It’s Bugs’ World and We’re Just Living In It with Jessica Ware

How big can bugs get? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Negin Farsad sit down with entomologist, Jessica Ware, to dig into the extraordinary world of bugs, insects the size of navel oranges, how they invented flying and so much more.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Negin, I was like weirdly attracted to these bugs that we were talking about.

• 0:06Negin Farsad?

  And I'm like emotionally connected to them.

• 0:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, how did that happen? Coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil Grath, Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I got with me Negin Farsad. Negin, welcome back.

• 0:35Negin Farsad?

  My god, hello.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm having you.

• 0:38Negin Farsad?

  I love being here on this hot summer day.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, excellent. You know what we're gonna talk about today?

• 0:44Negin Farsad?

  Tell me.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bugs.

• 0:45Negin Farsad?

  Oh, so delightful. Literally love it. When a bug lands on me, I just think, oh, this is great. Love a bug.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I not be an expert, but I work in an institution that contains them. Not only experts, but also bugs that they study. Back for your third time on StarTalk. Jessica Ware, Jessica, welcome back.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. Can't get enough. I'm excited to talk to you.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of those times, we talked about cicadas.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're like one of the world's experts on these ugly bugs.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  I think it's pronounced beautiful and charismatic.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mispronounced it. I mispronounced it.

• 1:23Negin Farsad?

  Did you say they were charismatic?

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Colorful, check. Sounds beautiful, check. They do cool things with the genitals, check. That's charisma.

• 1:34Negin Farsad?

  I mean, do they give like enlightening stump speeches on the road in national politics?

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On tree stumps, yes.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See what I did there? So let me get your whole title here. Division chair in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. So these are spineless animals.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, the people in my division or the insect in my... Or both. No, no, I call it, I just.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you study, yes. And you're curator of Protists, Basil, Hexapoda, and Non-Holometabola. Did I pronounce all that right?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  I would say Non-Holometabola, but you could, you could say.

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Holometabola. I like that. I have no idea what any of that is.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're creatures on this earth.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Exactly. So there are insects that have complete metamorphosis. You know the story, the hungry caterpillar. And it goes from an egg, then there's a caterpillar, then there's a pupal stage where there's a complete rearrangement of its internal and external anatomy, and it emerges as a butterfly. That's called complete metamorphosis. There's one group that does it, Holometabola. I don't study those.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's the official term for them.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's called Holometabola. It's a whole metabol, like it's a complete metabolic change of its body. I don't study those. I study all the ones that don't do that.

• 2:53Negin Farsad?

  Oh, you don't do that?

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She just described what she doesn't study.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Non-Holometabola.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  So like a baby grasshopper hatches from an egg, and it just is a small version. And it just molts to a larger and larger size until it's the same size as an adult grasshopper. There's no complete rearrangement of its body.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're also a PI, Principal Investigator, the Institute for Comparative Genomics. This is one of the jewels in the crown of this institution.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  It's true. We are able to really understand 400 million years of evolution through the genome, through whole genome sequencing.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. And you're professor in our built-in Gilder Graduate School.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Loving it.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Loving it.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you're the one to talk about bugs.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Well, insects.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Bugs are just one kind of insect, not to, not to be.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me that's all bugs. No.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Not to be that guy.

• 3:45Negin Farsad?

  But also non-Holomanatic or whatever, just so we're clear.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does she study non-bugs?

• 3:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's, let's just figure this out. What's a bug?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  So bugs are in the one particular kind of insect, and they're in the order Hemiptera. They have, they're called true bugs. They're the only ones that are actually bugs. All the rest are just different kinds of insects. Dragonflies are dragonflies, beetles are beetles, bugs are bugs. They're just a kind of insect, and they all are united because they have a mouth part that's sucking. They have like a little straw. It's so beautiful. A little straw and a little pump to suck up things. They suck up plant juice mostly, except for the ones that suck up blood. Yeah.

• 4:28Negin Farsad?

  Heroes. Okay.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are bees bugs? They suck up plant nectar?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Bees don't. Bees have a tongue. Bees lap up plant nectar.

• 4:38Negin Farsad?

  Oh, they're like, they're like little cats. I didn't realize that.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Their tongue is really long. It looks like if you look at a bee when it's drinking, it actually has a pretty long tongue. And they stick it out, and it actually, they're just, they're lapping up the nectar.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, stop. You have divided yourselves among people who study insects who suck and insects who lick.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Who lick, yeah.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a category.

• 5:05Negin Farsad?

  So you don't study insects who lick?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, none of that. I study insects that bite, that chew, and that suck.

• 5:14Negin Farsad?

  Wow, you just made a weird exception for that one category of licking.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  They're dead to me. Okay, I will not.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just like the Holometabola. She's a non-Holometabola.

• 5:29Negin Farsad?

  She's a non-Holometabola.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, non-Holometabola.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so those are bugs. So how about when I'm outside in a twilight and gnats come around my head?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're bugging me. So to me, they're bugs.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are gnats bugs?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  No, they're insects. They're in the order Diptra, which are the flies. So gnats are a kind of fly. There's gnats, there's noceums, there's horseflies, there's mosquitoes. We all know mosquitoes, black flies. And those are all in the order Diptra.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, I heard noceum, and I didn't believe that was the actual name of an insect. I thought the person was just lying.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Noceum.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's all one word. Noceum.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Noceum.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Because you know what? You don't see them.

• 6:09Negin Farsad?

  You don't see them.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  No, you don't see them.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Finally, you name something after what it looks like.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because none of that other stuff, we don't know what you're talking about until you explain it.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the dragonflies, I mean, they don't really look like a dragon. They do fly. I'll give you that. Right? It's in the name.

• 6:28Negin Farsad?

  They do have like a dragon vibe-ish look, though.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  And wait a minute, we eat them. Grasshoppers, they're often eating grass, and they hop. Descriptive. That's two that we know of that are very descriptive.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bet you that your official name for a grasshopper has neither of those two in it.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  It's true, it's Oryphoptera.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there.

• 6:50Negin Farsad?

  What's wrong with you guys?

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. So who knew that bugs had an official definition? It's the first I've learned of this. I'm delighted to be enlightened this way. And I notice you have tattoos on your body. Don't tell me that they're what you study.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I have a dragonfly, which is what I study, but I also have, well, I have a bug, a true, oh, I have a true bug. I have a Hemiptera right here.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, true bug, okay.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  With a sucking mouth part, because it's a sucking mouth part. And then I have a tiny rat flea that's wearing a circus hat and riding on a penny farthing, right here.

• 7:22Negin Farsad?

  And none of those lick.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  And none of those are liquors. Yeah.

• 7:27Negin Farsad?

  Got you.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What accounts for, even though they're all different from each other, so I don't mean to say they're the same, but they're very different from us.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What makes them so successful on Earth?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Well, part of their success is the time. So they've been around for a really long time. Flying insects have been around for 400 million years. So they've had a lot of time to rapidly radiate into all the different niches on Earth.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they, they just predate dinosaurs?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, predate by quite a bit.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by like 100 million years, yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  By quite a bit. Like, none of the cool dinosaurs that you might see on the fourth floor, they weren't even on the scene yet when dragonflies were already flying. The first to fly, so they were able to kind of conquer that.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dragonflies are OG flyers?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  OG. They're the OGs.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, before birds, before bats, before pterosaurs.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you realize in the sci-fi novel Dune, they've got, it's another planet, of course, and everything's different. And they're flying machines whose wings duplicate what a dragonfly wings do. So it's not a rotorcopter, and it's not a, it's not an airfoil. But they they look like dragonflies.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he must have been very impressed with them, just as you are.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I I mean, it's the original design, right? It's the bow planet template, right? Most insect wings follow the same idea. There's something slightly different that dragonflies and damselflies do with the way that their muscles attach to their wings inside of their body. But in general, the wings are the same. The forewing kind of has air that passes over it. It goes and affects the wind that passes over the hindwing.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what were you doing just before you arrived at my office here?

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Oh, we were looking at dragonfly brains, brains.

• 9:09Negin Farsad?

  How how big are their brains compared to their bodies?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  So you know, like, when you look at a dragonfly, their head just looks like giant eyes? That's kind of the story. So their eyes pick up almost everything, and then they have a teeny, teeny, tiny brain. So they have a mushroom body, which we think is for memory, so they can remember some things. And they have a tiny central cortex. And then most of their head is just optic globes, and because they're highly visual predators. So seeing is the biggest important part of what they do.

• 9:37Negin Farsad?

  And I mean, what can they remember? Like, can they remember? You know what I mean? Are they like, I can remember what I ate for lunch? Or are they like, I can remember, like, my family's story?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good question. We think maybe what if you were territorial? And you had to remember where your territory was? Would your brain be bigger than if you weren't territorial? Because some are territorial and some are not. Or some like never leave the pond from which they emerge, and some migrate across the ocean. So if you're migratory, would your brain be bigger than ones that never leave the area where they're born?

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the eyes of these flying insects are completely different from human eyes, optically, right? And famously, they're portrayed as, you know, in cartoons, I guess. That's where I get my entomology from. Where they're looking through and you see like 100 versions of whatever it is they're looking at. They've seen it for houseflies and dragonflies. Do they have the same kind of eyes?

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're basically the same idea, although the number of omatidia varies. There's an omatidia, which is has a lens and it has photoreceptor cells. And there are lots of those little images, but we think that they get stitched together in the brain and kind of make one composite image that probably they're seeing.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that the same for butterflies and moths?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  We think it's pretty much the same across insects. But the difference is, is that some insects that like have invested a lot in sight, like praying mantises, that's one, dragonflies are another, their vision is probably better than a butterfly or a moth.

• 11:00Negin Farsad?

  And then all the and these like insects also have like eyes that sort of like stick out. They're like they and does it, does that mean they see top and bottom at the same time? Or like, what does that mean?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  No, that's true. That's such a good observation, because the shape of the eye and the way that the omatidia, which are the the lens plus the photoreceptor, the photocell, the way that they kind of project out, stick out, that actually affects whether they can see above them, a little bit below them, a little bit behind them. So dragonfly eyes are really globular, and that allows them to see a little bit behind them in case there's a predator coming or there's food or a mate. And they can see out laterally and they can see in front of them and a little bit above them. Except for like, they do something with sex that's a little bit weird, and males grab the female behind the back of her head. And when he does so, sometimes he steps on her omatidia, so she loses a lot of her vision in the back part of her head.

• 11:51Negin Farsad?

  What? And that's built into their process?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  That's what they do. Yeah.

• 11:56Negin Farsad?

  What is the evolutionary purpose of doing that?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Well, if he holds on to her, then she doesn't fly away from him, and then he can ensure fraternity.

• 12:07Negin Farsad?

  Got you.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So getting pregnant has higher evolutionary value than losing some of your sight?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the back, I think. Because not everything is is good.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just it just has to be less bad than something else.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. If your fitness is even a tiny bit higher because you pass more genes on to the next generation selection.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it'll it'll accumulate and then.

• 12:29Negin Farsad?

  So you can tell when a when a dragonfly is female, because she's the one that's always like turning around fully to see what's happening. Just.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  It is sad that old gals, sometimes the back of their eyes are really busted up.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I woke up this morning, I didn't think this is what I.

• 12:46Negin Farsad?

  Also, I didn't think I would have, I didn't think I would have an emotional response to this, but I feel really bad and weird for old gal dragonflies.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The matriarch is why.

• 12:56Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  I'm Joel Cherico, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if they go back 400 million years, the Cambrian explosion of life is not that much earlier than that. 150 million years or so? So when I look at insects, they all look so different from one another. What is true among them that's been evolutionarily duplicated in all the insects?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Well, really, it's not that it's duplicated, it's that there was a single origin, a single ancestor, and they just all are descendants. And that, so they all share the same things.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, but somebody's going to have the bug eyes first. And then, does that give all the bug eyes? Or or did eyes evolve separately to be similar?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  No, we think that there's a single origin.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Convergent evolution, I think you guys call that.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think there's a single origin for eyes, a single origin for wings. And so insects in general have a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. They all have that. The abdomen in general has 10 segments, although this.

• 14:16Negin Farsad?

  Oh, so they're like, they're doing a 10-pack.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Doing a 10-pack. The common ancestor all had a head, a thorax, an abdomen, and six legs.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, the basal hexapods, which are the closest relatives to dragonflies and damselflies, they had no wings, they never evolved them. And then at some point, 400 million years ago, boom, wings.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Boom.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  I think that was, I believe that was the sound it made.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got wings. But you have to learn how to fly.

• 14:45Negin Farsad?

  I know. That must be like a real head trip, when you're like, suddenly I have these things? What do they do?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  I think they were really, what we think is that they were not good flyers in the beginning. Because the ones that first, like, the sky was empty, right? You could be as big as you want. There was nothing else really hunting you except for each other. So the first ones that flew were really large. Each wing was like 37 centimeters. They were pretty big. And they were really clumsy. They had really stiff wings, and they were just kind of like, probably not great. But then, as as the sky filled up with other things, then wings tended to get a lot smaller. And there's a bunch of different parts of the wings for fast flight, for maneuverable flight, for aerodynamics.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for hovering.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, for hovering.

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because dragonflies hover.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, I mean, they're not as good as hoverflies or for some other, there are some that, for the pesky entomologists that's listening to this, they'll say they're not as good at hovering as some other things, but they can stay in one spot for a little while.

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 15:41Negin Farsad?

  So is and then is something like crickets that can't fly, or?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Well, crickets can fly, they're just more like glide. They do like a little hop, and they kind of glide.

• 15:49Negin Farsad?

  Right. So in that, is that just because, like, is that like they started with that evolutionary thing, but then they just didn't go forward with it? They were like, hmm, we don't really need that model.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, I mean, they have the ingredients in in the kitchen, right? They have the the tools in the toolbox, but they're really focused on jumping. Dragonflies are going everywhere, they're going around the whole globe. So their their wings are kind of designed for long-distance flight.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait a minute, you're saying they got big because no one was in the air to eat them? Like a bird or something?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Well, they they, so there's a couple of reasons why we think they got big, but the reason why they were able to be big and clumsy was because there was nothing else in there related to.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's this I remember about, because there was a time when there was much more oxygen in our air? And insects breathe through their skin, right? Or not skin, what?

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Well, they have, they have little spiracles, they have little holes that open and close to let air go in. And we used to think it was just that, like, high oxygen, so they were bigger.

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I, that's what I read, like, long ago.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Well, people, people have even like reared dragonflies in high-oxygen environments, and they did end up significantly bigger than if they hadn't reared them in the high-oxygen environments. But recent work, just like hot off the presses this spring, not from our lab, but from collaborators in odinatology, they showed that they actually have giant kind of air sacs in their body. They actually held air with them. And it really wasn't necessarily because the oxygen was really high that they were able to be big. It's that they actually were able to carry their own air with them.

• 17:20Negin Farsad?

  Oh, it's like a built-in, like, oxygen tank.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were, they had their own iron lung.

• 17:24Negin Farsad?

  Oh, yeah, that's nice.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did you call that field?

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Odinatology, yeah.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Odonata is?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Uh, the, that's dragonflies and damselflies.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  And so if you study odinata, you're an odinatologist.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  And your field is odinatology.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:40Negin Farsad?

  I'd never heard of that before.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  If you Google it, you often get dentistry things. Because there's another word that's related to dentistry that sounds very similar. So just like etymology, which is words, and entomology are similar, that gets confused if you do a quick Google.

• 17:57Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  And odontology and odinatology, you'll get those, sometimes you get hits for both. So be careful.

• 18:05Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, yeah. Be be careful when you're Googling.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will totally be careful next time.

• 18:08Negin Farsad?

  You might end up thinking that insects have a lot of teeth.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Or, look, you want to see a beautiful picture of a dragonfly, and then you get a picture of a root canal. You don't want that. You don't want that.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So insects are all built on a basic model that apparently is highly successful. And there are more insects in the world than any other kind of animal.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  In terms of abundance, that's true.

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  And in terms of number of species, also true.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially given how many species there are, that's the evidence of how successful.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, there's around the same number of species of dragonflies and damselflies as there are all of mammals. So if I asked you to name five mammals.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't like that.

• 18:45Negin Farsad?

  Well, I mean, it makes sense, though, because if you live in, I I live in New York City, and I don't like ever run into like a fox or like, you know, a capybara, but I do on a daily basis run into insects.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you don't run into a capybara?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  I don't either.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Both mammals, both mammals, yes.

• 19:05Negin Farsad?

  You know, so it made, the numbers kind of make sense, because they can infiltrate, like, every world.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So insects as a branch in the tree of life has the capacity to be highly fit in almost any environment it encounters.

• 19:18Negin Farsad?

  They're like gentrifiers.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  They move in, they take over.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I can move from the countryside into a city and there are insects in the city?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have a lot of insects in New York City.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did any evolve here to be unique?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  We have a couple of species that we think are unique, like Manhattan.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Manhattan ant?

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, Manhattan ant, which is a species that was described first here in New York City. There's.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, what?

• 19:45Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, what is it? Well, I know, is it like really well dressed?

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is it stylish?

• 19:50Negin Farsad?

  Is it like, yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  It wears a ball cap a lot and reads the New York Times.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't know when to wear black, you know?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  It is black.

• 19:57Negin Farsad?

  Is it black? Okay, that makes sense. Absolutely.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  It's good for all seasons. I just feel like when they're wearing a black.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  No matter whether the insects are around.

• 20:06Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, totally.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that mostly in Central Park or is it?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  No, there's, I mean, you could just walk right down the street and there's pavement ants that are having battles on the street. There's pavement ants that actually fight each other. You can see dragonflies flying up Fifth Avenue. I mean, this city is actually full of little bits of green space, right? Whether it's a park, you know, like a little bits of flowers that you have on your stoop or a tree.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I used to host a program for PBS called Nova Science Now, a spinoff of Nova. And one of our episodes, we went to the High Line before it was heavily developed. The High Line had been abandoned for decades. It was just railroad tracks up there, okay? In Manhattan. And we go up there, there's like grass and there are insects. And I found a praying mantis. And I'm thinking, how does a praying mantis get into Manhattan?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did it, does it hitch a ride on the ferry? Does it walk across the bridge? Manhattan is an island.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  It can do all of those things. It can also, they can glide with their wings. They can cling to a bit of bark and go across the Hudson River. They can hitch a ride on my car when I drive in from New Jersey. Like insects are highly mobile. And even though we think of praying mantises, they're not like long distance flyers. They get around.

• 21:26Negin Farsad?

  Well, and do they not miss their families? You know what I mean? Are they like always like cutting and running and then just like going to Manhattan?

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think about that all the time. If a fly gets into my car and then I don't get it out for another hundred miles, then it gets out. That's sad.

• 21:41Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, you're like, you live in Pennsylvania now, buddy.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Not a lot of insects get to see Pennsylvania. Is that what you say to them? I say that sometimes when I'm bringing insects back from the field and I'm bringing them back to this building. I say, you know, not everybody gets to see New York.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's to make her feel better before she puts the pin through its thorax.

• 22:00Negin Farsad?

  And murders them.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, not a lot of insects get to see New York, right? So there's a lot of taxa that have been in the Northeast and species that have been in the Northeast for a really long time. And I mean, like millions and millions of years. Some of them persist, some of them we have extirpated. There's a lot of things that used to be in Manhattan that are not there now because of us.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Extirpicated.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Out. So when we build environments, like the ones that we live in, things that end up being. Like cities, things that do well there are things that used to live in cliff, on cliff faces. That used to live in areas where there was lots of impervious or hard surfaces.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the rock doves, which we call pigeons.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Like rock doves, like pavement ants. Pavement ants didn't evolve. Yeah. It's called pavement ants.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pre-start pavement.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  But probably they were just on like rocks, right? We basically made a rocky environment that a lot of taxa liked to, a lot of species like to live in.

• 22:57Negin Farsad?

  And what, which ones have we extirpated?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  There's a lot, actually. We probably don't even know all the ones that were here. Cause it's not like when people were first settling in Manhattan, and this is millennia ago. They were keeping meticulous logs of biodiversity per se. And then when Manhattan was colonized, you know, I don't think people were either taking meticulous logs. There was the first entomologist, Thomas Say, in North America. He actually did keep records of all the things that were around. So because of that, we know that there are some cicadas that used to be here that are not here. We know that there's certain species that are no longer here.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They couldn't take the heat.

• 23:34Negin Farsad?

  The cicadas ironically couldn't take the noise. It just felt like it was too much competition with what they were doing.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  They couldn't make it here, so they couldn't make it anywhere.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  You know, I've heard that story.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Frank Sinatra.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  I've heard that's true.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the more successful bugs in New York, and I won't have the right word, but cockroaches. Tell me about, so they live with us.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They didn't, they didn't create their own world. They are sharing our world and bedbugs. Okay?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is this adaptive, I guess?

• 24:11Speaker 02

  There's only a tiny fraction of cockroaches that live with humans, right? And most of them.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't tell me that that's only a tiny fraction of all the cockroaches.

• 24:19Negin Farsad?

  Cause it feels like all the cockroaches.

• 24:22Negin Farsad?

  When you like walk down the streets of Manhattan at night, you're like, they're literally all here.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  No, there's like over 7,000 species in the order Bladodaea, which are cockroaches. And the social cockroaches, which are termites, those are all just one order. And most of them live outside of the human condition. They're living in forests and deserts, in rainforest. So there's just a small number that have adapted to live inside of dwellings or to live inside with garbage and refuse. It's not us. It's the sewage, right? Like we make garbage, we make refuse.

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's true. They actually don't want to bother you.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not us or.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You turn on the lights, they scurry.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  They scurry. And the big ones, like you guys have the big ones?

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The big, the big, we call them water bugs.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Well, they're not water bugs. Cause it's actually, that's a classic landlord thing. They'll tell you you have water bugs so that you don't freak out and make them spray. But water bugs is actually a bug. It's in Hemiptera. It's a totally different insect. But the ones that are.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A water bug is a completely different insect from a cockroach?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if your landlord tells you that you have water bugs.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It squashes under my foot in exactly the same way.

• 25:25Negin Farsad?

  Also, are all landlords entomologists? And I didn't know.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  I have had landlords, when I had cockroaches, the landlord told me those are water bugs. I was like, surely you just, I am entomologist. I know this is not a water bug. It's not in Hemiptera, hello. It's in Bladodaea. And he said, how do you know you didn't bring them from work?

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  No. And I was like, I don't actually know.

• 25:45Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, he makes an excellent point.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yes, cause it's also possible, but.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, if you go to, if you go to her section of the museum, there's signs that say, no exterminators.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  We do, we actually, we do exterminate in some parts, but we actually have certain rooms that we don't exterminate because we have live, intentionally live insects in there. The big cockroaches we have though?

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  They are not native to here. The ones that are, the tiny little guys.

• 26:10Negin Farsad?

  I've worked with really big ones in Palm Springs, California, in the desert. And they would sometimes like take flight a little.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, the heat, if it's hot, even the ones that we have here.

• 26:19Negin Farsad?

  They will fly.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  They'll fly. But they're actually originally from Africa. And they were brought over on the transatlantic slave trade in large numbers. So they're, they're actually like, they're adapted to be in hot environments and when it's hot, they'll fly. So sometimes people will be really freaked out. This is like one more, new fear unlocked.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Roaches enough, flying roaches.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  New fear unlocked.

• 26:39Negin Farsad?

  It's traumatizing.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, just stop.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you were like not, like you should care about climate change. We all should. But if you were like, I'm on the fence about it, then as it gets warmer, cockroaches will take the disguise.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me go there. Okay. Two things. First, I heard tell that the world population of insects is on the decline.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My first inquiry with you, does that relate at all to whatever impact climate change has on the world population of insects, on bugs? And do they migrate? Do they hang out? Do they spring forth? Are these connected?

• 27:20Speaker 02

  So insects we think are declining at a rate that we've never seen before. People after the Industrial Revolution, there's stuff in the literature that said, hey, like, I'm not sure, but I think this might have a negative impact on insects. And fast forward to the early 2010s, people started doing studies that showed that populations of a particular butterfly had dropped by 70%. Populations of this other species dropped by big numbers.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bug zappers and raid spray.

• 27:47Negin Farsad?

  They're doing their job.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 27:49Negin Farsad?

  Are they really like?

• 27:50Speaker 02

  No, no. It's, it's, you know what it is? It's us. It's we change the habitat, we increase the temperature, we have now extreme weather, there's flooding, there's increased fire. All of those things are things that insects didn't evolve with, right? So we know the insects are declining at a rate that's faster than we've ever seen. But the problem is, is that all life that we think about, with the exception of maybe fish, right? It came after insects, right? So plants, we need, they need insects to pollinate them. Birds eat insects, fish eat insects. You know, mammals eat insects, we eat insects. In the absence of insects.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did she just say?

• 28:29Negin Farsad?

  I know. I'm like, we eat insects? Well, there was a trend and maybe this is like leading to the decline, I don't know, of like insect snacks as like, because they have a high source of protein?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 28:40Negin Farsad?

  What do you think of that trend?

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard tell they're high protein.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, they are high protein, low fat, depending on what you're eating. The water bugs and your, the cockroaches are actually very fatty. So if you were going to skip one, I would skip those ones. But like.

• 28:53Negin Farsad?

  Okay, thanks. I'm writing that down.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cockroach is not good for your diet.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  That's the one reason to not eat them, really. It's just about the calories. When you think about it, it's really about that. But I would say like my finger is on the pulse of tomorrow. I'm a young, hip, urban woman. And I think eating insects is cool and people should all do it.

• 29:17Negin Farsad?

  Well, you're not concerned about us declining the population further by also eating them?

• 29:22Speaker 02

  I would not go eat street insects. I'm not going to go eat insects just like go and collect on Fifth Avenue. People, when they rear insects for protein, for cricket cookies or whatever, they're doing it in the same way that we rear cattle.

• 29:33Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just said cricket cookies, like, like it's next to the Oreos and the chocolate chip on the shelf.

• 29:40Negin Farsad?

  You're selling it on the bake sale.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Shouldn't it be?

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cricket cookies. I confess, I've had sauteed crickets.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  It was good.

• 29:48Negin Farsad?

  It's popular, they're popular in Mexico, right? It's like a dish.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know. It was served to me once.

• 29:53Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It tasted like chicken.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  They're like kind of nutty.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, yeah, it tasted like a snack. I mean, just snack like you'd have at the bar. What I don't understand is, we're not much different, other than the climate change part of this, we're not much different than we were 100 years ago, moving into cities, taking over the landscape. Why are, why is there extra loss of insects today?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  I think urbanization is increasing at a rate that's much different than it was 100 years ago.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All that means is, we are living on less and less of Earth's surface area.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  But we're expanding.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Won't the insects like that?

• 30:28Speaker 02

  We're, I think we're expanding, though, the amount of impervious surface, the amount of concrete, right? We're decreasing the amount of forest. We pollute the water. There's a lot of insects that are aquatic, that dwell in freshwater. That kind of destroys their habitat.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was just recently driving, I forgot where, and I just noticed, I never thought to notice this before, I'm on a four-lane freeway going in one direction, there's a big divider, and then there's four lanes coming the other way, and I'm just looking at the total surface area that that is. It's huge.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  It's huge. And the lights that go over it, because we're gonna have lights, so that we can drive at night, that negatively impacts insects.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Well, there's insects eat less, caterpillars eat less, moths that communicate, they're flying, kind of using the UV light to navigate with, fireflies that communicate with each other at night. Light, bad.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't, but aren't bug zappers evidence that we're smarter than insects?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  I think.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we know they're sensitive to UV.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's make a UV light, and then zap them.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  But we're dumber than, than we think, right? We shouldn't pat ourselves on the back, because we designed those to get rid of mosquitoes and biting insects, and it actually, like 90% of what bug zappers kill are beneficial insects. They kill almost no mosquitoes. So you actually, there's no sense in buying it. So, in a way, I kind of feel like, that's, that's a kind of a loss.

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why can't we just get the bug zapper and then collect it all and just eat?

• 31:53Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, the bug zapper also barbecue them.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:58Negin Farsad?

  And turn them to a delicious treat.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just a little, a little channel goes over to the grill.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. In a way, maybe it kind of also precoces them itself a little bit with their food.

• 32:09Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, a little, it does a little saute.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little saas barbecue.

• 32:13Negin Farsad?

  But also, we're so, we're so bad at killing, like, the bugs that seem to be irritating everybody, like ticks.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Oh, so, yeah, so ticks are not bugs, they're arachnids. It's not that we're bad at killing ticks, it's that because of climate change, because of changing temperatures, ticks from other regions are moving and they're expanding their ranges. That's why we have the Lone Star tick here, for example, which is the one that causes a meat allergy. It can carry a pathogen that can cause a meat allergy. It's not, that's because of us. We changed the climate, and now they've been able to move into our area.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we've created habitats that previously were hostile to some varieties of insects. Now they can hang out and do the backstroke, and now we're affected by that, because that was a place we created.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, we created them. The catastrophe that we're seeing, we created, and we're kind of keeping it going. We could make decisions that would actually have really beneficial impacts on insects that, that we should make.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't just go past this, because I know people who've been bitten by the Lone Star tick. They can't, so it's not that they can't eat meat, apparently, they can't eat mammals. So they can eat chicken and fish, so I heard. You know what I think? I think vegetarians created this in the lab.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. They were like, what could we do? Alpha-gal, that's the...

• 33:35Negin Farsad?

  But more, yeah, but more like pescatarians created this in the lab, like a really specific subset.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I hear tell that in Martha's Vineyard, which is, you know, island off of Cape Cod, you know, a destination for the rich. There's an airport there, you could take your private plane on to.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  As one does.

• 33:54Negin Farsad?

  Famously, don't the Obamas go there?

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As one would do. I'm told that tick was so prevalent on that island, that stores are now reducing their supply of meat for sale, because no one's buying them. And, and restaurants have menus for those who are thusly affected, specifically.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Maybe a cardiologist made this.

• 34:16Negin Farsad?

  I know, I was just gonna say, like, are these, maybe these ticks are out for our health?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're a gift.

• 34:22Negin Farsad?

  You say reduce your red meat consumption, I mean.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  And nobody did it, and they're like, what could we do? And the cardiologist was like, let's import some of this stuff from Lone Star.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This drop in population, is it just habitat, or is there other things that affect them? Are they not finding mates? There are a lot of ways you can drop a population.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  So, population is just a single species. So, we're looking across, it's true across all the species of insects that we've looked at, right? So, what we think is that for some things, it's water pollution. For something, and that means that they can't, you know, they don't, they don't, they die. So they're not able to survive. For some things, like fireflies, if it's light pollution, they can't actually see each other to find a mate, so they're not able to reproduce. Like, it kind of varies depending on what the species is.

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why there are no fireflies in Times Square. I always wondered that.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, there should be, I mean, they, they make these flashes, and the flashes are species-specific. They need to be able to see each other, so they can see the flashes to know which species to mate with.

• 35:35Negin Farsad?

  I grew up in the desert, we didn't have fireflies, and so then as an adult, when I was here in the summers, I was like, oh my god, these are the coolest things I've ever seen, and still, in the summer, I look at them with such awe.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  They make light with their bum.

• 35:48Negin Farsad?

  I mean, it's incredible. Butt light, we call it. Butt light.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  You know, I heard that?

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Butt light.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a summer, it's a summer treat. But yeah, I mean, we should all be kind of sad, right? The things that we think about when we think about summer, like fireflies or monarch butterflies, like, those are declining at such alarming rates. Monarchs have decreased by like 90% since 1970.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, when I was a kid, I saw them all the time. Now I have, I hardly see any monarch butterflies.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's us. We destroyed the habitat. They need milkweed, it's a specific plant that they've evolved to eat. And they have an arduous, long migratory route that goes down to Mexico and back, and they get hit by cars and, and what have you. So, I mean, we're, we're making, we've made decisions in the past, and we're making decisions even right now, that negatively impact insects.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so I gotta, this is the 900-pound gorilla in the room, okay? Some insects are prettier than others, to the non-entomologist.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  You mean like head lice? That's a gorgeous one, I'm assuming.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm just...

• 36:53Negin Farsad?

  Neil is body shaming insects, by the way. I just want to say that, for the record. He's like, yeah, gnats aren't looks-maxing enough.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  The mean girl part of this Star Talk episode.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody doesn't like ladybugs. They're, they're nice. It lands on you, it's not gonna bite you or sting you or inject you with venom, okay? And so I can list insects that emotionally we're cool with, okay? More humans have died at the hands of mosquitoes than have ever died in all wars we have ever fought against each other.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we could render mosquitoes extinct from this world, none of us would complain. What would you do as an entomologist?

• 37:38Speaker 02

  If by that you mean that we would get rid of a specific kind of Anopheles and a specific kind of Aedes, Aedes aegypti, those are the deadliest animals on the planet. Those are the ones that vector malaria, dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever. If we got rid of those two or three, that's a species complex, then yeah, I think that that would actually have immense help to the human population. But there's thousands...

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While maintaining others.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's thousands of other mosquitoes.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the bats have plenty to eat.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Bats, dragonflies, there's lots of things that eat mosquitoes, and there's thousands of species of mosquitoes. And so, that live outside of the human condition, they're not vectoring diseases that affect humans.

• 38:17Negin Farsad?

  And you feel like there's a way to do that? That like, we can get rid of the bad ones and keep the good ones?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  They've been trying. So people have tried releasing sterile males. They're just shooting dead, that have, you know, no ability to impregnate a female. They've tried it a couple different ways. One with sterile males, they were irradiated, and one where they actually have a bacteria called Wolbachia that actually makes male...

• 38:40Negin Farsad?

  It's like a Dracaryon Noir, and the ladies just don't want to have anything to do with it. Is that what it is, essentially?

• 38:45Speaker 02

  You know what it is? The Wolbachia makes it so that, the Wolbachia is transmitted by females. So the Wolbachia changes it so that males are basically, yeah, males are very low, in very, very low numbers, and only females survive. So if females aren't fertilized... No eggs, no babies. They tried releasing dragonflies years ago. But dragonflies, dragonflies do eat mosquitoes in the juvenile stage and in the adult stage. But they don't like to

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Juvenile is still in the water?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Juvenile mosquitoes and juvenile dragonflies.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or sitting mosquitoes.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Same mosquitoes.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Cause they're just, they're just in the water, like that.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, with the little siphon.

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, still water, not moving water.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, still water. And dragonflies as, as babies, as nymphs, they will eat mosquitoes. But they don't like to breed in large numbers on command. So they could never release them in large enough numbers. Cause that would be the solution, just put dragonflies everywhere.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know the film The Helstrom Chronicle?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  No. Maybe my finger's not on the pulse of tomorrow. Am I not a young hip woman?

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was an apocalyptic documentary from the 1970s describing the future where insects take over the world. And they just eat all of our food supply. The Helstrom Chronicle.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Check it out.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  It is, I mean, people

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've never forgotten it. I saw it like once in the 1970s.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  This idea that there's quote unquote injurious insects, the ones that are coming, cause they like the same things we like. They eat this, a lot of insects eat the same things we eat. That they would come for our crops, that they would take over, that they're out to get us, right? This kind of, they're all locusts, they're all

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the apocalyptic scenario.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, but in reality, I think like, there's a very small number of grain, stored food pests or grain pests that we're worried about.

• 40:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Small number of species, but that doesn't mean they're not out there, ready to eat all of our corn.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you don't put all of your corn in one giant pile, it's open to insects to go in there and eat it, then you're solid, you're good.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how about the bull weevil?

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Oh, the bull weevil. I mean, the bull weevil was an invasive species. Invasive species are also a source of insect decline. Because invasive species often can outcompete native species.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think a bull weevil might be the only insect, whatever kind of bug it is.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, beetle.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beetle. The only one that has a blues song named after it.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Multiple, cause there was, people did different versions.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  There's a lead belly one that's very famous.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's the one I'm thinking of.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  There's a Bessie Smith did one, like multiple people did, cause you can, it's a blues. Yeah, you can pop it in.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cause if you're picking cotton and there's a bull weevil eating all your cotton.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:07Negin Farsad?

  Where's our current like pop hits about lantern flies?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 41:11Negin Farsad?

  That's what we really need, because those are, I feel like, our modern irritation.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's a lantern fly?

• 41:19Negin Farsad?

  Well, it's the, shall I?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  I think you shall.

• 41:23Negin Farsad?

  Well, is it fly or bug? Lantern bug?

• 41:25Speaker 02

  It's actually a bug, that's very, that's very astute, as an fellow entomologist. That was very astute.

• 41:30Negin Farsad?

  And you know what, some things are arachnids and some things aren't, is another thing I wanted to teach you all. No, but the lantern bug is, is like a thing that eats a bunch of everything, like trees and whatever.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's got a sucking mouth part.

• 41:45Negin Farsad?

  It's got a sucking mouth, but not a licking mouth.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Not a licking mouth, so it sucks the plant juice.

• 41:49Negin Farsad?

  And it's been in like, it's been in Manhattan, it's been in New York City for a few years now. And we've been told to stop them every time you see one. And they're sort of dumb, like it's easy to stop them.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:00Negin Farsad?

  They don't like run away real fast or anything, you could just like easily murder.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you gotta watch out though, because if you murder the ones easily, you're actually promoting fast ones. If you kill all the slow ones, because they're easy to kill.

• 42:15Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just made a whole generation of fast ones.

• 42:17Negin Farsad?

  Right, they're like adapting to be

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, so what you should do is only go after the fastest ones.

• 42:22Negin Farsad?

  But then in the meantime, the slow ones are still eating all the trees or whatever.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Well, they suck the, I mean

• 42:27Negin Farsad?

  Okay, yeah, what are they doing?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  They're just sucking the plant, the plant sap, right?

• 42:31Negin Farsad?

  Okay.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  But

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As we do when we make maple syrup.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, in a lot of ways, they're maple syrup tappers, right? The population, we think, is basically becoming established in the Northeast. We tried scraping off their eggs, cause that was the other thing, well, maybe we'd get rid of the eggs. And that really hasn't done anything. So sadly, we think that this is an invasive species, much like the bull weevil, is just kind of here.

• 42:53Negin Farsad?

  I stomped one this morning, should I stop stomping them?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  I mean, if

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You stomped a bull weevil?

• 42:58Negin Farsad?

  No, I mean

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where do you live?

• 43:00Negin Farsad?

  A lantern bug.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  When I was out in the field.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She had a back forty.

• 43:06Negin Farsad?

  When I was writing my blues song.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we don't know that it's really making much of an impact. So the best, if, if you were to do anything, you know what you should do?

• 43:15Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  As a New Yorker, as all New Yorkers should do, is we should learn the insects in our neighborhoods, so we can prevent the next invasive species from becoming established. Cause if you knew what was like on your walk to work, right? And you saw something that what you weren't supposed to see, that was unusual, you would tell someone sooner. And then you could prevent them from becoming established.

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if the pavement ants start lifting the slabs off of them.

• 43:42Negin Farsad?

  They're like jacked, they have like little, like muscles on there.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  They work out in the yard.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so a brief follow on, I think you already went there, but I'm gonna just to bring a closure to it. We have people among us who are saying, save the whales, save the porpoises, save this, save that. Nobody's ever said, save the rats, or save the leeches. Or save the, any other parasitic.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Save the maggots?

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The maggots, there you go.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  If you will?

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Save the head louse.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what I'm asking is

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Please think of the head louse.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are very species biased about what it is we want to declare that we want to save. Whereas all of these creatures are on God's green earth, just trying to make a living.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not their fault, that it's their job to suck your blood.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not, don't blame them for that.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, the bedbugs are just trying to make it in New York City.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're making it.

• 44:35Negin Farsad?

  What did they do before mattresses, by the way, bedbugs? I mean, I feel like the day mattresses were invented, bedbugs were like, guys, this is my time.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  But like, if you look, it's actually, if you like, like reading about human history, people have been writing about bedbugs for a really long time. Because for, even when you had just clumps of straw, then there were bedbugs that were in there.

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, lice, this is the most fascinating fact that I've learned about lice. Most fascinating, okay? Head lice are genetically different from genital lice.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even, okay, no, no, and, and so, how does that happen? Wait, wait, wait, can I check, can I check? Okay, so, go really far back, 30,000 years, we're hairy all over our bodies. What, the lice wouldn't know, they're just hair everywhere. Then when we started getting less and less hair, then we had a hair gap between our genital hair and the hair on our heads. So that the speciation would have occurred around when we started becoming hairless in the major parts of our torso. Orphaning one branch of the, the body lice from the other. I read that, is that still true?

• 45:50Speaker 02

  I think that's true, and I think we think that one is more closely related to the lice that gorillas have. And one is more closely related to the lice that chimpanzees have.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 45:59Negin Farsad?

  Which is which?

• 46:00Speaker 02

  I forget whether it was

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't wanna know. What are you gonna do with this information?

• 46:08Negin Farsad?

  I have a seven year old daughter, I wanna like say something fun when I have to like

• 46:12Speaker 02

  About human lice that suffer?

• 46:16Negin Farsad?

  About head lice, about things, about head lice.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  But you know what, head lice is, you could tell your daughter this, everybody eventually gets head lice. People feel a lot of shame about it, but like little kids, but they put their heads next to each other. And if you have lice, it's not that you're dirty or, I felt guilty, cause my mom said if you shared hats, you're gonna get head lice. And there was a head lice outbreak in my grade one class, you know? And I was convinced it was because Jennifer and I had shared a hat at recess. But guess what? Now that I'm a grown up entomologist, you could tell your daughter, it's just kind of a fact of lice.

• 46:52Negin Farsad?

  Hey!

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you did there.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  I didn't even

• 46:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you contracted lice?

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Head lice, yeah. When I, put the record.

• 46:59Negin Farsad?

  When she was a child.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  When she was like 50 years ago.

• 47:01Negin Farsad?

  Not like yesterday.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  It was 50 years ago. And I felt a lot of, I felt very stressed about it. But it turns out, um, actually, that my mother, who's a high school teacher, she had, there was also a head lice outbreak at her high school. So now I'm like, it wasn't even me, it wasn't even Jennifer's hat.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I, I read and have reported on the fact that lice infestations are 10 times more frequent among white children than among black children. And just wondering, were you white back then, when you got the?

• 47:35Negin Farsad?

  It's like reverse racism with the lice, or?

• 47:39Speaker 02

  So they, they like, they will go in any hair.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Uh, it's easier to find them in, in hair that is straight.

• 47:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Straight.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  And people used to think that, um, and this maybe was true for a period of time, um, from when Madam C J Walker invented hair pressing.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would've kept it out.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you were using lye in your hair, or if you were using chemical pressing, as we called it, then you would, to straighten your hair, then you would have been less likely to have lice.

• 48:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The lice doesn't stand a chance.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  It doesn't stand a chance. But if you were having natural hair, which I had natural hair, then you really should have your head checked for lice. So it actually, this actually really happened. My school, they would have the moms from the neighborhood come in and do a lice check. But the mom said to my, to the three black kids, my twin and I, and this other black kid, we don't need to check your hair, cause black kids don't get lice.

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  But I had lice.

• 48:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  I had it and they didn't check it. And then I was scratching my head at home and my mom, and we were all scratching our head, and then my mom was like, oh! And then they, she said, oh, you, we all have lice. And I said, oh no, they, they said we don't get lice, cause black kids don't get lice. And my mom was really mad and she went and she yelled at the principal. Because it actually is, it's not whether you're black, you have black hair or white hair, it's whether you chemically, if you did a chemical perm, you also, like if you were

• 48:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But also, straight, if you said, the, the louse likes straight hair better, you're more, so it's, it's a, it's a relative, it's not that black people don't get it, it's that, it's just less likely.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  It's not, well, I mean, it's not that they like straight hair better, it's just it's easier for us to find it in straight hair. So we often have overlooked, like in my case, they could have checked my hair and they didn't. Right? I had lice, I had a lot of lice.

• 49:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  It was 50 years ago, just to underscore, this was 50 years ago.

• 49:22Negin Farsad?

  Is that, is that the day you became an entomologist?

• 49:25Speaker 02

  I hated, oh my gosh, I, I really didn't like it. But nowadays, there's actually, um, a lot of things that you can do if you have lice. So God forbid, your daughter has lice, call me.

• 49:36Negin Farsad?

  Okay.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Cause there's, there's like ways you can treat it without chemical insecticide.

• 49:39Negin Farsad?

  Alright.

• 49:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is the size of the smallest and the largest bug?

• 49:44Negin Farsad?

  Hmm.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good question. So there are these little tiny, tiny, tiny things called fairy flies, um, that are just a couple of millimeters, and they're really, really tiny. That's probably the smallest one.

• 49:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they fly?

• 49:55Speaker 02

  They can fly, but, I mean, come on. They're very, very tiny. So they're not going, they're not going long. This other than by wind, they can be blown by wind.

• 50:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  And the biggest ones, um, in terms of length, there's some really, really long stick insects, Phasmata dia. In terms of weight,

• 50:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stick ones, those ones that look like sticks on, like tree sticks.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  There's ones that are longer than about as long as my arm here.

• 50:17Negin Farsad?

  Oh, wow.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Um, but then there are really heavy.

• 50:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like in Brazilian rainforest kind of bugs?

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Vietnam or Asia. Like there's lots of trop- in tropical.

• 50:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tropical.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, tropical. Although you can get some pretty big ones in Texas, if you go back there. There's some pretty big ones in Texas. But then in terms of like mass, I would say there are some beetles that are really, really pretty heavy.

• 50:35Negin Farsad?

  Like, what are we talking? Like, like an orange, an apple, or like a?

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Like a, like a naval orange. The weight of a naval orange.

• 50:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 50:44Negin Farsad?

  That's wild.

• 50:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how big?

• 50:46Speaker 02

  They, I'm not, let's say naval, how about this? Let's say naval orange in weight and size.

• 50:52Negin Farsad?

  Ah, that grosses me out so hard.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  No, it's so good.

• 50:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause if you step on that, it would go pop.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  But you wouldn't.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Well, you wouldn't, of course.

• 51:00Negin Farsad?

  I, of course, possibly would, depending on the situation. I'm so sorry.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Cause you, to see that, you'd actually have, assuming that you spend most of your time in New York City, you would have traveled somewhere to see it. And you wouldn't be like, oh, I'm here now, squash.

• 51:14Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like in my Manhattan apartment.

• 51:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, right, right, right. And I remember reading National Geographic, and they had an issue on beetles. And one of them was the Goliath beetle.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was, was something like this big?

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're, I mean, they're, I would say like, they're the naval orange, a big naval orange size.

• 51:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And beetles bugs?

• 51:34Speaker 02

  They're not. They're Coleoptera. They're holometabolus insects that have an egg. Holometabolus, yeah.

• 51:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not non-holometabolus.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, egg, larva, pupa, complete rearrangement.

• 51:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  And then adult. And there's more beetles than there is almost anything on earth described right now, although I think that bees, ants and wasps are catching up, because people are describing all of those right now.

• 51:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Please, give us Darwin's quote about beetles, and we will end on that.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Or Haldane. Could I give you Haldane's quote? That there's an inordinate?

• 52:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  JBS Haldane? Yeah, okay.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  How about if I give that one?

• 52:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Although Darwin did work on beetles. That was the thing he worked on first. But Haldane said that God must have an inordinate fondness for beetles.

• 52:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given how many, that's the quote I was looking for. Haldane. Uh, he's got some good quotes.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, a page turner. It's real, real page turner.

• 52:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Jessica, my gosh. I had all this pent up bug energy, and we, I, but can we do this once a year?

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it insect, insect time.

• 52:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Once a year.

• 52:31Negin Farsad?

  I mean, your entire thing fascinates me. Just, you're, and like, and you're interested in it, your origin story, which I've decided is with the lice.

• 52:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's a lousy, it's a lousy, it's a lousy story.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  And it was, it was 50 years ago. I just wanted to interrupt.

• 52:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you've got dragonfly earrings.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I have, I have dragon, two different kinds, dragonfly earrings, and I have a beet, I have a beetle ring as well. I went full insect, I went.

• 53:00Negin Farsad?

  I mean, you're repping insects hard today, and it's fascinating.

• 53:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, when the insects take over, she'll be their queen.

• 53:09Negin Farsad?

  We need someone out advocating for them, because everyone really hates them. So this is like a good, they need you on PR.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  We should all love the insects. We've got to save the insects if we want to save ourselves.

• 53:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, again, thank you, Jessica.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 53:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Friend and colleague, just across the way here, at the American Museum of Natural History, right up here on the Upper West Side of New York City. We are here in my office at the Hayden Planetarium, and we're going to come back to you with more insect queries, for sure. And McGee, your podcast?

• 53:43Negin Farsad?

  My podcast is Fake the Nation.

• 53:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fake the Nation. Have I ever been on your podcast?

• 53:46Negin Farsad?

  You have. You've been on it a few times.

• 53:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not lately.

• 53:49Negin Farsad?

  We're going to bring you back. The, the people need to hear your takes.

• 53:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't call, you don't write, you don't text.

• 53:54Negin Farsad?

  I know. This is, yeah, we will bring you back, and you'll, you'll have, you'll, now that you have this bug energy.

• 54:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Fake the Nation. And we can catch you, are you a re- a regular on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me?

• 54:07Negin Farsad?

  That's right. Yeah, tune into Fake the Nation, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

• 54:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll find you there. We love you. All right. This has been the bug edition of StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up. We're down at the bugs.