Bertie Beetle

The beetle frustration.

God gave a beetle.

Hey, who's the beetle?

This beetle, unlike this chip bag here, this beetle uses one material, chitin.

Cool pollen, though.

Call that beetle. Call anybody.

I'm allergic to pollen.

That's a geranium pollen.

A different pollen signature, if you like, or a different pollen fingerprint.

because I've turned into a beetle.

It actually is a Japanese beetle.

Watch how often the beetle dances.

Tom has a pollen allergy.

I am allergic to pollen.

Statistically, one of you is a beetle.

And look at what the beetle does.

I have an allergy to pollen.

This is our Khan Academy Spout beetle bot.

But pollen forensics can be very subtle.

Perhaps there's more pollen in the city.

They get paid by pollen and nectar, to move that male sperm, the pollen, from flower to flower.

Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.

This is a dung beetle. Watch what he's doing.

Why are you dawdling, like a beetle in the dunghill?

Pollen is produced by the anthers of flowers.

But anyway, take a look at its pollen.

Now, pollen from plants, which are wind dispersed

The fossilized pollen was not of savanna vegetation.

Turning rocks over revealed this crab spider grappling with a beetle.

This beetle can detect a forest fire at 80 kilometers away.

And of course, they're made to carry this pollen.

Pollen is a flower's way of making more flowers.

So, that's 20 micrometers across, that pollen grain there.

But not all pollen is quite so simple looking.

Like I said, pollen carries the male sex cells.

They build up a static electric charge and the pollen jumps on them and helps spread that pollen from bloom to bloom.

First of all, pollen is tiny. Yes we know that.

The pollen has little barbs on it, if we look.

That tells me that it's actually been fossilized, this pollen.

Just how well can masks block the, even smaller than pollen, yellow sand dust? I think it much more of a nuisance than pollen.

To hear that beetle talk... you'd think somethin' was gonna happen to us.

Here is a scanning electron micrograph of a grain of pollen.

Now the way that plants transmit that information is through pollen.

With the trains coming in to urban hubs, they can carry pollen with them, very light pollen, and it's just a big supermarket in the city.