Ruud Kleinpaste: A short synopsis of the jobs Invertebrates hold

Just spent a week with 30 teachers in various environmental locations of Auckland. The Sir Peter Blake Trust do this every year under the umbrella of BLAKE Inspire.  

Learning outside is part of the curriculum: water quality, Matauranga Māori, rockpools, school gardens (with pigs etc), climate change, StarDome, political policy simulation, corporate sustainability, and good, old nature nerd stuff in forests and reserves.  

Often the question comes up: what good do Mosquitoes do? And beetles? And weta?, etc.  

Those are also the questions I receive on talkback radio – makes sense?  

Teachers can use this knowledge in the curriculum and hence create Nature Literate students.  

We need those invertebrates (they really don’t need us!).  

In fact, when it comes to bugs that “invade” our homes, it pays to remember that we built our homes right on top of theirs. They are pretty generous about that, really: nice house you built on top of mine – might just move in with you!  

They find keratin (wool) and carpet beetles are the expert in recycling that stuff – been doing it for millions of years. That’s their job! No-one else can eat and digest keratin. 

They find spilled spaghetti bolognese behind the stove: roaches have been recycling food waste and other organic materials for many, many millions of years! No worries – yum!   

They find warm appliances on stand-by (TVs and Sky Boxes, amplifiers, etc). That means that microscopic moulds grow inside – enter booklice! They graze those moulds. 

Some (tiger slugs) slither towards the cat bowl, where milk and biscuits are the basis of their human-house diet. In nature they clean up all sorts of random protein and old food items. 

These are the caterpillars of the Indian Mealmoth. In our pantry they eat old, spilled muesli and in your garden shed they clean up mouldy slug and snail baits without any medical problems what-so-ever. 

And there are many more “Jobs on the Planet” that are filled by Invertebrates, Fungi, Birds, and loads of organisms that literally run our planet 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Be ow Man in the Garden. Root time Pass has
had a busy week indeed, running around the Nine Timas
and Makoto, Auckland, Yoda.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah, yeah, that was really cool. Actually, we had thirty
teachers for Blake inspired that this. Basically we take them
all over the place in Auckland and north of Auckland
and Taffery and Newian places like that, and it's always
really lovely. I love it showing them all the Bugsay,
can't you imagine them? And then you get the questions

(00:43):
what good does a mosquito do? And beatles and what
I mean? Why you know what? Anyway, so I thought
let's do that. I did it for teachers basically, and
explain that all the creatures on the planet, all birds
and all that, they've all got their own little job
to do ecosystem services if you like, that's what they called.

(01:06):
And and I'll start off with a carpet beetal, which
of course destroys your carpet because it's made of wool,
and carpet whetels are the only creatures on the planet
that can digest keratin, which is what wall is basically.
And so if if you know, if if a sheep dies,
you know, if you like, the meggots will do the inside,

(01:27):
et cetera, et cetera. But how do you get the
wall under control? Well you just call one one one
and the carpet wheetles come and do their toy. Do
you know what I mean? And do you have roaches
in your.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Excellent, Well you must have spilled the spaghetti bolonn age
behind the stove, because all they do is they're cleaning
it up for you, and you know what, they do
it for free?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yes, yes, there are some downsides. I don't know that
Missus Tame is particularly delighted whenever she sees a large
roach scurrying across the kitchen.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, but I mean, you know, you stand on it
if you want. It's not a big We're Julie, I
had a lovely one. Because there's a thing called a booklouse,
a book lie in pural. They make a ticking sound.
They're only a millimeter in size, and you'll find them
literally behind your television screen, but anywhere inside, and they

(02:25):
make a ticking noise. But the cold thing is what
they do in those particular places where they occurs. They
actually eat the microscopic molds inside your radio, your television
and all these other places, and they clean it up
for you. It's unbelievable. Yeah, tiger slucks, you know, tiger
slucks go to your cat bowl. They come in and

(02:46):
they slurp up all the milk and that sort of stuff,
and then the Indian meal moth. They go into your
pantry because they actually clean up all the mold and
stuff there as well, And I think good on them.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
See you're always doing this. I'm not going to say
you're a contrarian rude. I would never seduce that for
a moment. But you always give us good reason to
love the things that otherwise in life people might go
with good reason to love the invertebrates in our world.
Thank you very much, sir. You take care and those
teachers are very lucky. Indeed, Rouge Climb passed in the
garden us.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks 'd B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.