Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a classic from the vault. This one originally
Speaker 1: aired on January one. It was called Funeral for a Bug.
Speaker 1: I think this was all literally about funerals for bugs?
Speaker 1: Or will we get into some stuff about the Roman
Speaker 1: poet Virgil. Yeah, yeah, and even know Virgil's there, It's
Speaker 1: going to be a party, So so here we go,
Speaker 1: let's have a listen. Welcome just about to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today I wanted to start off
Speaker 1: by talking about a weird legend about the Roman poet
Speaker 1: Virgil and an insect funeral. Uh, Robert, you ready for
Speaker 1: some Virgil talk? Okay? So, So Virgil was a poet
Speaker 1: who lived in the first century BC during the Augustine period,
Speaker 1: so early Imperial Rome. And uh, you might know him
Speaker 1: best from his most famous work, the epic poem The Aenead,
Speaker 1: which is about sort of the founding lineage of Rome
Speaker 1: and the adventures of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who after
Speaker 1: the Trojan War, travels from Troy and eventually becomes the
Speaker 1: ancestor of the Roman people. Virgil is often considered one
Speaker 1: of the greatest Latin poets, and he was wildly popular
Speaker 1: during his own lifetime. Uh you know, he he received
Speaker 1: commendations from from kings and the wealthy, and and you know,
Speaker 1: everybody thought like, wow, this this guy has just got
Speaker 1: the juice. And I had Virgil on my mind a
Speaker 1: lot last year because Rachel and I were rereading Dante's
Speaker 1: Divine Comedy. And if you'll recall, of course, Virgil is
Speaker 1: Dante the pilgrim's guy through hell and purgatory in the
Speaker 1: Divine Comedy. So the spirit of Virgil he's been living
Speaker 1: out the centuries in Limbo because though he was a
Speaker 1: very virtuous man, he's one of the virtuous Pagans. He
Speaker 1: was never baptized as a Christian, so he can't go
Speaker 1: to heaven. He's got to hang out in this sort
Speaker 1: of anti chamber of hell where everybody sits around sighing
Speaker 1: because nothing interesting is ever happening to them. I have
Speaker 1: to admit that I tend to when anybody mentions Virgil
Speaker 1: that's the first place my mind goes is Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: which is it's probably not fair. It's like if you
Speaker 1: were to mention the name of Socrates and there was
Speaker 1: someone were to go, oh, yeah, yeah, he's in Bill
Speaker 1: and Ted's Excellent Adventure. That's exactly That's exactly where I
Speaker 1: knew you were going with that. Villa and Ted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, that that is pretty good because well though
Speaker 1: it's slightly different because it's not a it's he's not
Speaker 1: at all parodied in the Divine Comedy. In fact, I
Speaker 1: would say it's exactly the opposite. In the Divine Comedy.
Speaker 1: He is. He's revered, Yes, he's he's reimagined as this
Speaker 1: like superhuman wizard. For for Dante, he uh, Virgil is
Speaker 1: the embodiment of wisdom and reason. So for the intended
Speaker 1: readers of the Divine Comedy, we're supposed to understand that
Speaker 1: Virgil is like a ten out of ten platinum level
Speaker 1: cool beast. He is just like this ultimate wizard of
Speaker 1: knowledge and about half of the state you do remember
Speaker 1: how like like basically every other time Dante talks in
Speaker 1: the first two books of The Divine Comedy, it's just
Speaker 1: to say like Virgil, you are so right, I would
Speaker 1: never doubt your wisdom. Tell me more, you know. And
Speaker 1: and it kind of stinks in because I remember when
Speaker 1: we got to the end of the Purgatory. Oh, and
Speaker 1: Virgil does not get to move on to to Heaven
Speaker 1: with Dante. He has to stay behind and Beatrice takes
Speaker 1: him on from there. We're really mad that Virgil didn't
Speaker 1: get to go to heaven. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean
Speaker 1: so much, so much time is devoted to him, and
Speaker 1: it also so much is stripped away at that point.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like if it's hard to follow Dante
Speaker 1: and into pared Ceo, just because you know that there
Speaker 1: there aren't gonna be any demons uh playing trumpets with
Speaker 1: their bombs or anything. There's not going to be yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and monsters so much, and Virgil is not
Speaker 1: going to be there. So it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: part three in a series is always tough. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: you know, the trilogy is a hard sell to to
Speaker 1: complete with dignity. Uh. And but I think for modern
Speaker 1: readers that sense of injustice about Virgil that is interpreted, uh,
Speaker 1: you know by the characters in the Inferno, as you know,
Speaker 1: perfect divine justice. It's the one person version of the
Speaker 1: dynamic that plays out throughout the whole thing. Where as
Speaker 1: they're going through hell, it just seems like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is really unfair. Yeah. But anyway, long before Virgil was
Speaker 1: guiding Dante up the Mountain of Purgatory and his postmortem
Speaker 1: shade form, people were telling lots of legends about his life,
Speaker 1: and one of those legends is that once at his
Speaker 1: home in Rome, Virgil built a two womb and held
Speaker 1: an extravagant funeral for a dead fly, like a fly
Speaker 1: as in the insect with six legs and wings. Uh.
Speaker 1: This story is very probably untrue, and we'll get to
Speaker 1: why that is in a bit, but first I wanted
Speaker 1: to explore some of the details, and for this I
Speaker 1: was reading an article by George Pendall in Cabinet Magazine
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven called Virgil's Fly, and he describes
Speaker 1: the legend in the following way quote. Held in the
Speaker 1: grounds of Virgil's home on Rome's Esqualine Hill, the funeral
Speaker 1: attracted the great and good of the city. Dirges were
Speaker 1: sung and tributes read. Virgil's patron Mycenas delivered a lengthy
Speaker 1: and moving eulogy to the departed insect, and Virgil was
Speaker 1: himself said to have uttered a few of his exquisite
Speaker 1: verses over the tiny carcass A tomb had been erected
Speaker 1: and the lifeless body of the fly was placed within it,
Speaker 1: to the whales and moans of the professional mourners. So
Speaker 1: lavish were the commemorations that the cost was stimated at
Speaker 1: over eight hundred thousand sister ss. So that's the gist.
Speaker 1: According to this story, Virgil and his close friends spend
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money and effort to celebrate the life
Speaker 1: and memory of an insect, concluding with the insects burial
Speaker 1: in a marble tomb. Why on earth would this be? Well?
Speaker 1: The legend itself also contains an answer to this, So
Speaker 1: to read from Pendle again quote but the reason for
Speaker 1: the funeral was not due to extravagance, eccentricity, or even emotion.
Speaker 1: Having defeated Julius Caesar's assassins at the Battle of Philippi,
Speaker 1: the second Triumvirate was at that very moment engaged in
Speaker 1: confiscating the estates of the rich and dividing them among
Speaker 1: the war veterans. Returning from the battlefield. Only one exception
Speaker 1: was given. If the estate held a burial plot, it
Speaker 1: was not to be touched by burying his housefly. Virgil
Speaker 1: saved his house. So here it has transformed into a
Speaker 1: classic one of our favorite genres, loophole fiction. Yes, remember
Speaker 1: when we did the Anthology of Horror segment in October
Speaker 1: on deals with the Devil, and about how many of
Speaker 1: these stories, I think, especially later deal with the Devil's
Speaker 1: stories less so in the earlier ones. They're about somebody
Speaker 1: saving the day by figuring out a loophole that they
Speaker 1: can exploit to get out of their end of a
Speaker 1: pact with Satan. And I wonder, again, what's so appealing
Speaker 1: about this kind of plot resolution. It seems like maybe
Speaker 1: this would be the kind of thing that's especially interesting
Speaker 1: to too people who live in a more litigious kind
Speaker 1: of culture. Could be. I can also imagine that if you're,
Speaker 1: if you're, if you've ever taken advantage of a loophole,
Speaker 1: it probably helps out if you demonize the legal authority
Speaker 1: to some degree, if you make them into a devil,
Speaker 1: because in all these stories, it's the loophole that saves
Speaker 1: your soul. Whereas um, I think there are plenty of
Speaker 1: cases in in real in real life where the loophole
Speaker 1: might have the opposite effect. You Right, the loophole is
Speaker 1: the is the refuge of of less savory individuals at times, right,
Speaker 1: cheaters and scammers with crafty lawyers to help help them
Speaker 1: get out of trouble by exploiting some kind of you know,
Speaker 1: loophole in the wording of something. Is it? Isn't that
Speaker 1: always like, that's always a really frustrating thing when somebody
Speaker 1: uh evades the obvious spirit of justice by exploiting the
Speaker 1: exact wording of something, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: um yeah, So I can't have a wonder if there's
Speaker 1: there's some connection there. You know, you make your stories
Speaker 1: about cheating the devil with your loopholes, and then you
Speaker 1: you feel better about the sort of implied devil that
Speaker 1: you're cheating through your own loophole usage. Well, it's actually funny,
Speaker 1: there is uh. In this Pendle article, he also talks
Speaker 1: about a medieval legend about Virgil. And we'll get into
Speaker 1: more of these legends about Virgil's life as we go on,
Speaker 1: but one of these medieval legends about Virgil is that
Speaker 1: Virgil freeze a d men from there's like a devil
Speaker 1: trapped in a bottle, and Virgil lets it out so
Speaker 1: that it will empower him to do something great. I
Speaker 1: think maybe he uses its powers to to get a
Speaker 1: long road paved or something like that. But anyway, once
Speaker 1: he has has used this demon power, now I think
Speaker 1: the demon is supposed to get his into the bargain
Speaker 1: is going to do something really bad. But first Virgil's like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know you're so powerful. Could you show me again
Speaker 1: how you fit your frame into that bottle? So the
Speaker 1: devil does, and then he corks it back up, so
Speaker 1: he gets to have his magic and keep the genie
Speaker 1: in the bottle as well. Oh that's great. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to climb into an oven. And I've never
Speaker 1: sat on a shovel. That's some jack frost. Jack frost,
Speaker 1: that's from some ivanushka right there. So in that spirit
Speaker 1: that there's obviously this interesting process by which after Virgil's death,
Speaker 1: remember he lived in the first century b C. In
Speaker 1: the centuries after his death, his poetry was greatly admired
Speaker 1: and revered, but not just his poetry, he himself was
Speaker 1: greatly admired and revered and took on the aspects of
Speaker 1: a saint in many ways, even though he had been
Speaker 1: a pagan. Uh. There's an interesting note in in his
Speaker 1: Cabinet article where Pendle shares this fact that kind of
Speaker 1: helps make more sense of the almost absurd reverence shown
Speaker 1: for Virgil in the Divine Comedy in these in centuries
Speaker 1: after his death, many Romans and and later Italians in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages thought of Virgil as possessing a literally
Speaker 1: supernatural or near supernatural genius, that there was something magical
Speaker 1: about his poetry, the same way people would feel there
Speaker 1: is magic in the holy text of their religion. And
Speaker 1: one one clear illustration of this is that in the
Speaker 1: second century CE, under the Antonines, Uh, there had arisen
Speaker 1: this form of divination. And we've we've done episodes on
Speaker 1: divination in the past. You know, there are various ways
Speaker 1: of trying to sort of get turned some sort of
Speaker 1: noise or random input into an interpreted type of information
Speaker 1: about hidden knowledge you know, what's going to happen the future,
Speaker 1: or some other thing you want to know but can't uh.
Speaker 1: And and so the Virgil's poetry was itself used for divination,
Speaker 1: and so people would randomly select passages from the inneed
Speaker 1: and then read those passages as some kind of prediction
Speaker 1: about their future or statement about some other kind of
Speaker 1: hidden knowledge. Uh Pendle writes, quote, it is said that
Speaker 1: these sortes Virgiliana or Virgilian lots were consulted by both
Speaker 1: the emperor's Hadrian and Severus, and with each consultation, Virgil's
Speaker 1: memory began to take on an increasingly mystical air. But
Speaker 1: anyway to get back to the story about Virgil and
Speaker 1: the fly, So again, this story is almost certainly not true.
Speaker 1: There are elements of it that fit within known history.
Speaker 1: Apparently Virgil did actually have a house on the esqual
Speaker 1: Line Hill uh the Second Triumph for it was actually
Speaker 1: engaged in seizing a states so they could be given
Speaker 1: to returning veterans from military campaigns. But that's just the
Speaker 1: the accurate stuff about the setting. The main reason in
Speaker 1: the story is probably untrue is simply that there is
Speaker 1: no contemporary evidence or record of it. Uh. Nobody anywhere
Speaker 1: near Virgil's lifetime mentions anything about it. It only shows
Speaker 1: up in much much later sources. Rather, it seems to
Speaker 1: be one of those legends that accumulates on a you know,
Speaker 1: sort of gloamse onto a revered historical figure due to
Speaker 1: a chain of associative thinking. So what's the chain, Well,
Speaker 1: that brings us to a an absurd and absurdly interesting
Speaker 1: Latin poem called the q Lex, which means I think
Speaker 1: you can interpret it as like the gnat or the fly.
Speaker 1: Q Lex is also a genus name for certain types
Speaker 1: of mosquitoes, so I think it means like a flying insect.
Speaker 1: And so this is a poem that was published sometime
Speaker 1: after Virgil's death, and it was attributed to him as
Speaker 1: part of his juvenile Yad. It was widely said, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is something that Virgil actually wrote, but he
Speaker 1: wrote it when it was young, and that's that's why
Speaker 1: it's maybe not as good as his other poetry. Modern scholars,
Speaker 1: I think mostly really doubt that Virgil actually wrote this.
Speaker 1: It would technically be a poem in the pastoral genre.
Speaker 1: So that's poetry about the supposedly blissful, uncomplicated life of
Speaker 1: people in the countryside. It's usually about shepherds or herdsmen,
Speaker 1: often a lot of references to flowers and naps and
Speaker 1: clouds and cool waters, the idols of pan And it
Speaker 1: made me think about how you know, So for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, the pastoral poem from the Classical period, even
Speaker 1: into into the Renaissance was and well, actually i'd say
Speaker 1: even into the Romantic poetry era. There there is this
Speaker 1: tendency to fall back on this classic genre of stuff
Speaker 1: about the fields and the simple life of shepherds and
Speaker 1: all that, uh and and how great it is. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is sort of realized in modern culture,
Speaker 1: in our desire for like, uh, simple, aesthetically gentle content
Speaker 1: like the Great British bake Off. Is that the pastoral
Speaker 1: poetry of the modern era? Yeah, yeah, perhaps you know,
Speaker 1: um just sort of like soothing and non offensive. Perhaps, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just just you know, it's not even really escapism.
Speaker 1: It's just I mean, I guess to a certain extent
Speaker 1: it is escapism. But yeah, perhaps I can see that connection.
Speaker 1: I don't know it connected in my brain. But so
Speaker 1: there's a plot in this poem, the Coolex. It is
Speaker 1: widely regarded as absolutely ridiculous, but here is how it goes.
Speaker 1: A shepherd goes out in the morning to take his
Speaker 1: flocks to pasture, and there's some standard pastoral poetry musing
Speaker 1: on how the simple life of a shepherd living in
Speaker 1: the fields is so much better than the fraud life
Speaker 1: of a rich man, because it's better to throw your
Speaker 1: body down in the tender grass and lay your head
Speaker 1: among the flower buds than to be consumed with the
Speaker 1: grief and the greed that curdles the hearts of the
Speaker 1: rich and powerful. So the shepherd is living this nice,
Speaker 1: ide dilick life. He takes his flock to a fountain
Speaker 1: in the woods, and there he falls asleep, lying in
Speaker 1: the shade. But while he's asleep, a giant, horrible snake
Speaker 1: slithers up. It's coming to the fountain where it likes
Speaker 1: to lie in the mud, and it decides it's going
Speaker 1: to bite the shepherd in his sleep and kill him.
Speaker 1: But just before the snake attacks, a gnat buzzes down
Speaker 1: and stings the shepherd on the eye, and this wakes
Speaker 1: him up, and the shepherd crushes the gnat, but it
Speaker 1: also wakes him up just in time to see the
Speaker 1: snake and to save himself, so he beats the snake
Speaker 1: to death with a piece of wood, which I would say,
Speaker 1: in reality, is almost never necessary. Even if a snake
Speaker 1: is dangerous, you can run away from it right, But
Speaker 1: this is a storybook snake, and you know how they do.
Speaker 1: They do things like wrap around you and tie you
Speaker 1: to a tree or swile you hole. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: within the context of the story, maybe it's justified, right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he gets this. This piece of wood beats
Speaker 1: the snake into a bloody pulp. And then later the
Speaker 1: shepherd goes to sleep again and the ghost of the
Speaker 1: nat appears. It comes to him in a dream, and
Speaker 1: the gnat choose him out for not being grateful. He's like,
Speaker 1: why do you crush me? I saved your life. And
Speaker 1: the shepherd wakes up and he feels remorse for what
Speaker 1: he's done, and he builds a tomb in honor of
Speaker 1: the gnat, and then decorates the tomb with flowers and
Speaker 1: fruit and so to read briefly from the tomb section
Speaker 1: of the poem, it says for him at length, did
Speaker 1: heedful care the toil begun completing, gathered up the piled material,
Speaker 1: and with a plenteous mound of earth, a tomb arose
Speaker 1: in circle shaped around it, placing stone of marble smooth,
Speaker 1: he plants it, mindful of his constant care and growing
Speaker 1: here throughout the brilliant ring a can't this is? And
Speaker 1: bashful roses too, and every kind of violet. And then
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of lines about flowers. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: skip towards the end of that flower section. Um the
Speaker 1: admiranthe is here, and great switch, large do cluster ever
Speaker 1: flowering piccres to Narcissus isn't absent there in whom his
Speaker 1: beauty's radiance from cupids fire for limbs, his own begot
Speaker 1: a hot desire, and all the flowers that blooming seasons.
Speaker 1: No with these the mound is planted, or then on
Speaker 1: the front is placed the inscription, which asserts the letters,
Speaker 1: saying it with silent speech, Oh, tiny gnat, the keeper
Speaker 1: of the flocks, don't pay to the deserving such a
Speaker 1: thing the duty of a ceremonial tomb in payment for
Speaker 1: the gift of life to him. All right, Well, there
Speaker 1: you have it, a poem about honoring the the gnat
Speaker 1: that saved him from the snake when he was sleeping
Speaker 1: on the job. This is something I'm actually confused about.
Speaker 1: Our shepherds supposed to just sleep while they're watching their flocks,
Speaker 1: or they're not supposed to be watching. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but you do see it is part of that pastoral
Speaker 1: sort of image, you know, like we've all encountered some
Speaker 1: version of that four which I'm guessing most of that
Speaker 1: is just, Yeah, it's pining for a this um, this
Speaker 1: presumed idyllic lifestyle in the country where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're just looking after sheep. It's just like a nap
Speaker 1: all day. That's not just all it is, glossing over
Speaker 1: all the other stuff that comes harding a shepherd. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, once again it seems that modern scholars do
Speaker 1: not accept that Virgil actually wrote this poem. Virgil did
Speaker 1: write pastoral poetry. For example, in his ecologues. There's this
Speaker 1: great part of in the i think the tenth eclogue
Speaker 1: where he concludes with a wonderful passage decided bedtime uh,
Speaker 1: where he writes, come let us rise. The shade is
Speaker 1: wont to be baneful to singers. Baneful is the shade
Speaker 1: cast by the juniper crops, sickened two in the shade,
Speaker 1: now homeward, having fed your phil eves, star is rising,
Speaker 1: go my she goats go. Okay. I guess that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty good. But but yeah, if you were just going
Speaker 1: off of this passage. I don't know if you'd you'd
Speaker 1: really buy Dante's hype for virgil Um. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: she part is nice, that is the good part, and
Speaker 1: it is in translation. I think, you know, there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. I mean, for every type of poetry
Speaker 1: and translation, there's a lot of stuff that's lost. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so the Coolex, there's a good chance it was written
Speaker 1: by someone else and then published under Virgil's name, and
Speaker 1: it may well have had some kind of other meaning,
Speaker 1: like a veiled meaning as a political allegory, though I
Speaker 1: didn't follow the threads on that. But despite the doubt
Speaker 1: about the authorship, the poem seems to have given rise
Speaker 1: to all kinds of bizarre fly legends associated with virgil Um.
Speaker 1: So to read a segment from Pendel that I thought
Speaker 1: this was amazing quote. One of the most popular Neapolitan
Speaker 1: myths held that Virgil had created a bronze fly the
Speaker 1: size of a frog and placed it on one of
Speaker 1: the gates of Naples. The talisman remained there for eight years,
Speaker 1: during which time no flies could enter the city. In
Speaker 1: a similar vein, armies attacking Naples were said to have
Speaker 1: been harassed by swarms of flies sent after them by
Speaker 1: the poet. The fly would become Virgil's magical familiar over
Speaker 1: the ensuing years, never far from any tale of his exploits,
Speaker 1: and that was not all. Possibly due to this control
Speaker 1: of pestilence, Virgil was said to have created baths that
Speaker 1: cured all illnesses, and a butcher's block on which meat
Speaker 1: stayed fresh for six weeks. No longer renowned as the
Speaker 1: master of grammar and philosophy, Virgil's achievements were put down
Speaker 1: to his mathematical knowledge. In only a few centuries, Virgil
Speaker 1: had gone from being the preeminent poet of the Roman
Speaker 1: Empire to a Neapolitan enchanter with the pensiont for magical insects.
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of fabulous stuff about medieval legends
Speaker 1: about Virgil becoming more of a necromancer type figure, that
Speaker 1: he's got all these strange magical powers, like that you
Speaker 1: know that he commands the insects of the air and
Speaker 1: cast them down upon his enemies or can save you
Speaker 1: from them, and uh, and I love that that that
Speaker 1: this was like, I don't know if there was anything
Speaker 1: in his actual life to associate him with flies. It's
Speaker 1: only this poem that he probably didn't even actually right
Speaker 1: and isn't actually very good, that was attributed to him
Speaker 1: later that gave rise to all these strange stories. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's something. Yeah, I don't I don't recall it, you know,
Speaker 1: picking up on the the idea of the wizard Virgil.
Speaker 1: But but now I'm fascinated by it. Well. I think
Speaker 1: one thing is by the Middle Ages he had these
Speaker 1: broadly understood wizard associations, but I think Dante was sort
Speaker 1: of moving back against that and and saying like, no,
Speaker 1: let's fit him more into the Christian cosmology and say
Speaker 1: that he's more this beacon of reason and wisdom in
Speaker 1: the pagan world. But we do see this wizardization taking
Speaker 1: more hold with other figures like Roger Bacon comes to mind,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this on the show before. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember in one of our previous episodes we sort
Speaker 1: of concluded that maybe one of the greatest contributions of
Speaker 1: Roger Bacon as a as a you know, man of
Speaker 1: great learning in the Middle Ages and the thirteenth century
Speaker 1: was that he was very open to sources of knowledge
Speaker 1: from all over the world. So a lot of what
Speaker 1: he did was say, like apply things that he learned
Speaker 1: from texts from the medieval Muslim world, like the texts
Speaker 1: of Vanel Haytham and other things, or like uh, studying
Speaker 1: objects brought to him from from countries afar. So he
Speaker 1: was sort of a good collector of knowledge from many places.
Speaker 1: But somehow gets this, I don't know, gets this label
Speaker 1: affixed to him, like he's some kind of wonder worker,
Speaker 1: which he wasn't really in life, right, I mean, he
Speaker 1: was it seems like he was a very impressive individual,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's begome. He instantly becomes elevated to like
Speaker 1: arch alchemist status in some of these tellings, you know,
Speaker 1: he takes on all the guys of some sort of
Speaker 1: a mad scientist in a in a like a serial adventure.
Speaker 1: The main reason I think I was originally inspired to
Speaker 1: look into this topic and do this episode about insects
Speaker 1: and funerals was when I read an interesting article on
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura that was also by George Pendel. The same
Speaker 1: writer is that Cabinet magazine article about Virgil and the Fly,
Speaker 1: and this article is on the broader topic of insects
Speaker 1: and funerary rights. Yeah, this was a good, good article
Speaker 1: by by Pendell the fly Master here um. He touches
Speaker 1: on numerous associations between insects and death. Particularly, the author
Speaker 1: points out quote necklaces of stone carved flies to ward
Speaker 1: off maggots worn by the ancient Egyptian dead. Uh. The
Speaker 1: idea of being here that the maggots were seen as
Speaker 1: a threat to one's car or bo you know, the
Speaker 1: like the vital one of the vital essences and in
Speaker 1: the body, in the individual. And um. I found this interesting.
Speaker 1: So the first thing I did was I looked up
Speaker 1: to see of if Jeane Kritzky had written on this.
Speaker 1: Jane Kritzky, of course, is a former guest on the show.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called The Tears of Ray about uh,
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptian use of bees and honey and how
Speaker 1: they treated bees and honey both um, in terms of
Speaker 1: just creating products as well as uh, you know, magical uses, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that episode and about Jeane Kritzky
Speaker 1: when I was recording a recent episode of the Artifact
Speaker 1: I did, which was about ancient Egyptian head cones. Uh.
Speaker 1: These if you haven't listened to that artifact yet, I
Speaker 1: thought it was a lot of fun, so maybe you
Speaker 1: should check it out. But the short version is, there
Speaker 1: are these white cones depicted on top of people's heads
Speaker 1: and a lot of ancient Egyptian art, but nobody had
Speaker 1: ever found any physical evidence that they existed in reality.
Speaker 1: So there's been this debate about what were these cones?
Speaker 1: Did they ever actually exist in the world, or are
Speaker 1: they some kind of artistic convention and uh the uh
Speaker 1: and and in recent years there has been an excavation
Speaker 1: that uncovered physical examples of these head cones for the
Speaker 1: first time at a couple of graves in a Marna
Speaker 1: in Egypt. But unlike some of the theories in which
Speaker 1: these cones were made of like perfumed animal fat, these
Speaker 1: cones were made out of biological wax, which I knew
Speaker 1: immediately when I read that, Oh, that's gotta be bees
Speaker 1: wax because of the role of bees wax in ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptian culture, and sure enough that that seems like what
Speaker 1: they almost definitely were made of. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we've covered already. We've covered a few different Egyptian topics
Speaker 1: in the artifacts, so uh, so definitely checked with out.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll do more, but but in this cause
Speaker 1: I turned to Jeane Kritsky's work, and particularly I looked
Speaker 1: at a book that he wrote with an author by
Speaker 1: the name of Ron Cherry titled Insect Mythology. And so
Speaker 1: they get into this event. They point out that in
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt the fly, first of all, it was also
Speaker 1: a symbol of valor, because what does a pesky fly do. Well,
Speaker 1: it'll it'll move in, it'll bite you, try to bite you.
Speaker 1: You you drive it away by swatting your hand around.
Speaker 1: But then what does it do? It comes back. It's persistent,
Speaker 1: and therefore it is a symbol of valor. Wow, I've
Speaker 1: never thought of that before. But yeah, when the fly
Speaker 1: comes in to sting at you, it's like a human
Speaker 1: going up against a dragon or a giant. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so we have this this one example in particular, or
Speaker 1: a queen Ahotep gave her sons, three of her sons
Speaker 1: golden flies to honor their fights against an adversary. So
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting, and you can actually look
Speaker 1: up examples of this because I believe uh the ideas.
Speaker 1: These three flies were then buried with her, and then
Speaker 1: we're part of the the treasures that were on earth
Speaker 1: with her body. And yeah, they're these beautiful golden fly ornaments,
Speaker 1: but they stand for valor. Now as for the funeral necklace, yes,
Speaker 1: this seems accurate as well. So in the Egyptian climate,
Speaker 1: um flies would take to the dead rather quickly, and
Speaker 1: freshly hatched flies would be seen leaving the body before
Speaker 1: embalming could be completely finished. Um. These flies were seen
Speaker 1: as again the individual's call or bob leaving the body.
Speaker 1: So the fly necklaces were away to essentially put flies
Speaker 1: back on the body to return this leaked car to
Speaker 1: the deceased. Oh wow yeah, yeah, so and and this
Speaker 1: is really interesting as well. The car or ba is
Speaker 1: sometimes represented as a bird with a human head, but
Speaker 1: you also see versions of it they consist of a
Speaker 1: fly with a human head. So the the authors here, um,
Speaker 1: Chriskey and and Cherry, but they point out that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there was there is, at least at the
Speaker 1: time this was written, which I want to say it
Speaker 1: was uh a couple of decades ago, um at the time,
Speaker 1: and I imagine still to this day, there's the surviving
Speaker 1: folk belief that certain varieties of flies with a greenish
Speaker 1: or bluish metallic body were not to be killed as
Speaker 1: these contained or were likely to contain the spirit of
Speaker 1: someone who had died. So and then they say this
Speaker 1: would just be one of many modern beliefs that are
Speaker 1: seemingly tied to the traditions and beliefs from the age
Speaker 1: of the Pharaohs. But the idea of a fly with
Speaker 1: a human head certainly also makes me think of some
Speaker 1: some twentieth century cinematic literature. Yeah, yeah, and it brings
Speaker 1: to mind the movie The Fly, which ends with that
Speaker 1: that scene, well where you help me seeing with the
Speaker 1: fly with the human head, which we we had to
Speaker 1: stand corrected on. That is not Vincent Price whose heads
Speaker 1: on that fly. It's a different actor. He plays like
Speaker 1: his brother or something. Yeah. But but yeah, so it
Speaker 1: brings to mind hum a modern monster movie. But it's
Speaker 1: also interesting because on a physical level this is correct.
Speaker 1: There is something of the departed body anyway in the
Speaker 1: substance of the emergent fly. There is a connection to
Speaker 1: be made. Yeah, the chemical energy from yes, exactly. So
Speaker 1: again the idea is is not so much to keep
Speaker 1: flies away, but it's like to return what is leaked
Speaker 1: out to the body through symbolic flies. Now, as for
Speaker 1: flies in general, Chrisky and Cherry point out that the
Speaker 1: flies are often associated with death just throughout global myth cycles,
Speaker 1: and they rolled through a number of examples in their book,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Greek damon of decomposition uh urinomos
Speaker 1: uh and this was depicted often as either a vulture
Speaker 1: or a fly, you know, a consumer of carry on.
Speaker 1: Other fly demons can be found as well, such as
Speaker 1: of course be Elzebub, at least in his demonic interpretations
Speaker 1: later he was originally a Syrian god. You have the
Speaker 1: the Yazads and Nassau of Zoroastrianism, and Nassau they describe
Speaker 1: as quote the demon us of dead matter, and flies
Speaker 1: were also a symbol of torment for early European Christians.
Speaker 1: The god Loki was said to have taken on the
Speaker 1: form of a fly in order to pass through a
Speaker 1: key hole, and this transformation the transformation of one in
Speaker 1: one's body into that of a fly. This has also
Speaker 1: been associated with which is they write, in Hungarian traditions. However,
Speaker 1: in all this they point out to outstanding exceptions to
Speaker 1: the negative roles of mythological fly eyes. And they're pretty
Speaker 1: interesting because these kind of take me back to what
Speaker 1: you've shared from that poem that has been attributed to Virgil. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the first example is big Biter. Big Biter is
Speaker 1: an overlord of fish in what I believe is currently
Speaker 1: known as the Innu tribe of this is a Canadian
Speaker 1: Um First Nations people. And this uh, this spirit would
Speaker 1: have taken the form of a fly and chrisky and
Speaker 1: uh and cherry right that he quote hovered over the
Speaker 1: fisherman in order to see how his subjects were being treated. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: an overlord would bite the fisherman to remind him that
Speaker 1: the fish were in his custody and to warn against wastefulness.
Speaker 1: So so I I like that the idea of I
Speaker 1: also it just kind of feels like it's kind of
Speaker 1: illustrates the the you know, the universal experience of fishing.
Speaker 1: You know, you're perhaps gonna, you know, gaze off into space.
Speaker 1: You're you're gonna be bit by insects uh and then
Speaker 1: maybe have to confront the possibility of wastefulness. Um. But anyway,
Speaker 1: another one is big Fly, and this one is in
Speaker 1: the Navajo religion, and it is a mentor or helper
Speaker 1: that mediates between humans and the gods. And so it'll
Speaker 1: it'll frequently show up in stories and uh and appear
Speaker 1: to a hero and tell them how to proceed. And
Speaker 1: so that's the example that reminds me specifically of what
Speaker 1: we see in that poem attributed to Virgil. Yes, not
Speaker 1: just as a helper who who intervenes to save his life,
Speaker 1: but one who later appears to teach him a lesson. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing, of course, that that they drive home in
Speaker 1: this book is that it's worth remembering that other insects
Speaker 1: had entirely different roles in ancient Egyptian traditions. The scare
Speaker 1: a beetle, for instance, symbolizes perpetual life and renewal. Uh
Speaker 1: Kepri is in fact the dawn manifestation of of raw
Speaker 1: or ray, the sun god, and uh derived this is
Speaker 1: derived from kept her, which meant to become or to
Speaker 1: be transformed. And so the reason for this is twofold.
Speaker 1: According to Geraldine Pinch in the book Egyptian Mythology, first
Speaker 1: dung beetles rolling spheres of dung were compared to the
Speaker 1: movement of the sun across the sky. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: something that would be carried by the gods in the
Speaker 1: sky barge uh and Secondly, the sight of young beetles
Speaker 1: emerging from buried dung balls. This raised ideas of self generation,
Speaker 1: and so these acts of transformation could have applied, would
Speaker 1: have applied rather to more than just birth and death,
Speaker 1: but also to the various rights of passage in one's life,
Speaker 1: so not just being born, not just dying, but also
Speaker 1: you know, growing up, changing who you are, this sort
Speaker 1: of perpetual act of emerging and becoming. Oh, I like
Speaker 1: this because uh, I think it's something I've seen from
Speaker 1: Egyptologists in recent years, who I think sometimes emphasized that
Speaker 1: older schools of Egyptology would would sometimes over emphasize the
Speaker 1: the prevalence of thinking about death and the afterlife in
Speaker 1: a scient Egyptian culture, and that this might just be
Speaker 1: a result of the bias in what types of artifacts
Speaker 1: are preserved for us to look at to get a
Speaker 1: sense of their culture. And so so yeah, I like
Speaker 1: the idea of like seeing how it has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with birth and life itself as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is a thing that I actually just
Speaker 1: touched on and one of the Artifact episodes having to
Speaker 1: deal with the kiro To. I'm not sure if this
Speaker 1: has come out yet by the time this episode publishes.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, it has to do with an
Speaker 1: element um an artifact that could certainly be interpreted is
Speaker 1: something that is just about the dead, but upon closer examination,
Speaker 1: is far more about the living and the experience of
Speaker 1: living people. Yeah. Um, so, I think that's an important
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind. Even though it is fascinating
Speaker 1: to know all these things about ancient Egyptian funerary rituals
Speaker 1: and their beliefs about death in the afterlife, you can
Speaker 1: easily get this mistake and assumption that, like in ancient Egypt,
Speaker 1: all anyone did was die and be entombed and think
Speaker 1: about death. And obviously that can't be true. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were human beings, and they were they were subject
Speaker 1: to all the other whims and obsessions of human life
Speaker 1: now and in terms of their other relationships with with
Speaker 1: insects and arachnids uh scorpions, for instance, arachnids were considered
Speaker 1: it just enemies of humanity, but they were also associated
Speaker 1: with the goddess circuit who who protected the body of
Speaker 1: the deceased, as well as the canopic jars that would
Speaker 1: contain organs um. But to come back to that, Atlas
Speaker 1: Obscure article by George Pindall. UH. They write that there's
Speaker 1: a particular civilization of northern Peru uh, the the Mochi
Speaker 1: or the Mochika. Uh. This would have been a civilization
Speaker 1: pre Columbian, of course, but also pre Incin that ran
Speaker 1: from around one hundred to seven fifty c. And they
Speaker 1: seemingly practiced some manner of sky burial in which the
Speaker 1: flies that that that lighted upon the dead and then
Speaker 1: emerged from the dead were interpreted as an essential part
Speaker 1: of the spirit's journey. Um, maybe much like carrying birds
Speaker 1: would be in some other types of sky burial type traditions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was where my mind instantly went to, like
Speaker 1: the Tibetan model of where a body is sort of
Speaker 1: processed for carrying birds in a you know, an elevated
Speaker 1: rocky area, where other modes of burial or not as
Speaker 1: much of an option, And this would be a way
Speaker 1: of like returning the body to the world, to the
Speaker 1: element uh through scavengers, through carrying consumers. So I decided
Speaker 1: to look into this a little bit more because this
Speaker 1: was instantly fascinating as well. You know, I have this
Speaker 1: example that turns things on its head a bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand ten study I was reading published
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Archaeological Science by Hutchett and Greenberg,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this theory depends on the post
Speaker 1: mortem interval in remains how long the bodies of these
Speaker 1: people's were exposed prior to burial and um and, And And
Speaker 1: that's one of the keys there. This is that it's
Speaker 1: not simply while I'll get into this here, but it's
Speaker 1: not just like, okay, then they left the bodies out
Speaker 1: now that this would have been part of a more protracted, uh,
Speaker 1: funeral rite. I see. So the Mochi, they excelled in ceramics,
Speaker 1: they practiced human sacrifice um and. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: a lot of ancient cultures did um not to sweep
Speaker 1: human sacrifice under the rug or anything, but I think,
Speaker 1: as we've touched on before, I think we it pays
Speaker 1: to be fair in looking at particular cultures and regions
Speaker 1: that are often highlighted for this sort of thing, that
Speaker 1: we have to sort of keep them, uh. Keep in
Speaker 1: mind that that plenty of other ancient cultures also did this,
Speaker 1: did human sacrifice as well, and they were no exception,
Speaker 1: but they apparently had a complex religious system with complex
Speaker 1: mortuary practices supported by evidence of delayed burials, grave reopenings,
Speaker 1: and secondary offerings of human remains. Their ceramic illustrations reveal
Speaker 1: a lot about the role of flies and their beliefs
Speaker 1: with their For instance, there these motifs of flies following
Speaker 1: prisoners to exit cution in anticipation of of their corpses,
Speaker 1: as well as oval shaped motifs that may represent flies
Speaker 1: emerging from the puparia. So, you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to to think about this. This would have
Speaker 1: been a society where instead of sort of taking the
Speaker 1: Egyptian route and saying, well, the flies are part of
Speaker 1: the soul leaving the body, and will we have this
Speaker 1: magical uh symbolism that will will will prevent that or
Speaker 1: reverse the the the leakage. Uh. This is like a
Speaker 1: celebration of it. It would seem that's the argument anyway,
Speaker 1: that they seem to have incorporated it into their understanding
Speaker 1: of what our bodies and and or perhaps our souls
Speaker 1: do when we die. You know that it's that the
Speaker 1: flies moving in and then out of our bodies is
Speaker 1: just a part of what is supposed to happen it's
Speaker 1: part of the sacrament. Though. It's very interesting to see
Speaker 1: cultures in which that sort of biological knowledge about what
Speaker 1: happens to a human body that's left exposed to the
Speaker 1: surface elements. Uh, it gets incorporated into religious beliefs as
Speaker 1: opposed to the idea that a body should be you know,
Speaker 1: immediately buried, hidden away to a different place where you
Speaker 1: cannot see nature acting upon it as it decomposes. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially modern culture, we're so far removed from
Speaker 1: from physical death, you know that. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: some would argue that we're too far removed from it,
Speaker 1: you know that it Uh, it makes it more problematic
Speaker 1: in some cases when it does occur, and it of
Speaker 1: course will occur, and it does impact our lives. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's interesting to try and envision how
Speaker 1: how a culture like this would have handled death, because
Speaker 1: because again it would have been according to the way
Speaker 1: they were discussing it in this article, it would have
Speaker 1: been a situation where like, the body dies, if some
Speaker 1: sort of ritual that is conducted, but the body is
Speaker 1: left out and long enough the flies to begin to
Speaker 1: work upon it, and then other funeral customs come into
Speaker 1: play and then it is eventually buried, and then then
Speaker 1: it maybe a phase later on where the tomb is reopened.
Speaker 1: So it's um. You know, there's a lot more in
Speaker 1: and out compared to what we're more accustomed to with
Speaker 1: our modern funeral rights. Yeah, absolutely, thank thank Okay, So
Speaker 1: we've been talking about um legends of of human funerals
Speaker 1: for insects. We've been talking about associations between insects, especially
Speaker 1: flies and uh and human funerary rituals and different cultures.
Speaker 1: But one other thing that I thought would be good
Speaker 1: to talk about would be how insects deal with their
Speaker 1: own dead, the funerals within the insect world. And one
Speaker 1: place I was looking was that there's a there's a
Speaker 1: good short article on that GEO from seventeen by Ali
Speaker 1: Wilkinson that collects some really interesting examples of scientific study
Speaker 1: and observations about how different types of social insects in
Speaker 1: particular treat their own dead within and around their nest.
Speaker 1: And I think if you're looking for the really interesting practices,
Speaker 1: I think it would be these are especially going to
Speaker 1: be among social insects. So the article is called queen
Speaker 1: Ants and other Insects bury their dead. Here's why uh,
Speaker 1: And so just to look at a couple of examples
Speaker 1: sited here and maybe we can we can come back
Speaker 1: and talk more about the general theory on on why
Speaker 1: some of these things happen UH. For example, among ants,
Speaker 1: it is commonly observed that in mature ant colonies there's
Speaker 1: a very orderly process for removing dead ants from the nest.
Speaker 1: Worker ants will locate dead individuals from the colony and
Speaker 1: then systematically carry their bodies away, either to a place
Speaker 1: away from the nest, like a trash heap that's removed
Speaker 1: from the main nest activity, or to a special chamber
Speaker 1: within the nest. And Wilkinson also points out a cool
Speaker 1: study from the journal b MC Evolutionary Biology from ten
Speaker 1: By for Pull and Sylvia Kramer, reporting that under some
Speaker 1: conditions in some ants, even queens will engage in undertaker duties.
Speaker 1: We can come back to why that is a bit
Speaker 1: more later on, but just just to explore what happens
Speaker 1: in the example of the black Garden aunt. Sometimes in
Speaker 1: a young quality colony where there aren't many workers yet,
Speaker 1: if one of the early queens in the colony dies,
Speaker 1: the surviving queen will go to the dead queen's body
Speaker 1: bite it up into a bunch of pieces, and then
Speaker 1: bury those pieces herself, which kind of goes against the
Speaker 1: idea of you know, the the queen aunt or the
Speaker 1: queen bee, you know, the the queen in a social
Speaker 1: insects species just being like sitting around and and doing
Speaker 1: nothing and letting the workers do all the work and
Speaker 1: basically only existing to fulfill reproductive duties and never having
Speaker 1: never having any toil to their of their own. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is it does. Yeah, you did not think about that.
Speaker 1: So there, so you you either go overboard and associate
Speaker 1: all sorts of like human qualities with the with the
Speaker 1: ant ruler, or you do just think of them fulfilling
Speaker 1: this one key job within the colony. Though to be clear,
Speaker 1: I think biologically that is the most important job of theirs,
Speaker 1: and most of the work of the colony is relegated
Speaker 1: to these non reproducing workers. Yeah, but it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just just because you're reproducing all the time, doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you can't clean up a little bit, right, right.
Speaker 1: So another example b colonies and bees, there appears to
Speaker 1: be a very well organized behavior system for quickly ejecting
Speaker 1: dead bodies from the nest. Looks like they usually just
Speaker 1: get dropped on the ground outside the nest. And in
Speaker 1: honey bees, this disposal process tends to happen very fast.
Speaker 1: It's carried out by a special class of middle aged
Speaker 1: worker bees representing about one to two of the population
Speaker 1: of the nest. And Wilkinson points to a nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three study by P. Kirk Vischer in the journal Animal
Speaker 1: Behavior that found really acute time sensitivity in how the
Speaker 1: bees prioritize body disposal. So, for example, corpses that were
Speaker 1: one hour old were removed faster than bees that had
Speaker 1: died just moments before. And I think this probably relies
Speaker 1: on some kind of chemical signal, you know, uh, it's
Speaker 1: something you can smell coming off of the dead bee.
Speaker 1: Because Fisher notes also the dead bees that were coded
Speaker 1: in paraffin, which would probably interfere with the penetration of
Speaker 1: smells and stuff, are removed much more slowly. And then
Speaker 1: one last thing in termites, Wilkinson also writes about some
Speaker 1: interesting behavior in termites. Whereas bees and ants tend to
Speaker 1: remove the dead bodies from the nest or deposit them
Speaker 1: in a special trash chamber, termites often bury they're dead
Speaker 1: within the nest. But I guess that gets us to
Speaker 1: the question of why, like, why would insects have these organized,
Speaker 1: efficient funerary practices for the disposal of the dead within
Speaker 1: their colonies. And I think there's a pretty clear answer
Speaker 1: to it, at least of pretty clear primary answer, and
Speaker 1: that is a disease control. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Um. I
Speaker 1: was reading reading a very concise article about this by
Speaker 1: uh the author's son and Zoo. This was a Corpse
Speaker 1: Management and Social Insects from in the International Journal of
Speaker 1: Biological Sciences, and they summed it up as follows. Undertaking
Speaker 1: behavior is an essential adaptation to social life that is
Speaker 1: critical for colony hygiene in enclosed nests. Social insects dispose
Speaker 1: of dead individuals in various fashions to prevent further contact
Speaker 1: between corpses and living members in a colony. And I
Speaker 1: think that that kind of puts a nice little type
Speaker 1: bow on it right there. That's kind of the concise answer, um.
Speaker 1: But of course it gets a lot more complicated than
Speaker 1: than that, and certainly when you get into the various
Speaker 1: specific examples. Um. Again, i think it's important to note, uh,
Speaker 1: to to note all this because one of one of
Speaker 1: the major realities of modern funeral practices is that we
Speaker 1: often have an almost extreme separation from physical death. Again,
Speaker 1: someone argue it's even detrimental set separate separation from physical death,
Speaker 1: but this is in fact one of the key factors
Speaker 1: in having funeral rights and practices to limit the amount
Speaker 1: of contact between the living and the dead, not just
Speaker 1: because the dead can be unsightly and troubling for the
Speaker 1: living to behold, not only to prop up some notion
Speaker 1: of continuation of the individual after death, but also because
Speaker 1: of the dead are unhygienic and can serve as disease vectors. Now,
Speaker 1: with solitary animals, that's one thing, right, avoidance is usually
Speaker 1: the best approach if you encounter one of your own dead,
Speaker 1: But social animals are just going to regularly encounter their
Speaker 1: own dead. They are. There are essentially three different ways
Speaker 1: of dealing with your own dead when you encounter them.
Speaker 1: There's necrophagi eating the dead, there's corpse removal, and there's
Speaker 1: burial and and necrophagi. As we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: it's pretty widespread in various organisms, uh and is also
Speaker 1: found in human traditions. It's it's one solution, though not
Speaker 1: though it's fortunately without its own complications. But his son
Speaker 1: Enzo will point out while sanitary issues related to corpses
Speaker 1: are widespread, they are particularly sharp and dense populations for
Speaker 1: social organisms, and of course that that category certainly includes
Speaker 1: human beings, but it also includes use social insects like bees, ants,
Speaker 1: and termites, and so we see complex responses at the
Speaker 1: individual and colony level to deal with the dead and
Speaker 1: to engage in what humans would call undertaking. So they
Speaker 1: point out that for certain social spiders and social aphids,
Speaker 1: corpse removal is just an indistinguishable part of clearing out
Speaker 1: a nest site. It's quote indistinguishable from dealing with inanimate
Speaker 1: nest waste. So so that's one way of approaching it.
Speaker 1: It's just like if you would get like a twig
Speaker 1: or something in your nest area and you'd you'd clean
Speaker 1: that out eventually, the same thing happens to the dead afid. Right.
Speaker 1: It would be kind of like if you were, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if you you had a human house and
Speaker 1: you were to remove a dead body from your house
Speaker 1: with about as much precaution and and ceremony as you
Speaker 1: would take out the trash, where you're like, oh well,
Speaker 1: they're dead, so I'll take them out and put them
Speaker 1: in the trash can. That's kind of what some of
Speaker 1: these social spiders and social etheids are doing. But they
Speaker 1: point out that ants, bees, wasps, termites, we see much
Speaker 1: more complex modes of behavior in which the treatment of
Speaker 1: the dead is distinct from the treatment of other waste products.
Speaker 1: And these methods kind of they kind of pick from
Speaker 1: the eat removed Barry toolbox of possibilities, and I think
Speaker 1: we see that in some of these specific UH answers
Speaker 1: that you already looked at, you know, the idea of say,
Speaker 1: cutting up the body of the dead and then burying
Speaker 1: those pieces of just simply removing the dead and just
Speaker 1: throwing them out of the colony, versus removing them and
Speaker 1: burying them or in the case of the term ies,
Speaker 1: just burying them within the nest. The one of the
Speaker 1: really interesting questions I guess here is um among these
Speaker 1: used social insects, how do they know what to do?
Speaker 1: You know, like, how how do how do they know
Speaker 1: how to guide and control this behavior? What's the what's
Speaker 1: the nervous system flow chart for an aunt or a
Speaker 1: b to participate in an undertaking? Yeah, this is where
Speaker 1: it gets interesting. You get into a lot of really
Speaker 1: deep research over the years because, um, you know, what
Speaker 1: what is the trigger that causes them to remove the dead.
Speaker 1: And by the way, there's a term for this for
Speaker 1: the removal of the dead, and it is um uh necrophoresis,
Speaker 1: and this is from the Greek just basically to remove
Speaker 1: the dead. But it was coined by none other than EO. Wilson, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the the master ant researcher who who Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of his research projects for a while
Speaker 1: was like looking at how individual ants within a colony
Speaker 1: pick up on death and then respond accordingly. So you know,
Speaker 1: obviously this is the first step. You have to know
Speaker 1: what's dead. Uh is this a live ant or is
Speaker 1: this a dead aunt? Is it getting better? Uh? Just
Speaker 1: a flesh woe whatever? Uh? You know you have to
Speaker 1: be able to react accordingly. Uh. You know, it's vital
Speaker 1: to colony health. And it's based on chemical signals apparently
Speaker 1: um as as much of the activity within the ant world.
Speaker 1: And you can you can broadly think of the behavior
Speaker 1: as entailing death recognition and then behavioral responses and then
Speaker 1: task allocation for dealing with the dead. So Wilson and
Speaker 1: his fellow researchers identified what they called fatty acid death
Speaker 1: cues as being important in here. Those subsequent research seems
Speaker 1: to suggest that those are not the only signals involved,
Speaker 1: because sometimes the response time seems too short, like they're
Speaker 1: the uh the ants and question are reacting before the
Speaker 1: fatty acid death cues would generate. Uh. Get it all
Speaker 1: gets very you know, complicated in ant world chemical But
Speaker 1: basically they seem to lean more into perhaps a chemical
Speaker 1: vital sign detection by the ants. So it's it's not
Speaker 1: just picking up maybe on one chemical that's saying I'm
Speaker 1: but it's more of like a a chemical vital sign
Speaker 1: array that an ant is able to pick up on
Speaker 1: and read and the the In this uh, this particular
Speaker 1: son and our article, they also write that the term
Speaker 1: uh necromone is also used. This is like pheromone, except
Speaker 1: related to death, and this has been used to describe
Speaker 1: sort of the sort of the realm of death recognition chemicals. Uh.
Speaker 1: I love that that the necromone. It sounds like something
Speaker 1: that would be made up for a riddic film, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: but also fits well within the the ant world. You
Speaker 1: know that they would again the chemical language of them.
Speaker 1: I love this idea of these you know, these these
Speaker 1: creatures that we often you know, we think about them
Speaker 1: as being very simple, and they are, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: in a way like simple but but complex parts of
Speaker 1: this greater whole. And there's this whole language that they're
Speaker 1: engaged in, this chemical language that it's kind of a
Speaker 1: stretch for us to truly imagine it, you know, they
Speaker 1: do the imagine the being able to read the chemical
Speaker 1: vital science of other members of our society. That is
Speaker 1: really interesting and weirdly, like, it gets even deeper because
Speaker 1: there are some of these behaviors for the use social
Speaker 1: insects removing the dead from their nests that incorporate prioritization
Speaker 1: of the task based on how much of a disease
Speaker 1: risk the dead body would actually entail. So that that
Speaker 1: that raises all these other questions, like how can they
Speaker 1: tell what kind of disease risk? This is? Like that
Speaker 1: There's a section in that Wilkinson article that talks about
Speaker 1: study in the journal Scientific Reports about about termites that
Speaker 1: found that the termites would react differently to a dead
Speaker 1: body within their nest depending on whether it was a
Speaker 1: member of their own species or from a very closely
Speaker 1: related species. Just to read from Wilkinson quote, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether a corpse of the same species came from their
Speaker 1: own colony or another colony, it was pulled back into
Speaker 1: the holding chamber for nutrient recycling and hygienic purposes. But
Speaker 1: if the corpse was that of a dark southeastern subterranean
Speaker 1: termite or reticular Termy's virginicus, it was entombed by workers
Speaker 1: on site with a large group of soldiers standing guard.
Speaker 1: Ten times as many termites were involved with the burial
Speaker 1: of this closely related species then the same species, but
Speaker 1: the extra time, energy, and labor were warranted. Researchers found
Speaker 1: in the face of external pathogens. So that so there
Speaker 1: there seems to be some kind of like evolutionary mechanism
Speaker 1: controlling the behavior here that recognizes certain types of dead
Speaker 1: termites within the nest as an elevated disease risk because
Speaker 1: maybe they're bringing in a pathogen that is new to
Speaker 1: the nest and and could decimate it if it's not
Speaker 1: disposed of, you know, immediately and totally, even though that
Speaker 1: might be a very energy intensive process for the colony. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's amazing how these you know, each each
Speaker 1: colony is like this entire immune system, and that that
Speaker 1: brings me back to, uh, that other study I was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, the one in BMC Evolutionary Biology about
Speaker 1: the Black Garden aunt and how the queens will sometimes
Speaker 1: participate in undertaking behaviors if the colony is young and
Speaker 1: there are not enough workers to help out with it.
Speaker 1: And this is a situation where there can be multiple
Speaker 1: co founding queens and a colony. Actually, just to read
Speaker 1: from from the abstract of the study, quote, social insects
Speaker 1: formed densely crowded societies and environments with high pathogen loads,
Speaker 1: but have evolved collective defenses that mitigate the impact of disease. However,
Speaker 1: colony founding queens lack this protection and suffer high rates
Speaker 1: of mortality. The impact of pathogens may be exacerbated in
Speaker 1: species where queens found colonies together, as healthy individuals may
Speaker 1: contract pathogens from infectious co founders. Therefore, we tested whether
Speaker 1: aunt queens avoid founding colonies with pathogen exposed con specifics
Speaker 1: and how they might limit disease transmission from infected individuals.
Speaker 1: And what this found is when there were these co founders,
Speaker 1: these co founding queens in a colony. If one of
Speaker 1: the original queens died, the surviving queen again would would
Speaker 1: do this biting process where they would sort of chomp
Speaker 1: up the other queen into pieces and then uh bury
Speaker 1: and remove the corpse. And the authors here right quote
Speaker 1: these undertaking behaviors were performed prophylactically, i e. Targeted equally
Speaker 1: towards non infected and infected corpses, as well as carried
Speaker 1: out before infected corpses became infectious. Biting and burial reduced
Speaker 1: the risk of queens contracting and dying from disease from
Speaker 1: an infectious corpse of a dead co foundress. So they
Speaker 1: did actually find this had a survival benefit to the
Speaker 1: queen that's doing this work, because better to be safe
Speaker 1: than sorry and get that corpse buried just in case
Speaker 1: it could become infectious. Well, this has been interesting, I
Speaker 1: think by looking at insects in their relationship to death,
Speaker 1: we've kind of gotten to explore both ends of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: like the stripped down version of what funeral rights are,
Speaker 1: like what does it mean to bury the they departed
Speaker 1: and why do we do it on a very basic level,
Speaker 1: But then also seeing how some of these these insects
Speaker 1: end up being brought into far more elaborate understandings of
Speaker 1: human death as well. Now, obviously we we could and
Speaker 1: probably should come back in the future and talk more
Speaker 1: about funeral traditions. We talked about funeral traditions on the
Speaker 1: show before. Um, but but yeah, we could come back
Speaker 1: and discuss sort of like the the early days, like
Speaker 1: how what are some of the earliest examples of of
Speaker 1: burial among humans and pre humans and what does it mean?
Speaker 1: Like what and what aspects of it do we still
Speaker 1: see in our practices today. Yeah, those types of things
Speaker 1: are often interpreted as the earliest signs we have of
Speaker 1: the development of religion and human But you know, that's
Speaker 1: a really interesting area with a lot of questions open. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the the ant front, obviously, we've we've done plenty
Speaker 1: of other AUNT episodes that I refer folks back to,
Speaker 1: including our our three parter on Ant Warfare that we
Speaker 1: did earlier this year. But I also want to mention
Speaker 1: a really great YouTube channel. Uh this was one called
Speaker 1: ants Canada. Are you familiar with this one, Joe, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I was. I was not familiar with
Speaker 1: until a friend recommended as something to to show UM
Speaker 1: kids and it's I mean it's also really interesting for
Speaker 1: adults as well. But uh, this uh individual UM has
Speaker 1: this entire channel devoted to their various uh ant farms
Speaker 1: and also habitats for other creatures. But ants are the
Speaker 1: like the key focus, and it's it's really well done.
Speaker 1: Lots of great photography and video work. Uh. Some of
Speaker 1: the very topics we've discussed here pop up in the show,
Speaker 1: as as the chronicle, uh, the INDs and ounce of
Speaker 1: the various ant colonies and how they deal with their dad,
Speaker 1: how they deal with invaders and stuff of that nature.
Speaker 1: So my family has really been enjoying it. So if
Speaker 1: you have any AUNT fans out there, I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. Oh I just looked this channel up.
Speaker 1: I see one title on a popular video here seems
Speaker 1: to take a page from EO. Wilson says fire ants
Speaker 1: versus my hand. Yeah, yeah, I think IO Wilson would approve.
Speaker 1: Here's another one cockroach giving birth while being devoured by
Speaker 1: fire ants. Well, yeah, I'll have to give this a shot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think some of these popular ones maybe look there,
Speaker 1: they make the channel look a little grizzlier. Than actually is.
Speaker 1: But but I'm I mean, I'm sure I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've watched any of these uh these top ones yet.
Speaker 1: I kind of come in and out of the room
Speaker 1: home it's on sometimes, but I inevitably end up pausing
Speaker 1: to see what's going on. There'll be some big mystery
Speaker 1: with the colony, and uh, you know, they explore and
Speaker 1: they watch and they figure it out. Of course, whatever
Speaker 1: is the grossest and most gruesome content on the channel
Speaker 1: is going to be the most feud Well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's what will be rewarded. But you know, the
Speaker 1: ants don't care. They don't care about clicks and subscribers.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna go and close it out there.
Speaker 1: If you would like to listen to other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, you should check out the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast channel. You can find
Speaker 1: that wherever you get your podcasts. Uh Core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursday's Weird House Cinema on Fridays. And we've
Speaker 1: got artifact and listener mail in the mix as well.
Speaker 1: Uh and wherever you listen to the show, we just
Speaker 1: asked the rate, review and subscribe huge Thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hi, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
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