Ten News EXTRA: Creepy Crawlies 🐜
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🤣 It's Saturday, which means The Ten News is getting EXTRA! 🐞 Today we're learning all about bugs! 🧚♀️ We're joined by entomologist Dr. Jessica Ware to talk about working with bugs, and how finding new species of bugs is like collecting Pokémon. 🐜 Then it's time for the creepy crawly Fact Attack! The ant edition. 🦟 Plus! the buzzing Trivia Question of the Day!
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🐞 The fascinating world of bugs will have you buzzing with excitement
✍️ Find a copy of the transcript for today's episode here
Transcript
Various voices 0:00
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Bethany Van Delft 0:07
I'm Bethany Van Delft, and this is no ordinary episode of The Ten News. No, it is not. This is The Ten News gets extra.
Today's edition is all about bugs.
They're creepy, they're crawly, but they're pretty cool too. So get ready to bug out ten-ers. It's a deep dive into insects with The Ten News.
Some people like bugs so much they make a whole career out of it. Our correspondent Anya Schultz spoke to an expert who did exactly that. It's time for: "That's a job?"
Anya Shultz 1:01
Dr. Jessica Ware thinks about bugs all day long. She's an entomologist, which means her job is to study insects.
A Kid 1:11
Oh, gross.
Anya Shultz 1:12
Dr. Ware works as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I talked to her to find out about what an entomologist does for their job. What is a day in the life for your job.
Dr. Ware 1:27
Normally, I'm a field biologist. So a day in the life could either mean going on a plane to travel to either the Arctic or the tropics to collect insects. And on those types of days when we're in the field, we get up very early, you know, it's usually at sunrise or before so that we can be in the field when the insects start moving around so that we can collect them and we're often out until very late because of course insects don't really have a bedtime. So we often are out well into the night.
Anya Shultz 1:57
And on days when Dr. Ware isn't traveling the world looking at insects, she goes into the museum.
Dr. Ware 2:04
I spend time either in the collection of insects that we have at the museum, literally millions of specimens of insects to measure them, to look at their DNA, to take photographs of them. And then we use those data to write papers. So part of the afternoon usually is spent writing research papers on the experiments that we're doing out of all the insects in the world.
Anya Shultz 2:25
Dr. Ware focuses on dragonflies, damselflies, cockroaches and termites. Dragonflies and damselflies are beautiful flying creatures, but termites and cockroaches those get a bad rep. I asked Dr. Ware if there's anything to like about those pesky insects, and she said, there's a whole world of cockroaches and termites outside of the ones that are a nuisance to our homes.
Dr. Ware 2:52
2% of cockroaches, I think are pests. The number might even be a little bit lower than that. The rest are not pests. They kind of live outside of the human condition. You know, they're in the forest or they're decomposers they're consuming bits of rotting wood for us so that we don't have piles of non-rotted wood kind of stacked up every time a tree falls. Thanks to cockroaches, thanks to termites they do this great service for us, is kind of ecosystem engineers are decomposers. And so there's also some beauty to cockroaches. I mean, I think and termites for that matter. Although termites tend to not have a variety, a super big variety in their colors, but cockroaches do. I mean, there's bright green cockroaches, there's blue cockroaches, there's yellow cockroaches, there's red and pink colors. I mean, they can be really actually very striking, just as striking as any butterfly. So if you like things that are beautiful, you might be surprised, I would say to people, you might be surprised that cockroaches can be actually very beautiful. It's just that we know the best ones, which tend to for a variety of functional reasons, not need to be fancy and beautiful.
Anya Shultz 3:56
Dr. Ware didn't always know she wanted to be an entomologist. She told me she didn't even know that was a career when she was a kid. She just liked nature and being outside.
Dr. Ware 4:08
I really liked swimming. And I really liked kind of snorkeling around in the lake by my Nana's house. And so that kind of made me think I might want to be a marine biologist. And so I went to university for marine biology and then I was interested in invertebrate, things without a backbone, invertebrate marine biology. And when you study invertebrate zoology at school, you basically study everything with a backbone. There's cool classes in that. And it turns out there's more insects than there is anything else.
Anya Shultz 4:37
In school Dr. Ware found mentors who helped her become an entomologist, but it was when she went on her first field research trip that she really fell in love with her job.
Dr. Ware 4:48
If you get the opportunity to go out and collect insects in the field. I think everyone would be an entomologist if they had the chance to do that because it's actually so fun. It's a really rewarding and fun day to spend collecting insects I think.
Anya Shultz 5:00
Dr. Ware said she really hopes more kids decide to go into the field of entomology and have jobs like hers one day.
Dr. Ware 5:08
Well, I would just say you know that there's a million species of insects that have been described. But we think that there might be, you know, 5, 10, 30 million species left to be described, which is a lot. So we don't have enough entomologists on Earth, to do all of those species descriptions to find all those insects before they go extinct. So we really need kids to you know, go into entomology and, and help us. It's kind of like the ultimate Pokemon, right, to find the species that are out there and describe them. There's a lot of work to do.
Anya Shultz 5:43
That sounds like important and exciting work to me.
Bethany Van Delft 5:52
Did you know that when an ant dies, it gives off a special scent that signals other ants to take its body to the ant graveyard? Yes, that's a thing. So this is kind of spooky. If you're not up for spookiness, skip ahead to the next thing. Back in the 1950s, one very mischievous, ant scholar figured out how to recreate that special scent, and put a drop of it on a living ant to see what would happen. What? The other ants reacted to the scent by picking it up and taking it to the graveyard even though it was totally alive. The poor ant kept trying to return to the colony, only to be picked up and taken to the graveyard again. Apparently, this went on until the ant was able to clean the scent off enough for the other ants to leave it alone. Not a nice trick. Shame on you. But it did shed light on how ants communicate through smell. And that naughty scholar went on to revolutionize the study of ants. He got a timeout too. Not nice. It's trivia time.
This past summer, the Mosquito Control Agency of the Florida Keys approved what method to eliminate the pesky bugs. Was it A) releasing 750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes, B) releasing 100 million angry dragonflies or C) releasing 50 million tiny robot caterpillars? I do not like where this is going. Did you get it? The answer is A) 750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes. Oh my god! I get itchy just thinking about it. When these modified bugs reproduce with the natural ones, the female offspring won't be able to survive, meaning a drastic decrease in the number of mosquitoes in the community. And there's gotta be a ton of mosquitoes in the community if they have a mosquito control agency. Whether it'll work or go down like the plot of a creepy sci-fi movie remains to be seen. Life finds a way. Time's up. But before we go, here's a quick note for the grownups. We love you Grownies. Want even more great content from The Ten News? Sign up for The Ten News newsletter, aka The Ten News letter. It's a free, bi weekly email with even more stories to enjoy together and we made it easy for you. The link to join is in the show notes and on our website thetennews.com Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Look out for our new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. The Ten News is a co production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and is distributed by iHeartRadio. Our editorial director is Tracey crooks. Editing and sound design by Andrew Hall. Our creative producer is Jenner Pasqua. Stephen Tompkins is our head of audience development and our production assistant is Sarah Olender. Anya Shultz contributed to today's episode. Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and The Ten News is executive produced by Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. And a special thanks to Ten’er Sammy for helping us out too. Wait, what did I hear you say? You want to be part of this show? Record a question, a joke, or a fun fact you want to share and email it to us at hello@thetennews.com and if you want to share the love for The Ten News, go to your favorite podcast app and submit a rating and review. It helps others find the show so they can join the fun. I'm Bethany Van Delft and thanks for listening to The Ten News. Ciao for now.
