(hissing) (soft, serene music) - Ta-da!

It's not a thing.

(soft, serene music) - I just fed her so she's kind of fat and sassy.

She ate a nice big, juicy caterpillar off the cabbage plant.

She was very happy with that.

- This is that bait I was telling you about that these collectors have been using so they were successful in getting a black witch moth.

It's really cool.

Hey, guys.

Do you still have the moth?

Would you mind showing it?

Well, yeah, but look how big it is.

It's really, really beautiful.

(soft, serene music) - When I was growing up, my mother and stepfather owned a large piece of land, 24 acres, and I would spend a lot of time outside just kind of poking around and finding things, and what I loved about the natural world is I loved to see things rot.

Something about insects, it kind of approaches that place in us that is the same fascination that we have in circuses for things like a bearded lady.

They're just sort of like, outside of our day-to-day experience and so I think that mortality, it's just sort of got this strange beauty and this kind of dark draw for us.

If you've ever spent any time digging around a compost, you'll know that there are some really incredible creatures in there.

Some that look like really large, kind of nasty things.

There's a part in The Wrath of Khan where they drop a bug into the guy's ear and it's supposed to go in and eat his brain.

There's a lot of things in your compost that look just like that and even without ever seeing that clip in the film, you still have that sense of like, whoa, what is that?

You think we'll see a lot of them?

- Yeah.

- Okay, you want it like everybody else's, Felix?

- Yeah.

- I recognized in myself if I were gonna be a really successful bench scientist in the current way that academia works, I would really need to be devoting my whole self to that, and I have a family and I wanted to make sure I had time also to be a mother.

So I've sort of retooled a little bit and now I spend more time teaching and doing outreach and engagement.

Did you get it?

- Yeah.

- [Cara] Wow, you actually did.

- Actually got a large one.

- [Cara] Nice catch.

- Ever since I was a little kid, I'd be wandering around in the fall or in the summer.

I was just always intrigued by the insects, to small things.

I was little.

Some people are intrigued by, you know, seeing a football or basketball or some people are intrigued by getting a paintbrush.

I was intrigued by the beautiful wasps and the bees.

I don't really look forward to getting stung.

It's just kind of one of the hazards of my chosen activities in life that I'm trying to answer questions about stinging insects.

I've been stung, like I said, probably 500 or 1,000 times by honey bees.

So I said, well, we gotta get some numbers.

We gotta rate, that ow is less than that ow, which is less than that ow.

How do we do that?

Well, come up with a pain scale.

(chary music) I usually work on the higher levels, the genus, which is kind of like the cluster of species that are all very similar.

So the number I usually go by is in the book, The Sting of the Wild, where I made a table of these.

An appendix in the back, I have 83 listed.

10 fire ant stings hurt me about as much as one honey bee sting.

So you can continue that extrapolation.

The 10 honey bee stings will hurt about as much as one good maricopa harvest ant.

That's the red harvest ants we see running around on the sidewalks here in Tuscon and the Southwest.

You got 10 of those, 10 of the harvest ants would be about equivalent to one bullet ant or one tarantula hawk.

So that's pretty much the relationship.

There, fortunately, aren't any fives.

(growling) - I'm Coyote Peterson and I love animals.

I don't care if they're scaly, scary, hairy, toothy or absolutely huge.

Look at that swamp beast.

Guys, do be aware that if I do immediately go into a state of paralysis, just-- - They've got a sting that's about six, seven millimeters, about 1/4 inch long, 1/3 inch.

They'll get ya.

Electrify in one word.

And if you can imagine that, that's about what it feels like.

It's instantaneous, it's electrifying, it's clean, it's sharp, it's very pure.

It just totally shuts you down.

It's like short-circuiting your brain.

Your brain is sort of idling along.

You think, "Oh yeah, I'm still functioning."

Well, wrong.

So I tell people if you get stung, don't try to be tough and all that.

Just lay down.

Lay down and scream.

- [Cameraman] All right, Coyote.

You okay, man?

Is your heart racin'?

- A million miles a second.

This is the most nervous I've ever been to take a stinger bite from anything.

My hand is shaking.

Are you guys all ready?

- [Cameraman] Oh, yeah.

I'm ready if you're ready.

- I'm ready.

I'm ready.

Here we go.

I'm Coyote Peterson and I'm about to enter through the sting zone with the tarantula hawk.

- [Cameraman] Go for it.

- One... (tense music) Two...

Here we go.

Three.

(painful screams) - As long as you're screaming, you're doing two jobs.

You're screaming and trying to endure the pain.

That's better than just enduring the pain.

- Oh my gosh!

(painful screams) - [Cameraman] You okay?

(painful grunts) Tell me what you're feeling.

- I can't move my arm!

(painful grunts) That is the most intense pain I've ever felt!

I don't think I can talk.

(painful grunts) - [Cameraman] Are you okay, man?

I'm gettin' nervous.

- And if you scream, most of us, like I have lung power.

I can scream for about two or three minutes.

By the time you finally run out of energy for screaming, you go, oh, it doesn't hurt anymore.

- And you can see the stinger where it went in right there.

- I think we had this arms race, predator prey, where we're the predator and insects are the prey.

And so I think what happened is they won.

We're dreadfully afraid of them.

The bees, and stinging ants, and wasps have won that war because they get into our head.

- For instance, a lot of people are afraid of shark attacks, but I recently saw a statistic that actually humans bite more humans on the New York City subway than sharks bites humans.

And so, similarly, mosquitoes are an incredible problem because they transmit malaria.

They can be fatal 'cause of what they're carrying.

And so, yeah, I think sometimes our sensation, our fear doesn't necessarily map to where the actual risk occurs.

We're all here together.

This is one planet and we've had a lot of time here on this planet together interacting with one another in these nuanced ways that science is just starting to uncover.

It's one of the most exciting times in biology, but I'm sure that every biologist throughout time has said that.

- When we think about the history of humans understanding the world around them and pursuing science, one of the very first steps were these explorations of the world.

Major collecting expeditions, (brief pause) where Charles Darwin and Wallace would travel, collect specimens, bring them back.

I think of it as a map, like creating a map of the biological world.

(pleasant, upbeat music) We still do that type of research and we're still learning a lot.

We're discovering new species.

I thought I wanted to be a marine biologist and I pursued marine biology for my masters degree.

I studied marine isopods that live in the South Pacific Islands and for collecting I would put on full scuba gear and go diving and that was a really fantastic and fun experience.

(soft, serene music) I also fell in love with my advisor, who was one of the most amazing, open-hearted people I'd ever met.

We were in love and we decided to get married.

It was a lot of big decisions all at one time.

I needed to make a shift so that there wouldn't be such an overlap between my professional and personal lives and so I decided to switch to entomology to study basically the crustaceans of the land.

I specialize on bombardier beetles.

Bombardier beetles are special carabids.

They are these masters of chemistry.

They mix chemicals inside of their bodies in a way that creates an exothermic reaction just before it leaves the body of the beetle.

My collaborators and I have a grant through the National Science Foundation where were able to look at the genes involved in the production of defensive chemicals for these bombardier beetles.

They'll blast you when you collect them and it doesn't hurt too bad.

It's not as hot as brachinus, the other lineage of bombardiers.

It's not the boiling point of water, but it's definitely a bit of a shock.

(chatter among the group) My personal mission tonight is to try to get more of those new species, the small-bodied ones, but also to get as many of the larger agoniotropus cunsnai as possible.

We haven't gone beyond this point so it's all gonna be a new territory.

- But once you've seen a few of them, you get an eye for it and then just out of the corner of your eye you'll see a black something moving at just the right speed and they'll catch your attention and you turn and it'll usually be just out of reach.

I used to work on marine crustaceans and insects are basically just flying crustaceans.

But the most exciting thing I ever did was hook up with Wendy on a Polynesia expedition to Tahiti, and Guam, and Fiji, and that was the beginning of Wendy and I. Golly.

Ow!

Mating agoniatropus.

Two!

That's incredible.

- Was that the noise they made?

- Yeah, that noise with the blast.

- That sounds worse than brachinus.

(laughter) - Oh, I'm so happy even though I got some burning on my fingers from the bombardier blast.

That was very fun.

Wow.

Now here, that is probably simindus.

(soft, serene music) (camera shutter clicking) - Today we're looking at a malaise trap sample and that is a kind of a flight-intercept trap.

So this is a really convenient way to trap a lot of insects.

I think what's extraordinary about looking through a malaise trap sample is that there's so many different shapes, and colors, and textures.

I think the other thing about insects that's amazing is that they've been here for a lot longer and they dominate Earth.

They're in pretty much ever habitat except for like, benthic in the sea.

Being in all of these different habitats and occupying all of these different niches is what has allowed them to modify all of these different structures to fit those spaces.

So that's part of it, too, is that the story is kind of writ in the body.

Flies generally have piercing/sucking mouth parts.

They look like puppies.

They've got this beautiful little brown wide-spaced eyes.

Wow, that is a really crazy mouth, too.

Whoa!

This one has a crazy abdomen.

So insects have a open circulatory system so their air comes right directly into their body at different points along the whole length of their bodies and so the spiracles are sort of equivalent to our nostrils.

And it's just sort of odd to think about a nostril on your abdomen.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, and Toronto is considered one of the most multicultural cities in the world by the United Nations, and I would do this in a little room by myself for several hours and then I would go outside of the museum where I worked and walk on the sidewalk and think, this is not diverse.

I guess like the standard setup of people, I'm over it.

Is that weird?

There's just a limited number of types and shapes.

(rhythmic, upbeat music) This is an insect world.

When we just look at the insects, that's 52% of described species.

They're related to us on the planet so we're more closely related to insects than we are to say, plants or microbes or fungi.

These are the major groups of life on our planet.

(upbeat music) - The reason why beetles are so successful, one of the reasons why, is they've developed a hard protective shell, which is called the elytra, which is actually in the front wings but they protect the hind wings, which are the flight wings.

So structural differences are one reason why things could be so successful.

Everything's kind of adapted to where they occur.

(upbeat music) Things die out that can't adapt and speciation events takes place.

So everything's constantly evolving and changing over time.

Those that survive the changes are the ones that are successful.

(upbeat music) - The field of systematics involves naming species, determining how they're related to one another, and then establishing classification systems, which are a nest of sets of organisms based on their relatedness.

Together, that shows us a map of how organisms evolved throughout the history of life on Earth.

(upbeat music) What we have here in this collection is the product of all that time.

Our goal is to take these specimens and to keep them forever for all future generations to study.

For me, it just fills me up.

It's like, so obvious, you know, that that is such a good thing to do.

- You definitely always need the physical specimens because you can only do so much with an image.

An image, you can't analyze for molecular analysis.

So the specimens in the collection are irreplaceable.

If a specimen was lost or damaged, you can't go back to Mount Lemmon in 1942 and recollect that specimen.

- When those specimens were collected, the collectors and the people who have curated them all of these years had no idea what kind of sequencing technology was gonna come down the line.

It used to be that we would need to go collect specimens specifically for molecular phylogenetic analysis.

Recent advances in sequencing technology allows us to sequence small pieces of DNA that are very fragmented.

Museum collections are filled with specimens that have fractionated DNA that we could not use for genetic projects in the past.

But now they're perfectly suited for this new sequencing technology.

And there are gonna be a lot of other technologies in the future that we can bring to bear on these time capsules.

Natural history collections are time machines.

- Getting mic'd up.

This is a double mic situation.

- Action.

- All right, guys.

It's a big day.

On location here in Tucson, Arizona because I am about to meet the king of sting himself, the godfather of the insect sting pain index, Justin Schmidt.

We are right outside of his house and if you guys are ready, let's go inside and meet the man himself, Justin Schmidt.

(knocking) I'm expecting bullet ants.

Oh, there he is!

I see you've got some of our favorites over here, tarantula hawks.

- Yeah, we've got a couple of tarantula hawks.

- You're just gonna open that up, huh?

- Well, sure.

You can see better.

Screens, see-- - Everybody at home's probably like, "Wait a minute.

"He just took the lid off of the tarantula hawk terrarium."

- See there?

- Oh, you're just gonna put your hand in there?

- I think so.

But you see what I'm doing is just demonstrating that they really aren't out to get me.

I mean, if they were out to get me, I'd be stung.

Now if I put my thumb on the back of him, I'm gonna get nailed.

- Applying pressure is all part of-- - And I don't want you getting out because then I have to catch you.

- I'll kind of lead us in and then I'll ask you some questions and you tell me some stories.

I'll give you some of my experiences and then, of course, when we're talking about experiences, I think what people really wanna know are probably like our top three.

- (chuckling) Action.

- Let's talk stings.

- Let's go for it.

- For me, the tarantula hawk almost put a line in the sand, no pun intended, when it came to completing the sting index because I will never forget what it was like.

First of all how intimidating that creature is to get that thing into the entomology forceps and it looks like an alien.

- And it's strong.

- It is strong.

The wings are going and you see that 1/4 inch stinger coming in and out of that abdomen, and that moment where I'm like, all right-- - And it's sharp.

- I'm gonna have to place this on my forearm and take this sting.

And when I finally worked up the courage to do that...

I do this countdown where it's three, two, one or one, two, three and boom, you place it down.

The sting from that insect was electric in nature.

I've been shocked before where I've accidentally taken a zap from an electrical cord.

- Oh yeah, we all have.

- This was that times 10 and it put me on the ground.

My arm seized up from muscle contraction and it was probably the worst five minutes of my life at that point.

- Yeah, that's exactly why I call it electrifying.

I say, imagine you're walking along in Arizona and there's a windstorm and the power line above from the telephone pole snaps, the wire, and it hits you.

Of course that hasn't happened to me.

- 'Cause your mind goes into this state that's just, it's blank emptiness and all you can focus on is the fact that there's radiating pain coming out your arm.

- And that's why you scream because now you're focusing on something else.

- Yeah!

- Yesterday I woke up at 3:00 a.m, went to bed at 9:30, and then got up at 4:00.

(upbeat music) (chatter) Can you put this here and I have a billion other things to do.

This morning they were all like...

They put them here and I was like, that's not gonna work.

Yay, bugs.

Check it out.

How many people do you think are here right now?

(upbeat music) - [Boy] So beautiful.

- Five feet long.

- When you see a five, six, eight-year-old child explaining science to other members in their family, they're so empowered and it's really great.

(upbeat music) - Crickets.

- So, they're crickets?

- Yeah!

- Yeah, it's like dehydrated onion.

Not bad.

It's not bad.

- Is it good?

No?

(laughter) (chatter) - Whoa!

Whoa, whoa.

- I can guarantee you that over the course of my life, people have wondered why insects?

Why spend your time thinking about this all the time?

But insects do everything and I love them, and it's okay to follow something that maybe seems different to others because that love really can fuel you through so much adversity.

- [Girl] Can I hold the tarantula?

- [Boy] I've never touched a spider in my life.

- If you come from the top, that's like a bird.

Human curiosity is really what drives us.

So that's one distinguishing characteristic of us versus most other things.

We have this insatiable curiosity and I think we need to feed that.

(soft, serene music) We feed that through music, and art, and dance, and language, and poetry.

(soft, serene music) But we feed it through exploring and science is one of the fields that we explore.

- Once you realize how completely spectacular the natural world is, you are very driven to protect it.

(soft, serene music) - The sheer beauty; that's what elevates the human spirit.

That's what makes us special.

And if we aren't special, what are we?

We're nothing.

(soft, serene music)