The Birds and The Bees

Summary

TED Radio Hour: The Birds and The Bees
Host: Manoush Zomorodi | Release Date: February 28, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled "The Birds and The Bees," host Manoush Zomorodi delves into the intricate world of animal reproduction, exploring how different species navigate the challenges of procreation. Through conversations with leading biologists and a personal anecdote from comedian Julia Sweeney, the episode unpacks the complexities and fascinating behaviors that ensure the survival of various species.

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Urban Beekeeping and the Survival of Bees

Speaker: Noah Wilson Rich
Timestamps: 01:11 – 13:04

Manoush begins her exploration by visiting Noah Wilson Rich, a biologist and beekeeper, on a Manhattan rooftop teeming with wildflowers and trees. Rich explains his unexpected transition to urban beekeeping, highlighting that bees thrive better in city environments compared to rural areas.

"You have to vibe with it. You know, everything we do in life," (02:07) Rich emphasizes the importance of adapting to urban settings to support bee populations.

Rich outlines the critical role bees play in pollinating over 70 fruit and vegetable crops essential to human diets, contributing over $100 billion annually to the global economy. He underscores the significance of habitat diversity, noting that urban areas offer up to eight times more plant species for bees compared to their suburban counterparts.

"We're finding out now that in rural areas, there are 150 plants on average in a sample of honey," (07:57) Rich explains, presenting evidence that urban habitats with diverse flora are crucial for bee health and sustainability.

Rich also discusses the potential consequences of failing to support bee populations, warning of a "great insect apocalypse" that would have dire repercussions for agriculture and ecosystems worldwide.

"Without all of these plants that are pollinated by pollinators like bees, we are not going to be able to move the needle on our carbon goals and to really have a healthy future as humans," (12:58) Rich concludes, highlighting the interconnectedness of bees and human survival.

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The Complex World of Bird Reproduction

Speaker: Karen Bondar
Timestamps: 15:31 – 35:59

The episode transitions to the avian world with Karen Bondar, a biologist and science writer, who explores the sophisticated strategies birds employ in reproduction. Bondar explains how bird mothers meticulously manage their eggs, tailoring each one based on environmental factors and the quality of the father.

"If a mother is experiencing a resource shortage, this will make its way into the eggs that she lays," (16:26) Bondar details, illustrating how birds adjust egg composition to maximize offspring survival under varying conditions.

An intriguing example comes from the Galapagos Islands’ blue-footed boobies. Bondar describes how female boobies alter the nutrient and hormone levels in their eggs based on the attractiveness of their mates. Researchers observed that when a male's feet were artificially darkened, females produced eggs with fewer nutrients.

"The second egg came along with fewer nutrients, fewer hormones," (08:50) Bondar notes, demonstrating the direct influence of mate quality on egg investment.

Bondar also discusses the role of male birds in parenting, contrasting avian paternal care with mammalian norms. In species like penguins, fathers actively participate in incubating eggs, showcasing the diverse parental roles across bird species.

"In the bird world, once mom has laid that egg, dad can legitimately sit on that egg, and that is worth something," (24:36) she explains, highlighting the significance of bi-parental care in avian reproduction.

Additionally, Bondar touches on brood parasites—birds like cuckoos that lay their eggs in other species’ nests. These parasites often mimic the host’s eggs to ensure their young are raised by unsuspecting parents.

"They can copy the colors, the pigments. Sometimes there's even little patterns on the eggs, some speckles," (22:37) Bondar elaborates, showcasing the deceptive strategies employed by brood parasites to secure successful reproduction.

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Evolutionary Adaptations in Cricket Reproduction

Speaker: Marlene Zook
Timestamps: 30:29 – 44:51

Marlene Zook, an evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist, takes listeners into the world of crickets, revealing how these insects have evolved unique reproductive strategies in response to parasitic threats. Zook recounts her discovery of sound-orienting parasitic flies in Hawaii that target singing male crickets, forcing males to either attract mates or risk being parasitized.

"The larvae then burrow into the cricket, eat it from the inside out, and kill the cricket," (32:13) Zook describes the grim fate awaiting male crickets that sing loudly.

In response, some male crickets developed a wing mutation that prevents them from singing, thereby avoiding parasitization but also making it harder to attract mates. These "flat-wing" males adopt a satellite strategy, intercepting females attracted to singing males to mate without drawing the attention of parasitic flies.

"If there's a few callers left, the females are still super attracted to them," (40:18) Zook explains, illustrating the delicate balance between attracting mates and avoiding predators.

Zook emphasizes the rapid pace of this evolutionary adaptation, noting that the mutation spread through the cricket population in just about 20 generations—a testament to the flexibility and resilience of insect behavior.

"Evolution can happen really fast or really slow or in between," (40:18) Zook reflects, challenging common perceptions about the speed of evolutionary change.

She further explores the diversity of insect reproduction, highlighting behaviors that defy human expectations of gender roles and mating dynamics. For instance, in katydids, males provide costly nuptial gifts to females, reversing traditional expectations of male dominance.

"The males are very passive about mating, whereas the females are extremely aggressive," (43:56) Zook notes, showcasing the intricate and often counterintuitive reproductive strategies in insects.

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Human Reproduction and Cultural Narratives

Speaker: Julia Sweeney
Timestamps: 47:20 – 52:33

Comedian Julia Sweeney shares a personal and humorous story about explaining human reproduction to her young daughter. Her anecdote highlights the awkwardness and challenges parents face when discussing the realities of procreation with children.

"I realized that I have taken my little eight year old's hand and taken her right into Internet porn," (52:13) Sweeney recounts the unexpected turn her conversation took, underscoring the delicate balance between providing honest information and maintaining appropriate boundaries.

Sweeney's story serves as a relatable interlude, bridging scientific discussions with everyday experiences of conveying complex biological concepts to the next generation.

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Conclusion

In "The Birds and The Bees," TED Radio Hour offers a comprehensive exploration of reproduction across different species, highlighting the remarkable adaptations and behaviors that enable survival. From urban beekeeping ensuring the sustainability of essential pollinators to the intricate mating strategies of birds and the evolutionary arms races in insects, the episode underscores the complexity and beauty of life's perpetuation. Through expert insights and personal narratives, listeners gain a deeper appreciation for the myriad ways life navigates the challenges of reproduction.

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Notable Quotes

• Noah Wilson Rich: "You have to vibe with it. You know, everything we do in life." (02:07)
• Noah Wilson Rich: "Without all of these plants that are pollinated by pollinators like bees, we are not going to be able to move the needle on our carbon goals and to really have a healthy future as humans." (12:58)
• Karen Bondar: "If a mother is experiencing a resource shortage, this will make its way into the eggs that she lays." (16:26)
• Karen Bondar: "They can copy the colors, the pigments. Sometimes there's even little patterns on the eggs, some speckles." (22:37)
• Marlene Zook: "Evolution can happen really fast or really slow or in between." (40:18)
• Marlene Zook: "The males are very passive about mating, whereas the females are extremely aggressive." (43:56)
• Julia Sweeney: "I realized that I have taken my little eight year old's hand and taken her right into Internet porn." (52:13)

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This episode of TED Radio Hour masterfully intertwines scientific discourse with engaging storytelling, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of reproductive strategies across the animal kingdom and their broader implications for ecosystems and human society.

Transcript

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[Minouche Zumarodi]

Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

Our job now is to dream big.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Delivered at TED conferences to bring about.

[Marlene Zook]

The future we want to see around.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

The world to understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find challenge you.

[Karen Bondar]

We truly have to ask ourselves, like.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Why is it noteworthy and even change you? I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading From TED and npr. I'm Minouche Zumarodi. I see bees. Hello, friend.

[Julia Sweeney]

Hello.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

And today on the show, one just landed on me. The birds and the bees. Oh, my goodness. We have just come up a very steep ladder into paradise. This is amazing. A few weeks ago, I visited biologist and bee keeper Noah Wilson Rich on a rooftop covered with wildflowers and trees right in the middle of Manhattan. Okay, so where do we go to find the hive?

[Noah Wilson Rich]

Okay, so we are going to walk past these bronze sculptures and there are four beehives in the corner. So follow me. We're going to make our own pathways.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Can I just see how odd it is to be talking to you surrounded by a cloud of bees and not being fearful or running? I feel like we've got, like, a bee soup swimming around our heads. It is. You said it was going to be calming, and it kind of is.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

You have to vibe with it. You know, everything we do in life, I mean.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Okay, so, Noah, we had to come up. Well, we had to take the subway and then we had to come up this flight of, you know, steep ladder. We're in Manhattan. Somebody who maybe doesn't know, you might think, why go through all this trouble? Why not just put these hives in a beautiful field in New Jersey?

[Noah Wilson Rich]

You know, Minouche, I did not set out to become an urban beekeeper at all. I was living in the city of Boston, going to graduate school nearby when I needed to get more beehives for our research at the time, developing vaccines for bees. And I just began to notice that bees were dying outside of the city. And they were thriving inside the city and on the higher up rooftops as well. They were doing better. So we need to have beehives here on a rooftop in Manhattan instead of the fields of New Jersey, because they're dying there. This is where they're thriving.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

You've likely heard that bees are in trouble for many reasons, including climate change and pesticides. NOAA's company, Best Bees, collects data from hundreds of honeybee hives that they install and maintain in cities across the U.S. this research, he says, is helping biologists better understand how to protect all kinds of bee species.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

We can start to see which beehives are thriving, which beehives are not on this network, and then ask questions about the habitat, which so far seem to really converge around the habitat hypothesis that, as with this rooftop, the more plant diversity around a beehive. That seems to be the leading explanation for why beehives are thriving. Yeah.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

I'm just wondering, as an expert in bees, as you look around, what are you looking for? What are the indicators that you want to see?

[Noah Wilson Rich]

So what I'm looking for in a healthy bee population is safety first and foremost. Are these bees just doing their own thing? Are they ignoring humans as they should? Bees are vegan. They should go to flowers and come back. That's. That's really it.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

So far. Does it look good?

[Noah Wilson Rich]

It looks amazing. So far, these four beehives are thriving. I know from our database also, when our beekeepers visited recently, that we've done everything to make sure that the bees have a healthy queen. She's laying eggs, they're starting to make honey. And we're working with bees that are already in the environment, and that's a beautiful thing for sustainability. So some behaviors you'll notice, these bees are kind of having a conversation.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Multiply and survive. That is the goal of every organism.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

Yes. The goal of bees is to make more. Be. In an evolutionary biology perspective, the goal of humans is to make more humans. And that's what organisms do. We pass our genes to the next generation.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Maybe as a child, you first heard reproduction referred to as the birds and the bees. But your parents probably didn't teach you about pollination or insect intercourse or eggs hatching. So today on the show, we investigate the birds and bees, quite literally. We'll learn how feathered creatures and various insects breed, what can get in their way, and if linking their mating rituals to ours is ever a fair comparison. Which brings us back to biologist Noah Wilson Rich, who says humans have made honeybees essential to their own Survival.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

So bees are this universal pollinator. They bring over 70 fruit and vegetable crops that we humans rely upon for healthy, nutritious food. They bring nuts, you know, crunchy almonds, sour lemons, tart apples. They are responsible for over $100 billion to the global economy every year through this pollination service. They even support the cattle and dairy and cheese industries through their role of pollinating hay and alfalfa. And there are 20,000 species of bees worldwide hard at work pollinating not just crops, but also plants. And so whether they're pollinating crops or plants around, they're providing a really important ecosystem service that we rely upon every day in our daily activities.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

So we started the show visiting Beehives right here in New York City. And you have said that these honeybees are doing better in urban areas because of the habitat. Talk me through how you came to that conclusion, because it's a bit surprising.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

Yeah. So we were looking at the three main hypotheses for what's killing bees. That's the starting point in understanding what's saving them. So the. The main three killers of bees are agricultural chemicals. So that includes pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, anything that's designed to kill off some intricate part of this relationship between plants and pollinators. So that's one. The second is diseases, of which bees are affected by many pests and pathogens. So two is disease, and three is habitat loss, meaning there just aren't enough flowers out there to facilitate good nutrition for pollinators. Now, nutrition is just as important for bees as it is for humans. For bees, it helps them to better metabolize pesticides, which they can do, and also to better withstand disease. So that's how habitat loss relates to the first two leading killers of bees. Now, flipping those a little bit, what's saving bees? We were looking at the areas where bees were thriving and where they weren't on our network of beehives here. So these are beehives at home gardens at business rooftops across the United States. And we wanted to test to see if the areas where bees were doing great. Less pesticides, did they have less disease, or was the habitat better? And we found that in urban areas, there are up to eight times more plant species for bees to pollinate compared to their nearby rural and suburban areas.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Here's Noah Wilson Rich on the TED stage.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

So we're finding out now that in rural areas, there are 150 plants on average in a sample of honey. That's a measure for rural suburban areas. What might you think, do they have less or more plants in suburban areas with lawns that look nice for people, but they're terrible for pollinators. Suburbs have very low plant diversity. So if you have a beautiful lawn, well, good for you. But you can do more. You can have a patch of your lawn that's a wildflower meadow to diversify your habitat, to improve pollinator health. Anybody can do this. Urban areas have the most habitat, best habitat. Over 200 different plants we have for the first time ever, support for the habitat hypothesis. Spring honey in Provincetown is from privet. What's privet? Hedges. What's the message? Don't trim your hedges to save the bees.

Right.

Move to the summer honey, which is water lily honey. If you have honey from Provincetown right here in the summer, you're eating water lily juice. In the fall, sumac honey. We're learning about our food for the first time ever. And now we're able to report if you need to do any city planning, what are good things to plant? What do we know the bees are going to that's good for your garden?

I think we should taste some honey. So we look at all these little nuances, but this is a great time. Minouche. If you're comfortable taking off a glove, we're going to taste some honey fresh out of the hive with our fingers.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

My hunger overcomes all fear.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

There's no wrong way to do it. I'll do it first. I'm just going to take my finger and I'm smushing it right into the.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Wax comb, and it just squeezes out. It's so beautiful.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

This beautiful.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Oh, my God.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

Honey just pouring out. What you'll notice, look at them.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

They're like, what are you doing, man?

[Noah Wilson Rich]

These bees will come up right away and say, ugh, we got to clean up your mess. And I'm just going to taste it. Ah. Wow. This flavor is unlike anything that you can find in a store.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Oh, my gosh. I was gonna say it's nectar, but.

[Julia Sweeney]

It'S nectar, you know?

[Noah Wilson Rich]

And we don't have the vocabulary still at this modern day to put towards this. We call it all honey, but it's flower juice. And it's entirely different all around the world.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

So here's what I'm wondering. Can you give me a pitch? Let's say I am a commercial landlord and I'm like, hey, Noah, I've heard about UMBs, and I've got this huge rooftop in midtown Manhattan. What's the deal? What do you do? Why should I Join you.

[Noah Wilson Rich]

So when you think about real estate companies and when you're entering New York City, for anybody who's ever taken a train or a plane in there, and you look out onto the landscape of the city and you see gray, you see, wow, there must have been habitat before these buildings went up. What was there? There's nothing there in its place. And this is part of what's now called the gray to green movement. And so for companies that have underleveraged assets, what more could you do? When you're thinking about how to compete for business, for people to lease an office or an apartment space, think about what they're making those decisions based on. Green space is now the new mandate. Having a green rooftop, having the ability to go outside and to experience the feeling of wellness, to be to see some butterflies and some bees or even pick some carrots from a roof, that's the future that we see. And we're seeing spending patterns going towards companies that have a more sustainable brand and reputation.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Okay, this has been a pretty exciting, optimistic conversation, but let's say no. What happens if we don't succeed here?

[Noah Wilson Rich]

If we don't succeed, then I believe that bees are going to die off much faster than anybody realizes. We already have places around the world where there are humans doing the pollinating with little wands and cotton swabs, going from flower to flower to transfer that pollen to create fruit. This is very unsustainable. Those people could be doing other things to benefit society if only we had the pollinators to do that service for us. And so how do we know the health of the other 200,000 species of pollinators if we don't even know what they are? And that's where honeybees help us so much. We know so much about them. And if they're not doing well and they have human help to create more hives, then we're really in trouble. And some people call this the great insect apocalypse. We need to understand the identities of these pollinators so we know how to save them, so that they can bring us healthy fruits, vegetables, nuts, all the foods that we want for ourselves and for our kids, as well as to help promote all the plants that are out there bringing in carbon dioxide dioxide as part of their photosynthesis and then producing oxygen. Without all of these plants that are pollinated by pollinators like bees, we are not going to be able to move the needle on our carbon goals and to really have a healthy future as humans.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

That's biologist Noah Wilson rich he's the CEO of the Best Bees Company and you can see all of his [e-mail] on the show today, the Birds and the Bees. I'm Anoush Zamorodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. We'll be right back.

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[Minouche Zumarodi]

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[Minouche Zumarodi]

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zumarodi and on the show today, birds and bees. The buzzy, busy, amazing cycle of reproduction that keeps all life clucking along.

[Karen Bondar]

So eggs are amazing.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

This is Karen Bondar.

[Karen Bondar]

We just think about scrambling them for our breakfast and fair enough because there is a great source of protein. But the thing about eggs is they enable a couple of really spect spectacular things.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Karen is a biologist, science writer and very excited about eggs and the birds.

[Karen Bondar]

Who lay Them moms make these little beautiful packages of, you know, there's certainly the DNA is in there. Okay, we've got the embryo, but what else we got in there? We've got food, we've got nutrition, we've got hormones, we've got immune factors. And each one of those factors can.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Be individualized to for each egg, tweaked, refined and personalized. Karen says that bird moms are the micromanagers of the animal kingdom. And they can tailor their eggs in ways you would never imagine.

[Karen Bondar]

For example, if a mother is experiencing a resource shortage, if times are really tough, if food is not plentiful, this will make its way into the eggs that she lays. In a lot of cases, mummy birds will lay just a few extra eggs and those will be almost insurance eggs that will almost certainly, you know, if they develop at all, they will develop into runts of the litter that won't make it.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Oh, okay. So these mommy birds are hedging their bets. Like she has to weigh all the factors around her as she determines where or which egg she should invest her time and energy in.

[Karen Bondar]

Yeah, that's right. It's like, and those decisions have to be made quite early. But, you know, there's other things that, that are to be taken into consideration too. And a really interesting example of this comes from the Galapagos Islands, the blue footed booby. Now, these ladies or mothers also base their egg contents on the identity of dad. In the blue footed booby, you have these males who have blue, gorgeous feet. And this is an indicator of health. And this is something that a female use as a proxy by which to say, okay, yeah, this is a good male. I like this male. I want to reproduce with this male. Therefore I'm going to invest a lot into these eggs. So researchers manipulated the system of the blue footed booby. Female females will lay two eggs, so they'll mate with a male, and then about 36 hours later, they'll lay the first egg. Then another three days later, they'll lay the second one. It almost always works out this way. And so researchers, during that interval, they painted a male's feet a dark gray, right? As if to say, okay, hang on, we're taking his health away, we're taking away his beauty. Lo and behold, the second egg came along with fewer nutrients, fewer hormones. Mom provisioned the egg according to the fact that dad was no longer a high quality. And isn't that just an incredible demonstration of the ability that she has to allocate at such an early level of development? It Blows my mind.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

It is bananas. So another thing about bird eggs that you talk about in your book is size. Size matters, like a lot.

[Karen Bondar]

The size of an egg is actually highly correlated with the success of that egg. So the ones that are somewhat larger, generally speaking, we can assume that that has, you know, more food in there to make for a successful hatching. The latter or the later eggs will often be smaller, which makes sense. She's running out of energy. But sometimes what moms will do for these late laid smaller eggs is they'll actually load them up with some more androgens or the hormones that help for the chicks to be a little more aggressive. In some cases, this will make the difference for them between life and death. Because once they hatch, if they are not aggressive enough, I mean, the saying is true, the loudest bird gets the worm. And so if the late hatching little guys don't fight for their share, they simply won't eat and they will then die.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

So in some ways she's saying, okay, I get that you little guys are at a disadvantage to start with, but I'm gonna give you a boost of androgen or testosterone so that you can fight to the death if needed.

[Karen Bondar]

If needed.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Like fight your older sibling?

[Karen Bondar]

Yes, absolutely. I mean, sublicide is quite commonplace in a lot of these nesting birds, but from a biological point of view, that really is the most advantageous thing to have. The older chicks are going to be the ones that are most likely to survive anyway. And for her receive or realize any biological fitness, she's gotta let those smaller ones go.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

So we talked about the size of the eggs, but I didn't realize that there was also a way for birds to modulate when they lay their eggs. Tell us about the process of actually, how long does it take to lay an egg? How much time is there between eggs? Does it vary for each species?

[Karen Bondar]

Yeah, there actually there can be quite a lot of var. Generally speaking, for most species it takes between 20 and 30 ish minutes. However, there's a whole other set of birds. These ones are called brood parasites and these are mothers who swoop in to someone else's nest entirely. A different species, in fact, and they lay their eggs in someone else's nest and then they swoop away again. So they essentially drop off their children in a, in a permanent daycare situation and off they go. We've got someone like the brown headed cowbird. She can lay it in about 41 seconds, which is respectable, but the shiny cowbird can actually lay hers in seven seconds. And the Bronzed cowbirds can lay them in five seconds.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Whoa.

[Karen Bondar]

Could you imagine being in labor for five seconds? I can handle that.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Yeah, I guess so. But she has to fly there first. She has to fly in, fly in.

[Karen Bondar]

Swoop in, lay the egg and swoop out again and get the hell out of there. Right. It is just, it's a drive by laying.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Okay, so these brood parasites, I imagine that this whole scheme only works if they can fool the host parents. And you say in your book that cuckoos can mimic other eggs, like lay them so that they match down to the shade of color.

[Karen Bondar]

Oh yeah, I, I will often do public lectures where I throw a slide up that has eggs in a nest. And it's nearly impossible for the audience members to tell which ones are laid by the parasite and which ones are laid by the actual mum of that nest. They can copy the, the colors, the pigments. Sometimes there's even little patterns on the eggs, some speckles.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

But how do they know? Like, are they. And then returning to their own, you know, nest and saying like, right, okay, I'm going for Tiffany blue with some brown speckles. Like, how do they know?

[Karen Bondar]

That's a great question. And that is a question that we, you know, that we don't necessarily have a full on answer to that as far as the cognitive parts of it and the physiological parts of it. But what we do know is that yes, they will make sort of pre drop off flights where they observe the positionality of the nests that they're going to parasitize. They look for nests that are in an appropriate location that they'll be able to make a quick getaway. But then you know what these birds will do? The, the parasitized birds will then actually say, okay, well we're going to put our nests right beside this predatory bird as a means by which to scare you guys off. So the predators hopefully won't eat us, but they will eat these cuckoos who are, who are coming incessantly by.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

It does beg the philosophical question of how does a cuckoo bird know it's a cuckoo bird if it was raised by a magpie? Right.

[Karen Bondar]

You have to think that the identity, the personal identity of these birds has got to be right. And they don't even get to meet their parents ever. Wow.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Can we talk about dads? Is that okay? Do it.

[Karen Bondar]

Let's talk about debts. Because yes, you know, the bird world is really where we see some of the best fathering.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

I would, I would argue, really, the bird world.

[Karen Bondar]

Yeah. And that's just because of that. That truism that in mammals, I'm. I me and. And every other female mammal keeps that baby inside until that baby gets born. Right. So as soon as that sperm has made its transfer, once that embryo has been fertilized, Dad's job is done. There really isn't anything biologically relevant that dad can do. But in the bird world, that's not the case. In the bird world, once mom has laid that egg, dad can legitimately sit on that egg, and that is worth something. This is why we do see a lot of bi parental care in the bird world.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

As the father settled into their long wait at the breeding ground, the winter's second storm. I feel like the best example or the first time I kind of became aware of bird parenting was that penguin documentary. As they move about, the fathers will balance their eggs like tightrope walkers, where you saw these amazing emperor penguins passing an egg back and forth between themselves to keep it warm.

[Karen Bondar]

Yeah. So there's a need for adults and specifically the dads to. To sit on these eggs to keep them warm in these frigid environments. And rocks, for example, large rocks to create these nests are something that's quite a hot commodity in these environments. So a lot of sexual favors will take place by females towards males in order to grab onto some of these rocks to be able to build a nest. There's a good amount of homosexual sex that happens between males who are also dutiful dad, but certainly doing their own activities on the side. So, I mean, there's a lot of interesting parental and I guess, in a way, familial stuff that happens because of the nature of these really harsh environments where the penguins live.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

My daughter's favorite bird is the peacock.

[NPR Sponsor]

Oh, okay.

[Julia Sweeney]

Yes.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

The male peacock. Full feathers. Oh, yes. These showy birds who kind of put on a display for the female. Does that indicate in any way whether or not they will also be caring for the eggs and the chicks? Is there?

[Karen Bondar]

It sure does.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Oh, really?

[Karen Bondar]

That's a great question. And generally speaking, the more beautiful he is, the less he's going to help. And that's because.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Why does that not surprise me?

[Karen Bondar]

I know, right, that that's because, you know, there's only so much biological energy to go around. So we'll often see in species that are lek breeders or species where there is a male and his job is just to give out sperm, they're going to be very pretty because they are trying to give out as much of that sperm as possible. That's their only job. We Also would see that in something like a bowerbird. So these are the birds that create these, these beautiful homes, almost like bachelor pads with really beautiful feathers. Sometimes they find pretty things that are plastic from the human world and they decorate their, their nests with these things. They're doing that to entice her into coming to his, you know, bachelor pad and only to receive some of his sperm. And once she has received that sperm, that's it for him. He's looking for the next female.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Just to wrap up. You seem to. And I don't know how you'll take this, but you seem to relish the darker side of our conversation just as much as you relish the beautiful, the gorgeous feathers and songs and well built nests. There's a little bit of a psychotic side to birds, it feels like. Or am I attributing psychological things to an entire world that doesn't deserve it?

[Karen Bondar]

You know what? I love it. I delight in the macabre and the sort of darker sides because I love that nature is messy and that it isn't what we've been told is a nuclear family or a monogamous relationship or whatever kinds of things that humans have decided should be happening in whatever species or for our own species. But I really do deal delight in the fact that, that there's so much about nature that we maybe glaze over and it's not necessarily even dark. It's just all a matter of individual survival. And when you, you know, when you consider how that sort of plays out across the human world as well, for me it just makes us all that much more a part of the animal kingdom. We are animals just like anyone else is or any other living thing is. And I guess maybe that's where some of my delight in these, in these ridiculous and crazy things comes from. It's like of course they experience these things. Animals are not these perfect little happy family units and stuff. I mean, they just, they go through it just like we do.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

That's Karen Bondar. She's a biologist and author of several books including Wild Moms and the Nature of Sex. The Ins and Outs of Mating in the Animal Kingdom. You can see both of her [e-mail] we've been hearing about animal instincts, behaviors that are crucial to survival because it can be tough out there. Take the lowly cricket, for example.

[Marlene Zook]

From a cricket's standpoint, the world is very big and very dark.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

This is Marlene Zook. She's an evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist who specializes in insect reproduction.

[Marlene Zook]

The short version. I always Tell people is I study bug sex.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

And Marlene has spent a lot of time observing how crickets do it.

[Marlene Zook]

They're cool to study from the standpoint of understanding how males and females interact, because, as everybody knows, crickets sing and the song attracts females from a distance.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

This cricket story begins when Marlene was invited to a conference in Hawaii 20 years ago, and she spent a couple extra days researching male female cricket interaction.

[Marlene Zook]

It's not clear to me why I couldn't come up with the standard things that one does when one goes to Hawaii. Like, you know, I want to go to the beach, or I want to, you know, go hiking, or I want to, you know, I learned a hula. I don't know. And instead I thought, I wonder if there are crickets that I can look for when I'm in Hawaii.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Wait, so how does one collect crickets.

[Marlene Zook]

At night in Hawaii or anywhere else? It's a very low tech operation. So you go outside at night and you listen for cricket song. You do have to know what they sound like. And, of course, each species has its own song. There is a certain amount of skill involved in sound localization. So if you hear a sound, if you turn your head back and forth, that's actually a good way to figure it out. And it'll be louder on the side where obviously the sound is coming from, so. And then you have to just kind of pounce with your hand, but they don't bite, and it's okay, and so you can just grab them.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Marlene was looking for the Pacific field cricket. And that first night, she went out into an open area and noticed that something was off.

[Marlene Zook]

Unlike the usual situation with crickets where they are all buried under the leaf litter in the grass, I was seeing a bunch of males just walking on top of the lawn.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

She had heard of only one instance where crickets behaved like this.

[Marlene Zook]

A case in Texas where a scientist named Bill Cade had discovered a parasitic fly that could hear the sound of the cricket and would home in on that cricket and drop its larvae on them. And the larvae then burrow into the cricket, eat it from the inside out, and kill the cricket, which is a gory but wonderful life history. And I said, but that's weird, because I've never heard of that happening anywhere but in Texas. And then I was collecting the crickets and dissecting them the next day, and what should happen but a fly larva pops out. And I thought, oh, my God. It turned out that I discovered that there was these sound orienting parasitic flies in Hawaii that no one had ever known were there. And so that puts the male in this terrible bind because the more he calls, the more likely he is to attract a female, which is the best thing ever from an evolutionary standpoint, but it's also the worst thing ever because he could attract his fly that will deposit these alien like creatures that will burrow in, eat him from the inside out, and then leave him a shell of his former self.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

In a minute, more from Marlene Zook about how these crickets found a genetic loophole and completely changed their reproductive strategy. On the show today, the birds and the bees. You're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. Stay with us.

[Karen Bondar]

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[Minouche Zumarodi]

It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zumarotti. On the show today, the birds end the bees and we were talking to evolutionary biologist Marlene Zook. She is the author of numerous books and essays.

[Marlene Zook]

Riddled with life Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex and the parasites that Bring on the Aerial Ant Sex with Benefits, when and How Sexual Cannibalism Is Sex on six Legs, Lessons on Life, love.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

In addition to writing, Marlene does a lot of field research. And about 30 years she stumbled upon an evolutionary dilemma for the Pacific field crickets of Hawaii.

[Marlene Zook]

And it turned out that I discovered that there was these sound orienting parasitic flies in Hawaii that no one had ever known were there.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Year after year, Marlene returned to the island of Kauai to see if these crickets could survive an infestation of parasitic.

[Marlene Zook]

Flies that could hear the sound of the cricket and would home in on that cricket and drop its larvae on them. And the larvae then burrow into the cricket, eat it from the inside out and kill the cricket.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Okay, so if it sings, if the male cricket sings, he could either attract a girlfriend or a murderer.

[Marlene Zook]

Right? There you go.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Okay, so how did you go about measuring or observing how the crickets were coping with this?

[Marlene Zook]

We'd been working on three islands in Hawaii, and on one of them, the island of Kauai, the cricket numbers had just been falling for a few years. And I thought, well, you know, maybe we're just going to see extinction happening. And then the following year I went and didn't hear anything, but thought, okay, well, you may as well get out of the car. And I started walking up the road where we usually see them in Kauai with my headlamp, and all of a sudden I started seeing all these crickets, but I wasn't hearing anything. It's like this moment of cognitive dissonance, because if you see crickets and it's nighttime, then you should be hearing crickets. And if it's nighttime and you're not hearing crickets, then you shouldn't be seeing crickets, because that's what crickets do. It's their aison d'etre. You know, they call. I mean, that's what male crickets do. And so I literally was picking them up and thinking, what is this? And you know, because of course, I've been working for years by then, so of course I knew what they were. I just couldn't figure it out. And finally what we realized is that not all, as it turns out, but a bunch of the males on that island, and then later it was on other islands as well, had a mutation in their wings that made them unable to call. These male crickets were certainly males and they had everything else that a male needs, but their wings looked like female wings and females don't call. And so this is awesome for the males because it protects them completely from being found by this parasitic fly, because the fly can only hunt by listening. But it's also a hindrance because, of course, from the standpoint of, you know, finding a female, they're kind of out of luck.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Yeah, like what's. Yes, they're surviving. They're not being eaten from the inside out by these parasites. But how are they finding females and making more crickets?

[Marlene Zook]

It turns out that the males with this mutation act as what are called satellites to the calling males. The key to all of this is it can't work unless there's still a few callers. Because if everybody becomes what we call a flat wing, one of these males that can't call, then the show is over because everybody's just wandering around in the dark and nobody can find anybody else. But if there's a few callers left, the females are still super attracted to them. And if as they're walking toward the collar, they're intercepted by one of these flat wings, they will at least some of the time mate with them. And even if the females don't like them as much because those flat wing males are protected from the fly, they live longer, so they can just kind of wait it out. And so even if on a sort of per night basis, they're not mating as much, if they live longer, eventually something, you know, will happen to them.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

So how does this example challenge what we think we know about evolution and how it works?

[Marlene Zook]

You know, everybody always thinks, oh, evolution. The dinosaurs rose and fell, it's millions of years, and so evolution can't happen fast. But increasingly, scientists are realizing that evolution can happen really fast or really slow or in between. But it's hard to demonstrate in the wild because you're not always there to see it happen. And in our case, because I'd been working on the crickets long term, I knew that it had taken at maximum, about 20 generations to have the mutation spread, which, of course, from an evolutionary perspective is really, really, really fast. And I think that one of the fun things that's come out of a lot of this work is how flexible insect behavior is.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Here's Marlene Zook on the TED stage.

[Marlene Zook]

Now I will maintain, and I think I can defend what may seem like a surprising statement. I think sex in insects is more interesting than sex in people. And the wild variety that we see makes us challenge some of our own assumptions about what it means to be male and female. Of course, to start with, a lot of insects don't need to have sex.

At all to reproduce.

Female aphids can make little tiny clones of themselves without ever mating. Virgin birth right there on your rose bushes. When they do have sex, even their sperm is more interesting than human sperm. Dragonflies and damselflies have penises that look kind of like Swiss army knives with all of the attachments pulled out. And they use these formidable devices, like scoops to remove. Remove the sperm from previous males that the female has mated with. So what can we learn from this? I mean, I. All right. It is not a lesson in the sense of us imitating them or of them setting an example for us to follow. What I think insects do is, is break a lot of the rules that we humans have about the sex roles. So people have this idea that nature dictates kind of a 1950s sitcom version of what males and females are like. So that males are always supposed to be dominant and aggressive, and females are passive and coy, but that's just not the case. So, for example, take katydids, which are relatives of crickets and grasshoppers. The males are very picky about who they mate with because they not only transfer sperm during mating, they also give the female something called a nuptial gift. Now, the male manufactures this from his own body, and it's extremely costly to produce. It can weigh up to a third of his body mass. I will now pause for a moment and let you think about what it would be like if human men, every time they had sex, had to produce something that weighed 50, 60, 70 pounds. Okay. They would not be able to do that very often. And indeed, neither can the katydids. And so what that means is the males are very passive about mating, whereas the females are extremely aggressive. Aggressive and competitive. In an attempt to get as many of these nutritious nuptial gifts as they can.

These nuptial gifts contain protein and a bunch of other nutrients, and the female eats it while she's being fertilized by the male.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

She's basically eating a Power Bar while they do it.

[Marlene Zook]

I like to think of it more as, like, a box of, like, really good chocolate truffles. So I would be, you know, I mean, yes, the protein. But you. From her perspective, it's really. It's just a fabulous thing to eat because it helps her produce more eggs, which, of course, makes her produce more offspring, which, of course, makes her produce more genes in the next generation, which, of course, is what it's all about. And so from the standpoint of, like, okay, we've always got these competitive males and these picky females. The katydids don't really follow that rule. There's still male katydids and female katydids it's not like. Like, they're not changing sex. It's just that being a male and being a female is way more variable than people tend to think.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

So this might be kind of a dumb question, but I have to ask it. Do you think, Marlene, that insects, I mean, they're hot for each other because they need to procreate? That's in their biology. Sure, but is there a pleasure element in that as well? Or would that just be an example of us anthropomorphizing them?

[Marlene Zook]

So I think it's a super good question. I don't think it's dumb at all. And I think it gets to something that has fascinated me forever, which is, so how much can we think of other animals as being like us? You know, we're fascinated with this. We're like, only humans can, you know, fill in the blank. For a long time it was used tools, and then it's like, oops, there's lots of other animals that can use tools. People are constantly trying to come up with something that will make us different, and then if it turns out we're not different, then they're all in a tizzy about, oh, but so does that mean that everything is exactly like us and they all feel the same things we do, and they all, you know, like, love the way we do? And this is finally getting back to your question. They all experience pleasure the same way we do, and that explains, you know, everything. And I just don't see why we have to have it one of two ways. It seems to me that insects and other animals can be. Not like little automatons or robots or whatever, but they can also not be like us. And it's like, we don't expect other animals to be like us physically. Like, we think kidneys are different in different animals. Why do we think that emotions have to be the same in us as in other animals? So I think it's fine. Like, insects have a really weird version of kidneys. They're called Malpighian tubules. They. They do strange stuff. They don't look anything like a kidney, but they have the same function we have kidneys. Nobody's, like, having hysterics about, but. But why do we have such different ways to process waste? And, you know, like, it's just you do you. This is why I like insects is because you cannot look at an ant and say, oh, that's just like a person in an exoskeleton because their brain is like. Like the size of a poppy seed. I Mean, come on, they cannot be doing the things the way you're doing them because you're doing them dependent on this gigantic floppy thing inside your skull that then connects to all your nerves and all. They can't be doing it. And so they're, like, showing you this other world that is completely different.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

Front that was evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist Marlene Zook. Her latest book is called Dancing Cockatoos and the Deadman How Behavior Evolves and why It Matters. On the show today, the birds and the bees. We have spent the hour talking about procreation, or as some people prefer to obliquely call it, the birds and the bees. Using animal imagery was how parents used to avoid speaking frankly about human reproduction because, let's face it, that can be an awkward conversation for both the child and parent. Comedian Julia Sweeney remembers having the talk with her daughter, which went in all kinds of unexpected directions. And we just have to share it with you. Here she is telling the story on the ted stage in 2010.

[Julia Sweeney]

I have a daughter, Mulan, and when she was 8, she was doing a report for school or she had some homework about frogs. And we were at this restaurant, and she said, so basically, frogs lay eggs, and the eggs turn into tadpoles and tadpoles turn into frogs. And I said, yeah, you know, I'm not really up on my frog reproduction that much. It's the females, I think, that lay the eggs and then the males fertilizer them, and then they become tadpoles and frogs. And she says, what, only the females have eggs? And I said, yeah. And she goes, and what's this fertilizing? So I kind of said, oh, it's this extra ingredient, you know, that you need to create a new frog from the mom and dad frog. And she said, oh, so is that true for humans, too? And I thought, okay, here we go. I didn't know it would happen so quick. At 8, I was trying to remember all the guidebooks, and all I could remember was only answer the question they're asking. Don't give any more information. So I said, yes. And she said, and where do human women. Like, where do women lay their eggs? And I said, well, funny you should ask. We have evolved to have our own pond. We have our very own pond inside our bodies, and we lay our eggs there. We don't have to worry about other eggs or anything like that. It's our own pond. And that's how it happens. And she goes, then how do they get fertilized? And I said, well, men, through their penis they fertilize the eggs by the sperm coming out. And you go through the woman's vagina. And so we're just eating and her jaw just drops. And she goes, mom, like where you.

[Marlene Zook]

Go to the bathroom?

[Julia Sweeney]

And I said, I know, I know. It's how we evolved. It does seem odd. It is a little bit like having a waste treatment plant right next to an amusement park. Bad zoning. But she's like, what? She goes, but, mom. But men and women can't ever see each other naked, mom, so how could that ever happen? And then I go, well, and then I put my Margaret Mead hat on. Human males and females develop a special bond. And when they're much older, much, much older than you, and they have a very special feeling, then they can be naked together. And she said, mom, have you done this before? And I said, yes. And she said, but mom, you can't have kids. Because she knows I adopted her and that I can't have kids. And I said, yes. And she said, well, you don't have to do that again. And then she said, but how does it happen when a man and woman are together? Like, how do they know that's the time, mom, does the man just say, is now the time to take off my pants? And I said, yes, exactly how it happens. Then we got home and we see the cat and she goes, mom, how do cats do it? And I go, oh, it's the same. It's basically the same. And then she got all caught up in the legs. But how would their legs go, Mom, I don't understand the legs. And I was like. She goes, mom, everyone can't do the splits. And I go, I know, but the legs. And I'm probably like, the legs get worked out. And she goes, but I just can't understand it. So I go, you know, why don't we go on the Internet and maybe we can see like on Wikipedia. So we go online and we, we put in cats mating. And unfortunately on YouTube there's many cats mating videos. And we watch them and I'm so thankful because she's just like, wow, this is so amazing. She goes, what about dogs? So we put in dogs mating and you know, we're watching it and she's totally absorbed. And then she goes, mom, do you think they would have on the Internet any humans mating?

[Marlene Zook]

And then.

[Julia Sweeney]

And I realized that I have taken my little eight year old's hand and taken her right into Internet porn. And I looked into this trusting, loving face and I said, oh, no, that would never happen. Thank you.

[Minouche Zumarodi]

That was comedian Julia Sweeney. You can see all of her [e-mail] thank you so much for listening to our show this week about the birds and the bees. To see hundreds more TED talks, check out Ted.com or the Ted app. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, James Delahusy, Fiona Guerin, and Katharine Cipher. It was edited by Rachel Faulkner and Katie Simon. Our production staff at NPR also includes Sanaz Meshkinpour, Meghan Matthew Cloutier, and Rommel Wood. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Phelan, Michelle Quint, Sammy Case, and Daniela Balaurezzo. I'm Anoush Zamorodi and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from N.

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[Karen Bondar]

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