Why the government drops flies on California
2023 ж. 17 Жел.
2 010 129 Рет қаралды
There's a good reason for it. ■ More about the program: www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/PDEP/pr...
Edited by Michelle Martin / mrsmmartin
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This week's pinned-comment plug is for my podcast! There are bizarre questions and wonderful answers for free every week at lateralcast.com
nice
Will lateral continue or will it take a break as well?
Bro commented from the past
@@amitakler4710 IKR HOW!!!!
@@yessureethe video was uploaded a while ago in private, now the video is just set to public
I’ll miss you Tom 🫡
Didn't expect to see you here
How does schlatt have 5 likes lmao
All of us will
So will I.
I still can't believe that he passed away
I work for a company that makes the X-ray machines that sterilize them. They also do this with mosquitos and a load of other invasive species. So far it has really worked well.
Can you do it for Midges in Scotland?
How do they check that they are sterilized? It's just described that they check them when they arrive in the video, but they don't say how.
@@ano_nymUv-florescent markers put into the genes that sterilize them, so you can check if the gene has taken hold by seeing if they glow under UV.
@@ano_nym small scale lab tests, check if eggs hatch. if they don't, scale up. batch sampling.
Not sure. The machines can adjust power and time of exposure to get the results they want. They can also use the machines to kill all DNA so that nothing survives. They use that for disposal after testing so that nothing is contaminated. The bug growing and distributing is a whole different industry, we just sell machines to them. They also use our machines to sterilize blood that is donated and medical weed. X-rays are far safer for those things than nuclear radiation. @@ano_nym
"There are too many flies, we need a solution" "Have you considered more flies?" "That's just crazy enough to work"
Radiation flies that’s even better
This works. The flies don't live long, so releasing all those sterile flies screws things up for the flies.
More flies is less flies
I actually found a bunch of these guys one day at my university. I was working in a biochemistry lab which studies fruit flies at the time. We called some invasive species / wildlife hotline to report it and they seemed concerned. Later, we got an email that informed us about the sterile fly release program and thanking us for our vigilance.
Thats awesome
Watching people and machines handle live insects as if they were rice or jelly beans is... both surreal and oddly satisfying.
Same
My mind wanders to the thought of an alien invasion where we are the insects💀
@@assarlannerborn9342 Man made horrors (for the insects) beyond (the insect's) comprehension.
Yum, jellybeans.
They look so tasty though
This is a good chunk of science, using refrigeration to immobilize mass amounts of flies to make them easier to deal with. Using radiation to sterilize them, and then evolutionary biology models show why this works. Just brilliant.
And don't forget the airplanes!
They also do this in Singapore (i think it's Singapore) with mosquitos. It's dramatically slowed the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses.
It's a shame so many people don't appreciate or even trust science given how much it has benefited our comfortable lives.
@@Panzermeister36 The problem is the ways in which those in power can abuse the science :)
@@Vilakazi There's no such thing as the bible. Please read The Theogony.
When I was in high school one of those planes flew over... and suddenly the entire school was full of flies for ~30 minutes or so until they fully dispersed. Cool to know this project is/was effective and still going.
This is why it's so important to not be reactionary each time there is a seemingly ridiculous line item in a government's budget. Sure, waste and abuse exists and should be dealt with, but programs like this, though they may sound silly, are so unbelievably important!
I'd be happy if they could reduce spending, keep a budget and perhaps, if it's not too much to ask, have the Pentagon find the trillion they lost.
@@holymoly271easy. Nobody can run for office again if they leave with an unbalanced budget
Imagine falling asleep in a box, just to wake up free-falling while covered in bodypaint after being thrown out of a plane.
Well, they do have wings.
@@littlebitofhope1489they don't have parachutes though
dream, pure dream. sterilized humanity
@@griznatlethis is undeniable
@@nooooheyyy wtf?
Woah! Me and my Dad had a hard time finding firewood because the farms that usually sell it were shut down to avoid breeding these flies! Incredible to see you cover this, Tom, it hits close to home for me! Literally!
there was a crazy infestation this year. We had sooo many fruit flies all the way up in norcal it was annoying as hell
problem reaction solution@@kittiekillah
I remember hearing about firewood not being able to travel, and I had no clue it was becuase of this
@@Erteywie It is for beetles in my neck of the woods. (Ontario Canada) The provincial parks rake in the cash forcing people to buy their crappy local (usually wet) firewood for camping.
There's actually several different harmful/invasive species behind the "don't move firewood" rules - Emerald Ash Borer, Dutch Elm Disease, Chestnut Blight, Sudden Oak Death, Spotted Lanternfly, and many more! There are places where all the trees of a susceptible species have been killed by one invasive pest/disease.
I grew up in California and those insect detection traps were constantly in the background of my childhood. I made a game of it, like looking for easter eggs, because they could be anywhere, even on private property. (Obviously I wouldn't mess with them) Now we get to see what those traps are used for.
I hope these nerds don't get any ideas and turn this technology on the human population
@@galvanizedgnome Somehow social media (eg youtube) is trapping human minds the same way...
This is why governments matter. Lowkey, unsung, behind -the-scenes, preventative work that enables society to function and that market forces alone would not likely fulfill.
But this is an economic decision for fruit production which market forces would and could easily fill with a little cooperation.
@@newsgetsold Except the market forces in America disincentivize cooperation. Businesses have more incentive to let the flies kill their competitors while protecting themselves. If the markets were the solution to our problems, they would already be solved. The market forces create problems and other social structures have to step in to address them.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 And yet most farmers and primary producers from or join a type of conglomerate or entity to sell their produce on the wholesale markets and represent their interests.
Any of your arguments doesn't deny the fact that Government do a lot of background/behind the scene work.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 It would likely be illegal for private companies to deploy a solution like this. I'm sure the Big Ag industry prefers it this way though, where the tax payers foot the bill for these programs that protect the agricultural interests of California politicians and their donors.
As a pilot watching this I went down the biggest rabbit hole attempting to figure out whether or not that was a Queen air or a King air. It's a Model 65-A90-1. Which is essentially a King air with a queen air cabin. I have no idea why anyone would want such powerful engines on an unpressurized airframe that can't go higher than 12,500. I guess if the purpose is to stay at 2000 feet to drop flies then I guess its perfect for the job.
I was curious about that as well but without the aircraft registration it's going to be tricky to see if that plane is original or just picked up on the second hand market and was good enough.
Cheaper maintenance and certification procedures with an unpressurized cabin?
From my understanding, all their (Dynamic) King Air A90's are mostly US Army VIetnam War vintage and were configured with large cargo doors. The are the contractors flying this program, but they also lease out the same planes when not on this contract to fly other things like aerial survey missions, which I have gone up in one of their 90's. They have a good number of them. You can see some on Google Earth at their home base in Bridgewater, VA
@@cheekychappy1234 I believe there are two. N65V and N65U, which both appear to be identical.
probably best to have an overpowered engine for the job than the bare minimum and risk some sort of failure, because these planes are probably reused year after year. I would think.
I’m going to miss this Tom
He'll come back.. i hope.
I'm behind on the news, is he no longer making videos soon?
@@X150the’s finished with 10 years of regular weekly uploads will upload sporadically in the future
@thehoneyseals tbh he had some guest uploaders before so it's not really fair to say he had 10 years of consecutive uploads by himself. So maybe closer to like 506 weeks that Tom did, not 521
@@thehoneyseals as of this video?
My dyslexia, combined with my tiredness, had me going into this wondering why they drop a bunch of files.
I work in biosecurity in Australia and Medfly are one of the pests we're constantly watching out for. This is such a great idea for control once something gets established and I hope it continues to work.
so this is different to the fruitflies we have in Australia? Is that why we don't use a program like this to wipe out our fruitflies, instead of just limiting what can be carried across state borders?
@@mehere8038 We don't have Med-Fly in eastern Australia, so the limits on state borders are designed to keep it out, whereas a program like this could be more effective in eradicating or controlling a population that's already established. This would take a lot more resources and money than prevention though, so that's why we have the border checks and surveillance programs.
This man has the most damn consistent upload schedule in the entirety of youtube, like seriously, a video every single monday for nearly 10 whole years is amazing! edit: tf is happening in the replies
it honestly became a part of my Monday routine
Part of why he's going to retire doing that in a few weeks. Cause if anyone deserves to rest on his laurels and relax, it's him.
And it will stop soon, this is so sad
*Pewdiepie enters the chat*
Millions to be made, I'd do it as well, but I don't have the talent and willpower.
They're literally dropping like flies
The dude explaining it all is exactly how I expected someone dropping millions of flies from an airplane to look like.
I remember as a little boy on a road trip with my pa going thru a checkpoint in the middle of the desert. I asked pops why they asked us if we had any fruit, don’t remember what he said but that must have been twenty years ago. We’ve been fighting that fly for a long time.
I vaguely remember something similar around 15 years ago.
Those checkpoints are still in operation!
lmao they give them a vasectomy and give them some cologne, and then say "go get em tiger" 😂
Gives a whole new definition to fly tipping
Haha
There are two unforeseen consequences of irradiating fruit flies. One is that you end up with a teenager bitten by a radioactive fly, and he becomes a superhero. The other is a giant mutant fruit fly that wreaks havoc upon California.
You know most of your food is irradiated to kill bacteria...
These two consequences cancel each other out though since flyman will valiantly fall while taking down the giant fly removing both of them from the ecosystem and providing footage for dozens of high school film projects in the process.
It's Cali, no one would notice
Jeff Goldblum is that you
Those are consequences of radioactive fruit flies. But irradiating them doesn't make them radioactive.
It is videos like this I wish more people would see. People just have no clue about all of the behind-the-scenes activities that our federal and local governments have to do for the welfare of our citizens. Everyone always complains about how their taxes are used, because they have no idea about all of the things like this.
Well now "dropping like flies" has an entirely new meaning
It seems a lot more violent now.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 why? now they're living.
Im going to miss you Tom. You really are top of your game, but im really glad youre going to take some time for yourself now. I want to wish you all the best from the bottom of my heart, and sincerely thank you for all you have sacrificed over the years to provide us with top tier entertainment. HIP! HIP!....
HOORAY!
Hooray!
Hop?
Horraayyy!!
why, where is he going?
I'm sad knowing your videos will become less frequent soon, but extremely happy you will be spending more time for yourself! I greatly appreciate you, and I'm sure everyone else appreciates how much time, effort, and money you've spent through the years educating us with curiosity and excitement for the weirdest of topics. Thank you for everything, you've brought a whole new perspective to dozens of different jobs and industries that's ended up with many of us pursuing a career in those topics! You're amazing Tom! :D
Is it possible the person piloting that plane holds the record for the number of passengers on board?
If you count bacteria as passengers every pilot had billions of passengers.
@@k1ry4n not sure why, but I draw the line at the Animalia kingdom
This is similar to the joint U.S.-Panama programme that drop flies in Panama against the Screwworm. Not an easy task but one that requires constant effort to make it work.
Thanks for the read. Found out they cut off the program at Panama (15 million usd per year) because south American countries hate each other and don't want to pay for a certain percentage of the bill to eradicate screworms. They can't agree on how tk calculate which countries pool what amount for the sterile screworms. They should just do it based on the percentage of livestock a country holds compared to south American total livestock.
There are many places trying stuff similar to this but for mosquitos that can spread human diseases, as well. IIRC, they use other techniques to make them sterile (if I remember correctly, using some enzyme knockout mosquitos and providing the jutrient they should be able to synthesise while in the breeding lab)
I think Florida tried this
In Brazil we do this towards the Aedis Ægipt.
IIRC Singapore has a program that involves releasing mosquitos that have a disease that they'll then spread to the wild mosquitos.
Some of the misquitos are genetically engineered sterile with a genetic marker to also identify them. Yay science
@@C0lon0 Dang, I'm just 2h late in pointing this out.
This video was so fulfilling for me! Thank you so much! These planes fly over my house daily and I always appreciate them. I emailed the company once to ask all of the questions I had about the process and they obliged some small snippits (thank you!) . But this video fully answered all of the blanks in my head!
As a kid in Silicon Valley, California, I remember helicopters spraying suburban areas with Malathion to prevent Mediterranean Fruit Flies from spreading in California in the 1980’s, but this was around ‘79 or ‘80, not 1986. It was controversial at the time, with people complaining about the health effects of the government spraying pesticides over populated areas and people complaining about the droplets staining the paint on their cars. I certainly remember seeing the little spots on cars.
Government is always up to no good. DDT was a great idea until they realized it was a giant mistake
Hi Tom. You are one of the best educators on this platform. We're not ready for you to step away from KZhead 😢
He will literally just take a well earned vacation. He will come back very soon.
The selfishness of some people. Let the man go live his life. He gave you a heads up and if you're not observant enough to realize that these have all already been filmed well in advance and released on a schedule, then you're not very smart. Just look at the weather in the videos.
@@mattmarzula people can miss tom without demanding him to slave away
let him go, he will be back.
It shouldn't matter if you're not ready. It's his choice, not yours.
Considering how low the release density is, it's incredible that this works the way it does...
The males and females have to have some way of finding each other. For some insects, that's pheromones, for some, they meet on a food source (food for them or their larvae), and some make noise to attract mates. Some larger insects than fruit flies find each other visually.
Nichijou profile picture
It works better in species where one male mates with many females. I guess these particular flies are one of those species.
I was scrolling through trying to quickly find a video less than 10 minutes to watch while I was in the bathroom at a party. When I saw a Tom Scott video that fit the criteria, I can’t express my satisfaction.
I think they're dropping them right over my house. It was ridiculous this year.
Handling millions of frozen irradiated flies, giving them aphrodisiacs ... This is the weirdest job
Was thinking about this for the whole video... there really are people for all kinds of jobs.
Science is so silly. -a scientist
It's all about the narrative... you could just say they are scientists fighting to protect our food resources, so that kids can eat healthy organic products.
Growing up in LA in the 80s, there would be regular overflights of helicopters spraying malathion (sp?) at night to kill fruit flies. In addition to being toxic, it would ruin the paint on cars. I don't even want to imagine what playing in grass covered with the stuff did to me. Fly on, sterile flies. I'm rooting for you.
At some point they used to spray DDT... but I guess nobody old enough to remember survived this one. Yesterday's solutions are today's problems! The advantage with the flies is that their life expectancy is only a few days/weeks.
Hey Tom. Saw you at Six flags. Hope you had a great time, we did. Thanks for the videos.
Wow. When I’ve flown into LAX I’ve heard these planes on the ATC frequency - callsign “Medfly” and always wondered what they were… Thanks Tom!
Absolutely insane combination of maths, tech, science, and nature. Quite possibly one of the most ingenious solutions I've learned about.
Hey, kid. (this has been used for decades with a variety of species)
Anyone else read 'flies' as 'files' and were wondering why they would airdrop paper files in California?
I thought it said flyers (as in leaflets) similar to how the Israelis dropped flyers telling civilians to flee Gaza city as it was about to get bombed to hell. I thought oh sh*t what's kicking off now?
They have!❤🎉
Guilty... I was very confused 😅
Oh, on Apple devices, people do this all the time... 🙃
Yep!
I read this as "files" instead of "flies", imagine dumping a lot of paper
thanks for sharing behind of it!
I am going to miss this series, thank you for all the amazing things you have taught us Tom, looking forward to your next chapter!
I remember as a kid living in lakewood California in the late 80s having Hueys flying over at night spraying malathion and having local PD helicopters trying to stop them. Surprising they didn't hit each other. All in a effort for pest control.
Same here. You had to cover your cars because the malathion would hurt the paint. It was interesting to watch them fly in formation coming and going across an invisible matrix to complete their flight plan.
Yea remember that??? I lived in Glendora during that time.
Thats wild, i had similar incident in suburbs of NY for mosquitos. I remember running inside when i saw the truck coming, i dont remember if they used planes but possibly. Back in the 90s or late 80s iirc
We didn't have police helicopter interceptors in my neighborhood but I do remember the warnings of overflights and the damage to cars, the latter of which was fodder for late-night talk show hosts.
In the late 90s i lived in a suburb of houston/tx and there were trucks spraying insecticides in the streets every night.
Watching the pupa and flies being treated as rice grains is hilarious, i'm impressed how they don't get seemingly harmed.
I giggled and cackled for like half the video. This is amazing, and the description is also extremely funny.
Humanity is just wicked man.. Our inventions will never cease to amaze me.
In the west side of Argentina we have the same problem and we also drop sterilized Mediterranean fruit flies, but we go about it in a simpler way. We package the eggs into a paper bags and drop them from planes. Those bags are marked and people know that, if one lands on their property, they have to open the bag and place somewhere high and shady, like the canopy of a tree. The flies then hatch and spread themselves :)
Wouldn't work in the US. Too many crazy people and/or people who want to make things difficult for no reason. They would go out of their way to destroy any bags they came across.
As someone who lives in the LA metro area I really wish I hadn't watched this while eating
1 / 1/ 24. His video telling us he’s moving on. We’re going to miss this man
We definitely will.
The amount of science and work in this video is incredible!
Now this is a Tom Scott video. A large scale fasinating subject that I didn't know was happening.
I live in the LA area and teach aviation to new pilots. I see those planes all the time zig-zagging throughout the area. Some of the flies end up on the window. I will be able to identify where it came from. It’s awesome to see the behind-the-scenes of what they do.
Fantastic video as always Tom, well done!
Thank you to everyone involved. This is an amazing program.
Seems very well researched and many MANY angles of safety are being taken. Good to see lessons from past mistakes are being fixed today. I really appreciate they are not importing a new insect to combat an invasive one.
I misread "flies" as "files" and was very curious to see why some pre-fax document delivery service was still in use.
Oh my god now I know why we have these crazy waves of medflies!
Don't try this with Turkeys. (I heard a news broadcast about this on a Cincinnati radio station)
Tom.. back in the 70's there was a huge outbreak. As a kid I remember the helicopters flying over in groups of 3 spraying poison. You would hear them coming and dart inside. The next day you would have to wash your vehicle because it has an orange coating on it. Interesting how now we can drop the flies themselves. Thanks for the story.
This was incredibly fascinating! I definitely remember having Medfly infestations in the 80’s (we had fruit trees.) I wondered what happened to them! This is such a great program!
Hey Tom Scott! It was really nice meeting you in the line for revolution at magic mountain!
this is the perfect kind of thing for a government to do. incidentally, also the perfect kind of thing for a Tom Scott video
What a fascinating process 👏👏👏
Excellently done, Tom!
Amazing work as always. Thank you Tom Scott!!
Had one of those government insect traps hanging outside our apartment building for months last year and always wondered what it was for.
I must remember to share this the next time someone tells me about ''chemtrails'.
130 lbs of flies.... Imagine stepping that.
Fond memories of my encounters with the Californian fruit police at the Oregon border.
its amazing how we're able to do all this
I've heard of programs like this, but _seeing_ it like this is really shocking
Seeing all the flies together really gave me the heebie-jeebies
Is this what they call a "fly over"?
"What's your job title?" "Lord of the Flies"
one of the most... viscerally uncomfortable and fascinating videos i've ever watched. this is a great reminder that no matter how "gross" a safety measure may sound, it's important and does a lot of work! a lot of people can be turned off by ideas for change that sound or look uncomfortable, even though they can do a lot of good.
Can you expand on the "viscerally uncomfortable" - if you don't mind? Maybe you love insects, or just the exact opposite?
that’s why there’s so many annoying fruit flies in my home. 😵💫
I had no idea fruit flies had such a negative impact on agriculture! 😯
the farmers are just idiots though, they could just grow vegetables when there's too many fruit flies.
If you watched the news back in the 1980s, the medfly issue was huge and made national news. It's awesome to see the long them management of the issue!
Fruit flies impact agriculture the way plagues impacted medieval cities: "in the wild" their populations would be scattered and isolated and controlled by natural threats (insectivores/etc), but large-scale monocrops just so happen to provide an ideal scenario for them to reproduce _without_ their natural controls.
This makes a lot of sense, thank you for the info!@@Stratelier
Australia has draconian fruit-fly control laws, both the national and state borders, for a good reason. And they work and no-one complains about them.
A topic I never really cared about nor wanted to hear about, yet you captured my attention with another very well done video. Your topics are always so unique but also so interesting. Thank you for what you do!
As someone who lives in the middle of an orange grove and owns a large quantity of orange trees, we are very thankful for the folks responsible for dropping those sterile fruitfly. Oranges going to waste are a heartbreaking thing to see.
In Texas back in the 70’s we had an epidemic of screw worm flies. There was a program such as this one that dropped adult sterile male screw worm flies. Eventually the screw worm flies were eradicated.
Great video Tom. Going to miss your weekly educational videos.
I lived in San Gabriel from 88 to 91 when the Malathion spraying started trying to combat the Medfly. It started out with two Huey's & quickly became 10 plus 2 cop choppers flying wingman. You had to take your pets inside & cover your cars. I lived at the bottom of San Gabriel Ave which was their turn around spot, it sounded like I was back in Nam, the whole house would shake when they did their formation 180. The crazy thing is that I live in the Idaho Rockies now & see Medfly's here in the summer.
uh oh
bloody legend
Wow, this is fascinating! I didn't know anyone did this!
Time's fun when you're having flies. - Kermit the Frog Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana - Groucho Marx
Good fly jokes
Something similar is done in South Africa, not sure to what degree, where sterile male anopheles mosquitos are released in malaria hot spots. Fascinating to see this being done overseas as well.
And this is why taxes are important. The likelihood that private organizations would have stepped up to do this is extremely low
Wow, this is awesome! Bizarre sounding at the outset but makes total sense as it's explained further.
I love how the factory visually functions like a chocolaterie
Short refrigeration is a very good technique to immobilize insects for macro photography. You can manipulate them into all sorts of poses when they are completely docile at low temperature. Plus if the temperature is low enough and there is environmental moisture you get dew drops on them for sparkling effects. Then after the photoshoot the stars can be released without harm.
Doctors do it too. But there's more to the story.
That's how??? 😂i always wondered how they did it, found bunch of flies mating pictures macro photography in Facebook
Humanity & science is awesome. Thanks for sharing!
"Chill coma" - something me and med fruit flies have in common.
Always good to see your videos
I'd heard about this years ago. It's interesting that it's still going on.
A new meaning to the term "dropping like flies".
Thank you.