-Funding for "Coastal Kingdom" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, which proudly supports this program.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV Endowment has funded educational and entertaining programming like "Coastal Kingdom" for more than 40 years.

-Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ ♪♪ -Okay, so, here is what we're looking for, I think.

Yeah, sure enough.

This is a bird grasshopper.

And grasshoppers have a lot of myths associated with them.

This particular one, the really big ones almost look like a bird when they're flying.

In this episode, we're going to look at some of the stories and myths and misconceptions associated with insects, spiders, and other invertebrates.

♪♪ So, look at that little guy.

Okay, we got something big on.

There we go.

We've got the bird, and there's already a chick in there.

♪♪ ♪♪ So, there's a lot of great stories about grasshoppers.

And one of the things that people used to say about grasshoppers is that they were a sign of impending doom.

And you can see where this probably came from, because if a group of locusts came into fields, they would often destroy the crops.

And there's some others.

When I was a kid, we used to always think, when you picked up a grasshopper, a lot of times they would exude kind of a dark fluid out of their mouthparts.

And when we were kids, we thought that was chewing tobacco.

In fact, this one is -- I can see where it's doing it right now.

It's left kind of a glob of that stuff on me.

And there's even the stories that grasshoppers were lazy, and they spent all their time singing instead of preparing for winter.

Now, that's just kind of ridiculous, but it's still really interesting.

And I think what we sometimes do, when we don't understand animals, we tend to make up stories and myths and things like that associated with them.

So this is a bird grasshopper, and the genus I think is Schistocerca, which just sounds kind of interesting to say.

It's got a -- It's a neat genus name.

And this particular one I think is the American bird grasshopper.

And they're really common in fields like this.

And one of the things that really impresses me about them is even if you get a really cold night, below freezing, a lot of times, once the weather warms up a little bit, they get really active during the day.

So I think they're very resistant to cold temperatures.

As the name would imply, grasshoppers are terrific jumpers, and this species especially so.

They have very long back legs and very muscular, big, muscular legs for jumping.

But they can do something else.

When they jump, they have a tendency to fly as well, and sometimes they can fly for hundreds of feet.

So quite athletic, grasshopper.

The other thing you notice is the lines, those longitudinal lines.

That's not a mistake, because when they sit on vertical vegetation like these grasses, they blend in beautifully.

They're super cryptic in a habitat like this field.

Grasshoppers are not dangerous.

They're not bad for us.

They're not harbingers of doom.

In reality, they're really good to have around.

Obviously, if there's too many, it can be a problem.

But they're great food for a lot of things.

You know, other insects eat them.

Mammals eat them.

And of course, birds eat them.

And so habitat like this is really important.

It's important not only to have the habitat, but the insects like grasshoppers that live in this habitat.

Okay, I think it's time to let this one go.

And I'm just going to kind of toss in the air, and hopefully it's going to fly right off.

Here we go.

♪♪ So, this is one of the myths that I heard about when I first got to the Low Country.

I was used to garden spiders, but I'd not seen this species, which is the golden silk spider.

Now, a lot of people want to call these banana spiders, and I can understand why.

I mean, one of the reasons is their abdomen looks a little bit like a banana, and it's yellow.

But the other myth that I've heard is that these were exotic species that came in on banana crates and things like that.

Not true.

This is a native species, and it is actually quite, quite common.

And it's one of the biggest orb weavers that we have in the United States.

One of the things that I'm always impressed with is the size of these webs.

So, the webs can stretch, you know, through gaps in the canopy.

And although we just see this part as the web, I mean, some of these strands go way, way into the trees here.

And the other thing you notice is just how tough this silk is.

Things like garden spiders will make a new web pretty much every night.

Some spider species will do that.

These tend to keep the same web.

I think it's just so big and so expansive that they want to use it as long as they can, but they often have to fix spots where insects got caught.

And that way, once they fix the hole, then they can continue to use it.

That's exactly what it just did.

If a flying insect, for instance, or even a grasshopper or something like that jumps in the web, it gets tangled.

Spider bites it, immobilizes it, and then actually not only immobilizes it, but the venom of spiders typically liquefies the inside, and then they can just suck out the insides.

Sometimes they'll just grab it, wrap it up, and then save it for later.

But that, that's a really impressive tactic if you think about it, this big web that can catch anything that flies through.

You know, I've heard stories, and I think they're legitimately true, of using some of this silk, which, you know, for its size, it's stronger than steel, and actually making fishing nets and things out of it.

And I can completely understand that.

But golden silk spiders get enormous.

This is a -- really a smaller one.

But, you know, some of them get about this big around or so.

So this is an impressive spider.

But we saw something a little bit earlier that's a little bit smaller but just as interesting.

So, these are kind of neat.

We caught these out in the grass and have moved them out in the sun so we can see them a little better.

Look at those.

One of the great myths of all time.

These are daddy long legs.

And the myth is that these are the most venomous spiders in the world, but they lack the fangs to bite people and hurt people.

So first of all, these aren't spiders.

So our myth is in trouble right off the bat.

These are harvestmen, and it's an order called Opiliones.

So they have eight legs, but they don't even have a cephalothorax and an abdomen the way a spider does.

They've got just kind of one round body part.

These do not have venom glands, and that's one of the things that makes them not spiders.

They also do not produce silk, and spiders do, so that's another thing that makes them different.

And believe me, if these were the most venomous spiders in the world, I would not be holding them and letting them crawl all over me like this.

So it's a myth.

A lot of people say it, but it is definitely not true.

They're both still in here.

God, these are so much more athletic than I would have ever guessed.

Man, think about just the biomechanics of crawling with legs that are this long, and the legs are tough.

You know what else is kind of neat?

If they lose a leg, the body very quickly adapts to crawling with one less leg.

Sometimes they can be missing multiple legs and still crawl really, really effectively.

I mean, that's amazing.

These are eaten by a variety of predators.

You know, spiders will eat them, and birds will eat them and all kinds of things.

But they're amazingly athletic.

So, sometimes, you'll see huge groups of these all kind of gathered together.

And, you know, it's hard to know exactly what that is, but I'll bet it has to do with predator avoidance, because if you have a whole bunch of them together, it's hard for a predator to single in on one of them and, you know, hunt that way.

It probably very confusing to a predator.

Something kind of creepy about them crawling up your body like this.

So, we found these just kind of in the shade, kind of at the base of a tree.

And that's -- They like to hide in hollow logs or underneath things in the shade, for sure.

♪♪ So, we were driving down the road and just came across this guy.

And I've got this little plastic container.

I try and keep one of these in the truck.

But this is a velvet ant.

And let me see if I can scoop it up, first of all.

These are -- I'm going to be a little careful with this one.

They're so quick.

You notice I'm not handling this one by hand, and you'll see why in just a minute.

There we go.

So, I popped it in here.

So, this is a velvet ant, or one of my favorite names for it is the cow killer.

Now, this is one of the great myths.

So, the idea is this wasp -- And it's actually a solitary wasp, a mutillid wasp.

This animal is called a cow killer because its sting is so powerful that it could kill a cow.

Now, obviously, that's a myth.

It's not true.

But I'll tell you what.

From personal experience, these guys pack a wallop.

I've been nailed twice.

Both times, it was my own fault.

I was messing with it.

One time, I was pinning one down with a stick, and they've got a very flexible stinger.

It's actually a modified ovipositor, and it kind of stuck my thumb with it, and, whoa!

I mean, for a couple of minutes, it is a spectacular pain.

This is one I think called Dasymutilla occidentalis.

And it's a mutillid wasp, but also wingless.

The females are wingless.

The males can fly.

And so they just run around on the ground.

And what I always say is, if you're this brightly colored and this contrast-y and bold, and you're walking around like today in the middle of a road like this, and nobody's messing with you, then you know how to protect yourself.

And that's the case with these.

These bright colors mean warning.

This is an animal that has a very powerful sting.

And a lot of animals, especially birds, I think, know that.

I'm going to let this little guy go.

♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, I got one.

And, you know, there's a lot of dragonflies flying around here, but this is the one that I was trying to catch.

And this is one that's a little harder to catch than some of the others.

It's one of the bigger dragonflies we have.

You know, dragonflies are amazing creatures.

And I'm going to see if I can get these wings, make sure that I don't do anything to hurt this one.

Green darner.

I mean, this is a great dragonfly, and they are beautiful.

If you see this beautiful green and blue body, I can tell it's a darner because the eyes are so big, they actually meet at the top of the head right here, and then, of course, that wonderful abdomen, and that does look a little bit like a darning needle.

Expert fliers.

They can get stuff out of the air.

And actually sometimes they're feeding on insects out of the air.

They'll eat other dragonflies.

They'll eat all kinds of harmful insect species.

But really, they eat just pretty much anything they want.

Some people call these snake doctors, and the myth is that these animals, they would find snakes that were injured, and they could actually use these darning-needle-like bodies to stitch them up and sew them him up.

So snake doctor seems like a -- It's a really exciting name, actually, but it's not accurate.

It's one of those myths that's based on, you know, some observations that people saw.

In reality, dragonflies are wonderful creatures.

They're very important to the ecology of the area.

They provide food for birds and other animals, and of course, they feed on all kinds of insects.

But you know what?

They need good wetland habitat, because if they don't have good wetland habitats like this behind me, they can't survive.

Sometimes if you see dragonflies laying eggs, they will take the abdomen, and they'll dip it in the water repeatedly.

It may look a little bit like sewing, too, so maybe that's another way that they got their name.

But they lay eggs in the water.

Eggs hatch into these little larvae, and those larvae eventually metamorphose or change into adults.

They can crawl up on land.

Their back splits, and out comes a dragonfly.

So a lot of sort of magical sort of things associated with dragonflies.

So you can see why there are so many myths associated with them.

Okay, well, I think it's time to let this one go.

There we go.

So, one of the myths I hear a lot is that moths only come out at night.

And that's not exactly true.

And I noticed there's one right up here, and I'm going to creep up on it.

I'm going to reach in from the other side over here.

It is right there.

And that is a bella moth.

And it is a beautiful, beautiful moth.

And they're day fliers, so you'll see them out during the day.

Now, usually, you see them on Crotalaria, because that's what they like to feed on.

But this one looks like it's on some switch cane.

And I don't think -- It's not feeding on it.

Obviously, as moths, they're really not feeding anyway.

So, typically, what's going to happen is the caterpillar is going to feed, and then the moth flies to mate.

So you see these out during the day quite a bit.

And there it goes.

So that one flew off a little earlier than I had planned.

But it just goes to show they're obviously active during the day, and that one flew off.

They're brightly colored, so they probably draw some attention.

Maybe that flash of bright color even confuses predators.

This is kind of fun.

Let's go see what else we can find.

So, here's another moth species.

And this one's got a little bit of sun on it.

Normally they would be in the shade.

This looks like a tersa sphinx.

So here is one of our moths that only flies at night.

But as we said, some of them fly during the day.

And this one is just kind of sitting there.

So during the day, they're going to find a place kind of out of the way where they can just hide and wait for it to get dark.

Beautiful, beautiful moth.

And they -- God, they're built like jets, aren't they?

They're very aerodynamic looking.

And this one has that beautiful mahogany back.

Now, these have caterpillars that feed on a variety of food plants, but really no significant damage to anything.

But, boy, that is a good looking moth for sure.

♪♪ ♪♪ Oh, yep.

Still here.

So if you look right here, there's something really kind of cool.

So I was out looking for snakes with some of my colleagues yesterday for some research we're doing, and I saw this creature right here.

And obviously, it's not a snake.

This is a caterpillar.

And specifically, it's the caterpillar of a giant leopard moth.

Now, one of the myths that you hear all the time is that fuzzy caterpillars are all poisonous.

But I'll tell you what, that's not the case at all.

In fact, I'm going to pick this one up, and look what it did.

Just exactly as I suspected, it rolled into a perfect ball.

Alright, I'm going to set this piece of tin down and just have a seat right on the ground right here.

So, giant leopard moth.

And, you know, you notice this has some impressive spines on it.

But some caterpillars have what are called urticating hairs that will really sting you badly.

This species does not.

But I think people have a tendency to think that all caterpillars, if they're fuzzy, are dangerous.

And unfortunately, people want to squish these caterpillars, and there's no reason to do that at all.

This one in particular turns into one of the most gorgeous moths I've ever seen.

It's a white moth that gets about this big.

The body's about that long, and it has these beautiful black spots on it.

It's called a giant leopard moth because it has leopard spots on it.

And they're absolutely gorgeous.

When you just glance at it, especially when it's not rolled up in a ball, it looks black.

But if you look very closely, it has these wonderful red sort of divisions in the body.

And, boy, it just about rolled right out of my hand.

But anyway, really a gorgeous caterpillar.

But again, the moth is even prettier and even more impressive.

Now, there's another caterpillar that's a close relative of this called a woolly bear.

And woolly bear caterpillars look very much like this, except that they have much wider bands.

And they're kind of a orangey brown and black.

And there's a great myth associated with these.

And it says that if there's a lot of black banding on them or wide black bands, that means it's going to be a rough winter.

Now, obviously that's ridiculous, but it is kind of fun to talk about.

But anyway, back to this giant leopard moth caterpillar.

This is one that I'm going to put it back underneath this piece of tin, and it's going to just sit there for a while, overwinter kind of down in the leaf litter under this piece of cover.

And then eventually, it will pupate and then emerge from that pupa into this beautiful moth.

♪♪ Not what I -- Some mosquitofish, but not what I'm looking for.

So, the light's getting low.

It looks like it's starting to get a little bit dark, but I've got a couple more traps that I want to check.

♪♪ There we go.

This is the creature I was looking for.

This is the famous toe biter.

And it's one -- Let me put these fish back in.

But look at this creature right here.

So, this is some bait.

This is filled with gator chow and shrimp and all kinds of things like that.

Let me grab this bug.

And it is a bug.

It's an insect.

This is a giant water bug.

But people call these toe biters.

And this is -- When I was a kid, we were just terrified of these things.

We would find them occasionally around, you know, the baseball field and stuff like that, because these can fly.

And what happens is, like a lot of other insects, they're attracted to light.

And so these, they fly to mate.

And when they were flying, they would be attracted to the light, and they would end up, you know, on the pitcher's mound or, you know, somewhere on the baseball field.

But they spend most of their lives in the water, and they are just tigers in the water.

I mean, this is an animal that can eat just about anything smaller than itself.

And first thing you notice is they've got these very impressive claws, kind of hooks basically, and then very strong upper body.

And then if you look right -- right on the face right there, there's just one piercing, sucking mouthpart.

So, what this animal will do is grab a mosquitofish or a small salamander or a little frog or whatever, grab it with those monster front legs, and then it'll pierce it.

It will put in kind of a digestive enzyme, and that enzyme liquefies the inside of the animal, and then it can slurp it out like it's a straw.

I mean, it's a good thing these don't get this big, or you can imagine how dangerous they would be.

Now, the reality is, and I've been nailed a couple times by these, if they hit you with that piercing, sucking mouthpart, it hurts like crazy.

But it's not -- It's not seriously dangerous.

It just hurts quite a bit.

Now, another thing that's kind of neat -- I have to be careful how I'm handling this.

These animals can kind of hang upside down in this position.

And then they have a tube that kind of comes out, and that tube can pull oxygen out of the air down to the spiracles so this animal can breathe.

And that way, it can hang suspended underwater for hours and hours and hours, probably even days, and just hang like that and then nail fish when they swim by.

Just an amazing creature.

Now, I want you to see how aquatic these are, so I brought a little plastic container.

See if I can get some clear water.

And watch this.

I mean, they can really swim well.

And you can imagine them just swimming around in a wetland looking for small animals to feed on.

There's that tube sticking up, that tube so that it can breathe even when the entire body is submerged.

So as I said, I've been bitten a couple times by these, but both times, I was messing with them.

And I know of nobody who's ever had their toe bitten by one of these.

But it would hurt if you did.

It's time to let this one go.

So, we brought some stuff in from out in the field from collecting earlier, and we've got some really neat invertebrates.

And, man, there are some great myths associated with them.

And the first one is an earwig, and that's from the order Dermaptera.

And it's always been one of my favorite insects, and that's because they have this forcep-like tail apparatus.

And there's one right here.

And I remember when I first caught this one, caught a couple of them, and I was kind of poking it, and it pinched me with that apparatus on the tail.

And you know, I could feel it.

It's certainly not dangerous or anything like that.

So they already have the sinister-looking appendage on their back end, and they use this probably for protection from predators and things like that.

And I noticed there were a couple of them together.

We put them in the same container, and they were kind of using those to protect themselves from each other.

But the earwig's claim to fame is that these things supposedly would crawl into human ears and then, some people would say, would actually burrow into the brain.

Now, that's just ridiculous.

I mean, it's like a science fiction sort of thing, but they don't do that.

I mean, they're harmless to people, I mean, completely.

Now, they can be a little bit of a problem for -- I'm going to pop this one out and hold it for a minute.

They can be a little bit of a problem for certain crops like corn and other things like that.

So they're not, you know, completely harmless to crops.

But keep in mind, they can get rid of harmful insects themselves, so they can be beneficial to some degree.

But anyway, certainly don't attack people with this scorpion-like tail.

And they certainly don't burrow into people's heads, into their brains or anything like that.

Drop them onto the -- ♪♪ Okay.

♪♪ Okay, so another insect we caught.

This is a fabulous insect.

And what was really neat about this is how I found it.

So, this animal was -- This is -- By the way, this is a -- I think it's a Brunner's mantis is what it is, but it's one of the praying mantises.

But what was interesting about this one, when we found it, it was feeding on a tree frog.

And in fact, I didn't realize what was going on.

I saw a tree frog that looked like it was hung on some -- on a spine or something in some plants.

And so I carefully tried to remove it.

And when I did, out came the praying mantis with it.

So it was a little tree frog about this big, and this mantis had it by the leg.

Amazing.

You know, there's something really odd about seeing an invertebrate feed on a vertebrate, so it's weird to see an insect eat a frog.

These have some neat myths associated with them.

I mean, there's a lot of folklore associated with them, that they're good luck.

Some people think that these front appendages look like they're praying, you know, because they fold -- kind of fold those appendages up.

Anyway, we have several different kinds of mantises around here, but this one's particularly interesting for a couple reasons.

One, some people call it a grass mantis because it's so slight, and it blends in beautifully with grasses.

In fact, that's where we found it is in some kind of tall, warm season grasses.

But this species is parthenogenetic, which means there are no males.

They breed by parthenogenesis, which is, you know, very much like cloning, almost.

So there are only females of this species, and they have young that are genetically very similar to them.

And like I said, no males of this species.

I mean, that is wild.

So very, very interesting insect.

Probably more common than we realize because they're so cryptic.

This is an animal that just blends in perfectly with green vegetation.

So, another invertebrate.

This is not an insect, but it is one of the great myths ever associated with invertebrates, that's for sure.

And this is a millipede.

And "milli" means 1,000.

So people would say that millipedes have 1,000 legs.

Typically they do not.

Now, this is one -- a common millipede in the southeast, in fact, in much of North America.

I think one of the names for it is American giant millipede.

Millipedes are amazing.

First of all, they have a lot of legs.

They may not have 1,000, although there is an Australian species apparently that can have over 1,000 legs.

Most of them have, you know, somewhere between, you know, 50 and 300 or something like that.

In fact, this species, I once counted the legs on it, and it had 186.

So I don't know why I did that, but -- One big difference -- So there's a millipede, and then there's a centipede.

And centipedes move more quickly.

They tend to have less legs than the millipedes do, but they're very fast moving, and they're predators.

This animal is a much-slower-moving detritivore.

So it's going to feed on dead and decaying vegetation and also dead and decaying animals.

Just really kind of an amazing creature.

A lot of these have toxins or poisons, so, some of them even have cyanide.

So, if you want to differentiate between centipedes and millipedes, there's a pretty good way to do it.

Millipedes have two pairs of legs per segment, whereas centipedes have one pair of legs per segment.

And again, you know, you got to look pretty close to see that.

But each one of these little segments of the body on a millipede will have two pairs of legs, so four legs total.

And if you look at this one, boy, there are a bunch of legs on this.

And it's kind of amazing that this many legs can move kind of in concert with each other and allow this animal to move.

So millipedes don't necessarily have 1,000 legs, and centipedes don't necessarily have 100 legs, but especially with millipedes, 200, 300, 400, that's a pretty respectable number.

As you've seen in this episode, there's an awful lot of misconceptions and myths and stories associated with invertebrates.

But you know what you can do?

You can get yourself a trusted source like this field guide, and you can get out in the field, and you can learn the facts for yourself.

Thanks for joining us on "Coastal Kingdom."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Funding for "Coastal Kingdom" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, which proudly supports this program.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV Endowment has funded educational and entertaining programming like "Coastal Kingdom" for more than 40 years.

-Additional funding provided by...