Charles Darwin was a well-documented grump*.
One group of insects that really bummed him out were ichneumonid wasps, because their life cycle is dependent on a pretty cruel process. “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ [parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars,” Darwin writes in Life and Letters of Charles Darwin.
In this week's Season Watch Podcast, co-hosts Heidi Holtan (director of content and public affairs) and Charlie Mitchell (phenology coordinator) talk about parasitoid wasps, the abundance of monarch butterflies, and the exciting habits of red-backed salamanders.
We hear from Prairie Creek Community School, John Latimer (staff phenologist), David Virnala, and Christopher Smith (wildlife biologist).
Attributions
- Black-legged meadow katydid recording by Marti Starr via iNaturalist.
- The recording from David Virnala was left on KAXE's voicemail.
- Prairie Creek Community School's phenology talkback, John Latimer's phenology report, and Christopher Smith's salamander interview all originally aired on KAXE.
- This episode was produced by Charlie Mitchell and Heidi Holtan.
Love the podcast? What creatures shake your faith in the universe? Let us know! Send us a voice memo through Speak Pipe!
Email us at seasonwatch@kaxe.org.
*Other dour and/or relatable Darwin quotes include:
- “But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.” -The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 9
- "I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects..." -Letters. A Selection, 1825–1859
- "...one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one." -The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
- "I do so hope that you have not wasted any time for my stupid blunder.— I hate myself I hate clover & I hate Bees." -To John Lubbock [3 September 1862], Darwin Correspondence Project
- "I am at work on the second vol. of the Cirripedia, of which creatures I am wonderfully tired: I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship." -To W. D. Fox 24 [October 1852], Darwin Correspondence Project
