Socialized Fear of Insects (Mock Lecture - 2 p.m.)

Hard, right?

I think we are good to go.

I'm going to just check in here.

Awesome, alright that was the thumbs up that I needed. Hate y'all. My name is Matt Kamperin. I have the pleasure of getting to serve as the assistant Dean for the College of Agricultural Sciences in the area of teaching practice in academic programs. I also sit as a senior instructor, an entomologist within the College of Agricultural Sciences, Department of agricultural biology, which is a pretty cool place to be because it means that I get to play with bugs all day everyday and to teach all day everyday which are two of my very very favorite.

Things that I get to do now. I was really.

I was really excited to be part of this today to join with you, I'm going to be watching over here on this screen over here. I got three screens going on and phone with someone that's watching making sure I'm doing everything right 'cause I'm not always the best with technology. So miss Susan Brown who is the recruiting coordinator. Ann, I see some other ambassadors student investors in the like that are that are keeping me on track. So I'll be looking for questions over here. I'm going to ask you to participate in this side over here, but I always want to start off with just my information 'cause I always say that.

Whether I see you in elementary school, maybe at a 4H event or in high school at an FFA event or recruiting event, or we just catch up with each other somewhere around, you're always going to be my student, and so if you ever need to contact me for anything, my contact information is there 9704910713 that rings right into my office here and then always available by email. So if you have questions after this, you just want to connect about the college or the University at large. Please let me know and I'm very happy to answer those questions for you.

Connect in any way that seems right for you.

So again, my name is Matt Camper. I use the pronouns he and him and I am a first generation college graduate, so I was the first one in my family to attend. I attended CSU. I attended an got degrees in psychology and sociology. Far cry from entomology I know and actually I hate it. I was so scared of bugs and other arthropods. It was just out out of this world. But when I was taking psychology courses here at CSU, I learned about systematic desensitisation, face your fears, knowledge is power, knowledge itself is power.

In many, many things, and so that.

Lead me to taking an entomology course, the one that I now teach and I found a new passion. I learned that they weren't scary, that they were fascinating in lots of different ways, and I sort of taught myself out of the myths and urban legends. And that's what we're going to do today. I'm going to lead you through what would be a typical lecture for me in one of my classes and then at the end, we'll leave time for either content questions or other questions that you might have here at about CSU about the College Agricultural Sciences, whatever it might be, and the other folks that are joining us today.

Susan Brown and others will help field some of those questions as well, so our time together is about 57 minutes from right now it looks like that is the timing that I have left, so I want to jump right into things today and so I always think that it's a really good idea to get to know your instructor. And that's one thing that I would tell you, no matter where you're at. Get to know your instructor little bit. What do they like? What they don't like? 'cause it may be part of your passion, and then maybe down the line through a handshake. Hey, I really liked what you were doing in class. Can I come and visit your lab?

Honey research opportunities and that turns into paid internships and other opportunities that may suit you really well as you move on an write your college story, whatever that might be. So to know a little bit about me, you have to know my favorite San. I have two favourites when it comes to insects and plants. First with plants. I love orchids. This is a younger version of me with my very first orchid. I got that orchid when I was 16 years old and the reason that I have such a big smile there, obviously not 16.

Is that the second time I got it to bloom orchids are finicky and that's why I love them. Sometimes they bloom, sometimes they don't, sometimes they don't like the water, the light, whatever it is and it is just so much fun to me to get to try to work with them and get them to Bloom and see if I can get in their own favor. Write the plant is is manipulating me because I want to see those blooms so much. My favorite insect. This is a little bit more of a loaded question, but my favorite insect is the honey bees.

Particularly, I Love Hymenoptera, so bees and Wasps and ants, and so this is a picture of me a few years back when I was trying on this beard before the Gray showed up, and so there's about 20,000 honey bees hanging out on my chest, and we talk about the reasons for this when we get into my class. I am, I think you should also know about my family. I have two little girls in a little boy. My girls in the center there is adelyn and and and Stella and you'll notice there that it says no buses, motorhomes or campers and that's why they're being so sassy in that picture.

Is our last name is camper so I had told them we were out on vacation and I told him sorry we had to go home and so they were a little bit unhappy. My son up there in the left hand corner. His name is Colton. He has an ultra rare genetic disorder called BBS oas which there's only 200 cases a little under 200 cases known in the entire world. But he's awesome. Always working on being just the best him he can be so I always think it's good to introduce myself. Get to know me a little bit and then I can continue to get to know you and I'm just keep scanning over here.

To make sure that there's no questions or other issues that the folks that are monitoring are seeing as far as sound quality or vision visual quality as we move in. So again, I am a senior instructor, an an entomologist. My favorite. One of my favorite courses that I get to teach is 1 called insect science and society and in insect science and society. There's no sound going on. I just was going to bring up some insects for you to look at. As you're watching my talking head go on there as well. In this class we talked about all the different ways that insects.

Shape the world an it could be historical context, so maybe through medicine or maybe through technology. Technological advances. So insect eyes are an impetus for a lot of technology advances in micro cameras and also their bodies and their movements and their exo skeleton having their skeleton on the outside of their body has led to a lot of innovation and design, and so that's the stuff that really gets me nerding out on this stuff and gets me excited about being in this class and teaching in front of folks every single day so.

In this course, if this was day one, we would go over some of the general course objectives and I have a whole host of General Course objectives and so this is what you would see as part of my syllabus. The various relationships between arts pods in human societies are extremely important factors that have influenced both human survival and evolution. These relationships have had enormous impact on human history on sociology, on culture and pick any of the allergies, and there is an insect in there somewhere. We always say about insects and other arthropods.

You can't live with him, right? You don't want to live with those mosquitoes. The bed bugs, ticks and things like that. But we can't live without him. They are so important in every facet of the environment and different little ecological niches. Whether that ecological niche is in your garden, in your home, in your mattress, why you won't even get into there today. 'cause there's things that are there but all around these insects and other arthropods are a really big deal. And then you see four specific goals that I usually have for my class over the course of 16.

16 weeks I teach this class in the fall in the spring and I also teach an 8 week summer session that sort of Condenses it down and we're just prepping to also have an online version. So going back to what I was talking about at the start of our time together about 5 minutes ago, I said that I had an extreme fear of insects and that I really didn't understand them and by understanding them just a little bit more, I may not want to go up and get all snuggly Boo with him. I do. I don't have a problem with it, I have lots of pet tarantulas and other things.

The house here at CSU in the CSU bug zoo, but hopefully for you, even if like you have this discussed factor, maybe it'll bring it down just a little bit. Maybe it'll Pique your curiosity just to the point where maybe you will watch Discovery Channel show or you'll look up the YouTube channel deep look. I always recommend that Channel as well.

So for today, then in the next little bit that we have together, I want to talk about to fear or not? Right? That's big, bold, underline not to fear insects and other arthropods. And so we're going to do a quick crawl through insect and arthropod myth and legend. So particularly around two or three. I might make it into three urban legends that are pervasive across societies across the Globe, which is very interesting all by itself. How they have shown up and how they have moved and how they have influenced.

Our fear of arthropods, whether it should be there or not. So let's take a quick look at a couple of these and to get there. And so this is where I'm going to ask you to commit. It. Looks like we have about 8 participants in right now, so hopefully you can jump into the chat window and just answer this question. Are insects disgusting? So I'm going to give you just a second to pop in your answers. I want you to pop it into the chat window. Are they discuss you could just say yes, you could say no. You could say maybe you could give me a reason, anything you want. I'm going to give it just a little bit of time for you to pop into that chat window.

Anne Anne put that in there.

Everybody's being shy.

There we go sometimes thank you, Susan.

Sometime.

Times they are disgusting. No no I like this. Insects are super fascinating whoop. I agree with that. Thank you so much. No. Alright look at all this coming in here.

Thanks for the participation, I appreciate it. see I agree with you all. I don't think they're disgusting, but some people say absolutely insects or gross and there's this whole piece to that. Let me get back over here and managing my technology. There is a whole piece of this on why so I want to move it to a video. I'm just a quick three minute video or so that talks about the psychology of discuss. So the marrying my two favorite things, psychology and really thinking about the study of people and thoughts and processes.

And the study of insects. And you're going to see a loose connection. And then I'm going to filter us down, narrow it down, and we're really going to look into these facets of fear and arthropods. So let's take a look at this. If you could tell me in the chat if you're hearing the sound quality OK, I would appreciate that. If not, we can move on to other things. If the video is not really working today.

You're having dinner at a restaurant. The person sitting across from you wipes the sweat from his forehead, scratches his skin, pics at his teeth, even blows his nose.

You have a physical reaction turning your head, scratching your eyes, pursing your lips, and trying to back away. Scientists have discovered it is one of the most powerful human instincts discussed, their ascent of emotions that are these core basic universal ones. Fear, anger, disgust. We have all physically recoiled at certain triggers, is an incredibly visceral emotion, and if you look at all around the world, people react to discuss.

The exact same way they have this characteristic facial expression that they make, where they they go.

And literally people move back and away. Psychology, professor Doctor Gavan Fitzsimons at Duke University believes this physical reaction is part of a deeper pattern at work.

Thank you for coming in and volunteering to be part of the study today he is trying out an unconventional experiment. It's pretty straight forward, study about people's preferences and tastes in juice. Would you say that you're an orange juice drinker? I love you. OK, great. Do you mind go ahead and give it a taste?

Get Arch is OK, alright, So what I'd like to do now is I'm going to bring into contact with the orange juice, something that I've recently sterilized.

If just quickly.

Orange juice and just give it a quick stir.

If I now ask you that same question again in terms of how much would you like to try the orange juice, you realize it's Terrell, right? And it's not actually going to harm you, right? So I.

I have

no not gonna happen unless I'm getting something in return. OK, Justice Dr. Fitzsimmons predicted there is a pattern to their physical responses that crinkling of the nose combined with a raising of the upper lip and oftentimes a screeching of the eyes, they move back. They cover their mouths. These instinctive reactions physically keep our mouths, eyes and nose away from what could be a source of infection. Though we're not conscious of it, we are protecting ourselves.

It even overpowers are rational logic having been sterilized, the cockroach is safer than a piece of fruit from the grocery store. I did mention that I had sterilized.

Yeah, I mean you know it's sterile, so why would your preferences change so much based on contact with a sterile object? Because that sterile object has little hairs coming out of it. Not surprisingly, no one wanted the orange juice. I'm happy to re sterilize it and dip it in the orange juice. Would you then drink the orange juice? No tells him how to write. Still don't want it. That was a strong reaction that was like people should not be doing this with orange juice.

People know on a rational level that this sterilized cockroach is sterile and non harmful. It tells me that basically discussed is one of those core things that's been around for a really really long time. OK, I think we're going to leave it there, right? Ann? I have done some follow up studies here at CSU an we have done a lot of work on arachnophobia so the fear of spiders or Mata phobia. The fear of moths and butterflies.

Anna lot of other work just on general discussed issues around arthropods, and one of the things that we often hear is the legginess or the hairiness. Really long legs, really hairy, sometimes really fast and often times the unpredictability of them is what causes this discussed or scare piece for insects and other arthropods, and this has led to a whole host of different types of urban legends. So when we talk about urban legends, I suppose we should say.

What is an urban legend? In case you don't know and so in urban legend is something that appears mysteriously, so we don't really know the origins. We don't really know the beginning, and it spread spontaneously and in various forms, and that is really true for a lot of urban legends that we're going to talk about in here today is that we see it in one place, but then it could be a different insect, or it could be a different amount, or a different type, or things like that that are in there. Often times you see humor or horror, something in there, that kind of makes you chuckle or grown almost like a dad joke in.

In the urban legend itself, it's usually false, like if you read through there it's usually false, but there's just enough generality into it that it's generally believed to be true, at least by folks that haven't taken this class this lecture or have done other different types of of investigations on their own. So it's something you know kind of Once Upon a time, and when we look at these urban legends, there's a couple things that you need to be looking out for. We need to be watching for the flags.

So what you'll see and I put this in air quotes is testimony from bigwigs. Something that says doctor so. And so professor so, and so director of such and such, something like that, right? Someone where you say, you know what that has to be a credible source. My my my little girls are are learning the in's and outs of Google, particularly now that we're in this digital world I have 1/5 grader in a 7th grader, anan. Often they'll just land on a website and they'll be like, oh, dad, this set is from doctor so and so, so it's gotta be kredible or it said.

It said that it's, uh, I said ussomething.com and Odette has US at the start of it. It's gotta be, it's gotta be good right? And we just know that that's not always true. Use of brand names or slight alterations, they want you to say this is right because it is a brand name or a slight alteration. I'll show you example of that as well and then always really blowing out of proportion sensationalizing size, shape, color, all of these different things 'cause they want. That wow factor that. Oh my goodness.

Factor that comes in there. What else we will might see is emphatic language right? I've been inv attic Lee talking to you this whole time. Lots of emphasis. I try to really get excited about whatever it is I'm talking bout and that's what you see within these urban legends as well. And it almost always it says. I heard this from so and so or this is not a joke right? Again, trying to make sure that you say this is real and then almost always, particularly when I get these in emails or if people send them to my social media.

It always says pass this on to everyone you know. If you love them. If you don't want them to die, make sure you pass on this information because it is a life or death situation and again, most urban legends have really conspicuous signs pulling in all of these different pieces that they're just stories. So with that kind of background in place and justice, keeping us moving, being conscious of the time that we have together, I want to talk about. Why are insects a source of fear, right?

We could look into intima phagy eating insects, and it turns out the US is almost the only culture that doesn't have some socially acceptable form of eating insects. It turns out in the US we eat the cousins of insects with relish, and maybe you know or didn't know. But crustaceans are also arthropods, so we're talking lobsters and crawfish and crabs and shrimp. All of those things that maybe you like get out the garlic butter. Let's like go dip in. Let's get that crawfish boil going on right away, right?

And then there's insects, and we recoil from insects, but we're ready to put on the lobster bib and go to town on a lobster. And then you think to yourself? Well, that's kind of strange, right? Because lobsters, if you think about where they're feeding their feeding on the bottom of the ocean floor feeding on the scum in the filth there, there feeding as scavengers on the bottom of the ocean floor, and then think about that Caterpillar that maybe recoiled from that was just eating that yummy cherry leaf over there. And where is the balance? Because we have been socialized.

In different ways to fear insects, and one of those ways is friends, so movement from just person to person, word of mouth and probably the most famous of any of the urban legends that has socialized us to fear insects. Or in this case another arthropod is one that starts like this. Did you know that daddy long legs are the now who in chat can finish this urban legend? Did you know that daddy long legs?

Are the and then I'm going to give you a second. There's a couple of you that should be able to chat in and tell me what this is because this is one that is ubiquitous, meaning that its cosmopolitan seen all over the world and it is one that comes up time and time again when I am teaching this class. Is anyone want to give a guess on how this one ends?

Come on, don't be shy.

I'm going to no clue. OK, that's OK. I like honesty that works as well. Anybody else?

OK, thank you for that.

OK, there you go Joe, thank you were getting closer, isn't it? Said that they are super poisonous? The Susan brought it in the most venomous spider, right? So the urban legend goes and I hear it time and time again. I've heard it since I was a kid all the way through my adult life. I probably get it in an email maybe 10 or 15 times a year. I get it on social media dozens of times a year in my different social media channels. Asking if this is true. And here's how it generally goes. It goes something like.

Did you know that daddy long legs are the most venomous, sometimes poisonous? We won't go into the details on whether something poisonous or venomous in here, though, if you take my class eventually you will go into that. Are they the most venomous spider in the world, but their mouthparts are too small to bite us, or there too small to Envenomate us with. Thanks something like that. So let's look. Then at this video. This is a video that I have titled the ball of living death and this is a group of daddy long legs and let's just.

Listen to what we have here. Look, I found a ball of living death. The daddy long leg spider. Everyone knows that this is the most venomous spider in the world, but its mouthparts are too small to bite us. I gotta be careful and use this stick though 'cause there could be one in this giant ball. Just one in his mouth. Words might be big enough and I've been bitten and then I would die almost instantaneously. It is amazing. Look at him all screwing around in this terrible, terrifying sight. This is.

Using the stick so that I don't get too close, but man a true living ball of death. OK the myth then right here it is. This is what we just talked about. Now look down here at the bottom. What we see is that they are in the class arachnida so the class or agnita includes true spiders. So we're talking the Brown widow, the black to Brown window, the Black Widow, the Brown Recluse, other true spiders, the funnel Weaver and things like that. Then there are other orders within this class as well. The Scorpions belong to the.

Class Arachne to the mites and ticks. Also an also notice that daddy long legs. Otherwise known as harvest meter flanges are in their own order. It turns out they are not even true spiders and they not only are not true spiders, so here's a daddy long legs and so if we compare it with the true spider like this one down here, this Wolf spider that I just popped up on your screen. Notice the daddy long leg only has one body region whereas the spider down there on the bottom has that front body region in that back body region.

It turns out that not only that, but there are several different issues with the daddy long legs as well. What they do have is very long legs, four pairs of legs. In fact, all arachnids, whether it's a scorpion, imight, true spider daddy long leg, have four pairs of legs. Abadi that's not clearly separated into regions, so one globular area, a pair of eyes much different than a true spider, which we which you may or may not know, have either spirit, 6 pairs of eyes or 8 pairs of eyes very weakly.

Muscled mouthparts, that kind of fits in with that myth, doesn't it? And we talked about that a little bit and they have defensive glance for protection now. Those defensive glands are actually what we call repugnant Oriel, meaning they're just smelly. If you were to toss one in your mouth it would taste horrible and it would smell horrible if you put it up right next to your nose, and that makes sense if you are something you don't want to eat and you want to taste really bad. 'cause even if your damage may be one of the hundreds of others that are out there will gain protection from that overall defense.

But what they do not have is they have no glands for silk production, so they can't produce a web like a true spider could, and they have no jaws connected to venom glands. So this, this ball of living death that you saw a little bit, is really just a whole bunch of eight legged teddy bears. You could just hold them in your hands. They can't bite you, they can't envenomate you. They can't wrap you up in a silken cocoon and save you for dinner later. They are just awesome. So let's look. Then at this video.

In a different light now it's just an appeal leonys aggregation. Check out this massive daddy long legs. Daddy long legs are relatives of true spiders, but unlike crew spiders, they do not have any venom associated and they have very weekly muscle jaws so they can eat. Maybe some plant juices or a soft body to Arthur pot. There's a schoolyard myth that says these are the most dangerous spiders in the world, but the thermal parts are too small to bite anyone. In fact, these are not spiders at all, but another.

Order within the class. Arachne to altogether. This is a very cool phenomenon that's being shown in this video where a group of them will come together during cooler days in order to conserve body heat and then they will all go out and do their own thing later on. OK, so see knowledge is power when we have the right knowledge and we have the background behind us, then something that was a living ball of death just becomes a really cool phenomenon with a group of Daddy long legs. Just trying to survive.

In their ecological niche, which I think is pretty amazing. OK, so I want to move us then into. Another reason of this socialization socialized, fear of insects and that comes down to relatives close family members, right? We can say relatives and we can make that a relative term. OK it doesn't have to be a blood relative. Someone that is directly related brother sister right? We know that households are very Dan. It could be anyone that's living in close contact with you or someone that you're.

Hanging out with quite a bit, so that might smudge with friends a little bit, but in this picture right here, this is a picture of my oldest who is now 12 and I am doing a disservice. That is just a plastic transla that's not a real tarantula, and if you actually saw the whole photo piece and it maybe you have kids of your own, or maybe someday you will have kids as parents. We take way too many pictures, particularly when they're little and before their preachings where you're just anyway, we're just going to leave that alone, but.

This is a picture. She was actually super excited. We were playing and I caught this picture just perfectly. That looks like she's just scared out of her mind. Relatives can cause a whole bunch of problems right there. Own fears are passed along in what they say and in what they do. So one of the things that really comes to mind for me is when I was young, a movie came around, called arachnophobia. Perhaps you've seen it, perhaps you haven't. It's a little bit of an older, a little bit of an older video.

But I was probably 5 and my sister is much older than me by about five years, so she was maybe 10 and maybe we were seven and 12. In any case, she had some friends over and they were watching arachnophobia. I was way too young to be watching that movie, but I was enraptured by it. I was right up close to the screen. I was watching it an I was scared out of my mind but I couldn't tear my myself away and while I was watching up in front of the TV in front of all her and all of her friends.

They took a piece of paper towel and they got some other things and they started rubbing it really gingerly across my neck right at the most intense part of movies. Scared the you know what out of me an that has lasted in my mind forever, right? Ain other things right so my daughter, my middle daughter has a real fear of bees, which is unfortunate 'cause honey bees are amazing for lots and lots of reasons and they have no intent to sting in less. They are in a defensive posture for whatever reason, so you're messing with them in some way.

Wasps. That's a completely different story, but we're talking about these right here, and I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. But we had her in daycare and it turned out that her daycare provider had the most massive fear of anything that could sting that she would if they were outside and there was just Flowers. My little girl. She didn't know better at the time. She's like, hey, dad loves honey bees. I'm going to go up and I'm going to be right next to it. And this daycare provider would like snatcher up and pull her away and say, what are you doing? Getting close to those, they're gonna sting you. You're going to get hurt. We're going to the hospital.

So that it was again and it really made an impression on her. And now it's one that I am just having a heck of a time teaching back out because it is so ingrained and we see this all the time. And one of my greatest sources to find things for this class for these type of things is of course America's funniest home videos. So let's look at 2 examples where it is the parents or other close relatives that are causing a lasting impression.

On pork, it's OK. Here's number one.

Yeah, I'd like a large pizza with fake cockroach please.

Sorry all, I'm going to turn this up a little bit.

Second, OK, so that's one right. Fake cockroach under piece of pizza is small, but then it preys upon the fears of insects are unpredictable. Other arthropods are unpredictable. It turns out they can move super fast, much faster than we can and react much faster than we can because of the way that their nervous system works. So let's look at one more. Here is a different one. I want you to pay attention to the reaction.

Of the older sibling versus the younger sibling an also the reaction of the mom, as this is all playing out until the dad gets there to save the day. OK, so let's pay attention. Here we go.

Was a spider who hid under a shoe and a little girl so scared she didn't know what to do. She called her dad to do something heroic so he did his best and we thought we chill. We got home and there is a big spider on the driveway in Mommy. Doesn't like spiders and Jordan doesn't like spiders and so Jordan threw a shoe at it and the spider ran underneath her shoot so we had to call Daddy who's at work?

Ladies spiral.

They don't bother Daddy.

Come Daddy

I can't don't run into this thing.

Don't you dare move that because.

Oh my God.

OK.

Well, I could have done that.

Spider spider, huh?

OK, so I think you get the idea there right? The little little one not yet. Socialize doesn't understand the fear or the sense of danger that is being put there. Kind of out of out of the the size of what actually it is. She had that spider really zoomed in a bit. The beginning in it looks huge. It looked like a monster spider, but then when she was zoomed out and the dad the husband came and he kicked over the shoe it was tiny less than the size of probably a nickel.

Or 1/4 but you hurt her right? I don't like spiders in Jordan. Doesn't like spiders either. She doesn't like him because her mom is having this big reaction to this tiny little spider, right? And then now she has a big reaction and that was probably a lasting impression from a family member. Alright, let's move on down the line just a little bit. I'm trying to keep conscious that I'm here. I want to go into one more. I think we got about 10 more minutes and then I'll open up the last 20 minutes or so we have together.

To answer any questions you have, whether it's over content of that we talked about today or just CSU questions in general that you might have as well. So the last one of why are insects? The source of fear is the media right? The media doesn't awesome job at really sensationalizing fear of different things, and particularly around arthropods. So you could go to coyote Peterson's Channel. And if you haven't been exposed to coyote Peterson yet, this is a person.

Who goes out and finds things to be stung by and then after this person is stung, they have the most sensationalized response, like writhing in pain, laying on the ground, screaming all of these different things very much out of the context for what is actually happening when that venom goes in. Most venom doesn't cause any real damage whatsoever. It's meant to cause an reaction that says don't do that again, right? We don't want you to come near us.

There are some that are function as ion channel blockers to or potassium channel blockers, and those can cause some real problems. We see that a lot in neurotoxic venoms of, say, the Black Widow or in the side alisen venoms of something like a centipede, particularly some of the bigger species like the Amazonian giant centipede in things like that. Some of them do but in generally in general there isn't a whole lot in coyote Peterson just sensationalizes all of those different things.

If you want a great book on UN stinging insects that actually brings things into context by a really well written author, then I really recommend sting of the wild. It is a cool book just came out and now the person's name is completely escaping me right now. Schmidt Justin Smit Schmidt. He has what's called the sting pain index. You can actually look that up on Wikipedia.

And he rates the pain of everything on a scale of 1 to 4 and then puts funny notes of a sighted on on what he is experiencing. But his book is fabulous and it really shuts down coyote Peterson. But you also see it in other areas as well. There was a show. This is a little bit dated. It shows the Gray in my hair, but it's one that I think did more for my generation to cause fear of insects where they didn't need to be another arthropods than any other. It was a show called fear factor and in this show folks had to do things.

That were really scary be up on high buildings on a high wire hanging from helicopters. Do all of these other things there is this one that is called the celebrity edition. This was a washed up celebrity addition. When you see the folks that are in there and it's Coolio China from WWF Donny Osmond was in there as well. But what they had to do was stick their head into a jar and then have a bunch of different arthropods poured on their head and then they tried to freak each other out and whoever stayed in the longest one the round. So let's just see.

A piece of this.

The.

Inside, covered with these creatures 3 minutes.

Have to do this.

Seriously, think about it. You already have. Germany is trying to talk her out. He's afraid she's gonna be tomorrow. I'm not afraid of anything. I'm helping a friend get stuck in there. There's gonna be eating your here's OK, there's worms crawling up your nose and the millipedes will go in your mouth.

She.

Johnny.

K those are mealworms. Will talk about those in just a second answer. Scorpions and some millipedes, not centipedes.

Scorpion, right on your nose.

OK, I'm just going to leave it there. You get the idea. So Donny Osmond was saying centipedes there was no centipedes in their only millipedes, and millipedes are not venomous. They are our macro decomposers, their vegetable eaters. The most venomous thing that's in there is the scorpion that's hanging by her nose right there. Scorpions, it turns out, have a really hard time stinging if they don't first grab something, and they don't generally grab on to something and less it's moving. So as long as you're sitting still, it's not a big issue. The centipede or the scorpion that you see in the video.

Is one that has an extremely extremely weak venom to a normal healthy individual. It wouldn't even be to that of a honey bee sting. It is very mild, but the chances of her being stung are so minimal and then the bulk of what's in there are what are called mealworms. In this case, it's a giant mealworms. These are the same things that you go to the pet store and you feed to your to your lizards, or you sometimes might feed to bigger fish cichlids and things like that may be fed these, but they are completely innocuous. They're kind of.

Gross, but they're not dangerous in any way, shape or form. So again, it's fear outside of what's actually going on in it. Sensationalizes things for folks now when I talk about the media, there's one that continually comes back up a myth or urban legend that I see over and over and over again. And that's the one that I want to bring up to you all right now. So I'm going to leave it blank for a second. We eat blank spiders each year while we sleep. You all have probably heard this in one way or another, so I want you in the chat just so that we're all.

Still awake and you're still hanging with me just a little bit put in what you know, alright. Joe says four we all eat 4 spiders a year while we sleep. What are some other variations? And it might be that it wasn't spiders that you heard. Remember with urban legends we always hear that there's variations so it might be Beatles. It might be other arthropods, six or eight from Brady. Emma says eight and eight is the one that we hear most often. Alex comes in with nine so see everybody is in there. So the urban legend that I hear most often is that we eat.

At least eight spiders each year while we sleep, and so the basic claim comes in is a person swallows 8 spiders a year, but I see all kinds of variations on this urban legends. I see you swallow 20 spiders in your lifetime ICU swallow £1 of spiders in your lifetime. I see these again, invariants where it says insects or whether it says Just Beatles or other things like that, but this claim comes in and what's interesting is I started to do a lot of work.

It in in the early 2000s trying to track this one down, someone had beat me to it and there was a story that came out about urban legends and it was started out in an old magazine called PC professional of all places. I don't know why it started out there, but she wanted Lisa Holst, who was riding in there. She wanted to prove that you could make up anything on the newer Internet at that time, and people would believe it in back in the day, y'all. Before we had Facebook and all of these things, people would email lists of interesting facts, cartoons, things like that from person to person.

And there would be all of these facts and some of 'em. If you read through and then like did the research they were true. But it turned out a lot of 'em were false, but they became so firmly ingrained in our minds from going through those email lists that they just became part of part of what everyone says. And so you can look. Here's here's one of these. This is actually one that came. It was posted on maniac world, but I've had similar ones. And of course I have it highlighted down there. So you look down some of these.

Every episode of Seinfeld there's a Superman somewhere. A cigarette lighter was invented before the match. 35% of people who use personal ads for dating are already married. Some of these are like, is that true? Is that not true? But then look at that bottom third from the bottom right there in the course of an average light lifetime, you will, while sleeping, and this one changes a little bit. Eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders. They really built it up in that just kept going and going and going. And if you look at the truth that all your mouth would probably the last place an insect or spider would want to hang out.

Does that mean that you don't accidentally eat arthropods each and every day of your life? That answer is no. As we breathe, there are lots of tiny little insects that are flying around, particularly ones called trips that we might ingest as you buy produce from the grocery store. You may inadvertently eat some aphids or some other small insects that are maybe on some lettuce and things like that. Is there a chance out there in all of the people doing all of the things that they're doing that someone has eaten the spider before accidentally?

Absolutely, but if you're sitting there sleeping and your breathing in and out and it you have this hot breath, you have almost morning breath going on, right? And so there's movement, insects and spiders. If they're finding a place to get all snug boot accrual up and get out of the way, they're not going to go after and actively respiration then where, where your breath is coming in and out of your body that you're going to find somewhere that's completely hidden out of the way. Completely calm, and that's when they can then rest themselves in that way so they're not going to just jump in your mouth like.

This is the perfect place and they don't have malice in their little arachnid hearts. They're not that guy squished my cousin right, and so they don't come running after you. Because of that they had. There's nothing in there, so it would be far and few between now very recently on social media, there was something that came up called a new deadly spider spreads across the USA and look it's in bold, right? Does it? In Phatic language starts from the start?

There are some curse words I apologize for that, but look five people have died. the US government is working on an anti venom. Please take time to make your family and friends aware. So this came out August 21st of last year and I'm telling you I got destroyed in social media by so many people writing to me and saying Matt. Is this true? Are we all going to die? What's going on and if you Scroll down you can see the legs here in the pictures that are below and here's the spider that they're talking about. This y'all.

Is my very favorite of all spiders the scientific name of this spider is, does Derek Rakata, in fact, in this panic post that was put out those bottom 3 pictures 2 out of the three of them are mine, so that are posted on online in different places. This spider is less than the size of 1/4, with its legs outstretched. It does have some menacing jaws, because guess what his favorite food is rolly pollies. It needs big jaws to crack the Shell and eat rolly pollies it is not.

Medically important to humans whatsoever. It is everywhere here in Colorado and across the United States as well. In is not a medically important species. It's sometimes called the wood louse Hunter, sometimes called the Roly Poli destroyer, so it has some cool names. Family disparity does Derek Rakata, but it is not one that causes death and destruction or anything like that. So man hysteric hysteria that in Sudan, that one has resurfaced itself a couple times in social media, feeds and things like that, so again.

Another one of why are insects a source of fears? Just again, their actions are misunderstood that they run faster. They hide in weird places. They eat in different ways. They have all kinds of interesting appendages that are used for them to engage in their environment. Whether it is to procure food or whether it is to provide some sort of shelter and people just don't quite get all of those ones, and so I see memes. Your soul is now mine. You want to take a shower. I'll come with you. This is for a little house centipede, which is adapted to living indoors. It's a centipede that's about.

This big the fastest centipede on Earth. Very common here in Colorado. The Venom is crazy, we can. It's actually doing your gratis service in your house. It's eating other things, bedbugs. Not saying You have bed bugs, but if you did have bed bugs it would be eating those bed bugs from inside your house. Other small spiders, mites and ticks and other things that might be inside your house. It's actually doing a gratis service.

Alright, so yeah, I have just enough time. I'm going to show you one more video.

This is the Super Spider escape. This is just actually right outside my office right here. This was taken by me. OK, here we go Peter call me down 'cause he had gotten a new crazy Super Spider in coming to come down. Take a look. I looked in the zoo but I couldn't find anything. So I've been looking all over and see if maybe it escaped.

Oh my gosh, there it is. There it is.

OK, so I think that that is a good place to finish off on the media portion of it, right? So again, hopefully you're armed a little bit with some more knowledge on things. I want to show you one more because it actually just came across my email This morning that it is flaring up again across the country. And this is one that is OK. It's got a lot of weird names to it, but it is the blush spiders or but spiders of Blair instead of O'Hare. Notice that it's change just a little bit.

International Airport there is no Blair International Airport, but the claim is super venomous spiders, much like then we just saw are lurking in airport toilets, biting and subsequently killing unsuspecting passengers. I'm going to push up a bunch of text. It's probably going to be too blurry for you and I'm just going to point out some emphatic language and then will move into the question and answer. So again, look at the bigwigs doctor Beverly Clark in a Journal. So a brand name Journal. It turns out there is no Journal of the United Medical Association. There's other Medical Association journals. But that isn't one of 'em.

Gives you specific place Chicago at a specific restaurant. Something called big copies in the Blair International Airport and it's talking about people dying over and over again. And then it talks about the health Department descending on the restaurant and a big break came when a waitress at the restaurant was rushed to the hospital. She had been on vacation. She only went in to pick up her check and use the restroom while she was there. And of course that led people to rush into the bathroom. They found a spider under the toilet seat. Now look at the spider. They call it the South American Blush Spider. It's up at the top of this slide.

Look at the scientific name Arachne's. Gluteus the butt spider. All in there, but anyway, give you as you scroll your eyes down please before you use a public toilet, lift the seat check for spiders. It can save your life and then emphatically. Please pass this on to everyone you care about. This just came into my inbox this morning from someone who was traveling and saw it and thought that I would give a get a laugh out of it. And you know there's always these some truths that are there so there is.

A truth that that some spiders like black widows, would lurk in outhouses. It's dark, it's cool, it's out of the way, the smell and the and the materials in outhouses would bring in lots of flies, which was a perfect food and slim Newton had a song called the red back in the toilet seat. And so we can play just a clip of that.

There was a red back on the toilet seat when I was there last night. I didn't see him in the dark of the boy. I felt his fine. OK, you get the idea. Just just to point that out there. So again, sometimes it's shown to be true. Often it's shown to be false at the end, but there's these little bits of truth in there that keep you coming back for more. So we went through today being socialized to fear insects and we talked about friends and relatives and mass media. We talked about the fear of the unknown and how.

Insect actions are just misunderstood and I hope that that's what my job here today was. Give you just a small amount of understanding about these insect interactions. And then, as you find your journey and maybe your journey lead you to CSU, Maybe your journey will lead you into my class and will spend the whole semester really diving into that fear of unknown and really look at how knowledge itself is power. So y'all thank you so much for the time that we've had here today. I'm going to open it up to questions over here. Susan is going to pop up and she's going to help manage the questions a little bit.

And we're going to go through whether it's questions you have about CSU about college life, about this class, or about other arthropods you may know about. So thank you again for your time, and I'll open it up over here into the chat window.

Hi Suzan.

Hi.

Hi all, I'm Susan Brown. I'm the recruitment coordinator for the college agricultural Sciences. You she her hers.

And we're happy to answer any questions, yeah?

OK, sorry Alex has a question. Can students from any major take your class map?

Yes, thank you, thank you for that question. It's one of my favorite things about this class. I have about 300 students a semester in the class and even this semester. While we're all online for the covid restrictions because my classes so big an it is open to all majors and the coolest thing about it is that this semester an it's it's kind of typical for all semesters is this semester I have 54 different majors represented in my class of about 284 in there, which makes it really fun when we get into discussions and talk about it.

Assignments because everyones lived experience is different and so I think that that's just awesome man and you know my job is to take folks that are undeclared and really lead him towards the College of Agricultural Sciences and really into agricultural biology. I would be just super excited if you were here at CSU but even more excited if you're hanging out studying entomology with me.

What else you have?

Looks like we have a question from Brady. What other classes do you teach?

So it depends. It depends on this semester right now while I'm wearing my hat of the assistant Dean, so working at administration, I'm really only teaching one course per semester. I teach the BS PM 102. So insect Sciences Society every single semester. In some years I also teach plants in Civilizations, which is the sister.

Course to this one, so my courses how insects have impacted human history and then plants and Civilizations as you might have guessed, is how plants have impacted human history. So everything from caffeine from from caffeine from coffee, chocolate, scent, marketing and manipulating our mind with scent branding. Looking at the origins of Agriculture, it's an awesome class. It's currently taught by doctor Andrew Norton and doctor Courtney John and they are awesome as well. I also in some semesters will teach some of the 300 level.

Ideal apps I'm not currently doing that, but in some semesters I do.

Don't be afraid. Anything, anything from how we how we are working at CSU this semester or how we might look in the future. I see another question.

Yeah, so Alex is a great one. What do you think of how the murder opponents are being portrayed in the media right now?

How to the great one? What do you think of the hamburger? Opponents are getting created. It destroys me. You can already see where my passion lies, right? So so the The Asiatic Hornet or or the the murder Hornet is is so named because of its ability to kill other hymenopterans so the the murder Hornet is really adept at going after honey bee colonies because it likes to steal the honey stores and so it will go after other hymenoptera as well so.

The name is just so unfortunate and has been so overly sensationalized by the media in an interesting Lee here in Colorado, we haven't seen it right. It has shown up in the Pacific Northwest one or two times over over there and in a few other areas as well, but we have another one and you can look this up on your own. I can't pull it up quickly, but there are things called Horntails and there Wasps that are about 2 1/2 inches in length and they have a uh, over Positor there stinging mechanism. It turns out only female Wasps can sting because it is actually a modified ovipositors egg laying structure.

And the over positive itself can be another inch and a half in length, but they use that in order to lay their eggs into would. But they look so scary and I've been getting so many calls on them as Oh my gosh, we have murder Hornets here in Colorado. We don't. And even if we did, humans still don't have anything to worry about. There are species that is going after other hymenoptera, so you know when I talk about it, I'm more worried about honey bees, right? Honey bees are already having so many stressors. Everything from climate change to being moved.

In the Honey Bee in the in, the beekeeping industry being moved into almonds and around the country to pollinate crops, and this is just one more thing, you know, death by 1000 cuts for the poor honey bees.

I like the question though.

Hi Joe.

Hi.

Michelle from admission has a question. How available are you to meet with students if they have questions?

Good question, Michelle. Thank you so much for the question. I am super available in in non covid times. I keep what I call an open door policy and so my door is closed unfortunately which I just absolutely hate on social type person. I like to be able to talk to anybody and everybody that comes by. If my door is open then no matter what I'm available to you and I try to keep it open all the time, I will always also keep dropping hours so I keep three dropping hours a week.

Just for at very specific times and I tried to vary though, so it might be 10:50 on Monday and two to three on Wednesday because everyones class schedules a bit different and then always available by appointment and I like I say once my student always my students, so I'm not just available to students who are taking my class right now, but I always like to make myself available and I just love it when I hear from former students who are maybe 5 or 10 years out. This is my 21st year teaching. This class that say Hey I found this weird insect 'cause I'm down here in this area.

Can you tell me what it is? That's that's what I love to do so absolutely.

Just real quick I'm Joe. I'm a student ambassador with the College in with the office of admissions and I figured I'd hop in just in case anyone had any more University general questions. I would love to answer those 'cause I know right now or very confusing times. So yeah, if you have anything that's more general to CSU, I would love to help you out with that.

And it looks like we have about four minutes left. If for people who have questions and we can definitely go a little bit over that as well, we don't have anything scheduled right after this either, so.

Matt, I have a question. Oh here we go with Michelle. Why did you choose CSU?

It's a great question, so CSU was always the school in the back of my mind. It's one of those I'm from a really small town South. My class that I teach right now, which is 284 is bigger than my school, which was housed in one building preschool through 12th grade. My preschool through 12th grade had about 212 students. My graduating class had 23 students in it and so I wanted something that was close just in case, right? It wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but.

Also had the degree program that I was looking at, which was psychology at the time and I heard lots of good things about it. My school counselor at the time had said, you know that it's a good school, so I came up. I looked around. I loved the town. I loved it. The area. I love that it was pretty close to home on my hometown is Westcliffe, Colorado down in the South Central Mountains, in the Sangre de Cristo range. And so it was. It was closed, but just far enough from mom and dad that I could still stretch out and be on my own. And then I just found a love for it. I did.

Fridays it's a tradition here at CSU to wear your AGI orange, and even if it, even if it's not, it should be no, it is, and so I always have my orange on and I always say I bleed orange and I also believe that alfalfa green. I really, really, really like CSU. I like what it stands for and I like its path that it's trying to plot moving forward.

Yeah, I can jump in on this too. You know, my how I choose chose CSU story isn't all that exciting. Why I stayed is a little bit more, but I'll start off with why I chose it. I'm I'm in equine science major, which isn't a program offered at many universities nationally, and I thought that that was going to be really special experience to spend my four years learning what I loved because that's something that I've always known in this kind of in a personal philosophy for me.

Is doing what I'm interested in.

An not wasting time on things I'm not college is a big thing financially and so I encourage you to wherever you end up to pick something that you're interested in and that you're going to enjoy for the four years that you're studying it. But once I got to CSU, I really discovered the community here. It's very welcoming after talking to my other high school friends that went elsewhere, csus, very unique experience in how deeply your peers and your teachers and your advisors and

all the Rams around you really care for you. We say around here Rams take care of ramps, which is really cheesy, but really accurate. And Lastly, the best part about CSU is again how you can choose what you're interested in, what you're passionate about. We allow you to choose double majors, minors and concentrations from the college that your primary major is in an from other colleges around the University. There is no restrictions there, so I personally have a minor within the college which is agricultural literacy.

I'm also currently trying to add a minor in chemistry which is in the College of natural Sciences, not the College of AG.

So CSU is just really there to help you find your passion about. And that's something really unique to us. And it's just a great, supportive environment to be in. So I'm a little biased because I am a ram and I love being around. But CSU is a fantastic place to be.

Yeah, thank you both for sharing your answers. I also graduated from CSU and you know Matt and Joe both covered it really well, but CSU is just such a wonderful community and when I stepped on campus for my campus tour, that's when I knew that I wanted to be here. And it's what brought me back. Honestly, I couldn't picture working for another University. CSU is just that amazing. I also I'm wearing my CSU here. I have my orange on under my sweatshirt, but it's a little cold in Colorado today, but if we don't have any other questions

I put my email in the chat for anybody who wants to write that one down. Matt has his up on the slides as well and we can always connect. You do go through myself and we're really just excited for you all. Thanks Matt for the wonderful lecture. That was the first time I got to hear Matt Lecture and it was great. And Yeah, let us know if you have any any questions and thank you all for attending.

Thank you, thanks everybody, take care.