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George Beccaloni joins me today at the campfire. George is an evolutionary biologist and historian

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of science. He has worked at London's Natural History Museum for more than 20 years publishing

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articles on butterflies, cockroaches and other insects. As a science historian, he has studied

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the life and legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace and is the founder and director of the Wallace

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Correspondence Project. In that role, he has contributed to many articles and books on

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Wallace and through the Wallace Memorial Fund, George has helped restore the great man's

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grave as well as erect a statue of Wallace, complete with his butterfly net, at the London

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Natural History Museum. He has achieved many other feats and accolades, but to me, George,

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the coolest thing is that you have one very particular title and function. You have to

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be a very rare breed indeed, if in this day and age, you can call yourself a ship's naturalist.

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George, welcome to the podcast.

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Thanks, Arie. Nice to see you again. We met about five years for the first time on Bunaken

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Island off the north coast of Sulawesi Island.

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I think so. And I think I was trying to lecture you on Wallace at the time.

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Yeah, it was a very nice island with a beautiful coral reef, but totally infested with giant

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scolopendra centipedes, as I remember. There was that Austrian guy who's really big and

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tough and he was walking back at night to his room and with sandals on and one of these

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huge, he stepped on one of these huge centipedes and it wrapped around his foot and bitten.

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So he rushed off to his room, lay on his bed, put his hand on his pillow and then was bitten

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by another. And I just heard him sort of screaming for ages and ages from his room.

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I remember that just crying all through the night. It must have been such a terrible pain.

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Yeah, I've always disliked those giant centipedes, but I have one centipede claim to fame, which

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I'll mention later on in this podcast. No, I like centipedes. The bite is not very nice.

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Well, at least only about one person's ever been recorded as dying from a scolopendra

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bite. Okay, that's very low. I didn't know. Just extremely painful.

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Yeah. And you were just traveling throughout Indonesia when we met and you're doing a lot

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of traveling still as I said, as a ship's naturalist, but it's your love for nature

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and natural history, I think started a long time ago, as for most of us, you started as

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a child, right? Yeah, absolutely. They say that naturalists aren't born, well, sorry,

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they are born. Sorry, they say that naturalists are born, not made. And that was certainly

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the case with me. All my earliest memories from Kenya where I was born are all natural

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history related. And my first sort of encounters with natural history subjects, I don't remember

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because I was about one. So for instance, my mother tells a story of how she came out

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into the garden and found me touching this disc, this black disc, and I was saying, cookie

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cookie and I'd bitten into it and it was one of these giant millipedes, they coiled up

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and squirted all these horrible hydro phenols or whatever they are.

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Yes, they're very toxic.

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She said she couldn't get the smell off me for about two weeks. And another time in that

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same garden, I was almost killed by African giant bees. My grandmother was looking after

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me and she was in the house. And then she heard the sound of a swarm of African bees

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approaching. So she rushed out in the garden, grabbed me by my nappy and took me inside.

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And the bees got into the garden and adjacent garden and stung a puppy to death in the next

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garden. Wow. I was really lucky that she got me in time.

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And those African bees are the ancestors of the so-called killer bees, right?

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Yeah, the killer bees are hybrids. Yeah. But yeah, all my earliest memories, as I say,

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from Kenya are natural history related, like finding hedgehogs in the garden. And one of

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my earliest memories was driving around a large fish when I was aged two years old,

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which my father, I think, had caught. I really wanted it. So they gave it to me. And apparently,

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I spent all day dragging this fish around and then was very surprised when it became

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totally bloated and full of gas and smelled really terrible by the end of the day.

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In the hot African sun. I can't imagine that.

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Exactly. But yeah, I left Zimbabwe when I was about five. And then, sorry, I left Kenya

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when I was about five. And then I grew up in Zimbabwe and left there when I was about

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14. And when I was in Zimbabwe, I was also obviously very interested in natural history,

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mainly reptiles early on. And I read Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. So

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that really inspired me. Wonderful book. Yes.

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Excellent. And I got my mother's boyfriend to make me a collecting box like Gerald Durrell

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had and some things in which I used to carry around. And all the snakes I came across,

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if they looked harmless, I assumed that they were harmless and I would collect them. I

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had some sort of close calls. There was one nice snake sort of with lions that I found

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in the rockery in our garden. And I was, you know, I used to handle it and I kept it in

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a bucket of soil by my bed with a sheet of glass on it. And but very soon after I got

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it, it escaped into my bedroom and I never saw it again. And then when I went back to

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boarding school, I looked it up and it looked harmless, but it was actually called something

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like in Afrikaans, a scarpshtrekker. And it said that, you know, basically, it was

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probably poisonous and venomous. So that's close call number three with a venomous animal

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growing up in Africa. Yeah. Another occasion, I was walking under these eucalyptus trees

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and this long brown snake fell on the ground. So I happened to have my sort of forked snakes

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stick with me and I got it, put it in a cloth bag and then went to a friend's house and

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asked his mother to drive me to the local museum. Okay. Halfway there, I noticed the

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bag was empty. So I said, oh, my snake's escaped. And she almost crashed the car. She

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veered off the road, jumped out and I felt the saw coiled up under his seat.

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Oh, that's awesome. Yes. Parents of reptile enthusiasts are long suffering, I think.

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Mine were too. One other snake story was, well, it involved a really rare chameleon that I

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found, Rampolian marsh li, which is one of these dwarf chameleons, founded on in the

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Wumba mountains and the border of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Very hard to find, I imagine.

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They look just like a dead leaf. Yeah. Yeah. Really amazing. And I took it to the local

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museum in what's now Mutare and I used to take them all the snakes that I found and they

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used to sometimes exhibit them. But in this case, because it was so special, I was ushered

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down to see the reptile expert. So I went into his room and he was on the phone and

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talking away and I was just looking at the things on his desk and I saw a jar of liquid

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with this object and I thought, is that a snake or something or part of a snake? And

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he put down the phone and said, oh, you're looking at that as my finger. And it turns

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out that he had been out in the bush on a collecting expedition and something very

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venomous had bitten him like a slung or something. So he immediately got his bush knife and

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cut off his own finger and was so pleased that he preserved him formaldehyde or whatever

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as a death corn. That is a hardcore herpetologist right there. Yeah. Well, I've seen what happens

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with your, you know, you see sometimes photographs of what happens when you actually let the

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venom do its work. It seems better to chop it off sometimes. Yeah. Unless it was a dry

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bite, it dropped it off for nothing. Yeah. Could have been. But yeah, so Zimbabwe, I

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developed my interest in butterflies, aged about 10 because another friend of mine was

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interested in catching butterflies and that became my main kind of focus and I dreamt

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of actually doing it for a career, which of course, if I'd stayed in Africa, would have

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been impossible and it's virtually impossible anywhere actually in the world. There's not

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that. Anytime after the 19th century that came an extinct profession. Exactly. But so

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yeah, I'm just planning to tell you a few sort of funny stories of natural history stories

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that have happened, you know, to me during my life. So it's sort of a bit chronological

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because that seems more logical to do it that way. Definitely. So when I was 14, I left

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Zimbabwe and my parents came to England and applied for a work visa for the United States.

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I was sent to my aunt, Boulder, Colorado, and I spent a year and a half there. Oh, wow.

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And yeah, it was a bit of a shock to the system. I saw things like snow for the first time

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and modern things like computers and I remember my first encounter with a microwave. I'd never

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even heard of a microwave and I went to a friend of the family's house and they told

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me about this marvelous microwave and I was really interested in it. They left the house

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to go to the shops or something. So I experimented by putting their cactus into it and sort of

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blasting it for 10 seconds to see what happened. And it actually had no visible effect. I was

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a bit disappointed, but I thought I better not risk doing it anymore. No. So I took the

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cactus out and put it there and it looked fine. But then several days later, my aunt

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said to me, oh, you didn't microwave my friend's cactus, by the way. She said that it suddenly

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sort of went liquid. To this day, I don't know how they worked out that it was me who

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microwaved it. Yes. It's amazing when you said it. That was very clever. You must have

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expressed enough interest in the microwave to raise suspicions. And then after that,

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my parents didn't get their visas for the state, so I came over to England and that's

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where I've been ever since. And went to university here and then did a PhD at London's Natural

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History Museum. I joined PhD with Imperial College, University of London and Natural

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History Museum. And it was on the aspects of the evolution and ecology of a group of

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butterflies from South and Central America and the Caribbean called the Othomiani. And

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I was looking at mimicry, how sort of mimicry evolved in this group because they're famous

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for their mimicry. They are apposematically coloured, so brightly coloured or distinctively

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coloured so that predators can remember them. But mimicry theory, well, there's two sorts,

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six sorts of mimicry in butterflies. There's actually more, but the two common ones are

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Batesian mimicry where a tasty species has evolved to mimic toxic or unpalatable species

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and so is avoided by predators who think that that's toxic. That's what most people think

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of when they think about mimicry. Yeah. Yeah. The other sort of counterintuitive type of

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mimicry is called Mullerian after Fritz Muller, the famous German naturalist who lived in

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Brazil. And it's where toxic or unpalatable species have evolved to mimic each other.

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They converged on a common colour pattern because it reduces the number of different

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patterns that birds have to memorise to learn to avoid. And so it decreases the mortality

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of the group. So if there were ten species each with a different pattern and a naive

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bird that it just fledged, it would have to sample each one, remember ten patterns. But

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if they all showed one pattern, then there's a massive decrease in predation because only

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one from the group would have to be taken. And that's the case with the Thonians. They're

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protected by these toxic pyrolysidine alkaloids, which they mainly get as adults. And birds,

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if they taste them, release them. And the butterflies are very tough, very tough birds.

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So they often survive being caught. And did you study them yourself in the field?

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Yeah. So I was studying the pheromones of them in case, well, to find out whether the

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species could tell each other apart from the pheromone bouquets, which is what you'd expect

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because they all look the same. I also looked to see if they had hidden ultraviolet colour

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patterns that the butterflies could see, but other things couldn't see. But of course,

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birds can see UV light. So that wouldn't work. So they rely on complicated pheromone bouquets

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to distinguish, you know, members of their own species. But I was also looking at the

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question of why there are often many different colour patterns of the same group of butterflies

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in one habitat. Mimicry theory would say that they should all converge onto one best protected

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pattern. Yeah. And it was suspected that it might be because they occupied different strata

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in the forest, but it hadn't really been studied. So I studied that and found indeed that there

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were ones that colour patterns that flew near the ground, ones, you know, in the canopy

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and also in different micro habitats like secondary forest, primary forest, there were

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different dominant patterns. And I worked out that it was probably due to the weather

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host plants grew and also the heights of the host plants that were utilised. So species

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that flew high up tended to utilise shrubs or trees or epiphytes of the groups of plants

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that they fed on. So Solanaceae basically, potato family. Yes. And the one, the colour

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patterns that flew low down utilised herbaceous plants. And because there's sort of different

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guilds of birds in different micro habitats in strata, there's different predators and

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the butterflies at all had a similar flight height and micro habitat seem to have converged

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together. That's amazing. There hasn't been convergence in the between the strata, etc.

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It's hard to imagine that a rainforest is really built up of these layers that don't

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interact that much, apparently, at least for some organisms. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that

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was interesting. I did three field trips to Ecuador, studying these butterflies. And yeah,

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that was an enjoyable part of my life. Yeah. But actually, the first time I did an expedition

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to the tropics was when I was still an undergraduate in Imperial College. And I organised for a

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group of three of us to go to Papua New Guinea to do various studies. So one of mine was

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going to study the mushrooms used by local people. I was looking for a particular interesting

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cockroaches which is believed to suckle its young. And we were going to do a survey of

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the insects and other invertebrates eaten by local people. But anyway, so we got to

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New Guinea, went off into the highlands and started our projects. I mean, New Guinea is

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not beginners tropics. That's a pretty tough place. I would say. And you were there as

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young as well relatively young biologists. Yeah. Well, this was in 1990 when very, very

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few tourists were going to New Guinea at that time. I think actually very few go these days

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because it's so dangerous. But we didn't realise how dangerous it was. Although I remember

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when we got off the plane and got into Port Moresby, I saw all these red stains all over

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the place. I thought, God, this place really is dangerous. There's been multiple stabbings.

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But it was actually beetle nut juice that people spat onto the pavement. Right. But

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we were pretty naive at the time. And one stupe, well, it ended up not being stupid,

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but it could have been fatal. A thing that we did was all our clothing was army surplus

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clothing because we thought it was hard wearing and cheap and everything. But in most countries

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or many countries, you don't want to be wearing that sort of clothing because they think you're,

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you know, going on. But it turned out to be a positive advantage in New Guinea. And we

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didn't realise it for a long time. When we were walking around in the highlands, people

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were abnormally friendly and they'd come up and slap our backs and shake our hands and

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say thank you. And we thought, God, these people are really nice. And we only found

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out later towards the end of the trip, someone said, actually, you know why the people are

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so friendly. They think that you're Australian troops who got rid of all the Japanese troops

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in World War Two. Wow.

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Yeah, New Guinea was an eye opening experience. The survey of invertebrates eaten by local

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people failed because we found that they absolutely ate everything from web spiders to shield

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bugs to cockroaches, you know, just everything. So it was impossible to create a list.

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But shield bugs and cockroaches, they have these terrible glands and chemicals that they

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shouldn't be very palatable.

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No, all I can think of is the shield bugs might have tasted a bit like coriander because

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they smell a bit like coriander.

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That they do, yeah.

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The cockroaches are non-toxic ones. The ones that they told me, I was looking for these

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amphibious cockroaches, which live under stones by the sides of streams. And I couldn't find

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any. When I asked the local people, do you know these cockroaches? And they said, oh

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yes, go to that stream there and you'll find lots of them. And it turns out that they go

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there and collect them and steam them in bamboo tubes. It was my first introduction to this

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interesting group of cockroaches found all over the tropics, epilamprines. And they all

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seem to be amphibious, at least when they're nymphs, so subadults. But the curious thing

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is that these small streams that they live on the banks of just have no aquatic plants

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or anything. They're swift flowing. And the only thing that you could possibly eat in

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them is algae growing on the rocks. So I observed these cockroaches at night crawling on the

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rocks underwater. And I think that's what they must be doing, but it hasn't been proved

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yet.

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Wow. Still, after all these years.

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No.

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Yeah, that's a hard place to get to, I imagine.

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Well, I found these cockroaches all over the place in Africa, South East Asia. It's just

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very, very few people study cockroaches.

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Yeah, that's the thing. And are they able to breathe underwater because these are very

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shallow, fast flowing streams or because they have some sort of blastron or adaptation for

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breathing underwater?

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They have an adaptation. The rear spiracles are elongated into tubes so they can back

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up on a stone, put the spiracles like snorkels above the water surface, get oxygen and go

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down.

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So they protrude from the body. Wow. That's interesting.

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I've seen reports, a guy called Shelford, who was one of the greatest cockroach taxonomists,

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he said that in the middle of a big river in Borneo where he was based, he actually

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saw cockroaches swimming in the middle of the river and diving like diving beetles and

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coming to the surface. But he wasn't able to catch them. He didn't have a net at the

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time, but that's never been studied.

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So that's why.

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Wow. Yeah, there's a lot of cockroaches in the world. People only know the few species

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that live with people and are a nuisance, but there are just so many amazing, beautiful

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species of cockroaches that don't bother anybody.

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Absolutely. Yeah.

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So the other cockroaches I was interested in in New Guinea were these, a group in the

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genus Paris ferris, and one of the leading, or the leading cockroach expert of all time,

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Louis Roth, found that on dead specimens of the cockroaches, there was still white young

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clinging to the underside. And these nymphs are blind. They have curious, proboscis-like

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sucking mouthparts and huge pole villi on the tarsal pads.

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To hold on.

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Yeah.

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To hold on. So because they're blind and they're unpigmented and they seem to be unpigmented

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for at least two instars, it's very, very unlikely that they leave the mother. And the

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mother happens to have four holes on the ventral surface into which the mouthparts exactly

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fit.

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Wow.

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So it's thought that they probably suckle from the mother.

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And what would they suckle from those particular holes? Hemolymph or some gland?

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No one knows. It hasn't been proved yet. But it seems very likely that it must happen.

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Anyway, with great difficulty, I managed to find some living examples of these cockroaches.

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And they're very unusual that the females are wingless and heavily armored and they

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roll up into a tight ball when they're attacked by ants or whatever. And anyway, I found them

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in these vines by beating the vines and found quite a few of them. And during the two months,

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we were in New Guinea. So for about, I don't know, six weeks, I kept them alive and was

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hoping that they would give birth. None of them did. So I pickled them just before we

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left New Guinea. When I got back to England, I dissected, the first female I dissected

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had a well-developed young insider. So would have given birth any day.

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Oh no.

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Because this group of cockroaches actually gives birth to live young, the blabberids,

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they incubate the egg case internally and then young are produced live. But then years

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later in Thailand, I found actually a female which I shipped back to the UK and she gave

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birth. And I thought, great, I'm now going to resolve this great mystery of suckling

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cockroaches and examined her, the nymphs were all clinging to a ventral surface and put

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her in a clear glass tube, but I just couldn't see what their heads were doing. So some of

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them might have been suckling, but it was impossible to tell.

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Yes. Yeah.

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So these days, actually that genus is now kept commonly in captivity, but no one's been

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able to prove what they're doing. You can't observe the nymphs. I thought maybe of doing

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a micro CT scan, see where the proboscis of the nymphs were.

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That would work. Yes. Maybe flash freeze them and then scan them. Yeah. It's funny that

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species like that, even when in captivity, it still has some secrets that are not resolved.

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I mean, that's amazing. And how long it takes to figure out, you know, one super interesting

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biological fact like that is, I like that kind of story. And you seem to be very good

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at it also with figuring out that cockroaches actually evolved into termites or at least

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termites are social cockroaches.

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Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was my main cockroach claim to fame. It's been thought since the

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1930s that termites might be more closely related to cockroaches than people thought.

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There's certain morphological characteristics of the guts, et cetera. Yes. Almost identical.

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And the most primitive termite is master termites from Australia. And it actually produces an

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egg case. And cockroaches. Yes. Just like cockroaches. But they're so different in so

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many other ways in ecology, et cetera, that people have always regarded the cockroaches

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as a separate order of insects to the termites. But I initiated a study when I was working

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at the Natural History Museum where a friend of mine, Paul Eggleton, who is a termite expert,

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who had a student working on molecular stuff to do with termites. So I said, why don't

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we try and solve this problem once and for all? And they agreed. So I got basically samples,

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tissue samples of a wide cross section of all the families and sub families of cockroaches.

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So that's about 4,600 named species of cockroach. Probably about 20,000 in total. So a lot that

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haven't been named yet. And they got samples of all the termite groups. And then we did

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sort of molecular phylogeny and found that lo and behold, the termites came out from

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within the cockroach lineage. And that they were most closely related to a genus of cockroaches,

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true cockroaches called cryptostalsis, which is found in the Northern Hemisphere. And they're

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interesting because they live inside rotting logs and live in family groups.

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Ah. Yeah.

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Basically, they need to, the young need to live with the parents in order to get the

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symbionts needed to digest the wood. Because every time they molt and grow a bit bigger,

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the gut lining is shed, apparently the stomach lining, and all the symbionts go. So they

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need to be in the same galleries as the parents to get infected again and again with the symbionts

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to allow them to digest wood. And that's how termites are thought to have evolved.

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That I didn't know that super interesting. It's a good start for sociality and then new

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sociality after, yes.

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Yeah. Yeah. And so since our study, other people did similar studies to see whether

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we were right or wrong. And everyone's concluded we were right. So we were able to sync the

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entire order of isoptera, although some termite people still use it, which is completely wrong.

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You can't have one order isoptera nested within another order, which is Platoidea.

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So what is the new name inside the cockroaches? Does that clade have a name?

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Yeah, Termitoidea, an epi family. We had to erect an epi family in order to not disturb

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the classification, the higher classification of the termites and cockroaches.

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That's a good idea. Yes. Conservation of names.

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Yes. Just returning to cockroaches and to New Guinea. After New Guinea, I went to Australia

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and I went in search of the world's heaviest cockroach, the giant rhinoceros cockroach,

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which can weigh up to 40 grams, which is massive for an insect.

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And I'd heard, because I went to stay on the Atherton tablelands in Queensland with a family

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friend and then I got a coach to this totally remote town called Mount Garnet in the middle

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of nowhere because I had read an article that macroponasia was found there. And I think

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I thought at the time I would just saunter out of town and see the burrows and dig some

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up. But when I got there, I realized that it was like a needle in a haystack and I wasn't

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going to be able to find these things. And I happened to go into the one local shop in

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this sort of one horse town and there on the shelf behind the counter was a glass jar with

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formalin or something in it and one of these cockroaches preserved in it.

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Yes. I said, how comes you have that? And they said,

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well, haven't you heard of Bill Brotherton? He was the first person to study these cockroaches

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in the world and he's the local naturalist. And in fact, he had hoped to put the town

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on the map, Mount Garnet, the town by having silver plated souvenir teaspoons with one

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of these cockroaches on the handle. There's one. So look.

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Oh, beautiful. Very detailed even. Yeah. I think I was the only person ever to buy

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00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:07,960
one. Who wants a cockroach? This is what the cockroaches actually look like. So this is

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one I collected earlier. Oh, wow. That is huge. Yeah. It's gigantic.

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You can see it's a typical cockroach. It's got its head is below a shield called the

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pronotum. And I don't know if you can see the four legs there. Yes, like shovels. Yeah.

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This is a burrowing species. Yes. Well, as I mentioned earlier, but I didn't know how

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to find it. So I went to Bill Brotherton's house and he came out and he was a really

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charming old guy with a look like something out of a Disney movie with a long white beard

324
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and an old dog pickup truck and a little personal museum of pickled snakes and things in alcohol.

325
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And he said, Yeah, you know, I'll take you outside and show you. We'll go and collect

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some. So we went out with some spades to out of town into the sparse eucalyptus woodland.

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And basically it was the dry season. And he showed me how to find these little ridges

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of sand on the forest floor, which were the sealed up burrows of the cockroaches. They

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seal them up in the dry season. Of course, there would have been absolutely no way that

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I would have ever found them myself. Once you know what to look for, you can find the

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burrows and then dig down. And they live in this one meter long spiral burrow. Okay. Spiral

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just like scorpions do as well there. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Yeah.

333
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And usually just one adult female lives in a burrow together with her young. So they're

334
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also one of these advanced groups of cockroaches that incubates the eggs internally. The young

335
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live with the mother for about six months until they're half grown. And the mother goes

336
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to the surface at night and drags down dead eucalypt leaves and twigs and puts those into

337
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sort of chambers and lets the humidity in the solid sand soil that they're in kind of

338
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moisten them and maybe fungi start to attack them. And during heavy rains, sometimes all

339
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the cockroaches are flooded out of their burrows and they come to the surface and go on the

340
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roads and there's been records of motorists stopping and taking some of them and going

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to the local museum saying, I found this little tortoise. They obviously didn't notice that

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it had six legs. They're that big. Yeah. As you can see, they're very kind of shiny. They

343
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are. Yeah. Big brown dome carapace. You would think maybe, well, if you didn't know anything

344
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about biology, yeah, it's a tortoise. But anyway, yeah, I was able to find them and

345
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yeah, it was a really amazing experience, but really good luck that I happened to meet

346
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this guy and he was the first person ever to study their biology. Wow. Now they're

347
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quite widely kept in captivity, but they're very expensive, like 70 UK pounds one for

348
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a young. Well, if it takes that long for the young to grow up and it's a big species, so

349
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I can imagine. Yeah. It's one of the longest lived insects. They can live for seven years.

350
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Really? Yep. And so I guess, you know, you get value for money if you cost it per year.

351
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:05,920
Well, then that makes them cheaper than hamster. That's a... But it's interesting what you

352
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said about the rotting of the tritis that they do, because it sounds a little bit like

353
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what leaf cutter ants do, of course. Oh, yeah. But they actually chew up the leaves and cultivate

354
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a fungus in the leaves. But yeah, but it's sort of along the same lines. Interesting.

355
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:34,280
Yes. They're close relatives in their subfamily, live in rotting lobs. They're not related

356
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to the ones I just mentioned, the cryptocercis. They're a totally different group of cockroaches,

357
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but they've evolved to feed on wood as well. And they live in family groups in rotting

358
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logs all around, mainly Southeast Asia. Right. But then some in the, in arid Australia have

359
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then developed this lifestyle of making burrows and coming up to get the leaves and stuff.

360
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This is not nice, moist, rotting logs lying around. No. So they make do with what they

361
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have and they make their own rotting logs. Kind of. Yeah. Fascinating. I had never heard

362
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of that one. Never heard that one. One other cockroach story. I was lucky enough to see

363
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the, come across the biggest winged cockroach in the world. This is Megula blatter blabaroides.

364
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You can see from my finger that it is not from this perspective. They can have a wingspan

365
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up to 18 centimeters across. Wow. Beautiful. Four wings. Yeah. And anyway, I was in Ecuador

366
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doing my PhD field work. And I went to a reserve called Los Cedros up in the Andes. It was

367
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sort of mid-mountain cloud forest. And there was a very, very basic accommodation with

368
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an outside long drop toilet, as call them. So pit toilet. I was there one morning, I

369
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was sitting on the toilet and suddenly one of these cockroaches appeared on the wall

370
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beside me. So I thought bloody hell, you know, this is a chance of a lifetime. So I grabbed

371
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it in one hand and you know, they're totally harmless. Like, there's no cockroaches that

372
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can bite humans. There's one very aggressive cockroach that I found in Madagascar that

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can draw blood. It's got very long, needle sharp spines on the legs. And it's a very,

374
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very powerful cockroach. And if you try and hold it, it will just jab you with these spines.

375
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None of them can bite. Some of them can squirt nasty things, but this one doesn't. I don't

376
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know. I'm sure, but I'm sure a lot of people will flee if an 18 centimeter wingspan cockroaches

377
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come flying in. I mean, I was attracted. But anyway, I was sitting there with a cockroach

378
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in my hand and then another one appeared. So I had to grab that. And then I thought,

379
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I know, you know, what am I going to do now? Cause I haven't finished. So I think I managed

380
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to get them into one hand, one on top of the other, right? Do my business and then quickly

381
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:22,040
go inside and put them in bags or whatever. So the one you've just seen is one of the

382
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:27,440
two that I actually collected. Really? Okay. I never saw another one. And they, no one's

383
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:32,960
managed to keep the species in captivity. They, people desperately want to, but they

384
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just die. They might have a very specialized diet. Some, some cockroaches have very specialized

385
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foods. So this species might feed on only on fungi or something. Or something in that

386
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toilet. We don't know. It was attracted to something. I'm sure you were the only visitor

387
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:56,920
ever to be enthusiastic about those cockroaches there, George.

388
00:40:56,920 --> 00:41:02,880
Yeah. I didn't mention why I became interested in cockroaches. It was because as I said,

389
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I got really interested in butterflies in Zimbabwe. And Zimbabwe had about 600 species

390
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of butterfly. I then went to North America where there was only about 200 and that was

391
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a downer. And then I came to Britain that has just over 50 species and they, there's

392
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about 500 books being written on these 50 species over time. You could have a whole

393
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library of British butterfly books, just recycling the same information. So luckily I met a guy

394
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who was interested in tropical cockroaches and he got me interested and I started keeping

395
00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:42,040
things like giant hissing cockroaches from Madagascar.

396
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:46,240
Yes, I've had them too. Yes. Lovely. Yeah.

397
00:41:46,240 --> 00:41:49,760
The first one I got was from a pet shop and they were very rare in the country at the

398
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:56,360
time and it escaped and I didn't find it till a year or so later when we moved house and

399
00:41:56,360 --> 00:42:01,000
it was in my parents record collection and the records had fallen onto it and it was

400
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:14,200
like paper thin. I went on years later to do two long expeditions to Madagascar to study

401
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:19,640
and collect these cockroaches and I found quite a few new species, including the world's

402
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:24,440
most aggressive cockroach that I mentioned. Right. The one with the spines you just mentioned.

403
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:27,280
Yes. Which is a new genus. I haven't got around

404
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:35,560
to publishing it yet because well, that's a long story but basically when I was at the

405
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:44,560
Natural History Museum, I did my PhD there, then got postdoc working on insect plant relationships,

406
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:52,640
mainly butterfly relationships. Then my supervisor who was the butterfly expert retired and I

407
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:57,880
thought his job was going to be advertised because he was the one and only butterfly

408
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:04,000
researcher at the museum. But the museum never advertised the job. They decided they didn't

409
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:09,840
need a butterfly person even though being a butterfly researcher would attract much more

410
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:14,680
money and all the rest than probably working on any other group of insects.

411
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:18,520
Certainly the public likes them better than cockroaches. Yeah.

412
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:23,200
Exactly. It's the same thing the museum's done with birds. There's no professional ornithologist

413
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:31,160
on this stuff. It's just curators. Yeah. That's the tendency of museums now.

414
00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:38,760
So anyway, a job as curator of orthophtroid insects, so cockroaches, stick insects, grasshoppers,

415
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:44,120
crickets, earwigs, etc. came up. Because of my interest in cockroaches, I applied and

416
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:50,080
I'm the only person in the country, apart from my friend who now works at the Oxford

417
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:58,120
Museum. So I got the job and that's what I did for, I don't know how long it was, seven

418
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:11,040
or so years. It was during that time that I studied the term cockroach relationships

419
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:12,560
and stuff like that.

420
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:17,960
Right. I mean, I was so lucky when I met you in Sulawesi because I just come across this

421
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:24,120
tiny little animal that I photographed and you were able to tell me it was a dwarf mole

422
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:25,120
cricket.

423
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:29,640
Yes. I've never seen something like that before.

424
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:40,440
I remember you're incredibly good at taking amazing pictures with the Olympus TG5 camera.

425
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:45,600
I've tried taking macro photographs with it and just not being successful at all.

426
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:50,240
Well I now know what it is, George. Apparently they're not all the same because I bought

427
00:44:50,240 --> 00:44:55,680
another one and I cannot take as good pictures with that one as I can with the old one. So

428
00:44:55,680 --> 00:45:03,400
apparently they're just not all good. No, but can you, I mean, just the fact that you

429
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:09,360
run into the curator of orthopterans when you have a question like that in the field,

430
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:11,440
fantastic luck for me.

431
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:17,920
Yeah. So anyway, I ended up leaving the museum because I got interested in Alfred Russell

432
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:25,000
Wallace and the museum was very, very happy that I was working on Wallace because he's

433
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:33,120
obviously one of the top naturalists of all time. And I helped organize the worldwide

434
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:46,960
celebrations for the 100th anniversary of his death. He died in 1913, so this was 2023,

435
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:56,200
no 2013, sorry. And the museum did all kinds of things, an exhibition. I raised money for

436
00:45:56,200 --> 00:46:04,000
a life-size or larger than life-size bronze statue of Wallace, et cetera. And the museum

437
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:09,280
was very happy that I spent part of my time working on Wallace, especially when I then

438
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:17,400
decided to start the Wallace Correspondence Project because going back a step, due to

439
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:23,480
all my work on Wallace and commemorating him, I got to know the Wallace family. So his two

440
00:46:23,480 --> 00:46:30,200
grandsons were still alive. And I got to know one in particular, Dick Wallace. And he showed

441
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:37,840
me when I went to his house, part of Wallace's insect collection, plus a library of all of

442
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:43,520
the books Wallace had written and the editions and foreign language editions, all annotated

443
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:50,120
by Wallace. And then there were something like 6,000 other documents, including notebooks

444
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:55,840
and all kinds of things. So to cut a long story short, I arranged for the museum to

445
00:46:55,840 --> 00:47:00,960
buy the whole collection. And it came to the museum, was cataloged, and then it went into

446
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:05,600
the rare books room, which is very difficult to access. As a researcher, you can't just

447
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:09,640
go to the rare books room and go through the collection. You have to know what's in the

448
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:14,560
collection, then ask for one thing after the other. I want to see so-and-so letter, et

449
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:21,760
cetera. So I decided to set up a project to digitize the collection. And then I thought,

450
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:27,760
well, if I'm going to digitize 6,000 documents, I might as well try and digitize every letter

451
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:39,360
in all the archives in the world. So I managed to get a big grant from a foundation in America,

452
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:45,800
about half a million pounds, and employed an archivist and people. And I supervised

453
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:52,320
it for one day a week and designed the database system and everything. And we basically had

454
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:59,560
huge numbers of volunteers, as well as the archivist. And after all the letters were

455
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:04,760
scanned, basically transcribing all the letters. And they're now all available on a system

456
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:12,120
called Epsilon, which is online. Yes, I will put a link in the description of this video

457
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:19,840
and this podcast. I've accessed it. It's very interesting to see his own letters and

458
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:26,400
his own writing. Yeah. Absolutely. It's a treasure trove for people interested in the

459
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:33,360
history of science. And no one person has read more than about 10 or 20% of the letters

460
00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:45,680
so far. And I know that there's enough material for several PhDs in there, like a PhD on Wallace's

461
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:51,560
thoughts about Lamarckian evolution, for instance. Because I mean, most people don't realize

462
00:48:51,560 --> 00:49:00,880
these days that Darwin's theory of adaptive evolution was a combination of natural selection

463
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:08,040
and Lamarckism, which he called use and disuse inheritance. He wrote an entire chapter of

464
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:15,360
origin to use and disuse inheritance. Whereas Wallace, so Wallace and Darwin jointly published

465
00:49:15,360 --> 00:49:22,280
the theory of natural selection in 1858, 15 months before origin came out. And Wallace

466
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:28,600
in his essay, so I won't explain the whole story, but Wallace sent Darwin an essay about

467
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:35,680
natural selection, which was ready for publication. And he actually attacks Lamarck in the essay

468
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:44,640
and totally refutes Lamarckian selection. So Wallace was actually the first modern evolutionist,

469
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:51,080
the first neo-Darwinian, because he rejected Lamarckism in favor of pure natural selection,

470
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:59,680
because Darwin never rejected Lamarckian view. So there's lots of letters and things related

471
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:05,360
to this. And that could be, you know... Yeah, but digging that out of all those thousands

472
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:09,840
of letters, that would be a lot of work. But now that you've digitized it. It's easy to

473
00:50:09,840 --> 00:50:15,200
do now. You just look for keywords in the Epsilon system. Yeah. Anyway, where was I

474
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:22,960
going with this? Oh, yes. So I started this big project to do all the letters. And then

475
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:28,040
I got a new boss. So my former boss was happy for me to work a day or two a week on Wallace.

476
00:50:28,040 --> 00:50:35,040
But my new boss, she thought, well, he's supposed to be a curator of insects. So he has to spend

477
00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:43,400
all his time on that. And then we were running out of money for the first grant. And another

478
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:48,520
organization contacted me and said, how would you like to apply for more funding through

479
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:55,120
us? And it sounded like a dead certainty that if I applied, I would get money. So I knew

480
00:50:55,120 --> 00:51:00,440
that she wouldn't agree to it. So I went to the head of department and said to him, I

481
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:05,760
got this problem. I could get a huge amount of money to continue the project, but my boss

482
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:09,960
isn't going to like it. And he said, oh, yeah, go ahead, apply for the money and I'll sort

483
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:20,600
it all out. So I got the grant and then she got to hear of it and was furious. And unfortunately,

484
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:25,320
at the Natural History Museum in London, it's exceptionally bureaucratic. It's like Rome

485
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:33,720
became before the fall of the Roman Empire with, you know, tons and tons of layers of

486
00:51:33,720 --> 00:51:38,280
bureaucracy from one manager to the other. So within the entomology department, there

487
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:44,960
was my boss and her boss was the head of entomology collections. And she had a boss above her

488
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:49,880
that was the head of all the life science collections. And then there was the head of

489
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:58,600
department. So my boss influenced the boss above her to take sides and to stop me from

490
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:05,840
doing the work on Wallace and overrode the head of department. So I was told, sorry,

491
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:16,000
you have to give back, you know, half a million pounds and stop work. So I had no, I just,

492
00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:21,840
yeah, I decided to resign. I imagine. Yeah. And then the museum tried to grab the project

493
00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:28,760
by writing to the funders, the new funders saying, George has left the museum. We can

494
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:35,080
take on the grant. So they were going to get the libraries to manage the project. But the

495
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:41,640
funders actually told me that this had happened. So, and they were furious as well. The museum.

496
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:47,960
So anyway, to cut a long story short, I then had to find a place to an organization to

497
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:53,960
host the grant because it has to be managed through a charity. Right. Various organizations,

498
00:52:53,960 --> 00:53:00,280
no luck. But I happened to remember Randall Keynes, who's Charles Darwin's great, great,

499
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:07,800
great grandson was head of the Charles Darwin Trust. And I had met him years ago. I contacted

500
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:13,480
him. He was very enthusiastic. He said, yes, the Charles Darwin Trust will manage the money.

501
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:23,640
And so that's what happened. So I got an office. I hired two kind of full time staff and quite

502
00:53:23,640 --> 00:53:32,120
a few temporary staff. And we continued the project. And it's now in a pretty advanced

503
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:39,480
state. But then we ran out of money and I haven't managed to get a grant since then.

504
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:48,840
So I'm now funding the project partly by doing being the naturalist guide and speaker on

505
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:59,800
Wallace and natural history. So Bukit cruise ship in Indonesia. Yeah. So being run by a

506
00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:07,080
company called Sea Trek Sailing Adventures. Yes. It's a brilliant ship with only 22 cabins.

507
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:13,640
And there's as many staff as there are guests. And it's got sails that it can use at times.

508
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:18,600
And we go to really remote parts of Indonesia where literally no other Western tourists ever

509
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:23,000
go there because you can only get there by ship and they're all off the tourist routes.

510
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:29,480
Right. They're amazed to see us. And I remember just on the last trip, we stopped in a port on

511
00:54:30,200 --> 00:54:35,960
an island and all these little kids came over to have a real close look. They'd never seen

512
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:41,320
living white people before, even though they were six and seven years old. Wow. They were

513
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:48,520
really fascinated. That's really off the beaten track. Yeah. So that's really enjoyable. I do

514
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:57,400
four trips a year, spend two months of the year out in Indonesia. Lovely. Yeah. In search of

515
00:54:57,400 --> 00:55:04,600
Wallace and his living treasures trip, where we see birds of paradise displaying and golden

516
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:09,000
bird wing butterfly, one of the biggest butterflies in the world that Wallace discovered in the

517
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:15,720
Moluccas, the spice islands. Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, you really need a ship's naturalist

518
00:55:15,720 --> 00:55:19,880
on such a trip because you can go to the remotest place in the world, but you will not know what is

519
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:26,040
unique and what is special about these places unless somebody very knowledgeable can tell you

520
00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:33,000
about it. Right. And also, I mean, I've seen pictures of you sitting in the places where Wallace

521
00:55:33,720 --> 00:55:40,600
spent some time. It must be very special for you to visit the places where our hero essentially

522
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:47,160
spent a lot of time. Yeah. Well, on the next trip, I'm going out to Indonesia in September,

523
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:55,640
and on the 5th of October, I've arranged through Sea Trek to have a big black granite plaque made,

524
00:55:56,280 --> 00:56:02,840
commemorating Wallace's independent discovery of natural selection in the village of Dodinga

525
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:10,040
on the island of Halmahera. That's where he was when he had his malarial epiphany and discovered

526
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:16,680
natural selection after thinking about the mechanism for 10 years. And I was the only,

527
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:24,600
I heard of one other tourist, one other Westerner who went to that village before I did.

528
00:56:24,600 --> 00:56:30,280
Okay. The villagers didn't know about the history, and the rest of the world didn't because they

529
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:35,240
assumed that Wallace discovered the theory on Tanate Island, which is nearby, but that's where

530
00:56:35,240 --> 00:56:42,920
he actually posted his essay to Darwish from. But anyway, so we're having this, we're going to

531
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:51,240
unveil this plaque and Bill Wallace, Wallace's great-grandson from Canada is going to be on the

532
00:56:51,240 --> 00:56:58,040
trip and he's going to unveil it. And it will be a plaque commemorating Wallace's, you know,

533
00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:05,560
earth-shattering discovery while there. Yeah, it was. And it's amazing that in such a short time,

534
00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:10,680
well, not a short time, of course, he'd been thinking about it for many years, but in one

535
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:16,600
epiphany, he managed to write the whole thing down in one short essay, which took Darwin's whole book

536
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:23,880
pretty much. Yeah. Well, if you look at the original Darwin Wallace paper on natural selection of 1858,

537
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:30,760
I did so a few months ago. Because people always say Darwin and Wallace's theories were similar,

538
00:57:31,320 --> 00:57:38,600
but actually they're not, they're identical. If you look at the definition of natural selection

539
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:45,400
and all the steps that have to occur for the process to work, and then look at Darwin's writings

540
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:51,240
that were published alongside Wallace's, every single step of the process is mentioned by both

541
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:57,560
men. They came up with it independently. And some of the steps, you know, could easily have been

542
00:57:57,560 --> 00:58:04,360
missed out, but their theories of natural selection were absolutely identical. It's quite remarkable.

543
00:58:05,080 --> 00:58:09,880
But Wallace had been thinking about it for 10 years, whereas Darwin actually came up with it

544
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:17,880
pretty rapidly. He was actually a Christian and anti, well, certainly not an evolutionist when he

545
00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:24,520
was in the Galapagos. But shortly after getting back to England, he had begun to have doubts about

546
00:58:24,520 --> 00:58:29,800
the fixity of species. And within a fairly short space of time, he had discovered natural selection,

547
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:37,080
but it had taken Wallace 10 years of careful thought and lots of previous writings that were

548
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:42,760
getting closer and closer to the mechanism. And I think it's wonderful that you are doing all

549
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:49,640
these efforts to commemorate him and to remind the world that there was not one discoverer of

550
00:58:49,640 --> 00:58:55,800
the theory of evolution, but there are two. And one is really important and sometimes forgotten

551
00:58:55,800 --> 00:59:01,240
or overlooked. Yeah. Well, I think it's important even for, you know, to combat creationists,

552
00:59:01,240 --> 00:59:06,360
because they all say, oh, Darwin's theory, you know, that's wrong. But actually, two people came

553
00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:13,000
up with the same idea independently. So, you know, how comes, you know, it's much less, makes it much

554
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:19,080
less likely that the initial theory is going to be wrong if two people come up with it independently.

555
00:59:19,080 --> 00:59:23,880
Exactly. And thousands of people have confirmed it since.

556
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:30,680
Exactly. It's not an important. And great to hear that you're still doing the Seatrack

557
00:59:30,680 --> 00:59:39,080
tours there. I mean, it must be a wonderful trip to go with you. I mean, I really enjoyed my time

558
00:59:39,080 --> 00:59:44,440
with you when we were in Indonesia. You know so much about all the subjects. So that's definitely

559
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:50,120
a treat for anybody who goes on board. Well, that's very kind. Thank you. I know.

560
00:59:51,720 --> 00:59:59,080
Well, you must come on board sometimes. Yeah, if you have a sudden cash windfall, please come on board.

561
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:05,800
Unfortunately, their trips are a bit expensive. I would never be able to afford them.

562
01:00:05,800 --> 01:00:12,520
Yes, because so few people can come on the ship, of course. Yes. But it's, I'm sure that's definitely

563
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:17,560
a unique experience to go with you and see all these super rare places. And I'm sure you come

564
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:23,320
back with a lot more stories to tell us next time, George, I hope. Yeah, I didn't tell you all the

565
01:00:23,320 --> 01:00:29,720
stories that I had and I was going to, but I think we've basically run out of time. Well, then I'll

566
01:00:29,720 --> 01:00:36,600
have to ask you back sometime soon. Okay. I'd love to hear some more. If people want to know more

567
01:00:36,600 --> 01:00:45,800
about you or book a tour or anything, where should we go for any of your projects online?

568
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:52,040
Maybe. Yeah, online. The best place is the Wallace Memorial Fund. If you just type

569
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:58,840
Wallace Memorial Fund, you'll find my web page, which is not working very well at the moment,

570
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:05,240
for some reason. The server is on its malfunction, but it still works. And it's got details of my

571
01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:16,040
Sea Trek trips or alternatively just type in Sea Trek, one word, Bacolony or Wallace, and you'll

572
01:01:16,040 --> 01:01:22,520
find my trips. And then there's the Wallace Correspondence Project page, which is on the

573
01:01:22,520 --> 01:01:27,800
same server that's malfunctioning. So, but it is, hopefully that will be sorted out soon.

574
01:01:28,440 --> 01:01:35,640
And then I'm on LinkedIn and I bet my email is very easy to find because I'm, amazingly enough,

575
01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:41,160
I'm the only George Bacolony in the world. So if you type in George Bacolony email,

576
01:01:41,160 --> 01:01:45,640
you'll probably find it. All right. All right. I'll put all those links in with the description

577
01:01:45,640 --> 01:01:51,720
of this podcast. And with that, George, thank you very much for your fantastic stories. We learned

578
01:01:51,720 --> 01:01:56,520
a lot about cockroaches and Wallace and everything else. And I'm really looking forward to having you

579
01:01:56,520 --> 01:02:16,600
on again sometime soon. Thank you. Thank you, Ari. Thanks very much.