WEBVTT - Listener Mail: Atem 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:08.200 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:13.160 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener Mail. 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:16.319 My name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.120 Lamb is out today, so I'm going to be recording 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.680 this episode by myself, but Rob will be back with 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:26.720 me later this week. Right now, the plan for the 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:31.200 week is that I'm going to do listener mail solo today. Tomorrow, 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.239 which will be Tuesday, June eighteenth, is going to be 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:38.600 the last episode in our series of Vault episodes on Dreams. 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:42.479 Wednesday of this week will be a Monster Fact omnibus, 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:46.480 and then, hopefully, if we're able to get ready in time, 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:49.159 we should have a new core episode of Stuff to 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:52.840 Blow Your Mind for you on Thursday. If not, it'll 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:54.840 be another Vault and then we'll be with you for 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:57.920 Weird House on Friday. But either way, we should be 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:02.480 back with new content for you later this week. Okay, 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:05.959 I guess let's jump right into messages. We got a 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:10.160 bunch of great responses to our series on Cicadas. I'm 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:13.600 going to start with this message from Jim. I made 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:16.200 some edits for clarity when read aloud, I hope I 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:25.240 did everything here Justice Jim. Jim says, Hey, guys, hope you, 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:28.440 your families and your team had a nice break. When 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:30.959 I saw the title of this episode, I was excited 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:32.520 to hear that you were going to do a two 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.640 part episode on cicadas. The insect world is one of 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.040 my passions. By the way, great episode. I really enjoyed it. 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:43.520 Here in Canberra, Australia's capital city, we too experience every 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:48.400 couple of years a massive emergence of cicadas in some reserves. 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.960 If you don't have earmuffs on, it's impossible to work 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.400 or walk through the reserve. Is The noise that comes 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.480 from the cicadas is deafening. But halfway through the first episode, 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.240 I had a flashback of my childchildhood and I wanted 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.120 to share a memory from when I was about six 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.280 or seven years old, some forty years ago. I was 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.760 raised in Orange, a city in central New South Wales, 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.720 about twenty kilometers outside of Orange. There is a picnic 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:16.520 reserve in the middle of a pine plantation on a 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.080 creek called four Mile Creek. As kids, we would go 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:22.560 out there with the church group and on the way 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.560 out to four Mile Creek you would also go past 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:30.000 the agricultural department. I don't remember the environment that day 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:32.320 or the noise, but it must have been one of 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.840 those years when we had three species emerging. The most 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.400 common cicadas were the black ones, then the green ones 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.360 and the tiger ones, which were rare to come across. Now, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.840 someone I think it was older teenagers of the church, 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.600 told my two older brothers and me that the tiger 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:55.080 cicada you could sell to the agricultural department for ten cents. 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:57.280 Ten cents in the eighties, that was a lot of 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.320 money for a kid. I don't remember collecting the higer 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.280 cicadas until we came across the white ones. We called 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:08.359 them ghosts and were told that they were worth five 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.600 dollars each, so believing them, I guess the older kids. 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:15.320 Believing the older kids, we started to collect the cicadas 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:19.040 emerging out of their shells, and they were all white ones. 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:21.880 We collected a very large number of them. Through all 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:26.280 these cicadas, still in their exoskeleton or half emerged into 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:31.000 the back of our father's Kingswood station wagon. Thinking we 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.000 made a fortune, we ran off to play and have lunch. 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.680 Some time passed and we were called time to go home. 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:41.160 Running back to the car, we found our very upset 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.000 father with the front door open. He was not happy. 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:47.480 Cicadas were flying out of the car door he had opened. 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:49.680 Inside the front of the car, there were lots of 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.640 black and green cicadas flying around the back of the 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:54.880 station wagon, and the back seat had a lot of 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.600 empty exoskeletons just sitting there. What a scene it was 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.600 with a very upset down who made us remove all 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:05.360 the live cicadas and all of the exoskeletons from the car. 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.000 But we were distressed too. Where were all of our 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:13.720 ghost cicadas? Our fortune all gone? I paused the episode 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:15.720 and had a bit of a laugh. We didn't know 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:19.680 then that when insects emerge out of their exoskeletons, they 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:24.200 are molting, and newly emerged insects are often ghostly in color, 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:28.840 having reduced or absent pigment. Thanks guys made my day. 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.440 And then finally, Jim has some notes about the probable 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.800 species identification of the Australian cicadas from his story, so 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:40.200 he says, FYI, the black and most common cicadas are 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:44.760 called the red eye cicada or saltota morins the green 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:51.560 cicadas are called green grosser cicadas. These are Cyclochila australacea 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.200 and I looked these up. According to the Australian Museum's 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:58.360 info page, they have like different color variants of the 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:01.680 species that are called You've got the greengrocer, but then 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:07.040 you get the yellow Monday, chocolate Soldier, and blue moon. Interesting. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.560 And then Jim comes back and says, what we called 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:16.160 the tiger cicadas were actually called double drummers or sofa cicata. 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:19.239 All the best for now and keep up the great work, 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:23.040 looking forward to the next episode. Jim. Well, thank you 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:25.760 so much. Jim. You know this really got me thinking 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:30.480 not so much about insect biology, but about child psychology 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:33.720 and the difference between work and play with your story 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.240 about trying to collect all of the valuable cicadas for 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:41.120 the Agricultural department. So this story is kind of an 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.960 example of a genre of childhood experiences that I remember 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:49.400 from that age. Also that those experiences where you think 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.400 you have discovered a way to make lots of money 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:57.320 based on one or more mistaken or implausible premises. And 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.640 I remember these these schemes they often centered around to 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:06.960 gathering task like yours did, Like I remember deciding that 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:11.320 a certain kind of sparkly rock was actually a valuable 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.080 gym that you could sell, and I would like go 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:16.840 around digging them up and collecting them in a backpack. 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:23.279 There's an interesting thing about these like kid conceived cash 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.640 cow schemes, which is that the way I remember them, 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.920 in most cases, you're able to really believe in them 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:33.440 in the early stages, like it doesn't feel like you're 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.080 just playing pretend. You really think you're going to get 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:38.920 the money. But then at some point later on in 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.560 the scheme, it starts to feel less real and you 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:45.520 don't keep pushing forward as if you believe in it. 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.560 So Jim, in your story, if you hadn't gotten in 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.279 trouble with your dad and had to release all the bugs, 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.640 would you have actually insisted that your parents stop at 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:56.960 the agricultural department on the way home so you could 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.000 collect the bounties. I don't know in your particular case, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.880 but my memory of these types of schemes is that 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:06.120 by that point later in the day, like the magic 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:09.840 of the idea probably would have worn off, And if 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.920 I'd been in a similar situation, I probably would stop 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.240 caring or believing that it was possible to get the 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.600 money by the time I was heading home. But what 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:22.040 causes that change? Why did I believe the rocks were 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.400 valuable gyms in the first place, and what changed my 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:28.040 mind about it by the passage of a few hours. 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:31.640 I don't know anyway. Now that I've got a toddler, 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:33.400 I think about this kind of stuff a lot, and 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.880 it's interesting and kind of mysterious to remember those states 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.320 of mind that you could get into as a child, 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:43.960 where you're like fully engaged in a task. It's taking 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:47.400 all of your effort and attention, but it's actually not 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.440 clear to you whether you're doing serious, goal directed work 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:54.360 or just playing a game. But either way, thank you, 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:59.480 Jim Okay. This next message comes to us from Sierra. 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.680 It is about our Vault episodes on the Moons of Uranus. 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:13.160 Cer says, hello, longtime listener and big fan here. I'm 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.680 loving the episodes about the moons of Uranus, especially the 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.080 discussion of its proper pronunciation at the top of the show. 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:22.440 It made me want to share a mental image that 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:26.920 was conjured years ago and linger still. In some astrology 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.160 book I read once, Uranus was referred to as a 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:35.640 planet that rules rebellion, flippancy, revolution, perhaps due to its 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:41.120 odd rotation, Oh yeah, sideways rotation. Cira says it made 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.200 me picture Uranus as the iggy pop slash sid Vicious 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.360 of the planets, proudly rocking his name with green hair 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:54.040 and double birds to the audience laughing emoji. I hope 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:56.600 you can enjoy that thought too. Thanks for sharing the 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.960 good humor, wit and wisdom over the years, Sincerely, Sierra, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.480 Thank you, Sierra. All right, this next message comes from Chelsea. 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:08.840 This is another response to our series on cicadas, and 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:13.560 specifically this is about the etymological digression we took in 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.960 the episode looking into the history of the word bug, 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.280 which in its earliest use is in English referred to 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:24.520 a scarecrow. This is in an early English translation of 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:31.560 the Bible, or actually to a sort of deuterocanonical book 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:35.440 associated with the Bible. But so there's a scarecrow, or 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.760 it also referred to a hobgoblin like creature, a monster 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.640 of some kind, and then only later came to refer 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.960 to actual biological insects, and then later still came to 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:52.080 have this connotation of general problems like computer bugs and 0:09:52.160 --> 0:10:01.440 so forth. Chelsea says, hi, guys. Fact, the use of 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:04.800 the word bug to describe a computer bug dates from 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.880 nineteen forty seven, when the Harvard computer science team found 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:13.040 a moth trapped inside the Mark two, which was messing 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:17.320 with the electronics. Early computer programming language. Pioneer Grace Hopper 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.679 was a member of the team. So computer bugs are 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:25.120 named for the creepy crawleys. Keep up the awesome work, Chelsea. 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.160 Thank you, Chelsea. Well, so I did some looking into 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.600 this story, and one thing I came across is you 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:34.120 can actually look this up. There is a picture of 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:39.240 it on the National Museum of American History website. There 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.959 was a log book that was used by the computer 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:45.760 science team at Harvard while people were working on the 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:50.520 Mark to computer, and they actually physically taped the moth 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:54.840 found inside the computer into the logbook, so it's taped 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.040 there on the paper. You can see images of this, 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.960 and then they write underneath it first actual case of 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.920 a bug being found. I was also reading some articles 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:09.520 about this historical incident, and apparently there are some common 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:13.160 misconceptions about it, Like, Chelsea, you certainly did not say this, 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.880 but a lot of people say that this was Grace 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.200 Hopper's personal log book, and from what I've read, that 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.439 seems to be not true, that it doesn't look like 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:26.240 her handwriting, and it's probably just said that because she's 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:29.120 a famous person who was there at the time working 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.560 with this kind of working with this technology. Another misconception 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:36.320 I've seen written about this was that this was the 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.520 first ever use of the word bug in a sort 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:43.280 of technical engineering context, which is certainly not the case. 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.760 There are instances of this going way back back to 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.319 Thomas Edison wrote about bugs in some of his inventions 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:53.040 and so forth. But it does appear that Grace Hopper 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:58.160 was a very enthusiastic early user of the term bug 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.600 in a specifically in a compute context. So it is 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.280 it's not the case that this was the first use 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.160 of bugs in engineering or in technology, as some people 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:13.199 have said. But I was reading about this misconception in 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:18.280 an interesting article for the for the I Tripole Annals 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.839 of the History of Computing. There was an article in 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.720 that journal by an author named Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, a 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.400 historian of science and technology. I just want to read 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:32.360 a paragraph from her paper. Kidwell writes, quote in summary, 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:36.880 the phrase computer bug has served several functions. Talking about 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:41.480 bugs rather than flaws appeals to the wit of programmers 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:44.880 and computer users. In the early days of computing, the 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.880 phrase was used primarily by a relatively small group of 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:52.160 experts marking their special status. At the same time, having 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:55.720 a short, general term that covers a wide variety of 0:12:55.760 --> 0:13:00.320 flaws has been useful, particularly because the exact source of 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:04.640 the error was often unknown. Calling such problems bugs rather 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.480 than failures suggests that they are small faults that can 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.640 be corrected, not a general in thinking, and not a 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.400 general failure in thinking or design. This usage had long 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.840 been a refuge of US inventors and served the optimistic 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:23.959 nature of computer designers and programmers. So I think that's 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:27.120 kind of an interesting point about the psychology of engineering, 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.160 or the psychology of invention and technical work, that even 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:35.240 the language you select to describe the problems you face 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:38.880 in your work can color your emotions in how in 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:41.800 how you have to go about addressing it, and that 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.320 by using cute little terms like bug, which implied that 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:49.120 the problem is external, implied that the problem is small, 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.920 implied that the problem is you know, it's not something 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.200 that is wrong with the general approach or design of 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.080 the system. But it's just like a little little thing 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:04.000 that got in there and went wrong. Kind of helps 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:07.840 you maintain a positive attitude in addressing problems and fixing them. 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:19.200 So anyway, thank you so much, Chelsea. All right. This 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:22.760 last message is also in response to cicadas. This is 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.680 one that sent me down a bit of a research trail. 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.960 So this comes from Jeremy. Jeremy says, hello, Robert and Joe, 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.360 with reference to the recent rise of the cicadas episode 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.480 and the volume of their mating call. We thankfully don't 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.480 get cicadas in Europe, but we do have a contender 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:45.160 for the loudest insect and winner in the volume generated 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:50.440 in proportion to size category, the lesser water boatman or 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:57.360 micro necta. This is spelled scholt Zi. I don't know 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:01.840 if that's sculptz or schultzy. I'm gonna say schultze. The 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.000 micronecta Schultze is only zero points zero seven inches or 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:11.119 two millimeters long, yet can generate ninety nine point five decibels, 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:14.040 with peaks up to one hundred and five decibels. And 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:17.560 although this sound is created underwater, it can be heard 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.720 on the banks of the streams, rivers, and lakes where 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:25.080 it lives. Now, that in itself is amazing, and I 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:27.120 want to go into some more detail about that in 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.360 just a minute, but I've got a note on what 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.720 Jeremy is about to say in the email some context 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:36.480 to remind listeners. In the first Decade episode, we talked 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:41.600 about how insects like crickets and grasshoppers make sounds mostly 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.680 through a process called stridulation, which means rubbing, rubbing one 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.200 part of the body against another. So, for example, mail 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:53.000 crickets rub the edges of their four wings together their 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.240 front pair of wings. They rub those together using what's 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.960 called a file and scraper system. So basically, one wings 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:02.520 surface is like a stick and the other has a 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:05.520 series of ridges like the teeth of a comb, and 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:09.120 rubbing them together against one another produces a scraping sound. 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:13.480 Male cicadas, on the other hand, do not use strigulation. 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:18.160 They have dedicated sound producing organs called timbals, which are 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:23.360 these corrugated kiteness membranes kind of like drumheads, connected to 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:27.120 muscles and rib like structures underneath, and these are on 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.720 either side of the body under the wings, and the 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:34.360 cicadas make their sound by rapidly flexing and buckling these 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:38.480 organs and then allowing them to snap back into place anyway. 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:43.240 With that context back to Jeremy's message, Jeremy rites, in 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:47.360 contrast to the leg, wing or rib based sound generation 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:51.640 methods used by insects like cicadas, the lesser water boatmen 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:56.320 stridulates its penis against the ridged surface of its abdomen 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:01.280 to create the sound. And then Jeremy and some references 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:06.359 and also a paper, and he summarizes the paper by saying, quote, 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:09.480 it is theorized that a trapped bubble of air is 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:14.359 used to amplify the volume. Best regards Jeremy. Well, thank 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.000 you Jeremy for writing in and bringing up this amazingly 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:20.399 interesting animal. Now a couple of things to address at 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.240 the top here, I had to mention something from the 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:26.560 earlier part of your message about not having cicadas in Europe. 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:29.280 I double check to be sure, but there definitely are 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:34.480 cicadas in Europe. For example, multiple species in the genus Cicadeta, 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:38.399 like Cicadeta montana that's also known as the new forest 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:40.960 cicada is just one of the species found in Europe. 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:44.880 It's in England in places throughout continental Europe. But from 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:47.040 what I've been able to dig up, all of the 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:51.600 species of cicadas found anywhere in Europe are annuals, the 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.399 kind that emerge every year, as opposed to the kinds 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.160 we have in North America with broods on those thirteen 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:01.720 and seventeen year cycles. But also, I love your note 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:06.440 bringing attention to the lesser water boatmen, and it's incredibly loud, 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.640 stridulating penis. I had to know more, so I did 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:14.000 some investigation on this insect. So again, as Jeremy says, 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:19.720 the species is Micronecta schultzy. Like cicadas. The lesser water 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:23.000 boatmen are of the order Hymiptera, so they are also 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.560 the true bugs. Remember that's what the hymipterns are, the 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:30.520 true bugs, with the most distinctive body features being they're 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:34.880 piercing and sucking mouthparts. So hymipterans usually have a sort 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.960 of hinged needle called a rostrum on their mouth which 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:41.760 they used to puncture a food substrate which could be 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.280 a plant or an animal and suck nutrients out. In 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:48.440 the case of water boatmen, it seems they generally they're 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:52.520 not predatory. They generally suck nutrients from algae. So I 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.960 looked up the original paper that reported this stridulation miracle 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:59.000 and it goes back to the year twenty eleven. So 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:04.000 the paper is by Rome Sewer, David Mackie and James F. C. Windmill, 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:07.760 published in Plus one in twenty eleven, and the paper 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:12.360 is called so Small, So Loud extremely high sound pressure 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:17.679 level from a pigmy aquatic insect carrixiity micronectiny. So the 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.840 authors here begin with some context for their research and 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:25.280 noting some common difficulties in sound based communication among animals. 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:29.480 Sound producing animals often want to reach as many receivers 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.200 as possible with their sounds, and they also want their 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:36.160 sounds to contain as much information as possible. In order 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.400 to reach more receivers, a very simple strategy is make 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.879 your signal louder. But making a louder signal comes with 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:46.800 some difficulties. One problem, in the words of the authors 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.840 is that quote when considering acoustic communication, the production of 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:55.399 a loud and intelligible signal is not an easy task. 0:19:55.560 --> 0:20:00.000 Even for human built sound systems. The system can be overdriven, 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:06.000 distorting time and frequency parameters and consequently impairing information transfer. 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.280 So in other words, selecting for loudness can harm the 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:13.800 clarity of the information being transferred, and you can think 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:15.920 about this like you know, turning a speaker up until 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.600 it gets distorted and it's hard to understand what's being said. 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:22.639 Another problem is that how loud you can get is 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:27.080 usually constrained by what the authors call morphological characteristics, the 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.560 size and the shape of your body and sound producing organs. 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.760 In short, a small object usually cannot produce a very 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:37.480 loud sound, and this is why if you look at 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.280 lists of the loudest animals, most of them are also 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:44.640 the largest animals, so you get like whales and elephants 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:49.680 as the largest animals. However, there's another way you can 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:52.680 look at sound production, which is not just purely what 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:57.120 is the loudest sound achievable, but what is the ratio 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:01.000 of sound production to body size. Animals are able to 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.800 produce the loudest sounds with the smallest bodies and the 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:09.080 smallest sound producing organs. So here the authors turn to 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:13.520 freshwater insects, many of which can communicate by sound. Since 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:17.880 sound is a useful way of transmitting information when visibility. 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:23.400 Visual visibility is low, such as in murky water Micronecta 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.600 schultzi is an example of an insect that uses sound 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:30.879 based communication for pair formation in mating, for males and 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:34.680 females to find one another, for males to attract females, 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:41.320 and to attract females to initiate mating. It's possibly also 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:45.879 used for male male competition competition between males for access 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:50.119 to mating. The authors of this paper collected specimens of 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:54.400 this insect from a river and from a pond, both 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:58.360 located near Paris in France, and measure their sound production 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:02.240 in controlled conditions. Apparently a lot of the research here 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:04.800 was just aimed at making sure they were getting accurate 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:08.440 readings about the sound production, and so, just as Jeremy 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.199 said in the email, the authors did indeed find that 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:15.080 these tiny insects were able to create shockingly powerful sounds 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:18.320 for their size. When measured at a distance of one meter, 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:22.440 the intensity of the sound was roughly a seventy nine 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.359 decibel sound pressure level, with peaks of ninety nine to 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:30.680 one hundred decibels. A BBC report writing this up compared 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:33.919 this to the approximate loudness of sitting in the front 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:38.680 row listening to a loud symphony orchestra, except that's kind 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:40.760 of hard to make as a comparison in your mind, 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:45.280 because the symphony orchestra is a large like composite system 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:48.560 with many different sound production points. I guess the case 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:51.040 here would be like you're listening to an orchestra that 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.200 is a hair sized sexual organ of a two millimeter 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:58.240 insect about a meter away from your head. The author 0:22:58.320 --> 0:23:00.840 is right that while this is by no means the 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:04.439 loudest in the animal kingdom quote, when scaled to body 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:07.040 length and compared to two hundred and twenty seven other 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:11.920 acoustic species, the acoustic energy produced by Imschultzi appears as 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:18.199 an extreme value, outperforming marine and terrestrial mammal vocalizations. So, 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:22.560 according to these calculations, it is the loudest animal relative 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:25.480 to its body size. So, as the title of the 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:29.879 paper says, so small, so loud, if that's true, I 0:23:30.000 --> 0:23:32.920 was wondering why don't we notice hearing them more often? 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:35.200 Like why do even if you know you don't necessarily 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:37.560 have these around where you live. Why don't you read 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:40.760 things of people just commonly talking about the sounds they make, 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:43.480 the way people talk about the sounds made by cicadas. 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:47.720 I think the answer is probably because they make these 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:53.160 sounds underwater and people are usually above water, and from 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:56.040 what I was reading, about ninety nine percent of the 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:59.119 intensity of the sound is lost when it crosses the 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:03.200 air water inner though, though that doesn't mean you can't 0:24:03.200 --> 0:24:05.720 hear it again. People on the banks of waterways where 0:24:05.720 --> 0:24:09.240 these animals live are still sometimes able to hear them, 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:12.160 which is just a pretty incredible thing in itself, given 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:15.800 how much reduction in the sound there is from crossing 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:18.879 up out of the water into the air above. So 0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:21.960 it just indicates how loud the original sound is that 0:24:22.000 --> 0:24:25.480 people ever hear it at all. Couple more questions, how 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:28.600 exactly does this animal make the sound? In one sense 0:24:28.640 --> 0:24:31.880 the authors know the answer, and in another sense they 0:24:32.080 --> 0:24:35.360 said they did not. So the known part is that, 0:24:35.880 --> 0:24:39.480 as mentioned in Jeremy's email, the male water boatman rubs 0:24:39.520 --> 0:24:42.879 a sexual organ against a part of its abdomen to 0:24:42.920 --> 0:24:45.760 generate the sound. This organ is in many articles about 0:24:45.760 --> 0:24:49.359 this called a penis, but the paper clarifies it is 0:24:49.400 --> 0:24:54.400 actually the male's right side peramere rubbing against a lobe 0:24:54.520 --> 0:25:00.280 on the eighth abdominal segment. Perameres seem somewhat equivalent to 0:25:00.320 --> 0:25:03.760 a penis. They are paired sexual organs on either side 0:25:04.119 --> 0:25:08.600 of the abdomen. The paper calls them genitalia appendages, which 0:25:08.680 --> 0:25:10.960 I was reading about it seems like they often serve 0:25:11.000 --> 0:25:16.119 as clasping devices during copulation. The unknown part, according to 0:25:16.200 --> 0:25:19.240 the authors of this paper in twenty eleven, and people 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:23.679