The World of Karl Pilkington

Ricky: Not really. Do you mean evolution?

Karl: Yes, on that David Attenborough programme he’s always showing, yeah, little insects and what they have got to do. And there was one about a wasp, right, that had to fly about, right, for ages, looking out for a certain type of spider, right.

Ricky: Which it lays its eggs in, correct.

Karl: It whizzes down, it lands on its back, so it’s got to get that right. I don’t think the spider’s up for anything, the spider isn’t even aware of this. It’s not going, ‘I’ve got to look out for a wasp’, even though all this has got to be perfect timing. So this wasp dived down right, sat on the back of this spider, it injects it or something, with a maggot or something, right – and then that maggot lives off the spider for a bit. The spider knows it’s got a maggot in it.

Ricky: No it doesn’t.

Karl: It does.

Ricky: No it doesn’t.

Karl: And it’s making a web for it. It goes, ‘I’ve got something to look after here now. I’ve got responsibilities.’ It makes a web, right. It sort of reverses into it and puts the maggot on the web. The maggot sort of clings on to the web, maggot eats the spider – and then it moves on. Now if I came up with that idea you’d say, ‘That’s never gonna happen.’

Ricky: Wake up! It’s not the fact that you came up with the idea for an old lady dying at seventy-eight with a baby growing in her – even though it’s nonsense, it’s no idea – it’s how could it be enforced. Even if scientists thought that was the best idea in the world how would they make it happen? Who’s gonna go, ‘That’s a good idea, we’ve never thought of that, get in Elsie. Elsie, we wanna try something …’

Karl: Who told the wasp to look out for that spider? To go on its back?

Ricky: What do you mean ‘Who told the wasp?’ – It’s evolution, it’s natural selection …

Karl: Yeah but say, like, we have a kid at the moment. You don’t just jump on the back of a woman and go ‘There you go love’ and then a baby pops out.