You're listening to an iHeart podcast. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff.
I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too sitting in for Dave. So this is Short Stuff.
Yeah, this is an episode where I was very surprised, and I even went back when we did our episode on wasps, we even got emails about this, so I'm pretty sure we did not cover it.
But we're talking about fig wasps of the fig tree specifically, not the kind that you'd see you know like almost all fig tree varieties are not ones that you eat the fruit of um that's a very specific one uh the ones like you have out in your yard uh they develop without pollination which means they're uh parthenocarpic but the ones that where you eat the figs they are grown commercially mainly in california here in the united states they are calimorna figs and they imported from Turkey and the ficus carica or the fig wasp is also imported from Turkey because they have a very special relationship.
Yeah so fig wasps and that specific kind of fig apparently co -evolved over the last 60 million years to form a mutually symbiotic relationship as our friend Connor from love on the spectrum, would say, where the fig wasp depends on the fig for its reproductive cycle.
The fig depends on the fig wasp for its reproductive cycle.
And if you didn't have one or the other, the other one would not exist. Yeah, totally.
And we're gonna tell you how that happens right now.
I was gonna say right after this, but that'd be way too soon.
First thing we need to say is that the fig, the thing that you're eating, It's something within a larger structure and it's called a ciconium is what you're actually eating.
It's sort of like a inverted flower it's not really a fruit necessarily.
No. And what happens is these Calamurna farmers in California, they have female trees that are going to produce that edible version of the ciconia and they have male trees that produce an inedible version called a gall fig and if they want to pollinate those, a wasp has to crawl into that synconium, a female wasp.
She loses her wings on the way because she has a squeeze through a tight little passage.
And it's a one -way trip, which is very sad, and you end up eating that female wasp.
She's broken down by something called phicine.
It's a protein -digesting enzyme, so when you eat a fig, there is a little bit of female wasp inside of that thing just broken down and becoming part of that edible fig. Yeah, but essentially you're not gonna be able to detect it on your tongue.
Some people think that the little tiny seeds inside of a fig are wasp parts because there's been such a legend that developed about like fig wasps.
And it is true to some degree, but for the most part, no, you're not detecting a fig wasps like body or exoskeleton when you're eating a fig. You are eating part of a wasp though.
Like don't, make no mistake.
For sure. And I mentioned it was a one -way trip.
It's fairly sad that that happens, but it's all in good service of that mutual arrangement.
Before that happens, this female wasp is going to come out of an inedible male fig. I guess I'm going to call it a fruit because she was born there.
And she has mated by that point with a blind wingless male wasp who never leaves that male fig. So, she exits that inedible male fig. She picks up some pollen.
She's got all these eggs.
And at that point, she can either go to a male fig tree or a female fig tree.
But if she lands on that female fig tree, her ovipositor is too short to reach into this really long -styled female flower, so she can't lay those eggs in there.
She does end up pollinating it, but she sacrifices her life in doing so.
Yeah, she makes it all the way to the synchonium and finds like I literally just wasted my life.
But her life is not a waste, because if she didn't accidentally enter a female fig where she was trying to reproduce or lay her eggs in a male fig, then the figs would not get pollinated.
So figs get pollinated because fig wasps sometimes make mistakes when choosing a male or a female fig to burrow into and lay their eggs.
I find that amazing.
It's pretty great. Like, it works both ways.
If she goes into that male fig, then she's gonna deposit those fertilized eggs, And that circle just kind of keeps going on and on.
Farmers separate these trees out to try and keep them from doing that.
I protest that. I'm protesting.
Oh, you're protesting them doing that?
I protest that there are male and female fig trees.
I've seen that they're self -pollinating and hermaphroditic, including the ones that you eat.
So I'm going on record as saying that.
Well, you're wrong, my friend.
Because this farmer that was interviewed said that they separate those male and female trees.
I don't think he's just making that up to aggravate you?
And what if he's completely off his rocker?
I mean, are all the farmers and all the sources completely off their rocker?
So, I think this is just one of those times where we're going to have to agree to disagree.
Do you agree? Uh, sure.
That's very agreeable of you.
All right, we'll be back right after this.
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So, a few things that we can remember is that the female wasp dies inside that edible fig and there have been people like vegans, that there are vegans, there are literally vegans who won't eat that, but there are bugs in almost every fruit that you eat.
There are levels of bug, I was about to say infestation, but just bug activity that's acceptable for the USDA, tomato ketchup apparently.
It has the highest USDA grade standard possible and it can have no more than 30 fruitfly eggs per every 100 grams of ketchup.
Like, surely, I guess there's some quality control where they take some, like, 100 ounces, or 100 grams of ketchup and count the fruit fly eggs in it, right?
I don't know how they do that.
And if that is the, like, if they find 31 or even 100, that doesn't necessarily mean that the next bottle's gonna have the same amount.
Because, I mean, we're talking fruitfly eggs, right, from all sorts of different tomatoes in each bottle, it boggles my mind.
I don't know how they do this or how they enforce it, I guess, is what I mean.
Yeah, I bet someone...
Or it might be one of those things where no one's even paying attention to this.
Right. The vegans are watching you.
Yes, they're always watching.
I did mention, though, that the farmers try and control separating those trees out to control because it can be a problem if there are too many seeds.
that fruit can burst open and all of a sudden, it's not you know, it's good for the plant, but it's not good to harvest for the farmer.
So they're trying to sell these things.
So they separate those trees out over some pretty great distances and also control the number of new wasps they bring in.
They're wasp wranglers as well as farmers, and they get these things delivered to their house, to their farm in paper sacks.
And they can pretty much control exactly how many females have access to the correct plant.
Yeah. those paper sacks also usually include a tiny cowboy hat and a tiny lasso.
And then just one more time to just kind of go over this again just to calm anybody's fears.
You probably are eating some insects.
So, vegans, you're right, if you don't want to eat insects, you probably should steer clear of figs, but the fig is designed to digest the female wasp that dies inside of it and breaks it down for nutrients for itself.
So, just don't worry about eating wasps.
I don't why everybody's so worried about eating wasps, Chuck.
Yeah, I mean it is fig at that point.
That wasp becomes fig. Right.
In fact, that's a great t -shirt, wasp becomes fig. I agree wholeheartedly.
Well since we came up with a t -shirt, obviously everybody, that means short stuff is out.
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