Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. We
Speaker 1: are continuing our assault on Valentine's Day Downtown exactly. We've
Speaker 1: We've talked about kissing, We've talked about the color pink um.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about something a little different, something that's
Speaker 1: a little less of a Valentine's Day staple. It's not
Speaker 1: like a lingerie, it's not something that is advertised on
Speaker 1: billboards come every February. We're talking about Spanish fly, an
Speaker 1: aphrodisi act that is at once kind of mythic and
Speaker 1: kind of has all this these fictional airs about it,
Speaker 1: but at the same time is a definite real thing
Speaker 1: that is fascinating in its own right, and often in
Speaker 1: ways that you might not expect. Yeah, I mean, people
Speaker 1: associate fish fly with afrotusi acts, right, this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, someone just needs to have a bit of
Speaker 1: it and all of a sudden they will fill amorous
Speaker 1: and we'll discuss that. But yeah, you're right there. The the
Speaker 1: the actual implications of Spanish fly itself very differently. When
Speaker 1: is the earliest you ever heard any inkling of Spanish fly,
Speaker 1: You know, I don't. I want to say, like middle
Speaker 1: school is I have an idea of that. And I
Speaker 1: also have an idea of tequila in the worm at
Speaker 1: the end of the bot or the bottom of the
Speaker 1: bottle is being part and parcel of that, which I
Speaker 1: don't think exists either. Yeah, I feel like and maybe
Speaker 1: you can relate to this. I feel like it might
Speaker 1: have been referenced in kind of an off color reference
Speaker 1: in some old timey cartoons, like I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was something that I had some exposure to, and
Speaker 1: because I feel like there was maybe a moment where
Speaker 1: somebody had had a bottle labeled Spanish fly and it
Speaker 1: showed up as a gag and something in another you know,
Speaker 1: like it was that level of of unbelievable that it's
Speaker 1: just some sort of like magic juice that that somebody
Speaker 1: gives to another person and it makes them, uh you know,
Speaker 1: wild and randy or something. Well, it's back I think
Speaker 1: in the collective conscience because uh, as we know, Bill
Speaker 1: Cosby allegedly has been accused of um giving his giving
Speaker 1: people certain drugs um and then raping them and uh
Speaker 1: he has a routine I believe in the sixties, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from his sixty nine comedy album It's True, It's True.
Speaker 1: And he also talks about it in his childhood yes, um.
Speaker 1: And he he has referenced rufies or some sort of
Speaker 1: rufies before and other interviews and someone and so forth. Um.
Speaker 1: But he talks specifically about Spanish fly in this one
Speaker 1: routine from the album It's True, It's True. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, in the bit he's he's talking about
Speaker 1: as a kid hearing about it, which is very relatable
Speaker 1: because I, you know, my earliest memories of hearing about
Speaker 1: this thing are also in childhood, and and from a
Speaker 1: childhood perspective, it sounds kind of just fanciful and weird
Speaker 1: and maybe even attractive on some level, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this thing, and you know, and though off,
Speaker 1: you give it to somebody and then suddenly they're all
Speaker 1: lovey devy, like that's the very unreal version of it.
Speaker 1: But then you you take it and you put it
Speaker 1: into reality, you put it into an adult reality, and
Speaker 1: you're talking about something that's really rather horrible and and
Speaker 1: in in in the case with the allegations against Bill Cosby.
Speaker 1: You also see that that that story of childhood taken
Speaker 1: and then and then what happens when you look at
Speaker 1: it from a very real adult standpoint. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a it's just deplorable. Yeah, I mean, the the actual
Speaker 1: thing that he says. He says, go to a party,
Speaker 1: see five girls standing alone and that boy. If I
Speaker 1: had a whole jug of Spanish way, I'd light that
Speaker 1: corner up over there. Ha ha ha. So right, it's
Speaker 1: a you know, hearing it now is it's a little
Speaker 1: bit disconcerting, but it brings up the whole idea of
Speaker 1: the Spanish fly and whether or not it's actually a
Speaker 1: true aphrodisiac and what the deal is with it. And
Speaker 1: I just want to point out that FDA study proved
Speaker 1: that the chemical had no sexual effects on men or women,
Speaker 1: and yet the myth of this continues to persist, and
Speaker 1: how you define sexual effects kind of differs, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that later. All right, So what is it?
Speaker 1: People are probably wondering, what is the Spanish fly? Is
Speaker 1: it an actual fly? No, but it is. It is
Speaker 1: a beetle, technically a blister beetle. To be a specific
Speaker 1: They're about different species of blister beetle. But we tend
Speaker 1: to collect this. Uh, this agent cantharadin from two specific species.
Speaker 1: There's a European blister beetle called light of Asigatoria and
Speaker 1: there's a North African blister beetle known as my lab
Speaker 1: risk kikori. And uh, they secrete this. They secrete cantharit
Speaker 1: and as a self defense, as a chemical weapon to
Speaker 1: keep things from eating them. And this is the type
Speaker 1: of insect that's it's brightly colored, long body, bright greens,
Speaker 1: blue wing cover stripes. It's sending a clear message to
Speaker 1: potential predators. Hey, if you eat me, bad things are
Speaker 1: going to happen because I'm just laden with chemical weapons. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that canthar it in. It's a it's a turpin
Speaker 1: and organic chemical compound. And they secrete it. The beatle
Speaker 1: secrete it as this kind of milky looking fluid from
Speaker 1: the joints in their legs. Very convenient. Yeah. Now this
Speaker 1: is this doesn't have much to do with canthartin, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting as a side note. Um, these blister bugs,
Speaker 1: they the adults lay eggs near the nest of the
Speaker 1: solitary b and then these larval b lice as they
Speaker 1: call them, feed on the eggs and food stores, and
Speaker 1: they eventually grow into adulthood dropped to the ground, feed
Speaker 1: on vegetation. And it's in this life then that they
Speaker 1: have the full protection of the canthard and to keep
Speaker 1: things from from meeting, most things from eating them. Because
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that there are um some birds such
Speaker 1: as the meadow lark, such as the bluebird scissor tailed flycatcher,
Speaker 1: that are conferred and resistant and uh and make them
Speaker 1: a part of their diet. Yeah. And there are accounts
Speaker 1: though of some livestock eating them and actually being poisoned
Speaker 1: by them. So most most animals steer clear, but as
Speaker 1: you say, some of them can actually stave off the
Speaker 1: effects of conferait in. Now we should probably talk about
Speaker 1: how conferred in works in terms of the Beatles reproductive life.
Speaker 1: This is very interesting. Yeah, And then in this we
Speaker 1: get right into the Valentine's Day theme, like legitimately and
Speaker 1: not in a weird creepy way, because of course Valentine's
Speaker 1: is about, hey, here's a gift for the person I love,
Speaker 1: you know, or failing that, the person that I want
Speaker 1: to mate with. That sort of thing you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like here's a box of chocolate, right, and is essentially
Speaker 1: a pre nuptial offering, as we call it in the
Speaker 1: animal world. I feel like we've we've talked about this
Speaker 1: in the talked about this with orb weaving spiders, where
Speaker 1: they say, here, here, here's a gift. Here's a here's
Speaker 1: a gift that shows my you know, to anthropomorphize a bit. Here,
Speaker 1: here's a gift that shows my my support for you.
Speaker 1: Here is some some energy in the form of some
Speaker 1: food or whatnot that will help you survive and help
Speaker 1: our our offspring survive. Yeah, it's like, hey, we'll we'll mate, right,
Speaker 1: here's a little bit of energy. In the case of
Speaker 1: pyrochroid beetles, they're doing somewhat of the same thing as
Speaker 1: as the male or weaving spiders. They're presenting a gift,
Speaker 1: not so much for energy though, is more like protection.
Speaker 1: And what happens is that the male beetles essentially hand
Speaker 1: over a packet of sperm to the female when they're mating,
Speaker 1: and she will fertilize her eggs and she can kind
Speaker 1: of take her sweet time with whether or she does
Speaker 1: this right. Um, the females can discard the packets that
Speaker 1: don't please them, right, there's just not please me, bring
Speaker 1: me another. Um. So, what crafty private chroid beetles do
Speaker 1: to ensure that their gift of spirm is like really
Speaker 1: highly prized and received, is that they produce bonus packs
Speaker 1: of camper ridden and this this camphor written will allow
Speaker 1: the females to cover her eggs with it, and then
Speaker 1: that keeps those eggs safe for predators. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like if you were to give your your your
Speaker 1: sweetie a handgun for Valentine's Day and say, here, take this,
Speaker 1: protect yourself and our offspring with this lovely handgun. I
Speaker 1: think they call that a Texas Valentine. A Texas Valentine, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean it's probably a Georgia Valentine too for that matter.
Speaker 1: So is the mating ritual kicks off? The pyrochoid male
Speaker 1: actually secretes this gooey substance from a groove like structure
Speaker 1: in its forehead. Uh. And then the female of course
Speaker 1: tastes the gooy since and if she detects canthardin, then
Speaker 1: she knows that this is the this is the guy
Speaker 1: for her. If it's if it's not there, well then
Speaker 1: then maybe she'll pass. Yeah. That's what I think is
Speaker 1: so great about this is that, you know, maybe the
Speaker 1: beetle titles up and says, hey, I've got a little
Speaker 1: camphor it in package here for you, and she's like,
Speaker 1: prove it, prove that you can secrete this, and then
Speaker 1: out of his forehead it uzes and then she sniffed them.
Speaker 1: It's great. This is good like Valentine's drama right here. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of hard the beat in terms
Speaker 1: of a mating ritual. If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about that, check out this article Spanish flies a lure
Speaker 1: ardor or armor by Janet Rolla from Science News. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about canthardon that that powder you derive from
Speaker 1: grinding up the the booster beetles essentially a chemical weapon
Speaker 1: devised for the creature's defense. But as as we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: humans are all about taking another creature's chemical weapon and
Speaker 1: using it for their own advantage. We do it, and
Speaker 1: everything from the spices on our food to indeed some
Speaker 1: questionable aphrods as in the form of Spanish fly. Hippocrates
Speaker 1: prescribed ground blister beetles as a treatment for dropsy. And
Speaker 1: then you also have traditional Chinese medicine, using bliss for
Speaker 1: beetles to treat piles, alterers and brabies and even warts.
Speaker 1: There's another as far as it to use as um
Speaker 1: an aphrodeziac or at least it's it's more recreational uses. Um,
Speaker 1: there's there's some some interesting details from the life of
Speaker 1: the Marquis assad Um s eighteen fourteen, if anyone who's
Speaker 1: not familiar with him, French aristocrat, revolutionary, politician, philosopher and writer.
Speaker 1: He was a free thinker, a free doer. He was randy,
Speaker 1: he was he liked the ladies, he liked the men.
Speaker 1: He uh, he liked everything. Uh and uh then he
Speaker 1: had a lot of of course, a lot of scandals
Speaker 1: in his life. Um, you know, pretty much constantly in
Speaker 1: the In seventeen seventy two, Um, there was an incident
Speaker 1: where he had engaged his uh, his servant latour to
Speaker 1: find him some some prostitutes, and apparently the women in
Speaker 1: question helped themselves to the marquees uh personal stash of
Speaker 1: Spanish fly laden candies. And uh, since suddenly they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're suffering upset stomachs. Uh, they fear they've been poisoned
Speaker 1: and uh. Meanwhile, Dessad and the Littour flee the estates
Speaker 1: of the king of Sardinia who wanted to have him arrested,
Speaker 1: and that they end up being executed in effigy for
Speaker 1: for this this crime. But essentially at the case, these
Speaker 1: women are poisoned by the Spanish fly. Yeah, and they survived.
Speaker 1: But I mean, as we'll discuss it a little bit,
Speaker 1: they probably had they probably suffered pretty greatly depending on
Speaker 1: the amount that he gave them. I mean, after all,
Speaker 1: he was um sentenced to death or attempted murder. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So just that's just sort of an idea of just
Speaker 1: how potent this is. I mean, it's a you know,
Speaker 1: it's again it's the it's the the insects chemical weapon,
Speaker 1: and if taken in small doses, presumably it's not gonna
Speaker 1: kill anybody, but it's apparently very easy to to reach
Speaker 1: that threshold of serious harm with this particular agent. Now,
Speaker 1: this was also used in terminating pregnancy and um If
Speaker 1: you look at the long history of um of abortion,
Speaker 1: particularly before it was legalized, and you will see that
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of accounts of different things that
Speaker 1: may induce pregnancy termination. In the article leeches lie in
Speaker 1: Spanish Fly by Kate Manning in the New York Times. Um,
Speaker 1: she says, quote and talking about this sort of secret
Speaker 1: coda of terminating and pregnancy, she says, quote French periodical
Speaker 1: pills warranted to have the desired effect in all cases.
Speaker 1: Was one such knowing ad that appeared in the Boston
Speaker 1: Daily Times. In those ads spoke euphemistically of curing female
Speaker 1: complaint or renovating or unblocking the womb. So what's interesting
Speaker 1: about that is, and we'll talk more about the effects
Speaker 1: on the human body, is that there was a sort
Speaker 1: of wink, wink, Hey, this is this is a substance
Speaker 1: that you could use if you have these sort of
Speaker 1: female complaints. Yeah. Now, just to go back to Marquis
Speaker 1: Assad for a moment, um, there was there's at least
Speaker 1: one account that Marquis Assad would would would encourage prostitutes
Speaker 1: to partake of these Spanish fly cookies because it would
Speaker 1: make them a little gassy, and that he was into that. Um,
Speaker 1: he was into gassy sexual relations. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: into a lot of things. So I guess that was
Speaker 1: you know, that's on the menu. Um, but these are
Speaker 1: not this is not the primary desired of fact with
Speaker 1: Spanish fly. Most of the accounts that you see generally,
Speaker 1: the idea is that it's supposed to to fire up
Speaker 1: one's lust or to provide a mail with an erection
Speaker 1: when they're having difficulty achieving or sustaining that state. And
Speaker 1: it does. But I feel like it's an erection that
Speaker 1: you would never want if you if you haven't to
Speaker 1: look at the descriptions of this. And let's just start
Speaker 1: just even with, um, what it's like to have skin
Speaker 1: contact with Spanish fly, because it's not called blister beetle
Speaker 1: for nothing, right, Um, you get blisters, estering ones. If
Speaker 1: you have contact with your eyes, it can cause blindness.
Speaker 1: A deadly dose is only thirty milligrams, and one gram
Speaker 1: is enough to cause symptoms in five thousand people. And
Speaker 1: when you ingest it, that camphor it in inflames the
Speaker 1: gastro intestinal tract, and that maybe we're decide was trying
Speaker 1: to take advantage of the side effects here of Spanish
Speaker 1: by and then depending on the dose, it can completely
Speaker 1: strip away the stomach lining. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: burning and uh. And when you're talking about an overdose,
Speaker 1: you're talking about abdominal pain. Respiratory and heart problems, renal failure,
Speaker 1: bloody urine convulsions, coma, and possibly death. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: about it making its way through the rest of the body,
Speaker 1: not just the stomach um. It can affect the lining
Speaker 1: of the uterus and it irritates that lining. But it's
Speaker 1: that your irritation is sort of negligible when you compare
Speaker 1: it to men, in whom it causes a great deal
Speaker 1: of swelling. And that's where the erection comes into play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically we're talking an allergic hell direction, we're talking a
Speaker 1: non sexual priapism, so as you end up dealing with
Speaker 1: with a lot of burning swelling down there that results
Speaker 1: in an erection, but not really the kind of erection
Speaker 1: that I feel like anybody reasonably wants to have. No.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like an anaphloctic response for your keenness,
Speaker 1: right that can't be at all romantic or even you know, essential,
Speaker 1: I mean, barely functional. I'm thinking, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: just it's just it's a bad idea anyway anyway to
Speaker 1: shake it. Yeah, and even a minor overdose of canard
Speaker 1: and can lead to erections long enough to need medical intervention.
Speaker 1: To uh to put them down. But you know what
Speaker 1: it does for enough that there's actually one species that
Speaker 1: is taking it so that they may secure some more
Speaker 1: amorous flings in the future. And what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: here is the male bustard bird. Oh yes, this is
Speaker 1: a This is one of one of the birds that
Speaker 1: that has some degree of of resistance to the canthard
Speaker 1: and but uses it in a most interesting manner. The
Speaker 1: males actually pick the blister beetles out, you know, of
Speaker 1: array of possible food choices, and they do it to
Speaker 1: reduce STDs and more importantly, to reduce to to to
Speaker 1: watch away the appearance of STDs when picking out mates,
Speaker 1: because they wanted to appear clean and disease free. According
Speaker 1: to Discovery Magazines, uh seriously, Science blog quote, a white,
Speaker 1: clean cloaca with no infection symptoms is an honest signal
Speaker 1: of both resistance to canthardin and absence of parasites, and
Speaker 1: represents a reliable indicator of the male quality to the
Speaker 1: extremely choosy females. That's right, because the lady bustards actually
Speaker 1: examine the male busterds cloaca before deciding to mate with him.
Speaker 1: A little look, you know, under the hood. As it were. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: before taking it for a test run. So so there
Speaker 1: you go. We just wanted to go out on a
Speaker 1: positive note there and let you know that the male
Speaker 1: bustards are are using it in the appropriate way are
Speaker 1: probably the only ones who should be using besides the
Speaker 1: actual beetles themselves. Um. And we wanted to do a
Speaker 1: little public service announcement. If you're we're thinking about Spanish blood,
Speaker 1: please do not. I cannot use it unless you are
Speaker 1: a bustard bird looking to clean your kloeaka a bit uh.
Speaker 1: In those cases, go ahead, um, or if you yourself
Speaker 1: or a blister bug, I mean you should naturally occurring
Speaker 1: chemical weapons as you see fit. Yeah. You know, we
Speaker 1: talked about STD posters a while back, and I can't
Speaker 1: help but think if animals, if the Animal Kingdom had
Speaker 1: their own PR campaigns, what might those posters look like,
Speaker 1: especially from the bustard birds. Keep your chloeca clean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would guess so. And for the rest of you, yeah,
Speaker 1: just don't do Spanish flag because it's either this horrible
Speaker 1: chemical irritant or it's just a bunch of vitamin B
Speaker 1: three jens ng uh. And you know, maybe a little
Speaker 1: horny goat we packaged in some sort of scandalous packaging
Speaker 1: or at a very least like sugar and some dust. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's there are better ways to go about curing
Speaker 1: what ails. You. You know, the best way is that
Speaker 1: using your noggin. Oh, you already know, like if you're
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get in the mood, like wining
Speaker 1: and dining your own mind is probably the way to go. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and hey, if you would like to wine and dine
Speaker 1: that brain of yours, I want to go to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Pull your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find
Speaker 1: all of our podcast episodes, including all of our Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day podcasts past and present. If you click on the
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