Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the playlist. The stuff you should know, think, spring playlist to be exact. Chuck Jerry and I figured it was high-time that winner got the heck on.

So we're tapping into all of our wishful thinking, and getting the crocuses to sprout, and the air to warm up, and the chipmunks to come out.

For our first episode, we're going with caterpillars,

Colin, nature's magicians, because we can't think of a more poetic way to kick things off. So enjoy this episode, and enjoy the playlist, and don't forget to think spring with all your might. 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 there's Jerry, the three of us just inching along in life together, trying to make do, making our way in the world today.

It takes everything we've got.

“Oh, yeah, and this stuff you should have.”

Cheers. Cheers, Chuck. Cheers. You know, if it's an episode where we say mouth parts, and you're going to say it.

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

We just never see anyone anymore.

Right, fully art. But Tracy Wilson, co-host of the Stuff You missed in history class, along with Holly. They're wonderful. They've been around for years.

They're there icons of podcasting. Tracy used to write a bunch of insect articles for how stuff works.com back in the day. She very legendarily stayed up for 72 straight hours, and wrote like more than two dozen insect articles in that time.

They just got weirder and how there is the time went on. I almost believe that for a second. But Tracy always does a great job with those, or did a great job, and most of, most of the insect articles we've ever used

have been Tracy's original, like the ticks and the fleas, and don't think ants. But bees probably was. She's a master of it for sure. I mean, she wrote a lot of them,

and this one about caterpillars was from Tracy. Along with stuff from World Atlas, and the 88 in breedingbutterfly.com. But I just realized today when I was researching this some more that we haven't done butterflies yet.

No. Which is shocking. We've done one. We did the wings, like the iridesis. Okay, that's what it was.

Yeah, we talked about them in the animal migration episode two. Yeah. But not a standalone of butterflies. So we're going to talk about their counter part. And one of the facts of the episode already,

for me, is that caterpillars that eventually turn into butterflies, it's the same species. It's still the same thing. Right. We should never do that.

We should do it too. You didn't? I just figured it, like, well,

Huh.

“But did you know about the transformation”

and the crystalist or cocoon and everything? Did you know that? Oh, sure. I knew how it happened, but I thought it was like,

"So change out, now you're not whatever Latin name you are. You're a new Latin name." Oh, gotcha. So like, they just became a completely different animal,

basically, or different insect.

Yeah. Okay, I gotcha. Yeah, no, they're the same thing. They're just configured differently. Yeah, they got wings.

Like a transformer. Like they go more than that. No box to robot with the gun. That's right. You know?

“But a much more organic, soupy way, as we'll see.”

You. I love this one, Chuck. Like every kid knows about caterpillars.

You go look at him in the garden and everything.

And they're super cute and weird looking. And you learn the hard way not to touch some of them. But I did not know a lot of this stuff either. And it's endlessly fascinating to me. Especially if you step back and think about

a life stage where an organism undergoes such a complete transformation that they break themselves down to their cells. And then are rebuilt into a new version. Not that many animals do that. And scientists are an exactly sure how or even why that evolved.

Oh, the why is kind of teleological. But how that evolved. It's just this really bizarre thing that we're so aware of. We kind of just take for granted until you really stop and think about it. I love caterpillars.

I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, and it was also one of those where I just I kept looking and kept looking. I was like, how is this just this been sitting here under a noses all this time? I don't know. Because it's right up our alley to talk about something like that.

Yeah, one of the reasons why they are so different in their configured differently is that a caterpillars life. It is the larval stage of an adult moth or butterfly. That's probably the best easy definition of a caterpillar.

“The the reason that it's configured differently than it's adult form is because in the larval stage it's entire life is pooping.”

Eating pooping molding eating pooping molding. That's what I saw the caterpillars life described as over the course of five different molds as we'll see. That's all it does that's all I want to do. It just wants to eat. So it's designed essentially as an eating machine.

Yeah, kind of shark like and as Tracy points out like it's a very singular purpose. And the same butterfly has a singular purpose later on, which is propagating the species, if you know if you know what I'm saying. But the caterpillar, yeah, it's very shark like all it does is eat and store food and poop it out. And they eat so much that apparently they say that they can eat as much as 27 times their body size and their fairly short life. And they can end up being about a hundred times bigger at the by the time they go to pupate, which is when they, you know, hold up and turn into the butterfly.

As when they pop out of that little egg that they also eat. That's amazing. And if you want to see something just astounding go look up caterpillar egg for butterfly egg. I don't know which one you call it, but they look like little. Have you ever seen Vaseline glass?

Uh-huh. They look like little like ornate Vaseline glass vases. Yeah, they're very pretty. Yeah, I mean everything about butterflies are just great. Okay, I'm on board with them fully. But yeah, that thing, I mean, it starts eating. It eats its way out of the egg. Then it says, well, I'll just eat the rest of the egg.

And you know what, I'm going to go ahead and eat this leaf that the egg is sitting on as well while I'm at it. And they said, wow, I really like eating. Maybe I should just keep eating for the rest of my life. Yeah, each one suddenly turns into a gustous gloop and just keeps going from there. That's exactly right. So I said that it melts apparently it melts five different times.

And the reason why it melts is because it eats so much out, grows up skin. It's amazing. It has a mechanism where it releases an enzyme. There's a hormone that says, hey, you're getting a little, these, your clothes are getting a little tight.

Maybe it's time to hold. And so that releases an enzyme that basically dissolves its attachment to the excess skeleton.

And then the new bigger version pops out of the old excess skeleton walks away and guess what it does immediately after. It starts eating again. Yeah, it tries to outgrow that suit. That's weird. That's weird.

And it does that five times in its larval stage as a caterpillar. Yeah, these mulch are called in stars. Did you say that? That's the, that's the period of its life between mulch. Yeah, yeah. So five in stars in between mulch, like you said, all it's doing is just eating trying to get a larger suit size. But here's a very, another cool fact is they believe that not only do caterpillars have a memory that lasts like a mulch or two.

But they feel pretty good about the fact that they think that a butterfly remembers being a caterpillar. Yeah, they've done this at least one study that showed that if they trained it to avoid certain smells as one of its last in stars.

“It will remember that as an adult butterfly that it'll avoid those same smells.”

That's pretty cool because as you'll see what happens in the Christmas is so mind bending and nuts that the idea that it can remember anything is it's pretty pretty amazing. Oh, yeah, for sure. I didn't even consider that that is really hard to process. So let's talk about the body like you said it has mouth parts very important because it eats eats eats and the rest of its body is essentially a storage facility for that food that it eats and that it breaks down and stores essentially it's fat they're very fatty.

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

That's that's my impression too. Yeah, the caterpillar is six leg. If you're like, whoa, oh, Chuck, I've seen a caterpillar or two in my day and they have tons of little legs. Those are not real legs. They only have six genuine legs, meaning that they have segments and joints. The rest of those are called pro legs and there are a lot of those and they move all up the length of the abdomen of the caterpillar. And at the end of those little pro legs, they have little suction cups, little hooks basically.

Is it a is it a crescent you think or a crescent?

“Yeah, they're called creschets or crock and the yeah, crochets. But croch rocket.”

Isn't that what those really fast motorcycles are called? Sure.

Okay. I didn't know if that was a dirty thing to say or not.

No, no, that's all over. It's like douchebag. It was at one time like not very nice, but now everybody says it. So even though really like PG-13 movies. Oh, I thought you meant it was okay to say. You're real dishbag. Okay. Oh, no, no, no, it's not still not doing it. But it's not like, you know, a horrid thing to say like it used to be.

I gotcha. Because someone called me when the other day in a car and I was like, oh, I take you. Did they really? No, no. They don't have bones, of course, but they do have lots, they're very mussely. If you compare them to a human, and we have about 629 mussels, caterpillars have 4,000 mussels. Because those mussels, that's the way they're moving.

You know, they move in a little wave from front to back, front to back. Yes, front to back. Back to front, back to front. How did it mess that up? Well, different in the direction they're going again. Well, I guess so. And they move in a couple of ways. One of two ways is sometimes they're crawling, which means they're moving all of those pro legs and legs at the same time in sequence.

Or they do what sounds like an inchworm does, right?

“Yeah, I don't know why they didn't identify them as inchworms, but that's what they're talking about.”

They can move in little arches where they bring their front to their back together, making a mound out of their middle, their abdomen, and then they stretch the front out, and then they bring the back up, and then they stretch the front up. And that's basically one of two ways the other way for a caterpillar to move. Either as a wave, undulating, there's a lot of really cool videos of caterpillars moving or inching along.

Yeah, and I never looked close enough at an inchworm to figure out why they move that way.

And I feel like a dummy now because it seems obvious. They move that way because their middle section doesn't have legs. Right. It's pretty cool. It pulls the back because those are the legs are in the legs go, let me catch up. It's like a little cute accordion.

And it's really neat to see when you watch a close-up of a cent of, or a keep line of say cent of people, that's definitely a different animal. A caterpillar's pro legs moving as they attach themselves. Like you said they have a suction cup. They just attach themselves to like the branch or whatever that they're walking on.

And if you watch it and close enough detail. Yes. Excellent, Chuck. You can really see those suction cups working and it's pretty cool. It's awesome. Most things on a caterpillar are small, obviously, including their little eyelids.

They have 12 of those are called Stimata. And if you do look closely though, it's really cool looking. They have their range in a semi-circle sort of wrapping around the head. Like what's his name from Reading Rainbow, but on Star Trek, the next generation?

Yeah, Lavar Burton. Like his eyewear? Yes. Yeah. That's what I said.

“It would be on top of his head though, right? Like a headband?”

No, I think it's more on the front. I thought it was more on top. I thought it was on the front, but you could be right. It could be on top. It's kind of hard to tell with a caterpillar head.

Right, exactly. You don't really know what's what. It's kind of like a student baker. You can't tell which way it's going. Well, that job was for our age at listening.

That's what I love. Love a good student baker, Joe. Yeah, there's one more guy that's like, "Damn, Skippy!"

So those Stimata, they can identify light and darkness, but caterpillars are basically blind.

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

So they also breathe in a really interesting way. They breathe through spiricles, which are holes in the side of the caterpillar. And they breathe in oxygen. It goes directly to the trachea. And they breathe out carbon dioxide.

“And as they move, it's kind of like breathing in and breathing out.”

That's like a byproduct of their movement. And it all goes to that trachea. Like I said, in the trachea, it just diffuses it to the tissue throughout the body. They have blood. It's called hemo lymph, like most insects, blood.

But it doesn't, it's not used to transport oxygen. It transports things, like hormones that trigger molting and things like that. But the oxygen just diffuses throughout the body. Yeah, you know, an inch worm, it is like a little accordion. And if you could figure out how to build and insert a tiny little,

like, wooden read in each spherical, that little thing might sound like an accordion as it moved. They'd be pretty neat. Kind of cruel to, I imagine. Yeah, I mean, probably if you're sticking wood in the tiny breathing holes of a caterpillar. I don't think you're going to do that.

Don't try that. By the way, Chuck, did I tell you that caterpillar is from the old French shuttle pellos, which means shaggy cat? Oh, like the actor Timothy shuttle pellos? Is that?

No, that's Timothy Shalom, I'm sorry. Right. Yeah, Timothy shaggy cat would be that name. Kind of looks like a shaggy cat. But apparently, they think it was the, is it the woolly bully caterpillar that,

that inspired us? Yeah, that they think that, that was the original shaggy cat. And it's just kind of caught on from there. But that's where caterpillar comes from. Yeah, and speaking of woolly bully, you notice on caterpillars,

a lot of times those little hairs or little quills or spines. Those are called, uh, oh, man. We've even had scientists tell us how to pronounce that A.E. Is it Satay? That's what I think it is, yeah.

See, they're that, or we've been getting it wrong. I can't remember, but everyone is like in science, guys. Any times it's A.E. You pronounce the blank and I can't remember which one it is. Satay?

Oh, it's either Satay or Satay. And then we're going to get more emails. And maybe I should just put a sticky note on my laptop.

So I'll always remember that.

But that's what they're called. And they have a lot of functions. They can deter things that want to eat caterpillars. Because a lot of times these things carry little irritants and toxins. And you just put a pin in that for our very final segment at the end.

But like you said, yeah, you can get, you know, little irritated bumps sometimes if you handle the wrong caterpillar. And you shouldn't handle the caterpillar. I was referring to earlier, like as a kid. I remember touching one and just being like, oh, my God.

What just happened? And it hurt very badly. I remember distinctly. But I still love caterpillars after that. I remember there was one kind and someone will know what kind of this is.

“But I think it was sort of yellow and black.”

And we would, you know, put our. Fingy on the ground and the caterpillar would crawl up our hand. And then we would like get a leaf and have it crawl off. So I don't think we harm the caterpillar. We were just letting it kind of crawl on us for a minute.

But, and I wasn't touching the spine.

So I never got that irritation.

But I used to love doing that. And I just thought that was so cool. That they I guess now knowing that they're blind. There's like crawling on a stick. And it's like now I'm crawling on a finger.

Right. Yeah. That's cute. But yeah, you wouldn't stick like kid finger. You wouldn't have been touching the hair like structures.

So it would have stung you. It's not like I don't think it's an active process. I think it's a passive thing where you just touch it. And they're not like die die. It's just like right.

You just touched it. And it did it's thing. Passive. Yeah. Yeah.

I get the feeling that caterpillars even like, sorry man. Yeah. It shouldn't touch me. But sorry. Most caterpillars seem rather chill.

I was not happy to find this out.

I find this rather unpleasant.

“But there's some species of caterpillars in Hawaii that are actually carnivores.”

Far and away. Most species of caterpillars in hence butterflies are herbivores. They just eat leaves. That's what they do. They eat leaves and shoots.

Wait. Each shoots and leaves. Each shoots and leaves. So there's the ones in Hawaii. They'll eat snails.

And not only do they eat snails. It's really awful. They tie the snails to say like a twig or a leaf or something using spinnerets. They have silk producing organs. And they'll tie the snail.

The whole shell and all to like a twig. So the snail can't get away.

And then they climb into the shell and eat the snail alive.

It is horrifying. I don't like that particular kind of caterpillar. But I like all the rest. Yeah. They tie it down and eat it.

So awful.

“Imagine it just coming into your house, too.”

And you're like, please know. And you have no escape. And that's that. Yeah. It was pretty horrifying to read that.

And frankly disappointing. But there's also a brand brand in Australia. Brand of killer. This is hey. They lay their eggs and ant hills.

And when they come out, they will eat those ants. But aside from that and the Hawaiian. They, like you said, or strictly herbivores. And they are using those leaves also to camouflage themselves. They have a lot of great mechanisms to keep this not quite octopus level.

But they seem like they're, you know, I don't know if it's wrong. These words smart. But they know to like feed under leaves. Suburds can't see them.

They also have some natural camouflage. Like sometimes those eyes can look like the fake eyes can look like snakes. Did you see that one? Yeah. It looks like a snake.

Yeah. It looks like a bright green snake. And apparently they'll arrange themselves sometimes to make it look like a long snake. Like 300 caterpillars will get together and line up. And it's like, well, there's a snake.

No, it's a Hawaiian caterpillars. Yeah. Like a lot of them are solitary caterpillars. But there is what was the one in particular that, Traveling groups.

The gregarious caterpillars. Yeah. I get the feeling those are the ones that might do the old snake one too. Yes. I think those are swallow tails and they might be gregarious.

Yeah. So I say we take a break chuck. And then we'll come back and I propose that we talk more about caterpillars. Let's do it. I'm Bailey Taylor.

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Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. "Ladies, stop dangerous!" "Stuff your shoes!" "Okay, so you mentioned a couple of things that they do to protect themselves.

Camouflage, just eating a little bit on the underside of a leaf." "There's a lot of other things that they can do to. There's so many different species of caterpillar. Because, again, we're talking about malls and butterflies. They're not just all the same thing.

They've developed all sorts of really interesting means of defense. One of the ways that they say the best defense is shooting your poop out. And there's a type of caterpillar that does that. I think it's the silver spotted skipper. And skipper is a type of butterfly.

And it shoots its waste called fras as poop. As far as five feet from itself in order to keep predators from being able to track it back to its source." "That explains that old saying, "You ain't nothing but caterpillar fras."

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

"Yeah, and that's one of the things they do, like several other things, which is it all falls of the umbrella of I don't want anyone to know I'm even here. So a poop will be a big giveaway, obviously. Another is if they love to eat, if a predator sees a ton of chewed up leaves everywhere, they're going to be like, "Ooh, the caterpillar's nearby.

I love to eat those things." So as much as those caterpillars love to eat, it is their singular purpose in life. They will many times just eat little bits off of many, many leaves to kind of disguise the fact like, "No caterpillar here. There's just a few nibbles here and there."

"Yeah, just leaf rather than just, yeah, rather than just taking a leaf down to its spine." "Yeah, which even the dumbest of birds can be like, there's a caterpillar around here." "And you know they want to do that, but they still don't do it." The caterpillars have tremendous self control too. We mentioned that they have spinnerets, so they can spin silk.

And they use it to great effect in all sorts of different ways, including defense. Apparently, some kinds of caterpillars will spin a little thing of silk that they'll attach to the leaf they're on.

And when a predator comes, they just jump off, basically like John McLean and diehard.

And they're attached to the silk, so they swing into a window in the Nakatomi building. "Right, and then climb back up when the bird goes away. But they just jump off the leaf to get away. It's all but that's pretty neat to see." That's right.

And to combat jet lag, they make fish with their toes. "Yeah, what do you know?" "I wonder if they leap, I'd like to see that in slow motion. I wonder if all those legs and pro legs at once do that in concert. That would be pretty cool."

Or if they inch, they just shoot themselves up. They inch so quickly that shoots them right off of the leaf. Yeah. So yeah, that's one use of the silk is like literal climbing rope. Mm-hmm.

And like we said, like the solo caterpillar, which is many of the, I can't say, brands. What a dummy. Varieties, species. There you go. "Yeah."

"You know, if there's going around, they're eaten. They're laying in egg. They're using the silk as a, like, a lasso. Or maybe they might make a little nest. Mm-hmm.

Like we said earlier, maybe they might restrain that snail. But those gregarious kinds that live in big groups. They, they really get going with the silk production. They make big nests in trees and around tree trunks. Mm-hmm.

You've probably seen them before.

Oh yeah, they're like big tints basically.

Mm-hmm. Uh, if you've seen big, you know, looks like sort of a really dense spider web.

Yeah, there's some kinds of spiders that do that.

But I think probably more often than not what you're seeing or gregarious caterpillars getting together. Yeah. Uh, but they also use their little, uh, spinnerets as, like, a trail, like, hey. We're all going this way and we're going to lay this little trail.

“And we know that, you know, if you want to get home, this is how you get home.”

What's neat is those trails are often intergenerational. And so, like, uh, cool. The older, an older generation will leave their, that, that silk for the next generation to use. And that next generation then can grow bigger and stronger because they didn't have to use that energy to create the silk for that, that leads to the, um, to the food source.

I thought that was pretty nice. Yeah, like, hand me down silk. Yeah, exactly. Or like, you know, link the rope that grandpa gave you. Yeah.

Same thing. Hand me down silk. Length of rope from grandpa. Little else. There's another thing too that, um, we haven't quite figured out.

And we, I mean, the entomology world. And by we, I also mean them. Um, that it may or may not be advantageous to live in a gregarious community as opposed to being solitary. Um, because, yes, it's easier to build a big shelter for yourself if you have a bunch of other friends helping you. Um, it's easier to find food if you have other people looking at the same time you are and then telling you what they found.

But at the same time, you're also competing with those same people with the same caterpillars I should say. Yeah. And that's a big, that can be a big problem too. I like it caterpillars are people too. Exactly.

Uh, and if there's a disease, you know, it's going to spread pretty readily within that population. Uh, if they're all living together.

“Uh, but I think, you know, we've held off long enough.”

We should, we should talk about that metamorphosis. Okay. Which is what everyone wants to know about.

Uh, and that is basically a caterpillar is doing its thing.

It's going through those molds. Hit set fifth mold and they say, you know what? It's been great. But I think I'm tired of eating finally. Mm-hmm.

I'm going to go off and wander off into the woods and find a safe spot. And I'm going to pupate everybody. And when you see me again, I will be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Yeah, pretty neat. And this is where the terminology gets really confusing if you do any research on this.

Yeah, I can't for sure. So the pupa is often referred to as the form, the body form that the centipede, that the caterpillar is in as it enters the transformation, right? Yes. It's actually the life stage, like the caterpillar is the larval life stage.

The butterfly or the moth is the adult. The pupa is the life stage in between. But for all intends and purposes, you can also say that's a butterfly pupa. Uh, or that's a moth pupa, right? Mm-hmm.

That's the easiest, most understandable part of it. It starts to get really strange from there because the butterfly caterpillar, it emerges from that fifth moth. It has a special kind of skin on it. And over time, when it turns upside down and hangs from a leaf and begins its transformation,

that skin hardened, and it forms basically the protective layer that's going to protect

that caterpillar turned butterfly as it undergoes its transformation.

“And that's called a Christmas, but just butterfly caterpillars do that, right?”

Not moths? I think that's right. And then I think it's just moths because they don't form chrysalis or chrysalis. They are the only ones to spin a cune to protect themselves, correct? Right, and that cune starts to kind of soft, but that eventually hardens as well.

But I think that's right. Um, but the chrysalis itself is, is not some like shell they build. Like it is, it is the thing. Yeah, it's the outer layer of skin. Yeah, because it can actually twitch and move as a defense.

Yeah. Like it's a thinking sentient. Well, not thinking this early, but it is a shell that is a living thing. It's not like, let me build this, you know, this thing to get into. It is the thing that it is in.

Right. So imagine if you underwent this transformation, you probably go off into a corner. Sure. And kind of ball up maybe in a bit of a fetal position. Yeah, but then imagine as part of this process, all of your skin fused together. Oh, yeah.

And turned into like an outer shell rather than, you know, this, this, you know, this thing covering you. It's like this now this big ball that you're now kind of separated from inside. And you're doing your thing inside. Oh, yeah. That's kind of like what the chrysalis is like.

Yeah. And so we mentioned the silk like the uses as like a climbing rope and stuff like that into a little nest. It really comes in handy when it's time to to pupate because they use this silk in a variety of ways.

Sometimes like you said, they hang upside down from that leaf.

“So they, they've spun like a little silk pad that attaches to something.”

Sometimes he create like a little hammock, sometimes they make like a little sling in concert with a stick.

There are different ways that they can do this, but it always involves using silk to sort of stabilize itself either upside down or right set up or sideways or whatever.

Right. And then they start to do that thing, whether it's a moths spinning that cocoon or just the gradual transformation of caterpillar into chrysalis. Right. And then so once that happens, once the cocoon is full or the chrysalis is hardened,

“and one of the most amazing things that on earth happens in there.”

And it's neat because we've gotten to the point where we have photography that can peer inside of this without harming the caterpillar.

And they have like time lapse videos of this transformation. And as the thing turns more and more into what's obviously like a butterfly or a moth, and you see it hanging upside down, just forming, it looks, it looks like a cross between, in HR Geiger painting and Michael Crichton's coma, the movie version. Yeah. It's really neat, but it also gives you this, it has this kind of regal and majestic feel to it as well.

I produced a lot of emotions in me apparently. Yeah, I mean, it's, this isn't the science explanation, but it's almost as if you can take a tray of put a bunch of spaghetti and meatballs in a dish and cover it up. And then when you open it up, it's a lasagna. Yeah. And you're like, how did that happen?

Like, how did that even happen? So this is how it happens. The caterpillar breaks itself down into a soup of cells, like it's basically like a caterpillar soup for a while.

And some of the cells keep their form generally or at least stay attached to one another. So those legs cells. Yeah, they, they change, they look different, like a caterpillar's actual true legs look different from the butterflies true legs, but they're still the same cells. They're just, they rearrange themselves a little bit. Most of the other cells just completely come apart. Turn into a marginal cells, which are analogous to our stem cells, and that they can turn into any kind of cell. And then it reconfigures itself using the same cells, same amount, same everything into a butterfly.

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

And I don't understand it. This is where I think that science has kind of thrown off. They're like, the best explanation I saw is that it's better than having two, two things compete for the same food source, but that doesn't really make any sense, you know, because that doesn't make any sense to me at all. I don't understand it, but that was the best explanation I saw, and I didn't even understand it. So as to, as to the why. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's just so strange, it's, I just don't understand it, but everything goes through life stages, we go through puberty, we become adults, we go from infant babies to grown adults, but there's not a period where we stop.

“And over the course of two weeks, completely reconfigure ourselves into a new form. There's not that many things out there that do do that, and we just don't fully understand why it happens, and maybe we never will, and I think that'd be just fine.”

Although I would argue that the Josh Clarke I knew 15 years ago, his caterpillar like his now emerge is a beautiful butterfly. Thank you. I remember reading when Christopher Hitchens became a conservative, one of the, the liberal members of Parliament said that this is one of the rare instances where the butterfly turns back into a drug. I don't know. Wow. I like to hear what that makes it. I think I've ridden 2007, and it's still stuck with me. Yeah, that's a good one. We didn't take our second break, did we? No, it's time. All right. Well, let's take our second break. We'll probably still be talking about this metamorphosis, you know, when we come back, so just be prepared.

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.

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“Many stuff we enjoy to watch us, stuff you should know.”

All right. I mean, I guess we're done talking about many more physicists. It's called Hollow Metabolism. Yeah. That full transformation. I don't think we said it takes a couple of weeks, generally.

Yeah, it's about two weeks. Something like that on average. It can be more or less depending on the weather and stuff. Yeah. I took it as depending on the weather, meaning is that they don't want to do this in the middle of winter. So if they get started in winter comes early, maybe they'll just stay in there for a few months. Is that right?

There are some species that overwinter in their cocoon or in their chrysalis. And that's just part of their thing. But I saw that there's the ideal, there's an ideal temperature. That's what I took it to mean. Oh, okay.

And that the ideal temperature is 21 degrees Celsius and get this buddy. I converted it to Fahrenheit using fuel that we talked about the other day. So you did it yourself? Yeah. It's like down.

I could do it again if I wanted to, but I'm just going to find what I wrote down.

“I think it's like 88, 89 degrees Fahrenheit.”

All right. I love it when after all these years. 81, it's 81. You're still brave enough to put yourself out there with math. Here, I'll just do this.

Okay. So here we go. Fine Fahrenheit. 21 degrees Celsius. So it's 21 plus 32. Okay. We're getting everything back equal again.

So what is that? 56? The times 1.8, I believe, comes to 81. When was the last time you did sort of written down long division or something like that?

By the way, it's 84.6. 84.6.

Can you still do that stuff?

“I don't know probably if I gave enough time to it.”

Sure. I just did, it's just, it's not a part of my life. Yeah, I need more. I actually don't know if I remember how to do long division. I recently, because Ruby is starting, you know, like this past year.

Started like multiplication and stuff. And came at me with like a three digit times a two digit. And I was like, oh, you know what? I was like, I got it. I got it. I remember and I remembered how to do that and carry the stuff.

But I definitely don't think I could do long division anymore. I don't, I sort of remember, but I don't think I would fully be able to complete a problem. By the way, I, I know I brushed past it because I don't handle compliments that well. But I do appreciate the comment about me.

I might have more emphasizing into a butterfly.

Well, that was a joke. I'm just kidding. Well, definitely added this part. No, it was for sure true. I appreciate you appreciating that.

“So did we just come back from, from Abbreak? Is that really?”

Yeah, that's what's going on. But we can wrap it up and talk about caterpillar management. Because here's the deal. You know, they can, they can eat garden stuff if you have a garden that you're planting. But it's not that big a deal like individual caterpillars are not going to

ravage your garden and spoil your garden. If you have big groups of those gregarious caterpillars, they can cause problems. But, you know, if you see caterpillars in your garden, don't like, don't over react. Like, I got to start killing on these caterpillars. You know, take a breath. Assess your problem. Are they ravaging your garden?

Or do you just have some caterpillars here and there? Like, because you want those butterflies later on, don't you? Right. Yeah, definitely. That's a big part. And it's not just for their beauty either. Caterpillar's am butterflies alike.

Our food source for birds, which is sad, but it's part of the circle of life, I guess. So that's one reason alone. They're also probably even more important for your garden pollinators. Yeah. Big time pollinators. There was a dead milkman joke and there I couldn't quite make it. But they, so they pollinate their food source.

And most caterpillars, although all of them eat leaves. And again, like we said, they're eating machines. The amount of damage they're doing is really kind of pales in comparison to the benefits you get from having them in your ecosystem. So for the most part, you want to just leave them alone. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole section if you're interested on how to kill and get rid of caterpillars at HalsterForks.com.

And this article, but I don't even feel like talking about it to be honest. Well, let's talk about gregarious caterpillars because those are the ones that really are problematic. They can, on a bad year or a good year for the gregarious caterpillars, they can consume up to a quarter of the leaves in a forest. Yeah. And if they attack the same tree enough times, they'll kill a tree.

So gypsy moth caterpillars are gregarious and they're well known for killing trees just from eating the leaves off of it. That's how much damage they can do. And they can also harm crops too. So gregarious caterpillars, you actually probably do want to get rid of. If you come across it, but the key is prevention.

Like you look for the eggs, which form a ring around like a tree branch. And take care of those then, like don't try to deal with them later. It's going to be too late. You want to be proactive. They say the best defense is shooting your poop five feet away from you.

Yeah. I mean, I guess if you're in forest management or if you're a farmer. And it's like a literal effect on your crops and forest and stuff like that. They're out there burning tents and nests and things like that.

“But that's not something you should go out and try to do.”

Because it's you don't want to catch something on a tree on fire. Just not a good idea. Can you just see somebody trying to get rid of caterpillars? It'll be like that. And they just started a wildfire.

Yes. I can. I really can. It's hilarious if you think about it. So it is.

Should we finish up with the assassin caterpillar? Well, can I talk about one more thing? You don't want to talk about just for a second because I think it's kind of nuts as well. Okay. There's a bacterium called bacillus thirin gns, I believe.

Okay. He tea for short. This is a bacterium that people purposely introduce as a caterpillar control measure. And it goes in and creates it produces holes in the caterpillars gut and leads to sepsis. And it dies a painful death a few days after being infected.

Hmm. This is considered organic gardening.

The problem is it doesn't just target caterpillars.

You don't want it. It targets all caterpillars. And it's also a pretty terrible way to die.

I think you just say the caterpillars are here to stay as long as you're not curious. I'm just going to let them live and let live. Yeah. Okay.

I just wanted to get on that soapbox for a second.

Yeah. So I mentioned the assassin caterpillar. This is the Lenomiya Obliqua or the giant sokurimoth. Or the assassin caterpillar. It is the devil's caterpillar in the world.

And there have been supposedly several hundred people in South America that have died from the toxin injected from this caterpillar quills from the satay. Yeah. I think it takes a lot like even if one of them injected some toxin into you. You're going to be uncomfortable and I probably don't feel great.

“But I think you need to get like 20 to 100 times that to actually kill you.”

Yet it still happens. Yeah. It does apparently it's responsible for 500 deaths around South America. I think total like in all time as far as documented goes. Yeah.

It takes a lot like I think 20 to 100 times to kill you. But the way that it kills you is it's anti-coagulant. A very powerful one. And you die of internal bleeding essentially. Yeah.

It's a blood thinner. Yeah.

And that actually is being studied.

The toxins in that particular caterpillar being studied for its usefulness in bio medicine. Yeah. I think there are only what is it? There's like 32 species of linomia. But only two of those have that blood thinner venom, the obliqua.

And then the Achilles. But the rest will still sting you. It's just not going to kill you. It'll still hurt. Yeah.

That's South America. In North America, the biggest one we have is the post caterpillar, PUSS. Mm-hmm. Make a lot. Pige, upper, Qleris.

Mm-hmm. The southern flannel broth. And just accidentally brushing it can cause excruciating pain I've seen. So just be careful. Like it might be caterpillars with your eyes.

Not with your hands. Yeah. I guess I got lucky as a kid, but I just let him crawl on me for a minute. Yeah. I never felt that sting.

Um, there's one other thing too. The Eastern Tink caterpillars are problematic, especially in places like Kentucky, because they cause what's called mayor reproductive loss syndrome, where just I think 50 grams, which is a tenth of a pound of these caterpillars ingested by a horse while it's foraging, can cause it to lose its fetus.

Have a stillborn birth. Um, all sorts of crazy stuff. So much so that it has a whole syndrome named after it, and it's just for meeting these caterpillars. Oh, wow. Isn't that crazy?

That is. This is a good one. I thought you'd like that. Yeah, caterpillars are great. I think we should do a two-partner with butterflies.

Uh, should we? Sure. I think Tracy wrote that one too. Okay. I say we get on an adventure.

I was going to suggest that, but then I thought, is that too much? I don't know. I don't know. I guess they don't have to come out back to back. They can be competing in pieces.

How about that? No, we're back to back. And then we can skip the Metamorphosis March. Okay. Well, while we're figuring that out, I say everybody.

It's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm going to call this stuff. You should know, Crossing. I was very excited because one of our listeners, well, I'll just read it.

I'll let you hang on that for a second.

Hey, guys. When my wife, Katie and I were dating, we would meet up at lunch. To do the Daily Crossward together. For a poster, her 20 years ago, using a Crossward, I constructed myself.

“And years later, it's not only Crossward, but stuff you should know.”

It keeps our marriage life vibrant. I guess it's something to talk about every week. And needless to say, your recent episode on Crossward puzzles brought our life together full circle. About 10 years after we married, I became a published Crossward Constructor.

And have been, I've continued to resense with puzzles in L.A. times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, along others. So Jeff is a pretty experience as a Crossward Maker. As a thank you for a wonderful episode. I'm sending you an original puzzle to stuff you should know. Wow.

You do enjoy. Wow. And I haven't done it yet. It is printed out in my office. Uh, you set me, uh, just to, you know, sit us a, it's not a digital version.

So I can't, um, can't do it on my phone. I got to get out the open soul. Which would be kind of fun. And I can't wait to tackle it. I've just been waiting for the right window of time.

Uh, and that is from Jeff Stillman. And, uh, big shout out to Jeff at his wife, Katie. I don't know how I missed that one, but I'm glad you called it out. Because I can't wait to do that puzzle too. So thanks, Jeff.

Yeah, yeah. Jeff Stillman go with your emails and print that sucker out. Yes. Well, thank you to you both, Jeff and Katie.

“And if you want to be like Jeff, and send us some amazing thing,”

that's fine with us, uh, you can send a via email to StuffPodcast

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You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to it girl with Faley Taylor on the iheartradio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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?

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