Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature Production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Goolden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, it's a Buggy Listener Questions episode.
Speaker 2: I got a bunch of questions about insects, and I
Speaker 2: thought i'd answer them all at once, so I.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy. Let's get right into it.
Speaker 2: Oh and remember, if you have a question that you
Speaker 2: would like answered, you can write to me at Creature
Speaker 2: Featurepod at gmail dot com. Doesn't have to be about insects,
Speaker 2: but it certainly can be. So let's get right into it, Hi, Katie,
Speaker 2: what do bugs c? Specifically, what do insects see, especially
Speaker 2: the ones with large, elaborate compound eyes is like a
Speaker 2: dragonflies individual eye segment directly connected to their brains. Does
Speaker 2: eye size correlate with brain size and intelligence? Thanks love
Speaker 2: the show, Juanito. Also some additional context from Juanito. This
Speaker 2: question was prompted by reading Adrian Tchaikovski's Children of Time
Speaker 2: novel and the book A species of jumping spider Portia
Speaker 2: labiata gets accidentally uplifted to sentience and technology developing level.
Speaker 2: The author's description of the iraqtid censorium is fascinating. And
Speaker 2: you know what, all his books I've read so far
Speaker 2: investigate crazy interesting biology, invented the aliens, worlds, or real
Speaker 2: the cute little spider guys. I just discovered Adrian Tryikovsky
Speaker 2: this year and I heartily recommend his books. He studied
Speaker 2: zoology and psych before becoming an author. Wow, that sounds
Speaker 2: a lot like me, except I haven't written about super
Speaker 2: intelligent jumping spiders, but that sounds very cool. Thank you
Speaker 2: Juanito for the question and for the book recommendation. I'll
Speaker 2: check that out. So this is a great question about eyesight.
Speaker 2: How insects see the world, how compound eyes work, if
Speaker 2: eye size correlates with brain size, and intelligence, all really
Speaker 2: really good questions. So the broad answer in terms of
Speaker 2: insect vision is that it really depends on the insect.
Speaker 2: Different insects have different kind of eyes. Even insects who
Speaker 2: have compound eyes can have different types of compound eyes
Speaker 2: in different ways. Those are wired to the brain. But
Speaker 2: let's break down first the components of how vision is processed.
Speaker 2: You have the hardware, aspects of the eye, the lens,
Speaker 2: the shape of the eye, the retina, whether the animal
Speaker 2: has rods, cones or both, or simply light sensitive cells
Speaker 2: that can tell the difference between dark and lights. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of hardware to the eye that will
Speaker 2: determine how the light goes into the eye and where
Speaker 2: it goes to. And then the information has to reach
Speaker 2: the brain, usually through some sort of nerve cluster, and
Speaker 2: then the brain has to process the raw visual data,
Speaker 2: and after that other parts of the brain interpret those
Speaker 2: findings and those get sent down to other nerves that
Speaker 2: control muscles and reactions. So there are multiple points from
Speaker 2: the light hitting the eye to the organism's experience where
Speaker 2: that light is being transformed, both physically by the structure
Speaker 2: of the eye, by like the lens being directed into
Speaker 2: the eye, and then once it's inside, how it's hitting
Speaker 2: the back of the eye, what it's hitting, the sensory cells,
Speaker 2: the structures inside the eye that are funneling the light,
Speaker 2: and then also how that data is perceived, So both
Speaker 2: how it goes from the eye to the brain, the
Speaker 2: wiring of the neurons that transfer that data, and then
Speaker 2: how the brain process is it. So in terms of
Speaker 2: what something sees, it's a very interestingly subjective experience, even
Speaker 2: for us humans. We might think our site shows completely
Speaker 2: objective reality, but if you've ever seen an optical illusion,
Speaker 2: you'll realize our brains do a lot of funny business
Speaker 2: with that light hitting our eyes. There's a lot that
Speaker 2: happens between that and getting processed in our brain to
Speaker 2: the point where you can look at an optical illusion
Speaker 2: and see something very strange, because that's your brain working
Speaker 2: to try to interpret these signals and adding things in
Speaker 2: that may not actually be there. So let's also explore
Speaker 2: this question of eye size and intelligence. So ie size
Speaker 2: and brain size are not always correlated, and brain size
Speaker 2: isn't always correlated with superior intelligence. You have some things
Speaker 2: that might have really big brains and not necessarily be
Speaker 2: as intelligent as something that has a smaller brain. Right,
Speaker 2: we certainly don't have the largest brains in the world,
Speaker 2: but we're very intelligent. But in general, the general trend
Speaker 2: is that brain size can and does correlate with intelligence.
Speaker 2: It's just not a hard rule. There's many, many exceptions,
Speaker 2: and a similar thing happens with brain and ee size,
Speaker 2: or say like sensitive sensory organs and brain size. So
Speaker 2: there are some studies that find that eye size is
Speaker 2: positively correlated with brain size, though it's highly dependent on
Speaker 2: the type of animal. There's been some research on frogs
Speaker 2: that find eye size and brain size are linked, but
Speaker 2: studies done in guppies the fish found that eye size
Speaker 2: and brain size were positively correlated, but it did not
Speaker 2: actually predict better visual acuity or necessarily intelligence. So the
Speaker 2: idea behind brain size and eye size or eye complexity
Speaker 2: being related is a good one. Naturally, bigger eyes and
Speaker 2: more complex visual processing should require more space in the
Speaker 2: brain are at least more complex brain folds. We do
Speaker 2: actually see this kind of correlation in dolphins who have
Speaker 2: massive auditory processing parts of their brains to help with
Speaker 2: the complex task of echolocation, and in humans we have
Speaker 2: huge visual processing areas of the brain and complex large
Speaker 2: eyes and very complex vision. But some counter examples. You
Speaker 2: have the tarsiir, which is a tiny primate who has
Speaker 2: disproportionately large eyeballs. They're so big that they can barely
Speaker 2: fit in its head. They can't turn in their sockets,
Speaker 2: so if it wants to look around, it has to
Speaker 2: move its whole head rotate its head around, and its
Speaker 2: brain is not that big. In fact, its brain is
Speaker 2: smaller than one of its giant eyeballs. Also, its brain
Speaker 2: is relatively smooth, and so the trade off seems to
Speaker 2: be that it has ditched a lot of its other
Speaker 2: brain mass, say like olfactory brain mass or other you know,
Speaker 2: parts of the brain in favor of a disproportionately large
Speaker 2: visual cortex, which is still small but enough to take
Speaker 2: in the visual data from those giant eyeballs, which are
Speaker 2: designed to see at night for feeding on nocturnal insects.
Speaker 2: Speaking of nocturnal insects, they have managed to develop a
Speaker 2: keen night vision despite often having small eyes and small brains.
Speaker 2: They manage this with clever trade offs. Instead of seeing clear,
Speaker 2: crisp images like we do, they see very slow course
Speaker 2: images with high contrast. So this allows them to react
Speaker 2: to threats at in the night in the darkness, or
Speaker 2: to find mates while everything kind of looks like an
Speaker 2: overexposed black and white image that has been repeatedly compressed
Speaker 2: until it's a grainy bunch of pixels moving in sort
Speaker 2: of delay slow motion. Other insects have very different visual experiences.
Speaker 2: Fruit Flies have eyes and brains that work together to
Speaker 2: allow for very rapid responses to visual information with sharp
Speaker 2: crisp edges, so kind of quite different from these nocturnal insects.
Speaker 2: Many insects see colors that we can't perceive, like those
Speaker 2: in the ultraviolet range, which allow them to zero in
Speaker 2: on flowers who signal to them with secret colorful runways
Speaker 2: to aid in pollination. And this is the case for dragonflies,
Speaker 2: who can either be pollinators, they can also be predators,
Speaker 2: but they have those big, impressive compound eyes. Compound eyes
Speaker 2: are made up of a bunch of distinct units called omatidia,
Speaker 2: which each one comes with a lens, a cornea, and
Speaker 2: photoreceptive cells. So they are these like individual units of vision.
Speaker 2: Whereas you compare it to our e we have one lens,
Speaker 2: one cornea, and then a now with a bunch of
Speaker 2: photoreceptive cells at the back. They have just like a
Speaker 2: bunch of these units. Each one has a lens, in
Speaker 2: acornea and photoreceptive cells. There can be tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of these on a single eye. Different insects have different
Speaker 2: ways in which these compound eyes are connected to the brain,
Speaker 2: different methods of resolving the mass of tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of single units of information. Sometimes individual units are clustered
Speaker 2: together in processing for a more sensitive but lower resolution image.
Speaker 2: Others are more complex with an increase in neural wiring
Speaker 2: for higher resolution and still sensitive vision. The reason not
Speaker 2: all the eyes maximize resolution and sensitivity is because this
Speaker 2: precise wiring is a higher neural load, so some insects
Speaker 2: will trade off for less neural processing for a lower
Speaker 2: resolution image whatever is needed most for survival. Dragonflies specifically
Speaker 2: have eyes that are highly sensitive to color, even more
Speaker 2: so than human eyes. They also have three hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty degree vision with about two hundred images per second,
Speaker 2: meaning that they see in bullet time, basically slow motion.
Speaker 2: Most of their brain is dedicated to visual processing, like
Speaker 2: eighty percent of their brain, so they see a highly
Speaker 2: colorful world with ultraviolet and polarized light. It maybe being
Speaker 2: a dragonfly would sort of be like taking in a
Speaker 2: slow motion movie at an IMAX theater that's really brightly
Speaker 2: colored all around you. But again, it's kind of hard
Speaker 2: to say how they actually experience this, right, Like, we
Speaker 2: can't avatar into a dragonfly brain. We've got our human
Speaker 2: brains with our human feelings and thoughts about what we
Speaker 2: see in our visions, so it's very hard to know
Speaker 2: what they actually experience, but we can kind of say
Speaker 2: this is what the information that is reaching their brain
Speaker 2: is very interesting, A very different way of viewing the world.
Speaker 2: Sounds very trippy. Onto the next listener question. Hi, Katie.
Speaker 2: After the first rain of the season, ants began appearing
Speaker 2: in my house. Luckily, I have indoor ant traps, so
Speaker 2: I am not expecting any ant ant ant mageddon happening. However,
Speaker 2: as I was observing the hapless creatures harvesting the poison
Speaker 2: in the ant trap, I began to wonder would the
Speaker 2: colony ever evolve to become aware of the man made poison,
Speaker 2: like how some species of ants are aware if one
Speaker 2: of their own is carrying the Cordyceps spores and would
Speaker 2: take action to get rid of the infected ant. The
Speaker 2: ant traps are designed so the ant would carry the
Speaker 2: poison back to the nest and henceforth killing the whole
Speaker 2: colony by sharing the poisonous food. At this point, I'm
Speaker 2: at the edge of a rabbit hole that I'm hoping
Speaker 2: not to fall into because I started reading the ingredients
Speaker 2: of the ant trap, which is point zero one percent
Speaker 2: avermect and B and ninety nine percent sent other ingredients
Speaker 2: and I definitely don't know what any of that really means. Anyways,
Speaker 2: I would love to hear your thoughts before I get
Speaker 2: too carried away. Thanks Jessec Hi Jesse, this is an
Speaker 2: amazing question. First, let me just give some context. She mentions. First,
Speaker 2: let me give some context. Courtceps are mentioned. The courdyceps
Speaker 2: are spores of a fungus that can infect various arthropods,
Speaker 2: including ants, and so ants have learned to identify an
Speaker 2: infected individual and carry them far away from the colony
Speaker 2: so they don't infect the rest of the colony. So
Speaker 2: there are two ways ants might thwart threats or poison
Speaker 2: evolution or learning. So evolution is a very slow process
Speaker 2: over many hundreds thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions
Speaker 2: of years. So for ants to develop an innate instinctive
Speaker 2: behavior towards, say, human ant bait traps, we would probably
Speaker 2: need to co evolve with them for quite a while,
Speaker 2: but it would be possible. Some evolutionary traits already seem
Speaker 2: to act as potential protection against poisoning. So some ant
Speaker 2: species have worker ants that act as living larders. These
Speaker 2: are usually older workers who consume some food source and
Speaker 2: just kind of stand around and offer it to other
Speaker 2: ants via regurgitation, kind of like a living vending machine.
Speaker 2: This could potentially help dilute toxins or simply kill off
Speaker 2: the ant that has ingested all of these toxins, and
Speaker 2: so it may act as a kind of buffer between
Speaker 2: these ants that have these sort of living larger members
Speaker 2: of the colony eating a bunch of food and then
Speaker 2: offering it to other workers after it's already been diluted
Speaker 2: in its gut. But it's not a strategy that has
Speaker 2: evolved specifically for ant traps or ant poison or toxins,
Speaker 2: but it may be a separate benefit. This is a
Speaker 2: behavior that's evaulved for things like surviving famine, for economizing
Speaker 2: food gathering, things like that, but it could have the
Speaker 2: impact of helping them survive human traps. But ants do
Speaker 2: have the capacity to learn, particularly as a colony, and
Speaker 2: this is a faster process than evolution. You can have
Speaker 2: a colony adapt to some threat or something within a
Speaker 2: matter of a single generation just by learning. So Argentine
Speaker 2: ants have shown signs that as a colony they are
Speaker 2: capable of learning about poison bait and change their behavior
Speaker 2: in response to it. So the cleverness of ant bait
Speaker 2: is that it has a delayed response, so the ant
Speaker 2: eats it, it doesn't immediately die, which gives it time
Speaker 2: to you lay down pheromone trails to alert other ants
Speaker 2: about what seems like tasty food. Bring it back to
Speaker 2: the colony. All these ants come and they gather a
Speaker 2: bunch of it, bring it back. Still hasn't killed them yet,
Speaker 2: and then finally it starts to set in and kill
Speaker 2: them off. And by then, you know, hopefully for you
Speaker 2: and sadly for the ants, it's too late. They've already
Speaker 2: brought it in and so a lot of them die.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so this is very insidious. It's a very
Speaker 2: clever way to kill ants. But researchers have found that
Speaker 2: argentine ants, which are one of the most common ant
Speaker 2: species in the world, they are highly invasive, incredibly durable,
Speaker 2: really hard to get rid of if you've ever had
Speaker 2: an argentine ant invasion. So this might be one reason
Speaker 2: why so argentine ants seem to be able to learn
Speaker 2: to abandon toxic food sources and human beita traps. So
Speaker 2: one of the studies authors that was looking into this
Speaker 2: Argentina ant behavior entomologist Roxanna Johnson's happened upon this when
Speaker 2: she was trying to help a pediatric hospital get rid
Speaker 2: of their Argentine ant problem with baited traps and noticed
Speaker 2: that the ants simply abandoned the traps without poisoning the
Speaker 2: whole colony. So she got some argentine ants, put them
Speaker 2: in the lab, offered out some food sources, some that
Speaker 2: was just benign sugar water and some that had boric
Speaker 2: acid in it, which is an ingredient that's found in
Speaker 2: these ant ant traps or ant poison baits. And so
Speaker 2: what they found is that these ants learned to abandon
Speaker 2: the poisoned bait after about six hours, and in fact
Speaker 2: they had not managed to consume enough of it and
Speaker 2: bring back enough of it to destroy the rest of
Speaker 2: the ants. Of a few individual died, but not the
Speaker 2: entire laboratory colony. So the interesting thing is, we don't
Speaker 2: know how they know how to do this. So clearly
Speaker 2: there is some sort of algorithm happening where the ants
Speaker 2: go to the tainted food less and less and the
Speaker 2: pheromone trail weekends, whereas it strengthens for the food source
Speaker 2: that's safe but the researchers don't know how they're determining
Speaker 2: the tainted food source is unsafe. So still plenty of
Speaker 2: research that needs to be done on how these ants
Speaker 2: are learning to avoid the ant bait. But we know
Speaker 2: that at least argentine ants and possibly other species of
Speaker 2: ants do have strategies to counter it and can learn
Speaker 2: to avoid it. So yeah, so that is I would
Speaker 2: say learning is something that is it's not quite evolving
Speaker 2: to counter a threat, because evolution, that's that's a longer
Speaker 2: process that implies a fundamental intrinsic sort of change in
Speaker 2: the ants biology and species. But learning is of course
Speaker 2: something that's really really interesting, and you could absolutely have
Speaker 2: ants eventually adapt and evolve to counter ant poison human
Speaker 2: made ant poison if it is, oh, if we co
Speaker 2: evolve with them for long enough. All right on to
Speaker 2: the next listener question. Hi, Katie and or whomever reads this.
Speaker 2: It was me and my dog, that's who read it.
Speaker 2: I was recently listening to the episode with Janet Varney
Speaker 2: where you discussed bugs as alternative food sources and invasive
Speaker 2: species from the pet trade. I always want wondering if
Speaker 2: there have been any studies about the impact of industrial
Speaker 2: bug farming. You discussed animals from the pet trade becoming
Speaker 2: issues in an ecosystem. I guess I have several questions.
Speaker 2: Is there an industrial bug farm, what does it look like?
Speaker 2: And could a breach cause harmful spikes in a population
Speaker 2: to the flora and fauna. Thank you, Laura, Hi Laura,
Speaker 2: this is a fantastic question. I actually do know someone
Speaker 2: who researches crickets and has poked around cricket farms where
Speaker 2: they're raised as food. I'll try to get her on
Speaker 2: the show someday to talk more about both crickets and
Speaker 2: her experience checking out the cricket farm. So, in answer
Speaker 2: to your question, could is there this threat of insects
Speaker 2: being invasive if you're doing an insect farm? Absolutely yes,
Speaker 2: So all farm animals and plants can become invasive, and
Speaker 2: this could be absolutely true of insects already. There are
Speaker 2: insect farms, some used as food, like crickets being turned
Speaker 2: in into cricket meal or meal worms being turned into meal.
Speaker 2: Some farms use them as animal feed rather than human feed.
Speaker 2: Some farms use maggots like black fly larvae to break
Speaker 2: down food waste into frass, which is a nicer term
Speaker 2: for maggot poop that can then be used as a fertilizer.
Speaker 2: So we do already have bug farms, but a large
Speaker 2: bug farming industry doesn't really exist yet, not in the
Speaker 2: way that other industrial farms exist. So as you probably
Speaker 2: kind of instinctively understand, like, insects are very prolific, they're tiny,
Speaker 2: they're perfect candidates for becoming an invasive species. So they
Speaker 2: often become invasive just by hitching a ride in cargo
Speaker 2: and accidentally getting dropped off somewhere they don't belong. And
Speaker 2: they're so fecunned, they produce so much so many offspring,
Speaker 2: and they are highly adaptable typically that they're great at
Speaker 2: being invasive species. So a farm where you have a
Speaker 2: bunch of insects, potentially insects that have been selectively bred
Speaker 2: to endure harsh conditions or to breed more prolifically, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that would be a prime spot for there to be
Speaker 2: an invasive event, right, that could certainly pose a risk.
Speaker 2: In fact, we kind of already see that. We have
Speaker 2: a big example of that, which is honey bees. So
Speaker 2: honey bees, as cute and wonderful as they are, they
Speaker 2: are not native to the Americas. We imported them to
Speaker 2: make honey for us, for farms and to pollinate crops.
Speaker 2: The problem is that they can actually out compete native
Speaker 2: species of bees, which can both be harmful to the
Speaker 2: native bees themselves and also to the plants and the
Speaker 2: flowers that the native bees pollinate. Because you don't always
Speaker 2: just replace one pollinator with another, you can have a
Speaker 2: really specific relationship between say a wildflower, and a native
Speaker 2: species of bees who have co evolved with a wildflower,
Speaker 2: and they are a specific size, exhibit a specific behavior
Speaker 2: that the flower has co evolved with, and so their
Speaker 2: whole pollination structure is based on this species of bee
Speaker 2: and not necessarily based on the behavior of a honeybe.
Speaker 2: So you could, if you say, threaten a species of
Speaker 2: native bees because the honey bees are outcompeting them. You
Speaker 2: could also threaten native plants as well. So honey bees,
Speaker 2: I mean, I love them, right, and I love honey,
Speaker 2: but yeah, they are actually an example of what you're
Speaker 2: talking about. Bees that are used in large scale farming
Speaker 2: who have become invain because you can't really how do
Speaker 2: you keep how do you keep a honey bee in
Speaker 2: a cage? You don't they go around, and yeah, they
Speaker 2: have caused issues for the environment. Also, Laura, your question
Speaker 2: is so important. It is actually being asked by ecologists
Speaker 2: now as we're having more and more of these discussions
Speaker 2: and sort of proposals for having industrial scale insect farms.
Speaker 2: So the ideas that insects are more ecologically friendly because
Speaker 2: the sort of feed to waste to protein output ratios
Speaker 2: are much better than say a beef farm. So like
Speaker 2: cows are pretty wasteful when you consider sort of their
Speaker 2: waste and the amount of energy you have to put
Speaker 2: in per unit of cow meat, whereas insects are a
Speaker 2: lot more efficient in that respect. But there are a
Speaker 2: lot of questions that ecologists are raising because we don't
Speaker 2: actually have these large scale industrial bug farms that are
Speaker 2: similar in scale to other types of industrial farms that
Speaker 2: we have currently. So there is an article in Trends
Speaker 2: and Ecology and Evolution called Approaching Ecological Sustainability in the
Speaker 2: Emerging Insects as Food Industry. So your question is essentially
Speaker 2: the subject of this paper by concerned ecologists who are
Speaker 2: asking the same questions as you and pointing out a
Speaker 2: lack of research on the risk factors of large scale
Speaker 2: insects farms and the many unknowns of environmental impacts of
Speaker 2: insects farms. One of the points they bring up is
Speaker 2: the invasiveness aspect, the fact that these insects could get out,
Speaker 2: that these could be heartier than native species because we
Speaker 2: might breed them that way, and that they could cause
Speaker 2: destruction to the local ecology. And there's also other questions
Speaker 2: like even though we do know that they're more efficient
Speaker 2: in terms of like feed in protein out, there's not
Speaker 2: a lot of data on how you actually how do
Speaker 2: you house that many insects? Right, Like I do know
Speaker 2: from my friend the one he studies crickets that answers
Speaker 2: are very sensitive to things like heat, so in temperature,
Speaker 2: so you have to you might have to have really
Speaker 2: specific temperature controls for that many insects, both to make
Speaker 2: sure that they're eating and breeding and growing things like that.
Speaker 2: So also you know, just like how do you how
Speaker 2: do you prevent there from being say like disease that
Speaker 2: wipes out all of the insects. All sorts of questions
Speaker 2: in terms of how sustainable would they be and what
Speaker 2: are the risks to the environment that we don't really know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would still say that it's very promising, right,
Speaker 2: like the I think it's something that is worth looking
Speaker 2: into because our current industrial farming situation is not good.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not it is bad for the environment.
Speaker 2: It tends to be very wasteful. Also, you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of ethical concerns in terms of the treatment
Speaker 2: of animals. So you know, I think having insects as
Speaker 2: a potential alternative food source and looking into it is
Speaker 2: really important. But it's also not something to just be
Speaker 2: done without actually considering things that you've brought up, like
Speaker 2: the invasiveness aspect and what are the what are the
Speaker 2: other potential implications of an industrial sized insect form and
Speaker 2: it's an impact on the environment. So fantastic question. Uh,
Speaker 2: you could you could? You could be an ecologist because
Speaker 2: you're asking the very questions that they are asking. H Well,
Speaker 2: thank you guys so much for your extremely thoughtful and
Speaker 2: intelligent questions. I always enjoy them. It makes me do
Speaker 2: a little bit of homework that I really like to
Speaker 2: do because it keeps me sort of I guess, more
Speaker 2: up to date with uh, with research and stuff that
Speaker 2: I might not think to look into, but you guys do,
Speaker 2: and so I look into it and it's great. We
Speaker 2: all learn. We're all learning together. If you want to
Speaker 2: send me a question, you can write to me at
Speaker 2: Creature Future pod at gmail dot com. Thank you, guys
Speaker 2: so much for listening, and thank you to the Space
Speaker 2: Classics for their super awesome song Exolumina. Creature features a
Speaker 2: production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts like the one
Speaker 2: you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey,
Speaker 2: guess what wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm
Speaker 2: not your mother. I can't tell you what to do,
Speaker 2: but yeah, before starting a cricket farm with a bunch
Speaker 2: of mutated super crickets, do think about whether they will
Speaker 2: take control of your local government and install a cricket autocracy.
Speaker 2: You know, consider it. See you next Wednesday.