Sydney Crawley Transcript
Victoria:
Our guest this week is Dr. Sydney Crawley. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University. She got her bachelor’s degree in Biology at Transylvania University, and her PhD in Entomology, the study of insects from the University of Kentucky as an entomologist. She studies insects that live in and around your house. She focuses on studying bedbugs, cockroaches, mosquitoes, and other pests that can harm people or pets. Sydney is interested in finding the best ways to catch insects that people do not want in their house. She studies how bugs behave so that scientists and exterminators can understand them better, because understanding how insects behave help us get rid of them more effectively. She’s interested in figuring out how to use insecticides, chemicals that kill bugs, and other tools like insect traps in safest ways so that you and your pets stay safe from bugs that can spread germs or cost your family money because they cause property damage.
This week’s questions were submitted by the listeners through emails and on social media.
Dr. Crawley, thank you so much for talking to us today.
Dr. Crawley:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited.
Victoria:
Do you have anything you want to add to that little introduction?
Dr. Crawley:
I don’t think so. It sounds perfect.
Victoria:
(Sierra – My cat likes to eat moths, is that safe?)
Awesome. So we’ll get into the questions. This first question is from Sierra. My cat likes to eat moths, is that safe?
Dr. Crawley:
Yes. So this is a really common behavior for domestic pets. So my dog actually does this too. So especially cats are really drawn to those flying insects because they like to back them around. And they don’t pose any sort of risk when they’re eaten. There are some caterpillars or moths that can be kind of toxic, but they’re very, very rare. So not really an issue.
Victoria:
(Victoria – My cat throws up when he eats insects around the house. Do you know why this happens? Is there a chemical or something in insects that can upset cats’ stomachs?)
That is good to know. Oh, I forgot to added this question. This is a question for me. My cat throws up when he eats insects around the house. Do you know why that would happen? Is there a chemical in the insects that can upset cats’ stomachs?
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. So this might happen for a couple of reasons. So the first is that some insects can emit like defensive secretions that are really meant to deter other insect predators, but they can be irritating to vertebrate pests like cats and dogs when they consume them. That’s one potential reason.
But I think more commonly the skeleton of insects, which is actually on the outside and we call it an exoskeleton. It contains chitin and some other compounds that we can’t digest. And that can be kind of tough on a cat stomach. And sometimes that’ll cause vomiting too, because it just can’t be digested.
Victoria:
Okay. That makes sense.
Dr. Crawley:
But it’s not, it’s not problematic. It’s not going to be, you know, that you really need to worry about, just mildly irritating.
Victoria:
Okay. That’s good. That it’s not a problem. It’s just more of a problem to clean up the vomit.
Dr. Crawley:
Yes.
Victoria:
(Grace – How do flies and moths get into my house all the time when I keep my windows closed?)
All right. This next question is from Grace. How do flies and moths get into my house all the time when I keep my windows closed?
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. So this is a good question. Flies, moths, and other flying insects can fit through such tiny spaces. And a lot of times we have gaps around our doors and windows that we just don’t even notice because they seem so small to us, but to insects, they’re actually huge. So a good way to think about this. If you had a mouse that was trying to get into your house. A mouse can fit through a hole. It’s only a quarter inch wide, which is very small.
Victoria:
Wow.
Dr. Crawley:
So imagine a hole that a fly could fit its body through. So if you can see any light coming through around the windows and doors, that’s probably a big enough space for a fly to get through. You have to seal those up.
Victoria:
Wow. That’s crazy.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah.
Victoria:
(Sierra – What is the best way to get rid of fruit flies?)
Yikes. Speaking of very small pests, Sierra wants to know what is the best way to get rid of fruit flies.
Dr. Crawley:
This is a good, I’m struggling with these right now.
Victoria:
Oh, no.
Dr. Crawley:
You know, apples and things for pies and baking. So fruit flies, like the name suggests are attracted to ripe fruit, and anything that’s fermenting. So when something ferments that’s when a yeast or bacteria turns like the sugar of whatever this fruit or whatever food you have into an acid. So you can actually lure fruit flies in using something that smells like vinegar, because vinegar has a lot of acidic acid in it. So if you want to make your own fruit fly trap, you can just fill some sort of glass jar with apple cider vinegar. You can then put plastic wrap over the top and you can poke some holes in that to let the fruit flies go in there, then they can’t go back out.
So if you want to buy something similar, because you don’t want to make your own trap, I know that a lot of companies sell a similar solution. Tarro, for instance, they have those little apple-shape traps, and you fill it with the solution that comes with it, and those work really well.
You can do it either way. You can make it from scratch or you can buy one at the store.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s awesome. I’m definitely going to make one from scratch. That sounds fun.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah.
Victoria:
(Sierra – I sometimes find bugs under my sink, what is the best way to prevent that?)
All right. Let’s see, another question from Sierra. Sometimes I find bugs under my sink. What is the best way to prevent that?
Dr. Crawley:
That’s a really common problem. So insects need water to survive. And a lot of times they will get water by actually absorbing it through their bodies. So that being the case, a lot of times it can get really damp underneath our sinks. So you want to make sure it stays really dry under there. And so that might involve fixing the leaky pipe or making sure you’re not spilling water under there when you’re doing the dishes. You just want to keep it as dry as possible. And that will deter a lot of insects because they don’t like spaces that are really, really dry. It’s hard for them to survive.
Victoria:
(Sierra – Now that it is getting colder, what are some tips to prevent bugs from coming inside the house?)
That makes sense. Okay. Another question from Sierra. Now that it’s getting colder, what are some tips to prevent bugs from coming inside the house?
Dr. Crawley:
I love all these questions from Sierra. This is great. So, fall is a really good time to like, try to start pest proofing your home. So what you want to do is, like I said before, anywhere you can see light coming in the house is something that you need to close up. So you can install door sweeps underneath the door. You can make sure your windows screens don’t have holes in them. You can plug up any of those holes around the windows using caulk, if you can get it, silicone is the best to use.
So. You can, this is a lot of people don’t know about this, or if they do know they don’t think about it, but some colors, insects can’t see, and some colors are less attractive. So if you wanted to, you can change your porch lights from a white light to a yellow or red, which I know some people don’t like to do just because they don’t want red light around their house. But that is something that works really well.
Putting mesh, like a mesh screen, over any holes, moving into the attic or things like that will keep bugs out.
And then something good to do is make sure you’re cleaning up any old cardboard boxes, paper, wood, things like that. Yellow jackets and other wasps will use those materials to make nests. And so you don’t want that. And they’re also just good hiding places for a lot of other bugs, too.
Then just, you know, make sure you trim the grass one more time, trim your bushes away from the house. Just kind of do all those things before winter time. And that’ll really decrease the number of bugs that come in, and it’ll also decrease the number of bugs you see in the spring, too.
Victoria:
(Grace – How long do bedbugs live? Can they travel in your suitcase on a flight or if you checked a bag would the lack of oxygen/cold kill them?)
That is awesome. So many great tips.
Okay. Let’s see. This question is from Grace. How long do bedbugs live? Can they travel in your suitcase on a flight or if you checked a bag would the lack of oxygen/cold kill them?
Dr. Crawley:
So the amount of time that a bedbug lives just depends on the quality of where it’s living. In a laboratory, where things are just right, and we feeding them at just the right time, a nd the temperature is good, and the humidity is good, and they can live as long as one year.
But I think it’s more common in the indoor environment for them to live three to maybe six max months. And they can live a really long time without a blood meal. So if you ever hear someone say that you can get rid of bedbugs by just, you know, leaving the room for a long time, that is not true.
And they can survive a flight, and they can travel through your suitcase. And we think that’s one way that bedbugs became such a big problem in the past 20 or so years is through airplane travel. So those are really good questions.
Victoria:
(Sierra – I have heard that spiders crawl into your nose at night, is that true?)
Wow. Yikes. This is another question from Sierra. I’ve heard that spiders crawl into your nose at night. Is that true?
Dr. Crawley:
So. I can’t rule this out as having never have happened because it has happened, but it is so, so rare. Very unlikely that any insect wants to crawl into your nose, your ears, anything like that, because if you think about it from the bugs point of view, that’s really risky, you know, we’re really big. We can easily smush them. It’s not really in their best interest to crawl into any of our orifices. Yeah, it’s very rare, but could maybe happen. It would have to be a really small spider too to let that happen.
Victoria:
Oh, gosh.
Dr. Crawley:
I wish I could say it has never happened so people don’t freak out, but it’s, it’s very, very rare.
Victoria:
That’s good.
Dr. Crawley:
Absolutely.
Victoria:
(Joe – I have heard something about African or South American termites are now in the US and they can destroy a house very quickly. Is that true and what can be done to protect our homes?)
All right. This next question is from Joe. I’ve heard something about African or South American termites are now in the US and they can destroy a house very quickly. Is that true and what can be done to protect our homes?
Dr. Crawley:
Okay. So I actually have not heard that.
So there are some, the largest species of termite, I think it’s Macrotermes bellicosus, I think is an Africa and they get really, really big, but they are not found here in the United States. And they can be really destructive. But so far, none are here where we live in the United States.
The most destructive termites are subterranean termites, but we have really, really good management strategies for those. And if you get your house treated for termites, the chemicals we use will prevent termites from coming into your home for 10 to 15 years. So they last a really long time and they work really well. So that’s how we protect our homes from, from those termites.
But we, we don’t have the African or South American termite that he’s talking about.
Victoria:
Okay. That’s good to know.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah, great.
Victoria:
Yeah. As a new homeowner, I’m very happy about that.
Dr. Crawley:
Same here. Yeah. I just bought my house a few months ago.
Victoria:
Me too!
Dr. Crawley:
Oh, congratulations.
Victoria:
Yeah. Congratulations to you too.
Dr. Crawley:
Thank you. Get a termite treatment.
Victoria:
(Grace – Do carpenter ants attack drywall or is that only a worry for wood homes?)
Okay. All right. This next question is from Grace. Do carpenter ants attack drywall or is that only a worry for wood homes?
Dr. Crawley:
So I guess I was a little confused by this question, so you can have drywall, but you can have, you know, wood frame. So you can have carpenter ants that are attacking a wooden frame and, you know, that would still be problematic, but they wouldn’t necessarily be in the drywall. Most homes that have drywall also have wood. So you could see carpenter ants, you know, where drywalls present, but yes, they would be, chewing through the wood and they’re not eating the wood the same way a termite does, but they do create these galleries to live in that can be damaging to wood. So I hope that answers her question. Usually it’s hard to find drywall without also having wood. So.
Victoria:
Is there a similar treatment, for the carpenter ants that there is for termites?
Dr. Crawley:
No, we don’t treat the same way for carpenter ants. The way you treat for termites involves a really thorough soil treatment. They kind of keeps them from ever moving in to the home in the first place. Since most termites are, you know, underground. That works really well, but carpenter ants could be, you know, above ground as well. So we can’t treat the exact same way. But you can do injections into the wall and into, and through the foundation the same way you would for termites. But, they just use slightly different pesticides in that case. And the guarantee probably wouldn’t be for 10 to 15 years because they can come back. But they’re still pretty easy to get rid of. You just have to do some drilling and injecting. So usually you want to hire, you know, a professional to get those out of your wall.
Victoria:
(Sierra – Are there any bugs that can survive being washed in the laundry? What is the best way to get rid of bugs in clothes?)
Okay. This next question is another question from Sierra. Are there any bugs that can survive being washed in the laundry? What is the best way to get rid of bugs in clothes?
Dr. Crawley:
So I’m going to start with the last question first. The best way to get rid of bugs in clothes is actually to dry them. In my opinion, if you can, the dryer gets really hot and it’ll kill most insects, especially if you dry on high heat for two cycles. But to be fair, most insects can’t survive in hot soapy water either. So, I think if maybe if you had somehow an insect pupa that got in there, maybe they could survive a cycle, but it’s unlikely, most insects are going to be killed if you do hot soapy water and then two cycles through the hot dryer.
And a pupa is just the life stage that some insects have before turning into an adult. So like a butterfly, like the caterpillar building the case, and then going into the adult, that middle stage is called the pupa, just in case people didn’t know that. So yeah, most insects are gonna die if you run them through the washer dryer.
Victoria:
(Grace – Do the flying kind of cockroaches live in North America?)
(Sierra – Is it true cockroaches can survive anything?)
That’s good to know. Yeah. All right, let’s see here. Okay. These are two questions that go together. One from Grace and one from Sierra. Grace says, do the flying kind of cockroaches live in North America? And Sierra wants to know, is it true that cockroaches can survive anything?
Dr. Crawley:
Sure. Yeah. So there are multiple species of cockroaches here that fly. So I think Asian, Smoky Brown, Brown Banded, to name a few. And then American cockroaches, they have fully developed wings, they don’t tend to fly, they, they usually glide. So say they’re in a tree and they want to move down, they usually just kind of glide down rather than actually flying. German cockroaches, the ones you typically find in your house, they do have fully developed wings. But they tend to crawl around. They don’t fly very much either. So yes, we do have cockroaches here that fly, but it’s more than one species. They’re not, there’s not just one.
As far as surviving anything. I know they seem indestructible, but you think about it, I mean, they can’t survive us taking our hand and smashing them. Right? So, they are very old though. They evolved, I think, 280 million years ago or something like that. So they have adapted to lots of different types of environments, but we do have pesticides that work very well to kill them. Baits work really well. So, food that they consume that has a poison in it, those work really well. If you get them very, very hot or very, very cold, that works. If they can’t find food or water, they do starve to death. They can dehydrate. And if there’s not enough food, sometimes roaches will eat each other. So obviously one of the roaches in that scenario is going to die. Yeah, there’s lots of ways to kill them. They just seem indestructible because they’re so, you know, they seem almost prehistoric. Right. So, but I mean, if you step on one, instead. So they can’t survive anything, but they can survive a lot.
Victoria:
(Sierra – How many legs can a centipede get? Is it based off of genetics?)
That’s good to know. Okay, switching gears a little bit to an insect we haven’t talked about. Sierra wants to know how many legs can a centipede have? Is it based off of genetics?
Dr. Crawley:
So, first of all, centipedes are actually not insects, and neither are spiders or ticks. So if something has six legs, that’s an insect. More than that, and it’s something else in the same phylum, the arthropoda. So yeah, not a bug. But we, I don’t know, we tend to colloquially call all things bugs, so it’s fine. But I just did want to point that out.
The number of legs that they have, so yes, it depends on the species. So I guess technically you could say that, yeah, that’s related to genetics, right? Because the species that it is is related to the genes that it has. The most centipedes, and actually I had to look this up because, I haven’t studied centipedes a lot and I’ve kind of forgotten. I knew that they didn’t always have, you know, a hundred legs, but 17 to 177 pairs typically. So that would be 34 to 354 individual legs. And then the number of legs that centipede has just depends on how many body segments they have, because each segment will have two legs. So the more segments, the more legs, if that makes sense.
Victoria:
Yeah. Interesting.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. All right.
Victoria:
(Jane – Is it true that some insects/bugs don’t live at higher altitudes. Like dust mites?)
This is a question from Jane, isn’t it true that some insects don’t live at higher altitudes. Like dust mites?
Dr. Crawley:
It’s a really good question. So, yes, some insects cannot survive at high altitudes. That is absolutely correct. There’s just not enough air, and the pressure is really different. So yeah, they do have to adapt. And it can also get too cold for some insects. But there are some insects that can handle it. And I know a few years ago, there’s a group of scientists that did a study and they did find one species of bumblebee, and which one is escaping my mind right now, but they can fly at altitudes high enough that it would kill a person. But they’re able to withstand it and actually fly, which is pretty cool because the amount of pressure and everything on the wing muscles, and just like the amount of heat that they need to generate. It’s really impressive. I think they fly taller than the height of Mount Everest.
Victoria:
Wow.
Dr. Crawley:
There’s just not a lot of air up there and they’re still able to fly, which is pretty cool.
Victoria:
That’s incredible.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah, super neat. And now most insects cannot tolerate that, most people can’t tolerate that. So. Yeah.
Victoria:
(Ella – Are there more bugs in houses in warm climates vs cold ones? Like Alaska vs Hawaii?)
Okay. Ella wants to know, are there more bugs in houses in warm climates vs cold ones, like in Alaska versus Hawaii?
Dr. Crawley:
So I think. This used to be the case before we had central air and central heat. Now, since insects can go through a whole life cycle inside, you could have the same number of German roaches in a house in Alaska and a house in Hawaii. But I will say since insects can’t regulate their own body temperatures, like we can, you will tend to find higher numbers of specific insects in warmer climates. But if the bug is just because she said in houses, right? If you’re talking about an insect that only breeds in doors, then the outdoor temperature doesn’t matter.
But if you are living in a house, you know, in the South versus the North, and you’re talking about outside insects coming inside. Yes. If there are more generations of insects outdoors, they could find their way inside and you might see more where it is warmer. I know that I moved from Ohio to North Carolina, and I’ve only been here a couple months and I will say I have a lot more flies coming into my house down here than I did in Ohio. And I’ve had a lot more maggots outside, you know, baby flies essentially. I’ve seen a lot more maggots than I did in Ohio, and they’ve been reproducing more frequently.
So yes, you can have more outside for sure. But the ones that stay inside, it really doesn’t matter. Does that make sense?
Victoria:
Yeah. That makes sense.
Dr. Crawley:
Okay.
Victoria:
(Max – What is the difference between urban insects and rural ones?)
Yeah, I think that’s a good answer. Let’s see. Max wants to know what is the difference between urban insects and rural ones?
Dr. Crawley:
So I thought this is an interesting question. And it’s actually something we run into in urban entomology is defining what makes an urban pest urban, you know, so I like this question.
So technically an urban insect is any insect that you can find around a man-made structure. So say you have a house, you know, out in the country like mine is, even though a house is in a rural area, the pests that come inside on a regular basis, like spiders, termites, they’re still considered urban pests. So I don’t know that there’s really a distinction between urban bugs and rural bugs, but we do tend to call the urban bugs, the ones that we associate more with people. So cockroaches, bedbugs, lice, some spiders, some flies, termites.
But urban versus rural is just where you found it. I guess like you can find a cockroach in a rural setting and you can find, I don’t know, like a bumblebee in an urban setting. You know, so it’s, I don’t know that the distinction makes a whole lot of sense just depends on where you find it. But we do have bugs that people call urban, and I listed those out. But, yeah, that’s been like a common thing. Like people ask me if I work on crickets and some of the insects that you find, you know, in your lawn, and they’re like, well, those aren’t really urban because you find them in the grass. But if the grass is a lawn, that’s really close to the house, you know what I mean? So definition gets a little tricky. I think it’s blurry.
You can give people that live in a house or dealing with a pest problem in their house or their yard, like, I consider that under my purview, if they need help with mold crickets, even though they’re not really an urban insect, you know, I’m still gonna give them advice on what to do about it, even though it’s in their yard. You know what I mean?
Victoria:
(Sierra – How many lice on someone’s head takes to start an outbreak?)
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense
All right. Let’s see, you mentioned lice, we haven’t talked about lice yet. So this is a good follow-up question from Sierra. How many lice on someone’s head does it take to start an outbreak?
Dr. Crawley:
So it really depends. And this is true for a lot of blood feeding insects, so lice eat blood. So if you have one louse on someone’s head, but it’s a male. Then you can’t have an outbreak of lice because that male can’t lay any eggs. Right? But if you have one female and she’s never mate it before, and you have no males, then she can’t cause an outbreak either because she needs a male plus blood to lay eggs. So what you would need would be as few as one. If she were a female that had mated it before, and then she could feed, and then lay eggs. And they only need to mate one time to produce all of their eggs. So if you have, it can take as few as one, or you going to have a male and a female and need two. But yeah, it doesn’t take much to get a whole outbreak really fast.
Victoria:
That’s kind of scary.
Dr. Crawley:
And she can lay up to a couple of hundred eggs, I believe, so.
Victoria:
Ooh.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. Could easily go out of control very quickly.
Victoria:
(Billy – Do you study insects in the field or just in a lab? Have you ever been bitten?)
Yeah. All right. Let’s transition into some questions about you and how you study bugs.
Billy wants to know do you study insects in the field or just in a lab? And have you ever been bitten?
Dr. Crawley:
So I do study both. But my field might not be what you typically think of when you think of an entomologist. So I’m not out in, you know, a field with a bug net or anything like you see in some pictures. My field would be, you know, someone’s house for the most part.
So I’ve been bitten, many times by lots of different insects, sometimes just, you know, day to day life, and then sometimes at my job. But the most comment, I’ve let bedbugs bite me, because I wanted to see if I reacted, because some people will get red marks and other things and some people don’t. So just in case I wanted to know if I did or didn’t, in case I ever took them home from the lab, that way I would know. I’ve let fleas bite me, ticks, fire ants, those hurt.
Victoria:
Yeah.
Dr. Crawley:
Definitely been bitten by spiders before. I think everyone’s been bitten by mosquito. And then I’ve been stung by a few wasps too.
Victoria:
Ooh, those hurt.
Dr. Crawley:
They do hurt. Yeah. Not a joke.
Victoria:
(Tiana – If you trap the bugs instead of kill them, where do you release them?)
This next question is from Tiana. Okay. If you trap the bugs instead of kill them, where do you release them?
Dr. Crawley:
So I don’t do a lot of insect trapping, but typically when entomologists are trapping insects, they don’t tend to rerelease them in my field anyway. Because a lot of the bugs that were trapping are considered pests. So if I were to trap, you know, a lot of ticks. I don’t want to necessarily put those back out into the environment. But if I do accidentally trap, you know, a beneficial insect, like if I get a moth in a trap that was not meant to catch moth, I’ll just put it back where they live, where they like to spend their time, you know. That way they have a good chance at surviving. But most of the time when I’m trapping insects, they’re not insects we want to put out into the environment again, like mosquitoes and things like that. So.
Victoria:
That makes sense. If we find insects in our homes, do you recommend us trapping them and putting them back outside?
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah, if you find an insect in your house, that’s not really a pest, like say it’s wandered in from outside, like a lot of beetles are going to start coming in right now because it’s cooling off. I’ve had some stink bugs come inside. I’ve had some crane flies come inside. If they’re harmless insects, that do good for the ecosystem, you should definitely just trap them and put them back outside. And you can do it without touching them. You can put them on a paper towel with a cup. I often let them crawl out a paper towel and put them outside. Some can release like a smelly odor, like ladybugs can release a kind of smelly compound. And if you don’t want to get that on you, you can just let them crawl on a paper towel and put them out back in the yard. I definitely do that for most of the bugs are coming to my house. Sometimes I’ll let a spider hang out in my house too, because they eat the pest insects. So I get a lot of mosquitoes in here. So if I see a spider in the corner, I just leave it alone and let it eat the flies and mosquitoes that come inside. But I understand that not everyone’s comfortable doing that, and that’s okay too.
Victoria:
Yeah, I do that with spiders. I have so many that like to hang out in my stairs, down to the first floor. And I just ignore them.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. I had a friend over and I was like, by the way, there’s a spider that’s living above the shower you’re going to use, can you please leave it alone? If you want me to move it, I will. And she was like, no, it’s fine. But yeah, I definitely leave the spiders alone. But if you see a pest, you know, obviously you don’t want to do that. If a German roach happens to find its way inside or, you know, a bedbug, you don’t want to leave them around, but most of the pests that come into our homes are totally harmless. And so I don’t see the need and killing them unnecessarily. Yeah, just me.
Victoria:
(Jane – How do you create chemicals to kill bugs? How do you know it won’t hurt humans and pets? How long is it tested?)
No, I agree with that.
All right. Let’s see here. Jane wants to know how do you create chemicals to kill bugs? How do you know it won’t hurt humans and pets? How long is it tested?
Dr. Crawley:
So this is a really complicated question actually. But I’ll try to answer it quickly. So usually what happens is a chemist actually, so not an entomologist. Usually a chemist will have a compound that they either make themselves, or they mimic from something in the environment that is a molecule that we know has insecticidal activity. So that’s how it starts.
And then they have to find a way to put that into a form that we can apply to an insect. So they have to then formulate that molecule into like a pesticidal compound. So then an entomologist or someone else will take that and apply it to a lot of insects that they think it’ll kill. And then they, you know, write down did it work, did it not. And we kind of go from there and then the chemists and the entomologist and a lot of scientists work together to make this formula.
And then that has to go to the EPA, the environmental protection agency, for what’s called registration, and that takes a really, really long time. It can take years. The way they make sure it doesn’t hurt people and pets, they do all kinds of toxicity studies, for the environment for non-targets, for vertebrates, for people, they do all kinds of testing to make sure that it is safe. And so that can take 10 plus years and millions of dollars.
Victoria:
Wow.
Dr. Crawley:
It is very, very expensive to make a pesticide from the ground up. And then after they go through all of that, you still have to go through that same registration process in each state where you want to sell the chemical. And some states will say, yes, you can sell that here. And some will say no. So for instance, California is really, really strict as far as what you can sell. So you may be able to get a pesticide in Ohio, you cannot get in California, even if they’re both approved by the EPA. So by the end of the process, a company could easily lose a lot of money, depending on how the registration process goes and whether or not it gets approved.
So I know people think that pesticides are, you know, ruining the environment, and if they’re not safe and they hurt people, but there is a lot of work that goes in to make sure that they’re safe. We just need to make sure that we use them responsibly. And that the way that the people that made the chemical intended it to be used, that’s really important. And we do a lot more in this day and age to make sure that these chemicals are safe than we were doing, you know, 50, 60 years ago, which is good.
Victoria:
That is good.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah.
Victoria:
(Scott – What is the most interesting bug behavior you’ve observed? The funniest? The scariest?)
Okay, let’s get into some, some fun questions. Scott wants to know what is the most interesting bug behavior you’ve observed? The funniest? The scariest?
Dr. Crawley:
This question is so fun. So you can look up, the funniest one, you can actually look up on YouTube. There are a lot of videos of this. So there are some caterpillars that will shoot their poop really, really far. And they do this because their feces have, you know, chemicals that are attractive to predators. And so if the predator can smell it, then they can find the caterpillar, right. But if the caterpillar is sitting in one spot and they shoot their poop really far away, then it keeps them from being detected. So that’s, that was pretty funny to me, a little immature probably, but I thought it was funny.
The most interesting behavior that I’ve seen, and again, you can easily Google this one too. The peacock spider mating dance. I think it was just the coolest behavior in the insect realm. It’s so intricate. Their colors are so bright and it’s just, it’s really cute. So, if you haven’t seen it, look it up and peacock spiders are very cute. I mean, they’re very, very cute.
The scariest behavior I have seen, has to be, and I hadn’t seen this until I moved down here, actually, the way that fire ants will attack someone that’s disturbing their nest, is pretty terrifying because there can be thousands upon thousands of ants in the colony. And if you just barely disturbed the nest, they immediately just start crawling up and they can bite and sting at the same time. So you can imagine if you have thousands of ants, biting and stinging simultaneously, how painful that would be and how dangerous that can be, you know, if you’re a small child or a small animal, that’s a lot of venom. So that to me is pretty scary. I do not love the fire ants
Victoria:
Yikes.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah.
Victoria:
We’ll put links to the first two that you mentioned in the description of the episode, so listeners can just click on them.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah, the peacock spider ones, you can find people that have Photoshop too, especially around Christmas, little Christmas hats and little drums.
Victoria:
Oh cute!
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. I watched that every year. It brings me so much joy.
Victoria:
That’s so cute.
Dr. Crawley:
Actually when you Google it, that’s probably what you’re going to find first, because those are so popular around Christmas.
Victoria:
(Joe – What’s the scariest bug you ever saw or held?)
Okay. Joe wants to know what’s the scariest bug you’ve ever seen or held?
Dr. Crawley:
So I think the scariest bug is kind of relative, right? So like scary in what ways, is it scary looking, or is it scary because it can sting, or is it scary because, you know what I mean, is this scary cause it came out of nowhere and I didn’t expect it. Like once a beetle flew into my eye and that scared me a lot. This was because it was unexpected.
But I think the insect that grosses me out the most is the camel cricket. So when you get into a crawl space, you see these everywhere and they’re just, they’re creepy looking. In my opinion, they have a weird body shape and they’re often found in the dark. And so I think that adds an element of scariness. And then also their vision is just not good. And so they tend to just jump on you because they don’t, I don’t think they even know you’re there sometimes. And so when you’re in a crawl space and it’s already mucky and gross, and then a camel cricket jumps on your face. They scare me a lot.
But if you had to, if you asked me though, which one is like the scariest that I try to avoid, if you’ve ever heard of or seen a velvet ant, they’re actually wasps, but velvet ants are pretty, pretty scary. They call them cow killers actually, because they’re saying it’s just really, really painful. They’re very pretty, they’re red and black, very brightly color, but those bright colors are telling you, like, don’t mess with me. I will inflict a lot of pain. And I think at least my mom told me, this is anecdotal, she used to see him like in cow pastures. So I don’t know if that’s where the cow killer thing came from if they sting cows a lot, I assume that’s what it is. But, the sting is supposed to be exceptionally painful. I avoid those. I avoid those, like the plague. My friend actually came to visit, like I saw this cool bug in your yard, come check it out. So I walked out and he went to pick it up and I saw it from a distance. I was like, don’t touch that. It was a velvet ant. And he was like, so pretty. I’m like, no, no, no, pretty, but very, very dangerous. So. most insects, you can pick them up and it’s totally fine. But if you see one that’s really bright red, those like brighter orangy red colors often, that means that they can, you know, sting and they should be avoided for sure.
Victoria:
Yikes. I’ll put links to those two in the description of the episode. So the listeners can see.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah.
Victoria:
(Katie – What’s the biggest bug you’ve seen? The smallest?)
All right. let’s see, Katie wants to know what’s the biggest bug you’ve seen? And the smallest?
Dr. Crawley:
The biggest bug I’ve seen, kind of a three-way tie, I’ve never actually measured them out.
When I was in Australia, they have this, they’re called giant prickly stick insects, I think. And they’re like, they look like a combination of a walking stick and a praying mantis, but they get really, really big. And a lot of people keep them as pets. They’re very, very cool looking.
So those are really big here in the US probably. Giant water bugs are very, very big and cecropia moths also are very big. A lot of people probably seen cecropia moth and don’t know that they’ve seen one. But they get pretty huge. So.
Victoria:
Yeah. All right. I’ll put links to those too. Oh, and the smallest.
Dr. Crawley:
Oh, the smallest, sorry. There are a lot of tiny ones that I’ve seen. So there are some really tiny, stored-product beetles, gnats, fleas. Juvenile bedbugs are really small too, the ones that just hatch out of the egg. They’re very, very small. You can see them with the naked eye, but they’re tiny. So I think those might actually be one of the smallest that I’ve seen up close and personal on a regular basis.
Victoria:
(Jane – What’s the worst infestation in a house that you’ve seen?)
Okay. All right. Jane wants to know what’s the worst infestation in a house that you’ve seen?
Dr. Crawley:
So the worst infestation I’ve ever seen was actually in an assisted living facility, and it was multiple stories tall, and there were probably millions of bedbugs in that facility.
In a smaller house, I did see once a cockroach and a bedbug infestation that they had at the same time.
Victoria:
Ooh.
Dr. Crawley:
It had gotten so bad that they were actually living, you know, like around the people, like in their chairs where they were sitting. I mean, it was very, very bad.
So those were two pretty terrible ones. You can easily get in before you even realize there’s a problem, you can have thousands. So I don’t want to scare people or anything. Cause again, this rarely happens. Most of the time you get a handle on it before they get this bad, but you can get thousands of bugs in the house and I’ve seen that many times, so.
Victoria:
Yikes.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. It’s luckily there we have good ways to control them when it does get that bad. So that’s good, at least.
Victoria:
(Aaron- Do you study bugs all over the world or just in the US?)
Yeah. That’s good. Aaron wants to know do you study bugs all over the world or just in the US?
Dr. Crawley:
So I only study bugs here in the US. When I travel, I like to look at bugs in other countries, like I talked about the ones in Australia, but the ones I actually study only live here as of right now.
Victoria:
(Jane – How did you get interested in studying bugs?)
(Joe – Why did you become an entomologist?)
Nice. All right. Two fun questions that go together. One from Jane, how did you get interested in studying bugs? And Joe wants to know why did you become an entomologist?
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah, I love these questions. So it was kind of a windy road. I, when I was in middle and high school, I got really interested in viruses. So, obviously that’s very relevant right now. Scientists were predicting a Corona virus like virus a long time ago, and they were really worried that, with international travel and trade, food distribution, animal distribution, there was a big panic about the spread of viruses around the world, and the fact that there might be a global pandemic someday. Obviously, we’re living that right now. So I read a lot of books about the Ebola virus and I just got very interested in medicine. But what I realized was every time there was one of these outbreaks of say, Ebola, scientists, you know, rushing to be reactive, we have to create a vaccine, we have to stop the virus, we have to, you know, put all these medical procedures in place to keep people safe and healthy, which is totally fine. And that makes absolute sense.
There are also a lot of viruses that are transmitted by insects. And a lot of pathogens transmitted by insects. So, you know, mosquitoes. There’s been a ton of different pathogens. So my thought was instead of rushing to create vaccines, trying to get ahead of that and stop the pathogen from ever getting into humans in the first place. So if you can control insects that spread pathogens, then you can kind of slow down virus transmission, and people.
So that was one angle that it just seemed like would be fun because you get to work with something you can see. Viruses are often like very, very small, and you have to use special microscopes and special tools to detect them. And I didn’t want to work in the lab all the time. And biology in that kind of work means you’re sitting at a bench most of the day. With entomology, you get to go outside and you get to go to people’s houses and you get to talk to a lot of people. And that was just a better fit for me. Some people like working in the lab and that’s great. I wanted a mix of both, and entomology allowed me to do both, which I thought was pretty cool.
So yeah. I started off working with mosquitoes and then eventually moved to bedbugs because they were such a big issue when I was in grad school. So, but bedbugs actually don’t transmit any viruses or anything that we know of.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s good.
Dr. Crawley:
Yeah. Again, that’s really good. But they do cause people a lot of, you know, sadness and fear. And so even though it wasn’t technically a virus or something medical, I still just wanted to help people, and bedbugs were causing so much strife in a lot of people. So I wanted to help control them and, you know, keep people safe inside their house, because your house is supposed to be your safe place, you know. Yeah. So that’s why, that’s why I became an entomologist.
Victoria:
(Aaron – Do you have any bugs as pets?)
Nice. Yeah, that’s awesome. All right. And this is our last question from Aaron. Do you have any bugs as pets?
Dr. Crawley:
So, no, I don’t. My dog takes up most of my time. And things are really tough to keep actually, but there’s one I’ve had my eye on for a while. There are these, orchid mantids. I think they’re from Japan. They’re these praying mantises that look like orchids. They’re beautiful, but they cost $50 to $75 a piece. So I got to save some money before I dropped, you know, a few hundred bucks on some praying mantises.
But if you, if people do want to keep insects as pets, there are some that are really neat. Like Madagascar hissing roaches are pretty cute actually. And they make that cool sound when you pet them. And they’re really easy. They’re really easy to keep. A lot of my friends have tarantulas. They’re not a true bug, but they have those that they keep. They’re fun. It’s just, I just moved and I have a dog and I didn’t want the extra, extra stress. I was like, I do keep them in my lab. Those are sort of my pets, what I have in the lab. So, yeah.
Dr. Crawley:
That makes sense. You do get kind of attached, obviously you do research on.
Victoria:
Yeah. Do you name them in the lab?
Dr. Crawley:
I never did, but my friend, Jennifer, because, you know, I was only keeping them for a short time most of the time. But my friend, Jennifer, you know, someone asked how long does a bedbug live, one of her studies was seeing how long a bedbug would live, and she did get attached to her one that stayed alive for, I think it was something like 276 days or whatever. She did end up naming him because he was special. He survived much longer than any of our other bedbugs though. I forget what she named it, but yeah, she got very attached to him.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s cute. So that’s all of our questions. Do you have any last comments or questions of your own for the listeners?
Dr. Crawley:
No, just, you know, if anyone wants to talk to me, you know, more about what it’s like being an entomologist, and there are so many different jobs you can have. I didn’t even know until, I mean, all of the different jobs you can do. So if people are interested in just want to ask more questions, feel free to, you know, email me. We really need more people in this field. Insects are responsible for a lot in our ecosystem. Like we wouldn’t have the food that we have without them. They break down things in the soil so we can grow plants. I mean, they have a lot of function and I don’t think people appreciate sometimes how much insects do for us. So if anyone’s interested in a cool facet of science and they want to be a scientist, but aren’t sure what kind yet, and they want to learn more. Yeah. Just shoot me an email.
Victoria:
Awesome.
Dr. Crawley:
Whatever. Yeah.
Victoria:
I’ll make sure that I have a link. Do you have a website?
Dr. Crawley:
I am working on building one now. So having soon, but it is in progress. So I have a LinkedIn. If you want, I can get messages there quick.
Victoria:
Well, yeah, I’ll put a link to your LinkedIn in the episode description.
Dr. Crawley:
Okay, perfect. Yeah, it’s fun.
Victoria:
And then I have one question for you. I get this all the time. My last name is Crystal and I’m a geologist, that, you know, people comment like what a perfect name. So do you get that a lot?
Dr. Crawley:
Almost every day, I feel like. Yeah. That makes so much sense for bugs. Actually, when I worked at ScottsMiracle-Gro and I was their entomologist, they wanted to do a podcast with me. It was like, you know, bugs or creepy crawlies with Dr. Crawley, I think is what they wanted to call it. Yeah.
And especially, I don’t watch the show, but the big bang theory, I guess they had a Dr. Crawley: on there who was an entomologist. And so, especially when that happened, my phone just blew up with people. Did they get this from you? Like, did they interview you for this? I’m like, no, that was great, but no. So yeah, I get it all the time. That’s so funny, Crystal. Yep. Sometimes they’re just destined to do what.
Well, thank you so much and yeah.
Victoria:
Thank you!
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