Butterflies: Caterpillars with Wings!

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Thanksgiving playlist, spring edition, because it's spring, and so these are all spring centric, because we love spring. And you guys today, the episode is butterflies, colon, caterpillars with wings, and there's nothing more spring I think we can agree than butterflies, so please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I-Heart Radio.

Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, part two of a one-two punch of insect goodness. Yeah, caterpillars, hopefully you just listened to, if you didn't, you might want to, because it really, you know, without caterpillar, there is no butterfly episode. Yeah, I feel like they could stand on their own, like I don't think we should have to

listen to one to understand what we're going to talk about here. No, no, but, you know, we're probably going to say when it comes time to talk about how the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, just go back in time to two days ago and listen to that one. Right, we'll be like, "Din, doo, doo, doo, doo."

Once again, we have to thank HouseTAFWorks.com and our former and current colleague, Tracy Wilson, as well as our former colleague, not current, Jennifer Horton, wrote a fun piece about butterfly gardens that we're going to talk about at the end, but I forgot about Jennifer. You remember her? Oh, yes, she was great.

She wrote lots of great stuff, she was a good person. So, Jennifer, I don't know if you're out there and listen, but hi, hi, it's been a while. So, we're talking about butterflies and we should probably kind of pick up that where we left off because we talked, I think, about caterpillars being pests at the end or considered pests but they're not really.

We should pick up after the caterpillar emerges from its chrysalis, because we're talking specifically about butterfly, so it's the chrysalis, not a cocoon that it metamorphicizes within and once it emerges, it is a beautiful creature that resembles the caterpillar that it was almost not at all, but it's the same exact creature, it's got the same mind, it can

“remember smells and all that, but whereas the caterpillar was built for eating, I think”

we said in the last episode too, the butterfly is built for sex, sex, sex. Yeah, they're built for reproduce and should we go back in time just a little bit and talk about the fact that the distinction between mulls and butterflies and stuff like that?

same except mulls or they do their sex at night and butterflies do their sex in the day? Yeah, I mean there's not many distinctions between a mother than the obvious ones, but that's the biggest one and the reason why butterflies are diurnal and moths are nocturnal is because

“all butterflies, I think what is there like 15,000, 20,000 species of butterflies?”

There's a lot of them, all of them are descended from moths and these were just moths that started to do their thing in the daytime rather than the nighttime and over time they evolve to fit in in the daytime rather than the nighttime which is how moths evolved. So a moths camouflage is meant to blend in with like a tree where it's sleeping during the day. Yeah, whereas a butterfly is bright colored because it's out in the daytime and it needs to blend in

with the big colorful flowers that it likes to hang out on. Do you know why I meant to look this up and didn't why then a moth is so attracted to light? I saw that they think that it is attracted to the moon for navigation. Oh, okay. And that butterflies aren't attracted to light because they don't navigate by the moon.

They lost that ability or that need. Well, butterflies navigate by the sun.

That's one of the one of my amazing facts about butterflies.

Yeah, but then that's weird that they don't fly to light, but they are not attracted to flames or light bulbs. Yeah, well maybe they know sun is death. Yeah, whereas the moon is nice and cool. Should we talk about their bodies a little bit?

Because that's where we like to start off usually with our insect castes.

“One more thing, let's talk about where the word butterfly came from, eh?”

Where to come from? Oh, well, it's very old English and it means butter and fly, right? No real mystery there. Yeah. But the reason they think there's two reasons why they are named butterflies in the old English.

And they think it's either because some of them are a pale yellow in colors so they resemble butter, we can pretty much discard that one. The other one is that there was a folk belief that they stole butter, that they were just kind of some sort of supernatural spirit in a butterfly form to come and steal your milk and your butter, and there's evidence of that and other nearby languages.

I think the Germans call butterflies milk thieves and butter fairy almost. Yes, and then the Dutch and the Germans have a word for butterfly that means butter witch. So that's probably why butterflies are called that because they used to think that they stole butter. Well, you know who it was the whole time? It was grandpa. Dude, it was night night eating.

Yeah, he could get one CC of blood to those arteries, they were so clothed. He was on ambient. Does it, does it say when the name morphed for my wife into butterfly? They actually used to think or something like it's a pretty strange idea that they're called butterflies rather than flutter buys because that makes more sense.

So Emily's kind of taking in and a much smarter direction, but it's interesting. She probably just doesn't know the fact that they're actually witches in disguise who are out to steal butter and milk.

Yeah, she's always, she still calls him flutter flies, just pretty cute.

Does she call spaghetti pesquetti? No, no, just flutter flies. Can we talk about their bodies now? Yes, yes, thank you for indulging me. I feel so indulged. Sure. So, like we mentioned, the head, the thorax and the abdomen of the butterfly

will look a lot like a caterpillar in some ways if you hold them up next to each other. And that's about it. For one, a butterfly can see a lot better than a caterpillar can. I get the idea that it still doesn't have great division, but caterpillars, remember, but we're essentially blind. Butterflies at least have these compound eyes and they can detect color. And I think we said the caterpillar could only see him black and white.

They can detect movement as well. Right. But when it comes to the star of the show, as far as butterfly parts go, it's those antennae. Well, hold on, before we move on, I've got one about the eyes too.

Okay, the monarch butterfly, like basically the quintessential butterfly.

Sure. They have 12,000 eyes, both compound and simple. And they go basically all the way around their head. It's a lot of eyes. They can see into your soul.

“And that's why the, maybe that's why they're so great at migrating every year and such large numbers.”

Possibly, I think we talked about an our animal migration episode. We talked about monarch butterfly migration. And I think we said one of the reasons why they're able to make it from Eastern Canada all the way down to Northwest Mexico is because they are, they navigate using UV. They see in the UV.

These things are amazing. They get their sense of direction from the position of the sun.

So they are literally navigating by the position of the sun. The antennae also acts as light receptors. Yes. Obviously to track the sun. They're highly attuned to odors. Those antennae are great smellors. They sense fair moans during times of mating. Mm-hmm. And they can even sense these antennae, the beat of wings of butterflies of the same species during the season. Wow. That's amazing. Just the antennae. Just the antennae. Wow. How about the

labial palps? Well. Yeah, those are if you look at a close-up of a butterfly and they can take kind of different positions, but usually I've seen them. They look like kind of little hairy tusks. Coming out. Coming out of what Chuck? Coming out of their their head. Well, near the mouth parts. Yep. Ding ding. Okay. It's now officially a Tracy Wilson article. That's right. So they apparently are like, this is food, this isn't food, this is food, but they don't eat

with the labial palps. It's just a way of sensing food. What they eat with is their proboscis. And that's the long kind of tongue-like appendage that they suck nectar with. That's right. I got one more thing on the labial palps. Oh, okay. They've kind of surmised that it detects food that

“the function was is fairly unknown, but I think they've learned, I'm not sure how recently that”

they can, those labial palps detect CO2 in the air. Oh, neat. Says well, and they think that might be the main function. Oh, that's really cool. Who knows? So instead of seeing red or green, they have the labial palps that detect. I guess CO2. That was a reference to a reality episode. Yeah. So what part did you move to? I moved on to their proboscis. Oh, everyone loves a good proboscis. And the the the butterfly proboscis is interesting because when the butterfly comes out

and we'll talk about this more in a second, it's almost like it should have a label that says

some assembly required because they got to do some stuff before they can really do their butterfly thing. And one of those things is literally almost like screwing together their proboscis. Yeah, they have two parts of their proboscis that they have to connect in order to start eating. And so that's one of the first things that they do when they e-close from their Christmas. E-close. That's a great name. No, it sounds like Apple has trademarked or something.

And we'll talk more about the proboscis as we go. But we do need to mention their legs.

“If you remember the caterpillars have six real legs, then a bunch of pro legs. The butterfly”

says, I don't need those pro legs anymore because I'm flying basically. But I've still got those

six legs. I've got a set of four legs, some middle legs, and some hind legs. And these things are pretty, they're more than just legs as well because they will land on something and they're looking for dissolving sugars basically to eat and they're looking for that with their legs. Yeah. And also you'll probably see fairly commonly that there are some butterfly species that only have two pairs of legs and that's not true. They actually have six, but one pair is basically

shriveled almost to nothingness. And by the way, I should clear up when I say their legs are looking for dissolving sugars, they're not doing it by feel. They are taste organs in their feet. Yeah, they can taste through all sorts of different organs. It's pretty cool. Apparently when they step in like some dissolving sugar, their proboscis, uncoils involuntarily. Like, boy, are you on? And it starts sipping nectar immediately. Oh man. So you better hope that your

legs are finally attuned to sugar and you don't accidentally suck up some really gross stuff. You know, like, oh, it was puss. Right. Oh my god. Oh, the worst word. It's the worst. It's pretty bad. And it's not as a word as it says to. I genic you tensile the like, what are the odds that one of the grossest things has the grossest word? I don't know. I wonder if that was intentional. Yeah. Like, what is that? Puss. Right. Is that sound gross enough? Sure. Let's go with it.

Can we please stop talking about Puss? Sure. Webster. The wings we're going to talk about a lot. We did a whole episode on the iridescence of butterfly wings. So we're not going to really get into it here.

“But if you want to learn about iridescence, it's very complex and complicated and deserved its own”

episode many years ago. Yeah. But the upside is the structure of the scales. They're transparent, multi-layered and they reflect and amplify light multiple times. That was a really cool episode.

such a great job of it. I would like to say we probably just knocked it out the park really. I think so too. But the butterfly wings are made of a transparent, it's called Kighten. If you've heard of Kighten, you're probably just alive on the earth because it is one of the most abundant

“polysaccharides in nature. It's I think the second most abundant. It's all over the place.”

There are wings are made of that Kighten and they have those sort of vein-like structures that you can if you look at their wings closely. Don't touch them, though, please. No. We talked about that in that episode. But they have those four wings

that are obviously toward the front and they are basically triangular and then the hind wings

toward the butt and they kind of look like little sea shells. Yes. And they're like you said, don't touch when they're very, very delicate. And those veins are species specific. So that's one of the ways that they use to recognize one another when they're mating as well. Yeah. And I think butterflies cannot repair their wings. Isn't that correct? Yes. They have no means of doing that. They have no car shields for wings. But I don't think it kills them, but if a butterfly can't fly,

that's probably ultimately a death sentence, right? That's my guess. It would make them easy

“prey at the very least. Yeah. I think that's kind of the deal when they say a butterfly will die if”

you touch their wings. Yes. It will die quicker. There's something that a butterfly that's recently eclosed and a baby that's just been born having common. Do you know what it is? Maybe. But go ahead. They both poop out in a meconium. Oh, sure. A human baby. Yeah. Yeah,

meconium is that that first poop that they take. And in this case, the butterfly is pooping

what it last ate is a caterpillar. That's so cool. It is really cool. It's usually red, bright red, almost looks like blood. But the butterfly poops that out. That's one of the first things it does. It has to clean off all of its organs. It's feet to make sure it's sugar finding, not plus finding. Clean off its antennas. Put its proboscis together again. Yeah. Let its wings dry out. That's cool. I saw, and I don't think we mentioned in the caterpillar episode that in its last

in star, it has wings already. They're just folded up under its skin. They develop even further in the Christmas. But when they come out, they're soaking wet because the butterfly was goo, not too long ago. Yeah. And they have to spread them out and let them dry in the sun before they can fly. So they're doing all of this like self-care. Basically a morning at the spa right after they're born. Yeah. And but they can't just like flop their wings open immediately. They actually

have to pump them up, almost like an air pump inflating a raft or something. Or some high stops.

“Yeah. Oh man. Remember those? That's so funny. What a scam. That was a scam, right?”

I'm quite sure you could break your ankle and that just as easily as any other shoes. Sure. Yeah. It may give you like a little tighter fit or something. I don't know about that. And for people that are our younger listeners, if you don't know who Millie Benelli was, or pump up basketball shoes, they were, I think Reebok, right? Pretty sure it was Reebok. Had basketball shoes that on the tongue had a little basketball that was a little pump.

And you would put on your shoes, tie them up, and then press that pump a bunch of times. And it would fill some cavities with air, I guess, and make your choose tighter. Yeah. Especially around your ankle. It was meant to give you extra ankle support. So you could

dunk them. You're even though you've never dunked in your life. That's right. But they had

Spudweb, rep in them. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think he was one of their pitch guys for a little while. Okay. Cool. But anyway, the butterfly. Wait, wait, can we explain who Spudweb was? He was a diminutive NBA player. Yeah. For the last in Lendick, it is autograph time. Yeah. Nice. They pump their wings out, but not with air. There's a fluid that they pump through these, those two black veins we were talking about and just sort of inflate them out. And like you said,

they just get all cleaned up and ready to fly. Yes. And then once they're all ready, they start flying. And they realize very quickly, oh, it's not a very good data fly. And I say we take a break and come back and explain just what and the holy hack I'm talking about. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Itgirl. You may know me from my Itgirl series. I've done

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“As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you”

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I can honestly say I've never done an interview like that before, you know, at one point I

set my laptop down and we just started chatting as old friends, recent Oscar recipient, so we have some commonality there. I predict that by the way. And you said these words to me, dust off your mental. Yes. And I looked at you and I said what? And you said dust off your mental. And then I left and that was it.

“And then when all of that happened, I remember the next morning I think I wanted to like write you and go,”

how did you know? Listen to the quest love show on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. [Music] All right. What in the Holy Heckie talking about? Oh, well. Let me explain Chuck. It turns out that butterflies while being pretty hardy individuals, at least as far as insects are concerned on that

level, they're also very delicate like we talked about with their wings. And even beyond their wings getting like a rain drop, driving through it that can happen. Or say like strong wind tattering it, that's a big problem for a butterfly. Just the temperature, the ambient temperature, has a tremendous effect on them. Not just because they're acto-therms, meaning they're like a lizard, they rely on the ambient temperature to warm themselves or cool themselves off. Their muscles just simply will not

function when it drops below a certain temperature. Yeah, I think Tracy points out they work best when their internal temperature is about 82 Fahrenheit, 28 Celsius, and you know, they use these wings for flying, which is great. But you might think like, no, it's no big deal, it's cold, they just kind of hunker down. But they also use these wings to do all kinds of like cool things, like namely to scare away predators. Like you can do all sorts of like they can make eyes where it

looks like a scary face. Kind of like their little caterpillar former cells can look like snakes. They can flash these bright colors that a lot of times say get away predator. And if they can't move their wings, it's not just that they can't fly, but they can't defend themselves or disguise themselves. So it means that when it's cold outside or when it's too windy or rainy or something, then they're way more vulnerable to prey. For sure. Or as prey. Right. But even prey can probably

“get them. That's how vulnerable they are. So sure. So you'll often see like butterflies is kind of”

basking in the sun. I've always wondered what they're doing, like they just seem like they're

of their next move. But in reality they're just sitting, they're getting warmed up by the sun

so they can fly to another spot. And if you stop and think about it the next time you see a butterfly basking in the sun, I'll bet it's below 80 degrees out. And the butterflies having to warm itself so it can fly onto the next flower to eat or rest or whatever. Yeah, it's good point. They do take shelter at night when it gets chilly. That's why you don't see butterflies flying around at night mainly. And like you said, they're what are daytime dwellers called diurnal. Diurnal.

Diurnal? Yeah, diurnal. Is that how you remember it? Now it is. Okay.

“You do remember it. That's how I need to remember it. Right. But yeah, they baste those wings.”

They'll sit around on rocks. They shelter at night sometimes that they will actually do like a kind of like human shiver to warm up. They can kind of shake their butterfly wings to get their

muscles warmed up to to fly. They just they just can't go out cold. They got to do a little warm up first.

It's like that, um, that knee hike thing. Your knees really, really high like in in place a bunch of times. Yeah, that soccer players do. Yeah, like that Ted Lasso guy. Right. And there's a name for that. But don't bother emailing us with it. We can figure it out ourselves. They also can use those wings as little reflectors. Like, you know how in the 1950s and 60s, people would sit out in the sun with those reflectors under their neck to reflect sun back on their

faces. They can use their wings to do that to their to their body and warm it up. Right. Which is pretty cool. Um, they can also, they can also keep the sun from warming them up when it's too hot out. They'll fold their wings together and just present like the edge, the outer edge of their wings to the sun. So there's much less surface area. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And they like you said, when you see them sitting, they're probably not sitting for long. They're

probably sitting just so they can get it going to fly again. Exactly. Exactly. So even though they're sitting, they're warming themselves up to move from flower to flower, even. And that's typically what you see. There's a lot of species at least 200 that migrate over very long distances. And Monarchs are the ones that they're like the money, the money butterfly that everybody knows about. But one of the reasons why is because they migrate so far. Again, they migrate from Eastern Canada

to Northwest Mexico. It takes eight months and not a single butterfly that starts that journey is alive at the end. So it's like you look at the butterfly, by the way, the butterfly flock, or a group of butterflies is called the kaleidoscope. I love that. Also, that's the official one. They're also called the Flutter Schimmer and Ringboe of Butterflies. Okay, a flutter or a butterflies. Yep. But you look at the kaleidoscope of butterflies, it's like a single organism. Each individual

butterfly that lives and dies and reproduces, not necessarily in that order as kind of like cells that function and make up the larger hole. But it's really a bunch of individual butterflies flying together. But migrating as a hole down from Eastern Canada to Northwest Mexico. Yeah. And I guess since we're there, there was a big deforestation, illegal deforestation, logging operation in Mexico at the Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in 2015. And they got like,

“I can't remember like 30 or 40 acres of land just cut down before anyone knew what was going on.”

And since then, and we can't get into it here because it's really complex. But they have this very involved plan that they've been enacting since then of reforestation, including something called assisted migration that I don't fully understand yet. But I'm going to look into it more. They just drive slowly by some butterflies and swipe them into the car and drive them halfway.

Well, things are better now. But there were a billion butterflies in that migration in 1996,

and I think 2016 that was down to 35 million from a billion. And I think is since gone up due to these efforts. But that's good. Yeah. Butterflies, if you take down where they're trying to get to, then they're going to die. Yeah. And that that Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And you can go visit it. But apparently when the the number of butterflies that show up are in the billions, the the branches that they're sitting on bend

“under the weight of Butterflies, that's how many butterflies there are sometimes. But yeah,”

it's it's a very problematic that there's fewer and fewer. I'm glad to hear that it's kind of

critical right now. But there's there's there's something to keep an eye on as we'll see because

“they're in indicator species. They are and they're also pollinators. They're not, you know,”

the best pollinators. They're pretty good. They're not like bees. I mean bees were made to pollinate. They were too sweet. They were too. They were beeshirts. But some butterflies don't spread pollen at all. They just love that nectar. But generally butterflies are looked at as pollinators. And they have that proboscis, like you said, that's just it's made for for diving deep into those flowers and getting all that sweet stuff. But butterflies have lots of dietary needs. They can't

just get by on that sweet sweet sugar. They need minerals and stuff. And they get this in a variety

of interesting ways, right? Yeah. One is puddles. They'll just descend on a puddle that's bare dirt. I don't think asphalt would work. So yeah. It's kind of gross to think about. But the minerals from the dirt in the soil, each into the puddle and the butterflies suck up those minerals through the puddle. And apparently, if there's not enough minerals for they're liking, they'll actually flood or off real quick and then come back to the puddle.

And just that little butterfly movement is enough disturbance of the water to bring some extra minerals to the surface of the puddle for them to drink and to create a hurricane in Belize. If there's no water, it's pretty gross. If it gets pretty bad, they will resort to puking onto the soil and then drinking that mineral to puked. I took a more spit. Hey. One man's another man's puked. That's right. But yeah, they need the minerals. The

nutrients and it's not it's just not enough for the nectar. Yeah, exactly. They've done some studies of because they'll eat fruit. They'll eat rotten fruit on the ground or they will get on a piece of fruit. They will stomp on it with their little feet to try and tenderize it a little bit and then jab it with that proboscis and drink it up and they've done studies that have found that

“the fruit eaters live longer and are better at reproducing in studies because they I think it was”

the monarchs even. They fed them either mash banana or sugar and the ones that ate the mash banana laid almost two times as many eggs and those eggs were bigger and like more robust and vital as well. Yeah, I also read that they tend to be easier going in social situations and are more well-liked by their peers. The fruit eaters? Yeah. Wow. So there's a couple other places that they can get nutrients and minerals. Dung in urine, butterflies are not above that, especially if they

need it really badly. But when they're getting it from a puddle, it's called puddling. There's just so many great words around butterflies and there's a specific word for butterflies pollinating plants. It's called psychophily like psychophily but with one owl. Okay. Specifically butterflies pollinating plants is psychophily. I love that. I thought you would. I found that and I was like, "Fuck's gonna love this." The sexy stuff you mentioned,

they butterflies love to try and reproduce. And they reproduce like a lot of animals. They

“join themselves. They join into end at the abdomen. I think the male has a like class”

clasps down on the female to make sure they stay together and there is sperm from the male that is eventually going to fertilize the eggs of a female. But not like you would think.

It's pretty remarkable because what they do is they will first of all they have to recognize

each other like I said using those antennae. They recognize themselves as the same species or whatever. And through their fair moments as well, which is also at the antennae. And then the male delivers a sperm metaphor. So it's like, "Hey, I don't just have sperm for you. I've packaged it up in a little package for you and it's got all these other minerals and nutrients that you love that will help you in this fertilization process. And they will take extra time to get an extra

good sperm metaphor package ready to be an extra attractive mate." The good ones will. Sure. So the, I guess the female butterflies when they fertilize their eggs, they used the last sperm that was inserted to them, the last sperm metaphor package. So there are some species where

substance that prevents more sperm from going in. So his sperm is the most recent sperm.

Yeah, that's not very cool at all. But I guess that guy's also like, you know, what am I doing? Giving you my sperm metaphor if you're just going to use the latest sperm metaphor that you got. Exactly. I went to a lot of trouble combining the sperm metaphor. Yeah, like look at this stuff. Look at all these minerals. I also saw that some of the males in some species will spray them with an off-putting scent. So no other butterflies will

want them. There are mating dances that they'll do. And they, you know, when the female gets this sperm metaphor, they put it in their burse. And then they wait until they're ready to

lay their eggs. And they actually lay the eggs first. And then use the sperm to fertilize them once

“they have laid the eggs, which is also, I think, pretty unusual in the insect kingdom, right?”

I don't know. For some reason, I had the impression that they were fertilizing each egg as they were coming out kind of like a pez dispenser. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean though, but they're not, like, they're not fertilized in the body. I see what you're saying. They're fertilized externally. Yeah, yeah, sure. That's, that's the word. One other thing you talked about terrible smells, I turned up that there are some fair amounts are pleasant smelling to humans.

Specifically, let me tell you about the green vein white butterfly. Let's hear it. It puts together lemon oil. For all intents and purposes, it has the same chemical composition as lemon oil, but it's the fair amount it produces to attract a mate. And I gotta tell you, lemon oil is a pretty great smell. It would attract me too. I love it. So if you ever smell a great vein white during mating season, you're going to smell some lemon oil. The gestation periods about three days

and they lay anywhere from 10 to 300 eggs in clusters over a two to four week period. Oh, wow, it's that long. Yeah, it can't, yeah, two to four weeks. And these eggs, you know, they, they lay that many because it's tough for these eggs to survive into adulthood. They gotta be, the temperature's gotta be just right. Humanities gotta be just right. They can rot very easily if it's too wet. If it's not wet enough, they're going to dry out.

And then, of course, there's all those predators that are just dying to eat those butterfly eggs. They need to find the goldy lock zone with the humidity for the eggs. That's right, they do. So they also make sure that they put the eggs on their baby's favorite food, which is a certain kind of plant. They're, they're, butterflies are very frequently in discriminant pollinators. They just go from plant to plant. But they're also plenty of species that are very plant specific.

And those are the ones where they will not only eat that plant while they're caterpillars. They were probably born on that same plant as well. We used to have a butterfly bushing in our yard that was, those things get really big and out of control. Kind of in a, we have sort of a wild garden anyway. It's not like a, you know, super manicured like English type garden. It's kind of a crazy fun garden. So it fit in the garden. And we had tons and tons of butterflies. But it went away. And I don't

“know if it was because I think some people, well, I think it could be an invasive species. And a lot of”

people say like, they don't plant the butterfly bush. But we had one for a while, but don't now. So Emily may have taken it down for that reason. So the reason it's considered invasive and harmful the butterflies is it produces tons of nectar. But it has no value in in supporting eggs or the, the life cycle of it other than nectar for adults. And so it's a distraction from native plants that do provide not just nectar, but also shelter and a place to lay their eggs. So it actually

disrupts the life cycle of local butterflies, even though it's a butterfly bush. And they love it. It's actually bad for them. So I have to go cut down mine after this. Even if you have a lot of those natives nearby, like as a whole, it's still bad. Yes, because it's a distraction. Because it's so chuckful of nectar that they go to that one instead and just die off. Well, some distractions are okay, right? Like television? Sure. You could put a TV with an

extension cord out in your butterfly garden. That's not going to harm them. If, if you have a butterfly

“bush, you have to chop it down. I command you. All right. They're really pretty though. And”

it's fun to see other butterflies. But yeah, I get you. In the, but wait until you've planted other plants, which we'll talk about. And then you can chop down your butterfly bush. All right.

Well, let's take a break or second break. And we'll talk a little bit more about what's going on

with a butterfly population. And then butterfly gardens. Right after this.

the streets of New York over the years. Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews

and many more to this podcast. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success. But we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work with the women shaping culture right now.

“As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you”

have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Each week, I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility, and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being in Itch Girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to

people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important. Listen to Itch Girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why hasn't a woman formally participated in a Formula One race weekend in over a decade? Think about how many skills they have to develop at such a

“young age? What can we learn from all of the new F1 romance novels suddenly popping up every year?”

He's still smelled of podium champagne and expensive friction. And how did a 2023 event called Wag a Get-in change the paddock forever? That day is just seared into my memory. I'm a culture writer and F1 expert Lily Herman, and these are just a few of the questions I'm tackling on no grip. A Formula One culture podcast that dives into the under explored pockets of bespoke. In each episode, a different guest and I will go deeper into the wacky mishab scandals and

sagas, both on the track and far away from it, that have made F1 a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The people with soap was up, it's Questlove. So recently I had the incredible opportunity to have a real conversation with actors and producer Jamie Lee Curtis ahead of the release

of our new thriller series, Scar Petta. I can honestly say I've never done an interview like that

before, you know, at one point I set my laptop down and we just started chatting as old friends, recent Oscar recipient, so we have some commonality there. I predict that by the way. And you said these words to me, dust off your mantle. Yes. And I looked at you and I said what? And you said dust off your mantle. And then I left and that was it. And then when all of that

“happened, I remember the next morning. I think I wanted to write you and go, how did you know?”

Listen to the Questlove soap or the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. Well, we talked already about the monarchs and how they had been hit hard from the illegal logging going on in Mexico in the mid 2010s. Yeah. And in general butterflies are doing okay, but there are some pesticides and things like that. I think one of the other big reasons besides the logging for that migration of the monarchs. I think pesticides is

quite a lot of milkweed, which I think the monarchs love. So pesticides are a big threat and it's not like I'm just going to spray this one little part of my garden like pesticides in your garden in one part of your garden generally means it's in most parts of your garden. Yeah, travel is very easily. But on top of that butterflies are extremely sensitive to pesticides. So I don't know about herbicides, but definitely pesticides. So if you're going to plan a butterfly garden, you want to use

natural pests to fences, but that's a big thing that's killing off butterflies and bees too. And then also, we talked about it in the last episode. A lot of people think of caterpillars as pests. It's like, oh, you ate some of my lettuce. I'm going to kill all of you. That kills butterflies too.

They never make it to be adult butterflies and you just disrupt the generations of butterflies that

could have been. So when you put all that together, humans have not been super good for butterflies. Did you mention urbanization in roads too? No. Those are a problem. Like any time we build some where we destroy plants in those off of our butterflies or that's a butterfly habitat. And then the roads that we have, the marginal land alongside of the roads are often like

close to cars that are going seven to the 80 miles an hour, which is never good for the butterfly

“when they come in contact with them. So yeah, like I was saying, humans have been kind of bad for”

butterflies. But fortunately, we're starting to wake up and see the value in butterflies goes beyond like let's put that thing on a stamp. Like there's there's more value to the butterfly than just a aesthetic beauty. But that makes it plenty valuable in and of itself. I wonder if butterflies in other insects would ever if natural selection would be such that they would learn to fly higher than the height of an average car? Sure. I could see that. But then they run into semis and they're like,

it's going to take millions more years to get to a higher than a semi. Yeah, it's good point. Maybe they'll figure out how to fly under cars very quickly. Oh, okay. That'd be some trickier, but sure. Collecting butterflies is believe it or not. Another thing that is hit the butterfly population, butterfly collecting butterflies is a thing, hunting butterflies and putting them behind glass in your office is a thing that some people are really into and I don't know a lot about that,

but I do know that there are certain species that are endangered and part of the problem is

over collecting. Yeah, and the more rare butterfly species gets, the more desirable it is for collectors and the more collecting harms that population because it's so small. So, or a boros, but the worst kind. Yeah, and I imagine we'll hear from some collectors who can tell us that there are responsible ways of doing this. I really don't know enough about it to speak to it, but I'm not going to click butterflies. It's all I'm going to say. Yeah, I wonder if it's one of the things like ivory

where it's like, okay, this happened. This is done like these things are out there and we're not just going to throw them away. That's even bigger waste. Yeah, right. So, like antique ivory or antique taxidermy butterflies are legal, but anything new is illegal. I wonder if it's treated like that

or what, but I get the impression that butterflies don't have that much legal protection.

“I think they do on paper, but it's very rarely enforced. Yeah. I guess if you find one in the ground”

or something, that's, you know, that's your collection. Sure. Not sunning on a rock, but, you know, dead. Right, sure. Let's just fell over a full age. Uh-huh. Should we talk about butterfly gardens here at the end? Yeah, because one of the things people are doing, you're saying, like, hey, butterflies, we got to save these butterflies. If we don't, things are going to go pear-shaped even more, and so people are starting to plant butterfly gardens. Yeah, because I think you said

they're a big indicator of, like, butterflies are dying off all around you. That's a big indicator of how your local ecosystem is doing in large part. Does the canary and the coal mine? Yeah, exactly. And butterfly gardens are beautiful, and it doesn't take a lot. You need some plants. And you're going to want plants. Well, you're going to want to find out what kind of butterflies you have around you. That's a big one. Uh, you can look with your eyeballs, and then cross-reference,

or you can just look it up on the internet. Uh, and then you want to find out what kind of plants those butterflies love that are native to your area? Yeah. And plant those. Chuck, when I was researching this, all I wanted to do was be done with this episode, so I can go garden. Oh, I love that. Emily's gardening. I'm looking at her right now. Man, gardening outside. Well, pound on your window and tell her I'm jealous of her. We got, uh, I put it on my Instagram. I don't know if you saw it,

but you, uh, we, I saw a huge, uh, well, it's not that big, but a hornets nest in our backyard yesterday that is the coolest, most beautiful thing. Um, kind of tucked in a magnolia branch, uh, about only four feet off the ground. Well, uh, and I'm glad I saw it, because I was about to go do some trimming of my boxwoods right behind it in a few days, and it is, I would have bumped right into that thing. So, um, boy, uh, now we're just going to steer clear of it, uh, until it is

out of season, and then hopefully try and preserve it, but hornets nest are so cool looking. And I just love that we have one back there. We got a crazy backyard full of all kinds of critters. Does it look like a mommy's head? Sometimes they do. It looks, it looks like a, uh, sort of a mommy's head, but if it was an alien mommy, because it's just like top heavy, and it looks like has a little mouth at the bottom. You know, they're a little door. Yeah.

Uh, I'll send you a picture at school. Yeah. Or I can just go on Instagram like everybody else. Yeah. You get text-privileged. Thanks, man.

“What else about the butterfly garden? You need water, right?”

Yeah. Remember, they like to drink minerals from puddles. So, if you have a little bit of water dripping that forms a puddle in the soil, that's definitely going to help them. You want rocks for them to sun on. Yeah. A big one, Chuck, is you want to use native plants.

waking up to just how bad for the local ecosystem, like non-native plants are, and to use native

plants whenever you can, when you're building a butterfly garden, it's crucial, because even

plants within the same species can be harmful to butterflies. Yeah. And I have an example if

“you allow me. Sure. So, butterflies in Florida and Georgia in the southeast in general. I think”

are very, very keen on what's called butterfly weed. It's what monarchs love. It's that very tiny, multi-flowered orange-flowered weed. It's a type of milkweed. Okay. Yeah. That's native. Yes. There's another kind of milkweed called tropical milkweed that does just fine in Florida and Georgia in the southeast too, but it's not native. And the problem with putting that in your butterfly garden in the southeast is that it blooms so late into the season that butterflies will keep

reproducing and entire parts of the population will freeze to death because they've gone beyond

their natural reproductive window. And then furthermore, when the temperature drops a little bit, they're more susceptible to a specific kind of protozoan parasite called OT or OE. I can't remember that they wouldn't otherwise be if they were just on the native milkweed rather than the

“tropical milkweed. So like that's how much attention you really should be paying to your butterfly”

garden because you can inadvertently harm them while you're doing something you think is good for them. Like putting a butterfly bush out there. Everybody think like that's great. I'm going to put a butterfly bush out and I'm pretty much call myself Gandhi from here on out. Gandhi has a butterfly. But it turns out you're harming up. So it's definitely something that you need to take some research for. But it's the kind of research that it's like an invitation to go like

immerse yourself in the natural world in all of the best ways. Yeah. Boy, that butterfly weed is beautiful. Yes, it is. And it's native to Georgia. So you just plan it all you like. You know what I'm going to go tell Emily like. Oh, this butterfly milkweed and she's me like it's right behind me. Right. But it's not only a food source. It's like a place where monarchs lay their eggs. So you will have butterflies like living in your garden. I mean they'll

fly to Mexico eventually. But they'll hang out there for a while. Yeah. I mean that's the cool thing about the butterfly garden too. If you if you do it right, then you're you're going to have butterflies in your yard and not only that, but butterflies are going to like word gets around and it'll become a place for butterflies. It'll become like a haven for butterflies and they don't they don't generally I mean the ones who migrate migrate. But other than that you could have you could have

butterflies families live in their whole life back there in your backyard. Yeah, speaking of backyards, I've got a backyard, a lower part of my backyard is kind of wild and keep it wild. Like I don't mow it very often and there's lots of weeds and like little clovers and stuff growing. So I've loved it there for the beads that birds in the bees and all that and the butterflies. But I'm going full on man. I'm going to let oh yes it's going to be all butterfly like up to your hips,

butterfly stuff. I cannot wait to go plan it. I'm really looking forward to it because it's really

goes right up to the edge of some woods too. So it's going to be amazing.

Yeah, there's something we really love like leaving green spaces and making it in invitation for animals. Like I got my camp up there in North Georgia and like all of North Georgia is just being torn down for neighborhoods and and or and you know if you're a hunter has find that that's your thing. I'm not into it and we love that we have this acreage where we're just like tell your dear buddies this to come to our land, set up shop here. No one will be shooting

you and spread the word everybody. We have a safe space for all you critters out here. Yes, except for humans because it's also a most dangerous game type set up. You got going there. Well sure. On the back of the weekend. All right. Let's see one more thing about butterflies.

“There's an amazing fact that I think we can end on. How about that? Let's do it.”

They're frequently cited as inspiring the discovery of the RH blood factor, which is a type of subtype of blood types and it actually cured what's known as recess hemolytic disease, which is where a baby has a positive RH blood type and is born from a mother with a negative RH blood type and it's immune system starts attacking its blood. Not good, but the discoverer of the RH blood factor. His name is Sir Cyril Clark and he was big time in a butterflies and he was inspired

by the butterflies ability to mimic other butterflies genetically that they have these what are

by smaller genes over time. And he was like, I wonder if that has to do with blood types and diseases

“and in fact it was. Oh wow. Yeah, so butterflies super useful, super beautiful. Go cut down”

your butterfly bush today. Amazing. Chucks out amazing. So that means it's time for listen to mail

everybody. I'm gonna call this our influence on Spotify perhaps. Hey guys, I was wondering wondering if you're aware of your potential impact on Spotify searches on the millivanily episode Josh mentioned the song owner of a lonely heart by yes being the best song of the 80s and in my head I'm like, I'm not sure what that song is, but I set it out loud and immediately the chorus popped into my head. So I go over to listen to it later on Spotify. I see that a ton of covers for it

and I see millivanily is also in the search results which was gonna be my next search. So I think

you guys may have had enough people searching owner of a lonely heart and millivanily close together

so that the algorithm associated those two. That's awesome. Because other than the time period is not similar music, you know? No, I would say not. Maybe do a test and mention two unrelated songs or something to see what happens. Oh boy, should we try it? Yeah, let's make Sabbath and you pick the other one. Okay, so black Sabbath name a song specifically. Warpigs. Okay, warpigs. Hey,

“everybody, if you haven't heard Warpigs, you should go search it on Spotify. Give it a listen.”

It's a great song. And while you're at it, I don't know if you've ever heard Barry Manelows. Oh, shock. I was going to suggest Barry Manelows. I did it. Well, not a 50/50 chance there. I don't know if you've ever heard the Barry Manelows song even now, but it's a classic Barry Manelows song and everyone should just go search those two in Spotify. So warpigs and even now, by Black Sabbath and Barry Manelows, let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. That was a great

experiment. Who was that from? That was from Corey and I just want to give Corey to side notes. So you guys for the Andre the Giant live in Chicago episode. I also saw Josh's into the world live in Chicago when you tour that. You're your short series. It was so great. And I really enjoy that. Josh walked by on his way in when we were outside and padded my friend Sam on the shoulder. And he is definitely mentioned that several times since then. Oh, that's awesome. So that's from

Corey and you padded Sam on the shoulder and I think that meant what to say. Yeah, thanks for coming

“to see me, Sam and Corey. That was a fun show, actually. Let's see. If you want to let us know how”

this experiment pans out. Corey's experiment is what we're going to call it. Corey's choice. How about that? Love it. Now let's call it a Corey song rather than Brian's song. Okay. Okay. No, Corey can wait. Perfect. Okay. So, oh, no, but how about Corey's in charge? Okay. That's a good one. That's perfect. We're going to end on that. If you want to let us know how the Corey's in charge experiment goes. But we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at

iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctor this particular test twice in silence, correct? I doctor the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.

Two more men who'd been through the same thing. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura Scott's new police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trap podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The people with soap was up. It's Quest Love. So recently, I had the incredible opportunity

to have a real conversation with actress and producer Jamie Lee Curtis from routines to recovery, true lies, and a certain Jermaine Jackson music video. Jamie's real and raw, and something I really admire about her. I am so happy that I'm the headbitch in charge at 67 that I have the perspective that I have at my age to really be able to put all of this into context. Listen to the Quest Love soap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get

women shaping culture right now. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also

talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all. As a woman in the

“industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't”

compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja.

Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This isn't iHeartP podcast. Guaranteed human.