SciShow Tangents - Trick or Treat Month: Creepy Crawlies with Lulu Miller!

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Tangents annual descent into horror returns with Trick or Treat Month! And this time, we brought some fiendish friends along! Join us for a whole month of spooky themes and special guest stars!This week, we've called upon the spirit of Radiolab and Terrestrials ghost host Lulu Miller to get down in the muck and talk about all the wormy, wriggly, slimy, little creatures that send shivers down our spines: creepy crawlies! Get your extra-scary SciShow Tangents Halloween Decal here! Tell 'em Spooky Sam sent you!https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents/products/scishow-tangents-halloween-logo-stickerLooking for more Lulu Miller? Check out Radiolab or Terrestrials if podcasts are your thing, or Why Fish Don't Exist if you're more of a book person! There's a little something for everyone!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker!A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Tom Mosner for helping to make the show possible!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen

Hey everybody, Sam here with a very spooky Halloween technical note. So while we were recording this episode, both Hank and our very special guest recorded using the wrong microphone. It sounds pretty good anyway, just wanted to give you a heads up. Enjoy the episode, it science knowledge screen case. I'm your ghost, Hank Gangrene, and joining me this week as always is mad scientist, Gary Riley. Eek! And our resident every wolfman, Sam

Skulls. Uh, what else do they say besides awoo? I said that last week. Awoo again. The old calendar on the wall says it's Halloween time once more, and as you know, we here at SciShow Tangents love to get into the Halloween spirit, and this year's no different. October will be trick-or-treat month, and Sam and Sari have invited some ghoulish guests over

to the Tangent Manor to join us this week. In fact, I hear one of them approaching the door now. Who is it? Hello! Why, it's our mystery guest, Lulu Miller, host of Radiolab, author of Why Fish Don't Exist, and host of Terrestrials, a kid-friendly podcast full of stories from the people who brought you Radiolab.

Hello! Hello! How's it going? It's great. It's so good to see you. I had to be spooky there for a long time, but I'm just going to sort of settle back into normal now. Wait, I want to stay spooky. Like, why can't I be Boo Boo Miller or Ghoul Ghoul Miller?

I don't even think of that. That's all I got. Boo Boo Killer? Boo Boo Miller or Ghoul Ghoul Miller or like I didn't even think of that or that's all I got Boo Boo Killer Boo Boo Killer there we go Boo Boo Killer yeah

Boo Boo Killer perfect well thanks for joining us Boo Boo hey Boo Boo so I'm legitimately always surprised I do not know

who our special mystery guests are going to be which makes me very nervous but I'm very excited to see you never met before i know this is so i'm so i'm so happy to be in in the like my safe space of pure science nerdery it's where i want to reside i'm i'm honored and excited to be here it's so awesome to meet you all hank talks about your book all the time well i gotta tell you we actually actually made a SciShow episode today. We just filmed it.

It was a collab with the Monterey Bay Aquarium about whether or not we're fish. What did they say? Oh, you know, that it's a lot of that. That like cladistics and conversation are different things. And that if you're asked for a fish donkey, you shouldn't expect to get a cow in it. But a cow's a fish donkey you shouldn't expect to get a cow in it but cows are fish i love it so like basically conversationally no but scientifically accurately yes yeah there's no yeah there's no fish the in terms of this particular tool which is quite useful if it seems like we're being pedantic i guess we are but like there's a useful tool here and we have to stick with it and there are no fish.

There are lots of different kinds of fish and we can sort of settle on that. Every week here on Tangents we get together to try to unnerve, disgust and horrify each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for gory and for candy, which we'll be awarding as we play

and at the end of the episode, one of us will be crowned the king of Halloween! And if the guest is the treat, one of us will be crowned the king of Halloween. And if the guest is the treat of this trick or treat month, here's the trick. Our regular panel will take turns presenting games this month, and I get to play along for once. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Lulu. This is called Show Me a Sadder Thing

Than Elytra. Okay. Wow, it's gone beautiful already. They are a body part known to the beetle. The word itself sounds a little creakle.

Like, like Electra, the gal who lusted for her dad. But I promise you, Elytra is much more sad. You may know it as the little shell over the beetle's wing, but evolutionarily, it's more like a muzzle over what once could sing.

Consider the cruel forces by time concealed that forced the creature's wings to harden into shield. So depressing. I'm sorry. It's a sad word. It's a horrible thing. I mean, yeah. So it was a very good poem, but I did contain the word, I think,

Greekle? So Greekle was one of the words in that poem, which is a lesser known version of Greek-ish. Gotcha. Yeah. Sure, sure. So the topic for the day is creepy crawlies, which I guess we did specifically

so that we wouldn't have too much trouble defining it among, with a guest who knows maybe too much about taxonomy. I feel like if anyone's going to define creepy crawlies, it's going to be this group of people. We're going to draw some really hard boundaries. Yeah. This is important work that we're about to do. Can't have a spine.

Can't have a spine. A mouse isn't a creepy crawly. That's how, that's what I was operating under. It has to be invertebrate. Yeah. Yeah. Has to be terrestrial.

Can't, you can't get creepy crawly by a lobster. Oh, I think you can get creepy crawly by a little shrimp though. Don't you? Oh yeah. Like one of those sand freeze. Yeah. though, don't you? Oh, yeah, like one of those sand freeze.

What about those spiders, the under the spider crabs? Are they creepy crawlies? They're too big, I think. Yeah, there's a size. It can't be bigger than a fist. If it's bigger than a fist, that's not a creepy crawly. That's just terrible. What's a tarantula? Is a tarantula

not a creepy crawly? Or like a scorpion, a big scorpion? Those are creepy crawlies. What terrible what's a tarantula is a tarantula not a creepy crawly or like a scorpion a big scorpion oh those are creepy crawlies what if it's a scorpion the size of a person is that a creepy crawly is there a line it's great i didn't i never thought about this how the smallness is a part of it like it sneaks up and then it's all normally yeah yeah because if it like makes the sound of a normal person like coming into a a door, like opening the door, walking in and you're like, that's a monster. Yeah. Yeah.

That's just a bear with a, with an exoskeleton. Now it has to be able to be, it has people to crawl on you. Are you now, are we including soft like slugs, you know, like a slug snail?

I think you gotta have legs. Oh, she, no, I have to leave them. Cause I, I think worms can be creepy crawlies. They're part of the Halloween bowl of worms spaghetti. And they can crawl on you without any legs.

I think you gotta go, when it crawls on you, too. I don't know that a mouse counts. So then does a butterfly not count? Because you go, when it crawls on you too i don't know that a mouse that a mouse counts yeah so then like does a butterfly not count yeah butterflies are obviously yeah but and and no birds except for the ugly ones except for like a ratchet cardinal kind of like intimidating birds can be creepy crawlies but only if they're like really like just gross just off-putting birds like the babies that don't that don't have feathers yet totally a

creepy oh yeah totally yeah what about a human baby i just i don't know i think a human baby could be pretty pretty creepy if a human baby is crawling up they are especially if it speaks up on you crawl yeah good i'm glad so we've we're talking about uh slugs spiders human babies beetles and babies and it has to be alive nope it could be dead but it has to have once been alive all right so i feel like we got it all under control sarah do you have any etymological wisdom to share with us before we move on the word creepy crawly the compound word because it has a hyphen in between it uh was first used in 1858 as far as we can tell um to you to refer to an insect or animal i i disagree with the fact that it could be used for an animal with the spine but one time in a book in 1923, or I assume it was a book,

but I'm not sure. They referred to kangaroo babies as creepy crawlies. That makes sense to me. Oh yeah, sure. Wait, can we just stop and talk about kangaroo babies for a second? That's why it's called tangents. Okay, guys. Is it true that like a kangaroo baby,

when it is first birthed, is the size of like a beetle and crawls up the pouch and back in and it's like a little beetle vertebrate mammal and then it hides in the pouch and like incubates and then becomes like the cute size you see in cartoons like a puppy size it is really weird that they have to get into the pouch like could you not just wait do we know what the beetle is it actually the size of a beetle and is it hairless like has anyone watched it i have seen it i've seen a video crawling along the hairs it's a wet little like a jelly bean jelly bean yeah wow with little legs yeah it's like a birdie bots every flavor

bean and the flavor is baby kangaroo. Okay. That's for sure. Okay. You know what? The flavor is neat. I go with that book in 1923. I think that's a creepy crawly.

Yeah. That's a creepy crawly. Okay. Okay. I see it. Okay. So I feel like we are settled on having no idea what a creepy crawly is. That means it is time to move on to the quiz portion of our show.

Sam is going to be doing a the quiz portion of our show sam is gonna be doing a i think it's weird for me to not be in charge you guys i'm back in the saddle again like four years ago was the last time i did a truth or fail but i did my best so uh for anybody who doesn't know what truth or fail is like maybe lulu i'm gonna say three facts one of them's real two of them are fake of all the creepy crawlies in the world none are more lowly than the lowly worm they're slimy they eat nasty rotten stuff they don't even have legs but there are relatively speaking some spectacular worms out there worthy of at least some small degree of admiration so today i present to you three worm superlatives but only one of them

is real this is why you said you had to leave the podcast if worms didn't count as creepy yeah i'm screwed if worms don't count number one the award for longest worm goes to the boot lace worm a marine worm that can grow to be a hundred feet long there are even some unconfirmed reports of worms almost 200 feet long but you wouldn't want to pull yourself up by this boot lace its body is covered in thick toxic mucus number two the award for the slimiest worm goes to the numero worm an annelid that produces about four times more slime than your average earthworm. The slime has an antimicrobial property that keeps it safe from parasites and may have useful medical applications for humans. It does come with a tradeoff, though. The Numero worm is the slowest known worm.

And number three. On the other side of that coin, the award for fastest worm goes to the Sapphire worm. An Anilid that, in tests, has shattered the worm land speed record by traveling about 7 inches in 90 seconds. It uses this enormous speed to dodge other predatory worms as it goes about its day eating leaf litter. Which worm is real? The Bootlace Worm is the longest worm. The Numero Worm, the slimiest worm. Or the Sapphire Worm, the longest worm. The Numero worm, the slimiest worm. Or the Sapphire worm,

the fastest worm. I absolutely believe that all of those worms are real worms. I think I may have even heard of all of them. The... The... The slime thing is very interesting to me because I am obsessed with slime.

I have become recently obsessed with slime because I started to try and write a SciShow episode about the largest molecules. And slime, it turns out, depending on how you count, is almost definitely the largest biological molecule because it can be just one molecule. So they can form disulfide bonds. So all these proteins come together. can form disulfide bonds. So all these proteins come together. They form disulfide bonds. And basically, from what I can tell, though I haven't got an expert to confirm this yet, the entire inside of your intestinal tract is covered in one molecule of slime. What?

What the heck? Wait, I have a lot of slime questions now is slime like a taxonomy of slime i mean is the slime in us to say like how what is slime that's my question yeah yeah i mean i think so like there's this a class of proteins called mucins or i think it's mucins it may be mucins i think it's mucins and uh and that's what i'm talking about when i when i when i'm talking about us they're like me they're like minions but they're way worse just gross yeah stretch stretch armstrong minions and and and i think that's i think that that is similar to how other i think that this is a fairly common way of creating slimy stuff like uh you know those eels that are

really slimy they make they sort of excrete this these uh proteins that then bind together a lot of water and that's part of how they work really well is they they just get a huge amount of water to gloop into it and that's part of their um that the mechanism of how the proteins become functional. So I like that, and I bet there's some slimy worms out there, but also the eels make me think that maybe Sam was thinking about eels and he made up worms that were slimy. Minions can stretch. I would like to say that minions can stretch already. I don't know very much about minions.

Can they join together and become one large one single minion no they can't do that what do we think about fast worms how about those huh there's gotta be a fastest worm there's gotta be right there's gotta be a fastest and the slowest i don't know if that's how seven inches in 90 seconds yeah that felt slow okay that feels like when i did my official test of like flail seven inches and then that just feels like i've seen a worm go faster than that in 90 seconds and like swimming worms yeah they must this is a land this is this is specifically a land speed record for a worm i see i see yeah it's the cheetah of worms yes it is the boot lace was convincing because of the unconfirmed 200 like that felt very human real unconfirmed trying

to reach for a bigger superlative that what threw me off was like the generally toxic like toxic to whom and i just i'm going with slime slime's my guess too okay i'm gonna go with the boot lace worm because i think it would be cool if it existed because it just seems too long to be real i'm going with the boot lace worm because it is the correct fact oh no you think i don't know what the longest worm is who am i oh shoot well okay so the bootlace worm is real and with a scientific name like lineus longissimus is this long line yeah so while they do usually only grow to be five to ten millimeters there are some specimen that are definitely about 100 feet long the longer examples of bootlice worms like the 180 foot worm reported in scotland in 1864 have drawn a little bit of

scrutiny because this worm is extremely stretchy and could easily be stretched by external forces. Is it long or were we having a good time? I think they think the hundred foot worm did get that way by itself. Unless like two sea turtles grabbed on each end and went, I don't know. They were on a romantic date as a stray and a well-kept one they have a sticky hands of the sea someone was whipping it around slapping it on rocks yeah but if the worms can get that long they aren't just the longest worm they are the longest animal period and they produce a thick toxic slime that allegedly smells like sewage and can kill crabs so So pretty, pretty weird little guys. What do they do with all their lengths?

What do they, do they strangle? Do they just like try to not be incredibly vulnerable? Right? Like a giant sub just open for, and you said they're marine? Yeah, they're marine. Okay. Yeah. I do not know what they do with all their length.

You know, I have a guess and I i don't i don't know if this is real but my guess is that bootlace worms get long because it just happens to happen this is what happens when they succeed and they just get longer and longer and longer until somebody chomps them up that sounds right so the slimy numera worm isn't real in fact the name numera is the japanese name of the pokemon gumi who is a slimy little pokemon wow i was wrong i hadn't heard of that well maybe you played pokemon in japan sort of hard to search what the actual slimy creature on earth is because the hagfish really dominates any slime based searches that you might try to do yeah yeah but it's probably

hagfish they're probably the slimyest creature i don't know what the slimy swarm is uh eels have slime that protect them from various microbial invaders and it like protects wounds but i'm not sure if it has medical uses and i found also in an article that said that slimier snails are slower should you find yourself betting on snail races you should bet on the least slimy snail for the driest snail so that's why i said he was the slowest of all of all worms finally the sapphire worm was named after the sapphire computer virus which spread in 2003 and seems to be the fastest spreading computer virus of all time so the speed statistic of seven inches every 90 seconds is the speed of a particularly fast leopard slug documented by a worm, by like snail and slug scientists from Carnegie Museum of Natural History, who said that the real fastest snail or slug was what I was looking for, was one that went up in the space shuttle. So, yeah, but don't.

Yeah, there was no real answer really there's gotta be a fast snail or slug and i think that we should do that work as a speech he showed off his little slug racetrack and he was like the fastest one i found goes seven inches every 90 seconds how do you make a slug go fast like you can't tell yeah well you can't tell who's which is the fastest slug because you can't tell them to race like maybe one of them is just walking more slowly because they want to take their time that day so you have to give them something some motivation just a little you know slug attack dog it's like a slug has little teeth. Yeah, we'll get that guy on next week and we'll ask him. He says, woof.

Okay, that sounds good. Next, we're going to take a short break and then Sari has another devious game for us. Welcome back, everybody. welcome back everybody we're tied at three except for lulu who has nothing all three of us are tied except for lulu who nothing. And Sari has a game for us. Sari, what are we going to do? What are we about to do? I made up a game. It's hopefully pretty simple. The game is called Mate, Murder, or Mislead.

I had other options. Fornicate, fight, or flee. Copulate, consume, or camouflage. But the M's really won it. And the premise of the game is pretty straightforward. So Ryan Gosling, Ryan Seacrest, and Ryan Adams.

Yeah. Maybe inspired by another game, but this one's science-y. So I'll present you with a creepy crawly body part or behavior, and you tell me whether it's mainly for mating, which is sexual reproduction, murdering, a.k.a. catching prey or otherwise eating nutrients or misleading, which I'm considering any anti-predator adaptation to keep them from being eaten. I love it.

Here's how the scoring works. If you get it right, you get a point. If you get it wrong, you get no points. And if a point. If you get it wrong, you get no points. And if all of three of you get it wrong, I get three points. So one strategy would be to divide your votes, and I'll get no points this whole time, and I can't stop you. But I have a feeling that won't happen. I'm basing this off of another board game that I've played.

Points are the hardest part of games. Are you ready? Mm-hmm. Ready. Number one. Railroad worms got their name because they have 11 pairs of dorsolateral lanterns along their body segments that glow a yellowish color thanks to bioluminescence. In other words, they look like little train cars with glowing windows. Wow.

Do scientists think these lateral lanterns are for mating, murdering, or misleading? Oh. think these lateral lanterns are for mating murdering or misleading oh i'm gonna guess it's for murdering because you're drawing things to you with light i believe i think it's mating i think that it's like a deep sea vibe and it's hard to find mates down there so you gotta glow yeah like a like a deep sea firefly like do you look at me? But here's my question. For mating, meaning like it's the business, it's like a private part or just it helps you mate? So I'm considering it like mostly used for something to do with mating. So like researchers look at it and say those lights are sex related, help you in some way.

Not necessarily like the inserting part, but like, are the attractive bits. I think I'm going mate, too. I'm going mate. Okay. The answer is misleading. Oh! Sorry! That was surprising. So,

railroad worms are the larval form of multiple genera of Brazilian beetles. And both the larval forms of multiple genera of Brazilian beetles. And both the larval forms and the adult forms maintain these light organs and glow to some capacity. They use luciferin and luciferase like fireflies to do their bioluminescing and they have lanterns on their heads and their sides. And researchers think the ones on their heads help them see in the dark,

but the lateral lanterns seem to be for self-defense because they only flash them, um, pretty much when they're surprised and a sudden flash can repel potential predators. So yes, it can draw attention to you. It's like a taser.

It's like bears. Great. It's like, but like a more like a security light, like's like bear spray. Kind of. It's like, bah! But more like a security light on the outside of your house. Yeah. Where it all of a sudden goes. Whoa! And it's

just on the larvae, like the adults don't have. It's just when you're a little vulnerable larva. I think the larvae light up more often, but the adult forms also have it along their sides. And adult females also seem to glow while protecting their eggs. And so that's why they think it has something to do with defense, too.

Something about these like multiple lights. It's a classic maternal glow. Yeah. You know, it just happens. Whoa, that is so cool. I love that fact. I've never heard about that. That's so cool.

Number two, velvet worms are also not taxonomically worms, so to speak. They are in a loose group called panarthropods and are sort of cousins to arthropods and tardigrades with their many feet and soft, wiggly bodies. They have oral papillae, one on each side of their head, that wildly spew out a protein-rich slime. Are those slime jets mostly for mating murdering or misleading does gotta be murder slime jets i think it's murder slime jets too i want them to be boom boom slime to be uh so i'm gonna go with that that'll be my guess we're all going with murder no i'm going i mean Boom boom. I didn't understand what boom boom was.

Boom chicky boom. Boom chicky wow wow. Boom boom to Hank is murder. Let me translate. Boom chicky wow wow jets. What is it, Sari? It is for murdering. So most of the videos studied show this slime as an attack against prey

such as beetles or spiders or crickets. They store the slime in a reservoir in their bodies and then squeeze it out at estimated speeds of around 8.6 meters per second or 19.2 miles per hour. And they don't actually point there properly. They just push the fluid through it so fast that it waves about wildly, kind of like a garden hose. So they just spray slime kind of willy-nilly. And then it gets sprayed as a liquid. But as it settles onto the prey, it becomes a stickier or stiffer polymer thread kind of closer to a spider web so as the the beetle or spider wiggles around the the slime stiffens up and i love this uh

then they then they eat whatever they want to eat oh yeah that's great it's just encased in the slime yeah it's like a slime like a little net. What if that was people? What if that was people? I know. There's nothing that says that that wouldn't have been one of our strategies, like a primary strategy for success. And then we end up becoming a sentient slime shooter.

And according to Hank, we've got the slime in the intestine. We can make it. Yeah. We're so close. If you can excrete it in there, you can excrete it anywhere. That's what I always say. Number three. House centipedes feel like the platonic ideal of creepy crawly with their 30-ish long and gangly legs that radiate out from their bodies. One behavior they do with their super long back legs, which are really flexible and segmented, is called lassoing.

Are there leg lassos for mating, murdering, or misleading? I think they're boom boom lassos. I'm going to guess murder again. I don't know. That just feels right to me. Wait, so their legs are lassos? What does that mean? Their back legs are really long. All of their legs are really long. How can like what does that mean their back legs are really long all of their

legs are really long how such beats are like gangly but their back legs are especially flexible and segmented and do something called lassoing so okay i'm taking it back it's mating it's mating yeah i'm going i'm going mating i'm just staking on my mating guess here 100 boom boom 100 boom boom and zero percent correct it is in fact for murdering yeah they have uh one researcher called arthropod swiss army knives which i thought was very funny and so like centipedes have a lot of different legs that are differentiated for different things so for example they have some specialized legs that act as as f. But these leg lassos are used to rope around prey and restrain them, sometimes multiple at a time, so it can eat one and have one caught for a snack for later. House centipedes feed on cockroach nymphs, flies, moths, bedbugs, crickets, silverfish, earwigs, and all kinds of pests yeah so even though we think of house centipedes as a creepy crawly a lot of the the pest websites are like don't kill it because they eat things that you

like less they're terrible you could if if it doesn't have any food it'll die on its own if it does have food that's a bunch of things in your house that you don't want. Do you want me to give you an impromptu creepy crawly gross out fact that is related to cockroach nymphs while we're on the topic? Do you know what I did on Friday? I know. I wasn't there. Did you eat something weird? Did you find? You ate something weird?

Turns out, again, this room probably knows it, but it was news to me about a month ago. There is a species of cockroach that does not lay eggs, but gives live birth to babies. And as part of that, creates milk. Cockroach milk has been analyzed and is believed to be one of the most nutritious milks on the planet. It has all nine amino acids. It has calories. It has proteins. It has all nine amino acids. It has calories. It has proteins.

It has omega fatty oils. It's not lactose-based, so it could, in theory, be a nice form of milk for the lactose intolerant among us. So what did I drink? You drank Coke? On Friday? How much can you get? I got a small vial, along with a guest entomologist, Dr. Sammy Ramsey, who told me about it, who's heard about it for 10 years and has always wanted to try it because he eats all the bugs. And we did a taste test and we guessed. We had cow milk and goat milk and oat milk and roach milk.

And I had to guess. And it was very clear. It was not tricky. It was really disgusting. It tasted like acrid. I think in the moment I called it the broken dreams of sunshine. It was sparkle. It was like so bad.

Anyway, but there are people looking into whether we could bottle it for a more sustainable future. Oh, my God. Keep your eyes out on the milk aisle. I have some issues with the idea. Well, have you ever had a jelly bean, though? I mean, you've eaten a bug secretion, I'm sure. No, no, no, no, no. I'm basing this on what, if you thought that it tasted like sunshine and rainbows, I would be excited about the possibilities.

But if it tastes like garbage, I've smelled the inside of a cockroach before it's bad in there it's not good it's bad in there well so they haven't this was just like straight from the lab i mean this was like not treated this is not like the company with like a cute name adding sugar like this was just like i basically nursed a cockroach but i boiled it but anyway so should I go? Like, did I achieve the creepy crowd you do feel? Have I done Halloween right for you? Yeah. I kind of want to taste it too, though.

Yeah. Okay. It's definitely worse. I'll see what I can arrange. I know a guy. I know a guy. I got a hookup in Omaha. Get me a vial.

I'll send you my address. I'd also like to note that I have zero points in any game so far. Maybe this will be the one. Yeah. Okay. So barklice are tiny brown insects that feed on small debris like fungi or poop or whatnot. And the Neotrogla genus are found in Brazilian caves where they use barbed appendages called gynosomes to go about their lives.

Are these gynosome barbs for mating, murdering, or misleading? I feel like the name gynosomes. Yeah, you're trying to fake us out with a gyno. Are they very big or are they gynosomes? Like, are they giant or are they gynah?

This is the question. I can give you the spelling if you want. It's in the show. G-Y-N-O-S-O-M-E. Oh, well, it's a boom boom. this is the question i can give you the spelling if you want well yeah yeah what's the yeah can you can use it oh well it's it's a boom boom she's tricking us but it's mating barbed miss hold on guys i'm not ready i'm guessing wherever i go is gonna be wrong so don't follow me here but where I'm going is murder. A-loo-loo. It's just boom-boom. It's just boom-boom. It was just obvious. There was no fake-out.

I've been waiting for you. Yeah, there was no fake-out. This was literally the easy. This was the softball. I thought you were head-faking. You were getting, you were guessing mating every time. But yeah, that's,

this is what I was betting on on this game. Yeah. I appreciate your experience. Is that you would over, everyone would overthink this but all four species of the neotroglogenus of barklouse have opposite structured sexual organs so the females have a gynosome that gets erect and has barbs to stab into the male's cavity

which is very weird yeah they have sex that lasts up to 70 hours which is probably why the barb exists, so that they can just stay interlocked. And the gynosome sucks up and transfers the semen, so it's kind of like a straw rather than a squirt gun. Wow! This is very weird, and the only time we found it among animals.

It doesn't suck it up very quickly. It seems like it might be fairly passive if it takes 70 hours. That's to work on that. That's a thick milkshake right there. Thicker than the cockroach milk for sure. Oh my God. Lulu Miller, thank you so much for spending some time with us on this episode of SciShow Tangents. We started a little late and Lulu has to go pick up her kids.

So we're going to do the science catch without you. How will we ever learn? But I'm so glad to know that you have put the gross thing in your mouth. I'm happy to come here and provide those factoids and no correct answers. You guys are the best. If you are into bugs, we have this brand new series that's called Terrestrials. It's all about the strangeness right here on earth. I think it's spiritually aligned to what y'all are doing,

which is looking at creatures and showing that the, that they often work in ways you don't believe nature is supposed to work and that we don't need to look up to the stars or to aliens to find kind of wonder here. And I think it's the most fun I've ever had making something. So I'd love if you check it out even if you aren't a kid or aren't a parent my secret hope is that like a fadult would like it too just a fun adult or a sad adult like a sad adult who needs to be cheered up like

just needs to go on a walk with their geeky nature friend i'm here to provide that service welcome have fun on the couch i'll miss you i'm there in spirit and lulu's gonna be back for the to provide that service. I'm both of them too! Yeah, so the Deltas are just welcome. Have fun on the couch. I'll miss you. I'm there in spirit. And Lulu's going to be back for the butt fact, so stay tuned. Final candy count.

Sam has three. I have three. Lulu has none. And Sari has seven. It's almost like the games is a leg up. It's hard not to make a game where you crush everybody. And now it is time to ask the science couch where we got some listener questions for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. Sam, what is our question?

Vida Bjornan on Discord asks, I used to hear that the brown recluse had a potent venom. Then I heard that it's actually a staph infection that does the majority of the damage in the things it bites. What's the truth? I've always wondered about this too, because it seems like spiders can F you up, but I don't know if they're F-ing you up or if something else is F-ing you up. As someone who thinks about spiders all the time,

I've heard conflicting reports. I don't actually know the answer to this question, but it does seem like the, like from what I've seen of brown recluse bites, they last for a very long time, which feels more like an infection than a venom to me. Sari, do you know the answer? I do. In fact, I researched it just for this very podcast. I'm not a secret spider expert.

So brown recluse spiders do have a toxin, and it has a bunch of different stuff in it. A lot of proteases, which are enzymes that attack proteins or break them down. And when they bite human skin, it causes cell death. It's called dermonecrotic arachnidism. So when brown recluse spiders bite humans, you do get like a puncture wound and then reddish and pus and whatnot. It hurts sometimes if the toxin, if enough toxin got in you, it can get like a little bit worse. Like your skin can slough off or the wound will get uglier. But the thing is brown recluse spiders as toxic as they are are only found in certain regions of the united states mostly in the south west and midwest mostly in dark areas

like under rocks bark of dead trees basements whatnot and they don't feed on humans uh they don't feed on blood at all and so really the only time that they would bite you is if they were like in your bed for some reason and you rolled over and they were very scared and then they went wow i'm gonna bite to try and defend myself so a lot of doctors uh who are not spider experts or people who are just looking at their skin and being like, oh, I have like a red swollen thing on my arm. Must be a spider because we don't like spiders socially. They're categorized as creepy crawlies, even though they're just fine. That's where the idea of staph comes in.

It's not like the staphylococcus bacteria. It's not getting in through the spider bite. You just got bacteria in a cut or something. And that led to a skin infection. But all kinds of things like skin cancer, ulcers can all be misdiagnosed as spider bites because if you don't bring in the spider and if you don't have an entomologist or someone who is really familiar with spider bites looking at the wound and you can see the fang marks, then it's probably some other skin condition. And so there's all these articles online of like, if someone says

it's a spider bite or if you Google something and the Google results says it's a spider bite, maybe think about questioning that because you might have something else that needs treatment in some way. Well, if you want to ask the science couch your questions, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on Discord. Thank you to at Genkar, at BoyWithHeadache, and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that.

First, you can go to patreon.com slash scishowtangents to become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our very weird bonus episodes. And also, we have a tier where you can get a special in-episode shoutout, which is the tier that patron John Pollock has subscribed at. Thank you to John. Thanks, John.

Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps people know what you like about the show, and it helps us know as well. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly.

And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz. Our editor is Seth Glicksman. Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz Bizzio. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trucker-Vardy. Our sound design is by Joseph Muna-Medish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and me, Hank Green.

And of course, we couldn't make any of this without our putrid patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a coffin to be filled, but a jack-o'-lantern to be lighted. But, one more thing. What you guys don't know is that at Radiolab, people torment me. I hate talking about farts. And people torment me, like, all day long. It's like, let's do an episode about farts. And it's like, I cannot escape.

I'm so sorry. That you chose. Okay, so here we go. Creepy, crawly insects eat and poop like a lot of animals. And depending on what they eat and their gut microbes, they can toot as well. Some bugs, all right, I'll just say fart. They can fart too. Some bugs release fart gases like hydrogen and methane through holes in their exoskeleton called spiracles.

But we have evidence that some fart directly from their butts too. Fossilized flatulence. There are lots of fossilized insects in amber, but a handful of them showcase creatures like ants, cockroaches, beetles, and termites caught mid-fart in their untimely deaths with a distinctive bubble emerging from their anus how humiliating for them i don't know if i want to be remembered for anything and i'm an ant yeah because at least like you're a little bit exceptional at that point most ants don't get

their farts fossilized with them it's like was it edison's last breath was like caught in the bottle and it's like maybe the soul escaped uh-huh exactly and is caught in the amber yes we have to figure out how to capture my last fart you guys okay we're on it that's the whole direction of the company now