(Jesse Hawley) So, Story 1, I’ve got it, I’m going to talk about plants
and how they can turn caterpillars into cannibals.
(Sophie Schmidt) Well, what’s happening then?
(Jesse Hawley) What's the story? Yes so, researchers
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, wanted to know
under what circumstances you could get a healthy plant,
with lots to give, lots of like leaves and stems
that would want to be eaten by potential herbivores,
what that plant could do to get the herbivore to not eat it
but to cannibalise someone next to it,
which is a big sort of behavioural change, it’s a shift.
Yeah. I know, isn’t it crazy?
Obviously, plants have an interest in not getting eaten
and unlike lots of animals that get eaten, or creatures,
they can’t run away. They’re rooted into the ground. So…
(Sophie Schmidt) They can weave away right, it’s just very slowly,
gradual.
(Jesse Hawley) Yeah, vines can.
So, in order to combat animals trying to eat them,
they’ve grown thorns. They don’t taste very good.
They famously don’t taste much like pizza or burgers.
That’s a big problem we’re all having right now.
(Sophie Schmidt) Sorry what? Tomatoes don’t taste good ‘cause they don’t.
What’s been happening with that?
(Jesse Hawley) That’s the Subway tomatoes…
no I think they put them in the fridge for too long.
No, the tomato plants, so the leaves and stems and stuff, not the fruits.
(Sophie Schmidt) OK. Cool.
(Jesse Hawley) Because the fruits do want to get eaten.
That’s why they’re delicious. Everything makes sense.
But apart from the structural thing, they have like thorns and stuff
to stop themselves from getting eaten,
they have these chemical defences called secondary metabolites.
(Sophie Schmidt) OK.
(Jesse Hawley) So, they’re pretty common in the plant world.
So, I guess a primary metabolite is something that a creature needs
to live, you know, like you need all your chemicals
so you can bring in oxygen, keep going and make babies and such.
(Sophie Schmidt) All my chemicals.
(Jesse Hawley) But no, so plants produce a suite of
secondary metabolites and they do all sorts of stuff
but largely they’re to stop creatures from eating them.
So, it’s yeah chemical… chemical warfare.
(Sophie Schmidt) Cool, and because it’s the structural integrity
of the tomato plant, right? It doesn’t want to get eaten.
(Jesse Hawley) None of it except for the fruit.
(Sophie Schmidt) Most things don’t want to get eaten.
Cool, I’m here. I’m in the present.
(Jesse Hawley) We’re there, we’re here together.
So, I guess that’s some secondary metabolites.
What do you think some are, some chemicals?
(Sophie Schmidt) I don’t know, like for colour?
(Jesse Hawley) Like they’re to poison creatures that eat them
and we get them from plants. OK.
It’s just like the blank stare.
So, appropriately caffeine is a secondary metabolite,
cocaine, nicotine, quinine, you know like the anti-malarial,
turps, tannins, which give on the bitter flavour of tea and red wine.
So, they’re all secondary metabolites.
They’ve evolved to stop or harm animals from eating them. Nuts.
(Sophie Schmidt) Oh OK, cool, really cool.
(Jesse Hawley) Yeah, not nuts, it’s just strange.
(Sophie Schmidt) Yeah, some of those I think some people can live on
primarily like…
(Jesse Hawley) Primary metabolites.
(Sophie Schmidt) Yeah, was it opium?
(Jesse Hawley) Yeah, probably. A lot of them are.
So, another one, they just manipulate animal behaviour
in all sorts of wacky ways.
So, Capsaicin, which is the active ingredient in chillies and stuff,
that’s a metabolite evolved to burn animal’s mouths
when they eat the fruit.
There is even, I discovered, a secondary metabolite called,
turns animals into Cyclops’s.
It was quite shocking. It’s called Cyclothiamine.
(Sophie Schmidt) You mean, they drop an eye
or they just see through one eye, through two eyes?
(Jesse Hawley) Is that how Cyclops’s work.
I think that’s how a telescope works.
(Sophie Schmidt) [03.34] did that. OK.
(Jesse Hawley) Ideas. No, it’s made by the [03.41]
and when animals graze upon it, it gets into their system
and disrupts the, like the gendix of the foetus'
and stops their foetus, developing foetus, from forming
two halves of the brain.
So, they get a single lobe in their brain and get a single eye.
(Sophie Schmidt) Oh, that’s so sad.
(Jesse Hawley) Isn’t that sad? So, the plant is sending…
(Sophie Schmidt) Does that plant pass it on, the eye?
[Laughing sounds can be heard]
Back to base. Just tell your story.
[Music plays]