Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: have you ever become so angry or threatened that you've exploded,
Speaker 1: like literally exploded? No? No, no, but you've seen it before,
Speaker 1: at least in cartoons. I've seen it a lot in cartoons,
Speaker 1: And because my daughter plays Angry Birds and especially the
Speaker 1: Star Wars versions of it, I'm very aware of one
Speaker 1: character called Bomb and when enraged, the feather on top
Speaker 1: of its head we'll start to smoke and then it'll
Speaker 1: just detonate. Yeah, this is glorious explosion. You know, I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about about video games as much going
Speaker 1: into this, but us, there are a lot of exploding
Speaker 1: characters in games. Um, little bomb men, I seem to recall,
Speaker 1: and oh, of course, bomber Man. It's all about characters
Speaker 1: getting blown up. But but yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: exploding characters going on in your in your cartoons and
Speaker 1: your video games. Um. One example that always comes to
Speaker 1: my mind in John Carpenter's film Big Troubling Little China.
Speaker 1: There's a part when the city of this warrior sorcerer
Speaker 1: named Thunder of the Three Storms, and he discovers that
Speaker 1: his his evil master lo Pan has been slain uh
Speaker 1: there in the caverns and chambers of his underground uh stronghold,
Speaker 1: and so he gets so mad that he just puffs
Speaker 1: up and just explodes with anger uh in an attempt
Speaker 1: I guess to to take out invaders. But it's a
Speaker 1: you know, it's a gory, kind of goofy moment, but uh,
Speaker 1: it's actually a real thing. It is a real thing, right,
Speaker 1: because that was a fictional account, and yet in nature
Speaker 1: we have some very real instances of this happening, which
Speaker 1: kind of leads the whole idea that the truth is
Speaker 1: truly into in fiction. And we've tried in this territory before.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about c cucumbers, right, because we said
Speaker 1: that if you ever get in an undersea bar fight
Speaker 1: with a c cucumber, beware because you will probably have
Speaker 1: its guts pummeling your face because they're ejected from the
Speaker 1: c cucumbers an us. And if you were to get
Speaker 1: in a fight with say Harry Frog the t robust us,
Speaker 1: well then watch out because they can actually make shifts
Speaker 1: from their own bones, which they puncture their way out.
Speaker 1: The shivs the bones out of the frog's toepads to
Speaker 1: create these claws. Yeah, I mean, you see it this
Speaker 1: time and time again. Whatever the weird grotesque body horror
Speaker 1: type thing is that we can dream up in our
Speaker 1: fictional world and our pop culture, nature has already evolved
Speaker 1: it to a to a terrifying degree. And uh, and
Speaker 1: indeed that's what we see with autopsis, the biological act
Speaker 1: by which an animal, specifically an insect, ruptures their own
Speaker 1: internal glands and organs with enough force to cause their
Speaker 1: insights to literally burst out through their exoskeletons. It's a
Speaker 1: purely muscular exercise caused by deliberate contractions around in gorged tissue,
Speaker 1: and it creates absolute mayhem. Now, it's worth noting the
Speaker 1: insects that practice autithosis do so out of something called
Speaker 1: youth social organizations. So this kind of organization is predicated
Speaker 1: on three things. Brood cooperation, overlapping generations within a colony
Speaker 1: of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and
Speaker 1: non reproctive reproductive groups. And so these set the conditions
Speaker 1: for this kind of self sacrifice. And the examples that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about today. All right now, before we get
Speaker 1: into the exploding eurosocial insects, m I'm just gonna talk
Speaker 1: quickly here about chemical weapons in in animals, chemical weapons
Speaker 1: specifically insects in general. Now, number of animals out there
Speaker 1: use chemical weapons against their adversaries. H And as we've
Speaker 1: discussed before, a lot of human chemical weapons, also human
Speaker 1: spices and other agents are simply nature's chemical weapons that
Speaker 1: we've hijacked for our own ends. Some animals synthesized toxins,
Speaker 1: while others extract and modified toxins from their environment or
Speaker 1: their diet. So just looking at insects and arachnets, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously have we have scorpions, we have spiders, we have
Speaker 1: lost but we then we also have some stranger examples here,
Speaker 1: and they're like foam grasshoppers that excrete foul bubbles from
Speaker 1: their armpits. And uh and of course we always have
Speaker 1: to mention the bombardier beetle. And this is the one
Speaker 1: that heats, that sprays a heated exploding acid from its
Speaker 1: anus where it has to two chemicals that is stored
Speaker 1: in separate chambers. Then it fires them into a reaction chamber. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then this is where you have enzymes breaking down
Speaker 1: H two O two, releasing free oxygen um to oxygenate
Speaker 1: the chemicals, and it just creates this explosive, hot excretion
Speaker 1: that this beautiful chemical weapon to spray right in the
Speaker 1: face of an attacker. When we come to it's it's
Speaker 1: in the social insects, zero social insects. This is where
Speaker 1: we see, uh, the evolution of far more sublime, far
Speaker 1: more terrifying weaponry. Yeah, because foaming armpits, that's that is
Speaker 1: pretty great. That's but that's more like a fireworks display,
Speaker 1: whereas the examples of audi posas are more like the
Speaker 1: fireworks are the exploding of the ones self, right, offering
Speaker 1: of oneself as the fireworks displays. So let's meet Borneo's
Speaker 1: Campa notice cylindricus. This is one of several ant species
Speaker 1: known as the comic caze ants, and Jonathan Neil, An,
Speaker 1: Associate professor of entomology at Purdue University and author of
Speaker 1: the textbook Living With Insects, writes on his blog that quote,
Speaker 1: when exposed to European ants in the lab, the exploding
Speaker 1: Cappa notice ants would grasp the invader by the leg
Speaker 1: or the antenna, press its body to the head of
Speaker 1: the invader and squeeze it's abdomen until the abdomen ruptured,
Speaker 1: spilling glue over the eyes and mouth parts of the invader. Aunt.
Speaker 1: That is just utterly terrifying. Like I think of any
Speaker 1: grotesque moment in a monster movie that I've seen, and
Speaker 1: I don't think anything comes close to that, Like nothing,
Speaker 1: And I've some thought to this like that, Like nobody really, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, horror horror filmmakers out there, look look to
Speaker 1: the insect world, because there's some there's some stuff here
Speaker 1: that just has not even been plunged. Yeah, it's reminiscent
Speaker 1: of xenomorphs, at least some scenes with xenomorph right, because
Speaker 1: it's got the gluey kind of aspect to it. But
Speaker 1: let's discuss what it might be like to have this
Speaker 1: faithful of yellow goo, which which is the actual term,
Speaker 1: scientific term from the campanas, because it is chalk, a
Speaker 1: block with chemical irritants and strong adhesive. So it delivers
Speaker 1: this kind of one too punch of chemistry and really
Speaker 1: stops the invading ants and its tracks, right, because if
Speaker 1: your mouth is stuffed full of this glue, you're not
Speaker 1: going to be able and your you know, your your
Speaker 1: arms and your legs or rather just legs, or you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to do much damage. Right, You're
Speaker 1: going to pretty much freeze in your track. Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: just been completely incapacitated by this noxious concoction. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the camping, Honest, they are pretty touchy. They're known to
Speaker 1: self detonate far from the colony or when lightly touched
Speaker 1: with forceps in the lab well, probably completely terrifying some
Speaker 1: giant metal ant coming down at him right in times indeed,
Speaker 1: and researchers positive that the yellow goo initially help the
Speaker 1: ants break down the microbes and microbial byproducts they fed on,
Speaker 1: like from one guy, right, But then it evolved into
Speaker 1: this sort of exploding adaptation. And so if you look
Speaker 1: at the mandibular gland in these ants, which are commonly
Speaker 1: used for digestive enzymes in most ant species, you will
Speaker 1: see that it is greatly expanded in campanadas, and the
Speaker 1: glands are so large that they actually extend into the
Speaker 1: abdominal cavity, pretty much filling it. Yeah. I'm reminded a
Speaker 1: bit of our episode on the Electric Eel in which
Speaker 1: you have you have tissue that evolved initially for for
Speaker 1: one purpose, uh, namely having to do with the communication
Speaker 1: and sensing, and then as it becomes weaponized, it just
Speaker 1: fills up most of the fish. Yeah, and and you know,
Speaker 1: humans don't necessarily have this allthing. You can argue that
Speaker 1: some people's uh microbes, get microbes contribute to such a stench.
Speaker 1: On the other end, when when releasing platos, that it
Speaker 1: could be a fence mechanism. Yeah, and I guess you
Speaker 1: could also make an argument it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: you have, like somebody who's really into karate or something like,
Speaker 1: so their whole life becomes about like just honing their
Speaker 1: body and their behavior towards this one offensive, defensive purpose.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like what we see on an evolutionary
Speaker 1: scale with some of these examples. All right, let's explore
Speaker 1: termite world. Here. We are talking about some four thousand
Speaker 1: termite species, and they exist on every continent except Antarctica.
Speaker 1: But scientists have identified only about half of the ones
Speaker 1: they think that are out there, and most of those
Speaker 1: species common names, and little is really known about their
Speaker 1: biology or behavior. In fact, several years ago, uh DNA
Speaker 1: testing revealed that rather than belonging to their own order.
Speaker 1: Termites should be classified as a cockroach family. Huh. And
Speaker 1: that's interesting because you, I mean, I think most people
Speaker 1: tend to think of them sort of in the same
Speaker 1: camp as an ant, or at least very similar to
Speaker 1: the ant, you know, with the social set up royalty
Speaker 1: in place division of labor, right, indeed that the uth
Speaker 1: social organization there now. Tracy V. Wilson, you may know
Speaker 1: her from stuff you miss in the history class. She
Speaker 1: actually has a great article called how Termites Work on
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, and she describes them vastly
Speaker 1: quote in a lot of ways, termites are a paradox.
Speaker 1: They're strong enough to eat a house, but their bodies
Speaker 1: are soft, delicate, and prone to drying out. Soldiers whose
Speaker 1: sole job is to defend the colony can't even feed themselves.
Speaker 1: Adult termites develop wings so they can leave the colony
Speaker 1: and find a new home, helping the termite population grow.
Speaker 1: But winged termites are terrible flyers, and most don't survive
Speaker 1: the journey. And yet they do right, and they do
Speaker 1: so as working as as a cooperative unit, and they
Speaker 1: ensure that their nests are moist so that their bodies
Speaker 1: don't dry out, they build shelters protection from the environment,
Speaker 1: including predators, and as they slowly and methodically carry back
Speaker 1: bits of waste and dirt to use as building materials,
Speaker 1: they munch on wood for sustenance. Hence a homeowner's terror
Speaker 1: at discovering that they've got termites in their midst. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I highly recommend anyone interested in termites to to
Speaker 1: read Tracy's article because it's a great house stuff works article,
Speaker 1: and it really, I mean, it dives into the complex
Speaker 1: and really beautiful biology of these creatures that we so
Speaker 1: often just dismissed as a mere past. Just like termites.
Speaker 1: Don't want them, don't want to know about them. But
Speaker 1: they're really kind of lovely in their own way. I
Speaker 1: wish they would need our houses. But they're pretty great. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're lovely, and but they're they're quite formidable. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that they can actually be pretty spectacular on
Speaker 1: an individual level as well. Yes, indeed, because we do
Speaker 1: see termites a practice Autopsis um Autopsis evolved independently actually,
Speaker 1: and of course a number of species, and we can
Speaker 1: actually best fathom the evolutionary process by noting the varying
Speaker 1: levels of lethality and toxicity in the various examples. According
Speaker 1: to the journal Nature, some termites simply defecate on their enemies,
Speaker 1: all right, so it's just a matter of just just
Speaker 1: poop on anything that's that's a threat to you and
Speaker 1: the family. But others adapted to shower their enemies with
Speaker 1: filth by squeezing, squeezing their abdominal muscles till the excrement
Speaker 1: bursts out through thin portions of the abdominal wall, so
Speaker 1: that the next level in pooping on your enemies, right,
Speaker 1: But the the ultimate in this, the the peak of
Speaker 1: the evolutionary mountain, as we as we thus far can
Speaker 1: grasp it, is the termite neo capit Terminis tarracia, and
Speaker 1: UH Tarracia stands at the forefront of the Autothis arms
Speaker 1: race UH the species here they grow abdominal sacks of
Speaker 1: toxic blue crystals grown throughout their lie and these are
Speaker 1: the chemical weapons that they use to defend the colony.
Speaker 1: That's right. They were discovered in two thousand and twelve
Speaker 1: and French Guiana, where researchers said, hey, what is that
Speaker 1: the kind of blue sack there? And what is making
Speaker 1: it blue? And by the way, it is copper rich
Speaker 1: proteins that give it that blue hue. And so what
Speaker 1: the researchers found is that the older the termite, the
Speaker 1: bigger this kind of backpack or ruck sack that they
Speaker 1: carried on their backs of this blue crystal. And there's
Speaker 1: a reason for this, by the way, the older the bigger,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that, but let's talk about this sack.
Speaker 1: Because these crystals are created by specialized glands located on
Speaker 1: top of the salivary glands, and so during aggressive encounters,
Speaker 1: the termite ruptures its body wall, releasing the contents of
Speaker 1: the blue pouch, which mixes with salivary fluid to form
Speaker 1: a chemical so toxic that it paralyzes or kills most
Speaker 1: of the invading termites that touch it. So it's it's
Speaker 1: so much more dramatic and effective than just pooping on
Speaker 1: your enemy, right, because this is kind of like taking
Speaker 1: a stick of dynamite to a powder keg and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: take that. Yeah, I mean if they just explode into
Speaker 1: blue toxic good, I love it. Yeah. In an interview
Speaker 1: with Nature, Olav Repel and evolutionary Biologists says the sophistication
Speaker 1: of this is remarkable. We have never seen an external
Speaker 1: pouch like this before. That adds one substance that needs
Speaker 1: to be mixed with another substance. Now, use the analogy
Speaker 1: of you know, just running out there and touching the
Speaker 1: touching the fire to the dynamite and explodes and explosive
Speaker 1: and dangerous tasks. So so who do you who do you?
Speaker 1: Who do you give this task to? Write? Uh? And
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of this. We mentioned that those the
Speaker 1: toxic blue crystal sacks, they grow throughout the creature's life.
Speaker 1: So by the time the termite is elderly, it has
Speaker 1: it has reached maximum blue crystal bloat. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's it's it's it's run out of other
Speaker 1: uses in the colony. It's mandibles are dull and useless. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be able to go out there and
Speaker 1: really get in the fight. It's not really you know,
Speaker 1: going to be able to help out much working around
Speaker 1: the colony. Now it has one purpose, and that is
Speaker 1: to march out there with its bloated, over filled sacks
Speaker 1: of explosive goo materials and to indeed explode, yes that's right,
Speaker 1: and defend the colony. Right with this kind of suicidal, rupturing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the perfect you know, well often come
Speaker 1: back to to just the the inhuman beauty of the
Speaker 1: insect world, you know, just completely devoid of of of
Speaker 1: most of our our human qualities. There's a line in
Speaker 1: uh from Jeff Goldbloom's character in The Fly where he
Speaker 1: talks about that the absence of insect politics. You don't
Speaker 1: find politics in the insect world. You just find this
Speaker 1: this brutal and and just beautiful economy, UH at play
Speaker 1: here where in this case, we have these old termines,
Speaker 1: we have no other use but to go out there
Speaker 1: and explode. And they do it that they do it
Speaker 1: perfectly to make sure the survival of the genetic uh
Speaker 1: packets are in place right for future generations. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all about the greater good of the colony, not the individual. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna we're gonna just talk about exploding toads
Speaker 1: a little bit. This is a this is a slight
Speaker 1: deviation from the topic, but it's a tantalizing mystery that
Speaker 1: involves exploding animals. So I think it's it's totally open,
Speaker 1: open game. So back in two thousand five, what you
Speaker 1: had happened is that you had an exploding toad epidemic
Speaker 1: in northern Europe. More than a thousand toad corpses were
Speaker 1: discovered in a in a pond and an upscaled neighborhood
Speaker 1: of Hamburg, Good Germany and over the border in Denmark. Um.
Speaker 1: So everyone who was curious what's going on is there's
Speaker 1: this is some disease of the toads. It's causing them
Speaker 1: to explode. Uh, is someone exploding our toads? What is happening? Well?
Speaker 1: Frank and whose Mun, a Berlin veterinarian who collected and
Speaker 1: tested specimens at the Hamburg pond, said that it appeared
Speaker 1: that clever crows had pecked into the toads with their
Speaker 1: beaks between the amphibian's chest and the abdominal cavity. And
Speaker 1: what happened is that the toad puffed itself up as
Speaker 1: a natural defense mechanism. But because these crows had, you know,
Speaker 1: effectively removed the liver. Uh, there was a hole in
Speaker 1: the toad's body and the blood vessels and the lungs
Speaker 1: burst and then other organs oozed out, so that the
Speaker 1: toad puffs up as a defensive measure. But the crow
Speaker 1: just reaches in there gets the part at once, even
Speaker 1: the nice juicy bit like a game of operation. And
Speaker 1: then and then the toads left. They're trying to puff
Speaker 1: up and defend itself and instead just splurting its insides
Speaker 1: out through its hole. You know, I'm seeing a future
Speaker 1: House to Works article, maybe sort of something like the
Speaker 1: Five Unexpected Fates of Toads, because we've also talked about,
Speaker 1: well we're talking about frogs raining from the sky because
Speaker 1: of water spouts out in the ocean, these sort of
Speaker 1: tornadoes in the water. Yeah. Outside of a scientific understanding
Speaker 1: of the world and a skeptical approach to two weird happenings,
Speaker 1: you would easily think that the toad is like ground
Speaker 1: zero for the supernatural, like something weird happens. They're gonna
Speaker 1: rain from the sky, They're gonna they're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: swell up and explode. Which is which is playing with
Speaker 1: our toads as always better than our toes. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's you know, we've got a few minutes here.
Speaker 1: Let's call the robot over then, and indeed do a
Speaker 1: couple of listener mails. Alright, this one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Larry. Larry says I was listening to your episode
Speaker 1: on the weight of the soul, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to make a comment. Now, Professor Gary Nam's theory is
Speaker 1: completely logical if you just have an open mind for
Speaker 1: a minute. That takes us to the heart of my comment.
Speaker 1: It seems that you, guys may be letting your views,
Speaker 1: which seem to be more atheistic and agnostic, get in
Speaker 1: the way of looking at this logically. Whether or not
Speaker 1: your soul goes onto anything after this is beside the point,
Speaker 1: the point being that that what you call a soul now,
Speaker 1: don't get it caught caught up in the name being
Speaker 1: a religious reference, is just the collection of energy that
Speaker 1: makes up life. Now, having that in mind, Professor Nam
Speaker 1: makes all the sense in the world. Thanks guys. I
Speaker 1: love the show and I will always listen. Uh indeed,
Speaker 1: that's you know, Geary Nam's research I did find really
Speaker 1: fascinating because he kind of again the difficulty of approaching
Speaker 1: the idea of the soul and trying to study it
Speaker 1: or theorize about it scientifically. He uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: over overcomes that to a certain extent, at least in
Speaker 1: the in the theoretical uh phase. And and I do
Speaker 1: I do buy a lot of what he's putting out there.
Speaker 1: He kind of loses me the more he gets into
Speaker 1: into black holes. But but I like the general approach.
Speaker 1: I see, there's a brilliant thought experiment. But again, the
Speaker 1: problem with it is the problem of science and the
Speaker 1: metaphysical which is is very difficult to get actual data.
Speaker 1: And uh, therein lies the correct of the problem exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Dave. Dave says, you probably don't have time to
Speaker 1: reply or maybe even read this and its entirety. Well, well,
Speaker 1: we're about to prove you wrong. Uh No. Nevertheless, I
Speaker 1: thought I should send you both a message just to
Speaker 1: let you know how much I love your podcast. I've
Speaker 1: been an avid podcast listener for a few years now
Speaker 1: when I stumbled across yours. Until then, I've been listening
Speaker 1: to s g U and The Reality Check. When I
Speaker 1: started listening to Stuff to Blew Your Mind, I was
Speaker 1: impressed with the format of the show and the sharing
Speaker 1: of science was done in a fun, never belittling way.
Speaker 1: I really enjoy the rapport between the both of you
Speaker 1: and look forward to my time so I can listen
Speaker 1: to a few Stuff to Blew Your Mind episodes. I'm
Speaker 1: currently going through your backlog and I'm about halfway through
Speaker 1: a little more the Seven Deadliest. Anyway, I just felt
Speaker 1: compelled to drop you this message and let you know
Speaker 1: that I really enjoy and appreciate the show and wanted
Speaker 1: to thank you both and everyone else involved for putting
Speaker 1: together such a great show on a regular basis. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Thanks Dave. That's that's very nice. And Seven Deadly's one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. Yeah, that that was a really fun
Speaker 1: series to do, and uh yeah, I would really like
Speaker 1: to uh maybe re explore that material in the future,
Speaker 1: maybe in video form, who knows. Yeah. And also I
Speaker 1: want to take this opportunity to tip my hat to
Speaker 1: our producer, Noel Brown, to who puts us together every
Speaker 1: week and get us out to you guys. Indeed, we
Speaker 1: couldn't do without no all right. Hey. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you know where to go. Go to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all of
Speaker 1: our podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, and be sure to
Speaker 1: check out the landing page for this episode if you
Speaker 1: want to find a links to other great content, including
Speaker 1: that How Stuff Works article by Tracy Wilson and if
Speaker 1: you have exploding thoughts you'd like to share with us,
Speaker 1: you can do so by emailing us that blow the
Speaker 1: mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of their topics, visit how staff works
Speaker 1: dot com.