Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Figs & Wasps

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Today Chuck and Josh look at the interesting relationship between figs and wasps.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast. Are you a Charlotte? Sarah, Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning. Like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in.

You're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it. I completely forgot you in. And then you're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it? I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too sitting in for Dave. So this is short stuff. Yeah. This is an episode where I was very surprised and I even went back that when we

did our episode on wasps, we even got emails about this. So I'm pretty sure we did not cover it. Yeah. But we're talking about fig wasps of the fig tree specifically, not the kind that you'd see, like almost all fig tree varieties are not ones that you eat the fruit of. That's a very specific one. The ones like you have out in your yard, they develop without pollination, which means they're parthenocarpic. But the ones that where you eat the figs, they are grown commercially, mainly in California here in the United States, they are calamirna figs and they are imported

from Turkey and the ficus carica or the fig wasp is also imported from Turkey because they have a very special relationship. Yeah, so fig wasps and that specific kind of fig apparently co-evolved over the last 60 million years to form a mutually symbiotic relationship, as our friend Connor from Love on the Spectrum would say, where the fig wasp depends on the fig for its reproductive cycle. The fig depends on the fig wasp for its reproductive cycle. If you didn't have one or the other, the other one would not exist. Yeah, totally.

And we're gonna tell you how that happens right now. I was gonna say right after this, but that'd be way too soon. For sure. First thing we need to say is that the fig, the thing that you're eating, it's something within a larger structure and it's called a seconium is what you're actually eating. It's sort

of like an inverted flower, it's not really a fruit necessarily. And what happens is these calamerna farmers in California, they have female trees that are going to produce that edible version of the zirconia, and they have male trees that produce an inedible version called a gall fig and if they want to pollinate those, a wasp has to crawl into that synchonium, a female wasp. She loses her wings on the way because she has to squeeze through a tight little passage and it's a one-way trip which is very sad.

And you end up eating that female wasp. She's broken down by something called phicine. It's a protein digesting enzyme. So when you eat a fig, there is a little bit of female wasp inside of that thing just broken down and becoming part of that edible fig. Yeah, but essentially you're not gonna be able to detect it on your tongue.

Some people think that the little tiny seeds inside of a fig are wasp parts because there's been such a legend that developed about like fig wasps. And it is true to some degree, but for the most part, no, you're not detecting a fig wasps like body or exoskeleton when you're eating a fig. You are eating part of a wasp though,

would like don't make no mistake. For sure. And I mentioned it was a one-way trip. It's fairly sad that that happens, but it's all in good service of that mutual arrangement. Before that happens, this female wasp is going to come out of an inedible male fig, I guess I'm going to call it a fruit, because she was born there. And she has mated by that point with a blind wingless male wasp who never leaves that male fig. So she exits that inedible male fig, she picks up some pollen, she's got all these eggs, and at that point she can either go to a male fig tree or a female

fig tree. But if she lands on that female fig tree, her ovipositor is too short to reach into this really long-styled female flower, so she can't lay those eggs in there. She does end up pollinating it, but she sacrifices her life in doing so. Yeah, she makes it all the way to the synchonium and finds, like, I've literally just wasted my life. But her life is not a waste, because if she didn't accidentally enter a female fig where she was trying to reproduce

or lay her eggs in a male fig, then the figs would not get pollinated. So figs get pollinated because fig wasps sometimes make mistakes when choosing a male or a female fig to burrow into and lay their eggs. I find that amazing. Yeah, it's pretty great. Like it works both ways.

If she goes into that male fig, then she's gonna deposit those fertilized eggs. And that circle just kinda keeps going on and on. Farmers separate these trees out to try and keep them from doing that. I protest that. I'm protesting. Oh, you're protesting them doing that?

I protest that there are male and female fig trees. I've seen that they're self-p pollinating and hermaphroditic, including the ones that you eat. So I'm going on record as saying that. Well, you're wrong, my friend, because this farmer that was interviewed said that they separate those male and female trees. I don't think he's just making that up to aggravate you.

What if he's completely off his rocker? I mean, are all the farmers and all the sources completely off their rocker? So I think this is just one of those times where we're gonna have to agree to disagree. Do you agree? Uh, sure. That's very agreeable of you. All right, we'll be back right after this. Hi, I'm Bob Pipman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia.

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And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, a few things that we can remember is that female wasp dies inside that edible fig, and there have been people like vegans, that there are vegans, I'm not going to say there have been, there are literally vegans who won't eat that. But there are bugs in almost every fruit that you eat. There are levels of bug, I was about to say infestation, but just bug activity that's

acceptable for the USDA. Tomato ketchup, apparently. It has the highest USDA grade standard possible. And it can have no more than 30 fruit fly eggs per every 100 grams of ketchup. Like surely, I guess there's some quality control where they take some like 100 ounces or 100 grams of ketchup and count the fruit fly eggs in it, right? I don't know how they do that.

And if that is, like if they find 31 or even 100, that doesn't necessarily mean that the next bottle is gonna have the same amount because I mean, we're talking fruit fly eggs, right? But it is, like if they find 31 or even 100, that doesn't necessarily mean that the next bottle is gonna have the same amount, because I mean, we're talking fruit fly eggs, right? From all sorts of different tomatoes in each bottle. It boggles my mind. I don't know how they do this.

Or how they enforce it, I guess is what I mean. Yeah, I bet someone, or it might be one of those things where like, no one's even paying attention to this. Right, the vegans are The vegans are watching you. Yes, they're always watching. I did mention though that the farmers try and control the, you know, separating those trees out to control because it can be a problem if there are too many seeds that fruit can burst open and all of a sudden it's not, you know, it's good for the plant but it's not good to harvest for the farmer. So they're trying to sell these things. So they separate those trees out over some pretty great distances and also

control the number of new wasps that they bring in. They're like their wasp wranglers as well as farmers. And they get these things delivered to their house, to their farm in paper sacks. And they can pretty much control exactly how many females have access to the correct plant. Yeah. And those paper sacks also usually include a tiny cowboy hat and a tiny lasso. And then just one more time to just kind of go over this again, just to calm anybody's fears. You probably are eating some insects, so vegans you're right, if you don't want to eat insects, you probably should steer clear of figs. But the fig is designed to digest the female wasp that dies inside of it and breaks it down for nutrients for itself.

So just don't worry about eating wasps. I don't know why everybody's so worried about eating wasps, Chuck. Yeah, I mean, it is fig at that point. That wasp becomes fig. Right. In fact, that's a great t-shirt. Wasp becomes fig. I agree wholeheartedly. Well, since we came up with the t-shirt, obviously everybody, that

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