transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Oh, wait, you're listening?

Speaker 2:
[00:01] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[00:02] All right. Okay. All right.

Speaker 4:
[00:07] You're listening to Radiolab. Look it!

Speaker 2:
[00:11] Radiolab.

Speaker 4:
[00:11] From? WNYC.

Speaker 2:
[00:13] See? Three, two, one. Imagine your back poofs out these...

Speaker 3:
[00:26] Tail feathers almost.

Speaker 2:
[00:28] Little white fluff's feather.

Speaker 3:
[00:29] Very fuzzy and sticky and cute.

Speaker 2:
[00:33] And you shrink down to be...

Speaker 3:
[00:35] Really tiny.

Speaker 2:
[00:36] The size of a sesame seed.

Speaker 3:
[00:39] You still have a really big spirit and charisma and magnetism and draw people to you.

Speaker 2:
[00:46] People have nicknamed you a forest fairy, a fuzz pixie, a ghost bug. You have become...

Speaker 3:
[00:55] A woolly aphid.

Speaker 2:
[00:57] A woolly what?

Speaker 3:
[00:58] Aphid.

Speaker 2:
[01:00] Got it. Now is the part where I make you sing the theme song with me.

Speaker 3:
[01:10] Bestrials.

Speaker 1:
[01:13] Yay, you did it!

Speaker 3:
[01:14] I got it.

Speaker 2:
[01:14] Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on Earth. I am your host, Lulu Miller. Joy, Dad's always about my song, bud. And talking to us today about aphids is someone it was very surreal to just sing the theme song with because she is half of my all time favorite musical duo. Can you introduce who you are?

Speaker 3:
[01:40] I'm Amy Rae from Indigo Girls. Me and Emily, we're two people that have known each other since we were 10 years old, discovered that we both loved music and wanted to play it together.

Speaker 2:
[01:50] Two 10-year-old dreamers who would eventually pick up guitars and go on to become the Indigo Girls, performing thousands of concerts, selling millions of records and enchanting the world with their stirring harmonies. Like this one on one of my favorite songs, Galileo. Oh, that is so pretty to listen to. And weirdly enough, the Aphid story that Amy brought us ends up leading us to discover the secret harmony of the forest. Now, Amy had never seen a woolly aphid until just about a year ago when she was on a springtime walk in the woods behind her home in Georgia.

Speaker 3:
[02:46] I'm walking on this path that I always walk, and it's, it's right above a creek. And with her is my dogs.

Speaker 2:
[02:53] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[02:53] There's seven of them.

Speaker 2:
[02:55] Seven?

Speaker 3:
[02:55] Seven. Perdue, Scruffy, Miska, Luna, Halo, Lonnie and Pickard. I walk two at a time.

Speaker 2:
[03:03] And as they're walking along by patches of ferns and hollybushes.

Speaker 3:
[03:07] It's like a very idyllic trail.

Speaker 2:
[03:09] Amy is hunting.

Speaker 3:
[03:12] I check in on all my little areas.

Speaker 2:
[03:14] For little treasures, like maybe a-

Speaker 3:
[03:17] Spider lily, and it only blooms for like a few days. Or I always walk by my chanterelles areas to see how they're doing.

Speaker 2:
[03:25] Oh, mushrooms.

Speaker 3:
[03:26] They're kind of orange and yellow, and they look raggedy like an ear that's kind of messed up. And the turtles come at some point. Oh. It's fun to watch them make their little hole and put eggs in it and stuff.

Speaker 2:
[03:37] And about 15 minutes into this one particular walk.

Speaker 3:
[03:40] Across a creek, I've turned a corner.

Speaker 2:
[03:45] And just as she walks under a beech tree.

Speaker 3:
[03:47] My shoulder kind of brushed this branch. I looked on it and there are all these little white things on the branch.

Speaker 2:
[03:55] It looked like a fur of hundreds of tiny white cotton balls.

Speaker 3:
[04:00] I was like, oh, what are those? Is it a fungus? Is it a weird kind of lichen or something? And then I reached my hand to investigate. I pulled the branch towards me so I could really look at them. I just touched the tip of the branch. And then that's when I saw the stadium wave.

Speaker 2:
[04:19] Like when people are at a soccer stadium and people in different sections stand up and throw up their arms. So it looks like a wave spreading across the crowd.

Speaker 3:
[04:29] It was like all these little arms that went up in the air, like they were like waving.

Speaker 2:
[04:33] But then they stopped.

Speaker 3:
[04:36] It looks like they're almost like sleeping, kind of curled up like a little ball.

Speaker 2:
[04:41] Until she touched the branch again, or even just waved her hand nearby.

Speaker 3:
[04:49] It startles them and everybody goes crazy and they're waving their arms around.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] And she kept doing it.

Speaker 3:
[04:55] I would leave the branch alone, they would stop, and then I would touch it again and they would wake up again. And I swear, I was like completely mesmerized because I had never seen this before.

Speaker 2:
[05:05] She said she almost could not compute what she was seeing.

Speaker 3:
[05:08] Yes, it was a reality glitch.

Speaker 2:
[05:11] A glitch in reality. Like, why is this thing that looks like a plant or fungus responding to me?

Speaker 3:
[05:21] And then it was just like, I can't wait to show this to somebody.

Speaker 2:
[05:24] So she scooted back to the house, flew through the doors where she found Ozzy, her kid. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:29] This is Ozzy.

Speaker 2:
[05:30] Hi Ozzy.

Speaker 3:
[05:32] And I grabbed them and I'm like, Ozzy, you got to see this. Because that's our thing is we like to discover things on walks.

Speaker 2:
[05:38] So together they run back over the creek around the bend and Amy shows Ozzy the branch with all the white cotton ball things, which she still didn't know, but you have probably guessed, were Willie Aifetz and I've touched my finger to the branch and all of a sudden. Hands up! A stadium wave swept across the branch and Ozzy, like Amy, was full of questions.

Speaker 4:
[06:03] Why do they wave their arms or legs when you shake the branch or get close to them?

Speaker 3:
[06:07] Like dancing on a branch.

Speaker 4:
[06:08] What does it do for them?

Speaker 3:
[06:09] Do they experience joy? It's like they're happy.

Speaker 2:
[06:12] But are they? And by the way, what are they? Are these white, cottony fuzzballs a growth in the tree bark?

Speaker 3:
[06:21] Fungus.

Speaker 2:
[06:21] Larvae?

Speaker 3:
[06:22] A weird lichen.

Speaker 2:
[06:23] Parasites? Pollinators?

Speaker 4:
[06:25] What part do they play in the ecosystem?

Speaker 2:
[06:27] And as Ozzy was wondering all these things, they touched the bark just beneath the aphids and wondered.

Speaker 4:
[06:35] Why are they sticky?

Speaker 2:
[06:36] Sticky?

Speaker 4:
[06:37] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[06:38] So, I don't know the answers to any of those questions.

Speaker 2:
[06:41] Would you like some answers?

Speaker 3:
[06:43] Oh yeah. Yeah, I want some answers.

Speaker 5:
[06:46] Hey, hey.

Speaker 2:
[06:47] That is a voice, if you listen to Terrestrials, you probably recognize bug correspondent, Dr. Sammy Ramsey, who says Amy and Ozzy are not alone in thinking that these fuzzy white critters look like they are dancing.

Speaker 5:
[07:02] They have developed this nickname, the boogie woogie aphids, because they dance in synchrony. It's like a little disco and it's so cool to watch.

Speaker 2:
[07:12] Unfortunately, however, while they dance, they are likely not experiencing joy, as Amy hoped.

Speaker 5:
[07:20] You are looking at aphids that are in alarm mode.

Speaker 3:
[07:24] Oh, no.

Speaker 5:
[07:24] They are full of stress in this moment because they think something is trying to eat them.

Speaker 2:
[07:29] And who tries to eat them? Wasps or ladybugs, which are often seen as good luck to us, but very bad luck to an aphid.

Speaker 5:
[07:43] I need you to know, ladybug jaws are no joke.

Speaker 2:
[07:46] Really?

Speaker 5:
[07:46] They are really freaky. Jagged, munchy, they'll just chop up the aphids with their jaws.

Speaker 2:
[07:56] Like the very cutely polka-dotted sharks of the sky.

Speaker 5:
[08:00] Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:
[08:01] Me want aphid.

Speaker 5:
[08:03] Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.

Speaker 2:
[08:04] And so if a woolly aphid thinks a ladybug or a wasp is nearby, they'll all start bouncing around and dancing at the same time. Shaking those puffy white tail feather looking things that Sammy explains are actually tiny spikes made of?

Speaker 5:
[08:21] Wax. And it tells the predator, if you come over here, we'll poke you.

Speaker 2:
[08:25] Oh, wow. So can those wax spine things really like hurt the ladybug?

Speaker 5:
[08:31] No. They are not really particularly good at defending themselves.

Speaker 2:
[08:36] Is it more like a little slap?

Speaker 4:
[08:38] It's like, go away, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2:
[08:40] Like it wouldn't kill the thing, but it would annoy it?

Speaker 5:
[08:42] Yes. Annoy it enough that it leaves.

Speaker 2:
[08:45] Or it might leave? Sammy explains that often the predators are not scared away by the tiny aphids shaking their soft wax tutu.

Speaker 5:
[08:54] They're easy pickings.

Speaker 2:
[08:56] Oh, so if that doesn't work, will the aphids just run away?

Speaker 5:
[08:58] No. If you look at an aphid's legs, they're just really thin, so they can't move very quickly. Some of them don't move their entire lives.

Speaker 2:
[09:06] Oh, but wait, there's more. They also...

Speaker 5:
[09:09] Cannot jump.

Speaker 2:
[09:10] Can they fly?

Speaker 5:
[09:11] Not really.

Speaker 2:
[09:12] Sammy explains that most aphids don't have wings, and those that do can't even really flap them. They just kind of sail.

Speaker 5:
[09:20] If the wind is not blowing very well, they can't fly very effectively.

Speaker 2:
[09:25] Okay, but we're in the bug world. There's some famously very cool stuff going on there. Can they shoot boiling hot liquid like bombardier beetles?

Speaker 5:
[09:33] No.

Speaker 2:
[09:34] Shoot webs like spiders?

Speaker 5:
[09:35] No.

Speaker 2:
[09:35] Spray stinky stuff?

Speaker 5:
[09:36] Uh, no.

Speaker 2:
[09:38] Sammy says their bodies just don't have any cool features like that, but to defend themselves against hungry ladybugs, the aphids do do something incredible.

Speaker 5:
[09:49] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:50] So remember when Amy's kid Ozzy asked, why are they sticky? It turns out this is the key to their ingenious defense. So join me if you will on a very brief and very sticky tangent. See what the aphids are doing all day as they sit on a tree is sucking sap.

Speaker 5:
[10:08] Slip, slip, slip, slip.

Speaker 2:
[10:09] Turns out beach trees just like maple trees have sap. You can even turn that sap into syrup, beach tree syrup.

Speaker 1:
[10:16] I'd like one stack of flapjacks with beach tree syrup, please.

Speaker 5:
[10:21] Yum.

Speaker 2:
[10:22] So as these suckers are just imbibing gobs and gobs of this fine, sappy delicacy, eventually they hit a point where they need to poop. Because basically all they've been eating all day long is sugar, they literally poop candy. So that sticky stuff underneath them is poop candy or candy poop?

Speaker 5:
[10:49] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[10:50] Or candied poop. Anyway, whatever you call it, the point is their excrement is full of sugar, which is highly prized in the natural world because sugar, when eaten, provides a lot of fuel to power the body. You know who adores it? You definitely do know who adores it, who is all over you when you go on a picnic with your sticky, jelly sandwiches and pastries.

Speaker 5:
[11:14] Ants.

Speaker 1:
[11:14] Yum, yum.

Speaker 2:
[11:16] Ah, there's ants everywhere.

Speaker 1:
[11:17] That poopy sugar stuff, we can't get enough. We are the terminators.

Speaker 5:
[11:23] The aphids excrement is called honeydew.

Speaker 2:
[11:26] What a rebrand of doodoo. And the ants cherish this sugary aphid poop so much.

Speaker 5:
[11:37] If they see a ladybug walk over, Not so fast, you ladybug.

Speaker 2:
[11:41] The ants, who are a lot bigger and muscleier than the aphids, will team up and They will literally grab the ladybug by all of its legs and carry it away.

Speaker 3:
[11:51] Get out of the way, lady.

Speaker 5:
[11:53] You are not going to eat my sugar mama.

Speaker 2:
[11:55] Oh my goodness. So the aphids don't need to have big, strong bodies because the ants will literally fight off the predators for them?

Speaker 5:
[12:05] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[12:05] And Sammy says, that's not all.

Speaker 5:
[12:07] The ants.

Speaker 2:
[12:07] If they notice a group of aphids has sucked too much sap out of a branch or plant, like if that area starts wilting, they will pick their aphids up. No.

Speaker 3:
[12:16] Come with me if you want to live.

Speaker 5:
[12:18] And run them over to another plant.

Speaker 2:
[12:21] No. Is it a piggyback situation?

Speaker 5:
[12:23] The ants pick them up with their mouth parts and they just walk around with the aphids.

Speaker 2:
[12:28] Into their mouth.

Speaker 3:
[12:29] Are you serious?

Speaker 2:
[12:30] Yes, Amy Ray, I am. And it turns out, the ants are so dedicated to keeping these little defenseless aphids safe and well-fed that scientists call what the ants are doing.

Speaker 5:
[12:44] We call it aphid farming.

Speaker 1:
[12:46] Old MacDonald had a aphid.

Speaker 5:
[12:48] If you think of the ant as the farmer, and the aphids as cows, and they're milking them for the sugar.

Speaker 2:
[12:55] So they're like taking care of them and fighting off predators in exchange for this treasured sugary delicacy they get.

Speaker 5:
[13:03] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[13:05] So it's this really amazing example of symbiosis.

Speaker 3:
[13:09] That's incredible.

Speaker 2:
[13:10] They're each providing for each other in different ways.

Speaker 3:
[13:14] I mean, that's so beautiful and crazy to think about the ants and the aphids. It's like a little paradise.

Speaker 2:
[13:22] The surprising soundtrack of this teensy paradise. Right after this short break. Terrestrials is back. We are here with Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls.

Speaker 3:
[13:42] Hey.

Speaker 2:
[13:43] Who about a year ago fell in love with a bunch of aphids sitting on a tree branch.

Speaker 3:
[13:47] Yes, for days, I took the same path with my dogs just to go by the tree and make the little things wave at me. I'm serious, I know that's weird.

Speaker 2:
[13:56] And she asked us to find out a little bit more about what these creatures are, who they are, what their lives are like, which led us to discover that aphids can do something pretty amazing, something I didn't totally understand was possible in the natural world, which is that, you know how we are often told that to make a baby, you need a mommy and a daddy. Well, aphids, they just don't need a dad. The females can reproduce without milk.

Speaker 3:
[14:20] Oh, wow, super interesting.

Speaker 5:
[14:24] We have a word for this, it's called parthenogenesis.

Speaker 4:
[14:27] Parthenogenesis.

Speaker 5:
[14:29] Parthenogenesis.

Speaker 2:
[14:31] And there are all kinds of creatures that can do it, from lizards to sharks to condors, which are huge birds. But back to our woolly aphids.

Speaker 5:
[14:46] So a female aphid will just pop out, another aphid, without mating. And she can just keep doing this over and over. They're kind of like Russian nesting dolls, where you open one and then there's a smaller one inside of that, and then you open the next one, there's a smaller one inside of that. Inside a newborn aphid is a developing daughter aphid, and inside that daughter is the next one that's gonna be born.

Speaker 3:
[15:08] Dutters all the way down. Wow.

Speaker 2:
[15:14] So what Amy saw on that branch that day was likely a big family of moms and daughters and grandmas and granddaughters, all sipping up sap, getting stronger, and rapidly cloning themselves from 100 to 1,000 to maybe 10,000, which is why some humans don't have the nicest of names for them, sometimes calling them plant lice. Oh no, because in addition to beech trees, aphids also love to suck the fluids out of cabbage plants, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, things we love to grow. When a colony of all these girlies gets to sipping all day, they can do a lot of damage to a farmer's crops.

Speaker 3:
[15:56] That's sad.

Speaker 2:
[15:57] But interestingly, it is thanks in part to how damaging aphids can be to plants, that scientists discovered something incredible about plants, something plants are doing behind our backs, almost like in the movie Toy Story, where the toys come to life when we aren't looking. It turns out that plants, when they are attacked by aphids…

Speaker 5:
[16:21] When the aphids stick their mouthparts into the plants, the plants are singing. Plants? Yeah, yeah, the plants.

Speaker 2:
[16:27] The most quiet, famously quiet beings. They're singing?

Speaker 5:
[16:33] Sort of.

Speaker 2:
[16:33] Sammy explains they aren't singing using sound, but instead using chemicals.

Speaker 5:
[16:39] Volatile organic compounds, we call them VOCs.

Speaker 2:
[16:42] And these VOCs are released from the plant in a kind of spritz of chemicals. The chemicals that contain a message. A sort of alarm cry that can carry through the forest, saying something like, Something is chewing on me. But who would these messages be meant for? Would it be other plants?

Speaker 5:
[17:10] Bingo. When a nearby plant detects this chemical alarm signal, the plant can release a kind of repellent, like a literal bug spray, to keep the aphids from coming to get them.

Speaker 3:
[17:21] Wow. I love that.

Speaker 2:
[17:23] That is so genius. It's like a song or a chemical cry that protects their neighbors.

Speaker 5:
[17:31] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[17:35] And it turns out the plant's chemical communications can also be received by someone else.

Speaker 5:
[17:45] Wasps.

Speaker 2:
[17:46] Who then fly in to attack the aphids, meaning?

Speaker 5:
[17:51] Plants have figured out how to get a bodyguard on speed dial. Like, I need you to think about that. That is amazing.

Speaker 2:
[17:59] It is amazing.

Speaker 3:
[18:01] That is amazing.

Speaker 2:
[18:03] Okay, Sammy, I feel just like a need to just like recap everything you just told us about all these different messages whizzing through the forest. So you got the aphid. Aphid lands on a plant and starts sucking the sap. Who then detect the wasp and start dancing their boogie woogie to fend them off. Which probably won't work, so the nearby muscly ants rush in. To carry the aphids away to a new place.

Speaker 1:
[19:25] we got you. 🎵 We got you, we got you, we got you. 🎵 Go away, boogie woogie woogie.

Speaker 2:
[19:33] And Sammy says when you think about all these different messages and calls and responses coming together, you begin to hear it. The forest.

Speaker 5:
[19:54] Harmony. Even though the notes that they're singing are different, they're all singing the same song.

Speaker 2:
[20:08] Oh, and what is the song?

Speaker 5:
[20:11] This is the song of balance.

Speaker 2:
[20:20] Amy, what actually is harmony?

Speaker 3:
[20:24] What a question.

Speaker 2:
[20:25] Oh, let's talk about the forest harmony. Well, it got me thinking about musical harmony. Like when Amy sings with Emily on a song, like on, say, Closer to Fine. Ugh, like, why does that feel so good?

Speaker 3:
[20:49] I mean, what is harmony? It's interesting because, you know, music is sound waves. Sound is a wave. And harmony is different waves that fit together like a puzzle. Huh.

Speaker 2:
[21:19] A lot of us can be uncomfortable with difference when we encounter it in our lives. Different opinions, different beliefs, it can make us turn away. But what Amy explains is that you cannot get harmony with sameness.

Speaker 3:
[21:38] You need difference. That's the magic.

Speaker 1:
[21:42] Huh.

Speaker 2:
[23:18] Alan Goffinski in Harmony with Indigo Girl, Amy Rae. Does that make him an Indigo boy? I don't know, you tell me, and there is nothing else cool about to have a go...

Speaker 1:
[23:32] What's that?

Speaker 4:
[23:33] Excuse me, I have a question. Me too. Me three. Me four. The Badgers.

Speaker 2:
[23:38] Listeners, the badgering questions for the expert. Are you ready?

Speaker 5:
[23:41] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[23:42] Hi, my name is Travis. I'm six years old. My question is, how much does an aphid weigh?

Speaker 5:
[23:49] So before when I was weighing aphids in the lab...

Speaker 2:
[23:52] Oh, you have weighed them?

Speaker 5:
[23:53] I've weighed a lot of aphids.

Speaker 2:
[23:55] I've weighed a lot of aphids in my day.

Speaker 5:
[23:58] 0.3 to 0.5 milligrams.

Speaker 2:
[24:01] How many grains of sugar would that be?

Speaker 5:
[24:03] Just a couple.

Speaker 2:
[24:04] Wow, so they're little.

Speaker 5:
[24:05] They're little guys.

Speaker 1:
[24:07] Just a spoonful of sugar would be hundreds of aphids or more.

Speaker 4:
[24:12] Hi, I'm Aurelia. I'm eight years old. My question is, what is a woolly aphid and can we make sweaters out of it?

Speaker 5:
[24:19] Oh, that's a great question.

Speaker 2:
[24:21] I know. Like, can you shear an aphid like how you shear a sheep?

Speaker 5:
[24:25] I think you would have a really hard time making a sweater out of them. It's not wool. It's wax that looks like wool. And wax is not great as a clothing.

Speaker 2:
[24:35] Oh, because it might melt in the heat.

Speaker 1:
[24:38] You could make a candle.

Speaker 2:
[24:39] Oh, I like that. A teensy little aphid candle, which you could blow out for a teensy tiny wish. Hi, I'm Robin. I'm 78.

Speaker 5:
[24:49] And I'm also Lulu's mom.

Speaker 1:
[24:51] Mom question!

Speaker 2:
[24:53] Should we be eating aphid poop? And why did you wonder that? Because we wouldn't have to grow expensive sugar cane with all sorts of chemicals.

Speaker 5:
[25:03] Great question. Curious humans out foraging for edible plants and forests have indeed been known to eat honeydew, like literally right off the tree sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[25:11] Wow, neat! But wait, there's more.

Speaker 5:
[25:14] And, okay, so I know it might sound a little gross, but it's possible that you already have eaten aphid poop. So depending on what kind of honey you've consumed, there are bees that will fly to aphids, they will suck up that honeydew that is officially the aphid's poop, and they will use that to make their honey. You're kidding.

Speaker 2:
[25:35] He is not kidding. And apparently some people think it is such a delicacy that they harvest and sell this very special poop honey. I ended up ordering some from New Zealand.

Speaker 5:
[25:48] No.

Speaker 2:
[25:48] Do you want to taste with me? Honeydew honey. Okay, opening the little jar here.

Speaker 5:
[25:53] Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2:
[25:54] It's a little frothy on the top. Am I going to eat that? Okay, ready? All right, here we go.

Speaker 5:
[26:04] It's actually sweeter than honey, but it's an acquired taste.

Speaker 2:
[26:09] The aftertaste to me tastes a little peepee-esque. It does. It's a little sharp. Okay, so sweeter than sweet with notes of urine.

Speaker 5:
[26:17] Taste test completed.

Speaker 4:
[26:19] Hello, my name is Felix and I am nine years old. How many aphids would it take to devour an entire sunflower in a day?

Speaker 5:
[26:30] So they wouldn't chew up the flower the way that a beetle would if it was eating the flower. They suck all the juice out of it and then the flower just kind of flops over. But how many aphids would it take? Hundreds and hundreds of aphids all feeding in one day? I bet you they could make it limp for sure.

Speaker 2:
[26:50] Okay, I need to jump the line here because I'm still thinking about something you said, which is that aphids don't need males to reproduce. So does that mean there just are no male aphids?

Speaker 5:
[27:00] They do have male and female.

Speaker 2:
[27:02] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[27:03] But the males are seasonal in the fall.

Speaker 2:
[27:05] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The males are seasonal?

Speaker 5:
[27:09] Yeah, seasonal boys.

Speaker 2:
[27:10] What does that mean?

Speaker 5:
[27:12] So the aphids pick up on the change in day length as winter approaches.

Speaker 2:
[27:16] Oh, like how much light there is in a day?

Speaker 5:
[27:19] And those females will actually start to produce male offspring. They have wings.

Speaker 3:
[27:24] Oh, no way.

Speaker 2:
[27:27] So, describe for radio, what are you looking at? What do you see? I showed Amy a picture of one of these winged male woolly aphids.

Speaker 3:
[27:33] It looks like a fairy. Yeah, with these iridescent wings that are like rainbow-y.

Speaker 2:
[27:40] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[27:40] Like little beautiful, delicate little wings.

Speaker 2:
[27:43] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[27:44] Like how long does it take them to sprout those wings? Like is it, if I sit there long enough, will it happen?

Speaker 2:
[27:50] Great question. I got to check with Sammy.

Speaker 5:
[27:52] So for Amy, what she would really need to do is just visit that population over the course of the fall and watch as there's this transition that happens, almost like a light switch is flipped, where she'll start seeing ones that have wings. Her best option for seeing them will be to look all around, just kind of spin in the forest and do a...

Speaker 1:
[28:12] The hills are alive.

Speaker 5:
[28:17] They'll be spiraling all around her.

Speaker 3:
[28:25] I know I know to look for that.

Speaker 2:
[28:29] All right. I think that is a good place to leave it, and I won't tell you that aphids poop out so much honeydew, that if they live in too dense of a colony, young aphids can sometimes drown in their own doo-doo, which is possibly the worst way to go. I won't tell you that because I'm nice. Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Alan Goffinski with sound design by Alan and Mira Bertwin Tonic. Sarah Sambach is our executive producer. Our team also includes Ana Gonzalez, Tanya Chala, Natalia Ramirez and Joe Plord. Fact checking this episode by Diane Kelly. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the Templeton Foundation. Thank you. Big thanks also to Sammy Ramsey, who has a new documentary that just came out called Secrets of the Bees from National Geographic. It is unbelievable and I hope that it generates lots of buzz. And thank you to Amy Rae and Ozzy. It was a dream come true to get to do this with you. Oh, that sound means we have got some April birthdays to shout out for our Explorers Club members. All right, Alan, here we go.

Speaker 1:
[29:37] Happy, happy birthday.

Speaker 2:
[29:39] Ada Alden Anayis.

Speaker 1:
[29:41] Clover, Grace and Lyndon.

Speaker 2:
[29:43] Cobalt, Cooper, Karina. Dean Eleanor Eliana.

Speaker 1:
[29:47] Elliot Finley, Graham, Henry.

Speaker 2:
[29:49] Juniper.

Speaker 1:
[29:50] Kai, Noah, Rafi.

Speaker 2:
[29:51] Ella.

Speaker 1:
[29:52] Rowan, Robin, Elias.

Speaker 2:
[29:53] And finally, Simon. Happiest Bees. You are all as sweet as the doo doo of an aphid. And finally, Amy actually has a present for you. It is a tip about how to be present to help you notice the little treasures in this world like aphids.

Speaker 3:
[30:13] Take walks barefoot.

Speaker 2:
[30:14] Oh.

Speaker 3:
[30:15] Because you have to really look where you're going. And it really helps you see things.

Speaker 2:
[30:21] Very clever. If you would like to join the Explorers Club and experience off-key singing from me and Alan along with ad-free listening and other perks, go to terrestrials.org/join and see if it's for you. Thank you everyone for listening and see you in a couple spins of this dirty old planet of ours. Okay, guys, club is closing.

Speaker 3:
[31:48] Get out of here. We're leaving too, bye.