Nature’s Self-Destruct Button: When Death Means Survival

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In this explosive episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole reveal the surprising truth: sometimes, nature chooses to self-destruct—and it's all part of the plan.

From exploding ants to salmon that spawn and die, and fungi that launch spores like botanical cannons, this episode dives into how death in nature isn't always failure—it's strategy.

💥 Why some creatures explode on purpose
 🐟 How salmon die to feed the next generation
 🌱 Which fungi use pressure to shoot spores into the wind
 🐜 The gluey, horrifying world of exploding ants
 🧬 And why your own body kills its own cells—on purpose

Whether it’s defending the colony, escaping danger, or creating new life, these self-destruct systems show just how weird, strategic, and shockingly brilliant evolution can be.

🎧 Listen in to learn how destruction can be nature’s ultimate power move.

Transcript

Katy: [00:00:00] I don't have any nature news.

Laura: Dude, I just wanna mention the video that I sent you earlier, but that you didn't even have a chance to watch yet.

Katy: Oh, yeah. I didn't yet. No, go ahead. Go ahead and mention it.

Laura: So I just got sent a video by a relative, , about this bird called the hold on hold.

Katy: Speaking of birds, though it is fall migration right now. So turn your lights off at night. Texas has been like insane with fall migration. Like the numbers and stuff that we've been seeing down here, it it's nuts.

Laura: Yeah, ours is, it's definitely started, but this is more of like raptors are starting to leave first. I think 

songbirds 

Katy: Yeah, no. Texas is all, if you guys go to, what is it, bird, cast

Laura: Yeah, the Atlantic Flyaway is not full on yet. You guys

are. I saw the 

Katy: Yeah. We are.

Laura: on fire.

Katy: Yeah. Bird cast info. You can see that. Yeah. The Mississippi, the central Flyway where Texas and then straight up is glowing, right? Where Yeah. You guys, the east, east coast isn't, [00:01:00] isn't quite as lit up. So what was the bird called?

Laura: So Club Winged mannequin. You know, the mannequins that do the crazy dances that they always show on like bird videos. So the club winged mannequin has this really weird,, they all do weird dances, but when it does this dance, it makes this really weird sound.

And apparently it has literally mystified scientists since Charles Darwin because he saw this bird and was like,

I don't know how he's doing it.

'cause his mouth never opens

and it makes like this, , it's like a hum, like a high

pitched hum. And the frequency is something like 1500. , And so anyway, some this ornithologist was like, I am going to discover how this happens. So she took out a high speed camera and slowed things down.

And she saw that when he puts his little wings up and makes this noise, he's actually slapping his, he's hitting his

Katy: Oh, interesting. 

Laura: And it's something like, you're gonna have to fact check me. People, but I, it's something I know the number is 107. I don't know how fast it, it's, [00:02:00] I think the hummingbird was something like 77 beats per

Katy: Beats per minute. Yeah. Per second. Yeah. Per 

Laura: this is 107, so it's

faster than a hummingbird. 

Katy: Yeah. That's crazy.

Laura: at first they were like, we solved the mystery. But actually no, because then you'd think that the sound would hear some kind of rhythmic

Katy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Laura: even when you put it in a computer model, that is

Katy: Slow it down. Yeah. It's not that. Yeah.

Laura: then they looked at it even closer and they noticed that the feathers on the wings are really unique. And they have one of the feathers is kind of hard and has literally like a hard plate with little ridges and the

feather next to it has scales. And when they, those wings tap together, it makes these feathers go

Katy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a comb.

Laura: And no bird does that. That's an insect thing.

This is the only bird that makes an insect 

type noise. 

Katy: Yeah, yeah, 

Laura: And so since there's seven it goes down seven, it goes up seven every time it hits together. 107.

Times that is 1500 or like [00:03:00] 1498. So that

it, it perfectly explains how it's making that noise. But it's the

first bird ever discovered to be making 

sound like 

Katy: An insect like noise. Yeah. That's 

Laura: Yeah. You gotta watch a video 'cause it's so cool to see.

It's it's faster than the eye would ever be able to see. It just

raises its wings and you just hear Hmm. Like, it's like

Katy: yeah, yeah.

Laura: birds are

so weird. 

Katy: like a co.

Hmm. Yeah, 

Laura: That just reminds me, I do that every time. Like I open, you know, like the dutchman's treasure,

like, 

Katy: Right. But it's the print. Hmm. Yeah. That's awesome.

Well, today's episode, it's a full length episode. We're gonna be talking about how nature uses a self-destruct button, not out of failure, but as a strategy for survival. All

Laura: just love this message 'cause I feel this is something that I need to have on a wall. You know what I

mean? Self-destruct isn't always, is not, isn't always

Katy: It's like the cat hanging off , the kitten hanging off a wire [00:04:00] kind, is it

Laura: not failure, it's a strategy for survival. But like desperate eyes, 

like, 

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: you know what I mean?

Katy: Right. how I 

Laura: not 

Katy: how we all, yeah, how we all feel right now with everything going on in the news. It is just 

Laura: this isn't failure. This is just a strategy for survival.

Katy: Yeah, every, anything that everyone's just trying to do right now is just to get through to the next day, to get through, to the next day, to get through to the next day and just survive.

It's just the strategy of survival. So for this episode, we divided it down into 3, 4, 5, 6. I talk about three different ones. Laura talks about three different ways that this happens in nature.

Laura: Like how does this, what does self-destruct actually mean and what are some ways it uses it?

Katy: Yep. Do you wanna go first? You want me to go first?

Laura: I don't mind going first. So,

so our, basically my parameters were some part of the organism or all of it has to do a. [00:05:00] Or no, some part of the organism has to die, but not all of it

Katy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Laura: dead. And that's not really a survival. Well, kind of,

Katy: Kind of. Well, 'cause I talk about how they do 

Laura: for the benefit of each other. 

Katy: yes, yes,

Laura: when it's like, right, something functioning is a larger organism.

Katy: yes.

Laura: so mine is one. One way that nature uses self-destruct. To survive, , is spore dispersal, which sounds really boring, but it's pretty cool.

Quick reminder for anyone who doesn't remember what a spore is, we have talked about it before, but for any of your newbies, , it's tiny.

It's typically one celled reproductive unit that brings about a new life form without sexual fusion. So it's just basically a way you , pop some of your essence into the ether and it starts a new you. No sex involved just

Katy: pop some of your essence

into the other.

Laura: So we did talk about this when we talked about ferns and fungi, both of

which do this. And so one, [00:06:00] one way that spores are dispersed are by passive means like airflow, like literally just the breeze,

rainfall getting bumped into. But sometimes fungi have to take things into their own mycelium and launch their spores.

Katy: this is, sorry,

Laura: I gotta make this as fun as I can. 

this is about 

Katy: is just so. The jokes are just writing themselves and I'm just, I'm not gonna say anything, but when you guys just see me laughing, you watch it. Make sure you watch this on video if you're listening to it. 'cause I'm just not gonna say it. I'm just gonna start 

Laura: Yeah, and I write these myself. This is not chat

Katy: I just write these 

Laura: This is, this is me.

Katy: I write these myself. Help.

Laura: things into their own mycelium. So how do they do it?

Typically in order for a fungal cell to explode, it needs to dehydrate. Okay? Like I said, think of mushrooms. They've got spores they wanna disperse themselves. Imagine like a puff ball like we all

stepped on as a kid.

Sometimes, like I said, passively, it just a strong breeze or the rain hits and it makes it [00:07:00] go. But sometimes they want it. They want to explode themselves, so they have to dehydrate as the water evaporates the cell walls. So imagine a cell and it's got this rigid wall around it as they

Katy: One might say it's hard.

Laura: one might say hard, rigid. Hold on. I'm playing with my window. Okay, there we go. 'cause I need to be able to see what I'm doing with my hands while I'm reading, because otherwise I'm

gonna do something crazy. 

Katy: Yeah,

Laura: So as the water evaporates, the cell walls come under tension. Because the inside is shrinking, but the walls are still the same size, so they're like compressing on themselves. Sometimes this can eventually create ne a negative pressure situation like I'm talking about, where a vapor filled bubble is actually like formed inside of the cell.

Katy: Okay.

Laura: And eventually one day the walls can't take it anymore. They crack,

Katy: They're just like, I'm 

Laura: give out. Yeah. 

Katy: get it. Walls, I get it

Laura: No, I get [00:08:00] it.

And because of the structure of the cell, typically they're just made a certain way that something like the top is what's going to break first, because maybe it was a little bit thinner, structurally.

So then

Katy: Mm-hmm.

Laura: pops, it pushes.

When it does that, it flexes and shoots the spore out. This method is called cavitation and it can shoot things out at about 0.6 meters per second,

which is alright for a fun for fungi,

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: that's just dehydrate, just getting dehydrated.

Katy: It is all right for a fun guy.

Laura: There's two other ones I wanted to talk about. 'cause there's so many ways spores are dispersed. That was

just the dehydration cavitation inside out method.

I think of it like a pop it.

Katy: Yes, 

Laura: one way that's way more effective, is ASCO spore discharge, which just sounds cool, which can launch spores at 30 meters per second.

Now, that's respectable. 

Katy: Yes. Right. Geez.

Laura: It's 

Katy: Yeah. The other ones, I mean like, yeah, 

Laura: Better [00:09:00] than nothing. Like it'll just fall out. yeah. 

Katy: Yeah. This is intense. Geez.

Laura: 30 meter per 

Katy: This is really launching them like,

Laura: Um, it's specifically done by the asco, my Coda Fungi, which go

back and listen to our Fungi episode where we broke them into categories.

But it's the largest category, and many of them are plant pathogens, meaning they infect plants, so

they really wanna spread their stuff because they wanna infect a lot of plants.

Katy: Yeah. Yeah.

Laura: They release multiple spores at once too. It's not just like p it's just a whole bunch of them. But basically the spores are located in what's called an ascus. I didn't name it guys, A-S-C-U-S, which is like a pressurized spore gun and just shoots 'em out. There's also another type of spore gun, but this one is called a pillow, but squirt gun. Because water is involved, pressure builds inside the little capsule, which is called the Sgio four, and eventually pops and deliberately aims towards [00:10:00] the sun, which I think is kind of cool. Like

it like goes towards the sun

and it shoots 30 to 90,000 spores, nine meters per second, over two and a half meters. 

There's just so many at one time. 

Katy: yeah, that is, yeah.

Laura: so there are, like I said, a lot more ways that they do this, but not as exciting as those three.

Exciting. Just, but why do they bother doing this? What's the survival strategy here? Air has a lot of resistance.

Katy: Mm-hmm.

Laura: about when you put your hand out the window and you can, you know, ride the air current there. Because it has so much resistance. If you are tiny, if you are a super tiny, literally single celled thing,

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: a struggle just to get through the air. So you're waiting for a breeze or you're waiting for rainfall, but sometimes that just doesn't happen and you still need to spread. 

So to combat this, the plant, the fungi, or the plant like a fern or something, it uses force.

And it can sh, it can distribute further distances.

Katy: Hmm.

Laura: It tries to do it as [00:11:00] hard as it can to combat that air resistance.

Katy: Yeah. 

Laura: So self-destruct as in just that one part of the cell is destructing in

order to reproduce. 

Katy: yeah. Okay. Well, talking about reproduction, then I have a little bit more of an overview, which I guess I should have gone first, but.

Laura: That's alright.

Katy: So the first way things is struck, like I said, is gonna be reproduction. They may once and then done. So the thing that I'm gonna talk about is a one and one and done.

That's 

Laura: So self-destruct completely,

but for the good of the species. 

Katy: yes. Which again, like if humans worked like that, like a wedding night would be a much. Big, bigger 

Laura: dramatic. Yeah. 

Katy: like, that's it. That's it. All right. So why on earth would nature design something so extreme? Because in evolution, survival isn't about you. The individual, like Laura and I were talking about, it's about your genes, and if sacrificing yourself boosts the chance of your offspring, making it, [00:12:00] nature's totally fine to throw you under the bus.

Laura: 'cause I feel like humans often forget that's the point of most biology.

Katy: Yep. It is 

Laura: very unself centered,

Katy: the,

collective whole. It's not the individual. , Here's the deal. The self-destruction after reproduction isn't failure. It's strategy like we were saying. For a few different reasons. First, it maximizes reproductive success. Instead of spreading energy, thin, staying alive and raising babies, some species just dump absolutely everything they've got into one giant reproductive blowout.

And then. I don't know what else to 

Laura: I don't know. 

Katy: All energy reserves, hormones, tissues, it's all directed into producing and protecting the offspring as far as protecting the future of them. Second, it eliminates competition. If the parents die, them other parents are not around to compete with their own babies or other, babies with [00:13:00] adults for food territory.

And that means more resources for the next generation. And third, it helps with population stability. Think about like salmon for some species of salmon. I'll talk about that later. But if every adult kept living after spawning again and again and again, like rivers would be just finfin in, in some cases and things like that.

And so it's ke kind of keeps the population a little bit more stabilized. So I'm gonna break down, that's just kinda like the big picture, the evolutionary trade offs. And so I'm gonna. Break off into 1, 2, 3, 4, quick,

Like, 

Laura: like what does this look like?

Katy: Yeah. Yeah. Of, of those ones. So the first one, produce once, then die. When it comes to

destruct reproduction, like I said, Pacific salmon, particularly Pacific salmon 'cause some salmon don't kill off. But Pacific salmon are absolutely the poster child. And like I said, Pacific salmon, like [00:14:00] Chinook, the chocho, sockeye and pink. They're what we call semial. Semial. God.

Laura: hear that. Yeah.

Katy: Yeah. Put Paris.

Laura: Yeah.

Katy: anyway.

The word separ comes from Latin semial, meaning once and pere meaning to give birth. So it literally means to give birth once. Yeah. In biology, it's used for species that reproduce a single time. In their lives and then die. So here's how it goes. They hatch in fresh water, head out to the ocean to grow up, and when it's time to spawn, they take an epic trek back to their home rivers.

It's not just exhausting, it's physiologically destructive. Cortisone, the stress hormone shoots up to extreme levels that hormone. Surge of it shuts down the immune system. Their organs begin breaking down and they stop eating altogether. Every last calorie is funneled into two jobs, swimming [00:15:00] upstream and making eggs or sperm.

And then once reproduction is complete, they die, but their death isn't wasted. It's essential for this. Species as a whole, their carcasses, decomposed in the stream, releasing nitrogen, not even talking about the number of 

Laura: yeah. There's an amazing documentary I just saw recently, specifically on

this and how the entire forest ecosystem around these rivers depends on these dead fish.

Katy: Yes, absolutely. So their carcasses decomposed in the streams releasing nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients that fertilize the ecosystem. Trees, insects, bears, birds, they all benefit and most importantly, those nutrients feed the very rivers little baby fish end up growing up in. Now, like I said, not all salmon do this.

Atlantic salmon are weird cousins of the salmon world. They can survive spawning and even come back for around two, three or more sometimes. But for, Pacific, I'm gonna say specific 'cause my son [00:16:00] says it all the time. Even for Pacific salmon, self-destruction is the strategy for the entire ecosystem.

The second one to talk about then real quick is explosive reproduction. Now, animals, like I said, we don't get all talk, all the dramatic of this. Plants like Laura talked about, do this too. The one for, the example for this one is the annuals. All right? Just

Any annual flower plant.

They're the ultimate, all in gamblers of the world. They live fast, grow like crazy, put out flowers and seeds, and they drop dead. That's

their plan. That's.

Laura: live. 

Katy: Yep. That's what they do. So the signs behind, it's pretty cool. Once an annual plant flowers sets its seeds in its own hormones trigger the shutdown sequence.

The main culprit is actually ethylene gas, a plant hormone that signals, the sequence and programmed aging, I guess 

Laura: like they use that to ripen fruit.

Katy: I think they do. I think it does. 

Laura: they use on bananas and stuff.

Katy: Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised. So ethylene [00:17:00] production ramps up, chlorophyll, breaks down the leaves, yellow roots decay, and the entire plant basically collapses in on itself.

And here's the important part. It's not because the plant like failed or got sick, it's deliberate. So every last bit of stored energy from sugars and leaves and starch and the roots is rerouted into seed production. The parent plant sacrifices itself to make sure the next generation gets. Absolutely everything possible , and as much as possible.

So normally, like people see like basil and things like that are annuals and people are like, ah, it's dying. It's fine. It's supposed to, it's going to like it. It is what it is.

Laura: It needs to self seeded. What? Like they

say, like 

Katy: Yep.

Laura: can't cut off the seeds if you want your annual to come back next year.

Katy: Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. , Third example for the reproduction is sacrificial parental care. Now, salmon, yes, definitely dramatic, but spiders, they can liquefy themselves for their [00:18:00] kids,

which is, there's a species,

Laura: I,

That's so, I mean, I know this 'cause I've definitely have heard about that some, animals that let their babies literally eat their bodies. But you're like,

talk about boy man, when you feel like you're as a mom, like your life is just taken over by your kid. At least we haven't, it's not this

Katy: This, right. So this stago di fuss spiders. I think that, is that the genus? Hold on, let me look here.

Laura: Gotta, I, I don't know. But you said it really good. That's how it surely is pronounced.

Katy: Yeah, it's a genus. Yeah, the genus of velvet spiders.

So it's.

Laura: and stuff, do you think? No, no, that's nevermind. Nope. Something different.

Katy: Yeah, so after, so this is the, like a grouping, a genus of velvets. So a bunch of other, a bunch of spiders combined there. So after the mother lays her eggs, she doesn't just guard them, she slowly like self-destructs inside her body. Enzymes leak out of little cell structures called Li, life, [00:19:00] life, life, soso.

, These are things like. Pro proteins, which chop up proteins and lip bases, which dissolve fat together. They basically turn her internal organs into like soup. And by the time her baby's hatch, mom is alive. But she's like a,

Laura: That's horrifying.

Katy: a liquid buffet. Yeah. The spiral lings pierce her body and

Laura: liquid.

Katy: Yes. Yeah, she's living but like barely.

The spider lings pierce her body and drink that. Soup juice, which sounds so gross and gruesome, but it's incredibly effective 'cause they get that nutrient rich meal perfectly safe inside the nest instead of having to crawl out into the dangerous world right away. So it works.

And so the last one I'm gonna talk about is kind of a more infamous example of a self-destruct reproduction and it's the praying mantis, right. And so in some species, mantis, and we've talked about this [00:20:00] briefly with a couple, 

Laura: Yeah. 'cause, and we've talked, talked to, I think like it's come up in a really early episode, how not all mantis do this.

Katy: Yeah. Not all mantis. Yeah. But some, some do. The male climbs onto the mate and the female basically responds by biting his head off. And it's, yes, it sounds like losing his head doesn't stop the mating process, which sounds. Horrible one, but it's, it makes it more effective. And that's because the insect nervous system doesn't work like ours does, like a humans does.

A lot of their motor functions are controlled by nerve centers in the abdomen, not the brain. So when the head is removed,, inhibitory signals from the brain stop two and the rest of the male's body. Just keeps pumping sperm

even. But because the head is gone, it does it. So with even greater efficiency, which is so

funny.

Yeah. So in other words, decapitation actually boosts his reproductive [00:21:00] success, which is insane. So in conclusion, for the reproduction side of it. There's definitely some bizarre systems out there, but the sacrifice of the individual for the benefit of the whole is definitely more of a strategy, like we talked about nature that humans don't do, but a lot of everything else, a lot of other things other than humans.

Humans do that.

Laura: Yeah. I'm trying to think of how to connect and which one I want to do next. So that was for the sake of reproduction. Sometimes things happen that require sacrifice because of outside environmental triggers. when bad situations happen. Sometimes either the entire organism calls it quits for the be the betterment of its species, or just bits and pieces of it. So I have a couple of examples here. So this one though, I did ask, I was like, Hey, chat bot, can you help me start finding a couple of sources? And it came up with the [00:22:00] best, like one liner. For this one. It says, when the environment gets tough, nature doesn't panic. It prunes. Thanks jab, bot.

Katy: Right.

Laura: So what happens?

I'm gonna do heat and drought flooding, cold and freezing, and chemicals so

bad situations for organisms.

Katy: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Laura: Heat and drought. So when things get really hot or really dry, some organisms are like, I gotta cut my losses here in certain situations because I'm not gonna make it if I don't.

Katy: yeah.

Laura: This is truly like survival situations. So one, one way that we're not even thinking about but is about to start happening more and then where I live, it's already starting to happen, is dropping leaves.

Katy: Yep.

Laura: so many plants, all of those deciduous trees and many others will drop leaves in response to excessive heat or drought or both. We've had a really dry summer here, and you could tell because the trees were so stressed, they were dropping leaves at the beginning of [00:23:00] August.

Katy: Oh wow. Really?

Laura: so like the Tula poplars were like Denzel.

Katy: Done. 

Laura: They're doing it in the fall because of changing, and we'll go over that about cold. That happens when things get cold too, but when there's not enough water, they're like, I can't use these leaves.

Katy: They're like, I'm done.

Laura: They're losing, they actually lose water through their leaves. That's what's supposed to happen. So as the evaporation from their leaves occur, it's pulling water up through their trunk. So it's just this, like this cycle of water loss. And it takes a lot to keep leaves alive. So they just cut 'em off, which is called abscission.

They're like, Nope, no more water loss. Chop the leaves off, let 'em go.

And the same thing can happen with plant roots. If they're losing too much water from their roots, they will chop off those pieces. So the pruning? The

Katy: they're just like, this appendage is ineffective amp. 

Laura: Yeah. It's right. Like you get your leg trapped under a rock and you're in the middle of nowhere, you gotta chop off your leg like it's

that, you 

Katy: yeah, just no question.

Laura: So on the other side of that, we have the cold and freezing, plants that are adapted [00:24:00] to the Arctic sometimes go into a form of stasis

and will lose bits and pieces of themselves due to damage, like from frost and things.

But one of them, 

Katy: it just makes it sound like they go crazy. They just lose pieces of themselves. Listen, sometimes I do too. 

Laura: Yeah. In the dead of winter, you never know.

Katy: yeah. 

Laura: But a really extreme example of this, with animals is wood frogs and painted turtles,

wood frogs especially, but painted turtles

too, which both have very wide ranges for reptiles and amphibians. So wood frogs can be found in Alaska 

and painted turtles can be found up into the northern United States and I think even Southern Canada. And so those are animals that ate. They're supposed to go to sleep for the winter, 

but 

Katy: hibernation brew mate. They brew mate. It's a little bit, a little bit different.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit different,

Katy: Essentially the same.

Yeah.

Laura: So old. They can essentially freeze though during the winter. Most of these guys, most of the reptiles, amphibians, they're just sleeping in the mud.

Like

Katy: Sleeping in 

Laura: they're, they're, they're living in the temperature range that [00:25:00] wouldn't harm their bodies 'cause they

can't stay warm. They're cold-blooded. Although most of their cells are protected with antifreeze properties like these wood frogs and painted turtles, their cells actually have antifreeze stuff inside of them.

It does result in some tissue damage, especially the skin or extremities. So they just, they'll wake up and they'll have gotten frostbite and they're like, eh, fine.

Worth it. Hashtag worth it, this extreme. It's just, it's worth it for them in order to be able to live in those places and not have competition

They're like, I didn't need this toe anyway. And some

of these animals have like amazing powers of regeneration anyway,

Katy: yeah.

Laura: Flooding can cause some animals to cut or end plants to cause to cut their losses, usually plants. So they might sacrifice a part to save the whole. If their roots or branches become too water logged, they will cut them off to save oxygen and allow oxygen to move more freely throughout the plant.

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: Then finally chemicals, if there's chemical exposure in the environment, [00:26:00] fish and frogs can just slough, which is such a terrible word. That's such a

Katy: It is such a, yeah, horrible word.

Laura: their skin if exposed to toxins. So they're like, I didn't need that. Anyway. I'll grow

some new skin. so.

they just,

Katy: Who needs skin

like. 

Laura: environmental triggers don't usually kill the whole thing, but it does make an organism make hard choices.

Katy: Yeah, so gross. All righty. I'm not gonna try to do a transition. I'm talking about population control next, guys. I'm tired, my brain's tired. So not. All self-destruct systems end in dramatic death scene. Sometimes a sacrifice happens silently every single day of an animal's life. All 

Laura: That's so sad too. Just like, geez,

Katy: I guess I didn't, I wrote that, but I didn't think about how bad that actually [00:27:00] Yeah, I sad that.

Laura: silent. And every day they die a little inside,

Katy: Well wait until I tell you who it's about. You won't feel so bad 'cause we're gonna be talking about the Naked mole rat.

Laura: Okay.

Katy: yeah. So you're like, eh. , So if you've ever seen a Naked Mole rat, I guess I can describe it.

Laura: Scrotum

for sure. That's the pg, you know.

Katy: I wouldn't even say that's a PG version. I, I asked Luke how to describe it. Like I showed him a picture when I go, how would you describe this? And he giggled and he said, a hot dog with teeth. And I was like, I think that's worse than.

Laura: Ew. A really dehydrated hot dog,

maybe. Ooh, 

Katy: Yeah. Like I'll knock with teeth.

Laura: ew.

Katy: So I would say that's a little bit more of the pg ish version, but if you haven't seen a Naked Mole rat, I am so sorry that you're gonna have to Google that.

They're gross looking. saying a scrotum is way more accurate than a hot dog , with teeth, for sure. So these little rodents live in the dry grasslands of East [00:28:00] Africa and countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, where digging underground is their survival strategy. They've got wrinkly, nearly hair, nearly hairless.

There is some hair. It's, they're gross, they're gross. , Tiny eyes that are basically useless and oversized incisors that stick.

Laura: teeth. 

Katy: Yeah, super buck teeth that stick outta their lips that can dig without eating. A mouthful of dirt. Essentially, they spend their whole lives in elaborate tunnel systems with different quote unquote rooms for food storage, nesting, and waste colonies.

Laura: Did we talk about them when we talked about the super organisms? 'cause 

we're 

Katy: We've brought them up before. I don't remember what episode it was in though.

Laura: remember either.

Katy: Colonies can reach hundreds of individuals and they're, they are pretty remarkably cooperative. Essentially the mammal version of ants. Think of it that way. , They're also very tough naked mole rats. Honestly, they barely feel pain, which is crazy.

Laura: Yeah, especially when you're described as nature scrotum, that doesn't seem like it would

Katy: Right.

Yeah. You think it'd be a [00:29:00] little 

Laura: A little sensitive. Yeah. 

Katy: They can survive in very little oxygen environments, hence tunnels underground. , And they can live for , a very long time. They're not like a typical, tiny mammal. So anyway, the, one of the weirdest things about them though isn't their wrinkly skin or how long that they live.

It's their social structure. Naked mole rats are U Social, one of only two mammal species With an insect like setup. There's a single breeding queen, few chosen males, and everyone else gives up reproduction entirely. So here's where the quote unquote self-destruct comes in. Though the non breeding females could reproduce, their bodies are perfectly capable.

But they don't. And so the queen's dominance, , and again, if we're thinking of like the collective hole, these don't. So the Queen's dominance work dominance works on two levels, behavioral and chemical. The behavioral suppression. The queen physically reinforces her status by shoving, [00:30:00] headbutting, and even dragging subordinates that aren't listening, right?

Right. The constant harassment triggers stress responses in other females, which elevates cortisol and stress 

Laura: Cheese, 

Katy: high, I didn't know any of this. Yeah, right. Chronic high 

Laura: She's not a queen. She's,

Katy: I mean, tomato. Tomato. Chronic high cortisol suppresses the hypothalmic pituitary, god Al Axis, the HPG axis, the hormone network that normally drives ovulation.

Basically stress, short circuits, the brain signals, that would tell the ovaries to produce eggs 

Laura: sense. I mean, even for us. Humans. If you're in high stress situations, 

you don't have

Katy: You are not gonna, yeah, not gonna, yeah. Not gonna be able to reproduce. The other way that I said was chemical suppression. The queen also produces pheromones, which are spread throughout the colony via direct contact and grooming. [00:31:00] These pheromones influence the same H-P-H-P-G axis dampening the release of luteinizing hormone lh, and follicle stimulating hormones.

FSH from the pituitary gland. Without these two hormones ov ovarian follicles never mature and ovulation never occurs. So they essentially don't lay eggs. So the result of all this,

Laura: gear. They just don't do it unless the queen dies, and then something will kick in.

Katy: yes, something else can happen because they're literally being the crap beaten out of them in a high stress environment. And then her pheromones that she puts off keeps.

Laura: Through grooming each other,

so the little bit of tender love and care they get in their lives actually also is birth control. Like,

Katy: Yes. right. 

Laura: what a society. 

Katy: birth control. Yep. So they may show, ovarian tissue, but it's underdeveloped and inactive. They're, and again, think about it this way, . These are normal parts of a female system and [00:32:00] you're, you need those things to work and to function. And when they don't the way that they should, there's repercussions for that, right?

Like others. Yes. And so the reproductive system is essentially on pause, not permanently broken, but silence. As long as that queen is in charge, and here's the kicker, if the queen dies or moves, like we were saying, within weeks suppressed, females can like quote unquote wake up hormonally like weeks, within weeks, which is just crazy that if that happens in weeks, that shows like how much like you have to sustain like the grooming and the behavioral stress.

So it almost has to be like a constant, ongoing thing. If it can wake up, if just stopping it for a few weeks can re wake up the system. So their LH and FSH levels can spike ovaries, kick back online, and one of them will step into the queen rule. So the shutdown, like we said, isn't a genetic defect.

It's socially enforced stress and pheromone driven system that [00:33:00] keeps the colony stable. So what does that mean is the mole rats are sacrificing their own genetic feature to keep the colony stable. No power struggles, no resource competition between litter, like multiple litters within the colony.

Instead, the entire workforce funnels energy into digging tunnels, finding food, and defending that queen's pups for as long as she stands. So it might be a self-destruct on the level of the individual identity, but it's, and it's not like a dramatic death, but it's the slow death of those particular individuals for the genetic, like reproduction and ongoing of one queen.

Laura: I wonder if anybody's ever done a study where they put multiple naked Mora queens together. Then can one suppress, like once you're a queen, are you always a queen

Katy: I don't think, I don't, I think it can be. I think it can be, yeah.

Laura: ever done it.

Katy: Yeah. I don't know. I'm, I wouldn't be surprised. So, yeah. [00:34:00] Naked Mora,

Laura: to the death.

Katy: right. 

Laura: Well transition.

Not really.

Katy: That's,

Laura: the last one that I have, other than again, we're all talking about the same thing, which is some sort of self-destruct is apoptosis, which again, cool word. I feel like that should be an album name or something.

Katy: yeah. 

Laura: It's also known as Programmed Cell Death. If you Google apoptosis, it's gonna come up with a million different things.

Katy: Oh yeah.

Laura: But it's. A way that like genetically certain cells are programmed to die. So how does this work? This isn't just cells dying uncontrollably though. So that is not the same thing as something like necrosis 

or what happens when you get a disease that is

just like your cells get inflamed and they start bursting and it's just chaos.

This is like

very precise. So it's a series of

Katy: A little more elegant way.

Laura: an elegant way

of your cell, [00:35:00] of your cells dying 

on a small scale. So it's , a series of steps that they undergo to self-destruct. The process is super important to the overall health of an organism. So , an organism like our bodies are well oiled machine. All of the cells are working together to keep us alive. Like we're not, as conscious of that kind of thing happening. But

literally all of them have this exact same goal of. Keep the organism alive. When something goes wrong within certain cells, the body decides to cut its losses and get rid of the problem again, unconsciously, which is the craziest thing,

And I feel like at some point.

Katy: Subconsciously,

Laura: well, I feel that like you don't know, right? We don't know about plant sentient. We've talked about this before.

Do you think that it's a conscious, in very quotes, big

quotes, conscious choice to cut your losses with your leaves and your roots. But like we are not making any judgment calls here with what cells we destroy.

Something

in us is, but it's not like

our brains. So it's [00:36:00] likely caused, they're still like looking into this. 'cause there's a lot of different, what they're calling programmed cell death. It's likely caused by certain proteins being present or absent, which is, basically if you look at all into the human body, it all comes down to what the proteins tell your body to do.

Katy: Yes. 

Laura: There is, or there isn't a protein for some command.

It's lightly signaled from within the cell itself that's having a problem. Anytime I imagine the body or explain the body to my toddler or anything, I'm just immediately thinking like Osmosis Jones level stuff that like there is stuff happening inside of me that I'm

just not aware of.

So something goes wrong in the cell, there's a dumpster fire, some little guy in there, like there's a problem we need to

clean up here.

So, the cell. Sends out some kind of signal they think, and then goes through the series. So the cell starts to shrink and gets little tiny like protrusions off of it,

which actually have a name.

They're called Blebs

Katy: Blebs.

Laura: Bleb, which is exactly, [00:37:00] you're like, what sound do you think that would make as. Bleb, like it's

lit. Thank you scientists.

It gets little blebs all over it. And then the DNA, something comes inside and it was like, we don't need this DNA anymore, so let's chop it up into little pieces and then reuse it.

And then they're gonna, everything is broken, packaged up. So the blebs eventually are packaged into their own little thing and signal that they're ready for disposal.

And 

Katy: is nuts 

Laura: Like the actual process is so sophisticated and it's

Katy: Because you gotta think of evolution wise, this again, it goes back to, yeah, the number of steps for this to

Laura: single cell

Katy: Yeah. Is crazy.

Laura: And like I can, I am currently struggling to clean my own house, whereas my body is just doing this all the time, just clean up on IL 12 and then they

come on in and then. 

So, then once they send out the signal, macrophages, which is a type of immune cell, come and gobble them up, [00:38:00] and then the end parts are reused.

And this causes no inflammation. So that's the difference. Two between like when something

Katy: autoimmune.

Laura: This is not an autoimmune problem. Well

this is what's supposed to happen.

Katy: Yes, yes.

Laura: so if a cell is old. This happens if a cell is damaged or sometimes if there's just a surplus of cell. So a really cool example of that is this happens a lot when we're being, for when our embryo is forming.

Katy: Mm-hmm.

Laura: you've got like essentially what looks a little paddle at first. We don't have any fingers,

right? 

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: this happens.

Katy: You guys have to watch 

Laura: My knife hand's 

Katy: it's like, I mean, he just got paddles.

Laura: just got little paddles in there.

Katy: Just in there swimming and paddling 

Laura: and then this happens, apoptosis comes and just pops all the cells in between the

Katy: Interesting. Yeah.

Laura: So it's not even that there's a problem always, it's that we have too many of [00:39:00] that cell and they're like, oh, well that

needs to be chopped 

Katy: yeah. 

Laura: we need fingers.

And something is telling me we need fingers here.

Katy: yeah, yeah. It doesn't even know. It's like I have a feeling this needs fingers.

Laura: Yeah, cells with DNA damage that can't be repaired. 'cause again, the body, it, the cell, first of all, the cell tries to fix itself and then if it

can't, it's okay, come clean this up. Cells that sometimes get infected with viruses can be packaged up like this.

Katy: Hmm.

Laura: This is a way for the body to eliminate rogue immune cells that attack the body.

So if you do have an autoimmune problem, your body is also trying to get those guys out too. They're

That guy's gone rogue. , Get

him outta here.

Katy: Yeah,

Laura: And then balance. So your body has to out the old to make way for the new. If

otherwise you're, it would be gross, all the dead cells.

Katy: Oh yeah. Too many.

Laura: Or even if it's not that they're dead, think about when you get sick, okay. Your body creates a [00:40:00] ton of immune cells to go battle that problem.

Katy: I was just gonna say, I wonder if we didn't, from an evolutionary point, like what would happen if it didn't?

Laura: I, yeah, I guess, I don't know. Does your, would it actually like your blood volume increase because

Katy: Continue talking. I'm gonna see you looking up.

Laura: So when you get sick, you are actually creating new immune cells to go fight that. And your body is all out, man. It's gonna send as many as it can, but then once the infection is solved, you still have a lot of extra immune cells in there.

They have no job anymore. And so your body's package 'em and go, which I

wonder if they stuck around, if it would end up causing problems. They would go rogue, you'd just have more rogue immune cells 'cause they idle hands and all that.

They just find something to do. And the whole concept of apoptosis is just as Katy said, elegant without apoptosis. Cancers can develop and autoimmune diseases that, 

those two things, that's when apoptosis doesn't work. That's what happens. Cancer cells [00:41:00] are when things go wrong and they keep multiplying and nothing is making them pop. And then autoimmune diseases are when your rogue immune cells are attacking your own body. So that's when, if it doesn't occur, if too much occurs, which can also happen. So too much apoptosis is also not a good thing. They actually think that it's probably the cause of major problems like muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer's.

It's like apoptosis went crazy and is eliminating things that should not be eliminating, which makes sense.

Yeah.

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: so maybe your signals, something is going wrong with your cells signaling that they need cleaned up and they don't need cleaned up something. But man, your body and just in general, cells are just their own little world and they, it knows exactly what it needs to be doing and it's doing it all the time.

Katy: Yeah, good grief. So I just, I looked it up and basically they said that if it never had happened, because it is such a, like a, a. [00:42:00] A way of cleaning up that we would never ha we would not have evolved past very simple organisms essentially.

Is it? 'cause they're like, this just has to happen.

Laura: wouldn't 

Katy: Yeah. We just, this just,

yeah, this just would never have happened.

So, hey, what would happen to a human body if this didn't, we just 

Laura: cancer autoimmune and Yeah. And then

Katy: We, we couldn't even, yeah, we couldn't even get to the 

Laura: Yeah. You wouldn't go past embryo stage 

Katy: No, no, no. So the last one I'm gonna talk about is defense. So let's wrap up the tour of self-destruction here with something that is this one's weird. Cool. But also, I don't know, an interesting one. So let's talk about little ants Colo, Bo Kalo boxes.

I don't know. They're ants. They live in the rainforest of Southeast Asia. Places like Borneo, Malaysia, and Bruni. They're tiny. Just a few millimeter long and you probably [00:43:00] never notice them crawling around, honestly, the understory because

Laura: They're under

Katy: they're just so tiny.

Laura: Yeah.

Katy: Unless you see one when it blows itself up,

so, yep.

So whenever we're talking about Hey, 

Laura: going out with a bang. 

Katy: Yeah.

this is, yeah, this is what we're talking, but it's all defensive, so. Up , here's the setup of these ants. All right? The naked mold rats run their colonies like insect hives, exploding ants. They are insect hives, but they've taken the quote unquote for the colony to just a whole other level.

Like other ants, they have a queen, workers and soldiers, but some of the minor workers are ver a very special. Cast within the group, they're literally built to sacrifice themselves. The scientific term for what they do is called auto thesis, which basically means self sacrifice by self rupturing.

These ants have massive and large man mandibular glands that normally make chemicals for defense, [00:44:00] with other ant species.

Laura: like the ones in like

Katy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But in these particular ants, the glands, stretch through most of their body cavity. So in most ants, it's just appear these particular ones through most of their body cavity, and they're like little tubes of toxic glue ready to go off.

Yep. When a predator shows up. Let's say a spider, another ant species, or a hungry insect. The worker ant contracts, its abdominal moles, so violently that its body walls rip open the glands burst and out sprays a sticky, toxic secretion. It gums the attacker, sometimes even killing it, but the ant obviously gone.

It dies every single time. There's no coming back from this. So the glue, the stickiness stuff isn't just some random bug slime. It's a highly [00:45:00] specialized chemical cocktail. The enlarged glands inside these ants are packed with compounds like phenols, fennel based, aromas. They are sticky, corrosive, and toxic to other insects.

When ant ruptures, those chemicals come blasting out under pressure coating anything nearby. The gluey texture literally traps attackers, legs get stuck. Jaws can't open wings, gum together and the toxicity, it can burn or poison enemies on contact, especially rival ants or spiders which have like smaller respiratory systems and things like that.

From a physiological standpoint, the ants have basically turned their, the entire body cavity into a pressurized defense system.

Like I said, their muscles.

Laura: me. Oh, I was gonna say, this reminds me of, there's a video game called Left for Dead with like zombies, infected zombies.

And there's ones called bombers and they run at you and explode. And juice goes everywhere.

Katy: that's [00:46:00] essentially it. Yeah.

Laura: but for real. 

Katy: like I said, their muscles contract so forcefully that the cuticle splits almost like pulling that pin in the grenade. And because the glands run.

Laura: are hard.

Katy: Yeah. They can be different hardness levels too. You know what I 

Laura: But still like an ant. I mean?

it's

an exoskeleton, so it's not like skin.

Katy: because it needs to be, you've gotta think of it though. It needs to be protective for the day-to-day life, but then also be able to do this too. You know what I mean? So it's like a. 

Laura: pre-built in, like break points.

Katy: yeah, essentially. Yeah. So whenever it, it runs that whole length of their body, the explosion sprays in multiple directions.

Like you said, it is very particular spots. So it's like a sprinkler system

of death, though, evolutionary. This is. One of the mo more extreme examples, natural [00:47:00] selection isn't acting on survival of the individual insect an ant, like we've talked about or I've talked about in so many other examples, it's acting in the survival of the colony.

So one exploding worker when there's thousands of others, leave zero descendants of their own, but it keeps the population of the entire colony going. So while other examples that we've talked about, like honeybees, they might leave behind, the Barb Stinger and then they die and stuff like that.

Exploding Ansys definitely takes it up a whole other level. It's definitely, it's a lot messier. It's violent and one of the, I would say cooler examples, whenever we talk about self-destruct, this is it.

Laura: think of anything more like explosive, That's

Katy: Literally. Yeah. Then, yeah, then exploding. Yeah, guys, so that's a variety of ways that animals, plants, everything they, like we said, , it's self-destruct, but it's a strategy. It's not just either, whether it's survival of the [00:48:00] species as a whole, it's not for the individual like Cuban, we're often, I don't know, that's how we think,

Laura: Yeah. That it's not just , yeah, it died, but 

it 

Katy: but it's.

Laura: an accident. It

Katy: Yep. It's intentional. All righty, guys. So we have one more short episode next week, and then this season is done. , We'll do another mini, so for the season break like we've done previously, and then it'll be season 13, yeah, 13. All right guys. Make sure you check us out on social media. Just search Wildly Curious Podcast and you'll find our snippets and other random little videos.

Go support us on Patreon if you can, until next week.

Laura: Bye everybody.

Katy: Till next week.