WEBVTT 1 00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:13.504 This is Sidedoor, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. 2 00:00:13.504 --> 00:00:14.804 I'm Lizzie Peabody. 3 00:00:24.693 --> 00:00:28.475 Chapter One: I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends. 4 00:00:29.008 --> 00:00:30.308 All right, here we are. 5 00:00:31.012 --> 00:00:37.035 I'm about to head into a building where you will likely never go, which might be a good thing. 6 00:00:37.890 --> 00:00:40.129 I feel like I just walked into a horror film. [laughs] 7 00:00:40.551 --> 00:00:45.804 Behind the Smithsonian's largest storage facility is a small cinder block structure, 8 00:00:46.082 --> 00:00:51.271 and inside is a room I can only describe as "science lab meets murder basement." 9 00:00:51.356 --> 00:00:54.343 All of my spidey senses are going off, like, meep, meep, meep! 10 00:00:54.343 --> 00:00:55.043 Get out of here! 11 00:00:55.043 --> 00:00:56.987 This is—nothing good happens here. [laughs] 12 00:00:57.314 --> 00:01:03.121 There's some chest freezers, sinks filled with loose scalpels and surgical scissors. 13 00:01:03.480 --> 00:01:08.420 Jars of ominous-looking fluids and fleshy things. 14 00:01:08.474 --> 00:01:09.774 I see tweezers. 15 00:01:10.063 --> 00:01:10.802 I see bones. 16 00:01:10.802 --> 00:01:12.102 Is that a tray of, um, head? 17 00:01:12.568 --> 00:01:15.202 So that is a salvaged whale skull. 18 00:01:15.202 --> 00:01:17.241 I don't remember off the top of my head what kind of whale, but he was ... 19 00:01:17.241 --> 00:01:23.116 I'm following Inger Toraason, the osteo preparator for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. 20 00:01:23.394 --> 00:01:26.185 Osteo as in bone, preparator as in preparer-of. 21 00:01:27.909 --> 00:01:34.607 And this is the osteo-prep lab where he works alongside some unusual colleagues. 22 00:01:35.384 --> 00:01:36.954 And I am about to meet them. 23 00:01:38.516 --> 00:01:44.407 Inger leads me over to a walk-in freezer, which is actually more like a freezer on Opposite Day. 24 00:01:44.718 --> 00:01:46.576 It's keeping warm air in. 25 00:01:46.662 --> 00:01:48.060 Okay, should we peek inside? 26 00:01:48.060 --> 00:01:49.360 Yeah, let's say hi. 27 00:01:50.067 --> 00:01:53.235 Inger opens the door, and the first thing I notice is ... 28 00:01:53.368 --> 00:01:55.354 There is a pungent smell in here. 29 00:01:55.354 --> 00:01:56.107 Yes. 30 00:01:56.107 --> 00:02:00.418 So I don't—I don't have a sense of smell, so that's like my superpower for this job. 31 00:02:00.418 --> 00:02:04.002 But the beetles have a very specific smell to them. 32 00:02:04.584 --> 00:02:05.785 That's right. 33 00:02:05.785 --> 00:02:07.085 Beetles. 34 00:02:07.163 --> 00:02:08.617 Flesh-eating beetles. 35 00:02:09.310 --> 00:02:10.700 Thousands of them. 36 00:02:11.233 --> 00:02:17.157 And they do have a unique smell, like scorched nuts and musty sawdust. 37 00:02:17.562 --> 00:02:21.676 And it's so strong, the air inside their warm room feels chewable. 38 00:02:21.969 --> 00:02:24.640 If I'm breathing heavily, it's because I'm breathing through my mouth. 39 00:02:24.933 --> 00:02:25.798 Yeah. [laughs] 40 00:02:25.798 --> 00:02:31.166 Inger lifts the lid off a metal box, dips his hand in and pulls out ... 41 00:02:31.166 --> 00:02:31.866 Whoa! 42 00:02:31.866 --> 00:02:34.735 All right, so you've got this little cardboard box. 43 00:02:35.332 --> 00:02:37.106 And what is in there? 44 00:02:37.127 --> 00:02:39.205 So we have a little songbird in there. 45 00:02:39.915 --> 00:02:46.836 I can barely see the bird underneath the moving mass of black bugs, each about the size of a grain of rice. 46 00:02:47.692 --> 00:02:50.404 And they are just, like, kind of swarming all over. 47 00:02:50.404 --> 00:02:54.433 You can see it's—the little bird itself almost looks like it's moving. 48 00:02:54.433 --> 00:02:55.733 Yeah. 49 00:02:56.198 --> 00:03:01.152 Some of these beetles look rather beetlish: black shiny bodies, six legs, antennae. 50 00:03:01.254 --> 00:03:04.812 But others look more like roly-polies or little millipedes. 51 00:03:04.881 --> 00:03:07.047 Squishy guys with tons of little legs. 52 00:03:07.047 --> 00:03:10.301 So the guys who do most of the work are the larvae, 53 00:03:10.386 --> 00:03:13.544 and so you can see them crawling all over this guy and all over my hand, too. 54 00:03:13.544 --> 00:03:14.753 Yeah, yeah, they're all over your hand. 55 00:03:14.753 --> 00:03:18.443 Wait, so are you worried that they're gonna nibble on your fingers? 56 00:03:18.443 --> 00:03:20.338 No, they're only gonna eat dead things. 57 00:03:22.210 --> 00:03:28.461 Dermestid beetles have been helping museum professionals like Inger clean skeletons for over a century. 58 00:03:29.180 --> 00:03:34.980 That's because the Smithsonian has hundreds of thousands of animal skeletons cataloged in its collections. 59 00:03:35.346 --> 00:03:37.956 But these nice, neat skeletons don't come in that way. 60 00:03:38.266 --> 00:03:41.120 They're just dead animals when they arrive at Inger's lab. 61 00:03:41.735 --> 00:03:43.287 And that's where the beetles come in. 62 00:03:43.742 --> 00:03:49.229 These flesh-eating dermestids work quickly and delicately to eat meat from bone, 63 00:03:49.748 --> 00:03:53.243 more quickly and delicately than clumsy human fingers could, 64 00:03:53.602 --> 00:03:56.107 crawling in the nooks and crannies to clean the flesh, 65 00:03:56.107 --> 00:04:01.963 tendons and ligaments off a songbird in a day, off a fox in a few days to a week. 66 00:04:02.450 --> 00:04:06.170 But like most colleagues, the beetles do have preferences. 67 00:04:06.625 --> 00:04:08.033 They don't love fish. 68 00:04:08.214 --> 00:04:09.016 Huh! 69 00:04:09.016 --> 00:04:11.720 And if something's been sitting for a while, they'll get tired of it. 70 00:04:12.157 --> 00:04:13.823 Or if they've been eating a lot of the same thing. 71 00:04:13.823 --> 00:04:16.627 So, like, we had a number of beaked whales go through, 72 00:04:16.627 --> 00:04:19.527 and by the last beaked whale, they're like, "I don't want to eat this anymore." 73 00:04:19.527 --> 00:04:20.425 [laughs] "No more whale." 74 00:04:20.425 --> 00:04:22.075 I'm like, "You have to." [laughs] 75 00:04:22.075 --> 00:04:25.195 Wait, so how do you encourage them? 76 00:04:25.392 --> 00:04:30.407 So you can encourage them with—if you rub, like, fats, like bacon grease or cod liver oil, 77 00:04:30.407 --> 00:04:33.618 you can rub it on meat to kind of entice them back to be like, "Look, it's fresh, it's new." 78 00:04:33.618 --> 00:04:33.968 Ah! 79 00:04:33.968 --> 00:04:34.668 Uh-huh. 80 00:04:34.668 --> 00:04:36.651 And then I'll bring them—bring them back over to finish up. 81 00:04:36.656 --> 00:04:41.232 And they're like, "Wait a minute, this is just the same old whale I was eating before covered in bacon grease." 82 00:04:41.232 --> 00:04:41.987 Yeah. 83 00:04:41.987 --> 00:04:45.690 Speaking of whale, Inger leads me one room over. 84 00:04:46.161 --> 00:04:51.989 So here's an oversized room, but we do have a beaked whale that's almost finished getting cleaned up over here. 85 00:04:51.989 --> 00:04:53.289 Oh, wow! 86 00:04:53.707 --> 00:04:56.085 So yes, the smell is definitely worse in here. 87 00:04:56.085 --> 00:04:57.464 [laughs] 88 00:04:57.464 --> 00:05:01.221 This is where my ability to narrate what I was seeing completely broke down, 89 00:05:01.221 --> 00:05:04.218 because my brain was just shutting down from the smell. 90 00:05:04.753 --> 00:05:07.162 Yeah, just trays of bones. 91 00:05:09.320 --> 00:05:12.618 In this room, the bones sit on trays out in the open, 92 00:05:12.740 --> 00:05:17.822 with beetles crawling all over, so we were effectively standing in the beetle colony itself. 93 00:05:18.192 --> 00:05:25.377 And this trusty beetle colony has been working away behind the scenes, paid only in food, for nearly a hundred years. 94 00:05:26.940 --> 00:05:30.918 The beetles aren't just cleaning flesh off specimens for the Smithsonian's collections, 95 00:05:31.484 --> 00:05:34.022 they're a big part of the collections themselves. 96 00:05:34.403 --> 00:05:37.508 And that's because beetles are a vital part of the natural world. 97 00:05:37.750 --> 00:05:42.349 They're pollinating plants, turning poop into nutrient-rich soil, eating pests. 98 00:05:42.550 --> 00:05:47.392 They're the fireflies lighting up your summer picnics and the ladybugs making your wishes come true. 99 00:05:50.650 --> 00:05:57.009 So this time on Sidedoor, we're opening the Smithsonian vaults to give a little love to the beetles, 100 00:05:57.302 --> 00:06:02.066 the little creepers that make up nearly a quarter of all animal life on Earth. 101 00:06:02.585 --> 00:06:06.841 And learn about the single adaptation that's enabled them to dig, jump, 102 00:06:06.841 --> 00:06:13.678 fly and crawl their way into nearly every environment on Earth—including your home. 103 00:06:14.229 --> 00:06:15.289 Right now. 104 00:06:15.289 --> 00:06:18.126 Doesn't matter how much you clean, there be beetles. 105 00:06:18.918 --> 00:06:20.375 So let's go catch beetlemania! 106 00:06:21.954 --> 00:06:24.116 But first, I have got to get out of this warm room. 107 00:06:24.390 --> 00:06:26.602 Okay, I think this might be as much as I can take in here. 108 00:06:26.602 --> 00:06:27.130 Yeah. 109 00:06:27.130 --> 00:06:27.830 For the moment. 110 00:06:27.830 --> 00:06:29.436 Unless—is there anything else ... 111 00:06:31.091 --> 00:06:44.919 Chapter 2: Magical Mystery Tour. 112 00:06:45.958 --> 00:06:48.556 Now of course, it's gonna be impossible to show you everything. 113 00:06:48.556 --> 00:06:51.352 I'm at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, 114 00:06:51.352 --> 00:06:54.303 getting a tour of the beetle collections with entomologist Floyd Shockley. 115 00:06:55.726 --> 00:06:58.334 You might remember him from our episode about cicadas. 116 00:06:58.531 --> 00:06:59.831 Oh, goodness. 117 00:07:00.390 --> 00:07:01.690 I mean, they're so gentle. 118 00:07:01.912 --> 00:07:03.212 You are putting it on your face. 119 00:07:04.300 --> 00:07:05.502 Oh, he flew away! 120 00:07:05.502 --> 00:07:07.341 Oh, that's okay. 121 00:07:07.458 --> 00:07:13.388 Floyd is the collections manager, and the Smithsonian's collection of beetles spans far and wide. 122 00:07:13.388 --> 00:07:16.733 It's on every floor, and in multiple buildings. 123 00:07:16.801 --> 00:07:22.026 There are over eight million beetles here at the Smithsonian—officially in the collections, that is. 124 00:07:22.026 --> 00:07:25.179 There are probably more checking out the gift shop and admiring the fossils. 125 00:07:25.456 --> 00:07:26.257 Why? 126 00:07:26.257 --> 00:07:29.105 Beetles are hands down the largest animal group on Earth. 127 00:07:29.398 --> 00:07:31.445 That's right, animal group. 128 00:07:31.802 --> 00:07:36.957 They're not a single species, but actually 400,000 different species. 129 00:07:37.394 --> 00:07:40.082 Do you know how many human species there are on Earth? 130 00:07:40.615 --> 00:07:41.315 One. 131 00:07:41.315 --> 00:07:45.503 So if you imagine you're trying to describe Homo sapiens, 132 00:07:45.503 --> 00:07:52.022 how many would you have to collect, and from how many places to fully encompass the species? 133 00:07:52.396 --> 00:07:53.198 A lot. 134 00:07:53.198 --> 00:07:55.525 Now multiply that by 400,000. 135 00:07:55.525 --> 00:08:02.612 You can see how collections can get quite large quite quickly if you're trying to do the totality of each of those species. 136 00:08:02.970 --> 00:08:08.469 The Smithsonian's beetle collection is one of the largest in the world, and growing all the time. 137 00:08:08.843 --> 00:08:14.476 It's a reference collection for citizens and scientists of today and tomorrow to study evolution, 138 00:08:14.476 --> 00:08:18.659 identify invasive pests, even get ideas for technological innovation. 139 00:08:19.194 --> 00:08:22.978 Because beetles are masters of adaptation. 140 00:08:23.449 --> 00:08:27.639 Floyd opens one of the rows and rows of cabinets here in the collections. 141 00:08:27.639 --> 00:08:28.747 Let's see. 142 00:08:28.747 --> 00:08:30.047 Pulls out a drawer. 143 00:08:30.273 --> 00:08:33.388 Lifts a tray of beetles delicately pinned to felt. 144 00:08:33.388 --> 00:08:36.374 So here's just a nice random assortment of beetles. 145 00:08:36.374 --> 00:08:40.709 The beetles in this tray look so different, I wouldn't have even known to call them all "beetles." 146 00:08:40.709 --> 00:08:43.932 There's tiny little brown guys the size of the head of a pin. 147 00:08:44.386 --> 00:08:45.526 And some bigger show-offs. 148 00:08:45.526 --> 00:08:47.294 They do blue, they do green, they do purple. 149 00:08:47.294 --> 00:08:48.014 They're so shiny! 150 00:08:48.014 --> 00:08:48.714 They have yellow. 151 00:08:48.714 --> 00:08:49.764 There are different patterns. 152 00:08:49.764 --> 00:08:51.701 This one has zigzags on its back. 153 00:08:51.770 --> 00:08:53.070 This one has polka dots. 154 00:08:53.151 --> 00:08:56.565 There's a brown one the size of my thumb that Floyd calls "cute." 155 00:08:56.666 --> 00:08:59.085 Okay, you and I have different definitions of "cute." 156 00:08:59.170 --> 00:09:00.819 That looks like a cockroach to me. 157 00:09:01.081 --> 00:09:01.642 That? 158 00:09:01.642 --> 00:09:02.002 Yeah. 159 00:09:02.002 --> 00:09:02.702 Oh, I don't know. 160 00:09:02.702 --> 00:09:05.410 And some don't even look like beetles to me. 161 00:09:05.672 --> 00:09:07.047 I can't believe that's a beetle. 162 00:09:07.116 --> 00:09:08.641 It looks like a beetle that got squashed. 163 00:09:08.641 --> 00:09:10.487 That's actually one of my favorite beetles. 164 00:09:10.487 --> 00:09:11.852 It's called the violin beetle. 165 00:09:11.852 --> 00:09:13.038 And you can see why. 166 00:09:13.038 --> 00:09:13.738 Yeah. 167 00:09:13.738 --> 00:09:19.012 It's flat, with a long neck and a body in the curvy shape of a ukulele or a violin. 168 00:09:19.306 --> 00:09:21.373 But Floyd says there's a good reason for that. 169 00:09:21.373 --> 00:09:24.676 This one is a subcortical predator. 170 00:09:24.676 --> 00:09:26.760 Subcortical means "under bark," and 171 00:09:26.760 --> 00:09:33.247 so having this particular flattened appearance makes it easier for it to get into the cracks and crevices. 172 00:09:33.492 --> 00:09:37.804 There's another beetle, a scavenger, that's as round as the violin beetle is flat. 173 00:09:37.804 --> 00:09:40.129 This one is bigger than a ping pong ball, I would say. 174 00:09:40.129 --> 00:09:42.133 And they actually get a little bit larger than that. 175 00:09:42.133 --> 00:09:45.440 The reason we didn't include it is we couldn't get the lid on the drawer. 176 00:09:45.995 --> 00:09:49.958 The smallest beetles are so small they would require a microscope to see. 177 00:09:50.368 --> 00:09:51.701 And the largest? 178 00:09:52.207 --> 00:09:53.897 Well, you'll find out later. 179 00:09:55.940 --> 00:10:01.260 So how is it that there are so many different variations of the same kind of insect? 180 00:10:01.768 --> 00:10:04.715 Well, it's been a long time in the making. 181 00:10:07.940 --> 00:10:10.047 Beetles have been around since the time of the dinosaurs. 182 00:10:10.690 --> 00:10:14.777 They first appear in the fossil record more than 240 million years ago. 183 00:10:15.296 --> 00:10:24.439 Floyd says—and he says this very strongly—that beetles owe much of their evolutionary success to one key feature: their elytra. 184 00:10:25.311 --> 00:10:31.052 In insects that have wings, the vast majority of them have two pairs of wings. 185 00:10:31.426 --> 00:10:36.349 But in beetles, the outer pair of wings have evolved into a sort of hard shell. 186 00:10:36.642 --> 00:10:42.528 They're essentially wing covers that sit on the beetle's back and protect the delicate flying wings underneath. 187 00:10:42.757 --> 00:10:46.272 So that when they fold their wings away, they have protection. 188 00:10:46.272 --> 00:10:48.514 Because if they tear those wings, they can't fly anymore. 189 00:10:48.599 --> 00:10:49.739 They don't grow them back. 190 00:10:49.739 --> 00:10:53.923 So it's incredibly important, especially if you're a really big beetle, a heavy beetle, 191 00:10:54.136 --> 00:10:58.192 you protect those wings at all costs because otherwise you can't get around. 192 00:10:58.791 --> 00:11:04.758 Over millions of years, beetles and their wing covers, they've adapted to almost every environment on Earth. 193 00:11:05.373 --> 00:11:08.088 Take the diving beetle. 194 00:11:08.088 --> 00:11:12.055 They use their elytra to trap air so they can stay underwater longer. 195 00:11:12.055 --> 00:11:17.527 So they'll put a bubble under the elytra, but because it's also so hard, 196 00:11:17.982 --> 00:11:22.939 when they are swallowed, they will actually swim through the digestive system. 197 00:11:23.025 --> 00:11:24.504 This was done in frogs. 198 00:11:24.504 --> 00:11:25.204 [laughs] 199 00:11:25.204 --> 00:11:31.762 They'll swim quickly through the digestive system, and then come out the anus of the frog and go swimming off. 200 00:11:32.025 --> 00:11:35.533 The frog thinks it ate something and the beetle gets away. 201 00:11:35.533 --> 00:11:37.283 [laughs] 202 00:11:38.590 --> 00:11:42.923 Some beetles have elytra so strong they're nearly indestructible. 203 00:11:43.446 --> 00:11:46.311 These are fittingly called ironclad beetles. 204 00:11:47.173 --> 00:11:49.759 They can actually survive being driven over by a car. 205 00:11:51.178 --> 00:11:56.819 And we have to use special techniques just to pin them because we can't push a pin through their elytra. 206 00:11:56.819 --> 00:12:01.532 We have to burr a hole with a diamond-tipped drill or heat it to go through. 207 00:12:02.660 --> 00:12:08.384 Beetle elytra don't just provide brute force protection, they've evolved into adaptive colors, 208 00:12:08.678 --> 00:12:13.487 like iridescent green and blue beetles that mimic the glare of sunlight on wet foliage, 209 00:12:13.653 --> 00:12:16.135 keeping them hidden from birds in the rainforest. 210 00:12:16.525 --> 00:12:20.741 Or red beetles that signal "I taste bad" to predators, 211 00:12:21.099 --> 00:12:26.855 like the bright red leaf beetle that Indigenous hunters in parts of Africa would smear on arrow tips. 212 00:12:26.860 --> 00:12:32.546 The blood, just the blood, is so toxic that it can bring down buffalo. 213 00:12:32.940 --> 00:12:36.945 From beneath the protection of the elytra, over millions of years, 214 00:12:37.080 --> 00:12:42.662 the basic beetle body has become a canvas for a staggering number of evolutionary solutions. 215 00:12:44.081 --> 00:12:45.956 But beetles aren't just wild and wacky. 216 00:12:46.010 --> 00:12:51.951 They're super helpful to humans in ways that are largely invisible to us, mostly by eating what they eat. 217 00:12:52.263 --> 00:12:57.059 Floyd says without beetles, we would quickly be buried under as much as 30 feet of decomposing animal bodies. 218 00:12:59.418 --> 00:13:03.959 You know, humans, we embalm ourselves and stick ourselves in a box and put ourselves in the ground. 219 00:13:04.269 --> 00:13:10.384 So taking us out of the equation, everything else requires insect intervention to break down. 220 00:13:11.481 --> 00:13:14.030 And beetles don't just eat organic. 221 00:13:14.276 --> 00:13:16.038 There's one kind of beetle larva ... 222 00:13:16.284 --> 00:13:23.689 That can feed on things that we used to think couldn't be disposed of properly, like Styrofoam and plastic. 223 00:13:23.689 --> 00:13:28.723 They can eat it and break it down into organic compounds that are benign in the environment. 224 00:13:29.049 --> 00:13:30.762 They can eat our trash. 225 00:13:30.895 --> 00:13:34.099 They can biodegrade the non-biodegradable. 226 00:13:34.762 --> 00:13:40.165 And while bees and butterflies tend to get the credit, beetles are also pollinators. 227 00:13:40.764 --> 00:13:48.644 They're not as elegant as bees and butterflies that are very gentle when they're gathering pollen. 228 00:13:48.644 --> 00:13:50.248 Beetles are little bulldozers. 229 00:13:50.248 --> 00:13:53.618 So when they land, they are just tearing their way through the flower. 230 00:13:53.618 --> 00:13:57.753 And as they do that, it is accumulating on hairs on their body. 231 00:13:58.432 --> 00:14:00.374 Then they fly to the next one and start it all over. 232 00:14:00.374 --> 00:14:06.322 So the things that they pollinate often require beetle pollination. 233 00:14:06.937 --> 00:14:14.041 Beetles in general are just—yeah, they're like rhinos wandering through the—through the environment. 234 00:14:14.559 --> 00:14:15.506 Like little tanks. 235 00:14:15.506 --> 00:14:16.206 That's right. 236 00:14:16.206 --> 00:14:18.999 That's exactly right. 237 00:14:19.132 --> 00:14:22.465 Back in the collections, Floyd opens another drawer. 238 00:14:23.545 --> 00:14:28.416 Inside is what I can only describe as an absurdly large insect. 239 00:14:28.421 --> 00:14:31.849 This guy is a behemoth! 240 00:14:31.886 --> 00:14:34.196 These guys are known as Goliath beetles. 241 00:14:34.196 --> 00:14:36.602 Obviously the name comes from their size. 242 00:14:36.602 --> 00:14:37.580 Yeah. 243 00:14:37.580 --> 00:14:38.880 Look down at your hand. 244 00:14:39.104 --> 00:14:40.404 Open it up. 245 00:14:40.628 --> 00:14:43.126 This beetle would take up your entire palm. 246 00:14:43.371 --> 00:14:47.276 So to turn into an adult this size, the larva has to be bigger than that. 247 00:14:47.276 --> 00:14:47.976 What? 248 00:14:47.976 --> 00:14:53.074 So larvae of some of the largest species of this can be the size of a softball. 249 00:14:53.162 --> 00:14:54.389 A softball-sized grub. 250 00:14:54.389 --> 00:14:55.245 Mm-hmm. 251 00:14:55.245 --> 00:14:57.224 That does give me shivers. 252 00:14:59.280 --> 00:15:02.166 How can a beetle's larva be bigger than the beetle itself? 253 00:15:02.949 --> 00:15:06.240 That would be like if your baby was bigger than you, right? 254 00:15:07.136 --> 00:15:10.351 Okay, you have to understand the beetle life cycle. 255 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:14.993 See, like butterflies, most beetles go through complete metamorphosis. 256 00:15:15.666 --> 00:15:19.402 From an egg, the larvae emerge, looking like juicy little grubs. 257 00:15:20.018 --> 00:15:23.320 The grub's job is to eat, and depending on the type of beetle, 258 00:15:23.470 --> 00:15:29.405 they could be eating animal flesh off skeletons, Styrofoam from a landfill, dung, all kinds of stuff. 259 00:15:30.053 --> 00:15:38.124 Once the beetle larva is as large as it will become, it pupates and emerges transformed into its adult beetle self. 260 00:15:38.883 --> 00:15:41.351 And then it flies away—or tries to. 261 00:15:42.351 --> 00:15:48.194 Smaller beetles look just like any other insect flying, so they're kind of facing front-back, 262 00:15:48.194 --> 00:15:50.500 with a little bit of a tilt, and the wings are coming out. 263 00:15:50.923 --> 00:15:54.802 As beetles get larger, the way they fly changes. 264 00:15:55.016 --> 00:15:58.831 Take, for example, our gentle giant, the Goliath beetle. 265 00:15:59.189 --> 00:16:00.853 This guy weighs a lot. 266 00:16:01.115 --> 00:16:03.507 Larger than a golf ball, but not quite a baseball. 267 00:16:03.507 --> 00:16:04.207 Whoa! 268 00:16:04.207 --> 00:16:06.091 That's the equivalent weight. 269 00:16:06.091 --> 00:16:06.974 Baseballs are heavy. 270 00:16:06.974 --> 00:16:09.489 That thing hits you flying, that's an injury. 271 00:16:09.622 --> 00:16:14.043 And because they're so heavy, they kind of tip backwards as they fly. 272 00:16:14.272 --> 00:16:15.572 They fly like Tinkerbell. 273 00:16:16.020 --> 00:16:16.720 Kind of. 274 00:16:16.720 --> 00:16:17.656 Kind of like that, yeah. 275 00:16:17.656 --> 00:16:18.998 If Tinkerbell were a tank. 276 00:16:19.885 --> 00:16:22.932 Or like when a kid carries a cat by holding it under the front legs 277 00:16:22.932 --> 00:16:25.653 so the rest of the body just sort of dangles there below. 278 00:16:25.995 --> 00:16:27.295 It kind of flies like that. 279 00:16:27.742 --> 00:16:30.047 And it only flies at night. 280 00:16:30.388 --> 00:16:32.901 And so you don't see them coming, you hear them coming. 281 00:16:32.954 --> 00:16:35.023 Because they sound like little helicopters. 282 00:16:35.023 --> 00:16:36.323 You're listening to one right now. 283 00:16:37.605 --> 00:16:40.312 And if you hear them coming, you should duck. 284 00:16:40.717 --> 00:16:42.445 They're kind of clumsy flyers. 285 00:16:42.643 --> 00:16:45.851 When they land, they're just flying around and they're reaching out. 286 00:16:45.851 --> 00:16:48.092 You can see the claws are quite substantial. 287 00:16:48.514 --> 00:16:52.921 It's just to hook in like a grappling hook and pull itself into the tree. 288 00:16:53.552 --> 00:16:57.686 And if you happen to be what it grips into, they can draw blood. 289 00:16:57.803 --> 00:16:58.445 So ... 290 00:16:58.445 --> 00:16:59.145 Wow! 291 00:16:59.145 --> 00:17:01.649 Floyd, I was never afraid of beetles until now. 292 00:17:01.975 --> 00:17:02.873 Well, don't be afraid. 293 00:17:02.873 --> 00:17:03.900 I am afraid. 294 00:17:03.900 --> 00:17:11.050 I don't want to—I don't want something this size flying into me and drawing blood. 295 00:17:11.050 --> 00:17:12.921 But flying isn't just a way to get around. 296 00:17:13.455 --> 00:17:15.358 It's also a way to find a mate. 297 00:17:15.779 --> 00:17:18.179 And different beetles have different ways of doing that. 298 00:17:18.440 --> 00:17:22.843 Some use chemical signals called pheromones—basically smelling each other. 299 00:17:23.216 --> 00:17:27.155 Others use visual cues, like size, color and shape. 300 00:17:27.560 --> 00:17:31.434 But occasionally, appearances can be deceiving. 301 00:17:31.968 --> 00:17:33.518 Floyd opens another door. 302 00:17:34.437 --> 00:17:37.338 This sad little beetle, if I can find it. 303 00:17:37.905 --> 00:17:39.345 It's Julodimorpha. 304 00:17:39.735 --> 00:17:41.035 Julodimorpha? 305 00:17:41.036 --> 00:17:41.736 Yes. 306 00:17:41.736 --> 00:17:44.820 Another brown beetle, about the size of, well ... 307 00:17:44.970 --> 00:17:47.257 A cockroach is about—like a large cockroach. 308 00:17:47.257 --> 00:17:47.957 Or a chestnut. 309 00:17:47.957 --> 00:17:50.108 You are really obsessed with cockroaches. 310 00:17:50.108 --> 00:17:51.312 No, I don't like cockroaches. 311 00:17:51.312 --> 00:17:53.383 I had a bad experience with one as a child. 312 00:17:53.383 --> 00:17:54.186 What can I say? 313 00:17:54.186 --> 00:17:55.149 I see. 314 00:17:55.149 --> 00:17:57.360 But maybe like a chestnut or a pecan. 315 00:17:57.718 --> 00:17:59.299 Yeah, a little bit bigger than a pecan, actually. 316 00:17:59.299 --> 00:17:59.661 Okay. 317 00:17:59.661 --> 00:18:00.361 Anyway ... 318 00:18:00.361 --> 00:18:03.741 The reason I wanted to show it to you is 319 00:18:03.741 --> 00:18:09.039 because it is approaching endangered species status. 320 00:18:09.140 --> 00:18:12.711 This beetle is not being decimated by disease or habitat loss. 321 00:18:13.095 --> 00:18:16.501 The culprit here is misguided lust. 322 00:18:19.020 --> 00:18:25.450 The males mistake Australian beer bottles for gigantic females. 323 00:18:25.892 --> 00:18:30.660 And so litter on the side of the road is causing the species to ... 324 00:18:31.940 --> 00:18:33.090 To mate with beer bottles? 325 00:18:33.090 --> 00:18:37.003 To try and mate with the beer bottle, and not find a female to mate with. 326 00:18:37.043 --> 00:18:40.808 And so the population levels have dropped significantly, 327 00:18:41.106 --> 00:18:45.322 so much so that there was an active campaign in Australia to change the shape 328 00:18:45.322 --> 00:18:47.326 and the color of the beer bottle in question, 329 00:18:47.326 --> 00:18:49.209 because it was just one kind of beer bottle. 330 00:18:51.441 --> 00:18:54.684 Maybe it's the color of the bottle or the bumps on the glass. 331 00:18:54.856 --> 00:19:00.750 It's hard to say for sure, but something about these bottles get male beetles thinking, "I wanna hold your hand." 332 00:19:01.845 --> 00:19:03.700 And so they are ... 333 00:19:04.651 --> 00:19:05.351 Confused. 334 00:19:05.351 --> 00:19:09.490 They are confused, and it's causing a drop in population, 335 00:19:09.543 --> 00:19:17.156 because they are becoming fascinated with this really sexy giant female that's a beer bottle 336 00:19:17.225 --> 00:19:22.036 and not finding the ordinary females in the environment. 337 00:19:22.036 --> 00:19:25.868 Well, there's a lot that could be said about that, but I'm not gonna. 338 00:19:26.387 --> 00:19:29.754 Except that this beer company is no longer making that bottle. 339 00:19:30.080 --> 00:19:31.921 'Tis better to have loved and lost. 340 00:19:32.007 --> 00:19:37.300 Before we leave the collections, Floyd says there's one more thing he wanted to show me. 341 00:19:37.690 --> 00:19:39.772 He starts rummaging around in cabinets. 342 00:19:39.938 --> 00:19:41.238 There it is. 343 00:19:42.025 --> 00:19:43.325 Whoa! 344 00:19:43.551 --> 00:19:49.604 There it is, as promised, the biggest beetle in the world—the Titan beetle. 345 00:19:49.604 --> 00:19:51.527 It's Titanus giganteus. 346 00:19:52.304 --> 00:19:53.004 Uh-huh? 347 00:19:53.004 --> 00:19:53.750 Well, it's right there in the name. 348 00:19:53.750 --> 00:19:57.879 And because this looks so cockroach-y, I'm gonna force you to hold it. 349 00:19:57.879 --> 00:20:00.589 So I'm gonna take it out of its ... 350 00:20:01.253 --> 00:20:05.682 Floyd lifts what I can only describe as the Arnold Schwarzenegger of beetles, 351 00:20:05.976 --> 00:20:08.723 who, fun fact, has a beetle named after him. 352 00:20:09.196 --> 00:20:10.996 But it's not as big as this one. 353 00:20:12.485 --> 00:20:15.349 It's over six inches long, the size of a hot dog. 354 00:20:15.917 --> 00:20:24.091 It's got a hard, dull-looking wing cover, a cockroach-y head and jaws at the front that, 355 00:20:24.515 --> 00:20:27.794 if the beetle were alive, could snap a wooden pencil. 356 00:20:28.397 --> 00:20:32.612 And this is the insect that Floyd wants me to hold. 357 00:20:34.560 --> 00:20:35.945 Okay, editorial note: 358 00:20:36.115 --> 00:20:41.147 those of you who have been listening to the show for a while may recall that when it comes to bugs, 359 00:20:41.685 --> 00:20:42.985 I'm a big old weenie. 360 00:20:45.296 --> 00:20:46.087 Oh my God! 361 00:20:46.087 --> 00:20:47.298 It's fine, it's fine. 362 00:20:47.298 --> 00:20:47.998 They're fine. 363 00:20:47.998 --> 00:20:49.438 Spider webs everywhere. 364 00:20:49.719 --> 00:20:50.849 Oh my God! 365 00:20:50.849 --> 00:20:52.699 I'm not walking any further than this. 366 00:20:53.880 --> 00:20:55.123 I'm so sorry. 367 00:20:55.123 --> 00:20:57.588 I have a very strong startle impulse. 368 00:20:57.628 --> 00:20:58.328 It's okay. 369 00:20:58.328 --> 00:21:03.081 And even though I'm prepared, I might throw my microphone and end this for all of us. 370 00:21:04.260 --> 00:21:05.560 I'm so sorry! 371 00:21:05.850 --> 00:21:11.079 All this to say, I don't think Floyd knew who he was handing the world's largest beetle to. 372 00:21:11.437 --> 00:21:12.737 Floyd, why? 373 00:21:13.588 --> 00:21:14.888 Hold your hand out. 374 00:21:15.194 --> 00:21:16.479 But what if I ... 375 00:21:16.479 --> 00:21:17.999 You're not gonna drop it. 376 00:21:18.245 --> 00:21:19.690 I promise you're not gonna drop it. 377 00:21:19.690 --> 00:21:20.390 I might drop it. 378 00:21:20.390 --> 00:21:21.584 It's not gonna move. 379 00:21:21.793 --> 00:21:22.757 Okay, so ... 380 00:21:22.757 --> 00:21:25.594 Sidedoorables, I did not drop the Titan. 381 00:21:26.594 --> 00:21:28.072 How light is that for how big it is? 382 00:21:28.072 --> 00:21:28.794 Very light. 383 00:21:28.794 --> 00:21:30.094 It's extremely light. 384 00:21:31.989 --> 00:21:32.777 No, you're right. 385 00:21:32.777 --> 00:21:35.225 But that's only because the back and the front are touching. 386 00:21:36.410 --> 00:21:39.440 Floyd and I spent nearly two hours looking at beetles. 387 00:21:39.656 --> 00:21:43.623 We only looked in three cabinets out of twelve hundred. 388 00:21:44.446 --> 00:21:48.624 And the beetle collection, as vast as it is, continues to grow. 389 00:21:48.890 --> 00:21:55.036 Because we may have eight million beetles, but there are still beetles out there yet to be discovered. 390 00:21:56.480 --> 00:22:02.048 When we come back, we bust out of the collections and go in search for beetles in the wild. 391 00:22:02.152 --> 00:22:09.077 We'll do that by laying a trap for one of the most beloved, most sacred beetles in the world. 392 00:22:09.757 --> 00:22:11.057 After the break. 393 00:22:30.463 --> 00:22:32.545 Chapter 3: Dig It. 394 00:22:32.630 --> 00:22:36.704 Okay, so let's bring the listeners into the car with us. 395 00:22:36.821 --> 00:22:41.585 We're—it's Friday afternoon, and we're on a mission. 396 00:22:41.622 --> 00:22:44.861 We're driving up to Maryland. 397 00:22:45.572 --> 00:22:49.105 In the passenger seat is Frank. 398 00:22:49.105 --> 00:22:50.405 Introduce yourself. 399 00:22:50.453 --> 00:22:52.648 Hello, I'm Dr. Frank Krell. 400 00:22:53.343 --> 00:22:59.568 I'm a coleopterist, that is a beetle scientist, working at the Smithsonian. 401 00:23:00.167 --> 00:23:04.609