Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: What is it with the with the bees versus the wasp? Uh?
Speaker 1: We we talked about this twice on our Facebook page
Speaker 1: to blow the mind on Facebook, find it that way
Speaker 1: and interact and share your own thoughts on this. But
Speaker 1: if we brought up bees versus wasp twice uh and
Speaker 1: basically just asked for people's gut reaction, like who are
Speaker 1: you gonna side with? And this this classic rivalry between
Speaker 1: the the wasps and their stingers and their nests and
Speaker 1: their stingers and then the bees with their hives and
Speaker 1: their honey and their their fancy culture, Like which which
Speaker 1: side do you you go for? And and everyone seems
Speaker 1: to go for the bees. I mean right, I'm probing.
Speaker 1: It's not just because I'm a lady and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're so cute and fuzzy, but they're going yeah, but
Speaker 1: they do get buying cute, you have to admit, yes
Speaker 1: they are. Whereas the wasp. I'm actually pro wasp because
Speaker 1: even though they tried to kill my sister. They are sleek.
Speaker 1: Um they are they are deadly. They have this like
Speaker 1: totally sci fi horror book kind of lifestyle going on.
Speaker 1: Um so they really speak to the nine year old
Speaker 1: in me. Um and uh yeah. So I'm gonna side
Speaker 1: with the wasp every time, I think, even though there
Speaker 1: is no such thing as delicious wasp honey. Uh and
Speaker 1: and I can't think of a single wasp cartoon character,
Speaker 1: whereas cartoon bees, they're everywhere. They're stinging Donald Duck there.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're the centerpiece of whole motion pictures.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I don't know. I mean yet they are
Speaker 1: you sometimes as sports mascots, right, which makes sense because
Speaker 1: they are aggressive jerks. Well that's the thing you want
Speaker 1: to you want your your mask got to be an
Speaker 1: aggressive jersey. I mean, you don't want to be a
Speaker 1: big fuzzy bumble bee. Fuzzy bumble bee. It's like the
Speaker 1: Cleveland Bumblebees. They're gonna becoming the whole audience starts going
Speaker 1: which and that's not menacing at all. Right, we might
Speaker 1: sting you, but we'll eviscerate ourselves in the process, I mean,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into later. It's it's just not as
Speaker 1: as as fearful a prospect as the wasps coming at
Speaker 1: you know. But it's interesting to look at these creatures
Speaker 1: side by side because they have a shared history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just an arbitrary pairing, like what would win
Speaker 1: in a fight a grizzly bearer a bull shark. I mean,
Speaker 1: these two species share a common history and evolved from
Speaker 1: a common form in the far far far ancient past.
Speaker 1: If you were to go back about a hundred million
Speaker 1: years back to the Cretaceous period, you would find a
Speaker 1: very interesting world. A very green world, all right, if
Speaker 1: you call it. Take us back. Yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: green world. But there you know, you're not gonna find
Speaker 1: You're not gonna find any flowering plants. It's occupied mostly
Speaker 1: by conifers. So we have a lot of pine cones,
Speaker 1: a lot of pine cones, of greenery, a lot of greenery.
Speaker 1: And the whole way that these plants that spread their
Speaker 1: seeds are via the wind um or you know, or
Speaker 1: just sort of letting them fall and letting them just
Speaker 1: casting the dice and let them go where they will.
Speaker 1: So on top of this green world, you already have
Speaker 1: a thriving insect community things. I mean, just like like
Speaker 1: the insect world is today, it's just a NonStop brawl
Speaker 1: of species eating each other, um, you know, mating with
Speaker 1: each other, warring against each other, forming these little uh
Speaker 1: you know, hives and nests. It's it's already the original
Speaker 1: brave hearts. Yes, and you have carnivorous wasps in this time.
Speaker 1: And these these are wasps that are going around they're
Speaker 1: hunting generally, they're hunting spiders, and spiders remain another classic
Speaker 1: enemy of the wasp. Uh, the kind of kind of
Speaker 1: the whipping boy for the wasp really. Um, and these
Speaker 1: waspers are pretty much owning everything like that. They're just
Speaker 1: going around there eating what they need and their and there,
Speaker 1: and they're using the meat that they gather to feed
Speaker 1: their their young. It's a you know, it's a perfect world, right,
Speaker 1: Like what what could change? M You see pine cones,
Speaker 1: no flowers, oh those romancers the flowers, right, the flowers emerge.
Speaker 1: And basically the idea here is that I'm gonna probably
Speaker 1: inevitably personify evolution a little bit here. We're going to
Speaker 1: do that a bit here. So you have this plant world,
Speaker 1: you have all these insects warring each other on its surface.
Speaker 1: The plants eventually come to exploit all that traffic. You
Speaker 1: need to get some genetic material from plant A to
Speaker 1: plant B. Say, well, let's put it on the back
Speaker 1: of this, uh, this creature that is waging a war
Speaker 1: across several different plants. So what we have here is
Speaker 1: the rise of the angiosperms, plants that depend on insects
Speaker 1: to spread genetic material and pollen from male up plant
Speaker 1: parts called anthers to female plant parts called stigmas. Okay,
Speaker 1: so uh, they start to they start producing this delicious
Speaker 1: nectar and pollen uh, and sweetens the deal for the insects,
Speaker 1: and it gives them specific reasons to traffic the parts
Speaker 1: of plants where Holland is produced because now they have
Speaker 1: a food source. Yeah, and so suddenly these wasps who
Speaker 1: were all into you know, they're killing and brutalizing and
Speaker 1: they're eating and the spiders. Suddenly there's all this sweet
Speaker 1: duff food stuff available right there, and it's easier to get.
Speaker 1: It's just there for the taking. It's dripping you know,
Speaker 1: off the off the flour. You don't have to engage
Speaker 1: in Mortal Kombat with an eight legged horror to get it,
Speaker 1: so it becomes the predominant food source for the wasp,
Speaker 1: and the carnivorous wasp, the wasp that goes out and
Speaker 1: kills and eats another animal that steadily fades away, and
Speaker 1: the wasp that emerges the kind of the and there,
Speaker 1: of course thousands of different types of wasp, but but
Speaker 1: this strain of wasp that remains with us today. They
Speaker 1: do not eat other insects. No, they don't. They don't.
Speaker 1: They've completely removed it from their diet. What they do
Speaker 1: eat is the the nectar and carrying the pollen from
Speaker 1: plant to plant. But the kids are a different store, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the kids, and we'll get to that in a bit.
Speaker 1: So what we have evolving from this is basically bees. Right,
Speaker 1: So we've got bees and wasps because bees now are
Speaker 1: a bit different from wasps, but they're coming from the
Speaker 1: same genetic material, right, bees and wasps are both both
Speaker 1: of them share a common descendant in these carniverse. Wasps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and youve got these bees who are sort of hipped
Speaker 1: to the whole flower gig, right, because they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's start really exploring this in earnest or being
Speaker 1: exploited by flowers and earniest depending on who you look
Speaker 1: at it. And you get these these uh bees versus
Speaker 1: wasps where we are right now? Yeah, and of course
Speaker 1: this this leads to a difference in their body types.
Speaker 1: To write, one has the body of befager and one
Speaker 1: has the body of a predator. Because we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into this a little more, but it's essential to to
Speaker 1: note that even though the the wasp no longer eats
Speaker 1: prey itself, it still has to hunt prey to feed
Speaker 1: it's young. It's kind of yeah, you have this a
Speaker 1: great article on this how wasps were and I think
Speaker 1: you're what was the analogy of the vegan parents bringing
Speaker 1: home a pepperoni pizza for their young ones because they
Speaker 1: refused to eat anything else. Yeah, it's kind of like that, which,
Speaker 1: uh they never quite that. The wasp world never was
Speaker 1: able to completely remove meat from its diet, whereas the
Speaker 1: bees do. Okay, I see that's where all this the
Speaker 1: like a tree hugging vegetarian type of lovey dovey bee
Speaker 1: comes in, right exactly. It's the bees are more of
Speaker 1: a tree hugger. And then the wasps are out there killings.
Speaker 1: They're out there you know, harvesting their meat. Even though
Speaker 1: they're not gonna need it themselves, they need it for
Speaker 1: they're young. So the wasp has to has to retain
Speaker 1: the body of a killer. It has to sleep design
Speaker 1: um stinger that's that that has some generally has some
Speaker 1: sort of powerful venom involved. The beat is this kind
Speaker 1: of fat, doughy guy with I think rotund instead of
Speaker 1: fat and hairy with bristly flat legs. Those are good
Speaker 1: for gathering honey. And of course, as you said, the
Speaker 1: wasp havethers, thin waist, and they're very sleek and they've
Speaker 1: got smooth shettles. And then if you look at these two,
Speaker 1: they've got um and and whilst they have ovipositors to yes,
Speaker 1: no ova positor is pretty interesting. Of course, only the
Speaker 1: females have this because it is avi for overm over
Speaker 1: eggs exactly. It is an instrument for the laying of eggs.
Speaker 1: So travel back againto that carnivorous wasp. How's it depositing?
Speaker 1: It needs to deposit eggs with that oppositive, but where
Speaker 1: is it gonna put it? It started laying eggs on
Speaker 1: other creatures, so it's it's like, now I'm going to
Speaker 1: lay eggs on you. Yeah, right, okay, And eventually they
Speaker 1: were like, well, laying laying my young on a caterpillar
Speaker 1: is one thing, but I want them to I want
Speaker 1: them to stay warm, I want them to have a
Speaker 1: nice meal when they wake up. I'm gonna to lay
Speaker 1: them inside the caterpillar. Now, of course, the wasp doesn't
Speaker 1: ask the caterpillar what it thinks of this. Uh, it
Speaker 1: just starts doing it. So the ovipositor become not only
Speaker 1: an instrument to lay eggs, it becomes a surgical instrument
Speaker 1: for the implantation of eggs inside the body of another insect. Right,
Speaker 1: this ovipositor is is literally like a blade, right right,
Speaker 1: it's it's fashion like this just so that it can
Speaker 1: do that, right, And and then they begin to evolve
Speaker 1: these different chemicals, you know, because you're performing this crude
Speaker 1: surgery in the insect world to lay your eggs inside
Speaker 1: this caterpillar. You know, the caligory baby moving around a
Speaker 1: little too much. So uh so, yeah, they begin to
Speaker 1: develop venoms as well. They end up paralyzing the prey
Speaker 1: or or in in some way impacting it to facilitate
Speaker 1: the surgery. So wasps continue to use this in many cases.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of parasitic wasps today, as we'll get into,
Speaker 1: that still lay their eggs inside or on other animals.
Speaker 1: Then there are other they're they're ones that don't they're
Speaker 1: ones that that build nests, lay their their eggs in there,
Speaker 1: and then bring the food back for they're young. And
Speaker 1: we're talking about whilest talking start in generalities because do
Speaker 1: recall that it's like species for both bees and loss.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of them, and they all have a
Speaker 1: little bit different uh behavior to them or um a
Speaker 1: bit you know, this and that going on in times
Speaker 1: of where they lay, where they lay eggs, and what
Speaker 1: they do. And these are even further removed from the
Speaker 1: prospect of laying eggs inside another creature, but they still
Speaker 1: have the oppositor, the stinger, and it retains the sting
Speaker 1: uh they have. They have kept that because it ends
Speaker 1: up being very useful as a defensive weapon. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about weapons in a moment here after the break,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about some brawling, right so the battle
Speaker 1: continue right after this. This podcast is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel
Speaker 1: at Intel we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Speaker 1: Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
Speaker 1: to life's questions. And we're back. We we rejoined the
Speaker 1: battle between bees and all right, we've talked about the
Speaker 1: oppositor and stinging. Let's talk about the big sting. The sting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happens here? Do they all of them die after
Speaker 1: they sting you? Just some of them? Oh? Well, of course,
Speaker 1: wasps generally can can stain multiple yeah, over and over again.
Speaker 1: They've got smooth stingers. But the one that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about is the honey bee stinger, which is actually barbed
Speaker 1: and it sticks in your flesh. Um, And when the
Speaker 1: honey bee tries actually fly away, her stinger won't budge.
Speaker 1: So it's very sad. Actually, um, it RiPPs from her
Speaker 1: body and essentially disembowels her when it stings human. Now,
Speaker 1: there's some sometimes they can use these against other insects,
Speaker 1: and it not if this rate the user, because it's
Speaker 1: not getting stuck in there. Yeah, but but in humans, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's always the thing. It's like the the honey beetle
Speaker 1: stingy once and then it did die. Stinging, which I
Speaker 1: think also adds to It's like, oh, it's stung me,
Speaker 1: but it died, so I can't hate it. Where's the
Speaker 1: wasp comes along? There's no bar. The wasp can sting
Speaker 1: you all day and it doesn't care for the be
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a noble death. Is that we're Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a noble desk in the wasp, Like, I
Speaker 1: use this all the time. I'll sing again. Can we
Speaker 1: do this again tomorrow eight am? You know, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: set a day. I like the little voice you're doing
Speaker 1: for the wasp pair. I I know I should be
Speaker 1: able to do more of an Italian like, you know,
Speaker 1: stereotypical thug kind of a thing. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: what you were going there now. It's uh. It's interesting
Speaker 1: to note that even though the honey base this is
Speaker 1: something I found in Tracy V. Wilson's article Pies on
Speaker 1: the website, the males don't have stingers that break off
Speaker 1: in people's flesh, but they do have endo fouls's uh.
Speaker 1: When they mate with the female honeybees, it breaks off
Speaker 1: inside the female's body, with the queen, of course, fatally
Speaker 1: injuring the mail in the process. So oh yeah, We've
Speaker 1: talked about this before too, and in another podcast about
Speaker 1: this sort of very scary proposition sometimes of mating in
Speaker 1: the insect world, decapitation and all sorts of fun stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wasp and bees. When we're talking about the war here,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a war between females, because the females
Speaker 1: are the species and the male are just there to
Speaker 1: facilitate mating. And in some cases I believe it was
Speaker 1: there's a type of bee where when the when the
Speaker 1: males are no longer necessary, they go and just kick
Speaker 1: them out. Because you're wondering, the bumblebee sting is one
Speaker 1: of the most painful stings, is it. Yes, you get
Speaker 1: a lot of swelling and the irritation. And I just
Speaker 1: wanted to also mention Africanized honey bees, also known as
Speaker 1: killer bees, that live in South America and southern United States.
Speaker 1: They have been known to chase people for over a
Speaker 1: quarter of a mile once they get excited and aggressive.
Speaker 1: And the reason why they're called killer bees is not
Speaker 1: necessarily because they kill people so much, is that their venom.
Speaker 1: Their venom is uh, you know, no more dangerous than
Speaker 1: any other honeybee. It's because their attacks are more harmful
Speaker 1: because they attack in greater numbers. So um, that can
Speaker 1: really increase increase your chance of having a severe allergic reaction.
Speaker 1: That's why they're scary. So let's let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of the abilities of these particular creatures.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come back again to the parasitic wasp, which
Speaker 1: is a concept I love. You know, it's something about
Speaker 1: you know, you grow up watching Alien and uh and
Speaker 1: and and I mean that's basically the concept of the
Speaker 1: wasp taken into a sci fi human world. Is this
Speaker 1: the ladybug bummits for that? You that's what you call it?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'll get to get to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Growing up grew up in like rural Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and so they're they're dirt dapper nest everywhere that the
Speaker 1: or mud dappers if they're known in some areas. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you've ever broken one of these open, it's really
Speaker 1: neat you'll find it. There are these little cylinders, right
Speaker 1: and that's where the eggle will be in. The larva
Speaker 1: will grow and they'll just the the wasp will just
Speaker 1: stuff these things with with paralyzed or dead spiders. So
Speaker 1: that so when the young wakes up, it'll have a meal.
Speaker 1: And so if anyone out there is just completely anti wasp,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to note these things kill the
Speaker 1: heck out of some spiders. So and a lot of
Speaker 1: the spiders that they go after it things like brown
Speaker 1: reclusives or black widows, things that you definitely don't want
Speaker 1: a round uh and and and definitely don't want crawling
Speaker 1: on you or in any coming into any kind of
Speaker 1: contact with you or your the people you love. And
Speaker 1: in these cases, they'll fill a cylinder with like upwards
Speaker 1: of forty spiders. I'm not talking just like a few
Speaker 1: forty spiders. Then you have washp like the Pepsis wasps
Speaker 1: also known as tarantula hawks, and they will each lay
Speaker 1: an egg inside a single paralyzed tarantula, and then the
Speaker 1: emerging larva proceeds to eat the imprisoned spider from the
Speaker 1: inside out, which is pretty that's pretty greesome. I like it.
Speaker 1: One of my my favorites, though, is a particular parasitic
Speaker 1: wasp known as the dino campus uh Cosinella, which what
Speaker 1: is called the dino campus so that the dino campus
Speaker 1: when it's when it hatches from the egg like a
Speaker 1: lot of wasps, it finds that it is inside another creature.
Speaker 1: In this case, it is inside a ladybug, all right,
Speaker 1: and it was of course deposited there by an adult.
Speaker 1: And then and then it grows to larvahood and then
Speaker 1: it emerges in something that I am going to to
Speaker 1: try and coin a celebration of chess bursts burst mitzvah
Speaker 1: who it burst from the chest of this ladybug. And
Speaker 1: then it's they're squirming as a as a larva doesn't
Speaker 1: emerge fully grown in this case. Um, so it's it's
Speaker 1: still you know, it's it's not completely ready to fend
Speaker 1: for itself. So you would normally think, all right, so
Speaker 1: the ladybug has been uh surgically impregnated with this foreign entity.
Speaker 1: This foreign entity has burst forth from its stomach. Uh,
Speaker 1: now the ladybug is gonna dimmersefull death, right right, like,
Speaker 1: please put her out of her misery? Yeah? Not not
Speaker 1: not so. In this case, not only does the ladybug live,
Speaker 1: but there's a little behavior modification involved in the the
Speaker 1: implantation process that forces it to hang around and guard
Speaker 1: it's parasite baby as it grows to adulthood. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the larva is smaller than the ladybugs. So you'll see
Speaker 1: pictures of this where the ladybug just continues to hang around,
Speaker 1: like hunched over the larva to protect it. And scientists
Speaker 1: believe that this has caused by secretions left by the
Speaker 1: larva when it bursts out. It essentially reprograms the host
Speaker 1: to stick around. Alright, so so the wasp grows to maturity,
Speaker 1: right then what happens, Well, it doesn't need to to
Speaker 1: eat this uh, this ladybug because it doesn't eat ladybugs.
Speaker 1: As an adult, it doesn't depend on other animals for
Speaker 1: its food. But once it reaches this uh, this point,
Speaker 1: researchers found that of the manipulated ladybugs recovered normal behavior
Speaker 1: following the word a deal. So a lot of them
Speaker 1: just did eventually die, but but some of them didn't.
Speaker 1: Some of them like went on, like that's how cruel
Speaker 1: the insect world is. But then how resilient the insects are.
Speaker 1: It's like you could go through this kind of catastrophics
Speaker 1: u situation in your life as a ladybug, and then
Speaker 1: you eventually move on. And now I'm just wondering if
Speaker 1: there's any sort of like memory racing enzymes that were
Speaker 1: involved with that, because you know that's of course we're
Speaker 1: humans and so we can't help. But thinking human terms,
Speaker 1: but imagine your body being occupied by this alien larva
Speaker 1: which you then are reprogrammed to to not just host
Speaker 1: but um protect. And then and then imagine the ladybug
Speaker 1: is out like walking around on a leaf and it
Speaker 1: looks over and sees this this wasp and she doesn't remember.
Speaker 1: She looks and she's like, oh, he's so cute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe's like Stockholm syndrome. You know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember you. You you fed off of me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were a little larva. Then the wasp says, come
Speaker 1: come here, I have something to give you, and it
Speaker 1: all begins again. I don't know if they could survive
Speaker 1: a second I would yeah, yeah, that would be cool.
Speaker 1: Um and then there but then there are other interesting
Speaker 1: uh moments of jerk them in the Lost World, such
Speaker 1: as with cuckoo wasps. And these are wasps that figured
Speaker 1: out long ago that the best source of food for
Speaker 1: their larva was other wasp larva. Uh, and what better
Speaker 1: way to feed them than by leaving the larva their
Speaker 1: larva in another wasp nest to begin with. Um so,
Speaker 1: it just kind of like dead beat moms of the world.
Speaker 1: Um and when so when the cuckoo larva hatch, they
Speaker 1: feed on the larva and food left in the cylinder
Speaker 1: of the actual nest builder. Okay, all right, well I
Speaker 1: have a couple of stories for you, sir, about how
Speaker 1: they are. They're pretty kicking themselves, Okay, okay, if they
Speaker 1: can do more than just make delicious honey and yeah
Speaker 1: and save the environment. Okay, So small hive beetles huge pests, right,
Speaker 1: they like to invade the hives of bees and eat
Speaker 1: their stored food which they've worked so hard to make.
Speaker 1: Oh you make it sound like the like this beetle
Speaker 1: as a jurich When it's doing the same thing with humans.
Speaker 1: I know it's doing what it's programmed to do. When
Speaker 1: it's completely fine, and I'm just saying, and kill the
Speaker 1: bees young. Um So in Africa where the beetles come from,
Speaker 1: honey bees wait until the beetles are in a confined
Speaker 1: space and then they imprison them within the tomb of resin.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, like that Ed Groland post story. Yes, the
Speaker 1: uh I can't remember Montague No, not anyway, I'm sure
Speaker 1: someone out there listening can let us know what that
Speaker 1: what that is? Um? But yes, just like the girl
Speaker 1: and post story, but they can also mummify. Okay, that
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Ye Stings bees, which are native to Australia,
Speaker 1: uses this this tactic. The worker bees immediately start coating
Speaker 1: the beatles with bathroomen, which is a mixture of wax
Speaker 1: and resin that they used to build their nest entrances with,
Speaker 1: and all the while their hive mates attack continuously. So
Speaker 1: not only are they just kind of stopping the beetle
Speaker 1: in its tracks, but you know, putting them into this batoman.
Speaker 1: But now all of them are like, hey, let's start
Speaker 1: pummeling on pa, pa, pa pa, and they're coming at them. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now I get it that it's maybe not as cool
Speaker 1: because they're all doing this as a group as opposed
Speaker 1: to having these individual abilities or abilities as an individual.
Speaker 1: But still, this is amazing that they're they have these
Speaker 1: sort of defense tactics, aren't able to act on them, um,
Speaker 1: and they're mommifying this beetle. It's kind of like you
Speaker 1: watch Fraggle Rock, right, I have seen it, I don't
Speaker 1: currently watch it every time. You come home from work. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well now you put it like that, but it would
Speaker 1: remember the dozers, the little guys who built all these things.
Speaker 1: They're like, they build all these little bridges and towns,
Speaker 1: and then the fraggles will come around and eat their
Speaker 1: their their constructions. But it would be like if the
Speaker 1: fraggles came to eat the dozers constructions and the and
Speaker 1: the dozers built something around the fraggle and entombed it
Speaker 1: to death underground. Yeah, you know, you're seeing it. You're
Speaker 1: seeing how cool the bees are right now. Of course,
Speaker 1: wasps social wasps have have the ability to attack as
Speaker 1: a group as well, which can be pretty devastating for
Speaker 1: someone who is attacked by a large swarm of loss.
Speaker 1: But but it doesn't likewise, it happens with bees too,
Speaker 1: So that's something they kind of share among their more
Speaker 1: social species. But what happens when they go motto a motto,
Speaker 1: Then all sorts of interesting things happen. Because yes, so
Speaker 1: this is like the it's like the dark elves and
Speaker 1: the normal elves fighting. It's like the it's like angels
Speaker 1: and devils in a way, you know, It's it's like
Speaker 1: these these they have a common origin and then forced
Speaker 1: a war against each other like they can't help it.
Speaker 1: It's very experienced. It's kind of beautiful, yea brothers warring
Speaker 1: or sisters warring. But I think one of the coolest
Speaker 1: examples to look at are the encounters between Japanese honey
Speaker 1: bees and the Asian giant hornets. If you have such
Speaker 1: an interesting mismatch here, because the Asian giant hornet is
Speaker 1: is pretty big, like it's um. I've seen pictures of
Speaker 1: it in people's palms, and it's it's not quite the
Speaker 1: size of a cicada, but it's it's it's pretty big.
Speaker 1: It's a sizeable thing. You would not want this, this
Speaker 1: creature coming after you with its ovipositor uh. And the
Speaker 1: Japanese honey bees are small little bees, so you'll have
Speaker 1: these situations where the bees will be carrying on their
Speaker 1: normal business and suddenly a single giant hornet shows up.
Speaker 1: Now this hornet is there to basically, it's discover the nest.
Speaker 1: It's going to tag the nest with its pheromones, which
Speaker 1: sends out the signals for its UH it's us to
Speaker 1: come over and and launch a full scale attack on
Speaker 1: everything the bees have so they can take it back
Speaker 1: to their nest and feed their young. And when this works,
Speaker 1: you'll have situations where merely thirty of these Asian giant
Speaker 1: hornets will kill thirty thousand honeybees. That's a slaughter. Yeah great,
Speaker 1: I mean just like can imagine that, like each one
Speaker 1: of is killing a thousand bees. It's but the thing is,
Speaker 1: believe you have this example. Sometimes, however, they're able to
Speaker 1: kill that first invader before it can send the signal
Speaker 1: back home. It's very very cool. It's called heat balling.
Speaker 1: And the honeybees have developed this defense against the hornet, right,
Speaker 1: and they form a giant ball of bees and then
Speaker 1: they pile on like a beard of bees, a beard,
Speaker 1: a ball, just a large amount of bees congregating um.
Speaker 1: But I like the giant ball because I like to
Speaker 1: think of it as like the giant ball of death
Speaker 1: coming at the hornet um and it weighs it down
Speaker 1: while vibrating their wing muscles, and the activity increases the
Speaker 1: temperature inside the ball to about forties six degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: hot enough to cook the hornet alive, but five degrees
Speaker 1: under the bees maximum tolerated temperature. I'm sorry, but that
Speaker 1: is really cool. Like they just crop potted that wasp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing. I saw. I've seen some of these
Speaker 1: sternal images of what's going on, and you do you
Speaker 1: just see the temperature of just really rise and you
Speaker 1: see that little guy cook right in the middle right there,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, they had little Barbie with it. Um.
Speaker 1: And then their Cyprian bees, which their strategy is to
Speaker 1: suffocate hornets to death because hornets have sort of like
Speaker 1: there it's almost like a lung system in the back
Speaker 1: part of their bodies, and so they mob its abdomen
Speaker 1: and they are like effectively strangling the hornet to death. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mean they can't be uh, pretty h rabble
Speaker 1: rousing themselves, I'll say, these bees. Yeah, they they seem
Speaker 1: to have evolved a certainly more social and strategic ways
Speaker 1: of d with what is physically a superior killer. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously, like I said, they can't really go one
Speaker 1: on one with wasps. That's not really gonna happen. Um,
Speaker 1: they are their strength is in their numbers. But really
Speaker 1: fireball death, it's pretty cool strangling. Yeah, but then again
Speaker 1: I have to point back that one wasp uh killing
Speaker 1: a thousand bees in a single battle, that's that's pretty
Speaker 1: that's pretty awesome too. It's like and it seems like
Speaker 1: it's like a battle that can go either way, like
Speaker 1: who what's gonna happen? It's gonna be a wholesale slaughter
Speaker 1: of bees or a strategic victory for the honeymakers when
Speaker 1: the slaughter is just sad considering that there's so important
Speaker 1: for the pollination of hundreds of wasps are important for
Speaker 1: pollination as well. That's well. And of course figs. I've
Speaker 1: had some figs, some local figs actually from just a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, and they're so delicious and you
Speaker 1: would not have figs without fig wasps. Uh. Fig fig
Speaker 1: wasps are really a whole other, mind blowing sort of
Speaker 1: scenario to look at because you have very tiny little
Speaker 1: wasp like these are not the kind of wasp you're
Speaker 1: gonna run from at the swimming pool. They're very small.
Speaker 1: And there's for every type of fig out there, there
Speaker 1: is a corresponding species of fig wasps. How cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like arteesanal wasps. Yeah, and you would not get
Speaker 1: the edible fig without them. Um, you'll you'll see pictures
Speaker 1: of I mean, it was one of the problems with
Speaker 1: figuring out how to grow figs in new areas because
Speaker 1: you can't just take the plant, you got to also
Speaker 1: bring the wasp. So you'll see pictures of like fig farms,
Speaker 1: fig plantations where there'll be a paper sack tied to
Speaker 1: the limb of a tree and that contains like older
Speaker 1: figs with waspon. So okay, well that's cool. But I
Speaker 1: will say this is my my last comment for it
Speaker 1: is that recently a truck in Idaho overturned sharing fourteen
Speaker 1: million bees which were used for pollination. Um, so my
Speaker 1: point is that they didn't have fourteen million wasps they
Speaker 1: needed to transport. They were bees. Yeah, well all right,
Speaker 1: but but it also shows that the bee is kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, owned by the man, whereas the wasp.
Speaker 1: The wasp is a renegade. The wasp is out there
Speaker 1: living the life, but the man and the are on.
Speaker 1: Well okay, but at the end of the day, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a delicious cheese plate and you're gonna have
Speaker 1: You're gonna have some cheese, which neither species had anything
Speaker 1: to do with until we breed the cheese producing cornet
Speaker 1: in the future. But then you have the cheese, you
Speaker 1: have the the honey to dip the cheese, and then
Speaker 1: you also have the delicious fig spread. That's so they're
Speaker 1: both important to me and my cheese plate. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Well, don't forget about the honey over your
Speaker 1: precious cheese. Is exactly that can be quite delicious to
Speaker 1: all right, So bees versus wasp an old rivalry. Let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's get on to some listener mail. Here. Our first
Speaker 1: bit of mail comes from listener Eric, and Eric had
Speaker 1: some interesting comments to one of our recent podcast. He says,
Speaker 1: this is not meant to be a nasty gram, always
Speaker 1: a promising way to start one from an emails, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to comment on something, he said. Sorry to
Speaker 1: bring up such an old podcast, but in the neuro
Speaker 1: Myths podcast, Robert made a comment that deeply disturbed me personally.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, understanding conscienness sometimes feels like a Pandora's box.
Speaker 1: I wonder the more we unlock about about consciousness and
Speaker 1: the more we understand what we are and who we are,
Speaker 1: do we stand the risk of de mystifying ourselves too much? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then Eric goes on to say, as someone who
Speaker 1: has suffered from escar syndrome, which has caused serious social
Speaker 1: problems and depression. I long for a better understanding of
Speaker 1: the mind. All my life, I felt psychologists have simply
Speaker 1: been guessing as to what my problem is. The science
Speaker 1: of psychology is no better than which doctrine. Granted, we
Speaker 1: know that some medications help with some problems, but what
Speaker 1: about the medications that don't help. In most cases, we
Speaker 1: don't even know why or how the medications work. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to me that you can take the heart out
Speaker 1: of a person who has diet and put it in
Speaker 1: someone whose heart is failing, and that person's life will
Speaker 1: be saved. And yet we can't here the blues think
Speaker 1: of what could be done with a complete knowledge of
Speaker 1: the mind. Ignorance is not bliss. It is how almost
Speaker 1: all suffering comes from ignorance. Knowledge is bliss. Uh. Sorry, Robert,
Speaker 1: I love the podcast, but I found your comment offensive.
Speaker 1: But take heart, everyone is bound to make offensive comments
Speaker 1: from time to time. No apology is necessary. Well that
Speaker 1: is excellent because none will be given. But interesting at
Speaker 1: an interesting point, imposing this, uh, this question, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not arguing that we shouldn't seek to understand the brain,
Speaker 1: or you know, engage in any kind of quest for knowledge.
Speaker 1: I think that the thing is, when we in any
Speaker 1: quest for knowledge, you're inevitably going to find out some
Speaker 1: things that alter your worldview. And the alterations to one's
Speaker 1: worldview can at times be experiments in enlightenment, but they
Speaker 1: can also be chaotic and result in a lot of
Speaker 1: reevaluation of what we are and why we are, especially
Speaker 1: when you look at things like consciousness. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: understand you're coming from, because so much of our existence
Speaker 1: just feels like this mystical, just strange, incredible experience that
Speaker 1: we are able to even sit here and talk and
Speaker 1: cogitate on the level that we are all able to
Speaker 1: do so. And it's sometimes examining that can take away
Speaker 1: a bit that. But then I look at the other ways.
Speaker 1: If when you examine it and you get to see
Speaker 1: the brain doing what it does, it's magic to be
Speaker 1: able to peer into that and to see the process
Speaker 1: of um So there's a kind of magic and peeling
Speaker 1: away the layers. Yeah. I think one of the things
Speaker 1: is that even even if we we build this map out,
Speaker 1: you know, completely, the brain has such a hard time
Speaker 1: seeing itself as a part of the environment. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: you know will have a complete map. But well if
Speaker 1: we try and find the you are here sticker on
Speaker 1: the map, like get them all, um you may have
Speaker 1: some difficulty in finding it or fully contemplating what that means. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the crux of it right there. I think that's
Speaker 1: what you were trying to get to. And and obviously
Speaker 1: you weren't saying, hey, let's not explore their brain. I
Speaker 1: think you were kind of saying, like this, this consciousness,
Speaker 1: this I am, this me is really the big mystery
Speaker 1: of our being. Um So if it's less than what
Speaker 1: we think it is, it could be disappointing, right because
Speaker 1: nobody wants to feel like just a cog in the
Speaker 1: wheel of nature. But essentially that we know, you know
Speaker 1: that that's kind of what we are. We want we
Speaker 1: want to feel a little bit more special than Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I do thank ed for us sending in
Speaker 1: some thoughtful commentary on the question that we post. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he always sends very interesting commentary, said thanks Eric. And
Speaker 1: we also heard from Francisca. Uh Francisco right soon and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I thought you might want to hear a story about
Speaker 1: my brother Lorenzo and his music and math skills. Of course,
Speaker 1: responding to some music and math related podcast we've covered.
Speaker 1: He is studying to be a professional clarinetist and is
Speaker 1: very good. When he was in high school and middle school,
Speaker 1: he did advanced math because he always knew the stuff
Speaker 1: that the teachers were talking about. I also am pretty good,
Speaker 1: pretty good French horn player. I used to play French
Speaker 1: yah um, I mean sort of played it. That was
Speaker 1: very good anyway, she says. I am also pretty good
Speaker 1: French horn and keyboard player, and also currently go to
Speaker 1: tenth grade math. Though I am in eight, I still
Speaker 1: wouldn't become a musician or mathematician because I don't love
Speaker 1: math that much and prefer to listen to music rather
Speaker 1: than make it. I love your podcast and hope you
Speaker 1: keep doing really interesting topics. All right, Well that's the goal.
Speaker 1: To keep doing interesting topics. That is the goal. So
Speaker 1: let us know if you have any topics that you'd
Speaker 1: like us to hover. You would love to hear from you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can contact us on Facebook or Twitter. We are
Speaker 1: on both of those as Blow the Mind. One word
Speaker 1: Blow the Mind, and you can send us an email
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.