Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Silverfish

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Should you be afraid of these creepy little creatures you find in your basement? Only one way to find out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey there everybody and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's Jerry's

here. She's just kind of lingering quietly in the background and this is short stuff. I mean, there's Chuck. The hiss went away. Yeah. And that means Jerry's gone. That's right. When she was on it was hissy and now it's not hissy. She speaks like a Cobra commander. I don't know what that means. You know that. Yes, you do from G.I. Joe. If you watched the cartoon, you had kind of a hissy talk, you know. You ever seen a silverfish? That's my line. Oh, sorry. Chuck. I thought we were mixing it up. No. Chuck, have you ever seen a silverfish? I don't know what a silverfish is. Yes, you do. You liar. Is it from G.I. Joe? That's right. He was a Cobra commander's right hand man. Silverfish. It's actually kind of. No, I have seen silverfish and they,

I think a lot of people get freaked out by silverfish and I don't and I don't know if I should. Well, I know I shouldn't, but I don't know why people do, I guess. I think just because they're weird looking. They're very prehistoric looking, which makes sense because apparently they've been around since the Devonian period for 400 million years and they haven't really changed much since then. So I think that it probably is triggers some innate primal part of our evolved brain that came from whatever those ancient silverfish used to eat. You know what I'm saying? Sure. I do know that they've remained pretty unchanged largely because they haven't really had to. I mean, I guess they were perfect little beings and they're very hardy. I think they

can live six months with just water or just food. I think as long as they have one of those two, they're doing fine. Yeah, which is pretty interesting, but I mean, that's a long time to go without either one. That's a long time for an insect to live. It is. Yeah, and I didn't see how long they live for in general, but they do seem fairly hardy, but to kind of circle back to what you were saying initially of whether or not people should be scared of them, you shouldn't. They're actually not at all harmful to people, and the worst they can do is maybe degrade some of your old books, eat some of your favorite starch collars. Nothing really terribly untoward, and they also don't really tend to break out in infestations. And if they do, you've had silverfish

a long, long time if you've noticed that you have a silverfish infestation because they reproduce very, very slowly. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've ever seen more than one in a place. Same here. Yeah, they're like lone wolves. I guess an infestation might creep me out a little bit, but you did mention books, and that's because back in the day books, well, there are still books. We just wrote one and they're selling a book. That's true. But it is not put together with glues that use animal byproducts. We made darn sure of that. Actually, we didn't have to because that's just the old way of putting books together, and the silverfish eat these things not because, ooh, I love to eat books or even like the paper.

It's really kind of the starchy sugary glues and animal proteins used to put this stuff together. Right, exactly. So they're SOL with new books, but the problem is if you have an antique book collection, it's probably worth some money and the silverfish love that stuff. But for those of us who don't collect antique books, like we said, they love starch that you would say spray on a collar and they can inadvertently ruin your clothes. They don't set out to ruin your clothes, but them just kind of sucking on and chewing up that starch can harm the fibers as it stands. We should just leave bowls of mashed potatoes in the attic. Yeah. In offering to the silverfish gods. Should we take a break? Be sure. All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll describe

these things because we're going to start describing things in 2021. Oh, nice. And we'll be right back. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that,

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So Chuck, yeah, that dude wrote in to say, hey, not all of us can go on the internet and look at pictures of what you're talking about. So please do describe it. That's what you were referencing. Sure. You want to talk about what a silverfish looks like? Sure. They're skinny. They're pointy in the abdomen region. They got a little round head. Some people say they look like little carrots that made it with a fish because they have these little silvery, tiny, gray scales. And they kind of shimmer and they kind of wiggle like a fish swimming. And I think that's where they got their name. Plus also, if you look at their tails, they have those like three little kind of pointy appendages. Stingers? I guess. Is that what they are?

They're not. They look they look stingy, but they're not. But I don't know if they could sting other things that aren't humans. I don't know. But yeah, they definitely don't sting or bite or anything like that. And they don't want to be anywhere near you. So again, you don't need to to be worried about them. But if you kind of use your imagination and just kind of connect those three stingers and fill it in a little bit, it looks a lot like a fish's tail. Yeah, I agree. All the more reason to call them silverfish. And all the more reason to fry them up with some hush puppies and tartar sauce. Delicious. And have a mushy peas maybe if you're from England.

Yeah, I guess. Have a little party. Yeah. So you're going to find silverfish in places, like we said, that have a high starch content, but also very humid places. And at a certain temperature, they apparently prefer high humidity, like between 75% and 95%. And then temperatures of around 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. So they kind of like it a little tropical. You know what I mean? Yeah, like in the summertime in your basement or crawl space, you might see them. I think the things that freak me out of those, I don't know what they are. They're not crickets, but they are cricket-like in the ones that jump in very unpredictable directions.

Wolf spiders? No, they're crickets sort of. But they leap up in the air and you never know which way they're going to go. Like usually cricket will just leap forward like in a grasshopper, like they're trying to go somewhere. These things are just a little unhinged. So yeah, I read a really good description of how silverfish move. They move really, really fast and then stop and just kind of hang out for a little bit. And then they move again really, really fast. And it's almost like this weird kind of disjointed movement from one place to the other. But again, usually when they're moving and they see you, they're trying to get

away from you. They're not coming at you. Yeah. And you know, their reproduction cycle is pretty long. So you're probably not going to see infestations. I think if you do have them, they say you probably have too much junk laying around or maybe you've got a bunch of storage and cardboard boxes, which is not a good, for many reasons, not a good way to store things. And they definitely suggest that you store things in plastic bins now that we have these sort of modern things available to us with lids. And it's a lot harder for, I mean, it's just a better way to store things, period. Yeah. And one reason I also saw why it is hard to end up with a silverfish infestation is because like you were saying, it's a long reproductive time, but also

silverfish, female silverfish only lay about 100 eggs over the course of their lifetime, which seems really low as far as insect eggs go, don't you think? It seems like it. Yeah. And I guess they only lay about three or six at a time. And it takes about three to six weeks for them to hatch. So if you see a silverfish, you probably don't have much to worry about. But if you do want to get rid of them, Chuck, what do you do? I mean, surely you have to like tape up your house and like go get a fogger and like get all the furniture out. And then it's a real problem, right? Yeah. I mean, you know me, I tend to just leave them alone, but they do say that you can just

vacuum them up, get rid of your clutter, reduce the humidity if you can. But I say, don't really sweat it so much because there's probably not many of them. And if you do have a real infestation, you can call a professional. Right. But I mean, yeah. But I don't recommend it. If you don't have like an antique book collection at stake, then yeah, maybe just coexist, right? Yeah. And if you're storing your antique book collection in a cardboard box in your carl's place, then you don't care about it. Right. Exactly. You got anything else about Silverfish? Nothing else. Leave them alone, everybody. And since I said leave them alone, I guess that means

that this short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.