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Short Stuff: Figs & Wasps · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: So this is short Stuff.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an episode where I was very surprised,
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: and I even went back that when we did our
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: episode on wasps, we even got emails about this, so
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure we did not cover it.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but we're talking.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: About fig wasps of the fig tree specifically, not the
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: kind that you see. Almost all fig tree varieties are
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: not ones that you eat the fruit of. That's a
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: very specific one. The ones like you have out in
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: your yard. They develop without pollination, which means they're parthenocarpic.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: But the ones that where you eat the figs, they
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: are grown commercially, mainly in California here in the United States.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: They are Calimerna figs, and they are imported from Turkey,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: and the Ficus carica, or the fig wasp, is also
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: imported from Turkey because they have a very special relationship.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so fig wasps and that specific kind of fig
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: apparently co evolved over the last sixty million years to
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: form a mutually symbiotic relationship. As our friend Connor from
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Love on the spectrum would say, where the fig wasp
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: depends on the fig for its reproductive cycle, the fig
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: depends on the fig wasp for its reproductive cycle. And
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: if you didn't have one or the other, the other
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: one would not exist.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, And we're going to tell you how that
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: happens right now. I was gonna say right for this,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: but that'd be way too soon for the first thing
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: we need to say is that the fig, the thing
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: that you're eating, it's something within a larger structure, and
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: it's called a seconium, is what you're actually eating. It's
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: sort of like an inverted flower. It's not really a
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: fruit necessarily, No. And what happens is these Calimurna farmers
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: in California, they have female trees that are going to
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: produce that edible version of the sinconia, and they have
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: male trees that produce an inedible version called a golf fig.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: And if they want to pollinate those, a wasp has
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: to crawl into that sinconium, a female wasp. She loses
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: her wings on the way because she has a squeeze
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: through a tight little passage. It's a one way trip,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: which is very sad, and you end up eating that
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: female wasp. She's broken down by something called physine. It's
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: a protein digesting enzyme.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: So when you.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Eat a fig, there is a little bit of female
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: wasp inside of that thing, just broken down and becoming
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: part of that edible fig.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but essentially you're not going to be able to
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: detect it on your tongue. Some people think that the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: little tiny seeds inside of a fig are wasp parts
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: because there's been such a legend that developed about like
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: fig wasps, and it is true to some degree, but
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: for the most part, No, you're not detecting a fig
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: wasps like body or exo skeleton. When you're eating a fig.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: You are eating part of a wasp though, Like, don't
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: make no mistake for sure.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: And I mentioned it was the one way trips.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: It's fairly sad that that happens, but it's all in
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: good service of that mutual arrangement. Before that happens, this
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: female wasp is gonna come out of an inedible male fig.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm gonna call it a fruit because she
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: was born there and she has mate it by that
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: point with a blind, wingless male wasp who never leaves
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: that male fig. So she exits that inedible male fig,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: she picks up some pollen.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: She got all these eggs, and at that.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Point she can either go to a male fig tree
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: or a female fig tree. But if she lands on
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: that female fig tree, her ovipositor is too short to
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: reach into this really you know, long styled female flower,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: so she can't lay those eggs in there. She does
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: end up pollinating it, but she sacrifices her life in
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: doing so.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she makes it all the way to the synconium
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and finds like, I literally just wasted my life. But
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: her life is not a waste because if she didn't
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: accidentally enter a female fig where she was trying to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: reproduce or lay her eggs in a male fig, then
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: the figs would not get pollinated. So figs get pollinated
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: because fig wasps sometimes make mistakes when choosing a male
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: or a female fig to burrow into and lay their eggs.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I find that amazing.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty great, Like it works both ways. If
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: she goes into that male fig, then she's gonna deposit
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: those fertilized eggs, and that circle just kind of keeps
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: going on and on. Farmers separate these trees out to
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: try and keep them from doing that.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I protest that I'm protesting.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Oh you're protesting them doing that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I protest that there are male and female fig trees.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I've seen that they're self pollinating and hermaphroditic, including the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: ones that you eat. So I'm going on record as
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: saying that.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Well, you're wrong, my friend, because this farmer that was
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: interviewed said that they separate those male and female trees.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: I don't think he's just making that up to aggravate you.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: What if he's completely off his rocker.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, are all the farmers and all the sources
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: completely off their rocker?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So I think this is just one of those times
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: where we're gonna have to agree to disagree. Do you agree?
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Sure, that's very agreeable.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: All right, we'll be back right after this.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: So a few things that we can remember is that
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: the female wasp dies inside that edible fig. And there
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: have been people like vegans that there are vegans and say,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: there have been there are literally vegans who won't eat that.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: But it's there are bugs in almost every fruit that
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: you eat. There are levels of bug so i'd say infestation,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: but just bug activity. That's acceptable for the USDA Tomato Ketchup.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Apparently it has the highest USDA grade standard possible and
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: it can have no more than thirty fruit.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: Fly eggs for every one hundred grams of ketchup.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Like, surely, I guess there's some quality control where they
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: take some like one hundred ounces or one hundred grams
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of ketchup and count the fruitfly eggs in it, right,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know how they do that, and if that
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: is they like, if they find thirty one or even
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: one hundred, that doesn't necessarily mean that the next bottle
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: is going to have the same amount, because I mean
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: we're talking fruitfly eggs right from all sorts of different
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: tomatoes in each bottle. Yeah, it boggles my mind. I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: don't know how they do this, no, or how they
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: enforce it, I guess, is what I mean.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet someone or it might be one of
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: those things where like no one's even paying attention to.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: This, right the vegans are vegans are watching you?
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, they're always watching.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I did mention though, that the farmers try and control
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: the separating those trees out to control because it can
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: be a problem if there are too many seeds that
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: fruit can burst open and all of a sudden, it's
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: not you know, it's good for the plant, but it's
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: not good to harvest for the farmers. So they're trying
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: to sell these things. So they separate those trees out
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: over some pretty great distances and also control the number
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: of new wasp that they bring in. They're like, they're
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: wasp wranglers as well as farmers, and they get these
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: things delivered to their house, to their farm and paper sacks,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: and they can pretty much control exactly how many females
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: have access to the correct plant.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and those paper sacks also usually include a tiny
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: cowboy hat and a tiny glat so and then just
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: one more time to just kind of go over this again,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: just to calm anybody's fears, you probably are eating some insects,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: so vegans, you're right. If you don't want to eat insects,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: you probably should steer clear of figs. But the fig
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: is designed to digest the female wasp that dies inside
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of it and breaks it down for nutrients for itself.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: So just don't worry about eating wasps. I don't know
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: why everybody's so worried about eating wasps. Chuck, Yeah, I.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Mean it is fig.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: At that point that wasp becomes fig. In fact, that's
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: a great t shirt. Wasp becomes fig.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I agree wholeheartedly. Well, since we came up with a
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: t shirt, obviously everybody that means short stuff is opps.
• 8:27
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• 8:30
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• 8:34
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