Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wanting to stuff to about your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: were you able to make it to work today without
Speaker 1: finding yourself trapped and snared or otherwise captured by some
Speaker 1: sort of large arachnet or insect barely bare sort of
Speaker 1: like metal arachnets traffic? Yeah, yeah, I took the train,
Speaker 1: so I had to deal with actual giant arachnets in
Speaker 1: the subway tunnels. But but generally, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they're just going about their business. All they want to
Speaker 1: do is protect their young and lay more if they're young,
Speaker 1: inside your belly. And can you blame them? I know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's especially on a cold day like this,
Speaker 1: that's the warmest place to delay them your your brood
Speaker 1: of eggs. Yes, seventeen degrees in the south here, all right.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about, if you guys are picking
Speaker 1: up what we're putting down here, are traps, Yes, because
Speaker 1: you know, as humans were pretty good tool users, we
Speaker 1: create traps all the time. But out there in nature
Speaker 1: there's stuff going on. Yeah, I mean, human traps are
Speaker 1: almost limitless. I mean, you can start with the really
Speaker 1: basic stuff, like you just take a like a tiger pit.
Speaker 1: You know, here's a pit, cover it with some some brush.
Speaker 1: After I've dug it out, something walks across the top,
Speaker 1: it falls in. Now I've caught myself a tiger or
Speaker 1: a person or what have you. There's a and then
Speaker 1: if you want to up the anti, maybe you have
Speaker 1: a sticks at the bottom of it, a sharpened stick
Speaker 1: so that someone falls in, then they're going to potentially
Speaker 1: be impaled upon those sticks. You have simple animal traps.
Speaker 1: Have you ever used one of these, like to catch
Speaker 1: wild animals or cats for Spade in the Neutering No,
Speaker 1: we we My wife and I did a little of
Speaker 1: that at our previous house. And it's, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty wild stuff because you'll catch multiple things. We were
Speaker 1: trying to At one point we were trying to catch
Speaker 1: a dog that like a puppy that was in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood and it was, you know, sweet little dog but
Speaker 1: clearly had no owner, was eating garbage and we gotta
Speaker 1: catch this dog. We can, we can do some good
Speaker 1: for this dock. But ultimately that dog was too wary. Instead,
Speaker 1: we caught like three different possums. We caught two different
Speaker 1: stray cats, and that eventually led into doing some spandar
Speaker 1: during with those guys, and then we caught our own
Speaker 1: cat twice. Was this just a day of like catching things?
Speaker 1: Was just like, hey, we're gonna go out and we've
Speaker 1: got this trap. You know, just set it up in
Speaker 1: the night, you catch a possums, set it up in
Speaker 1: the day, you catch your own cat, that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then then ideally that I think the county would
Speaker 1: come and take it away. But but yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: fun little trap. But then there are there are far
Speaker 1: less fun traps that we've devised. Of course, when you
Speaker 1: get into the world of land mines, we create explosive devices,
Speaker 1: uh that that that you know triggered one one steps
Speaker 1: on them or when you know, some proximity mind of
Speaker 1: some kind, and and those are of course, uh, pretty
Speaker 1: deadly and pretty horrible inventions. But throughout all of this
Speaker 1: we we tend to think, well, hey, that's humans were
Speaker 1: tool users. We make things, We make things that react
Speaker 1: to the presence of others. We create all of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these traps. Be it's something rather simple like a little
Speaker 1: box of a twig or or something advanced like a landmine.
Speaker 1: We're wildy, we're clever. Yeah, there couldn't be any other
Speaker 1: animal or insect or arachnid out there that could be
Speaker 1: as clever as us. Uh, that is not true. We're wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And specifically in this podcast, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: arachnids and insects creatures that we can't We generally just
Speaker 1: think there's no way that these guys are up to
Speaker 1: anything on the level of human beings. And you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of Charlotte's Web when we
Speaker 1: were looking at this material. Because spiders obviously are featured
Speaker 1: pretty well in this area of trapping things, we tend
Speaker 1: to think about them as these passive trappers. But I
Speaker 1: was thinking about Charlotte A cavodica in in Charlotte's Web,
Speaker 1: and how when Wilburt figures out that she's like basically
Speaker 1: sucking the blood out of these insects, He's just recoils
Speaker 1: and Horror doesn't necessarily want to be friends with her,
Speaker 1: and then she kind of lays it down for him, like, look,
Speaker 1: this is how I survive. You get things brought to
Speaker 1: you in a piale you, you lucky pig. I I
Speaker 1: have to use my wits, and I come from generations
Speaker 1: and generations of trappers. Yeah, and I don't think a
Speaker 1: pig has a lot of room to judge a spider really.
Speaker 1: I mean, pigs are not above doing a little killing
Speaker 1: for their their food. Well, sure, but in this instance,
Speaker 1: and particularly in this story, it was it was this
Speaker 1: great moment where it's like, you know, you can't necessarily
Speaker 1: judge another person, animal insect for the behavior because they're
Speaker 1: just doing what survival needs them to do. And so
Speaker 1: that is what I think is so interesting about spiders
Speaker 1: and their traps, because it's fascinating these these webs that
Speaker 1: they create, and as you have pointed out in an
Speaker 1: earlier conversation with me, sometimes they don't even have a web. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one thing about spiders. I mean, Cope, we have
Speaker 1: to go to spiders first, because they are They're the
Speaker 1: animal you think of when you think of an a
Speaker 1: will laying a trap. I mean, the spiderweb itself is
Speaker 1: kind of a metaphor for any kind of a trap
Speaker 1: or enscarement, or some sort of complex system of ensnaring
Speaker 1: someone or something. But yeah, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of spiders are don't actually spin webs, so they don't
Speaker 1: use their silk and hunting at all. They're just using
Speaker 1: them as building materials um or you know, to create
Speaker 1: a nursery. Or they're using them as a drag line.
Speaker 1: It's sort of, you know, a mountain climbing a line
Speaker 1: to use in the navigating their environment. But then there
Speaker 1: are a number of spiders that do use their web,
Speaker 1: and we we generally, we generally go to the orb
Speaker 1: web spiders first because that's the more um iconic spider web,
Speaker 1: that big orb shaped web. Flies fly into them and uh,
Speaker 1: and then the spider comes and and creeps across the
Speaker 1: web and fix them off and and generally that's our
Speaker 1: When we think of giant spiders in fantasy and sci fi,
Speaker 1: they tend to be a giant orb spider. But that's
Speaker 1: just one of the many different ways that different species
Speaker 1: of spiders use their webs, generally in some sort of
Speaker 1: hunting or trapping scenario. Yeah, and this is from the
Speaker 1: article how Spiders Worked by Tom Harris. I thought this
Speaker 1: was such a great description of spiders. He says, spiders
Speaker 1: are predators above all else, so hunting and killing is
Speaker 1: where they really shine in the bug world. Spiders are
Speaker 1: fairly fearsome animals. They're the tiny equivalent of wolves, lions,
Speaker 1: or sharks. Yeah, they're basically second only to the wasp
Speaker 1: because the wasp is just gonna rule over the spider
Speaker 1: every time. It's true. And we recently were talking about
Speaker 1: how if you could just somehow, through the power of alchemy,
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh, miniaturize us humans. I would have
Speaker 1: to say that if we if right now, if I
Speaker 1: were just about, you know, a fourth of an inch tall,
Speaker 1: if a spider was coming at me, this would be
Speaker 1: the thing that I dreaded the most, more than a
Speaker 1: cockroach or really anything else. Yeah, I mean the spiders
Speaker 1: would be fighting over you. It's the thing. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: that sense, you have a certain amount of power. You'd
Speaker 1: be like you'd be like the wife of Ulysses, where
Speaker 1: you have all the suitors coming for you, right and
Speaker 1: you get to you get to make ridiculous demands of
Speaker 1: your various spider suitors, which one will get to devour you.
Speaker 1: And still I would not take it as a compliment.
Speaker 1: Let's do a quick anatomy of a web, because, as
Speaker 1: you say, you know or spiderweb classic here. Um, if
Speaker 1: you look at how a spider constructs a web, it
Speaker 1: all begins with silk line that is cast out into
Speaker 1: the wind. And when the spider census it's caught upon something,
Speaker 1: it will sense a starting point and use that connection
Speaker 1: as a bridge. And this is really cool. Um. You
Speaker 1: can actually see how this works in an article called
Speaker 1: how spiders Work. And when that spider crosses that bridge,
Speaker 1: it actually drops another loose thread and it climbs down
Speaker 1: on this thread and creates a kind of y configuration.
Speaker 1: And from here on out it will start to create these, um,
Speaker 1: you don't know, I guess you could call them anchor points,
Speaker 1: and you have the sort of V configuration, and then
Speaker 1: it starts to lay out these radius points from the
Speaker 1: center of the web to the thread. So now you
Speaker 1: have these non sticky auxiliary spirals that it creates. And
Speaker 1: the reason why it creates these non sticky parsons because
Speaker 1: that's the part that it's going to actually travel on
Speaker 1: the web, and then it creates another spiral that is sticky.
Speaker 1: So it's amazing to me is that it's created this
Speaker 1: complex web, but it has also given itself a pathway
Speaker 1: on which to to tread. It Yeah, it's it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's top and overlooked is that indeed,
Speaker 1: not all spider web is sticky, and they're in some
Speaker 1: of these structures that we're going to discuss, some of
Speaker 1: these traps and uh and web environments that are not
Speaker 1: even sticky at all. So um so, yeah, the orb
Speaker 1: orb web spider, the orb webs, the big iconic web.
Speaker 1: But then there are a number of other ones we're
Speaker 1: gonna go through. Some of these, uh, some bear more
Speaker 1: mentioned than others. For instance, triangle spiders make triangular webs,
Speaker 1: and these are essentially like imagine the orb web, and
Speaker 1: imagine if you cut a pizza sized uh slice of
Speaker 1: that web, that would essentially be a triangle whip. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: it's basically the same idea, just on a smaller scale.
Speaker 1: Now where it starts getting a little more interesting to
Speaker 1: get into the world of funnel spiders. Now, funnel spiders
Speaker 1: they make a sheet of silk and then they wrap
Speaker 1: them up and they to make this funnel, you know,
Speaker 1: just like taking a newspaper and rolling it up right, uh.
Speaker 1: And the funnels have a big opening on one end,
Speaker 1: and that's so where they catch the prey. And they
Speaker 1: also have a small opening in the back and that's
Speaker 1: the escape hatch in case the spider needs to run
Speaker 1: for it. Okay, and it's not sticky, but the idea
Speaker 1: here is that the spiders can move around really easily
Speaker 1: in this uh, this funnel environment. They've basically made a
Speaker 1: you know, home turf killing room where they have a
Speaker 1: maximum ownership over their prey. So that in itself is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty amazing. It's not not exactly a trap, but
Speaker 1: it's a It's they've created an environment that they have
Speaker 1: just absolute control over and uh and and an outsider
Speaker 1: is going going to be an outsider in that that
Speaker 1: web of death. And I like thinking about it in
Speaker 1: that way because it moves this idea from spiders is
Speaker 1: creating these passive traps to really being tool users and
Speaker 1: really premeditating the kills that they exact. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: if a like if a serial killer was that was
Speaker 1: the kind of would bring somebody back to his or
Speaker 1: her apartment, and they knew exactly where they had the uh,
Speaker 1: you know, their murder weapon stashed, where they had the
Speaker 1: various instruments, where the escape routes were going to be. Again,
Speaker 1: a complete home turf advantage, and that's what the funnel
Speaker 1: spider creates here. Now, another thing is that a lot
Speaker 1: of these webs will have a kind of anchor thread,
Speaker 1: and this anchor thread sometimes is used to get on
Speaker 1: and off of that spider web, but in most cases
Speaker 1: it actually used is used as a kind of um
Speaker 1: trip wire. And it's so sensitive and the spider can
Speaker 1: tell so much from the movement that it can actually
Speaker 1: know if it's a leaf that's hit it, or if
Speaker 1: it's just the wind, or if it is indeed the
Speaker 1: vibrations from an insect. Yeah, So they wouldn't fooled to, say,
Speaker 1: by a child's finger poking in or something. Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 1: They would probably know pretty soon that they were about
Speaker 1: to be scooped up, put under a magnifying glass and
Speaker 1: then set on fire. Now, a number of different spiders
Speaker 1: these webs that are far less complex their cobweb spiders,
Speaker 1: you know, and then everyone knows what a cobweb is.
Speaker 1: It's just a small random mess of silk strings. Just
Speaker 1: throw it together and see what gets caught in it. Right.
Speaker 1: Mesh web spiders very similar. You'll find often find these
Speaker 1: in grassy fields, under stones and dead leaves. Uh. Their
Speaker 1: sheet web spiders that basically make webs that are formed
Speaker 1: out of the different sheets of the silk and there's
Speaker 1: just sort of jumbled together and not a lot of
Speaker 1: large gaps to be found there though. One interesting type
Speaker 1: of sheet web spiders are the bowl and doily spiders. Now,
Speaker 1: what the spider does in this situation is it makes
Speaker 1: an inverted dome shaped web, kind of like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a bowl, all right, and that's suspended above a
Speaker 1: horizontal sheet web, and that's the that's the doily, and
Speaker 1: the spider hangs from the underside of the dome and
Speaker 1: attacks prey. So you have to look at pictures of
Speaker 1: that one, because it's a pretty pretty phenomenal looking web.
Speaker 1: It just looks like some sort of crazy space structure.
Speaker 1: And I like that there's a doily like a nod
Speaker 1: to your grandmother's coffee table drink on top of it.
Speaker 1: Um that reminds me of something called a net casting spider.
Speaker 1: And this can be found across the world in tropical
Speaker 1: and subtropical regions, and it's also known as the ogre
Speaker 1: faced spider because of its distinctive really big eyes and
Speaker 1: that helps them to see prey during the nighttime. But
Speaker 1: what's notable about this is that they build cobweb sacks
Speaker 1: that are held open with their front legs and they
Speaker 1: have an anchor threat on it. Okay, and there's that
Speaker 1: anchor thread that acts as a trip wire. And the
Speaker 1: really cool thing is that when this spider sensus a vibration,
Speaker 1: it will drop that net that it's holding with its
Speaker 1: leg over the insect and a thousands of a second.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's amazing. There's some really cool footage of
Speaker 1: this on BBC. But it kind of reminds me of
Speaker 1: like a character out of a mob movie. It's just
Speaker 1: like throwing a hood over, you know, unpecting person and
Speaker 1: drag them off and hit them with a bag of oranges. Now,
Speaker 1: another that type of spider that does something just really
Speaker 1: amazing with its web are the the Ceclosu spiders. And
Speaker 1: these these guys they make a they make a more
Speaker 1: or a standard web and and so you know, you're
Speaker 1: not really impressed by that, but they make a decoy
Speaker 1: of themselves in the web. They craft this out of leaves,
Speaker 1: bits of dead insects, you know, the normal type of
Speaker 1: craft that a spider is gonna find and in some
Speaker 1: of these cases it even has the correct number of legs,
Speaker 1: like it will even have eight legs on it. So
Speaker 1: what they've created here is the decoy to confuse predators,
Speaker 1: and if the spider is disturbed, it vibrates the web.
Speaker 1: It vibrates its body, which vibrates the web, which causes
Speaker 1: the decoy to vibrate and look even more lifelike. So
Speaker 1: in other words, if it senses that there's a predator round,
Speaker 1: it'll start to say, it'll start to shake it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the decoin be like, hey, I'm over here, I'm over here.
Speaker 1: And in most times these decoys are much larger than
Speaker 1: the spider itself. Yeah, so it can easily hyeah. That's
Speaker 1: the other thing. It's a much larger spiders, a scarier
Speaker 1: vision of the spider than it's than it actually creates itself.
Speaker 1: But the amazing part of that, I mean, just stop
Speaker 1: for second to think about this. This is interacted, lowly iracted,
Speaker 1: and it has created uh an artistic interpretation of itself. Essentially,
Speaker 1: That's what I was sitting here thinking that it has
Speaker 1: the ability to understand what it looks like. And presumably
Speaker 1: it's not sitting around with a mirror, you know, looking
Speaker 1: inside the mirror, maybe a giant water droplet and looking
Speaker 1: at the reflection. But in some way it can figure
Speaker 1: out the dimensions of itself and recreate them. You know.
Speaker 1: It brings to mind that that episode we did on
Speaker 1: the Cracking and where we discuss the controversial theory that
Speaker 1: these there is some prehistoric um cephalopods that would take
Speaker 1: prehistorics sea creatures and crunch their bodies and create basically
Speaker 1: a work of art that resembles themselves, which if you
Speaker 1: if you just look at it that way, then yes,
Speaker 1: it's mind blowing but also a little potentially a little crazy.
Speaker 1: But the but the idea that that this particular squid,
Speaker 1: this prehistoric squid might have been making a decoy of
Speaker 1: itself out of the bodies of its victims, well that
Speaker 1: is a little more in keeping with what we're seeing
Speaker 1: here with the spiders. So I'm not saying it makes me,
Speaker 1: you know, fall behind that cracking theory, but I feel
Speaker 1: like it gives it a little more, a little more beef.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean that that's a spider as an artist,
Speaker 1: but what about as an architect, as an engineer? Ah? Yes,
Speaker 1: And in this we get into the world of the
Speaker 1: trap door spiders. These guys really up the anti here
Speaker 1: because what they are doing is they're they're kind of
Speaker 1: like taking the the idea of the you know, the
Speaker 1: funnel web, but they're they're they're taking it to the
Speaker 1: next level. So trapdoor spiders are essentially large spiders that
Speaker 1: are close relatives of tarantulas. And they build these two
Speaker 1: black tunnels in the side of of of a bank. Okay, uh.
Speaker 1: They dig the tunnel, then they reinforce it with a
Speaker 1: mixture of earth and saliva, and then they add a
Speaker 1: layer of silk on top of that. So it's not
Speaker 1: just I dug a hole and I'm gonna hide in it. No,
Speaker 1: They've crafted a hole. This is like the kind of
Speaker 1: tunnel of you know, you would hear about in the
Speaker 1: Great Escape, where there's all this like structuring behind it. Right,
Speaker 1: they've smoothed out the tunnel. And the reason for this
Speaker 1: is that because eventually this tunnel could be used for
Speaker 1: bringing up some young uns right right, and and just
Speaker 1: ease of movement through it. They again, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the idea of the funnel. They won't have maximum
Speaker 1: control over this environment, maximum maneuverability within it. So they
Speaker 1: have this uh, this this hole, this fancy tunnel on
Speaker 1: the side of this bank. But then they add the
Speaker 1: final touch, and the final touch is they add a
Speaker 1: trap door. Now there are two types. There's like a
Speaker 1: court type trap door, which is thick and it's fitted,
Speaker 1: and then there's this wafer type door, which is basically
Speaker 1: just a sheet of silk and dirt. But either way,
Speaker 1: they're both hinged like a like a really elaborate web hinge. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's amazing just to think that they could
Speaker 1: fit the trap door in there, and by the way
Speaker 1: that that one that's fit has a beveled edge, actually
Speaker 1: fits in there. But it's that hinge that makes it
Speaker 1: so amazing. And that's when you sit there and say,
Speaker 1: how could you say this is not a tool user. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they've used granted they've used something that's come
Speaker 1: out of their own body, but they combine that with
Speaker 1: elements of the world around them to create this totally
Speaker 1: artificial environment. Yeah. I mean, they've created this hatch that
Speaker 1: they can surprise prey with because they feel the vibrations
Speaker 1: of that prey coming along and then say ha ha,
Speaker 1: here I am snatch you and I'm gonna take you
Speaker 1: down into my tunnel, and maybe there's even some little
Speaker 1: children here that would like to eat. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes it depends on this the exact species, but sometimes
Speaker 1: they are there are branching corridors in the tunnel. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they are multiple trap doors. It's essentially they build a
Speaker 1: hobbit hole. It's like if if if you had a
Speaker 1: hobbit hole, and then if you got too close to
Speaker 1: the door, Froda would jump out and drag you inside
Speaker 1: and suck all your blood out. Why is that terrifying?
Speaker 1: I mean, Froda is not typically terrifying, but why in
Speaker 1: that context, just because he's up to no good? He's sneaky,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I feel like there's some sort of
Speaker 1: distent memory from Sin City that has melded with that
Speaker 1: to sor Yeah, well, he's always playing creepy rolls these days.
Speaker 1: He's in that remix of Maniac. I think it is
Speaker 1: all right. Well, let's take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we will continue just to to take
Speaker 1: out this house reports in the form of insects and traps.
Speaker 1: We're back, Robert, did you know that there is a
Speaker 1: terrible creature roaming the hundred Agar Woods. This is where
Speaker 1: the backs and fell backs. And yes, that's where Winnie
Speaker 1: the Pool lives, along with his friends and Christopher Robbins
Speaker 1: and some mythical creature they made up called the Backs.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember the facts. I remember the jagular Jack.
Speaker 1: You are, yes. And of course all these plots I
Speaker 1: have discovered, um, you know, reading these to my child
Speaker 1: and watching the movies. It's all based on miscommunication, isn't
Speaker 1: it comedy of errors? It's very shakespeareance. But in this instance,
Speaker 1: the backson is a misreading of a note that says
Speaker 1: back soon. Uh. You know, all the characters from the
Speaker 1: hundred Acre Woods think that Christopher Robbins has been taken
Speaker 1: by this backs, And so they create a pit, of
Speaker 1: course classic, and they cover the pit with a picnic blanket.
Speaker 1: They anchor it with stones, and they put an empty
Speaker 1: honey jar in the middle. Oh, I see where this
Speaker 1: is going, all to trap the Bacs in. But of
Speaker 1: course what happens. We need to poose the backs and
Speaker 1: all along. No, we need the Pooh, being a bear
Speaker 1: of very little brains eat great huge heart, knows that
Speaker 1: that honey pot is empty, and yet he still falls
Speaker 1: for it. He still sees it and he goes for it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: The point is traps abound everywhere. Children's imaginations, arachnids, and
Speaker 1: in something called ant lions. Yes, the ant lion has
Speaker 1: long been a favorite of mine. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was a kid living in rural Tennessee, we would, uh
Speaker 1: we I would go down to the to this sort
Speaker 1: of sandy spot near our house, and I would watch
Speaker 1: the ant lions in action and kind of and try
Speaker 1: to poke a little sticks down to rile them up. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with what an antline is, um,
Speaker 1: they are essentially the star Lac from Star Wars. Like
Speaker 1: basically that's the concept, except on a much smaller level.
Speaker 1: And they're just the perfect creature for the twelve year
Speaker 1: old boy and all of us. Um. By the way,
Speaker 1: my daughter calls me star like when she's mad at me. Really, so,
Speaker 1: the ant lion is actually the larval creature here. It's
Speaker 1: he's one of these situations where it's this particular species
Speaker 1: is most famous in its larval stage and it's incomplete stage. Uh,
Speaker 1: it eventually becomes an aunt griffin. Nobody really cares about
Speaker 1: the ant griffin because it's just kind of boring. It
Speaker 1: flies around, uh and you know, and and and breeds
Speaker 1: and all the important things that an adult insect needs
Speaker 1: to do. But this larval ant lion is the one
Speaker 1: that blazes and a pretty impressive trap. What the ant
Speaker 1: lion does is it digs a pit, all right, and
Speaker 1: it places itself at the bottom. So in the same
Speaker 1: way that a human might create a tiger pit with
Speaker 1: steaks at the bottom, it's doing a similar thing, except
Speaker 1: it is the steak all right. So if it were
Speaker 1: in the Winnie the Pooh plot, it would have been
Speaker 1: Tigger who jumped into the pit and waited for the facts.
Speaker 1: And I guess, yeah, pretty much. So these these guys
Speaker 1: are pretty amazing to look at two, because they have
Speaker 1: this really globular abdomen, you know, there's very much in
Speaker 1: keeping with a with a larval creature. But then they
Speaker 1: have this flattened head and these huge sickle shaped jaws. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they'll dig their way down into this hole with
Speaker 1: their you know, butt first, so that their heads are
Speaker 1: at the top, all right, and then they'll you know,
Speaker 1: they're so they're burrowed in at the bottom of this
Speaker 1: little pit. So an aunt comes along slides into the hole,
Speaker 1: crawls into the hole, and then they'll start flinging sand
Speaker 1: up one side of the pit, using upward jerks to
Speaker 1: their heads, making it difficult for the ant to escape.
Speaker 1: And then when the ant falls to the bottom, bam,
Speaker 1: they pierce them with those sickle shaped jaws and they
Speaker 1: suck them dry. Right, So you're probably thinking, why so fierce,
Speaker 1: why so silent? So the lambs here with this pit.
Speaker 1: The reason is that their larval stage is three years long.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a long time to be in that
Speaker 1: sort of stage where you know that you're you needed
Speaker 1: a lot of protein, a lot of energy to to
Speaker 1: grow out of. So think about newborn babies. Were they
Speaker 1: to remain in that stage for three years, they'd have
Speaker 1: to learn to do it on their own a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would. They would grow a very fierce set of mandibles,
Speaker 1: and they might start hunting woodland creatures with these pits.
Speaker 1: And you can kind of understand why they go to
Speaker 1: such lengths to trap prey. Yeah, because I think of
Speaker 1: the caterpillar, right. The caterpillar has to eat a lot
Speaker 1: of material in order to gear up for that metamorphosis
Speaker 1: into its next stage, into its its final stage of
Speaker 1: of life. But it gets to just eat, you know,
Speaker 1: limitless leaves to to. In order to to reach that point,
Speaker 1: the ant lion has to feed off a flesh and
Speaker 1: therefore it has to have these amazing sickle shaped jaws.
Speaker 1: It has to have this really cool um pit based
Speaker 1: hunting style and just laser in ambush to to suck
Speaker 1: itself some some some ants. The next guys are going
Speaker 1: to kind of make these these horrible fierce mandibles look
Speaker 1: like nothing, look like a dream. These are the Amazonian ants.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about a torture rack here. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the way that I would like to set this
Speaker 1: up for everyone is imagine you were at Chuck E
Speaker 1: Cheese or a carnival or some variation of a carnival
Speaker 1: or Chuck e Cheese. Right, what they always have they
Speaker 1: always have the whack a Mole area. Well they have cheese,
Speaker 1: but they have the whack a Mole game. Right. The
Speaker 1: whack amole game, of course, has is this this platform
Speaker 1: has all these holes and then these moles, these cartoon
Speaker 1: moles will pop up. And what happens when a mole
Speaker 1: pops up, Well you take this hammer and you just
Speaker 1: slam it, or you attempt to you. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: too fast usually for you to actually get the mole,
Speaker 1: and it's frustrating and you won't get your ticket and
Speaker 1: be able to turn that ticket in for a toy.
Speaker 1: This it's okay, Julie's okay. So this will make you
Speaker 1: feel better or maybe worse about the whole scenario. Imagine
Speaker 1: that you went up to one of these whack a
Speaker 1: Mole games and when you got too close, and let's
Speaker 1: say you reach out and actually touch the surface of it,
Speaker 1: several of the moles came out and grabbed your limbs
Speaker 1: and held you in place against the whack a Mole game.
Speaker 1: You can't move, you're struggling, but they're just holding on tight.
Speaker 1: They're pulling you tighter and tighter. And then a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other moles emerged on the other side of
Speaker 1: the machine, and they have hypodermic needles loaded with poison,
Speaker 1: and may you start jabbing you with those things and
Speaker 1: injecting you, and then suddenly you're paralyzed. They drag you
Speaker 1: away to their their din and do god knows what
Speaker 1: with you. They tear you limb from limb ah. This
Speaker 1: is the Amazonian aunt, my friends. This is basically what
Speaker 1: it goes on with these guys. I mean, instead of
Speaker 1: the little whack a mole platform, they're just using some
Speaker 1: plant material. Yeah, but they but they definitely constructed. And
Speaker 1: that's the amazing that they basically build their own whackamole
Speaker 1: machine here. Uh, they're torturous whackamo machine. They cut hairs
Speaker 1: from the stem of the plant that they inhabit, and
Speaker 1: they use the tiny fibers to build this spongey snare
Speaker 1: and uh, and indeed it's kind of like a torture
Speaker 1: rack because anything that walks across that surface. They It's
Speaker 1: important to know that they also drill the whackamole holes
Speaker 1: in the surface and if your lag, if you're an insect,
Speaker 1: and your leg will fit into one of those holes.
Speaker 1: When you walk across it, they will grab onto it
Speaker 1: because they're lurking underneath there. They'll grab onto it, hold
Speaker 1: you in place, and once they have you secured, a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of other ants will come up and have
Speaker 1: at you. Yeah, they'll sting you into paralysis. I really
Speaker 1: like this description from this BBC article called fierce ants
Speaker 1: build torture rac Once the prey is well secured by
Speaker 1: jaws fastening all its extremities. It has stretched over the
Speaker 1: platform like an ancient sacrifice to the gods. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like that. I like a clearly that, like the the
Speaker 1: author was just in total awe of this, uh this,
Speaker 1: uh the situation, and by all rights they should have been,
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's amazing and you have to I
Speaker 1: mean answer pretty amazing. Anyway, We've seen plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of ants. You know, they build these these fabulous colonies.
Speaker 1: In many cases, they're they're they're farming, they're they're bringing
Speaker 1: leaves back in order to to grow their own food
Speaker 1: within the you know, the belly of their colony. So
Speaker 1: we we know that answer pretty advanced. We know, we
Speaker 1: we've covered before some of the various ways that they
Speaker 1: wage war, that they that they build their societies. And
Speaker 1: here's just another example of their amazing ways of working
Speaker 1: together to uh to pull something off, in this case
Speaker 1: the limbs of another creature. Yeah. I was just thinking,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to revise, uh, my my idea
Speaker 1: of being you know, uh, becoming a little little futition Julie,
Speaker 1: a little tiny Julie and meeting my fate with a spider. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think that would be the most fearsome thing.
Speaker 1: I think it would be these guys, you think so, yeah,
Speaker 1: being torn as under? Yeah, stretched, m m, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd be hard pressed to decide which which one I
Speaker 1: would I would find the most nightmareck to encounter. I
Speaker 1: guess I tend to side with like the ant lion
Speaker 1: or the trapdoor spider, just because both of them are
Speaker 1: the idea of falling into something, falling into an environment
Speaker 1: where where you have no control and then you're consumed
Speaker 1: by the monster and you know, it's like a dark
Speaker 1: space or pit. I don't know it, just those those
Speaker 1: ideas feel me with with more dread fair enough, but
Speaker 1: I guess I would hold up. I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: I would have a better chance against the ant lion
Speaker 1: just because it's it's a little simpler trap, whereas the
Speaker 1: spider is going to outmaneuver me at every turn. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to say the trapdoor spider is the the
Speaker 1: one that scares me the most. You write the antline,
Speaker 1: they really have to rely on their ability and move
Speaker 1: from dirt quickly your way to try to get you
Speaker 1: off course. So you might have a chance there you know,
Speaker 1: mentioning the star Lac and the antline. I wonder, And
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of expanded Universe material out
Speaker 1: there about Star Wars, and I know some of our
Speaker 1: listeners have probably read it. Has anyone ever formulated an
Speaker 1: idea of the star Lac? That the star Lac is
Speaker 1: a larva and that it is eventually, if it eats enough,
Speaker 1: like you know, Jedi and Goblinman, that it's gonna you know,
Speaker 1: sprout wings and fly off and be some sort of fabulous,
Speaker 1: beautiful creature. I don't know, but I will now when
Speaker 1: I get home, consult my daughter's Star Wars encyclopedia to
Speaker 1: see what they have to say on the matter. That is,
Speaker 1: how big is that thing? I think I saw something
Speaker 1: like two characters, and don't She'll rattle off a bunch
Speaker 1: of them. I mean, I know a good amount of them,
Speaker 1: but there are some that seem extremely obscure to me.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's amazing. She'll tell me the species the
Speaker 1: home planet. Yeah, what's her? What's her absolute favorite? Starts
Speaker 1: Star Wars subject to talk about? Um subject? Well, it's
Speaker 1: Darth Vader. I mean, she's completely preoccupied by his duality,
Speaker 1: you know, that that he was Anakin and became Darth Vader.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of kids are intrigued by
Speaker 1: that because they begin to understand this idea of good
Speaker 1: and evil forces. Yeah, I remember, you know, being into
Speaker 1: Darth Vader as a kid. I think that was something
Speaker 1: that really attracted you to because it's like that first
Speaker 1: villain character that you you you realize it is not
Speaker 1: just this well of darkness that there is, uh, that
Speaker 1: they fell from grace. I mean it's you know, in
Speaker 1: that since it's kind of a satan character, but it's
Speaker 1: actually broken down a lot easier for you to consume
Speaker 1: than than the devil is at at that stage in
Speaker 1: your mental development, right, And he's been transformed armed in
Speaker 1: now he's sort of even um, he's even sort of
Speaker 1: trapped in his own I would say, not his design,
Speaker 1: but Emperor Palpatine's design, and he's sort ofly half man
Speaker 1: half droid. Yeah, he's he's a fabulous It's easy to
Speaker 1: overlook how fabulous the Darth Vader character is when you know,
Speaker 1: you see him in commercials and stuff nowadays and you've
Speaker 1: grown up with him, but you know, certainly a fabulous character,
Speaker 1: for sure. There's a really funny book out. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's exactly for kids, but it's about like
Speaker 1: Darth Vader and his relationship to his teenage daughter. I
Speaker 1: wish I could remember the title right now, but it's
Speaker 1: a very funny stuff. Awesome. I'll have to post it
Speaker 1: on the old Facebook. Well, there you go. It's a
Speaker 1: trap and it's a good thing. We ended up talking
Speaker 1: about Star Wars because we got the title for the
Speaker 1: episode from from Star Wars when they when they were fun.
Speaker 1: It's a trap, right exactly. So hey, do we have
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. Yeah, let's toss one out there. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's call over our droid, our mail droid, and see
Speaker 1: what we have to read here. All right, here's one
Speaker 1: that comes to us from Colin. Colin, right sin in
Speaker 1: response to our Uncanny music episode we did around um
Speaker 1: October and around Halloween. He says, Hi, Julian Robert, I
Speaker 1: was catching up on the podcast and I felt I
Speaker 1: absolutely had to suggest a soundtrack relating to the Uncanny
Speaker 1: Music episode. The Eerie soundtrack, produced by Jene Paptiste de
Speaker 1: lab Companies the two thousands seven French film Water Lilies. Robert,
Speaker 1: I think you will really like this album. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the podcast. PS. I do believe the film is available
Speaker 1: on Netflix. I actually I checked this out and uh
Speaker 1: and the the artist on this I believe he records
Speaker 1: under the name peril One and it's available. This is
Speaker 1: a soundtrack is available in full on SoundCloud from the
Speaker 1: artist himself, and it is really good. I listened to
Speaker 1: it like four times in a row when I was
Speaker 1: working the other day. So so thanks Colin for that
Speaker 1: music recommendation. Pretty cool. We've got a quick one from Jacqueline.
Speaker 1: She says, this is a wonderful show and I'm always
Speaker 1: left wishing it was longer. I just listened to the
Speaker 1: Normalcy Bias podcast. It was excellent and I'm fascinated to
Speaker 1: learn more. I was inspired to hunt down the episode
Speaker 1: on the rat King, which we referenced. In that episode,
Speaker 1: she says, I used to work at a semi secret
Speaker 1: underground animal testing lab. I was a rat keeper. It
Speaker 1: was under a complex of cutting edge hospitals. On breaks
Speaker 1: and lunchtime, the hazmat cleaner would come down and eat
Speaker 1: with us. He was an extremely eccentric man, but one
Speaker 1: of his rants was about the rat king. We never
Speaker 1: understood one on Earth he was talking about, and now
Speaker 1: it's making so much more sense after all these years.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful to have to have it come full circle
Speaker 1: and find out he wasn't as much of a loon
Speaker 1: as we thought he was l o L. I had
Speaker 1: never even considered that there was extant folklore or documented
Speaker 1: clusters of rats. I just thought it was something his
Speaker 1: mind concocted as a result of his fairly traumatic job.
Speaker 1: As always, I learned so much. Thank you for your
Speaker 1: work and the entertaining show. There's so much I love
Speaker 1: about this um. There's a semi secret underground animal testing.
Speaker 1: There's the Hasmat person who now I want to go
Speaker 1: to my my nearest has Matt person and find out
Speaker 1: all the secrets of every building. Perhaps I don't want
Speaker 1: because I love this because I'm inagining like an underground complex.
Speaker 1: And then there's like the break room and the mister room,
Speaker 1: and they're having uh, you know, lunch with this dude
Speaker 1: in a full hazmat suit. Who's who's really breaking down
Speaker 1: the seriousness of the rat king threat? Right? And they're like,
Speaker 1: oh man, he's gonna say he's gonna bring up the
Speaker 1: rat king. Good stuff. Thank you so much. Jaqueline. All right,
Speaker 1: So hey, you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: You want to share your thoughts on topics that we've
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