No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Rum and Woke

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

James, Anna, Andy and Erica McAlister discuss flies, flies, flies and flies. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where we were joined by the incredible Dr. Erica McAllister. Now, Erica has been on the podcast before, so you might remember her, but if you don't, the one thing you need to know is that she is an expert in flies, insects, I won't say creepy callies, I won't say mini-beast, because I know Erica doesn't like that, but she is essentially a senior curator at the Natural History Museum. and an absolute legend in this office. She is so enthusiastic about her subject, but also so funny, so interesting. We really, really enjoyed making this show. The main thing I do need to tell you is that Erica has a book out. Her book is called Metamorphosis, How In Sex Are Changing Our World. It's a lovely thing.

I've got a copy of it right here. It's got loads of amazing pictures, incredible stories. It's just a really, really great object to own. and obviously you'll learn a great deal about insects if you buy that book. Another thing to say is that the Radio 4 show, which spawned the book, get it spawned, it's called Metamorphosis How Insects Transform Our World. That is currently available on BBC Radio 4. If you Google Radio 4, Erica McCallister, you will find it.

It's a great show and it is full of amazing facts. Anyway, not much more to add. Join Clubfish if you haven't. Buy our books if you haven't. blah blah blah blah blah blah let's get on with the show with Dr Erica McAllister and on with the podcast Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish A weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoban

My name is Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm here with Anna Tijinsky, James Harkin and Erica McAllister And once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts From the last seven days So in no particular order here we go Starting with fact number one and that is Erica Some flies have tits on the end inside. It's on the inside. Yeah. Do they have to wear bras on the...

Yeah, how do you, because a bra's tough enough to do off on the outside, actually. I just think it's an evolutionary advantage of them avoiding males, groping them in public. Do you think male flies are gropers? Oh, look at how many hands they have. So it's, okay, take your head away from imagining loads of little mammary grounds on the inside. But it's, they have this kind of flat surface and they've got no nipples so it's like a big area but they do give birth alive young so they will instead of like shooting off hundreds of thousands of eggs they've decided to actually do you know what let's concentrate on raising one larvae and this yeah i know that's unusual in flies right it's unusual in insects ah so we generally think of the mammals doing that you know

let's let's actually look after just one and go for it now this is in the super family hippobossoidia. And they include the things that people would have heard of like Tetsi. Tetsi flies is no because Tetsi means fly. It's not a little fact.

Oh, very nice. And what is amazing like the Tessi, when she gets pregnant, because she probably does get pregnant, the larvae, when it's born, can have a mass bigger than her. Oh, wow.

Oh, yeah. I've seen a video of them giving birth and it is remarkable. Because imagine having a baby and it's bigger than you. First of all, it seems impossible. How do they, what do they then shrink as they get older? Otherwise, they just get bigger, a bigger, a bigger.

They go through metamorphosis, remember? Oh, I forgot that. It's not a video that they show at Fly NCT? Because I like that idea. This is what happens. This is just to get you ready. Now, if you light a lot of candles and play some nice music, it won't be as bad as you think.

Wow. I mean, you look at her stomach before she gives birth, her abdomen, just looks like the radichio cabbage. You know, it's really, does it properly swell? It is absolutely engorged. It's red, it's got these white veins all over it. Wow. Just, I mean, she only gives birth about three or four times.

I mean, only is quite something. I know, I think I'd have given up after one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're actually just going to say one and done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've made a decision. It's easy with the schools. Also, what a great way of putting me off radichio cabbage for life. Sorry.

So one thing I read about the, specifically the Tetsy flies, is that the third, females get a lifetime's worth of sperm from mating once, and then they just use it bit by bit as they go. They kind of hoard it. I suppose if you only have one child, a lifetime supply of sperm is just one sperm, isn't it? That's true. So many insects do this, and a lot of lies,

it's called a spermathicca, and it's where they store sperm. They can get rid of sperm, they can replace sperm. Now, this might be a question that you can't answer, but I was really wondering this when reading about it. A, really sad, because presumably every shag is a one-night stand. So a bit of a shame there. Yeah, but some of them only live for hours, so it's not even like a night. Okay, fair enough, at one minute's time.

But then when you've got all this sperm inside you, you want to pick the best one. Do you know how, like, what's the mechanism where you've got sperm within you? No idea. No one's going to know, are they? You're beginning to look at this, because you've got, this is cryptic female selection going on. So this is all quite exciting. So the Victorians had this whole thing about, oh, it's always about the males, the males, this, the males choose, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, okay, back off.

We know this is not the gays. We can see it in our own sex. So we're looking at the biochemistry now. We're looking at the hormones. We're looking at that. So her body is trying to kill sperm. His sperm is trying to drug her. It's all sorts of things going.

Why is her body trying to kill? Because her body wants the best. So she kills off all the weaklings, only the best. How does she do? We don't know. What was the other thing about them poisoning? The males drug the females. Yeah.

So his sperm is going to have a load of. of pheromones in loads of different chemicals. And so with Drosophila, we know that immediately they've had sex. The sperm makes the female less likely to have sex again. So there's lots of sneaky behaviour going on. Some of these flies, they said the bat flies, which I really love. So I spend a lot of time running after bats in the Caribbean. She's nice.

The female, when she gets pregnant, some of them undertake some extreme morphological adaptations at this point. So there's one that when she gets pregnant, she rips her legs off and she rips her wings off and then she sticks her head into the back and basically most of her body she undergoes this complete metamorphosis what does she rip off her last two legs with

well she's still I guess she's like she's got to have ripped her wings off first she's learned that the legs they can break them so I presume she's breaking them off but Mother Nature's sort of a lovely solution so she can stick her head in but she invaginates herself like she kind of I beg your pardon she kind of rats her

amtomut. Invaginates. As in bachinate meaning sheath. So she kind of like draws herself into her own body. Like pulling herself into a sleeping bag. Yeah. Well, what a chat up line I've never got. Fancy a spot of invagination. I think that writes yourself out of the picture in that chat. You mentioned that you were running around chasing bats in Barbados

and I've tried to catch two bats in my life inside rooms to get them out and it's extremely difficult. How do you, what are you doing just leaping along beach, luxury beaches after bats in the dark. No, no. It was in Dominica, and we have mist nets. So have you ever seen misnets catching birds? No. Obviously, you lot have never done holidays like, how I do.

So you put a bit of a misnet, and a bat comes flying into it. And male bats, they're really obviously male bats. These two giant testicles are straight in your face. And you're holding them open because you're trying to weigh them, sex them, speciate them. And then I'm the little entomologist next to your, trying to find these little bat flies. So they look like little drunk spiders

running all over the bats. So they're visible enough. And you can see them without a microscope. They're big enough. And they're like, leh-de-lidly running around the bat. Do they annoy the bats because they've got parasites? I don't know because the bat's so angry at this day.

I don't know what's annoying. Someone's measuring his testicles. So there's a lot going on. Imagine having some parasites the size of your own thumb just running around your body. I'm guessing. Well, they're not. They're bigger than a thumb.

Oh, great. Okay, fab. And there's a whole lot of interesting things. There's a group of flies that. are slightly different. These are called bee riders, and they hang around honeybees. They will go down and feed around the mouth of, say, the queen, which they are more often on. And these have mimicked her smell.

So the queen knows that something, there's this bit running around on her, this other creature. But it smells like her. So she thinks it's herself? She's like, is that me? I don't know. But that literally is, imagine your head running around your body. Like going, hold on a minute. What is that?

Gosh. Anna, did that answer your question of how to come? catch a bat. Thank you, yes. You've written that down. It would be cool if you had a beard, which you get crumbs in. Are there beard mites that...

No. The food... There's eyelash mites. Oh yeah. You rarely get crumbs in your eyelashes, do you? And there's obviously other things. Mm-hmm. Again, you don't get crumbs there either.

I think some people get crumbs there. I do. There's a lot of feasting in bed. Okay. Let's not ask too many questions. There's a custard cream down here. Has this hobbit? I've been invalinated?

Sorry. Sorry. Let's talk about flies. A negative about flies, because I know you're a fan, but Tetsu flies are quite big disease spreaders. And it's, well, you're making a face like maybe they're not. Well, I mean, it's not the Tetsi's thought.

Again, it's the same. Well, no, it's not, because they are vectors. They're being manipulated by this Trapanosome. Okay? And their behaviour is altered if they're, have this within them. The tropatom is the parasite? Yeah.

So it causes them to go into environments and feed for longer, feed earlier, and do all of this. So there is manipulation going on with the parasite. Of course it's not the parasites faulty. You're always advocating for the poor flies. Those poor Tetsu flies killing millions and millions of people everywhere. I know. And I'm not taken away from that. But also there has been a case that Tetsi has helped massively with conservation.

because we couldn't go into certain areas we couldn't take livestock into certain areas we left all of it so some of the original national parks in southern Africa was set up because it was like there's nothing we could do with the land the indigenous animals were fine because they're like they've got

skin so thick the Tessis were not doing that so yes so there is a case that Tetsis are very nice here's an attempt to deal with Tetsu flies this is quite a clever one is what Zimbabwe did in the 1980s I didn't know this there are 60,000 fake cows across Zimbabwe

which you can't tell you can't tell really I bet I guess depends on how distant Is it like where they take one of those mobile phone masks And try and make it look like a tree And actually it just looks like a green mobile phone mast It's exactly that

Except you're trying to lure people into the mobile phone mast To give them a shock to blast Basically they have these chiromons These are chemicals that Tetsu flies love And they lure them in And then they kill them with insecticide because these fake cows also ooze in sacriicide in some way that I don't fully understand.

But they brought cases down to almost zero in Zimbabwe. So we tether cows often and put nets over them because they are really good lures. And so there's various different sampling methods using that. They've done this with rabbits, chickens, all sorts, put them in boxes, chickens' head poking out. It's better than human bait, which is another way we do it. Have you stood in the middle of a net with arms out? People I know have.

Really? So yeah, so it's human bait. So every hour they will stick their hand out and let all the mosquitoes feed on them. Oh, yeah. And they would do this. Can I ask, Erica, I'm one of the people who, when I go on holiday, I get bitten really, really badly and my wife doesn't. So these people who are the human baits, do you look for people like me to do it? As in, are you looking for people who are just people who are tasty?

No, I think we just, I think we just, I. ask and hope that someone does it because... Right. We'll look for someone to Leeren, the incredibly rare North African penis bite who fly. Are you willing? Funny you should say that. So there's New World Screw Worm.

Oh, it was awful. This guy went to Venezuela to visit his family there and he got back to the UK. This is a horrible story. Do you want me to carry on? Yes, please. Okay. It's our favourite kind of.

Okay. Got back to the UK and it's obviously moaning. And New World Screw Worme, you can have multiple infestation of the Mac. And is it a screw worm Because it screws its way into your body Yeah His screw worm infestation

Of which he had multiple Was in his scrotum Oh no Now he's let this fester as it were For a couple of weeks Now at this point These maggots Yeah but you're busy

You can't get a GP's appointment Yeah They're saying can you do three of the afternoon It might sort itself out Exactly Well they eventually will Because they will pop out by themselves but you have to put up with a writhing maggot man.

Discomfort. In your scrotum. If I googled that and it was like it will eventually cure itself, I can imagine being the kind of person's so lazy I'd be like, you know what, I'll deal with it. I just don't think he would. Now, I'm not a male, so I do not have them. But I think if my scrotum was moving by itself, I would be tempted to do something about it. Can I ask a question?

Did his scrotum still smell like him? I did know. That was obviously. I don't think that was written in the side of the paper. They don't move exactly by themselves, but they're certainly... They move more than the rest of you. If I'm running and then I stop.

It keeps running. That's when Andy runs the 100 metres. He actually only runs 99.98 meters. It's top 10. And I get over the line that way. Actually, on genitals, can I ask a question about fly genitals generally? because I have struggled to find the definite answer to this. I was reading an article from new scientists in 1990

about how all flies, when they have sex, their penises, the male flies, their penises, rotate either 180 or 360. Not all of them. Okay, but some of them do. Yeah, so it sounded very interesting and cool. So when I read out mosquitoes, when the adult males hatched, we leave them for 24 hours because their genitalia has to rotate 360 degrees to be in the correct position.

Yes, yeah. Wait a minute. Because if it rotates It doesn't just do that It moves down and round So it's not like the hand of a clock No No, no

But it does wrap itself internally Around the other organs I think When it rotates There's a lot of rapids going on But not all of them rotate And you can see this Because some of them will

Copulate in a missionary Or doggy style As it were Playa style And others A female would drag the male Along behind her Okay

So that depends on how much Genital rotation has gone on But also That's fixed rotation There is temporary rotation so they can move their penis into position. Like during sex, yes, I think you were saying this. And what I've really liked is an explanation of maybe why.

It allows you to be a bit more flexible in the same way that a balloon animal, if you've got a long balloon and then you rotate it 360 like a magician would when he's making it into an animal, suddenly that you've got strength there in that twist in the middle and you've got flexibility. I quite like that. But this is all runaway evolution. So there's some flies that have a penis that is just extraordinary.

It's like a massive curly-whirley. And you're like, whoa. So she's evolving internally. He's trying to do all these crazy stuff. So her body parts running away from his body parts. I mean, basically, yes. I'm now thinking all the things that I'm off radichio cabbages. Off curly whirlings.

Two of my major food groups. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that the oldest rum brand in the world was founded by a man named Cumberbatch sober. I've never heard Cumberbatch as a first name. Sorry to completely distract from the sober element of his name. No, I've never heard that before. Cumberbatch was a crucial part of the fact as well. Me neither.

I'll be honest, I'd never heard of it as a surname until Benedict Cumberbatch came along. It is a relatively uncommon name. Yeah, yeah. It's a funny word, Cumberbatch. Anyway, this is Mount Gay Rum. And it's probably been producing rum since 1663. It was, and I've sort of cheated on this fact, because it was originally called Mount Gilboa. And then it was taken over by the Sober family.

And they put someone in charge called Sir John Gay Allain to manage it and to manage a distillery. A gay rum became the biggest rum in the world, an amazing business. And so when Sir John died, John Sober's son, Cumberbatch, renamed Mount Gilboa and Mount Gay. and that's what we get Mount Gay rum. So he named it. I have seen that Mount Gay rum for sale and never realised it was the oldest. That's quite cool.

Weird names, a lot of them. There's Pussas rum, which I like, and Mount Gay. They're all sorts of eccentric names. You can get extraordinary variety of strength in rum. Didn't realise. The strongest rum in the world, I think is one called rude to your parents' rum.

It's not really an official rum. You can't really get it unless you go deep into Jamaica and ask the right people, but a journalist tracked it down, and it's 160 proof, so 80% rum. Journalist said he sniffed it and almost passed out. Can you even...

I mean, that's what we're preserving insects. Yeah. I mean, this is a... Is that really? I don't think we know where rum comes from for sure. The word rum, because there was a drink called rum bullion, rumbullion, which was made from boiling sugarcane stalks, which is the leading theory,

and that sounds pretty convincing, to be honest. But there was also a pirate drink called Bambow, which I really like. Nice. Yeah, yeah. But definitely came from the Caribbean, right? Yeah, yeah. And it was from sugar plantation owners who had this kind of molasses, which was left over, black sticky stuff. And they would add water to it and then leave it to ferment and it became rum.

Yeah. But I read in Greg Jenner's book, which is a million years in a day, that they would add dead animals or human urine. to their wash. So you go, to preserve them, as Erica says. Was it entomologist? To preserve your urine? I think you're preserving the dead animals. But yeah, sure.

What's that? Apparently, the idea is that it would stop the enslaved people who are working on your plantation from drinking all of your rum. But you then have to drink dead rat rum. Well, presumably, when you're selling it, you don't advertise the fact

that there's been dead animals and urine in it. Or perhaps it was a story that you told the people so that they didn't drink it. and the actual fact you didn't do that. Well, if you run as strong enough, I mean, I'll drink it. Yeah, me too. As if that's going to put you off your plantation.

We drink a lot of like tequila, you know, although the worm is only a recent thing, isn't it? Yeah. All the bottles have a little worm. Yeah. Well, they don't they? No, and I think that could actually be a recent thing. Oh, really? So, yeah, and we're not even sure why they did it in the first place. Just one guy had a lot of spare ones in his scrot.

Gosh. Do you know what I've been handed My friend went walking And found a load of ticks all over him So he had a tiny little whiskey bottle So it's now in whiskey And I can't have I haven't had the heart To put it in the collection

Because it looks so cute And his only label he had on him Was a plaster So it's handwritten on a plaster Where on his body it was And where he collected it in this little miniature of whiskey So he's preserved it in that How late and desperate into the night

Would it be before you decided That this was the last drink in the house Yeah, I've got a lot of those bottles Can I tell you a bit about Navy rum? So this was the big thing in the Royal Navy. It was all sailors got a tot of rum every day. And in fact, it wasn't a tot. It was about half a pint a day of rum.

And this was, you know, this was great. And then until in 1740, it was watered down from that point on by one to five. So you did get your rum still, half a pint, but it was watered down with two points of water. So it was a bit. Okay. So you were getting two and a half pints worth of stuff. for you. Yeah, it was called grog, this sort of mixture.

And basically, if you were a senior officer, you were allowed to drink your rum neat, because you were probably a trustworthy chap. And if you were on the rest of the ship... An able seaman. Exactly, untrustworthy. You'd go on a bender, maybe, you'd save it all up, and that you'd, you know, and you'd steer the ship wrong. Anyway, so they had it water down. And basically, this is the amazing ritual they had. The officer of the day, the master at arms, the supply petty officer, and the butcher, no idea what he's doing here, They meet at the ship's spirit room They unlock it

The butcher inserts his pump into the bunghole I'm sorry what Come on, still on He imagines the barrel He draws off the ration Which is then transferred to a small breaker Which is spelled barrico But pronounced breaker

So that's then padlocked And then carried to the rum tub At which point you've got the rum tub Is now full of the day's rum Then the rum call is sounded on bugle everyone gathers and you know then each mess like let's say the four of us would be a mess

we would nominate a mess man let's say James is the mess man James goes up gets the rum for all of us carries it back in his rum fanny that is the imagination it's a large egg-shaped container for our messes rum

and then while we're drinking it we sing a special song called Nancy Dawson oh yeah I know the Nancy Dawson song I think we might eventually it before actually. Maybe we have. But I think it is the same tune as here we go around the mulberry bush. Oh, okay. And it was about a famous sex worker called Nancy Darson. And every sort of, every verse is ruder and ruder than the last one. I've got to learn that version of the marbury bush. I'm very bored of seeing the other one. Do you know why it's called grog? I didn't know this. But it's because for international listeners,

grog is sort of what we call general alcohol now quite often. Oh yeah. a glass of grog. Yeah. You know, not if you're in a certain age, perhaps. Live in the deep, deep countryside as well. You don't get many orders

in the sort of London cocktail bars I frequent for a glass of grog. 12 pounds. Gin tonic, a half of... Here's my rum fanny, so just top that up. And then around of here

we get around the Nazi bush or that's what it's called. No, it's because, as Andy said, in 1740, the run was watered down because people were a bit worried that sailors were getting out of control of being irresponsible. And it was watered down diluted by a chap called Admiral Vernon, who is an Admiral. And he wore this big cloak, which was made of a special fabric. That happened to be called Grogrum. So people used to call him old Grog. And that's one of those nice etymologies where we just know it comes from there.

Yeah, because it sounds fake, but it's not fake. Yeah, I mean, he just wore this cloak. They called him all Grog. So they called drinks Grog. And we do to this day in some parts of the country. Do you know what Grog Blossom is? No. Have a punt. I think you already know it does. I do know it, yeah.

Is it also to do with Admiral Vernum? Did he have a case of genital warts or something? No. It's higher up. Okay. It is a bodily condition. It's even higher. Even higher than your nipples. Yeah, strike north.

Is it your nose? It's your nose and your cheeks basically. Oh, that makes sense. It's the ruddy, red. It's all where the blood vessels have sort of, you know, given up goes if you've been drinking a lot for a long time. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. It's in Gross, that, isn't it? Gross's dictionary. I read Gross's dictionary for some other rum words. Because like we were talking before the mics came on about whether we say the word rum to mean, you know, like he's a rum bugger we would say in Bolton for instance. Dodgy rum. I'd say that's a bit rum.

Yeah. I would use it. But you would say rum in that sense to mean bad, right? Kind of a bit dodgy. Yeah, yeah. But it used to mean more like good. Like rum, oh, that's, you know, so your rum peepers would be very expensive glasses. You mean spectacles?

Spectacles, yeah, yeah. Rum drawers, do you know what they were? B-R-A-W-E-R-S. They're where you smuggle your rum out of the rum shop in your drawers. Another word we use in the countryside. Yeah, well, you're using the right kind of drawers. It's silk or other fine stockings, were known as rum drawers. And rum gaggers.

Do you know what a rum gagger was? Ram gaga Someone who can't hold their drink No it was someone who would tell Wonderful stories of their sufferings at sea Or when taken by the Algerians And that's a tip If I had a nickel

They would They would tell these stories And they'd get your confidence And then they would swindle you Oh The rum gaggers Right Okay

I found a thing which is In your Wheelhouse, Erica, which is related to rum. Can you have a guess? So related to insects, we're thinking? Yeah. Oh, and all these things, insects. Okay, related to insects.

Related to insects. Related to animals. It's certainly creepy crawly. Mini beast, they call them. Oh, don't use either of those terms. Okay. I don't like any of them. I like mini beast.

It's a bit cutesy. It's still beasts. I just think the negative information. I just think the negative words. It should be mini great guys. Yeah. Beasts. I mean, beasts.

Beasts are exciting, you know. We don't say big beasts. We don't say low. I do. Well, okay, we can claim beasts for a good thing. Handsome beast. Another one that we use alongside rum and grog. Frequently in the wilds of hunting goods.

Okay, I'll tell you, it's the Isle of Rub. Yes. This is off Scotland. Yep. And it is home to the biggest something in the UK. Oh. This is, it's got a huge population of red deer. Might it be something that lives on a red deer?

I'd be very surprised because these are the largest worms in the UK found on rum, the Isle of Rum. They're three times bigger than your standard worm. It's basically like Dune, the Isle of Rum. It's like they're huge. These worms, they're just worms are they? There's no such thing as just.

Just take that away. The Earthworm specialists in the museum right now will be having kittens thinking about you saying just words. Just kittens. Are they common or garden worms? They are. They're standard earthworms. They're earthworms. But the reason they've grown massive is that they...

I know, hold your horses, Erica. There are no predators. It's island gigantism. It's island gigantism. The soil is very fertile. Scientists from the uni of central Lancashire have... They apparently discovered very large worm burrows.

I don't know how large, but they're big. It's like badgersets. Pretty much. And they, apparently, they might be living for up to 10 years. and a normal worm lives two years on the mainland. The natural predator of a worm, I would say, is the early bird. Do they not have birds on rum then?

Well, because it's further north, you know, it gets light later, so the early bird can't see what it's doing. Do you know what's splicing the main braces? Is it where you have a rope and you cut it so that it... That's why I always thought. It's very close to it. I thought splice, yeah, you divide it too. Basically, these days, it means give everyone on board some rum, a tot of rum.

But back in the day, it meant something incredibly fiddly, which then was so fiddly that everyone who'd done it deserved the extra tot of rum. The main brace is a piece of rope, and it's the longest line in what they call the running rigging. And the running rigging is what keeps the ship mobile. It's what means you can navigate, basically, as opposed to the standing rigging, which is what keeps the masts in place, right? And the main brace is the longest and most complicated bit.

It's the most fiddily changing job to do, because it goes through all sorts of bits of word, And it's just, you know, you have to, oh, God, it's just so, so fiddly. And so that's what, that's what means it. That's what means it, is it? That's what means it. Sorry for using my nautical terms, but, yeah, so, and that's what, uh, spliced the main brace. Now it's just a ceremonial thing, but originally it had a meaning of, yeah, but they both resulted in rum, basically.

So we should say that rum is no longer in the Navy rations, but it lasted so... Due to woke. Well, indeed. It lasted a bloody long time until 1970. And I was reading the Hansard debate, the parliamentary debate, for when it was abolished. And the outrage was palpable. MP's just standing up one after the other. Dr. Reginald Bennett MP for Gosport and Ferum saying,

I represent a constituency which has been plunged into gloom and horror by this iniquitous decision. So the reason it was abolished was because it was said that maybe their judgment in quite fiddly tasks at war could be impaired. Splicing them base. For instance. could be impaired by having a rum ration and the argument was that No, no, well... We've used it and my friend got a butt fly in his head

so we needed it. We needed the rum for him. For morale or for... Yeah, to slightly anethitise him. So when you split open, it's quite... How deep, so it embeds itself in your... No, well it doesn't because of your skull. It just goes along so you can see it growing.

Oof. If you just leave it, will it get better? Yeah. Oh, and there's this beautiful guy, Gil. He did a study of his own botfly And so he's got all the photos And then he's got the adult when it hatched out That's like an entomological dream Because it's been part of you

You're one with it He really became a foster parent So he's quite pleased I mean it's a bit upsetting Apparently if you get botfly at night Because you can hear it Oh wow And moving around your skull

Well they don't move around it's so But what do you hear it doing? Eating and defecating So it's just like you're asleep And he's going Oh Gop Oh

I'd give it a minute Okay It's time for fact number three And that is James Okay My fact this week Is that the Amazon rainforest Is man made

No Not having it Is it sort of a plastic It's all plastic Yeah It's all mobile phone masts So I bring this up

because Eric has just come back from the Amazon. But the basic argument is that the Amazon's home to 16,000 trees, a species of tree, but 227 of them cover more than half of the forest ecosystem, which is suggestive of people deliberately planting them in certain places. There seems to be two distinct layers of soil in the forest. The bottom layer is kind of the normal stuff you find around there, which has got quite poor fertility. But then there's a top layer called Terra Preta,

which is like some kind of super soil that's made with like burnt charcoal and stuff. So it's as if humans have made that. And the more kind of deforestation we do, thank God we're doing this deforestation, because we find evidence of farming societies, of human structures, of artefacts. And even recently they've been doing laser technology from the air and they're finding earth and mounds hidden

and lots of what they think are ancient roads that go in between all these places where people lived and there is historical evidence that when Europeans first arrived there they said that lots of people were living there and now of course very very few people live there so that's the argument I buy it yeah I absolutely buy it

Erica you've been there so when I read you this I was like oh so I went back to all the primary sources and I was like oh well the thing it they do make a valid point. Yeah. To say that the Amazon is man-made, however. I mean, no.

There probably would have been something there. There probably would have been lots of trees in this area, even if people hadn't. So we're shaping some of them. It's a nice way of saying it. Because these species, we didn't make these species. No. So we are manipulating the environment.

To that extent, nothing is man-made. Even this building we're in now, because it's all made. Okay, I think about these as second. and tertiary, but when it comes to the actual species, we're just manipulating them along the way like that. So the Amazon is man manipulated. Yeah, I mean, maybe.

So it was quite extensive as well. So they did over a thousand plots and quite far apart. So what to test? To test. It's so cool. Yeah. The area of this soil, the terra praeta, is twice the size of Great Britain. It's got lots of fish bones and seeds in it.

They basically burned it to produce charcoal. So this, it's really fertile. stuff. It's really good soil. And it dates from the last 2,000 years, this terrapaator. I mean, the argument against it is maybe there was a fire and maybe then it was washed down by the Amazon. No way. I mean, that's it just to say that's

your argument. I can't believe it. We're all now thinking and arguing, like, Amazon being partially manmade is the more plausible explanation. But this layer, it can be 12 feet thick. It's really thick. And basically I love the idea. The basically, the primary building material in the Amazon was the soil. So it's not

built. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I still think you've got to be careful by saying, I mean, there is, yes, areas of it have been manipulated by humans. But I don't think we can... Not the whole thing. I know not the whole thing. I just want to just take a plan a bit. But the reason it doesn't look like what we think of as a built environment is that so much, if you're moving large amounts of soil around, it doesn't look like that to us. So Percy Fawcett, the explorer, who went looking for the lost cities of the Amazon.

Great name. It's such a good name. I know. There was a theory that when he came through, you know, on his travels, he may have walked through some of these sites. which actually were the city he was looking for and not recognised them as that because he didn't know about this soil because they're not like Western cities.

Also, wasn't he hoping to find a existing living city with lots of bustling people trading, hanging out? I don't think he was hoping to find a series of slightly raised bits of black soil. He was hoping they would be made of gold rather than black soils. Yeah. Yeah.

It seems almost inevitable because I really hadn't realized how many people were there in the Amazon itself in the Amazon rainforest when Columbus arrived in 1492. So there were probably between 8 and 10 million indigenous people living there, which is at least five times more than there are today living in the Amazon.

So when you've got millions and millions of people, it makes sense. Of course they're going to be sculpting things, aren't they? It is very big. It's large. Yes. So if you have 8 million people there, I worked out that would give you a population density, still less dense than Mongolia,

which is the least dense big country in the world, and about three times emptier than modern. Australia. Yeah, it's wildly big. Oh, wow. Okay. But, I mean, it's still a lot of people. This is what scares me about going to it, the idea of getting lost. It's 28 times bigger than the UK.

I can't. I mean, humans aren't very good at conceptualizing space, and it is huge. We were on a boat going across the Amazon, and this is like, you know, this is not at the mouth. So this is really quite narrow. Where else were you? So, I quitos in Peru. So you're up, you know, at the other end. You're not down in Manaus.

haven't got the Amazon that is fattest. But even still, I'm like, oh my God, the idea of a river being this wide, you know, it's still, I'm not used to it. I'm from the UK. Is it wider than the Thames then? A little bit, you know, little bit. Because the Thames is pretty wide if you go down, you know, Doctland's way, it's wide. But you could still see the other side.

Yeah, that's true. Could you not see the other side? No, there are bits, you can't. You're just like, this is amazing. Holy moly. Do you even know then? How do you even know? How are you, are you sure?

It was like you're on the coast. It was just like, but no, it was weird, because we were a bit where there's all these different tributaries coming in. And so there's one bit you're just like, this is amazing. You know, what we did throw a tarantula in. But it's all right. You threw a tarantula in. It wasn't on purpose, and I didn't do it.

I'll have you noticed. But it was one of the students panicked. There would stradler on them. Fair. So she just threw it into the Amazon. And it swam off. So luckily. Swam off.

I'm amazed charangulas. And do they swim, like, an underwater? Crawl, surely crawl. It's going to be more like the butterfly, I presume. Yeah, okay. That's good. That's good. We should say about the Amazon being partially man-made thing. Oh, yeah.

It sounds like, oh, you might take the implication that, oh, well, it's fine what we're doing now then. And what this was is, this is people producing food in quite small batches. Yeah. And they did have things like fish farms, but it was relatively sustainable. Whereas what we have now is chopping down ancient forest to grow soy or raise cattle, which is really, really, really, really unsustainable. Although in good news, which we don't get a lot in the world of climate change, it is getting better as in, I mean, I don't think we make enough of a big deal

about the fact that Bolsonaro left power and Lula came in, given the awful damage that he was doing. You're looking sceptical, but there's no question that he's better. So deforestation in Brazil has halved. Yeah, halved in 2023. But it's about halved. This is, again, see the figures. It's still very bad.

It's really bad. It's better than doubled, as in the direction. I mean, you're right, you're absolutely positive, but I still think we all need to, we've got to stop it. I think it's something like in the 80s, the amount deforested globally per year was roughly the size of India. And now it's the size of Switzerland. It just shows how big it is that some of it's still left, right? But it's amazing. So I'm going out there and we're looking for new species and we're doing all of this.

And it's still, you know, I could just walk down this tiny little transect next to where I was staying. And knowing that I'm looking at new things to science. And it's just so sad. We're kind of, you know, the probability. of life is so random and it's so odd. The fact that I'm here and you're here is also random and all these different species. And this is the only proven bit of life, this planet.

And yet we're hell-bent on destroying it. And it's like, come on. It's an amazing thing. I caught, okay, this is my favourite discovery of the Amazon. We caught this dick insect. And my friend was like, well, the woman who got it. And she was like, Erica, what's that? It's got an egg on it.

And I'm like, oh, it's this midge. And this midge feeds on the veins of the wings. of this stick insect and it's engorged. It's engorged. Now imagine growing your abdomen to the size of this table. You know like Mr. Croixote is the only thing I can think of

but Mr. Creosote would have to be four or five times bigger to be this mid- Anyone else not know? No, I'm afraid I don't. That's a Monty Python sketch with the guy who's just had a huge great meal. One more Waffer thin meat.

Oh, Waffer thin. I'm with you at a risk. But yeah, but it was amazing. And this midge does it all around the planet. And I'm working with this. this guy at the moment. He's looking at all these migrating insects. And some of them will latch on to a dragonfly.

So the dragonflies can migrate in their masses up there, migrating across continents. And there's this little female mitch. Clinging on. Like feeding, go, woo. What's going on here? And so it's like all of these little discoveries everywhere. Yeah.

Oh, it does sound incredible. I love it. And some quite scary stuff, some quite painful insects. I think they've got the most painful insect in the world. the bullet ant, which is as painful as being shot, hence the name. 30 times more painful than a bee sting. But the satiri-Marway people have this ritual, though, I don't think we've mentioned before, where boys from 12 onwards, you have to gather them up, you make gloves, special bullet-am

gloves, and you stuff your gloves full of them, don't you? And it's to sort of prove, well, I read a quite nice quote from a tribe chief who said it's meant to show that a life without suffering or without any kind of effort isn't worth anything at all to teach you that suffering is a crucial part of being alive well I suppose so yeah it does feel like extra sort of bonus suffering though yeah I mean

sounds like I'm a celebrity get me out well actually Steve I did a podcast with Steve Batchshaw and he was saying he did that so he does nature's deadliest and he was reduced to tears it was the most he said it was extruteating he did the bullet uns yeah he did the bulletin and you know it's 13 14 year old boys generally and yeah it's

grown man who's completely tough and he was just But yeah I feel like teenage boys can cope with a lot of weird stuff

Do you? Okay I just remember in my school taste It's just you know Okay

It's time for our final fact of the show That is my fact My fact is The man who invented the karaoke machine

Also invented a device You could Throw at robbers As they ran away So they Would be Indelably died

Oh Dead's Dead? Die? No, sorry. You cover them in dye. So this is a guy who's called Shigeichi Negishi, and he has just died. And again, I'm using the died word to mean he's passed away.

This year, aged 100. He was born in 1923. Amazing. And he invented the karaoke machine. So Japan had all these kind of early versions that were kind of approaching karaoke. And he was in the right place at the right time. He ran his own electronics firm, basically. And there was a radio show called Pop Song.

songs without lyrics, which is quite karaoke-ish. You know, they just play the songs and then you can sing along. And he was teased about his singing voice, brutally by his boss. And he was sad about that and he thought maybe it would sound better if he had a professional proper backing track behind him. So he wasn't just singing along to the radio. So he asked a colleague to hook up a microphone and he could hear himself singing then over the recording.

So rather than just him singing, he's hearing himself through the speakers. And that's what he set up and he called that the Sparko box. And that is basically the first karaoke machine. Yeah. That's amazing. But he's invented this other thing as well. So ironically, the thing that's famous for revealing people's inability to sing was made by someone who wanted to improve his singing. That was tragic.

And there was actually loads of people, like you say, who kind of claimed invention of the karaoke machine, right? Because it was of its time. It was just like, like you say, there was this program on and lots of people doing it. There was another guy called Enui Daisuke. And he had been. He was a keyboard player, and people used to invite him around to play keyboard so they could sing because it would improve their performance. And then so many people were asking him that he thought, well, maybe I'll come up with a way of recording my keyboard playing. And then people can use that as a backing track.

But he also invented a cockroach repellent. So he was also a double inventor. It's so interesting. How did he repel cockroaches? Uh-oh. That's a great question. He's in trouble now. No, it doesn't say, I don't know is the answer.

But the problem was that his karaoke machines were getting infested by cockroaches. I know it's not the cockroaches fault. I know that they just like karaoke machines, but they would get inside, build nests and chew on the wires. Have you not seen Joe's apartment? Who's apartment? Sorry. Joe's apartment is the film with the singing cockroaches.

No? No, it's this ten-minute building in New York and the guy moves in and the whole place is falling down. So the cockroaches all start helping each other, but they're always singing. So maybe that's why they were in the Carriotian machines because they really liked it. It's pretty Ratatoui.

Yeah. It's like a much, I'm sorry, less cute version of Ratatoui. I'm sorry. It's got singing cograges. Can I ask Erica, we were discussing before the Mites came on about how if you read a book or watch a movie where it's not entomologically correct, you don't enjoy it quite as much?

Okay, right, Jurassic Park when it came out. Okay. Those insects were massive. Okay, no, we ignored the dinosaur bit. We just let that go. But when they had old Dickie with his little stave and it had the mosquito in it, the first scene of that is not a mosquito, it's a crane flower. No.

And I'm like, oh, God. And then they do show a mosquito and it's a male. And we're like, no, because males don't collect blood. And it's so big. We think actually it was a toxic ryanchitis, which obviously you all know that even the females don't blood feed. So we were like an entomological rage Almost every film that you ever watch

Would have a fly or some sort of insects In the background even just flying around right So really every film should employ an entomologist Just to make sure Yeah You should come up with a website fly MDB Yeah And that would

Fly some movies, yeah Back to karaoke quickly Are you guys karaoke fans? I do, I love karaoke Do you? What? I mean these days now that I have a child and no life. I don't do it so much.

But I certainly used to do it all. I used to do it every week. God, you've never invited us. And to be honest, I'm okay with that. Me and Jenny Ryan from the chase, we used to do. Really? Yeah, yeah. We got asked in Australia to leave a bar because we weren't respecting the karaoke. Oh, really? Yeah.

What do you mean? Well, we were laughing too much. It was very much, will you go? You were breaking into the machines getting the cockroaches out. We were just not respecting. Because it is really serious. They do take it very seriously in a lot of Asian countries

And what I found really interesting Is that it's particularly huge in Japan Of course where it was invented And you know Everyone still does it And it's also very big in Europe Certainly and I think outside of Asia It's biggest in Finland

And I was reading an article about this And lots of people said the same thing Which is that Both of them have populations that are quite reserved Or the Finland one was saying That Finnish people tend to be quite reserved And a lot of the Finns who love karaoke Were saying

It's kind of way of going out without having to spontaneously communicate with each other. Because you can go out and you just have to do this other thing. I see. Like doing a pub quiz. That's a very good... I do like that kind of activity. There you go, like a game.

One which replaces proper communication. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. What does karaoke mean? It means empty orchestra. And the term existed before Mr. Negishi came up with his Sparko box. It was an industry term and it was when singers went around the country to rural areas. They would sometimes not have an orchestra.

with them. So they would play with just a tape, like a tape backing them. They'd do the gig, but the orchestra bit was empty. It can be bad for you. Can it? Yeah, 2019. There was a man whose lung collapsed due to the high lung pressure caused by singing high notes, according to the paper. There was a study in 2003 saying that people who sing regularly, this was in Korea, and they have sounds higher than 95 decibels and it can cause hearing damage. Do you know what? There's a slightly off track

that you're just talking about hearing damage. There's a micro nectar. It's a tiny little water bug and it stridulates with its penis and thankfully it's in water because otherwise it's 99 decibels. Oh. How loud's that going to sound?

Like an orchestra, front row of an orchestra. And has nice Mozart or my list? Well, I presume he's trying to be as nice as possible because he's trying to attract the ladies. Okay. So, yeah. Wouldn't it be amazing if humans did that and that's what your orchestra was?

Yeah. Just the string section. It was just... He lays the horn. But this is the thing about... So Mr. Negashi invented this thing, but he invented lots of other stuff too. And inventors frequently do...

Yeah. They're inventing things. It's kind of the way business people. It doesn't actually matter what the business is. What they're good at is doing business. You know what I mean? And inventors, invent and that's the thing.

Can I drop a plug with the book? Please do. Yeah, so this recent book is all about people looking at nature going, do you know what? That's amazing. And let's think about how we can copy it. My favourite ones are like a maggot. And they're making tiny little nano robots that look like maggots that can actually now go through your body. Some of the maggots, they're looking at encapsulating medicine.

You know, they're being inspired by these things already there. And I love the fact that people are. looking at nature in a different way. So it's all different people. Some of them might be artists. Some of them might be, you know, engineers. Some of them are medics. So lots and lots of different disciplines.

And I think that's what's really great. Evolution has taken millions of years to get the insects to where they are. And we're just making it. And we're just in the last minute coming in and taking the glory. Have you got a favourite invention based on that? I quite like our debridement therapy. So this is maggots eating necrotic flesh. Oh yeah.

Yeah, I love that one. And the fact that we can get it on the NHS. Can you? Can anyone get it? Yeah. Great. I'll go. I'll ask. Well, you have to bring your own necrotic flesh, I think. You can't just say I'd like some maggots, please. No. And they come now in little like tea bags, so because people get offended by maggots calling around their flesh.

I prefer loose leaf. I know. I know. Losely faget. I read the other day that venous fly traps, which you probably hate Erica, because they eat flies. But they will also eat human athletes' foot skin if you feed it to them. Someone tried it and it worked. But they won't, you can't put your foot in and then pull it out an hour later and it's even the athletes fed off. You mean like those fish that nibble yarns?

Your shopping centre experience really badly, didn't it? But no, that is, I think you'd need to wiggle it about because the trap won't close unless it thinks it's an insect, right? So you need to get a piece of athlete's foot skin off your foot, wriggle it around so that it closes on it. but it will digest it and it will eat it. Cool. Useful.

Can I say to you my favourite inventor? Yeah. Artur Fisher. So he died in 2016. He had 1,100 patents to his name. Wow. And his main thing is the Fisher wall plug. So you will know what this is.

It's that little plastic wall plug. You drill a hole, you stick the plug in the hole, and then you can put a screw in. And it means you can hang things off a wall, which you couldn't if you just shoved a screw in because screws don't work like out of the puzzle. This man is a huge. He, I just think he's great

And I didn't really realise that I'd have been invented by someone But it was, it was by him Is that his only one? Have you read the full 1100? I've read a few more. I've read a couple of obitaries. So he also, he also invented, I like these two,

edible building blocks for very young children. So just in case they try to eat. That's a great idea. It's like fraggle rock. Yeah. They just, you can. The diggers, they build all these buildings and the fragles would just eat them.

Exactly. It's exactly like that. I love fraggle rock. Don't worry. Thank God you've got Andy here to understand all your references. Thanks. You've had several of them today. Thank you for that.

And the other one of his, which is one of my favourites, is a plastic egg holder which could be stretched to fit any standard size egg. Not waitress extra large. So you can go from a goose to like an ostrich. Again, I think standard size probably means hens. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, what a thing. Was the world crying out for that?

I wonder. I've never found my egg cup is not sufficient. It's probably lower down the list of his 1100. Yeah. That's really cool. Erica, if you ever used a pooter? Oh, yes. I have.

I use a pooter a lot. We have to be careful where we use the term pooter because if any of you speak Spanish, does a very different meaning in Spanish. Does it? It's an insulting term for a lady. It's a lady of the night. Oh, of course. Oh, like, pita.

And so when I was in Honduras and they're like, where do you get in your suitcase? and I'm like 13 pootas. They're like, what? And I'm like, yeah. And I give everyone their puta. So it's an aspirator. And a follow-up question there. It enables that to suck up insects.

You suck a straw thing. And then the insect goes through another straw and into a box. Is that right? Kind of, yeah. So nowadays, when I was little, we didn't put gauze over the end. So if you miss sucked, you would end up with spiders in your mouth. I only bring it up because it was invent. by a guy called Frederick Pooze.

Really? Named after him. Yeah, Frederick William Pooze. He's another one. Just for your information, Erica, Andy, collects names of people that are verbs. And Frederick Pooze is one. Short sentences.

Short sentences. That's sentence people. Yeah, Frederick Pooz, that's absolute slam dunk. My favourite author, who wrote the book on the cow dung community of vertebrates, his name's Peter Skidmore. That's great. Yeah, which always makes me giggle.

Yeah. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with us about any of the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm at Andrew Hunter M. James. At James Harkin. Erica. Flygirl, NHM. Anna.

You can get in touch with us on Instagram at No Such Things of Fish or on Twitter on at No Such Thing. Or you can email podcast at QI.com. That's right. And if you go to No Such Thing as a Fish.com, you can find lots of episodes there. You can also find the sacred portal to Clubfish. is where we keep our exclusive private members lounge, complete with and free shows, private exclusive content. Free peanuts.

Free peanuts. So many peanuts. It's really fun. Clubfish is great. If you haven't joined Clubfish, what are you waiting for? Go and join. Right.

What is more important than that, Andy? Oh, buying Erica's book. Yes, and Erica, what's it called? Metamorphosis, how insects are changing our world. Make sure you put the last bit in, otherwise you might get a Kafka novella. Oh yeah. Or some Ovid. Yeah.

Metamorphosis. I think that's metamorphoses, technically, of course. And with that last incredibly poetic correction, it's time to end the show. Thank you very much, Erica. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.