Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we are talking about aeroplankton.
Speaker 1: That's right, there's life all around us. We are breathing
Speaker 1: it in, don't cough it out. It's probably fine. From
Speaker 1: tiny animals to bacteria to who knows what. There are
Speaker 1: so many little guys just floating on the wind, surprisingly
Speaker 1: sometimes on purpose. Discover this and more as we answer
Speaker 1: the age old question isn't raining viruses? And do you
Speaker 1: need an umbrella? Joining me today is friend of the show,
Speaker 1: my good old buddy, writer for American Dad, Sora and
Speaker 1: wait No, also co host of Quick Question with Soren
Speaker 1: and Daniel or Daniel and Sorn. I don't know what
Speaker 1: sorry and Daniel, ddice, she got first? You got first?
Speaker 1: Is that an argument?
Speaker 2: No? In fact, Daniel gave that up for it was
Speaker 2: Daniel's idea, because Daniel will always pitch it that way
Speaker 2: as the other person in the hopes that the other
Speaker 2: person says no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 1: She should have known better. But yeah, your name is
Speaker 1: Soren Booy. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be
Speaker 2: here again. Oh to stretch my legs in the world
Speaker 2: of the floor and fauna feels good.
Speaker 1: Feels good to be back getting all those floor in fauna,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, stretching your legs and I'm that that
Speaker 1: makes total sense.
Speaker 2: I just put them on.
Speaker 1: Put them on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get slip into something more comfortable, like a megafauna,
Speaker 2: like a moose.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I imagine comfortable b to be in a moose. You'd
Speaker 2: have so much room.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, just kind of like you know, I guess
Speaker 1: you have to slice that sucker open like a ton
Speaker 1: ton but imagine how warm would be in there.
Speaker 2: Now, are you? I assume that when you started this podcast,
Speaker 2: like the first things you did were the megafauna, Like
Speaker 2: those were all the good ones. Those are like the
Speaker 2: fun animals to talk.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, Actually, you know what sort. I
Speaker 1: think One of the first ones I talked about was
Speaker 1: a parasite, uh, the tea gandhia, because it was so interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love a parasite like that's they're my
Speaker 1: favorites because they're so sneaky, uh and they do so
Speaker 1: they're like they're pranksters. They're they love fun pranks, like
Speaker 1: making a rat fall in love with a cat urine.
Speaker 1: That's like a fun.
Speaker 2: Prank and just attracted to cast. Yeah, like they the
Speaker 2: cats look very sexy too.
Speaker 1: They're turned on by the smell of cat urine. And
Speaker 1: I feel like it's that is a sick joke, and
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm all for sick jokes.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, I I I never picked.
Speaker 2: When you say do you want to call on the
Speaker 2: podcasts or anything you want to talk about I I'm like,
Speaker 2: all right, what are the things that I'm very interested in?
Speaker 2: And I always scratch like all the big animals off
Speaker 2: theos because I'm like, no, she's probably she's probably like, oh,
Speaker 2: I know what we'll do Area plank did We'll do it.
Speaker 1: It's perfect. I love this topic so much. I'm so
Speaker 1: happy you suggested it. I actually, you know what I
Speaker 1: would this if you suggested something like let's do whales,
Speaker 1: I would panic because honestly, whales are not very well
Speaker 1: studied and there's so many things that we don't know
Speaker 1: about them, and I personally am you know, It's like
Speaker 1: when I try to research whales, like how do they mate,
Speaker 1: and it's like, we don't know. You think we know that,
Speaker 1: we don't know that.
Speaker 2: It's mystery, it's none of our business.
Speaker 1: We're business. Uh so yeah, no, this is this is
Speaker 1: very cool. So we're talking about aeroplankton. So aeroplankton is
Speaker 1: it's basically just stuff that uses instead of oceanic currents,
Speaker 1: it uses wind currents to get around. So we all
Speaker 1: we all know and love oceanic plankton. They're tiny micro organism,
Speaker 1: including both zooplankton like coral larva or even like crab
Speaker 1: or fish larva. Those count as a zooplankton. There's also
Speaker 1: phitoplankton like tiny algae. These are like diatoms, so yeah,
Speaker 1: like animals, plants, even prokaryotic plankton like bacteria. These are
Speaker 1: all things that count as plankton. They're using oceanic currents
Speaker 1: to travel, and so skyplankton aeroplankton is basically the same.
Speaker 1: These are little teeny tiny things that use the currents
Speaker 1: of the air to get around, and so it is.
Speaker 1: It is really interesting because like oceanic plankton is a
Speaker 1: relatively like stable population of stuff. They do do like
Speaker 1: a mass migration every day and night, cycle, which is
Speaker 1: really cool, but more or less, they're like supposed to
Speaker 1: be there, whereas with aeroplankton, it ranges from stuff that
Speaker 1: is like intentionally like on the wind, to stuff that
Speaker 1: like probably doesn't know why or how it got up there.
Speaker 2: That's a most exciting about. I'm excited about like spiders
Speaker 2: that end up in the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what's interesting. They do, but they are
Speaker 1: not the confused ones.
Speaker 2: They're supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to be there often. So yeah, aeroplankton, there
Speaker 1: are microorganisms that live in the air, well, not live
Speaker 1: in the air. They happen to wind up in the
Speaker 1: air from clouds to wind currents. Uh. And just like
Speaker 1: oceanic plankton, there are animal organisms. There's plants, fungi, unicellular organisms,
Speaker 1: and prokaryotic organisms that make up aeroplankton. I Actually, so
Speaker 1: this is kind of exciting timing because I recently recorded
Speaker 1: a podcast with Alex Schmidt. It's a podcast called Secretly
Speaker 1: Incredibly Fascinating. We talked about clouds, and Alex just yeah,
Speaker 1: he taught me all about clouds, uh. And he told
Speaker 1: me about how like clouds are formed usually by like
Speaker 1: a seed it's like a little mote of something. It
Speaker 1: could be silica, like a piece of sand, but it's
Speaker 1: like these little microscopic seeds and then cloud sort of
Speaker 1: water droplet forms around it. It's like the nucleus of
Speaker 1: the cloud. Yeah, so like the cloud has all these
Speaker 1: little nuclei, but this thing they exactly but these little,
Speaker 1: these little microscopic bits of stuff can often be things
Speaker 1: like microorganisms. They can be dead or alive bacteria, microorganisms,
Speaker 1: algae that also form these nuclei and clouds. So that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Clouds can have a bunch of like dead
Speaker 1: or alive microorganisms that actually help the cloud form.
Speaker 2: Wow, that I did not know that that Every cloud, Yeah,
Speaker 2: every cloud is built around something that was once on
Speaker 2: the ground pretty much.
Speaker 1: No, that's I mean, that's accurate. Yeah. Like I'm not
Speaker 1: going to talk anymore. Well maybe a little bit, but
Speaker 1: not much more about cloud So if you want to
Speaker 1: learn all about the clouds, you can check out Secretly
Speaker 1: Incredibly Fascinating. I host it with Alex Schmid.
Speaker 2: Do you ever have Alex Schmidt on this podcast? I do, yes, Okay,
Speaker 2: A really fun bit would be would be to only
Speaker 2: let him talk about clams every time he comes over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what is dis clams? I don't know
Speaker 1: that we have talked about clams. I should do that.
Speaker 1: He's not going to listen to this one probably, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that. Don't tell him, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Insist on it. And every single time, like we just
Speaker 2: got to go back to mallus. I'm so sorry because
Speaker 2: molis is like wide ranging because it goes all the
Speaker 2: way from clams to octopy.
Speaker 1: So like he actually does not like he does not
Speaker 1: he see life upsets him. He has a slight fear
Speaker 1: of aquatic animals. So perfect, Yeah, perfect? Uh So who
Speaker 1: is ero plankton? Right, like, who who is this stuff?
Speaker 1: I do? First want to talk about maybe the most
Speaker 1: famous of the arrow planktonic members, pollen, which I think
Speaker 1: right now everyone hates, or at least everyone with allergies hates.
Speaker 1: I also have. I actually never used to get seasonal
Speaker 1: allergies too badly until they moved to Italy and somehow
Speaker 1: the Italian flowers non mi piace ifiori italiani because they
Speaker 1: I get really bad allergies here really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh no, what do they have? They've figured out
Speaker 2: histamines over Oh yeah, I'm on them the caves that
Speaker 2: you live in.
Speaker 1: I am currently high on some kind Yani histamine. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can be, but you know it is.
Speaker 1: It's making life a little better. But I'm still sniffling
Speaker 1: a little bit. But yeah, it hits me like a
Speaker 1: train every year. Yeah, And I've heard like, oh, just
Speaker 1: eat honey that is made out of the local like flowers,
Speaker 1: and maybe it helps. I don't know, because like I
Speaker 1: don't have the patience to just keep eating honey. I
Speaker 1: usually like take the antihistamy. But it sure is good.
Speaker 1: The honey's delicious. I don't know if it has any
Speaker 1: real effect. Do you get allergy sore in? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I get them pretty badly. I didn't when I was
Speaker 2: really young, and my brother did and I was always like, ah,
Speaker 2: sex with you. Yeah, And then as I got older,
Speaker 2: my immune system just changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I get terrible seasonal allergies. And the same way somebody
Speaker 2: was like, oh, hey, try this bee pollen, which is
Speaker 2: like not the honey. It's like, I don't know how
Speaker 2: they're collecting it, and like you just get these spoonfuls
Speaker 2: of baskets.
Speaker 1: On their legs.
Speaker 2: Pieces.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean, how are the humans collecting it baskets
Speaker 1: on their.
Speaker 2: Legs, off the leg and I'll put it in my baskets.
Speaker 2: I I tried that. I tried to taking take a
Speaker 2: tablespoon on this bee pollen every day, and so I
Speaker 2: started doing that. I was like, oh, my throat's closing
Speaker 2: because of the I'm just consuming now, So I stopped
Speaker 2: doing that. Now I'm just back on Clariton's.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had b pollen chocolate bar once. It did
Speaker 1: not close my throat, but it also did not taste good.
Speaker 1: So the thing is like, if you give me some
Speaker 1: kind of BSD remedy but it tastes good, I'll be
Speaker 1: all about it, like, yeah, this honey is helping my allergies.
Speaker 1: It's not, but it tastes good, so I won't.
Speaker 2: I'm drinking it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm drinking it. Like don't like they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know red wine, you know does something positive. It's
Speaker 1: like great, I won't listen to any other news or
Speaker 1: study about it. Yeah. So pollen, they are they count
Speaker 1: as aeroplankton as a bio aerosol. They are microscopic grains
Speaker 1: that contain male sperm cells of plants. That's right, plants
Speaker 1: are having sex get over it. So they are part
Speaker 1: of a plant sexual reproduction cycle, and they need to
Speaker 1: land on the female part of the plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it turns out my new system, it's just very prude.
Speaker 1: It's very it's it's very puritan. Yeah, it's like, get
Speaker 1: this out of here. Yeah, get this sky stauge away
Speaker 1: from me. I'm not sure if I can say sky
Speaker 1: sauge on my own show, but we'll see. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they plants can accomplish pollination through highly effective and precise
Speaker 1: pollinators like bees, flies, bats, and birds, or through the
Speaker 1: less precise and more promiscuous method of just blasting it
Speaker 1: out into the air and hoping it lands where it
Speaker 1: needs to go. I mean, I see, are how are
Speaker 1: babies made? So? Uh yeah. The plants that rely on
Speaker 1: wind transport are called uh animophylus, which means wind loving,
Speaker 1: And so these are the plants that typically are behind
Speaker 1: seasonal allergies, so they're pollen is designed to be bountiful
Speaker 1: and travel by air. Like have you ever like batted
Speaker 1: a pine branch and just a cloud of menacing yellow
Speaker 1: comes out of it?
Speaker 2: Are you're asking me? Yeah? Of course. My card right
Speaker 2: now is I have a pine tree in my yard
Speaker 2: and it is just a film of yellow dust all
Speaker 2: over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's because the pine, the pine trees whole
Speaker 1: plan is to just produce a huge amount of pollen.
Speaker 1: Some of it's gonna wind up on your car, but
Speaker 1: by god, some of it will land on a female
Speaker 1: cone somewhere. Yeah, just with a hope and a prayer.
Speaker 1: So yes, why is pollen an allergen? So airborne pollen
Speaker 1: is easily inhaled. It can be microscopic. I mean you
Speaker 1: can see sometimes heavy coating of pollen, but it can
Speaker 1: get up in your nose and interface with your mucosal
Speaker 1: membrane of the nose and sinuses. Our mucosal membranes are
Speaker 1: very important part of our immune system because they contain
Speaker 1: not only mucus, but immune cells, which is part of
Speaker 1: our passive immune system. Immune cells can either be part
Speaker 1: of the adaptive immune response, which is like the precise
Speaker 1: thing where they have wanted posters out of a specific pathogen,
Speaker 1: where they're like, yeah, that's the guy, get them, or
Speaker 1: the passive immune system where they are just checking essentially
Speaker 1: passports for invasive cells and stuff. It's like do you
Speaker 1: belong here? No, Well, you're gonna get it, and so
Speaker 1: they will sometimes misidentify something as harmful when it's really
Speaker 1: just kind of inert. Pollen is not really that harmful intrinsically,
Speaker 1: and not everyone is allergic to it, but for many people,
Speaker 1: the immune system just accidentally identifies it as a dangerous pathogen.
Speaker 1: So like it is sensitive to civic pollen proteins. That's
Speaker 1: actually one of the reasons that it can change over time, Right,
Speaker 1: like your immune system change, you can actually become sensitized
Speaker 1: to pollen, and like your immune system accidentally learns to
Speaker 1: identify this as a pathogen, and then you start getting
Speaker 1: sneezes and wheezes with the rest of us, sad sex.
Speaker 2: That's what happened to me. I think you can go
Speaker 2: the other direction too, Like I have a I was
Speaker 2: allergic to cats for a very long time and then
Speaker 2: we got a cat, and I was taking medication and
Speaker 2: then ran out and then felt like five days without
Speaker 2: taking it and realized, oh, you know what, Yeah, cats
Speaker 2: are fine. It turns out no, I'm my immune system has.
Speaker 1: Adapted that cat trained you with just the pure power
Speaker 1: of will. No, I mean that that is true, So
Speaker 1: like you can also your allergies can calm down, either
Speaker 1: with age or just sort of environmental factors, because you know,
Speaker 1: your immune system might no longer be reactive to it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to pretend like I understand exactly how
Speaker 1: that works, and in fact, yeah, it is something that
Speaker 1: is even complex to experts the exact way in which
Speaker 1: the immune system and allergies precisely work in that situation.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's probably it's like a combination
Speaker 1: of genetics and environmental exposure that determines whether you will
Speaker 1: be allergic to pollen. I don't know. I would not
Speaker 1: necessarily recommend, uh, eating spoonfuls of bee pollen to try
Speaker 1: to cure it, because.
Speaker 2: That you end up like the kid and stand by
Speaker 2: no in my girl.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wait, you're right, it's my girl. That's mcaulay Culkin.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's I've met him. He's nice.
Speaker 2: I mean the kid in the movie who died. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: Clay Culkin himself, I'm sure is a wonderful boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's Uh. I I don't know if he's actually
Speaker 1: allergic to bees in real life, but I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to try it.
Speaker 2: You know what we should call?
Speaker 1: We should call? Yeah, he doesn't. There's no way he
Speaker 1: remembers who I am. But anyways, we are going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we get back we
Speaker 1: are actually going to talk about animal aeroplankton. Yes, I
Speaker 1: guess like zoo aeroplankton, which is gonna be fun. All right,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna talk about animal aeroplankton. These are aeroplanktonic
Speaker 1: particles that are in fact little tiny animals. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of animals that fly or glide, and
Speaker 1: we don't really count those as aeroplanktons.
Speaker 2: So like the.
Speaker 1: Things like gnats or flies that like just fly or birds,
Speaker 1: like we don't count birds as aeroplankton. That would bediculous.
Speaker 1: Uh it is. The definition seems to be both things
Speaker 1: that are tiny but also just like it has to
Speaker 1: be passively carried by a wind currents. It can't really
Speaker 1: be an autonomous flying animal, right like a gnat or
Speaker 1: a fly that actually like you know, it can be
Speaker 1: really small. There are some wasps that are really really tiny,
Speaker 1: but they can they're flying like they are showing sort
Speaker 1: of a they have an autonomous ability to fly around.
Speaker 1: Aeroplankton control exactly. Aeroplankton, for the most part, are passively
Speaker 1: being carried by wind currents. So one example is aphids.
Speaker 1: They can be found thousands of feet up in the air,
Speaker 1: just like, I don't know that they expected that to happen,
Speaker 1: to be honest, they might benefit from from from some dispersal,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it is that must be wild. One minute,
Speaker 1: you're you're being farm by ants sipping on plant juices.
Speaker 1: In the next you're just like getting sucked into a
Speaker 1: airplane turbine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're over at the top of a storm. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to. I mean, we can all stand to
Speaker 2: be a little bit more like those aphits that we
Speaker 2: just sort of like let it carry you, don't try
Speaker 2: to control everything getting if you get lifted up into
Speaker 2: the sky, just see what happens.
Speaker 1: Man. Like the other option is staying and getting farmed
Speaker 1: by ants and having them like suck juices out of
Speaker 1: your butt. So you know what, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't you rather be hit by a plane?
Speaker 1: I would, Well, everyone has their own taste sore, and
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't judge. But you know, one famous little
Speaker 1: member of the Aeroplankton family are indeed spiders, baby spiders.
Speaker 1: So do you know about how baby spiders use strands?
Speaker 1: Of silk to fly around like little eight legged Mary Poppins's.
Speaker 2: I don't totally understand this. I'm vaguely familiar with the
Speaker 2: fact that spiders could occasionally just land on you, yes,
Speaker 2: from the sky usually.
Speaker 1: So if you for like large adult spiders, that's usually
Speaker 1: because they're probably like in a tree or somewhere nearby
Speaker 1: and then they kind of like accidentally went airborne and
Speaker 1: landed on you. But if it's a teeny tiny baby spider,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that was entirely intentional. Where this
Speaker 1: baby spider, what they do is they they kind of
Speaker 1: walk on their little tippy toes. They're any bitty adorable
Speaker 1: baby spider tippy toes. They stick their butts in the air,
Speaker 1: and they should shoot out a strand of silk, and
Speaker 1: that silk helps them get picked up by the wind.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a parachute, but or paragliding, but
Speaker 1: it's called ballooning, so they can be picked up by winds.
Speaker 1: And there's a massive amount of these baby spiders, so
Speaker 1: much so that there are animals that completely depend on
Speaker 1: them as part of their diet, like swifts. Swifts are
Speaker 1: birds who are migratory. They spend like most of their
Speaker 1: life in the air, very little time roosting, and they
Speaker 1: do not like to be on the ground. Their feet
Speaker 1: actually have turned into just like basically hooks. They can't
Speaker 1: really walk, and so most of the time they're spending
Speaker 1: in the air, and a huge part of their diet
Speaker 1: are these baby spiders that they snack up. Because the
Speaker 1: baby spiders, there's just so many of them, they kind
Speaker 1: of expect. I don't know if expect is something a
Speaker 1: spider can do, but the survival strategy is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: they a lot of them are going to get eaten,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are going to die, but then
Speaker 1: there's just so many of them that some of them
Speaker 1: will land somewhere good and do spider stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's called ballooning. Ballooning, yeah, I love that term.
Speaker 2: And they but they just sort of like depend on
Speaker 2: the wind to carry them somewhere hopeful and promising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hopefully not into the mouth of a hungry swift,
Speaker 1: but that does happen. But yeah, they they hopefully will
Speaker 1: land somewhere and then they can go on and grow
Speaker 1: into adult spiders and do spider stuff. Sometimes they land
Speaker 1: in less ideal places, like boats in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ocean because they can they can fly like three
Speaker 1: miles up, which is about five kilometers up into the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and they can wind up miles away off of land
Speaker 1: and on boats and stuff. So that's that's not great
Speaker 1: for them, but a lot of them do wind up
Speaker 1: in good places and establish themselves as you know, an
Speaker 1: adult spider that really, you know, is a contributing member
Speaker 1: of spider siety.
Speaker 2: Five miles up? Do you know how far?
Speaker 1: Like they three miles five kilometers.
Speaker 2: But I mean, oh, that's up, But how then how
Speaker 2: how far can they go? Like can you get? Are
Speaker 2: they these international spiders?
Speaker 1: These are you know what? It depends on the nation, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think in Europe they could probably be international.
Speaker 1: Could a spider make a transatlantic flight? Probably not unless
Speaker 1: it lands on a boat and then that boat goes
Speaker 1: into port. Usually though, usually those spiders that invade areas
Speaker 1: by boat are gonna wind up there just because they're
Speaker 1: like hiding out in some bananas or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a cool new way though.
Speaker 1: It's fun. It's more fun than like just sitting on
Speaker 1: a banana. I feel like it's more like, you know, adventurous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty amazing. Yeah, because at that point it's really
Speaker 2: in fate's hands. Like the fact that a spider was
Speaker 2: in the middle of the ocean would land on a
Speaker 2: boat is like, okay, that was supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be so confusing though, right Like you're like,
Speaker 1: well this is this is like Earth, but smaller and
Speaker 1: full of ocean nerds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad.
Speaker 1: Would always tell me these stories of like the various
Speaker 1: things that would like land on the boats. And it's
Speaker 1: usually some kind of sea bird, and usually it's fine,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit of a tangent, but it's
Speaker 1: just such a messed up story. But there are these
Speaker 1: like what I think there's storm petrels and they would
Speaker 1: land on the boat, which would be okay, but like
Speaker 1: when the boat is in these like cold water. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's a research ship. It's a huge ship.
Speaker 1: But they would land on these like these sort of
Speaker 1: like I guess they're not really smoke stacks. Man, I'm
Speaker 1: bad for being the daughter of someone who does this
Speaker 1: for a living. But it is the part of the
Speaker 1: boat that generates some heat, right, like they are there,
Speaker 1: there's this warmth that comes out of them because it
Speaker 1: is sort of like somewhere where there is like an
Speaker 1: exhaling of some of where you know, how the boat
Speaker 1: go forward with power, it's you know, maybe it's starboard
Speaker 1: or something. Anyways, these birds really like the warmth of
Speaker 1: these areas, and so they'll sit and kind of buy
Speaker 1: just like the warm air that is generated by these
Speaker 1: these the kind of chimney things. And but the problem
Speaker 1: is like they sit there for too long and then
Speaker 1: they like don't have the energy to fly because they
Speaker 1: need to like be eating and fly, like it's kind
Speaker 1: of ruling for them. They have to be constantly like
Speaker 1: getting you know, fishing and flying and stuff. And then
Speaker 1: they just don't want to leave, so they sit there
Speaker 1: until they like just keel over and die because they
Speaker 1: have not been and they don't have the in energy
Speaker 1: and they don't like it's it's it's like so creepy
Speaker 1: right where it's like these it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: the ship is like a siren that has lured these
Speaker 1: birds to their death, just sort of in the opposite way,
Speaker 1: like instead of going off the boat to like kiss
Speaker 1: a mermaid, they're going on a boat because it's warm,
Speaker 1: and then they just die. It's really sad.
Speaker 2: I tell another lesson for all of us. I told
Speaker 2: you stop grinding. That's what Katie always says. She's grindcore mentality.
Speaker 2: She loves. She believes that everybody should be grinding at
Speaker 2: all times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a I have a grind set for sure,
Speaker 1: where it's like, if you're not, if you don't have
Speaker 1: five jobs going all at once, what are you why?
Speaker 1: What are you even doing?
Speaker 2: You're just a bird on a smokestack.
Speaker 1: Man. If you're not generating multiple revenues of bitcoin, ape,
Speaker 1: ape coin, whatever, whatever, the newest thing is all my
Speaker 1: apes gone. But I told him that what they should
Speaker 1: build is like a bird trebuche, so like kind of
Speaker 1: like a springboard, so that every time a bird tries
Speaker 1: to land there, it triggers like a mechanism that flings
Speaker 1: the bird back into.
Speaker 2: The air back up there.
Speaker 1: He didn't seem to take that suggestion seriously. But I
Speaker 1: think it might actually help. Uh, So, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: keep trying to petition and sort of a workshop the
Speaker 1: bird Flinger invention to save storm petrels from their own
Speaker 1: desire to be cozy. So we're gonna oh wait, no,
Speaker 1: there's one more thing about spiders. I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: you about. It's not just wind that actually helps baby
Speaker 1: spiders travel by silk butt parachute. So there are actually
Speaker 1: electric fields that may be aiding these spiders. In laboratory settings,
Speaker 1: they were able to generate electrics, and not only did
Speaker 1: that seem to trigger spider ballooning behavior, these electric fields
Speaker 1: could actually lift these tiny, itty bitty spiders up. And
Speaker 1: so this sort of laboratory experiment seems to indicate that
Speaker 1: in nature's my spiders may be able to travel by
Speaker 1: the Earth's electromagnetic fields. So that's neat.
Speaker 2: Whoa. Yeah, they're using like magnets essentially to fly through the.
Speaker 1: Air electric fields.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't understand what that means.
Speaker 1: Well, there are electrostatic forces that Okay, So there's a
Speaker 1: different podcast that I'm on called Daniel Njorge Explains the Earth.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm just sort of like making it
Speaker 1: other people's problems to explain these things. Now. I do
Speaker 1: a guest host on that one, Daniel Lightson. He understands
Speaker 1: things like electric static forces much better than I do.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, it's like how uh gosh, It's
Speaker 1: it's like magnetism, but it's electromagnetism.
Speaker 2: Okay, good enough for me.
Speaker 1: You know how a balloon sticks to your head if
Speaker 1: if you rub it there a lot. Yes, is like that,
Speaker 1: but with a tiny spider in his little butt silk parachute, and.
Speaker 2: It's just electromagnetism that's in the air.
Speaker 1: Yes, because the Earth has electric fields generated by the Yes, Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: I'll accept that as an answer, thank you. Does it can?
Speaker 2: But do electromagnetic fields travel or do they just sort
Speaker 2: of stay stationary? You just sort of wait for the
Speaker 2: Earth to turn underneath you. These dumb questions.
Speaker 1: No, they're not dumb questions. I just may not be
Speaker 1: able to completely answer. Yes, I think there are electrical
Speaker 1: currents that do move around the Earth. I think also
Speaker 1: it's like there's probably a number of things that are
Speaker 1: happening right like where the spider. There may be some
Speaker 1: kind of like difference in the strength of the electrical current,
Speaker 1: like the higher you get up, right, so maybe it
Speaker 1: can carry the spider up. I am reaching the limits
Speaker 1: of my knowledge because we're talking about electricity. I routinely
Speaker 1: shocked myself unplugging my laptops, so I'm not an expert,
Speaker 1: but I would guess it is something. It's probably something
Speaker 1: to do with you know, how like lightning happens because
Speaker 1: there is this difference in terms of the like electrostatic
Speaker 1: you know, balance between like the clouds and the ground.
Speaker 1: You know, I would imagine that you could probably lift
Speaker 1: something up, like a tiny spider based on the sort
Speaker 1: of like there there is a difference in the density
Speaker 1: of ions up in the sphere. Ions there, you go,
Speaker 1: it's all snapping into place because of the ions. You
Speaker 1: just forgot about the ions. But you know, the charge,
Speaker 1: the charge, it's the difference in charge and they're probably
Speaker 1: riding that sick charge differential wave. Definitely check out UH
Speaker 1: physics podcast like Daniel Jorge Explain the Universe if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about electric magnetic currents, because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you stuff that's maybe not exactly right.
Speaker 1: It is fun though, it's like it's like jazz. It's
Speaker 1: about the things you don't learn. Yeah, all right, well
Speaker 1: we're going to take another quick break, but then when
Speaker 1: we get back, we're going to talk about other things
Speaker 1: that are floating around there that you can't even see,
Speaker 1: but they're all around you, watching you at every hour
Speaker 1: of the day. There's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. All right, we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about more stuff that's just around in the air, traveling
Speaker 1: in the clouds, in the air currents, and there's you know,
Speaker 1: you just kind of have to accept it.
Speaker 2: Well, I when I talk to you about this podcast
Speaker 2: and what we're going to be talking about, I asked
Speaker 2: you a very specific question, and I'm curious if you
Speaker 2: buy the answer you're going.
Speaker 1: To be answer to answer for me, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say probably not how many, because I think your question
Speaker 1: was like how much stuff is above me right now?
Speaker 2: I want to specifically like, yeah, any animals that No,
Speaker 2: I don't care about the ones that fly, I don't
Speaker 2: care about the ones that have like a way to
Speaker 2: get from A to B. I mean the ones that
Speaker 2: like either get picked up accidentally or are just riding
Speaker 2: the currents. How many, say, like spiders and small animals
Speaker 2: are right over my head right now?
Speaker 1: So sorry, I could not find an official answer to this.
Speaker 1: I did look count I Well, this is what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say. Let's say there is like there's a Soren's
Speaker 1: head shaped column that goes from the top of your
Speaker 1: head up until outer space, right, and we're are we
Speaker 1: counting bacteria or just animals?
Speaker 2: I just want animals. Bacteria. I assume bacteria is. I
Speaker 2: assume there I am surrounded at all times by millions.
Speaker 1: Bacteria, virus is millions.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: If it's just animals, I'm gonna say my estimate would
Speaker 1: be hundreds of thousands. So if this, like, if this
Speaker 1: came down, if this like rained down on you in
Speaker 1: like a column of stuff, yeah, probably probably thousands to
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, like ten, it's.
Speaker 1: Probably more than that because okay, so uh and if
Speaker 1: we're including like bacteria and viruses, it's more than you'd
Speaker 1: like for sure.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean I assume i'm ratio wise, I'm
Speaker 2: more bacteria than man.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: My bacteria out number myselves like ten to one or
Speaker 2: something like that. So bacteria, I'm just I've made my
Speaker 2: peace with bacteria. Yeah, that is the world is more
Speaker 2: bacteria than anything else. And what I'm really what I
Speaker 2: what really startles me is, yeah, I'm doing that column.
Speaker 2: It's just me and like a vacuum, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I'm going to create extra gravitational pull
Speaker 2: on every single one of those animals that's in the
Speaker 2: air and they all come down on me.
Speaker 1: I mean they're very tiny, so you probably get like
Speaker 1: a look again, this is coming out of my butt University,
Speaker 1: Katie's but University, which is an accredited online university that
Speaker 1: you can sign up for ninety nine a month. But
Speaker 1: I would say, be a maybe like a thickish film,
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't die, but it'd be a film, a
Speaker 1: thick film, That's.
Speaker 2: What I was. Yeah, that's still pretty pretty substantial.
Speaker 1: Well, so the kinds of animals that can be wind
Speaker 1: borne includes rotifers, columbulans, tartar grades, mites, thrips, and nematodes.
Speaker 2: So I know two of those things. I know those
Speaker 2: are two nematods and tartar grades.
Speaker 1: Good job, what are they? Soren popul toads.
Speaker 2: Okay, Nematodes are are flatworms, nematodes roundworms. Roundworms are nematodes. Yes, okay,
Speaker 2: all right, you got the flats.
Speaker 1: You got the rounds, you got the square worms.
Speaker 2: And the tartar grades are like very microscopic looking. They
Speaker 2: kind of almost look like beetles.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they're the chubby ones. They're also called moss
Speaker 1: piglets or water bears. They have eight legs, and they
Speaker 1: they kind of look like chubby cattog pillars, but with
Speaker 1: very stubby eight legs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they survive super well in space.
Speaker 1: Yes they I mean, I wouldn't say super well, but
Speaker 1: they do better than us, much better than us. They
Speaker 1: can survive desiccation, extreme temperatures both hot and cold, and
Speaker 1: so yes, they are very hearty. It's not much of
Speaker 1: a surprise that they can survive a little bit of
Speaker 1: wind travel. And they're teeny tiny, their microscopic and yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. And nematodes are round worms. They arrange in size,
Speaker 1: but many species are microscopic or very very tiny, and
Speaker 1: they're found all over the world, and unsurprisingly, they can
Speaker 1: take advantage of wind currents to distribute themselves. They are
Speaker 1: often parasitic, but not necessarily parasitic. But they are so
Speaker 1: ubiquitous that there are like sixty billion nematodes per human being,
Speaker 1: and it is unfathomable what the world would be like
Speaker 1: without them. Just because there are so many of them
Speaker 1: that they are very likely to be an integral part
Speaker 1: of every ecosystem. I saw this really sickening description of
Speaker 1: nema toads where it was like if we took away
Speaker 1: everything that wasn't nema toad there would still just be
Speaker 1: sort of like a ghost of everything made out of
Speaker 1: Nema toads, which I think is also largely true of
Speaker 1: like bacteria.
Speaker 2: So are they in my drinking water? Like if I
Speaker 2: could get a microscope and like look at my drinking water,
Speaker 2: what I see little worms rather than around?
Speaker 1: Potentially, Yes, I mean that can actually be a problem.
Speaker 1: I think that it depends on sort of the level
Speaker 1: of purification of your drinking water. Obviously, there's drinking water
Speaker 1: that can like you know, like if the tap water
Speaker 1: is not that clean, it can make you sick, and
Speaker 1: Nema toads can be behind that. But like you know,
Speaker 1: I think that if you have like water does go
Speaker 1: through sort of water sanitation, that probably kills most of
Speaker 1: the nematodes off. But you know, there could be some
Speaker 1: dead ones in there.
Speaker 2: I don't My goal is not to kill them. I
Speaker 2: just want to sterilize them. I want like spade and
Speaker 2: neuter them.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean, like you know, Bob Barker, but for nematodes, right.
Speaker 2: Don't forget the spade. Neuter your nematodes thank you for watching,
Speaker 2: just because that's that's the issue, right, is like them
Speaker 2: breeding inside you, the nema toad itself by it on
Speaker 2: its own, Yeah, not doing.
Speaker 1: Much to me, right, Yeah, So like you, I think
Speaker 1: you could probably find some microscopic nematodes in your drinking
Speaker 1: water that are probably not doing anything, and they might
Speaker 1: you might drink them up and it's probably okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so don't worry about it, don't think about it.
Speaker 2: And there's just a bunch floating right on my head
Speaker 2: at this moment. Yeah, well I'm inside. I'm inside, so
Speaker 2: it's different. But like walking around outside, there's.
Speaker 1: Probably a lot. Yeah, Like if you walk on the ground,
Speaker 1: there's a lot. If your head brushes against a leaf,
Speaker 1: probably gonna smear them. Onia, you know, there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of nematodes around and yeah, they are probably in
Speaker 1: your drinking water. They probably aren't hurting you, uh if bacteria,
Speaker 1: like I think often like the problem with a lot
Speaker 1: of nematodes, the non parasitic nematodes is if they have
Speaker 1: uh like bacteria on them, which is also harmful to humans.
Speaker 1: But again that's not very likely intreated drinking water, which
Speaker 1: might kill a lot of the nematodes, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them are probably still alive and hanging out and
Speaker 1: just then you drink them and they hang out in
Speaker 1: your body and they don't do anything, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: just don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: Making piece of it right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you've got much grosser looking stuff everywhere.
Speaker 1: I don't mean this personally against you. So I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: you know, like they can't.
Speaker 2: See where I'm recording right now, we are watching each
Speaker 2: other on video. That is a little hurtful.
Speaker 1: It is, guys, when I was saying the film it
Speaker 1: was not a hypothetical.
Speaker 2: No, I am recording out of a garage where a fine,
Speaker 2: there is not a single flat surface.
Speaker 1: I mean you've got a couple of cardboard boxes there.
Speaker 1: It's probably full of stuff nematodes. Sorry, keeping nematodes. So
Speaker 1: uh yeah. They are also something that can be carried
Speaker 1: around and distributed by the wind. And they're the like
Speaker 1: research where they surveyed sort of like samples of stuff
Speaker 1: collected by like rain water and stuff. And yeah, nematodes
Speaker 1: just they get around that way. They're tiny. What do
Speaker 1: you want. They like to use the wind to get
Speaker 1: around there are other things that I had listed there
Speaker 1: that may be less recognizable, like rotifers, columbulands, I mean, mites,
Speaker 1: and thrips.
Speaker 2: You may have heard of, I know, mites, not thrips.
Speaker 2: That's new to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So mites are they're tiny rachnids. They've got eight legs.
Speaker 1: You might have seen like velvet mites. These like tiny
Speaker 1: red mites. Mites can be parasitic. They often are, but
Speaker 1: they don't have to be. They are not necessarily parasites.
Speaker 1: And yeah, those can get picked up by wind and
Speaker 1: carried around and it's not you know, sometimes that might
Speaker 1: be beneficial to the mites to distribute them, and sometimes
Speaker 1: could just be confusing. So the other ones I mentioned
Speaker 1: rotifers are actually typically zooplankton that inhabit freshwater habitats. They
Speaker 1: can be found in saltwater, but most of the species
Speaker 1: are in fresh water. They're also known as wheel animals.
Speaker 1: They are called wheel animals because their mouth kind of
Speaker 1: looks like a spinning wheel. It doesn't actually spin, but
Speaker 1: it has these cilia that kind of undulate in a
Speaker 1: pattern that makes it look like it's spinning. It's kind
Speaker 1: of an optical illusion. Let me see if I can.
Speaker 1: I doubt maybe I should have looked this up before,
Speaker 1: but I want to see if there's a gift of it. Man,
Speaker 1: have you noticed that it's like really hard to just
Speaker 1: find good guess? Yeah, like everything takes you to another thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's full of skaties, googles.
Speaker 2: Google's broken.
Speaker 1: It's broken, Okay, send it to you sore in the human.
Speaker 2: Oh they got chainsaws on the front of them. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: just spin and spin. Yeah, it looks like a heart.
Speaker 1: Hmm, no, but you know close enough, I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just something like beating inside of it.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's got tiny organs for sure. That
Speaker 1: is probably not like that thing that's moving. I would
Speaker 1: guess it's some kind of like food distribution.
Speaker 2: Yeah thing, that's the tube within the tube.
Speaker 1: It's a tube inside of the tube, sort of smooshing
Speaker 1: stuff down deeper into the tube. So but yeah, the Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see why it's called an wheel animal because
Speaker 1: it looks like it has these two wheels that are
Speaker 1: like spinning on its head. But yeah, really it's just
Speaker 1: the cilia are like moving in sort of a wave
Speaker 1: and that makes it look like it's spinning. And that's
Speaker 1: how they collect food.
Speaker 2: It looks like, I mean, this is a tangent as well,
Speaker 2: and it's probably not super helpful for on an audio podcast.
Speaker 1: But we're not trying to We're not trying to be helpful.
Speaker 2: Here in this gift. There's also something that starts out
Speaker 2: at looking like an egg and then transforms into a
Speaker 2: worm up in the corner. And I want to know
Speaker 2: what that thing is too. It's just like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: I could do whatever shape I want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: Man, No, I'm a chili pepper.
Speaker 1: Sometimes small stuff just does weird things. You can quote
Speaker 1: me on that. Sometimes small stuff it just does weird things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's those guys get picked up, you know,
Speaker 1: in evaporation cycles by winds, and they wind up in
Speaker 1: the air and they're probably super confused because they are
Speaker 1: not supposed to be in there. They're supposed to be
Speaker 1: fresh water going around. It's been in their little face wheels.
Speaker 2: I like those wheels.
Speaker 1: I like them too. It's like I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a specific tool that is used I'm gonna say in
Speaker 1: woodworking where it's like or maybe it's dentistry. Look, I
Speaker 1: have two successful side businesses Katie's backyard dentistry in Katie's
Speaker 1: backyard carpentry. And I get them confused sometimes, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like it just it does look like
Speaker 1: a power tool, an organic power tool. Yeah, so, uh
Speaker 1: yeah they are. They're one of these uh air aeroplankton
Speaker 1: uh columbu colum Boland's, also known as springtails, are a
Speaker 1: type of teeny tiny, indi beaty hexapod that like moist
Speaker 1: conditions and feeding onto king matter. In fact, one type
Speaker 1: of these springtails is the snow flea, which I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember. I thought that you were on
Speaker 1: the show when we talked about snow fleas or was
Speaker 1: it ice worms?
Speaker 2: We talked about ice worms.
Speaker 1: Damn it.
Speaker 2: Wow, snow flea sounds cool though, the snow.
Speaker 1: It's tiny and little and lives in the snow. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they are uh yeah, these little springtails. They kind
Speaker 1: of can kind of jump around it and there's they
Speaker 1: can get so tiny that they can get picked up
Speaker 1: by the wind and carried around. Yes. And then thrips
Speaker 1: are tiny insects that are under a millimeter long that
Speaker 1: can be winged or wingless. Now, I think earlier I
Speaker 1: talked about how like we don't generally classify winged insects
Speaker 1: as aeroplankton. But the thing is, they suck at flying,
Speaker 1: so like their wings are pretty useless over long distances.
Speaker 1: They actually have a specific way of flying that's called
Speaker 1: clap and fling, which like they clap their wings together.
Speaker 1: It generates these little wind vorgicies that kind of gives
Speaker 1: them some lift, but it is not very efficient, not
Speaker 1: very good over distances. So to travel long distances, they
Speaker 1: depend on wind currents, so they count.
Speaker 2: It's just to get them up there. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, I really like that type of animal,
Speaker 2: the animals that like they they kind of can fly,
Speaker 2: but really it's everything's being dictated by mother nature.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really count, you know, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: My butterflies, I feel like, are the same. Like you
Speaker 2: put butterfly in a vacuum, it can fly straight. But
Speaker 2: the butterflies in your everyday life look like they're drunk
Speaker 2: because they're just being like they are being thrown around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh it is they. I I do love that
Speaker 1: and I think that like it'd be interesting though to see,
Speaker 1: like if you get a butterfly drunk, does it fly good? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it better.
Speaker 1: Is it better?
Speaker 2: They like.
Speaker 1: Zip in nectar, They've got to sometimes sip nectar that's
Speaker 1: a little fermented. It probably just kills them, though, it
Speaker 1: probably just instantly kills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything kills butterflies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you breathe funny and it just butterflies.
Speaker 2: Like, oh no, am my scales.
Speaker 1: My scales. Yeah. I once hit a small butterfly with
Speaker 1: a hose when I was a kid, and I thought
Speaker 1: I killed it. I picked it up, I put it
Speaker 1: on like a paper towel. I guess that dried it
Speaker 1: out and it flew away, and it was such a
Speaker 1: good feeling that like, I kind of tried to hit
Speaker 1: another butterfly with a hose so I could just like
Speaker 1: be its savior again. And then I had this realization
Speaker 1: as I was doing it, like this might be wrong.
Speaker 1: So I didn't end up. I didn't end up as
Speaker 1: like Kathy Baits in Misery or what's her name, But
Speaker 1: I almost developed a munch housen by butterfly proxy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had a very small experience where I would
Speaker 2: My brother had taught me that you can revive a fly,
Speaker 2: round a fly and then put it in a pile
Speaker 2: of sugar. You can revive a fly, but it's never
Speaker 2: really the same.
Speaker 1: How do you know it's not the same, Like it's
Speaker 1: like personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mountain sugar is like pet cemetery for a fly,
Speaker 2: like it'll come back, but it's like it's a.
Speaker 1: Weird version.
Speaker 2: Used to do that. And I do remember like catching
Speaker 2: house lies in that in the house and like how
Speaker 2: much they didn't want to be caught, and thinking that's
Speaker 2: probably fair, but I don't think i'd want this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like this. It's like this because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of children go through that experimentation phase of
Speaker 1: like doing weird stuffed insects, and then it's like and
Speaker 1: then you get to a point where you're like I
Speaker 1: remember putting an ant on some ice to see if
Speaker 1: it could ice skate, and it was just flopping around helplessly.
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe this sucks for the ant. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm a cruel god.
Speaker 2: Right right before you move on to mammals, yeah, and
Speaker 2: your serial killer people.
Speaker 1: I think most children stop before mammals. I certainly I
Speaker 1: certainly stopped at ants and butterflies and then I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel bad about this, I'm gonna stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like that moment, that flickering, that realization.
Speaker 1: It's like, what is this feeling? Is it empathy? Empathy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we would.
Speaker 2: Take ants and put them in a dish with water,
Speaker 2: and then we would jump on the trail, like get
Speaker 2: on trampoline where there's a lot of static electromagnetic currents,
Speaker 2: and then we would put a finger in the dish
Speaker 2: and then touch a spring on the trampoline and just
Speaker 2: get that shock. And as soon as they went to
Speaker 2: the water, because the ants are writhing around the water
Speaker 2: because they're dying, they're they're they just they'll stop moving
Speaker 2: and then they come back in a little bit and
Speaker 2: they keep moving, but that shock really puts them out
Speaker 2: for a minute.
Speaker 1: I mean that is very cool, you know, pretty dark. Look,
Speaker 1: you know what like ants, I don't a lot of them.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of them. I don't. I don't relish
Speaker 1: killing them, but I'm not going to pretend like I
Speaker 1: don't eat chicken and a fish. So you know, and
Speaker 1: ants and ants, I have tried them. They have a
Speaker 1: nice peppery flavor.
Speaker 2: So the ones you get, I think, what the ones
Speaker 2: some type of ants you get?
Speaker 1: You mean, like they only serve you the peppery ones like,
Speaker 1: there's other ones that just tastes like ass that they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they when they when the restaurant orders their ants,
Speaker 2: I see go through and they set out the ones
Speaker 2: that are peppery because they're just not as good.
Speaker 1: I mean I when I was a kid, I just
Speaker 1: eat them off the ground, but they always taste peppery
Speaker 1: to me. So I don't you got lucky yet. Lucky
Speaker 1: I was like the Gordon Ramsey of of the inside beating.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who's visiting a cricket farm where
Speaker 1: they're they're doing sort of like they're trying to mask.
Speaker 1: It's very good. It's for ecological and humanitarian reasons, but
Speaker 1: they're trying to sort of make a cricket farming a
Speaker 1: sort of doable on this like mouse scale. And it's
Speaker 1: just like I'm just imagining a bunch of little crickets
Speaker 1: and paddocks, you know, just like rows and rows of them.
Speaker 1: I know it's not that, but that's how I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about it. Uh So. Yeah. Aeroplankton also includes some non
Speaker 1: animal microorganisms, such as fungal spores, you know, same kind
Speaker 1: of like principle as pollen. There's also bacteria viruses. In fact,
Speaker 1: clouds that have been studied can have anywhere from three
Speaker 1: hundred to thirty thousand bacteria per millimeter of water. It
Speaker 1: is unclear whether clouds can successfully transport bacteria in an
Speaker 1: effective way, because most kind of just die under cloud conditions.
Speaker 1: It's not particularly hospitable to bacteria. But wind, like when
Speaker 1: they have sort of a substrate to be on, like topsoil,
Speaker 1: wind can transport this top soil containing bacteria. The bacteria
Speaker 1: can like survive on this these like tiny particles of
Speaker 1: top soil, and they can be transported from like one
Speaker 1: area to another fairly effectively through wind.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have another question for you, and I'm not
Speaker 2: sure you can answer this.
Speaker 1: I'll make something up, don't worry.
Speaker 2: I have a bad understanding of how high up is
Speaker 2: the sky, and so I'm curious if like there's an
Speaker 2: animal that could potentially get picked up by a wind current,
Speaker 2: get carried higher and higher, like like curious George and
Speaker 2: the kite, and just higher and hire to the point
Speaker 2: where it just leaves the atmosphere, Like are we sending
Speaker 2: animals up to space by accident every day?
Speaker 1: Potentially? I think that you know, I I think like
Speaker 1: there are few. There are few that would survive the
Speaker 1: trip to say Mars, right like that could just flow
Speaker 1: on their own, wind up on Mars and start like
Speaker 1: a little colony of guys I mean some microscopic like
Speaker 1: I mean bacteria. There are extremophiles like bacteria. I mean,
Speaker 1: we talked about tartar grades who can survive quite a
Speaker 1: bit of abuse. Even then, being able to survive space
Speaker 1: for long enough to say, like hit the Moon would
Speaker 1: be pretty tough without some kind of like yeah, good
Speaker 1: chunk of a substrate. Like, there's ideas that back to here,
Speaker 1: it could like maybe survive on say like an asteroid
Speaker 1: for a while, right like, but just free floating in space.
Speaker 1: I don't think they would last very long.
Speaker 2: I don't need them to survive. I just like the
Speaker 2: idea that there's a spider that in its last moments
Speaker 2: leaves the pull of Earth.
Speaker 1: May it's to ground control. Yeah, I think you know what,
Speaker 1: I think it could happen. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: we have in terms of records of that, right Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've got satellites scooping up scooping
Speaker 1: up microorganisms, but I think that there certainly could be
Speaker 1: some like you know, maybe like a storm or something
Speaker 1: that kicks them up even higher. And you know, the
Speaker 1: thing is the problem with that happening a lot is
Speaker 1: that you need a lot of like velocity to escape
Speaker 1: the Earth's gravity. Oh right, So like you know, you
Speaker 1: could I could imagine something like getting kicked up maybe
Speaker 1: by a storm and then like tinking into like a
Speaker 1: satellite or something. But to really like get to shoot
Speaker 1: something out into space, it's a really good question. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know if there would be enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're light, right, so it doesn't take as
Speaker 1: much force as like a spaceship because the spaceship is
Speaker 1: a big mass, and so you need a lot a
Speaker 1: ton of energy to escape the Earth's gravitational pull something
Speaker 1: that's tiny. Yeah, that's a that's a that's a question.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna ask Ai
Speaker 1: assists whether.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make a note to talk to Nessa
Speaker 2: about putting a cup a look up on the next
Speaker 2: satellite so that I can see if it's collecting uh targets.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I'm gonna I am going to
Speaker 1: uh keep looking into this and if I find a
Speaker 1: satisfying answer. I will do a follow up on the
Speaker 1: show and I will tell you about it, Soren.
Speaker 2: Because what a journey. I mean, obviously it ends in death,
Speaker 2: but what a what an exciting journey for Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: little comrade spiders seems fun.
Speaker 1: The atmosphere, you know, like they're probably there's probably like
Speaker 1: a special heaven for animals that die in space, Like
Speaker 1: like is there? It's like lots of chimpanzees there.
Speaker 2: You're past heaven at that point, like you are? You?
Speaker 1: I do like that you have you subscribe to the
Speaker 1: belief that there is a heaven, but it is lies
Speaker 1: at a certain it's at a certain it's like sort
Speaker 1: of like above the eye on a sphere, but below
Speaker 1: the stratosphere. I don't know how.
Speaker 2: Sometimes in a plane you can you can see it.
Speaker 1: I try. I try to wink at God when I'm
Speaker 1: on a plane, you know, like, hey there, God, how's
Speaker 1: the hang in Jesus, I'm sure you guys are up
Speaker 1: here doing stuff.
Speaker 2: One of the engines goes out. Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know you know what is up there? Though?
Speaker 1: Viruses uh so. Viruses can also travel by wind and
Speaker 1: be found in clouds and they can rain down on
Speaker 1: us in actual literal rain. But don't worry, most of
Speaker 1: these are fine. In fact, pretty much all the viruses
Speaker 1: that you're gonna find that are aeroplankt in uh. There's
Speaker 1: millions and millions of them, and we're breathing them in
Speaker 1: all the time. But they actually uh are only pathanogenic
Speaker 1: uh for bacteria, So they infect bacteria maybe other microorganisms,
Speaker 1: but they can't infect humans. And so it is not
Speaker 1: really thought that viruses flying around in the wind is
Speaker 1: particularly driving infection in humans. It's it is like theoretically possible, right,
Speaker 1: It's just that a sneeze is gonna be a much
Speaker 1: more efficient deliverer of viruses than like one virus lands
Speaker 1: on your nose from two thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: Okay, And if I'm drinking rainwater, am I getting all
Speaker 2: this stuff in there as well?
Speaker 1: I think there are different reasons not to drink rainwater,
Speaker 1: like I mean, sometimes it depends on like the bodies
Speaker 1: of water near you where the water is evaporating from.
Speaker 1: I don't think you have anything to worry about in
Speaker 1: terms of viruses from drinking rainwater. It's just we're breathing
Speaker 1: in like literally millions of viruses all the time, and
Speaker 1: they just don't do anything to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes me feel a little stronger.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's like it's it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like our bodies a city and these
Speaker 1: viruses are just passing through you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They're just drifters pass through your system. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so don't don't worry about it. We're constantly surrounded by viruses, bacteria.
Speaker 1: Little guys probably breathe them, breathing them in, uh, taste
Speaker 1: in them. You stick your tongue out, it's probably like
Speaker 1: just a bunch of stuff landing on there. But don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. It's good. It's like, you know, like
Speaker 1: when you stick out your tongue to catch snow on
Speaker 1: your on your tongue, but then you're getting viruses.
Speaker 2: Snowflaces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, makes it feel better. Anyways, before we go, we
Speaker 1: do got to play a little game. This game is
Speaker 1: called Guests Who's Squawking? This rail sound game. Every week
Speaker 1: we play a mystery. An'll sound in you the listener,
Speaker 1: and you the guest, trying to guess who.
Speaker 2: I'm so mad that I.
Speaker 1: Don't remember that you did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there I was. I shouldn't know because we maybe
Speaker 2: I can't remember the last time at a time before,
Speaker 2: but it was Cassawary and Cassewary is like one of.
Speaker 1: My favorite games. Oh yeah, yeah, that was so embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Everyone was disappointed in.
Speaker 2: You, the one more than my son.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I I'm sure if someone like turn this
Speaker 1: around on me, I would lose so much because, like
Speaker 1: it's easy for me to pick out these sounds and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I know what it is because I
Speaker 1: looked it up.
Speaker 2: I looked up.
Speaker 1: I looked it up. But yeah I would I would not.
Speaker 1: I don't want people to think that I would actually
Speaker 1: have a really high success rate with this, because I
Speaker 1: probably would not. Okay, but that being said, let's do
Speaker 1: this all right. So the hint is this. It gets
Speaker 1: its name from the sound it makes, not for sitting
Speaker 1: at the cool kids table. It gets its name from
Speaker 1: the sound it makes, not from sitting at the cool
Speaker 1: kids table in high school. Could you hear that?
Speaker 2: Is it? The little popping noise?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I was gonna say the manta shrimp,
Speaker 2: but or that shrimp that makes that noise, But then
Speaker 2: I hear a bunch of birds and ship in the background.
Speaker 2: So is this something? Is it the manta shrimp?
Speaker 1: No, it's not. You're you're, you're You're correct to be skeptical,
Speaker 1: given that there is birds and wind.
Speaker 2: Okay, because sometimes you can even say, put your you're
Speaker 2: the surface of the water and it sounds like soda
Speaker 2: popping with manta shrimp. But let's see, let's see.
Speaker 1: It's a good guess. It's a good guess.
Speaker 2: Is that topping noise? It's gonna be something weird? Isn't
Speaker 2: a clam?
Speaker 1: No, it's not Alex Schmidt snapping his fingers doing.
Speaker 2: Doing try not find out until next one.
Speaker 1: Doing the no. No, you're gonna find out. You're gonna
Speaker 1: find out right now, because this is last week's No,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not Alex Schmint snapping his fingers. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not a clam Uh. This is the click beetle.
Speaker 1: It is a beetle that basically folds its body in
Speaker 1: half and makes this clicking sound. And it actually can
Speaker 1: rapidly contract its muscles, and it has like a peg
Speaker 1: and slot mechanism uh that allows it to like it
Speaker 1: can unhinge this and then snap it back into place.
Speaker 1: And it both makes a clicking sound and basically launches
Speaker 1: it in a sort of jump. So this is an
Speaker 1: evasive tactic for it to like, I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of it. It looks kind of funny
Speaker 1: because it's just it's basically just this beetle. It's kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know, it's like about the length of
Speaker 1: your thumb, and it's sort of oblong, just kind of
Speaker 1: a flat beetle. But then it, like if it's on
Speaker 1: its back or being held, it like kind of folds
Speaker 1: itself where it's like kind of belly up and folds
Speaker 1: itself like in a upside down V and then just
Speaker 1: like snaps back together and then kind of flings itself
Speaker 1: and makes that snapping sound.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's fun. It's a fun little party trick.
Speaker 2: I didn't know this thing existed.
Speaker 1: Well, now you do, all.
Speaker 2: Right, give me the next one. I get another one, right,
Speaker 2: you do, get another one?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, here's a hint. This bearded fellow is
Speaker 1: the bell of the ball, all right, kind of guesses yes.
Speaker 2: Before I heard your clue, it's like bird. Definitely a bird.
Speaker 2: You gave me another clue that was this bearded fellow,
Speaker 2: and so I'm gonna even though the Habitat in the
Speaker 2: background sounds too jungly or tropical for this, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: guess the bearded.
Speaker 1: Readling Ooh, interesting, interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 2: Guess it's not right.
Speaker 1: It's not right. No, because otherwise I would have bleeped
Speaker 1: you out. But maybe you're on the right track. Anyways,
Speaker 1: you'll find out the real answer to this little, my
Speaker 1: tricky little riddle.
Speaker 2: Next time you're playing a home give yourself. Give yourself
Speaker 2: the extra context of the background noises always with this game.
Speaker 2: That's like, you know Habitat right away, and I disregarded
Speaker 2: that this time. I shouldn't have done that. But you
Speaker 2: can get Habitat almost immediately, and that's gonna give like
Speaker 2: that's gonna zero down your search and then you can
Speaker 2: win this game of katies that if you do win,
Speaker 2: you give a million dollars, right, you give a million
Speaker 2: dollars to the person who gets it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, well, Sarren, that is a great guess, and
Speaker 1: he is on the right track. I will say that,
Speaker 1: but yes, not quite. Uh. If anything that you know
Speaker 1: the answer, you can write to me a Creature Feature
Speaker 1: Pod at gmail dot com. You can also write to
Speaker 1: me your questions, pictures of your pets. Please stop sending
Speaker 1: me requests for millions of dollars. I don't have it.
Speaker 1: I don't have it. Uh so sorry, where can the
Speaker 1: people find you? And also, hey, thank you for coming on?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I'm
Speaker 2: no longer on Twitter, but you can find me on
Speaker 2: Blue Sky. I'm like one of the Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: No no, no, that's the other thing. I don't know where you.
Speaker 2: I don't know where you're o x xx gonna give
Speaker 2: it to you. Yeah, I'm not on that anymore. I'm
Speaker 2: on Blue Sky. If you go there, I'm one of
Speaker 2: only like six people there, so it's very easy to
Speaker 2: find me. Just it's a room full of folks and
Speaker 2: you just go others.
Speaker 1: I'm I'll follow you. I'll give you a follow. I'm
Speaker 1: never there, but I guess I kind of want to
Speaker 1: go on there. Ish I share super recipes on Blue Sky,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Just oh, reinvent yourself. It's like going to high school
Speaker 2: after middle school. It's a whole new opportunity.
Speaker 1: I feel like it. We could definitely swing it in
Speaker 1: the direction of just being a recipe sharing site, and
Speaker 1: we should try to do that, like this is the
Speaker 1: time at which the culture is being established, and if
Speaker 1: it's just like this is a website to share fun
Speaker 1: recipes without any stories, just like I like this being
Speaker 1: super recipe here it is.
Speaker 2: I'm doing jokes over there right now, but I'm happy
Speaker 2: to switch over to Soups Soups.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good use for it as much
Speaker 1: as anything else. But that's Creod.
Speaker 2: You also listen to my podcast with the US It's
Speaker 2: called Quick Question with Thorn and Daniel. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: fun little podcast we do. Yeah, and check it out.
Speaker 1: Check that out. Please. I beg of you and thank
Speaker 1: you so much listeners for doing that thing you do,
Speaker 1: which is listening. If you're enjoying the show and you
Speaker 1: leave it right to review. I read every single review,
Speaker 1: all of them all at once. It hurts my head,
Speaker 1: but I love them. And thank you to the Space
Speaker 1: Cossics for their super awesome song. Exo Lumina Creature feature
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the
Speaker 1: one you just heard, visit the art Heeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or Hey guess what really listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. I don't judge you. I'm not your mom.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you where to listen to your gosh
Speaker 1: durn podcasts. That's not my job. See you next Wednesday,