WEBVTT - Ep. 208: Dr. Justin Schmidt on Why It Hurts So Bad 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:05.880 You're listening to the Meat Eater podcast, part of the 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.080 Meat Eater podcast network. We know one great podcast isn't 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:11.440 enough and you want more, so go check out and 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:14.520 subscribe to these other great meat Eater titles and Cow's 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.239 Weeken Review. 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Shirtless, severely bog bitten, and in 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:02.440 my case, underwear listening Don't Me to Eat podcast You 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:06.640 Can't Predict Anything presented by on x Hunt, creators of 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:10.320 the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.600 Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:20.120 where you stand with on x Okay We're gonna start 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:24.920 all with a quick song. She waki fall me for 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:36.280 home live, she me for fun boo ca me for 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:46.920 shan right you'll yeah, she um wa what do want me? 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:56.320 Ful car, That's what I'm talking about. That's beautiful, beautiful. 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:58.800 I'm gonna leave that hanging. I'm gonna leave that hanging 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.040 as like a source attend and well I take over 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.520 other quick couple of things. We're joined by um this 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:07.440 is not i' gonna this hanging to, but we're doing 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:12.000 joined by Dr Justin. Oh Schmidt. You don't know this, uh, 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.120 Dr Schmidt. We've talked about you a whole bunch. So 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:20.160 we've talked about the Schmidt paint index and that led 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:22.000 me to start and reading about you and reading your 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:23.800 book and getting interested in you. But can you just 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.960 hang tight a minute? Sounds good? I was, I'll tell 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:30.880 you I have to. Before we started here, before that 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:32.880 beautiful song, I was telling Cal that I had to. 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.359 Cal's telling me that I told him a story that's 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:42.040 not my story. You're confusing me with someone else, you don't, 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.000 that's correct, Yeah, I must be correct. Yeah. Yeah. So 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.520 Cal's saying like, oh, when you were saying and he 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:49.000 told the story. It's like, that's not my story. But 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:51.560 I have to this two chicken stories I do have, 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:58.639 not your chicken stories. I have where. Um, there's a 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:01.720 place in in in Mexico on the uk Tam Peninsula 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:03.640 to Loom, which used to be like just all like 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:05.400 hippie kids and stuff, and now it's you know, it's 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.840 like families go there. People like what I used to 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:10.760 be like, people like that used to go there, and 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:12.600 now it's just people that are like what I'm like 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.760 now that go there. But um, they had this in 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.040 the old days twenty years ago. There's like this little 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.400 street in town and they would people would cook chickens, 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.760 is like the local thing, grilled chickens, and they'd have stumps, 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.519 I mean like full on stumps and cleavers and Machetti's 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:32.240 and they would be like grilling chickens and chopping chickens 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:39.080 on stumps, chopping blocks. My buddy Eric, um, my dear 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:44.360 late friend Eric was obsessed with these chickens and how 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:46.080 they could make these chickens so good. And you don't 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.200 understand like what what the magic touch was. So he 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.320 spoke very poor Spanish, but he makes it back into 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:57.840 the kitchen like you know, like he's he's penetrated the 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:00.640 the depths of the facility where they all this chicken, 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:03.400 and he's trying to like inquire, like what makes it 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:04.680 so good? How do you do it? And the guy 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:09.320 gestures to him that there's this trash can full of marinade, 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:14.560 and he uh is very eager to have Eric taste 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:18.200 the marinade. So Eric drinks some of the marinade and 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.159 then no sooner does he have a nice sip of 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.479 the marinade is the guy reaches into the trash can 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:29.800 and produces from it, um a number of raw chickens. 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.280 Then Eric's like, oh, this isn't gonna be good um 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.640 for my gut. But then the man then goes to 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.320 a frit a freezer, a chest freezer that's not even 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.440 plugged in, and opens it and it's just he says, 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.440 it's just the most foul, the most foul foul ever, 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:53.240 festering in like chicken liquid that's not refrigerated. And he 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:59.680 replenishes the vat of marinade with these chickens, and then 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:05.560 he indeed did get sick. I don't think I'm surprised. Yeah, 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:07.120 I'll tell you the story later has to do with 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.600 when I got to visit a turkey a place where 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:16.120 they process turkeys. Story, yeah, not even chicken. Story real 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:17.960 quick before we getting what we're supposed to be doing 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.760 here to uh the whole our whole live tour is 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:23.640 like about Licked. There's two venues laugh where you can 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.800 get tickets. Licked isn't sold out sold but does two 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:31.520 venues laugh where you can get tickets April five what's four? 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:38.560 Four April April fifteen. In April sixteen, we still have 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:42.720 tickets Masa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona. So like eu 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.400 Phoenix Folk and then uh u l a Folk, we're 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:49.880 gonna be at the National Grove in Anaheim for sixteen. 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.320 Other than that, you missed your chance, so hurry up 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.400 and book them up if you want to go, and 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.840 thanks for getting on it. Okay, now real quick, can 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:05.040 you uh the beautiful song we heard was from Dr Schmidt, 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:09.719 justin Schmidt's wife. Can you introduce yourself real quick? I'm 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.159 Leash Schmidt. I'm the Queen of sting O, Queen of 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.120 sing and can you offer us a rough translation of 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:18.880 the song? And then we're gonna turn the attention to 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:23.160 your husband Yeah, it's actually the wedding vowel song from 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:27.799 a Chinese minority group, and the meaning is basically said, 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:33.080 when the flower blooms becomes flower a bees are inseparable. 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.960 Bees seems born to love flowers, and flowers bloom just 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:41.280 for the bees, and that's a metaphor for the love 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:43.839 that will be shared between the husband and wife of 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:50.279 the wedding. Yes, that's cute and it's called me fun, 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:55.200 but in Chinese it's a hunch wedding. Wow. Are you 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.280 familiar with um? I don't fully understand. I might be 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:02.480 mutilating this. Are you familiar with the concept of um? 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:08.760 In Greek mythology, there's this concept of of like zenia 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.960 I think it is, or the guest host bond, and 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:17.000 it has to do with the relationship of a pollinator 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:22.480 and the flower, and it somehow translates into a bond 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.480 that exists between a guest. Like what what are the 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:37.320 obligations of a guest to their host? Hm? H uh oh, yeah, 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.440 I'll go ahead, letter rip because in China, guest has 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:44.000 no obligation to host. Host has full obligation to the 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:48.280 g guess there's no obligation to host. Try to be 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:52.280 a guest to China, so when you so, so it 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:56.000 would be unusual in China to bring a Like when 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:57.680 you go to someone's house for dinner, it would be 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:01.360 unusual to bring, say a bottle of wine or a gift. 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.480 Not a custom at all. When you come as always 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.080 a full service. It's a food, that's always like we 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.800 prepare everything. But now maybe it's different now because China 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:15.440 always want to mimic America. So but the guests have 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:20.200 guests have no obligation. In fact, the Chinese culture, which 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:25.200 she has half of it is very like if guests 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:30.120 your everything, like we we will prepare everything, like he 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.400 got the treat when it came to China and so 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:36.680 we I think our culture doesn't have that at all. 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:45.000 How you guys been married one years? Seriously? Hm, no, 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:50.400 it's impossible within China for thirty here for thirty years almost. 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.080 That's great. I'm not going to argue that women are 0:08:55.120 --> 0:09:03.400 always right. We remember those dates. At least I didn't underestimate. Yeah, uh, okay, 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:06.320 tell people what an entomologist do? You describe yourself as 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:10.040 an entomologist. Pretty much, I describe myself as an entomologist 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.840 or a biologist or for the general public off and 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.959 just say I'm a bugologist. A bug is anything as 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:19.160 creepy crawley legs and jointed legs, and that pretty much 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.920 gets the concept across. But an entomologist doesn't work because 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:25.439 you work on things that aren't insects, right, well, I 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:29.600 work on racknets, which are spiders, scorpions, vinegar, ruins, and 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:32.959 various things of that sort, as well as mostly in 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:35.920 hymenopter which are ants, wasps, and bees, and there of 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:43.120 course insects. And when, uh, what drew you too, like 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:46.160 what initially drew you to to to digging into these animals, 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.080 I'm not really sure. When I was about five years old, 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:51.559 I was dared one time to sit on an ant 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:54.400 mound and those ants, of course didn't sting, but they 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.360 could sure crawl up your breeches and bite. And that 0:09:57.440 --> 0:09:59.839 got my attention. And I realized at that point that 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.959 while there's life out there, and it's more complex than 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.359 I thought it was, and it isn't this kind of interesting, 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:11.040 you know? I find that like if you're a writer, 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:13.720 you know, oh you are writer because you have a book. 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:15.520 But if you're writing people, you go to do an 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:17.480 interview and they'll be like, why did you write this book? 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.839 And it's like there's two answers. There's you could you 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.360 could be glib but very honest. You'd be like, well, 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:26.400 I wrote it because I was trying to make money. 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.880 That chance of that. So what I'm saying, it's like, 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.040 there's like that answer, then there'd be the answer that 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.839 is expected of you, which is um oh, I had 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.120 a story that had to be told, you know, and 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:42.960 both are equally true. But when you were growing up 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:46.880 to become and wanted to become a scientist, was that 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:51.960 you couldn't have thought to yourself at a young age 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:54.600 that like, there's a way that I'll be able to 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:59.000 make a living is by studying bugs. No, I I 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:01.880 was fact swait it from studying bugs. You can't make 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.679 a living studying bugs, I was told. So I became 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:07.839 a chemist. Chemists make all kinds of cool things and 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:10.000 all kinds of not so cool things, but anyway, they 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.920 get paid well for doing it. So I went to 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.079 chemistry and went to bachelor and master's degree and said, 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:18.560 all these people and my friends are having such a 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:22.920 good time with outdoors or geologists. They're biologists and marine biologists. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.120 You know whatever they are, and they're having a lot 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.960 of fun outside. This was in Vancouver, British Columbia, which 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:31.960 is very much like Montana. It's got lots of trees 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:35.040 and streams and opportunities. I said, gosh, I gotta find 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.319 a way to make life more interesting. Etmology was the 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:41.800 way I applied chemistry to studying insects and bugs. And 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.680 so that was where the transition came. That they weren't 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.280 jealous of the lab jacket and the protective goggles and 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:53.679 the benzine and the carbon tetric clarda was breathing every day, No, okay, 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.760 So that became that that became your focus with insects 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:02.280 is the chemistry of it, particularly what they do to 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.319 their enemies exactly. I thought, you know, here I am. 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:07.680 I always have all this chemistry training and I have 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:10.480 very little animalogy training. What can I do with this 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:13.120 training that I have in this whole new field? And 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.920 I thought, well, these things hurt. Ever been stung by 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:19.080 a bee or a wasp or anything? We all have 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.960 and they heard so I said, hm, hmmm, what makes 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:26.400 them hurt? What's what's the chemistry? This chemistry behind everything? 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.480 And so I started working on this particular ant called 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.080 the harvest rants, which hurt a whole lot more than 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.240 a bee or a wasp. And I said, these little 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:38.120 dinky things the third of an inch long, you know, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.240 how in the heck do they hurt so dog on 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.000 much and hurt for four to eight hours. What's the 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:46.040 chemistry behind this? So I said, ah, mystery, let's go 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.440 and work on this. When I found out about you, 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:56.640 it was after I got stung by a bullet ant 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:04.800 lucky you in Bolivia, and I later in researching it, 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:08.320 I came across you, and I came across the your 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.760 you know, the Schmidt paint index. Like you have a 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:14.079 whole lifetime of work you've done. It probably drives you 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.440 crazy that people reduce it down to like I'm doing 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:19.400 right now, that they reduce it down to you. You You 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:22.280 came up with this like very clever pain index when 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:24.520 you've done all this work. But that's like what you're 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.959 known for now to layman, is that annoying? No? I 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:30.160 think figure is better to be known for something than 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:32.680 nothing at all. So I found you that way. But 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.520 to my credit, I I dug deeper. But I found 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:37.760 you because you had a description of what it's like 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:42.959 to um be stung by a bullet ant. And the 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:45.400 reason I became interested in the chemistry of it is 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:49.120 because of I think you give it the most severe 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:53.480 score exactly four plus. Yeah, it's the highest of anything. 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.560 The Tranchila hawk is about equally high. But on the 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:58.920 last two or three minutes was that bullet and asked 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.559 last twelve the thirty six hours. So given the choice, 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:04.880 I'll take the two to three minutes over the twelve 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:09.800 and thirty six hours. When I got um stung by one, 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:13.920 what I became what enthralled me about it was how 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:20.040 severe the pain was exactly. But then for me that 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.480 three hours later, I couldn't remember what foot it was. 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.520 He probably didn't want to remember. No, it just was 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:31.200 so unbelievably intense that I was worried about and I 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:33.880 didn't I didn't know about bullet ants. It was so intense. 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.160 I was worried about dying because I didn't know what 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:37.840 it meant. I don't know, is it like getting is 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.080 it like getting bit by a snake? Like I knew 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.560 it was bad to get bit by one, but I 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:44.920 didn't know how bad. And so there was a lot 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.160 of psychological like a lot of anxiety around the bite, 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:52.000 but then the pain was gone, and I just wondered, like, 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.160 how could something hurt so bad and seemed like it's 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:59.360 doing so much damage to your body, but then it's ephemeral. Well, 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:01.800 I think that reason is because we're so big. If 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.520 you're a mouse, you would have been past tens because 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:06.840 they're actually quite toxic and do a lot of damage 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.800 as well. But you figured a little and it's inch 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:13.880 long and at max and it has volatively small size. Now, 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.480 if it was say four ft long, like a typical snake, 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.080 and it's stung you, while you probably wouldn't be here today, 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:26.000 they can kill a mouse. Oh yeah. Why did just 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:27.880 back up on this a little bit, just kind of 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:30.120 like the beginning, And I have just read your book 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:35.080 The Sting of the Wild. Um, Why let's approach this 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.880 this way. Why do you feel that certain indec or 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:44.520 certain insects or anything spiders? But why did bugs need 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:49.320 to develop a way to sting? Like what were the 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.320 things that led them to to have the necessity to 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.720 do this. There's quite a few different things that would 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.440 gone One of the problems. When you're a social insect 0:15:57.480 --> 0:15:59.520 like an aunt, you have a colony of three thousand 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:01.960 fairly big ants, and you know, that's a lot of 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.840 meat there to eat, and that means big people are 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.080 gonna want to eat you, you know, like raccoons and 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:11.560 quada mondays and things of that sort, larger animals. If 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:16.680 you're dealing with something that's a million times bigger than you, biting, scratching, 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:19.320 kicking just doesn't cut the mustard. You have to have 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:21.880 some way to get through. And the sting gets through 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:24.200 your skin and gets directly to where the nerves are. 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:27.240 So that's a way of defending yourself and your nest mates, 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:29.880 and you're young and that kind of thing. But the 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.640 bullet ant is a little bit different from most of 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:34.000 the rest of them. Why it needs to be so 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:37.760 extreme is they live down on the ground of the rainforest, 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:40.400 down at the base of a tree. They crawl up 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:43.560 the tree up into the canopy. Up in the canopy 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:46.960 they forage for nectar and sweet honeydew and hay fits 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.360 in those sorts of things, and pray, you know, pray 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.080 for feeding their young. Well, if you've ever been up 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.800 in a canopy of a rainforest, there's frogs, there's lizards, 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:59.240 there's birds, there's monkeys everything on earth, and what are 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:02.800 they all having common? They all eat insects. And if 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.400 you can't jump away like a grasshopper, and you can't 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.040 fly away like a fly because you're an aunt without 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:10.720 any wings, you don't really want to drop off from 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:13.360 fifty or sixty ft up because how are you ever 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:15.640 going to find your way back up? So you've got 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.879 to be so tough that these things learned oh big 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:20.840 black ant. No no no, no no, no, no, I don't 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:22.919 think I want to go there. And the way that 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.439 happens is they get stung once and that's it. They 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.879 will learn for life that never mess around with you. 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.480 And so that's basically a defensive system that allows them 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:35.639 to exploit the most dangerous place on earth for a 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:39.720 small insect. But what about all the insects that um, 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:42.399 I mean, what about all the insects that can't do that? Right? 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.560 Like a like a like a butterfly has no defense 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:48.639 system like that. Well, butterflies, some of them actually are 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.040 quite toxic. Eat them. And the famous picture Lincoln Brower 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:56.760 blue jay eating a monarch butterfly and barsets guts out 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:59.359 after that. As you all know, if you've eaten a 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:01.800 bad meal or something in your barf your guts out. 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:03.920 You don't want to eat that same kind of food 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:06.879 for quite a long time. You get this toxic aversion, 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.360 and so a lot of butterflies do that. A lot 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.040 of things actually avoid the predators by hiding. You know, 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:17.760 caterpillars are often green, they're living on green vegetation, so 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:19.680 they're just a hard to see and they don't move. 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.000 And grasshoppers, of course can jump, and once they're an adult, 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.240 they can fly, and grasshoppers even have some of the 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.440 clever approaches. You'll see a lot of them up here 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.480 in Montana. They fly and they click, so they make 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:35.000 a noise which allergs to where they are, and they 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:37.040 have bright colored wings, and then when they land, they 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:40.480 pull their wings in and they become absolutely like the dirt. 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:44.200 They're just kind of grayish or brownish speckled, and they've 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:48.080 become invisible. So you're following the noise and the view 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:51.360 and advantages and you can't find them, and it's almost 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.120 a failsafe defense that they have. So each insect, that's 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:57.240 one of the things that's really cool is each insect 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:01.119 has their own strategy how they make it you're familiar 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.560 with white tail deer, I'm sure, how could you not be? 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:09.400 They're tasty. Uh have you ever heard the idea um 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:14.000 that the white tail functions similar to what you're talking 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:19.840 about with grasshoppers, where when they're running away, they put 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:22.479 up this this big white tails like this like beacon 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.960 exactly going through the woods, and then they stop and 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:31.000 drop the tail, and then your eye is your I 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:34.639 tunes into that highly visible white tail, and that's what 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:38.359 you're following when it runs away. And then it just 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.159 drops his tail, and it takes away the thing that 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.760 you had, the thing that you had found focus on. 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:48.240 It becomes invisible. You weren't You weren't actually watching the deer, 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.240 You were watching the tail exactly. But we have an 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:55.199 even more interesting scenario in Arizona. We have a zebra 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:59.000 tail lizard, which is a fairly fast running lizard. And 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:01.240 if you're tw so away from it, it it waves this 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.159 tail back and forth saying I'm here, I dare you 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.760 to try to catch me, and you're running it it 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:12.520 takes off. Usually most predators don't bother because they realize 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:16.119 it knows that that I'm here. It's too fast. I 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.640 can't catch it much like the deer. If the deer 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:20.200 is a long way away, I don't have the tail. 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:23.400 But if it's really close to you, it's not gonna 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.040 do that. You know you're just ten feet away. It's 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:28.520 gonna just try to freeze and hope, hope the heck 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:31.240 you don't know it's there. But once it gets you know, 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:33.760 some distance way, then the tail goes up and it runs. 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.240 The lizard does the same sort of thing, and it's 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.720 actually a very good strategy. It's a beautiful way to 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:44.320 enhance your chance that you're not dinner for somebody else? 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:50.159 Was it I've been I've been quoting uh story you 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:53.320 told in your book. Um, I swear it. I'm gonna 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:54.560 tell you what it is, and you remind me if 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:55.920 it was your book or a different But I read 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.360 a handful books by researchers such as yourself Did You Talk? 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:01.960 Did You Talk? Talk? In the Sting of the Wild, 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:11.640 about how young scientists are so impactful because they're asking 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:18.320 original questions, and that you find that older scientists spend 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:23.200 their time defending their old idea. Exactly. Yeah, I call 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:28.240 that science progresses by one coffin at a time. You 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:30.720 gotta you gotta kill off the old guys, so the 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:35.320 new guys gonna have freedom to make new discoveries. D Uh, 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:39.200 when you were what was your idea when you were young? 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.240 Like if you had to say where here you are? 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:44.560 You know, you're going through the education system, You're getting 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:47.280 a doctorate. You know you have an interest in chemistry, 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:50.639 you're developing an interest in insects things. But you have 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:54.560 to sort of turn it into a question, right, like, yeah, 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:58.159 there has been like some foundational premise. I'm guessing if 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:00.000 you're gonna pursue the line of work that you pursue, 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:05.240 what became your thing that you needed to answer? Basically, 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:09.160 I was asking a question, how did sociality and insects evolve? 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:11.919 In other words, how did you go for mom single 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.919 mom raising all her young alone like a sand wasp 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.159 or or digger be something like that. It was just 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:21.239 mom and her young. All of a sudden, you get 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:26.280 a huge social society like Honeybee colony with thirty thousand 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:29.480 individuals or some ant colonies that have up to a 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.840 million individuals. You have a whole lot of I was 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:36.119 asking a question, how did you get around the predation 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.800 pressure of predators? You know, if you're My analogy is 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:42.080 if you're in the party and you see a bowl 0:22:42.080 --> 0:22:46.000 and has one peanut, it's across the room. Yeah, it's 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:49.040 not worth the effort to go and get that peanut hungry, 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:51.359 but the bulls full of peanuts, then you're gonna go 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:54.240 and get grab a handful. Same kind of thing with 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:57.640 social insects. So the question is how does that peanut, 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:01.560 for the analogy, defend itself when it becomes many peanuts 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:03.840 so that doesn't get eaten. And I came up with 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:08.240 a hypothesis as well, the stinging venom, which relies on 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:12.680 two things. The pain gets your attention and the toxicity 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:16.960 which does your damage. That that was the reason that 0:23:17.000 --> 0:23:21.400 they could evolve sociality. Whereas you don't see social flies 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.800 or you don't see social beatles because they don't have 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:29.560 any way to defend themselves other than maybe being nasty toxic. 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:35.280 But the ants, spies, and wasps had this automatic stinger ability. 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:37.280 It's all I had to do is evolve the behavior 0:23:37.359 --> 0:23:40.959 to use it right and the chemistry to make it effective. 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:44.280 So that was my hypothesis. I wanted to collect evidence 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:50.280 two either refute or support that hypothesis, and that's basically 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:53.640 what I did. I'm guessing you thought to ask this question. 0:23:54.720 --> 0:23:58.760 Is it in fact true that the ability to sting 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:04.639 in in HAVE societies is something that progressed over time 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:07.640 and that there weren't things that used to be venomous 0:24:07.640 --> 0:24:12.919 and social big overtime became not venomous and not social, like, 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:15.520 does it always move in that direction? Does a does 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:19.600 always move towards complexity? Well, yes and no. Most of 0:24:19.600 --> 0:24:22.919 the time it does. There's an advantage of complexity. Have 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:27.399 social behavior. You can have some individuals specializing and foraging, 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:32.960 someone defending the nest, someone building the nest, someone collecting water, 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:38.359 someone reproducing, and these sorts of things. A specialist is 0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:41.200 much better than a generalist. And the other thing is 0:24:41.240 --> 0:24:43.240 when you're away from home. If you're just a single 0:24:43.320 --> 0:24:47.159 mom said digger, b out there in a sandbox someplace 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:50.440 you go away to get the flowers for nectar and pollen. 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:53.800 Somebody can invade your nest and eat your young while 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:56.280 you're gone. If you're social, you have a bunch of 0:24:56.320 --> 0:25:00.280 people still there. Hey, get out of here, intruder, and 0:25:00.320 --> 0:25:03.359 we'll teach you the lesson by stinging you or attacking you. 0:25:04.000 --> 0:25:07.720 So there's a lot of advantages to sociality, which means 0:25:07.760 --> 0:25:10.560 most of the time it doesn't reverse. But there are 0:25:10.640 --> 0:25:16.360 a few cases. There's some solitary bees that evolve sociality 0:25:16.600 --> 0:25:19.359 and low levels, but then as they progress in the 0:25:19.440 --> 0:25:23.080 further north in the shorter seasons, those that were social 0:25:23.119 --> 0:25:25.760 and become back to solitary because there's not enough time 0:25:25.800 --> 0:25:29.040 to have two generations. If your social, you have to 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:33.160 have mom living with babies. Babies help mom, and they 0:25:33.200 --> 0:25:36.520 were the next grandchildren at least, and most of them 0:25:36.920 --> 0:25:39.399 they continue on for many generations. But you need at 0:25:39.440 --> 0:25:43.320 least the overlap of mom and her young to help 0:25:43.440 --> 0:25:47.440 mom in order to be social. And so in some 0:25:47.560 --> 0:25:51.560 extreme situations you can you can lose that. But it's 0:25:51.560 --> 0:25:56.680 not because of the normal disadvantages. It's because climatic restrictions, 0:25:56.720 --> 0:25:58.800 you know, just don't give you the time to do it. 0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:06.480 When there's that shows a name for this concept and evolution, um, 0:26:06.480 --> 0:26:08.000 and maybe you can provide it for me. But to 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:12.200 be like that, well, you see something fly, Okay, so 0:26:12.600 --> 0:26:17.159 you see that there's birds of flying insects that fly. Um, 0:26:17.320 --> 0:26:20.960 one could be excused for looking at these two things 0:26:21.040 --> 0:26:25.240 flying through the air, a dragonfly and a hummingbird and 0:26:25.440 --> 0:26:31.840 think that there's a relationship there that somehow flight began, 0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:36.040 like flight happened and it spread and became like flight 0:26:36.119 --> 0:26:40.280 for hummingbirds and and flight for dragonflies. But in fact 0:26:41.400 --> 0:26:48.800 they they independently arrived at this exactly. So are there 0:26:48.840 --> 0:26:52.080 like to be venomous like a beer or whatever to 0:26:52.119 --> 0:26:54.520 be venomous? Are there like a bunch of families of 0:26:54.560 --> 0:26:59.520 insects that all kind of like independently invented this technology 0:26:59.680 --> 0:27:01.560 or does it seemed like there's like a thing somewhere 0:27:01.640 --> 0:27:05.160 that did this and it proliferated and dispersed over time, 0:27:05.320 --> 0:27:08.000 when in the case of ants, bees, and wasps, there's 0:27:08.040 --> 0:27:12.199 a one ancestor that had had an ovpositive actually an 0:27:12.200 --> 0:27:15.560 egg laying to that's a tube that you punch into 0:27:15.600 --> 0:27:18.720 a plant or another insect and use that to inject 0:27:18.760 --> 0:27:22.280 an egg kind of like a syringe injects eggs. Bo 0:27:22.440 --> 0:27:24.040 is that how about does a body fy do that 0:27:24.080 --> 0:27:27.080 when it puts a baby inside? You know, they actually 0:27:27.240 --> 0:27:31.400 uh lay the egg on vegetation or some of them 0:27:31.400 --> 0:27:34.800 will get on mosquitoes. And then the larva, which is 0:27:34.840 --> 0:27:38.480 what they call a plenary in which is kind of 0:27:38.480 --> 0:27:42.600 this mobile worm like thing that's very rapidly moving, and 0:27:42.760 --> 0:27:46.160 one of the mosquito lands on you. Then it crawls 0:27:46.200 --> 0:27:48.239 off the mosquito and onto you and the and the 0:27:48.320 --> 0:27:51.239 young larva, which is tenth of a millimeter long, it's 0:27:51.280 --> 0:27:55.040 really tiny, tiny little thing burrows into your skin and 0:27:55.040 --> 0:27:58.760 then from there that's what becomes the bot fly. And yeah, 0:27:58.880 --> 0:28:02.960 that's how that happens. Yeah, it's kind of sending a 0:28:03.080 --> 0:28:08.400 harrowing picture. Squirreling got my goodness, is out upsetting squirrels, 0:28:08.400 --> 0:28:13.879 Stephen rolla squirrels. This little tiny squirrel has got three 0:28:13.960 --> 0:28:17.800 or four these enormous whopping The big bot flies in 0:28:17.840 --> 0:28:20.160 and you can say, how does this squirrel survive? That? 0:28:20.400 --> 0:28:21.919 Can you give me the favorite to give me that 0:28:21.960 --> 0:28:25.720 life cycle of abot flagon. What's basically they lay eggs 0:28:25.720 --> 0:28:27.960 and I'm not sure where. I think it's on vegetation 0:28:29.000 --> 0:28:32.119 and somehow where they gets onto a mosquito, and a 0:28:32.200 --> 0:28:35.399 mosquito then flies around it like he hitches a ride 0:28:35.400 --> 0:28:38.720 on a mosquito. Yeah, basically a freeloader. And what they 0:28:38.920 --> 0:28:42.479 drawls off on a you or a squirrel or whatever 0:28:42.520 --> 0:28:46.360 it is. And they detect when the mosquitoes feeding because 0:28:46.840 --> 0:28:50.520 you're warm and squirrels warm, whereas the mosquitoes landing on 0:28:50.560 --> 0:28:53.600 a leaf or on a flower sucking nectar, you know, 0:28:53.680 --> 0:28:57.400 because they drink sugar water too to get their energy 0:28:57.400 --> 0:29:01.880 to fly the plnary and doesn't crawl off then because 0:29:02.240 --> 0:29:04.960 you're not warm, you're not their host. They just hang 0:29:05.080 --> 0:29:08.040 tight until the mosquito finally gets on you or the 0:29:08.160 --> 0:29:10.920 squirrel or whatever it is. There's a lot of different 0:29:10.920 --> 0:29:14.320 species of them, and then they crawl off. They're pretty 0:29:14.400 --> 0:29:17.800 quick about doing that. And then they're they're so small 0:29:17.880 --> 0:29:20.600 you don't feel them. You know, they won't be moving 0:29:20.640 --> 0:29:22.960 any hairs in your body to tickle you or anything. 0:29:22.960 --> 0:29:26.000 We'd swat them or rub them or something that just 0:29:26.640 --> 0:29:30.120 very small and quiet. They just burrow in and you 0:29:30.120 --> 0:29:33.640 don't really notice anything until they're quite a bit bigger. 0:29:34.040 --> 0:29:36.720 That One of the questions of chemistry on these things, 0:29:37.240 --> 0:29:39.720 which I'm not aware anybody's looked at, is how do 0:29:39.800 --> 0:29:42.680 they burrow a hole in you without you feeling it. 0:29:43.200 --> 0:29:45.520 My hunch is that they have an anesthesia, you know, 0:29:45.600 --> 0:29:47.720 kind of like to go to the dentist and he 0:29:48.200 --> 0:29:50.960 numbs your your skin or your tooth or whatever it is. 0:29:51.680 --> 0:29:54.160 I suspect they do that. But you know, something a 0:29:54.240 --> 0:29:56.640 tenth of a millimeter long, how are you going to 0:29:56.720 --> 0:30:00.360 study that? It's pretty tough problem. Your body doesn't like 0:30:00.480 --> 0:30:04.040 your white blood cells, like, don't you don't really attack that, 0:30:04.160 --> 0:30:07.680 you you just end up being host to that. Yeah, 0:30:07.720 --> 0:30:11.680 they probably also have other defenses against the immune system. 0:30:11.840 --> 0:30:14.680 You know, most of these things have a whole suite 0:30:14.720 --> 0:30:17.640 of complex behaviors, some of them for numbing it, some 0:30:17.760 --> 0:30:20.920 of them in mosquitoes case or ticks case. They have 0:30:21.320 --> 0:30:25.080 other chemicals prevent clotting so you don't stuff up there. 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:30.680 They're blood feeding to be their proboscus or you know whatever. 0:30:31.280 --> 0:30:34.360 And then they also have things to prevent immune system 0:30:34.400 --> 0:30:37.640 from attacking them, and so that there's a whole smorgest 0:30:37.680 --> 0:30:41.680 sport of goodies that they inject into you, which aren't 0:30:41.720 --> 0:30:45.400 good for you, but good for them. Uh. I want 0:30:45.440 --> 0:30:47.600 I know where you were when I when we got 0:30:47.640 --> 0:30:50.440 you sidetracked, and I'm gonna I'm holding it in my 0:30:50.480 --> 0:30:52.720 head just so we all know. You were beginning to 0:30:52.760 --> 0:30:57.960 talk about the evolutionary forefather of a stinging insect and 0:30:57.960 --> 0:31:00.880 how I had to do with the proboscus over a 0:31:01.000 --> 0:31:05.320 positive the positives are egg laying too. Yeah, I'm still 0:31:05.320 --> 0:31:07.080 not ready to come back to that though, because you 0:31:07.160 --> 0:31:12.720 talk about mosquitoes. Gott me, I got a mosquito question. Um, 0:31:12.880 --> 0:31:15.720 only female mosquitoes bite, that's right, And most of the 0:31:15.800 --> 0:31:18.840 males are pretty nice guys, and antspeas and wash and 0:31:18.920 --> 0:31:21.800 males are nice guys too. It's the girls that you 0:31:21.880 --> 0:31:25.520 gotta worry about. Is it true that a female mosquito 0:31:25.800 --> 0:31:29.640 can still be successful, can still be a successful egg 0:31:29.720 --> 0:31:34.640 layer even if it never bites a mammal and gets 0:31:34.640 --> 0:31:36.320 blood out of it or a birden gets blood out 0:31:36.320 --> 0:31:38.440 of it. It's kind of a yes or no question 0:31:38.520 --> 0:31:41.760 that it's it's both. That often they will lay a 0:31:41.800 --> 0:31:44.160 small batch of eggs, you know, just a few dozen 0:31:44.280 --> 0:31:46.120 or something. That's all they have in their own body 0:31:46.200 --> 0:31:50.360 reserves from not having you know, fed on blood versus 0:31:50.360 --> 0:31:52.360 that they feed on you or me, or or an 0:31:52.360 --> 0:31:54.880 elk or a reindeer or you know, something of that sort. 0:31:55.240 --> 0:31:57.760 Then they fill up with double the amount of energy 0:31:57.840 --> 0:32:00.840 that they had before, I think, produce hundreds of eggs, 0:32:01.240 --> 0:32:03.880 and then they can get another blood meal produce another 0:32:03.920 --> 0:32:06.320 couple of hundred. So if you look at two or 0:32:06.360 --> 0:32:10.160 three cycles of several hundred eggs versus one cycle of 0:32:11.080 --> 0:32:14.200 paltry dozen or two. You can see that. That's why 0:32:14.200 --> 0:32:16.600 I say yes and no that yes, you technically can 0:32:16.640 --> 0:32:19.640 do it, but it's not a very successful strategy to 0:32:19.680 --> 0:32:22.320 do it. It's much better to take your risk. What's 0:32:22.360 --> 0:32:24.880 my chance of getting swatted and killed? Which means I 0:32:24.920 --> 0:32:28.600 passed no jeans a long versus ten times as many 0:32:28.600 --> 0:32:32.120 as if I don't feed. And obviously the calculus in 0:32:32.160 --> 0:32:34.920 the case of mosquito is it's worth the risk of 0:32:35.200 --> 0:32:38.200 getting the blood meal. Where are all the guys, Like 0:32:38.200 --> 0:32:40.800 when you're when you're out and you're getting swarmed by mosquitoes? 0:32:40.840 --> 0:32:43.240 Are you swarmed by males and females but it's only 0:32:43.280 --> 0:32:46.040 the females biting you, or the are the guys elsewhere? 0:32:46.280 --> 0:32:48.520 The guys are elsewhere they're looking for the girls, and 0:32:48.560 --> 0:32:51.200 they often hang out where they're going to be feeding 0:32:51.600 --> 0:32:54.720 because blood doesn't have much energy. It's mostly just protein, 0:32:54.760 --> 0:32:57.600 which of course what you need for laying eggs, but 0:32:57.680 --> 0:33:00.800 your energy comes from floral neck or something and this 0:33:00.840 --> 0:33:04.240 sort of sugary sweet things. So often the guys will 0:33:04.320 --> 0:33:06.480 kind of hang out around that looking where they can 0:33:06.840 --> 0:33:09.600 sneak up and catch a goal while she's getting lunch 0:33:09.680 --> 0:33:14.240 or something like that. Are they born on a one 0:33:14.280 --> 0:33:17.600 to one ratio or are their boatloads more females and males. 0:33:17.720 --> 0:33:21.520 Now they're pretty much one to one, huh most most so, 0:33:21.560 --> 0:33:24.040 when you got that huge swarm, there's that many guys 0:33:24.160 --> 0:33:27.680 sitting under some leaf exactly, but they're not bothering and 0:33:28.080 --> 0:33:31.840 they'll they'll fly away if you get anywhere near them. 0:33:31.960 --> 0:33:34.040 They're not dumb. They don't want to be squatted because 0:33:34.040 --> 0:33:37.320 they look right pretty much. They have a furrier proboscis, 0:33:37.720 --> 0:33:41.720 their stingery there. Their blood feeding tube usually is more 0:33:41.800 --> 0:33:45.320 furry because they need this for sensory things to detect 0:33:45.360 --> 0:33:51.080 and find the female. I eat with one more mosquito one, yeah, exactly. 0:33:51.160 --> 0:33:53.000 When we were kids, we had the belief, and I 0:33:53.000 --> 0:33:55.200 feel like I swear it works. Cal You probably did 0:33:55.200 --> 0:33:59.280 this where you catch a mosquito biting you and you 0:33:59.320 --> 0:34:01.480 would you know, the idea is that you would pinch 0:34:01.560 --> 0:34:07.760 it and so that you were trapping his sucker what's 0:34:07.800 --> 0:34:11.040 the word for a sucker probos You pinch him and 0:34:11.120 --> 0:34:14.560 trap his proboscis. And our belief where I grew up 0:34:15.360 --> 0:34:19.200 was that they could not stop sucking. Once they got 0:34:19.239 --> 0:34:23.800 in there, they and you would blow it up. You 0:34:23.840 --> 0:34:28.520 would eventually if you did it right, it would eventually erupt. Cool. 0:34:28.640 --> 0:34:31.960 I've never heard that sounds like a great thing to do. 0:34:32.080 --> 0:34:34.080 I would have done that if I had known about 0:34:34.920 --> 0:34:39.239 that's your next paper. So that doesn't ring true to you. Well, 0:34:39.280 --> 0:34:41.399 I don't know, if I know, I knew. We used 0:34:41.440 --> 0:34:43.680 to Sometimes they get in the crease of your knuckle 0:34:44.320 --> 0:34:47.120 and you straighten your finger and pinches so they can't 0:34:47.160 --> 0:34:49.000 get away, and then you could just kind of look 0:34:49.040 --> 0:34:51.839 at and torment this thing. But we never actually did 0:34:51.880 --> 0:34:54.439 it long enough to see whether they exploded. That. That's 0:34:54.440 --> 0:34:57.759 a good experiment. You need to repeat that, Man, I 0:34:57.760 --> 0:34:59.960 haven't done a long time. But yeah, you'd you'd suffer 0:35:00.000 --> 0:35:02.160 a lot of stings in order to eventually get one. 0:35:02.360 --> 0:35:05.279 And I know for a fact you can hold them captive. Yeah, 0:35:05.320 --> 0:35:07.759 I know, Yeah, we did that. But our view was 0:35:07.800 --> 0:35:09.319 I don't know that I ever saw it might just 0:35:09.360 --> 0:35:11.200 been like a thing we knew to be true, even 0:35:11.200 --> 0:35:13.759 though no one ever saw as it would eventually, like 0:35:13.800 --> 0:35:20.000 I said, explode another chapter. Yeah, considering you have three 0:35:20.120 --> 0:35:23.080 kids of prime age for this, you'll you'll be able 0:35:23.080 --> 0:35:26.560 to collect some data on this and then wait for 0:35:26.600 --> 0:35:29.239 a nice wet June evening and I'm gonna make them 0:35:29.239 --> 0:35:31.839 ball in the yard and they can write it up 0:35:32.080 --> 0:35:34.720 with a nice photograph and publish it in the journal. 0:35:34.760 --> 0:35:37.239 I've got a couple of good candidates who would love 0:35:37.280 --> 0:35:40.520 to have them in their journal. I like, Okay, I 0:35:40.560 --> 0:35:41.880 want to go back to where you were trying to 0:35:41.920 --> 0:35:44.160 talk what you're trying to talk about. I was asking about, like, 0:35:44.200 --> 0:35:46.920 where did it begin? Where did the ability to like 0:35:47.040 --> 0:35:51.000 wallop someone with a nasty sting begin? And and you 0:35:51.040 --> 0:35:54.719 were getting into explaining, um that here's a bug and 0:35:54.760 --> 0:35:57.359 a head an ovipositor, you know, I first started out 0:35:57.400 --> 0:36:01.319 they went through solitary bees in solitary offs, and they 0:36:01.440 --> 0:36:04.080 use the stinger mainly for paralyzing their prey. Say a 0:36:04.160 --> 0:36:08.120 cicada killer for example. It has it's a big boss, 0:36:08.239 --> 0:36:11.000 looks like a yellow jacket on steroids and growth hormone, 0:36:11.040 --> 0:36:14.200 so it's quite huge. But it doesn't sting. It's solitary. 0:36:14.239 --> 0:36:16.840 It's just mom and she goes out and catches the 0:36:16.920 --> 0:36:21.600 cicada and she stings it then paralyzes it just by 0:36:21.640 --> 0:36:24.920 piercing it, not by poisoning it. No, no, she poisons 0:36:25.480 --> 0:36:28.879 and so she pierces it and poisons it, and then 0:36:29.520 --> 0:36:33.560 she has this venom, which is very ineffective on us 0:36:33.719 --> 0:36:37.439 because we don't prey on cicada killers because again, there's 0:36:37.480 --> 0:36:39.799 not worth the effort to try to track down this 0:36:39.960 --> 0:36:43.880 fast flying insect just to get one snack a bite. 0:36:44.600 --> 0:36:48.200 Not worth the energy to do that. But then some 0:36:48.320 --> 0:36:53.640 of them adapted different behaviors like ants. Of course they 0:36:53.719 --> 0:36:58.480 can't fly, so they have a more limited ability to escape. 0:36:59.239 --> 0:37:02.319 And we don't really know the ancestor of ants because 0:37:02.360 --> 0:37:06.279 the closest we have is very primitive ant societies, which 0:37:06.320 --> 0:37:09.399 have maybe say a dozen or so individuals, but they're 0:37:09.400 --> 0:37:12.480 already social, so we don't know the step between that 0:37:12.560 --> 0:37:16.120 when has a single individual to go to the small 0:37:16.280 --> 0:37:19.759 first step. But presumably something happened there where he had 0:37:19.800 --> 0:37:22.920 overlap of generations and mom and a few ones, a 0:37:22.960 --> 0:37:27.000 few individuals helped out. And the advantage of having a 0:37:27.040 --> 0:37:30.120 stinger is there's something that's messing with you, you can 0:37:30.160 --> 0:37:33.359 sting it and chances are to go away and then 0:37:33.480 --> 0:37:36.440 leave you and your mom and your your siblings alone. 0:37:37.600 --> 0:37:41.719 And so then this as you've got bigger colonies evolved. 0:37:41.760 --> 0:37:43.960 You know, say something where you know a couple of 0:37:44.520 --> 0:37:47.480 hundred ants, then you have to have a better defense 0:37:47.560 --> 0:37:50.600 because there's more enthusiasm. I'm more willing to eat a 0:37:50.680 --> 0:37:54.839 hundred something than I am a dozen or fewer, and 0:37:54.880 --> 0:37:58.720 so I have higher motivation. So in order to blunt 0:37:58.719 --> 0:38:01.880 the higher motivation, you've got to get a more effective sting. 0:38:02.560 --> 0:38:05.719 So this is basically the hypothesis of stepwise as you 0:38:05.760 --> 0:38:09.080 get bigger and bigger, and it takes it to the extreme, 0:38:09.120 --> 0:38:13.640 which there's about a dozen wasps in this category. Honeybees 0:38:13.719 --> 0:38:17.560 are also in it, and one ant species of harves strand. 0:38:18.040 --> 0:38:20.160 What they do is go to the extent of actually 0:38:20.880 --> 0:38:24.920 giving up their life sacrifice and committing suicide by stinging you, 0:38:25.440 --> 0:38:28.800 ripping the stinger out. If everybody's been stung by honeybee 0:38:28.840 --> 0:38:31.439 knows they lose the stinger in you. You say, why 0:38:31.440 --> 0:38:34.920 would they do that? It's because at this point, the 0:38:35.000 --> 0:38:38.280 individual honeybee doesn't reproduce, she doesn't lay eggs or anything. 0:38:38.320 --> 0:38:43.520 She's protecting mom. So she's basically like a cell of 0:38:43.640 --> 0:38:47.560 mom that she's part of the system to reproduce, and 0:38:47.719 --> 0:38:50.520 she got he's got to keep. Now I'm getting into 0:38:50.520 --> 0:38:54.640 the heat like you. Sorry, the worker honeybee, the female 0:38:55.000 --> 0:39:00.080 honeybee has to defend its mom and by leaving the 0:39:00.160 --> 0:39:02.919 stinger and you, that prevents you from If you get 0:39:02.960 --> 0:39:05.520 stung and you give it a karate chop, you get 0:39:05.520 --> 0:39:08.560 it off before it does much damage. He gets much 0:39:08.640 --> 0:39:11.400 venom and it takes about thirty seconds to a minute 0:39:11.600 --> 0:39:14.120 to get a full load of venomin. If you lose 0:39:14.160 --> 0:39:17.719 your stinger, then your karate chopping you knock off the 0:39:17.760 --> 0:39:21.880 bee and say ah solution be gune a kill your ascal. 0:39:22.680 --> 0:39:25.239 Wrong because the stingers in you and it pumps that 0:39:25.360 --> 0:39:30.080 other of the venom into you. And that's beneficial as 0:39:30.120 --> 0:39:33.960 an even stronger defense than just the venom and stinging itself, 0:39:34.360 --> 0:39:36.960 because now you get ten times more in. And it's 0:39:37.000 --> 0:39:41.080 often very hard to find a penetrable part of the animal. 0:39:41.200 --> 0:39:43.839 You know, you have a lizard or something like that. 0:39:44.000 --> 0:39:47.359 It's hard to find between the scales the sting where 0:39:47.400 --> 0:39:50.160 most mammals we have all this fur and hair and everything. 0:39:50.520 --> 0:39:53.200 You know, we're unusual people were pretty easy to sting. 0:39:53.200 --> 0:39:56.520 We don't have much hair, but it's often very hard 0:39:56.600 --> 0:39:59.080 to manage to get you know, a place where you 0:39:59.120 --> 0:40:01.160 can sting and so it's important once you get to 0:40:01.280 --> 0:40:04.920 maximize the damage that you did. So it just keeps 0:40:05.400 --> 0:40:08.600 accent to writing as there's more and more risk. All 0:40:08.680 --> 0:40:11.800 these ones that lose stingers are huge. Colonies are big, 0:40:12.480 --> 0:40:16.480 like the honey wasp and honeybee. And there's a bunch 0:40:16.480 --> 0:40:20.840 of Polibia wasps which are papermaking nests down in Latin 0:40:20.840 --> 0:40:25.160 America and the tropics that also have huge colonies of 0:40:25.640 --> 0:40:31.560 sometimes individuals. You think about it, you lose one individual, yeah, 0:40:31.880 --> 0:40:35.480 so what who cares? But if you have a colony 0:40:35.520 --> 0:40:38.200 of ten, like some of the small ants, you lose one, 0:40:38.239 --> 0:40:40.560 that's a big price to pay. So they never lose 0:40:40.600 --> 0:40:45.480 their sting. It's only these super huge monsters social societies 0:40:45.520 --> 0:40:49.560 that do that. It's this is an impossible question for 0:40:49.600 --> 0:40:55.160 anyone to answer. But the ones that self eviscerate, they 0:40:55.160 --> 0:40:58.120 sting in, they die like they you know exactly, It's 0:40:58.120 --> 0:41:02.799 impossible to know what m oh Man like, what their 0:41:02.840 --> 0:41:07.840 self awareness is, right, But like most creatures are gonna 0:41:08.520 --> 0:41:11.600 I should say most a lot of creatures exhibit they 0:41:11.640 --> 0:41:14.880 desire to not get killed self preservation. Yeah, they do 0:41:15.000 --> 0:41:21.120 things because they don't want to get killed. Um, I 0:41:21.160 --> 0:41:24.239 would love to know like, to what degree it has 0:41:24.320 --> 0:41:27.319 any sort of self awareness about the finality of the 0:41:27.360 --> 0:41:30.880 decision to bite. I think they're quite well aware of that. 0:41:30.920 --> 0:41:34.839 I just have a paper submitted just six months ago 0:41:34.920 --> 0:41:38.719 and basically that question. I asked, the question of honeybee colonies, 0:41:39.360 --> 0:41:42.040 will you make a decision? Is it worth dying for 0:41:42.200 --> 0:41:45.360 my colony or is it not? And the two questions 0:41:45.360 --> 0:41:48.240 they give them is one case, they have only a nest, 0:41:48.400 --> 0:41:51.359 they have no young, they have no food, no paul, 0:41:51.480 --> 0:41:55.000 no nectar, no honey or anything. That's like they're just 0:41:55.040 --> 0:41:57.880 building a house. Like, yeah, that's just in the initial stages. 0:41:57.960 --> 0:42:00.960 Three days old colony, and so you came from a 0:42:01.000 --> 0:42:03.440 swarm and you had a bunch of honey in your tummy, 0:42:03.880 --> 0:42:06.319 and you've been there three days, and if worst comes 0:42:06.320 --> 0:42:09.399 to worst, you just off you go find a new 0:42:09.440 --> 0:42:12.799 nest to very little lose. And the other case that 0:42:12.840 --> 0:42:16.479 I had was nineteen to twenty two days, whereas that's 0:42:17.080 --> 0:42:19.880 midway through your life cycle. Of the oldest bees are 0:42:19.920 --> 0:42:23.320 starting to die off. They live about forty days in general, 0:42:24.360 --> 0:42:26.600 and so you you have a whole bunch of young 0:42:26.680 --> 0:42:29.759 there which are just about to emerge and start taking over. 0:42:30.040 --> 0:42:31.840 You have a lot of honey, of a lot of plony, 0:42:31.920 --> 0:42:33.920 have a lot of wax, you have a lot of investment. 0:42:34.600 --> 0:42:37.480 And in that case, if you're a worker be will 0:42:37.560 --> 0:42:40.319 you decide, Oh, I have a lot more to risk 0:42:40.480 --> 0:42:44.320 my mama, who's everything to me. Because I can't reproduce. 0:42:44.400 --> 0:42:48.200 All I can do is allow her to reproduce. So 0:42:48.360 --> 0:42:51.960 should I sacrifice my life my mama much more readily 0:42:52.040 --> 0:42:54.600 when I'm in a colony that's older and has much 0:42:54.640 --> 0:42:58.040 more to lose than younger And the answer is yes, 0:42:58.120 --> 0:43:01.200 the two and a half times more likely to sting 0:43:01.239 --> 0:43:03.440 when they're the older at the bigger risk. So they 0:43:04.080 --> 0:43:06.319 so they have some kind of awareness that they have 0:43:06.360 --> 0:43:11.879 a value, you know, exhibit that by their behavior. Does 0:43:11.920 --> 0:43:17.800 that ever, does that ever begin to reverse? Like oh yeah, 0:43:18.200 --> 0:43:21.200 Like well they then okay, let like if it's an 0:43:21.239 --> 0:43:23.919 old colony, and like we're gonna get set to take 0:43:24.000 --> 0:43:26.200 off on for a new one. And then he goes like, 0:43:26.400 --> 0:43:30.480 now I'm losing my desire to die because it's not 0:43:30.520 --> 0:43:32.520 as important anymore, or is the only thing that just 0:43:32.640 --> 0:43:35.640 increases increases increases, and then they die. No, it goes 0:43:35.680 --> 0:43:37.840 both ways. That I had a couple of examples I 0:43:37.920 --> 0:43:42.160 had twenty total colonies, eight of the three days and 0:43:42.280 --> 0:43:46.560 nine of the nine two days, but I had three 0:43:47.040 --> 0:43:49.520 that what we called queenless was the queen died for 0:43:49.600 --> 0:43:53.919 whatever reason, either you know, something happened to an old age. 0:43:54.120 --> 0:43:56.920 You know, we often don't know, maybe got pinched or 0:43:57.000 --> 0:44:00.880 something happened. And these colonies have no we reductive potential 0:44:00.880 --> 0:44:03.920 at all, because again, the workers can't lay eggs, and 0:44:03.960 --> 0:44:08.440 so they have nothing to lose, nothing to defend except themselves, 0:44:08.440 --> 0:44:10.680 and they're just gonna live out there their last of 0:44:10.719 --> 0:44:13.239 their forty days of old age. And you go and 0:44:13.280 --> 0:44:15.399 mess with those colonies, they won't do anything at all, 0:44:15.640 --> 0:44:18.640 No way. Yeah, they they're like they're aware of what's 0:44:18.640 --> 0:44:21.359 going on with the queen. Oh yeah, they know they 0:44:21.360 --> 0:44:24.440 have no queen, and so they'll go, they'll go. Uh, 0:44:24.560 --> 0:44:26.640 they were about two percent would come out and defend, 0:44:26.640 --> 0:44:30.040 whereas I'd have sixty or seventy come out with some 0:44:30.120 --> 0:44:32.560 of the ones that had the most to defend. So 0:44:32.600 --> 0:44:36.920 they knew, why should I go and sacrifice myself for 0:44:37.040 --> 0:44:40.640 my useless sisters when I could just hang out for 0:44:40.640 --> 0:44:43.400 forty days. Yeah, just hang out and enjoy life as 0:44:43.480 --> 0:44:46.399 best you can. I mean, what else is there to do? 0:44:46.400 --> 0:44:52.440 You know everything? Man, that's where you want up. You 0:44:52.480 --> 0:44:55.560 wind up in these like difficult where you're like, is 0:44:55.560 --> 0:44:59.480 it that they know it? Or is it just somehow 0:44:59.520 --> 0:45:02.200 that it is? They certainly behave as if they know it. 0:45:02.640 --> 0:45:05.120 But there's an even more into honey Bees are fascinating, 0:45:05.120 --> 0:45:07.400 which is one of the reasons I worked on a 0:45:07.400 --> 0:45:10.000 lot and everybody else does. He got the males, on 0:45:10.040 --> 0:45:13.880 the other hand, the males when they mate, they explode 0:45:14.480 --> 0:45:18.040 their genitary explode into the queen and they fall off 0:45:18.080 --> 0:45:20.520 paralyzed and die and get hauled away and eaten by 0:45:20.520 --> 0:45:25.839 the ants. Back up, who does the male honey bees? 0:45:25.880 --> 0:45:29.439 The drones as they call them, and say, asked the drone. Well, 0:45:29.680 --> 0:45:34.960 so you gotta colony, it's got the drones. How many 0:45:35.000 --> 0:45:37.319 of the drones are gonna have the opportunity to go 0:45:37.400 --> 0:45:39.799 out like this? Well, they'll probably be two or three 0:45:39.840 --> 0:45:44.279 thousand of these drones per summer in the colony, and 0:45:44.320 --> 0:45:46.720 they probably get to mate with one or two queens 0:45:46.760 --> 0:45:50.840 that most each one does well the whole colony worth. 0:45:51.400 --> 0:45:54.520 And so if you figure a queen mates about eighteen 0:45:54.600 --> 0:45:59.000 two six times, so let's say fifty males get a 0:45:59.080 --> 0:46:02.400 chance out of two or three thousands to mate. And 0:46:02.440 --> 0:46:05.520 so the males, no, this is a very rare opportunity. 0:46:05.800 --> 0:46:08.160 You know, most of us are just horny and never 0:46:08.160 --> 0:46:11.440 get a chance to find a mate. And so if 0:46:11.480 --> 0:46:13.440 you get the chance to find a mate, what are 0:46:13.440 --> 0:46:18.719 you thinking, I've succeeding. But I'm exploding and I'm rupturing 0:46:18.760 --> 0:46:22.440 my whole whole system and being paralyzed and falling to 0:46:22.520 --> 0:46:25.160 the ground. And of course the queen then turns around 0:46:25.160 --> 0:46:28.200 and kicks the rest of your genitalia. It's like having 0:46:28.239 --> 0:46:32.200 your your penis stuck inside ripped off and then go on. 0:46:32.400 --> 0:46:35.560 Then she goes and rips it out and throws it away, 0:46:35.520 --> 0:46:43.080 and so that's what the man and so his gym 0:46:43.200 --> 0:46:46.239 till you come off. Yeah, you can actually hear it. 0:46:46.239 --> 0:46:48.200 It's a pop if you're down on the ground near 0:46:48.239 --> 0:46:53.120 and they explode. And then she discards it exactly, and 0:46:53.200 --> 0:46:57.640 someone hauls this paralyzed, dying thing off when it falls 0:46:57.680 --> 0:46:59.600 down to the ground, and then the aunts say, oh, yeah, 0:46:59.600 --> 0:47:02.680 I'm nice, fat juicee be let's have dinner, and so 0:47:02.719 --> 0:47:06.640 they hauled off to them their nest and need it. Wow, 0:47:07.680 --> 0:47:10.880 So what is the male No, idea. Yeah, but have 0:47:11.000 --> 0:47:13.200 you been just like you looked at their eagerness to 0:47:14.239 --> 0:47:18.480 that you looked at you know, species eagerness to die 0:47:18.640 --> 0:47:23.720 for the cause? Um, have you? Is there any study 0:47:23.800 --> 0:47:27.080 you can think of it would measure the male's awareness, Like, 0:47:27.160 --> 0:47:29.960 are there males that get the opportunity and then bail? 0:47:31.280 --> 0:47:34.120 I don't know. Unfortunately, they're about twenty ft up, going 0:47:34.200 --> 0:47:37.399 fourteen miles an hour and flying chasing this queen who's 0:47:37.440 --> 0:47:41.919 buzzing around, and they there, yes, yes, don't say having sex. 0:47:41.960 --> 0:47:45.399 I don't imagine they're they're mating up in the air. Yeah. See, 0:47:45.520 --> 0:47:47.759 she's pretty clever. She figures, I don't want to get 0:47:47.760 --> 0:47:50.880 a reject mail because that makes reject kids. So you 0:47:50.920 --> 0:47:54.200 want to get the strongest, fittest male. So you're flying fast, 0:47:54.239 --> 0:47:55.840 and the mail's gotta be able to catch up with 0:47:55.880 --> 0:47:58.160 you and beat out all the other males that are 0:47:58.200 --> 0:48:01.440 they all the other drones. So she's intentionally making it 0:48:01.480 --> 0:48:04.040 hard for him to do it. So I guess he's 0:48:04.080 --> 0:48:06.960 more thinking about the immediate I gotta catch it, rather 0:48:07.000 --> 0:48:09.719 than think about, oh, I'm not going to make it 0:48:09.920 --> 0:48:13.520 be alive much longer. I'm not sure where the beasts think, 0:48:13.640 --> 0:48:16.440 but you know, that's if you analogize, that would be 0:48:16.520 --> 0:48:20.280 probably how his behavior would be, that he's more worried 0:48:20.280 --> 0:48:24.799 about catching the queen and worrying later about you know, 0:48:24.880 --> 0:48:28.480 we're somewhat the same way with with people. I guess 0:48:28.520 --> 0:48:30.880 I shouldn't go that way, but there seems to be 0:48:30.920 --> 0:48:33.719 a lot of interest in the mating part. Oops, I 0:48:33.840 --> 0:48:36.719 got a kid, Now what you we don't really think 0:48:36.760 --> 0:48:40.200 about the kid in too many cases. You know, once 0:48:40.239 --> 0:48:42.719 we're married and that sort of thing, then we do 0:48:42.800 --> 0:48:45.759 think about that. But before you're married and you're young, 0:48:46.120 --> 0:48:49.919 you know, you don't really go to that depth of thought. 0:48:50.040 --> 0:48:52.799 You're you're focused on the immediate. Yeah, in the back 0:48:52.840 --> 0:48:56.719 of your mind, you're aware that exactly exactly, But that's 0:48:56.719 --> 0:49:00.839 about as far as you take it. How did you 0:49:01.280 --> 0:49:07.480 um and doing your work? Why did it become necessary 0:49:08.280 --> 0:49:13.240 or and did it become necessary that you would start 0:49:13.320 --> 0:49:17.839 exposing yourself to getting stung by everything? Basically it was 0:49:18.160 --> 0:49:21.600 late in the scheme where I had had early I 0:49:21.680 --> 0:49:24.280 wanted to expose just because I was trying to collect 0:49:24.640 --> 0:49:28.120 enough information from It's kind of a statistical thing. You 0:49:28.120 --> 0:49:31.640 can't use one example that's an anecdote or five or 0:49:31.640 --> 0:49:34.880 ten to get the information I needed. I needed dozens 0:49:34.920 --> 0:49:38.000 and dozens. So each time I've had a new species, 0:49:38.520 --> 0:49:41.040 I would go after that to kind of collect the 0:49:41.160 --> 0:49:46.239 chemical and pain information about them. And so eventually I 0:49:46.239 --> 0:49:49.640 got to us fifty or sixty different different types of 0:49:50.320 --> 0:49:53.720 of seeing insects that did that. I'd go to meetings 0:49:53.760 --> 0:49:57.640 and give presentations, a show a picture of a a 0:49:57.719 --> 0:50:00.840 mud dauber wash dirt dauber washp would to have pretty 0:50:00.920 --> 0:50:03.680 much around the world. It's a long, skinny thing about 0:50:03.719 --> 0:50:07.000 an inch long. It's got a really narrow thread like waist, 0:50:07.680 --> 0:50:11.960 and they're dead, dreadly death, deathly afraid of them in 0:50:12.000 --> 0:50:15.120 some parts of Texas, Oh my god, these things are awful. 0:50:15.160 --> 0:50:16.839 And have you ever been stung by one? And I said, 0:50:16.880 --> 0:50:20.520 well no, why not? I said, well, because there's solitary 0:50:20.960 --> 0:50:24.560 they just think spiders and paralyzing for their prey. There's 0:50:24.680 --> 0:50:26.880 they have very few predators that are big, you know, 0:50:26.920 --> 0:50:29.080 like birds or anything. Doesn't want to mess when they 0:50:29.080 --> 0:50:32.760 don't really need a stinger for defense, so they probably 0:50:32.760 --> 0:50:35.280 don't hurt much. And that's very hard to get into stinging, 0:50:35.440 --> 0:50:38.839 so they probably don't hurt. And they'd say yeah, man, yeah, 0:50:38.920 --> 0:50:42.080 you're just afraid of these things. It's about the third 0:50:42.120 --> 0:50:45.640 or fourth time taunted. Yeah, third or fourth time I 0:50:45.680 --> 0:50:48.080 got those sorts of questions, I said, oh damn, and 0:50:48.120 --> 0:50:50.840 I guess I had to bite the bullet go test 0:50:50.920 --> 0:50:53.120 my theory, which said would be about a one on 0:50:53.160 --> 0:50:56.440 this very very low pain. So I went out to 0:50:56.520 --> 0:50:59.880 a cattle tank where they water the cattle in the 0:51:00.000 --> 0:51:04.120 desert of Arizona. There's no water for miles away. Mud 0:51:04.200 --> 0:51:07.320 dauber wasts need mud. That's where they make their nests 0:51:07.360 --> 0:51:09.640 out of, so I knew they'd be coming in there. 0:51:10.040 --> 0:51:12.120 It's again, only the females that do the work. The 0:51:12.160 --> 0:51:17.080 males just chase the females, so they're kind of useless basically. 0:51:17.440 --> 0:51:19.640 So the females are all coming in. They could all sting, 0:51:19.640 --> 0:51:22.439 and they were collecting mud balls. So I grabbed three 0:51:22.480 --> 0:51:25.719 of them and I'd apply them to my arm. I'd 0:51:25.760 --> 0:51:29.120 sticking colin and ladies, stay me, please, staing me, stink, stink, 0:51:29.160 --> 0:51:30.600 come on, you can do it, you can do it, 0:51:30.719 --> 0:51:33.520 you can do it. And I finally got a couple 0:51:33.520 --> 0:51:36.319 of stings to to sting me, and they were what 0:51:36.360 --> 0:51:40.440 i'd call underwhelming, just as I predicted, so like all 0:51:40.480 --> 0:51:42.680 the Texans are all worked up about it, but then 0:51:42.680 --> 0:51:44.600 you get stung and you weren't impressed. Yeah, it was 0:51:44.640 --> 0:51:47.480 basically they're scary looking. I admit that they are scary 0:51:47.520 --> 0:51:50.000 looking you look at them. And so there was a 0:51:50.080 --> 0:51:52.839 number of things like that. The cicada killer was another one. 0:51:53.719 --> 0:51:57.280 This was a little bit of serendipity, foolishness and opportunity. 0:51:58.400 --> 0:52:00.160 I had never been stung by one, and it was 0:52:00.200 --> 0:52:03.279 only one recorded literature history of a guy who got 0:52:03.320 --> 0:52:07.359 stung underneath his thumbnail at the end, and that's one 0:52:07.360 --> 0:52:10.000 of the more sensitive parts of your body underneath there. 0:52:10.640 --> 0:52:13.400 He complained that it hurt a lot, but then he said, 0:52:13.719 --> 0:52:16.920 it really wasn't that bad a thing compared to you know, 0:52:17.080 --> 0:52:19.440 something like a honey bee or something like that. But 0:52:19.480 --> 0:52:22.840 it's just this kind of passing thing in you know, 0:52:22.960 --> 0:52:25.239 really old paper, and I'm not in sure why you 0:52:25.239 --> 0:52:27.640 put that in. Today they wouldn't even lie to put 0:52:27.680 --> 0:52:30.680 this chafe in the side in there. But it was nice. 0:52:30.719 --> 0:52:33.600 We got a little bit of natural history. So then 0:52:33.600 --> 0:52:36.200 I thought, well, this is probably it's big. It's you know, 0:52:36.239 --> 0:52:39.080 about two inches long, So how much is this thing 0:52:39.120 --> 0:52:42.040 going to hurt again. I was asked about that, and 0:52:42.200 --> 0:52:45.600 I thought, well, I've worked on for years and years 0:52:45.640 --> 0:52:48.839 and they don't sting you. So I went out one day. 0:52:48.880 --> 0:52:51.160 I didn't have a net or anything, and I saw 0:52:51.239 --> 0:52:54.640 one on a flower, so I'm grab and it stung 0:52:54.680 --> 0:52:58.319 the poem my hand, which incidentally has more pain than 0:52:58.400 --> 0:53:02.600 most other areas because we have all the sensory nerves there. 0:53:03.400 --> 0:53:06.120 Palms are very sensitive to touch and that sort of thing, 0:53:06.680 --> 0:53:09.080 so we need a very good nervous system and that 0:53:09.200 --> 0:53:12.600 part of our anatomy. And it hurt about a one 0:53:12.600 --> 0:53:15.000 and a half, as I called it, less than a honeybee, 0:53:15.000 --> 0:53:18.640 more than a sweatbee, more than a dirt daub or wass, 0:53:18.680 --> 0:53:20.799 but not as much as a honeybee. And this is 0:53:20.800 --> 0:53:23.440 a great big thing. And again that was a prediction. 0:53:23.640 --> 0:53:27.040 It's just mom doing everything on our own. If you 0:53:27.120 --> 0:53:30.560 had a colony of things like that. Analogy being the 0:53:30.600 --> 0:53:34.520 giant hornets of Asia Japan, we have hundreds of them 0:53:34.520 --> 0:53:37.840 in a nest and they're the same size. Those do 0:53:38.200 --> 0:53:41.239 hurt you when you say you gave it a one 0:53:41.280 --> 0:53:45.000 and a half. Explain the scale you eventually came up with. Yeah, 0:53:45.000 --> 0:53:47.799 the scale, it's kind of it's it's very hard to 0:53:47.960 --> 0:53:50.360 You can't put an electrode in in the skin or 0:53:50.360 --> 0:53:52.360 in a nerve or anything and get a like a 0:53:52.400 --> 0:53:55.160 galvanometer we do in high school physics class with the 0:53:55.200 --> 0:53:57.759 needle swings over and you can record how far it 0:53:57.840 --> 0:54:00.920 swings and say, oh, that implies this strange. I can't 0:54:00.920 --> 0:54:04.120 do anything like that with with pain, so it's just relative. 0:54:04.840 --> 0:54:07.960 So I made a pain scale of four for one 0:54:08.000 --> 0:54:10.480 to three and four, and I said, well, we need 0:54:10.520 --> 0:54:13.560 to have a comparative because the pain you experience might 0:54:13.600 --> 0:54:16.640 be different from the pain I experienced, saying, maybe you're 0:54:16.680 --> 0:54:20.880 ten times tougher than I am. So if if you 0:54:20.960 --> 0:54:24.120 get stung by a honeybee and you call that a 0:54:24.200 --> 0:54:26.480 two by definition, I get stung by a honeybee, and 0:54:26.760 --> 0:54:29.520 I call that a two for me. So even though 0:54:29.520 --> 0:54:34.160 it may hurt me ten times more than you, I'm 0:54:34.200 --> 0:54:37.120 normalizing it to myself. So next time I get stung by, 0:54:37.239 --> 0:54:40.880 say a sweatbee, which is the one, I'd say it's 0:54:40.880 --> 0:54:44.319 a whole lot less than the two. And one of 0:54:44.320 --> 0:54:46.239 the ways you can tell the differences you hold up 0:54:46.239 --> 0:54:48.800 the two and ask somebody which one would you prefer 0:54:48.840 --> 0:54:50.640 to get stung by if you had to, if there's 0:54:50.680 --> 0:54:53.040 a gun to your head, Oh, I'll take that one 0:54:53.080 --> 0:54:59.200 for sure, absolutely, that one without indicate a strong recognition 0:54:59.239 --> 0:55:02.239 that that one hurts a lot less and kind of 0:55:02.280 --> 0:55:06.200 on the semi quantitative arena. What I do is they say, 0:55:06.200 --> 0:55:11.160 it's like an exponential scale of a two is ten 0:55:11.239 --> 0:55:15.360 times more painful than a than a one, and three 0:55:15.400 --> 0:55:19.200 is tend to the Richter scale for earthquakes, exactly seven 0:55:19.320 --> 0:55:21.640 is ten times worse than the six. Exactly the same 0:55:21.680 --> 0:55:24.480 sort of idea, And you say, how you can you 0:55:24.520 --> 0:55:27.520 can match that? Is? Okay, take a fire ant, which 0:55:27.560 --> 0:55:30.200 is something that readily stings numerous times. You get one 0:55:30.239 --> 0:55:32.840 fire it kind of smarts. It's kind of a one. 0:55:33.520 --> 0:55:37.000 You get ten fire ants. They kind of ladies on 0:55:37.000 --> 0:55:41.000 on que all sting, and all ten I'm stinging. It 0:55:41.080 --> 0:55:43.600 seems that's the way they are. They aren't really that way, 0:55:43.600 --> 0:55:46.000 but that's the way it seems to poor victim. When 0:55:46.040 --> 0:55:48.920 you get stung ten fire ants stings heard about as 0:55:49.000 --> 0:55:52.279 much as one honey bee sting. You get to ten 0:55:52.320 --> 0:55:54.359 honey bee stings they heard about as much as one 0:55:54.440 --> 0:55:57.879 harvest RNT, which is a three, and you get ten 0:55:57.920 --> 0:56:01.520 harvest ants, and that's maybe as much as one bullet 0:56:01.600 --> 0:56:04.680 and or transa hawk, which is a four, so you 0:56:04.719 --> 0:56:07.360 can see, you know, it's it's not a linear scale 0:56:07.360 --> 0:56:11.799 like one is half of two, which is you know, 0:56:12.239 --> 0:56:16.520 half of three, and it's more tenfold difference. When you 0:56:16.560 --> 0:56:19.719 started subjecting yourself to getting stung by everything, whether did 0:56:19.719 --> 0:56:21.239 you get to where there were some things you were 0:56:21.360 --> 0:56:24.000 nerves that you were reluctant to want to go get 0:56:24.040 --> 0:56:27.719 stung by, or early on in my career, before I 0:56:27.760 --> 0:56:31.680 actually had concept with the sting pain scale, I was 0:56:31.680 --> 0:56:35.520 still just working on the chemistry. I didn't really get 0:56:35.520 --> 0:56:39.719 the pain scale formulated my mind until three So three 0:56:39.800 --> 0:56:42.239 years later, I was in Japan and they had these 0:56:42.320 --> 0:56:45.680 huge mandarin hornets. Everybody's seeing them on YouTube and such. 0:56:46.200 --> 0:56:49.160 They're about two inches long, big boxy, blocky things with 0:56:49.200 --> 0:56:53.040 a bright orange head and orange stripes in their abdomen. 0:56:53.480 --> 0:56:56.360 These things are enormous. Now it is studying them for 0:56:56.400 --> 0:57:00.040 the venom. They've got a lot of venom. And I 0:57:00.080 --> 0:57:02.080 didn't want to get stung. I mean, who wants to 0:57:02.080 --> 0:57:04.799 get stung by some saucy on on wings that's two 0:57:04.840 --> 0:57:09.160 inches long? Boy? I mean, this thing is kind of scary. 0:57:09.239 --> 0:57:11.560 So I managed to collect two colonies with the help 0:57:11.600 --> 0:57:15.040 of Japanese who were very protective of me. They didn't want, 0:57:15.360 --> 0:57:19.160 you know, there their colleague from the US to beginning 0:57:19.480 --> 0:57:21.960 stung up and say these Japanese mal treated me or 0:57:21.960 --> 0:57:24.760 anything like that. So they were very covetous and made 0:57:24.760 --> 0:57:27.040 sure I didn't get stung. And I was all suited up, 0:57:27.640 --> 0:57:30.320 had all those students. Students are expendable, so they had 0:57:30.360 --> 0:57:33.600 them behind me. Within the second nets, they're catching anybody 0:57:33.720 --> 0:57:36.320 cut behind me, could you know, attack me from the back. 0:57:37.080 --> 0:57:39.360 So the long story shot was I managed to get 0:57:40.280 --> 0:57:45.040 all all the members of both colonies and never get stung. 0:57:45.680 --> 0:57:49.160 So in retrospect, I can't say, gosh, I wish I 0:57:49.200 --> 0:57:51.600 had been stung, because everybody asked about how much does 0:57:51.600 --> 0:57:54.880 the Mandard hornet has say well, I don't really know. 0:57:54.920 --> 0:57:57.320 I've never been stung by one. We don't have them 0:57:57.360 --> 0:57:59.800 in the US or North. So to this day you 0:57:59.840 --> 0:58:03.400 have been stung by it, that's right. And so I say, well, 0:58:03.440 --> 0:58:05.360 if somebody wants to fund me for a junk at 0:58:05.920 --> 0:58:08.760 Japan or China for four thousand dollars to go and 0:58:09.080 --> 0:58:11.640 get stung, fund me there and I can do that 0:58:11.720 --> 0:58:15.400 and continue my research on a free trip, and all 0:58:15.400 --> 0:58:18.120 I have to do is get stung once. But my 0:58:18.160 --> 0:58:22.040 prediction is, you know, predicting based on the biology and 0:58:22.120 --> 0:58:25.240 natural history of these things, would be like a yellow jacket, 0:58:25.280 --> 0:58:27.840 which is a two, except a whole lot bigger than 0:58:27.880 --> 0:58:30.040 the yellow deck. It's ten times. It was so bigger. 0:58:30.720 --> 0:58:32.800 So my prediction is it would be about a three, 0:58:33.640 --> 0:58:36.280 you know, ten yellow ten a little yellow jackets equal 0:58:36.280 --> 0:58:40.960 to one humongous yellow jacket like relative. So that's what 0:58:41.040 --> 0:58:44.800 I would predict. Have you traveled to other places to 0:58:44.840 --> 0:58:47.960 get stung? Oh yeah, I'm just like specifically win there 0:58:47.960 --> 0:58:50.080 to get stung. Well, no, not to get stung, to 0:58:50.080 --> 0:58:52.600 collect the venom of whoever was there. I I went 0:58:52.640 --> 0:58:55.760 to Malaysia. We had a nice study there which was 0:58:56.000 --> 0:58:58.240 kind of an interesting thing. I found these ants that 0:58:58.280 --> 0:59:02.080 live in trees and they turned out to be very 0:59:02.160 --> 0:59:05.280 mild in disposition and they didn't hurt very much. They 0:59:05.400 --> 0:59:07.840 brought him back to the lab and looked at their chemistry. 0:59:08.080 --> 0:59:11.280 My god, they're incredibly toxic. They're one of the most 0:59:11.840 --> 0:59:15.360 most toxic insects I've ever run into. So they're The 0:59:15.440 --> 0:59:19.680 question I ask is why if you're so toxic do 0:59:19.760 --> 0:59:22.760 you not hurt? I mean, normally, if you're a big, strong, 0:59:22.920 --> 0:59:25.640 dangerous thing you want to address, Hey, I'm big, strong 0:59:25.760 --> 0:59:28.560 danger don't mess with me, and you you'd want it 0:59:28.640 --> 0:59:31.080 to be painful and hurt, and they don't do this. 0:59:31.680 --> 0:59:33.920 So that's one of the you know, the more you 0:59:33.960 --> 0:59:37.400 do research, you have many questions you can answer, and 0:59:37.440 --> 0:59:40.360 that's one of the ones that I got there. But 0:59:40.440 --> 0:59:44.440 I went to South Africa specifically to study they have 0:59:44.520 --> 0:59:49.080 a whole what I call the Big five of of ants. 0:59:49.480 --> 0:59:56.320 You know, of course into the Big five exactly, hippos 0:59:56.400 --> 1:00:00.480 and elephants and uh ryanos that's the last when Yeah, 1:00:00.880 --> 1:00:04.000 so that these Big five they're good whopping sized dance 1:00:04.840 --> 1:00:06.800 and they were talked about and some of the old 1:00:06.840 --> 1:00:10.520 literature and the naturalists being really really fierce and scary 1:00:10.600 --> 1:00:13.320 and all this. So I said, well, that should be 1:00:13.360 --> 1:00:15.920 a good source of venom chemistry and good good things 1:00:15.960 --> 1:00:19.320 to study. And so I found all those. It turned 1:00:19.320 --> 1:00:21.680 out most of them really didn't hurt that much. I 1:00:21.720 --> 1:00:25.160 think it's just the problem that you relate how much 1:00:25.200 --> 1:00:28.240 painfulness is relative to your experience, and if your experience 1:00:28.320 --> 1:00:32.160 is mostly mild, things. Then the least mild of them 1:00:32.240 --> 1:00:35.640 is really hurts, yeah, whereas the least model is about 1:00:35.640 --> 1:00:38.720 a third or a half as much as anything in 1:00:38.880 --> 1:00:42.040 the New World actually has the most painful stinging things 1:00:42.120 --> 1:00:46.000 by far. We're lucky, yeah, especially if you go to 1:00:46.040 --> 1:00:50.960 Amazoni's or someplace fun like that. And so the South Africans, 1:00:51.400 --> 1:00:54.320 relative to their experiences, these things really hurt. But compared 1:00:54.360 --> 1:00:57.080 to what I'd run into here in North America and 1:00:57.120 --> 1:01:00.280 South America, they were pretty mild. And so all five 1:01:00.280 --> 1:01:04.240 of them. So North America has worse stinging stuff than Africa. 1:01:04.360 --> 1:01:07.800 Oh yeah, as far as insects go, Africa is kind 1:01:07.800 --> 1:01:11.320 of kind of a little doll actually in some regards 1:01:11.320 --> 1:01:14.000 when it comes to stinging. Yeah. They have they have 1:01:14.200 --> 1:01:18.320 these uh what they call them firetail wasps, the long 1:01:18.440 --> 1:01:23.080 skinny kind of tanny wasps that they have there maybe 1:01:23.160 --> 1:01:27.280 a two, the most social one that's about as high 1:01:27.280 --> 1:01:29.720 as they get. And they have the metal belli ant, 1:01:29.800 --> 1:01:32.760 which is this army like thing that goes out and 1:01:32.800 --> 1:01:37.720 raids termites and there around it two maybe a little 1:01:37.760 --> 1:01:40.880 bit less. And then they have the giant stink ant, 1:01:40.920 --> 1:01:43.480 which is an enormous an. It's about as big as 1:01:43.480 --> 1:01:46.760 a bullet ant. And that's at most the two of 1:01:46.800 --> 1:01:51.680 their pretty minor two chicken shit ants, Yeah, exactly, and 1:01:51.880 --> 1:01:54.360 most of them, well, they will stinging if you mess 1:01:54.400 --> 1:01:57.560 with them, but you have to kind of mess with them. 1:01:57.640 --> 1:02:00.160 And and they really weren't all that painful. The uh, 1:02:00.600 --> 1:02:04.200 the most painful. I ran intos what I call the 1:02:04.320 --> 1:02:08.280 glossy ants. They're kind of a purply sheen to them. 1:02:08.680 --> 1:02:11.800 They weren't listed anywhere on the list, but those things 1:02:11.800 --> 1:02:15.640 really kind of smarted and so I, you know, just 1:02:15.720 --> 1:02:18.360 go to place, and I went to Australia to study 1:02:18.440 --> 1:02:22.840 their jack jumpers and their bulldog ants and got stung 1:02:22.920 --> 1:02:24.720 by all of those. Of course, it's hard not to 1:02:25.360 --> 1:02:29.120 mess with them. Were they pretty nasty? No, they were 1:02:29.200 --> 1:02:31.880 kind of a sharp, clean pain, kind of like a 1:02:31.920 --> 1:02:35.640 needle stick or a small knife stick. But they weren't burning. 1:02:35.840 --> 1:02:38.120 You know, burning is like a match or an ember 1:02:38.120 --> 1:02:42.960 from fire pops explodes your your fire blows an ember 1:02:43.080 --> 1:02:47.400 on your this hot, fiery feeling. This is more of 1:02:47.440 --> 1:02:51.919 a clean piercing, you know, almost chemical feeling that I had. 1:02:53.000 --> 1:02:55.520 What were the circumstances when you went and got stung 1:02:55.560 --> 1:02:59.320 by a bullet A well, basically it was again desperation. 1:03:00.160 --> 1:03:02.640 That's when most of my stings occurred. I was in 1:03:03.400 --> 1:03:06.320 Amazonas and near Bay Lange. What is the word you're 1:03:06.360 --> 1:03:11.440 using amazonas the Amazon? Yeah, Amazon, it's just a territory 1:03:11.520 --> 1:03:15.520 around where the Amazon base. That term maybe maybe it's 1:03:15.640 --> 1:03:18.720 Latin or Spanish or Portus, I don't know. I just 1:03:19.160 --> 1:03:22.400 kind of used up in Amazon area and it was 1:03:22.960 --> 1:03:25.920 getting near nightfall is about five o'clock and I was 1:03:25.960 --> 1:03:29.440 on half a degree south latitude. So if you ever 1:03:29.480 --> 1:03:31.760 been in the tropics, when the sun goes down, it 1:03:32.000 --> 1:03:35.720 goes down ten minutes. It goes from light to black. 1:03:35.880 --> 1:03:41.120 You can't know nothing, like if you're in northern you know, 1:03:41.320 --> 1:03:46.240 Montana or Alaska or northern Canada. Yeah, twilight sometimes for hours, 1:03:46.720 --> 1:03:49.560 not so they're so here was. I had an hour 1:03:49.640 --> 1:03:54.200 to go and I finally found this, this bullet ant colony, 1:03:54.680 --> 1:03:58.000 and I had an assistant Himarrow Hemorrow, was the toughest 1:03:58.000 --> 1:04:00.960 guy I'd ever run into. The Hemorrow would stick his 1:04:01.040 --> 1:04:03.600 hand into fire ant colonies and grab mounds them and 1:04:03.680 --> 1:04:06.840 stuff them in a bag because because you know, we 1:04:06.840 --> 1:04:09.760 we were collecting venom. I was with my professor and 1:04:09.760 --> 1:04:13.040 we were collecting venoms and ants of anything, those stinging 1:04:13.080 --> 1:04:16.760 We didn't care what it was pretty much. And I 1:04:16.800 --> 1:04:19.400 had this little kind of trowel that i'd care along, 1:04:19.480 --> 1:04:24.520 little plastic thing that's light and easy to transport, you know, overseas. 1:04:24.840 --> 1:04:27.760 I'm digging up this colony and trying to get these 1:04:27.840 --> 1:04:30.200 these bullet ants to come out. I'd run into a 1:04:30.280 --> 1:04:32.520 root or something like that where I couldn't dig two, 1:04:32.560 --> 1:04:34.800 and I said, hey, Marrow, where is Merrow? Where is 1:04:34.840 --> 1:04:37.600 her arrow? He's back there twenty ft behind me, and 1:04:37.600 --> 1:04:39.240 I'd say here, I get up here and get this 1:04:39.360 --> 1:04:41.800 root out of here. He'd run up and give a 1:04:41.880 --> 1:04:46.120 whack or two and then retreat. What is wrong? Hemarrow 1:04:46.200 --> 1:04:51.400 is a man of steel wise anyway. So then I 1:04:51.480 --> 1:04:53.600 was a little bit in my naivete. I had this 1:04:54.040 --> 1:04:58.240 glass jar about it, a court jar. I'd put telcum 1:04:58.240 --> 1:05:00.760 powder around the top so the ants couldn't crawl out. 1:05:00.800 --> 1:05:04.440 They'd slip and fall back down. Yeah. It works pretty 1:05:04.520 --> 1:05:06.520 much until they wear off all the telcom potty and 1:05:06.560 --> 1:05:10.240 then they get out. But man, that's a hot tip. Yeah. 1:05:10.800 --> 1:05:14.320 But then I had these long tweezers. Theyre foot long. 1:05:14.640 --> 1:05:16.840 I was grabbing them and trying to get them in. 1:05:17.360 --> 1:05:20.400 I found out first of all that bullet ants are 1:05:20.520 --> 1:05:24.200 very fast, and they're very sticky legg They could stick 1:05:24.280 --> 1:05:29.560 to two chromed tweezers and crawl up. So the next thing, 1:05:29.640 --> 1:05:31.800 I got four or five of them attacking you all once, 1:05:31.840 --> 1:05:33.240 and you're trying to say, how am I going to 1:05:33.320 --> 1:05:36.160 fend off all the They have a colony with three thousands, 1:05:36.200 --> 1:05:39.760 so a lot of a lot of ants there. And 1:05:39.800 --> 1:05:41.880 when you get them kind of rolled up, they take 1:05:41.960 --> 1:05:45.600 umbridge at this and come after you. And so I'm 1:05:45.640 --> 1:05:47.919 trying to get these things in and it's getting dark 1:05:48.040 --> 1:05:50.560 and we're having to leave soon, and I thought I 1:05:50.600 --> 1:05:52.840 may never see these things again. I don't know this 1:05:52.880 --> 1:05:55.400 the first time I've seen them. So I got again. 1:05:55.560 --> 1:05:58.360 So I speed it up. Sure enough, the faster you 1:05:58.400 --> 1:06:01.760 go and the more careless you get, the sloppier you get. 1:06:01.960 --> 1:06:04.720 And yes, you will get nailed. And that's what happened. 1:06:06.400 --> 1:06:11.840 Have you uh been z by a Transula wasp? Oh? Yeah? 1:06:12.000 --> 1:06:15.680 Is that is that a whopper? Definitely? Absolutely? What can 1:06:15.680 --> 1:06:18.280 you explain their life history a little bit? Yeah? Transla 1:06:18.320 --> 1:06:22.040 hawks are they're a big spider wasp and what they 1:06:22.080 --> 1:06:25.600 do is they they catch a trantula. They hunt one 1:06:25.640 --> 1:06:27.960 down and they sting it and paralyze it in a 1:06:28.120 --> 1:06:32.240 permanent paralysis. Is the thing will never die until it 1:06:32.320 --> 1:06:36.320 dries out. It will eventually die of either dehydration or starvation, 1:06:36.640 --> 1:06:39.280 but it doesn't kill it to the venom the keeps 1:06:39.280 --> 1:06:42.080 of fresh meat. It's kind of like having your venison 1:06:42.160 --> 1:06:44.480 in a cooler. You can keep it over winter, and 1:06:44.520 --> 1:06:46.360 as long as you keep it in a cooler, you 1:06:46.400 --> 1:06:49.480 can feed your family for months on end. So the 1:06:49.520 --> 1:06:52.880 same principle that they have there. You have a paralyzed 1:06:52.920 --> 1:06:57.000 tranchling the one egg on it, just one, and that 1:06:57.000 --> 1:06:59.800 that egg hatches into a larva, which ends. Doesn't you 1:06:59.840 --> 1:07:03.480 got stash that transl somewhere? Oh yeah, which she forgot 1:07:03.520 --> 1:07:05.960 that part? Yes, I mybody most that he was camping 1:07:06.000 --> 1:07:09.800 one time and said he saw one fly past. I 1:07:09.840 --> 1:07:11.720 don't want to ruin his story. I feel like this 1:07:11.720 --> 1:07:13.600 is what he told me, he saw one fly passed. 1:07:13.760 --> 1:07:15.880 Then in a while later here comes out something bit dragon, 1:07:15.960 --> 1:07:20.000 a trangeler back the way he'd come from. Who could 1:07:20.040 --> 1:07:21.520 be it might have been the same one or a 1:07:21.520 --> 1:07:24.520 different one. But what happens is they paralyze him and 1:07:24.560 --> 1:07:28.040 then they either put them in a burrow that the 1:07:28.080 --> 1:07:31.120 trench la hawk wasp makes digs a burrow down and 1:07:31.120 --> 1:07:33.520 puts in the bottom of the cell, or if it's 1:07:33.600 --> 1:07:36.240 near where the trench as a burrow. They haven't naturally 1:07:36.320 --> 1:07:38.400 dig a hole in the ground his own hole, yeah, 1:07:38.400 --> 1:07:40.120 and then just put it in its own hole, which 1:07:40.200 --> 1:07:42.000 is a lot less work. I mean, I would do 1:07:42.040 --> 1:07:46.200 that if I were the wasps being lazy, but they do. 1:07:46.280 --> 1:07:48.680 You know, those two different things got one egg on it, 1:07:48.800 --> 1:07:52.160 you know, one egg. So what happens is the egg 1:07:52.240 --> 1:07:56.360 then hatches and it starts eating the blood. They have 1:07:56.400 --> 1:07:59.560 an open system, not like us with veins. They just 1:07:59.640 --> 1:08:02.880 have a open cavity and you can just keep sucking 1:08:02.880 --> 1:08:05.600 the blood. And then when you get a little bigger, 1:08:05.960 --> 1:08:07.720 you start eating the fat. And when you get a 1:08:07.720 --> 1:08:12.920 little bigger, you start eating the reproductive system and the gut. Yeah. 1:08:13.440 --> 1:08:16.000 And of course none of these things are life support 1:08:16.080 --> 1:08:19.479 systems for the tranches, so it's still alive. When you 1:08:19.479 --> 1:08:22.880 get to the fifth mold, fourth mold into the fifth 1:08:22.960 --> 1:08:27.240 end star. Each each different larva doubles or triples the 1:08:27.360 --> 1:08:30.200 size of the previous one, so you can see the 1:08:30.280 --> 1:08:32.640 last one is many times bigger than all of the 1:08:32.680 --> 1:08:35.720 four younger ones together. When the last one gets it, 1:08:35.760 --> 1:08:39.559 goes on this ravenous gluttony and just eats everything, the nerves, 1:08:39.600 --> 1:08:44.360 the brain, you know, yeah, finally eats everything and it 1:08:44.400 --> 1:08:46.760 gives one. Doesn't want to make a live action movie. 1:08:47.040 --> 1:08:48.760 I heard how they're going to remake bamb We feel 1:08:48.800 --> 1:08:50.960 like they should remake a do a live action movie 1:08:50.960 --> 1:08:59.639 about this exactly and kind of nature kids. You can imagine, 1:08:59.680 --> 1:09:01.680 you know, the larger than at that point gives one 1:09:01.720 --> 1:09:04.840 big earth. But really, rather than that, it takes one 1:09:04.920 --> 1:09:08.080 big dump and then becomes a pupa and spinds a 1:09:08.960 --> 1:09:13.120 cell and then molds into the adult, goes out and 1:09:13.200 --> 1:09:15.320 kills one, or goes out and catches one. But it's 1:09:15.320 --> 1:09:17.479 even more interesting than that. Their life has to be 1:09:17.560 --> 1:09:21.120 quite fascinating. The trans is come in various sizes, you know, 1:09:21.200 --> 1:09:22.760 just like people who have some of that are big 1:09:22.760 --> 1:09:25.879 and some that are little. Males are scrawny and runty. 1:09:25.960 --> 1:09:28.760 They spend all the time chasing females. There's not much 1:09:28.800 --> 1:09:31.559 meat on them, whereas the females are big and fat 1:09:31.600 --> 1:09:33.240 and juicy because you know, they have to lay a 1:09:33.240 --> 1:09:36.240 bunch of eggs and all that so the Transla hawk 1:09:36.479 --> 1:09:39.920 not being particularly fussy. If you find a transla, you 1:09:39.960 --> 1:09:43.479 want to capitalize on whatever translor you find. So a 1:09:43.560 --> 1:09:46.479 little scrawny thing you say, uh, well, you are what 1:09:46.520 --> 1:09:49.160 you eat. So if you're a little scrawny thing, you're 1:09:49.160 --> 1:09:53.280 getting a little scrawny transla hawk. Wath A little scrawny 1:09:53.479 --> 1:09:56.960 female transla hawk is worthless. She can't overcome a big, fat, 1:09:57.080 --> 1:10:00.759 juicy transla. It's not big enough, strong enough. But a male. 1:10:01.479 --> 1:10:04.120 All a male does is transmit sperm to the female. 1:10:04.120 --> 1:10:06.720 He does not be bigger, little, or anything else. So 1:10:06.800 --> 1:10:09.559 then she'll pick a male for her offspring if it's 1:10:09.600 --> 1:10:13.400 a little one and she she can do this, which 1:10:13.479 --> 1:10:16.519 fortunately we can't. And how they do that is a 1:10:16.600 --> 1:10:21.799 male is haploid. It's it's like half the chromosomes, whereas 1:10:21.840 --> 1:10:26.560 the female has is a double chromosome as twice as many. 1:10:26.720 --> 1:10:29.840 So she fertilizes the egger she wants. A female. She 1:10:29.880 --> 1:10:32.679 has a sphincter which lets two or three sperm out 1:10:33.080 --> 1:10:37.000 as the egg is passing down the over duct hold. 1:10:37.120 --> 1:10:39.000 She's able to put her own sperm on her own 1:10:39.000 --> 1:10:43.280 egg that she got from a male before she Yeah, 1:10:43.320 --> 1:10:48.880 she has a storage she mates and holds that sperm, 1:10:48.920 --> 1:10:51.479 and it releases that sperm out onto the egg when 1:10:51.520 --> 1:10:57.559 she wants to, yeah, and set a choice around her body. Yeah, 1:10:57.560 --> 1:10:59.720 So what she does is it's a little scrawny one, 1:10:59.760 --> 1:11:02.800 then she makes a male because they're worthless. They can 1:11:02.840 --> 1:11:05.680 mate with just as well as the big one, more 1:11:05.760 --> 1:11:08.240 or less, and she saves the females for the big, 1:11:08.360 --> 1:11:12.599 juicy ones. Me, it's a good thing we don't have 1:11:12.640 --> 1:11:16.280 that ability yet. I mean, we'd end up like China. 1:11:16.360 --> 1:11:18.320 For a while, I was having a shortage of women 1:11:18.360 --> 1:11:24.439 because they were well disposing, I guess putting nicely, too 1:11:24.439 --> 1:11:28.280 many female babies, and they're getting like ten or more 1:11:28.280 --> 1:11:31.120 boys than girls. And they found out then they weren't 1:11:31.200 --> 1:11:33.400 enough wives for them. So the problem there is you 1:11:33.439 --> 1:11:37.000 have all these males running without mates. They get pretty 1:11:37.040 --> 1:11:40.960 disruptive and started messing up society. So it's a bad 1:11:41.040 --> 1:11:43.760 idea to have in balance of sex is at least 1:11:43.760 --> 1:11:47.840 in our society. Man, I would love the bow if 1:11:47.840 --> 1:11:50.360 you could just know the decision making process, so it 1:11:50.360 --> 1:11:52.960 could be a transla hawks that maybe one nobody has 1:11:52.960 --> 1:11:55.800 actually done the numbers. It might not be a one 1:11:55.880 --> 1:11:58.000 to one ratio. It might be there's a lot more 1:11:58.640 --> 1:12:02.360 squawny trance as this, which would bias you towards too 1:12:02.360 --> 1:12:05.400 many males. Or it could be maybe there's a lot 1:12:05.439 --> 1:12:07.760 of big, fat, juicy ones, but you get a lot. 1:12:07.880 --> 1:12:12.439 I mean, it's a long lifespan out of tarantula, and 1:12:12.520 --> 1:12:15.240 so it kind of makes me very interested to know 1:12:16.040 --> 1:12:19.760 after a couple of seasons dealing with tarantula hawks, if 1:12:20.280 --> 1:12:25.240 you're older, tarantulas have developed a little more defense towards 1:12:25.320 --> 1:12:28.800 those that That's the funny thing about the trancellor, which 1:12:29.320 --> 1:12:32.040 doesn't make sense of the human mind. We cannot grasp 1:12:32.120 --> 1:12:36.000 at least I cannot grasp this concept. Here, this huge 1:12:36.040 --> 1:12:39.679 spider often eight times heavier than the Transla hawk wash. 1:12:40.040 --> 1:12:43.680 You're a big whopper. You have these huge, massive fangs 1:12:44.080 --> 1:12:47.840 which are really strong. Have you ever seen a Transla catch, 1:12:47.880 --> 1:12:51.840 say a nice juicy American cockroach. You hear this craunch 1:12:52.240 --> 1:12:56.920 snap and it just shatters the the cockroach, and then 1:12:56.920 --> 1:12:59.679 of course it becomes dinner. And you say, well, this equipment, 1:12:59.720 --> 1:13:02.080 why doesn't it fight back, Why doesn't it try to 1:13:02.520 --> 1:13:06.759 actually kill the trench La hawk wasp? It doesn't, And 1:13:06.760 --> 1:13:08.760 and one or two percent of the cases they will 1:13:08.800 --> 1:13:13.240 try to fight back, and almost all those they lose anyway, 1:13:13.439 --> 1:13:15.840 But you think if you have a one or two 1:13:15.840 --> 1:13:20.040 percent chance of winning, that's better than a zero pert chance. 1:13:20.479 --> 1:13:22.160 What they do is they try to run away, and 1:13:22.160 --> 1:13:25.040 they try to hide, so they'll run out of their burrow. 1:13:25.120 --> 1:13:27.479 The trans kwas will go down in the borough where 1:13:27.479 --> 1:13:31.519 the translas chase, the trench l out because it's hard 1:13:31.560 --> 1:13:33.720 to maneuver in a tight burrow like that. We can 1:13:33.720 --> 1:13:37.160 get your stinger underneath and paralyze it. So some our 1:13:37.200 --> 1:13:41.599 other the trench is a dumb enough not to stay there. 1:13:41.680 --> 1:13:44.240 It would be difficult for the wasp to get it. 1:13:44.240 --> 1:13:47.520 It goes roaring out and it tries to hide someplace, 1:13:47.560 --> 1:13:49.720 and the wasp of course comes out and finds it. 1:13:49.760 --> 1:13:53.280 Because all trenches have a smell of you can detect 1:13:53.320 --> 1:13:56.600 if you're a wasp. I mean, we don't smell them that. 1:13:56.640 --> 1:13:59.959 We're not making a diet of translates, so we don't 1:14:00.040 --> 1:14:03.679 we don't have that that ability, and so the trans 1:14:03.880 --> 1:14:07.080 is very, very passive, and it's always one of these 1:14:07.120 --> 1:14:10.920 things that you know, to my sense of logic, I 1:14:10.960 --> 1:14:13.519 would you know, fight to the end, you know, hope 1:14:13.600 --> 1:14:16.400 the heck that I'm I'm that lucky one that gets 1:14:16.400 --> 1:14:19.200 a bit to think that that's what we would do. Yeah, 1:14:19.280 --> 1:14:21.000 you know you might be able to get right behind 1:14:21.040 --> 1:14:27.160 the neck. There's a yeah, exactly. I haven't done the tests. 1:14:27.200 --> 1:14:30.200 I probably should have because it didn't really relate to 1:14:30.240 --> 1:14:32.920 what I was doing of seeing if the transer can 1:14:32.920 --> 1:14:35.280 tell the difference between a male and a female transla 1:14:35.320 --> 1:14:39.440 hawk because of course the male can't sting and represents 1:14:39.439 --> 1:14:41.920 no risk, but it does represent a dinner if you 1:14:41.920 --> 1:14:45.840 can get to punch him, which you probably could. I 1:14:45.880 --> 1:14:49.120 haven't done that, just too many things to do in life. 1:14:49.160 --> 1:14:51.839 That's a good project for one of the young budding 1:14:51.920 --> 1:14:55.280 junior high listeners who wants to do a science. That's 1:14:55.280 --> 1:14:57.920 exactly what came to mind was was junior high, like, 1:14:58.160 --> 1:15:00.439 how much of your career has just dropped? And two 1:15:00.439 --> 1:15:03.759 bugs and a container they're like, okay, which one's gonna 1:15:03.760 --> 1:15:06.639 win exactly, and that that could be something you could. 1:15:07.120 --> 1:15:11.439 You could test a few of the trances with males first, 1:15:11.479 --> 1:15:13.240 because if you test them with the female, you may 1:15:13.280 --> 1:15:16.040 not get to repeat it with a male. Yeah, and 1:15:16.080 --> 1:15:18.880 then do your X number ten of each or something 1:15:18.880 --> 1:15:22.000 and see see if the transer behaves differently. I don't know. 1:15:22.560 --> 1:15:24.559 I had to add a question for you on bald 1:15:24.600 --> 1:15:29.320 faced hornets. Seems to be something I run into um 1:15:29.360 --> 1:15:34.280 And I could be totally misidentifying these these um they're 1:15:34.320 --> 1:15:37.800 pretty hard to miss identify. They're big in black and white. Yeah, 1:15:38.080 --> 1:15:41.679 and uh run into them on trails all the time, 1:15:42.040 --> 1:15:45.959 oftentimes on horseback. And then they come out and horses 1:15:46.000 --> 1:15:48.800 don't like them. No, they do not know they do not. 1:15:48.920 --> 1:15:52.760 But we have this big mule and she we tied 1:15:52.760 --> 1:15:54.840 her up at the end of a very long ride, 1:15:55.200 --> 1:15:59.080 and she kicked a nest. It took took me a 1:15:59.080 --> 1:16:01.040 while to figure out was going on. The mule was 1:16:01.080 --> 1:16:04.240 freaking out. I ran over there. Of course, there's hornets everywhere, 1:16:05.120 --> 1:16:07.920 and I'm tighter and ran her over to a different 1:16:07.920 --> 1:16:09.840 treaty to get her away from the nest. And then 1:16:11.240 --> 1:16:14.400 I was watching and trying to remove hornets, and it 1:16:14.479 --> 1:16:19.320 appeared to me that some were burrowing through the hair 1:16:19.400 --> 1:16:24.080 and biting, and others were stinging, biting with their mouth 1:16:24.160 --> 1:16:27.639 their mandibles. They have pretty sharp mandibles. They can they 1:16:27.640 --> 1:16:31.200 can shred a most any insects. Just cut them up 1:16:31.479 --> 1:16:34.519 kind of like meat cleavers. They they're really pretty good 1:16:34.520 --> 1:16:38.200 at that. I haven't actually heard that I was seen that, 1:16:38.280 --> 1:16:40.720 but I would guess if I had to speculate just 1:16:40.840 --> 1:16:43.360 in what was going on, that it could be the 1:16:43.400 --> 1:16:46.960 ones that were biting had already spent most of their 1:16:47.040 --> 1:16:50.559 venom stinging them, so they they It's kind of like 1:16:50.560 --> 1:16:53.400 if you're a soldier and you have a have a 1:16:53.920 --> 1:16:56.439 your rifle and you have a bandet on the end, 1:16:56.479 --> 1:16:58.720 you're gonna try to shoot the enemy first until you 1:16:58.800 --> 1:17:01.200 run out of bullets. They're gonna try to stab him 1:17:01.240 --> 1:17:05.920 with the band at I've seen the movie The Alimo. Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, 1:17:06.240 --> 1:17:08.400 so you can imagine the same sort of thing is 1:17:08.920 --> 1:17:12.759 again the bald faced hornet. She has no reproductive ability 1:17:12.760 --> 1:17:16.240 to herself, the individual workers. She's defending mom, the queen, 1:17:17.000 --> 1:17:21.120 and so biting helps. Honey Bees will do that too. 1:17:21.160 --> 1:17:24.400 Once they have stung and lost their stinger in you, 1:17:24.560 --> 1:17:26.960 we know they've lost At that point, they'll come and 1:17:26.960 --> 1:17:30.080 they'll bite on your eyelids or your eyelashes and try 1:17:30.120 --> 1:17:31.920 to pull on them, and they'll try to crawl in 1:17:32.000 --> 1:17:37.960 your ears and bite your ears or try to Yeah, exactly, 1:17:38.000 --> 1:17:40.599 and they Yes, I had one. I had wondered if 1:17:40.640 --> 1:17:45.400 I was witnessing observing two different some were stinging and 1:17:45.439 --> 1:17:51.200 some were eating. We have another project for junior high kid. 1:17:52.840 --> 1:17:54.599 You know, when you're talking about the way the trans 1:17:54.640 --> 1:17:57.920 a little hawk, you know, paralyze the transl and keeps 1:17:57.920 --> 1:18:00.360 it around for a long time. How many days go by? 1:18:00.479 --> 1:18:02.639 Like like how many days that thing alive? The translate 1:18:02.760 --> 1:18:05.680 was alive for well, there have been a couple of 1:18:05.720 --> 1:18:07.760 cases where people have had them in the lab where 1:18:07.760 --> 1:18:13.479 they either the egg died or the experiment or removed 1:18:13.520 --> 1:18:16.120 the egg, and I lived two or three months. In 1:18:16.160 --> 1:18:21.400 one case, a fella was artificially trying to rehydrate the translate. 1:18:22.560 --> 1:18:24.320 I'm not quite sure I did that. Whether he was 1:18:24.400 --> 1:18:28.559 just injecting water into its mouth or whether it's into 1:18:28.560 --> 1:18:30.880 its body, I don't I don't remember that trying to 1:18:30.920 --> 1:18:32.639 keep it alive. I just try to keep it from 1:18:32.720 --> 1:18:34.920 drying out to see how long it would last. I 1:18:34.960 --> 1:18:37.599 think he got like five or six months something like that, 1:18:38.200 --> 1:18:42.120 hopefully really intention of seeing if it would come back. Well, yeah, 1:18:42.200 --> 1:18:46.479 that's the whole idea man, when he made it back, 1:18:46.600 --> 1:18:50.360 if that trans made it back out there where he's from. 1:18:50.400 --> 1:18:52.599 And Pete were like where are you been? Yeah, dude, 1:18:52.600 --> 1:18:55.040 what a story to tell. I'm guilty of doing that 1:18:55.080 --> 1:18:58.040 to a certain extent myself. I was studying the green 1:18:58.080 --> 1:19:00.720 and knolls, you know, the little a little what they 1:19:00.720 --> 1:19:04.280 call chameleons. They're actually in Annoala live in the southeast. 1:19:04.880 --> 1:19:07.760 I was stinging them to see if they're more resistant 1:19:08.280 --> 1:19:11.160 then say mice are, because they're a lizard, which is 1:19:11.160 --> 1:19:14.599 a different physiology and metabolism than than say a mammal. 1:19:15.240 --> 1:19:19.400 And I got a couple of individuals that were completely paralyzed, 1:19:19.439 --> 1:19:21.920 but I could tell they were alive, and it's still 1:19:22.040 --> 1:19:25.160 the gloss on their eyes, and they could move their 1:19:25.200 --> 1:19:29.360 tongue a little bit. And I said, well, is this harvestrant? 1:19:29.360 --> 1:19:33.040 Then I'm gonna wear off eventually. How how irreversible is it? 1:19:33.960 --> 1:19:36.759 And so it went on for weeks and I would 1:19:36.800 --> 1:19:39.560 open its mouth and put water in the mouth to 1:19:39.640 --> 1:19:42.479 keep the lizard hydrated. In this case, it succeeded. It 1:19:42.520 --> 1:19:45.400 could manage to drink it, and slowly, after two or 1:19:45.400 --> 1:19:47.960 three weeks it started getting a little flick flicked on 1:19:48.040 --> 1:19:50.960 its legs, and then a bunch of about a week later, 1:19:51.000 --> 1:19:54.280 it got so it could completely recover. And you know, 1:19:54.360 --> 1:20:00.920 live happily ever after. So so it isn't it is possible, 1:20:01.160 --> 1:20:06.040 except the tranchula doesn't have that good luck to be 1:20:06.080 --> 1:20:08.960 a lizard than a transla. I guess does the transila 1:20:09.040 --> 1:20:12.240 have like a pain index for itself? Like does the translate? 1:20:13.720 --> 1:20:20.320 We like? And then and then while it's while it's 1:20:22.240 --> 1:20:25.400 feel I don't know. It's hard to tell. It's sort 1:20:25.400 --> 1:20:27.640 of like, you know, if we're under anesthesia in a 1:20:27.760 --> 1:20:31.080 coma and we're slowly rotting away, are we feeling pain? 1:20:31.200 --> 1:20:33.519 And you know why I need jerk reaction to be 1:20:33.680 --> 1:20:36.880 since I'm not conscious, I'm not feeling pain. But of course, 1:20:37.400 --> 1:20:39.840 how do you know what the tranch is conscious or not? 1:20:40.720 --> 1:20:43.960 I now this opens up so many like this discussion 1:20:44.080 --> 1:20:46.479 opens up so many ethical questions. We need to get 1:20:46.680 --> 1:20:50.240 electrodes into the primary gangley on the brain of a 1:20:50.320 --> 1:20:53.280 transition and have a normal one where we can see 1:20:53.280 --> 1:20:57.000 whatever the wave patterns like what we have in our brains, 1:20:57.040 --> 1:20:59.360 so we know what a normal tranch is like. And 1:20:59.360 --> 1:21:01.760 then do this same thing and one that's being paralyzed 1:21:01.800 --> 1:21:04.479 and pinched leg or something like that, and see that 1:21:04.640 --> 1:21:07.400 we get a spike and some kind of signal in 1:21:07.760 --> 1:21:10.920 the electrodes in the brain. Have you watched the film 1:21:11.040 --> 1:21:14.479 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I think that's when 1:21:14.520 --> 1:21:17.280 I miss I'm not sure. It sounds like a good 1:21:17.360 --> 1:21:19.760 movie to see though. Oh, it's Phenomenal's about a man 1:21:19.840 --> 1:21:24.680 who's unresponsive. It's about like the inner life of an 1:21:24.760 --> 1:21:28.320 unresponsive man. Yeah. That that's the same guy that made 1:21:28.320 --> 1:21:31.439 Before Nightfalls. Um, what's his name is? He used to 1:21:31.439 --> 1:21:35.240 be like Julian Schnabble. I think, wasn't it good job 1:21:35.280 --> 1:21:38.120 down there? Philis on it? You just do that off 1:21:38.160 --> 1:21:42.320 the top of your top of your head. Um. Have 1:21:42.439 --> 1:21:45.960 you read a book, uh, in the Heart of the Sea. No, 1:21:46.120 --> 1:21:49.559 I guess I'm pretty pathetic in that these are completely 1:21:49.560 --> 1:21:51.559 different realms. But the reason I'm bringing it up is 1:21:51.720 --> 1:21:56.080 the trantula suffering away there or not? Um in the 1:21:56.080 --> 1:21:58.240 Heart of the Sea. It's a it's a book about 1:21:58.560 --> 1:22:01.519 the whale ship Essex. The tragic the whaleship Essex. But 1:22:02.120 --> 1:22:04.000 when they would go out whaling, they would stop at 1:22:04.000 --> 1:22:09.120 the Galapagos and well they would stock up. They just 1:22:09.160 --> 1:22:11.160 flip them over down in the hold of the ship 1:22:11.280 --> 1:22:16.000 on their backs keep alive for months, ma'n. Pretty barbaric, Yeah, well, 1:22:16.120 --> 1:22:19.760 or or they're like a trench lock. There were no 1:22:19.840 --> 1:22:23.120 different than trange locks. Of course, we we pretty much 1:22:23.160 --> 1:22:26.479 assumed the tortoise was conscious at that point because it 1:22:26.600 --> 1:22:29.680 wasn't paralleled just on its back. No, keep him in 1:22:29.720 --> 1:22:33.479 the hold for months like that. But then you know, 1:22:33.680 --> 1:22:37.639 um they got their come uppings and that because that 1:22:37.880 --> 1:22:40.799 ship was sunk by a whale, good for the whale, 1:22:41.120 --> 1:22:46.599 and um, you know, all kinds of cannibalism ensued. There's 1:22:46.600 --> 1:22:48.559 a there's a great line, my favorite line in that book, 1:22:48.600 --> 1:22:51.840 as there's later as someone's you know, meet someone meets 1:22:51.840 --> 1:22:55.479 a guy who was on the Essex and he asked him, 1:22:56.280 --> 1:22:58.280 you know, I can't read the guy the guy's name. 1:22:58.320 --> 1:23:02.360 He says, Oh, did you know Dale Johnson? And the 1:23:02.360 --> 1:23:06.599 man replies, UM, no him, I had him. I'm gonna 1:23:06.600 --> 1:23:10.519 say it wasn't very tasty, but it's a great book. 1:23:10.760 --> 1:23:15.919 The movie, man, do not waste your time. So chemically, 1:23:15.960 --> 1:23:18.840 what's going on? Like what's the most like a yellow jacket. 1:23:18.840 --> 1:23:21.160 I used to have a mild yellow jacket allergy, and 1:23:21.240 --> 1:23:25.599 I was looking why does it hurts damn bad? Like 1:23:25.600 --> 1:23:28.080 like what is it doing to you? And basically what 1:23:28.200 --> 1:23:31.680 it is as kind ins wasp kindons they call him 1:23:31.760 --> 1:23:34.800 or or hornet kindons, and it kind of is kind 1:23:34.800 --> 1:23:38.920 of like Brady kind in, which is a uh hormone 1:23:38.960 --> 1:23:41.760 that affects the heart and it makes extreme pain and 1:23:41.760 --> 1:23:46.080 it also causes stronger contractions and various things that it 1:23:46.120 --> 1:23:49.200 does to the heart. But the thing I focus on 1:23:49.240 --> 1:23:52.600 is that it causes extreme pain. So the wasp just 1:23:52.680 --> 1:23:56.080 hijacked the chemistry. I don't think they. I think they 1:23:56.120 --> 1:24:01.120 independently evolved it. Basically, it just kindons make pine, so 1:24:01.200 --> 1:24:03.320 they have a lot of kinds in their venom and 1:24:03.400 --> 1:24:08.000 that's what causes the pain. It's just a hormone. No, 1:24:08.120 --> 1:24:11.680 it's just a polypeptide in other words, about eleven to 1:24:12.080 --> 1:24:16.360 nineteen amino acids, whereas Brady kind in the original one 1:24:16.400 --> 1:24:20.200 I forget, it's something around ten, maybe off one or two. 1:24:21.200 --> 1:24:24.639 So they're the Brady kind is a hormone in us 1:24:24.640 --> 1:24:29.280 and in mammals, but wast kinds are just the similar structure. 1:24:29.720 --> 1:24:32.240 Get a little bit longer protein, which probably makes it 1:24:32.400 --> 1:24:36.479 more stable, so it hurts longer and lasts longer, and 1:24:36.560 --> 1:24:39.880 that's what causes the pain. But there's things they could 1:24:39.920 --> 1:24:44.360 deliver it to you that it might not hurt probably, yeah, 1:24:44.520 --> 1:24:47.320 like if they stung an insect or something like that, 1:24:48.080 --> 1:24:50.760 because it probably wouldn't hurt that we don't know, you know. 1:24:50.880 --> 1:24:54.960 That's it's one of the things. There's so many questions 1:24:55.000 --> 1:24:57.360 out there and there's so little time to work on 1:24:57.400 --> 1:24:59.880 all of them. But we know in your case kind 1:25:00.080 --> 1:25:03.200 is don't cause allergy. So they have other components in 1:25:03.200 --> 1:25:06.639 their phosphor LIGHTPAS, which is a great, big enzyme, huge 1:25:06.760 --> 1:25:10.400 monstrous enzyme, which is again a protein. What it does 1:25:10.520 --> 1:25:15.200 it breaks up the lipid membrane around cells. Cells have 1:25:15.320 --> 1:25:19.160 a kind of a fatty membrane around them and they're 1:25:19.200 --> 1:25:23.080 mostly liquid and the inside, and it breaks up that membrane. 1:25:23.479 --> 1:25:28.040 So phosphor lightpase helps destroy and do damage. And so 1:25:28.120 --> 1:25:30.960 that's what the main allergy and that that you would 1:25:30.960 --> 1:25:33.320 probably have for your allergic to them. They also have, 1:25:33.439 --> 1:25:36.640 how you want, a dase, which is a a spreading 1:25:36.640 --> 1:25:39.720 agent kind of like a detergent that helps loosen up 1:25:39.800 --> 1:25:43.040 connective tissue and make a path so the the goodies 1:25:43.040 --> 1:25:45.479 of the venom can get into their So it's like 1:25:45.520 --> 1:25:48.000 a lot of complexity. Yeah, And and those are the 1:25:48.080 --> 1:25:50.960 two main ones that are being a wasp or yellow jacket. 1:25:51.320 --> 1:25:53.360 So what what's a like when you get bit by 1:25:53.360 --> 1:25:56.120 a fire ant? Like, chemically, what's happening to you there? 1:25:56.240 --> 1:25:58.840 You know? The fire answer are really the the odd 1:25:58.840 --> 1:26:01.960 ball of all odd alls of the stinging insects. They 1:26:02.000 --> 1:26:06.240 have propuritine alkaloids which are very similar to the the 1:26:06.360 --> 1:26:09.840 water hyacinths or whatever it was called that Socrates had 1:26:09.880 --> 1:26:13.240 to drink to commit suicide, hemlock water hemlock. That's why 1:26:13.280 --> 1:26:16.840 I knew as close something was wrong there and their 1:26:16.880 --> 1:26:23.200 relative to that, and they're neurotoxins, they're cytotoxins, they're they're hemorrhagens. There, 1:26:23.360 --> 1:26:25.600 they do a whole lot of really nasty things to you. 1:26:26.000 --> 1:26:30.440 But it's a strictly simple alkaloid, which is a organic molecule, 1:26:30.520 --> 1:26:34.120 has nitrogen, and it's not a protein, it's not amino acid, 1:26:34.160 --> 1:26:37.400 it's not a fat, it's it's an alkaloid typical of 1:26:37.479 --> 1:26:41.960 what most bitter things are alkaloids, And so it's very 1:26:42.040 --> 1:26:45.720 unusual in that it has these these alkaloids which are 1:26:45.840 --> 1:26:50.120 very effective against prey. And again you ask the question, 1:26:50.240 --> 1:26:53.519 what's going on when you get allergic to them? Because 1:26:53.600 --> 1:26:57.280 alkaloids are not allergenic. They don't cause allergy. What happens 1:26:57.360 --> 1:26:59.840 they have one or two percent again a phosphorlite base 1:27:00.000 --> 1:27:03.120 our old friend and how Rana is just tying it 1:27:03.160 --> 1:27:05.599 a little bit to this, and that's what you get 1:27:05.640 --> 1:27:09.000 allergic to. Why they're in there, who knows, Probably just 1:27:09.560 --> 1:27:13.519 a legacy of their their father genetic history. They came 1:27:13.560 --> 1:27:16.639 from some ancestor which had these components of their venom. 1:27:17.000 --> 1:27:21.040 They inventor evolved a new system, which is the alkaloids. 1:27:21.520 --> 1:27:25.400 So it's probably just the residual leftover, which probably does 1:27:25.479 --> 1:27:29.280 no functional use anymore for the fire in but it 1:27:29.320 --> 1:27:32.960 does of course cause allergy. And so so they're they're 1:27:33.000 --> 1:27:37.439 an unusual situation. It's it's you got into this in 1:27:37.439 --> 1:27:39.200 your book a little bit. And it's a thing that's 1:27:39.240 --> 1:27:42.960 kind of puzzling to me. Is let's say you grab 1:27:43.040 --> 1:27:47.800 like I'm just finally getting over a burn I had 1:27:47.840 --> 1:27:51.000 in my hand. Okay, I want to grab a thing 1:27:51.000 --> 1:27:53.680 on a wood stove, and those hot so burns like 1:27:53.800 --> 1:27:57.600 holy hell, and it's damaging you, like the pain is 1:27:57.640 --> 1:28:02.360 telling you that you are damaging your skin, and you 1:28:02.400 --> 1:28:04.639 pulled away and the skin blisters and scabs. It gets 1:28:04.680 --> 1:28:07.280 infected and it's like lo and behold, like wow, good thing. 1:28:07.320 --> 1:28:11.040 I got the pain signal to alert me that I 1:28:11.120 --> 1:28:16.519 was destroying skin cells. But a lot of the insects things, 1:28:16.720 --> 1:28:19.240 there's it's all bark and no bite, like it's not 1:28:19.320 --> 1:28:22.639 actually doing anything to you. That's basically correct unless you're 1:28:22.680 --> 1:28:25.599 really tiny. So if your a mouse for beast, things 1:28:25.600 --> 1:28:28.320 will kill you. If you're you know, human being. It 1:28:28.400 --> 1:28:32.559 takes about eight to ten per pounds. So if you 1:28:32.600 --> 1:28:35.439 weigh a hundred pounds, your little person takes about a 1:28:35.479 --> 1:28:38.760 thousand stings before it kill you. It eventually would. But 1:28:38.800 --> 1:28:41.519 who gets a thousand stings? You know, not very many people, 1:28:41.520 --> 1:28:44.559 do you know? Most I've ever had is about fifty. 1:28:44.600 --> 1:28:47.000 And that was in a kind of an accident where 1:28:47.000 --> 1:28:50.600 a high fell apart and I didn't wasn't wearing proper equipment, 1:28:50.680 --> 1:28:53.240 and you know, things get out of hand. You got 1:28:53.240 --> 1:28:55.519 start by fifty honey bees. Yeah, and I got a 1:28:55.560 --> 1:28:57.400 little bit of swelling on my hand and that was 1:28:57.439 --> 1:29:00.240 about it. No, none the worse for the damn rates. 1:29:00.280 --> 1:29:02.080 You know, two or three days later when the swelling 1:29:02.120 --> 1:29:06.559 went away. And so it depends on you know, most 1:29:06.560 --> 1:29:10.080 of these venoms are designed for a whole suite of predators, 1:29:10.080 --> 1:29:13.400 anything from a mouse or shrew or more, you know, 1:29:13.479 --> 1:29:16.760 something smaller or small lizard to somebody as big as 1:29:16.840 --> 1:29:19.479 an elephant. And that that's what I was missing in this, 1:29:19.640 --> 1:29:21.080 to be honest with you, is that you know, you 1:29:21.120 --> 1:29:24.559 want to relate everything to humans. And I was sitting 1:29:24.560 --> 1:29:28.439 there going why it would why does a bullet ant 1:29:28.560 --> 1:29:31.360 need venom that lasts for three hours? Like isn't that 1:29:31.400 --> 1:29:34.759 a little greedy? Like what needs three hours to hide 1:29:35.280 --> 1:29:38.040 or three hours to run away? Like that's a little 1:29:38.080 --> 1:29:40.720 bit much. Yeah, the bullet ants venom didn't evolve in 1:29:40.760 --> 1:29:43.479 the presence of humans because we've been here for they 1:29:43.479 --> 1:29:46.599 were fourteen thousands or thirty thousand years, depending on who's 1:29:46.680 --> 1:29:51.640 arguing and fighting over when they came to the New World. Yeah, exactly. 1:29:51.680 --> 1:29:54.519 They're great fun. But that's relatively you know, as the 1:29:54.560 --> 1:29:57.280 Germans saying, organ blick, a blink of the eye, and 1:29:57.320 --> 1:30:01.800 the evolutionary time scale and and so obviously bullet ants, 1:30:01.840 --> 1:30:04.920 which have been unchanged for a hundred million years, have 1:30:05.080 --> 1:30:09.320 evolved their venom a lot earlier than we were there, 1:30:09.360 --> 1:30:12.200 so that it wasn't intended for us. I think it 1:30:12.240 --> 1:30:14.799 was more intended for the monkeys up there in the canopy, 1:30:14.920 --> 1:30:18.680 the lizards, the frogs and the birds. Yeah, it'd be 1:30:18.760 --> 1:30:23.200 nice to know what what considered the bullet ant one 1:30:23.280 --> 1:30:27.320 on the pain index. Well, there was something so bad 1:30:27.320 --> 1:30:32.360 ascid just just brush it off when there's nothing that 1:30:32.400 --> 1:30:34.320 I know of. The closest I ever came to that 1:30:34.439 --> 1:30:36.480 was that I had what I called the toad project, 1:30:36.520 --> 1:30:38.960 which I wrote about in the book. We were just 1:30:39.160 --> 1:30:40.720 what we've had a couple of too many beers and 1:30:40.720 --> 1:30:43.519 the tummies full of a nice Costa Rican dinner, and 1:30:43.560 --> 1:30:45.559 we were kind of relaxing in the evening after a 1:30:45.560 --> 1:30:48.439 hard day's work, and we had this great big bouffo 1:30:48.560 --> 1:30:51.080 marine as the marine coat of the cane toad they 1:30:51.120 --> 1:30:53.600 call him in Australia, and they're about the size of 1:30:53.640 --> 1:30:57.120 a platter, you know, a plate. There's this one sitting 1:30:57.120 --> 1:31:01.280 there wolfing down everything, three inch long grass offers, and 1:31:01.360 --> 1:31:05.600 my assistant tossed a three inch long scorpion there and 1:31:05.640 --> 1:31:09.439 the thing got the scorpion in the mouth and the 1:31:09.479 --> 1:31:11.639 front end and the mouth and the tail was stinging 1:31:11.640 --> 1:31:14.840 in between the eyes went down the hatch. He said, 1:31:14.880 --> 1:31:18.479 we got these things are tough, so then I had 1:31:18.560 --> 1:31:21.720 nine bullet dances. I'm not sure why didn't kill it. No, 1:31:22.479 --> 1:31:25.120 I had these nine bullet ants that I brought over 1:31:25.120 --> 1:31:27.879 from the Caribbean side, because Coast Week has a Pacific 1:31:27.920 --> 1:31:30.479 and the Caribbean side, and the bullet answer only on 1:31:30.520 --> 1:31:34.679 the Caribbean side. So for some reason I brought nine over. 1:31:34.800 --> 1:31:38.160 I don't remember why hadn't used them all when I 1:31:38.160 --> 1:31:40.000 was on the Caribbean side. Anyway, I had these nine 1:31:40.560 --> 1:31:43.160 bullet ants, so I said, well, let's toss one and 1:31:43.200 --> 1:31:45.479 see what the toad does with this. It's obviously naive. 1:31:45.560 --> 1:31:47.920 It's never seen a bullet d and because they don't 1:31:47.960 --> 1:31:51.240 live here and ain't the same with loop loop and 1:31:51.479 --> 1:31:55.679 eyes popped in and out, mouth gate and tongue came 1:31:55.720 --> 1:31:59.720 out and said, well, I get the impression it responded 1:31:59.760 --> 1:32:05.160 to the son. So then I thought, well, the other 1:32:05.240 --> 1:32:09.120 hypothesis is that just does that normally when it eats anything. 1:32:09.160 --> 1:32:11.880 So I threw it something about the same size down 1:32:11.920 --> 1:32:15.479 the hatch. No hiccup ng, no eye popping or anything. Okay, 1:32:15.520 --> 1:32:18.360 that suggests to me that it got stung. So let's 1:32:18.400 --> 1:32:21.519 try another ant. See how dumb this this toad is. 1:32:22.000 --> 1:32:26.320 So we did another aunt who eye popping the same thing. 1:32:27.040 --> 1:32:31.280 We did this through all nine ants. He never never learned, 1:32:32.120 --> 1:32:36.200 but was consuming them exactly and getting stung and suffering. Obviously, 1:32:36.760 --> 1:32:39.160 it didn't seem the like I thought it was too spicy, 1:32:39.240 --> 1:32:44.719 but it didn't seem to stop. And and so the 1:32:44.720 --> 1:32:48.599 the question is, you know, why, why was the thing? 1:32:49.360 --> 1:32:53.120 I assume it still lived through it. I didn't follow 1:32:53.160 --> 1:32:57.640 the toad to see if it but he. And the 1:32:57.680 --> 1:33:00.000 funny thing is we've we've never seen in toad stune 1:33:00.120 --> 1:33:04.479 makes and you know any of the herpetology literature where they, 1:33:04.680 --> 1:33:07.240 you know, catch these things and say what are they eating? 1:33:07.280 --> 1:33:09.320 And they open up and see what's in there. We 1:33:09.400 --> 1:33:11.680 had to do that in tenth grade or whatever. I 1:33:11.680 --> 1:33:13.519 opened one up and found a mouse in it. Man, 1:33:14.600 --> 1:33:17.679 it's kind of the I'm still a little bit trauma 1:33:18.120 --> 1:33:23.920 traumatized by it was a bullfrog with a mouse. I'm 1:33:23.920 --> 1:33:27.360 not surprised now eat anything. Bull Frogs the North American 1:33:27.360 --> 1:33:31.240 equivalent of the cane toad pretty much, and so none 1:33:31.240 --> 1:33:34.800 of the literature ever reported bullet dance in them. So 1:33:34.840 --> 1:33:37.760 I don't know whether that's because the bullet dance aren't 1:33:37.800 --> 1:33:40.880 down on the ground near water, usually where the toads 1:33:40.920 --> 1:33:43.920 are there up in the canopy, and they go from 1:33:43.920 --> 1:33:46.519 their nest at the base of a small tree or 1:33:46.640 --> 1:33:49.559 sapling up to the canopy. They don't forage out on 1:33:49.600 --> 1:33:53.200 the ground. I got stung about one out on the ground. Well, 1:33:53.560 --> 1:33:56.160 I guess they should modify. They don't start out that way. 1:33:56.280 --> 1:33:58.200 They go up and they may go thirty ft over, 1:33:58.320 --> 1:34:01.240 fifty over, then down another one and forage on the 1:34:01.280 --> 1:34:04.360 ground there. And the reason they will do that is 1:34:05.080 --> 1:34:09.040 they're fiercely territorial and colonies will kill each other, so 1:34:09.120 --> 1:34:12.519 they're not randomly distributed. Their evenly distributed because of this 1:34:12.720 --> 1:34:15.880 constant warfare. So they don't want their nests to get 1:34:15.880 --> 1:34:19.240 discovered by a nearby bullet ant nests. So that's why 1:34:19.240 --> 1:34:21.600 they go up and down, and so they get discovered 1:34:21.640 --> 1:34:24.559 someplace further away, but they can't find the nests. The 1:34:24.640 --> 1:34:30.680 nest is safe. But usually kane toads aren't on that 1:34:30.880 --> 1:34:34.080 an area. They're usually you know, around the water. So 1:34:34.120 --> 1:34:36.719 I don't know. Maybe it's so the absence of bullet 1:34:36.760 --> 1:34:41.640 ants and cane toad guts is not necessarily an indicator exactly. 1:34:41.880 --> 1:34:44.120 They don't like them. So we have another junior high 1:34:44.120 --> 1:34:46.920 project for a nice Costa Rican got some busy junior 1:34:47.000 --> 1:34:50.320 high people. Yeah, Costa Rican star students know, if they 1:34:50.320 --> 1:34:53.400 were giving away these ecology degrees, I feel like there'll 1:34:53.439 --> 1:34:57.120 be a lot of folks being ecologists. The thing we 1:34:57.200 --> 1:35:02.720 hated most and we were kids was horse flies. Yeah. 1:35:02.760 --> 1:35:05.679 You'd be out swimming, like on the raft or whatever, 1:35:05.720 --> 1:35:07.559 out in the middle of the lake and you get 1:35:07.600 --> 1:35:12.080 found out by a horse fly and everybody like you'd 1:35:12.120 --> 1:35:15.439 be underwater and everybody group effort trying to kill it, 1:35:16.479 --> 1:35:18.120 and you know you eventually get it killed. Nob we 1:35:18.160 --> 1:35:22.000 could breathe easy and then comes Yeah, like they're like 1:35:22.000 --> 1:35:25.880 a slash and lap feeder exactly. They take a chunk 1:35:25.920 --> 1:35:30.360 of flesh out of you. They open you up and 1:35:30.520 --> 1:35:34.240 suck your blood. You tell me, Yeah, they're kind of 1:35:34.280 --> 1:35:38.040 like a couple of Chinese meat cleavers, hacking away your skin, 1:35:38.479 --> 1:35:40.880 getting it all nice and bloody and messy, and then 1:35:40.920 --> 1:35:43.200 they can drink the blood. Why is that hurts the 1:35:43.240 --> 1:35:45.559 damn bad man? Those things hurt I think because they 1:35:45.560 --> 1:35:48.639 haven't evolved to be a better system. Like a mosquito 1:35:48.760 --> 1:35:52.519 doesn't hurt much at all? Does it? On the sly, Yeah, 1:35:52.840 --> 1:35:55.760 they are necessize, and they're sort of sneaky about that. 1:35:55.920 --> 1:35:58.240 Or kissing bugs, which are one of the things I 1:35:58.320 --> 1:36:01.799 work on, their blood sucking, you know, like a stink 1:36:01.840 --> 1:36:05.760 bug type thing, except they suck blood. They don't hurt 1:36:05.800 --> 1:36:08.200 at all, whereas some of the things that do hurt 1:36:08.200 --> 1:36:10.800 of the sloppy feeders, like the horse flies or the 1:36:10.880 --> 1:36:13.599 deer flights, which are just like smaller varieties of horse 1:36:13.680 --> 1:36:16.160 So that hurts because of what he's doing to you, 1:36:16.600 --> 1:36:18.880 because of what he's applying to you. It's because what 1:36:18.920 --> 1:36:21.840 he's doing to you. Yeah, my minus maybe the application 1:36:21.880 --> 1:36:26.200 of anesthesia exactly. Yeah, So that's what it feels like, 1:36:26.240 --> 1:36:27.640 just to have something to give you a bunch of 1:36:27.640 --> 1:36:30.360 real small cuts all of a sudden. Yeah. And and 1:36:30.400 --> 1:36:32.360 some other ones that hurt. If you go to Africa, 1:36:32.400 --> 1:36:35.320 the tetsi fly had never been personally bitten by one, 1:36:35.680 --> 1:36:38.200 but I'm I'm told that they really hurt too. And 1:36:38.240 --> 1:36:41.679 it's again kind of a sloppy feeder. And the last 1:36:41.680 --> 1:36:43.880 one and they and they, they're the ones that are 1:36:43.920 --> 1:36:47.640 responsible for a certain sleeping sick sleeping sickness which is 1:36:47.640 --> 1:36:51.280 which is gotta be some kind of like bacterial infection 1:36:51.360 --> 1:36:53.479 or whatever. You get from it's a protozome and it's 1:36:53.560 --> 1:36:57.320 related to chaugus disease, or it's it's a protozome, which 1:36:57.360 --> 1:36:59.679 is why it's so hard to treat, because the dog 1:36:59.760 --> 1:37:01.960 on thing is that you carry out just like we are. 1:37:02.000 --> 1:37:04.760 The cells are similar. So if it's a bacteria, they 1:37:04.800 --> 1:37:07.880 have a different biochemistry and we can zap them a 1:37:07.920 --> 1:37:11.240 lot more easily than we can something that's similar to us, 1:37:11.360 --> 1:37:14.320 because if you kill them, well you're sort of killing 1:37:14.479 --> 1:37:18.240 us too, which isn't a good idea. The last one 1:37:18.280 --> 1:37:21.040 that really hurts that I know of, which is very 1:37:21.040 --> 1:37:25.840 familiar to anybody around Montana or the northern areas, or 1:37:25.880 --> 1:37:29.439 what we call stable flies look like a small house flying. 1:37:29.520 --> 1:37:31.320 They bite and take a hunk out of it it. Oh yeah, 1:37:31.320 --> 1:37:33.200 we love those in with deer flies and horse flies. 1:37:33.400 --> 1:37:37.400 Yeah yeah, the stable flies. I would, uh, I would, 1:37:37.720 --> 1:37:40.080 I guess I'm an entomologist. I would look at this 1:37:40.160 --> 1:37:41.920 fly of lands on me if it's a house fly, 1:37:42.000 --> 1:37:44.439 won't be bothered to shoot it off because it's not 1:37:44.479 --> 1:37:47.400 doing any dam So I look at its probositive because 1:37:47.439 --> 1:37:49.880 this floppy mop like thing in the bottom, it's a 1:37:49.920 --> 1:37:53.519 house flying. It's safe if it's pointy, there's the stable 1:37:53.560 --> 1:37:57.519 flying whack. I gotta kill it right away. And that's 1:37:57.520 --> 1:38:00.240 what's so funny though about the horse fly. As on 1:38:00.479 --> 1:38:02.559 some of these stable flies too, I think they can 1:38:02.600 --> 1:38:06.320 really take a beating. I whacked, like you score a 1:38:06.360 --> 1:38:08.960 good hit and it doesn't pay off. You're the legs 1:38:09.000 --> 1:38:10.920 tuck up and it tips over and it falls on 1:38:10.960 --> 1:38:12.680 the river rocks, and then you look at the thing 1:38:12.800 --> 1:38:18.000 right itself. Second, or if you're biting in horses and 1:38:18.080 --> 1:38:21.040 horses have tails that are whipping around, they kind of 1:38:21.120 --> 1:38:24.120 hit you, but they don't really squash you. And so 1:38:24.160 --> 1:38:26.240 what you do is you hit them and then ruby. 1:38:26.560 --> 1:38:31.040 That's right, So glancing thing. Do you think you'll do 1:38:31.080 --> 1:38:34.759 a book someday about how best to squash bugs? Probably? 1:38:35.880 --> 1:38:39.280 Rub Probably not, But I actually do mention that in 1:38:39.320 --> 1:38:41.320 the book that I talk about if you get a 1:38:41.680 --> 1:38:44.559 honey being in the hair, stuck in your hair, I say, 1:38:44.600 --> 1:38:47.040 don't whack at it, because in order to squash the thing, 1:38:47.479 --> 1:38:49.240 you have to hit it so hard you'll give yourself 1:38:49.240 --> 1:38:52.559 a minor concussion or at least the headache. And so 1:38:52.720 --> 1:38:55.160 I say a better thing to do is take a 1:38:55.200 --> 1:38:57.599 comb and try to comb out or if you insist 1:38:57.640 --> 1:39:00.879 that you want to kill it, then it and smash 1:39:00.960 --> 1:39:04.639 it as you're rubbing and turned into juice, which gives 1:39:04.680 --> 1:39:09.000 you a good excuse to have a shampoo shower. Uh, 1:39:09.320 --> 1:39:11.880 I want to ask you explain the word of thinker 1:39:11.920 --> 1:39:16.559 pronounces is correctly apple semantic apple apple sematic. The apple 1:39:16.640 --> 1:39:19.800 sematic is basically the technical term saying that you have 1:39:19.800 --> 1:39:23.640 a warning coloration. The classic example people think of as 1:39:23.680 --> 1:39:26.240 a coral snake. You see that red and white and 1:39:26.320 --> 1:39:29.200 yellow or red and black and yellow reather Red on black, 1:39:29.240 --> 1:39:31.960 You're okay, jack, Yeah, red on yellow you're a dead 1:39:31.960 --> 1:39:35.439 feller exactly. That's it. And and because most of you 1:39:35.479 --> 1:39:38.200 look at it, you like, watch out exactly, you say, 1:39:38.280 --> 1:39:40.080 you look at this. And there's been some tests that 1:39:40.120 --> 1:39:45.000 have been done with naive predators of snakes that have 1:39:45.080 --> 1:39:48.280 never seen a coral snake or any dangerous thing, and 1:39:48.320 --> 1:39:51.639 to give them saying a gray snake or a black 1:39:51.680 --> 1:39:55.519 snake or some other color green snake, and then you 1:39:55.520 --> 1:39:59.280 give the pattern that's similar to the the coral snake, 1:40:00.200 --> 1:40:03.920 and they kind of look back and they have this innate, 1:40:04.360 --> 1:40:10.720 genetically programmed apprehension of this appop sematic warning coloration, and 1:40:10.760 --> 1:40:14.120 I think that relates to anything that's warning. Colors are 1:40:14.160 --> 1:40:20.160 basically red, black, yellow, and orange, and those there's one 1:40:20.200 --> 1:40:24.240 exception for color blind animals. The skunk is a warning 1:40:24.320 --> 1:40:29.599 appos sematic because there's jet black and brilliant white. See 1:40:29.600 --> 1:40:32.160 white and black. That's as contrasting as you can get. 1:40:32.840 --> 1:40:35.560 Most people know not to pounce on a snake for you, 1:40:35.760 --> 1:40:41.759 not a snake, Hey, skunk for dinner. Yeah. I imagine 1:40:41.800 --> 1:40:45.240 for that system to work, appop sematic, right, I'm saying 1:40:45.240 --> 1:40:47.840 it right, Yeah, that's right. For that system the work, 1:40:48.040 --> 1:40:53.320 like there has to be um, a bite and bark exactly. 1:40:53.439 --> 1:40:56.680 But there's probably some species i'm guessing exploited where they 1:40:56.960 --> 1:41:02.600 they resemble the trouble things but don't have the bite exactly. 1:41:02.640 --> 1:41:05.920 That's the king snake example. King snake can't do anything 1:41:05.960 --> 1:41:09.800 to really hurt you. Perfectly tasty and yummy, but you 1:41:09.800 --> 1:41:12.240 don't want to take the chance because you don't know 1:41:12.240 --> 1:41:15.800 whether he's a cheater or the real thing. We see 1:41:15.800 --> 1:41:18.320 the same thing with you know, a lot of other 1:41:18.479 --> 1:41:22.720 monarch butterflies have what's called the viceroy, which was originally 1:41:22.720 --> 1:41:26.400 thought to be a cheap mimic. It looked just like 1:41:26.479 --> 1:41:29.599 it and it wasn't toxic. It turns out there mildly toxic. 1:41:29.720 --> 1:41:33.479 So it's a scale from being total cheat to total 1:41:33.720 --> 1:41:37.360 true truth, with a gradation of things in between them. 1:41:38.439 --> 1:41:42.559 But I think there's some innate apprehension of bright things, like, 1:41:42.640 --> 1:41:45.400 for example, in the southeast of the US, they have 1:41:45.479 --> 1:41:49.000 these things called the cow killer velvet and black and 1:41:49.320 --> 1:41:52.760 black and red. You almost never hear of anybody who's 1:41:52.800 --> 1:41:55.800 ever been stung by one. And I say, you know, 1:41:55.960 --> 1:41:58.679 juniors out there are salies out there, two year old 1:41:58.720 --> 1:42:01.360 kids playing in the backyard, cute little fuzzy was he 1:42:01.479 --> 1:42:04.120 let's pick it up? You think that would happen all 1:42:04.120 --> 1:42:06.519 the time, and you'd know if they picked him up, 1:42:06.560 --> 1:42:10.360 they come squawking in Mama or Dada, whoever is there, 1:42:10.400 --> 1:42:13.400 would would you know, be cuddling them and see this 1:42:13.400 --> 1:42:15.720 thing running around. It's quite bright, so you you'd know 1:42:15.800 --> 1:42:19.120 if there's a case of that happening. Yeah, we've never 1:42:19.160 --> 1:42:22.280 heard of any of those, with one exception, Famous EO. 1:42:22.400 --> 1:42:25.519 Wilson reported in a story when he was about three 1:42:25.560 --> 1:42:27.720 that he picked one up. But then he's an in 1:42:27.760 --> 1:42:30.040 them alogist like me, so you have to make exception 1:42:30.160 --> 1:42:35.000 for people like us, but most you know, normal people. E. O. Wilson, 1:42:35.000 --> 1:42:39.720 the guy that popularized the term biophelia right exactly, an island, biogeography, 1:42:39.760 --> 1:42:43.439 and about a dozen other terms. Pretty amazing guy. He 1:42:43.520 --> 1:42:47.639 was an entomologist. Yeah, he's basically an aunt man. Really, yeah, 1:42:47.720 --> 1:42:51.840 that's that's his true love. But he's an overall general biologists. 1:42:52.040 --> 1:42:55.000 You name it, its living and it's animal. He's pretty 1:42:55.040 --> 1:42:58.200 good at it. But yeah, he's the only one I've 1:42:58.240 --> 1:43:01.360 ever heard of who ever got stung as as a youngster. 1:43:01.479 --> 1:43:04.559 And of course once you get older, parents you don't 1:43:04.600 --> 1:43:07.439 mess with that thing. So now they're communicating, But as 1:43:07.439 --> 1:43:10.160 a two or three year old, you're not being told, 1:43:10.200 --> 1:43:12.840 oh that that red and black thing, don't don't mess 1:43:12.880 --> 1:43:16.160 with that. So you're completely naive, yet you don't pick 1:43:16.280 --> 1:43:20.320 them up. And and that's the interesting question. I think 1:43:20.439 --> 1:43:23.960 we have this innate fear of it. You see similar 1:43:24.000 --> 1:43:27.240 sorts of things and people having an innate fear of 1:43:27.439 --> 1:43:32.280 snakes because we evolved in Africa, and in Africa, almost 1:43:32.360 --> 1:43:34.639 every snake there are at least a good chunk of them. 1:43:35.120 --> 1:43:37.960 Bite you and you're dead. So you learn if it's 1:43:37.960 --> 1:43:41.120 snake or snake, like, don't take a chance, it isn't 1:43:41.120 --> 1:43:44.960 worth it. Avoid the thing. And there's extreme phobia of 1:43:45.479 --> 1:43:49.599 people which persists even to people who are nowhere near 1:43:49.600 --> 1:43:53.240 where there's dangerous snakes, like northern Europeans have no dangerous 1:43:53.240 --> 1:43:58.160 snakes anymore. People's phobia snakes or northern parts of China 1:43:58.200 --> 1:44:02.360 and that sort of thing. Asia or there are no Yeah, 1:44:02.560 --> 1:44:04.320 that's why always would be like a really interesting if 1:44:04.320 --> 1:44:08.960 you could time machine back and watch the first human 1:44:10.400 --> 1:44:15.280 um after coming from Asia across Burringia, and they've been 1:44:15.320 --> 1:44:19.800 generations and generations removed from snakes because they've been in 1:44:20.160 --> 1:44:25.360 the Arctic um that all of a sudden someone penetrates 1:44:25.400 --> 1:44:30.639 down into the mid continent and there's a rattlesnake. Did 1:44:30.640 --> 1:44:35.280 they just like go to grab it or did they 1:44:35.400 --> 1:44:42.360 have that thing like, I'm generations removed from snakes, thousands 1:44:42.400 --> 1:44:44.120 of years removed from snakes, but there's no way I'm 1:44:44.160 --> 1:44:46.439 touching that thing that that would be my feeling. Is 1:44:46.439 --> 1:44:50.320 that what had happened? But they carried that. Yeah, we 1:44:50.360 --> 1:44:53.439 need a time machine to do that, the same thing 1:44:53.920 --> 1:44:56.200 all kinds man. Yeah, when I get a time machine, 1:44:56.720 --> 1:44:59.000 get into the movie, but do that first and then 1:44:59.000 --> 1:45:00.559 I got some other stuff on to take care of. 1:45:00.560 --> 1:45:02.800 And we have the same phobia of spiders, you know, 1:45:02.800 --> 1:45:07.840 it's a rachnophobia technical term for people are dreadfully petrified 1:45:08.560 --> 1:45:12.720 of spiders in general, translers in particular, which is kind 1:45:12.720 --> 1:45:15.479 of interesting because tranchers never bite people and they don't 1:45:15.560 --> 1:45:18.679 hurt if they even if they did, that's our trend. 1:45:18.760 --> 1:45:22.320 But you're definitely afraid of them, exactly I was. I 1:45:22.560 --> 1:45:24.920 didn't know until recently how harmless they were. I just 1:45:24.960 --> 1:45:26.720 assumed there must be something bad about them. I mean, 1:45:26.760 --> 1:45:28.920 look at them, you know. I mean I I do 1:45:29.000 --> 1:45:33.080 a lot of classroom displays where I hold of transfer 1:45:33.400 --> 1:45:36.439 taking up the classroom with third or fourth graders. And 1:45:36.479 --> 1:45:39.160 the funny thing is the girls always come up first 1:45:39.200 --> 1:45:41.880 and hold their hands out. The boys, the big brave boys, 1:45:41.880 --> 1:45:44.680 are sitting in the back, you know, watching and you know, 1:45:44.800 --> 1:45:48.000 acting tough and brave. About the fifth time a girl 1:45:48.400 --> 1:45:51.400 holds the tranch and the boys are realizing they're embarrassed 1:45:51.439 --> 1:45:53.519 and they got to show that they're boys, and they 1:45:53.560 --> 1:45:56.840 come up and start holding the transulum. But it's not 1:45:56.920 --> 1:45:59.160 just me. I've had other people report the same sort 1:45:59.160 --> 1:46:01.280 of thing. So I don't. I don't know what that 1:46:01.320 --> 1:46:04.000 tells us about it, but it makes an interesting story. No, 1:46:04.120 --> 1:46:06.840 it is interesting to understand, like biologically what could have 1:46:06.840 --> 1:46:09.160 happened there? I got, I got one last question for you. 1:46:09.120 --> 1:46:12.800 They're not gonna then see if colnt uh Corean or 1:46:12.800 --> 1:46:14.519 Phil have anything for you, and then I'm gonna plug 1:46:14.520 --> 1:46:17.320 your book. But can you talk about the drink the 1:46:17.320 --> 1:46:20.919 Spanish fly you mentioned in your book? It's an afergy, 1:46:21.040 --> 1:46:26.800 it's an afrodisiac, right, well, sort of? What is it? 1:46:27.240 --> 1:46:31.360 Spanish fly? Is? Can there? Then? Which is a again 1:46:31.439 --> 1:46:35.280 one of these small molecules in chemistry. And what it 1:46:35.360 --> 1:46:38.880 does is it it rots away tissue of a body. 1:46:39.000 --> 1:46:42.320 It's it kills a lot of horses. It's particularly bad 1:46:42.360 --> 1:46:46.799 in Oklahoma and areas like that, where it gets into alfalfa, blister, beetles. 1:46:47.160 --> 1:46:49.599 They bail it up in the hay. Horse eats as 1:46:49.680 --> 1:46:52.840 few as a dozen a few of these things. The 1:46:53.000 --> 1:46:55.280 stomach kind of rots away and you lose your horse. 1:46:56.040 --> 1:47:00.040 Horrible pain. Back up, So a guy bails up a 1:47:00.120 --> 1:47:04.599 beetle inadvertently exactly, the horse eats the hay with the beetle, 1:47:04.800 --> 1:47:07.800 The dried up beetle, the dead beetle. Yeah, it's just 1:47:07.840 --> 1:47:10.040 like it's just in its carcass and then he just 1:47:10.120 --> 1:47:12.200 inadvertently eats some of these and that can be fatal 1:47:12.439 --> 1:47:15.200 exactly from a toxin. It's in the beetle, exactly. In 1:47:15.280 --> 1:47:18.120 the Spanish fly was one of these things that we 1:47:18.200 --> 1:47:21.080 presume was in Europe, presumably in Spain, I'm not sure 1:47:21.120 --> 1:47:25.479 where the came. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. And the guys 1:47:25.520 --> 1:47:27.800 would put it in and the drinks of the food 1:47:27.800 --> 1:47:30.479 of the gals and they'd grind up a small part 1:47:30.520 --> 1:47:33.559 of this beetle. What it's supposed to do is it's 1:47:33.560 --> 1:47:38.120 a general irritant, so it irritates everything, including your your 1:47:38.160 --> 1:47:41.479 genital system, so you want to scratch, and you aware 1:47:41.520 --> 1:47:43.880 of it, and it's painful and whatever. If you get 1:47:43.920 --> 1:47:47.599 the right dose, the story goes that, then then you'll 1:47:47.640 --> 1:47:53.439 become much more susceptible to being um sexually appreciated by 1:47:53.560 --> 1:48:00.000 whoever put this. I buy that totally. I'm not sure 1:48:00.120 --> 1:48:03.400 that's all wives tale or not, but that's that's sort 1:48:03.439 --> 1:48:06.560 of the folk. That's what that comes from. And in 1:48:06.720 --> 1:48:10.400 that amount doesn't rock the inside of human no, they well, 1:48:10.479 --> 1:48:13.040 if they get it wrong, then it's bad news. Yeah, 1:48:13.120 --> 1:48:15.640 you're like, hey, maybe check it out. Like, I'm not 1:48:15.640 --> 1:48:17.640 gonna put so many of these in here that it 1:48:17.720 --> 1:48:19.800 rots your insides out and kills you. I'm just gonna 1:48:19.840 --> 1:48:22.240 put a little touch in and this is gonna put 1:48:22.280 --> 1:48:24.120 you in the mood. It's kind of like a like 1:48:24.280 --> 1:48:26.800 all night to puffer fish. You have to you have 1:48:26.840 --> 1:48:29.360 to eat just enough of that that's really tasty, not 1:48:29.479 --> 1:48:33.320 enough to kill you. So that's what that comes from. 1:48:33.360 --> 1:48:36.439 That's what I'm told. And don't call me the world expert, 1:48:36.520 --> 1:48:39.920 but that's what the general you know, rumor has is 1:48:39.960 --> 1:48:42.840 where it came from. Its being called Spanish fly. Of 1:48:42.880 --> 1:48:46.600 course it's not a fly at all to beetle, but technicalities, 1:48:47.320 --> 1:48:48.720 you know. I said that was my last question. I 1:48:48.720 --> 1:48:52.040 have one more question. You run around the snow in 1:48:52.400 --> 1:48:59.040 uh sandals exactly? Now? Okay? Uh? We have we we 1:48:59.080 --> 1:49:01.360 have just like you know, among our circle here, we 1:49:01.400 --> 1:49:04.639 have an ongoing debate about whether it's responsible to wear 1:49:05.360 --> 1:49:09.439 sandals or flip flops. Because if there's like a like 1:49:09.479 --> 1:49:11.400 my buddy Rownie likes to point outlets da, there's a 1:49:11.479 --> 1:49:15.559 volcano and there's lava everywhere, are you prepared to defend 1:49:15.560 --> 1:49:19.320 your family? So he doesn't like. Not only is he 1:49:19.360 --> 1:49:23.960 not like sandals, he doesn't like people who wear sandals. Um, 1:49:24.040 --> 1:49:26.240 but here you are and there's twelve inches of snow 1:49:26.240 --> 1:49:29.000 on the ground, and it's snowing, and you show upen sandals. 1:49:29.680 --> 1:49:32.280 Can you share with us your what you what went 1:49:32.320 --> 1:49:34.400 through your head when you dressed well? I check the 1:49:34.439 --> 1:49:37.160 weather report first. If it gets below ten degrees, I 1:49:37.200 --> 1:49:43.160 won't wear sandals off. Yeah, ten or fifteen degrees. And 1:49:43.280 --> 1:49:46.400 a nice thing about sandals is they're very comfortable. I 1:49:46.439 --> 1:49:49.679 never get blisters with them. I do everything. I get 1:49:49.680 --> 1:49:52.479 good sandals. Flip flops don't cut the mustard in my mind. 1:49:52.640 --> 1:49:55.160 You got chockos on? Yeah, I get chocos there. You know, 1:49:55.200 --> 1:49:57.120 they're sort of the best that I can find, other 1:49:57.160 --> 1:50:01.120 than South Africa makes rockies, which don't import here. They're 1:50:01.240 --> 1:50:04.320 they're pretty good too. And today it's thirty four degrees 1:50:04.520 --> 1:50:08.519 with six inches of snow. The heat way freshne. My 1:50:08.600 --> 1:50:11.040 wife complains that I have no feeling in my feet. 1:50:11.040 --> 1:50:13.720 But we did a test the other day and we 1:50:13.760 --> 1:50:16.360 had one of these infrared guns that tells you, you know, 1:50:16.439 --> 1:50:20.000 the temperature of what you're pointing out. Her hands were 1:50:20.040 --> 1:50:22.559 hot like eighty six degrees or something like that. In 1:50:22.600 --> 1:50:25.439 my hands were like sixty one or sixty two degrees. 1:50:25.840 --> 1:50:28.040 I said, I bet my feet are warmer. So she 1:50:28.120 --> 1:50:30.360 shot my feet and they were like three degrees warmer. 1:50:32.640 --> 1:50:36.519 Do you have like a tolerance to increased tolerance to 1:50:36.600 --> 1:50:39.439 pain now that you've been stunt? I don't think so. 1:50:40.439 --> 1:50:42.599 The one case, you know, I get asked this, how 1:50:42.600 --> 1:50:45.840 do you know that you're just not nerve dead and 1:50:45.960 --> 1:50:49.560 you no longer respond to these So the first adventure 1:50:49.640 --> 1:50:53.040 that I had in in in Australia, I was with 1:50:53.080 --> 1:50:55.679 a group of social insect people and other AUNT people 1:50:55.720 --> 1:50:59.240 watch people and be people. They're fair game is guinea pigs. 1:50:59.240 --> 1:51:01.559 They they're not edgible. They should know what they're doing 1:51:01.920 --> 1:51:04.920 and if they don't, don't blame me. I'm not exploiting 1:51:04.960 --> 1:51:09.360 somebody who's completely naive and ignorant. That's my justification. So 1:51:09.439 --> 1:51:11.080 then I we got that out of the way. What 1:51:11.200 --> 1:51:14.559 the experiment was. I had been stung by them when 1:51:14.600 --> 1:51:18.599 I was Oh, it's sharp and it's clean, and it's 1:51:19.280 --> 1:51:22.840 chemical like to me, not burning or anything, but it's 1:51:22.920 --> 1:51:25.200 less than a honeybe it's you know, like one and 1:51:25.240 --> 1:51:28.080 a half something like that, which kind of surprised me. 1:51:28.120 --> 1:51:30.560 I had an expectation from the literature this would be 1:51:30.640 --> 1:51:33.200 like a three or really really hurt a whole lot. 1:51:33.800 --> 1:51:36.240 So I thought, well, maybe I'm just nerve dead. We 1:51:36.320 --> 1:51:39.000 can test this. I was on this bus load we 1:51:39.000 --> 1:51:41.759 were in Kangaroo Island, which is burned up last week, 1:51:42.840 --> 1:51:46.160 and the bus driver said, we see a bull ant 1:51:46.240 --> 1:51:49.840 colony and alongside of her, anyone want to stop? Yes. 1:51:50.200 --> 1:51:53.120 The whole bus just screamed, so it all got out. 1:51:53.439 --> 1:51:56.040 I being sneaky and knowing what I'm doing, I had 1:51:56.040 --> 1:51:58.519 this jar and I was picking up an one flip 1:51:58.720 --> 1:52:01.400 flip into the jar. It was about a tenth of 1:52:01.400 --> 1:52:03.439 a second for reach, and I picked him and flipped 1:52:03.479 --> 1:52:07.400 into the jar. They didn't notice that speed. These things 1:52:07.439 --> 1:52:11.599 are very fast. I was just faster, and so someone 1:52:11.600 --> 1:52:13.920 would They try to catch them with tweezers, and they 1:52:13.960 --> 1:52:17.120 can't catch them. They're too big and too agile, and 1:52:17.160 --> 1:52:20.639 they can't suck him up with aspirators. And there trying 1:52:20.840 --> 1:52:22.720 trying to trap them in the short time we had, 1:52:22.760 --> 1:52:25.240 and they were getting frustrated. So then they do like 1:52:25.360 --> 1:52:27.360 they saw, Oh Schmidt, he's the expert, and all that 1:52:27.439 --> 1:52:29.599 sort of stuff. He's just picking them up. So they 1:52:29.600 --> 1:52:31.680 picked him and get stung. And I would kind of 1:52:31.720 --> 1:52:35.720 saunter over and say, how how does this sting affect you? 1:52:36.479 --> 1:52:39.160 Is it like more than a honeybe lesson honeybe about 1:52:39.160 --> 1:52:41.800 about like a honeybee or whatever? I managed to get 1:52:41.840 --> 1:52:46.000 five of these people that I sort of sneakily got 1:52:46.080 --> 1:52:51.439 is my volunteer controls on my own nerve deadness, if 1:52:51.439 --> 1:52:55.080 that's a word. And they all said, well, surprising, it 1:52:55.160 --> 1:52:57.679 hurts less than a honeybee, a little bit less. All 1:52:57.760 --> 1:53:00.400 five of them agreed basically what I said, So I said, 1:53:00.400 --> 1:53:03.280 ha ha, Schmidt is not nerve dead You know what 1:53:03.320 --> 1:53:05.400 I like about what you're saying, though, is you're you're 1:53:05.439 --> 1:53:10.200 pointing out um as a way to measure pain. You're 1:53:10.200 --> 1:53:13.280 not applying an absolute number to it. It's like it's 1:53:13.320 --> 1:53:17.880 a relative thing. Yeah, Like someone might be someone might 1:53:18.320 --> 1:53:20.439 um think that a hunting bee is like crippling and 1:53:20.479 --> 1:53:22.519 they can't do anything for an hour after getting it, 1:53:22.560 --> 1:53:24.599 but they could still tell you that that's not as bad. 1:53:24.720 --> 1:53:26.519 Or someone might be a honeybe they don't even think 1:53:26.520 --> 1:53:30.800 about it, but they could still relatively tell you, you know, Yeah, 1:53:30.840 --> 1:53:32.640 the one. One case where I have a little bit 1:53:32.680 --> 1:53:35.559 of trouble with that is there's beekeepers and there's people 1:53:35.600 --> 1:53:38.280 who collect a lot of them actually around the Montana area, 1:53:38.479 --> 1:53:42.120 who collect yellow jackets for collecting the venom for allergy shots. 1:53:42.320 --> 1:53:45.040 Oh and so if you make your profession as a beekeeper, 1:53:45.360 --> 1:53:47.840 you asked them, you've ever gotten stung by a yellow Yeah, 1:53:47.920 --> 1:53:50.479 those daring things, they really hurt. They heard a lot 1:53:50.520 --> 1:53:54.800 more than a honeybee. You go, well, and then you 1:53:54.840 --> 1:53:58.120 ask the yellow jacket people who collect them for a living, 1:53:58.600 --> 1:54:00.840 and they say, what about a honey v versus your 1:54:00.880 --> 1:54:03.960 yellow jack That was bloody honey bees? They really really 1:54:04.200 --> 1:54:07.000 like they've lost some of their Yeah, I think it's 1:54:07.040 --> 1:54:12.000 a bit psychological psycho. They both hurd the same. I 1:54:12.040 --> 1:54:15.840 don't like either one of them. You guys got any 1:54:15.880 --> 1:54:19.200 more questions? I kind of thought you were gonna applaud 1:54:19.360 --> 1:54:25.120 Dr Schmidt's um. You know, he wasn't willing to take 1:54:25.120 --> 1:54:28.599 advantage of naive people. And I've kind of heard you 1:54:28.640 --> 1:54:33.360 say that in in certain circles where you're like hiking 1:54:33.400 --> 1:54:35.720 a little too fast, And he said, all those folks 1:54:36.000 --> 1:54:38.760 knew what they were getting into. Oh yeah, which different 1:54:38.800 --> 1:54:44.400 views on it. Yeah, yeah that works. Uh No, I 1:54:44.400 --> 1:54:48.280 I like the book and uh I really do enjoy 1:54:48.360 --> 1:54:51.320 your adventures also. And and something you said at the 1:54:51.400 --> 1:54:56.160 very beginning of the podcast, when Steve said he was 1:54:56.240 --> 1:55:00.440 bit by bullet Anton, he said, oh you're lucky. Um 1:55:00.760 --> 1:55:03.280 do you feel that way like you do? You appreciate 1:55:03.360 --> 1:55:06.760 your experience. I'm glad to happen. Yeah, yeah, I think 1:55:06.800 --> 1:55:09.400 one of the things is acute pain. When you have this, 1:55:09.920 --> 1:55:12.280 you obviously don't like and you wish you didn't have it. 1:55:12.680 --> 1:55:15.720 But then did you get to regale this story time 1:55:15.760 --> 1:55:19.120 and time again, particularly to your children and your grandchildren? 1:55:19.520 --> 1:55:21.720 You know, Graham's can't tell me a story about your child, 1:55:21.760 --> 1:55:23.600 and you can tell them about the bullet an. The 1:55:23.720 --> 1:55:27.080 kids will be enraptured with this seeing later on in life, 1:55:27.160 --> 1:55:28.720 you know, good joy out of this. So I say, 1:55:28.800 --> 1:55:31.480 that's why you're lucky. If you never had this, you 1:55:31.520 --> 1:55:34.840 have one fewer stories to tell. And maybe that's just me, 1:55:35.120 --> 1:55:37.840 you know what, what to me is interesting and what 1:55:38.000 --> 1:55:42.000 maybe to other people isn't. But yeah, I I certainly 1:55:42.040 --> 1:55:43.960 didn't like it when I got stung by it, but 1:55:44.680 --> 1:55:51.840 well I got a book out of it, so um, 1:55:51.880 --> 1:55:55.880 not to make this too much longer. But for people 1:55:55.920 --> 1:56:02.400 who will die from a beasting, what happens there is it? 1:56:02.440 --> 1:56:06.480 Is it that it's the kind in is it that 1:56:06.560 --> 1:56:11.080 bees have kind in and in some susceptible people that 1:56:11.440 --> 1:56:14.320 immediately will affect their heart or am I totally off 1:56:14.360 --> 1:56:17.200 base there? While you're you're close. What happens is these 1:56:17.400 --> 1:56:21.680 these have melatant, which is another one of these small peptides, 1:56:21.720 --> 1:56:25.960 in other words, twenty six or so amino acids. And 1:56:26.000 --> 1:56:28.920 what they do is they cause extreme pain. And that's 1:56:28.920 --> 1:56:31.200 what causes the hurt. But that's not what we would 1:56:31.280 --> 1:56:34.640 kill you an allergic reaction and allergic reactions our old 1:56:34.720 --> 1:56:38.880 friend phosphol lippase a or how you wanted, is it's 1:56:38.960 --> 1:56:42.800 usual phosphol lippase a. What it does is it causes 1:56:42.840 --> 1:56:47.400 a massive release of masts cells or basulfills. These are 1:56:47.520 --> 1:56:54.160 specialized cells in our body that release endorphins not endorphins, histamine, 1:56:54.760 --> 1:56:58.080 slow reacting substance, and replaxus which are now called luco 1:56:58.160 --> 1:57:04.880 tryins us um a whole bunch of other enzymes and things. 1:57:05.720 --> 1:57:08.600 What they do is they cause a dramatic lowering of 1:57:08.680 --> 1:57:12.760 blood pressure and people if they get enough of this reaction, 1:57:12.800 --> 1:57:16.960 they can actually die of asphyxia. With two ways, they 1:57:17.080 --> 1:57:20.120 cause it's swelling in your throat and you can die asphyxia, 1:57:20.600 --> 1:57:25.480 or they can cause cardiac you know, insufficiency where you 1:57:25.520 --> 1:57:28.120 can actually you know, have brain dead because you're not 1:57:28.120 --> 1:57:32.280 getting enough enough oxygen to your brain. In the third 1:57:32.280 --> 1:57:34.840 way they can do it is actually cause the heart 1:57:34.920 --> 1:57:39.600 attack itself. And so it's it's it's our body killing us, 1:57:39.640 --> 1:57:41.480 not the venom. I was just gonna say, it's our 1:57:41.520 --> 1:57:46.800 own processes, yeagers triggers your body to attack itself exactly. 1:57:46.920 --> 1:57:51.080 And of course the bees like, oh, I didn't mean that. Yeah, 1:57:51.320 --> 1:57:54.040 And you say, why do why do we have Why 1:57:54.120 --> 1:57:57.080 do we have this dumb immunogloby in an e system 1:57:57.160 --> 1:58:00.800 that causes us? The reason is that's our our system 1:58:00.880 --> 1:58:05.240 that protects us against macro parasites, worms and big pathogens 1:58:05.280 --> 1:58:08.360 and things of that sort. And if you notice people 1:58:08.400 --> 1:58:12.000 in places that are very poor hygd and have a 1:58:12.040 --> 1:58:15.720 lot a lot worse parasite problems usually don't have allergies 1:58:15.760 --> 1:58:18.520 because their idea is busy fighting off the worms and 1:58:18.560 --> 1:58:22.680 these sorts of things. Interesting, we're just too clean. We 1:58:22.720 --> 1:58:25.839 have the hygienic theory that came out of Japan. Words. 1:58:26.560 --> 1:58:29.720 We have all these immunizations of childhood disease in our 1:58:29.760 --> 1:58:33.720 immune system just gets lazy and that's what causes you know, 1:58:33.880 --> 1:58:38.040 arthritis and mortivele sclerosis and you know all these autoimmune disease. 1:58:38.120 --> 1:58:41.520 None then it acts out. Yeah, just choose off our 1:58:41.560 --> 1:58:44.120 own body because we don't give it something useful too 1:58:44.880 --> 1:58:49.960 to a to work on. Yeah, all right. The name 1:58:50.000 --> 1:58:53.040 of the book again, The Sting of the Wild by 1:58:53.160 --> 1:58:57.120 Justin O. Schmidt, creator of, among many other things, the 1:58:57.160 --> 1:58:59.480 Schmidt Pain Index, which you next time you get stung 1:58:59.480 --> 1:59:01.880 by something, you look it up. The subtitle of the book, 1:59:01.920 --> 1:59:03.880 so it's The Sting of the Wild, the story of 1:59:03.920 --> 1:59:09.440 the Man who got stung for science and uh, Mr Schmidt, 1:59:09.520 --> 1:59:11.920 Dr Schmidt, thank you very much for joining us. It's 1:59:11.960 --> 1:59:14.040 in my place here and uh and thank you for 1:59:14.080 --> 1:59:14.720 the beautiful song.