Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your buddy who swaps sandwiches in your
Speaker 1: lunch alley. Ward, and welcome to another episode of smologies,
Speaker 1: which are condensed, shortened all ages, classroom friendly episodes of
Speaker 1: ologies classics. So they're little and they are safe for littles. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this one bugs bugs, bugs, bugs bugs. So you
Speaker 1: may not know this about me yet, but I'm nuts
Speaker 1: about bugs.
Speaker 2: I love them.
Speaker 1: I have had a fascination since I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I used to get bug books for every holiday and
Speaker 1: every birthday. My walls now, as an adult, are covered
Speaker 1: in bug posters and pinned insects. So this week's topic
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite ologies, of course, But even
Speaker 1: more importantly, this particular ologist honestly changed the course of
Speaker 1: my life. She was just a friend of a friend
Speaker 1: at one point years ago, and she invited me one
Speaker 1: day to the La County Natural History Museum in this
Speaker 1: lab that was off limits to the public, and it
Speaker 1: was an insectory. Now this is a bug lover's dream.
Speaker 2: So there are.
Speaker 1: Terrariums of millipedes and cockroaches. There's butterfly chrysalises hanging like
Speaker 1: these tiny chandeliers, dragonfly niads, and gurgling tanks. There's a
Speaker 1: freezer full of tarantula molts. And at the time I
Speaker 1: was going through really sad period in my life and
Speaker 1: not knowing any of this. This entomologist just casually suggested
Speaker 1: that I volunteer at the museum, and I did, and
Speaker 1: talking to kids about bugs one morning.
Speaker 2: A week lifted my spirits. It changed my life.
Speaker 1: After doing it for a few months, I somehow was
Speaker 1: offered a job as a science correspondent for CBS for
Speaker 1: a show called Innovation Nation. It's still on every Saturday morning.
Speaker 2: Eight years later. I'm still doing the show, and I'm.
Speaker 1: Doing exactly what I wanted to do since I was twelve,
Speaker 1: all because I took this tour at an insectory and
Speaker 1: I loved this interview.
Speaker 2: I love this friend. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: So the word entomology comes from the Greek meaning to
Speaker 1: cut up into little pieces, which is not what you
Speaker 1: should do when you find a bug in your face. Rather,
Speaker 1: it's a reference to insects bodies being cut or segmented,
Speaker 1: so having a notch at the waist. There you go,
Speaker 1: and this guest is an entomologist. She's done a TED
Speaker 1: talk called learning to love nature in a big city.
Speaker 1: She's an author on one of my favorite books called
Speaker 1: Wild La, which every Angelino should own a copy of.
Speaker 1: It tells you all of the things that you see
Speaker 1: out and about all the critters and the plants that
Speaker 1: you see in the parks.
Speaker 2: It's great. I will link those on my website.
Speaker 1: She's also the manager of Community Science at the Natural
Speaker 1: History Museum in Los Angeles, one of.
Speaker 2: My favorite places.
Speaker 1: So get ready to hear about bugs, licking cockroaches, social insects,
Speaker 1: less social insects, lots of legs, how to be an
Speaker 1: amateur scientist, and why bugs should be your friends. So
Speaker 1: please ready your heart and your ears for Leela Higgins.
Speaker 1: How she.
Speaker 3: Alogy knowledges.
Speaker 1: If someone at a cocktail party were like, what, what's
Speaker 1: your deal? What would you sell them?
Speaker 2: Hmmm?
Speaker 4: Well? Usually I you know, I'm like, I'm bug geek.
Speaker 4: Usually there's no children at cocktail parties, but sometimes there are,
Speaker 4: and then they're like, Oh, I'm gonna go hang out
Speaker 4: with the children now and talk all about bugs for
Speaker 4: the next you know, a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: That's actually a good question I have. I just complimented
Speaker 1: my own question. This is an important question I have,
Speaker 1: Why are kids owning the buns and adults are like
Speaker 1: kill it with fire? What's that? What happens?
Speaker 4: I think? I mean, I was really into bugs as
Speaker 4: a kid. I grew up on a farm in England
Speaker 4: and I dug up aunt nests trying to find the queen.
Speaker 4: I like, would put glasses over bumblebees to observe them.
Speaker 4: I would try to follow the butterflies down the lane
Speaker 4: and see where they were going.
Speaker 1: And then so that sounds idyllic, like following a butterfly
Speaker 1: down a lane in England? Are you kidding?
Speaker 4: To the woods? Basically, not the scary woods. There were
Speaker 4: badges down there.
Speaker 1: What is the most fulfilling thing about being having studied bugs?
Speaker 4: Well, getting to work at the Naturalist Museum and being
Speaker 4: around other bug geeks and getting to go into the
Speaker 4: collection and pull out drawers and see just these spectacular
Speaker 4: specimens from all over the world, whether they're you know,
Speaker 4: the big showy things that the crowd pleases, or whether
Speaker 4: it's the hundreds of tiny little wasps or tiny little flies.
Speaker 1: What's a show stopping bug? When you say like the showstoppers,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about?
Speaker 4: So like goliath beetles, or hercules beetles, Like, some of
Speaker 4: these beetles are almost the size of our fist. Yeah,
Speaker 4: huge giant. And then when holding one of those large
Speaker 4: beetles in your hands, you're just like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: it's so much stronger than I thought it was going
Speaker 4: to be a little bit scary, stronger, like Heaveny tried
Speaker 4: to use their huge jaws, powerful jaws to say hello,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty good about not touching that end. Okay, the
Speaker 4: ones that have large mandibles, especially large slicy mandibles.
Speaker 1: Slicy mandibles. I have a question. Insects are what half
Speaker 1: of all species of living animals on Earth something like that.
Speaker 4: I just know that there's about a million described species,
Speaker 4: but they estimate that could be up to like ten million.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they outnumber mammals and oh fish way and
Speaker 1: birds and birds yeah, etcetera, et cetera. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was a British evolutionary biologist,
Speaker 1: and he was credited as noting that God, if one exists,
Speaker 1: has an inordinate fondness for beetles. He actually like laid
Speaker 1: it out, said the creator would appear as in doubt
Speaker 1: with a passion for stars on the one hand and
Speaker 1: for beetles on the other. God is just in a
Speaker 1: shack in the backyard, tinkering over and over, being like,
Speaker 1: man cannot get enough of these beetles, can't stop making them.
Speaker 1: I can't stop so much. When you're gravitating toward a
Speaker 1: certain bug to study, do you go for like really
Speaker 1: gossipy behaviors, like do you are you?
Speaker 2: Like, oh my god, this wasp.
Speaker 1: They're parasites. They infect people like zombies. They sting people.
Speaker 1: They don't even make Connie like, what's the deal? Wasps?
Speaker 4: Well, the wasps that I actually studied and worked on
Speaker 4: right after I graduated from UC Riverside, So that's my
Speaker 4: ala mata. UC Riverside Entomology program amazing place. I studied
Speaker 4: biological control, and I think that I was really into
Speaker 4: that because it was, Oh, we don't have to use
Speaker 4: so much pesticides out in the world. We can use insects.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are other creatures you can use for biocontrol,
Speaker 4: but I was obviously focusing on insects as biocontrol aid.
Speaker 1: And biocontrol is when you release an insect to kill
Speaker 1: another insect instead of spraying everything with like agent orange
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 4: Basically, Okay, that's a great way lay definition for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you guys ready for some serious insect gossip?
Speaker 1: I hope so. So she was working on this project
Speaker 1: with the glassy winged sharpshooter. They are not native to
Speaker 1: southern California. They come from the southeaster United States. But
Speaker 1: they love to hang out on citrus and grapes, which
Speaker 1: is annoying because they poop everywhere. But also they spread
Speaker 1: this bacterium, and this bacterium is bad news. It causes
Speaker 1: diseases such as you ready for this sweet gum die back,
Speaker 1: cherry plum leaf scorch, and phony peach disease. These are
Speaker 1: awesome names. So it spreads all these diseases.
Speaker 2: So what do they do? Well?
Speaker 1: Leela was working on this project where she was helping
Speaker 1: introduce a wasp that would eat the eggs of the
Speaker 1: glassy winged sharpshooter so that the glassy beings sharpshooter wouldn't
Speaker 1: spread the bacterium. Pretty cool. Also, these wasps have the
Speaker 1: cutest name ever. They're like little tiny superheroes.
Speaker 4: And they're called fairy wasps. Oh and they're tiny. They're
Speaker 4: like like one to two millimeters long. The babies there,
Speaker 4: and they're some of them are kind of golden. So
Speaker 4: it's like these little literally like with these really beautiful
Speaker 4: gosmel wings. They sound really beautiful and amazing, right, And
Speaker 4: the only problem was I was literally collecting these wasps
Speaker 4: on a daily basis, and they're tiny, and you use
Speaker 4: a little thing called an aspirsa, So you got like
Speaker 4: a little like tube that goes into your mouth and
Speaker 4: then you suck on and then and then the little
Speaker 4: wasps go into into the vial and there's a little
Speaker 4: screen so it doesn't then you don't suck them into
Speaker 4: your own mouth.
Speaker 1: So it's like a proboscis for humans, because now a
Speaker 1: proboscis is a tubular mouthpart, like if a crazy straw
Speaker 1: grew out of your face, like a yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: prosthetic proboscis. What is the deal with with like bees,
Speaker 1: ants being social insects and the rest of them being
Speaker 1: like this apple core is mine?
Speaker 4: Well, okay, so there's some uh wasps, bees, ants and
Speaker 4: wasps right, the hymenoptra there are many of them that
Speaker 4: are social insects, but there are wasps and bees who
Speaker 4: are not so like carpenter bees are more like solitary bees.
Speaker 4: And you see the black ones flying around, which are
Speaker 4: the females, and the like kind of tan colored ones
Speaker 4: and the males. We call them teddy bear bees.
Speaker 1: But they're huge. They're so pretty. I I once didn't
Speaker 1: know what it was and I tried to kill one,
Speaker 1: which I shouldn't have and I and but the joke
Speaker 1: is on me because I used to rolled up magazine
Speaker 1: and I and I blew out a window and then
Speaker 1: I had to pay for the window and college.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they're solitary. So a lot of people expect
Speaker 4: that most bees and wasps are social, but there are
Speaker 4: that are solitary and don't do the whole social thing.
Speaker 1: So different types of bees might be wallflowers preferring to
Speaker 1: hang out alone, and others might be social butterflies except
Speaker 1: their bees.
Speaker 4: But there are obviously benefits to having that kind of
Speaker 4: social life because they protect their sisters.
Speaker 1: But they're usually ladies though, like when you see a
Speaker 1: huge colony, they're usually sterile ladies. Right.
Speaker 4: So, if we're talking about the beehives, like the the
Speaker 4: European honey bees, which are the bees that we see
Speaker 4: like all around here. Again, not a species that is
Speaker 4: from North America. They're from Europe. It's mostly females. But
Speaker 4: then there are the drones. But you know they're not
Speaker 4: doing as much work as the women are, right.
Speaker 1: But they don't. Drones don't sting. Males don't sting.
Speaker 4: No, they because it's a modified ovipositor. That is what
Speaker 4: the stinger is for a bee.
Speaker 1: So an ovipositor is kind of like this pointy tube
Speaker 1: structure at the end of a lady insect butt and
Speaker 1: she uses it to lay eggs. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a T shirt gun, but for your babies. So drones do,
Speaker 1: in fact have larger eyes, and they don't gather nectar
Speaker 1: or pollen or do really any work. Their primary goal
Speaker 1: is to mate and die. I have some questions that
Speaker 1: people wrote in that they can I rapid fire question you,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yes, But before your questions, we donate
Speaker 1: to a cause of the ologists choosing And this week
Speaker 1: it's going to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County,
Speaker 1: where I met Leela Higgins and also where she works
Speaker 1: in community science, which are programs that get local people
Speaker 1: engaged to help collect data for scientists, and you can
Speaker 1: learn more about those programs at NAHEM dot org or
Speaker 1: at the link in the show notes. And if you're
Speaker 1: not in LA, if you want to find community or
Speaker 1: civic sometimes called citizen science programs all over the country,
Speaker 1: Leela says, you can check out sistarter dot com, which
Speaker 1: will also be linked on my website. So thank you
Speaker 1: to sponsors for making our donation possible. Okay, let's hear
Speaker 1: your questions. Okay, Dave Long wants to know what's with
Speaker 1: all the legs.
Speaker 4: The six legs to three pairs of legs. Well, they're
Speaker 4: in the arthropod groups, which is jointed legged creatures, and
Speaker 4: insects have six versus like their racknets that have eight versus.
Speaker 4: Some of the other creatures like crustaceans that have seven
Speaker 4: pairs and whatnot. Why do they have six versus? I
Speaker 4: don't know the answer to that, but obviously those legs
Speaker 4: help them to get around. And some insects don't have wings,
Speaker 4: they've de evolved wings, like Madagascan hiss and cockroaches per se.
Speaker 4: But those legs are this method of locomotion on on
Speaker 4: land that works really well for them, so.
Speaker 1: It gets them around crawling crawling wise.
Speaker 4: Some of them what they have? Some of them have
Speaker 4: stultorial legs which are for jumping. Good for jumping. Some
Speaker 4: of them have fasorial legs, which are good for digging.
Speaker 4: What are some of the other modified legs going back
Speaker 4: to all my undergraduate classes.
Speaker 1: Are petopalps in the front, but there that's.
Speaker 4: More of the arachnids have, like the scorpions have petipalps.
Speaker 1: Is it true that and that exoskeleton rigidity is why
Speaker 1: insects could not maintain their massive prehistoric sizing? Brandy Demora
Speaker 1: wants to know this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the largest the largest insects we have right
Speaker 4: now in our current climate, with our current like pressure
Speaker 4: on the planet is about the size of a fist.
Speaker 4: Which are the those giant amazing beetles. But back in
Speaker 4: the day, when there were different climate conditions and pressure
Speaker 4: conditions on the planet, there were some giant, oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: I wish I could go back in time, giant dragonflies
Speaker 4: that had like a foot long wingspan.
Speaker 1: What fossils? How loud were they? Do you think?
Speaker 4: I can only imagine? You know what dragonfly? Sorry, a
Speaker 4: hummingbird comes like right behind your head if you're imagine
Speaker 4: that multiplied by ten. So I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's an extrapolation. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Eric Martin wants to know what the white goo is
Speaker 1: that comes out of a bug when you squish them.
Speaker 4: White goo or yellow goo because when you okay, so
Speaker 4: you know when you have a uh driving down the
Speaker 4: road in your windshield and a bug splats on it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: if it's a lot of yellow, that's usually the fat
Speaker 4: body of a female insect that maybe was like got
Speaker 4: all this stuff ready for her eggs. I don't know
Speaker 4: about the white stuff though, but.
Speaker 1: Maybe they mean the yellow like you know when you
Speaker 1: smash a thing and it's like and it looks like
Speaker 1: Twinkie filling comes out, you know what I mean, I know.
Speaker 4: About the whole white thing like I've definitely I haven't
Speaker 4: squished that many bugs.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly, I think he must be talking about fat. Okay, sorry, storytime,
Speaker 1: quick diversion from the rapid fire. This one time I
Speaker 1: was in when I was taking an animal bioclass. I
Speaker 1: had to a dissected cockroach and we had dissected all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. We had dissected pigeons and fetal pigs
Speaker 1: that were like the size of a puppy and incredibly heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: But who it was time to kill a cockroach. You
Speaker 1: had to go to this tank full of custus who
Speaker 1: cared about Nobody cares about it, But I remember slicing
Speaker 1: it open and a lot of like these feathery fat
Speaker 1: deposits came out.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: Because this is so the spiracles inside of an insect,
Speaker 4: so they insects do not breathe the same way as
Speaker 4: humans do.
Speaker 1: We don't.
Speaker 4: They don't breathe through their mouth and then the oxygen
Speaker 4: goes through the lungs into the circulatory system. Instead, insects
Speaker 4: have these things called spiracles along the side of their
Speaker 4: body which will tiny holes, and then oxygen is brought
Speaker 4: in through those holes through these like very white When
Speaker 4: I've dissected some insects, they like those tubes kind of
Speaker 4: like white nopalescents kind of pop out.
Speaker 1: I have a do you have any bugs that you're
Speaker 1: afraid of? Like? Are there like for me? I love bugs.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing a shirt this is bugs on it that
Speaker 1: was made for me. But like a cockroach is no
Speaker 1: friend of mine and I and I can't really explain it,
Speaker 1: Like if I see a cockroach in my house or
Speaker 1: especially inside, I get terrified. But I can hold up
Speaker 1: like a spider on my face and not care.
Speaker 4: Like what you wouldn't hold a cockroach.
Speaker 1: I could hold a cockroach.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I'm just laughing because I've licked a cockroach in
Speaker 4: front of children before to show them that it's not dirty.
Speaker 2: She's a hero.
Speaker 4: I was like, you know how people think cockroaches are dirty? Kids.
Speaker 4: This was literally in a museum program many a number
Speaker 4: of years ago. Cockroaches on dirty. This cockroach lives in
Speaker 4: the jungle and from Madagascar, and I was like, they're
Speaker 4: not dirty, and I literally licked it in front of children.
Speaker 1: Had that go over.
Speaker 4: They thought it was amazing. They thought it was the
Speaker 4: coolest person that ever existed until they went home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I know that they're really fastidious, right, They're really like
Speaker 1: they're in depth groomers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they having particles on their body isn't necessarily something
Speaker 4: that's going to feel great to them. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I've see cockroach our cor coroaches like really going to
Speaker 4: town clean rooming, right, Yeah, And I mean they live
Speaker 4: so the madagas and cock coroaches we have at the museum,
Speaker 4: they live in these amazing little habitats that we create
Speaker 4: for them, and we feed them all these little vegetables
Speaker 4: and sweet potato and a little bits of mushroom and
Speaker 4: corn and all of this other stuff.
Speaker 1: They live better lives than I do. So do you
Speaker 1: have any closing advice, like if someone wants to become
Speaker 1: an entomologist, if someone's interested in the field, Like what
Speaker 1: advice would you give to a future entomologist, Like find
Speaker 1: your niche, like study the study the unglamorous flies no
Speaker 1: one cares about.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, there's just not that many entomologists
Speaker 4: in the world. There's just not that many out there
Speaker 4: who have the entomology focused in background. And I've literally
Speaker 4: worked at so many different places and I'm the only
Speaker 4: entomology expert there, And at the Museum there's a bunch
Speaker 4: of other entomology experts, which is awesome because I get
Speaker 4: to hang out with all these bug geeks. But yes,
Speaker 4: if you are going to be an entomologist and be
Speaker 4: a research scientist, focus in on something that is a
Speaker 4: little bit less studied.
Speaker 1: I hope one day there's some kind of insect named
Speaker 1: after you, Leila, because I feel like you deserve it. Jeez,
Speaker 1: So what did we learn? Pick weird bugs to study,
Speaker 1: don't inhale them, and never ever ever feel alone because
Speaker 1: there are bugs everywhere and they can be your friends. Also,
Speaker 1: volunteer somewhere you love if you're bummed out, and google
Speaker 1: Leela Higgins and follow her on social media. She just
Speaker 1: did it to head x talk. She killed it, So
Speaker 1: if you have eighteen minutes, look that up. Learning to
Speaker 1: Love Nature in a Big City So good. Ologies is
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at just Ologies, and I'm on
Speaker 1: both at ali Ward with one l and ologies. Merch
Speaker 1: is available at Ologi's merch Talk, and of course we
Speaker 1: have more somologies episodes, including a whole one about bees,
Speaker 1: one about eating bugs, plus one on snails and wolves
Speaker 1: and veterinary science and the moon and dinosaurs. So download
Speaker 1: more at aliward dot com slash smologies. And in the
Speaker 1: interest of keeping these short, we're going to list in
Speaker 1: the show notes all the people who worked on the show.
Speaker 1: But extra big thanks to Mercedes Maitland and Seek, Fredriguez
Speaker 1: Thomas and Jared Sleeper of mind Gem Media for the
Speaker 1: edits on this episode. And if you stick around until
Speaker 1: the end, I give you a piece of advice, and
Speaker 1: this week it's that when you're at a restaurant and
Speaker 1: people start singing happy birthday to someone, even if you
Speaker 1: don't know them, join in, because, first off, singing is fun,
Speaker 1: and also wouldn't it be nice if a stranger wish
Speaker 1: you happy birthday and saying to you too? I actually
Speaker 1: like to keep a birthday candle in my wallet just
Speaker 1: in case I find out it's someone's birthday and they
Speaker 1: haven't made a wish yet. Ten out of ten, always glad,
Speaker 1: I have one. Okay, have a great day. Smologites, byebye, somag.
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