No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Millipede Lipbalm

Episode Date: April 5, 2019

Live from Cambridge, Dan, James, Anna and Andrew discuss silk-spinning goats, the invention of the scooter, and millipede PR problems.

such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from Cambridge. And I am sitting here with Anna Tzinski, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin, and once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with my fact, my fact this week is that adult scooters were invented by a Swiss banker who was hungry for a sausage. That's true. This was in the 1990s. There was a man who was a Dutch Swiss banker,

and he was called Wim Obiter. And he was at home one night, and he suddenly really wanted a sausage. And he thought, you know, it's what he called a microdistance. It wasn't far enough to get in a car and drive there and find car parking. What, the sausage shop? Yeah, he had a favorite sausage shop.

and it wasn't close enough that he could walk to it. And he thought, why is there not a device that I could use to get me there? And then he suddenly had the idea of turning what was only available really for kids, kids scooters. Why not make an adult version of that? So he invented that. But by the time he's invented it, he's not going to want a sausage anymore, is he? That's the sad bit of this story.

Yeah. He starved to death in the manufacturing process. No, so when he eventually had a prototype, he took it down to his town, and everyone laughed at him because the idea of an adult on a scooter was seen as really ridiculous. Ten years later, and with the support of his wife, he had the prototype made into a real thing. It started going to market. It went to big sales. And then in America, it got sold with the name Razor, Razor Scooters, which I grew up riding.

And that was him. It was down to the man wanting a sausage. And he said he gave them sex appeal, which is something I haven't seen evidence of yet on adults, on scooters. but he described it was like the tiny wheels, the polished aluminium and the foam handlebars, the combination of those three things gives them more sex appeal than your average kids thing. I don't know if foam handlebars are sexy,

but maybe that's just me. I've got weird taste. There was a kind of really, really, really proto-scooter which was invented in the early 19th century. So it was called the Dandy Horse. It was technically called a pedestrian curricle. So it was invented. in 1818 was when it was first-patented.

And it had other names. It was called a Swift Walker or a pedestrian's accelerator. That was a name that it was given. I can't believe this. This is three years after the Battle of Waterloo was over, but it was for fashionable dandies in town. And what it was was imagine a bicycle and just take away the pedals.

Okay, so you sit astride it on the saddle and then you just have to push yourself along the ground on either side. This was the ultra-fashionable device in London to have. You know, there were only about 300 of the mate. But it's the bizarre thing about the dandy horse is, A, it appeared, as you say, in 18, it was 1817. It was probably 1818. And it suddenly come back, right? So that's what you see kids going around on them today.

They're at local balance bikes or whatever. And it helps them cycle. And also, it was fashionable for a year. So invented 1817, really fashionable in London, 1818, disappeared by 1819. And you can find articles, by the 1830s, you've got articles going, God, remember the dandy horse? That was weird, wasn't it? But that's actually true of the adult scooters as well. Yeah.

They are coming back in America especially, but in 1999, they had $4 million worth of sales, 4.5. In 2000, it was 70 million. And in 2001, it had gone back down to 6 million. Wow. So it's just that one year where they became absolutely massive. Yeah. And then quite a few people got injured, I think. Well, yeah, what happened was is he, the problem he had was he made this new innovation.

You could fold, it was, it could go in your bag. everyone got excited. Immediately, every country that had copies, you know, pirated copies made, got in on the action. So the market was flooded with all this stuff. And as you say, handles weren't made properly so people were chopping their, well, not chopping their fingers off, but damaging their... One person lost a bit of a finger due to a cheap imitation. Yeah, exactly. They made the handles out of knives or something. That's sexy.

They're made now. There is this, the town that it's produced in, it's just outside of the, Zurich, and it's called Kusnacht, and it's where they manufacture, or where the headquarters for this Razor company is, without the name Razor, his original company. And it's a really cool town. It sounds like there's a lot of amazing stuff that's happened and going on there. So notable people outside of this Razor that is there from that town include Julius Magi, who invented the pre-cooked soup, Magi Noodles, from this tiny, tiny town. Carl Jung was from there.

You should have led with Carl Jung. Well, how about this? Tina Turner lives there since 1994. Yeah, Carl Jung, Tina Turner and the Maggi Noodle guy. Very exciting. You put those in the wrong order. It was clarified. But it is bizarre that scooters, even though we're claiming that this guy invented them,

they are not a new invention. And I really had no idea that these motorized scooters that you see today were first properly invented in 1915. And there are loads of pictures in the early 20th century, people going around on them. And again, it was short-lived. It was between about 1915 and 1922. They were partly a response to wartime gas rationing, so they didn't use up very much petrol. And it was in America, and they would come with head and tail lights and a toolbox, and policemen used them. Post was delivered on them. Postman used them for a while.

Wait, sorry, are these things like Vespers, or are they things like... No, you're standing. You're standing on them, but they're fuel powered. You're standing like a child, but with a small motor. Yeah. And they had even... I did really a source that said they were used by a New York gang called the Bog Trotters, the Long Island Bog Trotters. No. You did exist. This is written a lot of books.

I've struggled to find the primary newspaper reports that talk about the Bog Trotters disappearing down alleyways on push scooters. But yeah, apparently they were really useful for getting away from police. They'd just do a motorized scooter down an alleyway. That is possible, I guess. If you commit a crime at the top of a hill, you're laughing. I found something about

sort of development of new kinds of transport. A similar wartime transport innovation. So motorized roller skates, so separate roller skates with motors inside them were invented in the Second World War. Four people in the war? Well, the inventor suggested that...

I mean, the war, I'm not going to say the war is fun, because war isn't fun. No. But if we all had motorized roller skates... It would have taken the edge off. It would have taken the edge off. Well, the guy who invented them was called Tom Hancox. He took the mower out of a lawnmower,

and he basically put... these engines on these roller skates and there's footage, Pathé news footage of him scootering around and he's even got a little trailer on the back which his daughter sits on and she's just sitting there going along the road and he suggested that soldiers could use them to save

on marching and he was not taken up on his offer basically but they're coming back those are the Segway last year invented motorized roller skates really but they were not greeted with great favour headlines included Segway is back and it's coming for your last shred of dignity.

Segways, East Gates are a whole new way to look cool while falling over. And Wired magazine named them the object in the office most likely to kill you. Wow. Yeah, but these electric scooters, they are quite popular now in America in a lot of cities. They have like a kind of Uber thing

or a Boris bike kind of thing where you can take them for a small amount of money and take them around, can you? Lyme and Bird are the two main companies. The problem is they're new, So, for instance, the scooters that Bird has got, they're rebranded Zayomi devices, which have a weight limit of 200 pounds

when the average American man weighs 197.9 pounds. And a couple of weeks ago, Lyme did an official statement saying there was a bug that caused sudden excessive braking. Oh. And they said, it's all right, it only happens when being ridden downhill at top speed. Excessive brakes. Breaking is not what you want, is it?

No, basically you'd go downhill and you'd hit something small on the road, and whatever's in the scooter makes it think that it's a massive obstacle and just immediately stops. Oh, God. They did say, I should say, for the legal reasons, that fewer than 0.0.0.4 or 5% of all rides worldwide have been affected. That's covered? The Segway has a checkered history, isn't it? And the guy who invented the Segway, Dean Kamen, in fact, thought it was going to take over the world.

And he called it Ginger after Ginger Rogers, because I guess they're so elegant. But he also invented a bunch of other things. So he invented a robotic wheelchair, which goes upstairs, which is quite cool. So the wheels climb over each other so you can get up the stairs. He also invented a person cannon. This is technically called a controllable launcher, and it's a cannon that fires its payload, as in the person that you put in it, onto the top of buildings. So if you're a fireman...

I mean, that does sound really cool. doesn't it? But hang on, do you set the height of the building that you want to get on to the top of? Of course you do. They're not all set up to be the size of the shard. And then you've just got a one-story house. You wouldn't want to be going to the top of the shard,

because even if you get right to the top, you're instantly impaled on the shard. It's the worst building to land on in the world. What if you work on the 15th floor and the building's 30 floor as far? You're still as far away. Could you open a window and just get propelled through that? Wait, what do you mean open a window?

They don't want to go inside the building. It's not just a quick way of getting to work. Oh, right, really? You were saying it fires you on to the top of a building. Yes, if you're, sorry, if you're a fireman or something, the building's on firemen. If there's a terrorist up there, it's not just, oh, I'm too lazy to use the lift. I don't want to be with them.

I'm scum in there. I just get my person, can I? So if there's a terrorist up there? I would have been a great scene to die hard when Bruce Willis gets loved to the top of the... He said it was his potential uses were anti-terrorism. I don't remember when terrorists have hidden on the top of the top. top of buildings and we haven't been able to get to them. But this is what we need when they do.

And apparently it would land you gently at a safe impact distance from the... It won't. It won't. They thought the segue would be bigger than the internet, though. They said this is going to be the biggest thing since the internet. They said this is going to render cars obsolete. And then the problem with it is that they did it in massive

secrecy. So they were really paranoid when they were making it that Japan was working on something similar. So everyone who was making it had to have all their blinds like nailed down, properly tape shuts so no one could see anything. But they couldn't test it because they were so paranoid about other people seeing it. So they were astonished when it was let outside and only weirdos and nerds used them. I've got four.

Well, exactly. I'm going to have to move us on in a second to our next fact. I've got one tiny fact. This is just about sort of little motorized forms of transport. Since Donald Trump became the president, the Secret Service has spent $300,000 renting golf carts from him so they can protect him while he plays golf. Wow. Yeah. Just in case anyone was on the fence about him at this point. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that goats have been engineered to produce spider silk,

because when farmers try to get the spiders to do it themselves, they just kept eating each other. This is an amazing thing that goats were engineered to do in the early 2000s. They have been genetically spliced. with the protein from spiders that makes their silk. And apparently farmers have been trying to farm spider silk for over 100 years, but it's a complete nightmare because they're territorial cannibalistic predators

that will eat anything in their way. Well, the people who are farming at work. So, yeah, it didn't work. And then they finally found out that you can put these genes in goats, which don't tend to eat each other, unless you've got a very unhappy farm. And they're what's called transgenic. So a transgenic goat

Is transgenic is when you have the DNA of something totally different put into you And it comes out in their milk They're not just weaving these webs You can't go to go. They don't get glands, silk glands inserted. You don't come in the morning and you're in the farm and your goats

in the middle of tree stuck. Imagine if you got bit by a radioactive goat of this kind Just having to explain your superpower It would be so long. So the reason I've climbed up this apparently sheer wall of a dam.

It's a niche goat reference, if there was one. So the spiders, the early versions where they did this, they put a spider in a tiny little, almost like the stocks, you know, if you throw like... Did it have eight holes?

It was just for the abdomen and you put the spider in there and then you'd put a thing in it would pull all the spider silk out. But the thing is, they kept all the spiders together. and eventually the spiders spun the webs over the walls so it was completely covered which meant that no other insects or mosquitoes could get in and so they ended up not having

anything to eat which is why they all at each other and then eventually there was only few left alive but they were all absolutely massive because they'd eaten all their mates and that's why it never kind of... EI, EIO. Just a thing on spider silk that I didn't know is how useful it has been already in the past. So, for instance, it's been totally vital to astronomy. I don't know this. So for 250 years, it was used in telescopes, and it's using the eye pieces of telescopes, and it acts as kind of as crosshairs, basically. So if you're looking through a normal telescope, you see

shadows of stars, you need some kind of reference points. It's amazing you never got that job of the sky of night. Do you think that's a common complaint that they go, oh, man, it's too many. It was, it's not that there's too many, is that you can't pinpoint where they are. And so what you do is you need crosshairs to act as a reference point, and the perfect crosshairs are spider silk, and so they've been used in telescopes for hundreds of years.

They used to have a spider silk collector, the Greenwich at the observatory until the 1950s. And I was actually reading the astronomical guidelines from the 1890s about how to collect spider silk, and it says you have to stand on a stool, and you hang a spider from a piece of wood, and then as it drops, you wind its thread with a fork. So you just collect its thread with a fork.

So this poor spider thinks it's dropping and dropping and is just saying in the same place. And then it sometimes says, if Arakne is inclined, however, to be obstinate, gently blow on her with a full, steady breath, and she will weave. But this is how they've been pinpointing where stars are. That's incredible.

It's amazing. I can't believe that you can collect it and store it like that. Oh, yeah. Well, another thing was in war, it's very useful. So in the Second World War, it was used in gun, for the same reason. You put it on the lens of gun sights, and it was exactly that reason to help you focus,

and there was a team of spider ticklers who were in the lights. Yep, the US employed. The main one was called Nansonger and a bunch of other women who tickled spiders. She tickled so many webs out of spiders that the US had to appeal to Mexico

for extra spider imports because she'd exhausted all the web available in America. I mean, how many spiders are there in America? Yeah. She kind of tickled every single. She was pacing through those spiders. You, you're on roller skates. You, you're tickling spiders.

What's going on to win this war? I think there's been debate, not serious debate, but debate nonetheless, about what kind of spider bit Spider-Man? The theory is that... Finally, we got to the big issue of the night. Spider-Man must be one or another kind of spider, because it wasn't just any old spider that bit it, was it?

So tarantulas probably produce silk from their feet. Oh, yeah, because he doesn't... When he fires the silk, it's out of his hands. He doesn't pull it out of his bum, doesn't he? Yes. If he had been bidden by a radioactive house spider, he would have to laboriously... Like, his costume would look very different, for example.

And they really wanted to make the film a PG, so they were like, find me another species, mate. Yeah. I mean, it's worth saying that Spider-Man has gadgets that shoot out the web. It's not actual web shooting out of his arms. Really? One of the movies at least. I don't know about the original. But he can stick to walls, can't he have like sticky gloves. He can stick to walls.

He can stick to walls. I did not know that. I have... The thing is the four people who know least about Spider-Man in this room sat on the stage. Everyone else is going out for fuck sake, guys. If you don't have any fishing bait when you're going fishing, an alternative to use, particularly if you're in the Solomon Islands, is spider silk. They have a fish there, which is called the needlefish, and its mouth is too small to eat any of the classic luring bait that you use. So what they do there is they use like a kite string.

So they throw that out into the water, and they attach to it blobs of rolled up silk from a spider's web, and they will just bounce it on the water. And what happens is that these fish come up and they leap into it, and they get stuck to it, and then they pull them back, and that's how they catch them. So that's their belt. Why?

Hang on, couldn't they then just swim off, but with a mouth that stuck together? No, because the guy's got the kite string, he's pulling them back in. You've got the kite string, sorry, got it, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, you haven't just thrown a bit of... Sorry. You've never been great of fishing, have you, Andy? You just throw the rod in there with everything. Just sit by the side of the lake for two hours.

I found it in a very calming. They'll be back. That's shown that fish. I bet that's really uncomfortable in its mouth right now. That's fishing. Okay, we're going to have to move on to fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that when King George VI visited Washington, an American chemist provided the royals with special London water so they could have exactly the same tea as they had in Britain.

And this was the first time any king had visited a sitting US president, because of all the unpleasantness previously. Can I ask this water? It wasn't that they brought it over from London, or was it? No, they didn't. They made it up. They sort of analysed the chemicals in it, and a chemist called Betts offered to provide special London water,

and the White House said, that's a very nice and hospitable thing to do. We'll have five gallons of it. And then halfway through the Royal Visit, Bet's got another telegram saying, we find we'll need far more water than we asked for. Would it be possible, and could you be so kind as to furnish us with 20 more gallons?

because the royals evidently drank a lot more tea than the Americans have bargained for. I looked it up. If that was small cups of tea, the original consignment would have made 120 small cups of tea and then they asked for enough to make another 500 cups of tea.

Wow. And he was only there four days or something, wasn't it? Yeah. So it must have been lots of people drinking it. No, it's just the king. It was a big trip. When they went there, they were received outside the White House

by over 250,000 people. It was mayhem. Everyone came out to see that. They made a lot of trips. This was when the war was about to kick off. So it was very symbolic the trip that they were doing. And George VI went to visit the tomb of George Washington, who obviously was a foe of his great, great, great grandfather.

So that was a huge symbolic moment to visit, yeah, the man who effectively kicked us out of America. His revolting tea all over that tombstone. They also, as well as, that they had hot dogs for the first time, the first time a royal had had a hot dog. The headline in New York Times said, King tries hot dog and asks for more.

The hot dogs were served on a silver tray, and apparently the queen at the time, which we would know as the queen mother. She asked Roosevelt how to eat a hot dog, and Roosevelt said, very simple, push it into your mouth and keep pushing until it is all gone. It's good advice in general, I think.

It's a sure for a recipe for choking. Well, then she used the knife and fork after that. Did she? Yeah. And no photographer is allowed to take photos. Of the royals eating hot dogs? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.

I think you're not allowed to take a photo at the Queen eating now, are you? You don't want that phallic shot, do you? You don't want the hot dog going into the Queen's bar wholesale. Yeah, you don't want the President of the United States shoving a sausage in the Queen's face, do you? It's bad, PR. I looked up a little bit about tea.

You know Carl Linnaeus? who's famous of categorizing life. He was really desperate. He wanted to import a lot of plants because he was a specimen collector and he was desperate to bring back tea from the east and time and time again he failed to bring back any tea from the east.

So he tried 20 different times to get a single tea plant from China where it was at the time. But what happened? Did he keep getting halfway through and then just thinking, oh, I could do with a brew? Well, they died on route. Other times they were eaten by rats or mice. there was once a time where he had a student

called Pair Osbeck who had managed to source a tea plant and he got it all the way to the Cape of Good Hope sailing all the way back from China and then there was a sudden whirlwind and it was blown overboard. Another one fell off ship when the ship blasted a ceremonial gun as it left the harbour.

Put it right over the edge. Put it below deck. What are they doing? I know, I know. But why have they only got one specimen each time? I reckon like the 13th or 14th time, I'll be like, why don't we Take two this time, just in case. So the following assistant, after the gun debacle, he was called Largstrom, and he brought a plant back to Uppsala. He managed it, he made it, brought a plant back, and then he nurtured it for two years before finding out it was the wrong one.

Was it because, is this in China that he was taking the plant from? Yeah, so it was that China had a stronghold over tea, and they didn't want any of, that was the biggest, most dangerous thing to their economy for you to take that out. and as a result of someone actually managing to smuggle it out and setting it up, that's what gave birth to so much of how the West became powerful, basically, through tea. It was, if I made that, I feel like you're looking at me like I made that up. Some more clarity wouldn't go amiss. So I was looking at tea. So tea is a very British thing.

The Brits have been very proud of their tea making. They're addicted to tea, basically, have been for a long time. and to the extent that in war it's been really useful and every single tank, every single armoured tank to this day has team-making facilities in it and this is because it causes a serious problem in the war so in the Second World War just off the Normandy landings there was a British battalion, a British tank battalion

who had a couple of minutes to spare and so they did what all British troops did with a couple of minutes to spare they popped out of their tanks. Tickled a few spiders. And they tickled some spiders. Had a quick roller skate And they made a tea And they made this tea

And the enemy saw that they were doing that And they sort of destroyed them and their tanks And so it became apparent that there needed to be tea-making facilities Within tanks And you couldn't put petrol and light fires in tanks to make tea And so tanks were all equipped in their little funnel In the sort of chimney With proper tea-making facilities

That were designed for tanks That used the electricity that the tank used and it was inside the turret, and they are still used to this day, and it was because the Brits needed to drink tea at all times. Wow. That's amazing. Even in tanks. We're going to have to move on shortly to our final fact. Can I just, I've got some stuff about milk and tea.

So the way the Brits drink tea is with milk, and I wanted to know when that actually started. And so the first person to recommend drinking tea with milk was a guy called Thomas Garway in 1670. So no one drunk tea with milk then. most of the countries they don't, but he wrote a pamphlet called an exact description of the quality and virtues of leaf tea drawn up for the satisfaction of persons of quality.

And he gave a bunch of reasons why tea is a great thing to drink. So he said if you add milk to it, it avoids looseness in the bowels, which is quite good to know, I think. He also said the good thing about tea is it prevents fevers by provoking a most gentle vomit. tea was really weird then he said it makes the body active and lusty and he said that this is something that he learned

from Japanese law that had been brought over the best tea ought to be gathered by virgins they're the only people who are qualified to gather the best tea yes you were saying about vomiting the reason that we have tea in Britain is due to vomiting and this is because when Charles II

married Catherine of Briganza of Portugal she brought the idea of tea over It had been, a few people had had it, but it wasn't really popular. And she came over to the UK on a boat, and it was an extremely stormy crossing. And when she arrived, she was feeling really, really sick. So she asked for a cup of tea, and everyone went, What the fuck's tea? And they didn't know what tea was. And so they gave her instead a glass of ale, which unsurprisingly did not make her feel better at all.

And so she decided that we're going to have to have a lot more tea in the country, and then it became much more popular. Thanks to that. Really? Just the fact. God, imagine if you went traveling and you got to the other end and they said, what the fuck's tea? You'd go back.

Have you ever heard of America? Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that many Millipede researchers are annoyed that more than 70 years after World War II the animals are still associated with the Nazis. It's certainly the first symbol I have in mind. when I think Nazi.

So this is true, apparently. Oh, a very early qualifier, that. Well, I was told this by our good friend Arika McAllister, who works in the Natural History Museum. Why are they Nazi insects? Well, I googled it, and apparently it comes from the Dig for Victory campaign. So do you remember during World War II,

the people who were left home, they weren't tickling spiders and they weren't playing with the roller skates and stuff like that, they were making food at home so that we wouldn't run out of. out of food. And so they sent a load of pamphlets around to everyone saying, this is what you have to do, this is how to plant sprouts, and this is how to dig up potatoes. But it also said this is what you

have to do with pests. And they had a picture of a centipede and a picture of a millipede, and they said the centipede was a fast-moving friend, and the millipede was a slow-moving enemy. And they showed you how to tell the difference between the two of them, and the milapede was holding a massive swastika. Right. And sorry, is that the main way you tell the difference even today? But the reason was that centipedes eat insects and millipedes eat plant matter. And so if you're making vegetables, what you don't want is insects that are going to eat the roots of your plants. But you do want centipedes that might eat the other pests. But in actual fact, millipedes mostly eat decaying organic matter.

They have very weak mouth so they can't really eat tubers and stuff like that. So it was completely ridiculous. I can't eat a tuber. Fair place here. too silly Well thank God we've resuscitated the reputation of the millipede Everyone thought was a fascist Millipedes don't have a thousand legs

Sometimes researching the show It's just horrible They have 750 is the most they've ever had Yeah There is a theory that one day there could be a millipede with a thousand legs Why? How come? Because I believe that some of them develop extra legs the longer they live

Really? Yeah Well, they all do. Milipedes all add legs to themselves as they're growing. So when they're born, they're born with about three pairs of legs. Yeah. And it's kind of like they're adding to each other, like their Lego or something, or like a conga line, they're constantly adding a new segment.

They shed, they molt, and then they add a new segment with legs. Oh. So if they live forever, I guess they would. If they live forever, yes. Or a thousand years. Yeah. A thousand years. Just like the Third Reich was predicted to.

There's more and more evidence as we look for it. Well, this is the really cool one. It's called Iliakmi Plenipes, which is the one with the most legs ever. And it only lives in California under a particular boulder. Well, no, sorry. It lives in a very small, four and a half square kilometres. Not a boulder, four and a half square kilometers. It was found under a boulder.

It was missing for 80 years. And then it was rediscovered. They should have just looked under the boulder. Yeah. Should have looked in Argentina. it's too much it's too much but this is a really weird thing

the male of this species iliacme plenipis it has converted two of its legs into sex organs which is a thing that some animals can do that's what milapies tend to do their legs turn into penises but how

during puberty imagine that 13 years old and what are your legs turns into a penis That's a rough day at school, is it? You would hope to get... Your shoes had fit. And why aren't you doing PE today? Well...

Yeah, it sounds really traumatic, actually. Their whole bodily makeup changes. This is a recent study that looked into what happens when they hit puberty, and it's usually on their fifth, sixth or seventh segment. Those legs turn into a gonopod or gonopod and that's basically a penis is that clasp the female

while they put sperm into her and it involves the rearrangement of all their internal organs basically and it's an exhausting process in terms of energy consumption to turn your legs into a penis and so some adolescent male millipedes

go through reverse adolescence because they develop the penis legs and then they're so exhausted they're basically at starvation level because they've used so much energy and so they go backwards again they're like, I'm notherous, I can't deal with this whole

being sexually mature thing. Do they turn their leg penises back into legs? Yeah, yeah. They're reverse adolescence. Wow. What? Imagine if Spider-Man was bitten by a millipede. This one's definitely not a PG, guys.

So, okay, well, Madagascar's giant pill millipedes, they have a music-making organ on the backside. The males is called a harp. the females is a washboard. And basically it's like a load of ridges, but both sexes have a knob on their backside of the last pair of legs, which they rub across their back sides to make noises.

Wow. So like the female sounds a bit like a washboard, and the male sounds like a guitar. It's like a skiffle group. Whereas a lot of them are deaf as well, tragically. So they make this music to seduce each other, but they can't hear. And so we don't really know what the point is.

Wow. Can they feel it? Maybe they're feeling the vibrations in their hairs. Yeah. Yeah. But they can't hear the beautiful, skiffle music that's been created like we can. It's very sad.

You know, some of them have, this is just quite a cool thing, they have spiral stomachs to give themselves as a larger surface area to digest food because obviously they're very, very long. So if the food is going around a spiral, it gets maximum surface area.

Oh, that's clever. Very clever. Very clever. They give each other back massages as well. Yeah, this is actually how they seduce their mates is they give the ladies a back massage. So the Milope's defense mechanism is to curl up into a ball, into a spiral.

And sometimes if she hears a male coming, she thinks, or she's a male coming, she thinks, oh, that's a threat. And so she curls up tightly, and to try and seduce her, he'll walk over her back until she relaxes up. Lower, lower, lower still. Got a long way to go.

But that's not. To me, if you turn that into human terms, if you were seducing and you gave a back massage, you would go with hands. You wouldn't, anyone who gets a massage when you suddenly feel someone standing on your back. Isn't that a thing? There is something like... No, you have... My wife had a massage the other day, and she had people walking all over her back. Did she?

Yeah, it's a thing. There you go. And imagine if those people had 750 legs, that would be a good massage. I'm going to get a cold... And one of them's a penis. You were never... seeing them again. We're going to have to wrap up shortly, guys.

I've got one quick thing, which is that lemurs self-medicate using millipedes. This is really cool. So they get these infestations of threadworms, which are very nasty things, around their mouth and around their anuses, and they sort of crawl out, and then they lay their eggs in your skin around those two areas, threadworms. They're very unpleasant to get. So lemurs have a particular kind of millipede, which has a chemical defense mechanism inside it, and it can blind them

poison predators, and it's quite strong. So the lemurs chew on the millipedes, and then they rub the remains around their mouths and around their anuses, and then they swallow them, and that repels the threat. It's an awful moment for the millipede, when it thinks oh, this is a real low point in my life, I'm being

used as lit barn. Little does it know. The anemone This is coming. Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us

about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter account. I'm on at Schreiberland, Andy. At Andrew Hunter, M. James. At James Harkin. And Chisinski. You can email podcast at QI.com.

Yep. Or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing. Or you can go to a website, no such thing as a fish.com. We have links to our upcoming tour of both the UK and of VIII. Europe. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back again next week. We'll see you then. Goodbye.