Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com? Yeah, wait your house
Speaker 1: it's a good y Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Josh. That's Chuck. This is Stuffy should know.
Speaker 1: How do you smell? Chuck? Was that at the other
Speaker 1: room this morning? So? How how are you holding up? Well?
Speaker 1: This is we got a good three and a half
Speaker 1: beat between us. Fine, um, you heard this is a
Speaker 1: non usual opening for this podcast. You didn't hear, but
Speaker 1: I heard you did. Okay, Okay, So that's the that's
Speaker 1: the last few seconds. I guess of the Fly, the
Speaker 1: original nineteen fifty eight version starring Vincent Price, and that
Speaker 1: is the the inventor named Seth Brendle, who um brindle fly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who has converted himself into a fly. Well switched heads
Speaker 1: with the fly, right, switched bodies, I guess. And now
Speaker 1: he's a tiny little fly man who's being attacked by
Speaker 1: a spider on the spider web. You know, I just
Speaker 1: saw the Cromeberg version a couple of months ago. I
Speaker 1: think I told you that. Yeah, it holds up the
Speaker 1: first time. Yeah, it's that I don't understand why um oh,
Speaker 1: what is his name, the main guy, gold bloom. I
Speaker 1: don't understand why Jeff Goldbloom um decided to add I
Speaker 1: guess it's a kind of like sexy arrogance to his
Speaker 1: character because it came off weird. That's just the gold
Speaker 1: he can do, I guess. So, man, the he brings
Speaker 1: that to everything he does. He's tripping with it. So chuck,
Speaker 1: we uh. We played that part of the fly not
Speaker 1: so much because we could, although that was a large
Speaker 1: part of it, but because we can explain what is
Speaker 1: on that little fly body. Now, that's right. We've read
Speaker 1: how flies work, and specifically how house flies work by
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. Robert Lamb's been popping up
Speaker 1: a lot lately, hasn't he? Who Robert's work? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: good stuff, And he just kind of pops into the
Speaker 1: cubicles and says, hey, how's it going a lot lately? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The housefly josh, um, if you're if you live in
Speaker 1: a house and you're flies flying around, you got about
Speaker 1: a nine chance that that is an actual Musca domestica. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the houseflies name. That's right. There's not
Speaker 1: some other more exotic name. It is on all um
Speaker 1: initial appearances, one of the more mundane bugs ever. But
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty interesting if you ask me, and disgusting
Speaker 1: because they carry lots of diseases like typhoid, fever and
Speaker 1: sam and ella and leprosy and cholera. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1: They carry leprosy and testinal worms. Well, I knew that
Speaker 1: bacteria that can lead to dysentery. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: they could, Uh, they could carry leprosy, though I didn't either.
Speaker 1: You know, I always equate leprosy with nudism because they
Speaker 1: both they both live in colonies. Yeah, I always think
Speaker 1: of leprosy when I think of lepricy. I think of
Speaker 1: the Bible, because growing up in churches where I heard
Speaker 1: about lepro colonies and leprosy and leprity being healed and
Speaker 1: all that. Exactly have you ever seen the fog the
Speaker 1: second one? I guess for the fog too? Was there
Speaker 1: a fog too? I don't know. I mean John Carpenter
Speaker 1: the original fog, I think, right, this is the remake
Speaker 1: where the people attacking were lepers who were turned away
Speaker 1: and now their ghosts have come back for Vengeance. I
Speaker 1: think that was the original as well. It wasn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize there were lepers. I thought they were like
Speaker 1: pirates that have been across or something. Cheez. We need
Speaker 1: to get her act together. And that's such a good movie,
Speaker 1: the first one. Yeah, I'll check it out. I just
Speaker 1: watched the thing last night. Oh that's a great one too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I had a fairly voracious Alien versus the Thing
Speaker 1: comments on I saw people get into that. I definitely
Speaker 1: say Alien is bad or but the thing is more disgusting,
Speaker 1: a little more twisted. Yeah, alright, this has been a
Speaker 1: long setup. Flies huh so chuck, um, We've we've got
Speaker 1: down that they spread disease, right potentially. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the things that kind of cropped up while I was
Speaker 1: reading this is it was kind of an expansion of
Speaker 1: everything I'd always knew about flies. Yeah, we all know
Speaker 1: a little bit, which I find very reassuring. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like quantum suicide, where it's like everything you
Speaker 1: think you know is just completely unreal and just go
Speaker 1: ahead and stop thinking. Now. This is like, yes, you
Speaker 1: understand house flies, and here is some more information about them.
Speaker 1: So I guess kind of this is almost like an
Speaker 1: elementary school episode, which I find I find comforting and
Speaker 1: reassuring to let's talk about fly anatomy, house fly anatomy,
Speaker 1: and if I accidentally say fly, if you accidentally say fly,
Speaker 1: we mean house fly specifically, right, that's right, Oh, And
Speaker 1: dispersed throughout the podcast, we'll have fly facts that sounds
Speaker 1: like this, So when you hear that, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a new fly fact. So, Josh, if you're talking a
Speaker 1: housefly body, it's like a lot of insects. It's got
Speaker 1: an exo skeleton made of kitan, and it's got three
Speaker 1: sections to the body. You got the head, you got
Speaker 1: the thorax, you got the abdomen. And as everyone knows,
Speaker 1: this is the this is actually isn't a fly fact,
Speaker 1: so no buzz, but it is effect, but it's not
Speaker 1: one of our fly facts. So every jingle, no jingle.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows that the fly has all those tiny, little
Speaker 1: bitty eyes, and like you said, it's reassuring to know
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they are. There two common eyes divided
Speaker 1: up into three to six thousand simple eze yes, and
Speaker 1: it's like a bunch of little video monitors because they
Speaker 1: can't focus on one little thing in particular. It's like
Speaker 1: a mosaic, right, but I also got the impression that
Speaker 1: it's like a mosaic. But each little eye is kind
Speaker 1: of its own. It's representative of the physical grid. It
Speaker 1: makes a grid of its physical environment. Right. So I
Speaker 1: wonder if the flies like, oh, there's a movement in sector,
Speaker 1: what I wonder and like, I go focus on that
Speaker 1: one simple eye to see that, you know a piece
Speaker 1: of poo on the ground that I need to go,
Speaker 1: you know, wattle through, or there's a human um who's
Speaker 1: coming towards me or something. And of course by sector
Speaker 1: ninety G, I meant sector three thousand to six thousand G. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So those are the eyes, and they are also a
Speaker 1: couple of little um I think three ocel eyes or
Speaker 1: if you're in Itali in Italy, and they are between
Speaker 1: the two compound eyes. And that's sort of like a
Speaker 1: compass that keep the fly oriented and ideally flying towards
Speaker 1: the sun. Okay, So I think that this should be
Speaker 1: the first fly fact. All right, let's do it, okay,
Speaker 1: uh chuck. The reason house flies are commonly found kind
Speaker 1: of flittering against a window because they're stupid, No, that's
Speaker 1: a fly myth. The fly fact is that they're oh
Speaker 1: ocelli or ocelli. The to simplize the act as a
Speaker 1: compass orient themselves upward by finding the sunlight. They're all
Speaker 1: constantly searching for sunlight, which is why they always go
Speaker 1: to a window or a bugs ever. That was fly
Speaker 1: back number one, all right, I like it on the head, Josh,
Speaker 1: which is where a lot of the action takes place
Speaker 1: with a fly. Um. They get their sense of smell
Speaker 1: from their antennae right there. For tasting and eating. They
Speaker 1: have a probiscus, which is a little plunger like thing
Speaker 1: that sticks out from the bottom of its mouth and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the bottom of the head um. They have
Speaker 1: little feelers, two of these, and their max maxillary palps.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and then they are the tasters. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the probiscus you have the labellum, which
Speaker 1: is um. Is that the mouth, the little spongey part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a sponge mouth like it's not like
Speaker 1: an open mouth that you think of. It's like a
Speaker 1: sponge on the end of the pro proboscis where you
Speaker 1: just suck. That's a probiscus didn't they it's close proboscus.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that. No, it goes either way, and that
Speaker 1: always makes me think of adaptation. Chris Cooper's character talks
Speaker 1: about the probiscus of the orchid. Oh yeah, Jerry's and
Speaker 1: they're just saying, yes, it's really weird. Apparently she's um
Speaker 1: guest starring in this episode. She's paying attention for the
Speaker 1: first time in weeks. So, um, chuck, there's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge little thing that you You pointed out that um uh,
Speaker 1: the labellum. Yes, the spongy mouth doesn't allow solid food
Speaker 1: in and we're gonna get to that in a minute,
Speaker 1: but just keep that in mind. That's fly foreshadowing, not
Speaker 1: a fly fact. But we've come to what I think
Speaker 1: is fly fact number two. Don't you are you going
Speaker 1: with the biting? Yeah, the biting, Okay, fly fact number two.
Speaker 1: Houseflies do not bite. If you get bitten by a fly,
Speaker 1: it was not a houseflowd on housewives. Might be a
Speaker 1: horse fly, and you know those in the summertime when
Speaker 1: you're in the pool, the land on your head and
Speaker 1: bite the tar out of you. Or it might have
Speaker 1: been your little sibling, brothers, sister. That's true and what
Speaker 1: other list another one stable flies, which are yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: horseflies there there. They kind of take care of all
Speaker 1: the horses at once, where a horse flies just like
Speaker 1: I just want this one horse. That's my take on it,
Speaker 1: all right, So that's fly fact too, So chuck, Um,
Speaker 1: we are onto wings now, which isn't necessarily a fly
Speaker 1: fact because it's so essential. Right back in ancient times,
Speaker 1: which was up to sixty million years ago, as I understand, Um,
Speaker 1: that's how long houseflies have been around. Um, they had
Speaker 1: two sets, two full sets of wings, and nowadays in
Speaker 1: our modern times, it looks like flies have houseflies have
Speaker 1: one set. That's not necessarily true. Yeah, if you're a
Speaker 1: little jerky kid, a little myoclonic jerk, and you pull
Speaker 1: the wings off of a fly, you probably think you're
Speaker 1: just pulling off too. Yeah, and you may be, because
Speaker 1: those are the large ones. But there's little tiny guys
Speaker 1: under there, and they're called halters, right, and the halters
Speaker 1: where actually if you if you pull the halter off,
Speaker 1: these little tiny wings um that are underneath or above
Speaker 1: I think they're underneath. They're underneath the big wings um.
Speaker 1: They allow they basically allow the fly to move quickly
Speaker 1: in the air right to um to maintain balance a
Speaker 1: direct direction hover, yes, um. And so if you remove
Speaker 1: one of these, it can only go in circles. If
Speaker 1: you remove both of the halters to fly, can't get
Speaker 1: is an airborne at all? Yeah, with those two big wings,
Speaker 1: it still can't fly without his little halters. Ye, it's
Speaker 1: pretty good, but not a fly fact. No, very interesting nonetheless,
Speaker 1: But the the big wings, the large wings that you
Speaker 1: see when you look at a fly, are the ones
Speaker 1: that do the real heavy lifting, right. Yeah, We're talking
Speaker 1: two hundred to three hundred flaps per second, and they
Speaker 1: can go about four and a half miles an hour,
Speaker 1: which I would have assumed they could go faster than
Speaker 1: I can run four and a half miles an hour.
Speaker 1: And it's and I've seen flies zipping by me when
Speaker 1: I'm running. So chuck first, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: said the all of the moving parts, the wings, the legs,
Speaker 1: all this stuff, um, are located in the thorax, right,
Speaker 1: So you get the two sets of wings up top,
Speaker 1: and then below that you have the different legs. And
Speaker 1: the legs are well, they're they're standard legs. They're segmented
Speaker 1: and joined. But the most interesting part for me about
Speaker 1: the fly legs the house fly legs are the tarsi, right, yes,
Speaker 1: which are little tiny hairs on the end of the
Speaker 1: legs that act as pretty much the same thing as
Speaker 1: taste buds do for us. So that's why a fly um,
Speaker 1: that's why it'll land on food. It's not just landing,
Speaker 1: it's tasting to say do I want some of this?
Speaker 1: And most of the time the answers yes yes. And
Speaker 1: we'll get to the gruesome truth of that in a
Speaker 1: moment as well. Right, My favorite part of the legs
Speaker 1: is the pole vili. They are a little moist suction
Speaker 1: pads and they are the little grippers. So that's why
Speaker 1: when you see a fly, uh, jump on a wall,
Speaker 1: fly into a wall, and just all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they're like Spider Man right walking up the wall, little grippers.
Speaker 1: Or that's how Jeff Goldblum did it, with some swad
Speaker 1: of viv as well thrown in there. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the abdomen they have the key organs which are the
Speaker 1: reproductive organs, and the female the oviposter, and the male
Speaker 1: has the ideas and I actually look at that one
Speaker 1: up nice and that's not how it would have pronounced it.
Speaker 1: But these little uh, little things retract when they're not
Speaker 1: in use, on both the male and the female, so
Speaker 1: they'll stay protected there. That's very aerodynamic. It would be
Speaker 1: very unerodynamic to have the adegus just kind of laughing
Speaker 1: in the wind flies a thing around the house. It's
Speaker 1: like putting the landing gear down a little too soon.
Speaker 1: Write exactly, um, so chuck you you we already foreshadowed
Speaker 1: what's going on with them. The mouth, the sponge mouth,
Speaker 1: the labellum. Yes, um, that it can only up liquids. Well,
Speaker 1: not everything a fly eats is liquid, right, No, not
Speaker 1: if they want to jump on that steak or that
Speaker 1: dog crap or dry blood yea. Um. When a fly
Speaker 1: encounters something, well, first of all, part when when the
Speaker 1: it accepts food into the bellum, it basically sucks it
Speaker 1: straight into the stomach. If it's liquid, it's good to go.
Speaker 1: So when it lands on the food and it finds
Speaker 1: that it can't um, it can't just suck it up, um,
Speaker 1: it basically tries to crumble it with the end of
Speaker 1: its proboscus. Right at that point, it's got tiny little
Speaker 1: it's it's smaller, it's more manageable, and then it pukes
Speaker 1: on it. Yea, that's step two. Everything you've ever heard
Speaker 1: about flies vomiting on you um or your food or
Speaker 1: whatever when they land is absolutely true. Yeah. I thought
Speaker 1: I might have thought that was an old wives talle
Speaker 1: in this article. No, it is true. Um. What the
Speaker 1: fly does is basically spit up saliva and digestive juice
Speaker 1: is onto the little crumbs that it's made using its proboscus, right, um,
Speaker 1: and it sits there for a couple of seconds thinking,
Speaker 1: and then it it tries to slurp it up. Um.
Speaker 1: And Robert makes a really good point in the article
Speaker 1: this sounds extremely disgusting to us, right, sure, but the
Speaker 1: fly isn't doing anything we don't do. When we take
Speaker 1: food into our mouth, we chew it, we masticate it. Right.
Speaker 1: Saliva is attacking it, starting to break it down, and
Speaker 1: then it goes through our esophagus into our stomachs and
Speaker 1: it becomes digested by juices. The flyes just doing the
Speaker 1: same thing, but on the outside of its body because
Speaker 1: it doesn't have teeth, and we have the decency to
Speaker 1: keep it all internal. Right, We don't go into restaurants
Speaker 1: and puke up onto our plate. That just would that
Speaker 1: would be untoward. So if there if the um, if
Speaker 1: this food is kind of in an in between state, um,
Speaker 1: and it's been spent on, vomited on left and it's
Speaker 1: still not quite right, it gets moved to the crop. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see the what should we call this fly fact? Okay?
Speaker 1: Fly fact? Was this three? Yeah, there's a crop, like
Speaker 1: you said, and instead of just um saying, oh, well
Speaker 1: this this little bit of crumb isn't quite liquid enough,
Speaker 1: let me just go fly to another one, the fly
Speaker 1: is pretty efficient, so they say, actually, let me save
Speaker 1: this for later, stick it down another hole into the crop,
Speaker 1: and in the crop it waits, and then they'll pass
Speaker 1: it back and forth, maybe add a little more digestive juices,
Speaker 1: throw up on it a bit more, and they do
Speaker 1: this until it's ready to be you know, until it's
Speaker 1: liquid ready to go down the shoot. It doesn't waste
Speaker 1: its food. That was fly fact three. Right, Yes, there
Speaker 1: is one thing you know we said that the fly
Speaker 1: is not really doing anything differently than we do to
Speaker 1: our food, is just doing it on the outside. That's
Speaker 1: still horrific and disgusting, because um, not only is the
Speaker 1: the fly carrying possibly leprosy to your sandwich. When it
Speaker 1: throws up on it, it's probably throwing up something at
Speaker 1: just eight which, as you pointed out, could be dog poop,
Speaker 1: could be blood. Uh, could be the you know, poop
Speaker 1: from a leprous dog, something like that. So when you
Speaker 1: you're at a picnic or something and you see that
Speaker 1: fly on your sandy, it's probably and if you see
Speaker 1: it moving his little hands around, it's vomiting disease on
Speaker 1: your food. It's what it's doing, right, exactly, Potentially disease,
Speaker 1: not always no. And plus you don't underestimate the human
Speaker 1: immune system. I mean, we all have white blood cells,
Speaker 1: you know, we all, we all can mount a pretty
Speaker 1: decent defense unless we have some sort of immuno deficiency.
Speaker 1: And if we do have that, then they were probably
Speaker 1: in some sort of treatment for it. So for the
Speaker 1: most part, I mean, it is gross. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think in in modern times where we got the
Speaker 1: flies under control at least you know here in the West. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: for now, until the apocalypse comes the Rise of the
Speaker 1: fly right, Um, do you remember of that part in
Speaker 1: Amityville Horror The priest is like he's covered in flies
Speaker 1: and starts sweating and was that Rod Starker Huh yeah,
Speaker 1: nice good. I would have been so out of there,
Speaker 1: um chuck. Yes, we talked about their sexy bits already.
Speaker 1: What do they do with them? What's the fly family?
Speaker 1: Like a fly family? Josh is like many insect families.
Speaker 1: They man will chase down a female and impregnate her
Speaker 1: and it happens really quick. She's ready to lay her eggs.
Speaker 1: Toot sweet and uh, they don't stick together after they mate,
Speaker 1: they separate and the and the mother doesn't even guard
Speaker 1: the eggs like a lot of species do. One night
Speaker 1: love affair. Yeah, and she basically dumps the eggs and
Speaker 1: what she deems to be a safe place and she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. It's one night stand followed in
Speaker 1: child abandonment. And how many eggs is it? Later time?
Speaker 1: Did we get that up to nine? Over the life
Speaker 1: cycle of a fly? Okay, in a life cycle, I
Speaker 1: think they said the average lifesman is about three weeks,
Speaker 1: but it could be three months. Yeah. I don't think
Speaker 1: a fly can live physically beyond three months. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the average lifespan and reality because of fly swatters and
Speaker 1: things like that. Um is like twenty one days. I
Speaker 1: think he said. Yeah. So the life cycle um is
Speaker 1: a lot like most insects. It's got the egg and
Speaker 1: then the larva, then the pupa, then the adult. Warm
Speaker 1: summertime is optimal. It takes about seven to ten days
Speaker 1: to go from egg to adult. And they go through
Speaker 1: I think three molten stages. Uh, the little maggot student,
Speaker 1: they see, you know this, you know all this. You
Speaker 1: learn this in school. Didn't it nice to know this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Very nice? So chuck um with the maggots. The first
Speaker 1: stage of the most interesting stage. We've arrived at a
Speaker 1: story that I have. Oh boy, when I was in college, Um,
Speaker 1: cooked steak through cooked steak and really actually, now they
Speaker 1: think about it, I guess I've probably trimmed some raw
Speaker 1: meat off and put it in the guard bridge can,
Speaker 1: as is normal, a garbage bag in a garbage can,
Speaker 1: the kitchen garbage can. Okay, And I get up the
Speaker 1: next so I'm a normal person. I'm not stick away
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Um. So I get up the next morning
Speaker 1: and I go into the kitchen and I wonder, why
Speaker 1: is the kitchen floor moving like that? Oh man? And
Speaker 1: I kind of followed the floor as it went up
Speaker 1: the garbage can and into it, and I realized that
Speaker 1: my kitchen floor, it's a small kitchen, granted, but my
Speaker 1: kitchen floor was covered in a living layer of maggots
Speaker 1: the whole thing, the whole thing. So I'm like, I've
Speaker 1: got to get rid of these. What how do you
Speaker 1: take care of a maggot infestation? And I tried bleach first,
Speaker 1: did nothing to him, didn't even slow down one of them. Really,
Speaker 1: I ended up having to walk all over them. Well that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the old fashioned way. That's that's what I had
Speaker 1: to do. And for I did not actually have a
Speaker 1: floor infestation after that, so I guess I got them all.
Speaker 1: But they make a horrific little popping sound. Did you
Speaker 1: have have like snow shoes or something at least no,
Speaker 1: probably like hiking boots or something. It was an athen
Speaker 1: Why were they all over the floor? Was it from
Speaker 1: the steak it out of the garbage can overnight? Like
Speaker 1: like that? That's frightening, But that I mean that follows
Speaker 1: with um what we know about the housefly life cycle.
Speaker 1: That Larva's hatch um within a day, right, and and
Speaker 1: don't forget Larva and by Larva's I met larva with
Speaker 1: an E on the end um equals maggots breathe out
Speaker 1: of their butt, right, didn't we learn that somewhere else?
Speaker 1: So they never have to stop eating exactly. So they're
Speaker 1: just like this little fleshy worm like thing with the
Speaker 1: hooked mouth that just does nothing but eat. And yeah,
Speaker 1: because they breathe out of their butts and molt like
Speaker 1: I said, three stages, and then the third molten stage,
Speaker 1: you know, it goes uh, it gets a little darker
Speaker 1: and enters the pupa stage and that's the larger protective shell.
Speaker 1: Then it fully develops and outcomes a beautiful butterfly or
Speaker 1: a disgusting house fly like barton the Simpsons. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how to like what Barton the senses. There's a treehouse
Speaker 1: of Horror where they redid the fly where he's like
Speaker 1: that mindless like the fly with Bart's bodies it's mindless eating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the earlier ones. That's a good one. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they get out of their little shell there
Speaker 1: with a temporary swollen bump because they can't chew to
Speaker 1: get out of an egg or the shell, so they
Speaker 1: they literally use this bump on their head to crack
Speaker 1: their way out, and then after they get out, that
Speaker 1: bump deflates and it just becomes part of the head again.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's unique to each fly, like they
Speaker 1: can recognize one another from the bump on the head, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I didn't There wasn't a name
Speaker 1: for that in here either. No, it's just the swollen
Speaker 1: bump alright. Fly fact number four. Yes, so we talked
Speaker 1: about a fly. It can't live longer than three months,
Speaker 1: that's right, That is if it's existing outside of diapause, right,
Speaker 1: Totally fascinating to me. Yes, So diapause is basically like
Speaker 1: suspended animation or hibernation for the fly. Basically, if there's
Speaker 1: no food around um, and there's no predators either, and
Speaker 1: the flies like I'm gonna see what's going on a
Speaker 1: few months from now, the fly can basically shut down
Speaker 1: it's it's life processes to the state where it can
Speaker 1: just exist without moving. It's like a state between life
Speaker 1: and death for a few months, right, and then wake
Speaker 1: back up and be like it's the future or it's
Speaker 1: winter and I'm dead soon. That's another part, because don't
Speaker 1: they only live during the warmer months or do they
Speaker 1: don't live all year around. They they thrive in the
Speaker 1: in the warmer, warm, muggy areas. So Josh, surely these
Speaker 1: things add nothing to the world aside from being discussing
Speaker 1: little creeps. Agreed? Not true? You don't want them in
Speaker 1: your house? Well, remember, Chuck, these are one of the one,
Speaker 1: one of like three bugs that you and I agreed
Speaker 1: are are fine to kill. Yeah, what else did we say?
Speaker 1: Mosquitoes and mosquitoes, ticks and this is the only non
Speaker 1: blood sucker. Interesting. It's a poop Peter though, and that's
Speaker 1: why I don't want in your house. But they are
Speaker 1: good um, like all flies in the world at large,
Speaker 1: great source of protein. They break things down in in
Speaker 1: into smaller bits for other bacteria and life forms to
Speaker 1: feed on. They are an important part of any ecosystem
Speaker 1: that they live in. I mean, there's nothing here that's useless, right,
Speaker 1: That's right? Okay. I think they even found a use
Speaker 1: for the old appendix, didn't they they did? Doesn't it
Speaker 1: like um combat cancerous growth? I can't remember, I believe
Speaker 1: so uh, And I think they even use maggots and
Speaker 1: uh freshwater fishing raising commercial fish like to lapia. Yeah
Speaker 1: to life, you love them. They use pupa. The pupa
Speaker 1: is high in protein. Okay, so that's what they feed them,
Speaker 1: a little freeze dripe pupa m And you know, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're a survivalist, or you're in a bad
Speaker 1: situation out in the woods and you need to survive, maggots.
Speaker 1: If you get like a rotted uh rotted tree on
Speaker 1: the ground, you want to eat those maggots. You'll eat it.
Speaker 1: You'll eat it and you'll like it. I would do it.
Speaker 1: And I'm not down with that stuff at all, but
Speaker 1: I would do that, of course, to save myself. Full
Speaker 1: circle and Tom Fagy, oh yeah, nice job, thank you.
Speaker 1: Do we have time for one more fly fact? I?
Speaker 1: I think so, I think, yes, we do alright. Fly
Speaker 1: fact number six, No. Five five. Ancient civilizations actually made
Speaker 1: regular sacrifices to the fly gods to keep the swarms
Speaker 1: out of their houses and temples because they thought they
Speaker 1: were harbingers of harbingers of sickness and death, even though
Speaker 1: they didn't know the science behind it. Right. The flies
Speaker 1: are just there's something about them. They are um, They're
Speaker 1: disgusting there, unwholesome. That's the word I'm looking for. They
Speaker 1: are inherently unwholesome. Yeah. So if you want to keep
Speaker 1: flies out of your temple, right, you have several options
Speaker 1: available to you. Right, keep a clean house, that's number one.
Speaker 1: That's the smartest thing to do. Don't don't don't leave
Speaker 1: like your carton of milk open and just sitting on
Speaker 1: the counter when you're doing it, all right, Or the
Speaker 1: steak in the trash. Yeah, Emily makes me throw away food. Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: I put it in a bag and take it out
Speaker 1: to the garbage. So what we do too, that's what
Speaker 1: you do with adults in college, I think so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like scrape in the trash. It was in a
Speaker 1: kitchen garbage can with the top. I mean in college,
Speaker 1: I would have left that plate out in the living
Speaker 1: room on the couch. I've always been fairly clean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. What else can you do fairly biological control?
Speaker 1: You've got the old venus fly trap, which you know,
Speaker 1: if you can keep them healthy either kind of tough.
Speaker 1: Not just that. At the end of the um at
Speaker 1: the end of the fly that was at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this podcast, it's taught in a spider web, which
Speaker 1: happens quite a bit, so us. As long as the
Speaker 1: spider is not going to kill you and your family
Speaker 1: while you're sleeping, just leave it along because it's going
Speaker 1: to control the fly population tremendously. That's right. And farmers
Speaker 1: even there's some commercial farms that actually buy uh parasitic
Speaker 1: wasps too, you know, eat larvae right and take care
Speaker 1: of flies for their crops. The Tarot melody wasp, that's right,
Speaker 1: Tara Melody. Uh, keep your windows and door shut. That's
Speaker 1: kind of obvious. If you're gonna keep your door open
Speaker 1: in the middle summertime, you're gonna have a lot of flies.
Speaker 1: I think that's funny that even warranted its own bullet point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the flyswatter did too. Actually physical control and fly
Speaker 1: paper which is disgusting. Yeah, it's it's gross too, I
Speaker 1: mean especially around food, like if you see that in
Speaker 1: the kitchen at camp. Yeah, you know when you went
Speaker 1: to camp and you walk past of kids and there
Speaker 1: like flies there. It's like, get some glass glazies windows,
Speaker 1: what is wrong? Or at least changed the fly paper
Speaker 1: every day. That's something too. There's bugs appers and then
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even endorse pesticides for house flies. You don't
Speaker 1: want to be sprayed that stuff in your house, But
Speaker 1: that is an option for some people and it's just
Speaker 1: not for me. They can be very dangerous and has
Speaker 1: anybody who's ever seen a bug's life knows the bugs
Speaker 1: appers actually get bugs high. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: hallucinogen to him. Oh was that what happened in that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the guy that's got zapp, the bug got zapp.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, that was far out something along those lines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: bug zappers are fun. So chuck, you got any more
Speaker 1: fly fax or anything? I know? So we're done with
Speaker 1: house flies. I'm done forever. House Flies just just as
Speaker 1: disgusting as you always thought. That's right, and you already
Speaker 1: knew everything about him. So everybody yourself a pat on
Speaker 1: the back of this one. Right. Yeah, we should mention
Speaker 1: if you use a fly swatter, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to smash a house fly, but you leave behind
Speaker 1: quite a disgusting mess. You will not allow house or
Speaker 1: fly swatters in the house. Now, we don't. We haven't
Speaker 1: owned up. They're they're really kind of gross. That's only
Speaker 1: second to the Pooper Scooper for the kiddie lettering devices.
Speaker 1: Or the toilet scrubber next to the toilet, or the plunger.
Speaker 1: So that's it. Now you know what chuck's in my
Speaker 1: houses look like. Right. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about flies and you want to see these fly facts
Speaker 1: in text, even you can type in house flies uh
Speaker 1: in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: which of course brings up listener mail Uh funny or
Speaker 1: sad funny. Okay, I'm gonna read the Hodgman exchange. Oh
Speaker 1: oh really, I was thinking we wouldn't do that and
Speaker 1: end up on Judge John Hodgman. Maybe he'll litigate this
Speaker 1: if we just pretendally can he doesn't exist. We'll see.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this though, all buddy, Uh Johnny Rocket
Speaker 1: Hodgeman John Kellogg Hodgman. Rocket is his maiden name. He
Speaker 1: has a podcast he does through Jesse Thorn's Maximum Fun
Speaker 1: Sound of Young America, called Judge John Hodgman. We plugged
Speaker 1: it before he settles minor disputes between friends, lovers, husbands
Speaker 1: and wives. It's very funny. So John writes this last week,
Speaker 1: and there is a fan that said I wish to
Speaker 1: file suit against the stuff. You should know podcasts and
Speaker 1: this guy. It's complaining about the fact that we said
Speaker 1: in the Scooby Doo show that there were the Boston
Speaker 1: area campuses. Yeah, the five the five colleges that were
Speaker 1: represented by the characters. Supposedly it was one of the
Speaker 1: Scooby Doo myths, and we said that they're all Boston
Speaker 1: area colleges. Like, what ones Amherst, you, mass Holyoke? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mount Holyoke's North Northampton And all right, that's the ones
Speaker 1: we'll get too. So March eighteen eight their nine Am,
Speaker 1: Judge John Hydman writes to the stuff you should know. Seriously, guys,
Speaker 1: see this Hello, The five colleges are in the Connecticut
Speaker 1: River or Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, specifically Amherst, Northampton
Speaker 1: in Holyoke, Massachusetts. This is painful to me, not only
Speaker 1: because this is Hodgman country, but it was which is
Speaker 1: mainlier than Marble Country. Actually it also has more argyle.
Speaker 1: That's right. It was indeed while driving up and down
Speaker 1: the tobacco fields along the Connecticut River that I first
Speaker 1: came to enjoy your podcasts and to admire your great knowledgeability.
Speaker 1: Wait you say tobacco fields, that is right. The Connecticut
Speaker 1: River Valley produces what is historically the most prize shade
Speaker 1: tobacco in the United States, and Massachusetts tobacco is still
Speaker 1: dried and used as rappers for fine cigars. Were you
Speaker 1: aware of this? In all caps? He he loves all cats,
Speaker 1: and he's very intimidating. Sunday, even hope to show this
Speaker 1: fine country to you, my semi hometown, in my total
Speaker 1: home state, and to remind you of the great motto
Speaker 1: of Hampshire College. To know is not enough. I look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing this letter read in its entirety on
Speaker 1: your podcast before you forced me to humiliate you on mine.
Speaker 1: That is all. Chuck Bryant writes, back, boy, John, did
Speaker 1: we hear about this one? It made it abundantly clear
Speaker 1: that the fine people of Massachusetts need to get right
Speaker 1: with one another and cease to throw up walls between themselves.
Speaker 1: There's enough segregation in the world. At ten o four,
Speaker 1: Judge John Hodgman writes, so you have already run a correction,
Speaker 1: then I must have missed it. Sarcasm uh. Ten o six,
Speaker 1: Chuck writes, we have not and shall not take part
Speaker 1: in the continued segregation of the fine people of Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: That is all. At ten oh eight, John writes, you
Speaker 1: leave me no choice but to mention this on my
Speaker 1: own podcast, And I respond to him, and you leave
Speaker 1: me no choice but to scoff at it publicly on
Speaker 1: our podcast. This is like a nerd battle at this point.
Speaker 1: It Yeah, And then John writes, very seriously, you don't
Speaker 1: want to go down this road, Chuck, just read my
Speaker 1: letter on the air before this gets ugly. I finally responded,
Speaker 1: if anything gets read, it shall be the entire exchange, John,
Speaker 1: complete with your threatening words from the alleged judge. And
Speaker 1: then he writes back, finally, you are a monster. And
Speaker 1: that is the end of the exchange. That was a
Speaker 1: great gramantic reading. Man. Thank you, thank you, and thank
Speaker 1: you John. Beep beep beep and uh sorry. I guess
Speaker 1: to everybody who was offended by that, which was a
Speaker 1: substantial amount of people who wrote in, I guess in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: that'd be like saying equating making with Atlanta or something,
Speaker 1: and we would say, no, no, no, no, Makan's not
Speaker 1: even close to Atlanta. Yeah, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: I would um point out the difference angrily. Well, Plus
Speaker 1: they were disassociating from Boston. Usually you glom onto the
Speaker 1: big city and they were like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: We're not Boston this one. Yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: If I don't get it, I don't either. But um
Speaker 1: to each his own, as we always say, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: If you want to litigate us somehow via email, maybe
Speaker 1: you can contact John Hodgman. Um, we should probably give
Speaker 1: us personal email out huh see it's so kind to
Speaker 1: copy ours. Yeah. Um, well, you can contact us first
Speaker 1: and we'll see if we can put you in touch
Speaker 1: with John. Um. You can reach us via Facebook at
Speaker 1: uh facebook dot com. Slash stuff you should know. You
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s y s K podcast right, um,
Speaker 1: and then you can always send us a good old
Speaker 1: fashioned email, which we're always appreciative of, although no longer
Speaker 1: respond to every single one. Be aware. Um that's stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
Speaker 1: on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
Speaker 1: our homepage. The House Stuff Work's iPhone app has arrived.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
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