Hey, and welcome to another episode of the Ologies Podcast. I'm your host, Ali Ward, and my name is Ali Ward. This is the Ologies podcast. So last week I did not put up an episode. I just took a week off and kind of caught up from holiday break and squirreled away some more episodes for the future, like lit Winter Acorns. So thank you guys for being patient, and also for anyone in the LA area. I'll be doing
a really really quick, short live show. I'm just doing a storytelling show for public school on Wednesday, December sixth and RSVP at Public school Show dot Com. It's at the Virgil and I'll just be doing a quick storytelling show just like five minutes. But they just asked me to do it and I said sounds fun. So if you're in La Wednesday night, then Public school Show dot Com has more information on that. Come say hi. Perhaps
you'll meet some fellows Angelino Ologites. I have no idea what story I'm gonna tell because I said yes about two minutes ago, so we'll see how it goes. Anyway, that's Wednesday, December sixth. Okay on the episode. In this episode, mom, dad, don't listen. We're gonna talk about bug mating and it gets real candid. Okay, cool, see you next week. Okay, bugs, bugs bu bugs. Bugs. So you may not know yet,
I'm really nuts about bucks. I love them. I had a fascination as a kid, and I got bug books for every holiday, every birthday, and my walls are covered in bug posters and dead things. So this week's topic is one of my favorite ologies, of course, But more importantly, this particular ologist honestly changed the.
Course of my life.
She was just a friend of a friend at one point a few years ago, and she invited me one day to the merry bowels of the Elli County Natural History Museum. In this lab that was off line to the public, it was an insectory. Now, okay, this room is like a really well lit silence of a lamps set. It's a bug lover's dream. There are terrariums of millipedes and cockroaches. There's butterfly chrysalisses hanging like these tiny chandeliers.
There's dragonfly naiads and gurgling tanks. There's a freezer full of sadly passed tarantula's. And I was going through a really rough time in my life. A couple of years ago,
my dad was just diagnosed with multiple myeloma. I was going through a breakup that was just the saddest thing ever, and not knowing any of this this, Entomologists casually suggested that I volunteer at the museum, and I did, which is so weird because I could never commit to anything, but I just wanted to find some way to cheer the fuck up, and volunteering for zero dollars an hour, no stakes, talking to kids about bugs one morning a week is the only thing that seemed to help. It
totally changed my life, no joke. After doing it for a few months, I somehow was offered a job as a science correspondent for CBS. I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do since I was twelve, all because I took this tour, it and in sectory. So I recorded this episode of Ologies first. This is the first one I ever recorded in a sound studio with mics that were like a little too good. I wanted her to be my first ologist because it was so special to me, and now I'm having her on. I think this is
like the tenth episode. I kept holding it because I just was afraid the episode wouldn't honor her enough. And honestly, I hadn't re listened to this since we recorded it months ago. At the time we recorded it in this sound booth, drinking like celebratory terrible champagne. Listening back, I realized I loved this interview. It's one of my favorites. And I can also tell I was trying to sound like a little more cool than I felt inside. Now that we're a few so it's in like I just
I don't play it cool. So you're welcome, and I'm sorry. Now. Entomology study of bugs, sometimes called bugology, but come on, no one calls it that. The etymology of entomology is Greek. It means to cut up into little pieces, which is not what you do when you find a bug in your face, but rather it's a reference to insect's body being cut or segmented, so having a notch at the waist.
There you go. This guest is an entomologist. She's now the manager of Citizen Science at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. So get ready to hear about bugs. Hari Krishna's we'll talk about some terrible mating behaviors licking cockroaches, what is citizens science, how to be an amateur scientist, and why bugs should be your friends?
So please ready.
Your heart and your ears for Leela Higgins. If someone at a cocktail party were like, what, what's your deal? What would you tell them?
Hmmm? Well it depends on how many cocktails I'd had at said cocktail partty. But usually I, you know, I'm like, I'm bug geek. Usually there's no children at cocktail parties, but sometimes there are, and then they're like, oh, I'm gonna go hang out with the children now and talk all about bugs for the next you know, a couple of hours.
That's actually a good question I have. I just complimented my own question. This is an important question I have. Why are kids owing to bugs and adults are like kill it with fire? What's that? What happens?
I think? I mean, I was really into bugs as a kid. I grew up on a farm in England and I dug up ant nests trying to find the queen. I like, would put glasses over bumblebees to observe them. I would try to follow the butterflies down the lane and see where they were going.
And then so that sounds idyllic. It's fun like following a butterfly down a lane in England? Are you kidding?
To the woods? Basically, not the scary woods. There were badges down there.
Say your biggest child predator were badgers in England? Basically, yes, No clowns.
I don't think I ever saw a clown.
So what happens? Do people go through puberty and they decide that they hate spiders?
I think some people do. I was thinking a lot about my kind of trajectory and I totally kind of fell off the wagon in high school. I was trying to remember if I had any memories of insects from high school, and the only things I could think of were like the hip hop.
So Leela was really into this band called Diggable Planets and they had members who were called Butterfly, lady Bug, Doodlebug. She also liked wood tangs, killer bees.
And that's like, literally the only things I can remember from high school to do with insects.
You didn't listen to the Beatles or the Scorpions or anything. At what point do you remember being like, I'm gonna be an entomologist.
I didn't even know that was a thing. I really kid. Nope, did not have I mean neither of my parents. My dad went to like agricultural college for like a hot second. I'm sure he got kicked out for doing naughty things. My parents were Harry Christna's what uh yeah, what for how long? Undetermined? Because I think my dad still's partly you know, involved. What does that mean to be a Harry Krishna. I feel like there's just a lot of brown rice in singing, but I don't know. I've never
i brown rice through Harry Christnas. I always always a white rice to Harry Christna's, so well, then I'm wrong. But there's a lot of really good food. There is a lot of like singing and symbol little mini symbol finger symbols and incense and worship and chanting. But my mother was like, no, I want you to go to regular school. And I'm like, thank you, mommy.
Yeah. I was gonna say, it sounds more like a lifestyle than a religion. It sounds aromatic.
People ask me a lot of questions about, well, what are the tenets of the religion. I'm like, I don't really know.
I know some things I knew nothing about Harry Krishna's nothing. So I googled what are Harry Krishna's Okay, so I'm going to give you a rundown. It's the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The other thing is called it's a type of Hinduism, and it was founded in the mid sixties in this exotic place called New York City. And
it has four regulative principles. Number one, no meat eating, including fish or eggs, No gambling, no intoxicants, No illicit sex, including that which is not for the procreation of children, including in marriage. So it sounds like a party. I was still convinced that Harry Krishnas eat a lot of brown rice, and I looked it up and the first search return was brown rice is for the animals, So, okay, I was off the mark there. Ps George Harrison went to their temple.
Okay, I was a teenager and I didn't want to be there, and I was really annoyed at my dad. You know, typical teenager crap.
So I'm I think most teenagers get annoyed that their dads are Harry Christian. I think it's really common. So wait, at what point were you at?
What?
At what point? Did did you decide to take this path? And also if your parents were kind of like in this old religion, was it weird to be a science kid?
Imber So I remember when I was like, I'm going to be a scientist. But at that point, again, I didn't realize the entomology was an option. I had this this teacher in high school in England, and high school starts a little earlier than it does here in America.
Because you have nine hours ahead. It starts nine hours, eight hours.
And I forgot his name, but he had kind of like crazy Einsteinian hair that was like all over the place. He would wear like a big velvet purple bloat bow tie. He had the you know, the shorts coat that had the corduroy elbow patches. One day he took me aside and he's like, Leila, you're good at science. You need to study science. And I was like, oh yeah, I do. I love science. I love dissecting daffodils.
Quick question, was he Willy Wonka? Was he actually really Wonka?
Literally looks like Willy Wonka in my head, but he looks a tiny bit different because he wasn't. He's not Gene Wilder.
Okay, so you were touched by the hand of a science angel. Yes, and he said you're good at this, and you're like, you're right, I'm amazing.
I don't think I said that, but it was at the same right around the same time when they're telling us that we had to pick Koreas and I had literally been looking at being a hotel manager.
Oh fuck that. I mean, it's good if.
You can do it, but I'm pretty happy with where I am in my career, and if I was a hotel manager, I think it would be I don't know, I don't think it would be as fulfilling for me.
Right then, when Lea went to college, she got back into entomology and she ended up at UC Riverside and found out that they have a really great program where she could study bugs for four years. And she was like, oh, dude, it is on What is the most fulfilling thing about being having studied bugs?
Well, getting to work at the Naturist Museum and being around other bug geeks and getting to go into the collection and pull out drawers and see just these spectacular specimens from all over the world, whether they're you know, the big showy things that the crowd pleases, or whether it's the hundreds of tiny little wasps or tiny little flies.
Is it like being like when you see bad rom coms about women in jewelry stores drilling? Do you feel like that when with bug collections?
Yeah, I definitely would not be sitting in a jewelry shop looking at rows of diamond rings and being like I want that one or that one. I'm definitely looking at the bugs. I'm like, oh my gosh, look at this beetle.
Look at this mother beetle, whether it's elytra eleikra being.
The hardened sheath like wing coverings the outer wings of a beetle.
I have a question, what's a show stopping bug? When you say like the showstoppers, what are you talking about?
So like goliath beetles or hercules beetles, Like some of these beetles that are almost the size of our fist, huge giant And then when holding one of those large beetles in your hand, it's you're just like, oh my god, it's so much stronger than I thought it was gonna be a little bit scary stronger, Like have any.
Tried to use their huge jaws powerful jaws to say.
Hello, I'm pretty good about not touching that end. Okay, ones that have large mandibles, especially large slicy mandibles.
Slicy mandibles, keep away from that.
Hold them in the the well because you were saying the endem thin waisted. So beetles don't really have a thin waist. They're pretty fat around the waist.
Yeah, they got a badonka.
So you hold hold them on that fat beIN you're like, oh, keeping far away from many manibals that you might have them might want to bite me.
I have a question about insects. Are what half of all species of living animals on earth? Something like that.
I just know that there's about a million described species, but they estimate that could be up to like ten million.
Yeah, so they outnumber mammals and fish, way and birds and birds, yeah, etcetera, et cetera. So in nineteen forty nine, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was a British evolutionary biologist, and he was credited as noting that God, if one exists,
has an inordinate fondness for beetles. He actually like laid it out, said the creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, God is just in a shack in the backyard, tinkering over and over, being like, man cannot get enough of these beetles, can't stop making them. I can't stop so much. I guess I should stop wars from happening. But it's gonna keep making these beetles.
So how do you go about studying that? If there's so if there's such biodiversity with insects, there's so many different kinds, they have so many different habitats. How do you tackle that when you're studying it?
It's hard because there's only so many scientists, and there's only only so many scientists who end up going into entomology or choosing that as a koreer. We don't have that many people doing it. We need more people studying bugs to help figure out what's here. And if we don't know what's here, how can you like work to protect it? Right, we have again amazing entomology department at
the museum and our curator, doctor Bran Brown. He's a fly expert and one of the leading fly experts in the World's right, it's pretty amazing.
Okay, So doctor Brian Brown studies this type of humpback fly that hardly anyone else studies. So during his career path he was like, you know what, I'm gonna look at flies. This is kind of a way for me to distinguish myself. And now he's one of the leading fly experts and has discovered forty three forty two forty three new species of forward flies here in Los Angeles, which is a big deal.
That was through citizens science having traps in people's backyards that were said, yeah, sure, we'll have this trap. We'll host this trap in our backyard. It's called a Malaise trap, not because anyone's in a bad mood or anything, but the guy's name was Malaise.
So Renee Malaise was Swedish, and in the nineteen thirties he invented a death chamber for bugs, but an important tool for fellow entomologists. So a Malays trap. I've seen them. They look like a really shitty tent, like they have netty sides and kind of a white canopy and bugs get trapped and they try to fly out the top, but they're funneled into a trap which is usually are filled with ethanol, which is a scientific term forever clear, so they die in the worst version of college jungle
juice possible. Also, I just looked up ever clear, not pure ethanol. It's ninety five percent alcohol by volume, and it's illegal in a bunch of places because it's probably very dangerous. But in some states you can buy ninety four point five percent alcohol, which is totally fine.
So it's a capital M. You always see malays trap with a capital M.
That's a terrible last name, and especially if your legacy on Earth is that you invented a trap that kills and collects insects and it's a Malay Like it's so perfectly named.
I think it's amazing. I love I love explaining the name.
I wish it were called like a womp womp trap, like it's such as set. It sounds like such a bummer. No, going a little bit back to school, like what are some of the first things that an entomologist learns, Like, let's saying you're gonna be one. Do you start with with chemistry? Do you start with ecology?
There was a lot of chemistry, a lot of biology, a lot of physics.
Do you do you gravitate more towards science? That with living things, it's like you can look at behavior and patterns you yeah.
Yeah. That's part of what appeals to me about entomology is that I can talk about really uh inappropriate things, but it's science, So it's okay.
When you're gravitating toward a certain bug to study, do you go for like really gossipy behaviors? Like do you are you like, oh my god, this wasp is such a dick? Like why are wasps such dicks? They they're parasites. They infect people like zombies, They sting people. They don't even make Connie like, what's the deal with wasps?
Well, the wasps that I actually studied and worked on right after I graduated from UC Riverside, So that's my Ala Mata UC river Side entomology program. Uh. I studied biological control, and I think that I was really into that because it was, oh, we don't have to use so much pesticides out in the world. We can use insects. I mean, there are other creatures you can use for biocontrol, but I was obviously focusing on insects as biocontrol agents.
And biocontrol is when you release an insect to kill another insect instead of sprang everything with like agent orange or something.
Basically, Okay, that's a that's a great way lay definition for sure. So I worked for the California Department of Food and Agriculture and worked on the glossy wing shop. She's a project which is a tiny little plant hopper, you know, about two centimeters? Oh what is that? In inches?
Don't worry about it. Yeah, okay, are you guys ready for some serious insect gossip?
I hope.
So. So she was working on this project with the glassy winged sharpshooter. They're not native to southern California. They come from the southeastern United States. But they love to hang out on citrus and grapes, which is annoying because they poop everywhere. But also they spread this bacterium, and this bacterium is bad news. It causes diseases such as you ready for this sweet gum die back, cherry plum leaf scorch, and phony peach disease. These are awesome names.
Glassy wing sharpshooter is already badass anyway, So it spreads all these diseases. So what do they do? Well? Leela was working on this project where she was helping introduce a wasp that would eat the eggs of the glassy wing sharpshooter so that the glassy wing sharpshooter wouldn't spread the bacterium. Pretty cool. Also, these wasps have the cutest name ever. They're like little tiny superheroes.
And they're called fairy wasps. Oh, and they're tiny. They're like like one to two millimeters long babies there, and they're some of them are kind of golden. So it's like these little literally like with these really beautiful gosml wings and so they sound really beautiful and amazing, right, And the only problem was I was literally collecting these wasps on a daily basis. And they're tiny, and you
use a little thing called an aspirita. So you've got like a little like tube that goes into your mouth and then you suck on it and then and then the little wasps go into into the vial and there's a little screen so it doesn't then you don't suck them into your own mouth.
So it's like a proboscis for humans, because now a proboscis is a tubular mouth part like if a crazy straw grew out of your face, like a yeah, that's that's a prosthetic proboscis.
But we did have ones that you could hook up to a vacuum cleaner so that you didn't even have to use your own sucking power.
That's all due respect. That's so weird too, that you had like a two that you would suck over.
And as as an entomologist, you carry them around your neck and it's almost like you're wearing a necklace. So I had to aspirate hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these tiny wasps. So I would wake up in my I'd have dreams and then wake up in the middle of the night being like one, two, three before and it was like, oh my gosh, no, I could don't well, I love insects, but I'm hating them right now.
That used to happen to me when I played Magic the Gathering a lot.
I would like be.
Falling asleep and I'd be like, how much manner do I have to tell to rush my teeth? You're just like used to it. How much of your career has been spent in the field versus like in a lab.
So that's a great question. So not long after that that repetitive nature of the asperating the fairy wasps and then going to the same field sites every month.
So the fieldwork was starting to wear on her, so Leila decided to take a little bit of a detour.
And I'd also kind of had figured out right before that that I was better at communicating about science and and getting other people excited about insects. And I got my first job at a museum, and my whole life changed.
Really Yeah, so now you work in museums and you kind of facilitate people getting stoked about bugs.
I mean the bug stuff. I just I get so excited when I get to have someone send me a bug picture.
How does that happen? Do you get text at like two in the morning being like, what the fuck is thisst and it's a potato buger.
Suff I totally have texts from people at all times of the day and night, from different time zones, different places. And it's not just text message. It's like Facebook messages, Instagram messages, a few ones through Twitter, but like that's my favorite thing. I'm like, more people send me all your bug pictures. I get so so excited.
Leela and I have also attended again on a Friday night a bug meet up called the Lorquin Entomological Society, which is a bug society. The bug Society is legit. It's not like your aunt's book club that met twice. These people have been meeting every Friday night for like one hundred years. It literally turned one hundred a few years ago, and they meet now in the back of a bug warehouse in Compton. It's called bioquip. It rules.
The first time I went, I went completely alone by myself on a Friday night, and I sat down and someone turned around and introduced themselves as Jeff. I'm a kind of a Katie did guy, and I was like, these are my people, and bioquip is my heaven.
The best bug warehouse where you can buy the best bug geeky equipment and books and everything that you could ever ever want.
They have bug socks, they have butterfly nets, they have books about bugs, they have framed bugs, VHS tapes. It's they have ties with bugs on them that like you know that you have like a weird uncle to give it to. Okay, quick shift from bug socks to something grosser. I have a question. How many bugs live on our person? How many bugs are living on me right now? Mm like not me. I did not wash my hair today, So that's it for the average person.
I don't know. I know that there's like the the mites which aren't technically insects, uh in our eyelashes and places and eyebrows. I'm non expert. I like literally don't know.
Okay, so check this out. About ninety percent of the cells that are walking around that you call you and that share your Social Security number are actually other creatures. They're microbes, mites, et cetera. Now we're going to cover this in more detail when I have a microbiologist on, but I just want you to know that you're covered
and full of organisms, so you're never alone. Feel free to use the second person plural from now on as the royal we refers to trillions of other persons who have hopes and goals and dreams, such as to live in a poor near your nose. Do you hate this podcast? I hope not.
I remember when I was a teenager moving to America. On the way here, I was in the Philippines. This is a gross story, but I'm gonna tell it anyway. I was in the Philippines and I was like, oh my god, I've got pubiic lice. And I'm like, oh wait, it's an ant. I'm like, how did an ant get in my crotch?
Can I tell you a secret? What an ant bit my butt? Crack? Once? So I get it? What is it with What is it with ants?
Where?
Why are they so social? Maybe they were lonely? What is the deal with with like bees, ants being social insects and the rest of them being like fuck all, y'all, this apple core is mine?
Well, okay, so there's some uh, wasps, bees, ants and wasps right, the hymenoptra. There are many of them that are social insects, but there are wasps uh and bees who are not so like carpenter bees are more like solitary bees. And you see the black ones flying around, which are the females, and the like kind of tan colored ones, and the males. We call them teddy bear bees, but.
They're huge, they're so pretty. I once didn't know what it was and I tried to kill one, which I shouldn't have, and I and but the joke is on me. Excite. I used to roll up magazine and I blew out a window and then I had to pay for the window in college.
Yeah, so they're solitary. So a lot of people expect that most bees and wasps are social, but there are some that are solitary and don't do the whole social thing.
So to determine if an insect is social or solitary, what a lot of researchers do is administer this test, the specimen and it's called this awkward small talk quiz will reveal your introvert type, which is available at BuzzFeed dot com.
But there are obviously benefits to having that kind of social life because they protect their sisters.
But they're usually ladies though, like when you see a huge colony, they're usually sterilely right.
So if we're talking about the bee hives, like the the European honey bees, which are the bees that we see like all around here. Again, not a species that is from North America. They're from Europe. It's mostly females. But then there are the drones, and but you know they're they're not doing as much work as the women are, right.
They're just flying around trying to have a gang bang with the queen.
Right, I was gonna bring that back.
But their their job is to fly as fast as they can in the air, get a quick noogie with the queen, try and have one million babies with her, and then die. Is that correct or is that wrong? I'm paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing. I think that's you know, fairly again, it works for the lay audience, right, okay, But they are but they don't.
Drones don't sting. Males don't sting.
No, they because it's a modified ovipositor. That is what the stinger is for a bee.
So an ovipositor is kind of like this point tube structure at the end of a lady insect butt and she uses it to lay eggs. It's kind of like a T shirt gun, but for your babies.
So the males cannot do it, but they do. They they do the trickery. They do the trickery. So of a male bee could like land on you and then still like pump his abdomen, not in a sexual way, but in a in a like oh I could sting you. But unless you're looking really closely, you know, most people don't really they're like, ah, right, but if you know it's a if you can see that it's a drone you're like, oh, you can't actually do anything.
And drones have bigger eyes. So drones do, in fact have larger eyes, and they don't gather nectar or pollen or do really any work. Their primary goal is to mate and die. They are Nature's No, i'd jigglow. This is literally all of my knowledge of drones. But so I but I didn't know that. I didn't know that a beastinger was a mod fight ovipositive. Yes, So let's get back to Leela's job at the NHM. Citizens science is essentially non scientists helping collect data and observations for research.
And if you're like, I'm not qualified for that, just know that scientists are like, either you help me or this shit never gets done, so please thank you. Also, no, you don't have to be like a citizen of anywhere. That's a bit of a misnomer.
Some people call it community science, some people call it civic science. Some people call it public participation in scientific research PPSR. That's not exactly like one of those things that's going to be like I want to be be a PPSR.
Yeah, No, that does not bring to it.
So, and you know, there's a lot of other countries that do citizens science besides just North America, and in some of those are the places the word citizen isn't quite so polarizing. But I get that that's a thing, So I just want to make sure that that is lost in the in the scheme of things. But ultimately, citizen science is a way democratize science. Who owned the
data isn't just large corporations in the government anymore. People of the community, people, citizens of the country of the world can own that data.
And so do you think, as we were coming upon we'll just call it a post truth era, Like, what do you feel like your role is someone who advocates for citizens science could be in kind of keeping science alive and respected.
Again, I think there's a lot of people who don't really understand how science works because it has been a bit of a black box. And citizens science is a way to get people involved in the actual scientific process and so can help to then demystify science. Isn't that complicated?
How do people get involved in citizen science? Like, let's say you've got really shitty karma, you cheated on your saxes or your wife, Like, how can you get involved in citizen science? And redeem yourself.
So obviously there's citizens science that we do at the museum, and you can get involved in those projects that are very LA and South Southern California centric, and they're obviously focused on mostly right now, the kind of urban terrestrial fauna that lives around here. So we've got a snail and slug project called slime Nice, We've got a reptile amphibian project called Rascals, and we've got a squirrel project which is squirrels and chipmunks because they're all in the
same group. And so you can take pictures of any of those creatures snails, slugs, reptiles, amphibians, turtles, newts, squirrels, chipmunks anywhere in Southern California and submit them to the I Naturalist website, which is also free app on your phone. Anyone can join.
Okay, what if you don't live in LA like most people on the planet who can afford housing and don't wear SPF seventy in the winter, But and then across the country people can maybe what like just.
So many different projects and you go to you can go to a website called starter dot com and you can then find a project that is in your area and that you'd be interested in. There's projects, really cool projects online where you can literally sit in your pajamas and do human computing using your free time to help a project on this platform called the zooniverse, and you can go to a project and like literally like code the different galaxies.
Coding galaxies. I have no idea what you're talking about. Is it cool? Okay, this has absolutely nothing to do with bugs, but it's awesome. Go to galaxzoo dot org.
So you go to the zoooniverse website and I think it's called galaxy Quest and you literally look up pictures of galaxies because you imagine a telescope taking all the pictures of galaxies hundreds, right, and hundreds and maybe the scientist doesn't have an algorithm that it can go through a computer yet to figure out what it's looking at. And the human I plus our human brain together we just have this ability to like recognize patterns that computers we can teach it how to do that based on
what humans do. But at first, like if you don't know there's no pattern, how can you teach a computer to do it? So we can have humans do that, So that's called human computing, and you know, there's how much time do people use on things like angry birds or whatever, the new candy crush saga. I don't even know what the new one is. There's probably a new one, but hundreds of thousands of hours people use on these things.
And some people decide to instead of doing angry words or you know, candy crush saga, decide to go on to galaxy quest and to look at different galaxies and code them and so and then literally people have found like new galaxies. Citizen scientists have found new galaxies.
Are you allowed to brag about that?
Like?
Do they send you an email? Like, yo, hey Roger, you found a new galaxy?
Like I believe there was this woman called Hanni and she found this thing called a I'm gonna fuck up the name like vor veldt or something. Vorverb. I think I think it's the word for thingy in Scandinavian language.
Okay, so I look this up. It's called Hannie's vor verb warwerp vor verb and it means vorverb just means object aka thingy vorverp is my everything.
Now, So Hannie's thingy not a dirty thing, a galic seal thingy and it was something that she was like, she'd been doing it so much. She's like, that's a weird thing right there. It's a thingy. It's a weird thingy. Maybe it's something significant. And then the scientists looked at it like, oh my gosh, this is a whole new thingy that we never knew about. Also, I love that in Britain and like Europe, people are like, yeah, thingy,
that's totally good word. We're gonna use it. Anything with a y on the end thingy.
Americans don't use thingy or the metric system enough. Both of those things are sorely lacking them.
Right, make us at a little bit happy of people.
I think I have some questions that people wrote in that they can I rapid fire question you.
Oh my gosh. Yes.
But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money, you can go to Aliward dot com and look for the tab Ologies gives back. There's like one hundred and fifty different charities that we've given to already, with more
every single week. So if you need a place to go, donate a little bit of money but you're not sure where to go. Those are all picked biologists who work in those fields, and this ad break allows us to give a ton of money to them. So thanks for listening and thank sponsors. Okay, your questions, I'm just gonna rap it fire. Just whatever answer you. If you don't know, you can just be like pass Sean Paul called wants to know what's the visible difference between dragonflies and damselflies.
So dragonflies usually hold their wings out to the side of their body, whereas damselflies hold them. I'm doing it. No one can see this, I feely podcast.
That's a yoga pose that I don't know the name.
Yeah, No, damselflies hold them together over the back of their body. Also, dragonflies have eyes that usually meet in the middle to some extent, and damselflies have more have eyes that are more out to the side, a little bit like hammerhead sharks, and damselflies are very petite and slender. Sometimes. There's a scientist called John Acorn, the nature Nut from Canada. He calls them flying neon toothpicks because they're very slender, whereas dragonflies are more stout bodied.
Nice way to go, Canadian bug guy. Yes, okay, Dave Long wants to know what's with all the legs.
The six legs to three pairs of legs. Well, they're in the arthropod groups, which is jointed legged creatures and insects have six versus like their racknets that have eight versus. Some of the other creatures like crustaceans that have seven pairs and whatnot. Why do they have six versus? I don't know the answer to that, but obviously those legs help them to get around, and some insects don't have wings, they've de evolved wings like madagascan hiss and cockroaches per se.
But those legs are this method of locomotion on on land that works really well for them, so.
It gets them around crawling crawling wise.
Some of them what they have. Some of them have saltorial legs which are for jumping. Good for jumping. Some of them have for sorial legs which are good for digging. What are some of the other modified legs? Going back to all my undergraduate classes.
Are story ELPs are petopalps in the on the front that they look.
So that's uh, that's more of the arachnids have the pet like the scorpions have petitpalps. Oh my gosh, I can't believe. I don't remember another.
It's okay, it's rapid fire. We got more for you also, Okay, is it true that and that exoskeleton rigidity is why insects could not maintain their massive prehistoric sizing? Brandy Demora wants to know that.
Yeah, so the largest the largest insects we have right now in our current climate with our current like pressure on the planet is about the size of a fist, which are the those giant amazing beetles. But back in the day, when there were different climate conditions and pressure conditions on the planet, Uh, there were some giant oh my gosh, I wish I could go back in time, giant dragonflies that had like a foot long wingspan. What fossils?
How loud were they? Do you think?
I can only imagine, you know, when a dragonfly, sorry, a hummingbird comes like right behind your head, if you're imagine that multiplied by ten. So I don't know, I mean, that's an extrapolation.
Who knows and well why? Davidaka wants to know why flees exist.
The same reason that humans exist. They just want to carva a living. They want to find food, shelter, water, space, pass on their genetic material. How are they any better or worse than us?
They're just they're just living their lives. Let them bite you and live their life. Can't if we make a living?
I mean, you could compare compare some fleas to certain human beings in the world right now, parasitic human beings. Yeah, aren't we all just parasites of something like consumerism?
Or I mean, aren't we.
All God Friday Night in Los Angeles?
Aren't we all? I mean, but I feel like bugs are no more terrible than a human being. Everyone's just trying to fuck and eat and die. Like I just said, food, water, shelter, space, pass on your genetic material. Uh, how what we human beings? We've got a lot of judgments about things we do. Eric Martin wants to know what the white goo is that comes out of a bug when you squish them.
White goo or yellow goo because when you okay, so you know, when you have a driving down the road in your windshield and a bug splats on it. Yeah, if it's a lot of yellow, that's usually the fat body of a female insect that maybe was like got all this stuff ready for her eggs. I don't know about the white stuff though.
Maybe they mean the yellow like you know when you smash a thing and it's like and it looks like Twinkie filling comes out, you.
Know what I mean, I know about the whole white thing, like I've definitely I haven't squished that many bugs. Surprisingly, I think he.
Must be talking about fat. Okay, sorry, storytime, quick diversion from the rapid fire. This one time I was in when I was taking an animal bioclass, I had to dissect a cockroach and we had dissected all kinds of stuff. We had dissected pigeons and fetal pigs that were like the size of a puppy and incredibly heartbreaking. But it was time to kill a cockroach. You had to go to this tank full of cockages. Who cared about Nobody
cares about? I mean, it was there's they set up a terrarium and it's full of like empty toilet paper rolls and like apple cores and like some sad carroage shavings, and it's just like a it's like a essentially, it's like a skid row for cockroaches. And so you had to go in and pick one up, and then you had to kill it in alcohol, and then you had to dissect it. And I had this lab partner who I had been eyeing all Semester's name is Ted. He
was he had he was very heid. He had like this really cheapist, like sheepish adorableness and like messy hair. But I thought he was really cute. And he asked me to be his lab partner for this one, and I said yes. So I got my dead cockroach and we started dissecting it, and it something happened where it wasn't quite dead yet or or the nervouses and reacted to a scalpel and it grabbed onto my hand and then I moved my hand up and I hit Ted in the faith with the cockroach.
On my finger. There was this an American cockroach.
This no, I think it was the Asian cockroaches, the wingless ones. I think. I don't know, maybe it wasn't American. I can't remember. All I remember is that like Ted and I never worked together, and I had to look at him from the back of the room, but I remember slicing it open and a lot of like these feathery fat deposits came out.
Well. Because this is so the spiracles inside of an insect. So they insects do not breathe the same way as humans do. We don't. They don't breathe through their mouth and then the oxygen goes through the lungs into the
circulatory system. Instead, insects have these things called spiracles along the side of their body which will tie holes, and then oxygen is brought in through those holes through these like very white and I've dissected some insects they like those tubes kind of like white, nopalescent kind of pop out. So I again, i'd have to see with your eyes, which I can't mind meld and get inside your mind and be there with Ted and maybe Ted and I had a thing, who knows, But yeah, so they just
breathe in this whole different way. And also if it was a metacasting, hissing cockroach, those spiracles are the same things that when they breathe out when they exhale air, exhale again, not with the same terminology as thus humans. When air is let out through those holes fast come like when you're blowing through a strawberry fast, it makes that hissing sound.
And that is that's to say, yo, back off.
Jerks doesn't. Well, they can also be doing it for like hey ladies. Really there's multiple communications for the hissing.
It's like, hey, you hissed it me. Do you want to have ten thousand babies in the dirt?
I mean obviously, Like as a handler of hissing cockroaches, a lot of times are like, dude, stop touching me.
But don't I've heard that if you have a hissing cockroaches a pet, after a while, it gets used to you and stops hissing because it's like, oh it's you totally.
Really that happens. Yeah, our live animal keepers and the people who look after the insects of the museum. Yeah, the cockroach is like, oh, there's no threat here. Why would I bother hissing at you?
What if you came in with a Freddy Krueger mask or something else?
Scary?
No cloud someone named Cloudburst asked if they're a legit not lethal. Ways to keep common bugs away from their spray happy dad. This person says, I'm a Buddhist, I don't want anything dead, and they think that this person's dad thinks that spraying them with soapy water and plainwater is friendly. But how would you get rid of crickets, ants and roaches without being like too big of a jerk?
I know, yeah, I mean personally, I'm all about integrated pest management IPM. So what of the cultural and mechanical methods of excluding them from getting into your house in the first place? Amidley, if you get into gardening, it's a whole other thing. I've been a gardener, and you know, so, like if they're for coming into your house. Obviously, we talk about this in the museum field, a lot IPM is a big deal. You don't want bugs coming in and eating your collections that are in your care, and
we're supposed to be keeping imperpetuity. Obviously things are going to degrade over time, But you don't want insects coming in and eating your mammal.
Collection, right, Like a carpet beetle will just chew the hell out of a hide, right.
Yeah, those carpet beetles. Domestids are amazing and that's the same beetle that is used to basically skeletonize specimens.
So carpet beetles are great when you need to clean flesh off of bones. Say, let's say in a museum setting. Please you don't want to sit there with tweezers and two brush and bleach and Q tips trying to get every bit of flesh off of say a skull. So you jump it in a bucket full of a bunch of carpet beetles and they are like, yeah, yumyam yum, and they eat off all of the flesh and they
give you in return poop but they love it. Now, that's great when you need a skull cleaned, but it really sucks when they get into hides or fur or leather or whatever in your specimen collections. So museums do not like carpet beetles getting in where they're not supposed to be. And if you listen to the Ornithology episode, and you remember I asked the ornithologists the worst thing about his job, the worst, and he said carpet beetles. And this is a man who's been held up a gunpoint on the job.
So carpet beetles and those a museum collections equals very freaking bad news. So yeah, in your home, I would go around and make sure that you have sealed up every single entrance point. Where are those ants coming in? Where are those corproaches coming in?
I have a Do you have any bugs that you're afraid of?
Like?
Are there? Like for me? I love bugs. I'm wearing a shirt this is bugs on it that was made for me. But like a cockroach is no friend of mine and I and I can't really explain it, like if I see a cockroach in my house or especially inside, I get terrified. But I can hold up like a spider on my face and not care.
Like what you wouldn't hold a cockroach.
I could hold a cockroach.
Sorry, I'm just laughing because I've licked a cockroach in front of children before to show me it's not dirty. I was like, you know how people think cockroaches are dirty? Kids? This was literally in a museum program many a number of years ago. Cockroach is on dirty. This cockroach lives in the jungle and from Madagasca, and and I was like, they're not dirty. And I literally licked it in front of children, had that go over. They thought it was amazing.
They thought it was the coolest person that ever existed until they went home. Yeah, I don't know.
I know that they're really fastidious, right, They're really like they're in depth groomers.
Yeah, they having particles on their body isn't necessarily something that's gonna feel great to them. So, yeah, I've see cockroach. Are cockroaches like really going to town clean room? Right? Yeah? And I mean they live the so the madagas and cockroaches we have at the museum, they live in these amazing little habitats that we create for them, and we feed them all these little vegetables and sweet potato and a little bits of mushroom and corn and all of this other stuff.
And honestly, they eat better than they live better lives than I do. Like, let's talk about debunking some flint flam. Is there any myth about insects or entomology in general that you just you wish that you could debunk?
Oh, myths, myths.
All spiders are venomous. People do say poisonous spiders, but really it's venomous right.
Well, yeah, so okay, the whole poison versus venom thing. We like to debunk that as a as a thing. So, yeah, poison is something you ingest versus venom is something where you are like getting injected or venomated by a spider. So yeah, you could literally eat a black widowed spider, and because it's going through your digestive system and the digestive juices or breaking down the proteins that are in the venom, it's not gonna affect you the same way
as if it's going into your blood. So there's a whole different root of action.
So if you eat something and it kills you, it's poisonous. If it's something stings you or bite you, it's venomous exactly.
And things that have venom that you would eat sometimes may not affect you at all. And other creatures can can also be be stung or bitten by something that's venomous and it not affect them the same way as it affects humans. Oh okay, yeah, so I from what I remember, dogs really black widow bites not a big deal.
Really, but they can't eat chocolate. Get it together, dogs, think up your mind? Should we be eating bugs?
Oh and some maphagi? Yeah, that's what eating bugs? Is I love eating bugs? I know I've invited you to the museum and you've eaten bugs there with me, and then you are an official judge of the thirtieth Annual Bug Fair this last year.
Yeah, I ate a tarantula. I felt bad because tarantula is like it takes a while for them to get to that size, So I felt bad about that. But I ate crickets and some mealworms I think, with.
A grasshoppers too. And then I think you also ate a toe biter.
I ate a toe biter, and I'm just a toe biter is like a really big water bug, right, Yes?
And then also I think you ate some odnate or dirves, so some dragonfly temper about dragonflies.
Yes, this is all coming back to me kind of like a bad dream. You know what's weirder to me though, really quick on the topic of eating before we wrap up, is its honey's weirder to eat because it's bee Vomit isn't that weirder to eat than the actual cricket? Are they actual bee?
Right? So well, this is the whole vegan thing, where like we're not gonna eat honey because we're subjugating bees, and with commercial hives because there's a whole bunch of shit there too. Hives are taken out of hibernation early or are like put into hibernation early, trucked across the country on flatbeds, fed corn syrup, all this stuff. So like there's a whole bunch of research that people can
do in that. I think that there's so many feral colonies of bees, and then there's beekeepers who are collecting those feral colonies and then keeping them in their own backyard and taking some honey and trying to be responsible beekeepers and not taking too much and leaving enough for the bees to be able to sustain themselves over a winter.
But we're going to be eating bugs in the future because they're easier to farm, right, So, well, there's a lot.
Of great protein. There's a lot of great vitamins and minerals ands and vitamins and minerals in bugs. And meat production is hard on the planet, you know. I think this is gonna have to be some like reduction of meat. Again. My parents were Harry Christnas, so I grew up vegetarian. I eat a little bit of meat now and then, oh god, hope my Dad doesn't hear this, You'll be like, I did not know that, sorry Dad. So yeah, I
definitely eat bugs. I am more than happy to eat. Uh. You know, protein bars and other things that have insect flour in it, like cricket.
Cricket flour is a thing.
Cricket flour is a thing. And you know, again, you can have use up so much less space than you would need to obviously raise a cow, right, So get used to it.
World. So do you have any closing advice, like if someone wants to be common entomologist, if someone's interested in the field, Like what advice would you give to a future entomologist, Like find your niche like study this study the unglamorous flies no one cares about.
Uh. Well, first of all, there's just not that many entomologists in the world. There's just not that many out there who have the entomology focused in background. And I've literally worked at so many different places and I'm the only entomology expert there, and at the museum there's a bunch of other entomology experts, which is awesome because I get to hang out with all these bug geeks. But yes, if you are going to be an entomologist and be
a research scientist. Focus in on something that is a little bit less studied.
I hope one day there's there's some kind of insect named after you, Leila, because I feel like you deserve it. I feel like you deserve it. Thank you for talking bugs with it. So what did we learn? Pick weird bugs to study, don't inhale them, and never ever ever feel alone. Also, volunteer somewhere you love if you're bummed out, and google Leela Higgins and follow her on social media. She just did it to head x talk that came out a week ago. She killed it. So if you
have eighteen minutes, look that up. Learning to love nature in a big city.
So good.
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that's how I'd do it. Okay, Bye, Pacodermatology, hobiology or do zoology, lithology, zoology, meteorology and pertology, ethnology, seriology, celinology,