Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Ladybugs

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why ladybugs are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsifpod

Ladybugs. Known for being bugs. Famous for being insects. Red, black, spotted, cute. Nobody thinks much about them. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why ladybugs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks.

Hey there, Cipelopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name's Alex Schmidt. I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie! Yes.

What is your relationship to or opinion of ladybugs? So I remember when I was a little kid and I thought they were really pretty. And so I, you know, grabbed one nicely. I was nice to animals and held it in my hand. And then it did a really stinky pee on me. And I got a little afraid of ladybugs at that point. I've since learned that this is like a defense mechanism of theirs. So the ladybug was more afraid of me than I was of it.

I'm just hung up on the idea of you grabbing a ladybug. Like did you kind of welcome it onto your hand or was it like a somehow you snatched it without crushing it? I was conscientious of not crushing things. So like what I did with my little like six year old hand is like cup it over the ladybug and then nudge it with my fingers into the palm and then turn. it over. Ladybug was fine, but it did do its stinky defensive pee. That's a pro move, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, other ladybug things that have occurred over the years. One is I learned that you can get bags of ladybugs at Home Depot. And every excuse that I had to like get a bag of ladybugs when I would go there with my mom, I'd be like, they're good for apids. Can I get a bag of ladybugs?

And she's like, yeah, well, okay. And so I just would pour them all out onto my hands and be like, yes, yes, my little minions. And release them, of course. I was not a monster. I had a ladybug house, which was like a little wooden box with like a mesh around it. And then I'd put some leaves and ladybugs in there and just enjoy. their presence. As an adult, I had this sort of basal adventure where I grew a bunch of basil on my balcony. And it was getting pretty healthy. And I had this big forest of basil. And then I had a big infestation of

aphids. But I noticed that there were a bunch of ladybugs on this plant. And I kept collecting them, kidnapping them really and bringing them to my basil and encouraging them to feast upon the aphids there nice uh i like them and i would consider myself to be friends with them there's certain ladybug impostors that are like i think there has some kind of like house beetle type things those freak me out ladybug doppelgangers they concern me and then other thing is i learned when I was little that ladybug larva are terrifying looking. Like just alien, scary, terrifying looking. I didn't know what these things were.

And it was a shock to me that they grew up to be these beautiful ladybugs. They look like xenomorphs. They're like black and orange and just awful looking. But yeah, just baby ladybugs. Thank you. I was going through this field guide of insects. And I was so concerned about what this different bug was on the ladybug page. But no, it's just the young ones that look like really long, spooky, weird other insects.

Yeah. I'm sorry. I went on and on. I do really like ladybugs. So, like, I had a lot to say. But what about you, Alex? No, I think you have had much more lived experience with them than me. Like I had just kind of heard of them.

And then I was told as a kid, yeah, they eat aphids. And I was like, I don't know why they have a job. They're just cute. And that was kind of it. And then the suggestor of this topic is Schmidt Baby. Because he has a ladybug toy that he loves a whole lot. And I kept looking at him joyfully playing with. And then I thought, ladybugs are also stiff.

So that's why. What's the ladybug toy? It's basically, it's like a little wooden ladybug with two legs. And there's a little jointed thing. And then it's balanced so it'll do a little walk down a ramp. That's awesome. So he's obsessed with the walk. Yeah.

I think I might be obsessed with it too. I want to know more about this ladybug toy. When we got it, me and Brenda would just kind of watch it first. Yeah. It's pretty cool, yeah? I'm a little jealous of Baby Schmidt. Who isn't? He has a great life.

But yeah, they were just a key bug to be. Then I think I had a little bit of a raised on cartoons sort of thing in my mind where I know they're not all female, but the name implies they're all female a little bit. It was that great role in a bug's life. It was what by Dennis Leary? Is that right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Francis, it says. I looked it up rapidly.

Francis, the ladybug. Who is a man, a man ladybug? A male. It's hard because it's like you'd say male ladybug, but also these are anthropomorphized insects. So they do have gender unlike actual ladybugs. but in the movie a bug's life Francis is a man ladybug

and he gets mistaken for a lady ladybug and then he gets upset about it but by the end of the movie he embraces his the softer side of himself his femininity and no longer feels differs goes from sort of this like toxic masculinity

because of misgendering to you know being confident in himself by the end of it. It's great. It's beautiful. Along with maybe thinking a lot of dogs are boys and a lot of cats or girls, I had a childhood thing of like, ladybugs are all probably girls.

But of course they're not. But like maybe they are. And it turns out it's about half and half boys and girls among ladybugs. Yeah, that's usually how it is. It's not like, I don't know, queen bees and queen ants or something. Right, right.

There's just a bunch of ladybugs. Yeah. And there's not a lot of sexual dimorphism. I didn't think, like, there might be a slight size difference, but in terms of how they look, it's not like the females are drab and the males are really colorful. It's, they look about the same. Maybe, I think the females are like a little bigger, but it's not by much, right? That's right, yeah.

Yeah, across many of the species, we'll talk about it, yeah. Yeah. And also, if you live outside the U.S. or Canada, you might be most used to different names for this kind of insect. outside the U.S. and Canada, they're often called Lady Beetles or Lady Bird Beatles, or even it's just an insect and Lady Bird is the main name. But I'm American, so the episode says Ladybug's in your feed. Yeah, that's what I'll call them. Deal with it.

USA, USA. Also, Canada, as I understand it. Also, Canada, as I understand it. Golf of Ladybug. And on every episode, we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers. and statistics this week that's in a segment called, there are some stats in this topic, Mrs. Katie. And it's worth learning for.

I don't remember the statistics of strawberries, Sam. I don't remember. So that name was submitted by John Ryan. Thank you so much, Jen. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a Missillian Wacking Bass possible. Submit through Discord. Or to sift pot at gmail.com.

They're taking the hobbits to stats and guard. There we go. Now as a bit, I want to upload an ant podcast, and it's just 10 hours, and they barely say anything, you know? It's like too big for phones to download. You just, you just have us on minus three times, and then we're ants. Oh, there we go. Yeah, and moot, the pot, yeah. Yeah.

And yeah, enough about trees. talking about coxenellidae. Coxenellidae is the taxonomic family. They're a bunch of small beetles. So calling them bugs is a little, I guess, less accurate than beetles, even though they are bugs too. Yeah. The first number about them is 1973. That's when they were invented.

By John. By Silas J. Ladybug. Sorry, you already had John loaded and I butted in with Silas. No, it's okay. John Silas, that was John Silas Ladybug. Grimey to his friends. 1973 is when a species called the Seven Spotted Lady Beetle established itself in the United States. Invasive.

Yeah. And one key source this week is the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America. That's where I was seeing, you know, they're smaller than adult ladybugs, but the larvae and the pupae and stuff look totally different, usually, like Katie said. But they talk about a lot of different ladybug species. In modern times, being technically invasive, it's usually because farmers brought them over on purpose. But the specific species, it's an ironic case of farmers failing to establish it, and then it just established itself somehow separately. Right, right. That's a European insect, the seven-spotted lady beetle.

And as early as 1956, U.S. farmers tried to import it. And they constantly failed to get little nests of them going. But then sometime in 1973, a group of them, in an invasive way, got into Bergen County, New Jersey and got started. Now they're all over southern Canada and the northern U.S. Did North America have its own native species, though, of ladybug? Yeah, apparently hundreds. And there's more than 6,000 species of ladybugs in the world, and their color schemes range way beyond red and black. There's yellow ones, orange, pink, kind of a white color, gray, there's a blue color. And the patterns can also be just solid red or solid black or even

a striped looking thing. So we'll link a few fun ones. There's the eye spotted lady beetle, the ashy gray lady beetle, the steel blue ladybird. It goes way beyond my cartoon idea of red with black spots. There's like a checkerboard almost one that I like. Ooh, cool. The 14-spotted lady beetle. Ooh. Even though they look very different, these are all related species, correct?

Like, are they in the same genus? Yeah, they're all in that family, cooks and alidae. You mentioned impostors. We won't really talk about that. But there's other, like, bugs and beetles. that look like these. I think I'm being a little harsh. It's not really an imposter in the sense that I think these are, it is a type of lady

bug, but there's an invasive species in the U.S. It's like a more orange one. The Harlequin Ladybird, also known as the Asian Lady Beetle. Yes, that's it. And it's, it is related, of course, to the other ladybugs. But they're also known as sort of like house ladybugs because they get into homes. and just kind of reproduce a bunch and then you get big piles. They're kind of orange.

Yeah. And yeah, they're just, they're considered more of a pest because they do get into homes and then just crawl over everything. Totally. I found like a lot of recent news coverage in the U.S. and in the U.K. of people saying, oh, no, the Asian lady beetle is like taking over our country. is like swarming into the houses. It had like a tough vibe to it too. Now I do take the threats of invasive species seriously but I'm always wondering like if any kind of bug species that has the

word Asian in it always seems to like hit the news and it makes me a little bit. Yes. I almost like suspect that there's a little bit of xenophobia or xenophobia there where it's like you know like the Asian murder hornet. When I was a kid, there were Asian carp in the Great Lakes. And I was like, why, how did they get from Asia? But I don't know. I'm just a kid. Sure.

Okay. On one hand, of course we're going to get a bunch of invasive species from Asia because Asia's ginormous. It's a bunch of different countries and continents. So yeah, there's going to be like a huge number of insects there, huge amount of biodiversity. And then some of those are going to be invasive. It always strikes me as a little bit like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

the way we talk about it is weird. Not necessarily that we talk about it. It's good to talk about invasive species, but sometimes it's like a little bit like, yeah, this bug is from mysterious Asia. Right. Especially with these Asian lady beetles, as they can be called, the number there is the 1970s.

That is when farmers in North America intentionally introduce them to hunt new pests, in particular, an invasive wheat aphid from Russia. So a lot of why they're here as farmers put them here. As we know, the way to deal with one invasive species is keep adding new ones. And we'll have a whole takeaway especially about that because basically ladybug's relationship to humans across a lot of history has been, we are excited that they eat smaller insects

and also the eggs and larvae of other insects without giving. us any bites that really bother us. That's pretty much it. Which is great. Like for sure, it's just the, because evolution is such a tug-of-war thing between species, that if you introduce one where it hasn't been co-evolving with the prey that it's after, you could get like an imbalance or co-evolve with other competitive predators, like other lady bugs, then you could have it having a strategy that nobody else had.

any counter strategy to and then you can get problems like because even though aphids are annoying we still need them and in terms of the ecosystem like a bunch of animals rely on them as a food source so you know it's just it's not we shouldn't necessarily be trying to like wipe out all the aphids with a you know a like Terminator-esque lady bucks the L-1000 fly away home. Your affids are dead. He hangs up the phone.

Your house is on fire. Fly away home. Yeah. Yeah. That's all exactly right. And yeah, these, I like calling them Harlequin Ladybirds. It feels better.

Yeah. And they're so brightly colored. And they can look a few different ways as adults, too. But apparently in their natural endemic habitat, they like vertical surfaces such as cliffs or slopes to make their nests in. And so in new environments, they've used the cracks of houses often. And the other number here is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about 13 degrees Celsius. 55 Fahrenheit is the temperature around where many species, including this one, will come out of something called

diapause. Diapause is a technical name for a kind of insect hibernation. And ladybugs will often do sort of a sequence of gather in a giant group, promiscuously mate all over the group, all the males and females getting together, and then kind of do this diapause, this insect type of hibernation. And then everybody hatches all at once. And so that freaks out some humans, just a huge amount of ladybugs. Right. And when you say hatches, you mean that they like go from being in this torpor to waking up. Right. Like they might come out of their eggs and then also do that at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. That is kind of a thing with a lot of species of insects where you have kind of safety in numbers. And so they time these things to basically try to take advantage of statistics.

Because like if you're in one little hatchling or one dude coming out of torpor, coming out of hybridation, then, you know, you just get picked off. But if there's a bunch of you at the same time, statistically it's less likely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of many ways they protect themselves. Like Katie was talking about from life, they can make a stinky odor. Apparently for some of them, it's a mix of their pheromones with a little bit of their blood.

and it's a way of deterring or harming predators that try to eat them. Hemolymph. Oh, that's a cool word. That's the stinky pee. It's not really pee, but it's a hemalymph, which is insect blood and is stinky. Yeah, and we think a lot of them evolved to have bright colors to indicate that they taste bad, but they, especially Americans and Canadians calling them ladybugs, we should almost more just call them pretty stink beetles or something. You know, they're like the sort of gross beetles you think of in a different situation.

Right. Red, spotted stinkos. Yeah, yeah. And with the giant groups they can get in, my favorite number here is about 80 miles wide. I like where you're going with this. I'm on board. 80 miles wide. It's more than 128 kilometers.

That's the size of a group of ladybugs that showed up in 2019. in like the skies over the San Diego area. In the sky. Wait, when was this? Because I'm from San Diego. 2019. What was I doing in 2019? I was in Los Angeles.

Organizing a giant group of ladybugs? I wasn't there. You can't fin this one on me. Even though I may have helped provoke it all those times that I got the ladybugs from Home Depot. and held them in my hands. And I was like, now go, my pretties, go, populate the earth. Do it in my name. No me for I am the one who liberated you from your nylon prison.

Their society has a lot of lore about Katie. So lots of people call these swarms, but apparently a lot of entomologists also call them blooms when you get a huge amount of ladybugs in one place. That's cute. I think that's cute. I like that. It's so cute. And yeah, in the summer of 2019, meteorologists, like weathermen, noticed a huge blob on the radar for weather, like over the sky of Southern California. It was about 80 miles by 80 miles with a really dense core of about 10 miles across. It was between 5,000 and 9,000 feet above the ground. It zoomed from around Barstow, California, through San Diego into Mexico.

And then it either dissipated or they just lost it in the exchange between U.S. and Mexico weather radar. Could people on the ground like see this blob or is it too high up? Excellent question. It was apparently high up and people saw a bunch of faint specks. But like it was dense in a way that showed. up on radar, but not in a way that was all that visible to the human eye. Right. It's so weird.

I worry a lot about things like nuclear war. Could we ever get fooled by ladybugs and a big oopsie? Big oopsie. Yeah, that's pretty wild just to see like what is this odd cloud of debris? And it's a bunch of little ladybugs, root of tooting around. the air. Yeah, and especially creeped out meteorologists because there's no cloud, you know, they're like, okay, we got to investigate this. And apparently one of the first groups they got in touch with was entomologists, like insect scientists. Yeah. Who told them this was a truly

massive bloom of ladybugs. Our guess is it's a species called the convergent lady beetle, which, you know, they're basically all harmless to humans, ladybugs. And also that one is from North America. It's not only so-called invasive ladybug species doing these big blooms. You said they're called convergent lady beetles? Yeah. Do you know if they're called that because they converge in a group or because they convergently evolved with other lady beetles? It's apparently their markings converge.

Oh, so I wasn't right at all. Well, I don't like that. There's little white lines on their head that kind of come together. Right. Well, I learned, but I also was wrong. Your theories were more fun. I hoped it would not just be like the lines come together, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's a, that was a dumb answer. That happens to be true. But yeah, like any species, even in their own normal. habitat. You can get ladybug blooms. And my other favorite number about giant groups of ladybugs is about $100 U.S. Apparently in 2015, a group of Maryland high school seniors bought $100 worth of ladybugs and swarmed them through their high school as a senior prank. I wasn't in Maryland, so that was pretty. Yeah, you can purchase amounts of ladybugs. I didn't know that as a kid. I think our hardware store

whatever, didn't have it. But in 2015, students at ChopdeConn High School in Morganza, Maryland bought 72,000 ladybugs online for $100. That's shrewd. That's a shrewd business decision. Yeah. When I was a kid and I would buy these ladybugs, like, I didn't know anything about stuff. I think there is some issues. I don't know how widespread this is, but often these will be not native species of a ladybug that are, you know, like cheap to breed. And then you're basically probably very marginally adding to the invasive species by releasing them. But also, I don't know how much that matters if there's already a well-established group of invasive species. But that's a fun prank, though. I like that. I mean, what are they going to do? Eat the

aphids at school? It seems harmless. Yeah. And the students insist it was harmless and easy to clean up and the school brought in the police and pressed criminal charges against them. So don't necessarily do that if you think your school will be uncool. This is like what was what was the crime? They claimed they broke the whole HVAC system. Charge them with burglary because they broke in the back door of the school to get them in. Oh, they did this indoors. Yeah, yeah.

Sorry. I'm going to disapprove a little bit of that. I went to an outdoor high school, so I just. imagine them releasing them outside and it being a bunch of ladybugs on campus and everybody being like, wow, look at all these ladybugs. And then, because that's also nice to the ladybugs because then they can just leave. So I thought that they released the ladybugs outside. I would say a little bit of a mildly stern disapproval for releasing them inside because, you know, that's not good for the ladybugs. That's what I think. Yeah, I think the school was fine, but the

ladybugs were harmed, yeah. So that's too bad. Yeah. I mean, you know, detention where you clean up the ladybugs, not police. Are you kidding? Right. They got the actual police involved and gave people criminal charges. What?

Really? Ugh. So I find that to be too much. What year was this? 2015. Come on. Just like make them do community service where they learn about, I don't know. ecology.

Yeah. Right. Just anything but like the cops and law. There are ladybugs all around us. Really? Right now. I found one weird study that claims the average home has more than 100 different species of insects inside it because of how they can get in. But it seems like they're kind of guessing.

I mean, if you're including mites, I would, I guess, sure. Yeah, they're being truly like broad about it. So they were like, your house probably has ladybugs in it. Yeah, sure. Mine does, and I checked. Yeah, ladybugs like you. They would come say hi. Right.

Yeah. I'm like I have crocheted you the tiniest hat. But and with these like voraciously predatory, stinky beetles, I got really hung up on like, why are they called ladybugs? None of that makes sense. It turns out there's a specific reason that goes back to the first species we mentioned. Takeaway number one. The ladybug name allegedly comes from medieval farmers observing the seven-spotted lady beetle and connecting that with Catholic numerology about Mary.

The number seven looms large in especially medieval lore about Jesus' mother Mary, the Virgin Mary. Because she had seven eyes. This kind of goes back to last week's show about the days of the week. They just got hung up on seven. And so they claim there are seven sorrows and seven joys in the life of Mary and that you should pray on those and think about those a lot. I really like flaunting my religious ignorance at Alex and making him explain stuff. Also, she had six eyes.

Everybody knows that. Come on. Six eyes. And I had not heard of this Seven Joy's, Seven Sorrows when I was in Catholic Church as a kid. I see. So it's Seven Joy's, Seven Sorrows of Mary is the idea. Yeah, it's basically a set of stories from the Bible that people sort of cataloged into, if you want to think hard about Mary, like you can think about the seven best times in her life or the seven worst times in her life. And do the seven-spotted ladybugs always have seven spots? Is that just like a fact? Or is it usually seven spots? Apparently always. And it's also pretty neatly laid out. It'll be three on one side, three on the other side. And then one kind of in the middle. And to my eye, the one in the middle almost looks like a cartoon heart shape. So it's a pretty distinctive look at this one species that, again, is Europeanly. It was not in the rest of the world for most of history.

If you see a ladybug that has a different number of spots or no spots, then it is a different species most likely. Yeah, and a lot of us have probably never seen one, just because, you know, we don't see a lot of ladybugs in general and there's more than 6,000 species. You know every ladybug, you know, but. Well, no, but I've specifically seen ones without spots. I've seen ones with fewer spots, yeah. It's sort of like the days of the week, Laura, where there's. no date or inventor, we just have a solid theory that fits the biology and the culture and religion in medieval Europe. So like when they say lady, they mean like lady as in Madonna, my lady.

Like the Virgin Mary specifically, yeah. Because like Madonna means my lady. Oh yeah, yeah. And key sources here are digital resources from the University of Connecticut and from the Vermont Center for Eco Studies and the San Diego zoo. And I'm also linking to some Catholic resources from a magazine called the St. Anthony Messenger and the cable channel, EWTN. I know you've got a hotline to the Pope, Alex. You don't got to be modest. We talk about the White Sox all the time. You're from, you're a lapsed Catholic from Chicago. He's just trying to get you back on board, back on board with Catholicism and bears. And, you know. I did also stop watching football because it's bad for you.

human brains. So maybe he would try to get me out of the bears too. He's like, Caleb Williams. And I'm like, I can't believe I'm talking to the Pope. He's like, no, yeah, don't worry about it. So, yeah, the seven-spotted Lady Beetle was a bug that a lot of farmers in like medieval times were just glad was around. Because basically all ladybug species are carnivorous and are voracious predators.

and the seven-spotted lady beetle is famous for eating aphids, but it also eats other similar insects. There's a pest called Thrip. There's a pest called the white fly. And they'll also eat the eggs and larvae of lots of other insect species. This also means a lot of ladybug species will eat each other's eggs and larvae. So they're not just out-competing when one is invasive. They might start feeding on each other in that way.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. But the seven-spotted lady beetle did what a lot of ladybugs did in the distant past and probably into ancient times where farmers tried to grow crops. Pests started eating the crops. And then they were just lucky that there were ladybugs in their ecosystem that came and ate the pests. Like it felt like a miracle. What a good thing.

Did they ever try to actively like foster ladybugs for their crops like create? Because like now I don't know how effective these are really. but now there's like things where it's like, here's a little ladybug house, and it's like a bunch of little hollow sticks and nooks and crannies for ladybugs to have a little area to be in. That's a great question, and I wish we had more information about it. It seems like there was less of a dedicated thing for ladybugs than there was for like bees and apiaris and stuff. But they, yeah, people can just make basically a set of nooks and crannies for a few. a female ladybug to lay a bunch of eggs.

Yeah, you can also like put little like, you buy little rocks for your garden where there's little tiny pools of water in it and that can also encourage certain helpful bugs or pretty bugs like butterflies. I don't know how well it works. And it seems like there was not a culture of like ladybug keepers like there was right away with beekeeping. It was more of a thing where people either did that. little bit of work or we're just lucky.

Like they said, great, the ladybugs have come and saved my crop and my family and so on. You can release ladybugs onto crops, but like they will disperse. They don't have, they don't have like a hive that they come home to. So if you tried to be a ladybug keeper, you wouldn't, like, this is my experience as a kid, I'd buy the bag of ladybugs, tell them to go out and spread the word of benevolent Katie. And the next day I'd like go outside excited to see my little ladybug civilization. And I couldn't find them. They'd be gone probably.

I mean, maybe I'd find a couple, but they dispersed. You know, they'd go out all over the garden, probably over into the neighbor's place and the lawn out in the canyon, all over. So you can't. Yeah. It's probably pretty hard to be a ladybug keeper. I don't see how you do it because the beekeeping makes sense because if you have a hive with a queen, and the bees just go there. They have a, you know, a compound. Yeah, and when I said ladybugs are promiscuous earlier, that's like a scientific term. Like, the species is just a lot of males and

females mating with each other willy-nilly. We're not shaming. We're not sex shaming. Yeah. And they're not particularly social. They're just out here to hunt thousands of aphids in their lifetime each individual and then made a bunch and die. And apparently the average lifespan is about a year. Yeah. They've got the Louis Vuitton red and black. They are killers and they have a lot of promiscuous sex. Just honestly, what a life. What an icon. Really? Yeah. And they're stinky. They release a bloody piss thing out of their joints. They release stinky blood that's smelly and kind of orange as well. Iconic.

Yeah. So, yeah, and then we believe that farmers named these ladybugs because they were thrilled with the, you know, at minimum helpful at maximum miraculous, it felt, you know,

help from the ladybugs. And then they tied the seven spots of this one specific species out of the many thousands to stories of seven sorrows and seven joys in Mary's life. again, I wasn't taught this at Catholic Church, but it makes sense to me that it would be one of the forms of lore they picked up. There's especially a lot of things with like rosaries counting out a specific amount of prayers.

So people would pray on these stories about Mary. And the sorrows mostly involve Jesus's crucifixion and also some like foreshadowing and prophecies she hears early in his life that this will happen. And the joys are what you would think, like his miraculous conception. his birth, like God's angels celebrating him, and then Mary getting to see him resurrected, Mary ascending to heaven herself. It's all stories from the Bible just kind of cataloged into a set of seven that people could remember well. Right. And so anytime you would see the number seven, people would think about this potentially. Yeah, it would really come up, yeah. And it ties into making a week of seven days with one holy day and stuff. Just the number seven

has been massive in European culture for millennia. 7.11. 7.11. At 7.m. I go get a surpe, and I think about Mary. And then at 11 p.m. I stop. I don't know if people know it used to be called 711 because it opened at 7 and closed at 11. But anyway. Now it's just always open. Now it's kind of always open. Yeah. There's no point.

Eternity 11. So these stories of Mary having seven great things in her life and seven terrible things in her life, people saw a beetle that also had red on it, and red was sort of a secondary color for Mary and art. Her main color was blue. We talk on the blue episode of SIF about blue being expensive and special, and that's how Mary got it. But she'd usually have red under that or red trim or something. So because this beetle has seven spots and red color. and feels like it's doing something nice for farmers.

One way or another, they chose a lady name for the bug. Okay. Well, you know, I mean, because the lady bugs, unlike in a bug's life, are not aware that they're being misgendered. Yeah. Yeah. And based on languages, we also think this started after the Roman Empire period. Because in Latin, that's where we got.

that scientific name, Coxenolidei, that is based on the Latin word for Scarlet. And that influenced languages like French and Italian. They use similar words for a ladybug. But in Spanish and also in English, the name focuses on words meaning lady in a merry kind of way. In Spanish, it's mariquitas, which means little ladies. And English, there's been a bunch of things they've been called. I mentioned like Lady Bird Beatles or Lady Beetles. apparently some medieval people also called them lady flies or lady cows, none of which makes

sense to me. But lady is always the thing in English. It's all about Mary. It's interesting. I think it's actually in Italian. It's based on the Latin. Yeah, Italian and French. They're based on that Latin. Yeah. Cochinella. Yeah, so they took the name for, it's red, which makes sense. But then some time in medieval times, especially English speakers said, I feel like this is the Virgin Mary helping my crops. And that's why we call them ladybugs. And like, was it literally called ladybugs because it was in English or was there like an older version of the name?

It's pretty much ladybugs or extremely similar things. Like the bug part is sort of an arbitrary choice. But yeah, it began as lady. Like the variation of Lady Beetle is basically just some US versus UK kind of language difference. Right. Because we do things a little differently, but we're all thinking about Mary. We're all, all the time.

When I see a bug, I'm like, this could be the Virgin Mary. It is a little ironic, given that they are very promiscuous that they have that association with like the most famous version of all time. Yeah, a significant part of the rest of especially the bonus show will be about just ladybugs having sex all the time as much as they can. Awesome. It's ironic. Yeah, yeah. Good. We talked about Catholicism and we have to counterbalance it with a bunch of debauchery.

Inside of you are two really pent-up wolves. And that's those are the two things they're hung up on. Yeah. But a different anatomical thing, the red bit gets us into takeaway number two. the colorful outside part of a ladybug is not the wings. No. It is a small covering for a much larger hidden wing that it turns out might have insights for human designs for robots.

Yeah, so like if you've ever watched a ladybug open up, which I have. Yeah, I never had. I had like the cartoon understanding that they flap the red parts. No, there's black, kind of translucent black wings under it that. huge wings. And they're not the size that you'd think they would be. They like unfold. Like if you've ever had a tent and that comes in a little bag and then you like and it pops

open. So that's how it works. There's so much bigger than you think. We'll link about it. And people in modern times have used like high speed cameras to get our best ever views of this. Yeah. And apparently a lot of Beatles do this.

The U.S. Canada name for this. where you forget their beetles kind of helps mislead people too. Like a lot of beetles have a part of their exoskeleton that opens to then like unfurral huge wings. And that's not the wing on the top there. Those outer coverings are called Elytra. Yeah, it turns out. It was neat to learn that name.

Yeah, Elytra. Yeah. E-L-Y-T-R-A. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, we have our latest, greatest, studies of these lately, especially a 2020 study from Seoul National University in South Korea, and then a 2017 study at the University of Tokyo. You know, link coverage of those and also the

U.S. National Park Service. Like Katie said, the Elytra, it's a part of the exoskeleton that moves, and it basically just opens, it reminds me of sports cars with those wing doors. It sort of opens that way. Yeah, like a DeLorean. It's very DeLorean, yeah. And, and then that lets them release their wings. Another part of their exoskeleton has gaps that let them breathe. They kind of breathe through the middle of their body instead of their mouth. Again, cartoons are wrong. Usually through spiracles, little holes.

Yeah, man, have I mentioned creature feature yet today? No, I have not. Check out Creature Feature. Katie's Amazing Podcast. She knows all the technical terms and everything. I potentially have more episodes coming out. I'm slowly. My gears are wrong.

Rusty, and I'm using a lot of WD40 on those whole podcasting years after having a baby. Glug, glug, glug. Drinking the WD40. Drinking a lot of it. Weirdly, I feel kind of loopy, and then it's hard to concentrate on research. I don't know. Someone's lied to me, but yeah, it's very cool. And pretty much all flying beetles work this way. Elytra over these wings.

I think for ladybugs, it is especially kind of like impressive how much they unfurled, but it's the same basic thing. Yeah, so cool. Once you get in your head that these are beetles at all, it's easier to understand. But I think in the U.S. we think they're just sort of a special kind of pretty bug, and they're not Beatles almost, you know? Yeah, I can see that.

And I'm speaking, of course, not thinking about insects very much. That's how people think. Yeah. Beatles has a little more of a like oaky, spooky feel to it and ladybugs are whimsical. The mechanisms of the ladybug is not so different from, say, like, a June bug, right? Like a big shining. Yeah, those guys. That's cool.

They're pretty, but they, like, if you ever get hit in the face with fun, it's an experience. I really don't want that experience. I'm also, we talk about my animal phobia sometimes. I'm pretty good with Beatles. It seems fine. That's good. But I don't want to get hit with one, yeah. Yeah.

And in 2017, a team at the University of Tokyo said, let's observe how the wings come in and out of the Elytra better than anyone ever has. So they set up CT scanners and high-speed cameras to get images and pictures and scans. And they also got some nail art supplies. Like supplies for making human nail art. They took some UV-keared resin and made transparent replacements for the real Elytra of ladybugs. And then I assume painfully for the bugs. That's too bad.

But like remove the real Elytra, put on transparent fake ones. And then got amazing, extremely detailed footage of how the wings come in and out because it's a transparent covering. this way. Oh, man. That's like, we're, we're, we're so spooky. When you think about like, the way that we deal with, you know, quote unquote lesser life forms, we're such, we're so maniacal. Yeah. Like, if you did this to any species we consider higher than insects, they would be like arresting the scientists. But they, it's insects, so they went for it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, and the NPR quoted professor Kazuya Saito who said he was surprised a ladybug would fly at all with these fake elytra on it. But it did and then they could perfectly capture the folding and

unfolding of the wings. We're surprised they were functional after the mangling. Right. I'm surprised too. Ladybugs are tough. It's true. I'm a little surprised as well. Yeah. And with that study, like starting in 2017, we had our best ever understanding of the exact mechanism of the folding and unfolding of these big wings into a little space. and apparently the easiest way to model it is origami paper. The way it basically works is you take a, if you take like a flat square of paper, form a spiral in its middle and it spirals into itself,

that's how the wing folds back up and then unfolds too. The one thing is that it could be that there aren't, I'm hoping that there's like not, there may not necessarily be nerves in the connection between the Lyra and the rest of the, the body right like if we trim our fingernails it doesn't hurt because there's no nerves there so hopefully you know i don't know though i don't i'm not so deeply you'd think i would be uh deeply familiar with ladybug anatomy but i actually haven't it's usually about like hey can i get this ladybug interested

in eating this aphid i found and not so much does it feel pain if i pull it's a lightra off uh because i'm mostly normal. Yeah, and my sources don't say either way. I just sort of assumed they're torturing them, but they could be fine. Yeah, yeah. They might not even know. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

And then just a few years later, researchers in Seoul ran with this information. In 2020, they published in the journal Science Robotics team at Seoul National University shared a design for a glider module that you could incorporate into all sorts of robotic designs. And they say that, quote, we report compliant origami inspired by the wing vein in Lady Bird Beetles. The deformation and geometry of the compliant facet enables both large energy storage and self-locking in a single origami joint.

Wow. And they went on to say that a robot could effectively sustain aerodynamic gliding with this design based on how Ladybug wings work that we didn't really have until we looked at them in the bugs. I don't know how I feel about that. Now that there's all of this AI stuff about that we're all definitely doomed by from AI. And then you're like, yeah, we can create a robot that's like glides indefinitely like an insect. And I don't know.

I just hope, look, I hope that our robotic ladybugs remember when I, I liberated their organic ancestors. I asked for nothing in return. I just enjoyed the process of releasing more ladybugs into the world. I was just reading about a thought experiment about AI. It's called like Rokos Basilisk. People might already know all about this, but basically the thought experiment is you should help AI come into being

because then it will be nice to you when it takes over the world. Is it that that experiment? I've been doing some research into AI because for my other job and sometimes Alex's other job writing for summer news. I don't want to get too much into detail about it because I don't know yet. But yeah, I've been just like poking my nose into it. And I don't know. I mean, it's interesting, right?

Because there's a lot of when you look at the behavior of AI, and I get, I feel like I get the concerns of everyone about the downsides of AI, and I largely agree with that. In the future, if there's an AI overlord, I don't mean you. I mean other AI. But like, there's a lot of parallels, I think, between, like, insect behavior, especially like swarm behavior or hive behavior and sort of, you know, these like AI agentic behaviors.

But I also think that potentially all of these guys that work on AI are legitimately in a cult. So I don't know. You know? But the point is if the AIs do become

robot ladybugs, like I'm an ally. Golden's Bassa Ladybug. Yeah. These researchers, at Seoul National University, they figured out a robotic version of the wings six years ago, at least in a prototype way. So it seems like the main thing stopping it from being a common robot design is just there's not like financial incentive or technical need.

But we could pretty much do it, it seems like. Yeah. So that's pretty well. Well, you know, maybe ladybug spies are already here and we don't even know it. Like all they know how to do is the stuff. stinky pee. Like, they don't know how to get any information or help anybody. I think that's cool.

I'm down with that. Keeps everybody humble. Keeps everybody working. Yeah. Well, and folks, that's a ton of numbers and two takeaways. We are going to take a quick break, then discover Ladybug's saving an entire economy. We're back, and we have two more Ladybug takeaways for you. Takeaway number three.

Ladybug's revolutionized global farming in the distant past and again in late 1800s California. Hey, I'm from there. The late 1800s, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. God, I need to use more sunscreen, apparently. Yeah, this is a, like, farmers got a lot more specific about the intentional usage of ladybugs.

in a late 1800s project to save the citrus industry in California. There was an invasive pest from Australia that almost ended that industry and basically the whole economy of the state. Wow, that's like a reversal. Usually the invasive pests are going into Australia, not out of Australia. Yeah, how about that? How about that? How about that? Yeah.

Yeah, good for them. And the key source here, it's an amazing feature for Smithsonian Magazine by journalist Martin J. Kernan. And then I'm also linking to digital resources from North Dakota State University, the University of Kentucky, and the University of California system. It turns out that with modern farming of fruits and vegetables, you should probably thank a ladybug for making that fruit or vegetable either possible or cheaper or more available because they were sort of our first big usage of. the modern approach of, hey, something's a pest, let's find what eats that, instead of the other modern approach of just chemicals, chemicals, chemicals. Right, right. Yeah, because, you know, chemicals don't always taste good.

Yeah, and they can work and stuff, and then we have this whole everything. And apparently in the history of California, you know, like colonizers really start coming there for a gold rush after previous, you know, Spanish invader missionaries and stuff. Yeah. And then after the gold rush, the next economy is really citrus farming. In the early 1870s, they start cultivating seedless oranges in California. And then also 1876, the Southern Pacific Railroad finishes a line to Los Angeles. And then starts working out, like, train cars with huge blocks of ice to preserve oranges

for the trip east. Right. Yeah, because, like, it's California is sunny and warm. It's got, you know, the somewhat Mediterranean climate. And oranges, they are not native to California or even to North America, correct? Yeah, basically all citrus is from Asia. Like white colonizers figured that out kind of all at once. Apparently, in about 13 years from 1877 to 1890,

in those 13 years, they increased orange cultivation sevenfold in California. They just suddenly filled the state with orange trees. They were like, great. This is a huge business. We're all going to get and make money. I've driven through the valley. And it's kind of fun to watch when you're driving past, just all these, like this green. And then you see a bunch of like orange as you're driving past.

Wow. I'm watching, looking at all the trees. This is such a Katie episode. It's insects in Southern California. And it's great. It's really speaking to my childhood. And then this whole thing almost died because of an invasive speech. she's from Australia.

There's an Australian insect scientific name Isaria Purchasei. The cutesy name is the cottony cushion scale. What it looks like when it lays its eggs is the female covers itself in a bunch of puffy white egg sacks. I've seen these actually, yeah. Oh, ew. Yeah. I mean, cool, but like, ooh. When I was a little kid, I found it kind of pretty.

It looks like white fluff. Whoa. I thought it was fun to touch. And then I realized it's all bugs. It's all bugs. And it freaked me out. It's just bugs. Yeah.

And apparently the larvae can blow on the wind. They're so tiny. So there's an extraordinarily good at spreading pest and parasite essentially. Yeah. Because they suck the sap out of the undersides of tree leaves and kill the whole tree. And they also make honeydew that attracts ants and mold and other things that kill the tree. So it's a devastating pest to dozens of woody plant species, especially citrus trees that are not from Australia, but once these pests found them in California, they went nuts. Yeah.

They feel like malevolent fairies because it looks like, oh, it's like there's snow underneath the leaves. And no, it's just a bunch of bugs. It was bugs the whole time. Man, I just did not experience this ecosystem as a child. Boy, oh boy. It's an odd feeling because it's kind of a little sticky, kind of like almost like cobwebby sticky, and then you touch it, and then sometimes you feel the adults moving around. That's not good. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So these were in Australia. They apparently made a pit stop in New Zealand eating all the trees there and then reached California in the 1880s. By 1886, the U.S. government and citrus farmers were about to give up. They said, we've tried hundreds of kinds of pesticides on these. Martin J. Kernan also says they tried washing the trees with whale oil, heating them with stoves to get like blistering steam going to steam them off the leaves.

Whale oil? Yeah, they tried to like slatter the trees in whale oil so the pests couldn't get at them, which is a huge waste of whale oil. But yeah, they tried cutting off and burning infected tree limbs. Like nothing worked. Oh, and the other thing they tried is gunpowder blasts to like vibrate and concuss the pests off the trees. Shoot the trees. I mean, not a terrible idea, I guess.

Yeah, like they were just so desperate they truly tried everything in 1880s person could think of. And then the final idea was from the USDA's chief entomology. So of course he's thinking about bugs. It's a scientist named Charles Valentine Riley. He says, what if we do what is in the 1880s a novel idea, let's send scientists to find what eats the pest and import it to this ecosystem. Because the pest is not from the U.S. So whatever it is back in Australia and eats it.

Let's bring it. Keep adding new species. It's always the answer. Yeah. And also apparently this was such a disaster. It basically created the citrus industry because before this, most of the citrus growers were independent and really pride of themselves on being independent. And then they formed a collective called SunKist to manage this. Whoa.

So the Whitefly created SunKist. Yeah, yeah. That's wild. Like they finally became kind of a collective and big corporation. There's a direct line from the Whitefly to the crappiest tasting orange juice. I've ever had. Amazing. Got them.

Yeah. And apparently Riley did not totally invent this. He'd heard about a project on the island of Mauritius in the 1760s where there was a locust problem and they imported mina birds to eat the locusts. Birds for locusts, great. And then the minor birds just start like swearing and cussing and importing foul language as well. Why would they do that? I don't get it.

I believe they can imitate human voices. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. They learn our slang. Yeah, yeah. Yes, exactly. But so, like, U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists go to Australia, and they're told, hey, sure, there's a kind of parasitic fly that eats this area.

Here you go. Yeah. But also, luckily for us, they tried to look for other options, too, because when they brought the parasitic fly to California, it could not establish a population. there was like one extra frozen crate that they put one tiny Australian ladybug in. It's a scientific name Novius Cardinalis. And this like surprisingly tiny ladybug, it's even way smaller than the pest it's eating, just devours this area really effectively and solved the problem.

It's called Novius Cardinalis. And we're like really lucky the scientists kept looking for something besides the parasitic fly, which also sounds gross, I guess, but this beautiful tiny ladybug was a perfect Assyria killer and could establish itself in California. So it saved the citrus industry and basically that whole state as an economy. So sometimes invasive species work out and we should do more of it. Is that what you're saying? Almost because, like I said, on Mauritius and a few other places, people had done

find the thing that eats the pest before. But because this was done by. institutional white people, then the scientific world paid attention to that idea and did it kind of all over the world for all sorts of pest problems. So that does lead to invasive species issues, but it leads to less pollution and pesticide. I just thought of a way to describe the tactile sensation of touching a white fly infestation, Alex. Are you ready? Ready as I'll ever be. All right. So imagine you're touching the softest, stickiest, dog with a massive flea infestation.

That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm so glad I didn't grow up around this pest. It would have really messed me up. Or I did and I am not very aware. Or you would have become unduly fascinated like I did. True.

I also might have. It turned out normal and fine. So here we are. The last last thing about this, it speaks to ladybugs eating tons of different kinds of things. We all just think they eat aphids and that's most because it's true, but other species can eat pollen or nectar or specific funguses. I'll link about one called the pink spotted lady beetle that gets the majority of its calories from pollen.

And it eats so much pollen, it's considered an incidental pollinator. It's not even trying to. It just like gets pollen on itself as it eats a bunch of pollen. So there are all sorts of different ladybugs eating different things. And they help us with farming even more than you'd think. It's not just like, yeah, they'll help with the aphids. It's like I have a specific pest. There might be a specific ladybug that takes care of it.

Right. Because there's like a ton of species. Yeah, over 6,000. There's so many. Like I really thought it was one, you know, like if you'd ask me, I might have said, maybe there's a couple more. But I thought it was the red kind. And that's it.

And it's not just that they all, they can be, have different coloration. Like some of them are shaped a little differently. Like I'm looking at this, this spotted pink lady beetle. And they're a bit more elongated. and tear-shaped than the are real round, round-bodied ones. Yeah, they are, yeah. And it's another one native to the Americas. Like the whole world except Antarctica has its own very special ladybugs.

It's a really global critter. They have those, at least the seven spotted ladybug and other ones like it. They have like a white spots on their little heads that look like their eyes in the same way that orcas kind of have those white spots, but is in fact not, that's not where their eyes are. Oh, I didn't know that. Cool. Yeah. It's, I mean, orcas, so like, they have the white around sort of near where their eyes are,

but that's, it's not like, the whole white area is not their eyes. They have little, you can see like a little small eye, you know, within like that eye spot area. But then with the ladybug, I believe their eyes are not at all. all in that white spot area. It's more, it's closer to the front of their head. That's so cool. And we have one last quick takeaway that goes beyond all these ladybugs on Earth. Because takeaway number four, a sweet campaign by schoolchildren in Chile convinced NASA to send ladybugs to eat aphids in Earth orbit. There were ladybugs on a space shuttle and they ate aphids. They even got

aphids in space, Alex? We got space aphids? Yeah, spacefids? Space fids. Yeah. You're not a bored, but it's fine. No. But tell me more.

Yeah, they sent ladybuds and aphids to space. And other than humans eating meat they're sent up with, I think this is the other case of humans specifically sending something to eat something else in space, you know, like in a carnivorous. way. Right. I would also kind of like going with our recent hot dog episode, I would send Joey Chestnut into space and see how many hot dogs in that environment he can eat. Yeah. First you got catch them. Oh, they're bouncing around in microgravity. Oh. That'd be so much more fun. And yeah, this is a story from 1999. Key sources are coverage at the time from the Chicago Tribune

and then digital resources from the San Diego Zoo. Because, yeah, ladybugs are ferocious hunters of affids. And in the 1990s, a group of students at public school one, a grade school in Santiago, Chile. They and their teacher created a proposal to NASA. I guess the school just got excited about this kind of thing. And their proposal was, you should experiment on ladybugs and aphids in microgravity. because on earth ladybugs tend to hunt the aphids by climbing up a plant's stem and the aphids tend to escape being eaten by leaping from stem to stem.

So if you take gravity out of it, what happens? Which is actually like kind of an interesting question for what it is. Yeah, yeah. No, it's true because you've got a few things, right? Because there's fluid dynamics of like sucking out aphid juices and how the ladybug moves. in that environment. And also like, I mean, because their little feats have, you know, qualities to them that allow them to crawl up on stuff. So that's all really interesting questions.

Good job for these kids. It's very cool. And yeah, and then also they managed to connect with a really special NASA astronaut. Franklin Chang-Diaz is one of the first people to be fluent in Spanish in the space program of the U.S. and he happened to visit Santiago's planetarium on a lecture circuit, and then the science teacher at PS1 helped her students show Franklin Chang Diaz the idea. And he said, you know, I'll run this idea up the chain, and they actually took it.

By 1997, this was a formal pitch to NASA, and in the summer of 1999, four ladybugs and several more aphids went into Earth orbit on the space shuttle Columbia. And it turns out, yes, ladybugs are excellent at hunting, aphids, no gravity needed. It's cool. It's so funny to me imagining there's these like astronaut

apids and ladybugs going into space and then the little affids are like, okay, what science are we doing up here? Why are you looking at me like that? Right. I just am so hung up by the aphids of this story. Yeah, it's one of the first things we've sent to space to be devoured.

Like not like an animal that we're going to lose or a human that we want to bring back. It's like you will go up there and be hunted. Do we know exactly how many aphids were sent up there? I know it was more than four. I mean, that's sensible. I'm kind of surprised that it could be in single-digit territory because they're aphids.

Like, you probably want a few extra ones in case you move your thumb wrong and destroy them. It's a real thing that cargo space is. precious on the mission, but some of the stuff I found says, like, STS93, they gave cargo space to the ladybugs and aphids. And I'm like, yeah, they gave them an inch or whatever. Sure. Yeah. It's like, has anyone seen the afid we brought? I can't find it. Right. Like, truly every edge is precious of space shuttle, but also, come on. I get it's not just a free-floating aphid. You probably have to have to have. it in like a little aphid container where they live in. So like that's probably bulkier than an

individual aphid. But you know, surely you can squeeze a few of them in there. You would think. And it also turns out this mission was both dedicated to totally different things and had at least one other insect experiment. There are also some U.S. students who convinced NASA to send up a butterfly habitat. And their cool idea was you want to observe butterfly metamorphosis at various stages. Like they assembled a bunch of butterflies at the different stages that will be interesting and then watched what continued to happen while they were in orbit. So that's pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. And like especially because like metamorphosis is so weird where they basically almost entirely liquefy inside the chrysalis and then reassemble. Yeah. I didn't know that. What? Yeah, yeah.

So they turn into a sort of soup situation. Some parts are retained, including certain neural structures. So they retain some memory. But like the rest of their body is like gets kind of broken down into a soup and then rebuilt into the butterfly. I always assumed it's more of a like human and to werewolf sort of bones cracking. No. No, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's, it's, it's, there are some

structures that are, that remain and then they kind of like, uh, use like the goo to then rebuild those, but it's mostly a goo. You gotta use that goo. It's mostly a goo. If you cut into a chrysalis, actually if you watch a video of some cute animals eating chrysalis, it's like a little cream filled, uh, Delicious treat. Yeah, it's a good one there.

So, yeah. Man, now I want the space ladybugs to run out of apheds and eat the butterflies, I guess. Because they'd do it, probably. Stick a straw in there, slurp it up. Yeah, and this mission, their main job was to launch a space telescope called the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is still humanity's most powerful X-ray telescope. It was also a milestone mission because mission commander Eileen Collins, was the first female commander of a space shuttle mission by leading STS 93.

So a lady led the ladybug shuttle, too. That's nice. It's fun. Hmm. Hmm. Nice. But yeah, like just kids in a completely different country from the United States convinced NASA to do a whole experiment.

That's really cool. And ladybugs are really talented at what they do. Yeah. Clearly, we need more ladybugs at NASA, you know. Have we ever considered building a giant space ladybug? Because they got the wings and, you know what I mean? And I get that wings wouldn't work the same way in space because there's no air. But you add some jet thrusters.

I'm in. I'm going to NASA right now. Good. Yeah. I'll at least bring them a bag of Home Depot ladybugs to be a visual aid, you know? Yeah. Exactly Anyway folks I've been arrested in Florida

There's no more podcast Oops Folks that is the main episode for this week And welcome to the outro with fun features for you Such as Help Remembering this episode With a run back through the big takeaways Takeaway number one The Ladybug name

Allegedly comes from medieval farmers Observing one specific species Called the Seven Spotted Lady Beetle and connecting that with Catholic numerology about the seven joys and seven sorrows of Mary. That is the lady in the name is the Virgin Mary, Jesus' mother. Takeaway number two, the colorful outside part of a ladybug is not the wings. It's actually a small covering called an Elytra, hiding the much larger hidden wings, in a way that humans could adapt into robot designs.

Takeaway number three, ladybug's revolutionized global farming in the distance, and past, and again in a modernized way in late 1800s, California. That's the story of Novius Cardinalis being brought from Australia to eat the Australian Cottony Cushin Scale. Takeaway number four, a very sweet campaign by schoolchildren in Chile convinced NASA to let ladybugs eat aphids in Earth orbit. Spacefids. And then a whole lot of numbers and stats this week, too, about the huge range of species

and colors of ladybugs in the world, pranks of ladybugs, blooms of ladybugs on weather radar, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is a bizarre myth about necrophilia among male ladybugs. They do not really do that, at least not in a pronounced way.

Visit sifpod.f.fod.fund for that bonus show for a library of more than 25 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources. on this episode's page at maximum fun.org. Key sources this week include a wonderful insect field guide. It's called the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.

That was especially helpful for species that come from the Americas that we talked about, such as the Convergent Lady Beetle. We also really leaned on science writing from Smithsonian Magazine. And then a lot of digital resources from institutions like the University of Connecticut, the University of Kentucky, the University of California system, the Vermont Center for Eco Studies, the San Diego Zoo, and more. That page also features resources such as native-dash-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking,

the traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people, and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations, in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very, much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey,

would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly, incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick, amazingly is episode 26, that is about the color blue. We mentioned that color because in European Christian medieval art especially, blue became the color of the Virgin Mary, mostly because it's just expensive and difficult to get blue if you're a medieval European person. They wanted to honor her with the expensiveness of the medium that they were using to make their painting or other art. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend Katie Golden's podcast Creature Feature Feature about.

animals science and more whether that's back with new episodes or not has an amazing archive and the animal information stays amazing all the time so you heard of course how much she knows about the animal world on this episode check out create your feature for more our theme music is unbroken unshaven by the buddows band our show logo is by artist burton durand special thanks to chris suza for editing this episode special thanks to the beacon music factory for taping support extra extra special Thanks, go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists' own shows. Supported. Directly. By you.