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Speaker 1: Since Americans encountered the beautiful Western prong horn, We've struggled

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Speaker 1: to understand an animal that looked like a gazelle but

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Speaker 1: couldn't jump, could outrun all its predators by twenty miles

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Speaker 1: per hour, yet like bison, was on the cliff of

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Speaker 1: extinction by nineteen hundred. I'm Dan Flores and this is

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Speaker 1: the American West, brought to you by velvet Buck. Still

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Speaker 1: in barrel. Velvet Buck arrives this summer, just in time

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Speaker 1: for the season that calls us home. A portion of

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Speaker 1: every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers to protect public lands,

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Speaker 1: waters and wildlife, enjoy responsibly survivors from a lost world.

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Speaker 1: From the accounts of all the Indians I have seen,

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Speaker 1: it is probable there may be a species of antelope

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Speaker 1: near the headwaters of Red River. Those words were written

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Speaker 1: by a young Virginia named Peter Custis, who from Louisiana

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Speaker 1: was taking a wistful look up the Red River of

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Speaker 1: the South in the year eighteen oh six. I'll have

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Speaker 1: much more to say in the next episode about Custis

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Speaker 1: and why he was on the edge of the West

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Speaker 1: that early in the nineteenth century. But the Louisiana purchase

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Speaker 1: had just doubled the size of the United States, and

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Speaker 1: Custus's wonderment about a likely African type antelope roaming the

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Speaker 1: horizontal Yellow Prairies was just the kind of story literary

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Speaker 1: Americans were hearing from their native Spanish and French predecessors

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Speaker 1: in the West. And while accounts of unicorns, giant horned serpents,

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Speaker 1: and mountains made of pure salt in the West were

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Speaker 1: like the early stories of mermaids in New England waters,

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Speaker 1: the antelopes that Custus heard about were very real. I've

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Speaker 1: long been drawn to pronghorns, the more accurate name for

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Speaker 1: America's gorgeous striped western antelopes, at least since driving a

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Speaker 1: dusty two track along the Powder River of Wyoming many

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Speaker 1: years ago and watching a young buck pronghorn running at

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Speaker 1: fifty miles an hour clocked by the speedometer alongside me.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly crossing the road in front of my bronco at speed.

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Speaker 1: He turned straight towards a barbed wire fence, but rather

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Speaker 1: than jumping over it, more quickly than I could register

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Speaker 1: the move, he turned his body sideways and darted between

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Speaker 1: the strands. The impact of thwanging explosion of white hairs

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Speaker 1: drifting in the wind as he trotted off, daydreaming of, well,

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Speaker 1: what do prong horns daydream about? As my panic for

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Speaker 1: him subsided, I decided I ought to try to find

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Speaker 1: out when Americans finally made it to the Great Plains

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We call these

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Speaker 1: fabled animals antelopes for good reason, since in size, form,

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Speaker 1: and speed they resemble no other creatures quite so much

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Speaker 1: as the antelopes and gazelles of Africa. But prong horns

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Speaker 1: are not true antelopes. The antelope capri day antelope goats

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Speaker 1: emerged as a distinctly American family of animals roughly twenty

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Speaker 1: five million years ago, but paleontologists still don't agree on

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Speaker 1: their earlier provenance. They may be anciently related to the Servidae,

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Speaker 1: the deer family, but there are some modern biologists who

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Speaker 1: think pronghorns closest living relatives are in the family Giraffiday,

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Speaker 1: the giraffes whose legs resemble pronghorn legs. Whatever their origins

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Speaker 1: in ancient America, modern pronghorns are actually.

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Speaker 2: Just like us.

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Speaker 1: There are species that today represents the sole remaining survivor

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Speaker 1: of a large family of animals and thus a rarity

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Speaker 1: in nature. Fossil records in North America show that the

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Speaker 1: antelope Caapridae actually consisted of two major, big subfamilies. The

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Speaker 1: earlier of these subfamilies included several species of graceful, dainty

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Speaker 1: ungulates possessed of permanent, multi branched, antler like horns. This

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Speaker 1: group of creatures was extinct by the end of the

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Speaker 1: Miocene around five point three million years ago, but they

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Speaker 1: gave rise the other subfamily, which soon replaced them on

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Speaker 1: the grasslands that were then starting to emerge in Western America.

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Speaker 1: This subfamily of larger antelope goats were high speed runners,

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Speaker 1: but with quite different horns made around a deciduous sheath,

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Speaker 1: with some versions sporting four horns and others as many

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Speaker 1: as six. There was even a dwarfed four horned version

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Speaker 1: not much larger than a jack rabbit, so this quite

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Speaker 1: real version of a jackalope still spreaded across the Great

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Speaker 1: Plains as late as ten thousand years ago. Occasionally, four

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Speaker 1: horned fawns are still born to pronghorns as one genetic

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Speaker 1: reminder among a great number. As we're about to see

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Speaker 1: of the pronghorn's deep and varied past Antelo capra Americana.

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Speaker 1: Our present day pronghorn from this evolutionary family, dating back

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Speaker 1: twenty five million years, is now the last living representative

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Speaker 1: of evolution's wild genetic experimentation, with America's answer to the

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Speaker 1: gazelles of Africa. Back in nineteen ninety seven, a biologist

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Speaker 1: named John Byers, who had spent years studying pronghorn behavior

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Speaker 1: and natural history on western Montana's National Bison Range, stepped

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Speaker 1: up to answer most of my questions about the mysterious

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Speaker 1: nature of the American pronghorn. Buyers's provocative argument finally made

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Speaker 1: clear much about an animal that had seemed inexplicable to

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Speaker 1: its admirers. Many of us had noted the pronghorn's apparent disinclination.

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Speaker 1: It's probably not a true inability, but a disinclination to

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Speaker 1: jump fences. Why would a creature as fleet and athletic

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Speaker 1: prefer to go through barbed wire fences rather than over them?

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Speaker 1: With long suspected pronghorn evolution as the answer, and Buyers agreed,

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Speaker 1: a grasslands creature shaped by the open country niche it occupied,

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Speaker 1: pronghorns never experienced any selective pressures to be able to

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Speaker 1: jump obstacles that produced the kind of drama I'd witnessed

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Speaker 1: in Wyoming. But unfortunately, it could also become a maladaptation

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Speaker 1: in a fenced modern world, and one that played a

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Speaker 1: critical role in pronghorn history over the past one hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty years. Pronghorns are one of only a handful

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Speaker 1: of great plain species that managed to survive the epic

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Speaker 1: extinction crash that ended the Pleisisain ten thousand years ago,

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Speaker 1: a best shary simplification that still stands as the most

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Speaker 1: profound ecological alteration in America since the extinction of the

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs in the biography of a species like us or

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Speaker 1: prong horns. How however, the Pleistocene was only a few

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Speaker 1: heart beats in the past. So what if much about

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Speaker 1: the behavior of modern prong horns has little to do

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Speaker 1: with their present circumstances.

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Speaker 3: As we find them.

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Speaker 1: The primary predators of prong horns for the past ten

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Speaker 1: thousand years we know, have been wolves and coyotes, neither

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Speaker 1: of which is capable flat out of running much more

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Speaker 1: than about forty to forty five miles an hour. Prong Horns,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, are the ferraris of the American

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Speaker 1: natural world. Their delicate bones in frames and remarkably low

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Speaker 1: body fat keep them light, while broad nostrils and a

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Speaker 1: huge windpipe deliver turbocharged oxygen to their outsize lungs and

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Speaker 1: heart pedal to the metal. They top eighty five kilometers

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Speaker 1: per hour at a dead run, some fifty five miles

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Speaker 1: an hour for the one hundred and twenty pound males

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Speaker 1: and as high as sixty five to seventy miles per

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Speaker 1: hour for the low females. That's as fast as an

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Speaker 1: African cheetah. Prong Horns can also run at ninety percent

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Speaker 1: of top end for more than two miles. Like horses,

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Speaker 1: to detect predators at great distances, they too evolve gigantic eyes.

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Speaker 3: Prong Horn behavior features other oddities.

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Speaker 1: Like Thompson's gazelles and other African ugults pursued by big cats.

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Speaker 1: Prong Horns have a powerful inclination towards a form of

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Speaker 1: grouping known as the selfish herd, with much of their

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Speaker 1: expression of dominance and rank focused on their physical position.

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Speaker 1: Inside these herd groups, the lower ranking, less dominant animals

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Speaker 1: get pushed to the outer margins, where if prong horns

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Speaker 1: were on the African veild, the low ranking members would

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Speaker 1: be in much greater danger from predatory attacks. But as adults,

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Speaker 1: American prong horns have no predators at all because of

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Speaker 1: the impossible speed. Once they're grown, pronghorns are subject to

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Speaker 1: predation only as fonts. If a prong worn fund survives

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Speaker 1: to six or eight months of age, it will join

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Speaker 1: all other surviving fauns in living to the ripe old

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Speaker 1: age of eleven or twelve years old. Yet adult pronghorns

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Speaker 1: still persist in grouping and still fight for position in

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Speaker 1: those groups, as if predation somehow mattered to them. So why,

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Speaker 1: in a world where gray wolves and coyotes and maybe

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Speaker 1: occasionally a mountain lion are their threats, do prong horns

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Speaker 1: express so much protective excess. The question John Byers posed

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Speaker 1: then was this, what if most of their physical characteristics

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Speaker 1: and behavior are actually adaptations to a lost world that

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Speaker 1: winked out around them ten thousand years ago, leaving pronghorns

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Speaker 1: still living out their existence among us reacting to a

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Speaker 1: world of ghosts. The fascinating question, then, is whether the

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Speaker 1: whole suite of pronghorn behaviors, and not just their lack

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Speaker 1: of jumping ability has to do with the lost world

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Speaker 1: of the Pleistocene Great Plains. Prog Warns emerged in their

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Speaker 1: modern form at a time when the American Planes was

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Speaker 1: the scene of one of the great assemblages of savannah

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Speaker 1: step creatures anywhere on Earth, a more diverse collection of

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Speaker 1: animals than present today in the Serengetti or the Massaimara.

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Speaker 1: Along with the elephants and longhorned bison and enormous herds

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Speaker 1: of horses, along with bands of numerous types of camels

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Speaker 1: and deer, and of course elk and prong horns, the

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Speaker 1: Pleistocene planes featured an array of truly formidable predators that

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Speaker 1: hunted and scavenged. Among all those millions of ungulates, prog

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Speaker 1: Warns then spent the better part of four million years

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Speaker 1: perfecting their ability to survive. Where large and fast predators

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Speaker 1: looked hungrily at them over bright teeth. There were grass

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Speaker 1: aisle active and aggressive short faced bears. The smilodons are

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Speaker 1: sabertoothed cats that attacked mammoth calves, a steadily changing lineup

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Speaker 1: of wolf and coyote packs. There were jaguars and cougars

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Speaker 1: along with the steppe lion, a far larger version of

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Speaker 1: the African lion, as predators of the fastest grazers, the

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Speaker 1: horses and prong horns. There was a slender, limbed lion

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Speaker 1: size running cat known as the scimitar cat, along with

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Speaker 1: a particularly rapid and legging American hunting hyena. And there

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Speaker 1: were two species of large American false cheetahs, cats from

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Speaker 1: the same evolutionary line that produced cougars, but with elongated,

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Speaker 1: curved spines, long legs, and wide nostrils for gulping air

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Speaker 1: in open country pursuit are in rock slide ambushes. These

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Speaker 1: vanished creatures of the ancient planes, at least so biologists

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Speaker 1: like Buyers now argue, however long ago they passed the

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Speaker 1: veil of extinction, or why pronghorns seem mysterious and almost

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Speaker 1: alien to us now, why they struck early observers like

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Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark as possessing a speed that resemble more

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Speaker 1: the flight of birds than anything else. Pronghorns are at

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Speaker 1: once breathtakingly beautiful yet outrageously overbuilt relics that have outlasted

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Speaker 1: the conditions that created them. They offer almost our only

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Speaker 1: remaining glimpse of the American Pleistocene. Like most wild ungulates

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Speaker 1: then are now, pronghorns follow a yearly routine that varies

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Speaker 1: considerably by the seasons. At the conclusion of the September rut,

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Speaker 1: the exhausted bucks, which would once have been prime targets

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Speaker 1: for predators in that condition, disguised themselves by mimicking the females.

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Speaker 1: They shed the outer husk of their horns, and they

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Speaker 1: joined the female herds. Since the Pleistocene, winter has been

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Speaker 1: a time of migration for northern pronghorns. A few years ago,

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Speaker 1: with a friend who lives in Jackson Hole, I photographed

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Speaker 1: the famous Sublet pronghorn herd, which summers in Grand Teta

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Speaker 1: National Park but still migrates more than two hundred miles

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Speaker 1: south to near Green River, Wyoming in winter. This inclination

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Speaker 1: to migrate before severe winter storms was adaptive in the wild,

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Speaker 1: but couple with their inclination not to jump obstacles, ultimately

196
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Speaker 1: reproduced tragedy in the late nineteenth century, when legendary winters

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties sent pronghorns southward by the thousands

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Speaker 1: into a new world of barbed wire in the spring.

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Speaker 1: From a year old until they're three, young pronghorn bucks

200
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Speaker 1: segregate themselves into bachelor bands and spend most of their

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Speaker 1: time in all male groups. There, they express group position

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Speaker 1: dominance just as females do, but they also spar and

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Speaker 1: practice moves they will later use in earnest. Around three

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Speaker 1: years of age, pronghorn males become solitary for most of

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Speaker 1: the spring and summer, during which time, at least in

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Speaker 1: most pronghorn country, they set up territories of perhaps one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty acres whose perimeter they sent mark and

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Speaker 1: will use to cloister a harem of females to hide

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Speaker 1: from other males during the rut. In other circumstances, male

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Speaker 1: pronghorns protect harems of females, but without defending a territory.

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Speaker 1: Rather than our prime resource location, pronghorn territories actually seem

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Speaker 1: to be merely tactical space for defending females. Pronghorn bucks

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00:15:59,760 --> 00:16:04,320
Speaker 1: fight over females too, in violent, quick and quite often mortal,

214
00:16:04,400 --> 00:16:09,280
Speaker 1: as high as fifteen percent of the encounter's fights. Reproduction

215
00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:13,200
Speaker 1: success is the prime directive, and some prong horned bucks

216
00:16:13,240 --> 00:16:17,040
Speaker 1: win the lottery. Others spend their entire lives without ever

217
00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:23,000
Speaker 1: siring any offspring at all. Then there is female selective behavior.

218
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:28,000
Speaker 1: Female prong horns, which reach sexual maturity at eighteen months

219
00:16:28,040 --> 00:16:31,040
Speaker 1: of age and give birth every spring for the rest

220
00:16:31,080 --> 00:16:35,680
Speaker 1: of their lives, find themselves in harems that male pronghorns

221
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:41,080
Speaker 1: judiciously protect during the brief September mating season. During the rut,

222
00:16:41,200 --> 00:16:45,840
Speaker 1: females repeatedly break away from their cloistered harems, however, joining

223
00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:49,520
Speaker 1: the other harems of other males and inviting males to.

224
00:16:49,480 --> 00:16:53,080
Speaker 3: Compete for them. What exactly are they looking for?

225
00:16:54,120 --> 00:16:59,520
Speaker 1: Apparently they're setting up contests of stamina, speed, and resolve

226
00:16:59,720 --> 00:17:04,040
Speaker 1: but between various males and observing the outcome before surrendering

227
00:17:04,080 --> 00:17:08,040
Speaker 1: themselves up to be bred by the winner, the pronghorn

228
00:17:08,160 --> 00:17:12,800
Speaker 1: male who demonstrates his genetic fitness by running faster and

229
00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:17,679
Speaker 1: longer than his rivals. But if you're already almost twenty

230
00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:21,440
Speaker 1: miles an hour faster than your fastest predators, why would

231
00:17:21,520 --> 00:17:25,280
Speaker 1: females set up games of natural selection and choose who

232
00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:29,920
Speaker 1: will impregnate them based on fitness as demonstrated by speed,

233
00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:36,080
Speaker 1: Because apparently you never know when American cheetahs are going

234
00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:40,400
Speaker 1: to show up on the planes again. Prong worn females

235
00:17:40,400 --> 00:17:44,199
Speaker 1: have evolved another strategy that's interesting with respect to what

236
00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:49,040
Speaker 1: it says about both past and present. After a remarkably

237
00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:52,719
Speaker 1: long gestation period of some two hundred and fifty two days,

238
00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:57,600
Speaker 1: they give birth not to single offspring, but to litters,

239
00:17:58,280 --> 00:18:02,960
Speaker 1: specifically litters of two fawns every spring, and they do

240
00:18:03,040 --> 00:18:08,000
Speaker 1: this throughout their reproductive lives. Twining, as well as the

241
00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:12,359
Speaker 1: week's long hiding of fawns which lie motionless and silent

242
00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:16,720
Speaker 1: for most of the day, are clearly responses to serious predation.

243
00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:19,399
Speaker 3: They too, probably.

244
00:18:18,920 --> 00:18:23,600
Speaker 1: Emerge as adaptations to the distant past, when pronghorns lived

245
00:18:23,640 --> 00:18:24,919
Speaker 1: in a world where they.

246
00:18:24,760 --> 00:18:27,159
Speaker 2: Were prey for three or four different predators.

247
00:18:28,119 --> 00:18:32,320
Speaker 1: Today, it means that coyotes, the principal predators of pronghorn

248
00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:36,320
Speaker 1: fawns for probably the last million years, are able to

249
00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:40,000
Speaker 1: pull down as much as fifty percent of a pronghorn

250
00:18:40,119 --> 00:18:46,720
Speaker 1: fawn crop without appreciably affecting pronghorn populations with litters, and

251
00:18:46,840 --> 00:18:52,760
Speaker 1: with their extremely high adult survivability rates, pronghorns were anciently

252
00:18:52,840 --> 00:18:56,399
Speaker 1: prepared to survive the culling of even so efficient a

253
00:18:56,480 --> 00:19:01,200
Speaker 1: predator of fawns as coyotes. But a mother pronghorn will

254
00:19:01,200 --> 00:19:03,920
Speaker 1: attack and fight a coyote to keep it from her faunds.

255
00:19:04,320 --> 00:19:08,880
Speaker 1: Pronghorn bucks don't defend faunds. Some biologists argue that this

256
00:19:08,960 --> 00:19:13,639
Speaker 1: is another leftover behavior from the Pleistocene, when fast predators

257
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:17,720
Speaker 1: scattered groups of pronghorns across wide territories, and a male

258
00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:21,359
Speaker 1: pronghorn thus could never be sure that a fawn it

259
00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:26,840
Speaker 1: defended was its own. As cutschewing rumnants capable of processing

260
00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:31,720
Speaker 1: forbes and shrubs, pronghorns demonstrate yet another adaptation to the

261
00:19:31,800 --> 00:19:36,800
Speaker 1: ancient savannah ecology of Western America. For maybe four hundred

262
00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:42,119
Speaker 1: thousand years, pronghorns had been evolving a mutualistic relationship with

263
00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:47,480
Speaker 1: the bison herds. Bison i had survived the Pleistocene extinctions

264
00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:51,719
Speaker 1: and had increased dramatically in their wake, in numbers that

265
00:19:52,040 --> 00:19:56,920
Speaker 1: likely range somewhere between twenty and thirty million animals, depending

266
00:19:56,960 --> 00:20:01,320
Speaker 1: on climate cycles. So waves of bison and waves of

267
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:08,480
Speaker 1: pronghorns cropping the same country produced mutually beneficial results. Cropping

268
00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:12,879
Speaker 1: the grasses and ignoring the often poisonous species like local weed,

269
00:20:13,280 --> 00:20:18,960
Speaker 1: rabbit brush, and sagebrush. Bison grazing encouraged forbes and shrubs

270
00:20:19,119 --> 00:20:22,840
Speaker 1: in their wake, coming along after the bison herds and

271
00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:28,080
Speaker 1: concentrating instead on the flowering plants and shrubs. Pronghorn browsing

272
00:20:28,400 --> 00:20:33,440
Speaker 1: shifted the advantage back to the grasses. Both preferred succulent

273
00:20:33,520 --> 00:20:37,800
Speaker 1: vegetation sprouting up after recent fires, which was a fact

274
00:20:37,800 --> 00:20:47,040
Speaker 1: that Native people long noted. So deep time history created

275
00:20:47,119 --> 00:20:52,080
Speaker 1: an entirely unique situation for pronghorn antelope. Since pronghorns had

276
00:20:52,080 --> 00:20:55,439
Speaker 1: out survived almost all their predators, had ended up with

277
00:20:55,560 --> 00:20:59,199
Speaker 1: few competitors for the often toxic shrubs and forbes they ate.

278
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:04,280
Speaker 1: We're read everywhere there were vast horizontal planes, and they

279
00:21:04,359 --> 00:21:09,720
Speaker 1: increased into the millions. The writer Ernest Thompson's Seaton famously

280
00:21:09,920 --> 00:21:13,320
Speaker 1: estimated that in eighteen hundred, the moment in time when

281
00:21:13,359 --> 00:21:17,280
Speaker 1: pronghorns were in the verge of discovery by formal Western science,

282
00:21:17,720 --> 00:21:20,280
Speaker 1: there were as many as forty million of them in

283
00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:25,000
Speaker 1: the West. More recent estimates have advanced original figures of

284
00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:26,800
Speaker 1: something like fifteen million.

285
00:21:27,800 --> 00:21:28,520
Speaker 2: What we can.

286
00:21:28,359 --> 00:21:31,120
Speaker 1: Probably say is that on the Great Plains, where there

287
00:21:31,240 --> 00:21:36,879
Speaker 1: ranges overlap most precisely, pronghorn numbers very likely matched those

288
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:37,840
Speaker 1: of buffalo.

289
00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:40,920
Speaker 3: We've long thought of the historic era.

290
00:21:40,800 --> 00:21:44,600
Speaker 1: Great Plans as the Great Bison Belt. In truth, it

291
00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:49,639
Speaker 1: was just as much the Great pronghorn Savannah. Their range

292
00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:53,520
Speaker 1: doesn't appear to advanced eastward beyond the ninety seventh meridian,

293
00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:57,119
Speaker 1: though at least in places like Texas and Mexico, and

294
00:21:57,200 --> 00:22:00,400
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to have gone beyond the ninety third already,

295
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:04,640
Speaker 1: and farther north in Iowa and Minnesota. But they were

296
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:08,880
Speaker 1: found westward all the way to Baja California and into

297
00:22:09,080 --> 00:22:13,919
Speaker 1: eastern Oregon and Washington. Southward on the continent, prong horns

298
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:17,640
Speaker 1: were able to colonize the desert grasslands of Mexico all

299
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:20,840
Speaker 1: the way down to the vicinity of Mexico City at

300
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:25,680
Speaker 1: twenty degrees latitude, considerably south of where bison ever ventured.

301
00:22:26,520 --> 00:22:29,680
Speaker 1: Although prong horns can derive adequate water from the plants

302
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:33,680
Speaker 1: they browse in optimal wet years, they do need to

303
00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:35,840
Speaker 1: drink about three and a half quarts of water a

304
00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:39,240
Speaker 1: day during hot weather, which limited their numbers in the

305
00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:47,439
Speaker 1: Great Basin the Mohave, Chihuahuan, and Sonoran deserts. Abundant and

306
00:22:47,560 --> 00:22:51,280
Speaker 1: widespread as they were, prong worns attracted the attention of

307
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:55,520
Speaker 1: Indian hunters from the very beginning of human arrival. There

308
00:22:55,560 --> 00:22:58,679
Speaker 1: a butchered prong horn remains in some of the Clovis

309
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:02,880
Speaker 1: and Folksome archaeola logical sites, so at least some paleo

310
00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:07,200
Speaker 1: hunters did take the occasional pronghorn to vary a diet

311
00:23:07,240 --> 00:23:08,840
Speaker 1: of mammoth and bison cuts.

312
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:11,320
Speaker 3: But it took fifteen or twenty.

313
00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:15,280
Speaker 1: Pronghorns to equal the caloric possibilities of a single giant bison,

314
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:19,080
Speaker 1: and since prong worn flesh was so very lean, prog

315
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:23,200
Speaker 1: worns commonly ranked well down the list of pursued prey

316
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:28,720
Speaker 1: among Southwestern peoples. In fact, pronghorns ranked lower than rabbits,

317
00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:31,600
Speaker 1: even though it took sixteen jack rabbits to match the

318
00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:35,879
Speaker 1: edible flesh of a prong worn Native people, from hundreds

319
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:39,040
Speaker 1: of generations of experience with pronghorns knew how to exploit

320
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:43,800
Speaker 1: their weaknesses and utilize pronghorned leather horns and hoofs for

321
00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:48,359
Speaker 1: a variety of purposes. One aspect of pronghorn natural history

322
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:52,920
Speaker 1: that made them vulnerable to Indian hunters was their disinclination

323
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:56,680
Speaker 1: to leave their home ranges. Parts of the West yet

324
00:23:56,760 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 1: show fading evidence of ancient pronghorn correct such as the

325
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:06,200
Speaker 1: Fort Bridger trap site in southwestern Wyoming, where local herds

326
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: evidently were enclosed and pushed to run in circles until

327
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:14,719
Speaker 1: they were exhausted and could be clubbed to death. Another

328
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:19,800
Speaker 1: technique involved v shaped pairs of fence wings, often miles long,

329
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 1: made from piled up sagebrush, that sent stampeded pronghorns into

330
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:29,120
Speaker 1: corrals or pits. There are also references from a variety

331
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:32,960
Speaker 1: of sources of horse mounted planes indians engaging in the

332
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:37,600
Speaker 1: kind of pronghorns surround They often used for bison, again

333
00:24:37,680 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: with the goal of getting a pronghorn band to run

334
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:44,560
Speaker 1: in circles until the spent and stumbling animals could be

335
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: ridden down on horseback. According to the writer Richard Irving Dodge,

336
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:54,199
Speaker 1: when pronghorns collected into the thousands in wintertime, some tribes

337
00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:58,919
Speaker 1: even used rifles in pronghorn hunts from horseback, reacting as

338
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:03,399
Speaker 1: if pursued by editors. The antelope crowded together in their fright,

339
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:08,120
Speaker 1: Dodge wrote, and thus were easily shot down. When bison

340
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: were scarce, planes hunters preferred antelope to deer because you

341
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:14,960
Speaker 1: could take an entire herd of prong horns at once.

342
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 1: Because local herds could be completely extirpated, by mass techniques.

343
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:24,200
Speaker 1: Like these, Indian hunters often spared some animals in order

344
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 1: to preserve the herd stock, whatever the technique. Unlike bison

345
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: or elk, prong horns butchered out as all protein and

346
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:37,199
Speaker 1: very little precious fat. Their lean body mass may be

347
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 1: the reason no tribe ever bothered to domesticate prong horns,

348
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: which are actually easier to tame than any African antelope.

349
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:54,400
Speaker 1: Among Europeans, prong horns were first encountered by numerous Spanish

350
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:58,159
Speaker 1: travelers on the Southern Plains and in California, where they

351
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:01,679
Speaker 1: were known as barndos, and by French travelers to the

352
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 1: Great Plains, who called them cool de Blanc. Francisco Hernandez's

353
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:12,960
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty one Natural History of Mexico described and even

354
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 1: provided an initial illustration of the western pronghorn, But like

355
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: so many charismatic animals from the American West, pronghorns did

356
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: not come to the official notice of Enlightenment age science

357
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 1: until the time of the Jeffersonian expeditions into the New

358
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: Louisiana Purchase. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark collected the type

359
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:38,080
Speaker 1: specimen of the species for Western science in eighteen o five,

360
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:41,919
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark made more than two hundred pronghorn entries

361
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: in their journals, although they found the animals like elk

362
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: and deer far less numerous west of the continental divide.

363
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: Back east, George Ord of Philadelphia Naturalists and Ornithologists, who

364
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:58,480
Speaker 1: was working up many of the Lewis and Clark specimens,

365
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: published a science to description and the Lenaean name for

366
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: the pronghorn in eighteen eighteen. Ord recognized that, despite their

367
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: similarities to African antelopes and gazelle's, pronghorns were actually unrelated

368
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:16,919
Speaker 1: to any existing family of animals that he could find.

369
00:27:17,760 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 1: So Antilope capra day the family name he devised, and

370
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: Antilope capra the genus Ord fashion for an animal that

371
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: seemed to combine the traits of both antelopes and goats

372
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:34,680
Speaker 1: have stood ever since. One of the best selling books

373
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: of the West in the nineteenth century was the trader

374
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: naturalist Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, first published in

375
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six. This is what greg had to say

376
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:52,639
Speaker 1: about the pronghorn. That species of gazelle, known as the antelope,

377
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: is very numerous upon the high plains, This beautiful animal

378
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: is most remarkable for its fleetness, not bounding like the deer,

379
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: but skimming over the ground as though upon skates. The

380
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 1: flesh of the antelope is but little esteemed, though consequently

381
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:14,120
Speaker 1: no great efforts are made to take them. Being as

382
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:18,199
Speaker 1: wild as fleet the hunting of them is very difficult

383
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 1: as well. The commercial market hunt of wildlife in the West,

384
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,880
Speaker 1: though and more of that to come in future episodes,

385
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:30,840
Speaker 1: had been underway in earnest since at least the eighteen twenties,

386
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: but so long as beaver lasted or bison roamed in

387
00:28:35,119 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 1: numbers enough to produce robes, hides, and tongs, and as

388
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 1: long as wolves and coyotes remained targets of traps and

389
00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: poisoned bait, the market hunt left pronghorns largely alone.

390
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 3: Prong Horns had already reaped.

391
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 1: The whirlwind in mining areas like California, where they were

392
00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: corralled and killed to feed miners, but was not until

393
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: bison numbers began to drop that prong horns finally started

394
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: to attract attention in the slaughter of Western animals for profit.

395
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 1: With more than five thousand professional hunters in the West

396
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 1: in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties. Once every last

397
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 1: buffalo had been pursued to ground, hunters looked to see

398
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: what they might turn their guns on for a final

399
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 1: killing spree. Big horned sheep in the bad lands lasted

400
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: only a handful of years, and those in the mountains

401
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: only a handful more. Elk and even deer had mostly

402
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:38,640
Speaker 1: fled the open country by that time to the safety

403
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 1: of the mountains. In the eighteen eighties, only two primary

404
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 1: charismatic animals remained on the Great Plains, wild horses and pronghorns.

405
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: The horses would get caught and sold overseas buyers whenever

406
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: Europeans were involved in wars her Brother the nineteen twenties,

407
00:29:56,760 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: get rounded up as a source of dog food for

408
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:02,600
Speaker 1: the American pet industry, or they were simply shot down

409
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: by cowboys as nuisances. But prong horns had evolved on

410
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: the Great Plains, they had survived fearsome predators, they'd lived

411
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 1: through the pleistosine extinctions. Erasing them from America was going

412
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 1: to require some effort. Naturally, the market hunt, though, was

413
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: up to the task. There were multiple causes for what

414
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 1: began to happen to pronghorns homesteading steadily tore up the

415
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: prairie and prong horn habitat. Ranchers overstocked the planes with

416
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 1: cattle and sheep that undermined vegetation. Prong horns depended on

417
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: the new barbed wire fences, demarketing a West that was

418
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 1: fast becoming private property went straight to the prong horns

419
00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 1: evolutionary weakness, fences preventing the herds from migrating and from

420
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 1: escaping winter blizzards. Without bison, the trump down the snow,

421
00:30:54,600 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: prong horns couldn't get at the plants they ate anymore,

422
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: add fences to block their migrations, and the horrific Western

423
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 1: winners of the eighteen eighties devastated them, and an event

424
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:11,400
Speaker 1: that became all too common. Homesteaders in the Texas Panhandle

425
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 1: and the winner of eighteen eighty two discovered more than

426
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred prong horns blown like a deck of cards

427
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: against a curb, trapped and piled many feet high against

428
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: a barbed wire fence. Even hard bitten homesheads were horrified

429
00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: by that. Then there was the market hunt. The generally

430
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: poor opinion of pronghorned leather and meat had long kept

431
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: prong horns out of the rifle sights of men who

432
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: killed animals for money. But with everything else gone and

433
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: a deathly silence beginning to fall across the West, market

434
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: hunters finally turned their rifles on prong horns, and the

435
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:56,320
Speaker 1: story became all too familiar. What had once been millions

436
00:31:56,360 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: of wild creatures fell for a pittance in return. Winter

437
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: concentrations of prong horns around the Black Hills got slaughtered.

438
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: In two or three seasons, a hunter in California killed

439
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:11,560
Speaker 1: five thousand of them for their hides. When a drought

440
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: drove almost all the prong horns in the area to

441
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 1: a few remaining water holes, hunters, desperate to keep their

442
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: market lifestyle going, sold pronghorn meat to butchers in Kansas

443
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: for two to three cents a pound. In eighteen seventy three,

444
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: an Iowa firm shipped some thirty two thousand pronghorn and

445
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 1: deer skins via railroad from the plains, barely making a

446
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 1: dollar apiece for all the effort of hunting, skinning, and shipping.

447
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: When George byrd Grennell, the Great Conservationist, alerted future President

448
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt to the impact of market hunting, a step

449
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: that led to the formation of the Boon and Crocket

450
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: Club to protect American game animals. One of the victims

451
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: Grenelle mentioned was the pronghorn that put prong horns before

452
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 1: an influential group, but by the time Roosevelt was president,

453
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: pronghorn numbers had dropped frighteningly low. In eighteen hundred, there

454
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: may have been fifteen million prong horns in the West,

455
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, but in eighteen ninety nine, biologist Vernon Bailey,

456
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: crossing one hundred miles of the Texas Panhandle, counted a

457
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: mere thirty two in what had once lay near the

458
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: center of their range. A decade later, the New York

459
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: Zoological Society estimated that fewer than five thousand of these

460
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: twenty five million year old natives of America were left.

461
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,320
Speaker 1: Rescuing them from almost certain extinction required cooperation between the

462
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: states in the West, which Roosevelt facilitated, along with pronghorn

463
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 1: stocking in Yellowstone and on the National Wildlife Refuge. Is

464
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 1: that Teddy Roosevelt was creating. Two lucky breaks helped the pronghorns, though,

465
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:08,720
Speaker 1: and one was the refuges which the Boone and Crocket

466
00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 1: Club and the American Bison Society stocked with remnant animals.

467
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:18,200
Speaker 1: The other break was evolutionary good fortune. In a nation

468
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:24,640
Speaker 1: where economics trumped everything as four rather than grass eaters,

469
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: prong horns didn't compete with cattle and only marginally with sheep,

470
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:36,920
Speaker 1: so Western livestock associations, if grudgingly, became tolerant of them. Today,

471
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 1: the United States and Canadian population of prong horns hovers

472
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 1: around seven hundred thousand animals, half of them in the

473
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: state of Wyoming, with another twelve hundred in Mexico. A

474
00:34:49,080 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: series of highway overpasses now allows some of them to

475
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:56,000
Speaker 1: continue their winter migrations, and as one of the original

476
00:34:56,080 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: Western animals tapped for sport hunting, pronghorns are now privileged

477
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 1: in a way that a lot of other creatures are not.

478
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:08,360
Speaker 1: I am still transfixed, though by a moment in Western

479
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 1: history I once came across when among all Western animals

480
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:19,840
Speaker 1: three ancient Americans, wild horses, coyotes, and pronghorns were the

481
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:25,479
Speaker 1: last holdouts remaining. This was in April of eighteen eighty four,

482
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: and it appeared in a letter written by a cowboy

483
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 1: named George Wolforth, who was riding his horse up over

484
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:37,640
Speaker 1: the rim of West Texas Yellow House Canyon, about where

485
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 1: the city of Lubbock now stands. Wolforth described a scene

486
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: that seared itself into his memory and into mine too.

487
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:51,759
Speaker 1: As far as we could see, he wrote, there were

488
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:56,360
Speaker 1: only antelopes and mustangs grazing in the waving.

489
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:57,320
Speaker 3: Sea of grass.

490
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: The whole tableau, he went on, rendered misty and unreal

491
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:08,719
Speaker 1: by the mirage that hovered over the plains. These were

492
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 1: the sole survivors of the big animals of the Great Plains.

493
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:18,400
Speaker 1: Almost all the rest had suffered extinction or extirpation, or

494
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,240
Speaker 1: had been driven into the mountains across the previous thirty years.

495
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 1: But even this moment was brief, merely a romantic thing

496
00:36:27,840 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 1: to hold onto in the mind, truly a mirage.

497
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 4: Dan, I think one of the things when you read

498
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:55,920
Speaker 4: primary sources from the Lewis and Clark era forward, a

499
00:36:55,920 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 4: lot of times I'm struck by animals not being where

500
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 4: I expect them to be, or at least where I

501
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 4: wouldn't have expected them to be before I knew better.

502
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,759
Speaker 4: But grizzlies and salt Dakota grizzlies out on the plains,

503
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 4: big horns dominating Elk country, Elk out on the prairie.

504
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:18,239
Speaker 4: You know, it seems like they're all familiar animals, but

505
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:22,319
Speaker 4: there's always sort of there's like something about it that

506
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 4: doesn't line up with our present day awareness of the

507
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 4: animals around us. But pronghorn are the exception to that

508
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 4: general rule. And here I think you yeah, I mean

509
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 4: a prong horn is a prong horn is a prong horn,

510
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 4: And I guess it's it's striking to me, but you

511
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,799
Speaker 4: make a strong case why it's deeply rooted in their

512
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:50,120
Speaker 4: genetics and in their evolutionary history.

513
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:52,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.

514
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:56,279
Speaker 1: I mean, these are animals that come from specifically from

515
00:37:56,360 --> 00:38:00,400
Speaker 1: North American evolution for twenty five million years, and so,

516
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 1: you know, and prong horns are like us, they're the

517
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: sole remaining representative of what was at one time really

518
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:13,280
Speaker 1: big in their case, a couple of different subfamilies of animals,

519
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: many of them with multiple horns, and some of them

520
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:21,319
Speaker 1: with horns unlike the present day animal that weren't deciduous

521
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: but were solid like antlers. And so it's a it's

522
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 1: kind of a remarkable thing to me. The most remarkable

523
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 1: aspect of the prong horns story is how long we

524
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: tried to figure them out. You know, I mean, we

525
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:42,680
Speaker 1: just couldn't quite. I mean, everybody knew, okay, they won't

526
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:46,960
Speaker 1: jump fences, and that's probably because they evolved on the planes.

527
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:50,359
Speaker 1: But you know, on the other hand, Thompson's gazelles, you know,

528
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:54,479
Speaker 1: jumped like crazy in Africa, showing I think what they're

529
00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:58,799
Speaker 1: doing is starting to show their fitness, so that the

530
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 1: cheetah that's after the goes after one that's stumbling along

531
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 1: or something. But prong horns never they never developed that ability,

532
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 1: and the inability or disinclination to jump over things really

533
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: kind of set them in a bad situation when the

534
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: West started being basically covered with barbed wire fences because

535
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: a lot of them ended up, you know, because they

536
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: migrated in front of winter storms. That was another thing

537
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:30,680
Speaker 1: about their long term evolution that they would pile up

538
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 1: against those fences. But you know that biologist John Buyers,

539
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:37,839
Speaker 1: who about twenty five years ago was working on prong

540
00:39:37,840 --> 00:39:44,239
Speaker 1: horns in the Montana National Bison Refuge. I mean, he's

541
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: the one who kind of figured all this out, all

542
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: these inexplicable parts of their natural history, you know, starting

543
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:55,240
Speaker 1: with one of the damn things, why are they capable

544
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 1: of running sixty five miles an hour when anything that's

545
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:01,439
Speaker 1: chasing them can't run more than about forty or forty five.

546
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:07,400
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the explanation for the excessive speed? And

547
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:09,719
Speaker 1: what he came up with, of course, was that with

548
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: prong horns, we're getting to witness and it's really kind

549
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 1: of the only animal that we're getting to see do

550
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:18,960
Speaker 1: this we're getting to witness applies to seeing animal that's

551
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 1: still through its natural selection ten thousand years ago. It's

552
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:25,320
Speaker 1: still doing the kinds of things that would have enabled

553
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: it to succeed when there were fast running cheetahs and

554
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: aenas and things chasing them. And so it's a you know,

555
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:34,640
Speaker 1: it's an animal that's kind of living in its head

556
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: in a world of ghosts.

557
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 4: And I think one thing when I look, especially having

558
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 4: grown up in the East, when I look at pronghorn,

559
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 4: I think to myself, that doesn't look like it belongs here.

560
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 4: It doesn't look like anything else. It looks like it

561
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 4: should be in Africa, when in fact it is the

562
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 4: the animal of all the ones that I know.

563
00:40:55,680 --> 00:40:57,280
Speaker 2: Today that has the deepest roots.

564
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:00,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it is. It's twenty five

565
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 1: million years back, as you know, and of course we

566
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 1: still have them. I mean, passenger pigeons go back fifteen

567
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 1: million years here, but we don't have them anymore. But

568
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 1: this is a creature that goes back a long way,

569
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 1: and so it's really kind of it's as America. And

570
00:41:15,160 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 1: this is another kind of mind bender about all this

571
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:23,759
Speaker 1: deep time evolution. It's as American almost as horses, which

572
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:27,359
Speaker 1: evolved here fifty six million years ago, you know. And

573
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: so in the case of prong horns, they managed to

574
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 1: get through the plastaink sanctions and survive, and horses, obviously,

575
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:38,600
Speaker 1: while they survived elsewhere around the world, they didn't survive here.

576
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:41,960
Speaker 2: But those are the two to me that have the

577
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 2: deepest time.

578
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 1: The other really deep time animals like camels, they were

579
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 1: about forty five million years old, and of course they

580
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:50,839
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't make it.

581
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 5: Speaking of deep antiquity, you had to comment and you

582
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 5: just touched on it again a second ago. You had

583
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 5: to comment in your in your show and mention it

584
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 5: now where you said, like us, they're the only one left.

585
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 5: And it was fighting that really struck me. It hadn't

586
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 5: occurred to me, But I'm often find myself explaining to

587
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:12,080
Speaker 5: visitors who come out. We're driving around looking at wildlife.

588
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 5: I'll explain to him, I kind of get into like

589
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:19,080
Speaker 5: what it means that they're the only to be the

590
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:22,400
Speaker 5: only member like of your genus, and to have me

591
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 5: you came like it's hard to even find a relative right.

592
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 5: And I never thought I'm gonna start saying when I

593
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:33,440
Speaker 5: do that little spiel, I'm gonna start saying, like us

594
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 5: like this, you can go like, there's this thing, there's

595
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:37,960
Speaker 5: a chimpanzee.

596
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 2: Oh, that's probably Bob. As close as close as we're

597
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:42,719
Speaker 2: gonna get.

598
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 5: But I made the comment in our we did an

599
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 5: outdoor cookbook, and in the introduction of the outdoor cookbook

600
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 5: I made I made a comment that at the right

601
00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 5: place and time, you know, in the Middle East, southern Spain, whatever,

602
00:42:57,200 --> 00:42:59,399
Speaker 5: at the right place and time, it would have been

603
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 5: possible for a human to have to see a fire

604
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:09,000
Speaker 5: and the need to also and see figures sitting around

605
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 5: a fire at night, and you would need to wonder,

606
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 5: I wonder what species of human that is, which one

607
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 5: of us that is?

608
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 2: It was just like so hard to picture, I know.

609
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:24,360
Speaker 1: I mean, there's I read somewhere several years ago that

610
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 1: at one point in time, there may have been as

611
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 1: many as eight different human species coexisting in Africa, and

612
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:35,879
Speaker 1: I think it was Africa. I don't think that many

613
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:37,680
Speaker 1: made it to the Middle East or further north, but

614
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 1: as many as eight different ones, So I mean, wow,

615
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: you know, you really there's actually I saw a movie

616
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: on I think it was on Netflix. It was on HBO,

617
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: I think, and I don't remember the name of it,

618
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:56,759
Speaker 1: but it's basically was a movie about this group of

619
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: anatomically modern humans Homo sapiens, who are traveling across the

620
00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 1: landscape and they camp out in woods one night and

621
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:08,239
Speaker 1: some group attacks them and steals one of their you know,

622
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 1: one of their children. And so the father and a

623
00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:14,839
Speaker 1: couple of other guys of this group and I think

624
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:17,719
Speaker 1: of female, maybe the mother of the child too, they

625
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,320
Speaker 1: track this other band and when they find them, they're

626
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 1: not Homo sapiens. They are some other species, you know,

627
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: and they're standing looking in the cave and what in

628
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: the hell? Yeah, So that was that was possible in

629
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:36,959
Speaker 1: our past. It obviously was possible in the programing past,

630
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: but not.

631
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 2: For either one of us anymore. You know.

632
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 5: One time, when I was working on a book project,

633
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 5: I spent some time with an organization that was then

634
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:50,399
Speaker 5: called the Buffalo Field Campaign. I remember you remember because

635
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,720
Speaker 5: we had a mutual friend when I was a student

636
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 5: of yours.

637
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:54,399
Speaker 1: Dan.

638
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:55,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was kid in our class that.

639
00:44:56,040 --> 00:44:59,720
Speaker 5: Was was involved with Buffalo Field Campaign. And of course

640
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 5: that is a buffalo being a term that has fallen

641
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:08,959
Speaker 5: out of favor and it's sort of taken the back

642
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:13,399
Speaker 5: seat to the term bison, right, people explaining that it's

643
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:15,600
Speaker 5: not actually a buffalo, it's it's a bison, and you're

644
00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:17,280
Speaker 5: confusing everybody by calling it a buffalo.

645
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 2: Away.

646
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:19,760
Speaker 5: I was sitting there with a kid from the Buffalo

647
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 5: Field Campaigment. I was doing my reporting and I see

648
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 5: off in the distance an analope. Okay, so I say, oh,

649
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 5: there's an aneloe. He says, well, actually that's a prong horn.

650
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 5: I was kind of like, well, don't get me started,

651
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:35,040
Speaker 5: because your whole organization is called buffalo.

652
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 3: And actually you're protecting.

653
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 5: So so with that said, I like, I'd like to

654
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 5: hear your thoughts on what terms you use.

655
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 2: I have I stick with buffalo.

656
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 5: I noticed that Ken Burns has my back, but I

657
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:57,760
Speaker 5: have switched and I now even will crack my kids.

658
00:45:57,760 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 2: I make them say pronghorn.

659
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:04,279
Speaker 1: Instead of antelope. Huh, well, I would admit I kind

660
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:08,000
Speaker 1: of us both for both animals I use and I

661
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 1: know I've got buffalo several times and written stuff, and

662
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:14,759
Speaker 1: I think probably in this podcast in an episode or two,

663
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 1: I use the term buffalo. It's a good interchangeable word

664
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: with bison, you know. And as a writer, you're always

665
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:21,399
Speaker 1: trying to Okay, I don't want to use the same

666
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:23,839
Speaker 1: damn word over and over and over again. So here's

667
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 1: a good interchangement word. And everybody knows exactly what it is. Yeah, pronghorn.

668
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: I tend to stick pretty closely with pronghorn. But in

669
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, almost anybody you quote, like Josiah Gregg,

670
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 1: you know, it's an antelope. I mean, and that's how

671
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:41,600
Speaker 1: they all describe it. It's an antelope.

672
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 4: When we were I got really in the habit of

673
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 4: only using bison sort of in the academic context. And

674
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:52,680
Speaker 4: then when we were working in the Long Hunter book,

675
00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 4: Steve pointed out that none of these guys ever saw

676
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:57,480
Speaker 4: a bison.

677
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 2: They saw buffalo. So we went through and changed that

678
00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 2: for consistency.

679
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:05,879
Speaker 5: I just haven't encountered a ton of confusion. If I'm

680
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:09,239
Speaker 5: talking to someone and I'm saying like, hey, you know,

681
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 5: we can go down that way and you might see

682
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 5: some buffalo. They're never picturing an asiatic water buffalo.

683
00:47:15,719 --> 00:47:16,279
Speaker 2: They're just not.

684
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, I just never. It's like, I never have problems

685
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 5: with it. But you know, I like pronghorn. I guess

686
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 5: you know, I accept the interchangeability. And then I also

687
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:30,320
Speaker 5: kind of as much as I like to word police

688
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,240
Speaker 5: other people, when people word police me, I get prickly.

689
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:40,280
Speaker 4: So Steve and I have been going around to different

690
00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 4: universities talking about the Mountain Men project that we worked on,

691
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 4: and in the course of that talk, I described some

692
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 4: of the primary sources that we use, and one of

693
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 4: them I describe as Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper.

694
00:47:55,680 --> 00:47:58,560
Speaker 4: And I make the point though, I make the point

695
00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 4: that in I said, it's it's just this wonderful source

696
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 4: and it can go from this very mundane we went

697
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 4: three miles north, no Beaver, we went three miles west,

698
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:11,000
Speaker 4: no Beaver, we went you know, and then he has

699
00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 4: these long, sort of flourishes of description and he includes

700
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 4: his own thoughts and reflections, and one of the points

701
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 4: that I've been highlighting as sort of a joke is

702
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 4: that when he describes the pronghorn, he says that he

703
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 4: thinks they can be easily domesticated. And I sort of

704
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 4: share that with the crowd for a cheap laugh. And

705
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:37,080
Speaker 4: then here I am and going through your episode and

706
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 4: you make the same point, and it makes me pause

707
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 4: and reflect on whether I've just embarrassed myself before several crowds.

708
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:51,680
Speaker 5: According to the physiologist Jared Diamond, what does he say, well,

709
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:54,640
Speaker 5: the whole have you read guns, germs and steel?

710
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:54,799
Speaker 4: Oh?

711
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:56,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, But he lays out this.

712
00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 5: Theory that he starts with this foundational question, why did

713
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 5: who's a guy that came and attacked the Incas?

714
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 2: Bisarrow?

715
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 5: Why did Pizarro cross from Europe to attack the Incas?

716
00:49:14,120 --> 00:49:20,560
Speaker 5: Why didn't the Incas come from the east to attack Bizarrow?

717
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:23,439
Speaker 2: Right?

718
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:28,320
Speaker 5: And then part of it gets into this this cocktail

719
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 5: of things. One thing is how many people live along

720
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 5: the same latitude so that they can develop certain agricultural

721
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 5: crops and technologies and it winds up being transferable. Are

722
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 5: you oriented north south or east west? And then he

723
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 5: gets into how many beasts did you have that could

724
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:54,520
Speaker 5: be domesticated? And he says that here none.

725
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 2: None, So I mean the turkey.

726
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:02,799
Speaker 1: So the two animals that I think would have been

727
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 1: fairly easy to domesticate would have been prong horns and

728
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:06,839
Speaker 1: bighorn sheep.

729
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:10,280
Speaker 2: And the reason I say that Dan Osborne and Russell's.

730
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 1: The reason I say that about bighorn sheep is because

731
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: I've read these sheep eater accounts around Yellowstone where some

732
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,879
Speaker 1: of the archaeologist supposed his name whole Krantz or something,

733
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 1: who did that big sheep eater study, and he said

734
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:31,839
Speaker 1: the sheep eaters told him the sheep eaters has shown.

735
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 1: He told him that big oorn sheep were really easy

736
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 1: to catch. He's just kind of lurked by one of

737
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:41,760
Speaker 1: their trails and you had yourself a net, and especially

738
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 1: if you had a little depression or some kind of

739
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: little pit, you just threw the net over the top

740
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:51,480
Speaker 1: of them, and they just kind of did this. Now,

741
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:54,719
Speaker 1: of course, there's another step you have to make from

742
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 1: catching one to domesticating it. I mean you have to obviously,

743
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:00,879
Speaker 1: you have to be able to train in some way.

744
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 5: The snakes are easy to catch, but that's uh.

745
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 1: And I can't say that I've seen anybody specifically, and

746
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I have, but I don't recall anybody

747
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:18,239
Speaker 1: specifically running with that as a possibility, but I have

748
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:20,720
Speaker 1: a sneaking suspicion that for a lot of these hunter

749
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:25,440
Speaker 1: gatherer groups like that, they weren't interested in having domesticate

750
00:51:25,520 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: animals because they hadn't reached the stage that old worlders

751
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 1: had where Okay, man, there's kind of nothing left here.

752
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:35,680
Speaker 1: We got to come up with We've got to come

753
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: up with some way to keep all this going. So

754
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:40,680
Speaker 1: let's take those those goats right there. Let's see if

755
00:51:40,719 --> 00:51:43,440
Speaker 1: we can't tame them and get them to start following

756
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: us around and stuff. But a lot of the people

757
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:51,960
Speaker 1: in the West, particularly outside the agricultural region of the

758
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 1: of the Southwest, with the pueblos, I mean, they're hunters

759
00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: and gatherers, and they kind of don't have any need

760
00:51:57,920 --> 00:51:59,720
Speaker 1: or interest in domesticating anything.

761
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:01,759
Speaker 5: You know what backs you up on this, As you said,

762
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:05,319
Speaker 5: this is a great point you're making. Think about the

763
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:09,560
Speaker 5: end of the near end of the buffalo. What winds

764
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:13,920
Speaker 5: up happening when there aren't andy left. People start feeding

765
00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 5: them with bottles, hitching them up, keeping the pastures, putting

766
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:21,399
Speaker 5: them in barns. So it's like when there was yeah,

767
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 5: like you're saying, like if they had if people had

768
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:25,919
Speaker 5: got pushed and pushed and pushed to where the only

769
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 5: way you were going to have protein reserves was if

770
00:52:28,680 --> 00:52:31,959
Speaker 5: you had it in your yard and took with.

771
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:34,759
Speaker 1: You, and you would take the step because I mean,

772
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: think of this, you know. I mean, camels are nasty,

773
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:39,759
Speaker 1: you know, I mean they would be nasty to try

774
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:40,280
Speaker 1: to mistigate.

775
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 3: And horses.

776
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:42,640
Speaker 1: I mean, if you ever spent a whole lot of

777
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:45,279
Speaker 1: time around horses, and I have had horses for some

778
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:46,560
Speaker 1: of my life, I.

779
00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:47,360
Speaker 3: Mean, damnation.

780
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:51,200
Speaker 1: The first people who domesticated a horse must have been

781
00:52:51,200 --> 00:52:53,960
Speaker 1: pretty hard up. I mean those things, you know. The

782
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:56,920
Speaker 1: reason they buck, of course, is that because cats had

783
00:52:56,960 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 1: always jumped on their backs, and of course they can

784
00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:02,360
Speaker 1: kick and bite it and they strike with their fore feet,

785
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:04,520
Speaker 1: and I mean that would not have been an easy

786
00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:08,839
Speaker 1: animal to domesticate. So I think anybody who decides we're

787
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:11,440
Speaker 1: going to domesticate a horse or a camel's backs against

788
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:11,759
Speaker 1: the wall.

789
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:16,959
Speaker 2: And they never got there with prong worn.

790
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: I don't think they needed to. Yeah, I think that's it.

791
00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:21,880
Speaker 1: They didn't need to