Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

Hey, and welcome to the playlist. The Stuff You Should Know Think Spring playlist to be exact, Chuck, Jerry and I figured it was high time that winner got the heck on, So we're tapping into all of our wishful thinking and getting the crocuses to sprout and the air to warm up and the chipmunks to come out. For our first episode, we're going with caterpillars colon Nature's Magicians because we can't think of a more poetic way to

Cool. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. The three of us just inchin along in life together, trying to make do, making our way in the world today. It takes everything a cop Oh yeah, and this is stuff you should.

Cheers.

Cheers, Chuck cheers. Uh.

You know, if it's an episode where we say mouth parts.

I knew you're gonna say.

This, then we're going back to the old school from our let's say, former colleague Tracy is still our colleague.

We just never see anyone anymore, right fully.

But Tracy Wilson, a co host of The Stuff You Missed in History Class along with Holly. They're wonderful. They've been around for years. They're icons of podcasting. Tracy used to write a bunch of insect articles for HowStuffWorks dot com back in the day.

She very legendarily stayed up for seventy two straight hours and wrote like more than two dozen insect articles in that time. They just got weirder and as the time went on.

I almost believe that for a second. But Tracy always does a great job with those, or did a great job, And most of most of the insect articles we've ever used have been Tracy's original, like the ticks and the fleas and I don't think ants, but bees probably was.

She's the master of it for sure.

I mean she wrote a lot of them, and this one about caterpillars was from Tracy, along with stuff from World at List in the eighty eight and rereading butterflies dot com. But I just realized today when I was researching this some more, that we haven't done butterflies yet no, which is shocking.

We've done one we.

Did the wings like that, you're desk Okay.

That's what it was. Yeah, And we talked about them in the Animal Migration episode two.

Yeah, but not a standalone on butterflies. So we're going to talk about their their counterpart. And one of the facts of the episode already for me is that but caterpillars that eventually turned into butterflies.

It's it's the same species. It's still the same thing.

Right.

We should never knew that we should do it too, You didn't.

I just figured it like, well, now it's something else, like entirely huh.

But did you know about the transformation and the chrysalis or cocoon and everything? Did you know that was sure?

Okay, I knew how it happened, but I thought it was like presto chaninjo. Now you're you're not whatever Latin name you are, you're a new Latin name.

Oh gotcha. So like they just became a completely different animal basically, or a different insect. Yeah, okay, I gotcha. Yeah, No, they're the same thing, they're just configured differently. Yeah, they got wings like a transformer, like they go box to robot with the gun. That's right, you know, But in a much more organic, soupy way, as we'll see you.

Yeah, And it was also one of those where I just I kept looking and kept looking. I was like, how has just this been sitting here under our noses all this time? I don't know, because it's right up our Alley to talk about something like cat.

No.

Yeah. One of the reasons why they are so different and they're configured differently, is that a caterpillar's life it is the larval stage of an adult moth or butterfly. That's probably the best easy definition of a caterpillar. The reason that it's configured differently than its adult form is because in the larval stage, its entire life is pooping, eating, pooping, molting, eating, pooping molting. That's what I saw the caterpillar's life described

Yeah, kind of shark like. And as Tracy points out, like it's a very singular purpose. And the same butterfly has a singular purpose later on, which is propagating the species, if you know what I'm saying. But the caterpillar, yeah, it's very shark like.

All it does is eat.

And store food and poop it out. And they eat so much that apparently they say that they can eat as much as twenty seven times they're body size in their fairly short life. Yeah, and they can end up being about one hundred times bigger at the by the time they go to pupe et, which is when they you know, hole up and turn into the butterfly as when they.

Pop out of that little egg that they also eat.

That's amazing. And if you want to see something just astounding, go look up a caterpillar egg or butterfly egg. I don't know which one you'd call it, but they look like little have you ever seen vasaline glass Huh? They look like little like ornate vasaline glass vases.

Yeah, they're very pretty.

Yeah, I mean everything about butterflies are just great. Okay, I'm on board with them fully.

But yeah, that thing, I mean, it starts eating, It eats its way out of the egg.

Then it says, well, I'll just eat the rest of the egg.

And you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and eat this leaf that the egg is sitting on as well.

While I'm at it.

Uh huh.

And they said, wow, I really like eating. Maybe I should just keep eating for the rest of my life.

Yeah, each one suddenly turns into Augustus glop and just keeps going from there.

That's exactly right.

So I said that at molts. Apparently it molts five different times, and the reason why it molts is because it eats so much it outgrows its skin.

It's amazing.

It has a mechanism where it releases an enzyme. There's a hormone that says, hey, you're getting a little your clothes are getting a little tight. Maybe it's time to bolt. And so that releases an enzyme that basically dissolves its attachment to the exoskeleton. And then the new, bigger version pops out of the old exoskeleton, walks away, and guess what it does immediately after it starts eating again.

Yeah, it tries to outgrow that suit.

And it does that five times in its larval stage as a caterpillar.

Yeah, these molts are called in stars. Did you say.

That that's the period of its life between molts.

Yeah, yeah, so five in stars and between molts. Like you said, all it's doing is just eating, trying to get a larger suit size. But here's another cool fact is they believe that not only do caterpillars have a memory that lasts like a molt or two, but they even think there are researchers at Georgetown that have sort of proven that. I'm not how you sort of prove something, but they feel pretty good about the fact that they think that a butterfly remembers being a caterpillar.

Yeah, they've done this at least one study that showed that if they trained it to avoid certain smells as one of its last in stars, it will remember that as an adult butterfly, that it will avoid those same smells. That's pretty cool because, as you'll see, what happens in the chrysalis is so mind bending and nuts that the idea that it can remember anything is it's pretty pretty amazing.

Oh yeah, for sure, I didn't even consider that. That is really hard to process.

So let's talk about the body. Like you said, it has mouth parts very important because it eats, eats, eats, and the rest of its body is essentially a storage facility for that food that it eats and that it breaks down and stores. Essentially is fat. They're very fatty.

Yeah.

I get the idea that the inner body movement through that body tube never stops. It's just a conveyor belt almost of food coming in and poop leaving.

That's my impression too.

Yeah, the caterpillar is six legged. If you're like Pho Chuck. I've seen a caterpillar or two in my day, and they have tons of little legs.

Those are not real legs.

They only have six genuine legs, meaning that they have segments and joints. The rest of those are called pro legs, and there are a lot of those, and they move all up the length of the abdomened the caterpillar, and at the end of those little pro legs they have little suction cups, little hooks. Basically, is it is it a crochette? Do you think I think crochet?

I'm going with crochet.

Yeah, they're called crouschettes. And the yachts a crack rocket.

Isn't that what those really fast motorcycles are called. Sure, okay, I didn't know if that was, you know, a dirty thing to say or not.

No, no, that's all over. It's like douchebag. It was it one time, like not very nice, but now everybody says it, so even PG. Thirteen Movies.

Oh I thought you meant it was okay to say, yes, you're a real douchebag.

Okay, Oh no, no, no, it's not. Still not, but it's not like, you know, a horrid thing to say like it used to.

I gotcha because someone called me one the other day in the car and I was like, oh, I thank you.

Did they really No? No, they don't have bones, of course, but they do have lots. They're very muscly.

If you compare them to a human, we have about six hundred and twenty nine muscles. Caterpillars have four thousand muscles. Because those muscles, that's the way they're moving, you know. They move in a little wave from front to back, front to back. Yes, front to back, back to front, back to front. How did I mess that up?

Well, it depends on which the direction they're going.

I guess, well, I guess so, And they move in a couple of ways. One of two ways is sometimes they're crawling, which means they're moving all of those pro legs and legs at the same time in sequence. Or they do what it sounds like an inch worm does.

Right.

Yeah, I don't know why they didn't identify them as inchorms, but that's what they're talking about. They can move in little arches where they bring their their front to their back and their back together, making a mound. Out of their middle their abdomen, and then they stretch the front out and they bring the back up and then they stretch the front up. That's what an inch worm does. And that's basically one of two ways. The other way for a caterpillar to move, either as a wave under.

Yeah, and I never looked close enough at an inch worm to figure out why they move that way. And I feel like a dummy now because it seems obvious they move that way because their middle section doesn't have legs, right, it's pretty The front pulls the back because those are where the legs are, and the legs go, let me catch up.

It's like a little cute accordion.

And it's really neat to see. When you watch a close up of a centipeder, I keep wanting to say centipede, but that's definitely a different animal. Caterpillars pro legs moving as they they attach themselves. Like you said, they have a suction cup. They just attach themselves to like the branch or whatever that they're walking on. And if you watch it and close enough detail, yes, excellent, Chuck, you can really see those suction cups working and it's pretty cool.

It's awesome.

Most things on a caterpillar are small, obviouslycluding their little eyelets. They have twelve of those are called stemata, and they if you do look closely, though, it's really cool looking. They have their arrange in a semi circle, sort of wrapping around the head.

Like what's his name from Reading Rainbow but on Star Trek the next generation.

Yeah, LeVar Burton.

Like his eyewear, Yes, yeah, that's what I said. It would be on top of his head though, right, like like a headband. I think is it more on the front? I thought it was more on top.

I thought it was on the front, but you could be right, it could be on top.

It's kind of hard to tell with the caterpillar head right exactly.

You don't really know what's what. It's kind of like a studio baker. You can't tell which way it's going, right for our aged listeners love a good STUDI baker, Joe.

Yeah, there's one little guys like Damn Skippy.

Uh So those stamata they can identify light in darkness, but caterpillars are are basically blind. They're for sure color blind, and they just like I said, they can see sort of light and dark and shadow and stuff like that, but they are not like they're not crawling around seeing things. They're kind of feeling their way around with those antennae that they have. But although those antennae only handle taste and smell, so I don't even know why I said that.

So they also breathe in a really interesting way. They breathe through spiracles, which are holes in the side of the caterpillar, and they breathe in oxygen. It goes directly to the trachea, and they breathe out carbon dioxide and as they move, it's kind of like breathing in and breathing out. That's like a byproduct of their movement, and it all goes to that trichia, like I said, and the trachia just diffuses it to the tissue throughout the body.

Yeah, you know, an inch worm, it is like a little accordion, And if you could figure out how to build and insert a tiny little like wooden reed in each spiracle, that little thing might sound like an accordion as it moved.

That'd be pretty neat, kind of cruel to I imagine.

Yeah, I mean probably if you're sticking wood in the tiny breathing holes of a caterpillar. I don't think it would.

Don't try that.

By the way, Chuck, did I tell you that caterpillar is from the old French chateapellos, which means shaggy cat.

Oh, like the actor Timothy Chatapellos? Is that you know that's Timothy Shallomey?

Sorry, right, Yeah, Timothy. Shaggy cat would be that name.

Kind of looks like a shaggy cat.

But apparently they think it was the the is it the wooly bully caterpillar that? Yeah, they think that that was the original shaggy cat and it's just kind of caught on from there, But that's where caterpillar comes from.

Yeah, And speaking of wily bully, you notice on caterpillars a lot of times those little hairs or little quills or spines those are called Oh man, we've even had scientists tell us how to pronounce that ae.

Is it? Stay?

That's what I think it is.

Yeah, it's either that or we've been getting it wrong.

I can't remember.

But everyone is like in science guys, anytimes it's AE, you pronounce the blank and I can't remember which one it is. Oh, it's either set or SETAE. And now we're gonna get more emails. And maybe I should just put a sticky note on my laptop so i'll always remember that. But that's what they're called, and they have a lot of functions. They can deter things that want to eat caterpillars because a lot of times these things

Oh yeah, and you shouldn't handle a category get much worse than that too. Yeah, if you've ever touched the caterpillar, That's why I was referring too earlier, Like as a kid, I remember touching one and just being like, oh my god, what what just happened? And it hurt very badly, I remember distinctly, but I still love caterpillars after that.

I remember there was one kind and someone will know what kind ofness is, but I think it was sort of yellow and black, and we would, you know, put our finger on the ground and the caterpillar would crawl up our hand and then we would like get a leaf and have it crawl off. So I don't think we harmed the caterpillar. We were just sitting it kind of crawl on us for a minute. But and I wasn't touching the spine, so I never got that irritation.

Right, Yeah that's cute.

But yeah, you wouldn't stick like kid fingers.

You wouldn't have been touching the hair like structures, so it wouldn't have stung you. It's not like I don't think it's an active process. I think it's a passive thing where you just touch it and they're not like die die die. It's just like, right, you just touched it and it did its Thingah.

Yeah, I get the feeling.

The caterpillars even like, sorry, man, and you know it shouldn't touch me, but sorry.

Most caterpillars seem rather chill, but not all of them are. I was not happy to find this out. I find this rather unpleasant. But there's some species of caterpillars in Hawaii that are actually carnivores. Far and away, most species of caterpillars, and hence butterflies are are herbivores. They just eat leaves, That's what they do. They eat leaves and shoots. Wait, eat shoots and leaves. So there's the ones in Hawaii, though, they'll eat snails. And not only do they eat snails,

It is horrifying.

I don't like that particular kind of caterpillar, but I like all the rest.

Yeah, they tie it down and eat it.

So awful. Imagine it just coming into your house too, and you're like, please know, and you have no escape. And that's that.

Yeah, it was pretty horrifying to read that and frankly disappointing. But there's also a brand, a brand in Australia brand Hey. They lay their eggs and ant hills and when they come out, they will eat those ants. But aside from that, in the Hawaiian they, like you said, are strictly herbivores and they are using those leaves also to camouflage themselves.

Did you see that one?

Yeah, it looks like a snake.

Yeah, it looks like a bright green snake. And apparently they'll arrange themselves sometimes to make it look like a long snake, Like three hundred caterpillars will get together and line up and it's like Wow, there's a snake. No, it's a line of caterpillars.

Yeah, like a lot of them are solitary caterpillars, but there is what was the one in particular that traveling.

Groups gregarious caterpillars.

Yeah, I get the feeling. Those are the ones that might do the old snake one too.

Yes, I think those are swallow tails and they might be gregarious. Yeah. So I say we take a break, Chuck, and then we'll come back, and I propose that we talked more about caterpillars.

Let's do it.

Softly jaw. Okay, So you mentioned a couple of things that they do to protect themselves, camouflage, just eating a little bit on the underside of a leaf. There's a lot of other things that they can do too. There's there's so many different species of caterpillar because again we're talking about moths and butterflies, they're not just all the same thing. That they've developed all sorts of really interesting

That explains that old saying, you ain't nothing but caterpillar frass.

M I never knew what they mean.

You're really good at jumping, that's what they say to you.

Yeah, and that's one of the things they do, like several other things, which is it all sort of falls to the umbrella of I don't want anyone to know I'm like even here, So a poop will be a big giveaway obviously.

Another as if, like they love to eat.

If if a predator sees a ton of chewed up leaves everywhere, they're gonna be like, ooh, the caterpillars nearby. I love to eat those things. So as much as those caterpillars love to eat, it is their singular purpose in life. They will many times just eat little bits off of many, many leaves to kind of disguise the fact, like, no caterpillar here. There's just a few nibbles here and there, yeah leaf rather than just yeah, rather than just like taking a leaf down to its spine.

Yeah, which any even the dumbest of birds can be Like, there's a caterpillar around here.

And you know they want to do that, but they still don't do it.

I know. Caterpillars have tremendous self control, you doo. We mentioned that they have spinnerets so that they can spin silk, and they use it to great effect in all sorts

That's right. And to combat jet lag, they make fists with their toes.

Yeah, what do you know.

I wonder if they leap. I'd like to see that in slow motion. I wonder if all of those legs and pro legs at once do that in concert that would be pretty cool.

Or if they inch, they just shoot themselves up. They inch so quickly that shoots them right off of the leaf.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's one use of the silk is like literal climbing rope. And like we said, like the solo caterpillar, which is many of the I want to say, brands, what a dummy varieties species.

Here you go.

You know, there's going around, they're eating, they're they're laying an egg. They're using the silk as as like a lasso. Or maybe they might make a little nest. Like we said earlier, maybe they might restrain that that snail. But those gregarious kinds that live in big groups, they really get going with the silk production. They make big nests in trees and around tree trunks.

You've probably seen them before.

Oh yeah, they're like big tents.

Basically, if you've seen big you know, it looks like sort of a real dense spider web. I guess sometimes those are spiders, right.

Yeah, there's some kinds of spiders that do that, but I think probably more often than not what you're seeing or gregarious caterpillars getting together.

Yeah, but they also use their little spinnerets as like a trail, like, hey, we're all going this way and we're gonna lay this little trail and we know that. You know, if you want to get home, this is how you get home.

What's neat is those trails are often intergenerational and so like an older generation will leave there that that silk for the next generation to use, and that next generation then can grow bigger and stronger because they didn't have to use that energy to create the silk for that that leads to the to the food source. I thought that was pretty nice.

Yeah, like handy down silk, Yeah exactly, or like you know link of rope that grandpa gave.

You, Yeah, same thing, hand me down silk, length of rope from grandpa.

What else?

There's another thing too that we haven't quite figured it out, and we I mean the entomology world, and by we also mean them that it may or may not be advantageous to live in a gregarious community as opposed to being solitary. Because yes, it's easier to build a big shelter for yourself if you have a bunch of other friends helping you. It's easier to find food if you have other people looking at the same time you are

Caterpillars are people too, exactly, and if there's a disease, you know it's gonna spread pretty readily within that population if they're all living together. But I think you know, we've held off long enough. We should we should talk about that metamorphosis, which is what everyone wants to know about, and that is basically a caterpillar is doing its thing. It's going through those molts. It's that fifth molt, and they say, you know what, it's been great, But I

Yeah, pretty neat. And this is where the terminology gets really confusing. If you do any research on.

This, yeah, I can for sure.

So the pupa is often referred to as the form the body form that the centipede that the caterpillar is in as it enters the transformation. Right, Yes, it's actually the life stage, like the caterpillar is the larval life stage, the butterfly or the moth is the adult. The pupa is the life stage in between. But for all intents and purposes, you can also say that's a butterfly pupa, although or that's a moth pupa. Right, that's the easiest,

I think that's right.

And then I think it's just moths because they don't form chrysalis or crysalie. They are the only ones to spin a cocoon to protect themselves.

Correct, right, and that cocoon starts talk kind of soft, but that eventually hardens as well. But I think that's right. But the chrysalis itself is not some like shell they build like it.

It is. It is the thing.

Yeah, it's the outer layer of skin.

Okay, yeah, because it can actually twitch and move as a defense. Yeah, like it's it's a thinking sentient, well not thinking necessarily, but it is a shell that is a living thing. It's not like let me build this, you know, this thing to get into. It is the thing that it is in.

Right, So imagine if you underwent this transformation, you probably go off into a corner and kind of ball up, maybe in a bit of a fetal position. But then imagine as part of this process, all of your skin fused together and turned into like an outer shell rather than you know this this you know, this thing covering you. It's it's like this now this big ball that you're now kind of separated from inside and you're doing your thing inside. That's kind of like what the chrysalis is like.

Yeah, And so we mentioned the silk, like the uses as like a climbing rope.

And stuff like that, and to build little nests.

It really comes in handy when it's time to pupate because they use this silk in a variety of ways. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way for a caterpillar to metamorphosize. Sometimes, like you said, they hang upside down from that leaf, so they've spun like a little silk pad that attaches to something. Sometimes they create like a little hammock. Sometimes they make like a little sling in concert with a stick.

Right. And then so once that happens, once the cocoon is full or the crysalis is hardened, this and one of the most amazing things that on Earth happens in there. And it's neat because we've gotten to the point where we have photography that can peer inside of this without harming the caterpillar, and they have like time lapse videos of this transformation. And as the thing turns more and more into what's obviously like a butterfly or moth, and

Yeah, I mean it's.

This isn't the science y explanation, but it's almost as if you can take a tray of put a bunch of spaghetti and meatballs in a dish and cover it up and then when you open it up it's a lasagna. Yeah, and you're like, how did that happen?

Like how did that even happen?

So this is how it happens. The caterpillar breaks itself down into a soup of cells, like it's basically like a caterpillar soup for a while, and some of the cells keep their form generally, or at least stay attached to one another. So those leg cells, yeah, they change. They look different, like a caterpillar's actual true legs look different from the butterfly's true legs, but they're still the same cells. They're just they rearrange themselves a little bit.

It's un Yeah, it really is, Like my brain breaks every time I try to make sense, especially when you see what comes out, you know, And I mean if it came out looking like a dung beetle like that would still be awesome. But to come out looking like a butterfly with those iridescent wings, yeah, and the little faces on those wings, it's just unbelievable. And I guess I mean, evolutionarily speaking, this is all to eventually get to like a pollinator.

I don't understand it. This is where I think they that science has kind of thrown off. They're like, the best explanation I saw is that it's better than having two things compete for the same food source, but that that doesn't really make any sense, you know, because that doesn't make any sense to me at all. I don't understand that. But that was the best explanation I saw, and I didn't even understand it.

So as to the why, yeah, yeah, Like.

It's just so strange. It's I just don't understand it. And everything goes through life like stages. We go through puberty, we become adults, we go from infant babies to grown adults. But there's not a period where we stop and over the course of two weeks to completely reconfigure ourselves into a new form. There's not that many things out there that do do that, and we just don't fully understand why it happens, and maybe we never will, and I think that'd be just fine.

Although I would argue that the Josh Clark I knew fifteen years ago his caterpillar like has now emerged as a beautiful butterfly.

Thank you. I remember reading when Christopher Hitchins became a conservative, one of the Liberal members of parliament said that this is one of the rare instances where the butterfly turns back on lug Oh no, yeah.

Wow, I'd like to hear what that exit.

I think I read that in two thousand and seven and it still stuck with me.

Yeah, that's a good one. We didn't take our second break, did we.

Nope, it's time.

All right, Well let's take our second break.

We'll probably still be talking about this metamorphosis, you know, when we come back, So just be.

Prepared softly, jaws.

Soft all right.

I mean, I guess we're done talking about metamorphosis. It's called holo metabolism. Yeah, that full transformation. And I don't think he said it takes a couple of weeks generally.

Yeah, I saw about two weeks something like that on average. It can be more or less depending on the weather and stuff.

Yeah, and I took it as depending on the weather. Meaning is that they don't want to do this in the middle of winter. So if they get started and like winter comes early, maybe it'll they'll just stay in there for a few months.

Is that right? There are some species that over winter in their cocoon or in their chrysalis, and that's part of their thing. But I saw that there's that the ideal there's an ideal temperature. That's what I took it to mean, oh, okay, and that the ideal temperature is twenty one degrees celsius. And get this, buddy, I converted to farent height. You s we talked about the other day.

So you did it yourself.

Yeah, it's like, uh, I love it down. I could do it again if I wanted to. But I'm just gonna find what I wrote down. I think it's like eighty eight eighty nine degrees.

Fahrenheits all right, I love it when after all these eighty one it's eighty one, you're still brave enough to put yourself out there with math.

Here, I'll just do this, okay. So here we find fahrenheit from twenty one degree celsius. So it's twenty one plus thirty two. Okay, we're getting everything back equal again. So what is that fifty six times one point eight I believe comes to eighty one.

When was the last time you did sort of written down long division or something like that.

Oh it's been a long time. By the way, it's eighty four point.

Six eighty four point six. Can you still do that stuff?

I don't know. Probably if I gave enough time to it. Sure, I just did just it's not a part of my life. Yeah anymore.

I actually don't know if I remember how to do long division. I recently because Ruby is starting, you know, like this past year started like multiplication and stuff and came at me with like three digit times of two digit and I was like, oh, you know what it was.

Like, I got it. I got it.

I remember, and I remember how to do that and to carry the stuff. But I definitely don't think I could do long division anymore.

I don't.

I sort of remember, but I don't think I would fully be able to complete a problem.

By the way. I I know, I brushed past it because I don't handle compliments that well. But I do appreciate the comment about me metamorphosizing into a butterfly.

That was a joke. I'm just kidding.

Well, definitely edit this part.

No, it was for sure true. I appreciate you appreciating that.

So did we just come back from from a break? Is that here?

Yeah, that's what's going on.

But we can wrap it up and talk about caterpillar management, because here's the deal. Caterpillars eat leaves, and you know they can they can eat garden stuff. If you have a garden that you're planting, but it's not that big a deal. Like, individual caterpillars are not gonna ravage your garden and spoil your garden. If you have big groups

Right, Yeah, definitely, that's a big part. And it's not just for their beauty either. Caterpillars and butterflies alike are food source for birds, which is sad, but it's part of the circle of life, I guess. So that's one reason alone. They're also probably even more important for your garden. Pollinators, yeah, big time pollinators. There was a dead milkman joke in there.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a whole section if you're interested on how to kill and get rid of caterpillars at HowStuffWorks dot com in this article, but I don't even feel like talking about it, to be honest.

Well, let's talk about gregarious caterpillars, because those are the ones that really are problematic. They can on a bad year or a good year for the gregarious caterpillars, they can consume up to a quarter of the leaves in a forest. Yeah, and they if they attack the same tree enough times, they'll kill a tree. So gypsy moth caterpillars are gregarious, and they're well known for killing trees just from eating the leaves off of it. That's how

Yeah.

I mean, I guess if you're in forest management or if you're a farmer and it has like a literal effect on your crops and your forests and stuff like that, they're out there, you know, burning tents and nests and things like that. But that's not something you should go out and try to do because that's you don't want to catch something on a tree on fire.

Just not a good idea.

But can you just see somebody trying to get rid of caterpillars and be like, yeah, oh and you just started a wildfire?

Yes I can't, I really can.

It's hilarious if you think about it. It's so doode it is.

Should we finish up with the assassin caterpillar?

Well?

Can I talk about one more thing you don't want to talk about just for a second, because I think it's kind of nuts as well. Okay, there's a bacterium called Basillis thrying inis. I believe et for short, this is a bacteria that people purposely introduce as a as a caterpillar control measure, and it goes in and created produces holes in the caterpillars gut and leads to sepsis, and it dies a painful death a few days after being infected. This is considered organic gardening. The problem is

Yeah, I'm with you. So I mentioned the assassin caterpillar. This is the Linomia obliqua, or the giant silkworm moth, or the assassin caterpillar. It is the deadliest caterpillar in the world and there have been supposedly several hundred people in South America that have died from the toxin injected from this caterpillar.

Quills from the sette.

Yeah, I think it takes a lot, like even if one of them, you know, injected some toxin into you, you're going to be uncomfortable and it probably won't feel great. But I think you need to get like, you know, twenty to one hundred times that to actually kill you. Yet it still happens, Yeah, it does.

Apparently it's responsible for five hundred deaths around South America I think total, like in all time as far as documented goes. Yeah, it takes a lot, like I think twenty to one hundred times to kill you. But the way that it kills you is it's an anticoagulant, a very powerful one, and you die of internal bleeding essentially.

Yeah, it's it's a blood thinner.

Yeah, and that's that actually is being studied, the toxins in that particular caterpillar being studied for its usefulness in biomedicine.

Yeah, I think they're only what is it, there's like thirty two species of Linomia, but only two of those have that blood thinner venom, the obliqua and then the achillis.

But the rest will still sting you. It's just not going to kill you. It'll still hurt that's South America. In North America, the biggest one we have is the puss caterpillar. Puss megalopige upper cularis the southern flannel moth, and just accidentally brushing it can cause excruciating pain I've seen. So just be careful. Admire caterpillars with your eyes, not with your hands.

Yeah. I guess I got lucky as a kid by just letting them crawl on me for a minute. But yeah, I I never felt that sting.

There's one other thing too, The eastern tent caterpillars are problematic, especially in places like Kentucky, because they cause what's called mayor reproductive loss syndrome, where just I think fifty grams which is a tenth of a pound of these caterpillars ingested by a horse while it's foraging can cause it to lose its fetus, have a stillborn berth, all sorts of crazy stuff, so much so that it has a whole syndrome named after and it's just for eating these caterpillars.

That is this is a good one.

I thought you'd like that. Yeah, caterpillars are great. I think we should do a two parter with butterflies.

Oh should we sure? I think Tracy wrote that one too.

Okay, I say we get on a bench.

I was going to suggest that, but then I thought, is that too much?

I don't know, I don't know. I guess they don't have to come out back to back. They can be companion pieces.

How about that we're back to back and then we can skip the metamorphosis marsa.

Well, while we're figuring that out, I say, everybody, it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this stuff you should know acrossy. I was very excited because one of our listeners, well, I'll just read it.

I'll let you hang on that.

For a second.

Hey, guys, When my wife Katie and I were dating, we would meet up at lunch to do the daily crossword together.

I proposed to her twenty years ago using a.

Crossword I constructed myself, and years later, it's not only crosswords, but stuff you should know. It keeps our marriage life vibrant, it gives us something to talk about every week, and needless to say, your recent episode on crossword puzzles brought our life together full circle. About ten years after we married, I became a published crossword constructor and have been. I've continued ever since with puzzles in La Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, among others.

So, Jeff is pretty experience is across the maker.

As a thank you for a wonderful episode, I'm sending you an original puzzle the stuff you should.

Know theme Wow, you do enjoyed Wow.

And I haven't done it yet. It is printed out in my office. He sent me just a you know, send us. It's not a digital version, so I can't. I can't do it on my phone.

I got to get out the old pencil nice, which would be kind of fun, and I can't wait to tackle it. I've just been waiting for the right window of time. And that is from Jeff Stillman and big shout out to Jeff and his wife Katie.

I don't know how I missed that one, but I'm glad you called it out because I can't wait to do that puzzle too. So thanks Jeff.

Yeah, yeah, got Jeff Stillman, go look at your emails and print.

That sucker out. Yes. Well, thank you to you both Jeff and Katie. And if you want to be like Jeff and send us some amazing thing that's fine with us. You can send it via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.

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