plaguedocboi:
Mad scientists are great and I adore the lab aesthetic but where is the love for unhinged field work scientists. You drive down a backroad in the middle of the night and your headlights illuminate someone crouched down in the woods completely covered in mud holding five toads in a net. You're hiking in the remote mountains and there's some guy perched on a cliff that should be impossible to get to ranting about rocks, they're gone when you glance back. You're hanging out by the river one day and see a fully clothed person walk out the water like Godzilla and they immediately start recording something on a clipboard while muttering to themselves about salamander populations. Feral Science. Degree in being a cryptid
There was a great movie that I saw as a kid, starring Shawn Connery, where he plays a mad field scientist. He's in the rainforest looking for a cure for cancer in chemicals produced by ants or something like that. I can't remember what it's called though!
Edit: ChatGPT to the rescue! It was a rare flower, not ants. 1992, called Medicine Man. Check it out! It's worth a watch.