Josh Clark (2:49)

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 is stuff you should know. Cheers. Cheers, Chuck.

Ad Voice (3:09)

Cheers.

Chuck Bryant (3:11)

You know, if it's an episode where we say mouth parts.

Josh Clark (3:16)

I knew you were gonna say this.

Chuck Bryant (3:18)

Then we're going back to the old school from our. I was about to say former colleague. Tracy's still our colleague. We just never see anyone anymore.

Josh Clark (3:27)

Right.

Chuck Bryant (3:28)

Fully our colleague, but Tracy Wilson, co host of the Stuff youf Missed in History Class, along with Holly. They're wonderful. They've been around for years. They're icons of podcasting. Tracy used to write a bunch of insect articles for howstuffworks.com back in the day.

Josh Clark (3:44)

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 weirder as the time went on.

Chuck Bryant (3:54)

I almost believe that for a second. But Tracy always does a great job with those or did a great job. And most of the insect articles we've ever used have been Tracy's original, like the ticks and the fleas, and I don't think ants, but bees, probably wasps.

Josh Clark (4:15)

She's a master of it, for sure.

Chuck Bryant (4:17)

I mean, she wrote a lot of them. And this one about caterpillars was from Tracy, along with stuff from World Atlas, Indy88, and breedingbutterflies.com. but I just realized today when I was researching this some more, that we haven't done butterflies yet.

Josh Clark (4:32)

No.

Chuck Bryant (4:32)

Which is shocking.

Josh Clark (4:34)

We've done one.

Chuck Bryant (4:35)

We did the wings, like, the iridescence.

Josh Clark (4:37)

Okay. That's what it was. Yeah. And we talked about them in the Animal Migration episode two.

Chuck Bryant (4:42)

Yeah. But not a standalone on butterfly. So we're going to talk about their counterpart. 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.

Josh Clark (4:57)

Right. Never knew that we should do A two. You didn't?

Chuck Bryant (5:02)

I just figured it, like. Well, now it's something else. Like Entirely.

Josh Clark (5:06)

Huh. But did you know about the transformation in the chrysalis or cocoon and everything? Did you know that?

Chuck Bryant (5:11)

Oh, sure, I knew how it happened, but I thought it was like, presto changeo. Now you're not whatever Latin name you are. You're a new Latin name.

Josh Clark (5:20)

Oh, gotcha. So, like they just became a completely different animal, basically. Or a 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 from boom box to robot with a gun.

Chuck Bryant (5:35)

That's right.

Josh Clark (5:36)

You know, but in a much more organic, soupy way, as we'll see. I love this one, Chuck. Like, I. Every kid knows about caterpillars. You go look at them 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. Their cells, they break themselves down to their. Their cells and then are rebuilt into a new version. Not that many animals do that. And scientists aren't exactly sure how or even why that evolved. Although Y 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.

Chuck Bryant (6:34)

Yeah. And it was also one of those where I just, I kept looking and kept looking. I was like, how has just this been sitting here under our noses all this time? I don't know, because it's right up our alley to talk about something like caterpillar. No.

Josh Clark (6:48)

Yeah. One of the reasons why they are so different and they're configured differently is that a caterpillar's 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 its adult form is because in the larval stage, its entire life is pooping. Eating, pooping, molting. Eating, pooping, molting. That's what I saw. The caterpillar's life described as over the course of five different molts, as we'll see. That's all it does. That's all it wants to do. It just wants to eat. So it's designed essentially as an eating machine.

Chuck Bryant (7:29)

Yeah, kind of shark like. And as Traci points out, like, it's a very singular purpose. And that same butterfly has a singular purpose later on, which is propagating the species, 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 in their fairly short life, and they can end up being about 100 times bigger by the time they go to pupate, which is when they hole up and turn into the butterfly, as when they pop out of that little egg that they also eat.

Josh Clark (8:10)

That's amazing. And if you want to see something just astounding, go look up a caterpillar egg or butterfly egg. I don't know which one you'd call it, but they look like little. Have you ever seen Vaseline glass? They look like little. Like ornate vaseline glass vases.

Chuck Bryant (8:28)

Yeah, they're very pretty.

Josh Clark (8:29)

Yeah. I mean, everything about butterflies are just great. Okay, I'm on board with them fully.

Chuck Bryant (8:36)

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 gonna go ahead and eat this leaf that the egg is sitting on as well, while I'm at it. And they said, well, I really like eating. Maybe I should just keep eating for the rest of my life.

Josh Clark (8:56)

Yeah. Each one suddenly turns into Augustus Gloop and just keeps going from there.

Chuck Bryant (9:01)

That's a good. Exactly right.

Josh Clark (9:02)

So I said that it molts. Apparently, it molts five different times. And the reason why it molts is because it eats so much, it outgrows its skin.

Chuck Bryant (9:11)

It's amazing.

Josh Clark (9:12)

It has a mechanism where it releases an enzyme. There's a hormone that says, hey, you're getting a little. Your clothes are getting a little tight. Maybe it's time to mold. And that releases an enzyme that basically dissolves its attachment to the exoskeleton. And then the new, bigger version pops out of the old exoskeleton, walks away. And guess what it does immediately after it starts eating again. Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (9:36)

It tries to outgrow that suit that it's wearing.

Josh Clark (9:39)

And it does that five times in its larval stage as a caterpillar.

Chuck Bryant (9:43)

Yeah. These molts are called instars. Did you say that?

Josh Clark (9:46)

That's the. That's the period of its life between molts yeah, yeah.

Chuck Bryant (9:50)

So five instars in between molts. 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 molt or two, but they even think there are researchers at Georgetown that have sort of proven that. I don't know how you sort of prove something, but they feel pretty good about the fact that they think that a butterfly remembers being a caterpillar.

Josh Clark (10:23)

Yeah, They've done at least one study that showed that if they trained it to avoid certain smells as one of its last instars, it will remember that as an adult butterfly, it'll avoid those same smells. That's pretty cool. Because as you'll see, what happens in the chrysalis is so mind bending and nuts that the idea that it can remember anything is. It's pretty amazing.

Chuck Bryant (10:49)

Oh, yeah, for sure. I didn't even consider that. That is really hard to process.

Josh Clark (10:55)

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 that it breaks down and stores essentially as fat. They're very fatty.

Chuck Bryant (11:15)

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.

Josh Clark (11:28)

That's my impression too.

Chuck Bryant (11:30)

Yeah. The caterpillar is six legged. If you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, 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 prolegs. 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 prolegs, they have little suction cups, little hooks, basically. Is it a crochet? You think so? Or a crochet?

Josh Clark (12:04)

I'm going with crochet.

Chuck Bryant (12:05)

Yeah, they're called crochettes or crotchets. Yeah, crotchets. A crotch rocket. That what those really fast motorcycles are called?

Josh Clark (12:15)

Sure.

Chuck Bryant (12:16)

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

Josh Clark (12:20)

No, no, that's all over. It's like, douchebag. Now. It was at one time, like, not very nice, but now everybody says it, so it even shows in like PG13 movies.

Chuck Bryant (12:30)

Oh, I thought you meant it was okay to say it is. You're a real douchbag. Okay.

Josh Clark (12:34)

Oh, no, no, no. It's still not nice to say, but it's not like, you know, a horrid thing to say like it used to be.

Chuck Bryant (12:41)

I gotcha. Because someone called me one the other day in a car, and I was like, oh, thank you.

Josh Clark (12:44)

Did they really?

Chuck Bryant (12:45)

No.

Josh Clark (12:45)

No.

Chuck Bryant (12:46)

Okay. They don't have bones, of course, but they do have lots. They're very muscly. If you compare them to a human, we have about 629 muscles. Caterpillars have 4,000 muscles. Because those muscles, that's the way they're moving. 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 I mess that up?

Josh Clark (13:12)

Well, it depends on which direction they're going, I guess.

Chuck Bryant (13:14)

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 prolegs and legs at the same time in sequence. Or they do what it sounds like an inchworm does, right?

Josh Clark (13:29)

Yeah. I don't know why they didn't identify them as. As inchworms, but that's what they're talking about. They can move in little arches where they bring their. Their front to their back and 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 out. And that's what an inchworm does. 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, like, really cool videos of caterpillars moving or inching along.

Chuck Bryant (14:00)

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.

Josh Clark (14:12)

Right. It's pretty good.

Chuck Bryant (14:14)

So the front pulls the back because those are where the legs are. And the legs go. Let me catch up. It's like a little cute accordion.

Josh Clark (14:19)

And it's really neat to see when you watch a close up of a centipede, or I keep wanting to say centipede, but that's definitely a different animal. Caterpillars, prolegs, moving as they. 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 in, in close enough

Chuck Bryant (14:44)

detail.

Josh Clark (14:45)

Yes, excellent, Chuck. You can really see those suction cups working and it's pretty cool.

Chuck Bryant (14:50)

It's awesome. Most things on a caterpillar are small, obviously, including their little eyelets. They have 12 of those, they're called stemata. And they, if you do look closely though, it's really cool looking. They have their arranged in a semicircle sort of wrapping around the head like

Josh Clark (15:07)

what's his name from Reading Rainbow, but on Star Trek the next generation. LeVar Burton.

Chuck Bryant (15:12)

Yeah, LeVar Burton. Like his eyewear.

Josh Clark (15:15)

Yes. Yeah, that's what I said.

Chuck Bryant (15:17)

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

Josh Clark (15:20)

No, I think it's.

Chuck Bryant (15:21)

Is it more on the front? I thought it was more on top.

Josh Clark (15:23)

I thought it was on the front, but you could be right. It could be on top.

Chuck Bryant (15:26)

It's kind of hard to tell with a caterpillar head, right?

Josh Clark (15:29)

Exactly. You don't really know what's what. It's kind of like a Studebaker. You can't tell which way it's going.

Chuck Bryant (15:34)

Right.

Josh Clark (15:35)

That joke was for our aged listeners who love a good Studebaker. Joe.

Chuck Bryant (15:41)

Yeah, there's well known guy that's like damn skippy. So those stomata, they can identify light and darkness, but caterpillars are, are basically blind. They're for sure colorblind. 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 their 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.

Josh Clark (16:11)

So they also breathe in a really interesting way. They breathe through spiracles 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. And the trachea just diffuses it to the tissue throughout the body. They have blood, it's called hemolymph, 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.

Chuck Bryant (16:49)

Yeah. You know, an inchworm, it is like a little accordion. And if you could figure out how to build and insert a tiny little, like, wooden reed in each spherical. That little thing might sound like an accordion as it moved.

Josh Clark (17:05)

That'd be pretty neat.

Chuck Bryant (17:06)

Kind of cruel, too, I imagine.

Josh Clark (17:08)

Yeah. I mean, probably. If you're sticking wood in the tiny breathing holes of a caterpillar, I don't think it would.

Chuck Bryant (17:15)

Don't try that.

Josh Clark (17:16)

By the way, Chuck, did I tell you that caterpillar is from the old French Chateau pelos, which means shaggy cat.

Chuck Bryant (17:24)

Oh, like the actor Timothy Chateaupelos.

Josh Clark (17:27)

Is that.

Chuck Bryant (17:27)

Oh, no, that's Timothy Chalamet.

Josh Clark (17:29)

Sorry. Right. Yeah, Timothy Shaggy cat. Would be that. That name kind of looks like a shaggy cat, but apparently they think it was the. The. Is it the woolly bully caterpillar that inspired those. Yeah, they think that that was the original shaggy cat, and it just kind of caught on from there. But that's where caterpillar comes from.

Chuck Bryant (17:48)

Yeah. And speaking of wooly bully, you notice on caterpillars, a lot of times those little hairs or little quills or spines, those are called. Oh, man. We've even had scientists tell us how to pronounce that. A, E. Is it setay?

Josh Clark (18:03)

That's what I think it is. Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (18:06)

It's either that or we've been getting it wrong. I can't remember. But everyone is like, in science, guys, anytime it's ae, you pronounce the blank, and I can't remember which one it is.

Josh Clark (18:15)

Satay.

Chuck Bryant (18:17)

Oh, it's either satae or satay. And then we're gonna 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 you said. Yeah, you can get little irritated bumps sometimes if you handle the wrong caterpillar.

Josh Clark (18:49)

Oh, yeah.

Chuck Bryant (18:49)

And you shouldn't handle a caterpillar.

Josh Clark (18:50)

It can get much worse than that, too. Yeah. If you've ever touched a caterpillar. That's what 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.

Chuck Bryant (19:08)

I remember there was one kind, and someone will know what kind this is. But I think it was sort of yellow and black. And we would put our Fingie on the ground and the caterpillar would crawl up our hand and then we would get a leaf and have it crawl off. So I don't think we harmed the caterpillar. We were just letting it kind of crawl on us for a minute. 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, that they're just like crawling on a stick. And it's like, now I'm crawling on a finger, right?

Josh Clark (19:47)

Yeah, that's cute.

Chuck Bryant (19:48)

But yeah, you wouldn't stick like kid fingers.

Josh Clark (19:50)

You wouldn't have been touching the hair like structures, so it wouldn't 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, die. It's just like you just touched it and it did its thing passively.

Chuck Bryant (20:04)

Yeah, yeah. I get the feeling the caterpillar's even like, sorry, man, and you know, shouldn't touch me, but sorry.

Josh Clark (20:10)

Most caterpillars seem rather chill, but not all of them are. 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, and hence butterflies, are herbivores. They just eat leaves. That's what they do. They eat leaves and shoots. Wait, eat shoots and leaves?

Chuck Bryant (20:37)

Eat shoots and leaves.

Josh Clark (20:39)

So there's the ones in Hawaii though, 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.

Chuck Bryant (21:03)

It is horrifying.

Josh Clark (21:05)

I don't like that particular kind of caterpillar, but I like all the rest.

Chuck Bryant (21:09)

Yeah, they tie it down and eat it.

Josh Clark (21:11)

So awful. Imagine it just coming into your house too, and you're like, please, no. And you have no escape. And that's that.

Chuck Bryant (21:19)

Yeah, it was pretty horrifying to read that and frankly disappointing. But there's also a brand brand in Australia, a brand of calorie. They lay their eggs in ant hills and when they come out, they will eat those ants. But Aside from that, in the Hawaiian, they, like you said, are 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 to use the word smart, but they know to, like, feed under leaves so birds can't see them. They also have some natural camouflage. Like, sometimes those eyes can look like. The fake eyes can look like snakes.

Josh Clark (22:07)

Did you see that one?

Chuck Bryant (22:09)

Yeah, it looks like a snake.

Josh Clark (22:10)

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, wow, there's a snake. No, it's a line of caterpillars.

Chuck Bryant (22:24)

Yeah, like, a lot of them are solitary caterpillars, but there is. What was the one in particular that traveling groups.

Josh Clark (22:32)

The gregarious caterpillars.

Chuck Bryant (22:35)

Yeah, I get the feeling those are the ones that might do the old snake one, too.

Josh Clark (22:39)

Yes. I think those are swallowtails, 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 some more about caterpillars.

Chuck Bryant (22:50)

Let's do it.

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Josh Clark (26:03)

Learning stuff with Joshua Stuff you should know. 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, they can do too. There's, there's so many different species of caterpillar because again, we're talking about moths and butterflies. They're not just all the same thing that they've developed all sorts of really interesting means of defense. One of the ways they say the best defense is, is shooting your poop out. And there's a type of caterpillar that does that. I think it's these, it's the silver spotted Skipper. And Skipper is a basically a type of butterfly and it shoots its waist called frass. It's poop as far as five feet from itself in order to keep predators from being able to track it back to its Source.

Chuck Bryant (27:05)

That explains that old saying, you ain't nothing but caterpillar frass. I never knew what they meant.

Josh Clark (27:13)

You're really good at jumping. That's what they say to you.

Chuck Bryant (27:16)

Yeah. And that's one of the things they do, like several other things, which is. It all sort of falls under the umbrella of I don't want anyone to know I'm like, even here. So a poop will be a big giveaway. Obviously. Another is if they love to eat. If. If a predator sees a ton of chewed up leaves everywhere, they're gonna be like, ooh, the caterpillars 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.

Josh Clark (27:55)

Yeah. Just leaf rocks.

Chuck Bryant (27:56)

Rather than just. Yeah, rather than just like taking a. A leaf down to its spine.

Josh Clark (28:01)

Yeah. Which any. Even the dumbest of birds can be like, there's a caterpillar around here and

Chuck Bryant (28:06)

you know, they want to do that, but they still don't do it.

Josh Clark (28:08)

I know caterpillars have tremendous self control.

Chuck Bryant (28:11)

They do.

Josh Clark (28:13)

We mentioned that they have spinnerets that 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 like 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 McClane and Die Hard. And they're attached to the silk, so they swing into, you know, a window in the Nakatomi building and then climb back up when the bird goes away. But they just jump off the leaf to get away. I'll bet that's pretty neat to see.

Chuck Bryant (28:47)

That's right. And to combat jet lag, they make fists with their toes.

Josh Clark (28:51)

Yeah. What do you know?

Chuck Bryant (28:53)

I wonder if they leap. I'd like to see that in slow motion. I wonder if all those legs and prolegs at once do that in concert. That would be pretty cool.

Josh Clark (29:02)

Or if they inch. They just shoot themselves off. They inch so quickly. It shoots them right off of the leaf.

Chuck Bryant (29:07)

Yeah. So yeah, that's one use of the silk is like literal climbing rope. And like we said, like the solo caterpillar, which is many of the, I keep wanna say brands. What a dummy. Varieties species. There you go. You know, they're just going around. They're eating, they're laying an egg. They're using the silk as like a lasso. Or maybe they might make a little nest like we said earlier. Maybe they might restrain that snail. But those gregarious kinds that live in big groups, they really get going with the silk production. They make big nests in trees and around tree trunks.

Josh Clark (29:48)

You've probably seen them before.

Chuck Bryant (29:50)

Oh, yeah, they're like big tents, basically. If you've seen big, you know, looks like sort of a really dense spider web. I guess sometimes. Those are spiders, right?

Josh Clark (30:00)

Yeah, there's some kinds of spiders that do that, but I think probably more often than not what you're seeing are gregarious caterpillars getting together.

Chuck Bryant (30:07)

Yeah. But they also use their little 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.

Josh Clark (30:19)

What's neat is those trails are often intergenerational and so like, oh, cool. 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, to the food source. I thought that was pretty nice.

Chuck Bryant (30:41)

Yeah, like hand me down silk.

Josh Clark (30:43)

Yeah, exactly.

Chuck Bryant (30:45)

Or like, you know, a length of rope that grandpa gave you.

Josh Clark (30:47)

Yeah, same thing. Hand me down silk, length of rope from grandpa. What else? There's another thing too, that we haven't quite figured out. And we, I mean the entomology world. And by we also mean them that it may or may not be advantageous to live in a gregarious community.

Chuck Bryant (31:08)

Yeah.

Josh Clark (31:08)

As opposed to being solitary. Because. Yes, it's easier to build a big shelter for yourself if you have a bunch of other friends helping you. 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 or those same caterpillars, I should say. Yeah, and that's a big. That can be a big problem too.

Chuck Bryant (31:31)

I like it. Caterpillars are people too.

Josh Clark (31:33)

Exactly.

Chuck Bryant (31:35)

And if there's a disease, it's going to spread pretty readily within that population if they're all living together. But I think we've held off long enough. We should talk about that metamorphosis, which is what everyone wants to know about. And that is basically a caterpillar is Doing its thing. It's going through those molts, hits that fifth molt, and they say, you know what? This has been great, but I think I'm tired of eating. Finally, I'm going to go off and wander off into the woods. I'm going to 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.

Josh Clark (32:13)

Yeah, pretty neat. And this is where the terminology gets really confusing. If you do any research on this.

Chuck Bryant (32:23)

Yeah, it can for sure.

Josh Clark (32:24)

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?

Chuck Bryant (32:39)

Yes.

Josh Clark (32:40)

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 intents and purposes, you can also say that's a. That's a butterfly pupa, although. Or that's a moth pupa. Right. That's the easiest, most understandable part of it. It starts to get really strange from there, because the butterfly caterpillar, when it emerges from that fifth molt, 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 hardens and it forms basically the protective layer that's going to protect that, that caterpillar turned butterfly as it undergoes its transformation. And that's called a chrysalis. But just butterfly caterpillars do that. Right. Not moths.

Chuck Bryant (33:33)

I think that's right.

Josh Clark (33:35)

And then I think it's just moths because they don't form chrysalis or chrysalis. They are the only ones to spin a cocoon to protect themselves. Correct.

Chuck Bryant (33:45)

Right. And that cocoon starts out kind of soft, but that eventually hardens as well. But I think that's right. But the chrysalis itself is. Is not some, like, shell they build. Like, it is the thing.

Josh Clark (34:00)

Yeah. It's the outer layer of skin. Okay.

Chuck Bryant (34:02)

Yeah. Cause it can actually twitch and move as a defense.

Josh Clark (34:06)

Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (34:07)

Like, it's a thinking sentient. Well, not thinking necessarily, 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.

Josh Clark (34:20)

Right. So imagine if you underwent this transformation, you would probably go off into a corner and kind of ball up, maybe in a bit of a fetal position. But then imagine as part of this process, all of Your skin fused together and turned into like an outer shell rather than this thing covering you. It's like now this big ball that you're now kind of separated from inside and you're doing your thing inside. That's kind of like what the chrysalis is like.

Chuck Bryant (34:50)

Yeah. And so we mentioned the silk, like the uses as like a climbing rope and stuff like that and to build little nests. It really comes in handy when it's to pupate because they use this silk in a variety of ways. There's more than one way to skin a cat and there's more than one way for a caterpillar to metamorphosize. Sometimes, like you said, they hang upside down from that leaf. So they've spun like a little silk pad that attaches to something. Sometimes they 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 side up or sideways or whatever. And then they start to do that thing, whether it's a moth spinning that cocoon or just the gradual transformation of caterpillar into chrysalis.

Josh Clark (35:42)

Right. And then so once that happens, once the cocoon is full or the chrysalis is hardened, this in 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 an H.R. geiger painting and Michael Crichton's Coma, the movie version. It's really neat, but it also gives you this. It has this kind of regal and majestic feel to it as well. It produced a lot of emotions in me, apparently.

Chuck Bryant (36:38)

Yeah. I mean, this isn't the science y 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.

Josh Clark (36:57)

Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (36:58)

And you're like, how did that happen? Like, how did that even happen?

Josh Clark (37:02)

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 leg cells, yeah, they. They change. They look different. Like a caterpillar's actual true legs look different from the butterfly's 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 imaginal 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.

Chuck Bryant (37:56)

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. I mean, if it came out looking like a dung beetle, that would still be awesome. But to come out looking like a butterfly with those iridescent wings and the little faces on those wings, it's just unbelievable. And I guess, I mean, evolutionarily speaking, this is all to eventually get to, like, a pollinator.

Josh Clark (38:23)

I don't understand it. This is where I think they. That science is kind of thrown off. They're like, oh, really? 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 that. But that was the best explanation I saw, and I didn't even understand it.

Chuck Bryant (38:46)

So as to. As to the why? Yeah, yeah.

Josh Clark (38:50)

Like, it's just so strange. I just don't understand it. And 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.

Chuck Bryant (39:21)

Although I would argue that the Josh Clark I knew 15 years ago, his caterpillar, like, has now emerged as a beautiful butterfly.

Josh Clark (39:28)

Thank you. I remember reading when Christopher Hitchens became a Conservative, one of the liberal members of Parliament said that this is one of the rare instances where the butterfly turns back into the slug.

Chuck Bryant (39:41)

Oh, no.

Josh Clark (39:42)

Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (39:43)

Wow. I like to hear with that accent.

Josh Clark (39:45)

I think I read that in 2007 and it still stuck with me.

Chuck Bryant (39:48)

Yeah, that's a good one. We didn't take our second break, did we? Nope.

Josh Clark (39:52)

It's time.

Chuck Bryant (39:52)

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.

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Chuck Bryant (40:11)

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Josh Clark (43:14)

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Chuck Bryant (43:26)

All right. I mean, I guess we're done talking about metamorphosis. It's called holometabolism. Yeah, that full transformation. And I don't think you said it takes a couple of weeks generally.

Josh Clark (43:38)

Yeah, I saw about two weeks, something like that. On average, it can be more or less depending on the weather and stuff.

Chuck Bryant (43:44)

Yeah, and 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 like winter comes early, maybe they'll just stay in there for a few months. Is that right?

Josh Clark (43:57)

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. That the ideal. There's an ideal temperature. That's what I took it to mean.

Chuck Bryant (44:07)

Oh, okay.

Josh Clark (44:08)

And that the ideal temperature is 21 degrees Celsius. And get this, buddy. I converted it to Fahrenheit using the formula we talked about the other day.

Chuck Bryant (44:15)

So you did it yourself?

Josh Clark (44:17)

Yeah, it's like I wrote it down. I could do it again if I wanted to, but I'm just gonna find what I wrote down. I think it's like 88, 89 degrees Fahrenheit.

Chuck Bryant (44:26)

All right. I love it when after all these years, 81.

Josh Clark (44:30)

It's 81.

Chuck Bryant (44:31)

You're still brave enough to put yourself out there with math.

Josh Clark (44:33)

Here, I'll just do this. Okay. So we're gonna find Fahrenheit from 21 degrees Celsius. So it's 21 plus 32. Okay. We're getting everything back equal again. So what is that? 56 times 1.8, I believe comes to 81.

Chuck Bryant (44:50)

When was the last time you did sort of written down long division or something like that?

Josh Clark (44:58)

Oh, it's been a long time. By the way. It's 84.6.

Chuck Bryant (45:00)

84.6. Can you still do that stuff?

Josh Clark (45:04)

I don't know. Probably, if I gave enough time to it. Sure. I just, it's just. It's not a part of my life anymore.

Chuck Bryant (45:12)

I actually don't know if I remember how to do long division. I recently, because Ruby is starting this past year, started multiplication and stuff and came at me with 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 to carry the stuff. But I definitely don't think I could do long division anymore. I sort of remember, but I don't think I would fully be able to complete a problem, by the way.

Josh Clark (45:43)

I know I brushed past it because I don't handle compliments that well, but I do appreciate the comment about me metamorphosizing into a butterfly.

Chuck Bryant (45:51)

That was a joke. I'm just kidding.

Josh Clark (45:54)

We'll definitely edit this part out.

Chuck Bryant (45:55)

No, it was for sure true. I appreciate you appreciating that.

Josh Clark (45:59)

So did we just come back from ab break? Is that really what's going on here?

Chuck Bryant (46:04)

Yeah, that's what's going on. But we can wrap it up and talk about caterpillar management because here's the deal. Caterpillars eat leaves and you know, 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 gonna 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 overreact and be like, I gotta start killing all 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?

Josh Clark (46:53)

Right? Yeah, definitely. That's a big part. And it's not just for their beauty either. Caterpillars and butterflies alike are a 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 Deb Milkman joke in there. I couldn't quite, 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. The benefits you get from having them in your ecosystem. So for the most part, you want to just leave them alone.

Chuck Bryant (47:37)

Yeah. I mean, there's a whole section, if you're interested, on how to kill and get rid of caterpillars@howstuffworks.com in this article, but I don't even feel like talking about it, to be honest.

Josh Clark (47:48)

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 they, they. 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 br ranch 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.

Chuck Bryant (48:43)

Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're in forest management or if you're a farmer and it has, like, a literal effect on your crops and your forest and stuff like that. They're out there, you know, burning tents and nests and things like that. But that's not something you should go out and try to do because you don't want to catch something on a tree on fire. Just not a good idea.

Josh Clark (49:05)

But can't you just see somebody trying to get rid of caterpillars and be like, oh, and they just started a wildfire?

Chuck Bryant (49:10)

Yes, I can. I really can.

Josh Clark (49:15)

It's hilarious if you think about it. It's so dumb.

Chuck Bryant (49:17)

It is. Should we finish up with the assassin caterpillar?

Josh Clark (49:22)

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?

Chuck Bryant (49:27)

Okay.

Josh Clark (49:28)

There's a bacterium called Bacillus thuringianis, I believe. BT for Short. This is a bacteria that people purposely introduce as a, as a caterpillar control measure. And it goes in and create, produces holes in the caterpillar's gut and leads to sepsis and it dies a painful death a few days after being infected. This is considered organic gardening. The problem is it doesn't just target caterpillars you don't want. It targets all caterpillars and it's also a pretty terrible way to die. So I'm. I think I'm with you, Chuck, man. I think you just. You say the caterpillars are here to stay. As long as they're not gregarious, I'm just going to let them live and let live. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to get on that soapbox for a second.

Chuck Bryant (50:11)

Yeah, I'm with you. So I mentioned the assassin caterpillar. This is the Lonomia obliqua or the giant silkworm moth, or the assassin caterpillar. It is the deadliest 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.

Josh Clark (50:36)

Quills from the setae.

Chuck Bryant (50:37)

Yeah, I think it takes a lot. Like, even if one of them, you know, injected some toxin into you, you're going to be uncomfortable and it probably won't feel great. But I think you need to get like, you know, 20 to 100 times that to actually kill you. Yet it still happens.

Josh Clark (50:54)

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 anticoagulant, a very powerful one. And you die of internal bleeding, essentially.

Chuck Bryant (51:15)

Yeah, it's a blood thinner.

Josh Clark (51:17)

Yeah. And that actually is being studied. The toxins in that particular caterpillar are being studied for its usefulness in biomedicine.

Chuck Bryant (51:26)

Yeah, I think there are only. What is it? There's like 32 species of Lonomia, but only two of those have that blood thinner venom, the Obliqua and then the Achilles.

Josh Clark (51:39)

But the rest will still sting you. It's just not going to kill you. It'll still hurt. That's South America. In North America, the biggest one we have is the puss caterpillar, P U S S Megalopage uppercularis, the southern flannel moth. And just accidentally brushing it can cause excruciating pain. I've seen. So just be careful like admire caterpillars with your eyes, not with your hands.

Chuck Bryant (52:06)

Yeah, I, I, I guess I got lucky as a kid by just letting them crawl on me for a minute. But yeah, I never, I never felt that sting.

Josh Clark (52:13)

There's one other thing too. The eastern tent caterpillars are problematic, especially in places like Kentucky, because they cause what's called mare 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, its fetus, have a stillborn birth, all sorts of crazy stuff. So much so that it has a whole syndrome named after. And it's just from eating these caterpillars.

Chuck Bryant (52:43)

Oh, wow.

Josh Clark (52:44)

Isn't that crazy?

Chuck Bryant (52:46)

That is. This is a good one.

Josh Clark (52:47)

I thought you'd like that. Yeah, caterpillars are great. I think we should do a two parter with butterflies.

Chuck Bryant (52:52)

Oh, should we?

Josh Clark (52:54)

Sure.

Chuck Bryant (52:55)

I think Tracy wrote that one too.

Josh Clark (52:58)

Okay, I say we get on it then. Chuck.

Chuck Bryant (52:59)

I was gonna suggest that, but then I thought, is that too much?

Josh Clark (53:02)

I don't know. I don't know. I guess they don't have to come out back to back. They can be companion pieces. How about that?

Chuck Bryant (53:08)

No.

Josh Clark (53:08)

Or back to back.

Chuck Bryant (53:09)

And then we can skip the metamorphosis part.

Josh Clark (53:11)

Okay, well, while we're figuring that out, I say, everybody, it's time for listener mail.

Chuck Bryant (53:18)

I'm gonna call this Stuff youf Should Know Crossy. 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 crossword together. I proposed to her 20 years ago using a crossword I constructed myself. And years later, it's not only crosswords, but stuff you should know. It keeps our marriage life vibrant, gives us something to talk about every week. And needless to say, your recent episode on cross puzzles brought our life together full circle. About 10 years after we married, I became a published crossword constructor and have been, I've continued ever since with puzzles in the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, among others. So Jeff is pretty experienced as a crossy maker. As a thank you for a wonderful episode, I'm sending you an original puzzle with the stuff you should know theme wow. For you to enjoy. Wow. And I haven't done it yet. It is printed out in my office. He sent me just a, you know, sent us a. It's not a digital version, so I can't can't do it on my phone. I got to get out the old pencil.

Josh Clark (54:28)

Nice.

Chuck Bryant (54:29)

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. And that is from Jeff Stillman. And big shout out to Jeff and his wife Katie.

Josh Clark (54:40)

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.

Chuck Bryant (54:46)

Yeah, yeah, Jeff Stillman, go look at your emails and print that sucker out.

Josh Clark (54:50)

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. You can send it via email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

Chuck Bryant (55:07)

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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