Hobbees

Discovered this more as we answered the angel question do you really want to know what a bee mom's secret ingredient is? Joining me today is stand up comedian host of the podcast You Can Tell Me Anything, and my friend Theresa Lee. Thanks for having me, Katie, of course

it's good to see you. So today we're talking about hobby ease and what we've been doing to kind of like stay you know, relatively emotionally stable at this time um and how animals, how animals do like their hobbies and how they stay alive much like we're trying to do now. So what are some of the hobbies that you've picked up to kind of cope with the new

the new lifestyle. First, I have to say, this is a marker of how long we've been at Quarantine is I've been able to do your podcast twice during that's right, your second this is our second Quarantine episode. That's my how I mark time now is how many times I've done this. I don't even remember the more four times, to be honest, Like when I think back to actually recording in a studio, I was like, oh, yeah, it used to be in a studio, not just I do.

I do prefer the for me just because I was doing all the like, I was very like bootstrapping my podcast. So it has been easier to get people to do it over zoom than when I had to make them drive to me. Yeah. But as but as the editor of this podcast, I have to say, I'm starting to dislike the sounds of cars and the sounds of planes. It makes me viscerally angry when I hear a plane fly over. Now. But yeah, so how have you like picked up any hobbies Like I've been crocheting a lot. Um,

I learned how to crochet. Yeah, I do have some quarantine hobbies. I Um, I'm learning to code and that's a bit. It's very real I think like that feels like a step up from a hobby, that feels like a life skill. I don't know when it's me. It's definitely because I years ago. I mean, I've always been interested in robots and the Singularity, but I was researching AI more for like a pilotis writing. And then now I just actually want to have app ideas I want

to make. And I think it's because I don't have stand up so I've been actively putting together stupid ideas. That's one I also got into, like I wish I actually had like a house I could work on, but the very little I can do in my apartment, I realize I really like power tools, so I bow my I brought my boyfriend's drill and put up like a wall of mirrors to make a little dance studio. And yeah, it's been really fun slash probably unhealthy because I'm obsesssaying

over things I shouldn't be doing. I also have like I have renovation envy. I live in a very small apartment. I don't think our lease would allow me to break down a wall or anything. Also, my neighbors probably wouldn't like that me bursting into their living room. But so we are talking about the things that animals do. Like now we think it's like really trendy to do all of these hobbies like crocheting and breadmaking, but these are

things that animals have been doing for millennia. And first I want to talk about bees and how they are a little pastry chefs. They're incredible. We don't think about animals doing baking, right because like that's like, oh, you know, you need to be a human with thumbs and like a chef's hat to be able to like do baking. But bees are incredible when it comes to food preparation.

And I want to talk about something literally called bee bread because bees don't just make honey, they also make bread. What exactly I was, It's like one of those things where you learn about this and it just seems so whimsical, like like you imagine a bunch of fairies at a tea party with some bees and they're sharing bee bread and the bees are like, yeah, I regurgitated it myself. But it's it is pretty incredible actually, this whole process.

So honey is great for bees and that it contains a lot of sugar which helps give them nutrition and helps them give nutrients to their growing larva, but it doesn't have that much protein, and so that's where bee bread comes in, and that's where they get a lot of their proteins. So be bread or ambrosia is a bit of bee confection that they create by collecting pollen. So when bees go from flower to flower, they collect pollen all over their bodies. And that's not just sort

of a byproduct of them collecting nectar. Obviously it helps the flowers because that's how flowers are pollinated. A bee gets in there, gets all in the flower sex organs, rummages around, goes to another flower, and then uh pollinates that. It's all very very kinky stuff. But um, they also intentionally collect the pollen so their bodies are covered in hair. That's why they're so adorable. And yeah, now, I mean like, look, what what's the point of shaving these days? We need

we need it to collect the pollen. Is how else are we going to make this bee bread? So they will clean their faces off. Their fore legs have little built in combs that they can comb the pollen off of their little faces. That's like when they do the cute little I love that you're doing. People can't hear this on the pod, but Katie is doing a little b impression and a toute. I've got to I've got to embody the bee with a little dealers going all over my face. I have to become the bee. Become

the bee. So then they pass all of the pollen they've collected off of their faces to their metal set of legs, so they have three pairs of legs and they move the pollen like a conveyor belt down to the back pair of legs, their hind legs that actually have a built in basket for pollen called corbricula. So the curricula is a cavity in the hind legs surrounded by hair um so that when they like pack in the pollen, it just sticks in there. It's literally a

little basket in their legs. Wow. I mean, I wonder what which came first, the kangaroo or beat that is. I think it was bees. Actually, yeah, I'm gonna say bees. I'm gonna I think it's that makes sense because they're a little more like bugs and Jurassic Park or whatever. I feel like, Yeah, I think there weren't kangaroos and Jurassic Park skeletally yea similar, very similar, very similar. You know, marsupials are a bit of a strange kind of evolutionary detour.

I do think that if you like, I don't know, like a velociraptor versus a kangaroo. I feel like people in Australia, what do you think kangaroos are pretty ornery. I'd give them a run for their their money. The hop thank you, I'm sorry. I apologize for missing that one. Everyone. So they basically pack in this pollen ball, using collected nectar and saliva to turn it into this tidy little lump, and then they can so much that it's like a

third of their weight. So they're caring just these It's actually kind of funny to see them because they just have these big, old like um balls connected to their

legs that they're flying around on. And then they returned to the hive and they have that beautiful hive structure where you have these honeycomb all the little cells, and they shove the water of pollen into an empty cell um and then put a bit of nectar on top to seal it in and then just let it marinate in the juices of like saliva nectar and then all of this pollen and then it turns into be bread which that they can um either the adults can eat later they can also like collect it and then use

it to feed their young and um people sometimes eat it, although I'm not sure, Like there's often these claims about health benefits of eating beeB it, and I'm not sure that there's anything that's really um backed up by research. Unit is feeling better than the person you're talking to, exactly. The benefit is feeling like a fairy queen who reigns over the realm of bees, and like have your tiny tea set with your little bee bread. Does the bread like actually baked like by the sun or why do

they call it? It's just it's sort of an oven less bread. I think they call that's a good question. Why they call it bread. I guess it's just they look a little bit like buns. I don't know if that's the reason why. That's how that's how it forms in my mind, but yeah, I think it's just because they store it in a pantry and it's a solid, you know, it's more of a solid than like honey.

Is so kind of seems bread like, and you know, as humans we can technically eat it because it's pollen and stuff, but I think there's like some complications with it, like it can actually trigger allergies and some people I can also, I think have like um, which does as well a lot of you know, celia. That's true, that's true. I wonder if like if like if you have like could you although I thought there's like some crossover if you have a gluten intolerance and like potential other allergies.

But yeah, so it's not um. It's not necessarily always good to just eat. But you know, it's like, I think it's kind of funny whenever it's like whenever there's something that an animal makes, humans are just like, oh if I eat that, maybe I'll like gain the powers

of a bee. That's funny. Yeah, I wonder It's almost like I feel like we would learn more by trying to do what they are their version of what they're doing, instead of just taking it from the Like what would are I mean, I don't know, it sounds gross, but like could are are we not using our saliva in the right way, like human saliva and crumbs? Maybe if we collected by ch of pollen and pack it just

like lick it into a ball. You know. You know what freaks me out about saliva is when you chew on gum or like suck on a hard candy, you're just like eating your flavored saliva because the candy goes down so parts of it. It's a but you're digesting it and you're you're like melting it in your mouth with your saliva, so you are sucking down like flavored sugary saliva. I suppose I guess that doesn't bother me

that much. I'm trying to think of what. I don't know why it doesn't bother because I'm think it was the opposite. It's spitting out the saliva, which that feels grosser than just swallowing, right, that's true. I feel like saliva when it's still in your mouth is fair game. Once the saliva leaves your mouth, then you know, you

swallow your own saliva all the time. But if someone was like, okay, spitting this cup, and I do it because I like to blindly follow instruction, and then they're like, now drink this saliva, I'd be horrified and wouldn't want to do it, even though that i'd like happily slip down my own saliva, like when it's still in my mouth, right, true. Yeah, I've never understood when couples shar toothbrushes. That's always gross. But then it's like, technically the saliva, it's not what

bothers me. But I think it's this idea that it's a cleaning device. And I'm like, I don't know, I'll like, you know, kiss my significant other, but sharing a spoon is it's fine, I'll do it, but it's still there's a slight thing of like I don't know though. Yeah, I'll like lick the inside of your mouth, and I'll lick your teeth, but I will not use the same spoon. Right, I'll use my tongue to floss your teeth. But sharing a spoon, licking the same ice cream, I don't know.

I don't know. So another be that does some confection that looks delicious. I don't know if it would actually taste good, but I do want to eat it. It is the blue orchard mason bees. Now, these are gorgeous little bees. They are different from honey bees in that they are their wild bees and they do not live in hives. Honey bees are considered somewhat domesticated because they are not from North America. They're not indigenous to North America.

We introduce them to help us pollinate in agriculture and obviously for their honey because it's delicious. But blue orchard mason bees, as well as other types of wild bees, they are native to North America. They are solitary bees, so every female bees will have her own babies, and they do not live in hives. They're uh, they're not intolerant of each other, though they sometimes live in like apartment complexes where it's like they all make their burrows

in the same area. In fact, like farmers will often create artific a shell apartment complexes for the bees because they love them. They use them for pollinating their crops. Wait are there, so there's no queen bee because they all have their own Are their kings are there? Like? Okay, now it's still a society. It's just a free for all. And they're these big competitions for males to try to mate with females, and every female will have her own offspring,

and they like to live in hollowed out branches. So just basically a little hole that they can just fit into, and they will make their own nest by going out and collecting clay, picking it up with their mandibles, flying it back to that hollow twig, and then lining the inside so they might make this nice clay lined den, and then they go about creating. They look like they're scoops of sorebet um for their offspring. That is a mixture of pollen and nectar and probablybly a lot of

their saliva. Saliva gets everywhere in nature. I hate to say it, um, you're probably eating a lot of bee saliva with with the honey, which shouldn't be a problem. It's great, but so like I said, they're excellent pollinators. They even though they are their populations are much smaller

than honey bees. Hive structures are great for creating huge populations because the queen bee is so well cared for that she pumps out enormous numbers of offspring every day and everyone in the hive is just ensuring the success of these offspring. So it's it's they are able to maintain a huge population, whereas solitary bees since every um, basically every mother is only producing a few offspring. Uh, they just aren't as populous as the other as the

hive introduced species of bees. But each individual bee is a much better pollinator than each individual need be. They really are very busy and they get They just traveled to so many different flowers. They're excellent pollinators, great for agriculture. It's like a smaller classroom versus a bigger classroom. Yeah, one queen overseas the whole hive versus exactly it's accepted. I don't know that better works. I was trying to think of a metaphor it, but then I'm like, that

feels too political. Was to try to be political? Well, what Teresa is trying to say is that we should use bees to teach our children. And I do like this bold new direction for American for educational system. You know, where's the Yeah, maybe those bee mothers could take on a few human children, right, feed them just like shove pollen and spit and our kids mouths, and nourish them. I would have to be watched, my kid, I would live, I too would littally watch. There's no bees in federal

prison right now? Oh? Did I mention that blue orchard mason bees are blue? They're very they're very cute. I love bees. They have sort of a shiny they're very fuzzy, but then like they're under that, their exoskeleton has this kind of like shiny iridescent blue color that's very pretty. They are so cute. So they're almost like flies, but like cute. Yeah, because they don't have like the striped they don't have the striped pattern that honey bees have.

So you look at when you may not recognize it as a B, it is a B. And like I was saying, so they create basically this long tube that is their din made out of clay inside a hollow twig, and then they start collecting pollen and nectar and creating little balls of It's basically a confectionery treat for their offspring, and that they will put into the tube. And they will lay a single egg on each of these balls of pollen and nectar that they've collected and then seal

that in with a little bit more clay. Then move on to this next compartment in the tube, lay another egg on top of like a ball of this confection this nectar all in mix, and then seal that in. So they create like basically it's food and then egg on top of the food wall, food egg wall, food egg wall until they run out of space essentially, and the food is It looks beautiful, especially when these bees are using pollen from plants that have colorful pollens. So

there's flowers that have purple pollen. So when they use purple pollen, they make purple balls of food and it looks gorgeous. It looks delicious. It actually looks a lot like like ube ice cream or sorbet. It's I want to eat it, but it's not like when you go to those fancy ice like salt and straw and like lavender, and yes, exactly I love salt and straw. But yeah, it does look like a lavender sorbet, but the larvae on it doesn't look that up to kind of take

the baby bee. It looks like a little jelly. But if it's about too wormy looking for my taste, Yeah, no, I don't want to eat. I don't want to eat baby bees. But it is very It is cute somehow, there's just something so charming about that, Like Mommy made you a ball of like nectar and pollen sorbet, and then you grow up eating it and then they weave themselves a little cocoon and they come out next season as adult bees and then they burst through the clay walls. Wow,

so they don't even go check on them. So that the whole thing is I feel like, you know what that I would wouldn't mind being a part if that's if I could just um save up a ton of like Kraft mac and cheese and then ballow it up and like lay my egg in a ball and just be like I'm gonna go summer and France, and I'll when I come back, you're going to be a teenager and I'll say hi to you. Then that like just

let them eat their way through their teens. Yeah, giant ball of here's like a giant dag would esk sandwich for you that will last your entire childhood, Eat up, see you by good luck hat like with a like a little like here's your lunch from mom, and it'll last you for your entire entire larval state. Yeah, that's my type of parenting. Yeah I could sometimes. Meal prep is the difference between a tasty dinner and a toxic one.

Loggerhead strikes a small, unassuming bird who likes to impale its prey on thorns are able to snack on toxic prey items by impaling them and leaving them out on the spit for a few days for their toxins to degrade. They'll impale toxic monarch, butterflies, lubber, grasshoppers, and toads and wait until these ghoulish kebabs are ready to eat. When we return, we're going to talk about more animal hobbies, and my fellow knitters and crow shares out there are

gonna want to stay tuned for this. Spiders are the most famous silk spinners in the animal kingdom, from Charlotte's Web to the Greek myth of Arachne, who foolishly challenged a goddess to a weaving contest and was transformed into a spider for her troubles. In fact, that's where the term Arachney for spider comes from. But spiders are the only master spinners in the arthropod world. Oh, there's a

there is a um house centipede in my bathtub, right? No? I, Actually there's very few insects that really bother me, But of them are silver fish, which don't scare me, but they like gross me out. I don't like them. Cockroaches again, they don't really scare me, but they gross me out because they're just like so like oily and nasty. And then the third one is how centipedes because they have too many legs. In my opinion, I don't like it. I don't care for it. I don't get scared of spiders,

but how cinimpedes, it's just it's too much. It's like you've got too many segments, you've got too many legs. So I got a plastic cup and I put it over the house cinipede in the bathtub, and I think I've solved it. I think I've solved the problem. We'll just have a plastic cup in the bathtub decoration. Yeah, I mean it's there. I'll like glue it down and with like seal it off and it's just like, hey, look it's you know, that's the classic cup in the

shower kind of one thing. I feel like I took that. Being home literally all day working is like if I see a bug at work, like I might not like it, but it doesn't feel like it's my bug. When I see a bug in my home, I'm like, it's it's like another else to feed, Like if you don't, I gotta move this bug outside, or if I don't move it, then later I'm gonna wake up in the middle then and be like did this bug is it still? Yeah, it's to like go like crawl into my eyesocket and

live in the space. Spiders don't do that. Bugs generally don't do that. I I actually don't. There are a lot of bugs that I'm very tolerant of. Most bugs, like I said, like even spiders. Sometimes I'll move them outside just because if it's like big enough, I don't want to like get startled and smoosh it. If it's small enough, like I will just let it chill out because it's probably eating insects for me and I enjoy that.

But you know, and then like you know, beatles, like when they get in, like I send them outside because like what are they going to do in here? There's nothing, there's nothing for them here. But yeah, so I'm like, hey, thanks for the application. It's not gonna work out. I just don't think there's anything for you to do, Beetle, Like, right, you're a June beetle. I don't think there's room for you.

My apartment is like two hundred square feet. I might be down for a spider if if I could communicate, because they do start on me. But you're right, they are they're helping me eat insects. But I think if I could be like spider, like how you said sorry, you said like helping me eat insects like you you both are like I have to do my working on a big bulb insects. You like, I don't think I can finish this. I would say, oh, hey, would you like do you want to finish this? I'm done? Wait, Katie,

you don't eat your insects when there's no spiders. Somebody just kidding. I just don't have a problem finishing all my insects. True, true, Yeah, that's right. Waste not um. If I could be like, hey, spider, I've cleared at this quarter for you, and like every once in a while check on you it, that's where you could be. Please don't come out when I'm eating. You'll startle me. Like we could make it work, but honestly, I've yet to find a spider that's going to follow my rules.

So I do feel like maybe if you if you set up like a little home for it, maybe then I'd get a hint, like a tiny welcome matt, and it would have to have eight welcome mats, because yeah, eight welcome mats, like eight pairs of little fuzzy bunny slippers and like like an easy chair and like a copy of Arachnids Monthly um with that you know, centerfold of Like, you know, that's very adorable and might actually

make be less afraid of spiders. Yeah. I think if you're afraid of spiders and you make your spot your house spiders like a little spider house, that will It's just like it changes the game, you know. It's like now they're now they're a renter. So there you go. Yeah, So, speaking of spiders, one thing that sometimes bothers me about Spider Man, amongst many other problems with the comic book universe, is the fact he shoots webs out of his hands.

Now I understand there's like different versions of Spider Man. There's like the version where it's like he like makes his web spinners out of technology, which always kind of bothered me because it's like he was bitten by a radioactive spider and then he creates webs in a lab and puts them in cannuses on his wrists. It's like, but true, you know, it was just a suggestion. It was like I like that idea of I like where

you're going with that. Now I will just do most of the other work, right, Like, so you're only spider powers are climbing up walls and having good punches, Like that's boring. And then there's like the movie version with Toby McGuire where he like shoots it out of his wrists for some reason and he's like, oh, how does this work? And then he squeezes his hands and it comes out, which is equally baffling because really with spiders, it comes out of the sort of rear end of

their abdomens. And so that's that's how. So really Peter Parker should be kind of spewing it sort of near his tailbone, kind of not not out the butt, not like out of the venus, but near the butt, you know what I mean, maybe with a fun like sound as he goes. But so, if you really want Peter Parker to sling webs out of his hands, he shouldn't

have been bitten by a radioactive spider. It should have been a radioactive web spinner web spinners are an insect that live all over the world in tropical and subtropical regions. And the males kind of are unassuming looking. They look like long winged ants. They just kind of don't you know, you would see when and not really think of anything. Females are actually the ones that do not have wings, and they have these like big doofy looking front legs

that look like little paddles. And this is where they have the spider man powers because out of their front feet they spew stick the strands of very fine silk. So um. Females uh look a little they kind of look like long termites, you know, like a termite, but just sort of stretched out with those like weird little

paddle feet. And they live like to live like in the king wood, like under a log or something, and they will create these intricate silken tunnels out of these threads from their front feet, and the tunnels, which are called galleries, helped protect the web spinners from the elements

and from predators and from getting rained on. So they will literally take their little feet where they have the a bunch of little hair like protrusions that come out of their feet that um actually each of those hair like protrusion spits out a strand of very very thin thread and it's actually the I think it's like the thinnest silk strands in nature created by an insect. And then so like it it's a bunch of strands at once.

And then they just move their little feet back and forth like they're at a loom, you know, like the the shuttle in a loom where you pass that back and forth. They're just doing that with their feet, like back and forth and back and forth. It's so fine. It looks like, yeah, it almost looks like it's just like a piece of fabric. Yeah, yeah, it looks it looks like um, I mean, it looks a little bit like cobwebs or or like a silk or something. It's

it's actually it's very pretty to me. It uh in sort of like a Gothic like you know, haunted, you

know what I mean, like Victorian haunted cheek. So basically, these web spinners make all these little tunnels out of silk and they can live comfortably inside because they like to feed on lichen and moss, which is plentiful in the rotting wood that they are building this and the silk canopies are so well made it'll catch the rain as it falls down, and in fact, when water falls on it, it like gets absorbed by the webbing and it actually changes the structure of the webbing so it

becomes even more water resistance. So it's amazing in terms of how it is so weather proof, and so they can live there there, their offspring can live comfortably in there, and they can actually be really social. So a bunch of web spinners can work together to create a bunch

of like uh galleries and like webbing together. And even though they don't necessarily live in colonies, um exactly, it's still like their neighbors, and they're they're not too fussed about sharing their their handiwork because it benefits all of them to basically, once you've got a web spin or making these things, and then more web spinners come in the mix, you start to get these very elaborate structures

of canopies and it helps all of them. One thing that's kind of funny is they can don't really turn off their web spinning feet on que like it's sort of the pressure that makes those silk injectors work. So if they walk on their feet, just like normally it will leave behind a trail of sticky thread that they can get tangled in. So if they want to walk forwards, they actually have to walk on their tippy toes like a little ballerina so that they don't trigger the web spinners.

And so if they're trying to evade a predator and they're like walking on their tippy toes away, it's really kind of cute and pathetic. But normally to evade a predator, because they can't move very fast on their tippy toes, they will shimmy backwards and back away from the predator because that way they can still like walk on the flats of their feet. And even though it leaves behind strands of webbing, like, they won't get tangled in it

because they're moving backwards. So either way, like looking at them trying to evade predators is really cute and sad. Just leave them alone. All they want to do is crochet and stay inside, just like me. It's cute that I like the idea that to build like a town, everyone has to build it. Like imagine if everyone in l A in order to use the highways, you had

to like help build it, like traffic. It would help traffic so much if like, you have to help build the road that you want to drive on, and you would treat it better, and you would drive safer, and you would just be nicer to the people on the road because you all built it together. So wait, if we all build things together and work together, you mean it might improve our quality of life? That sounds like socialism. You're right, it was stupid. Why did I even say

you're right? Dumb dumb dum. Reviewer from like weed Goku sixty nine says, like Teresa Len not only introduced politics by saying our children should be educated by bees, but started talking about be socialism propaganda another crafty insect. I'd like to talk about our carpenter ants. Now, if you live in an area that carpenter ants uh frequent, you may already be familiar with these and perhaps have a rather antagonistic relationship with them, because they are similar to

termites and that they carve out. Would unlike termites, they don't actually ever consume. Would they just rip it out with their mandibles to construct themselves a colony. So sometimes when you think you may have termites, but you see these big piles of like sawdust that is actually carpenter ants because they leave behind these big piles of sawdust that they are not eating. So carpenter ants are ants

who carve out these extensive structures. Usually they prefer rotting wood, um, but sometimes they will attack like human structures that is made out of lumber if it's soft enough, and they will basically like dig out all of the wood between you. How like trees have rings, and then like in between each ring, you have like this new growth and like this like kind of old growth and the new growth blah blah blah, so on and so forth, and then you have um the tree rings and that's used to

sort of like date it. Well, the ants will like carve out between the rings, and then what that does is it gives them all of these little like concentric walkways that they can use, uh and travel throughout the colony. And then they create sort of a nursery area and then all of these like satellite colonies. So they're basically

creating like a wooden city. It's really incredible and um for in terms of like in forests, this is actually great because again they like decaying trees and they do a really wonderful job of clearing out like decaying trees

and helping with the decomposition process. You know, when you have like a big tree that falls down in a forest, as you start to break that tree up into its comp posit parts and using them and then feeding on them, you actually you know that that's a good process of decay that helps the forest kind of regrow and have like you you have this microbiome of these organisms that flourish and uh, then you can have new plants that that take its place, and like you know, you have

soil that can become more fertile and it's so it's very useful. Um. And that's interesting this idea of like going after rotting or decaying because normally to the human eye, we think like, oh, that's like you see something dead and you feel like it's death, but actually or you see bugs and you think death, but the reality is full of life. So that's exactly interesting way to think

about it. Yeah. I remember when I was in sixth grade camp we had um we would go on these hikes and we each had our own like hike tour guide and ours was obsessed with talking about decay, like the decaying cycle. And at the time, like I was a very scared little sixth grader. I was terrified of being away from home. Um, and like I was just like living in in fear, like in this camp and

like there are bats everywhere. I was like, everyone's gonna get rabies, We're gonna get killed by a serial killer. Now I'm on this hike with like this crazy lady who's like talking about decomposition, and she's like, do you kids want to see a dead horse? And everyone's like hey, And so she takes us to this pile of hair and teeth that was like a dead horse. She's like, I know this may seem gross to you, but this

is actually a beautiful part of life. It is decay is just as much of a part of life as life is. And at the time, it's like, are you crazy? You showed us a dead pony, like Twilight Sparkle is dead and you're just showing it to us. No. I understand where she's coming from, because when you have decay in a forest, that means huge amounts of life that springs from the decaying, whether it's a horse carcass or

a tree carcass. I feel like there's like an age appropriate, like you've got to be a full adult and you've under stood life before you see that, because I could really fuck you up. Yeah, see that too young. I turned out fine. I'm fine, don't worry. I turned out fine. Now you can totally tell by how much I talk about parasites and like dead things and grows stuff on this show that that it was actually perfect that I learned by seeing a dead horse in sixth grade, and

it was a good growing experience. I think you need to build a welcome map for dead horses in your house. That's true that I think that would heal me, Like next to my eight welcome maps for the spider, just have like one one welcome map for like welcome dead horses. I'm like a horse girl, but for dead and decayed horses. So another interesting thing about carpenter ants is that, um they have different jobs. So like in an ant colony of like different jobs, you have the mean ant, you

have the worker ants. You sometimes in some ant colonies you'll have like soldier ants that are like bigger and bulkier. UM. With carpenter ants, they have worker ants, and they also have what are called honey pot ants UM, which also occur in other species of ants as well, but honey pot ants are a type of worker ant whose job is to become a living pantry for other ants by eating so much that they basically turn into food balloons. So they consume huge amounts of food and it turns

into this like sweet sugary liquid in their abdomens. And but it's so much of it. I mean, well, I know you said abdomen, but this photo, it just looks like it's got a juicy booty. Yeah, this might be my vibe. I feel like this ant. You're vibing with this ant. Yeah, this is who I am. Yeah, I mean it. It basically turns itself into a water balloon of food, like you get it. It is. It's actually

kind of pretty. So like you see it, it's like it looks like it's but um, it's just filled with it's just this like amber orb of it's a juicy Okay you missed. You miss those shorts that say juicy on the back. Yes, I never got to have one because they were the actual ones were expensive. Yeah, I never got I never got those as a kid. I was a very like straight lace little kid. I would never get like a thing that's a juicy on my butt. Now I'm thinking of like just crocheting my own juicy

just shorts. I took wood wood shop in middle school. I was like one of two girls in the class. And for our final project, which was freestyle like do whatever you want, I made a plaque that said naughty or Nice And it was a picture of an angel in the devil with the words naughty or nice, and I just painted flames on the naughty nice angel wings on the nice. Literally, everybody's like, why are you in this class? Like working, but you're kidding, that's amazing. What

do you mean? Why are you in this class? Were like boys, They weren't man called the real man would congratulate you on your artistry. Were like trying to do. They were like, I want to make use power tolls. I was like, well, guess what those power tolls you thought were so cool? I use them? And I made it's a cute little not your nice plaque. That's amazing, that's amazing. That's what I instead of like a live laugh love plaque, I want like naughty or nice or

like hail Satan with these honey pot ants. Actually, sometimes people will eat them because basically they're like little little uh what's it called, not juicy fruit water gushers. Gushers, they're like little living gushers because they are full of sugary goo and they are apparently very delicious. If you can get past the fact that your gushers, it might be better for you than gushers. Gushers are just chemicals,

that's true. I'm actually grossed out by gush ers. Something about it, Like you're like chewing on this thing and it pops in your mouth. It's very like pustular that I don't like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I feel like these Yeah they should make if they marketed these ants and just be like, do you like your gushers with the head and legs on them? That's a good marketing technique, Like would you like a gusher but

it's alive and it's got a head and legs. They do that already in marketing of candy, Like, Hi, kids, I'm living candy, murder me I want to be eaten? Yeah, what's up with that? I wonder if there's like an innate hunter gather vibe that we have, Like why do we of all the mascots for eminem's why did we

just make them alive? We crave murder. It's because we feel like hunting for we Yeah, we want to feel like when we like chase down nerds, they're cute little things that like are literally running away from us and that we eat, and you know, I mean that's wild. Maybe your quarantine hobby could be starting a gustatory adventure

when it comes to eating insects. While I don't suggest picking up random bugs and putting them in your mouth, insects and other arthropods our beloved food all over the world, our culture is just biased against them. Cooked scorpions, sand stinger apparently tastes like soft shell crab. Roasted grubs reportedly tastes like bacon meal. Worms have a slightly crunchy, nutty flavor. Crickets are apparently like a combination of popcorn and almonds

with a few more legs. Sounds good. No, Well, personally, I haven't quite gotten over my cultural hang ups about bugs, But maybe one of these days I'll enjoy some nice fried grubs cricket flour pancakes with a dash of honey pot and syrup. When we return, we're going to talk about some star gazing with an alien danger. Imagine you're enjoying a starry sky. Wouldn't it be nice to grow wings and fly up into the stars, bathed in the

glowing light of a billion distant suns. You see O Ryan and the Little Dipper, and well, actually you don't really recognize these constellations. That's strange. What's going on? Why are you suddenly stuck as if you've hit a ceiling? And what's that thing crawling towards you? Well you'll find out soon enough. Section I've just called vibing because I feel like one of the hobbies of the Quarantine twenty twenty times to try to stay I don't know, just

like stick keep your spear it's up. Is just finding out ways to vibe that, you know what I mean. It's like almost like you know, like your brain can provide like serotonin and whatever, you know, the mood enhancers. But I feel like a lot of cultures have like festival of lights in the times um, like during the you know, winter, and this photo of these lights, it's kind of like an external way to add um. You might think it's frivolous like decoration, but it's not. It's

actually to produce those like happy happy hormones. Yeah, something nice. Yeah, I feel like like we have to kind of think of ways, like because all of those things like festivals and rituals and gatherings, like I think it serves an extremely important purpose for human psychology and like the gathering of the Juggalos exactly, like it's a it's a yearly migration, one of the largest migrations in the natural world, that

of the Juggalos. Um. But yeah, I mean it is really important obviously, like our health and not dying or killing people with COVID is more important at this time, Like that takes priority keeping people safe from a deadly disease. However, I think if we can figure out ways to like just kind of enjoy ourselves and get that like and I'm like very agnostic, but I think there's a lot to be said about like rituals and festivals in terms

of that like kind of inner fulfillment there. It's there's something really like I don't know, like if you if you want to put up like like string lights or festival lights or like continue with sort of um, I guess just like do fun things like to keep you you said, lights and I did buy led lights to put up, and I just realized I put up. I bought some like space prints, like because like NASA's photographs

are in the public and sometimes people print posters. I bought a bunch of Galaxy photographs and put them up. And I think, probably innately, I'm missing, yes, like my connection to nature and the sky, even though I've only lived in big cities where I really star gaze. I just maybe subconsciousness at the very least I get a little bit of it. When I'm out, I don't have it at all. I mean, like the lights of the city maybe take the place of the lights of the

stars in our brains. And if we're not going out in the city at night and getting the lights and like you know, going to movies where we're getting all this light and stuff, like, maybe that part of us. It's like I like, because I share that exact thing, Like I want to just look at a night sky and look at the stars. I can't because we're in l A and um yeah, and I've been waking up with the sun not with no alarm, and it at first alarmed me, but I think it is my body

being like you're at Hunter gather mode. Now you need to follow the diurnal rhythm of the sun. You just started and it's been doing that for weeks. I just I was wide open as the sun's coming up, and I'm like, I guess we're awake now. Yeah, because we're talking about like lights and I love that, Like you're thinking about star gazing and stuff. I think there's something that is so aspirational about that, like when we're kind

of stuck in this like survival mode and um. There is an insect that also likes to create an artificial environment of stars, and this is known as Arachno Kampa luminosa, which is also known as the glow worm. The New Zealand glow worm is that artificial environment of stars. Like what what? What are we in l a or something? Egg? Yeah, nice got him roasted, Hollywood destroyed. So these glow worms are actually the larva of a fungus gnat, so fungus net.

It's sort of like a It looks a bit like a mosquito, but it does not feed on human blood. It feeds on fungus and seedlings. But their larva are glow worms and they are so creepy and beautiful. They are these transparent, long like wormy maggots, and they but they have bioluminescent butts like they're sort of caboose area.

It glows blue. And they live on the ceilings of caves, so they weave silk and hammocks all along the ceiling and they actually travel through these silken hammocks um like they're on a monorail essentially, like all these like sort of mono rail uh worms going around with their glowing cabooses.

But they live in these big groups and when they're all clustered together like that, they actually look a lot like us beautiful starry sky, like you're looking at an image of them, and they actually flicker as well, if you wanted to look at the video you cook, they kind of glow and flicker. So the video. Okay, so I see the string, So is that all one worm? That's a long string? There's um no that I feel like jellyfish almost where they're like yeah no, so this

the worm. Those like dangling tentacle like things are actually strands of silk that the worms have constructed. So there's strands of silk that have little globs of sticky saliva on it. So they look a little bit like icicles or slagtites, but they're actually just strands of silk with with sticky fit on it. And the reason they do that is that even though they're beautiful and it looks like this fairy wonderland, these are vicious carnivores. So they

will create these intricate like it's beauty. It looks like Christmas lights and like you know, like those sort of like icicle Christmas lights that angle down. It looks like an exhibit that would be at a like a music festival. Yeah, like a dum festival. Yeah, it's funny that you said there they're caboss glow because I'm like, I mean, give it like five ten years. That's going to be a trend.

Like some some Hollywood influencer is going to be like, have you gotten the latest surgery to get a bioluminescent ask, Oh my god, come on, I can't wait. But I'm going to light at the club. Yes, please, thank you. I'm going to get blowing button plants and and then learn to twerk so that you know, that'll be my excuse. It's like, look, I have to learn but dances because my butt clows now I'd be depriving the world of

this glowing. But I'm only half joking. I'm like bioluminescent, but especially if it's a nature, I could see this exactly. Now I'm thinking I should crochet some juicy pants. But with like bioluminescent threats, I support it. Yes, So they create so all of these like beautiful dangling threads, and then the worms themselves are bioluminescence, so the threads aren't actually glowing, but it's reflecting the bioluminescence of the worms.

And all of this effect creates this dazzling lights light display that moths and other insects that are traveling through the cave will see. And moths actually use starlight to navigate, so they don't just like go towards light because they're dumb. They go towards light because they actually are able to navigate in the night sky by following the stars in the moon. And so in these caves, when you have this like fake display of twinkling stars, it disorients the moths.

They fly towards the fake sky, even though it's not a sky at all, it's just the ceiling of the cave. And then they land into these sticky hanging threads and become trapped. And as a glow worm feels a moth vibrating their thread, they will reel in the thread and eat the poor moth that thought it was flying towards starlight. Oh my god, that's so sad. I mean, I hate moths, but yeah, I mean, but what we do when we moved to big cities, which is all getting trapped in

the web. It's that's exactly what liberal lies, socialism, l A is just it's a little people don't know this, but there's actually just a giant glow worm that eats everybody. The earthquakes are the vibrations. That's right. Look it up. People. Do you do your research? Don't you love it when someone like proposes a crazy conspiracy theory, You're like, what are you talking about? When I eat you do your research.

Every single time I've seen a documentary about conspiracy theorists, the one person, like the doctor or the expert, who was like, so I did, and it's like within minutes, like and I disproved them immediately. It's like anyone's like look it up. It's like, okay, I did. It's very easy to disprove you, but you're not looking at the

right websites. Then if you ignore all of these other books and then you just look at this one thread written by this one blogger who's anonymous, but he keeps it that way to protect himself and he doesn't back it up with anything, but trust me, it's real. Like, OK, Twitter is run by big glow Worm and everyone knows it. So if you read sources by big glow worm, guess what they're gonna deny that a giant glow worm lives

in l a and consumes everybody. Wake up sheeple. Anyways, UM, it's really interesting because like the glow worms are so committed to the grift, they actually there's like multiple glow worm colonies within one cave, so a bunch of like groups of glow worms that all kind of similar to the web spinner where they kind of share their um. They're woven silken runways a little bit or not runways, sort of like railways and um. But the different colonies

also seem to collaborate. So one colony will have a cycle where they're glowing and attracting insects, and then they'll sort of like shut off and then another colony will take their turn glowing, and it's relatively news to research, so it's not exactly researchers aren't exactly sure why they

seem to take turns. Maybe it's like sort of a way to ensure that the cave is sort of glowing at all times, so you're always sort of getting a flow of insects, but it's not going just to one colony because they probably can't handle that many moths at once, So you're sort of like working together to create a eternally fake starlet sky to trick moths, but then making sure all of the colonies sort of like get sort

of equal distributions of food. Again socialism. And then the last thing I want to talk about is just so charming and fun. It is a fun little game that dolphins play. So dolphins are very playful, intelligent creatures, and dolphins and other cetaceans like belugas like to do fun underwater vape tricks, except not with vape, just with air.

So you know how like people with like I don't have anything against vaping really I vape culture though sometimes you know what I mean, we're so it's someone who has dedicated their life to doing doing vape tricks. You know, I think they're awesome. I love to see a vape trick. I Uh, the lady doth protests too much, I think, but I do want to. A couple of years ago, when we were cracked, I thought it would before. I never ended up doing this, but this is one of

those ideas. I was like, if I have too much time, I'll do this. I wanted to write a step up but with a kid who wanted to go to school for competing vape tricks. Yeah, but mom, I want to I don't want to go to college. I want to vape. I want to be a vape bard. Now it is, it is. I actually love to see a vape trick. Those are those are pretty sick and tight and cool. But dolphins, Katie's doing the check. I'm doing it exactly,

just taking a big, big half of vape. As they say, as the kids say, don't they say that, you know you're just gonna go and do some vape. I'm gonna do some vape and blow some sick clouds. I'm very cool. Love me, zoomers, love me so dolphins. Hey, zoomers, you

may think dolphins boring right. No, turns out they love to do sick vape tricks to under the water, So they will blow bubble rings underwater um using nothing but their blowhole and little flipper tricks where they will create a vortex by moving the water with their flipper, they'll create a spinning vortex. They'll use their blowhole to blow a bubble of air towards the vortex, and as it gets caught up in the vortex, it creates this perfect,

beautiful shimmering ring of air under the water. You know that scene in like the Hobbit where Gandalff is like check this, check this out, froat, I'm gonna blow like or no, no, wait. He's sitting with Bilbo and Bilbo blows like a smoke ring and Gandalff is like, oh yeah, that's pretty cool. Check this out, and he blows like a whole like boat out of smoke out of his pipe. Okay, Gandalf like, chill out. You know, I have no idea

if this is real or not. I mean, it sounds like something that could happen, but it also sounds like a joke with the Gandalff thing. I guess I don't know. Lord of the Rings well enough to know if this is a joke about Lord of the Rings or if this is true. Yeah, it's a fictional like the movie is fictional on account of all the magic and stuff. But it did happen. I mean, like, if this is from it, I know, I'm just kidding and giving me a hard time whether it's aren't real, tore Tha, No,

it does happen in the movie. I don't remember if it actually happens in the books. Um, please don't hurt me, Tolkien fans, I don't remember the books that well. But yeah, no, it definitely happens in the movie. And it's always I always feel like Gandolf is kind of being a jerk because it's like, oh, you can smoke blow like a ring, Like I can make a boat out of smoke. Because

I'm a wizard. It's like, yeah, we know your magic and stuff, like you know, it's just but this is how I feel like the dolphins are flexing on us, where it's like, oh, you can blow a smoke ring. I guess that's cool. I can make a shimmering ring of air underwater that is shiny and beautiful, and they will do all sorts of trick with the rings, so they can manipulate it. They can push it forward or make it like do a spin. They'll even like blow like a second ring and then like join them together

so that it forms one big ring. And when you watch a video of them, which I will include in the show, notes, like, it's very clear they are just having a good time. There doesn't seem to be any purpose to this. Now, dolphins do use bubbles as tools.

Sometimes they'll create bubble nets where they basically swim in a circle around a group of fish and then blow a bunch of like bubbles and or like use their uh flippers to store up a bunch of bubbles and the water and that traps the fish in this column of bubbles and then they use that to hunt. But with these bubble rings, there's no seemingly no practical purpose

to it. It's just for fun. They're just playing. It's it's and they seem to understand the physics of the bubble ring, not just in how they like interact with it and like push it around and play with it, but they also there's researchers that observe them doing this, and they found that like you know the trick where they do like the first bubble ring, and then they

do a second one and then join them together. The dolphins would only do that if the first bubble ring was structurally stable, so they like the dolphins learn like, Okay, this bubble ring is like looks really good and stable, so I can blow a second one to join with the first one. So that means they know how this works. They understand the physics of these bubbles and like how

to do sick bubble tricks. And it's they're almost like the cats of the ocean, like cats who just hunt but also play with their food and just a yard they and they do literally play with their food, like you'll see an article come out every so often where it's like dolphins like to torture seals and like you think they're cute and fun, but really they're like murderous tortures and and it's just well, I mean, have you ever had a house cat? Yeah, Like, predators like to

play with humans should not be speaking. I mean we literally kill animals and then mold them into shapes of other animals and eat them like dinoats. What's up with that? That is such a crime against chickens. I'm not like and look, I I must admit I'm not a full vegetarian. I do eat chickens, but I do feel weird about disrespecting them by like forming them into dinosaurs where it's like chickens, remember when you were a mighty dinosaur and

now you're just a little feathery dinosaur that we eat. Yeah, yeah, that's true. There's that other layer. I mean, if you believe in evolution, which I don't know. I'm just kidding, Um, Teresa's cancel, don't cancel me. Yeah. No, we're definitely the worst, and we love to project like can you be these animals are hunting? It's like, well, we just read them to eat. Yeah, we uh, we do factory farming, which

some might argue is more cruel. Yeah. Yeah, I mean we are like I like really like throw the first stone, which like I do. I do eat me by the way, I just like to make observations. These are also roasting me myself. I'm not trusting any stones on anyone or like, oh, dolphinspied each other. It's like, yeah, we have, we have. We have like basically any time we're like, oh, these animals are vicious and they fight each other we have nukes that could we have enough nukes to basically destroy

the planet like ten times over. So if we treated animals the way we defend male perpetrators in Hollywood when stuff gets out wherever, it's like, yeah, but like, okay, that's like how many people just two people? Yeah, but look at all these good things they do with their food. That dolphin ripped the seals head off and is playing with it like a football. It's like, but you know, he's such a he's such a nice dolphin though, dolphin, Like he's got a great career and like, dolphin, Look

how many kids has that dolphin made? Laugh? You know, right, like the captain of the Dolphins soccer team potential dolphins. Uh, don't cancel dolphins. Don't cancel dolphins, is what I'm saying. You know, like I can't, can't. There's a lot of things we should cancel. Dolphins aren't one of them. Because of all the cool bubble tricks they do. I really am kind of a sucker for the dolphin bubble bubble tricks.

They like. They'll like sometimes balance sort of the bubble ring on their nose and then like whip it around and it's like dolphin. I see what you're doing. You're like one of them is eating a bubble. I saw that, Yeah, snappy, Like imagine if this was a fish chump, I could be fish anytime I want. Is there any maiding rituals to this or is this just for fun? It's hard

to say, Like I wouldn't necessarily rule that out. I don't think there's any concrete research on whether it's a form of communication, because certainly they do sometime do like bubble blowing and like showboating as some form of communication. It can be used to like impress other dolphins. I don't know that it is strictly a mating routine, but I think it's possible that, like they could use it to impress the ladies, be like, hey checked this at

I learned this trick. I like how it the tornatove love. I mean, while I'm hooked. Well, is the only men who did about? No? No? But I think they all do it. It's it's just fun. It's like it it's interesting. It's almost like dancing, because some people humans dance for you know, to impress the potential base, but also people just dance. Plus yeah, okay, I'm one of those people because I danced by myself alone, and it's just as fun. I was going to the book I danced for exercise.

Now I have that um Switch game called Just Dance twenty and it's where like it tracks your movements somewhat uh and like rates. It's definitely not doing a great job tracking my movements because if it really could, it would give me like an f on every dance I do. But it's it's like, oh, You're a superstar. I'm like no, no, really, I'm not, like, no, you are dancing? Is how you much you feel it? I don't let the screen tell you what to do. I think that like if it had,

I do want it to. Like like if I could wear a shirt that's like connected to the switch somehow and it measures how much I sweat, I feel like that would be the true measure of like how good I'm dancing, because yeah, it's very sweaty when I get

into it, but it is. It is fun. Sometimes I will change into more comfortable dancing clothes to cook because I really like to cook and dance at the time, because I'll play music and I'll just dance around and then move into my living room while like you know, the waiting for the water to oil and just do

a little chork number and yeah it's fun. So but I mean I think that we've basically word every hobby you could possibly meet in uh and quarantine, whether it is baking bread out of your own saliva and pollen or creating a fake starry sky with a bioluminescent. But you know, I think we got everything covered. Do you have any new hobbies do you think you're going to try out to like, like inspired by these animals? Yeah, the bioluminescent, but yeah, I'm gonna go for that. Yeah,

Seconded agreed. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Teresa. I know you have a fun quarantine kind of entertainment thing coming if you want to talk about that a little bit. Sure. I'm doing a live show on Zoom so Socially Distant on Friday. I guess this Friday, September twenty seven pm. So you can got tickets online and it'll be fun. It's uh, I'm doing stand up with

Bab's Gray and Dominique Jellen. Follow me at Larissa to you to get tickets and also if you want to buy a hat, I'm selling hats say cancel me, daddy nice. Started as a Twitter joke. People actually wanted them, and turns out they do. I but I have tell if you left um. But yeah, so follow me online. You can get them there. That's fantastic. We need to get these hats for dolphins so that like the dot like when when the dolphins get canceled, they can be like, yeah,

well check out my hat. I wanted it to happen. Well, that is awesome. Check that out. You can find us at Creature feature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's f e a T not f e T. That is something very different. You can find me at Katie Golden k A T I E g O L d I N on Twitter, and you know, just Katie thoughts and so on. And as always I'm also at pro bird Rites, where I make the case that the upcoming bird revolution where birds become the dominant species, is

not only inevitable but good and welcome. Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating and review, I will be eternally grateful to you. It really does help out tells the robots that were a good show and I also read all the reviews and they warm, they warm my cold, cold, spider loving heart. So thank you for that. Thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song. X Alumina.

Creature features a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the heart radio app, Apple Podcast, or Hey guess what. Wherever you listen to your favorite shows, even if it's on the butt of a glow worm. See you next Wednesday.