Dermestid Beetles: The Flesh-Eating Cleanup Crew
ALERT: There’s a top secret crew cleaning up the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Meet nature’s tiniest janitors - dermestid beetles!
These incredible insects have the grossest (but coolest) job ever: they eat away all the flesh from animal specimens, leaving behind pristine bones for scientists to study. We're going through a maze of the museum to get a behind the scenes to check out thousands of these beetles.
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Spectacular Specimens is made possible by KUOW Public Radio in Seattle in collaboration with the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Support more episodes at https://www.kuow.org/donate/spectacularspecimens/
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Brandi Fullwood
Senior Producer
Brandi Fullwood is a senior producer for KUOW’s midday show Soundside. She joined KUOW in 2019 as a producer on The Record and was promoted to her current position in 2021. She has produced a range of stories from dinosaur experts to misinformation in the 2020 election. They’ve also produced and reported pieces for other KUOW programs like Seattle Now.
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Paige Browning
Newscaster
Paige hosts midday newscasts and monitors news of significance to the Puget Sound region. She hopped over Washington’s mountains to join KUOW, after hosting news and reporting at Spokane Public Radio since 2011. She began her start in radio while a journalism student at University of Montana, by sharing stories with KUFM. Paige was raised in the mountains and rivers around Spokane. In her spare time she cheers on the Mariners in the summer, and hopes for snow in the winter.
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