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 Eggs. I like your eggs
Speaker 1: over easy, scrambled, fried, hard boiled, whatever you like. There
Speaker 1: are so many eggs in the animal kingdom, and they
Speaker 1: can be bonkers, from tiny camouflaged works of art to
Speaker 1: very strange but ingeniously shaped eggs. We are taking eggs
Speaker 1: to a whole new level. Discover this and more as
Speaker 1: we answer the age old question when does giving birth
Speaker 1: coincide with home improvement? Joining me today is friend of
Speaker 1: the show, my close and personal friend, podcasting buddy, host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, which I'm also on
Speaker 1: that one too, Alex Schmidt. Welcome.
Speaker 2: It's so good to be here. Thank you for having
Speaker 2: me for eggs, a thing I don't think enough about.
Speaker 1: Nobody thinks enough about eggs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also feel like I have learned from various
Speaker 2: friends and so on that different American accents kind of
Speaker 2: say the word differently, So I hope everyone's comfortable with
Speaker 2: how I say the word eggs. Sometimes eggs varies eggs.
Speaker 1: I feel like I say eggs. I don't know how
Speaker 1: do other people say it? Eggs? Eggs?
Speaker 2: Like eggs?
Speaker 1: Eggs? Yeah, I say eggs.
Speaker 2: I think I usually say eggs and sometimes I go
Speaker 2: eggs a little bit. And so we'll see what happens
Speaker 2: to me as we go on this journey.
Speaker 1: Either way is excellent. So we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: some really interesting eggs. There are a lot of animals,
Speaker 1: from insects to monotremes that lay eggs and they are
Speaker 1: all very very interesting. So Alex, you like a stick bug?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, especially I've only ever seen them in like zoos,
Speaker 2: but there will tend to be in a reptile house,
Speaker 2: maybe a little cubby where there's a stick insects living
Speaker 2: out of plant and it's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love the bug house. Like the San Diego Zoo.
Speaker 1: They have all sorts of cool insects and there's always
Speaker 1: a stick guy in there, just being sticky, going around
Speaker 1: like a stick. Stick insects belong to the fasmid order.
Speaker 1: We mostly think of them as these small brown, stick
Speaker 1: like bugs, but they can also be green. Rarely, they
Speaker 1: can be bright colors, such as stick insects found in
Speaker 1: Madagascar who can be bright blue and orange when males
Speaker 1: reach maturity, but most stick.
Speaker 2: Insects blue and orange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, charges Iago.
Speaker 2: Bears football value like it feels great?
Speaker 1: Wait, Chargers is yellow and blue. You're right? Wait what's it's?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: The Chicago Bulls Bears Bears, Bears Bears.
Speaker 2: I don't watch football anymore, but the culture is meaningful
Speaker 2: to me. Through an orange everyone can see you coming
Speaker 2: from you.
Speaker 1: Guys, got a stick bug who's a fan? So that's something.
Speaker 1: But yeah, most stick insects do go for camouflage. They
Speaker 1: try to mimic green or brown sticks or vegetation. Even
Speaker 1: really big stick insects try to blend in with their environment,
Speaker 1: such as uh Tinomorpha gargantua, which is the gargantuan stick
Speaker 1: insect found in Australia. Females can grow almost two feet long,
Speaker 1: which is over fifty five centimeters. Males only grow a
Speaker 1: fraction of this in are thinner, which enables them to fly.
Speaker 1: For most stick bugs, the females are too thick to fly,
Speaker 1: too big, and the males are the ones that can fly.
Speaker 1: So then yeah, the bigger females are flightless and their
Speaker 1: brown branch like appearance allows them to blend in with
Speaker 1: the forest canopy despite being so huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two feet is a branch.
Speaker 1: It's a branch. That's a branch bug. It's not a
Speaker 1: stick bug. That's a branch bug. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like, you can't throw it to your dog, you're like
Speaker 2: too big. Put it down a different stick.
Speaker 1: Oh no, this poor. Imagine throwing the stick insect to
Speaker 1: your dogs like, oh no, not that kind of stick.
Speaker 2: Hopefully become best friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be I would love that story. A
Speaker 1: Pixar movie about a dog and a stick insect and
Speaker 1: their adventures together. Sounds good.
Speaker 2: Carries around their friend.
Speaker 1: Hey yeah, and then they go and fight the Nazis
Speaker 1: or something anyways, so really escalated. Wow. So, these gargantuan
Speaker 1: stick insects, as well as other species of fasmids, lay eggs,
Speaker 1: either through sexual reproduction with a female with the eggs
Speaker 1: and a male fertilizing the eggs, or if the female
Speaker 1: gets no male takers, they can actually reproduce through parthenogenesis,
Speaker 1: meaning that she can lay unfertilized clonal eggs. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you can't find yourself a man, just pop out
Speaker 1: a few clones of yourself and call it a day.
Speaker 2: Right, that is double pressure from your parents. Why haven't
Speaker 2: you found a partner? And also why haven't you parthenogenesis?
Speaker 2: Some grandchildren for us, I guess they don't say it because,
Speaker 2: like me, they stumble over saying the words, but otherwise
Speaker 2: they will bring it up.
Speaker 1: I feel like parent Yeah, like parental guilt about having
Speaker 1: children would be trickier if they had to say parthenogenesis
Speaker 1: every single time. So, you know, one little obstacle.
Speaker 2: But yeah, frustrated dad is just like, why haven't your
Speaker 2: Parthenon's I'm not learning the just Parthenon, come on, make
Speaker 2: a Greek temple.
Speaker 1: Not being on them face blocks and Parthenon a kid already.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the eggs of stick bugs are actually no
Speaker 1: less fascinating than the stick bugs themselves because the eggs
Speaker 1: are also camouflaged. And Alex, I want to I want
Speaker 1: you to guess what the eggs of a stick insect
Speaker 1: might be camouflaged as, Like, the.
Speaker 2: Really fun one would be berries, right, or nuts or something.
Speaker 1: You are something you are so close. So the eggs
Speaker 1: of many stickbug species mimic plant seeds, So isn't that cute?
Speaker 1: It's a stick buzz that's cool. Their eggs look like seeds.
Speaker 2: They're just really doing at this point, they're larpang as
Speaker 2: a tree. They're doing all the parts.
Speaker 1: It's a hardcore sort of fandom where they're naming their
Speaker 1: kids after trees. They're dressing up their kids as seeds.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit dorky.
Speaker 2: So yeah, like are they going to make a wikia
Speaker 2: about free cannon and information?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Like how deep is this gonna go?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I feel like stick insects are already pretty just
Speaker 1: nerdy when you look at them, and then you add
Speaker 1: in this whole this whole plant fixation. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's endearing. Though, So the eggs mimic the seeds of
Speaker 1: local plants. Depending on where the stick insects live, the
Speaker 1: mimicry can be very refined in certain stick insects species. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, the giant prickly stick insect lays eggs that
Speaker 1: look like seeds with a knob like growth, and then
Speaker 1: these fake seeds, which are actually the eggs of the
Speaker 1: prickly stick insect, are actually carried off by spider ants
Speaker 1: into their colony because these ants often pick up seeds
Speaker 1: and bring them back to their colony. Because the ants
Speaker 1: eat these seeds. They actually eat a part of these seeds,
Speaker 1: this like nutritious knob on these seeds. And you might
Speaker 1: be asking, well, why would you want to disguise yourself
Speaker 1: as food for another animal, which is a great question.
Speaker 1: And the ants only eat part of the fake seed eggs,
Speaker 1: so that like knob like growth on the egg that
Speaker 1: mimics a seed is called a capitulum, and the capitulum
Speaker 1: is full of nutrients, but eating it does not damage
Speaker 1: the growing prickly stick bug larvae inside the egg. So
Speaker 1: essentially it's like gives the ants a little gift, which
Speaker 1: is a little bit of edible part of the egg
Speaker 1: case because the ant thinks it's a seed. But then
Speaker 1: the prickly stick insect continues to develop and when it hatches,
Speaker 1: its juvenile form mimics the spider ant, so it can
Speaker 1: proceed to be protected by this ant colony. So why
Speaker 1: does it want to be in the ant colony? Because
Speaker 1: ant colonies are full of protective soldier ants who will
Speaker 1: mess up whatever is trying to get inside of the
Speaker 1: ant colony. So this little juvenile stick bug mimics the ants,
Speaker 1: and then finally, as it develops, older juveniles will start
Speaker 1: to look like bark, and then finally its adult morph
Speaker 1: looks like crumpled leaves. It's fantastic. It goes through this
Speaker 1: whole life cycle from an egg that looks like a
Speaker 1: little seed that tricks ants, then they look like the
Speaker 1: ants themselves, then they look like bark, and then they
Speaker 1: look like crumpled leaves. Incredible.
Speaker 2: They did not need to go this hard and no
Speaker 2: mimicking one thing is a lot, and they decided I'm
Speaker 2: going to have a different mimicry for each life stage.
Speaker 2: There are seasons to my life, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: be an autumn chapter. When I'm a crippled leaf, I'm
Speaker 2: going to be like you guys in the are they
Speaker 2: called spider ants. The spider ant yell, which sounds like
Speaker 2: two bugs to me. This is a lot. This is great.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's fantastic. There's this wonderful National Geographic article that
Speaker 1: shows a photo by by Levon Biss in this National
Speaker 1: Geographic article about these these fasmin eggs, and they are
Speaker 1: I'll provide a link to both the National Geographic article
Speaker 1: and to this photographer's website in the show notes. But
Speaker 1: they're absolutely beautiful. They look like these intricate wood carvings.
Speaker 1: Now in this photo they look big, but this is
Speaker 1: like a macro photography. These are actually really really tiny,
Speaker 1: like think really tiny head of a pin seeds. So
Speaker 1: when you can look at them though, when they're blown
Speaker 1: up and you look at them in detail, they are
Speaker 1: incredible looking. They're all sorts of different shapes. There's like, uh,
Speaker 1: there's sort of more conical shapes, there's oval shapes. There's
Speaker 1: even some that look like a weird like almost like
Speaker 1: a totem pole or like a it's a rod with
Speaker 1: like these little holes carved into it. It's just they're
Speaker 1: so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is so much to get up to as
Speaker 2: a juvenile or infants bug, right, Yeah, like I aged
Speaker 2: many years before I did anything besides poop and cry,
Speaker 2: and these these bugs are really on the ball immediately,
Speaker 2: They're like, I'm immediately an HR Geeker figure in a
Speaker 2: positive way. Look at my phenomenal weird nature art.
Speaker 1: I'm still at the stage of pooping and crying a lot.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of what I get up to.
Speaker 2: It's our break from podcasting, it's what we do.
Speaker 1: We recharge and I'm afraid of being ashamed of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do. I just love the complicated lifestyle of
Speaker 1: like basically from birth to the end, like they are
Speaker 1: always tricking. Ye, there are always life's of stage for
Speaker 1: these fasmids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that that was so many schemes. You're a
Speaker 2: tree seed and then part of you is eaten by ants,
Speaker 2: and then you pretend to be an ant, and then
Speaker 2: you pretended to be like bark crumpled leaf, and I
Speaker 2: think something else before that.
Speaker 1: It was bark before crumpled leaf. But yeah, exactly, It's just.
Speaker 2: It even sounds hard to do bark before leaf. I
Speaker 2: would think leaf would be dinner easier. This is a lot,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of scheme. I recently saw a show
Speaker 2: called Lupan that is on US Netflix, where it's a
Speaker 2: French show of about a master thief who also disguises
Speaker 2: and elaborate schemes, and I keep I'm just thinking of
Speaker 2: this guy telling his French friend about a plan to
Speaker 2: be various bugs of eggs.
Speaker 1: It does. It feels like an ocean's eleven, but for insects,
Speaker 1: it's so convoluted it doesn't. It seems like a fake, bad,
Speaker 1: fake movie script of the insect world. But it's real.
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this picture is Bucker's. I'm glad you're looking
Speaker 2: it for everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just definitely check out that National Geographic article
Speaker 1: and the photographer's website because it's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Well,
Speaker 1: we are going to take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we are going to talk about another egg,
Speaker 1: which is like a work of art or a work
Speaker 1: of engineering. So, Alex, I know you don't like sea
Speaker 1: life too much, but how you feel.
Speaker 2: About legs, they're weirdly fine. And I have learned that
Speaker 2: my phobia is sort of constructed around would it broadly
Speaker 2: make sense as a land animal, right? And if sharks
Speaker 2: had legs, they would they would basically be some kind
Speaker 2: of smooth wolf. And so that's fine.
Speaker 1: They're smooth wolves. That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1: There's smooth sand papery wolves. Yeah. I like sharks. I
Speaker 1: feel like they are sort of like fish doggies, and
Speaker 1: they're cute and some of them will kill you, but
Speaker 1: they're typically harmless when you look at them as broadly
Speaker 1: in terms of all the species and stuff, and so
Speaker 1: such is the case with the horn shark, which I
Speaker 1: think is a cute one. Horn sharks are goofy cute
Speaker 1: little sharks with spots. They grow only about a meter,
Speaker 1: which is three feet in length. So you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like you could cuddle one of these. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to, because, like I think that'd stress the shark out.
Speaker 1: But you know, they also have a few defensive techniques
Speaker 1: which would not be great for cuddling. But still I
Speaker 1: think they're cute.
Speaker 2: When I think of shark defensive techniques, I just think
Speaker 2: of biting me at eating me. So is that one
Speaker 2: of them?
Speaker 1: No, not, Actually they will bite, they can't really eat
Speaker 1: you because they're too small, but they do have another
Speaker 1: defensive technique other than biting. They actually have a set
Speaker 1: of two protective spines on each of their dorsal fins
Speaker 1: that can be sharp. So that's, you know, is kind
Speaker 1: of like an anti cuddling barbs going on there, which
Speaker 1: is a shame they are, but their temperament is very sweet.
Speaker 1: They are not that aggressive. They will bite you if
Speaker 1: they're harassed, but otherwise they're very chill. They eat crustaceans,
Speaker 1: small fish, sea urchins, mollusks, other small sea life. They
Speaker 1: do not actively go after your people aggressively because they're
Speaker 1: so sweet.
Speaker 2: That's nice.
Speaker 1: They live. Yeah, yeah, they live in the Pacific, off
Speaker 1: the coast of North America down to Mexico. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they're actually so sweet. Their temperament is so good. In
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, three people tried to smuggle a horn shark
Speaker 1: out of an aquarium and a baby stroller. A baby stroller.
Speaker 2: I immediately was imagining some kind of duffel bag full
Speaker 2: of water. I like that, it's a baby's stroller.
Speaker 1: Baby stroller. Put a pacifier in its mouth and it
Speaker 1: sucks on it like Maggie Simpson. So they scooped the
Speaker 1: shark out of the tank, and they wrapped the shark
Speaker 1: in a wet blanket and put it in a stroller and.
Speaker 2: Right, and then shouted, are you calling my baby ugly?
Speaker 2: I don't anyone who even looked at it, like preemptively,
Speaker 2: that's the move. Just shame them and that question to
Speaker 2: get there.
Speaker 1: So this was in the San Antonio, San Antonio Aquarium.
Speaker 1: The shark's name was Miss Helen.
Speaker 2: And this is in Mexico. It's not Santonio, Texas.
Speaker 1: I think it was Texas.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, there's a lot of stuff named after him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, San Antonio, Yeah, San Antonio Texas is where it was.
Speaker 1: This is definitely a tex This was in Texas.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Isn't where Brenda's from?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, so wait to have what was Brenda doing
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Telling me she was bringing a child home and then
Speaker 2: suddenly dropping the subject. So I don't know, couldn't be here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they tried. They wrapped miss Helen this juvenile
Speaker 1: horn shark in a wet blaze get put her in
Speaker 1: a stroller. God the shark did survive. The suspects were apprehended.
Speaker 1: The shark was returned to the aquarium when the thieves
Speaker 1: were caught. The reason they kidnapped this cute baby shark
Speaker 1: is that it sells really well in the pet trade,
Speaker 1: so unfortunately it's not It was not like a shark
Speaker 1: liberation front, which would be misguided, but really funny. This
Speaker 1: was like they were they go for a lot of
Speaker 1: money in the pet trade because they're I mean, because
Speaker 1: they're really pretty in docile. I guess they while it's
Speaker 1: not like a nice life for them, they I guess
Speaker 1: people who have large aquariums they put them in there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they they these are survivors. They're pretty hardy
Speaker 1: sharks that are accidentally caught in fishing nets can often
Speaker 1: be returned to the ocean and survive. So they're they're troopers,
Speaker 1: and they're sweet, and they're precious little babies. And while
Speaker 1: you should not roll it around in a baby stroller,
Speaker 1: I love that that did happen, and I wish I
Speaker 1: could have seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much else to do in San Antonio.
Speaker 2: Go to the river walk, have a breakfast taco rights game.
Speaker 2: They have an astounding new French guy. Now, like, do
Speaker 2: that game?
Speaker 1: Put a shark in a s Wait? No, no, okay,
Speaker 1: breakfast burrito, put shark in star Wait. Damn, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's just like breathing. It's natural for me. So onto
Speaker 1: the eggs because this is really cool. The sharks are
Speaker 1: really cool in their own right. But we're talking about
Speaker 1: the eggs. So like a lot of sharks, they will
Speaker 1: weigh basically egg cases, so they have an egg case
Speaker 1: that covers a developing shark embryo. Some sharks give live birth,
Speaker 1: but a lot of sharks will lay these egg cases.
Speaker 1: So egg cases are made up of a tough collagen,
Speaker 1: and different species lay different shapes. Sometimes they're kind of
Speaker 1: like they look like little purses or little crescents. But
Speaker 1: the horn shark egg case are shaped like corkscrews, and
Speaker 1: they are incredible looking. They do not they look like
Speaker 1: you're talking about like hr Giger earlier Geiger. Yes, it
Speaker 1: looks like some science fiction e thingy. It is this
Speaker 1: like beautiful corkscrew. It's smooth, it looks like it's made
Speaker 1: out of plastic, but it is. They're incredible looking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm seeing the picture and it looks like a
Speaker 2: man made augur or cool screw, but also sort of
Speaker 2: like a grenade in a good way. It's great.
Speaker 1: You toss it and a little baby shark pops up.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and then we sing this song.
Speaker 1: No, oh my god, that song has ruined talking about
Speaker 1: shark life cycles. So, but not only is it shaped
Speaker 1: like a cork screw, it actually functions like a corkscrew.
Speaker 1: So the shape of this egg case allows the eggsack
Speaker 1: to become wedged in rocky crevices or on the sandy floor,
Speaker 1: and it kind of kind of screws in there, and
Speaker 1: that protects it from both predators and currents and allows
Speaker 1: it to kind of kind of latch onto like a
Speaker 1: get wedged into like a crevice or down in some sand,
Speaker 1: so it like it sort of screws in naturally. I've
Speaker 1: read different things regarding how this happens. Some research indicates
Speaker 1: it kind of naturally ends up wedged in crevices just
Speaker 1: due to the shape. I've also read at least one
Speaker 1: source that contends that the shark intentionally picks up the
Speaker 1: egg case and like puts it near a suitable spot
Speaker 1: or kind of wedges it in. But I haven't been
Speaker 1: able to find any really good observational studies about whether
Speaker 1: they do this, whether females like actually themselves manually wedging,
Speaker 1: And the thing that seems more likely is that it
Speaker 1: naturally just kind of like she lays it in an
Speaker 1: area that's pretty suitable and then the just like the
Speaker 1: gravity and currents end up kind of pushing it into crevices.
Speaker 1: But I really wish, and I really hope that they
Speaker 1: find evidence that these sharks are grabbing the egg case
Speaker 1: and just screwing it in like a light bulb into
Speaker 1: like into the rocky crevice.
Speaker 2: Right, the evidence is a screwdriver, Right, screwdriver, We just
Speaker 2: find that and then.
Speaker 1: Ah, man, can you imagine if Tim Allen was a shark.
Speaker 2: H Yeah, making that noise. What I actually want is
Speaker 2: shark al right? Al was his friend? Great?
Speaker 1: Wait, which one was out? Was Al? The one on
Speaker 1: the other side of the fence.
Speaker 2: No, that's Wilson, which would also be a fantastic shark
Speaker 2: because that's just the fin instead of his hair. Right,
Speaker 2: But Al is the bearded guy on the show, right,
Speaker 2: he was not Pamela Anderson.
Speaker 1: Man. You know what, I never watched that show as
Speaker 1: a kid. I saw that that come on, and that
Speaker 1: was an immediate, immediate channel change. You think you think
Speaker 1: six year old me wants to learn about saws and
Speaker 1: home improvement. I think I could handle that much flannel
Speaker 1: on the television.
Speaker 2: No, Right, And they failed to make them all various
Speaker 2: species of cuddly sharks.
Speaker 1: If they had been sharks in that show, I would
Speaker 1: have watched it and I probably would have learned how
Speaker 1: to do home improvement, which I assume is the purpose
Speaker 1: of the show.
Speaker 2: It is so distinctly weird that a major character was
Speaker 2: the top of a guy's hat behind a fence. Yeah, like,
Speaker 2: you probably don't know for about seeing it. But Tim
Speaker 2: Allen would be in his backyard having whole conversations every
Speaker 2: week with the top of a guy's hat and you
Speaker 2: never see his face.
Speaker 1: And that is very shark coded, right, because like sharks
Speaker 1: are super famous in a lot of movies just for
Speaker 1: their fin, which I think that's good branding right there,
Speaker 1: Like your fin or your hat is like just a
Speaker 1: synectic key for you. You've done. You've done good. You've
Speaker 1: done good branding there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes more much more sense. From a shark.
Speaker 2: He really should have been a shark and really could
Speaker 2: have been a shark. You can put a hat on
Speaker 2: a fin. No one will stop you.
Speaker 1: You can put a hat on a fin, No one
Speaker 1: will stop you. That's such a good that's such a
Speaker 1: good philosophy. Thank you, alex Well. Let that, let that
Speaker 1: settle in that beautiful phrase, and we will take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then we will return wiser and better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone, provide one picture of you doing that, and
Speaker 2: then you can.
Speaker 1: Cutting a hat on your fin, your dorsal fin. That's right,
Speaker 1: all right, we are back and we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about some complex egg engineering engineering. Wow, I just
Speaker 1: I wrote that joke in my notes and I just
Speaker 1: came up with it. Now I'm really predictable.
Speaker 2: I mean is how the English language works, folks. It's
Speaker 2: it's what's coming, you know, right, put a hat on
Speaker 2: a fin too. I have a lot of commands this week,
Speaker 2: but a hat on a fin.
Speaker 1: So this comes, uh, this, this incredible egg engineering feet
Speaker 1: comes from one of the most deadly, most despised animals
Speaker 1: on the planet. Can you guess, Alex, an.
Speaker 2: Even bigger shark, like a mega shack.
Speaker 1: Go in the opposite direction, an even smaller shark. I
Speaker 1: walked into that when I set that one up. No,
Speaker 1: this is the mosquito. Mosquito. Yes, the common house mosquitoes
Speaker 1: lay their eggs in fresh, slow moving or stagnant water.
Speaker 1: As you may have known, Like if you live anywhere
Speaker 1: where there's like bodies of water, but it maybe ponds,
Speaker 1: and it's during mosquito season and they're just freaking everywhere
Speaker 1: biting you up. It's because they use stagnant water to
Speaker 1: lay their eggs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gross, cut it out, cut it.
Speaker 1: Out, knock it off. But yeah, so when the eggs hatch,
Speaker 1: the mosquito larvae is aquatic. It breathes air through a
Speaker 1: tube on their butt, So their rear ends have a
Speaker 1: tube that they breathe through, and they kind of float
Speaker 1: bottoms up and will feed on microscopic organisms in the water,
Speaker 1: and then they will molt into their adult flying forms,
Speaker 1: and then they go around being pests and spreading disease
Speaker 1: but also providing food for a lot of animals.
Speaker 2: Breathing through a tube of the butt feels like something
Speaker 2: some kind of pseudoscience health influencer will try to tell
Speaker 2: me I can do, man, you know what I mean. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: if you just tried harder, you would be doing this.
Speaker 1: I definitely see butt sunbathing where you're supposed to go
Speaker 1: naked and like hold your butt out to the sun
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to do something I would caution against
Speaker 1: it unless you put sunscreen on your butt, in which case,
Speaker 1: you know, go for it. I'm not going to tell
Speaker 1: you now, but yeah, this is definitely this is definitely
Speaker 1: Goop Goop esque breathing through your butt with like a
Speaker 1: straw essentially. I think they sell those actually butt straws.
Speaker 2: To breathe through, right, because there first they tell you
Speaker 2: can do it literally, and then when you find out
Speaker 2: you can't, they'll be like, actually, like spiritually, you can
Speaker 2: do it if you just align your chakras to breathe
Speaker 2: right through the butt. And I know chakras are a
Speaker 2: real thing in a specific way, but like Internet, people
Speaker 2: use it for the nonsense.
Speaker 1: Definitely not what you're saying, Alex in terms of something
Speaker 1: you can breathe through your butt. You've just offended so many,
Speaker 1: so many people. Uh yeah, but yeah, I definitely could
Speaker 1: see there being like a sort of h woo woo
Speaker 1: spiritual grift of breathing energy through your butt.
Speaker 2: Right, you're getting bad energy through your mouth, right, somehow,
Speaker 2: the good one we'll come through your butt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they just sell you basically an enema or something. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I these these mosquitoes are actually breathing air, oxygenated air
Speaker 1: through their their butt tubes. H. But we are talking
Speaker 1: about the eggs because the eggs that the mosquitoes lay
Speaker 1: in the water are particularly interesting because this species of mosquito,
Speaker 1: along with other species, but we're talking about the common
Speaker 1: house mosquito, they lay egg rafts, So egg rafts rafts
Speaker 1: made out of eggs. These are tiny rafts made out
Speaker 1: of hundreds of eggs. The eggs are so small that
Speaker 1: each raft is only a fraction of an inch big.
Speaker 1: Like there's I've shared a couple of photos with you.
Speaker 1: One is of the raft and it looks like a
Speaker 1: bunch of grains of rice, kind of like stuck together
Speaker 1: into a floating raft form. But they are much smaller
Speaker 1: than rice, way smaller than rice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, rice is dead on or like a brief toothbrush bristle,
Speaker 2: like a bunch of toothbrush. It kind of looks like
Speaker 2: a tooth brush short, too short for my teeth.
Speaker 1: Gotta be thinking about that when I brush my teeth,
Speaker 1: Like this is like mosquito eggs that I'm rubbing on
Speaker 1: my teeth. Thanks for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad I can bring that to the world.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but yeah, this the scale of it is
Speaker 1: kind of hard to tell from this photo. But there's
Speaker 1: another photo of like you see, it's like it's just
Speaker 1: this tiny. The entire raft itself is smaller than a
Speaker 1: grain of rice, and it fits on like your finger,
Speaker 1: very tippy tip of your fingertip. So each egg is
Speaker 1: really really tiny.
Speaker 2: But I guess it's still bigger than I imagine somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's tiny for sure. And then I just I somehow
Speaker 2: I think of all mosquito things as being microscopic, even
Speaker 2: though they are big enough to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but still like the thing that you're seeing, the
Speaker 1: visible thing on the finger that is like still smaller
Speaker 1: than a grain of rice, is hundreds of eggs. That's
Speaker 1: like hundreds of eggs all together as this raft and
Speaker 1: so the Yeah, so basically the raft is formed through
Speaker 1: this cluster of vertical eggs, and the raft is buoyant
Speaker 1: due to a bubble of air inside the egg and
Speaker 1: the exterior of the egg being water resistant. So it's
Speaker 1: like an inflatable raft. But it's made out of mosquito eggs.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, I mean that's just cool. Yeah, good for them,
Speaker 2: and a good use of their weird, stagnant water rather
Speaker 2: than the flowing water that us proper people like.
Speaker 1: It's proper polite society likes flowing water. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the reason they want these to float is like,
Speaker 1: if you are setting it up such that when they hatch,
Speaker 1: they want to be floating butt up so they can
Speaker 1: breathe through that butt straw. You want to be on
Speaker 1: the surface of the water. You don't want to be,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of settled to the bottom of the
Speaker 1: water or get eaten by a fish.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's all coming together Yeah, the butt tube was
Speaker 2: so critical to the engineering and the understanding.
Speaker 1: The butt tube is sort of so like they can
Speaker 1: like hang out in water, benefit from the nutrients in
Speaker 1: the water, and then when they hatch, they you know,
Speaker 1: fly off and are a menace.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like a little chorus and a cartoon,
Speaker 2: Like when a dozen cartoon characters are singing, all their
Speaker 2: mouths are up, you know, but this is their butts
Speaker 2: are up.
Speaker 1: But it's the butts, the butts that are up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not the first thing that pops into my head,
Speaker 1: but you know, let's go with that.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm very musical.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I once found a bunch of mosquito larva in a
Speaker 1: I guess it was a wheelbarrow that had been rained
Speaker 1: in And I didn't know anything about anything because I
Speaker 1: was I was a kid, and so I just thought
Speaker 1: I had discovered a new type of cool tiny water bug.
Speaker 1: And so I thought maybe they were sea monkeys, naturally
Speaker 1: occurring sea monkeys. Sea monkeys, by the way, are just
Speaker 1: brine shrimp. But these I collected a bunch of them
Speaker 1: in a jar. I brought them home. I was so
Speaker 1: excited about it and I showed my parents are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's mosquito larva. Like you say, what, Like, that's a
Speaker 1: bunch of mosquito larva. I'm like, I'm pretty sure these
Speaker 1: are sea monkeys that I found in our backyard, mom
Speaker 1: and dad, and uh, but yeah, it turned out that
Speaker 1: they were indeed mosquito larva. So I brought them this
Speaker 1: show and tell my teacher was you know, looking at
Speaker 1: it through personal lips. Yeah, I uh, but you know,
Speaker 1: I kept it sealed. She was like very concerned. She's
Speaker 1: like that that's keep that jar closed, please. And then
Speaker 1: and then I brought it home and I think I
Speaker 1: gave it to my dad and I think he like
Speaker 1: flushed him or something. I'm not really sure what happened. Uh.
Speaker 1: They certainly were not given an opportunity to turn into
Speaker 1: a bunch of mosquitos inside of the home.
Speaker 2: I have so many questions about the flow of this because, like,
Speaker 2: because at least one of your parents has a lot
Speaker 2: of like biological training, right.
Speaker 1: Like under stops, No, they just you're an or something.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, so he he yeah, he's a he's an
Speaker 1: engineer who works for an oceanography But I don't know
Speaker 1: if that helps you with mosquito larva. I think it
Speaker 1: was just they'd seen their fair share of mosquito larva.
Speaker 2: I see, okay, yeah, because I was imagining some big
Speaker 2: gulf of knowledge between your parents knowing a lot and
Speaker 2: your teacher not knowing that stuff, so that they just
Speaker 2: kind he was going to bring some larvae'd be cool
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: You know. I think the teacher also knew it was larva,
Speaker 1: and she was just like, didn't want a bunch of
Speaker 1: mosquito larva to get lease in the classroom, which is reasonable,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Right at every turn, young Katie is running into jerk
Speaker 2: squares burnt down with her mosquito larvae liberation plans.
Speaker 1: Like I found a puppy and it's just a lot
Speaker 1: of cockroaches, a lot of cockroaches. Like that's not a puppy.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, I think it's a puppy and I'm
Speaker 1: bringing it to show and tell. But yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: the Mosquito larva are really fascinating. They're really interesting looking.
Speaker 1: The way that they breathe through their rear end is
Speaker 1: really cool, and they kind of move around in a
Speaker 1: really cool way, and they look interesting. There's sort of
Speaker 1: this kind of like almost like they look like weird
Speaker 1: not curly shrimp, but really tiny and they're very strange looking.
Speaker 1: And but yeah, it's it is. It's like I think
Speaker 1: that when we consider the humble mosquito, we just think
Speaker 1: about the adults that are super annoying, but not these
Speaker 1: really interesting earlier morphs of the mosquito. And it is
Speaker 1: it's still a really interesting little animal, despite how destructive
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is such a global feature, right, like
Speaker 2: like some some various species will not be near you
Speaker 2: when you think about them, but like these are all
Speaker 2: around us. Mosquitoes are They're all over the earth because
Speaker 2: they build these weird rafts and that's on top of the.
Speaker 1: Raft trans atlantic everywhere. Yeah, they're everywhere. They cause a
Speaker 1: lot of diseases. They're they're not not great in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, disease spread, but they are they're important
Speaker 1: for the ecosystem. So you know, we uh, it is
Speaker 1: it's important to both respect them but also try to
Speaker 1: protect people from malaria, which we can do both. I shrink. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's room, there's room. Yeah, And there's so many mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: We can kill a lot of them. It's hard to
Speaker 1: kill a good amount of them, and there they will
Speaker 1: still be around. But you know, but yeah, they do
Speaker 1: build rafts, so in that way, they are somewhat like
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I have never had occasion to construct a raft, and
Speaker 2: I think if somebody approached me about it, I would
Speaker 2: ask if we are stranded or something. Right, it feels
Speaker 2: like definite mistake on a sandy island activity, right.
Speaker 1: I feel like I would die in that situation because
Speaker 1: I don't think I could build a raft. I'd probably
Speaker 1: get distracted and do a wicker chair or something, and
Speaker 1: probably try to make it too fancy, and then the
Speaker 1: whole thing would sink like a small wooden Titanic, like
Speaker 1: I shouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't have had a had a
Speaker 1: bar and a conversation pit on this raft.
Speaker 2: I knew I shouldn't have fallen in love with someone
Speaker 2: from a different social class. On the raft there wasn't.
Speaker 1: Rube at all. So yes, Mosquitoes build the world's tiniest rafts,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty cool. But before we go, we gotta
Speaker 1: play a little game. Alex, you like games like games.
Speaker 1: This game is called Gets You Squawking. It's the Mystery
Speaker 1: Animal sound game. Every week I play mystery animal sound
Speaker 1: and you the listener, and you the guest kind I
Speaker 1: guess who's making that sound. It can be any animal
Speaker 1: in the world, world or out of the world. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Once we find him it could be. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, last week's mystery animal sound hint was this,
Speaker 1: Do not adjust your television and ignore the barking in
Speaker 1: the background. This hissor is better off in a manger.
Speaker 1: All right, Alex, did you hear that beautiful noise?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that beautiful hissing sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It it sounds like something leaking but cooler.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I almost feel like it's like an ambient purring, but weird,
Speaker 2: like some kind of is it? Is it some kind
Speaker 2: of like fox or something like oh with a fox's
Speaker 2: good guess.
Speaker 1: Foxes can make some pretty weird noises. You are wrong,
Speaker 1: so you're not going home with a brand new Ford Fiesta.
Speaker 1: This is a young barn owl hissing, So congratulations to
Speaker 1: cat s and Heather E who getsed correctly. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a barn owl. Barn owls are cosmopolitan. They are
Speaker 1: found almost everywhere in the world except in extremely hot,
Speaker 1: desert or extremely cold arctic climates. And in a lot
Speaker 1: of islands they're not found, but otherwise they are pretty cosmopolitan.
Speaker 1: They have a white heart shaped face, white bellies in
Speaker 1: tan backs, and sort of tan heads that like wraps
Speaker 1: around their face like a hood. They're beautiful owls. They're
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful owls I think, and they're
Speaker 1: often sort of used in movies to like, oh, look
Speaker 1: at this owl. Very elegant, owlegant. They feed on small rodents, reptiles, amphibians,
Speaker 1: and insect and insects as well as the occasional small bird.
Speaker 1: Because they have a fold to seek out dry, pre
Speaker 1: existing shelters for their nests, they often roost in old buildings,
Speaker 1: particularly barns, which are open structures, so this is why
Speaker 1: they're called barn owls. Barn owls do not hoot. They
Speaker 1: either shriek or hiss. The sounds that come out of
Speaker 1: them are horrifying. Despite looking so beautiful and elegant. They
Speaker 1: don't like if you hear a beautiful hoot and you're
Speaker 1: watching a movie and then you see like a barn
Speaker 1: owl pictured like the movie is lying to you. Because
Speaker 1: barn owls do not hoot, go wok. Right.
Speaker 2: The hooting was probably from one of the human romantic leads,
Speaker 2: and they were hooting at each other. And you're confused yet.
Speaker 1: But yes, so that is the sound of a barn owl.
Speaker 2: That's such a gift to get to hoot as an animal,
Speaker 2: and it's weird that they'd passed that up to hiss.
Speaker 2: But I guess they want snake privilege, and they.
Speaker 1: Want that snake privilege. Yeah, I mean the the hissing
Speaker 1: is a little more threatening, I guess, But yeah, hooting is.
Speaker 1: I do like a.
Speaker 2: Hoot, fantastic.
Speaker 1: It's a great sound, a little yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and every owl we would accept it from, but
Speaker 2: barn owls are like, don't need it now, yes.
Speaker 1: S, and your attic, so onto this week's mystery animal
Speaker 1: sound of the hint is this, don't add this fuzzy
Speaker 1: fellow to your fruit salad? All right, alex any guesses.
Speaker 2: I want it to be something so cute, but it's
Speaker 2: probably fuzzy and I probably ate it in a fruit salad, So.
Speaker 1: I told you not to. Don't add this fuzzy fellow
Speaker 1: to your fruit salad.
Speaker 2: I'm just so rebellious. I think, let's say it's gonna
Speaker 2: be some kind of colorful frog. There's all those colorful
Speaker 2: frogs at in the rainforest there.
Speaker 1: Maybe one of those colorful frog is Alex's guess Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you out there have a guess right to me
Speaker 1: at Creature featurepot at gmail dot com. And if you
Speaker 1: guess correctly, maybe I'll be like, hey, good job you
Speaker 1: did it, but yeah, and we will find out who
Speaker 1: is making that sound on the next episodisode of Creature Feature. Alex,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. Where can
Speaker 1: people find you? Are there perhaps other podcasts that you do?
Speaker 2: It is such a joy to make secretly incredibly fascinating
Speaker 2: with you buddy every week. It's a lot of fun
Speaker 2: and I hope people check it out.
Speaker 1: Do you check it out? It's it's really great. I
Speaker 1: like it because Alex does most of the work on
Speaker 1: that show, so that makes me happy.
Speaker 2: Advice on this it's a joy. It's great.
Speaker 1: It's fun to not do work and to talk. That's
Speaker 1: the always a benefit of no but it's it's an
Speaker 1: excellent show. I really enjoy being on it. I feel like, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, but I it's the Alex energy is makes
Speaker 1: it a real fun show and I learn a lot,
Speaker 1: so I assume you also learn a lot. So yeah,
Speaker 1: get secretly incredibly fascinated. Thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker 1: You're enjoying the show, and you leave a rating or review.
Speaker 1: I would be so pleased to see that because I
Speaker 1: read every single review. All the ratings really do help me.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic, And thank you to the Space Classics for
Speaker 1: there's super awesome song. Exo Lumina Creature features a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess what,
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I don't judge you,
Speaker 1: not your mother. I can't tell you what to do.
Speaker 1: You got to live your own life, make your own mistakes,
Speaker 1: you know, get out on your tiny little mosquito raft
Speaker 1: and just ride those waves that we call life. I'll
Speaker 1: see you next Wednesday.
Speaker 2: I also breathe that up your butt. That's required.