March 24, 2015 • 22 mins
Enter a world where toxic ants and termites explode at will to stave off murderous invasions - a world of highly-evolved chemical weapons an ruthless guerrilla tactics. It's all in this bombastic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
have you ever become so angry or threatened that you've exploded,
(00:23):
like literally exploded? No? No, no, but you've seen it before,
at least in cartoons. I've seen it a lot in cartoons,
And because my daughter plays Angry Birds and especially the
Star Wars versions of it, I'm very aware of one
character called Bomb and when enraged, the feather on top
(00:47):
of its head we'll start to smoke and then it'll
just detonate. Yeah, this is glorious explosion. You know, I
hadn't really thought about about video games as much going
into this, but us, there are a lot of exploding
characters in games. Um, little bomb men, I seem to recall,
and oh, of course, bomber Man. It's all about characters
(01:08):
getting blown up. But but yeah, there's a lot of
exploding characters going on in your in your cartoons and
your video games. Um. One example that always comes to
my mind in John Carpenter's film Big Troubling Little China.
There's a part when the city of this warrior sorcerer
named Thunder of the Three Storms, and he discovers that
his his evil master lo Pan has been slain uh
(01:31):
there in the caverns and chambers of his underground uh stronghold,
and so he gets so mad that he just puffs
up and just explodes with anger uh in an attempt
I guess to to take out invaders. But it's a
you know, it's a gory, kind of goofy moment, but uh,
it's actually a real thing. It is a real thing, right,
because that was a fictional account, and yet in nature
(01:53):
we have some very real instances of this happening, which
kind of leads the whole idea that the truth is
truly into in fiction. And we've tried in this territory before.
And I'm thinking about c cucumbers, right, because we said
that if you ever get in an undersea bar fight
with a c cucumber, beware because you will probably have
its guts pummeling your face because they're ejected from the
(02:15):
c cucumbers an us. And if you were to get
in a fight with say Harry Frog the t robust us,
well then watch out because they can actually make shifts
from their own bones, which they puncture their way out.
The shivs the bones out of the frog's toepads to
create these claws. Yeah, I mean, you see it this
(02:38):
time and time again. Whatever the weird grotesque body horror
type thing is that we can dream up in our
fictional world and our pop culture, nature has already evolved
it to a to a terrifying degree. And uh, and
indeed that's what we see with autopsis, the biological act
by which an animal, specifically an insect, ruptures their own
(03:01):
internal glands and organs with enough force to cause their
insights to literally burst out through their exoskeletons. It's a
purely muscular exercise caused by deliberate contractions around in gorged tissue,
and it creates absolute mayhem. Now, it's worth noting the
insects that practice autithosis do so out of something called
(03:24):
youth social organizations. So this kind of organization is predicated
on three things. Brood cooperation, overlapping generations within a colony
of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and
non reproctive reproductive groups. And so these set the conditions
for this kind of self sacrifice. And the examples that
(03:47):
we'll talk about today. All right now, before we get
into the exploding eurosocial insects, m I'm just gonna talk
quickly here about chemical weapons in in animals, chemical weapons
specifically insects in general. Now, number of animals out there
use chemical weapons against their adversaries. H And as we've
discussed before, a lot of human chemical weapons, also human
(04:10):
spices and other agents are simply nature's chemical weapons that
we've hijacked for our own ends. Some animals synthesized toxins,
while others extract and modified toxins from their environment or
their diet. So just looking at insects and arachnets, you know,
obviously have we have scorpions, we have spiders, we have
lost but we then we also have some stranger examples here,
(04:32):
and they're like foam grasshoppers that excrete foul bubbles from
their armpits. And uh and of course we always have
to mention the bombardier beetle. And this is the one
that heats, that sprays a heated exploding acid from its
anus where it has to two chemicals that is stored
in separate chambers. Then it fires them into a reaction chamber. Uh,
(04:53):
and then this is where you have enzymes breaking down
H two O two, releasing free oxygen um to oxygenate
the chemicals, and it just creates this explosive, hot excretion
that this beautiful chemical weapon to spray right in the
face of an attacker. When we come to it's it's
in the social insects, zero social insects. This is where
(05:16):
we see, uh, the evolution of far more sublime, far
more terrifying weaponry. Yeah, because foaming armpits, that's that is
pretty great. That's but that's more like a fireworks display,
whereas the examples of audi posas are more like the
fireworks are the exploding of the ones self, right, offering
of oneself as the fireworks displays. So let's meet Borneo's
(05:40):
Campa notice cylindricus. This is one of several ant species
known as the comic caze ants, and Jonathan Neil, An,
Associate professor of entomology at Purdue University and author of
the textbook Living With Insects, writes on his blog that quote,
when exposed to European ants in the lab, the exploding
(06:02):
Cappa notice ants would grasp the invader by the leg
or the antenna, press its body to the head of
the invader and squeeze it's abdomen until the abdomen ruptured,
spilling glue over the eyes and mouth parts of the invader. Aunt.
That is just utterly terrifying. Like I think of any
(06:22):
grotesque moment in a monster movie that I've seen, and
I don't think anything comes close to that, Like nothing,
And I've some thought to this like that, Like nobody really, uh,
I mean, horror horror filmmakers out there, look look to
the insect world, because there's some there's some stuff here
that just has not even been plunged. Yeah, it's reminiscent
(06:43):
of xenomorphs, at least some scenes with xenomorph right, because
it's got the gluey kind of aspect to it. But
let's discuss what it might be like to have this
faithful of yellow goo, which which is the actual term,
scientific term from the campanas, because it is chalk, a
block with chemical irritants and strong adhesive. So it delivers
(07:05):
this kind of one too punch of chemistry and really
stops the invading ants and its tracks, right, because if
your mouth is stuffed full of this glue, you're not
going to be able and your you know, your your
arms and your legs or rather just legs, or you're
not gonna be able to do much damage. Right, You're
going to pretty much freeze in your track. Yeah, you've
just been completely incapacitated by this noxious concoction. Yeah. Now,
(07:31):
the camping, Honest, they are pretty touchy. They're known to
self detonate far from the colony or when lightly touched
with forceps in the lab well, probably completely terrifying some
giant metal ant coming down at him right in times indeed,
(07:51):
and researchers positive that the yellow goo initially help the
ants break down the microbes and microbial byproducts they fed on,
like from one guy, right, But then it evolved into
this sort of exploding adaptation. And so if you look
at the mandibular gland in these ants, which are commonly
used for digestive enzymes in most ant species, you will
(08:14):
see that it is greatly expanded in campanadas, and the
glands are so large that they actually extend into the
abdominal cavity, pretty much filling it. Yeah. I'm reminded a
bit of our episode on the Electric Eel in which
you have you have tissue that evolved initially for for
one purpose, uh, namely having to do with the communication
(08:37):
and sensing, and then as it becomes weaponized, it just
fills up most of the fish. Yeah, and and you know,
humans don't necessarily have this allthing. You can argue that
some people's uh microbes, get microbes contribute to such a stench.
On the other end, when when releasing platos, that it
(08:59):
could be a fence mechanism. Yeah, and I guess you
could also make an argument it's kind of like the
you have, like somebody who's really into karate or something like,
so their whole life becomes about like just honing their
body and their behavior towards this one offensive, defensive purpose.
It's kind of like what we see on an evolutionary
(09:20):
scale with some of these examples. All right, let's explore
termite world. Here. We are talking about some four thousand
termite species, and they exist on every continent except Antarctica.
But scientists have identified only about half of the ones
they think that are out there, and most of those
species common names, and little is really known about their
(09:42):
biology or behavior. In fact, several years ago, uh DNA
testing revealed that rather than belonging to their own order.
Termites should be classified as a cockroach family. Huh. And
that's interesting because you, I mean, I think most people
tend to think of them sort of in the same
camp as an ant, or at least very similar to
the ant, you know, with the social set up royalty
(10:04):
in place division of labor, right, indeed that the uth
social organization there now. Tracy V. Wilson, you may know
her from stuff you miss in the history class. She
actually has a great article called how Termites Work on
how stuff Works dot com, and she describes them vastly
quote in a lot of ways, termites are a paradox.
(10:26):
They're strong enough to eat a house, but their bodies
are soft, delicate, and prone to drying out. Soldiers whose
sole job is to defend the colony can't even feed themselves.
Adult termites develop wings so they can leave the colony
and find a new home, helping the termite population grow.
But winged termites are terrible flyers, and most don't survive
the journey. And yet they do right, and they do
(10:50):
so as working as as a cooperative unit, and they
ensure that their nests are moist so that their bodies
don't dry out, they build shelters protection from the environment,
including predators, and as they slowly and methodically carry back
bits of waste and dirt to use as building materials,
they munch on wood for sustenance. Hence a homeowner's terror
(11:12):
at discovering that they've got termites in their midst. Yeah.
I I highly recommend anyone interested in termites to to
read Tracy's article because it's a great house stuff works article,
and it really, I mean, it dives into the complex
and really beautiful biology of these creatures that we so
often just dismissed as a mere past. Just like termites.
(11:33):
Don't want them, don't want to know about them. But
they're really kind of lovely in their own way. I
wish they would need our houses. But they're pretty great. Yes,
they're lovely, and but they're they're quite formidable. But it
turns out that they can actually be pretty spectacular on
an individual level as well. Yes, indeed, because we do
see termites a practice Autopsis um Autopsis evolved independently actually,
(11:56):
and of course a number of species, and we can
actually best fathom the evolutionary process by noting the varying
levels of lethality and toxicity in the various examples. According
to the journal Nature, some termites simply defecate on their enemies,
all right, so it's just a matter of just just
poop on anything that's that's a threat to you and
(12:18):
the family. But others adapted to shower their enemies with
filth by squeezing, squeezing their abdominal muscles till the excrement
bursts out through thin portions of the abdominal wall, so
that the next level in pooping on your enemies, right,
But the the ultimate in this, the the peak of
the evolutionary mountain, as we as we thus far can
(12:41):
grasp it, is the termite neo capit Terminis tarracia, and
UH Tarracia stands at the forefront of the Autothis arms
race UH the species here they grow abdominal sacks of
toxic blue crystals grown throughout their lie and these are
(13:01):
the chemical weapons that they use to defend the colony.
That's right. They were discovered in two thousand and twelve
and French Guiana, where researchers said, hey, what is that
the kind of blue sack there? And what is making
it blue? And by the way, it is copper rich
proteins that give it that blue hue. And so what
the researchers found is that the older the termite, the
(13:25):
bigger this kind of backpack or ruck sack that they
carried on their backs of this blue crystal. And there's
a reason for this, by the way, the older the bigger,
and we'll get into that, but let's talk about this sack.
Because these crystals are created by specialized glands located on
top of the salivary glands, and so during aggressive encounters,
(13:47):
the termite ruptures its body wall, releasing the contents of
the blue pouch, which mixes with salivary fluid to form
a chemical so toxic that it paralyzes or kills most
of the invading termites that touch it. So it's it's
so much more dramatic and effective than just pooping on
(14:08):
your enemy, right, because this is kind of like taking
a stick of dynamite to a powder keg and saying, hey,
take that. Yeah, I mean if they just explode into
blue toxic good, I love it. Yeah. In an interview
with Nature, Olav Repel and evolutionary Biologists says the sophistication
of this is remarkable. We have never seen an external
(14:28):
pouch like this before. That adds one substance that needs
to be mixed with another substance. Now, use the analogy
of you know, just running out there and touching the
touching the fire to the dynamite and explodes and explosive
and dangerous tasks. So so who do you who do you?
Who do you give this task to? Write? Uh? And
that's the beauty of this. We mentioned that those the
(14:50):
toxic blue crystal sacks, they grow throughout the creature's life.
So by the time the termite is elderly, it has
it has reached maximum blue crystal bloat. And at the
same time, it's it's it's it's run out of other
uses in the colony. It's mandibles are dull and useless. Uh,
it's not gonna be able to go out there and
(15:10):
really get in the fight. It's not really you know,
going to be able to help out much working around
the colony. Now it has one purpose, and that is
to march out there with its bloated, over filled sacks
of explosive goo materials and to indeed explode, yes that's right,
and defend the colony. Right with this kind of suicidal, rupturing. Yeah,
(15:32):
I mean it's the perfect you know, well often come
back to to just the the inhuman beauty of the
insect world, you know, just completely devoid of of of
most of our our human qualities. There's a line in
uh from Jeff Goldbloom's character in The Fly where he
talks about that the absence of insect politics. You don't
find politics in the insect world. You just find this
(15:53):
this brutal and and just beautiful economy, UH at play
here where in this case, we have these old termines,
we have no other use but to go out there
and explode. And they do it that they do it
perfectly to make sure the survival of the genetic uh
packets are in place right for future generations. Yeah, it's
(16:13):
all about the greater good of the colony, not the individual. Yeah.
So we're gonna we're gonna just talk about exploding toads
a little bit. This is a this is a slight
deviation from the topic, but it's a tantalizing mystery that
involves exploding animals. So I think it's it's totally open,
open game. So back in two thousand five, what you
(16:34):
had happened is that you had an exploding toad epidemic
in northern Europe. More than a thousand toad corpses were
discovered in a in a pond and an upscaled neighborhood
of Hamburg, Good Germany and over the border in Denmark. Um.
So everyone who was curious what's going on is there's
this is some disease of the toads. It's causing them
(16:54):
to explode. Uh, is someone exploding our toads? What is happening? Well?
Frank and whose Mun, a Berlin veterinarian who collected and
tested specimens at the Hamburg pond, said that it appeared
that clever crows had pecked into the toads with their
beaks between the amphibian's chest and the abdominal cavity. And
(17:17):
what happened is that the toad puffed itself up as
a natural defense mechanism. But because these crows had, you know,
effectively removed the liver. Uh, there was a hole in
the toad's body and the blood vessels and the lungs
burst and then other organs oozed out, so that the
toad puffs up as a defensive measure. But the crow
(17:39):
just reaches in there gets the part at once, even
the nice juicy bit like a game of operation. And
then and then the toads left. They're trying to puff
up and defend itself and instead just splurting its insides
out through its hole. You know, I'm seeing a future
House to Works article, maybe sort of something like the
Five Unexpected Fates of Toads, because we've also talked about,
(18:00):
well we're talking about frogs raining from the sky because
of water spouts out in the ocean, these sort of
tornadoes in the water. Yeah. Outside of a scientific understanding
of the world and a skeptical approach to two weird happenings,
you would easily think that the toad is like ground
zero for the supernatural, like something weird happens. They're gonna
rain from the sky, They're gonna they're gonna they're gonna
(18:22):
swell up and explode. Which is which is playing with
our toads as always better than our toes. All right,
so let's you know, we've got a few minutes here.
Let's call the robot over then, and indeed do a
couple of listener mails. Alright, this one comes to us
from Larry. Larry says I was listening to your episode
(18:44):
on the weight of the soul, and I just wanted
to make a comment. Now, Professor Gary Nam's theory is
completely logical if you just have an open mind for
a minute. That takes us to the heart of my comment.
It seems that you, guys may be letting your views,
which seem to be more atheistic and agnostic, get in
the way of looking at this logically. Whether or not
(19:04):
your soul goes onto anything after this is beside the point,
the point being that that what you call a soul now,
don't get it caught caught up in the name being
a religious reference, is just the collection of energy that
makes up life. Now, having that in mind, Professor Nam
makes all the sense in the world. Thanks guys. I
love the show and I will always listen. Uh indeed,
(19:25):
that's you know, Geary Nam's research I did find really
fascinating because he kind of again the difficulty of approaching
the idea of the soul and trying to study it
or theorize about it scientifically. He uh, you know, he
over overcomes that to a certain extent, at least in
the in the theoretical uh phase. And and I do
(19:46):
I do buy a lot of what he's putting out there.
He kind of loses me the more he gets into
into black holes. But but I like the general approach.
I see, there's a brilliant thought experiment. But again, the
problem with it is the problem of science and the
metaphysical which is is very difficult to get actual data.
(20:06):
And uh, therein lies the correct of the problem exactly.
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Dave. Dave says, you probably don't have time to
reply or maybe even read this and its entirety. Well, well,
we're about to prove you wrong. Uh No. Nevertheless, I
thought I should send you both a message just to
let you know how much I love your podcast. I've
(20:27):
been an avid podcast listener for a few years now
when I stumbled across yours. Until then, I've been listening
to s g U and The Reality Check. When I
started listening to Stuff to Blew Your Mind, I was
impressed with the format of the show and the sharing
of science was done in a fun, never belittling way.
I really enjoy the rapport between the both of you
and look forward to my time so I can listen
(20:48):
to a few Stuff to Blew Your Mind episodes. I'm
currently going through your backlog and I'm about halfway through
a little more the Seven Deadliest. Anyway, I just felt
compelled to drop you this message and let you know
that I really enjoy and appreciate the show and wanted
to thank you both and everyone else involved for putting
together such a great show on a regular basis. Thanks.
Thanks Dave. That's that's very nice. And Seven Deadly's one
(21:11):
of my favorites. Yeah, that that was a really fun
series to do, and uh yeah, I would really like
to uh maybe re explore that material in the future,
maybe in video form, who knows. Yeah. And also I
want to take this opportunity to tip my hat to
our producer, Noel Brown, to who puts us together every
week and get us out to you guys. Indeed, we
couldn't do without no all right. Hey. In the meantime,
(21:34):
you know where to go. Go to Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all of
our podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, and be sure to
check out the landing page for this episode if you
want to find a links to other great content, including
that How Stuff Works article by Tracy Wilson and if
you have exploding thoughts you'd like to share with us,
you can do so by emailing us that blow the
mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(21:59):
this and thousands of their topics, visit how staff works
dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
have you ever become so angry or threatened that you've exploded,
(00:23):
like literally exploded? No? No, no, but you've seen it before,
at least in cartoons. I've seen it a lot in cartoons,
And because my daughter plays Angry Birds and especially the
Star Wars versions of it, I'm very aware of one
character called Bomb and when enraged, the feather on top
(00:47):
of its head we'll start to smoke and then it'll
just detonate. Yeah, this is glorious explosion. You know, I
hadn't really thought about about video games as much going
into this, but us, there are a lot of exploding
characters in games. Um, little bomb men, I seem to recall,
and oh, of course, bomber Man. It's all about characters
(01:08):
getting blown up. But but yeah, there's a lot of
exploding characters going on in your in your cartoons and
your video games. Um. One example that always comes to
my mind in John Carpenter's film Big Troubling Little China.
There's a part when the city of this warrior sorcerer
named Thunder of the Three Storms, and he discovers that
his his evil master lo Pan has been slain uh
(01:31):
there in the caverns and chambers of his underground uh stronghold,
and so he gets so mad that he just puffs
up and just explodes with anger uh in an attempt
I guess to to take out invaders. But it's a
you know, it's a gory, kind of goofy moment, but uh,
it's actually a real thing. It is a real thing, right,
because that was a fictional account, and yet in nature
(01:53):
we have some very real instances of this happening, which
kind of leads the whole idea that the truth is
truly into in fiction. And we've tried in this territory before.
And I'm thinking about c cucumbers, right, because we said
that if you ever get in an undersea bar fight
with a c cucumber, beware because you will probably have
its guts pummeling your face because they're ejected from the
(02:15):
c cucumbers an us. And if you were to get
in a fight with say Harry Frog the t robust us,
well then watch out because they can actually make shifts
from their own bones, which they puncture their way out.
The shivs the bones out of the frog's toepads to
create these claws. Yeah, I mean, you see it this
(02:38):
time and time again. Whatever the weird grotesque body horror
type thing is that we can dream up in our
fictional world and our pop culture, nature has already evolved
it to a to a terrifying degree. And uh, and
indeed that's what we see with autopsis, the biological act
by which an animal, specifically an insect, ruptures their own
(03:01):
internal glands and organs with enough force to cause their
insights to literally burst out through their exoskeletons. It's a
purely muscular exercise caused by deliberate contractions around in gorged tissue,
and it creates absolute mayhem. Now, it's worth noting the
insects that practice autithosis do so out of something called
(03:24):
youth social organizations. So this kind of organization is predicated
on three things. Brood cooperation, overlapping generations within a colony
of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and
non reproctive reproductive groups. And so these set the conditions
for this kind of self sacrifice. And the examples that
(03:47):
we'll talk about today. All right now, before we get
into the exploding eurosocial insects, m I'm just gonna talk
quickly here about chemical weapons in in animals, chemical weapons
specifically insects in general. Now, number of animals out there
use chemical weapons against their adversaries. H And as we've
discussed before, a lot of human chemical weapons, also human
(04:10):
spices and other agents are simply nature's chemical weapons that
we've hijacked for our own ends. Some animals synthesized toxins,
while others extract and modified toxins from their environment or
their diet. So just looking at insects and arachnets, you know,
obviously have we have scorpions, we have spiders, we have
lost but we then we also have some stranger examples here,
(04:32):
and they're like foam grasshoppers that excrete foul bubbles from
their armpits. And uh and of course we always have
to mention the bombardier beetle. And this is the one
that heats, that sprays a heated exploding acid from its
anus where it has to two chemicals that is stored
in separate chambers. Then it fires them into a reaction chamber. Uh,
(04:53):
and then this is where you have enzymes breaking down
H two O two, releasing free oxygen um to oxygenate
the chemicals, and it just creates this explosive, hot excretion
that this beautiful chemical weapon to spray right in the
face of an attacker. When we come to it's it's
in the social insects, zero social insects. This is where
(05:16):
we see, uh, the evolution of far more sublime, far
more terrifying weaponry. Yeah, because foaming armpits, that's that is
pretty great. That's but that's more like a fireworks display,
whereas the examples of audi posas are more like the
fireworks are the exploding of the ones self, right, offering
of oneself as the fireworks displays. So let's meet Borneo's
(05:40):
Campa notice cylindricus. This is one of several ant species
known as the comic caze ants, and Jonathan Neil, An,
Associate professor of entomology at Purdue University and author of
the textbook Living With Insects, writes on his blog that quote,
when exposed to European ants in the lab, the exploding
(06:02):
Cappa notice ants would grasp the invader by the leg
or the antenna, press its body to the head of
the invader and squeeze it's abdomen until the abdomen ruptured,
spilling glue over the eyes and mouth parts of the invader. Aunt.
That is just utterly terrifying. Like I think of any
(06:22):
grotesque moment in a monster movie that I've seen, and
I don't think anything comes close to that, Like nothing,
And I've some thought to this like that, Like nobody really, uh,
I mean, horror horror filmmakers out there, look look to
the insect world, because there's some there's some stuff here
that just has not even been plunged. Yeah, it's reminiscent
(06:43):
of xenomorphs, at least some scenes with xenomorph right, because
it's got the gluey kind of aspect to it. But
let's discuss what it might be like to have this
faithful of yellow goo, which which is the actual term,
scientific term from the campanas, because it is chalk, a
block with chemical irritants and strong adhesive. So it delivers
(07:05):
this kind of one too punch of chemistry and really
stops the invading ants and its tracks, right, because if
your mouth is stuffed full of this glue, you're not
going to be able and your you know, your your
arms and your legs or rather just legs, or you're
not gonna be able to do much damage. Right, You're
going to pretty much freeze in your track. Yeah, you've
just been completely incapacitated by this noxious concoction. Yeah. Now,
(07:31):
the camping, Honest, they are pretty touchy. They're known to
self detonate far from the colony or when lightly touched
with forceps in the lab well, probably completely terrifying some
giant metal ant coming down at him right in times indeed,
(07:51):
and researchers positive that the yellow goo initially help the
ants break down the microbes and microbial byproducts they fed on,
like from one guy, right, But then it evolved into
this sort of exploding adaptation. And so if you look
at the mandibular gland in these ants, which are commonly
used for digestive enzymes in most ant species, you will
(08:14):
see that it is greatly expanded in campanadas, and the
glands are so large that they actually extend into the
abdominal cavity, pretty much filling it. Yeah. I'm reminded a
bit of our episode on the Electric Eel in which
you have you have tissue that evolved initially for for
one purpose, uh, namely having to do with the communication
(08:37):
and sensing, and then as it becomes weaponized, it just
fills up most of the fish. Yeah, and and you know,
humans don't necessarily have this allthing. You can argue that
some people's uh microbes, get microbes contribute to such a stench.
On the other end, when when releasing platos, that it
(08:59):
could be a fence mechanism. Yeah, and I guess you
could also make an argument it's kind of like the
you have, like somebody who's really into karate or something like,
so their whole life becomes about like just honing their
body and their behavior towards this one offensive, defensive purpose.
It's kind of like what we see on an evolutionary
(09:20):
scale with some of these examples. All right, let's explore
termite world. Here. We are talking about some four thousand
termite species, and they exist on every continent except Antarctica.
But scientists have identified only about half of the ones
they think that are out there, and most of those
species common names, and little is really known about their
(09:42):
biology or behavior. In fact, several years ago, uh DNA
testing revealed that rather than belonging to their own order.
Termites should be classified as a cockroach family. Huh. And
that's interesting because you, I mean, I think most people
tend to think of them sort of in the same
camp as an ant, or at least very similar to
the ant, you know, with the social set up royalty
(10:04):
in place division of labor, right, indeed that the uth
social organization there now. Tracy V. Wilson, you may know
her from stuff you miss in the history class. She
actually has a great article called how Termites Work on
how stuff Works dot com, and she describes them vastly
quote in a lot of ways, termites are a paradox.
(10:26):
They're strong enough to eat a house, but their bodies
are soft, delicate, and prone to drying out. Soldiers whose
sole job is to defend the colony can't even feed themselves.
Adult termites develop wings so they can leave the colony
and find a new home, helping the termite population grow.
But winged termites are terrible flyers, and most don't survive
the journey. And yet they do right, and they do
(10:50):
so as working as as a cooperative unit, and they
ensure that their nests are moist so that their bodies
don't dry out, they build shelters protection from the environment,
including predators, and as they slowly and methodically carry back
bits of waste and dirt to use as building materials,
they munch on wood for sustenance. Hence a homeowner's terror
(11:12):
at discovering that they've got termites in their midst. Yeah.
I I highly recommend anyone interested in termites to to
read Tracy's article because it's a great house stuff works article,
and it really, I mean, it dives into the complex
and really beautiful biology of these creatures that we so
often just dismissed as a mere past. Just like termites.
(11:33):
Don't want them, don't want to know about them. But
they're really kind of lovely in their own way. I
wish they would need our houses. But they're pretty great. Yes,
they're lovely, and but they're they're quite formidable. But it
turns out that they can actually be pretty spectacular on
an individual level as well. Yes, indeed, because we do
see termites a practice Autopsis um Autopsis evolved independently actually,
(11:56):
and of course a number of species, and we can
actually best fathom the evolutionary process by noting the varying
levels of lethality and toxicity in the various examples. According
to the journal Nature, some termites simply defecate on their enemies,
all right, so it's just a matter of just just
poop on anything that's that's a threat to you and
(12:18):
the family. But others adapted to shower their enemies with
filth by squeezing, squeezing their abdominal muscles till the excrement
bursts out through thin portions of the abdominal wall, so
that the next level in pooping on your enemies, right,
But the the ultimate in this, the the peak of
the evolutionary mountain, as we as we thus far can
(12:41):
grasp it, is the termite neo capit Terminis tarracia, and
UH Tarracia stands at the forefront of the Autothis arms
race UH the species here they grow abdominal sacks of
toxic blue crystals grown throughout their lie and these are
(13:01):
the chemical weapons that they use to defend the colony.
That's right. They were discovered in two thousand and twelve
and French Guiana, where researchers said, hey, what is that
the kind of blue sack there? And what is making
it blue? And by the way, it is copper rich
proteins that give it that blue hue. And so what
the researchers found is that the older the termite, the
(13:25):
bigger this kind of backpack or ruck sack that they
carried on their backs of this blue crystal. And there's
a reason for this, by the way, the older the bigger,
and we'll get into that, but let's talk about this sack.
Because these crystals are created by specialized glands located on
top of the salivary glands, and so during aggressive encounters,
(13:47):
the termite ruptures its body wall, releasing the contents of
the blue pouch, which mixes with salivary fluid to form
a chemical so toxic that it paralyzes or kills most
of the invading termites that touch it. So it's it's
so much more dramatic and effective than just pooping on
(14:08):
your enemy, right, because this is kind of like taking
a stick of dynamite to a powder keg and saying, hey,
take that. Yeah, I mean if they just explode into
blue toxic good, I love it. Yeah. In an interview
with Nature, Olav Repel and evolutionary Biologists says the sophistication
of this is remarkable. We have never seen an external
(14:28):
pouch like this before. That adds one substance that needs
to be mixed with another substance. Now, use the analogy
of you know, just running out there and touching the
touching the fire to the dynamite and explodes and explosive
and dangerous tasks. So so who do you who do you?
Who do you give this task to? Write? Uh? And
that's the beauty of this. We mentioned that those the
(14:50):
toxic blue crystal sacks, they grow throughout the creature's life.
So by the time the termite is elderly, it has
it has reached maximum blue crystal bloat. And at the
same time, it's it's it's it's run out of other
uses in the colony. It's mandibles are dull and useless. Uh,
it's not gonna be able to go out there and
(15:10):
really get in the fight. It's not really you know,
going to be able to help out much working around
the colony. Now it has one purpose, and that is
to march out there with its bloated, over filled sacks
of explosive goo materials and to indeed explode, yes that's right,
and defend the colony. Right with this kind of suicidal, rupturing. Yeah,
(15:32):
I mean it's the perfect you know, well often come
back to to just the the inhuman beauty of the
insect world, you know, just completely devoid of of of
most of our our human qualities. There's a line in
uh from Jeff Goldbloom's character in The Fly where he
talks about that the absence of insect politics. You don't
find politics in the insect world. You just find this
(15:53):
this brutal and and just beautiful economy, UH at play
here where in this case, we have these old termines,
we have no other use but to go out there
and explode. And they do it that they do it
perfectly to make sure the survival of the genetic uh
packets are in place right for future generations. Yeah, it's
(16:13):
all about the greater good of the colony, not the individual. Yeah.
So we're gonna we're gonna just talk about exploding toads
a little bit. This is a this is a slight
deviation from the topic, but it's a tantalizing mystery that
involves exploding animals. So I think it's it's totally open,
open game. So back in two thousand five, what you
(16:34):
had happened is that you had an exploding toad epidemic
in northern Europe. More than a thousand toad corpses were
discovered in a in a pond and an upscaled neighborhood
of Hamburg, Good Germany and over the border in Denmark. Um.
So everyone who was curious what's going on is there's
this is some disease of the toads. It's causing them
(16:54):
to explode. Uh, is someone exploding our toads? What is happening? Well?
Frank and whose Mun, a Berlin veterinarian who collected and
tested specimens at the Hamburg pond, said that it appeared
that clever crows had pecked into the toads with their
beaks between the amphibian's chest and the abdominal cavity. And
(17:17):
what happened is that the toad puffed itself up as
a natural defense mechanism. But because these crows had, you know,
effectively removed the liver. Uh, there was a hole in
the toad's body and the blood vessels and the lungs
burst and then other organs oozed out, so that the
toad puffs up as a defensive measure. But the crow
(17:39):
just reaches in there gets the part at once, even
the nice juicy bit like a game of operation. And
then and then the toads left. They're trying to puff
up and defend itself and instead just splurting its insides
out through its hole. You know, I'm seeing a future
House to Works article, maybe sort of something like the
Five Unexpected Fates of Toads, because we've also talked about,
(18:00):
well we're talking about frogs raining from the sky because
of water spouts out in the ocean, these sort of
tornadoes in the water. Yeah. Outside of a scientific understanding
of the world and a skeptical approach to two weird happenings,
you would easily think that the toad is like ground
zero for the supernatural, like something weird happens. They're gonna
rain from the sky, They're gonna they're gonna they're gonna
(18:22):
swell up and explode. Which is which is playing with
our toads as always better than our toes. All right,
so let's you know, we've got a few minutes here.
Let's call the robot over then, and indeed do a
couple of listener mails. Alright, this one comes to us
from Larry. Larry says I was listening to your episode
(18:44):
on the weight of the soul, and I just wanted
to make a comment. Now, Professor Gary Nam's theory is
completely logical if you just have an open mind for
a minute. That takes us to the heart of my comment.
It seems that you, guys may be letting your views,
which seem to be more atheistic and agnostic, get in
the way of looking at this logically. Whether or not
(19:04):
your soul goes onto anything after this is beside the point,
the point being that that what you call a soul now,
don't get it caught caught up in the name being
a religious reference, is just the collection of energy that
makes up life. Now, having that in mind, Professor Nam
makes all the sense in the world. Thanks guys. I
love the show and I will always listen. Uh indeed,
(19:25):
that's you know, Geary Nam's research I did find really
fascinating because he kind of again the difficulty of approaching
the idea of the soul and trying to study it
or theorize about it scientifically. He uh, you know, he
over overcomes that to a certain extent, at least in
the in the theoretical uh phase. And and I do
(19:46):
I do buy a lot of what he's putting out there.
He kind of loses me the more he gets into
into black holes. But but I like the general approach.
I see, there's a brilliant thought experiment. But again, the
problem with it is the problem of science and the
metaphysical which is is very difficult to get actual data.
(20:06):
And uh, therein lies the correct of the problem exactly.
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Dave. Dave says, you probably don't have time to
reply or maybe even read this and its entirety. Well, well,
we're about to prove you wrong. Uh No. Nevertheless, I
thought I should send you both a message just to
let you know how much I love your podcast. I've
(20:27):
been an avid podcast listener for a few years now
when I stumbled across yours. Until then, I've been listening
to s g U and The Reality Check. When I
started listening to Stuff to Blew Your Mind, I was
impressed with the format of the show and the sharing
of science was done in a fun, never belittling way.
I really enjoy the rapport between the both of you
and look forward to my time so I can listen
(20:48):
to a few Stuff to Blew Your Mind episodes. I'm
currently going through your backlog and I'm about halfway through
a little more the Seven Deadliest. Anyway, I just felt
compelled to drop you this message and let you know
that I really enjoy and appreciate the show and wanted
to thank you both and everyone else involved for putting
together such a great show on a regular basis. Thanks.
Thanks Dave. That's that's very nice. And Seven Deadly's one
(21:11):
of my favorites. Yeah, that that was a really fun
series to do, and uh yeah, I would really like
to uh maybe re explore that material in the future,
maybe in video form, who knows. Yeah. And also I
want to take this opportunity to tip my hat to
our producer, Noel Brown, to who puts us together every
week and get us out to you guys. Indeed, we
couldn't do without no all right. Hey. In the meantime,
(21:34):
you know where to go. Go to Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all of
our podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, and be sure to
check out the landing page for this episode if you
want to find a links to other great content, including
that How Stuff Works article by Tracy Wilson and if
you have exploding thoughts you'd like to share with us,
you can do so by emailing us that blow the
mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(21:59):
this and thousands of their topics, visit how staff works
dot com.
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