Speaker 1: Oh Hey, it's all that word bomb podcast on the
Speaker 1: old Mic Hello from my Closet, per usual. So this
Speaker 1: week the release schedule is a little wonky because I
Speaker 1: rushed to put up an episode on Sunday with doctor
Speaker 1: Michael F. Wells, who has gathered well over five thousand
Speaker 1: scientists willing to help with COVID nineteen testing, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to get that episode up asap, so I put
Speaker 1: it up on Sunday. And there is a link to
Speaker 1: his Google form if you're an ologist who wants to
Speaker 1: help out, and his contact info in case you are
Speaker 1: somehow connected to a government agency that can hopefully use
Speaker 1: that database to ramp up testing in the US. There
Speaker 1: are also tons of self help suggestions in that episode,
Speaker 1: ways to pitch in and help others. That's all in
Speaker 1: the all Washed Hands on Deck episode, So if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a fresh one, just go backwards one. So
Speaker 1: rather than double you up on two full new episodes
Speaker 1: this week, I thought I would have an encore presentation
Speaker 1: of a super spring and fluttery, goofy happy episode that
Speaker 1: is also swear free in case you need to listen
Speaker 1: with a younger or an older set. I don't know,
Speaker 1: although we do discuss some aspects of bugs making other bugs,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. But I love this episode.
Speaker 1: It's going to make you stop and look at the
Speaker 1: blossoms on your morning walks and appreciate all the beautiful,
Speaker 1: just disgusting creatures around you. Also, thank you to all
Speaker 1: the patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies for making
Speaker 1: the show possible and making donations possible each week, even
Speaker 1: when I don't run ads. It was so fun to
Speaker 1: live stream with you a few days ago. That was
Speaker 1: very wacky, just to hang out in a living room.
Speaker 1: So if you're not on Patreon dot com slash ologies,
Speaker 1: you are missing out on some very candid live streams. Also,
Speaker 1: thank you to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who rates and subscribes and reviews that
Speaker 1: costs you zero dollars. You're just keeping the show up
Speaker 1: in the science charts for other people to discover. Also,
Speaker 1: I have been feeling myself just a little extra stressed.
Speaker 1: I was really sad yesterday and your reviews honestly brightened
Speaker 1: my day so much. You have no idea. Maybe you do,
Speaker 1: Maybe you do have an idea, because I pick a
Speaker 1: fresh one each week like this one, like creep, and
Speaker 1: I read it to you. So thank you A Flatow
Speaker 1: who wrote, I'm currently working third shift disinfecting public transit buses.
Speaker 1: The job is incredibly monotonous and would be unbearable if
Speaker 1: not for this podcast. So thanks to the pandemic and
Speaker 1: my new work assignment, I finally have time to catch
Speaker 1: up on my backlog of ologies. I guess everything really
Speaker 1: does happen for a reason. A Flatow says, a Flatau,
Speaker 1: thank you, think you, thank you, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for everything that you are doing right now to make
Speaker 1: this better. I hope you hear this. I hope you're listening,
Speaker 1: and I hope you know how appreciated you are by
Speaker 1: me and everyone else listening. So thank you for cleaning
Speaker 1: the transit buses. We need you so much. Okay, onto
Speaker 1: the episode. This one first aired about two years ago,
Speaker 1: and I've included some updates and surprises along the way. Okay,
Speaker 1: you ready for the rest of intro. Okay, here we
Speaker 1: Golepidopterology what a word, so many syllables. You gotta remember,
Speaker 1: you got to not mess up. But it's a study
Speaker 1: of butterflies and moths of the order lepidoptera, which comes
Speaker 1: from Greek words for scale and wing. Very sexy. So
Speaker 1: this ologist I've known for almost five years, I think,
Speaker 1: which is crazy, but as a bug nerd, I saw
Speaker 1: some of his insect photos on Instagram and he's such
Speaker 1: a really, really good photographer. So I forced him to
Speaker 1: be my internet friend and then my in real life friend,
Speaker 1: and then we introduced each other to our other science friends,
Speaker 1: and now we're all in a WhatsApp thread called Scorpions
Speaker 1: on our Faces. We are the ones who fueled everyone's
Speaker 1: bug questions. And my only aim in life is to
Speaker 1: deliver insect ideas faster than him, and it only works sometimes,
Speaker 1: and that's just because he's on a plane or he's
Speaker 1: shooting one of his several TV shows he works on,
Speaker 1: and I'm may be able to get in before him,
Speaker 1: and I look like a hero. You may have seen
Speaker 1: him on Animal Planet, Al Jazeera America's show Techno. He's
Speaker 1: been on the Discovery Channel and others. He's working on
Speaker 1: a new show. He also has a YouTube series called
Speaker 1: Aptly Jungle Diaries. So we sat down in La while
Speaker 1: he was on the West Coast and I lobbed one
Speaker 1: million butterfly questions at his face, and we talked about
Speaker 1: the differences between moths and butterflies, the most butterflies he's
Speaker 1: ever seen in one place, and what children's toys are
Speaker 1: in his field kit, and why he sniffs butterflies, and
Speaker 1: the truly disgusting behaviors and preferences of the world's most
Speaker 1: fond over and respected insects. They are disgusting. We talk
Speaker 1: about sex and mating. So slow down, perch on a
Speaker 1: flower and open your ears for some delightful facts and
Speaker 1: harrowing jungle tales from one of my favorite entomologists, a
Speaker 1: guy I call Philly t Exoskeletorres lepidopterologist Phil Torres.
Speaker 2: Butterflies are the best, it appears to recorder.
Speaker 1: This is your microphone.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's karaoke night.
Speaker 1: I know it really is great. Just you just hold
Speaker 1: it like you're doing a stand up bit.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you point it at your face.
Speaker 1: Pointed at your face, Philly t exoskeleatoris thank you for
Speaker 1: being here, happy to be here. Okay, So you are,
Speaker 1: by all accounts, a lepidopterologist.
Speaker 3: Let's let's go with that. Yes, backgrounds and entomology, and
Speaker 3: I focus a lot of my work on butterflies because
Speaker 3: they're kind of the best.
Speaker 1: Why are they the best? I'm getting right into it.
Speaker 3: I mean a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 3: going way back for me. So when I was a kid,
Speaker 3: I was out there bringing home bones and snakes and
Speaker 3: bugs and any thing I could find from the local
Speaker 3: state park. And then I started taking these butterfly classes
Speaker 3: as a kid when I was seven years old. And
Speaker 3: this guy, doctor Andy Warren, who's now the collections manager
Speaker 3: at University of Florida. He's like amazing butterfly researcher. He
Speaker 3: taught these classes and he was in high school at
Speaker 3: the time. I was seven years old, and I was
Speaker 3: learning about how to collect them, how to mount them,
Speaker 3: how to identify them, how to collect like store the
Speaker 3: right data. And it was a blest and we were
Speaker 3: out there. I remember when I was eight, Me and
Speaker 3: this kid next to me were running after this thing,
Speaker 3: the golf ertilary.
Speaker 1: The gulf fritillary, by the way, is this cute little orangey,
Speaker 1: umber and dark brown butterfly And the underside of its
Speaker 1: wings have these crazy gorgeous metallic silvery patches. So from
Speaker 1: the top it looks like the palette for a Thanksgiving tablescape,
Speaker 1: but on the underside it has markings like a Lady
Speaker 1: Gaga super Bowl costume for the future anyway, gold fritillary.
Speaker 3: And he caught it. I missed it, but it was
Speaker 3: like the first state record ever recorded in Colorado. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, if we can do that at this age,
Speaker 3: imagine what we can do when I'm like a real
Speaker 3: human and an adult.
Speaker 1: The eight year olds are not real.
Speaker 3: They're not Let's let's be honest here.
Speaker 1: What happened when he caught it? Were you like, ah,
Speaker 1: congratulations out?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it was just it was all excitement.
Speaker 3: It was it was pretty there's probably some high fives.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know what the cool word was
Speaker 3: back then.
Speaker 1: But it's probably rad.
Speaker 3: Probably rad. I don't know, I was eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, probably a big word. Bition is a big word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does doctor Andy Andy Warren?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you are you guys? Still? Are you pals?
Speaker 3: Totally? We're totally palced still And it's great.
Speaker 1: So you too can digitally befriend Andy Warren, the lepidopterologist
Speaker 1: who inspired Phil. He is at Andy bug Guy on Twitter,
Speaker 1: so you can have at it. Andy will probably be
Speaker 1: confused about the sudden spike in his timeline, but it
Speaker 1: is a low buffet of butterfly and moth photos, totally
Speaker 1: worth it. Gently stock him.
Speaker 3: But yeah, actually I talked to him about getting on Twitter,
Speaker 3: and now he's just like killing the game. And if
Speaker 3: you have any butterfly questions, he just he knows it.
Speaker 3: He knows everything. So he's like the grand master and
Speaker 3: I'm like his understudy.
Speaker 1: And so I know, because I know that you answer
Speaker 1: a lot of questions when it comes.
Speaker 3: To butterfly, I do. I can't help it.
Speaker 1: I mean, is it harder for you to answer a
Speaker 1: question of like what is this caterpillar? Versus what is
Speaker 1: this butterfly?
Speaker 3: It is? I mean, you tend to spend more time
Speaker 3: working on at least for me, working on the adult
Speaker 3: and memorizing the different species and knowing where they're found
Speaker 3: and all that kind of thing. And the caterpillars can
Speaker 3: be a little trickier. Some are more obvious than others.
Speaker 3: You know that if it looks like bird poop, then
Speaker 3: it's probably a swallowtail caterpillar?
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 3: That is true? Yeah. A lot of the younger in stars,
Speaker 3: they will mimic bird poop, so well, oh, that's so
Speaker 3: smart on a citrus tree, especially, so if you are
Speaker 3: like smelling a nice orange and you see some bird
Speaker 3: poop crawling around, and you'd be like, wait a second,
Speaker 3: that might be a swallowtail butterfly.
Speaker 1: What's worse than roving bird poop? And they're like, surprise,
Speaker 1: how did jubby caterpillar? Side note, if you are like,
Speaker 1: what is this in star business? Don't worry. As much
Speaker 1: as I have been a bug lover for the years,
Speaker 1: I just learned this word recently. I didn't know it.
Speaker 1: It just means the different stages, like in this case caterpillars,
Speaker 1: So they just keep molting into a larger size until
Speaker 1: they're ready to pupate. So imagine kind of like a
Speaker 1: Russian nesting doll situation, but squishy, and at the very
Speaker 1: last stage they turn into a purse and then out
Speaker 1: of the purse pops a kite or a drone, and
Speaker 1: you're like, what kind of crazy witchcraft magic is this?
Speaker 1: Speaking of progressions, so let's talk about your path. Okay,
Speaker 1: at what point did you decide you were going to
Speaker 1: study entomology and butterflies?
Speaker 3: I was eleven years old and I had to write
Speaker 3: a paper in middle school saying what do you want
Speaker 3: to do when you grow up? And I was like,
Speaker 3: I want to study entomology at Cornell And that's what
Speaker 3: because that's where Andy went to study as well, and
Speaker 3: it's just the best undergrad program that I'd found, and
Speaker 3: it was it was amazing, and I was just like,
Speaker 3: this is what I want to do because he would
Speaker 3: tell these stories of you know, he just came back
Speaker 3: from South Africa and discovered species a month in Brazil
Speaker 3: and all these places around the world. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there was a job out there. You get to chase
Speaker 3: after things with a butterfly nets, make real discoveries and
Speaker 3: explore the world, and that just sounds like a blest
Speaker 3: not to mention you get to like have fun doing it,
Speaker 3: like you make bait traps that smell terrible, and it
Speaker 3: just like stuff that kids love. And I was like,
Speaker 3: I just want to stick with this for forever.
Speaker 1: How many countries do you think you've been to in
Speaker 1: a quest to look at butterflies and bugs and snakes,
Speaker 1: sticks and bones.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe like fifteen or so.
Speaker 1: Phil has traveled through most of Latin America, Mongolia, he's
Speaker 1: done work in Europe. The dude has some frequent flyer miles.
Speaker 3: You get around, and that's that's really what drew me
Speaker 3: to science in general, is just this idea that I mean,
Speaker 3: it's been a really nice career that I think. I
Speaker 3: did my first expedition when I was nineteen years old
Speaker 3: and worked with the grad student. We spent three and
Speaker 3: a half weeks in Venezuela and found thirty five new species.
Speaker 1: When you were you were not twenty yet, you could
Speaker 1: not run a car. You were six years from running
Speaker 1: a CARSS and you discovered how many new species?
Speaker 3: Thirty five on this trip. I mean it was he
Speaker 3: was like, really the guy who could look at it.
Speaker 3: We were studying aquatic beetles at the time, as you do,
Speaker 3: and it was so cool, and a lot of them
Speaker 3: were there's in Venezuela, a lot of these beetles. This
Speaker 3: one genus uh cyclist lives on the side of waterfalls
Speaker 3: and that's where it specializes. So like, imagine being nineteen
Speaker 3: and being like, Okay, I guess we're gonna have to
Speaker 3: travel throughout this beautiful country looking for waterfalls to discover things.
Speaker 3: And I had so many moments when I was young there.
Speaker 3: I was like, Yes, this was the right choice because
Speaker 3: the experiences I got, not just with nature and discovery,
Speaker 3: but also the humans you meet in these places were amazing.
Speaker 1: Phil had an experience growing up that always stuck with him,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to say, right up top, it involved
Speaker 1: travel and butterflies, which you're gonna find is a recurring
Speaker 1: theme in Phil's life in US this episode. By the
Speaker 1: time it's over, I'm just gonna warn you, you're going
Speaker 1: to be cramming a butterfly net in a steamer trunk
Speaker 1: and flipping your boss off on your way out the door,
Speaker 1: like bye bye, I'm off gone to the janga. This
Speaker 1: episode will inspire you to wreck your life. It's going
Speaker 1: to be great anyway.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, my dad's family is from Nicodagua, and when
Speaker 3: I was thirteen I can't remember if I was thirteen
Speaker 3: or fifteen at the times, we did two trips. As
Speaker 3: a kid. I reached out to the lead entomologist in
Speaker 3: Nicodagua saying, Hey, I'm coming down. I kind of know
Speaker 3: what I'm doing. Can I get a permit to collect
Speaker 3: butterflies and I'll send you photos and kind of we
Speaker 3: can id them together and he was like sure, and
Speaker 3: I was like, sweet, let's go find some butterflies. So
Speaker 3: we were there visiting family. But then I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we have to go to this remote rainforest in one
Speaker 3: area down by the border of Costa Rica. Then we
Speaker 3: went up into this volcano called Mombato for one point too,
Speaker 3: and I caught this one butterfly. They're called glass wing butterflies,
Speaker 3: and they're beautiful because they're kind of transparent and just
Speaker 3: really interesting.
Speaker 1: Just a note to say that a glass wing is
Speaker 1: super weird to look at. It's just as it sounds.
Speaker 1: Most of the wings are totally see through, like it's
Speaker 1: wearing an invisibility cloak. You can see right through its body.
Speaker 1: It looks like it exists, but it doesn't. And whenever
Speaker 1: I see photos of them, and I was just looking
Speaker 1: at a bunch of them, I always get like these
Speaker 1: weird kind of goosebumps and like a squiky feeling in
Speaker 1: my tumers, like a vertigo, Like how are you a
Speaker 1: mostly transparent animal? Anyway? So Phil found a really.
Speaker 3: Cool one butterfly usually find a higher elevation or shadier
Speaker 3: areas in the tropics, and I went home mounted this butterfly,
Speaker 3: put the location data, all that kind of thing. And
Speaker 3: then a few months later, my uncle who lives down there,
Speaker 3: sent us a newspaper article saying, hey, new species of
Speaker 3: butterfly has been collected on this volcano, Mumbacio, and there's
Speaker 3: only three specimens that have ever been found. And then
Speaker 3: I looked at my collection. I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: I have the fourth one. And I was like a teenager,
Speaker 3: and I was just on this family trip, and so
Speaker 3: it was another one of those moments where I'm like, holy, Like,
Speaker 3: if I just did this right now, because there's so
Speaker 3: few people out there appreciating these things, imagine what else
Speaker 3: I can do if I make a career out of this.
Speaker 3: And it's called not Biogenes tuloso mumbachuencies, so that quite
Speaker 3: a mouth mombacho part. That's the subspecies found on that
Speaker 3: volcano Mumbaco.
Speaker 1: What does the whole name mean? Do you know?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Not Biogen's toloso mumbauenzis Tolosa's my guess? Uh?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, let's look it up. We can
Speaker 3: dig into this. I wonder we'll get the truth.
Speaker 1: I want you to know that you're that tried real
Speaker 1: hard to find the meaning of this scientific name, and
Speaker 1: I just plump struck out, kiddos. It was named in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one by an entomologist, and I just I
Speaker 1: have no idea what it means. Spam, I have no idea,
Speaker 1: you know what. Let's back up. Let's just back up.
Speaker 1: Let's get to some easier questions first. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: define a butterfly. Okay, so I know what a butterfly
Speaker 1: looks like. But what's the difference between a butterfly and
Speaker 1: a moth? What's the difference between a butterfly and another
Speaker 1: winged insect? What makes it a lepidopterology?
Speaker 3: So lepidoptera translates as like scaly wing. Okay, so that's
Speaker 3: one of the number one things. You look at those
Speaker 3: wings and they're covered in little tiny scales, and that's
Speaker 3: how they get their color. Oh, and that color can
Speaker 3: be really brilliant and colorful, or it can be drab
Speaker 3: and brown, and it kind of depends on the thing.
Speaker 3: So butterflies get a lot of the glory because we
Speaker 3: see them more often because they're diurnal.
Speaker 1: Wait, what is that word again? Diurnal? FYI? I avoid
Speaker 1: this word a lot because I'm afraid of saying it wrong,
Speaker 1: and also it sounds like a pea toilet, but it
Speaker 1: just means not nocturnal. So butterflies awake during the day,
Speaker 1: which is more than I can say for myself sometimes and.
Speaker 3: They're just prettier. But really, butterflies are a type of day.
Speaker 1: Flying moth that's so weird.
Speaker 3: So when we look at the family tree, there's like
Speaker 3: moth moth, moth butterfly, and moth moth moth, and they're
Speaker 3: kind of considered and you know amongst most people as
Speaker 3: like butterflies on the left and moths on the right.
Speaker 3: But really it's this branch of moths that evolved into
Speaker 3: this superfamily papillion no idea that has really done well
Speaker 3: during the day diurnal and that's why it has all
Speaker 3: these bright colors, because those colors help it camouflage or
Speaker 3: identify a mate, or to show that it's poisonous if
Speaker 3: it has like bright orange and yellow and black colors,
Speaker 3: or to mimic something that is poisonous, and it's they're great.
Speaker 3: So to tell the difference between moth and butterfly color
Speaker 3: is one thing. Also, look at the way they rest,
Speaker 3: so a moth generally has its wings folded down when
Speaker 3: it's resting, and a butterfly generally has its wings folded
Speaker 3: up tucked behind it when it's resting.
Speaker 1: All right, So it's like a stealth fighter versus a sailboat.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, that is great. I'm going to use that.
Speaker 1: You are welcome. Please cite me in all you got it.
Speaker 1: So butterflies are up typically, typically, there are some that
Speaker 1: break the rules.
Speaker 3: The rule that basically is never broken is looking at
Speaker 3: the antenna. Okay, So a butterfly, imagine you know you
Speaker 3: have these too long stocks at the top are too long,
Speaker 3: you know, things sticking out, and then at the very
Speaker 3: end it gets a little thick, a little club. If
Speaker 3: it's got like a club at the end, you were
Speaker 3: talking about a butterfly. Here, if it's straight or feathery,
Speaker 3: we're talking about a moth.
Speaker 1: Okay, And do they have wildly different eyesight or wildly
Speaker 1: different like olfactory senses?
Speaker 3: Eyesight? For sure. Butterflies fly anything that's flying by day.
Speaker 3: There are moths that fly as well. They're going to
Speaker 3: be very visual, so they're looking for brightly colored flowers
Speaker 3: that are telling them, hey, we've got some nectar for you.
Speaker 3: They're looking for conspecifics, others of the same species to
Speaker 3: figure out if they want to mate or chase them
Speaker 3: out of their territory. They're looking for predators flying around.
Speaker 3: They're pretty decent vision to look for anything swooping at them,
Speaker 3: and you learn that when you're trying to catch them
Speaker 3: with a butterfly net. They're very tricky sometimes exercise it is.
Speaker 3: It is very good exercise. Yes, it's the real jungle gym.
Speaker 3: When you're out there in the rainforest and you're swinging
Speaker 3: these things. It's tricky. Some species are way easy to
Speaker 3: catch and they're kind of low flying and just flopping around,
Speaker 3: and then others are just they're like jet fighters. They're
Speaker 3: really tough, really agile, and they're really tricky, which is
Speaker 3: why sometimes bait traps do the trick.
Speaker 1: Oh, because I've seen a video of you in your
Speaker 1: YouTube series of Jungle Diaries where you have the world's
Speaker 1: longest butterfly. Oh yeah, how long is it? And how
Speaker 1: heavy is that? Because you've got to get up in
Speaker 1: the canopy. Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was working with my friend doctor Susan Finkbiner.
Speaker 1: Phil and doctor fink Biner went to Cornell together and
Speaker 1: she's now one of the top butterfly researchers ever in
Speaker 1: the world. She's super tough. She works deep in the jungle,
Speaker 1: and she uses this nuts the longest butterfly net available
Speaker 1: possibly on the open market, to catch butterflies in the
Speaker 1: rainforest canopy. It extends thirty five feet. It's a thirty
Speaker 1: five foot long net. I looked all over for on
Speaker 1: the internet. I couldn't even find one to see how
Speaker 1: much they cost. I think she had to build it herself. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Phil was like, I'm a buff dude, I can do that. Also, no,
Speaker 1: this was not his verbatim thoughts. I just editorialized them. Anyway.
Speaker 1: He was like, I got this, teach me how to
Speaker 1: use it. I'm gonna look just like you.
Speaker 3: It didn't pan out that way. We have to like
Speaker 3: hike up this crazy stream. And I mean it was
Speaker 3: amazing Pla to work like that's her office every day.
Speaker 3: Pretty great. But then you open up the butterfly net
Speaker 3: and I couldn't even I could barely hold the thing.
Speaker 3: It looks so heavy.
Speaker 1: It just keeps It's like a clown cart. You just
Speaker 1: keep extending and extending.
Speaker 3: Like extending it. My arm got tired. I was like,
Speaker 3: can we is there like a button we can breast
Speaker 3: that this thing happens, and so yeah, holding it you
Speaker 3: have to kind of stabilize with your foot and then
Speaker 3: swinging it and swinging accurately was a whole other level,
Speaker 3: but it was. It was a blest And every time
Speaker 3: I do something like that, I'm like, this is such
Speaker 3: a fun job. Like studying butterflies. You just get to
Speaker 3: do these crazy things like swing thirty five foot nets
Speaker 3: in the middle of the jungle.
Speaker 1: But what about the bait traps. If you're like, my
Speaker 1: arm is too tired, Yeah, I'm going to put out
Speaker 1: a pile of dung and see what happens. Is that
Speaker 1: what happens? Because you mentioned they were smelly.
Speaker 3: They are smelly. So bait traps you get creative and
Speaker 3: so sometimes you will use a banana bait trap, and
Speaker 3: this is pretty typical throughout the Tropic because you get bananas,
Speaker 3: you add some water, maybe some sugar, maybe some beer,
Speaker 3: and then you close it up and you let it
Speaker 3: ferment for a few days. You open it up if
Speaker 3: it smells the nivee in a ripe, and like you
Speaker 3: don't want to be anywhere near it. Then you got
Speaker 3: some good bait, and then you set it in a
Speaker 3: little cup and in this kind of like cylinder net
Speaker 3: thing at floating you know, it'll be floating below the
Speaker 3: cylinder net thing. And so the butterfly feeds on the
Speaker 3: bait and then flies up, and when they fly up,
Speaker 3: they get caught in that net.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 3: So that's like the most PG thirteen version of a
Speaker 3: butterfly bait.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: But then you get a little interesting, and we will
Speaker 3: use rotten fish, so we will ferment like tunic cans,
Speaker 3: and that was horrible. We will add human urine to it.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, and that doesn't make it any better. And
Speaker 3: then you can also use yeah.
Speaker 1: Poop, anything, in particular carnivore poop.
Speaker 3: So if you're a vegan, I'm sorry, but your poop
Speaker 3: probably won't cut it. If you are a carnivore, you
Speaker 3: have enough. You've got some like good sodium and maybe
Speaker 3: even some nitrogen they might be going for in there.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: And so I always joke that, I mean, seeing a
Speaker 3: jaguar in the wild is an amazing thing, and knowing
Speaker 3: that they're around, finding images of them on camera traps
Speaker 3: is great. But what I'm after is jaguar poop, because
Speaker 3: when you find jaguar poop, you will see some of
Speaker 3: the rarest butterflies that generally are only found way up
Speaker 3: on the canopy, but they will come down to the
Speaker 3: ground to feed on that steamy pile of goods. And
Speaker 3: that's just it. There's all these rare resources out there,
Speaker 3: and so if you make a bait that smells like
Speaker 3: a rare resource like pee or rotten fish or rotten fruit,
Speaker 3: then the butterflies will come.
Speaker 1: I love that the most Pg. Thirteen version of this
Speaker 1: is something that has to do with beer. Like it
Speaker 1: gets so gross from there that the most innocent thing
Speaker 1: is putting out beer for butterfly.
Speaker 3: It is you're fermenting this fruit, right, which is how
Speaker 3: you make alcohol in the first place. So it becomes
Speaker 3: slightly alcoholic, and you actually kind of see that these
Speaker 3: butterflies get a little drunk.
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 3: It is very true. How can you tell they're just
Speaker 3: like getting in bar fights and stuff? There tattoos.
Speaker 1: Now you can actually discern which butterflies become inebriated on
Speaker 1: fermenting fruit if you look super closely, because on some
Speaker 1: specimens you can see a really small tattoo of a
Speaker 1: human on the lower back of the butterfly, so the
Speaker 1: love is very mutual. They love us too. If you'd
Speaker 1: like a rabbit hole to go down. Type in drunk
Speaker 1: butterflies on YouTube, and you're gonna find some gems like
Speaker 1: this one from Ann a girl mpath. His tongue's all
Speaker 1: curled again, so he's not eating, he's just kind of chilling.
Speaker 1: So we may both be suckers for getting shmammren on
Speaker 1: a hooch. But a butterfly brain is a little different
Speaker 1: than ours. They have a lump of ganglia and the
Speaker 1: head to control the eyes and the antenna and the
Speaker 1: coiled birthday party horn of a proboscis, but it also
Speaker 1: extends down their body. Their brain goes all the way
Speaker 1: down their body to help their back end make decisions,
Speaker 1: which honestly would be very helpful in humans, especially drunk ones.
Speaker 3: But yes, they can get a little drunk like us.
Speaker 1: What okay? Well, this brings me to a question. If
Speaker 1: they can drink and eat how many moths? How many
Speaker 1: butterflies actually eat as adults, because don't a lot of
Speaker 1: them just chub it up when their bibis and they're done.
Speaker 1: They're like as I'm an adult, all I want to
Speaker 1: do is mate.
Speaker 3: Caterpillars are just big feeding tubes, okay, and they just
Speaker 3: eat and eat and eat, and they just try to
Speaker 3: grow into a thing that will then turn into a
Speaker 3: crystalis or a cocon and then turn into an adult.
Speaker 1: So some species feed as adults and live a little
Speaker 1: longer so that they can have a better chance of
Speaker 1: finding a mate, maybe a few mates. Hey, other species
Speaker 1: don't live as long, and thus they don't even bother
Speaker 1: growing mouths, which is like hello, American horror story.
Speaker 3: Butterfly season, they don't have mouth parts because they ate
Speaker 3: a bunch as a chelby caterpillar and now they're like,
Speaker 3: I just got a mate. So with them, it is
Speaker 3: a pheromone. Now, butterflies, well the pheromones too, but with
Speaker 3: moths it can be way stronger. So if you take
Speaker 3: a female silk moth, a big let's say, luna moth,
Speaker 3: and you stick it in you know, kind of a
Speaker 3: mesh whatever mesh bag, she will release this pheromone out
Speaker 3: into the world and if you wait all night, that
Speaker 3: thing will have like a dozen males that have tracked
Speaker 3: it down. And the way they do it is the
Speaker 3: males have these big feathery antenna that are super super sensitive.
Speaker 3: They can detect like a single molecule from like two
Speaker 3: miles away, and they'll be like, there is a female
Speaker 3: around here, let's find her. And they do kind of
Speaker 3: a zigzag pattern to triangulate and to figure out where
Speaker 3: she is. And then when they find her, they know
Speaker 3: that they got something to do and they try to mate.
Speaker 1: How pissed were they that she was in a mesh bag?
Speaker 1: They were so pissed, like I came this whole way.
Speaker 1: She's like, sorry, I'm in a back tonight.
Speaker 3: Maybe tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Now. How is it different for butterflies? How do they
Speaker 1: find each other just by peeping each other on a flower? Like, hey,
Speaker 1: I saw you on the flower back there. You look
Speaker 1: very good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be a visual thing usually because they have
Speaker 3: colors that we can see and also UV colors as well,
Speaker 3: and then from a close distance, it will oftentimes be
Speaker 3: a mix of behavior and smell. Okay, So certain species
Speaker 3: males will defend a territory and wait for a female
Speaker 3: to come by. Other times they'll be cruising around looking
Speaker 3: for a female slab and.
Speaker 1: Maybe want to roam my windows now.
Speaker 3: Close, so that kind of makes a difference. But then
Speaker 3: up close, butterflies to have a pheromone, and the best
Speaker 3: thing about butterfly mating is that their pheromones smell really,
Speaker 3: really good, the super good.
Speaker 1: Is this just a personal fetish from a lepidopterologist or
Speaker 1: would you say bit?
Speaker 3: But so, when I was in Peru a couple of
Speaker 3: months ago, we found this one butterfly and it was on.
Speaker 3: Butterflies sleep underneath leaves in the tropics, So if you're
Speaker 3: walking around at night and you shine lights underneath leaves,
Speaker 3: you'll see a little butterfly tucked in and so you
Speaker 3: can catch them in a way that they're they're totally
Speaker 3: not harmed, open up their wings and give it a sniff,
Speaker 3: and if it's a male in certain groups, I passed
Speaker 3: this around ten out of ten people, where like, this
Speaker 3: smells exactly like brownie batter.
Speaker 1: Why brownie batter?
Speaker 3: Like not even cooked brownies, we're talking the batter. This
Speaker 3: is so different, and I think it's just it's a
Speaker 3: mix of incidental that it smells like that. And also
Speaker 3: this group is known to feed on plants like banana
Speaker 3: and certain plants that may have some chemicals in them
Speaker 3: that are volatile and smell nice. And so when the
Speaker 3: caterpillar eats, it gets into the adult. And so these
Speaker 3: chemicals have taken a long journey and they have components
Speaker 3: in them that are kind of like fruit like or
Speaker 3: food like, and it's it's delicious. And there's some that
Speaker 3: smell like that. There's some that smell exactly like maple syrup,
Speaker 3: some that smell like cake, some that smell like barbecue,
Speaker 3: potato chips.
Speaker 1: That's so specific.
Speaker 3: So if you guys ever catch a butterfly, please please
Speaker 3: smell it and let me know. The black swallowtails that
Speaker 3: you get around here, actually the tiger swallowtails as well,
Speaker 3: the males in the US smell like fruit loops, like
Speaker 3: exactly like fruit loops.
Speaker 1: How did you discover this? Is this the thing that
Speaker 1: lepid apterologists know about.
Speaker 3: They know and they kind of pass on. I think
Speaker 3: I probably sniff more than other lipidopterologies, but I just
Speaker 3: like using my nose. I think it's it is when
Speaker 3: you work a lot with animals, or when you work
Speaker 3: a lot in the jungle, you start to use your
Speaker 3: senses a lot more. And not in like like b
Speaker 3: one with the earth way. It's just like you do
Speaker 3: because you notice, Okay, if you want to find monkeys
Speaker 3: in the jungle, you don't crane your neck looking up,
Speaker 3: use your ears and you'll hear a little crash and
Speaker 3: you know, okay, that's a big crash, that's a capuchin.
Speaker 3: If it's like a running crash, then that might be
Speaker 3: a spider monkey or something. You start to use your
Speaker 3: ears different and then also your nose because those resources
Speaker 3: like fermented fruit. If you are near a fruiting tree
Speaker 3: and you smell fermented fruit, you'd be like, oh, there
Speaker 3: could be good butterflies over here. Or dead animals too
Speaker 3: can attract certain things, or maybe you find a really
Speaker 3: cool dead animal that just died of natural causes, like
Speaker 3: I found my first sloth was a sloth with a
Speaker 3: big bite out of it from like an ocelot or something.
Speaker 3: But I was like, how cool is this? And so
Speaker 3: we used the machete and cut off its head and
Speaker 3: then preserved its head in a way that we got
Speaker 3: the skull, and then we were able to take that
Speaker 3: around the local schools and equadornge show them a slow
Speaker 3: skull and teach them about it. And sloth teeth do
Speaker 3: not mess around. They may be slow, but they got
Speaker 3: sharp teeth for cutting through. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just want to interject to tell you that sloth
Speaker 1: skulls I just looked it up. They look kind of
Speaker 1: like a softball wearing dentures plus plastic Halloween vampire teeth,
Speaker 1: and they are cute as hell. What's the grossest thing
Speaker 1: that's happened to you in the jungle? You just about
Speaker 1: beheading a dead rotting sloth? Yeah, which I can't imagine,
Speaker 1: like the whack with a machete that must have been.
Speaker 3: I've done it with a dead puma too. It's I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's it's pretty gross, but you start to
Speaker 3: get a little It's like sad to see the dead things,
Speaker 3: for sure, but you kind of realize like, oh, we
Speaker 3: can take this death and make something out of it.
Speaker 3: And I think skulls and bones are great educational tools,
Speaker 3: and so you just do what you gotta do.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been really really scared in the field.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I definitely do get scared sometimes, and
Speaker 3: I think that's okay. And one thing that helps is
Speaker 3: basically just to focus on my work. If I'm out
Speaker 3: there at night, sometimes I'll hike a loan, which you
Speaker 3: probably shouldn't do I just really focus on, Okay, what
Speaker 3: is my target that I'm looking for, if it's a
Speaker 3: spider or sleeping butterfly or anything like that. The main
Speaker 3: thing I don't know. We called the jungle scared Okay.
Speaker 3: That is like our term that we created where if
Speaker 3: you're out there, especially night in the jungle, even if
Speaker 3: you're with a group during a survey, sometimes you just
Speaker 3: get this creepy feeling that like you could turn and
Speaker 3: your headlamp would look out and there'd be a jaguar
Speaker 3: just like glaring backy you, with glowing eyes, and that
Speaker 3: would be really scary. So we call that the jungle scaredes,
Speaker 3: where like your mind kind of gets away from you.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Okay, But Fill's greatest fear in the jungle just shocked
Speaker 1: the socks off me. This is not what I was expecting.
Speaker 1: Wait till you hear this. I just click baited you
Speaker 1: in my own podcast. But seriously, you won't believe what
Speaker 1: this entomologist fears most in the rainforest. Ooh, click click click.
Speaker 3: My biggest fear in the jungle is trees. What trees?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 3: Because they weigh so much, that's true, and tree falls
Speaker 3: are a very natural part of the cycle of the rainforest.
Speaker 3: About two to three percent of the rainforest is in
Speaker 3: the tree fall zone at any moment, and every single
Speaker 3: day when you're in the jungle, you were here at
Speaker 3: some point a big s and like sometimes you feel
Speaker 3: that you earth shake because a tree that could weigh,
Speaker 3: you know, a few thousand pounds just fell. And not
Speaker 3: only did it fall, but there's vines everywhere, so it
Speaker 3: took a bunch of trees next to it down. And
Speaker 3: you can have this huge area cleared out that if
Speaker 3: you were anywhere near, there's not a whole lot you
Speaker 3: can do. And there was one time in Peru that
Speaker 3: I was out hiking. I was about a mile from
Speaker 3: base camp and I hear this crazy loud storm come in.
Speaker 3: I mean it sounded like a train was coming. I
Speaker 3: never heard anything like that. And then the wind started.
Speaker 3: And that is your biggest danger when it comes to trees,
Speaker 3: it's rain and wind, because that's what will take them down.
Speaker 3: And I just started, I mean I started hearing trees
Speaker 3: come down, branches started falling, So I turned and sprint
Speaker 3: it back. I've never sprinted a full mile, probably did
Speaker 3: like a four minute fifty five second mile, and there
Speaker 3: was literally, I mean we're talking six four hundred pound
Speaker 3: branches falling to my left and right a giant tree
Speaker 3: started falling, falling in the trail in front of me,
Speaker 3: and I had to kind of stop, and then I
Speaker 3: ran underneath it, and it was like crazy Indiana Jones
Speaker 3: go over where. I was like, where's my hat that
Speaker 3: I dropped? I got a grab and yeah, I got
Speaker 3: back and I just you don't mess around with that
Speaker 3: kind of thing. And so there's a lot of times
Speaker 3: that I've had to cancel hikes if rain is too
Speaker 3: high or wind is too high, because you just don't
Speaker 3: want to risk it. And I've had friends that have
Speaker 3: left their bag somewhere and they come back, you know,
Speaker 3: an hour later, and that bag is smashed by a
Speaker 3: giant branch that fell from the sky. And so it
Speaker 3: can just happen.
Speaker 1: And never knew. I never considered this, Yeah, I never.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe you could fall into a pit of alligators,
Speaker 1: but I never for sure trees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the animals, at least in the New
Speaker 3: World tropics, so central South America, generally, you're you're pretty
Speaker 3: okay with most of the things that are down there.
Speaker 3: There are some other tropics where you have other animals
Speaker 3: you need to be concerned about. But usually where I work,
Speaker 3: you're you're pretty good. Just don't get hit by a tree.
Speaker 1: Oh I have a question about gifts. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So I know that if you, let's say that you
Speaker 1: really like pigs or dragons or or you or something,
Speaker 1: you get a lot of gifts with that. Do you
Speaker 1: get a lot of butterfly and moth gifts?
Speaker 3: I do? I do, And I'm okay with it because
Speaker 3: I remember somebody got me like a little kitty, you know,
Speaker 3: is one of those like bug chamber things, like a
Speaker 3: little fold out thing that is aimed at judging by
Speaker 3: the font, probably aimed at like seven eight year olds, okay,
Speaker 3: And I was like, this thing's dope. And I carried
Speaker 3: around my backpack in the field for like two years
Speaker 3: and I use it all the time when I found
Speaker 3: something cool, when I wanted to stick it in there,
Speaker 3: I'd be like, this thing's collapsible. How great is this?
Speaker 3: I need to make this for adults too.
Speaker 1: I look this up and they're like five bucks on
Speaker 1: the internet, ear in a toy store, and they look
Speaker 1: like tiny mesh collapsible laundry hampers the zip down flat,
Speaker 1: so you can keep a bug catcher in your purse
Speaker 1: or pocket at all times, like a six year old
Speaker 1: who might just need to hang out with a cricket
Speaker 1: or a firefly for a little bit. It's chill.
Speaker 3: And also, my favorite thing about gifts and butterflies are
Speaker 3: the gifts that butterflies give each other such aspects. So
Speaker 3: it's called a nuptial gift.
Speaker 1: Oh your god.
Speaker 3: When let's say you love you love a female butterfly,
Speaker 3: and you're like, what do I do to impress her?
Speaker 3: So sometimes that tactic will be finding a source of sodium,
Speaker 3: whether that be in mud or you know, piss or
Speaker 3: dead animal or jaguar boop. You get that sodium minium,
Speaker 3: and then you make a sperm packet this thing called
Speaker 3: a spermatophore, and you inject the whole thing into there.
Speaker 3: So you're giving her sperm and salt.
Speaker 1: Wait a second, so you're giving her like a gift basket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that has your geas and then also just like a salt,
Speaker 1: a salt junk.
Speaker 3: You're serious, yes, And it's because salt is generally pretty
Speaker 3: rare out there. Plants don't have a lot of salt
Speaker 3: because it's poisonous to them, and so the males kind
Speaker 3: of say, hey, you're gonna need this to make some
Speaker 3: nice eggs and for our babies to be happy together,
Speaker 3: so they give her some salt. But there's also my
Speaker 3: favorite nuptial gift is poison.
Speaker 1: What. Yes, that sucks, although I guess when you buy
Speaker 1: someone or drink at a bar, you're technically giving them poison,
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, Like here's the poison.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there's this group, the glass wing butterflies, and
Speaker 3: they are naturally chemically defended by the what they eat
Speaker 3: as a caterpillar, so they have a certain type of
Speaker 3: I think it's a cardentolid toxin in them that makes
Speaker 3: them toxic to most things like birds, but spiders can
Speaker 3: still eat them, and some other predators can still eat them.
Speaker 3: So they need to get another toxin as an adult,
Speaker 3: but only the males do it. So there's certain flowers
Speaker 3: out there that you will very rarely find. So when
Speaker 3: you do find them, you will find a swarm of
Speaker 3: like thirty males of a bunch of different species all
Speaker 3: drinking up this nectar of these rare flowers to become
Speaker 3: poisonous themselves. Oh, my god, and they hold onto that
Speaker 3: poison until they mate, and then when they're poisonous, that
Speaker 3: means that they're defended from things that would try to
Speaker 3: eat them, and people if scientists have done tests and
Speaker 3: found that spiders will reject eating them if they have
Speaker 3: drank from these flowers.
Speaker 1: They take a chomp and they're like, oh hell no.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the spiders somehow detect it, and other predators somehow
Speaker 3: detect it or they've learned and yeah, and so they
Speaker 3: hold onto it until they mate. Because the female doesn't
Speaker 3: go for those flowers. She's busy just being a female
Speaker 3: flying around. And so when he mates, he gives her sperm,
Speaker 3: but he also gives her that poison. I think he
Speaker 3: gives about fifty percent of what he has to the female.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and then he says, here's the gift of poison. Ps.
Speaker 3: Now you're protected for life. And it's like, it sounds
Speaker 3: kind of crazy to give that, But it doesn't even
Speaker 3: stop there, because then the eggs that she lays have
Speaker 3: like a thin layer of this poison on them too,
Speaker 3: and protects them from things like parasitoids that would inject
Speaker 3: you know, eggs into those eggs. And so It's pretty
Speaker 3: cool thing that you can watch these butterflies swarm around
Speaker 3: this flower knowing there after single chemical here that is
Speaker 3: going to go into a female when the mates, and
Speaker 3: then into an egg when chi lay's eggs.
Speaker 1: That's so romantic, it is.
Speaker 3: I do not recommend giving the gift of poison. The
Speaker 3: public disclaimer right now.
Speaker 1: Alcohol and perfume both poisonous.
Speaker 3: That is true. Sure, that is true.
Speaker 1: You've told me before, and I would like you to
Speaker 1: expand upon this, but that butterflies are disgusting.
Speaker 3: They are horribly disgusting.
Speaker 1: In what way because they're so beautiful.
Speaker 3: They are beautiful, but they're disgusting, you guys. And you
Speaker 3: find this out when you just spend enough time with them,
Speaker 3: and it's I find it hilarious. Every time I see
Speaker 3: them do something even grosser. I'm just like, wow, you
Speaker 3: do not stop. So let's talk about we're on the
Speaker 3: topic of mating. Let's talk about mating. They do things
Speaker 3: like they have sperm plugs and when they mate with
Speaker 3: the female they plug her up and say, no more
Speaker 3: males inside you. It's kind of gross. They also have
Speaker 3: some hooks sometimes that will like hook out the sperm
Speaker 3: from the previous male and stick their own sperm in there.
Speaker 3: They'll clean you out like a clean like a pip cleanter.
Speaker 3: It's it is messy. Yeah, insect Genitalia can be pretty crazy.
Speaker 3: They feed on dead animals. I've seen some of the
Speaker 3: rarest butterflies feeding on dead animals that smell horrible.
Speaker 1: Those pictures don't make sense to me because like a
Speaker 1: butterflies is a thing that's like on a Mother's Day card. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also on a rotten carcass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need to make some new Mother's Day cards
Speaker 3: to be like, I love you mom. Here's a dead animal,
Speaker 3: but look at the beautiful butterfly in that little corner.
Speaker 3: It's there nuggets. Yes, So they feed on dead animals.
Speaker 3: They love poop, all sorts of poop, especially if you
Speaker 3: eat some meat in there, they will get drunk. Another
Speaker 3: thing I've seen so a lot of it is to
Speaker 3: get rare resources. So when it comes to sodium. One
Speaker 3: time had a butterfly that landed on my finger and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, this is really nice, and I
Speaker 3: was looking at what it was doing and it was
Speaker 3: drinking this off my finger and I was like, fingers
Speaker 3: sweaty sweaty fingers when you're out there, trust me, your
Speaker 3: fingers get sweaty. I don't want to. Yeah, it's gross.
Speaker 3: But after a while my sweat dried, but the butterflies
Speaker 3: still wanted to get that salt that was on my finger.
Speaker 3: So what did it do. It would pee on my
Speaker 3: finger and then turn around and drink up that pea
Speaker 3: because that basically that pea, that liquid would absorb the
Speaker 3: little salt crystals and make it into a salty solution,
Speaker 3: and then it would turn around and drink it up.
Speaker 3: So I would just watch it basically, pete turn around,
Speaker 3: drink Pete turn around, drink on my finger. And I
Speaker 3: was like, you disgusting creature. You're lucky, you're beautiful.
Speaker 1: So that's a given. Mountain dew dried and you're like,
Speaker 1: I know one way to rehydrid.
Speaker 3: So gross, super gross.
Speaker 1: You like that about butterflies, that they have such a
Speaker 1: beautiful public image but are like secretly super nasty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's so much more interesting the people
Speaker 3: give them credit for. And in the entomology world, people
Speaker 3: like to give each other a little bit of crap
Speaker 3: depending on what you study, and they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 3: you study micro moths, you must be weird. But butterflies
Speaker 3: seem like the easiest, most approachable insect to most people.
Speaker 3: So I think some entomologists will be like just kind
Speaker 3: of like dog on people who study butterflies because they're like, oh, like,
Speaker 3: of course you study them because they're so pretty. I
Speaker 3: study these things that are horrible looking, yeah, like.
Speaker 1: Weird botflies, and like many toothed saber.
Speaker 3: Maggots exactly, I love those saber maggots.
Speaker 1: So okay, saber maggots are not real, but botflies are
Speaker 1: very real, and they will lay a baby in your
Speaker 1: skin which hatches out like a little wormy surprise jumping
Speaker 1: out of a birthday cake. And entomologists they brag about
Speaker 1: getting botflied, like Phil has expressed to me before his
Speaker 1: chagrin and dismay and never having had one of these little, moist,
Speaker 1: miniature alien esque beings burst from his flesh. One day, Phil,
Speaker 1: one day you'll get one. Oh okay, quick update. So
Speaker 1: Phil finally got his first buttfly. It was just about
Speaker 1: a year ago. It was g gnarly. It was just
Speaker 1: a weeping, chewing, squirming baby maggot in his back. He
Speaker 1: made videos about it on his Jungle Diaries YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: You can go back and find him also as long
Speaker 1: as you're following him. He does ace nature content on
Speaker 1: his TikTok these days, including some breathtaking slow mo he
Speaker 1: just posted today. He rigged up with an iPhone and
Speaker 1: a hummingbird feeder. It's gonna make your whole day. And
Speaker 1: every day feels like a month lately, so it's gonna
Speaker 1: make your whole month.
Speaker 3: And so we came up with an expression when I
Speaker 3: was working in Ecuador. We said, only tough guys catch
Speaker 3: butterflies because there's like they're just very complicated. They do
Speaker 3: gross things, they have really interesting behaviors. They're a really
Speaker 3: good model to study and they Yeah, you have to
Speaker 3: be really tough to get out there and study these things.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, you can fall into a volcano chasing an
Speaker 1: invisible butterfly. And then the jungle is a tangle of
Speaker 1: dangers and beauty and mystery. Not to mention, there is
Speaker 1: the ever present mystery of transformation that I feel like
Speaker 1: that is one thing that just boggles everyone about butterflies,
Speaker 1: that they are capable of such an extreme makeover, Yeah,
Speaker 1: such a rebranding. What is happening when you have a
Speaker 1: chubby caterpillar. You have a tube of guts and then
Speaker 1: it pieces out is like catch it later gone fishing,
Speaker 1: and then it comes out as a different creature. I've
Speaker 1: heard that they have the same memories and the same aversions.
Speaker 3: I think there have been some studies that have showed that, yes,
Speaker 3: some of those memories and aversions can last into an adult.
Speaker 3: Some people think that they entirely turn to goo inside
Speaker 3: and then just reform. They don't entirely. There are still
Speaker 3: some parts that remain, these things called image discs that
Speaker 3: have been with them for a long time and actually
Speaker 3: inside some late in star caterpillars, meaning they're they're very
Speaker 3: mature caterpillars about to pupate. You will actually have little
Speaker 3: bits of butterfly in them, so they're already starting to
Speaker 3: change before they get in there. Okay, And then they
Speaker 3: get in there, a lot of them goes down, but
Speaker 3: the imaginal disc will turn into things like their eyes
Speaker 3: or their wings and that kind of thing. And so
Speaker 3: it's it is a lot of work, and it is
Speaker 3: really amazing. But there's some people out there. Our friend
Speaker 3: Aaron Palmerantz is an example of somebody who has figured
Speaker 3: out a way to cut a little window into a
Speaker 3: pupa what and then you can actually watch what happens
Speaker 3: on the inside.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. How the hell does he do that?
Speaker 3: Just a very tiny knife and a lot of patience,
Speaker 3: some soran rap, yes, and so you can actually see
Speaker 3: what's going on inside. So scientists have a pretty cool idea.
Speaker 3: They've done like MRIs or crazy scans on them to
Speaker 3: watch this transformation over time. But it is I mean,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of things in nature that just
Speaker 3: blow your mind. And that is something that is happening
Speaker 3: every day around the world. And every kid has done.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of kids grow caterpillars into adult
Speaker 3: butterflies in that stage. Is truly impressive and really wild.
Speaker 1: Now the DNA is the same, right is a DNA
Speaker 1: expression changing? Like how does I just have no idea
Speaker 1: how it works?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So yeah, there will be genes that get expressed differently.
Speaker 3: It is fascinating how some of the genes will turn
Speaker 3: on at different times of their life or turn off
Speaker 3: at different times of their life. And it's it's all
Speaker 3: stored in that same nucleus. I mean, their DNA has
Speaker 3: all the information to do all of these things throughout
Speaker 3: its life.
Speaker 1: And now can you tell me the difference between a
Speaker 1: cocoon and a chrystalist, because I know that those things
Speaker 1: get used a lot wrongly. And does it piss you off?
Speaker 3: It doesn't piss me off, because I mess it up
Speaker 3: sometimes too, Okay, but just don't do it. Okay, if
Speaker 3: you're listening at home, it's going to start to piss
Speaker 3: me off now because you've heard me explain it. So,
Speaker 3: chrystalis is what a butterfly creates, okay. And it's just
Speaker 3: a single little wrapping on the outside, and they're right
Speaker 3: on the inside there, so you can actually see their
Speaker 3: abdomen still, you can kind of see the wings a
Speaker 3: little bit in there, and you can if you poke it,
Speaker 3: it'll wriggle a little bit. And so that is a chrysalis.
Speaker 3: A cocoon has a pupa inside, Okay, So that pupa
Speaker 3: is basically equivalent to the chrysalis, where it is everything
Speaker 3: self contained right there. But the cocoon is this silky
Speaker 3: thing wrapped around the pupa. And that's what a lot
Speaker 3: of moths will do is they make a cocoon and
Speaker 3: they take they make little silk, or they'll use their
Speaker 3: hairs on their body and they make a little protective thing,
Speaker 3: and then inside that protective thing they will pupe eate.
Speaker 3: They will spend the winter as a cocoon and then
Speaker 3: hatch in the spring. And so that layer of protection
Speaker 3: that the cocoon creates allows them to survive. And you know,
Speaker 3: withstand the elements in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times when they change from one
Speaker 1: instar to the when they upgrade their instain and they
Speaker 1: get a little chubbier, they don't they eat their skin.
Speaker 1: I seem to remember that when I volunteering at the
Speaker 1: butterfly and they.
Speaker 3: Will, especially when the hats, they'll eat their egg.
Speaker 1: Remember when I was talking about those in stars, those
Speaker 1: like Russian nesting dolls. So caterpillars will molt into the
Speaker 1: bigger size, kind of like they're unzipping their skin like
Speaker 1: a sleeping bag, and then unlike a sleeping bag, they'll
Speaker 1: eat it after they'll just i'm nomina because it's made
Speaker 1: out of them and they need to make more of themselves,
Speaker 1: so they just use that raw material. I was so
Speaker 1: enthused to learn this fact in a museum volunteer seminar
Speaker 1: about butterflies, but quite Frankly, I was more amused to
Speaker 1: look up at the presenter's PowerPoint and see that on
Speaker 1: their computer desktop they labeled the Butterfly keynote folder. But stuff.
Speaker 1: I think of that often and it makes my day. Also,
Speaker 1: thank you to patrons and sponsors of the show for
Speaker 1: making it possible to donate to a cause of the
Speaker 1: ologists choosing each week, and this week a donation is
Speaker 1: going to go to the Xerxes Society that's at Xerxes
Speaker 1: dot org. You're gonna hear more about them later in
Speaker 1: the show. Oh, you're gonna be like, wow, Xerxes dot org.
Speaker 1: I like you a lot, so we donated to them. Also,
Speaker 1: I just texted Phil to see if he has a
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen related charity he wants to donate to, and
Speaker 1: he chose Meals on Wheels, which is providing food and
Speaker 1: home checks and gift baskets and even just notes to
Speaker 1: seniors during this not easy time. And they are at
Speaker 1: Meals on Wheelsamerica dot org. Great choice. Well, so those
Speaker 1: donations were made possible by sponsors of the show. We
Speaker 1: may hear about now, all right, so let's answer some
Speaker 1: friggin' questions. Thanks patrons, for sending these in. You ready?
Speaker 1: Why am I singing? I'm excited? Are you ready for
Speaker 1: a rapid fire around?
Speaker 3: Oh goodness, hit me?
Speaker 1: I got so many questions. Okay, over forty, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try and blaze through. You don't have to do
Speaker 1: rapid fire, but.
Speaker 3: We got a lot, so just challenge accepted. You ready,
Speaker 3: where's it go?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Butterfly time.
Speaker 1: Brian Edge wants to know why are they not called flutterbys?
Speaker 3: You know, let's start a public campaign and change this.
Speaker 1: Let's do it all right, flutterbys should just be what
Speaker 1: they're called.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think the name butterfly comes from. There's
Speaker 3: a few theories, but supposedly this came from like Europe
Speaker 3: or the or England or something where one of the
Speaker 3: common butterflies around there is a sulfur which is kind
Speaker 3: of yellowe and it looks like butterflying. But that might
Speaker 3: just be people these days being like this makes sense.
Speaker 3: Let's say that that's the case. But it's so, yeah,
Speaker 3: that is why.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to look into that. Yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: really cute. It is very cute. They're just gonna be butterflying.
Speaker 1: Let's a butterfly damn cute, so quick fact check on this.
Speaker 1: It's split. Some folks think butterfly came from but flogu,
Speaker 1: meaning to beatfly as the wings beat, but honestly I
Speaker 1: prefer the alternate entomology, which is that they're named after
Speaker 1: floating paths of fat. Also, the German word for butterfly
Speaker 1: translates to thief of dairy protein or butter liquor or.
Speaker 1: People also think it could be because they excrete a
Speaker 1: yellowish substance that looks like melted butter. The Dutch for
Speaker 1: butterfly translates to butter crapper. So between milk liquor and butterpooper,
Speaker 1: you now have so many friendly, low key insults in
Speaker 1: your arsenal. No our intended there, Clark Rake wants to know.
Speaker 1: Growing up, it seemed like there was an abundance of
Speaker 1: butterflies through the summers monarchs. Especially these days, I'm lucky
Speaker 1: to spot even one through the summers. Is this just
Speaker 1: a drop, is it my region Ontario? Or is there
Speaker 1: a real population decline?
Speaker 3: There is a real population decline, And when it comes
Speaker 3: to conservation in the US, I always think that the
Speaker 3: minimum standard we should have is that future generations of
Speaker 3: kids get to see butterflies flying around their backyard like
Speaker 3: that should happen. That was something that in my backyard
Speaker 3: was happening all the time, and I loved it. And
Speaker 3: if we've messed up our ecosystem so much that we
Speaker 3: don't have butterflies for our future generations to see, we've
Speaker 3: made a big mistake. And we're certainly on the way there.
Speaker 3: And that's a good observation that people are actually seeing less.
Speaker 3: And a lot of that has to do with things
Speaker 3: like monarchs their migration along the way. There aren't as
Speaker 3: many flowers for them to drink from. There aren't as
Speaker 3: many milkweed plants for them to lay eggs on. It
Speaker 3: has to do a lot with our agriculture with we've
Speaker 3: done a lot of habitat destruction. When it comes to developments,
Speaker 3: the best thing you can do, everybody can do this
Speaker 3: if you have a yard or a patio or anything,
Speaker 3: is to plant native plants. So there's a great website
Speaker 3: Xerxes Society Xercees. They will have great listings to show
Speaker 3: what you should plant there. And it makes a big
Speaker 3: difference because if you're putting out any plant, any flour,
Speaker 3: and you see butterflies come there and drink formad or
Speaker 3: lay eggs on there. That means that that was previously
Speaker 3: missing from the ecosystem there. We need more and more
Speaker 3: and more to help boost those populations and help them
Speaker 3: sustain what we've done to our area.
Speaker 1: So make sure that you plant something native. Yes, and
Speaker 1: you can check on the website and be like, uh.
Speaker 3: Huh for sure. Yeah, something for the adults, so some
Speaker 3: really nice. Some of the cone flowers are great, butterflies
Speaker 3: love drinking those for the nectar. And then something for
Speaker 3: the caterpillars too, so there's a lot and like the
Speaker 3: carrot family, that will be really good for some caterpillars.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of options out there.
Speaker 1: Okay, oh killer. Also it's just like party at my patio. Yea,
Speaker 1: butterflies for sure invited. I got what you like to drink,
Speaker 1: Please do come over. So once again, that is the
Speaker 1: Xerxes Society for Invertebrate Conservation and they're at xerxes dot org.
Speaker 1: This site is great. I just poked all around it.
Speaker 1: You can click on your part of the country and
Speaker 1: a whole list of region specific pollinator plants come up,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to worry like, what if I
Speaker 1: plant did the wrong thing, It'll tell you what to plant.
Speaker 1: And the name Xerxes is in honor of the first
Speaker 1: North American butterfly to go extinct, wamp wamp, because of
Speaker 1: human activity. But the nonprofit was started by a doctor,
Speaker 1: Robert Michael Pyle, who was a butterfly biologist and author.
Speaker 1: He's still he's very much alive. I looked up a
Speaker 1: photo of him and I found one where he has
Speaker 1: these bright blue eyes that peer out from around a
Speaker 1: halo of white, wiry hair, all framed by the snowy
Speaker 1: bush of a beard and over his shoulders. In this
Speaker 1: one photo, he's wearing a cloak of pea green moss
Speaker 1: from a nearby fallen tree. And I just like, I
Speaker 1: want to kick back and drink rotten nectar with this dude.
Speaker 1: I want to be his friend. Phil hook it up.
Speaker 1: Sarah Wright wants to know are there any moths or
Speaker 1: butterflies that will actually eat you? Or is my fear
Speaker 1: of them completely irrational?
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to tell you, but your fear is rational.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: So there is a real thing called a vampire moth.
Speaker 3: This is such a lie, This is this is absolutely real.
Speaker 3: I think the genus is called Calyptera, and they have
Speaker 3: a piercing mouth part and a lot of times they
Speaker 3: they'll find them like on cattle or something out there.
Speaker 3: But I think they have have landed on humans and
Speaker 3: like pierced to them and then drank their blood.
Speaker 1: This does not feel like a real story. Phil Torras,
Speaker 1: Please tell me.
Speaker 3: If this is If this is this is totally real?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: This cannot be real?
Speaker 3: And what I love about it is the way that
Speaker 3: they think it evolved is from previously feeding on fruit.
Speaker 3: So if you feed on fruit, you need to be
Speaker 3: able to pierce that skin of the fruit, right, So
Speaker 3: they've evolved this proboscis that's kind of pointing at the end.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And then imagine this scenario where one of these butterflies
Speaker 3: that was feeding on fruit landed on some mammal and
Speaker 3: maybe was drinking its salt or something like that, and
Speaker 3: then accidentally pierced through the skin and then got a
Speaker 3: mouthful of blood. And then that one was like, wow,
Speaker 3: I have like super powers and can lay a million
Speaker 3: eggs and maybe with a million females, so they had
Speaker 3: higher reproductive success. And then that gene and that behavior
Speaker 3: just evolved into them, and so it all came from
Speaker 3: piercing fruit. And what in my like science fiction future
Speaker 3: of the world in like a million years, that's going
Speaker 3: to be more commonplace because there are butterflies, especially in
Speaker 3: the tracks, and a subfamily that will feed on fruit
Speaker 3: all the time, and they have very sharp proboscuses and
Speaker 3: so they can pierce right through a fruit to drink it,
Speaker 3: and so they basically have the right scenario set to
Speaker 3: evolve into drinking human blood. So I would just love to, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you, like go into the future in a
Speaker 3: time machine. You come out and be like, where are
Speaker 3: all the humans? Then all of a sudden, you're just
Speaker 3: like surrounded by butterflies that are beautiful and landing on
Speaker 3: you and piercing your skin and drinking your blood dry.
Speaker 1: The future sucks, so naturally. I looked up the vampire moth,
Speaker 1: and despite its hell and death metal habits, it looks
Speaker 1: very bige, very unassuming, very normcore. So is that the
Speaker 1: most goth moth I'm feeling like, no, I think that
Speaker 1: the climbing moth might take it. Hear me out. It's
Speaker 1: this lily white moth with a black, velvety upside. Down
Speaker 1: cross on its wings, and it looks very much like
Speaker 1: it would fly into a hot topic and try to
Speaker 1: eat a wool cape. But then, in a quest to
Speaker 1: find the Gothis moth, I have to land perhaps on
Speaker 1: the legendary lepidoptera from Silence of the.
Speaker 3: Lamps, Agent Starling meets mister Acharantia sticks Weird, better known
Speaker 3: to his friends as the Death's Head moth.
Speaker 1: So Deathhead moth. It's got a skull on his face.
Speaker 1: It's named after a river and hell, and it tricks
Speaker 1: bees and eats their honey. This is a clear winner
Speaker 1: of the Gothis moth pageant. Thank you for taking this
Speaker 1: journey with me. No wait, really quick diversion. Speaking of movies,
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite butterfly movie? How do you
Speaker 1: feel about the butterfly effect? Is there any any movies
Speaker 1: that get butterflies right or wrong?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: There's a lot to get them wrong. Bugs Life is
Speaker 3: like still one of my favorite movies ever. It's pretty great,
Speaker 3: make some mistakes, but I like it. When I was
Speaker 3: in college, we had an entomology club that we started,
Speaker 3: and we would get together and we would watch like
Speaker 3: really bad movies with insect themes. Oh, my God, and
Speaker 3: like we would watch Erectrophobe and be like, oh, that
Speaker 3: butterfly isn't found on that continent, and like make all
Speaker 3: these like snarky remarks, and so most people get it wrong.
Speaker 3: But the butterfly affect the movie. That is one hundred
Speaker 3: percent accurate. Every butterfly flap that happens, that changes the
Speaker 3: entire world. That's just so it's not true.
Speaker 1: It's not well, you got me with the vampire butterflies, Yes,
Speaker 1: for a minute there. So Julie wants to know how
Speaker 1: long do butterflies live and what does a day in
Speaker 1: the life of a butterfly look like.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a good question. So most butterflies will live
Speaker 3: maybe around two weeks, you could say, and their life
Speaker 3: if they're male, it'll be you know, getting some good resources.
Speaker 3: Lots of times it'll be defending a territory. Some we'll
Speaker 3: just kind of hang out in a patch of flowers
Speaker 3: or hang out side of a tree and kind of
Speaker 3: defend that and waiting for a female to come by.
Speaker 3: And for female, same thing, she's gonna be drinking nectar.
Speaker 3: But then like floating around a little bit easier, and
Speaker 3: you can actually usually tell the difference between a male
Speaker 3: and female butterfly and flight just by kind of watching
Speaker 3: the speed, and the males kind of fly around like
Speaker 3: they got somewhere to go, and they're a little bit
Speaker 3: more rapid and jittery and like, hey, are you a male?
Speaker 3: Get out of here and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So wait, they have like a horny swagger.
Speaker 3: Basically, it's like they spray too much axon in the
Speaker 3: morning and they're like, I got this.
Speaker 1: And espress, so who wants to do it? Who wants
Speaker 1: to do it?
Speaker 3: And then the females kind of just float around. They're
Speaker 3: like these beautiful little things that are just a little
Speaker 3: bit floppier up in the air, a little bit more
Speaker 3: like a cartoon butterfly you would see. And generally they're
Speaker 3: just kind of saying, okay, is there a male that's
Speaker 3: gonna approach me? Or let's say I'm regular lay eggs.
Speaker 3: They're smelling the air with their antennae to figure out
Speaker 3: where is the host plant that I need that specific
Speaker 3: type of plant to lay an egg. So they're just
Speaker 3: kind of cruising, sniffing the air and enjoy the day,
Speaker 3: and for.
Speaker 1: Two weeks they got a lifespan two.
Speaker 3: Generally two weeks, and then you have some exceptions, especially
Speaker 3: migratory species like the monarchs, the ones that overwinter in Mexico.
Speaker 3: They live for months and they can travel super far,
Speaker 3: and it's it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I just went there and you posted video and there
Speaker 1: were millions of monarchs. So look for the video called
Speaker 1: the Butterfly Migration on Phil's YouTube channel, The Jungle Diaries.
Speaker 1: So did Phil loose his mind? Spoiler alert?
Speaker 3: I lost my mind. I think it's about ten million
Speaker 3: monarchs per acre, okay, something like that, and it was insane.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, ten million monarchs per acre.
Speaker 3: It was so there's so many butterflies around that it
Speaker 3: was loud. You would hear this like like this this
Speaker 3: rustling of you know, a single butterfly flies by you
Speaker 3: and flaps its wing. You won't hear that. But if
Speaker 3: you put ten million around you, all of a sudden, all
Speaker 3: those micro noises add up into like filling the entire
Speaker 3: forest with this like whispering sound. You can hear it,
Speaker 3: but that's no wind. That is the sound of millions
Speaker 3: of butterflies flying around me right now, And it's probably
Speaker 3: my favorite sound ever. It was just one of the
Speaker 3: most magical things, and it really solidifies our need for
Speaker 3: conservation in the US and our need to put more
Speaker 3: native plants out there. Because growing up, when I first
Speaker 3: learned about these monarchs migrating down to this forest in Mexico,
Speaker 3: we were always taught like, oh, the Mexicans better protect
Speaker 3: this forest because if they don't, then the butterflies won't
Speaker 3: have any place to overwinter, and it's going to be
Speaker 3: their fault. And they've done a pretty good job actually
Speaker 3: protecting the forest. It's not perfect, but they've incorporated it
Speaker 3: into their local tourism, so it's providing good income and
Speaker 3: more motivation not to cut down the forest. But the
Speaker 3: reason why butterfly populations have been dropping now the monarchs
Speaker 3: is because of what we've done here in the US.
Speaker 3: We've decimated their migration routes. We have, you know, used
Speaker 3: certain herbicides that have killed out all the milkweed in
Speaker 3: certain areas, so they don't have anywhere to lay their eggs.
Speaker 3: So it was very interesting when you're down there and
Speaker 3: you look around at these butterflies and say, you could
Speaker 3: have flown here from Canada, you could have flown here
Speaker 3: from Montana, you could have flown here from South Carolina.
Speaker 3: Each one has a different story behind it, and you
Speaker 3: can imagine how many times it could have died or
Speaker 3: needed a flour had all these things happened to it.
Speaker 3: And then they end up right there in this forest
Speaker 3: and it's really something.
Speaker 1: Now is that all those are during the winter months
Speaker 1: or right before spreading?
Speaker 3: Okay, winter months, so basically November two February is the peak,
Speaker 3: I would say.
Speaker 1: So like, get your tickets for the Mexican Butterfly Forest,
Speaker 1: like now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm actually going to be leading trips out there
Speaker 3: next year. So if you guys want to come, just
Speaker 3: follow me and I'll be posting about it.
Speaker 1: So Phil and another friend of ours, doctor Jason Goldman,
Speaker 1: lead trips through Atlas Obscuris. So follow Phil on social media,
Speaker 1: go to his web site in the show notes, or
Speaker 1: check at Less Obscura. It may not be booking yet,
Speaker 1: but keep checking back. They'll announce it. Heather Crowther wants
Speaker 1: to know. I know touching butterfly wings can really hurt them,
Speaker 1: but why what's happening? Is it the oils on our
Speaker 1: hands reacting with something? What's happening when you touch a
Speaker 1: butterfly without consent?
Speaker 3: Not a whole lot. What So a lot of people
Speaker 3: out there, will you know, if they see an image
Speaker 3: of me, like holding a butterfly by its wings or something,
Speaker 3: they'll be like, oh, you're killing it, and that's that's
Speaker 3: not the case. Now, there are very specific ways to
Speaker 3: hold a butterfly that I'm good at where you minimize
Speaker 3: the amount of damage because generally, if you're touching it wrong,
Speaker 3: you're rubbing all the scales off of it, or you
Speaker 3: might tear its wing a little bit because their wings
Speaker 3: are pretty sensitive, so you definitely don't want to damage
Speaker 3: the wing. I do not recommend anybody touching a butterfly,
Speaker 3: but you probably won't kill it unless you like really
Speaker 3: get into there. And so, yeah, they're tougher than they look.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I always felt like it was
Speaker 1: like if you touch a fly, like it will find
Speaker 1: a corner. It will be like see you later, you've
Speaker 1: killed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not true, not true.
Speaker 1: Jason Shirley wants to know what's the largest butterfly ever recorded.
Speaker 3: The Queen Alexandra's birdwing. Okay, they found down in like
Speaker 3: Papua New Guinea in certain areas there, and I want
Speaker 3: to say it's the females have like a eleven inch
Speaker 3: wingspan something like that. It's huge. And the first entomologist
Speaker 3: who went down there to collect this thing, they didn't
Speaker 3: have giant butterfly nets because they fly way up high,
Speaker 3: so the only way they could collect them is with
Speaker 3: the shotgun. So they would take a shotgun, aim it
Speaker 3: up and then bang, shoot this thing out of the
Speaker 3: sky and they'd be like, whoa, there's a butterfly. And
Speaker 3: so some of the oldest specimens i'm sure in like
Speaker 3: the London Museum and that kind of thing have shotgun
Speaker 3: holes in them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: A queen Queen Alexandra's bird wing, Oh my god, which
Speaker 3: is a very endangered species, and it's one of the
Speaker 3: few that collecting it has made it endangered. Generally, there's
Speaker 3: so many butterflies that go around habitat destruction is the
Speaker 3: big thing, and collecting it is not really a big deal.
Speaker 3: But some of those they are protected species. A lot
Speaker 3: of the bird wings because they're so big and really beautiful.
Speaker 3: The females look different than the males, really gorgeous, incredible species,
Speaker 3: and so sometimes people will collect them just to for
Speaker 3: art or just to own them, rather than collect them
Speaker 3: for data or for science to be done.
Speaker 1: So there caterpillars. Are they the size of hot talks?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Probably brought worst, Okay, I'm sure they are huge.
Speaker 3: There are some big caterpillars out there.
Speaker 1: That brings me to a personal question about our own collection.
Speaker 1: It's bad that I have a butterfly collection and dead
Speaker 1: butterflies that I have purchased.
Speaker 3: It's not, okay, it depends on you want to make
Speaker 3: sure it's the right species. There are some that are protected,
Speaker 3: some that are endangered in the wild. You definitely don't
Speaker 3: want to have those for that, I think if you're
Speaker 3: doing it right and you're spreading appreciation, okay, that is okay.
Speaker 3: A lot of these are actually bread in facilities and
Speaker 3: they're not like collected in the wild because while butterflies
Speaker 3: they get pretty pretty beat up pretty quick. You can
Speaker 3: actually tell the age of a butterfly depending on how
Speaker 3: beat up it is generally, and only a couple days
Speaker 3: in they'll have some clips on their wings, or they'll
Speaker 3: have some dusty spots, and so that that's not going
Speaker 3: to be nice to display a home, so people will
Speaker 3: breathe them and that provides a good income for people
Speaker 3: and motivates them to protect the forest and protect the
Speaker 3: native plants in some corner of the world. So I
Speaker 3: think it's like, it's a cool product that can come
Speaker 3: out of these places and can be done in a
Speaker 3: ethical and sustainable and conservation minded way.
Speaker 1: Okay, Lexi Fitter says, I've heard that butterfly bushes are
Speaker 1: now considered invasive and are bad for butterflies. Why is
Speaker 1: this ps I live in Michigan.
Speaker 3: So she's talking about bootleo, which is a butterfly bush,
Speaker 3: and that was the one maybe you know, in the
Speaker 3: nineties early two thousands, everybody was like, plant this plant
Speaker 3: because it's a big bush. It has these really big
Speaker 3: hours on it that are just really pretty colored. And
Speaker 3: I planted a lot when I was a kid. And
Speaker 3: that's a tricky one because they are not native. There
Speaker 3: are native options that you can go for that do
Speaker 3: a similar effect. And generally when you plant non native things,
Speaker 3: you're slightly sterilizing your environment because yes, it may attract
Speaker 3: things that will feed on the nectar, but there's no
Speaker 3: caterpillars that are going to feed on the leaves. And
Speaker 3: if there's no caterpillars on the leaves and there's no
Speaker 3: birds feeding on those caterpillars or spider's crawing on that,
Speaker 3: and so it basically takes away this opportunity for life.
Speaker 3: It's a tricky thing. It's a personal decision. If you
Speaker 3: had the time and just google what's the best native
Speaker 3: thing to plant here instead, that would clearly be the winner.
Speaker 1: John Worster in Casey Handmler want to know, essentially, how
Speaker 1: do some butterflies fly so long? Are they just on
Speaker 1: the wind currents or are they really that bad ass?
Speaker 3: It's a little bit of wind current, a little bit
Speaker 3: of bad ass, And every butterfly the thorax will be
Speaker 3: a little bit different. So the thorax is where they
Speaker 3: keep all their big muscles for flight and for walking around.
Speaker 3: So some butterflies, you grab the thorax and you're like
Speaker 3: that thing is buff, like they like they work out
Speaker 3: and you'll really feel the strength of these flight muscles.
Speaker 3: And some insects, like beetles, the big ones that when
Speaker 3: they fly and you feel the thorax, it's actually like
Speaker 3: warm from the friction from like all that exothermic stuff
Speaker 3: going on, Like they're very their muscles do some work.
Speaker 3: So there's some butterflies that are pretty buff, and so
Speaker 3: they're able to fly a long time, and then they
Speaker 3: do take advantage of the currents. I think monarch butterflies
Speaker 3: have been recorded at eleven thousand feet oh my god.
Speaker 3: And they just kind of go where the wind goes
Speaker 3: and they take advantage of that. And so there have
Speaker 3: been times where if there's a big hurricane in the Caribbean,
Speaker 3: in Florida somewhere, people will be like, wow, I just
Speaker 3: found a butterfly that is native to Guatemala that is
Speaker 3: flying around my backyard right now, and it didn't belong here.
Speaker 3: So they can go really far sometimes and storms will
Speaker 3: push them that way.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Maybe they had some plant nectar. And
Speaker 1: then they're like, I mean, you know, fly a couple
Speaker 1: thousand miles by. Yeah, that's so bad ass. It's pretty
Speaker 1: cool how they're able to pull all this off. Like
Speaker 1: evolution is crazy because like predators put so much pressure.
Speaker 3: On things and just freak accidents put so much pressure
Speaker 3: on things to be a really efficient machine as an organism.
Speaker 3: So butterflies they may look pretty, but like they they're
Speaker 3: efficient and they're good flyers and they got they got
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting things about them.
Speaker 1: Have you taken anything away existentially or philosophically from butterflies,
Speaker 1: like about change, or about about not being ashamed to
Speaker 1: smelp who. I don't know anything you.
Speaker 3: Know, but I think you know the metamorphosis analogy or
Speaker 3: metaphor that's not my thing. But for me, it's it's
Speaker 3: all about like keeping that curiosity enjoy that I had
Speaker 3: as a seven year old catching butterfly, and like being
Speaker 3: like not ashamed at all to have that same excitement
Speaker 3: as a full grown adult and sure in high school
Speaker 3: and a little bit in college, like it wasn't like
Speaker 3: the cool thing to do to show off your butterfly collection,
Speaker 3: but I was just like it doesn't matter, Like I
Speaker 3: love this stuff and nature.
Speaker 1: Is so.
Speaker 3: Cool, and there's so much to learn, Like we know
Speaker 3: probably the most about the monarch butterfly and the cabbage white,
Speaker 3: but we still have so many questions about those two species,
Speaker 3: and imagine all the other eighteen thousand that are out there.
Speaker 3: So I just think, if anything, I've just learned, like
Speaker 3: just keep that joy alive and that curiosity alive, because
Speaker 3: nature really has some magnificent things, even if they happen
Speaker 3: to be really pretty, Like I don't care they're awesome.
Speaker 1: What about what's the crappiest thing about your job? What's
Speaker 1: the hardest or most disappointing or most arduous.
Speaker 3: Uh, it's a mix because I used to be more
Speaker 3: like official scientist and now a more science communicator, and
Speaker 3: so part of it. The travel is amazing, But there
Speaker 3: was a point where after living two years in the jungle,
Speaker 3: where I was like, I should probably be around other
Speaker 3: humans again, and so finding that balance, and I've seen
Speaker 3: some feeld biologists who go a little bit too far
Speaker 3: and end up because it's kind of addicting. You have
Speaker 3: this adrenaline rush, this idea that you can make a discovery,
Speaker 3: and it's really exciting out there. But you need to
Speaker 3: have a real life too, and you need to have relationships.
Speaker 3: And that's how that is a successful life. To me,
Speaker 3: it has to be meaningful both in work and discovery,
Speaker 3: but also in relationships with friends and loved ones and
Speaker 3: family and all that. So balancing that took a little
Speaker 3: bit of work, and still sometimes I'm traveling quite a bit.
Speaker 3: That can be challenging. I'm sure you know what I'm
Speaker 3: talking about. What other is tough about my job?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And then also just like freelance life. I think
Speaker 3: that's the only other thing a lot of people have.
Speaker 2: More.
Speaker 3: There are not a lot of jobs and science, and
Speaker 3: so I saw a lot of people going for the
Speaker 3: same thing of going to be a professor or research scientist,
Speaker 3: and I was like, Okay, well, I'm going to take
Speaker 3: a little left turn here and still have my mind stimulated,
Speaker 3: still get the same opportunities to travel for science, but
Speaker 3: work more on the communication side and storytelling side. Because
Speaker 3: when I was I would do these expeditions when I
Speaker 3: was young, and we would do the craziest things, like
Speaker 3: we got held a gunpoint twice in Venezuela, I got
Speaker 3: lost in a forceful of quick sent of Mongolia. I
Speaker 3: would like sing under the stars with these Mongolians drink
Speaker 3: and fermented horse milk, and that's how we communicated because
Speaker 3: they didn't speak English, I didn't speak Mongolian, and we
Speaker 3: would just sing each other's songs. And I was like, this,
Speaker 3: there's a side of science that people aren't hearing. And
Speaker 3: maybe if they heard those stories more, they would care
Speaker 3: more about what we're studying here, because sure, some of
Speaker 3: the insects out there aren't innately appealing to the average person.
Speaker 3: But when you tell a story around it, then it
Speaker 3: really starts to shine and people start to attach appreciation
Speaker 3: to them.
Speaker 1: I love that. I asked you the scariest thing in
Speaker 1: the jungle was, and you neglected to tell me that
Speaker 1: you've been held up at gunpoint twice.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. Humans are also very scary in the jungle too. Generally,
Speaker 3: you just as long as you communicate and and don't
Speaker 3: go in there as like American savior, like conservation is
Speaker 3: about working with the people there. It's not about working
Speaker 3: just with the animal like. It's all about working with
Speaker 3: the people and so building good relationships and using what
Speaker 3: they figured out over a long time.
Speaker 1: Were you able to negotiate your way out of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? We were. One time it was the government Venezuela.
Speaker 3: I was under Javaz. They weren't very friendly. They stopped
Speaker 3: our bus, took the three of us off. There's like
Speaker 3: two or three truck fulls of dudes with machine guns
Speaker 3: and they like put us against the bus and patted
Speaker 3: us down. And I think it was kind of just
Speaker 3: a bluff because they track your every move there, like
Speaker 3: everything you do you have to put in your passport
Speaker 3: information and they weren't very fond of Americans back then.
Speaker 3: But I mean that would be a good cover for
Speaker 3: spy because there have been lepidoptera studying researcher spies in
Speaker 3: the past. The founder of the Scouts would work in
Speaker 3: North Africa, I think this is during World War One,
Speaker 3: and he would draw maps of enemy locations and butterfly
Speaker 3: wings and then send it back to the collections.
Speaker 1: Oh way, Beck, Yeah, So Robert Baden Powell did indeed
Speaker 1: found the Boy Scouts and was indeed all up in
Speaker 1: some espionage, as detailed in his book My Adventures of
Speaker 1: a Spy. That's just straight up he was straight up
Speaker 1: a spy. So he wrote, quote, carrying this book and
Speaker 1: a butterfly net in my hand, I was above all
Speaker 1: suspicion to anyone who met me on the lonely mountain side.
Speaker 1: So thanks for the advice, ma, dude, I will go
Speaker 1: do that. What No, I.
Speaker 3: Don't recommend people doing it now because I'm not like
Speaker 3: ruined scientists access to these places that we want to
Speaker 3: go and study. So don't mess with science. Let's just yeah,
Speaker 3: let that be in the past. And then the other
Speaker 3: guys they were just kind of really drunk, and that
Speaker 3: was challenging, but we figured it out.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what's the best thing about what you do?
Speaker 1: What do you love the most about? Butterflies? About your work?
Speaker 3: I Mean, one part that I love is just being
Speaker 3: able to go to places and have access to things
Speaker 3: that there's no other job that gives you that opportunity.
Speaker 3: You go to some really weird places, you really get
Speaker 3: to go behind the scenes and areas, and that's irreplaceable.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've pretty much never had an office job
Speaker 3: my entire life, and that's great and I love that.
Speaker 3: And then the other part is what it does to
Speaker 3: your brain. Like you get this brain tingle I like
Speaker 3: to call it as a scientist, and many people can
Speaker 3: relate to this where there's something out there that you're
Speaker 3: trying to figure out, and some of these things that
Speaker 3: I've studied and published papers on, it's like a puzzle
Speaker 3: out there that you're like, Okay, I see this part
Speaker 3: over here, this part over there, this part down there,
Speaker 3: how do they relate? How does this thing make sense?
Speaker 3: And I would lose sleep over it sometimes, But your
Speaker 3: brain has this feeling that you just can't there's nothing
Speaker 3: out there like it. It's like the best crossword puzzle. Ever,
Speaker 3: we like I nailed it, and that is a really
Speaker 3: exciting part of my job because it's super super fulfilling
Speaker 3: because you're not just doing it for yourself. I'm sure
Speaker 3: some people may be more kind of ego driven, but
Speaker 3: one thing I was noticed, like explorers who people call
Speaker 3: themselves explorers oftentimes would go to just be like I've
Speaker 3: done it, plant a flag and say they've done it.
Speaker 3: Now many are doing it for conservation reasons, which is great,
Speaker 3: but I was like, what if you could explore and
Speaker 3: contribute knowledge to the world the things you find as
Speaker 3: a scientist and studying butterflies, Like some of these papers
Speaker 3: have published. Nobody knew this before, and that's a really
Speaker 3: cool feeling to be, like, guess what, world drop some
Speaker 3: knowledge on you that now, for the rest of history
Speaker 3: of humanity, they're going to know this thing that they
Speaker 3: didn't know before.
Speaker 1: It's exciting, I mean. And to start helping discover species
Speaker 1: at nineteen, like, that's got to be a little bit
Speaker 1: addictive too.
Speaker 3: Probably right for sure, for sure, And I have huge
Speaker 3: respect for the people out there who dedicate their entire
Speaker 3: career to that. People kind of forget that we still
Speaker 3: need a catalog, what life is out there. We have
Speaker 3: so much work to do insects alone, there's probably at
Speaker 3: least another million, if not nine million species out there
Speaker 3: to be discovered, millions left to be done, and they're everywhere,
Speaker 3: and so we need people to do those jobs. And
Speaker 3: it's not even though it sounds cool, when it comes
Speaker 3: to getting funding for that kind of work, you don't
Speaker 3: always get the biggest budget.
Speaker 1: And now you're getting married this year, I am. Are
Speaker 1: you going to have butterflies be represented at all during
Speaker 1: your wedding?
Speaker 3: Definitely, So we're gonna instead of flower girls, we're having
Speaker 3: butterfly girls. It's a little butterfly wings everywhere. And then
Speaker 3: for our place settings, we're gonna do some cool stuff
Speaker 3: with like giving on native seeds just to get people oriented. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's so many ways you can you can incorporate this
Speaker 3: stuff into your life, and so we just kind of
Speaker 3: want to show people like, this is what's important to us.
Speaker 1: Oh that makes me so habby. I was wondering. I
Speaker 1: was like, I wonder if those weddings getting involved bucks
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of want to get some shoes with
Speaker 3: bugs on them.
Speaker 1: I know, I think you should. I think you deserve it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see some butterfly slippers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why not.
Speaker 1: I did look up some fly shoes for Phil, and
Speaker 1: I found some cool Gucci Bug loafers that cost a
Speaker 1: grand and then also some swayed butterfly loafers on eBay
Speaker 1: for like one hundred bucks. So if anyone has a
Speaker 1: Gucci hookup for these loafers, holler at Phil online. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be great? Come on, come on someone right? Okay,
Speaker 1: another update. His wonderful fiance and now wife, Celia, got
Speaker 1: him the Gucci Bug loafers as a wedding gift, and
Speaker 1: the ceremony was gorgeous. I danced so much at their reception.
Speaker 1: I should be mortified, but for some reason, I'm not.
Speaker 1: It was just a great party. It was such a
Speaker 1: good wedding. They're both so wonderful, and I'm very glad
Speaker 1: that they're here on planet Earth with us and married.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this only this is
Speaker 1: a blast. So please do continue to ask smart people
Speaker 1: awkward sometimes not smart questions because that's the only way
Speaker 1: any of us learn, and they secretly love it. So
Speaker 1: to see some Phil's gorgeous photography, and it's really amazing.
Speaker 1: Check out his Instagram at Phil underscore Torres. His Twitter
Speaker 1: is also Phil underscore Torres, and he's at the Jungle
Speaker 1: Diaries on YouTube or his website is Phil Dashturus dot com.
Speaker 1: I'll put links to those at aliword dot com, slash
Speaker 1: ologies and in the show notes. You can find the
Speaker 1: show at Ologies on Twitter or Instagram, where I post
Speaker 1: some visuals from the show all week and I'm at
Speaker 1: ali Word just one l on both Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can join the question club on Patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Ologies. You can lob your queries at upcoming ologists
Speaker 1: and also support the show that way. For merch, you
Speaker 1: can go to Ologies meerch dot com. You can tag
Speaker 1: your photos online with Ologies merch and I'll repost them
Speaker 1: on merch Mondays. Thank you Shannon Feltas and Bonni Dutch,
Speaker 1: very very cool Portland sisters for helping manage all the merch.
Speaker 1: You can join the discussion on the Facebook Ologies podcast group.
Speaker 1: Thank you Hannah Lippo and Aaron Talbert my good friends
Speaker 1: for admitting that. And thanks as always to the very
Speaker 1: very wonderful Stephen Ray Morris for editing this all together
Speaker 1: and just being the coolest dude, just the coolest dude.
Speaker 1: Also side note, Happy birthday, Sarah Basco. We've known each
Speaker 1: other since we were twelve. Happy birthday. If you stick
Speaker 1: around to the very very end of the show, you know,
Speaker 1: I tell you a secret, and this week's is fresh.
Speaker 1: It's fresh off the griddle. So two hours ago, I
Speaker 1: was leaving my friend Catherine's house and she has a
Speaker 1: bowl of peanut butter and ginger chewes. Have you had them? Oh?
Speaker 1: They're so good. They're right next to her door. And
Speaker 1: I grabbed two and I ate the first one as
Speaker 1: I was leaving her house. I was like, oh, so good.
Speaker 1: And then I unwrapped a second one before I even
Speaker 1: got to my car, and I dropped it on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: very public sidewalk, and I just picked it up and
Speaker 1: dusted it off, and I ate it anyway because I
Speaker 1: was alone and so wet and I'm still alive. Okay,
Speaker 1: Byebye Pack of German College. Hobbiology or doo Zoology.
Speaker 2: Lithology andology, oology, entology, mythology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 3: There's a butterfly time