Butterflies: Caterpillars with Wings!

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Butterflies – Caterpillars with Wings!

Podcast by iHeartPodcasts | Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

This spring-themed episode dives deep into the world of butterflies, examining how these striking insects live, their origins, biology, behavior, and environmental importance. Following a prior episode focused on caterpillars, Josh and Chuck pivot to what happens after metamorphosis, exploring the wonders (and some gross facts) about butterflies, their adaptations, and their symbolic role in ecosystems.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From Caterpillar to Butterfly: Not Just a Pretty Face

• Chuck and Josh build off their previous episode on caterpillars, emphasizing that while a butterfly may appear completely different post-metamorphosis, it's the same creature – with a mind that even retains some caterpillar memories (smells, etc.).
  • "Whereas the caterpillar was built for eating… the butterfly is built for sex. Sex, sex." – Josh (04:00)
• Differentiates between chrysalises (for butterflies) and cocoons (for moths).

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2. Moths vs Butterflies – Evolution and Behavior

• Butterflies are all descendants of moths—the main difference: butterflies are diurnal (active during the day) and moths are nocturnal (at night).
• Moth/butterfly camouflage: Moths blend against trees for daytime sleep; butterflies are bright for blending with flowers.
• A quirky aside on why moths are attracted to light (navigation via the moon), but butterflies navigate via the sun instead and aren’t drawn to artificial light.
  • "Butterflies navigate by the sun… that's one of my amazing facts about butterflies." – Chuck (06:45)

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3. The Name "Butterfly" – A Witchy Origin

• The Old English roots (butter + fly) may come from pale yellow coloring or a folk belief that butterflies were spirits that stole butter and milk.
  • "Dutch and Germans have a word for butterfly that means 'butter witch.'" – Josh (07:56)
• Fun family anecdote: Chuck’s wife calls them “flutterflies,” a term they lament isn't official.

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4. Butterfly Anatomy & Physiology

• Head, Thorax, Abdomen: While structurally similar to caterpillars, butterflies boast major upgrades.
• Eyes:
  • Monarch butterflies have 12,000 eyes, allowing them to detect color (including UV) and movement in all directions. Enables their famous migrations (10:01).
• Antennae:
  • Master navigators; serve as sun-based compasses and sensitive “smellers” for pheromones and even sense the wingbeats of potential mates.
  • "Just the antennae… sense the beat of wings of butterflies of the same species during mating season." – Chuck (11:06)
• Labial Palps:
  • Small “tusks” near the mouth, believed to detect food and can sense CO₂ (12:00).
• Proboscis:
  • Straw-like tongue; assembled after metamorphosis. Used to suck nectar. Butterfly must “assemble” its proboscis after emerging (12:57).
• Legs & Tasting:
  • Butterflies retain six legs (true legs), with taste sensors in their feet to detect sugars. If they step on something sweet, their proboscis unfurls reflexively (14:12–14:27).
  • "Their legs are taste organs. When they step in some dissolving sugar, their proboscis uncoils… and just starts sipping nectar immediately." – Josh (14:12)
• Wings:
  • Comprised of chitin (a common polysaccharide) and structure-specific veins; scales create iridescence via light reflection.
  • Touching wings damages them—irreparable, though not instantly fatal, makes flight (and survival) harder.

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5. Post-Emergence: Butterfly Bootcamp

• On eclosion (emergence), butterflies engage in a flurry of self-assembly: pump fluid through wings to inflate/dry them, assemble the proboscis, and excrete "meconium" (first waste).
  • Fun parallel: Both butterflies and human babies pass a red-tinted meconium after birth (17:12).

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6. Temperature Sensitivity & Behavior

• Butterflies are ectothermic—muscles don’t function below ~82°F (28°C); their activity is governed by ambient temp.
  • You'll see butterflies basking in the sun to warm up; at night or in the cold, they shelter and remain still (25:47).
• Wings are multi-purpose: For flight, thermoregulation, and scaring away predators using eye patterns or vivid color flashes.

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7. Migration Marvels

• Monarchs undertake the most famous migration: From eastern Canada to northwest Mexico, covering thousands of miles over multiple generations—no single butterfly makes the full round-trip.
  • "The branches that they're sitting on bend under the weight of butterflies..." – Josh (Monarch migration, 29:56)
• Population challenges: Deforestation in Mexico (Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve), pesticides (reduced milkweed), and habitat loss have driven numbers from a billion (1996) to as low as 35 million (2016), though recent years have seen some rebounds.

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8. Diet & Pollination

• Butterflies are pollinators, but less efficient than bees. Some species don't pollinate at all.
• Minerals: Critical but lacking in nectar; butterflies seek out puddles, mud (puddling), animal dung, urine, decaying fruit, and may even "spit" on soil to access minerals (31:20–32:15).
• Eating fruit (esp. mashed bananas) leads to greater longevity and reproductive success.
  • "The ones that ate the mashed banana laid almost two times as many eggs..." – Chuck (33:08)
• Specialized feeding terminology: "Psychophily" describes pollination specifically by butterflies.

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9. The Butterfly Sex Life

• Mating: Sex is end-to-end, with males delivering a nutrient-rich package called a “spermatophore,” which aids female fertility.
• Competition: Last male’s sperm typically fertilizes the eggs—some species evolved sticky plugs to prevent further mating.
• Egg-Laying: Females lay 10–300 eggs in clusters, choosing plants specific to their species larvae—humidity is key for survival.
  • “The eggs…have to find the Goldilocks zone with the humidity.” – Josh (37:57)

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10. Butterfly Gardens – Helping Out

• Why garden? Butterflies are indicator species—a drop in population signals ecosystem trouble.
• Garden Musts:
  • Use native plants: Non-native species like “butterfly bush” or tropical milkweed can disrupt local populations.
    • "Butterfly bush… produces tons of nectar, but it has no value in supporting eggs or the life cycle..." – Josh (39:00)
  • Avoid pesticides: Butterflies (and caterpillars) are highly sensitive to even small amounts.
  • Provide water (puddles for minerals), rocks for basking, and specific “host plants” for caterpillars.
  • Research local species and their native food plants to maximize benefit.
    • “When I was researching this, all I wanted to do was be done… so I can go garden.” – Josh (48:50)

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11. Human Impact and Butterfly Conservation

• Pesticides, urbanization, roadkills, habitat destruction, and even collecting for display have all contributed to butterfly declines.
• Some rare species become more desirable for collectors, further endangering them.
• Encouragement to seek out responsible, legal, and conservation-friendly ways to appreciate butterflies.

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12. Scientific Legacy

• Butterflies inspired Sir Cyril Clark’s work on genetics, leading to the discovery of the Rh blood factor—crucial for managing rhesus hemolytic disease in human infants.
  • “Butterflies… inspired the discovery of the Rh blood factor…” – Josh (55:39)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the name 'Butterfly':
  "Dutch and Germans have a word for butterfly that means 'butter witch.'" – Josh (07:56)
• On wings:
  “The structure of the scales… reflect and amplify light multiple times.” – Josh (15:23)
• On taste-by-feet:
  “Their proboscis uncoils involuntarily like boyo yoin, and it just starts sipping nectar immediately.” – Josh (14:12)
• On Monarch Migration:
  “You look at the kaleidoscope of butterflies, it’s like a single organism, each individual butterfly as cells making up the larger whole.” – Josh (28:27)
• On butterfly gardens:
  “It’s the kind of research that’s like an invitation to go immerse yourself in the natural world in all the best ways.” – Josh (52:22)
• On human impact:
  "Humans have not been super good for butterflies. Fortunately, we’re starting to wake up…" – Josh (45:52)

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Key Timestamps

• 03:19 – Episode intro; butterfly vs caterpillar
• 05:08 – Butterfly and moth differences
• 07:08 – The origin of the name “butterfly”
• 09:00 – Butterfly anatomy: eyes, antennae, labial palps, proboscis, legs, wings
• 12:57 – Post-metamorphosis assembly (“eclose” & meconium)
• 24:12 – Temperature and environmental sensitivity
• 27:35 – Butterfly migrations (esp. Monarchs)
• 31:20 – Butterfly diet & puddling/mineral intake
• 35:04 – Butterfly reproduction and egg laying
• 39:00 – Butterfly bush and the importance of native plants
• 43:40 – Population threats and conservation issues
• 48:04 – Building a butterfly garden
• 55:39 – Butterflies and the Rh blood factor (scientific inspiration)

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Summary Takeaways

• Butterflies, while beautiful, are complex creatures with fascinating lives, remarkable transformations, and vital ecological roles.
• Their fragility in the face of habitat loss, chemicals, and climate change makes them crucial environmental indicators.
• Listeners are encouraged to plant native gardens, avoid pesticides, and help protect butterfly populations, drawing inspiration from both ancient myths and modern genetics.

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Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Hey everybody, Chuck here.

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Happy Spring. And of course, this is episode number two in our Think Spring playlist Spring edition, because it's spring. And so these are all spring centric, because we love spring, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

I feel like they could stand on their own. Like, I don't think you have to have listened to one to understand what we're going to talk about here.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. We'll be like, diddle doodle.

[Chuck Bryant]

And once again, we have to thank howstuffworks.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.

[Josh Clark]

You remember her? Oh, yeah, she was great. She wrote lots of great stuff. She's a good person.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, Jennifer, I don't know if you're out there and listen, but. Hi.

[Josh Clark]

Hi.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's been a while.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, since like 2008 or 9 or something. Crazy.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's been a long while.

[Josh Clark]

Well, so we're talking about butterflies and we should probably kind of pick up not where we left off, because we talked, I think, about caterpillars being pests at the end or considered pests, but they're not really. Yeah, we should pick up after the caterpillar emerges from its chrysalis because we're talking specifically about butterflies. So it's the chrysalis, not a cocoon, that it metamorphosizes 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 it in the last episode, too. The butterfly is built for sex. Sex, sex.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They're built for reproducing. Should we talk, I mean, should we go back in time just a little bit and talk about the fact that, like, the distinction between moths and butterflies and stuff like, well, what's the deal? Wasn't it? Aren't moths and butterflies basically mostly the same? Except moths are they do their sex at night and butterflies do their sex in the day.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, there's not many distinctions between them other than, like 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

There's a lot of them. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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 evolved to fit in in the daytime rather than the nighttime, which is how moths evolved. So a moth's camouflage is meant to. To blend in with, like a tree where it's sleeping during the day.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you know why I meant to look this up and didn't? Why then a moth is so attracted to light.

[Josh Clark]

I saw that they think that it is attracted to the moon for navigation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

And that butterflies aren't attracted to light because they don't navigate by the moon. They lost that ability or that need.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, but butterflies navigate by the sun. That's one of my amazing facts about butterflies.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but then that's weird that they don't fly to light, but they are not attracted to flames or light bulbs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Well, maybe they know sun is death.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Whereas the moon is nice and cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we talk about their bodies a little bit? Because that's where we like to start off, usually with our insect casts.

[Josh Clark]

One more thing. Let's talk about where the word butterfly came from. Eh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Where'd it come from?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, well, it's very old English and it means butter and fly. Right. No real mystery there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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 color, 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 in other nearby languages. I think the Germans call butterflies milk thieves.

[Chuck Bryant]

Butter fairy, almost.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, you knew who it was the whole time. It was grandpa doing his night night eating.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He could get 1cc of blood through those arteries. They were so clogged. He was. He was on Ambien.

[Chuck Bryant]

Does it. Does it say when the name morphed for my wife into flutterfly?

[Josh Clark]

They actually used to think or something like, it's a pretty strange idea that they're called butterflies rather than flutterbys because that makes more sense. So Emily's kind of taking it in a much smarter direction. But that'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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, she's always. She still calls them flutterflies just for fun.

[Josh Clark]

Does she call spaghetti paschetti?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, just flutterflies. Can we talk about their bodies now?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, yes. Thank you for indulging me. I feel so indulged.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, like, you know, like great vision. But caterpillars, remember, were essentially blind. Butterflies, at least have these compound eyes and they can detect color. And I think we said the caterpillar could only see in black and white. They can detect movement as well.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But when it comes to, like, the star of the show, as far as butterfly parts go, it's those antennae.

[Josh Clark]

Well, hold on. Before we move on, I've got one about the eyes too. You know the monarch butterfly, like basically the quintessential butterfly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

They have 12,000 eyes, both compound and simple, and they go basically all the way around their head.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a lot of eyes.

[Josh Clark]

They can see into your soul.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's why they. Maybe that's why they're so great at migrating every year in such large numbers.

[Josh Clark]

Possibly. I think we talked about, in our animal migration episode, we talked about monarch butterfly migration. 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 navigate Using UV they see in the uv.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's that sun. And that kind of brings me back around to antennae.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, good.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 act as light receptors.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Obviously to track the sun. They're highly attuned to odors. Those antennae are great smellers. They sense pheromones during times of mating. And they can even sense these antennae, the beat of wings of butterflies of the same species during mating season.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. That's amazing. Just the antennae.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just the antennae. Wow.

[Josh Clark]

How about the labial palps?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Coming out of what, Chuck?

[Chuck Bryant]

Coming out of their head. Well, near their mouth parts.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. Ding, ding. Okay, it's now officially a Tracy Wilson article.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. I got one more thing on the labial palps, though.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They've kind of surmised that it detects food, that the function 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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, neat as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they think that might be the main function.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's really cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who knows?

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. So what part did you move to?

[Josh Clark]

I moved on to their proboscis.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh. Everyone loves a good proboscis. And 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They have two parts of their proboscis that they have to connect in order to start eating. So that's one of the first things that they do when they eclose from their chrysalis.

[Chuck Bryant]

Eclose, That's a great name.

[Josh Clark]

No, it sounds like Apple has trademarked it or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 and then a bunch of prolegs. The butterfly says, I don't need those prolegs anymore because I'm flying, basically. But I've still got those six legs. I've got a set of forelegs, 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.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, 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. Like they are taste organs in their feet.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they can taste through all sorts of different organs. It's pretty cool. Apparently when they step in some dissolving sugar, their proboscis uncoils involuntarily like boyo yoin, and it just starts sipping nectar immediately.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

So you better hope that your. Your legs are finely attuned to sugar and you don't accidentally suck up some really gross stuff. Yeah, you know, like, oh, it was pus.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, the worst word. It's the worst.

[Josh Clark]

It's pretty bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's one of the worst things, too.

[Josh Clark]

Hygienic utensil, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like what. What are the odds that one of the grossest things has the grossest word?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. I wonder if that was intentional.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like what is that? Ugh. Pus.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Does that sound gross enough? Sure, let's go with it.

[Josh Clark]

Can we please stop talking about pus?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But the upshot 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, if I remember correctly.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was. And it was a tough one, if I remember, to, like, absorb.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. But we did such a great job of it. I would like to say we probably just knocked it out of the park. Really.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so too. But the butterfly wings are made of. It's transparent. It's called chitin. If you've heard of chitin, 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. Their wings are made of that chitin 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 forewings 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 seashells.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And they're like you said, don't touch them. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I think butterflies cannot repair their wings, isn't that correct?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. They have no means of doing that. They have no car shield for wings,

[Chuck Bryant]

but I don't think it kills them. But if a butterfly can't fly, that's probably ultimately a death sentence, right?

[Josh Clark]

That's my guess. It would make them easy prey at the very least.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think that's kind of the deal. When they say a butterfly will die if you touch their wings.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

It will die quicker.

[Josh Clark]

There's something that a butterfly that's recently eclosed and a baby that's just been born have in common. Do you know what it is?

[Chuck Bryant]

Mm, maybe, but go ahead.

[Josh Clark]

They both poop out in a meconium.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure. A human baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meconium is that first poop that they take. And in this case, the butterfly is pooping what it last ate as a caterpillar.

[Josh Clark]

That's so cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is really cool.

[Josh Clark]

It's usually red, bright red, almost looks like blood. But the butterfly poops that out. It's one of the first things it does. It has to clean off all of its organs, its feet, to make sure it's sugar finding, not pus finding. Clean off its antennas, put its proboscis together again, let its wings dry out.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's cool.

[Josh Clark]

I saw And I don't think we mentioned in the caterpillar episode that in its last instar, it has wings already. They're just folded up under its skin. But they develop even further in the chrysalis. But when they're. When they come out, they're soaking wet because the butterfly was goo not too long ago.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Or some high tops.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or some. Oh, man. Remember those? That's so funny. What a scam. That was a scam. Right.

[Josh Clark]

I'm quite sure you could break your ankle in that just as easily as any other shoe. Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It may give you like a little tighter fit or something. I don't know about that. And for people that are younger listeners, if you don't know who Milli Vanilli was or pump up basketball shoes, they were, I think Reebok, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Pretty sure it was Reebok.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 shoes tighter.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Especially around your ankle. It was meant to give you extra ankle support so you could donk easier. Even though you've never dunked in your life.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. But. But they had Spudweb repping them, so. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I think he was one of their pitch guys for a little while.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

But anyway, the butterfly.

[Josh Clark]

Wait, wait. Should we explain who Spud Webb was?

[Chuck Bryant]

He was a diminutive NBA player.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

For the Hawks Austin line to get his autograph one time. Yeah. Nice. They pump their wings out, but not with air. There's a fluid that they pump through those tube like 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And then once they're all ready, they start flying and they realize very quickly, oh, it's not a very good day to fly. And I say we take a break and come back and explain just what in the holy heck I'm talking about.

[Chuck Bryant]

Psoriatic arthritis symptoms can be unpredictable.

[Josh Clark]

I had joint pain and I couldn't move like I used to. I needed relief.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got Cosentyx.

[Josh Clark]

It helped me move better.

[Cosentyx Advertiser]

Cosentyx Secukenumab is prescribed for people 2 years of age and older with active psoriatic arthritis. Don't use if you're allergic to cosenty. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. Like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal or viral infections. Some were fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough had a vaccine or plan to or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, serious allergic reactions and severe eczema like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-cosentex or cosentyx.com.

[Josh Clark]

Ask your dermatologist about Cosentyx.

[Public/LinkedIn Advertiser]

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[Josh Clark]

hey everybody. Get this. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 13030 million decision makers. And that's where it stands. Apart from other ad buys.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah, for sure. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, even company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.

[Josh Clark]

Yep, that's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B ROAS of all online ad networks. Seriously. All of them.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right. What in the holy heck are you talking about?

[Josh Clark]

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 raindrop 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 ectotherms, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, oh, it's no big deal if it's cold, they just kind of hunker down. But they also use these wings to do all kinds of cool things like, namely to scare away predators. They can do all sorts of. Like, they can make eyes where it looks like a scary face, kind of like their little caterpillar former selves 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. For sure, or as prey.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But even prey could probably get them. That's how vulnerable they are.

[Chuck Bryant]

So for sure.

[Josh Clark]

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. They don't know what to do next. That's how it's always struck me. For some reason, they're thinking of their next move, but in reality they're just sitting there 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 butterfly is having to warm itself so it can fly on to the next flower to eat or Rest or whatever.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a 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?

[Josh Clark]

Diurnal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Diurnal.

[Josh Clark]

Diurnal, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Diurnal. Is that how you remember it now?

[Josh Clark]

It is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, you do remember it. That's how I need to remember it.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But yeah, they bask those wings. They'll sit around on rocks. They shelter at night. Sometimes 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 fly. That's just. They just can't go out cold. They got to do a little warm up first.

[Josh Clark]

It's like that, that knee hike thing where you lift your knees really, really high, like in place a bunch of times.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like that soccer players do. Yeah, like that Ted Lasso guy.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And there's a name for that. But don't bother emailing us with it. We can figure it out ourselves.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 body and warm it up.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Which is pretty cool. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 very shortly.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So even though they're sitting there warming themselves up to move from flower to flower even, and that's typically what you see, there's a lot of species. I see 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love that.

[Josh Clark]

Also. That's the official one. They're also called flutter shimmer and rainbow of butterflies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. A flutter of butterflies.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. But you look at the kaleidoscope of butterflies, it's like a single organism in 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 whole, but it's really a bunch of individual butterflies flying together, but migrating as a whole down from eastern Canada to northwest Mexico.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

They just drive slowly by some butterflies and swipe them into the car and drive them halfway.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, things are better now. But there were a billion butterflies in that migration in 1996, and in, I think, 2016, that was down to 35 million from a billion. And I think it's since gone up due to these efforts.

[Josh Clark]

But that's good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Butterflies, if you take down where they're trying to get to, then they're going to die.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that biosphere reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and you can go visit it. But apparently when 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, yes, it's very problematic that there's fewer and fewer. I'm glad to hear that. It's kind of bounced back a little bit, but they're still under. I don't know if they're endangered or just critical right now, but there's. There. There's something to keep an eye on, as we'll see, because they're an indicator species.

[Chuck Bryant]

They are. And they're also pollinators. They're not, you know, the best pollinators, but they're pretty good. They're not like bees. I mean, bees were made to pollinate.

[Josh Clark]

They wear T shirts that say that they do.

[Chuck Bryant]

They wear bee shirts. 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 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?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. One is puddles. They'll just descend on a puddle that's bare dirt. I don't think asphalt would work, so it's kind of gross to think about. But the minerals from the dirt in the soil leach into the puddle and the butterflies suck up those minerals through the puddle. And apparently if there's not enough minerals for their liking, they'll actually flutter 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. And to create a hurricane. In Belize. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

If there's no water, this is pretty gross. If it gets pretty bad, they will resort to puking onto the soil and then drinking that mineral puke.

[Josh Clark]

I took it more as spit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, one man spit another man's puke.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. But yeah, they need the minerals, the nutrients, and it's just not enough for the nectar.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. They've done some studies, though, 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 mashed banana or sugar. And the ones that ate the mashed banana laid almost two times as many eggs. And those eggs were bigger and, like, more robust and vital as well.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

So there's a couple other places that they can get nutrients and minerals, dung and 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 psychophylly, like psychophily, but with one L. Okay. Specifically, butterflies pollinating plants is psychophylly.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love that.

[Josh Clark]

I thought you would. I found that and I was like, Chuck's gonna love this.

[Chuck Bryant]

The sexy stuff you mentioned. Butterflies love to try and reproduce. And they reproduce like a lot of animals. They join themselves. They join end to end at the abdomen. I think the male has a, like he clasps down on the female to make sure they stay together. And there is sperm from the male that is eventually gonna fertilize the eggs of a female. But not like you would think. It's pretty remarkable because what they do is they. Well, 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 pheromones as well, which is also the antennae. And then the male delivers a spermatophore. 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'll help you in this fertilization process. And they will take extra time to get an extra good spermatophore package ready to be an extra attractive mate.

[Josh Clark]

The good ones will.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So the, the, the, I guess the female butterflies, when they fertilize their eggs, they use the last sperm that was inserted to them. The last spermatophore package.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So there are some species where the male will basically close up shop after he's inserted a spermatophore with kind of like a sticky substance that prevents more sperm from going in. So his sperm is the most recent sperm.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 spermatophore if you're just going to use the latest spermatophore that you got.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. I went to a lot of trouble combining the spermatophore.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 spermatophore, they put it in their bursa 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.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean though. But they're not like they're not fertilized in the body.

[Josh Clark]

I see what you're saying. They're fertilized externally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, sure, that's the word.

[Josh Clark]

One other thing you talked about terrible smells. I turned up that some pheromones are pleasant smelling to humans specifically. Let me tell you about the green vein white butterfly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's hear it.

[Josh Clark]

It puts together lemon oil. For all intents and purposes, it has the same chemical composition as lemon oil, but it's the pheromone it produces to attract a mate. And I got to tell you, lemon oil is a pretty great smell. It would attract me too.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love it.

[Josh Clark]

So if you ever smell a great veined white during mating season, you're going to smell some lemon oil.

[Chuck Bryant]

The gestation period is about 3 days and they lay anywhere from 10 to 300 eg in clusters over a 2 to 4 week period.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow. It's that long?

[Chuck Bryant]

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 got to be. The temperature's got to be just right, humidity's got to 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.

[Josh Clark]

They need to find the goldilocks zone with the humidity for the eggs.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, they do.

[Josh Clark]

So they also make sure that they put the eggs on their baby's favorite food, which is a certain kind of plant. Butterflies are very frequently indiscriminate pollinators. They just go from plant to plant. But there are 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

We used to have a butterfly bush 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, 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.

[Josh Clark]

So the reason it's considered invasive and harmful to butterflies is it produces tons of nectar, but it has no value in supporting eggs or 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Even if you have a lot of those natives nearby, like, as a whole, it's still bad.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, because it's a distraction. Because it's so chock full of nectar that they go to that one instead and just die off.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, some distractions are okay, right? Like television.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. You could put a TV with an extension cord out in your butterfly garden. That's not going to harm them. If you have a butterfly bush, you have to chop it down. I command you.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. They're really pretty, though, and it's fun to see all the butterflies, but. Yeah, I get you.

[Josh Clark]

But wait until you've planted other plants, which we'll talk about, and then you can chop down your butterfly push.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, let's take a break, our second break, and we'll talk a little bit more about what's going on with the butterfly population and butterfly gardens right after this. Psoriatic arthritis symptoms can be unpredictable.

[Josh Clark]

I had joint pain and I couldn't move like I used to. I needed relief.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got Kosentyx.

[Josh Clark]

It helped me move better.

[Cosentyx Advertiser]

Cosentyx Secukinumab is prescribed for people 2 years of age and older with active psoriatic arthritis. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal or viral infections. Some were fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough, had a vaccine or planned to. Or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, serious allergic reactions and severe eczema, like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-cosentyx or cosentyx.com.

[Josh Clark]

Ask your Rheumatologist about Cosentyx.

[Public/LinkedIn Advertiser]

Support for the show comes from public.

[Chuck Bryant]

Huh.

[Cosentyx Advertiser]

I wonder if this can beat the market.

[Josh Clark]

Everyone's talking about the NASDAQ 100, but

[Cosentyx Advertiser]

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[Josh Clark]

Actually, too broad. How about software that's already profitable? Companies that beat the last five quarters.

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[Josh Clark]

That's discipline. Yeah, let's see what that looks like.

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[Josh Clark]

hey everybody, get this. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah, for sure. You can target your buyers by job title industry, company role, seniority skills, even company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. That's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B ROAS of all online ad networks. Seriously? All of them?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

And get this. If you spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads, you get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com sysk that's LinkedIn.com sy. Terms and conditions apply.

[Chuck Bryant]

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-20s tens. 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 has killed 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it Travels 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 plant a butterfly garden, you want to use natural pest defenses. But that's a big thing that's killing off butterflies and bees, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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 disrupted 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

Those are a problem. Like, anytime we build somewhere, we destroy plants, and those often have butterflies or that's a butterfly habitat. And then the roads that we have, the marginal land alongside of the roads are often like great places for butterfly centric plants to grow. But that means that the butterflies are very close to cars that are going 70, 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 its aesthetic beauty. But that makes it plenty valuable in and of itself.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wonder if butterflies and other insects would ever. If natural selection would be such that they would learn to fly higher than the height of an average car.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, I could see that. But then they run into semis and there's like, it's gonna take millions more years to get higher than a semi.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe they'll figure out how to fly undercars very quickly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

That'd be something trickier, but sure. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Collecting butterflies is, believe it or not, another thing that has hit the butterfly population. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the more rare a butterfly species gets, the more desirable it is for collectors, and the more collecting harms that population because it's so small. So ouroboros. But the worst kind.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I Imagine we'll hear from some collectors who, 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 gonna collect butterflies. That's all I'm gonna say.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I wonder if it's one of those things like ivory, where it's like, okay, this happened, this is done. Like these things are out there and we're not just gonna throw them away. That's an even bigger waste.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, right.

[Josh Clark]

So like antique ivory or antique taxidermied 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I guess if you find one in the ground or something, that's, you know, that for your collection.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not sunning on a rock, but, you know, dead.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Sure. It just fell over. Of old age.

[Chuck Bryant]

Uh huh. Should we talk about butterfly gardens here at the end?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, because one of the things people are doing are saying like, hey, butterflies, we gotta save these butterflies. If we don't, things are gonna go pear shaped even more. And so people are starting to plant butterfly gardens.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because I think you said they're a big indicator of like, if butterflies are dying off all around you, that's a big indicator of how your local ecosystem is doing.

[Josh Clark]

In large part, they're the canary in the coal mine.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. You're going to want to find out what kind of butterflies you have around you.

[Josh Clark]

That's a big one.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can look with your eyeballs and then cross reference, or you can just look it up on the Internet and then you want to find out what kind of plants those butterflies love that are native to your area and plant those.

[Josh Clark]

Chuck. When I was researching this, all I wanted to do was be done with this episode so I can go garden.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I love that Emily's gardening. I'm looking at her right now. She's gardening outside.

[Josh Clark]

Well, pound on your window and tell her I'm jealous of her.

[Chuck Bryant]

We got. I put it on my Instagram. I don't know if you saw it, but I saw a huge. Well, it's not that big, but a hornet's nest in our backyard yesterday. That is the coolest, most beautiful thing. Kind of tucked in a magnolia branch about only 4ft off the Ground. 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 I would have bumped right into that thing. So.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, boy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Now we're just going to steer clear of it until it is out of season and then hopefully try and preserve it. But Hornet's nest are so cool looking and just love that we have one back there. We got a crazy backyard full of all kinds of critters.

[Josh Clark]

Does it look like a mummy's head? Sometimes they do.

[Chuck Bryant]

It looks like sort of a mummy's head, but if it was an alien mummy because it's like top heavy and it looks like it has a little mouth at the bottom. You know, their little door.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll send you the picture. It's cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or I can just go on Instagram like everybody else.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, you get text privies.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

A big one, Chuck, is you want to use native plants. I know you and Emily are like big into that and I feel like people, including myself, are really 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. When you're building a butterfly garden, it's crucial because even plants within the same species can be harmful to butterflies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And I have an example, if you'll allow me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That's native. Yes. There's another kind of milkweed called tropical milkweed that does just fine in Florida and Georgia and the Southeast too. But it's not native. And the problem with putting that in your butterfly garden into 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 would think, like, that's great. I'm going to put a butterfly bush out, and I can pretty much call myself Gandhi from here on out, Gandhi of the butterflies. But it turns out you're harming them. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Boy, that butterfly weed is beautiful.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, it is. And it's native to Georgia, so you just plant it all you like.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know what? I'm gonna go tell Emily, like, oh, there's butterfly milkweed. And she's gonna be like, it's right behind you, dummy.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, that's the cool thing about the butterfly garden, too. If you. If you do it right, then 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 living their whole life back there in your backyard. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And speaking of backyards, I've got a backyard. A lower part of my backyard is kind of wild. I 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. I've left it there for the bees, the birds and 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. It's. I'm really looking forward to it because it's right. It goes right up to the edge of some woods, too, so. Gonna be amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There's something we really love, like, leaving green spaces and making it an invitation for animals. You know, like, I got my camp up there in North Georgia, and like, all of North Georgia is just being torn down for neighborhoods and. Or. And, you know, if you're a hunter, that's fine. 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 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Except for humans, because it's also a most Dangerous game type setup you got going there, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, sure. On the weekends.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, right. Let's see. One more thing about butterflies, there's an amazing fact that I think we can end on. How about that? 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 rhesus 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 its 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 into butterflies. And he was inspired by the butterflies ability to mimic other butterflies genetically, that they had these. What are called super genes, these big clusters of genes that all produce this mimicry and that were refined 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So butterflies. Super useful, super beautiful. Go cut down your butterfly bush today.

[Chuck Bryant]

Amazing.

[Josh Clark]

Chuck said amazing. So that means it's time for listener mail, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 Milli Vanilli 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 said it out loud and immediately the chorus popped into my head. So I go over to listen to it later on Spotify. I see a ton of covers for it. And I see Milli Vanilli is also in the search results, which is going to be my next search. So I think you guys may have had enough people searching. Owner of a lonely heart and Milli Vanilli close together. So that the algorithm associated those two.

[Josh Clark]

That's awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because other than the time period, it's not similar music, you know?

[Josh Clark]

No, I would say not.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe do a test and mention two unrelated songs or something to see what happens. Oh, boy. Should we try it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's mix Sabbath and you pick the other one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, so Black Sabbath. Name a song specifically War Pigs. Okay. War Pigs. Hey, everybody, if you haven't heard War Pigs, 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 Manilow's

[Josh Clark]

oh, Chuck, I was going to suggest Barry Manilow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I had a 50, 50 chance there. I don't know if you've ever heard the Barry Manilow song even now, but it's a classic Barry Manilow song and everyone should just go search those two on Spotify.

[Josh Clark]

So War Pigs. And Even now by Black Sabbath and Barry Manilow. Let's see what happens.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's see what happens.

[Josh Clark]

That was a great experiment. Who was that from?

[Chuck Bryant]

That was from Corey, and I just want to give Corey his due. Side note, saw you guys for the Andre the Giant Live in Chicago episode. I also saw Josh's End of the World Live in Chicago when you toured that your short series. It was so great and I really enjoy that. Josh walked by on his way in when we were outside and patted my friend Sam on the shoulder. And he's definitely mentioned that several times since then.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's from Corey and you patted Sam on the shoulder and I think that meant a lot to say.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Thanks for coming. Coming to see me, Sam and Cory, 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Love it.

[Josh Clark]

No, let's call it Corey's Song rather than Brian's Song.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. No, Corey can wait.

[Chuck Bryant]

Perfect.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no. But how about Cory's in Charge?

[Josh Clark]

Okay, that's a good one. That's perfect. We're gonna end on that. If you wanna let us know how the Corey's In Charge experiment goes, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are Wherever you listen to

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[Chuck Bryant]

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