TriBeta President, Byron Hu, interviews Dr. Langford

Byron: Where are you from?
Langford: I consider my hometown to be Lawrence, Kansas.

Byron: So you are a big Kansas Jayhawk?
Langford: Yes. Although I spent time in Huskerland, it was hard to switch teams. I think most of the Huskers are a little crazy. The entire state is obsessed with one team. There are no pro sports, and there is only big university. Huskers who leave Nebraska are usually told, "You are a little too excited about Husker football."

Byron: What inspired you to study zoology?
Langford: I grew-up catching frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes in Kansas, and I suppose I've never stopped. I love it. I first realized I wanted to catch critters for a living after watching and working with the greatest snake biologist of all time Henry Fitch during my undergraduate at the University of Kansas. He was an amazing naturalist!

Byron: What is one piece of advice for future researchers?
Langford: Keep your eyes open! In other words, always be making observations, you never know what you might discover, especially when you are out in nature.

Byron: Do you have any pets?
Langford: 2 dogs, a Border Collie and a Collie/Australian shepherd mix; I frequently walk them on campus. I used to have 2 large Carpet pythons, but I gave them to a friend before my daughter was born.

Byron: Who is your hero of zoology?
Langford: I don't know if I have a hero, but I have been greatly influenced by Henry Fitch, Val Smith, David Nelson, and John Janovy, Jr.

Byron: What are your hobbies?
Langford: I enjoy backpacking, exploring, and playing basketball. We are going camping somewhere around Lakeland for the first time this winter. While I was in Nebraska or Kansas, we’d go camping in Colorado a lot. I’d drag my wife up and down several large mountains. We climbed the highest peak in Colorado, Mount Elbert; it’s over 14,000 feet high. We brought our dogs with us.

Byron: Please tell us an embarassing story about yourself.

Langford: I don’t find this embarrassing, but I think my wife was embarrassed by it. This happened in 2006 while I was doing my doctorate studies. While vacationing in Azul Mijares, a little island off Cancun, Mexico, I saw packs of dogs at night all over the island. They were likely infected by a intestinal parasite known as Ancylostoma, sometimes called a hookworm. It does not normally infect people, but it can penetrate human skin and gets lost because it does not recognize its host.

(Please do not attempt this at home)

Basically, I let one of these hookworms infect my toe and kept it alive by not squishing it so that I could observe it moving underneath the skin. I guessed it would live about 10 days before my immune system would naturally kill it, so I was hoping to get a photo of it at the end. One night we were taking in some margaritas and I tripped, stubbed my toe, and killed the hookworm early.

But I did have this nice path on my toe, and I show a Powerpoint picture of where it went. (Dr. Langford is teaching Parasitology next Spring) I thought it was kind of cool as a parasitologist, but my wife was really embarrassed by it.