The Infinite Monkey Cage - Will insects inherit the earth?

Episode Date: July 24, 2017

Will Insects Inherit the Earth?Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined on stage by comedian Dave Gorman, zoologist Tim Cockerill and forensic entomologist Amoret Whitaker. They'll be discovering the joy of creepy crawlies, why the flea is the ultimate master of Darwinian evolution, and whether those pesky cockroaches will really have the last laugh if we are unlucky enough to be wiped out by a nuclear explosion. They'll be discovering how and why insects have been by far the most successful group of organisms during the history of life on planet earth, and why we simply couldn't do without them.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is the BBC. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox.

And this is the Infinite Mug Cage podcast, which is a longer version than the one you hear broadcast on Radio 4. Let me stop you there because you have to define what you mean, because it could just be longer because you're moving at high speed relative to the listener. Oh, yeah, I hadn't really thought of that. Well, I suppose longer in terms of the minute measurement. You see, you're getting into trouble now.

Oh, this is really much harder than I thought. You can define it in a particular frame of reference. So you can say in this particular frame of reference where the player is at rest relative to the listener, then the recording you may have made off the radio is shorter than the recording on the podcast.

Thursday? Is that a frame of reference, Thursday? Roughly speaking. It's a starting point, isn't it? Yeah. Quite imprecise. This is the Infinite Monkey Cage extended version. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Ince, and in exchange for the usual programme,

the Infinite Monkey Cage has been replaced by Book at Tea Time. And today, this reading is an abridged version of Locusts by Guy N. Smith. The grasshoppers were still and silent, legs and antennae poised, an ominous hush. Only their eyes moved, huge evil orbs that saw the boy and the woman, flies caught in a spider's web. There was no need to hurry. They were trapped. She looked to David. She couldn't speak. He did not understand, was totally unaware of the danger. Oh, it's not tea time yet, is it, Mum? It is tea time, David.

The grasshopper's tea time. Run! That was a reading from Locust by Guy N. Smith, and that was the first and last in the series of Locust's Escape From A Peach Tin Near Wales and Try To Take Over The World genre from the 1970s, which was also part of the Ants Take Over The World, Cockroaches Taking Over The World and Assorted Bugs Taking Over The World novels from the 1970s which was also part of the ants take over the world, cockroaches taking over the world and assorted bugs taking over the world

novels of the 1970s which were basically death intermingled with extraneous and pointless nude scenes to attract the teenage boy market. This is why Robin ended up in the arts. Because I was thinking about Einstein and he was just getting mesmerised by locusts in a peach tin.

Genuinely that is what the book's about. It is about locusts in a peach tin. They are mesmerised. Genuinely, that is what the book's about. It is about locusts in a peach tin. It is one of the great works of locusts in a peach tin genre. Anyway, today we're looking at the most numerous and diverse animals on the planet, insects. How did they evolve? Why are they so successful? And is it really true, as Robin said, that insects might one day... Take over the world if kept in a peach tin for long enough.

Telfer's explored the world of insects. We have a distinguished panel of entomologists and Dave Gorman. And they are... My name is Tim Cockerell. I'm a senior lecturer in natural history at the University of South Wales. And my favourite insect is the male fig wasp. He's small and very inconspicuous. He spends his whole life on the inside of a fig.

He never sees the light of day, but he couldn't see the light of day because he doesn't have eyes. But he does have telescopic genitalia about twice the length of his own body, so it's not all bad. And my name is Amaret Whittaker. I'm a senior lecturer at the University of Winchester. I'm a scientific associate of the Natural History Museum. I specialise in forensic entomology. My favourite insect is actually not usually related to forensics, but it is the flea. And this isn't

why it's my favourite insect, but the male flea does actually have the most complicated genitalia of any organism in the living world. Picking up a theme here. does actually have the most complicated genitalia of any organism in the living world. Picking up a theme here. My name is Dave Gorman. I am a man, and as a rational man, I don't have a favourite insect. But I do have a favourite trilobite, which is the genus Avalanchurus. Yeah.

Is there anything about your genitalia you'd like to tell us? Keep the theme running? It's the most complicated genitalia of anyone in this room. And this is our panel. Tim, we'll start with you. As this is about insects, we should start with a definition. What is an insect? Yes, well, insects are a group of animals

that belong to a larger group called the arthropods, the phylum arthropoda. And they're those animals that are crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. They've got their skeleton on the outside of their body. Now, the body plan of an insect, it consists of three parts, the head, the thorax and the abdomen. They've got six legs and the typical insect also has two pairs of wings.

So that's kind of what an insect looks like and what an insect does. What are the most common errors in people believing something is an insect when it is not? Oh, gosh, lots of people think that things like spiders or ticks and mites might be insects, but to be an insect, it has to have those three body parts like spiders or ticks and mites might be insects. But to be an insect, it has to have those three body parts, three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings. But, of course, just to throw us off the scent to some extent, things like fleas, for example, at some point in their evolutionary history, they have had wings, but they've evolved to be wingless.

So in order to qualify as an insect, well, in a way, we'd have to look back in time at their evolutionary history. But generally, three body segments, three pairs of legs, and then you've got an insect. I love the fact that crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Is a double-decker bar an insect? No, it has no legs. Thank you very much. You cleared that up. We'll prove the crunchiness later as well. Yeah, this is one of the things.

When you do a show about insects, this was not mentioned by Tim before he arrived today, but always they go, well, they've asked me on a radio for insects, I presume they want me to bring some edible ones. And that's going to be an interesting piece of radio. I was thinking, the people that work on giant pandas don't do the same thing, do they? Here's a bit of panda jerky, just to...

LAUGHTER Always with the genitalia. Let it go, guys. Let it go, yeah. This one may only be going out on the 11 o'clock repeat, by the way. Dave, were you one of those children that liked insects, that collected them? Not especially.

I think probably because I read a couple of those books that Robin was referring to, so they were sort of part of horror to me. They were things that were repellent. And I'm one of those people who thinks of spiders as insects, and I think scientists are wrong on this. And anything that you think is an insect is an insect. And while I'm here, whales are fish and tomatoes are vegetables.

You're a little bit younger than me, but similar generation. Did you have stick insects? I remember becoming a pet in the early 80s. There were people who suddenly... I don't know where the pet shops started to sell stick insects. Yes, I think there was one in a fish tank at school that was sort of... Or at least we were told it was. It was very good.

We might as well have just had some sticks, for all I know. But there was definitely something we were told was a stick insect that we used to gawp at in fascination. But had there not been glass between me and it, I would have been on a chair in the corner of the room. Because I used to find these things genuinely scary. But you don't anymore? You're kind of fine with... Much less so.

And are you fine with discovering whether they're delicious or not? Well, we'll find out in a minute or two. Amaret, you described yourself as a forensic entomologist, which means you work with insects, or insects are integral to your work. Could you describe what that is?

Well, insects are everywhere, basically. They're ubiquitous, which is what makes them so incredibly successful. And the main insect that I use in my work is the blowfly, because they're just natural recyclers. They're really amazing creatures you know if we didn't have blowflies then the countryside would just be knee high in carcasses of hedgehogs that didn't quite get across the road etc so blowflies are just amazing recyclers and they recycled human bodies as well so if you drop dead then blowflies will find you and they will

lay their eggs on you and they'll start feeding on you as maggots. And basically, if I can work out how old those insects are, then I can work out the minimum time that that person's been dead. So when did we become aware of insects being something we can use in this story of life and death? can use in this story of life and death? Well, the first documented case of forensic entomology was actually in China in the 13th century when a murder had taken place and it looked like the wounds had been made by a sickle, a rice sickle.

So an investigator... Is that a serial? Serial killer. Serial killer. This is one of those moments where I hope this doesn't turn out to be a really melancholy story about murder, hoping that 700 years is long enough to make the ricicle joke, but we'll find out, because Radio 4 does have a way

of finding the right complainant for the right show. Yeah. So, basically, the investigator came along, he got all the local farmers to bring their own sickle, because they all owned their own sickle, or scythe, if you'd rather call it that, and they laid them on the ground in the midday heat

and flies came along and landed on one particular sickle, because there were still traces of blood on it. And so the owner of that particular sickle then owned up to the murder. So that was the first documented case of forensic entomology. We don't see enough use of insects in old Columbos. That's what I would like to say. Tim, can you tell us a little bit about the evolution of insects?

We get this point where suddenly this incredibly successful group appears. Can you give us a little bit of the background? About 500 million years ago, this group called the arthropods emerged in the sea. These things with a jointed external skeleton. They bumbled around for 100 million years or so. Then about 400 million years or so ago, they, they were on the land by that point, and the insects evolved. So they come from within that larger group. Now, it used to be thought that

insects were much more closely related to things like millipedes and centipedes. But actually, somebody's done some genetic analysis quite recently and discovered that insects are actually a kind of derived crustacean. So they belong to that group that has the crabs and the lobsters and the shrimp and woodlice and things like that. So they belong to that group that has the crabs and the lobsters and the shrimp and woodlice and things like that. So they possibly evolved from something that was maybe a land living, something like a woodlouse. And basically they have dominated every terrestrial ecosystem since then, from then up until the present day. So they were around, they saw the evolution of the flowering plants and they co-evolved with those and they diversified with those. They've seen the dinosaurs come and go. They saw those early tetrapod

vertebrates, the four-legged vertebrates, come out of the sea. They've seen the rise of the mammals and they'll probably see the demise of the mammals as well. That's my suspicion. Can I just question? A couple of times people have said the most successful group. I don't think a head count is the only way of measuring success. If you go to my house, you'll find three humans, one cat and no doubt loads more insects, but I feel like we're more successful than them. It's my house.

I don't think the fact there's more of them than me... And to be fair, I know you've got at least one BAFTA, maybe more, and I don't think they've got any. We could put it a slightly different way. If you think about complex life in our galaxy... Now, if I've got it right, there's a decent likelihood that planet Earth is the only planet in our galaxy that holds complex life.

And if you look at the typical version of that complex life... Let's add up the number of species, for example, of everything else that's not an insect. So the number of species of complex things like plants or vertebrates. So you can add together the birds and the mammals and the fishes, amphibians and reptiles, all of the other invertebrates that are not insects. You soft things like your jellyfish and your worms. You add all of those up together and they don't come close to the number of different species of insects that exist so you could actually say that the normal way to be a complex life form in our galaxy is to be an insect not dave dave saying but none of them have got any sofas i mean this is i've got two

sofas you mentioned something interesting they're just in passing almost You said they co-evolved with flowering plants, which is an interesting idea. So the fact that the flowering plants wouldn't be present on Earth without the insects, and possibly vice versa. Could you expand on that? Yeah, completely. So when the insects first came about, well, the plants were not as complicated as they are now.

They were kind of simple things like mosses, basically. And the plants are basically as complicated as they are, partly because of insects, because the insects evolved to pollinate plants, but they also evolved to feed upon plants. So then plants came up with defences, and you have these evolutionary arm races. And most species of plant have some kind of insect life cycle

that is just very deeply intermingled with it. So really, one of those two groups probably couldn't have evolved to the diversity that they've reached without the other. You mentioned in the introduction that your favourite insect is a flea. Yes. Why? Fleas just have the most amazing lifestyle. I mean, they're obligate parasites. So the adult flea has to feed off a host of some sort, which is generally a mammal, birds, bats, etc. And they're just beautifully designed, really, for that parasitic lifestyle.

So they have this exoskeleton, which is very, very hard to crush. They're laterally compressed, so they can move through the fur of their host. They have backward-pointing spines, so it's very difficult for the host to actually get rid of them by preening themselves. So they just have lots and lots of different morphological characters that are just beautifully designed for their specific lifestyle. In your work, is there any use of fleas, in terms of forensically, or will they, if something dies, is it right that they would leave the body

yes so fleas um like warmth basically so as soon as an animal dies they will jump off that animal and find another host so fleas are not generally involved in forensics um but in fact the first ever case i did did actually involve fleas, which is a very sort of simple case, and it would be great if all cases were that simple, but it did actually involve fleas. Well, I'm not going to let you stop there. That's far too enigmatic. It involved fleas, but please move on.

If you can talk about it, are you allowed to talk about it? Okay, yeah, so very, very simply, the police called me up because they had a house where they believed a murder had taken place. The people that owned the house had thrown out a carpet because they said that they had a very heavy infestation of fleas.

And they had three dogs, so, you know, it's not impossible. So the police wanted to know, is this a good enough excuse for having thrown out a carpet, that you've got such a heavy flea infestation? So I said, well, it's possible. However, these days, we don't have quite such a problem because we all have vacuum cleaners. And the immature stages of fleas actually live in carpets

and soft furnishings and basically the nest of the host. So I had this really bright idea. I said, well, why don't you find out if they've got a vacuum cleaner in the house? And if they have, then send me the dust bag out of it. And so that's probably the worst job I've ever done is going through somebody else's vacuum cleaner. I did find evidence of a few fleas, not a heavy infestation at all. So the police then went back to them and said, OK, we've consulted a flea expert. She says you're talking rubbish.

You don't have heavy infestation fleas. And so the couple then confessed, and they said, actually, it was our son who did kill somebody, and that's why we threw the carpet out. So... Wow. I mean, any time I see anyone taking a carpet out, I suspect there's a body in there.

It always looks like it, doesn't it? But for it actually to be one... There's a fascinating thing about fleas that lots of people have come across this, whereby if a house or a flat has been left unoccupied for a period of sometimes months, but up to a period of years sometimes, and people walk into the flat,

people have told me that this has happened to them, and all of a sudden the carpet is alive with fleas. And what's actually happening is that the fleas stay in their pupil stage, so the stage between when they're a kind of wriggly larva and an adult, and they can stay in that stage in also a kind of form of suspended animation until they get some stimuli, like some body heat from a host or some carbon dioxide or some movement,

and then literally within seconds they can emerge from that pupil case. So you could have a cat that's been walking around and dropping these flea eggs off and then they're staying as pupae in the carpet, but then as soon as somebody walks into that house, well, the house can literally explode with fleas. It's great.

You're reaching now, aren't you? Once you start on that second bit, I've got there, there, the whole thing, yeah. It seems to me you meant this interesting life cycle that fleas, but I suppose all insects have. Could you talk a little bit about that life cycle and how long they can exist in these various phases? Yeah, well, actually, not all insects have this life cycle. So there are a couple of ways to be an insect. One of them is to go through what we call complete metamorphosis,

which is where you have this kind of two-stage life cycle. So if you think of a stereotypical caterpillar turning into a cocoon or a pupa and then turning into a moth or a butterfly. So that's one way of doing things. The other way of doing things is incomplete metamorphosis. So something hatches out of the egg and it basically is a kind of miniature version of the adult. So a cricket, for example, a baby cricket looks like a miniature cricket but without the wings. So it just gets the wings the last time it sheds its skin. And this complete metamorphosis is probably one of the reasons why the insects have become so

successful. So the four most diverse kinds of animal on the planet, the wasps, the beetles, the flies, and the moths, they all show this complete metamorphosis. And in evolutionary terms, it's a brilliant trick because it means that you've got almost two species squeezed into one. So think about the most important things to do. It's basically to eat and to reproduce. And so within one species, like a butterfly, well, you've got one half of the life cycle which is perfectly designed by natural selection to take on as much food as possible,

this expandable caterpillar that's just an eating machine. And then you've got another side of the life cycle that is perfectly designed by natural selection to reproduce, to disperse and to find a mate and to lay eggs. So it's a fantastic way to be an animal. Yes, I mean to turn a caterpillar through this process into a butterfly which is an incredibly intricate machine.

It's just almost unimaginable. We do understand the hormones that control it for example and we understand some of the cellular processes but yeah, people are starting to understand a little bit more. Now we've got things like micro CT scanner so basically we can put one of these things into a machine and we can actually see inside it without destroying it whereas in the past of course the way the only way to do things would have been to dissect these things at various

different stages but now i've seen some some wonderful time lapses of these insects and it it looks like magic basically everything just kind of dissolves and then this completely new insect that is unrecognizable just, just forms from this cellular soup inside. It's so nice that you and I agree on... We don't quite understand how this works. Really comforting. Do you find, David, because when I was a kid, and it was like, you know, on the Sunday night

when they used to have the nature documentaries, I always wanted it to be like lions and tigers and elephants. And then the older you get, for some reason... Meerkats. Oh, meerkats as well. But the older you get, the more you go, I don't want mammals again. Mammals seem so samey. And suddenly you become fascinated by, you know, insect. Whenever I see any of those, you know, the life in the undergrowth comes out, suddenly, and I don't know why, as a kid, you kind of seem to want things that are more, I suppose, closer

to what we are. And then the older you get... I don't know if it's that or if it's just that the technology that is available to filmmakers now allows you to show life on that scale in a way that is utterly fascinating, whereas actually when we were kids, you could put a little camera down a hole and you could see... But you couldn't see that kind of development and that kind of... And now you can, whereas you could always a little camera down a hole but you couldn't see that kind of development

and now you can, whereas you could always point a camera at a lion killing an antelope. You've hit on one of the great advantages, I think. My favourite property of insects is that none of them are very big. LAUGHTER The question is, why? Why are they, in general? The biggest thing is about the size of your hand.

It's a beetle, isn't it? They get up to about hamster size, medium hamster size. Medium hamster. Yeah, people talk about it, so there are fossils of... Hang on, you just brushed that aside. That's terrifying. An insect that's medium hamster size. And I've brought some of them with me today. Can you draw us a picture in words of this medium hamster size. And I've brought some of them with me today. Can you draw us a picture in words of this medium hamster size insect?

Because Dave really wants to know. Can I say it genuinely? He wants to imagine it vividly in his mind. Everyone always thinks of Brian as cool and brave, one out of the two of us. But when we said we were doing insects today, Brian just went, oh, they're not going to bring any in, are they? Like, properly, like, oh, no, crawling. I mean, I did...

Filming, I sometimes have to sort of get hold of them. We filmed Wonders of Life in Australia where I had to play with some of the big beetles, the rhinoceros beetles, I think it's called, which is one of these very large insects, isn't it? Just paint a picture of the large insects and then tell us why they're not any larger. Yeah, well, before I do, there's an interesting fact

about going back to fleas, actually, about the difference in size. So fleas are parasites, and the biggest species of flea in the UK is the mole flea, which gets to about 8mm long. And the smallest species of mammal in the UK is the pygmy shrew, and occasionally the mole flea is found on the pygmy shrew. And I've heard it described as a bit like a human being infested with Jack Russells.

So I think ourselves lucky that we're not that small. Yeah, but it's true that insects don't get very big. There are some fossil insects of giant dragonflies or dragonfly-like insects in the Carboniferous period a few hundred million years ago. Now the oxygen levels were much higher then, so perhaps they had a bit more energy to fly around. So the energetics were definitely different then. But actually the biggest insects that exist, or the longest insects that exist now, are the stick insects from Southeast Asia, from Borneo and possibly from China as well. And they're about the size of one of those huge dragonflies. So they get well over

a foot long, massive, massive stick insects. So actually, these prehistoric insects have never been orders of magnitude bigger than they are today. And yeah, the biggest insects, or the heaviest insects at the moment, some of the goliath beetles, for example, yeah, so they would fit in the palm of your hands, but very, very big, chunky things. Now, probably the main reason why insects don't get any bigger than that is because they're so successful because of this external skeleton. It's like a Swiss army knife. You can produce any kind of tool with it.

But it does mean that in order to grow, they have to shed their skin periodically. So this tough external skeleton can't grow. It can only stretch up to a point in certain kinds of species. So they have to go through this process of shedding their skin periodically. So this tough external skeleton can't grow. It can only stretch up to a point in certain kinds of species. So they have to go through this process of shedding their skin, which means that they're very, very vulnerable. So if you imagine something like a grasshopper or a locust, it has to literally step out of its exoskeleton.

And at that stage, it's very, very vulnerable until the new exoskeleton hardens off. It kind of tans in the oxygen of the air. So if an insect's got much bigger than the size of, say, a hamster, well, at that point, when it's very, very vulnerable, it would just collapse under its own weight. So that's probably one of the main limits of the size of insects. What if, say, a locust was in a tin of peaches?

How protected would that be? Hypothetically, yeah. Actually, Amber, you'll know this, because this is always what worried me about Guy N. Smith's locusts, which is how... Because it basically, just to give you a bit of the background, as they move house, they take some peaches that were sent to them by some American friends

that have these malevolent locusts in them. In terms of survival in a thick syrup, how... Because you'll know about this. Is that likely? I mean, we're talking about export, we're talking about travel, we're talking about... I mean, how long do you think...? No, they still need to breathe, so they need to be, you know, have access to air.

This is why the maggot is just so perfectly formed, is that they actually have their posterior spiracles, so what they breathe through is on the back end of the maggot, so they can basically feed head down into whatever it is they're feeding on while breathing at the same time. What would you do? You could do that. I'm not sure it's broadcastable, but...

We both worked with some novelty acts in the 90s, didn't we, Dave? You know, we... I wondered... This I have to bring up, and it's obviously... It's a kind of, you know, a banal choice, but there are so many people who will always bang on about what's the point of wasps. And so perhaps we should now find out what is the point.

You know, this is... Because there are some people who say eradicate those and our picnics will be wonderful, you know. Yeah, well, I think it's a bit of a philosophical question because you could equally flip that question around and say what's the point in humans or what's the point in tigers or what's the point in pand or what's the point in tigers or what's the point in pandas? I don't think, unless you subscribe

to basically a religious notion of the world to this kind of bigger philosophical picture, well, things don't actually have a point. Things don't necessarily have to have a point. They just happen to be here. So they've just evolved. You can ask the question, what does a wasp do? Or what kind of evolutionary

context has it evolved in? So what has it evolved to feed upon and what eats wasps? But does it have an actual point? Well, no, it just happens to have evolved in an ecosystem over the past few hundred million years, just like every single other thing has as well. Did you say that wasps are one of the most numerous groups of insects? That's interesting because I think we tend to think of wasps

as the ones that attack our picnics, as Robin said. But you said there are numerous, thousands of them, presumably. Yeah, hundreds of thousands of species of wasps. So the black and yellow thing that annoys us at picnics is just one very conspicuous example of a group of insects called the wasp. And it's the hymenoptera, so it includes the wasps and the ants and the bees as well. And it is pretty much... It could be the most diverse group of animals on the wasp and and it's the hymenoptera so it includes the wasps and the ants and the bees as well and it is pretty much it could be the most diverse group of animals on the planet the fact is actually that we don't know so currently the the prize is taken by the beetles

so that's got the the most described species of any animal group but we've got a history of people being fascinated by beetles like charles darwin was a beetle obsessive and there's these victorian gentlemen collectors that were obsessed with collecting beetles so beetles. Like Charles Darwin was a beetle obsessive and there's these Victorian gentleman collectors that were obsessed with collecting beetles. So beetles are probably better described than the wasps. So it could be that wasps will take over as being the most diverse group of animals on the planet. So literally hundreds of thousands of species of wasp.

And you also mentioned the hymenoptera there, the bees, the wasps, the ants, termites, I suppose, as well. Are they part of that group? I'm just thinking that they have some... These animals have some kind of intelligence, in a sense, and particularly I'm thinking of ants, things that make colonies, bees as well. How much do we understand about that?

Because collectively, they're quite a clever, unified organism. They really are, yeah. Termites actually belong to a completely different group they just happen to have evolved to be social so they look a bit like ants in in the way that they do things but they're actually more closely related to cockroaches they're a bit of a derived social cockroach in evolutionary terms but yeah again it's a bit of a philosophical question because we base all of our definitions of intelligence on human intelligence so we can we can list obviously there we can list ways that insects are intelligent obviously insects aren't broadcasting a radio 4 program about humans at the minute so we could say that humans are intelligent but or more intelligent than the insects but that's on our

definitions so there are some very very complicated things that insects do. They can learn and they can communicate. So bees, for example, you've probably heard of the waggle dance that a honeybee will do. So it goes off and a foraging honeybee finds a particularly nice group of flowers with lots and lots of nectar and pollen, and it comes back to the hive, and it communicates exactly whereabouts this patch, this really good foraging patch is, by symbolising exactly where it is,

by doing a dance, and if it walks upwards and then to the left, it means you fly towards the sun and then to the left a bit. And if it repeats it many, many times, it means it's kind of like screaming out loud, saying, this is an amazing foraging spot over there. So it can communicate to other members of the hive just how good it is and just whereabouts it is. And so insects are the only other animal that we know of that uses symbols, so humans and insects.

Humans and bees are basically the only thing. So they are very intelligent and very complicated, but again, our definitions of intelligence are based on humans, so it's always a tricky thing. So because we were talking about picnics before, you have brought in your own picnic snacks, and I'm glad that... I haven't finished talking about termites yet and i won't finish talking about them until about 10 minutes time when we run out of time okay yeah we don't have time to eat the insects unfortunately

yeah because they do eat termites i'm not going to eat fry up termites in uh in african various african countries but yeah we've've got a group of different insects here. We've got some mealworms and some crickets that I roasted in soy sauce and sesame seeds and a little pinch of cayenne pepper last night. I'm just going to say this is yet more evidence that we're more successful than them. That is true.

I love the way you judge it. How do you know I'm more successful than that? Because I cooked it. I'm more successful than that because I cooked it? I'm more successful than him because I cooked him. Having said that, Amalek would say that ultimately the insects have the last laugh, don't they? Because they do end up feasting on us. They do, yeah, absolutely.

And what's amazing about them as well is they... So, for instance, when somebody dies, you get a succession of insects. So you don't just get one type of insect that feeds on a dead body. You get lots and lots of different insects, and they all like the dead body at different stages of decomposition. So as you give off different odours, different insects are attracted. And so you are literally left with just a pile of bones at the end of it.

How long does a blowfly live, an individual blowfly? Well, in captivity, quite a long time, because obviously they're not being predated on. Yeah. It's hard to know exactly, probably just a few weeks or a couple of weeks or so. So if we say the average blowfly lasts about two weeks and I'm planning on living more than two weeks,

I would say that right now I am more successful than any blowfly. Any blowfly that is currently living on this earth, I'm doing better than it. Now, Amrit, you're actually a vegetarian, aren't you? I am, so... Right, so you're out of this. I can pass them over. Right, so pass this over. OK, OK, I'm vegetarian. Dave, you're our entertainment guest, so that means you have to eat them.

LAUGHTER Dave, you're our entertainment guest, so that means you have to eat them. Let's... Mmm, they don't smell as successful as you. Not a hint of blue Stratos. So these are... Can you run me... So this is the cayenne pepper, etc? Yes, they've been toasted, lightly toasted, with some soy sauce, some sesame seeds and some cayenne pepper last night. And this

is, you've done this, not merely obviously to spoil our lives, but also there is a reason you know, are we now thinking that we will perhaps be living off insects more, that this is what we need to do because... After Brexit. Brexit.

That's the sound of... Oh, it's not 52% anymore, switching off their radio. So, yes, what's the hope with this? Yeah, well, there actually is a serious point behind all this. Now, it's become a bit of a novelty thing recently that, yeah, when you get an entomologist on, well, they always bring some deep fried locusts or some some mealworms but actually well about 80 percent of the world's population already eat insects so they use that to get protein into their diet but insects are phenomenally efficient so they're very efficient at producing protein

they're much more efficient than mammals or birds for for example. So they take up a lot less area, they produce far fewer carbon emissions, they use a lot less energy to produce protein. So they're actually a very sustainable source of protein. Now, we've got these insects... Shall we try one? Dave, I'll tell you what, if you're prepared... LAUGHTER Dave, have you got any?

I've got a few, and I'm just going to point out that Brian has taken some down to the front row of this audience. Don't eat them. This is like a kind of a moment in a panto directed by David Cronenberg. Very bizarre. Don't eat them if you've got a prawn allergy, though. I don't know if I do yet, so let's find out. We should emphasise that, actually.

Don't eat them if you have a seafood allergy. I would emphasise don't eat them, because it's fine if we die. We're covered by some kind of indemnity clause. I'm not sure the audience are. So, they smell of... What's the sort of the wheaty stick covered in marmite? Oh, wheaty sticks. Twiglets. Twiglets. They smell twiglety.

Right. I've got two in my hand. I'm prepared. Are you ready? Yeah. Right. I've never eaten insect... I've got two. my hand. I'm prepared. Are you ready? Yeah. I've never eaten insects before. I've got two. Here we go. Right. Now, what's very interesting is crunch on the outside, chew on the inside. A bit like a double decker.

You could be the new Ant and Dec. What? No, I really don't want to eat it. They're angry. You are the bon vivant. I'm going to a fancy restaurant. This is the fanciest food you've ever been offered. I'll have some more. Where are they?

Someone's holding out for a big I must liberty get me out of here paycheck. Right. I'll tell you what we could pass to Brian, because the serious point behind all this is that insects are a very efficient way of producing protein. And so there might be a brilliant way to inject protein into the diet of people who can't afford any choice over where they have their protein for.

So I've got this thing here. This is an energy bar. It's called an Eat Grub energy bar. And this is... It's like an energy bar, but it's got insect protein inside protein inside it and this although the crickets are a great novelty this is a far more realistic way of how insect eating will actually happen possibly in the future or it's even happening now so they're actually really tasty this is what flavor is it so what have we got here for dave and me our next course so these are mealworm. So they are the larva of a beetle, a darkling beetle.

They're actually a pest of flour and other stored products. And they are really tasty. They've got a kind of nutty flavour to them when they're fried. And as I say, they are very closely related to prawns. They're essentially a derived crustacean. You can think of that as what an insect actually is. So it's really no different to eating a crustacean. I was going to say, it's completely illogical, isn't it?

Because, of course, prawns, just for some reason, culturally, I don't know, they just seem much more... Yeah, and it is a strange Western thing. It's a marketing issue, though, isn't it? Because in my hand, I've got what appear to be some very stagnant maggots. And so mentally, there's a block to get past to be able to eat that. But if you can package it like the bar that Brian is...

I am now eating this. So that's the point, isn't it, really? Yeah, exactly. And it's a very cheap, very efficient... It's much more efficient in terms of the carbon, in terms of the water that you need to produce things. But not only that, so we can eat insects, we can use the protein from insects to put into our diet, but also insects are very good at decomposing things. So they can decompose our food waste or even our own waste and turn it

into usable protein. And for example, in fish farms. So fish farms are often sustained by catching other fish from the wild in order to feed to our trout and salmon to keep those alive and to make those grow and to put on protein. But actually, if we could breed insects to feed to our salmon and to our trout, well, then it's a much more sustainable and much more efficient way of doing things. Dave, what do you reckon to the mealworms? A bit nothing-y. Yeah, they're a little bit like the bits that are left in a bowl of snacks.

You know, not good enough. Yeah. And what's the final one, Heston? So these are some other crickets that I've just toasted, just so you can get the raw, natural flavour without any of that soy sauce. This, though, genuinely... You know what you were talking about going into that vacuum cleaner? That's what that looks like.

It just looks like this is... Can you pass that to Dave? So these are just lightly toasted. And these are what again? These are crickets. It just looks like this is... Can you pass that to Dave? So these are just lightly toasted. And these are what again? These are crickets. So these are brown house crickets. They've been kept to bread and then freeze-dried and then lightly toasted.

I'll try and do this one. Yeah, yeah, listeners, on your licence fee, I'm feasting. See, it's kind of, again, what do you reckon? Basically, the only ones that were nice were the twiglity ones at the beginning. Were they? But that's because they'd been flavoured. Yeah, yeah. Everything else just feels a little bit dusty. Running out of time, but one of the... No, we haven't.

You haven't finished your grub bar. One of the... One of the... Well, maybe it's a myth, maybe it isn't, surrounding insects. You often hear it, that cockroaches in particular, very tough things, and people say cockroaches, if we have a nuclear war then the cockroaches will survive. Is there any grain of truth in that?

Are they that tough? There is a bit of truth in it. We know that insects in general are able to survive a much higher level of radiation than humans. This is one of the things that entomologists do, do things like that, pop insects into a radiation oven to see what survives. We're nice like that.

Yes, so insects can survive a much higher level of radiation than humans can. It's possibly due to the fact that they are not... They're not replenishing their cells all the time in the way that we are. So because they have this growth that is split up into stages, so because they shed their skin in intervals rather than just renewing themselves all the time like we do, well, it means that their metabolism is a lot slower and that proliferation of cells is not interrupted quite so much

by the radiation as it would be in humans. Now, cockroaches, people possibly think about cockroaches because cockroaches can quite famously survive without their head for quite a long time. The insect brain is actually split up into each of the segments of an insect. So each segment has this kind of sub-brain all the way down the body.

The circulatory system and the respiratory system is very different to ours, so they don't breathe through their mouth. They actually breathe by... Well, basically, the air just kind of wafts in through holes in the side of their body. So you can actually take the head off a cockroach. Because they don't have the same circulatory system,

they don't have high blood pressure like we do, so they don't bleed out, as a human would do if he took its head off. So the cockroach can basically live. It can live and it can respire and it can live for a couple of weeks without its head. So they are very tough things. Whether they would survive a nuclear attack, well, we don't know, really. And if someone was bitten by a radioactive cockroach,

what superpowers would they have? We asked the audience, if you could be any insect, what would you be and why? And here are our audience answers, which include a silkworm, because I'll be able to make my own clothes when things get expensive after Brexit. Here's another great sort of 50s reference.

Ant, because I have high hopes. Nice. You remember that song? Ladybird, always have something to read. LAUGHTER A 2,000-year-old B, because that would be A-B-B-C. Wouldn't, would he, actually? Because 2000-year-old would still be A-D, wouldn't he?

18. 2018-year-old B. Actually, I'm not sure that... Anyway, let's not get into that now. Good. So, the... Thank you very much. Have you got any more there? Can I tell you why avalancherus is my favourite species of trilobite?

It does make a lovely bookend, and it does show that you've been using Wikipedia during the show. Yeah, no, it's my favourite species of trilobite because there are four species within it and they're all named by the same scientists. And, you know, you put... So, to give you an example of one of them, Avalancherus lenoni.

So they've named it after John Lennon, to put the i on the end. Then the first two are lenoni and stari. You've got Lennon and star. You know, I know where this is going. And the next two are simoni and garfunkeli. I just love the person who went, we've got four, we'll do two of the Beatles. But not Harrison and McCartney.

So, thank you very much to our panel. Dave Gorman, Amrit Whittaker and Tim Cockerell. Have you still got a bit of insects in your throat? I think I'm bringing them back to life inside me. I'm a little bit scared about this. I'm wondering what this is going to do if, in some unfortunate incident I murdered later on today, what is a forensic entomologist going to make

of the insects that are inside me? Not only are they alive again, they're giggling and going, look who won after all, Dave Gorman. Next week, we're asking, is our universe a simulation? And if it is, if all of this is just something that's been programmed by a teenager on a coding course, and if it is all a simulation, I would like to know why has the simulator put so much effort

into simulating Brian Cox and so little into simulating me? He appears to be about 30 terabytes stored on a RAID 5 array and I appear to be on a floppy disk. Anyway, so thank you very much for listening and goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you. Monkey cage, not a monkey

In the infinite monkey cage, without your trousers In the Infinite Monkey Cage. Without your trousers. In the Infinite Monkey Cage. Turned out nice again. This is the BBC. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are travelling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change.

We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts.