April 19, 2011 • 35 mins
Flies: They're disgusting, disease-spreading flying machines. They're also really fascinating. Flies taste with their feet, smell with their antennae and use a pair of eyes as a compass oriented to sunlight. Listen in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Yeah, wait your house
(00:24):
it's a good y Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:57):
This is Josh. That's Chuck. This is Stuffy should know.
How do you smell? Chuck? Was that at the other
room this morning? So? How how are you holding up? Well?
This is we got a good three and a half
beat between us. Fine, um, you heard this is a
non usual opening for this podcast. You didn't hear, but
(01:21):
I heard you did. Okay, Okay, So that's the that's
the last few seconds. I guess of the Fly, the
original nineteen fifty eight version starring Vincent Price, and that
is the the inventor named Seth Brendle, who um brindle fly, Yeah,
who has converted himself into a fly. Well switched heads
(01:43):
with the fly, right, switched bodies, I guess. And now
he's a tiny little fly man who's being attacked by
a spider on the spider web. You know, I just
saw the Cromeberg version a couple of months ago. I
think I told you that. Yeah, it holds up the
first time. Yeah, it's that I don't understand why um oh,
what is his name, the main guy, gold bloom. I
(02:07):
don't understand why Jeff Goldbloom um decided to add I
guess it's a kind of like sexy arrogance to his
character because it came off weird. That's just the gold
he can do, I guess. So, man, the he brings
that to everything he does. He's tripping with it. So chuck,
(02:28):
we uh. We played that part of the fly not
so much because we could, although that was a large
part of it, but because we can explain what is
on that little fly body. Now, that's right. We've read
how flies work, and specifically how house flies work by
stuff to blow your mind. Robert Lamb's been popping up
(02:49):
a lot lately, hasn't he? Who Robert's work? Yeah? Yeah,
good stuff, And he just kind of pops into the
cubicles and says, hey, how's it going a lot lately? Yeah? Yeah.
The housefly josh, um, if you're if you live in
a house and you're flies flying around, you got about
a nine chance that that is an actual Musca domestica. Yeah,
(03:12):
that's the that's the houseflies name. That's right. There's not
some other more exotic name. It is on all um
initial appearances, one of the more mundane bugs ever. But
it's actually pretty interesting if you ask me, and disgusting
because they carry lots of diseases like typhoid, fever and
sam and ella and leprosy and cholera. Isn't that crazy?
(03:34):
They carry leprosy and testinal worms. Well, I knew that
bacteria that can lead to dysentery. I didn't know that
they could, Uh, they could carry leprosy, though I didn't either.
You know, I always equate leprosy with nudism because they
both they both live in colonies. Yeah, I always think
of leprosy when I think of lepricy. I think of
(03:54):
the Bible, because growing up in churches where I heard
about lepro colonies and leprosy and leprity being healed and
all that. Exactly have you ever seen the fog the
second one? I guess for the fog too? Was there
a fog too? I don't know. I mean John Carpenter
the original fog, I think, right, this is the remake
(04:15):
where the people attacking were lepers who were turned away
and now their ghosts have come back for Vengeance. I
think that was the original as well. It wasn't. I
didn't realize there were lepers. I thought they were like
pirates that have been across or something. Cheez. We need
to get her act together. And that's such a good movie,
the first one. Yeah, I'll check it out. I just
watched the thing last night. Oh that's a great one too. Yeah.
(04:35):
And I had a fairly voracious Alien versus the Thing
comments on I saw people get into that. I definitely
say Alien is bad or but the thing is more disgusting,
a little more twisted. Yeah, alright, this has been a
long setup. Flies huh so chuck, um, We've we've got
down that they spread disease, right potentially. Um. One of
(05:01):
the things that kind of cropped up while I was
reading this is it was kind of an expansion of
everything I'd always knew about flies. Yeah, we all know
a little bit, which I find very reassuring. You know,
it's not like quantum suicide, where it's like everything you
think you know is just completely unreal and just go
ahead and stop thinking. Now. This is like, yes, you
(05:22):
understand house flies, and here is some more information about them.
So I guess kind of this is almost like an
elementary school episode, which I find I find comforting and
reassuring to let's talk about fly anatomy, house fly anatomy,
and if I accidentally say fly, if you accidentally say fly,
we mean house fly specifically, right, that's right, Oh, And
(05:43):
dispersed throughout the podcast, we'll have fly facts that sounds
like this, So when you hear that, it's gonna be
a new fly fact. So, Josh, if you're talking a
housefly body, it's like a lot of insects. It's got
an exo skeleton made of kitan, and it's got three
sections to the body. You got the head, you got
the thorax, you got the abdomen. And as everyone knows,
(06:08):
this is the this is actually isn't a fly fact,
so no buzz, but it is effect, but it's not
one of our fly facts. So every jingle, no jingle.
Everyone knows that the fly has all those tiny, little
bitty eyes, and like you said, it's reassuring to know
that's exactly what they are. There two common eyes divided
up into three to six thousand simple eze yes, and
(06:28):
it's like a bunch of little video monitors because they
can't focus on one little thing in particular. It's like
a mosaic, right, but I also got the impression that
it's like a mosaic. But each little eye is kind
of its own. It's representative of the physical grid. It
makes a grid of its physical environment. Right. So I
(06:51):
wonder if the flies like, oh, there's a movement in sector,
what I wonder and like, I go focus on that
one simple eye to see that, you know a piece
of poo on the ground that I need to go,
you know, wattle through, or there's a human um who's
coming towards me or something. And of course by sector
ninety G, I meant sector three thousand to six thousand G. Yeah.
(07:12):
So those are the eyes, and they are also a
couple of little um I think three ocel eyes or
if you're in Itali in Italy, and they are between
the two compound eyes. And that's sort of like a
compass that keep the fly oriented and ideally flying towards
the sun. Okay, So I think that this should be
(07:35):
the first fly fact. All right, let's do it, okay,
uh chuck. The reason house flies are commonly found kind
of flittering against a window because they're stupid, No, that's
a fly myth. The fly fact is that they're oh
ocelli or ocelli. The to simplize the act as a
(07:58):
compass orient themselves upward by finding the sunlight. They're all
constantly searching for sunlight, which is why they always go
to a window or a bugs ever. That was fly
back number one, all right, I like it on the head, Josh,
which is where a lot of the action takes place
with a fly. Um. They get their sense of smell
from their antennae right there. For tasting and eating. They
(08:22):
have a probiscus, which is a little plunger like thing
that sticks out from the bottom of its mouth and
I'm sorry, the bottom of the head um. They have
little feelers, two of these, and their max maxillary palps.
Yeah yeah, and then they are the tasters. And at
the end of the probiscus you have the labellum, which
(08:43):
is um. Is that the mouth, the little spongey part. Yeah,
it's it's like a sponge mouth like it's not like
an open mouth that you think of. It's like a
sponge on the end of the pro proboscis where you
just suck. That's a probiscus didn't they it's close proboscus.
Sorry about that. No, it goes either way, and that
(09:04):
always makes me think of adaptation. Chris Cooper's character talks
about the probiscus of the orchid. Oh yeah, Jerry's and
they're just saying, yes, it's really weird. Apparently she's um
guest starring in this episode. She's paying attention for the
first time in weeks. So, um, chuck, there's a huge,
huge little thing that you You pointed out that um uh,
(09:27):
the labellum. Yes, the spongy mouth doesn't allow solid food
in and we're gonna get to that in a minute,
but just keep that in mind. That's fly foreshadowing, not
a fly fact. But we've come to what I think
is fly fact number two. Don't you are you going
with the biting? Yeah, the biting, Okay, fly fact number two.
(09:48):
Houseflies do not bite. If you get bitten by a fly,
it was not a houseflowd on housewives. Might be a
horse fly, and you know those in the summertime when
you're in the pool, the land on your head and
bite the tar out of you. Or it might have
been your little sibling, brothers, sister. That's true and what
other list another one stable flies, which are yeah, yeah,
horseflies there there. They kind of take care of all
(10:11):
the horses at once, where a horse flies just like
I just want this one horse. That's my take on it,
all right, So that's fly fact too, So chuck, Um,
we are onto wings now, which isn't necessarily a fly
fact because it's so essential. Right back in ancient times,
which was up to sixty million years ago, as I understand, Um,
that's how long houseflies have been around. Um, they had
(10:34):
two sets, two full sets of wings, and nowadays in
our modern times, it looks like flies have houseflies have
one set. That's not necessarily true. Yeah, if you're a
little jerky kid, a little myoclonic jerk, and you pull
the wings off of a fly, you probably think you're
just pulling off too. Yeah, and you may be, because
those are the large ones. But there's little tiny guys
(10:56):
under there, and they're called halters, right, and the halters
where actually if you if you pull the halter off,
these little tiny wings um that are underneath or above
I think they're underneath. They're underneath the big wings um.
They allow they basically allow the fly to move quickly
in the air right to um to maintain balance a
(11:19):
direct direction hover, yes, um. And so if you remove
one of these, it can only go in circles. If
you remove both of the halters to fly, can't get
is an airborne at all? Yeah, with those two big wings,
it still can't fly without his little halters. Ye, it's
pretty good, but not a fly fact. No, very interesting nonetheless,
But the the big wings, the large wings that you
(11:40):
see when you look at a fly, are the ones
that do the real heavy lifting, right. Yeah, We're talking
two hundred to three hundred flaps per second, and they
can go about four and a half miles an hour,
which I would have assumed they could go faster than
I can run four and a half miles an hour.
And it's and I've seen flies zipping by me when
I'm running. So chuck first, I don't know if you
(12:02):
said the all of the moving parts, the wings, the legs,
all this stuff, um, are located in the thorax, right,
So you get the two sets of wings up top,
and then below that you have the different legs. And
the legs are well, they're they're standard legs. They're segmented
and joined. But the most interesting part for me about
the fly legs the house fly legs are the tarsi, right, yes,
(12:25):
which are little tiny hairs on the end of the
legs that act as pretty much the same thing as
taste buds do for us. So that's why a fly um,
that's why it'll land on food. It's not just landing,
it's tasting to say do I want some of this?
And most of the time the answers yes yes. And
(12:45):
we'll get to the gruesome truth of that in a
moment as well. Right, My favorite part of the legs
is the pole vili. They are a little moist suction
pads and they are the little grippers. So that's why
when you see a fly, uh, jump on a wall,
fly into a wall, and just all of a sudden
they're like Spider Man right walking up the wall, little grippers.
(13:06):
Or that's how Jeff Goldblum did it, with some swad
of viv as well thrown in there. Uh. And then
the abdomen they have the key organs which are the
reproductive organs, and the female the oviposter, and the male
has the ideas and I actually look at that one
up nice and that's not how it would have pronounced it.
(13:28):
But these little uh, little things retract when they're not
in use, on both the male and the female, so
they'll stay protected there. That's very aerodynamic. It would be
very unerodynamic to have the adegus just kind of laughing
in the wind flies a thing around the house. It's
like putting the landing gear down a little too soon.
Write exactly, um, so chuck you you we already foreshadowed
(13:51):
what's going on with them. The mouth, the sponge mouth,
the labellum. Yes, um, that it can only up liquids. Well,
not everything a fly eats is liquid, right, No, not
if they want to jump on that steak or that
dog crap or dry blood yea. Um. When a fly
(14:11):
encounters something, well, first of all, part when when the
it accepts food into the bellum, it basically sucks it
straight into the stomach. If it's liquid, it's good to go.
So when it lands on the food and it finds
that it can't um, it can't just suck it up, um,
it basically tries to crumble it with the end of
its proboscus. Right at that point, it's got tiny little
(14:35):
it's it's smaller, it's more manageable, and then it pukes
on it. Yea, that's step two. Everything you've ever heard
about flies vomiting on you um or your food or
whatever when they land is absolutely true. Yeah. I thought
I might have thought that was an old wives talle
in this article. No, it is true. Um. What the
fly does is basically spit up saliva and digestive juice
(14:55):
is onto the little crumbs that it's made using its proboscus, right, um,
and it sits there for a couple of seconds thinking,
and then it it tries to slurp it up. Um.
And Robert makes a really good point in the article
this sounds extremely disgusting to us, right, sure, but the
(15:16):
fly isn't doing anything we don't do. When we take
food into our mouth, we chew it, we masticate it. Right.
Saliva is attacking it, starting to break it down, and
then it goes through our esophagus into our stomachs and
it becomes digested by juices. The flyes just doing the
same thing, but on the outside of its body because
(15:37):
it doesn't have teeth, and we have the decency to
keep it all internal. Right, We don't go into restaurants
and puke up onto our plate. That just would that
would be untoward. So if there if the um, if
this food is kind of in an in between state, um,
and it's been spent on, vomited on left and it's
still not quite right, it gets moved to the crop. Right, Yeah,
(15:59):
I see the what should we call this fly fact? Okay?
Fly fact? Was this three? Yeah, there's a crop, like
you said, and instead of just um saying, oh, well
this this little bit of crumb isn't quite liquid enough,
let me just go fly to another one, the fly
is pretty efficient, so they say, actually, let me save
(16:19):
this for later, stick it down another hole into the crop,
and in the crop it waits, and then they'll pass
it back and forth, maybe add a little more digestive juices,
throw up on it a bit more, and they do
this until it's ready to be you know, until it's
liquid ready to go down the shoot. It doesn't waste
its food. That was fly fact three. Right, Yes, there
(16:41):
is one thing you know we said that the fly
is not really doing anything differently than we do to
our food, is just doing it on the outside. That's
still horrific and disgusting, because um, not only is the
the fly carrying possibly leprosy to your sandwich. When it
throws up on it, it's probably throwing up something at
(17:04):
just eight which, as you pointed out, could be dog poop,
could be blood. Uh, could be the you know, poop
from a leprous dog, something like that. So when you
you're at a picnic or something and you see that
fly on your sandy, it's probably and if you see
it moving his little hands around, it's vomiting disease on
(17:25):
your food. It's what it's doing, right, exactly, Potentially disease,
not always no. And plus you don't underestimate the human
immune system. I mean, we all have white blood cells,
you know, we all, we all can mount a pretty
decent defense unless we have some sort of immuno deficiency.
And if we do have that, then they were probably
in some sort of treatment for it. So for the
most part, I mean, it is gross. But you know,
(17:47):
I think in in modern times where we got the
flies under control at least you know here in the West. Yes, Um,
for now, until the apocalypse comes the Rise of the
fly right, Um, do you remember of that part in
Amityville Horror The priest is like he's covered in flies
and starts sweating and was that Rod Starker Huh yeah,
(18:09):
nice good. I would have been so out of there,
um chuck. Yes, we talked about their sexy bits already.
What do they do with them? What's the fly family?
Like a fly family? Josh is like many insect families.
They man will chase down a female and impregnate her
and it happens really quick. She's ready to lay her eggs.
(18:31):
Toot sweet and uh, they don't stick together after they mate,
they separate and the and the mother doesn't even guard
the eggs like a lot of species do. One night
love affair. Yeah, and she basically dumps the eggs and
what she deems to be a safe place and she's like,
I'm out of here. It's one night stand followed in
child abandonment. And how many eggs is it? Later time?
(18:51):
Did we get that up to nine? Over the life
cycle of a fly? Okay, in a life cycle, I
think they said the average lifesman is about three weeks,
but it could be three months. Yeah. I don't think
a fly can live physically beyond three months. But yeah,
the average lifespan and reality because of fly swatters and
things like that. Um is like twenty one days. I
(19:12):
think he said. Yeah. So the life cycle um is
a lot like most insects. It's got the egg and
then the larva, then the pupa, then the adult. Warm
summertime is optimal. It takes about seven to ten days
to go from egg to adult. And they go through
I think three molten stages. Uh, the little maggot student,
they see, you know this, you know all this. You
(19:33):
learn this in school. Didn't it nice to know this? Yeah?
Very nice? So chuck um with the maggots. The first
stage of the most interesting stage. We've arrived at a
story that I have. Oh boy, when I was in college, Um,
cooked steak through cooked steak and really actually, now they
(19:54):
think about it, I guess I've probably trimmed some raw
meat off and put it in the guard bridge can,
as is normal, a garbage bag in a garbage can,
the kitchen garbage can. Okay, And I get up the
next so I'm a normal person. I'm not stick away
exactly exactly. Um. So I get up the next morning
(20:15):
and I go into the kitchen and I wonder, why
is the kitchen floor moving like that? Oh man? And
I kind of followed the floor as it went up
the garbage can and into it, and I realized that
my kitchen floor, it's a small kitchen, granted, but my
kitchen floor was covered in a living layer of maggots
the whole thing, the whole thing. So I'm like, I've
(20:38):
got to get rid of these. What how do you
take care of a maggot infestation? And I tried bleach first,
did nothing to him, didn't even slow down one of them. Really,
I ended up having to walk all over them. Well that, yeah,
that's the old fashioned way. That's that's what I had
to do. And for I did not actually have a
(20:59):
floor infestation after that, so I guess I got them all.
But they make a horrific little popping sound. Did you
have have like snow shoes or something at least no,
probably like hiking boots or something. It was an athen
Why were they all over the floor? Was it from
the steak it out of the garbage can overnight? Like
like that? That's frightening, But that I mean that follows
(21:22):
with um what we know about the housefly life cycle.
That Larva's hatch um within a day, right, and and
don't forget Larva and by Larva's I met larva with
an E on the end um equals maggots breathe out
of their butt, right, didn't we learn that somewhere else?
So they never have to stop eating exactly. So they're
(21:42):
just like this little fleshy worm like thing with the
hooked mouth that just does nothing but eat. And yeah,
because they breathe out of their butts and molt like
I said, three stages, and then the third molten stage,
you know, it goes uh, it gets a little darker
and enters the pupa stage and that's the larger protective shell.
(22:03):
Then it fully develops and outcomes a beautiful butterfly or
a disgusting house fly like barton the Simpsons. Yeah, and
how to like what Barton the senses. There's a treehouse
of Horror where they redid the fly where he's like
that mindless like the fly with Bart's bodies it's mindless eating. Yeah,
that was one of the earlier ones. That's a good one. Uh.
(22:24):
And then they get out of their little shell there
with a temporary swollen bump because they can't chew to
get out of an egg or the shell, so they
they literally use this bump on their head to crack
their way out, and then after they get out, that
bump deflates and it just becomes part of the head again.
I wonder if it's unique to each fly, like they
(22:45):
can recognize one another from the bump on the head, Like,
I don't know, and I didn't There wasn't a name
for that in here either. No, it's just the swollen
bump alright. Fly fact number four. Yes, so we talked
about a fly. It can't live longer than three months,
that's right, That is if it's existing outside of diapause, right,
(23:07):
Totally fascinating to me. Yes, So diapause is basically like
suspended animation or hibernation for the fly. Basically, if there's
no food around um, and there's no predators either, and
the flies like I'm gonna see what's going on a
few months from now, the fly can basically shut down
it's it's life processes to the state where it can
(23:31):
just exist without moving. It's like a state between life
and death for a few months, right, and then wake
back up and be like it's the future or it's
winter and I'm dead soon. That's another part, because don't
they only live during the warmer months or do they
don't live all year around. They they thrive in the
in the warmer, warm, muggy areas. So Josh, surely these
(23:56):
things add nothing to the world aside from being discussing
little creeps. Agreed? Not true? You don't want them in
your house? Well, remember, Chuck, these are one of the one,
one of like three bugs that you and I agreed
are are fine to kill. Yeah, what else did we say?
Mosquitoes and mosquitoes, ticks and this is the only non
(24:17):
blood sucker. Interesting. It's a poop Peter though, and that's
why I don't want in your house. But they are
good um, like all flies in the world at large,
great source of protein. They break things down in in
into smaller bits for other bacteria and life forms to
feed on. They are an important part of any ecosystem
that they live in. I mean, there's nothing here that's useless, right,
(24:40):
That's right? Okay. I think they even found a use
for the old appendix, didn't they they did? Doesn't it
like um combat cancerous growth? I can't remember, I believe
so uh, And I think they even use maggots and
uh freshwater fishing raising commercial fish like to lapia. Yeah
to life, you love them. They use pupa. The pupa
(25:03):
is high in protein. Okay, so that's what they feed them,
a little freeze dripe pupa m And you know, if
you're if you're a survivalist, or you're in a bad
situation out in the woods and you need to survive, maggots.
If you get like a rotted uh rotted tree on
the ground, you want to eat those maggots. You'll eat it.
You'll eat it and you'll like it. I would do it.
(25:25):
And I'm not down with that stuff at all, but
I would do that, of course, to save myself. Full
circle and Tom Fagy, oh yeah, nice job, thank you.
Do we have time for one more fly fact? I?
I think so, I think, yes, we do alright. Fly
fact number six, No. Five five. Ancient civilizations actually made
(25:49):
regular sacrifices to the fly gods to keep the swarms
out of their houses and temples because they thought they
were harbingers of harbingers of sickness and death, even though
they didn't know the science behind it. Right. The flies
are just there's something about them. They are um, They're
disgusting there, unwholesome. That's the word I'm looking for. They
(26:12):
are inherently unwholesome. Yeah. So if you want to keep
flies out of your temple, right, you have several options
available to you. Right, keep a clean house, that's number one.
That's the smartest thing to do. Don't don't don't leave
like your carton of milk open and just sitting on
the counter when you're doing it, all right, Or the
(26:33):
steak in the trash. Yeah, Emily makes me throw away food. Uh, Like,
I put it in a bag and take it out
to the garbage. So what we do too, that's what
you do with adults in college, I think so. Yeah,
it's like scrape in the trash. It was in a
kitchen garbage can with the top. I mean in college,
I would have left that plate out in the living
room on the couch. I've always been fairly clean. Yeah,
me too. What else can you do fairly biological control?
(26:57):
You've got the old venus fly trap, which you know,
if you can keep them healthy either kind of tough.
Not just that. At the end of the um at
the end of the fly that was at the beginning
of this podcast, it's taught in a spider web, which
happens quite a bit, so us. As long as the
spider is not going to kill you and your family
while you're sleeping, just leave it along because it's going
(27:17):
to control the fly population tremendously. That's right. And farmers
even there's some commercial farms that actually buy uh parasitic
wasps too, you know, eat larvae right and take care
of flies for their crops. The Tarot melody wasp, that's right,
Tara Melody. Uh, keep your windows and door shut. That's
(27:39):
kind of obvious. If you're gonna keep your door open
in the middle summertime, you're gonna have a lot of flies.
I think that's funny that even warranted its own bullet point. Yeah,
and the flyswatter did too. Actually physical control and fly
paper which is disgusting. Yeah, it's it's gross too, I
mean especially around food, like if you see that in
the kitchen at camp. Yeah, you know when you went
(27:59):
to camp and you walk past of kids and there
like flies there. It's like, get some glass glazies windows,
what is wrong? Or at least changed the fly paper
every day. That's something too. There's bugs appers and then
I wouldn't even endorse pesticides for house flies. You don't
want to be sprayed that stuff in your house, But
that is an option for some people and it's just
not for me. They can be very dangerous and has
(28:23):
anybody who's ever seen a bug's life knows the bugs
appers actually get bugs high. It's kind of like a
hallucinogen to him. Oh was that what happened in that? Yeah,
I remember the guy that's got zapp, the bug got zapp.
He's like, oh, that was far out something along those lines. Yeah,
bug zappers are fun. So chuck, you got any more
fly fax or anything? I know? So we're done with
(28:45):
house flies. I'm done forever. House Flies just just as
disgusting as you always thought. That's right, and you already
knew everything about him. So everybody yourself a pat on
the back of this one. Right. Yeah, we should mention
if you use a fly swatter, it's a lot of
fun to smash a house fly, but you leave behind
quite a disgusting mess. You will not allow house or
(29:07):
fly swatters in the house. Now, we don't. We haven't
owned up. They're they're really kind of gross. That's only
second to the Pooper Scooper for the kiddie lettering devices.
Or the toilet scrubber next to the toilet, or the plunger.
So that's it. Now you know what chuck's in my
houses look like. Right. If you want to know more
(29:28):
about flies and you want to see these fly facts
in text, even you can type in house flies uh
in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com,
which of course brings up listener mail Uh funny or
sad funny. Okay, I'm gonna read the Hodgman exchange. Oh
(29:49):
oh really, I was thinking we wouldn't do that and
end up on Judge John Hodgman. Maybe he'll litigate this
if we just pretendally can he doesn't exist. We'll see.
I'm gonna read this though, all buddy, Uh Johnny Rocket
Hodgeman John Kellogg Hodgman. Rocket is his maiden name. He
has a podcast he does through Jesse Thorn's Maximum Fun
(30:12):
Sound of Young America, called Judge John Hodgman. We plugged
it before he settles minor disputes between friends, lovers, husbands
and wives. It's very funny. So John writes this last week,
and there is a fan that said I wish to
file suit against the stuff. You should know podcasts and
this guy. It's complaining about the fact that we said
(30:33):
in the Scooby Doo show that there were the Boston
area campuses. Yeah, the five the five colleges that were
represented by the characters. Supposedly it was one of the
Scooby Doo myths, and we said that they're all Boston
area colleges. Like, what ones Amherst, you, mass Holyoke? Yeah,
Mount Holyoke's North Northampton And all right, that's the ones
(30:57):
we'll get too. So March eighteen eight their nine Am,
Judge John Hydman writes to the stuff you should know. Seriously, guys,
see this Hello, The five colleges are in the Connecticut
River or Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, specifically Amherst, Northampton
in Holyoke, Massachusetts. This is painful to me, not only
(31:17):
because this is Hodgman country, but it was which is
mainlier than Marble Country. Actually it also has more argyle.
That's right. It was indeed while driving up and down
the tobacco fields along the Connecticut River that I first
came to enjoy your podcasts and to admire your great knowledgeability.
Wait you say tobacco fields, that is right. The Connecticut
(31:39):
River Valley produces what is historically the most prize shade
tobacco in the United States, and Massachusetts tobacco is still
dried and used as rappers for fine cigars. Were you
aware of this? In all caps? He he loves all cats,
and he's very intimidating. Sunday, even hope to show this
fine country to you, my semi hometown, in my total
(32:01):
home state, and to remind you of the great motto
of Hampshire College. To know is not enough. I look
forward to hearing this letter read in its entirety on
your podcast before you forced me to humiliate you on mine.
That is all. Chuck Bryant writes, back, boy, John, did
we hear about this one? It made it abundantly clear
that the fine people of Massachusetts need to get right
(32:23):
with one another and cease to throw up walls between themselves.
There's enough segregation in the world. At ten o four,
Judge John Hodgman writes, so you have already run a correction,
then I must have missed it. Sarcasm uh. Ten o six,
Chuck writes, we have not and shall not take part
in the continued segregation of the fine people of Massachusetts.
(32:44):
That is all. At ten oh eight, John writes, you
leave me no choice but to mention this on my
own podcast, And I respond to him, and you leave
me no choice but to scoff at it publicly on
our podcast. This is like a nerd battle at this point.
It Yeah, And then John writes, very seriously, you don't
(33:04):
want to go down this road, Chuck, just read my
letter on the air before this gets ugly. I finally responded,
if anything gets read, it shall be the entire exchange, John,
complete with your threatening words from the alleged judge. And
then he writes back, finally, you are a monster. And
that is the end of the exchange. That was a
(33:25):
great gramantic reading. Man. Thank you, thank you, and thank
you John. Beep beep beep and uh sorry. I guess
to everybody who was offended by that, which was a
substantial amount of people who wrote in, I guess in Massachusetts,
that'd be like saying equating making with Atlanta or something,
and we would say, no, no, no, no, Makan's not
(33:45):
even close to Atlanta. Yeah, but I don't know if
I would um point out the difference angrily. Well, Plus
they were disassociating from Boston. Usually you glom onto the
big city and they were like, no, no, no, no, no,
We're not Boston this one. Yeah, so I don't know.
If I don't get it, I don't either. But um
to each his own, as we always say, right, that's right.
(34:06):
If you want to litigate us somehow via email, maybe
you can contact John Hodgman. Um, we should probably give
us personal email out huh see it's so kind to
copy ours. Yeah. Um, well, you can contact us first
and we'll see if we can put you in touch
with John. Um. You can reach us via Facebook at
uh facebook dot com. Slash stuff you should know. You
(34:28):
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast right, um,
and then you can always send us a good old
fashioned email, which we're always appreciative of, although no longer
respond to every single one. Be aware. Um that's stuff
podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
(34:51):
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
our homepage. The House Stuff Work's iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
Reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Yeah, wait your house
(00:24):
it's a good y Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:57):
This is Josh. That's Chuck. This is Stuffy should know.
How do you smell? Chuck? Was that at the other
room this morning? So? How how are you holding up? Well?
This is we got a good three and a half
beat between us. Fine, um, you heard this is a
non usual opening for this podcast. You didn't hear, but
(01:21):
I heard you did. Okay, Okay, So that's the that's
the last few seconds. I guess of the Fly, the
original nineteen fifty eight version starring Vincent Price, and that
is the the inventor named Seth Brendle, who um brindle fly, Yeah,
who has converted himself into a fly. Well switched heads
(01:43):
with the fly, right, switched bodies, I guess. And now
he's a tiny little fly man who's being attacked by
a spider on the spider web. You know, I just
saw the Cromeberg version a couple of months ago. I
think I told you that. Yeah, it holds up the
first time. Yeah, it's that I don't understand why um oh,
what is his name, the main guy, gold bloom. I
(02:07):
don't understand why Jeff Goldbloom um decided to add I
guess it's a kind of like sexy arrogance to his
character because it came off weird. That's just the gold
he can do, I guess. So, man, the he brings
that to everything he does. He's tripping with it. So chuck,
(02:28):
we uh. We played that part of the fly not
so much because we could, although that was a large
part of it, but because we can explain what is
on that little fly body. Now, that's right. We've read
how flies work, and specifically how house flies work by
stuff to blow your mind. Robert Lamb's been popping up
(02:49):
a lot lately, hasn't he? Who Robert's work? Yeah? Yeah,
good stuff, And he just kind of pops into the
cubicles and says, hey, how's it going a lot lately? Yeah? Yeah.
The housefly josh, um, if you're if you live in
a house and you're flies flying around, you got about
a nine chance that that is an actual Musca domestica. Yeah,
(03:12):
that's the that's the houseflies name. That's right. There's not
some other more exotic name. It is on all um
initial appearances, one of the more mundane bugs ever. But
it's actually pretty interesting if you ask me, and disgusting
because they carry lots of diseases like typhoid, fever and
sam and ella and leprosy and cholera. Isn't that crazy?
(03:34):
They carry leprosy and testinal worms. Well, I knew that
bacteria that can lead to dysentery. I didn't know that
they could, Uh, they could carry leprosy, though I didn't either.
You know, I always equate leprosy with nudism because they
both they both live in colonies. Yeah, I always think
of leprosy when I think of lepricy. I think of
(03:54):
the Bible, because growing up in churches where I heard
about lepro colonies and leprosy and leprity being healed and
all that. Exactly have you ever seen the fog the
second one? I guess for the fog too? Was there
a fog too? I don't know. I mean John Carpenter
the original fog, I think, right, this is the remake
(04:15):
where the people attacking were lepers who were turned away
and now their ghosts have come back for Vengeance. I
think that was the original as well. It wasn't. I
didn't realize there were lepers. I thought they were like
pirates that have been across or something. Cheez. We need
to get her act together. And that's such a good movie,
the first one. Yeah, I'll check it out. I just
watched the thing last night. Oh that's a great one too. Yeah.
(04:35):
And I had a fairly voracious Alien versus the Thing
comments on I saw people get into that. I definitely
say Alien is bad or but the thing is more disgusting,
a little more twisted. Yeah, alright, this has been a
long setup. Flies huh so chuck, um, We've we've got
down that they spread disease, right potentially. Um. One of
(05:01):
the things that kind of cropped up while I was
reading this is it was kind of an expansion of
everything I'd always knew about flies. Yeah, we all know
a little bit, which I find very reassuring. You know,
it's not like quantum suicide, where it's like everything you
think you know is just completely unreal and just go
ahead and stop thinking. Now. This is like, yes, you
(05:22):
understand house flies, and here is some more information about them.
So I guess kind of this is almost like an
elementary school episode, which I find I find comforting and
reassuring to let's talk about fly anatomy, house fly anatomy,
and if I accidentally say fly, if you accidentally say fly,
we mean house fly specifically, right, that's right, Oh, And
(05:43):
dispersed throughout the podcast, we'll have fly facts that sounds
like this, So when you hear that, it's gonna be
a new fly fact. So, Josh, if you're talking a
housefly body, it's like a lot of insects. It's got
an exo skeleton made of kitan, and it's got three
sections to the body. You got the head, you got
the thorax, you got the abdomen. And as everyone knows,
(06:08):
this is the this is actually isn't a fly fact,
so no buzz, but it is effect, but it's not
one of our fly facts. So every jingle, no jingle.
Everyone knows that the fly has all those tiny, little
bitty eyes, and like you said, it's reassuring to know
that's exactly what they are. There two common eyes divided
up into three to six thousand simple eze yes, and
(06:28):
it's like a bunch of little video monitors because they
can't focus on one little thing in particular. It's like
a mosaic, right, but I also got the impression that
it's like a mosaic. But each little eye is kind
of its own. It's representative of the physical grid. It
makes a grid of its physical environment. Right. So I
(06:51):
wonder if the flies like, oh, there's a movement in sector,
what I wonder and like, I go focus on that
one simple eye to see that, you know a piece
of poo on the ground that I need to go,
you know, wattle through, or there's a human um who's
coming towards me or something. And of course by sector
ninety G, I meant sector three thousand to six thousand G. Yeah.
(07:12):
So those are the eyes, and they are also a
couple of little um I think three ocel eyes or
if you're in Itali in Italy, and they are between
the two compound eyes. And that's sort of like a
compass that keep the fly oriented and ideally flying towards
the sun. Okay, So I think that this should be
(07:35):
the first fly fact. All right, let's do it, okay,
uh chuck. The reason house flies are commonly found kind
of flittering against a window because they're stupid, No, that's
a fly myth. The fly fact is that they're oh
ocelli or ocelli. The to simplize the act as a
(07:58):
compass orient themselves upward by finding the sunlight. They're all
constantly searching for sunlight, which is why they always go
to a window or a bugs ever. That was fly
back number one, all right, I like it on the head, Josh,
which is where a lot of the action takes place
with a fly. Um. They get their sense of smell
from their antennae right there. For tasting and eating. They
(08:22):
have a probiscus, which is a little plunger like thing
that sticks out from the bottom of its mouth and
I'm sorry, the bottom of the head um. They have
little feelers, two of these, and their max maxillary palps.
Yeah yeah, and then they are the tasters. And at
the end of the probiscus you have the labellum, which
(08:43):
is um. Is that the mouth, the little spongey part. Yeah,
it's it's like a sponge mouth like it's not like
an open mouth that you think of. It's like a
sponge on the end of the pro proboscis where you
just suck. That's a probiscus didn't they it's close proboscus.
Sorry about that. No, it goes either way, and that
(09:04):
always makes me think of adaptation. Chris Cooper's character talks
about the probiscus of the orchid. Oh yeah, Jerry's and
they're just saying, yes, it's really weird. Apparently she's um
guest starring in this episode. She's paying attention for the
first time in weeks. So, um, chuck, there's a huge,
huge little thing that you You pointed out that um uh,
(09:27):
the labellum. Yes, the spongy mouth doesn't allow solid food
in and we're gonna get to that in a minute,
but just keep that in mind. That's fly foreshadowing, not
a fly fact. But we've come to what I think
is fly fact number two. Don't you are you going
with the biting? Yeah, the biting, Okay, fly fact number two.
(09:48):
Houseflies do not bite. If you get bitten by a fly,
it was not a houseflowd on housewives. Might be a
horse fly, and you know those in the summertime when
you're in the pool, the land on your head and
bite the tar out of you. Or it might have
been your little sibling, brothers, sister. That's true and what
other list another one stable flies, which are yeah, yeah,
horseflies there there. They kind of take care of all
(10:11):
the horses at once, where a horse flies just like
I just want this one horse. That's my take on it,
all right, So that's fly fact too, So chuck, Um,
we are onto wings now, which isn't necessarily a fly
fact because it's so essential. Right back in ancient times,
which was up to sixty million years ago, as I understand, Um,
that's how long houseflies have been around. Um, they had
(10:34):
two sets, two full sets of wings, and nowadays in
our modern times, it looks like flies have houseflies have
one set. That's not necessarily true. Yeah, if you're a
little jerky kid, a little myoclonic jerk, and you pull
the wings off of a fly, you probably think you're
just pulling off too. Yeah, and you may be, because
those are the large ones. But there's little tiny guys
(10:56):
under there, and they're called halters, right, and the halters
where actually if you if you pull the halter off,
these little tiny wings um that are underneath or above
I think they're underneath. They're underneath the big wings um.
They allow they basically allow the fly to move quickly
in the air right to um to maintain balance a
(11:19):
direct direction hover, yes, um. And so if you remove
one of these, it can only go in circles. If
you remove both of the halters to fly, can't get
is an airborne at all? Yeah, with those two big wings,
it still can't fly without his little halters. Ye, it's
pretty good, but not a fly fact. No, very interesting nonetheless,
But the the big wings, the large wings that you
(11:40):
see when you look at a fly, are the ones
that do the real heavy lifting, right. Yeah, We're talking
two hundred to three hundred flaps per second, and they
can go about four and a half miles an hour,
which I would have assumed they could go faster than
I can run four and a half miles an hour.
And it's and I've seen flies zipping by me when
I'm running. So chuck first, I don't know if you
(12:02):
said the all of the moving parts, the wings, the legs,
all this stuff, um, are located in the thorax, right,
So you get the two sets of wings up top,
and then below that you have the different legs. And
the legs are well, they're they're standard legs. They're segmented
and joined. But the most interesting part for me about
the fly legs the house fly legs are the tarsi, right, yes,
(12:25):
which are little tiny hairs on the end of the
legs that act as pretty much the same thing as
taste buds do for us. So that's why a fly um,
that's why it'll land on food. It's not just landing,
it's tasting to say do I want some of this?
And most of the time the answers yes yes. And
(12:45):
we'll get to the gruesome truth of that in a
moment as well. Right, My favorite part of the legs
is the pole vili. They are a little moist suction
pads and they are the little grippers. So that's why
when you see a fly, uh, jump on a wall,
fly into a wall, and just all of a sudden
they're like Spider Man right walking up the wall, little grippers.
(13:06):
Or that's how Jeff Goldblum did it, with some swad
of viv as well thrown in there. Uh. And then
the abdomen they have the key organs which are the
reproductive organs, and the female the oviposter, and the male
has the ideas and I actually look at that one
up nice and that's not how it would have pronounced it.
(13:28):
But these little uh, little things retract when they're not
in use, on both the male and the female, so
they'll stay protected there. That's very aerodynamic. It would be
very unerodynamic to have the adegus just kind of laughing
in the wind flies a thing around the house. It's
like putting the landing gear down a little too soon.
Write exactly, um, so chuck you you we already foreshadowed
(13:51):
what's going on with them. The mouth, the sponge mouth,
the labellum. Yes, um, that it can only up liquids. Well,
not everything a fly eats is liquid, right, No, not
if they want to jump on that steak or that
dog crap or dry blood yea. Um. When a fly
(14:11):
encounters something, well, first of all, part when when the
it accepts food into the bellum, it basically sucks it
straight into the stomach. If it's liquid, it's good to go.
So when it lands on the food and it finds
that it can't um, it can't just suck it up, um,
it basically tries to crumble it with the end of
its proboscus. Right at that point, it's got tiny little
(14:35):
it's it's smaller, it's more manageable, and then it pukes
on it. Yea, that's step two. Everything you've ever heard
about flies vomiting on you um or your food or
whatever when they land is absolutely true. Yeah. I thought
I might have thought that was an old wives talle
in this article. No, it is true. Um. What the
fly does is basically spit up saliva and digestive juice
(14:55):
is onto the little crumbs that it's made using its proboscus, right, um,
and it sits there for a couple of seconds thinking,
and then it it tries to slurp it up. Um.
And Robert makes a really good point in the article
this sounds extremely disgusting to us, right, sure, but the
(15:16):
fly isn't doing anything we don't do. When we take
food into our mouth, we chew it, we masticate it. Right.
Saliva is attacking it, starting to break it down, and
then it goes through our esophagus into our stomachs and
it becomes digested by juices. The flyes just doing the
same thing, but on the outside of its body because
(15:37):
it doesn't have teeth, and we have the decency to
keep it all internal. Right, We don't go into restaurants
and puke up onto our plate. That just would that
would be untoward. So if there if the um, if
this food is kind of in an in between state, um,
and it's been spent on, vomited on left and it's
still not quite right, it gets moved to the crop. Right, Yeah,
(15:59):
I see the what should we call this fly fact? Okay?
Fly fact? Was this three? Yeah, there's a crop, like
you said, and instead of just um saying, oh, well
this this little bit of crumb isn't quite liquid enough,
let me just go fly to another one, the fly
is pretty efficient, so they say, actually, let me save
(16:19):
this for later, stick it down another hole into the crop,
and in the crop it waits, and then they'll pass
it back and forth, maybe add a little more digestive juices,
throw up on it a bit more, and they do
this until it's ready to be you know, until it's
liquid ready to go down the shoot. It doesn't waste
its food. That was fly fact three. Right, Yes, there
(16:41):
is one thing you know we said that the fly
is not really doing anything differently than we do to
our food, is just doing it on the outside. That's
still horrific and disgusting, because um, not only is the
the fly carrying possibly leprosy to your sandwich. When it
throws up on it, it's probably throwing up something at
(17:04):
just eight which, as you pointed out, could be dog poop,
could be blood. Uh, could be the you know, poop
from a leprous dog, something like that. So when you
you're at a picnic or something and you see that
fly on your sandy, it's probably and if you see
it moving his little hands around, it's vomiting disease on
(17:25):
your food. It's what it's doing, right, exactly, Potentially disease,
not always no. And plus you don't underestimate the human
immune system. I mean, we all have white blood cells,
you know, we all, we all can mount a pretty
decent defense unless we have some sort of immuno deficiency.
And if we do have that, then they were probably
in some sort of treatment for it. So for the
most part, I mean, it is gross. But you know,
(17:47):
I think in in modern times where we got the
flies under control at least you know here in the West. Yes, Um,
for now, until the apocalypse comes the Rise of the
fly right, Um, do you remember of that part in
Amityville Horror The priest is like he's covered in flies
and starts sweating and was that Rod Starker Huh yeah,
(18:09):
nice good. I would have been so out of there,
um chuck. Yes, we talked about their sexy bits already.
What do they do with them? What's the fly family?
Like a fly family? Josh is like many insect families.
They man will chase down a female and impregnate her
and it happens really quick. She's ready to lay her eggs.
(18:31):
Toot sweet and uh, they don't stick together after they mate,
they separate and the and the mother doesn't even guard
the eggs like a lot of species do. One night
love affair. Yeah, and she basically dumps the eggs and
what she deems to be a safe place and she's like,
I'm out of here. It's one night stand followed in
child abandonment. And how many eggs is it? Later time?
(18:51):
Did we get that up to nine? Over the life
cycle of a fly? Okay, in a life cycle, I
think they said the average lifesman is about three weeks,
but it could be three months. Yeah. I don't think
a fly can live physically beyond three months. But yeah,
the average lifespan and reality because of fly swatters and
things like that. Um is like twenty one days. I
(19:12):
think he said. Yeah. So the life cycle um is
a lot like most insects. It's got the egg and
then the larva, then the pupa, then the adult. Warm
summertime is optimal. It takes about seven to ten days
to go from egg to adult. And they go through
I think three molten stages. Uh, the little maggot student,
they see, you know this, you know all this. You
(19:33):
learn this in school. Didn't it nice to know this? Yeah?
Very nice? So chuck um with the maggots. The first
stage of the most interesting stage. We've arrived at a
story that I have. Oh boy, when I was in college, Um,
cooked steak through cooked steak and really actually, now they
(19:54):
think about it, I guess I've probably trimmed some raw
meat off and put it in the guard bridge can,
as is normal, a garbage bag in a garbage can,
the kitchen garbage can. Okay, And I get up the
next so I'm a normal person. I'm not stick away
exactly exactly. Um. So I get up the next morning
(20:15):
and I go into the kitchen and I wonder, why
is the kitchen floor moving like that? Oh man? And
I kind of followed the floor as it went up
the garbage can and into it, and I realized that
my kitchen floor, it's a small kitchen, granted, but my
kitchen floor was covered in a living layer of maggots
the whole thing, the whole thing. So I'm like, I've
(20:38):
got to get rid of these. What how do you
take care of a maggot infestation? And I tried bleach first,
did nothing to him, didn't even slow down one of them. Really,
I ended up having to walk all over them. Well that, yeah,
that's the old fashioned way. That's that's what I had
to do. And for I did not actually have a
(20:59):
floor infestation after that, so I guess I got them all.
But they make a horrific little popping sound. Did you
have have like snow shoes or something at least no,
probably like hiking boots or something. It was an athen
Why were they all over the floor? Was it from
the steak it out of the garbage can overnight? Like
like that? That's frightening, But that I mean that follows
(21:22):
with um what we know about the housefly life cycle.
That Larva's hatch um within a day, right, and and
don't forget Larva and by Larva's I met larva with
an E on the end um equals maggots breathe out
of their butt, right, didn't we learn that somewhere else?
So they never have to stop eating exactly. So they're
(21:42):
just like this little fleshy worm like thing with the
hooked mouth that just does nothing but eat. And yeah,
because they breathe out of their butts and molt like
I said, three stages, and then the third molten stage,
you know, it goes uh, it gets a little darker
and enters the pupa stage and that's the larger protective shell.
(22:03):
Then it fully develops and outcomes a beautiful butterfly or
a disgusting house fly like barton the Simpsons. Yeah, and
how to like what Barton the senses. There's a treehouse
of Horror where they redid the fly where he's like
that mindless like the fly with Bart's bodies it's mindless eating. Yeah,
that was one of the earlier ones. That's a good one. Uh.
(22:24):
And then they get out of their little shell there
with a temporary swollen bump because they can't chew to
get out of an egg or the shell, so they
they literally use this bump on their head to crack
their way out, and then after they get out, that
bump deflates and it just becomes part of the head again.
I wonder if it's unique to each fly, like they
(22:45):
can recognize one another from the bump on the head, Like,
I don't know, and I didn't There wasn't a name
for that in here either. No, it's just the swollen
bump alright. Fly fact number four. Yes, so we talked
about a fly. It can't live longer than three months,
that's right, That is if it's existing outside of diapause, right,
(23:07):
Totally fascinating to me. Yes, So diapause is basically like
suspended animation or hibernation for the fly. Basically, if there's
no food around um, and there's no predators either, and
the flies like I'm gonna see what's going on a
few months from now, the fly can basically shut down
it's it's life processes to the state where it can
(23:31):
just exist without moving. It's like a state between life
and death for a few months, right, and then wake
back up and be like it's the future or it's
winter and I'm dead soon. That's another part, because don't
they only live during the warmer months or do they
don't live all year around. They they thrive in the
in the warmer, warm, muggy areas. So Josh, surely these
(23:56):
things add nothing to the world aside from being discussing
little creeps. Agreed? Not true? You don't want them in
your house? Well, remember, Chuck, these are one of the one,
one of like three bugs that you and I agreed
are are fine to kill. Yeah, what else did we say?
Mosquitoes and mosquitoes, ticks and this is the only non
(24:17):
blood sucker. Interesting. It's a poop Peter though, and that's
why I don't want in your house. But they are
good um, like all flies in the world at large,
great source of protein. They break things down in in
into smaller bits for other bacteria and life forms to
feed on. They are an important part of any ecosystem
that they live in. I mean, there's nothing here that's useless, right,
(24:40):
That's right? Okay. I think they even found a use
for the old appendix, didn't they they did? Doesn't it
like um combat cancerous growth? I can't remember, I believe
so uh, And I think they even use maggots and
uh freshwater fishing raising commercial fish like to lapia. Yeah
to life, you love them. They use pupa. The pupa
(25:03):
is high in protein. Okay, so that's what they feed them,
a little freeze dripe pupa m And you know, if
you're if you're a survivalist, or you're in a bad
situation out in the woods and you need to survive, maggots.
If you get like a rotted uh rotted tree on
the ground, you want to eat those maggots. You'll eat it.
You'll eat it and you'll like it. I would do it.
(25:25):
And I'm not down with that stuff at all, but
I would do that, of course, to save myself. Full
circle and Tom Fagy, oh yeah, nice job, thank you.
Do we have time for one more fly fact? I?
I think so, I think, yes, we do alright. Fly
fact number six, No. Five five. Ancient civilizations actually made
(25:49):
regular sacrifices to the fly gods to keep the swarms
out of their houses and temples because they thought they
were harbingers of harbingers of sickness and death, even though
they didn't know the science behind it. Right. The flies
are just there's something about them. They are um, They're
disgusting there, unwholesome. That's the word I'm looking for. They
(26:12):
are inherently unwholesome. Yeah. So if you want to keep
flies out of your temple, right, you have several options
available to you. Right, keep a clean house, that's number one.
That's the smartest thing to do. Don't don't don't leave
like your carton of milk open and just sitting on
the counter when you're doing it, all right, Or the
(26:33):
steak in the trash. Yeah, Emily makes me throw away food. Uh, Like,
I put it in a bag and take it out
to the garbage. So what we do too, that's what
you do with adults in college, I think so. Yeah,
it's like scrape in the trash. It was in a
kitchen garbage can with the top. I mean in college,
I would have left that plate out in the living
room on the couch. I've always been fairly clean. Yeah,
me too. What else can you do fairly biological control?
(26:57):
You've got the old venus fly trap, which you know,
if you can keep them healthy either kind of tough.
Not just that. At the end of the um at
the end of the fly that was at the beginning
of this podcast, it's taught in a spider web, which
happens quite a bit, so us. As long as the
spider is not going to kill you and your family
while you're sleeping, just leave it along because it's going
(27:17):
to control the fly population tremendously. That's right. And farmers
even there's some commercial farms that actually buy uh parasitic
wasps too, you know, eat larvae right and take care
of flies for their crops. The Tarot melody wasp, that's right,
Tara Melody. Uh, keep your windows and door shut. That's
(27:39):
kind of obvious. If you're gonna keep your door open
in the middle summertime, you're gonna have a lot of flies.
I think that's funny that even warranted its own bullet point. Yeah,
and the flyswatter did too. Actually physical control and fly
paper which is disgusting. Yeah, it's it's gross too, I
mean especially around food, like if you see that in
the kitchen at camp. Yeah, you know when you went
(27:59):
to camp and you walk past of kids and there
like flies there. It's like, get some glass glazies windows,
what is wrong? Or at least changed the fly paper
every day. That's something too. There's bugs appers and then
I wouldn't even endorse pesticides for house flies. You don't
want to be sprayed that stuff in your house, But
that is an option for some people and it's just
not for me. They can be very dangerous and has
(28:23):
anybody who's ever seen a bug's life knows the bugs
appers actually get bugs high. It's kind of like a
hallucinogen to him. Oh was that what happened in that? Yeah,
I remember the guy that's got zapp, the bug got zapp.
He's like, oh, that was far out something along those lines. Yeah,
bug zappers are fun. So chuck, you got any more
fly fax or anything? I know? So we're done with
(28:45):
house flies. I'm done forever. House Flies just just as
disgusting as you always thought. That's right, and you already
knew everything about him. So everybody yourself a pat on
the back of this one. Right. Yeah, we should mention
if you use a fly swatter, it's a lot of
fun to smash a house fly, but you leave behind
quite a disgusting mess. You will not allow house or
(29:07):
fly swatters in the house. Now, we don't. We haven't
owned up. They're they're really kind of gross. That's only
second to the Pooper Scooper for the kiddie lettering devices.
Or the toilet scrubber next to the toilet, or the plunger.
So that's it. Now you know what chuck's in my
houses look like. Right. If you want to know more
(29:28):
about flies and you want to see these fly facts
in text, even you can type in house flies uh
in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com,
which of course brings up listener mail Uh funny or
sad funny. Okay, I'm gonna read the Hodgman exchange. Oh
(29:49):
oh really, I was thinking we wouldn't do that and
end up on Judge John Hodgman. Maybe he'll litigate this
if we just pretendally can he doesn't exist. We'll see.
I'm gonna read this though, all buddy, Uh Johnny Rocket
Hodgeman John Kellogg Hodgman. Rocket is his maiden name. He
has a podcast he does through Jesse Thorn's Maximum Fun
(30:12):
Sound of Young America, called Judge John Hodgman. We plugged
it before he settles minor disputes between friends, lovers, husbands
and wives. It's very funny. So John writes this last week,
and there is a fan that said I wish to
file suit against the stuff. You should know podcasts and
this guy. It's complaining about the fact that we said
(30:33):
in the Scooby Doo show that there were the Boston
area campuses. Yeah, the five the five colleges that were
represented by the characters. Supposedly it was one of the
Scooby Doo myths, and we said that they're all Boston
area colleges. Like, what ones Amherst, you, mass Holyoke? Yeah,
Mount Holyoke's North Northampton And all right, that's the ones
(30:57):
we'll get too. So March eighteen eight their nine Am,
Judge John Hydman writes to the stuff you should know. Seriously, guys,
see this Hello, The five colleges are in the Connecticut
River or Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, specifically Amherst, Northampton
in Holyoke, Massachusetts. This is painful to me, not only
(31:17):
because this is Hodgman country, but it was which is
mainlier than Marble Country. Actually it also has more argyle.
That's right. It was indeed while driving up and down
the tobacco fields along the Connecticut River that I first
came to enjoy your podcasts and to admire your great knowledgeability.
Wait you say tobacco fields, that is right. The Connecticut
(31:39):
River Valley produces what is historically the most prize shade
tobacco in the United States, and Massachusetts tobacco is still
dried and used as rappers for fine cigars. Were you
aware of this? In all caps? He he loves all cats,
and he's very intimidating. Sunday, even hope to show this
fine country to you, my semi hometown, in my total
(32:01):
home state, and to remind you of the great motto
of Hampshire College. To know is not enough. I look
forward to hearing this letter read in its entirety on
your podcast before you forced me to humiliate you on mine.
That is all. Chuck Bryant writes, back, boy, John, did
we hear about this one? It made it abundantly clear
that the fine people of Massachusetts need to get right
(32:23):
with one another and cease to throw up walls between themselves.
There's enough segregation in the world. At ten o four,
Judge John Hodgman writes, so you have already run a correction,
then I must have missed it. Sarcasm uh. Ten o six,
Chuck writes, we have not and shall not take part
in the continued segregation of the fine people of Massachusetts.
(32:44):
That is all. At ten oh eight, John writes, you
leave me no choice but to mention this on my
own podcast, And I respond to him, and you leave
me no choice but to scoff at it publicly on
our podcast. This is like a nerd battle at this point.
It Yeah, And then John writes, very seriously, you don't
(33:04):
want to go down this road, Chuck, just read my
letter on the air before this gets ugly. I finally responded,
if anything gets read, it shall be the entire exchange, John,
complete with your threatening words from the alleged judge. And
then he writes back, finally, you are a monster. And
that is the end of the exchange. That was a
(33:25):
great gramantic reading. Man. Thank you, thank you, and thank
you John. Beep beep beep and uh sorry. I guess
to everybody who was offended by that, which was a
substantial amount of people who wrote in, I guess in Massachusetts,
that'd be like saying equating making with Atlanta or something,
and we would say, no, no, no, no, Makan's not
(33:45):
even close to Atlanta. Yeah, but I don't know if
I would um point out the difference angrily. Well, Plus
they were disassociating from Boston. Usually you glom onto the
big city and they were like, no, no, no, no, no,
We're not Boston this one. Yeah, so I don't know.
If I don't get it, I don't either. But um
to each his own, as we always say, right, that's right.
(34:06):
If you want to litigate us somehow via email, maybe
you can contact John Hodgman. Um, we should probably give
us personal email out huh see it's so kind to
copy ours. Yeah. Um, well, you can contact us first
and we'll see if we can put you in touch
with John. Um. You can reach us via Facebook at
uh facebook dot com. Slash stuff you should know. You
(34:28):
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast right, um,
and then you can always send us a good old
fashioned email, which we're always appreciative of, although no longer
respond to every single one. Be aware. Um that's stuff
podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
(34:51):
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
our homepage. The House Stuff Work's iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
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