Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave.
Speaker 1: So this is short Stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an episode where I was very surprised,
Speaker 2: and I even went back that when we did our
Speaker 2: episode on wasps, we even got emails about this, so
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure we did not cover it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we're talking.
Speaker 2: About fig wasps of the fig tree specifically, not the
Speaker 2: kind that you see. Almost all fig tree varieties are
Speaker 2: not ones that you eat the fruit of. That's a
Speaker 2: very specific one. The ones like you have out in
Speaker 2: your yard. They develop without pollination, which means they're parthenocarpic.
Speaker 2: But the ones that where you eat the figs, they
Speaker 2: are grown commercially, mainly in California here in the United States.
Speaker 2: They are Calimerna figs, and they are imported from Turkey,
Speaker 2: and the Ficus carica, or the fig wasp, is also
Speaker 2: imported from Turkey because they have a very special relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so fig wasps and that specific kind of fig
Speaker 1: apparently co evolved over the last sixty million years to
Speaker 1: form a mutually symbiotic relationship. As our friend Connor from
Speaker 1: Love on the spectrum would say, where the fig wasp
Speaker 1: depends on the fig for its reproductive cycle, the fig
Speaker 1: depends on the fig wasp for its reproductive cycle. And
Speaker 1: if you didn't have one or the other, the other
Speaker 1: one would not exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, And we're going to tell you how that
Speaker 2: happens right now. I was gonna say right for this,
Speaker 2: but that'd be way too soon for the first thing
Speaker 2: we need to say is that the fig, the thing
Speaker 2: that you're eating, it's something within a larger structure, and
Speaker 2: it's called a seconium, is what you're actually eating. It's
Speaker 2: sort of like an inverted flower. It's not really a
Speaker 2: fruit necessarily, No. And what happens is these Calimurna farmers
Speaker 2: in California, they have female trees that are going to
Speaker 2: produce that edible version of the sinconia, and they have
Speaker 2: male trees that produce an inedible version called a golf fig.
Speaker 2: And if they want to pollinate those, a wasp has
Speaker 2: to crawl into that sinconium, a female wasp. She loses
Speaker 2: her wings on the way because she has a squeeze
Speaker 2: through a tight little passage. It's a one way trip,
Speaker 2: which is very sad, and you end up eating that
Speaker 2: female wasp. She's broken down by something called physine. It's
Speaker 2: a protein digesting enzyme.
Speaker 3: So when you.
Speaker 2: Eat a fig, there is a little bit of female
Speaker 2: wasp inside of that thing, just broken down and becoming
Speaker 2: part of that edible fig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but essentially you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: detect it on your tongue. Some people think that the
Speaker 1: little tiny seeds inside of a fig are wasp parts
Speaker 1: because there's been such a legend that developed about like
Speaker 1: fig wasps, and it is true to some degree, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, No, you're not detecting a fig
Speaker 1: wasps like body or exo skeleton. When you're eating a fig.
Speaker 1: You are eating part of a wasp though, Like, don't
Speaker 1: make no mistake for sure.
Speaker 3: And I mentioned it was the one way trips.
Speaker 2: It's fairly sad that that happens, but it's all in
Speaker 2: good service of that mutual arrangement. Before that happens, this
Speaker 2: female wasp is gonna come out of an inedible male fig.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm gonna call it a fruit because she
Speaker 2: was born there and she has mate it by that
Speaker 2: point with a blind, wingless male wasp who never leaves
Speaker 2: that male fig. So she exits that inedible male fig,
Speaker 2: she picks up some pollen.
Speaker 3: She got all these eggs, and at that.
Speaker 2: Point she can either go to a male fig tree
Speaker 2: or a female fig tree. But if she lands on
Speaker 2: that female fig tree, her ovipositor is too short to
Speaker 2: reach into this really you know, long styled female flower,
Speaker 2: so she can't lay those eggs in there. She does
Speaker 2: end up pollinating it, but she sacrifices her life in
Speaker 2: doing so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she makes it all the way to the synconium
Speaker 1: and finds like, I literally just wasted my life. But
Speaker 1: her life is not a waste because if she didn't
Speaker 1: accidentally enter a female fig where she was trying to
Speaker 1: reproduce or lay her eggs in a male fig, then
Speaker 1: the figs would not get pollinated. So figs get pollinated
Speaker 1: because fig wasps sometimes make mistakes when choosing a male
Speaker 1: or a female fig to burrow into and lay their eggs.
Speaker 1: I find that amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty great, Like it works both ways. If
Speaker 2: she goes into that male fig, then she's gonna deposit
Speaker 2: those fertilized eggs, and that circle just kind of keeps
Speaker 2: going on and on. Farmers separate these trees out to
Speaker 2: try and keep them from doing that.
Speaker 1: I protest that I'm protesting.
Speaker 3: Oh you're protesting them doing that.
Speaker 1: I protest that there are male and female fig trees.
Speaker 1: I've seen that they're self pollinating and hermaphroditic, including the
Speaker 1: ones that you eat. So I'm going on record as
Speaker 1: saying that.
Speaker 2: Well, you're wrong, my friend, because this farmer that was
Speaker 2: interviewed said that they separate those male and female trees.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's just making that up to aggravate you.
Speaker 1: What if he's completely off his rocker.
Speaker 2: I mean, are all the farmers and all the sources
Speaker 2: completely off their rocker?
Speaker 1: So I think this is just one of those times
Speaker 1: where we're gonna have to agree to disagree. Do you agree?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Sure, that's very agreeable.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2: So a few things that we can remember is that
Speaker 2: the female wasp dies inside that edible fig. And there
Speaker 2: have been people like vegans that there are vegans and say,
Speaker 2: there have been there are literally vegans who won't eat that.
Speaker 2: But it's there are bugs in almost every fruit that
Speaker 2: you eat. There are levels of bug so i'd say infestation,
Speaker 2: but just bug activity. That's acceptable for the USDA Tomato Ketchup.
Speaker 2: Apparently it has the highest USDA grade standard possible and
Speaker 2: it can have no more than thirty fruit.
Speaker 3: Fly eggs for every one hundred grams of ketchup.
Speaker 1: Like, surely, I guess there's some quality control where they
Speaker 1: take some like one hundred ounces or one hundred grams
Speaker 1: of ketchup and count the fruitfly eggs in it, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know how they do that, and if that
Speaker 1: is they like, if they find thirty one or even
Speaker 1: one hundred, that doesn't necessarily mean that the next bottle
Speaker 1: is going to have the same amount, because I mean
Speaker 1: we're talking fruitfly eggs right from all sorts of different
Speaker 1: tomatoes in each bottle. Yeah, it boggles my mind. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they do this, no, or how they
Speaker 1: enforce it, I guess, is what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet someone or it might be one of
Speaker 2: those things where like no one's even paying attention to.
Speaker 1: This, right the vegans are vegans are watching you?
Speaker 3: Yes, they're always watching.
Speaker 2: I did mention though, that the farmers try and control
Speaker 2: the separating those trees out to control because it can
Speaker 2: be a problem if there are too many seeds that
Speaker 2: fruit can burst open and all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 2: not you know, it's good for the plant, but it's
Speaker 2: not good to harvest for the farmers. So they're trying
Speaker 2: to sell these things. So they separate those trees out
Speaker 2: over some pretty great distances and also control the number
Speaker 2: of new wasp that they bring in. They're like, they're
Speaker 2: wasp wranglers as well as farmers, and they get these
Speaker 2: things delivered to their house, to their farm and paper sacks,
Speaker 2: and they can pretty much control exactly how many females
Speaker 2: have access to the correct plant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those paper sacks also usually include a tiny
Speaker 1: cowboy hat and a tiny glat so and then just
Speaker 1: one more time to just kind of go over this again,
Speaker 1: just to calm anybody's fears, you probably are eating some insects,
Speaker 1: so vegans, you're right. If you don't want to eat insects,
Speaker 1: you probably should steer clear of figs. But the fig
Speaker 1: is designed to digest the female wasp that dies inside
Speaker 1: of it and breaks it down for nutrients for itself.
Speaker 1: So just don't worry about eating wasps. I don't know
Speaker 1: why everybody's so worried about eating wasps. Chuck, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean it is fig.
Speaker 2: At that point that wasp becomes fig. In fact, that's
Speaker 2: a great t shirt. Wasp becomes fig.
Speaker 1: I agree wholeheartedly. Well, since we came up with a
Speaker 1: t shirt, obviously everybody that means short stuff is opps.
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