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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, Rob, you're back.

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Speaker 3: You've been out of the country.

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Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, me and the FAM just spent two

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Speaker 2: weeks in Japan so much fun. Highly recommend it, but

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Speaker 2: it also means that, yeah, we're back. I'm only on

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Speaker 2: my second day back and I'm still somewhat jet lagged,

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Speaker 2: So I'm going to apologize in advance for any extra

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Speaker 2: fumbles that I make today in handling our notes in

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Speaker 2: our recording.

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Speaker 3: What's the time difference EUS Eastern to Japan?

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Speaker 2: What it's like thirteen hours? I believe it's I was

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Speaker 2: constantly breaking my brain by pulling up the world clock

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Speaker 2: on my phone and figuring out exactly like where we

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Speaker 2: were and where back home was, and then all of

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Speaker 2: that's fallen apart since I've come back, and I'm attempting

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Speaker 2: to readjust.

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Speaker 3: But it's like an almost perfect to day night inversion.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty much, and really was. It was easy,

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Speaker 2: easy enough to get used to it going over. It'sn't

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Speaker 2: just been much harder coming back.

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Speaker 3: Well, folks. If you remember from before we were out

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Speaker 3: for a couple of weeks, we had a kind of

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Speaker 3: strange but I think good scheme where we broke right

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Speaker 3: in the middle of a series so we could jump

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Speaker 3: back in with part two of our talk about cicadas. Now,

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Speaker 3: of course it's been a while, so you might not

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Speaker 3: remember some of the things we talked about in part one,

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Speaker 3: But in that episode we discussed our personal experiences with cicadas.

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Speaker 3: We talked about finding their abandoned former exoskeletons after molting,

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Speaker 3: or just finding random body parts, wings, legs, and stuff

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Speaker 3: like that. Here and there, we talked about how cicadas

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Speaker 3: fit into the insect class as a member of the

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Speaker 3: so called true bugs, the Hymiptera, and we had a

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Speaker 3: digression on the etymological history of the word bug in

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Speaker 3: English referred to monsters and scarecrows before it actually referred

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Speaker 3: to insects. We talked about the physical characteristics of cicadas.

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Speaker 3: They're piercing and sucking mouthparts. They have this needle like

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Speaker 3: mouth called a rostrum, which they used to feed off

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Speaker 3: of Xylum sap from plant roots and then stems in

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Speaker 3: their adult stage. We talked about how they emit their

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Speaker 3: famous song, not by rubbing together wings or legs like

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Speaker 3: some other insects, but with dedicated organs called timbals, these

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Speaker 3: kind of corrugated drumheads on the sides of their bodies

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Speaker 3: that they can buckle and snap back and forth to

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Speaker 3: make a sound. We of course talked about their reproductive cycle,

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Speaker 3: with an early developmental stage taking place underground where they

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Speaker 3: feed on Xylum from plant roots, and then their emergence

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Speaker 3: as an adult into the air or above where they mate.

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Speaker 3: And then of course after they the females lay eggs

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Speaker 3: with this wonderful knife like ovipositor that they gouge into

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Speaker 3: twigs and soft tree branches to make little canyons for

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Speaker 3: their eggs to live in. And then finally we talked

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Speaker 3: about the periodical cicadas of North America that we have

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Speaker 3: here and we just recently had a big emergence in

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Speaker 3: our area. The periodical cicadas which emerge not every year everywhere,

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Speaker 3: as most cicadas do, but instead after bizarrely long periods

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Speaker 3: of underground development, so some go thirteen years before emerging,

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Speaker 3: some go seventeen years. And we discussed evolutionary pressures that

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Speaker 3: could have led to this adaptation. One hypothesis that we

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Speaker 3: talked about, and to be clear, this is not the

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Speaker 3: only one. There are other possible explanations in the mix,

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Speaker 3: and we might try to get into them in a

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Speaker 3: later part of the series. But one hypothesis we talked

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Speaker 3: about is that it prevents local predators and parasitoids from

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Speaker 3: adapting to cicadas as regular prey or host animals, because

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Speaker 3: once they're out, as I've read in multiple places, everything

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Speaker 3: eats them. Cicadas are nutritious, they have almost nothing in

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Speaker 3: the way of individual defenses, and there are a zillion

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Speaker 3: of them, so it's nature's buffet. But the idea is

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Speaker 3: if you only appear at weird, irregular time intervals, predators

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Speaker 3: can't come to depend on you, and there won't be

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Speaker 3: enough of them to eat all of you when you

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Speaker 3: do come out. So it's like if you had a

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Speaker 3: buffet that you didn't want too many people eating at

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Speaker 3: so you know, and it was delicious and you had

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Speaker 3: lots of food, but instead you just like were very

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Speaker 3: squirrely about what you're operating hours were.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's the the complete inversion of what you

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Speaker 2: would expect with some sort of a business model for

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Speaker 2: a restaurant, a buffet or anything that's like bringing in bodies.

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Speaker 2: You know, in this case want you want your audience.

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Speaker 2: You want the consumers to be taken off guard so

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Speaker 2: that they can't be ready for it. They can't ramp

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Speaker 2: up to meet this dietary bounty that occurs again, not

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Speaker 2: every year, but every thirteen or every seventeen years with

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Speaker 2: these periodical cicadas.

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Speaker 3: But of course many species of cicadas are just annual cicadas,

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Speaker 3: and they do come out every year, and many things

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Speaker 3: do still eat them.

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Speaker 2: That's right. But that leads to the big question, right, Joe,

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Speaker 2: Lots of things can eat them, We can eat them.

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Speaker 2: We'll probably get into that a little bit more in

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Speaker 2: a subsequent episode, But can they eat us? To question

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Speaker 2: that has garnered a lot of discussion of you.

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Speaker 3: Yes, it's a wonderful question. It's a question people apparently

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Speaker 3: cannot stop asking. So if you go back through newspaper articles,

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Speaker 3: radio programs, all kinds of media that accompany these big

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Speaker 3: cicada booms whenever they happen, it seems readers and listeners

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Speaker 3: are always expressing concern that the cicadas will bite them

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Speaker 3: or sting them. And then maybe if people know a

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Speaker 3: bit more about their morphology, about the piercing and sucking

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Speaker 3: mouthparts rather than the chewing and tearing arrangement some other

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Speaker 3: bugs have, they might ask instead, will Cicada's stab their

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Speaker 3: needle like rostra into my veins and drain all my blood?

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Speaker 3: And yes, one historical newspaper article does discuss this possibility.

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Speaker 3: The short answer is no, no, no, this does not happen.

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Speaker 3: But it is kind of interesting to explore the way

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Speaker 3: this question keeps coming up over and over again, because

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Speaker 3: it turns out recent generations are not the first to

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Speaker 3: arrive at this question. People have been asking this for

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Speaker 3: a long time. So I was looking for sources on

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Speaker 3: this and I came across an article by an author

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Speaker 3: whose name always fills me with delight when I see it,

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Speaker 3: May Berenbaum. May Barnbaum is an American entomologist affiliated with

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Speaker 3: the University of Illinois. She has been recently and I

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Speaker 3: think still is editor in chief of PNAS, and we've

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Speaker 3: cross paths with her work a lot on stuff to

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Speaker 3: blow your mind because she has written a lot of

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Speaker 3: science based articles that cover I don't know, our kind

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Speaker 3: of beat like strange and funny questions about insects, but

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Speaker 3: with a scientifically informed perspective. And just one example is

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Speaker 3: I think we did an article of hers that was

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Speaker 3: talking about cases of bugs crawling inside people's bodies, stuff

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Speaker 3: like that. This particular article was called same Old Cicada Song,

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Speaker 3: and it was published in the magazine American Entomologist in

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Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, related to a big periodical cicada emergence

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Speaker 3: that year, specifically brood Now do we say brood X

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Speaker 3: or brood ten?

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Speaker 2: I mean, I always read it in my head is

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Speaker 2: brute x, but of course it's brood ten.

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Speaker 3: I think we should follow the Jason X convention though,

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Speaker 3: even though it you know, it's the tenth Jason movie,

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Speaker 3: but everybody says Jason X. So I think it should

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Speaker 3: be brood x brude X. It is so. In this article,

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Speaker 3: Barenbaum talks about the long history of media stories about

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Speaker 3: emerging cicada broods, and she goes way back into the

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Speaker 3: newspaper archives and finds a story from March first, eighteen

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Speaker 3: sixty in the New York Times. This would have been

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Speaker 3: only nine years after the paper was founded that begins

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Speaker 3: as follows the locust plague to reappear this year. You

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Speaker 3: know that's classic headline flair all caps locust plague about

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Speaker 3: insects that once again harm no one. So the article

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Speaker 3: goes on. Mister Gideon B. Smith communicates the following unpleasant

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Speaker 3: bit of entomological news through the National Intelligencer. The locusts

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Speaker 3: or cicada septin decim will appear very extensively this year,

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Speaker 3: occupying probably a larger surface of the country than those

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Speaker 3: of any other year. Now a note about referring to

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Speaker 3: them as locusts. We talked in the last episode about how,

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Speaker 3: of course cicadas are not locusts. Locusts are a type

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Speaker 3: of swarming grasshopper, and cicadas are not even especially closely

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Speaker 3: related to grasshoppers. They're both insects. But cicadas again are hymiptera.

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Speaker 3: They are the true bugs. But many of the popular

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Speaker 3: sources from the nineteenth century that discuss cicadas do refer

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Speaker 3: to them as locusts or sometimes with other common names

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Speaker 3: like harvest flies. But locust is very common, and because

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Speaker 3: of course locusts are associated with threats to crops, I

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Speaker 3: think this sort of bleeds over that, like calling incorrectly

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Speaker 3: calling cicada's locusts bleeds over into this idea that cicadas

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Speaker 3: themselves are a threat to crops, which they are generally.

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Speaker 2: Not right, right, and making it far easier to confuse

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Speaker 2: yourself not only with accounts of actual locust based destruction,

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Speaker 2: but even like cultural biblical mentions of the locusts and

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Speaker 2: plagues of locusts.

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Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah. So after this, barren Baum goes on to

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Speaker 3: highlight another article that appeared in The Times a little

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Speaker 3: more than seventeen years after that first one, in June

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Speaker 3: eighteen seventy seven, for the seventeen year re emergence of

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Speaker 3: the same brood. This article was called the Dry Cicada,

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Speaker 3: and she brings up this article as the first example

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Speaker 3: of a recurring theme that we'll see in a lot

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Speaker 3: of these where the author is starting to argue that

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Speaker 3: cicadas are not a threat to humans. And she includes

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Speaker 3: a short quote that was so good I had to

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Speaker 3: go look up the original article in full, and I'm

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Speaker 3: glad I did so. I'm going to summarize a bit

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Speaker 3: and read from some of it here. The article starts

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Speaker 3: off with a vivid description from the point of view

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Speaker 3: of a hypothetical new Yorker. They call them a townsfolk

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Speaker 3: visiting the rural districts of New Jersey, and it describes

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Speaker 3: the sites and sounds associated with a mass emergence of

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Speaker 3: periodical cicadas. It talks about their sound as similar to

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Speaker 3: a chorus of tree toads, or to quote the shrilling

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Speaker 3: of the railway track when the train is at a

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Speaker 3: distance and happens to enter a rock cutting. It describes

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Speaker 3: going on a ramble through the woods, seeing characteristic holes

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Speaker 3: in the ground as if someone had been stabbing the

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Speaker 3: ground with a walking stick, especially near the roots of oaks, chestnut, cottonwood,

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Speaker 3: and maple trees, and then finding leftover shells from cicada

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Speaker 3: moltz clutching onto the lower branches of trees like festoons.

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Speaker 3: And then I'm going to read a paragraph from the

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Speaker 3: article here. The author writes, quote, pretty soon one of

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Speaker 3: these peculiar creatures will be found, having just freed itself

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Speaker 3: from the grim, uncouth shape it has borne for so

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Speaker 3: many years. The long, transparent double pair of wings have

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Speaker 3: been shaken out from two limp close packed masses into

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Speaker 3: their full expanse of brittle pinions. The body takes a

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Speaker 3: darker tint, and the red eyes that distinguished this harvest

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Speaker 3: fly gleam brightly. The insect is fully prepared for its apotheosis.

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Speaker 3: It knows exactly what to do, and before its wings

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Speaker 3: can bear it, it begins to travel up the trunk

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Speaker 3: of any tree nearby to join the frivolous band of

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Speaker 3: its fellows that are making the upper air trimble with

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Speaker 3: their love notes. You know, theaper, the newspaper reporting style

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Speaker 3: was different back then.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, they had a whole different ap style book,

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Speaker 2: didn't they.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. But anyway, so it goes on to talk about

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Speaker 3: a few other things, like how how the cicada flies,

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Speaker 3: it's mating, and so forth, But then finally it gets

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Speaker 3: to the question of whether that frivolous band of fellows

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Speaker 3: will kill you. So here I'm going to read again

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Speaker 3: from the article. It says, since the larva lives by

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Speaker 3: sucking the juices from roots, and the fly has a

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Speaker 3: large and strong sucking tube, there seems no reason why

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Speaker 3: this locust, as we call it, should not divert its

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Speaker 3: attention from the juices of plants to the red juices

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Speaker 3: of animals and men like the just like the large

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Speaker 3: horse flies before mentioned. Indeed, just as the small and

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Speaker 3: maddening mosquito itself. It seems a mere piece of luck,

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Speaker 3: perhaps the result of their slow flight, or some arrangement

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Speaker 3: of their sucking tubes, their defective digestive their defective digestive system,

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Speaker 3: or even the fact that the ancestors of the present

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Speaker 3: harvest fly have been invariably well conducted, that the Jerseymen

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Speaker 3: of this year still exists in life instead of being

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Speaker 3: reduced to a thoroughly pumped frame of flesh. Nothing short

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Speaker 3: of plate armor would have saved him. Or it may

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Speaker 3: be that the extraordinary parsimony of nature which leads her

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Speaker 3: to give the poor harvest fly, after seventeen or thirteen

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Speaker 3: years of underground existence, only a few weeks in which

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Speaker 3: to buzz in love and deposit the connubial egg. It

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Speaker 3: may be the scantness of their allowance of paradise which

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Speaker 3: saves New Jersey from periodical depopulation. For if it were

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Speaker 3: not for one or more of these counteracting causes, imagine

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Speaker 3: the result of an appetite for blood aroused in the

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Speaker 3: horny breasts of these gigantic horseflies. Instead of flying with

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Speaker 3: comparatively harmless results about the tops of the trees, they

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Speaker 3: would descend upon the helpless jerseyman and drive him forth,

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Speaker 3: if it be possible to make that distinction with a

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Speaker 3: jerseyman to a foreign climb. Love the dig at New

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Speaker 3: Jersey residents at the end there.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, there's so much to dissect. There, so many

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Speaker 2: logical hurdles were vaulted over in this absolute sprint toward

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Speaker 2: the fear the possibility that the cicadas could just one

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Speaker 2: day wipe out all of New Jersey.

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Speaker 3: But I like that it's making the point that cicadas

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Speaker 3: don't do this by just elaborating extensively on how they could.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, yeah they could. Yeah, I mean if

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Speaker 2: humans had xylum and not blood, if we were trees

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Speaker 2: and not mammals, then then sure, yeah, it would be

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Speaker 2: a dire threat.

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Speaker 3: So unfortunately, I feel like I think the article is

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Speaker 3: just dreaming up a whimsical scenario. But I can't quite

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Speaker 3: tell if the author is trying to argue against a

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Speaker 3: belief that some people actually held at the time that like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 3: they'll drink your blood, and it's saying like, no, if

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Speaker 3: they did drink your blood, think how you know it

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Speaker 3: would depopulate all of New Jersey every thirteen years. I'm

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Speaker 3: not quite sure exactly what this author is trying to

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Speaker 3: respond to with this elaborate scenario, but either way, I

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Speaker 3: love it. But in any case, it is It certainly

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Speaker 3: is the case that people are concerned about the impact

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Speaker 3: of cicadas, both on plants and on people. Whether or

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Speaker 3: not they think, you know, people are actually going to

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Speaker 3: be drained of their blood, they do at least think

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Speaker 3: that cicadas are going to bite and sting them. So

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Speaker 3: Barenbaum finds more articles in the Times. The next one

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Speaker 3: is once again seventeen years after this last one, so

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Speaker 3: this would be in May eighteen ninety four, and it

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Speaker 3: debunks what appear to be several common misconceptions banging around

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Speaker 3: at the period. In the period, one is something we

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Speaker 3: talked about in part one that you brought up, rob,

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Speaker 3: the idea of prognostication via cicada wings that, like the

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Speaker 3: wa means that a war is going to happen, though

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Speaker 3: that's not really about cicadas, you know, it's just a

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Speaker 3: general superstition, so you know, the article attempts to address that. However,

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Speaker 3: the second misconception addressed is the idea that the cicada

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Speaker 3: can bite or sting, which the author says is not true.

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Speaker 2: Quote.

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Speaker 3: Other persons have feared that these insects may sting and

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Speaker 3: carefully avoid handling them, as they have no sting and

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Speaker 3: are only armed with a beak for sucking, which however,

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Speaker 3: is never used by the perfect fly. Such fears are groundless.

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Speaker 3: So we're getting a very different the perfect fly here.

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Speaker 3: This is like a be a tific view of the cicada.

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Speaker 3: It's like painting it in a very rosy picture. Now,

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Speaker 3: something that people do wonder they're armed with this knowledge,

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Speaker 3: like Okay, yeah, they don't have a stinger, they don't

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Speaker 3: have biting mouth parts. Could they stab you with the

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Speaker 3: beak if you threatened them? I've turned up a mixed

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Speaker 3: collection of answers on this. For example, I found an

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Speaker 3: older book by the Field Museum entomologist William Josiah Gerhard,

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Speaker 3: published in nineteen twenty three called The Periodical Cicada, in

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Speaker 3: which Gearhard addresses these concerns by saying, quote, under favorable conditions,

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Speaker 3: this insect could readily pierce the human skin by means

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Speaker 3: of its beak, but apparently it rarely or never attempts

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Speaker 3: to protect itself in such a manner.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because again coming back to the basic evolutionary tactic,

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Speaker 2: here is overwhelmingtory predatory threats. You know. Again, it's there

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Speaker 2: are so many of us you cannot possibly kill and

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Speaker 2: eat all of us. Enough of us are going to survive.

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Speaker 3: Read right. So, Yeah, the food at this buffet wants

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Speaker 3: to defend itself. It doesn't defend It doesn't defend itself

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Speaker 3: by fighting back. It defends itself by being a part

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Speaker 3: of a mass of so much food that it cannot

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Speaker 3: all be eaten.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't possibly get through this many steamer trays

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Speaker 2: of cicada. Yeah, you're out of luck. So that's where

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Speaker 2: they have That's where the investment is, not in individual

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Speaker 2: defensive capabilities.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And so I detect in this phrasing, even of

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Speaker 3: this older book, that even though he's saying it's possible,

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Speaker 3: he's not aware of any examples of this happening. And

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Speaker 3: he's written a whole book on the subject, so it

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Speaker 3: seems like he would have come across some examples if

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Speaker 3: they were known about. He only mentions this as a hypothetical,

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Speaker 3: And most modern sources that I found that consult actual

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Speaker 3: entomologists say that as far as they know this does

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Speaker 3: not happen. So can a cicada beak you? I don't know.

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Speaker 3: The way I would think think about it is like

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Speaker 3: if you are handling a cicada, like it does have

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Speaker 3: a hard exoskeleton, in some parts of that exoskeleton can

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Speaker 3: be kind of pokey. So it's conceivable that one of

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Speaker 3: these pokey parts could give you a little scratch or

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Speaker 3: a poke, but it's not going to get you like

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Speaker 3: other insects would. So even though it seems quite clear

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Speaker 3: that the periodical cicadas of North America do not bite

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Speaker 3: or sting, and any kind of poke you got from them,

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Speaker 3: you would really have to be like sort of go

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Speaker 3: in for it by handling them intentionally, and even then

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Speaker 3: it seems like it would probably be accidental. There's just

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Speaker 3: not really anything to worry about. But I think these

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Speaker 3: questions are going to keep coming up because one of

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Speaker 3: the themes of me May Berenbaum's article is how writing

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Speaker 3: about cicadas seems to be in a constant struggle to

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Speaker 3: deal with myths and misconceptions that arise perpetually again and again.

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Speaker 3: She quotes another article from The New York Times from

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Speaker 3: nineteen thirty six by Donald Peaty, which calls the periodical

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Speaker 3: cicada the most misunderstood insect on our continent and talks

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Speaker 3: about how it's necessary for the federal government to issue

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Speaker 3: bulletins to people in the eastern United States to quell

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Speaker 3: the misconceptions. Pd writs, quote and people may at last

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Speaker 3: learn that the cicada does not eat crops, does not

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Speaker 3: sting babies. No authentic case of baby stinging has come

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Speaker 3: to hand or invade gardens. But despite the fact that

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Speaker 3: people with knowledge have been debunking this for over one

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Speaker 3: hundred years, it never sticks. And she cites example after

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Speaker 3: example of these articles over time over the decades, responding

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Speaker 3: to reader concerns that cicadas are the same thing as locusts,

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Speaker 3: that they eat crops in foliage, that they bite or

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Speaker 3: sting people, especially children, And they don't do that. I

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Speaker 3: mean they it's not that they can never cause any

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Speaker 3: harm to plants. They can when they lay their eggs

356
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Speaker 3: in the you know, the young the greenwood of some

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Speaker 3: plants that can sort of kill some of the tips

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Speaker 3: of stems, but they're just generally not that harmful to plants.

359
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Speaker 3: They certainly don't eat crops, and that they don't hurt people.

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Speaker 3: And I was thinking about this, about these recurring misconceptions

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Speaker 3: about the periodical cicadas. Of course, there are misconceptions about

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Speaker 3: all kinds of living creatures. We talk about talk about

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Speaker 3: them on the show all the time, but it just

364
00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:39,200
Speaker 3: seems they are especially prevalent about cicadas. Every time there

365
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Speaker 3: is a new, local brewed emergence, people are baffled anew

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Speaker 3: and prone to the same superstitions that we believed in

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Speaker 3: last time. And this struck me as very interesting because

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Speaker 3: I started to think it's almost as if the periodical

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Speaker 3: cicadas are preventing us from adapting to them in the

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Speaker 3: same way and by the same method that they prevent

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Speaker 3: predators and parasitoids from adapting to them by appearing in

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Speaker 3: different areas on these staggered time schedules. Do you know

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Speaker 3: what I mean?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, It's like we instead of having just constant

375
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Speaker 2: news coverage or just you know, annual news coverage about

376
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Speaker 2: mass emergences of cicadas, we get you know, extra concentrated

377
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Speaker 2: news coverage every every so often. Yeah, so we have

378
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Speaker 2: time to sort of forget and then and then to

379
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Speaker 2: sort of grow hungry for new sensationalist headlines, which we

380
00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:38,880
Speaker 2: still have, you know, as we discussed in the last

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Speaker 2: episode that we did on cicadas, you know, we still

382
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Speaker 2: have these kind of outrageous news coverage bits that occur

383
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Speaker 2: that seem to even if they don't double down on

384
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Speaker 2: the misinformation aspect of it, they kind of like get

385
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Speaker 2: into the gleeful, ooh bugs aspect of it that is

386
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Speaker 2: almost kind of like the first step in getting to

387
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Speaker 2: a they might suck my blood.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, you know, there are these like different

389
00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 3: scales of plausibility in the people dreaming up scenarios about

390
00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:10,960
Speaker 3: what cicadas could do to them. You know, if you

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00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:13,640
Speaker 3: don't know anything, it's plausible to imagine they could sting

392
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Speaker 3: or bite you. They're not going to do that, actually,

393
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Speaker 3: but that doesn't seem all that far fetched. And then

394
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Speaker 3: beyond that, you get the will they leave me a

395
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Speaker 3: thoroughly pumped husk? You know, are they going to suck

396
00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:26,080
Speaker 3: out all my blood? That doesn't seem all that plausible.

397
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Speaker 3: And then there's like even weirder stuff.

398
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Gene Kritsky and what as I believe his

399
00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:35,639
Speaker 2: latest book, A Tale of Two Broods, dealing with the

400
00:23:36,280 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 2: latest cicada emergencies. He goes into a number of different

401
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:44,760
Speaker 2: angles here, but he includes this following actual example from

402
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:48,040
Speaker 2: an eighteen seventy one publication in the Grant County Herald

403
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:53,400
Speaker 2: from Lancaster, Wisconsin. And what's interesting here is he includes

404
00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:57,080
Speaker 2: full or most of the either the entirety or most

405
00:23:57,119 --> 00:23:59,960
Speaker 2: of the article, and most of it seems to be

406
00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:03,919
Speaker 2: rather logical, stressing that cicadas are only a threat to

407
00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:07,879
Speaker 2: tree branches, you know, basically doing a good job of

408
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 2: laying out the science. But then at the very end,

409
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:13,040
Speaker 2: it's like they felt like, well, we have to acknowledge

410
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:17,119
Speaker 2: the superstition in a little bit, so they include this

411
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:20,200
Speaker 2: last bit quote the insect has no sting and does

412
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 2: not seem to have the power to bite. It is

413
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 2: possible then, that in exceedingly rare cases, it has attempted

414
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:30,000
Speaker 2: and succeeded in depositing an egg in the skull of

415
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:33,719
Speaker 2: a human being. So you know, once you add that

416
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:35,640
Speaker 2: at the end, if you're like, but there's still there's

417
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:37,600
Speaker 2: a non zero chance it could lay an egg in

418
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 2: your skull, Like, it kind of undoes all that great

419
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,919
Speaker 2: work you just did at dispelling the superstition.

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Speaker 3: Well, wait, I believe there's a non zero chances that like,

421
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 3: has this possibly happened? Doesn't seem super plausible.

422
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:53,920
Speaker 2: But I mean, I didn't see I've not seen any

423
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Speaker 2: real accounts of this, you know, no medical journal, you know,

424
00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 2: recent or old.

425
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:01,680
Speaker 3: I heard from a guy.

426
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:04,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like somebody said it happened, and can

427
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:06,920
Speaker 2: you prove that it didn't sort of a thing, you.

428
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:11,439
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, disprove or except yeah, that's great.

429
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Speaker 2: And even then, I feel like there's a danger in

430
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:16,119
Speaker 2: us mentioning it here too, that now that's in your mind,

431
00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:20,159
Speaker 2: you're like when you experience the cicadas out there in

432
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:22,399
Speaker 2: the world, that you're going to think, but could they

433
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 2: lay an egg in my skull? I don't want that,

434
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,800
Speaker 2: but really do not worry about it. These creatures have

435
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:31,159
Speaker 2: an agenda, and that agenda does not include sucking your blood,

436
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 2: destroying your crops, landing Well, they may land on your baby,

437
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:37,959
Speaker 2: but they don't care about your baby, and they're definitely

438
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:39,720
Speaker 2: not interested in laying eggs and skulls.

439
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 3: I can very well imagine a scenario that easily leads

440
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 3: to the misconception that they sting babies, which is that

441
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 3: like if you've got a kid and like an insect

442
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 3: flies up in lands on them. The child might become

443
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 3: scared and start crying, and then it flies away, and

444
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,160
Speaker 3: then you think they're crying because they're in pain. It's

445
00:25:58,160 --> 00:25:58,720
Speaker 3: stung them.

446
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or an insect landed on your child and you're

447
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 2: overly protective, as many of his parents are, and you're like,

448
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:08,439
Speaker 2: oh goodness, then you rush forward and you create the

449
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:10,400
Speaker 2: incident of fear and so forth.

450
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:12,880
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, but I did want to mention one thing

451
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 3: that I thought was interesting that cicadas. Of course, they

452
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 3: do not bite, they do not sting. It seems exceedingly rare.

453
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:24,239
Speaker 3: If they ever even really poke people. That seems to

454
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 3: not happen much. If it happens at all, so you

455
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 3: don't have to worry about that. But they might possibly

456
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 3: pee on you and the p The nature of the

457
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 3: cicada urination is quite alarming actually if you see it,

458
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 3: because it doesn't look like what you imagine insect urination

459
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 3: would be, and in fact it's not very consistent with

460
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 3: what pre existing models before just recently would have predicted

461
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 3: of an insect like them. Because cicadas are insects and

462
00:26:57,040 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 3: they are xylum feeders. They live by sucking xylum from

463
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:04,399
Speaker 3: plants and creatures with these characteristics. The little insects and

464
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 3: xylum feeders were pretty much thought to excrete by creating

465
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:15,119
Speaker 3: little droplets that they shake off essentially, And this is

466
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 3: due to how fluid dynamics work at small scales. You know,

467
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:21,880
Speaker 3: We've talked about this a lot on the show because

468
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 3: of that essay. I love bringing up the on being

469
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 3: the right size, you know, or like the way that

470
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 3: your body interacts with water is very different if you

471
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 3: are very small, Like the surface tension of water becomes

472
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,600
Speaker 3: a much more powerful and dangerous force to deal with

473
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 3: in everyday life if you're very small. And it's also

474
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,159
Speaker 3: true that water flows differently at very small scales. So

475
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:47,639
Speaker 3: you know, larger mammals tend to produce a kind of

476
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 3: stream of urine that goes out of the body. But

477
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 3: when you get down to smaller and smaller animals, what

478
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:57,199
Speaker 3: tends to happen is that they just kind of like

479
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 3: do a weak, little kind of emission of droplets that

480
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 3: they might shake off of the body somehow. But I

481
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:07,400
Speaker 3: was reading about new research published just this year in

482
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 3: March twenty twenty four in p and As by L.

483
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 3: Eoj Chalita and M. Sad Bombla, and the paper was

484
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:20,120
Speaker 3: called Unifying Fluidic Excretion across life from Cicadas to Elephants.

485
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:24,640
Speaker 3: And so the authors write in their abstract, can insects

486
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 3: weighing mirror grams challenge our current understanding of fluid dynamics

487
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:33,880
Speaker 3: in urination jetting fluids like the larger their larger mammalian counterparts.

488
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:37,920
Speaker 3: And the answer is yes, Yes, Insects can create jets

489
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 3: just like mammals do. You don't often see it, but

490
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 3: cicadas can do this. And they got some video footage

491
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 3: of this, and they studied how the water, how the

492
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 3: excretion flows out of the cicadas. I would recommend looking

493
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 3: up video of cicadas peeing because, as I said earlier,

494
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:56,080
Speaker 3: it's it looks alarming.

495
00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. It's not the medicine dropper scenario we

496
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 2: were just talking about. It is, well, what you might

497
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 2: call a proper leak that these cicadas are taking.

498
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's jetting out. And so they talk about

499
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 3: a previous urination model where it was assumed that jetting

500
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 3: was basically limited to animals over three kilograms in body

501
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 3: mass because of just because of how fluids flow, and

502
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 3: that it's hard to create a jet if you're smaller.

503
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:28,960
Speaker 3: They say, it's owing to viscous and surface tension constraints

504
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 3: at microscales like I was talking about. You know, water

505
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 3: flows differently, liquids flow differently at smaller scales. But they say, quote,

506
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 3: our findings defied this paradigm by demonstrating that cicadas weighing

507
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 3: just two grams possess the capability for jetting fluids through

508
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 3: remarkably small orifices. Using dimensional analysis, we introduce a unifying

509
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:54,959
Speaker 3: fluid dynamic scaling framework that accommodates a broad range of taxa,

510
00:29:55,040 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 3: from surface tension dominated insects to inertia and gravity reliant mammals.

511
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 3: And then they go on to say, as we often

512
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 3: get in studies like this, they go on to say,

513
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 3: you know, this could be useful in designing better nozzles

514
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 3: for you know, like tiny robots and machines that need

515
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 3: to jet things out at a micro scale. So maybe

516
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 3: one day, maybe one day, some medical technology, like a

517
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 3: little robot that swims inside your body and jets around,

518
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 3: you know, needs to like squirt a jet of something

519
00:30:26,120 --> 00:30:29,680
Speaker 3: inside your body, will be based on the design of

520
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 3: a cicada's weird, kind of alarming urination.

521
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 2: I'll be very surprised if this study doesn't win an

522
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 2: ig Nobel Prize this year. Yes, you know, yeah, because

523
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 2: you have the cicada emergence is happening anyway. Cicadas are

524
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 2: in the public mindset, so yeah, this seems like this

525
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:49,960
Speaker 2: is a this is a shoehorn for the Biology Prize

526
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:51,719
Speaker 2: or I don't know what one of the other prizes

527
00:30:51,720 --> 00:30:54,320
Speaker 2: would probably work as well, but surely biology.

528
00:30:54,600 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 3: It's possible. We'll be back on this study later this year.

529
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, Now, for the remainder of this episode,

530
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:15,840
Speaker 2: I wanted to get back into the whole classification of broods.

531
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 2: You know, we're talking about brood X and so forth.

532
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 2: In the last episode, we talked about the evolution of

533
00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 2: periodical cicadas and why they do this, but we didn't

534
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 2: really get into the amazing way this really shakes out

535
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 2: in terms of different broods or the history of how

536
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:33,480
Speaker 2: we got to this point.

537
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 3: Right, because when we talk about these periodical emergencies, we've

538
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 3: tried to mention this a few times already as we

539
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:43,480
Speaker 3: go along, but it's not like the thirteen year or

540
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 3: seventeen year cicadas all come out at once. It's like

541
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 3: every thirteen years, they're all there. We have different local

542
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 3: populations referred to as broods that are on the same

543
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 3: time schedule.

544
00:31:57,280 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 2: Right right, based on their geographical area and the year

545
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 2: they emerge. And basically all of this our understanding of

546
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 2: this and our brood classification of periodical cicadas, it traces

547
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 2: back to the work of American entomologist Charles Lester Marlott,

548
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:18,880
Speaker 2: who lived eighteen sixty three through nineteen fifty four. Kansas born,

549
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 2: KSU educated, he was an entomologist who worked most of

550
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 2: his career. I believe he was a USDA researcher, and

551
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:29,280
Speaker 2: I was reading about him in the Legacy of Charles

552
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:33,720
Speaker 2: Marlott and Efforts to Limit Plant Pest Invasions by Leibhold

553
00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 2: et al. Published in the journal American Entomologist in twenty sixteen.

554
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:40,480
Speaker 2: So he's a pretty interesting fellow. A lot of his

555
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 2: work for the USDA centered around the control of agricultural

556
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 2: pest insects, with a focus on invasive threats. The article

557
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 2: mentions that in nineteen oh one and nineteen oh two

558
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 2: Marlott and his wife went on honeymoon in China in Japan,

559
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:00,160
Speaker 2: which again nineteen oh one.

560
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:00,840
Speaker 3: You know too, this is a.

561
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:05,160
Speaker 2: Pretty adventurous vacation. That's a pretty adventerous honeymoon. You know

562
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:09,479
Speaker 2: that we had to get there by ship and just

563
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 2: more of an undertaking compared to today. But while there,

564
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 2: it also gave him a chance to check out the

565
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 2: native range of a particular invasive pest insect known as

566
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 2: the San Jose scale, or it was known it was

567
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 2: known in the US at the time. It's the San

568
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 2: Jose scale. Uh, this being a creature that was a

569
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 2: big problem at this point in California. But it was

570
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 2: originally native to Siberia, northeast China, and I believe parts

571
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 2: of the Korean Peninsula. I believe it has since spread

572
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 2: to various places, not just you know, to to North America.

573
00:33:47,280 --> 00:33:50,360
Speaker 2: But so anyway, this this vacation, this honeymoon, gave him

574
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 2: a chance to investigate this organism's natural environment, to make

575
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 2: note of its natural predators, and even bring back specimens,

576
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 2: and all of this at his own personal expense. That's

577
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 2: just how devoted an entomologist he was. And this kind

578
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 2: of line of work would ultimately lead to the introduction

579
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 2: of the Italian ladybird beetle or lady bug, though it's

580
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:19,600
Speaker 2: not a true bug, the particular species being Chillcorus similis.

581
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 2: This is the red spotted ladybird, so Charles Marlott would

582
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:29,719
Speaker 2: be the individual to orchestrate it being introduced to North

583
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 2: America in order to combat the San Jose scale threat.

584
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 3: Weird. I just looked up the red spotted ladybird and

585
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,560
Speaker 3: if it is the thing, I've found it looks like

586
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:41,719
Speaker 3: an inversion of a ladybug.

587
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:45,840
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so you know, not to be confused with

588
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 2: various other ladybirds and related insects. But this is interesting though,

589
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 2: because he was in this effort, he was very much

590
00:34:54,680 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 2: a pioneer of biocontrol, introducing species to another species that

591
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 2: has already been introduced into an area. Again, as we've

592
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:07,360
Speaker 2: discussed in the show before, though, this of course is

593
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:10,560
Speaker 2: a very delicate balancing act and one that especially now,

594
00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 2: we do not engage in willy nilly. There are all

595
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 2: sorts of things that can go wrong and do go

596
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 2: wrong when we attempt to write a previous wrong.

597
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, google cane toads in Australia if you want to

598
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 3: see how this can go wrong.

599
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 2: Now, this honeymoon to Japan and China that Marlott and

600
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 2: his wife went on. It ends up taking a tragic

601
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,799
Speaker 2: turn because during his travels in Asia, his wife contracted

602
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 2: some unknown illness. I don't know that. I didn't even

603
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 2: run across any suspicions of what it might have been,

604
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 2: but she caught some sort of unknown illness ultimately died

605
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 2: from it, and the authors of this paper add that quote.

606
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 2: This experience no doubt shaped Marlott's thinking and perhaps contributed

607
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:54,440
Speaker 2: to his strong concern about the dangers of accidentally importing

608
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 2: species from overseas. So again, his wife seemingly caught some

609
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 2: sort of a pathogen, and Marlott his work dealt with

610
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:07,360
Speaker 2: agricultural pests. But you could see how this could intensify

611
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 2: his already pre existing concern about pest organisms from other

612
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 2: ecosystems being introduced into North America. And indeed, Marlott became

613
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 2: very concerned about the threat of invasive organisms that had

614
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 2: already entered the US through soil and trade, as well

615
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 2: as the potential for future invasive exposures. He was key

616
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:35,879
Speaker 2: in urging Congress to enact plant quarantine legislation to help

617
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:39,480
Speaker 2: deal with this threat, and I was The article gets

618
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,360
Speaker 2: into it here. It was a pretty polarizing topic because

619
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 2: on one hand, you had plenty of people who are

620
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 2: already like thinkers on this. You know, they could point

621
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:53,840
Speaker 2: directly at problems with invasive pests in agriculture in North America,

622
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:56,320
Speaker 2: like with the San Jose scale, and say, yeah, this

623
00:36:56,880 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 2: is terrible. We need to combat this and figure out

624
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 2: ways to prevent it from happening. But on the other hand,

625
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 2: you had individuals who were saying, no, no, no, no,

626
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 2: you can't stand in the way of free trade. You

627
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 2: can't get in the way of American horticulture because it

628
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 2: depends on introducing plant species from around the world, and

629
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 2: you just need to stand back and let us do it.

630
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:21,360
Speaker 2: And so we end up with another really interesting and

631
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 2: very newsy and political situation that occurs. And none of

632
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 2: this involves cicadas, but I thought it was too fascinating.

633
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:32,719
Speaker 2: It all concerns Marlin, so I do want to go

634
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:36,359
Speaker 2: into it, at least briefly. Here Basically, what happens is

635
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 2: in the year nineteen oh nine, you have a number

636
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:45,399
Speaker 2: of cherry trees, some two thousand cherry trees that are

637
00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:50,080
Speaker 2: gifted from Japan to the United States. It's a gift

638
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 2: that involved. Basically, there's kind of like a back and

639
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:55,760
Speaker 2: forth between a prominent Japanese chemist of the time, doctor

640
00:37:55,920 --> 00:38:00,319
Speaker 2: Takamini Jokichi, and the first lady of the time Hell

641
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 2: and heron taft. So you know, she'd expressed interest in

642
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 2: the cherry trees of Japan, and the good doctor Here's like, well, yeah,

643
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 2: I've got some connections here, and lo and behold, now

644
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:14,280
Speaker 2: we get a state offering of two thousand cherry trees.

645
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:17,480
Speaker 2: They are sent on their way across the ocean, and

646
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 2: then they're put on a train and travel across the

647
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 2: continent to Washington, d c. M. And this is where

648
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:27,799
Speaker 2: Marlott enters the picture, because a USDA team led by

649
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 2: him ends up inspecting the trees and he's like, instantly

650
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 2: he pulls a total ripley on all of this. He's like, no, no, no, no,

651
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:39,200
Speaker 2: you cannot do this, Like we just checked. These things

652
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 2: are infested, they have scale insects, they have root gall

653
00:38:43,080 --> 00:38:45,359
Speaker 2: What we need to do is just burn them all.

654
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 3: Oh no, I mean I understand the reasoning there, and

655
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 3: that makes sense, but it's like it was a gift,

656
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 3: you know, it's just like, oh that sucks.

657
00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:56,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so they didn't burn it right away, Like

658
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,319
Speaker 2: basically this had to travel up the pole, and I

659
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:02,480
Speaker 2: believe President Taft himself had to give the authorization, but

660
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:06,240
Speaker 2: that within a month all these trees were burned. And

661
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:08,839
Speaker 2: I guess the upside here is that, first of all,

662
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 2: Agricultural Secretary James Wilson and his staff followed this up

663
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:16,319
Speaker 2: with a strong push, using scientific evidence to seek a

664
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 2: national plant quarantine law. So thirty nine states had already

665
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 2: passed such laws, but with this they were able to

666
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 2: roll out the Plant Quarantine Act of nineteen twelve, which

667
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:31,840
Speaker 2: went into effect August twentieth, nineteen twelve, and the establishment

668
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 2: of the Federal Horticultural Board, and also you know future

669
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 2: plant quarantine efforts, so you know, they're able to spin

670
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:43,280
Speaker 2: it off and do some additional good, you know, broader

671
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:46,319
Speaker 2: good outside of you know, state offerings of gifts. And

672
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 2: there's even I guess a happy ending to the whole

673
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:52,680
Speaker 2: cherry tree gift tobacco here as well, because Japan ended

674
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 2: up offering replacements. These were fumigated before shipment, and ultimately

675
00:39:58,040 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 2: the first lady and the wife of the jap these

676
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 2: ambassador like oversaw the planting of these trees, and the

677
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 2: Washington d c. Cherry trees remain in iconic aspect of

678
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:09,719
Speaker 2: the nation's capital. Anyway, none of that involves cicadas, but

679
00:40:09,719 --> 00:40:12,360
Speaker 2: it all involves Charles Lester Marlott. So I thought we'd

680
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:17,120
Speaker 2: mention it. But if invasive pests were Charles Lester Marlott's

681
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 2: hated foes, his best friends, his most beloved insects were,

682
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:27,240
Speaker 2: without a doubt, periodical cicadas. He studied them, immensely, published

683
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:30,319
Speaker 2: about them. He loved them so much that when he

684
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:34,120
Speaker 2: had a house built in Washington, d C. This mansion,

685
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 2: this big brick mansion, he had cicadas carved into various

686
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:42,400
Speaker 2: features of the home. Huh. And the paper here includes

687
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 2: some images. I've included them here for you to look at, Joe.

688
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 2: This home apparently still is still around it currently, I

689
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 2: believe houses the Institute of World Politics. I intentionally did

690
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 2: not look them up. I don't know what their world

691
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,200
Speaker 2: politics happened to be, and I'm going to remain blissfully

692
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:02,879
Speaker 2: ignorant of whatever they are. But it is my understanding

693
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 2: that the cicadas are still there, like on the banisters

694
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:07,320
Speaker 2: of the staircases and so forth.

695
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,239
Speaker 3: Uh, huh, it's a beautiful house whatever they're doing in there.

696
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:14,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, he was a key figure in our

697
00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:18,799
Speaker 2: understanding and our study of periodical cicadas. He contributed to

698
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 2: the taxonomic study of them, outlined the thirty hypothesized broods

699
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:26,839
Speaker 2: of periodical cicadas in North America. His nineteen oh seven

700
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 2: book The Periodical Cicada laid everything out to signing Roman numerals,

701
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 2: covering all thirteen years of the thirteen periodical cicadas and

702
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 2: all seventeen of the seventeen periodical cicadas for a grand

703
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 2: total of thirty.

704
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 3: That's interesting. So you know, if you go back to

705
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 3: these articles that I was talking about from the New

706
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:49,080
Speaker 3: York Times in the nineteenth century, some people were already

707
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 3: aware that there were like some local emergences that happened

708
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:56,560
Speaker 3: on seventeen year cycles. But so there was some knowledge,

709
00:41:56,560 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 3: but I guess they didn't know. They didn't have worked

710
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:02,399
Speaker 3: out like what all the broods were and where all

711
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 3: of them.

712
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 2: Were, right. Yeah, you look at details from his work,

713
00:42:05,719 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 2: which was extensive, like he's making maps, you know, pinpointing

714
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 2: them like this guy went hard on periodical cicadas and

715
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:17,279
Speaker 2: as such, like anything you read about periodical cicadas. You

716
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 2: will invariably see his work sided like there'll be Marlett

717
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 2: down There often multiple Marlet publications that are cited. I mean,

718
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 2: his work was just foundational. Gene Kritsky, of course, cites

719
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 2: him numerous times in a Tale of Two Broods, saying quote,

720
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:35,880
Speaker 2: he designated the seventeen year cicadas that emerged in eighteen

721
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 2: ninety three as brood one. The cicadas that emerged in

722
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety four were called brood two. The cicadas emerging

723
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:44,040
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety five were to be called brood three,

724
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 2: and so on. And then he adds for just to

725
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 2: drive everything at home, he says, quote, Marlott's system greatly

726
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 2: reduced the confusion surrounding the study of periodical cicadas, and

727
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:58,080
Speaker 2: it has stood the test of time. It was particularly

728
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,600
Speaker 2: helpful in areas where there were overlapping broods, enabling observers

729
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 2: to determine precisely where and when cicadas would again emerge.

730
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 3: And as far as I can tell, our systems for

731
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 3: predicting these brood emergencies have been pretty reliable.

732
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:15,239
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now, you know, some things didn't quite shake out,

733
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 2: So you know, it turns out like we don't have

734
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 2: a full thirty broods. I think it's more like fifteen. Right,

735
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 2: Some years might not have produced a brood. And we

736
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:26,399
Speaker 2: know that some broods were in decline when Marlott studied them,

737
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 2: and some have seemingly gone extinct. So for instance, there

738
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 2: is a brood twenty three, but not a twenty four

739
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:36,360
Speaker 2: breod twenty one native to the Florida Panhandle when extinct

740
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 2: sometime after eighteen seventy. So you know that there have

741
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 2: been changes. And also it does drive home that you know,

742
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 2: even though when these broods emerge, it is just overwhelming

743
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 2: and it just seems like they're a juggernaut that can't

744
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 2: be stopped. They are vulnerable, you know, there are you know,

745
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:58,399
Speaker 2: changes to their environment can impact them and they can

746
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 2: just go away forever. Now, you know, we can't go

747
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 2: into everything like again, I'll just summarize by saying Marlott

748
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:10,359
Speaker 2: was the man of his time in laying out much

749
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 2: of the foundational work for our understanding of periodical cicadas.

750
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 2: But of course, given the time he was active, and

751
00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:20,000
Speaker 2: given just the pervasive superstitions around cicadas, he of course

752
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 2: also had to do a little myth busting here and

753
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:27,120
Speaker 2: there concerning their you know, consumption of flesh and so forth.

754
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 2: So here's one more quote from gene Kritsky's A Tale

755
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 2: of Two Broods quote. Reports of periodical cicadas attempting to

756
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 2: lay eggs in humans popped up in several newspapers during

757
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:42,920
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century. Marlott settled the question, writing, with every

758
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:46,320
Speaker 2: general outbreak of this insect our associated accounts in local

759
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 2: papers of its stinging human beings, the sting often resulting,

760
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:53,360
Speaker 2: it is stated more or less seriously to the person stung.

761
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 2: So far as investigation of the reports have been possible,

762
00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 2: they have proved to be either utterly without fandebt foundation

763
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:05,439
Speaker 2: or much exaggerated. So nothing that nothing that we haven't

764
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 2: already covered, and that that scientists aren't having to again

765
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 2: reiterate for the public. But it's it's interesting that, yeah,

766
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:16,400
Speaker 2: here's this guy who did so much work on cicadas,

767
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:18,120
Speaker 2: but he would also have to chime in and just

768
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 2: say no, no, no, they are not going to drink

769
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 2: your blood. They're not going to lay eggs in your brain.

770
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 2: They ultimately don't care about you. You are not part

771
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 2: of the cicada agenda. All right, Well, we're going to

772
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 2: go ahead and close out this episode right there, but

773
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 2: we're going to return to the world of cicadas in

774
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:35,719
Speaker 2: the next episode. There's still a lot we didn't get

775
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 2: to discuss. There are whole area's mythological yet to be

776
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:43,880
Speaker 2: to be discussed here on the show. We haven't really

777
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 2: gotten into the culinary question of cicadas, so there's a

778
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,759
Speaker 2: lot to discuss, and of course in the meantime, we

779
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 2: would love to hear from everyone out there. You undoubtedly

780
00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:59,360
Speaker 2: have experiences with cicadas, annual or periodical, and we would

781
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 2: like to hear about them. Do you fancy yourself a

782
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:05,640
Speaker 2: cicada photographer? Oh, we'll send your photos. We will look

783
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:08,839
Speaker 2: at them. Do you have any thoughts on cicada urination? Yes,

784
00:46:09,760 --> 00:46:11,879
Speaker 2: we want to know about that as well. And if

785
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 2: you have any second, third, fourth, fifth hand accounts of

786
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:19,279
Speaker 2: cicada's biting people, sucking blood, or laying eggs and the skull, yes,

787
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:21,839
Speaker 2: right in with that as well. We will of course

788
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 2: discuss that in future episodes of Listener. Made just a

789
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:26,880
Speaker 2: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a

790
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes publishing on Tuesdays

791
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's short form episode on

792
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:36,720
Speaker 2: Wednesdays and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns

793
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:39,719
Speaker 2: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

794
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

795
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

796
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

797
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:50,280
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

798
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

799
00:46:53,560 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

800
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:05,120
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801
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:08,000
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802
00:47:08,160 --> 00:47:25,840
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