Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alison adam Elk, the science editor how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science rider
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com. And today we're going to
Speaker 1: be trading some amazing infestation stories. Have you had any
Speaker 1: infestations at your house before? I wouldn't necessarily call them infestations,
Speaker 1: but sure we've had various vermin and pess invader home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what, Well, I did live in New York for
Speaker 1: a while, so I've dealt with my fair shirt. No,
Speaker 1: I've never had rats. What's New York? It's it's everywhere
Speaker 1: right well, of course, but especially on garbage night, the
Speaker 1: night that you know, people set out there. You'd have
Speaker 1: to you'd be walking across the sidewalk, you know, on
Speaker 1: your way to whatever it is you're doing in the city,
Speaker 1: and the rats would come out there, you know, crawl
Speaker 1: out from the little alleys to to get to the
Speaker 1: garbage that was by the curb on the sidewalk. It's delightful.
Speaker 1: It was terrible. It was quite terrible. What about you
Speaker 1: infestation stories? Well, rats, this is kind of this brings
Speaker 1: up an interesting story. I grew up. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of my growing up in the country, if you will, uh,
Speaker 1: more of a country mountain, a country setting. So so
Speaker 1: I was used to squirrels, right And then, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a few years back, moved down to Atlanta, and uh,
Speaker 1: I was. I had to drop off my my girlfriend
Speaker 1: at the time now wife for a photo assignment and
Speaker 1: uh and this was like downtown Atlanta, and I pulled
Speaker 1: the car into It's one of these little parking lots.
Speaker 1: It's kind of halfway stuck between this play you know,
Speaker 1: kind of an urban contested space, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: near a Marta track, which for your non Atlanteans is
Speaker 1: the public transportation down here. And uh, I I heard
Speaker 1: something rummaging around over and I'm like, oh, squirrels. So
Speaker 1: I go over to look at the squirrels. And why
Speaker 1: would you do that? Well, because I was new to
Speaker 1: the city. I'm just not used to being around a
Speaker 1: rat so much. So I'm like, oh, I'll see what
Speaker 1: the squirrels are up to. And what do I see
Speaker 1: when I get over there? Martyr rat eating a diaper.
Speaker 1: So that was that was kind of a traumatic welcome
Speaker 1: to the city moment. Luckily, we've not dealt with infestations
Speaker 1: of rats, but we have had some squirrels in the attic,
Speaker 1: which we dealt with with some sort of pepper sprinkles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, a friend of mine UM actually thought she
Speaker 1: had an infestation of flying squirrels in her attic, which
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty hilarious. Um, but it turned
Speaker 1: out that she was a little deluded, and there are
Speaker 1: rats instead my flying squirrels. We don't have flying squirrels.
Speaker 1: I think she just could tolerate the idea of flying
Speaker 1: squirrel if you're gonna, you know, go into fantasy land
Speaker 1: with it. I'm not sure. I'm not sure, but I
Speaker 1: think she did get rid of him. So today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some more historic gnarly infestations. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, some of them are pretty recent. So
Speaker 1: these are these are really hellish infestations in some cases
Speaker 1: some pretty severe examples that make our dealings with squirrels,
Speaker 1: martyr rats, and flying squirrels UM seem rather one day.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and yes, so I'm gonna kick off with
Speaker 1: the first one. Yes, caterpillars in northern libraria. This just yeah,
Speaker 1: last year January two thousand nine, UM thousands of librarian
Speaker 1: villagers UM fled uh like wasted farms, overrun homes, UM
Speaker 1: and like when pushed towards towards the border because there
Speaker 1: were just squirming masses of these black, hairy caterpillars just
Speaker 1: eating everything. They were even like falling into wells, fouling
Speaker 1: up the water supply, and not just their their bodies,
Speaker 1: but like their their feces, like caterpillar feces was poisoning
Speaker 1: the wells and waterways. So it's just like you know,
Speaker 1: like scorched earth thanks to this caterpillar infestations. So do
Speaker 1: they try to stop them, Well, they're they're pretty they're
Speaker 1: pretty tough to stop. We're talking like forty six villages
Speaker 1: were hit by these. They had eight teams, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to clean clean up the areas and all and uh.
Speaker 1: But but the key would be to hunt down um
Speaker 1: the winged adult moth that go off and spread even
Speaker 1: more of this, the wing moths that that spread the
Speaker 1: problem even for even farther. They travel by night, they
Speaker 1: breed rapidly, and they also get really high up in
Speaker 1: the tree canopies and makes it harder to hit him
Speaker 1: with pesticide, so it was just a foul situation for
Speaker 1: everybody involved. It sounds like a crazy caterpillar. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, why don't we stick with the bug world
Speaker 1: and I'll talk about termites here here in Georgia, we
Speaker 1: are quite quite familiar with termites. In fact um, when
Speaker 1: you buy a new house you need to have a
Speaker 1: termite bond, which kind of freaked me out because I
Speaker 1: bought my first house in Georgia and I remember thinking
Speaker 1: about this a lot and like scanning all the foundation
Speaker 1: walls for the tunnels and whatever. Um. But it seems
Speaker 1: like pretty much every house down in the South has
Speaker 1: had termite damage at some point or another, as long
Speaker 1: as it's old enough. So termites are ubiquity us. They're
Speaker 1: found all over the place. They're found in China, they're
Speaker 1: found in the continental United States, are also even found
Speaker 1: in you know, places like South Africa or Hawaii. Um,
Speaker 1: and termites, what do they like to eat? They like
Speaker 1: to eat wood. But we we know that from the cartoons.
Speaker 1: There was some cartoon Affrica, it was Mickey or or
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny where they have the situation where it's like
Speaker 1: they're fighting the termines end up building like a maybe
Speaker 1: it was Tom and Jerry where they build like a
Speaker 1: metal house. That sounds like more Tom and Jerry, I
Speaker 1: would think, not Mickey. So anyway, so termites build these
Speaker 1: huge underground nests. They can be as big as like
Speaker 1: three hundred feet, and they make these nests out of
Speaker 1: kind of their own homegrown concrete. It's like dirt and
Speaker 1: plant matter and fee season salve, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: So they build this home base and then they spread
Speaker 1: out and they start mentioned on anything from you know,
Speaker 1: a tree to a high rise. And then once a
Speaker 1: year they take to the skies and they established more colonies.
Speaker 1: So humans have built a lot of civilization from would
Speaker 1: you guys know this, and termites have happily threatened to
Speaker 1: bring a lot of that civilization crashing down UM. Most
Speaker 1: notably and pretty interestingly, in two thousand five, we had
Speaker 1: a hurricane comtunity. You guys all remember that, h Well,
Speaker 1: in fact, term it's might have been implicated in the
Speaker 1: hurricane UM and that's because they had apparently ravage sections
Speaker 1: of the flood barriers UM to the point of weakness.
Speaker 1: And this isn't a new behavior. In fact, the termites
Speaker 1: had already feasted on Chinese levies like in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. So it's a bigger deal than you might think.
Speaker 1: It's affecting more than your house. It's affecting you know,
Speaker 1: structural thing infrastructure. Yeah. So yeah, those are two examples
Speaker 1: of some pretty sucky insects. Really, um so let's move
Speaker 1: on to what we generally think of is a less
Speaker 1: sucky insect. That would be the honeybee. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: nice clean civilization going on there and produces delicious honey, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and we like to cultivate them and uh
Speaker 1: have them grow their own honey and then steal it
Speaker 1: from them and uh and sell it in little bear
Speaker 1: shaped jars for some ungodly reason. So the Brazilian guvern
Speaker 1: Aska genetesis by the name of doctor Warwick Care to
Speaker 1: breed a new kind of honeybee that would thrive down
Speaker 1: there and be really effective. What does doctor care come
Speaker 1: up with? Well, it's it's like something out of a
Speaker 1: like a mad science movie or string. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: would imagine gold Bloom playing you will either gold Blin
Speaker 1: would pay play the doctor or who would play like
Speaker 1: the you know, the mathematician who's like you can't breathe
Speaker 1: these two bees because they're kind of you know, he
Speaker 1: would be really manic and awesome about it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so care across the African honeybee with a European honeybee,
Speaker 1: all right, to create the Africanized honeybee, which we of
Speaker 1: course know now as the killer be. So ended up
Speaker 1: being a really effective be but also just like a
Speaker 1: really aggressive expansionist be. How fast we're talking, we're talking
Speaker 1: two hundred miles per year, which you know for bees.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys are small, um and by the
Speaker 1: ninety nineties they've conquered all of South and Central America
Speaker 1: and we're busy establishing their hives in the southern United States. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing made a lot of killer bees.
Speaker 1: I think, I think we're a big trend with the
Speaker 1: news programs for a while, but I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think I was old enough to really appreciate them at
Speaker 1: the time or to be fearful. But it's not just
Speaker 1: you know, a senseless moniker. These these guys can be
Speaker 1: deadly because they're they're far more defensive and just in
Speaker 1: far more aggressive. You know, a guy will be out
Speaker 1: on his tractor or something, and they'll they'll react to
Speaker 1: the sound and just like in mass you know, go
Speaker 1: and um and swarm him. Swarms. We're talking thousands in
Speaker 1: a swarm, like tens of thousands, thirty thousand killer bees
Speaker 1: in a swarm, um just coming after anything that's close
Speaker 1: enough to you know, make a kind of make a
Speaker 1: loud noise or or whatever that's kind of freak them out.
Speaker 1: You know. The real tragedy here. There's not just people
Speaker 1: that are affected by this, but but other be and
Speaker 1: honey bee colonies that just get wiped out in the
Speaker 1: wake of the killer bees because they're that effective and
Speaker 1: they just grow through an area and bam there then,
Speaker 1: so let's just bury those bees and wander over to
Speaker 1: a new species, the thread crab, the crimson crab over
Speaker 1: on Christmas Island, the Christmas Island red crab. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: Christmas Island, for those of you guys not aware of it,
Speaker 1: is an Australian island in the Indian Ocean and for
Speaker 1: residents of Christmas island's kind of a festive sounding place.
Speaker 1: There's a song about it, Like to spend Christmas on
Speaker 1: Christmas all right, right, I had forgotten about that. Well,
Speaker 1: their holiday season kicks off not necessarily with that song,
Speaker 1: but with an invasion of dred and twenty million red
Speaker 1: crabs each November, and these crabs come running pell mill
Speaker 1: through cities and towns, determined to get it on crab
Speaker 1: style essentially. So it's not always the case. Usually the
Speaker 1: land crabs are hanging out in the rainforest just looking
Speaker 1: for food. But every year they have to they have
Speaker 1: to reproduce, right, so they make this arduous trek to
Speaker 1: the beach to lay and fertilize some eggs. And as
Speaker 1: they go, they flood the streets. They march into your homes,
Speaker 1: they wander into closets and maybe hang out under your bed,
Speaker 1: and basically nowhere is safe for a few days. So
Speaker 1: that that really doesn't sound too fun to me. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine like crunching through crabs. You're walking down the street. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then once the once the babies are born, right,
Speaker 1: So that's the first wave, is when the the adults
Speaker 1: come out to lay their eggs. But then you have
Speaker 1: the babies being born, so you have all these eggs
Speaker 1: finally hatching, and you have round two. So all the
Speaker 1: adult crabs have since gone back to the forest, but
Speaker 1: all the babies are are coming out, and they invade
Speaker 1: from the sea, they come from the tides, and I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like this really massive crab larva. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's maybe not so attractive to somebody like me,
Speaker 1: but it is a wonder of nature, no doubt. The
Speaker 1: cats just go nuts for it because it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: constant batting at crabs for days. You always have to
Speaker 1: work in a cat reference to Well, I actually saw
Speaker 1: a video that like the second waves coming through and
Speaker 1: it just looks like it's like moving sand or like
Speaker 1: an like a flood of lentils or something, you know,
Speaker 1: And then there's there's this cat just going completely crazy
Speaker 1: swatting at this this stream of crabs. Well, and just
Speaker 1: to give you an idea of the scope, each female
Speaker 1: produces about a hundred thousand babies, so the second wave
Speaker 1: is even more massive. And then the newborns will eventually
Speaker 1: go back to the forest um as their parents do.
Speaker 1: But basically they blank at their roads and towns for
Speaker 1: for days. It's um. It's interesting too. I read that
Speaker 1: UM that numbers have actually been down in recent years,
Speaker 1: and they're blaming this on an invasive species called they
Speaker 1: and I'm not making this up. The yellow crazy aunt
Speaker 1: yellow crazy and uh. And you know, we often get
Speaker 1: bit out of shape over the over invasive species, generally
Speaker 1: with good reason because we're generally the cause of an
Speaker 1: invasive species. Um. But they say that if you look
Speaker 1: at the history books, you don't see as you don't
Speaker 1: see mention of this massive red crab tide on Christmas
Speaker 1: Island and that's be And they think it's because a
Speaker 1: read of rat called McLear's rat when extinct there in
Speaker 1: en three So I used to keep the population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they think that this is this rat kept the population
Speaker 1: in check for the long for the longest, and then
Speaker 1: when when that rat went extinct, bam, population explosion. And
Speaker 1: now we have an invasive species that's come in and
Speaker 1: kind of put things back into balance. Perhaps, uh, time
Speaker 1: will tell. So let's move on to something else, something
Speaker 1: a little more furry and disgusting. Perhaps, how about mice.
Speaker 1: I actually saw a mouse in the house about maybe
Speaker 1: it was a year ago. But we got those little
Speaker 1: plug in things that may or may not work. They
Speaker 1: make a little noise, they make no is it like
Speaker 1: a restorable you know, it's like a little like a
Speaker 1: little speaker you plug in and it supposedly makes a
Speaker 1: high pitched noise that only affects rodents. Um. But I've
Speaker 1: read some things where people are saying, hey, these don't work.
Speaker 1: I don't know. All I know is that the cat
Speaker 1: didn't care there was a mouse in the house, so
Speaker 1: we had to do something else about it. Oh, you
Speaker 1: don't have a mouse or cat. No, no, She'll bring
Speaker 1: in the occasional chipmunk. That's it. But these problems are
Speaker 1: nothing compared to what they get in Australia, where they
Speaker 1: and and again you really have to see a video
Speaker 1: of this to to get the full impression. But they
Speaker 1: have these uh these regular just floods of mice, Yes,
Speaker 1: the great mice plagues of Australia. Like imagine opening a
Speaker 1: barn door and the barn just vomiting out, just blankets
Speaker 1: of blankets of mice, just stirring and squeaking in every direction.
Speaker 1: You can't even step anywhere because they're like little bodies
Speaker 1: underneath foot, underneath your feet the whole time, like a
Speaker 1: living carpet. Uh. These these occur roughly every three years
Speaker 1: in Australia. Uh. They running through the grain growing regions
Speaker 1: and causing get this upwards of a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars. Absolutely, and they'll they'll go like kind of
Speaker 1: like the crabs. They just flow through anything they can
Speaker 1: get into, except uh, you know, their their mice. They're
Speaker 1: a little better at getting into things like the red
Speaker 1: crabs of Christmas Island. These these things reproduce like crazy.
Speaker 1: They can breed six weeks after birth and a single
Speaker 1: pair of mice can produce five hundred offspring in just
Speaker 1: twenty one weeks. Uh, basically we're talking a thousand mice
Speaker 1: for every two point five acres of land. So I
Speaker 1: mean they pull out all the stops to fight these things.
Speaker 1: We're talking chemicals, even flamethrowers. You can find you know,
Speaker 1: no joke, You can find videos of this Australian farmers
Speaker 1: coming out with the flamethrower hosing them down, and I
Speaker 1: mean it's like something out of you know, generally you
Speaker 1: don't only keep flamethrowers around for alien infestations, but but
Speaker 1: they use them on mice. So oh wait, wait, there's
Speaker 1: one more thing. Get this another just astounding factor. One
Speaker 1: Australian village reportedly killed five hundred and forty four tons
Speaker 1: of mice in just five months. Just think of like
Speaker 1: the sheer volume disgusting like mouse tonnage. There, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of noss tonnage. But I'm sorry, we need really
Speaker 1: need to move on to other disgusting furry things like rats.
Speaker 1: They're larger brethren. So we can't get through this podcast
Speaker 1: without mentioning the rat king of medieval Germanic folklore. And Robert,
Speaker 1: I know you love the rat king. I don't really
Speaker 1: know why. It's just it's I mean, it's it's germatic,
Speaker 1: it's medieval, it's it's linked to plague. It's right. So
Speaker 1: a rat king was basically you have several rats that
Speaker 1: are joined by tangled and broken tails. It's like if
Speaker 1: you put like when you keep yarn in a drawer
Speaker 1: and then you open it up and then all the
Speaker 1: yarn is tangled, except in this case there's like fecal
Speaker 1: matter and grime holding blood holding it all together. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's disgusting. So rat rat kings are basically fictional, but
Speaker 1: the folklore when that cryptosological anyway. I mean there's some
Speaker 1: people that make heavy they actually have specimens that are
Speaker 1: probably fake, but still they have specimens of these like
Speaker 1: these horrible dead rats kind of like mummified and tangled together.
Speaker 1: Moving on, moving on. The According to folklore, if you
Speaker 1: saw one of these rat kings, and that meant you
Speaker 1: had a pretty bad rat problem on your hands, and
Speaker 1: probably plague, which would probably be a good guess. If
Speaker 1: you had enough rats where they can't even like congreg
Speaker 1: gate in the same area without getting intertwined, you probably
Speaker 1: would have some some sort of hideous diseases on hand, right, Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: so you have some serious bubonic plague going back in
Speaker 1: medieval times and today rats as we know haven't gone anywhere.
Speaker 1: They're stuck around to keep spreading disease and mess with
Speaker 1: our urban infrastructure and pretty much everything else. Clearly, we
Speaker 1: have a pretty successful species on your hands. Even with
Speaker 1: sanitation and pest control, we just keep on having rat
Speaker 1: infestations and I'm sure they're not going to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: So one of the most interesting infestations, um actually occurred
Speaker 1: at the Paris suit back in two thousand four. Um
Speaker 1: So employees of the zoo went on strike. And why
Speaker 1: did they go on strike? Well, because there are swarms
Speaker 1: of rats, uh Parisian rats. The storms of Parisian rats
Speaker 1: where they're key complaint and so the Paris Do said okay, Um,
Speaker 1: so they had to have the animals transferred to other
Speaker 1: zoos temporary because the the animals of the zoo were endangered.
Speaker 1: They were terrorists by these crazy hordes of rats. So
Speaker 1: you had you know, the lions, the tigers, and the
Speaker 1: bears evacuated to protect them from these you know, squeaking,
Speaker 1: gnawing hordes. Yeah. I think that's all you all you
Speaker 1: really have to know about the rat is that in
Speaker 1: in the modern age, um, things like lions, uh, and elephants,
Speaker 1: the great beasts of the jungle or are you know,
Speaker 1: protected in cages by their human masters. Meanwhile, the rats
Speaker 1: just run willy nilly over everything and pretty muchu all
Speaker 1: the earth. Yeah, so that's rats. What about monkeys? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: then the monkeys. This one I don't know. This is
Speaker 1: this is actually more awesome than the rat king and
Speaker 1: that it is true. Um, And that's that if you
Speaker 1: if you go to New Delhi, you'll find a city
Speaker 1: overrun with wild Reese's monkeys. And I mean it's to
Speaker 1: the point where people have have caged have caged windows,
Speaker 1: you know, bars in the windows and doors to keep
Speaker 1: the monkeys out of their homes because I mean, just
Speaker 1: like on a pretty regular basis, these these monkeys are
Speaker 1: are breaking into the homes and businesses. Uh, They're biting
Speaker 1: and clawing for bits of food and drink, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know it's they're totally destructive. Um. There have
Speaker 1: been situations where they've flung HIV infected blood samples in laboratories,
Speaker 1: They've thrown top secret documents around, and in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but that last one kind of cracks me up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like where you're keeping your top secret
Speaker 1: documents if you know, if a monkey rampage could considerably cold,
Speaker 1: could possibly you know, am I the only one think
Speaker 1: you have Curious George right now? Like Curious George and
Speaker 1: the top secret documents? I don't remember that one. Where's
Speaker 1: the man in the old hat when you need him?
Speaker 1: In two thousand seven, a senior Indian official fell to
Speaker 1: his death from a balcony when monkeys ambushed his home.
Speaker 1: So it's like people are dying and you know, and
Speaker 1: top secret documents are getting curious. Um. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: they they're running in the streets, are running the subways,
Speaker 1: and the people of New Delhi have long held the
Speaker 1: monkey's sacred, so extermination isn't really an option. But then
Speaker 1: people aren't you know, it's really been a struggle to
Speaker 1: sort of pick up the other end of let's actually
Speaker 1: like like span neoter some monkeys, you know, or you know,
Speaker 1: do something to control the population through sterilization. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: they just need some yellow crazy ants. Well, interesting that
Speaker 1: you mentioned that, um um. You know, for for years
Speaker 1: they would have catchers that would go out there, monkey
Speaker 1: catchers that would go out there and catch the animals
Speaker 1: put them in cages. Um. But many home and business
Speaker 1: owners have Actually it's it's like a monkey arms race,
Speaker 1: all right. So the Reese's monkeys are running wild, Well
Speaker 1: why don't I just get a larger monkey to protect
Speaker 1: me from the little crazy monkeys. So you have situations
Speaker 1: where people will have a black faced lander monkey and
Speaker 1: they'll have it chained out in front of their business
Speaker 1: to guard it. So it's kind of like an Indian pitbull. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like the yeah, and to keep the other
Speaker 1: monkeys away, and people actually end up like walking one
Speaker 1: of these guys on a leash two keep in It's
Speaker 1: like it's just a straight up monkey arm race and
Speaker 1: it's uh and and it's it's horrifying. What next? What's
Speaker 1: the next step after the black faced langer? Are people
Speaker 1: gonna get like guerrillas? And I mean, it's crazy, but
Speaker 1: that's what you get with infestations. So I think we've
Speaker 1: given you guys some pretty good examples of gnarly infestations.
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming those are infestations that we wouldn't care for.
Speaker 1: I mean, do any of you guys want a hundred
Speaker 1: twenty million read crabs carousing through your streets? I'm assuming
Speaker 1: you wouldn't, right, But I have to ask Robert, what's
Speaker 1: your ideal infestation? Ideal infestation? Yeah, if you have to
Speaker 1: pick one. Well, I'm I'm reminded of Mitch Hedberg's bit
Speaker 1: about how um he wished that is the late great
Speaker 1: stand up comedian, and he had this whole bit about
Speaker 1: how he would he would totally dig a quala bear
Speaker 1: infestation because it would be the cutest infestation ever. Um.
Speaker 1: That being said, I hear that quala bears can be
Speaker 1: kind of stinky. Um, So I'm thinking as adorable as
Speaker 1: a kuala infestation might look, that it might smell kind
Speaker 1: of nasty. So you're not going with bears, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with I'm gonna go with the gecko. Um really yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean I I applied some thought to this,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, like, all right, I love scalops.
Speaker 1: Maybe an infestation of scalops, but that's not really like practical.
Speaker 1: How are they gonna live in my house? You know?
Speaker 1: Are they gonna be in the bathtub? I don't know. Maybe, Okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe I'd go for the scalop infestation. But the
Speaker 1: gecko infestation actually happens um like in the Philippines and Singapore,
Speaker 1: and they basically just like eat insects, and I don't
Speaker 1: like insects living in my house. Geckos they're gonna crap
Speaker 1: on some stuff, sure, and I might step on one occasionally.
Speaker 1: But the lizards are kind of cute, right, and they
Speaker 1: kind of blend in with things. So if one were
Speaker 1: to like walk across the TV screen during the movie,
Speaker 1: it might like blend into Sigourney Weaver and everything will
Speaker 1: be cool. I want to know about my ideas. What
Speaker 1: do you got? Okay, well, it's funny you should mention,
Speaker 1: um the whole water aspect because I was thinking dolphins, right,
Speaker 1: I like dolphins. I think they'd be you know, pretty
Speaker 1: social animals, fun to hang out with. They could teach
Speaker 1: me some new tricks, etcetera. But clearly the water is
Speaker 1: gonna be a tough, tough issue in the household smart too,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty are you getting in something? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's like the monkeys are a problem, and they're
Speaker 1: like crafty and all. So it's like, I mean, what's
Speaker 1: the dolphin gonna be doing in your house? Is gonna
Speaker 1: be like eating my food in the fridge, like where
Speaker 1: the telapia go? Dolphins? Okay, well, so I just started
Speaker 1: going to get along with dolphins. I'm not sure there
Speaker 1: could be a face off. So I discarded the dolphin infestation.
Speaker 1: And then I realized that I'm pretty much already infested,
Speaker 1: as are you, as is our producer, producer, Jerry as Is.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone, we have a bodily infestation on our hands.
Speaker 1: And what is it? Bacteria? Yeah, so that's good. Well
Speaker 1: mostly I'm I'm a fan of bacteria generally speaking, and
Speaker 1: in fact, since summer two thousand eight, I mean, how
Speaker 1: many bacteria are we talking in this infestation? Well, a
Speaker 1: bunch of microbiologists got together and announced that a regular
Speaker 1: healthy adult, and let's let's say you the adult, the
Speaker 1: bacteria inside the body outnumber human cell cells on a
Speaker 1: scale I pint to one. So I call that an infestation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I would. I would hate to have geckos outnumbering
Speaker 1: my cells tend to one. That would be a lot
Speaker 1: of geckos in one house. Yeah, indeed it would be.
Speaker 1: So I think that about wraps it up. So if
Speaker 1: you're interested in reading about I don't know, roaches, rats,
Speaker 1: or ten ways to bug proof your home, head on
Speaker 1: over to hows to first dot com. Yeah we're check
Speaker 1: check out the blogs as well, where you can read
Speaker 1: about everything from stocking stuffers for scientists to the pfunt Mothership.
Speaker 1: And Hey, if you'd like to tell us about an
Speaker 1: infestation of your own bodily or otherwise, send us an
Speaker 1: email at science stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: That's all we got, Thanks for listening, guys. For more
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