WEBVTT - Ep. 06: Survivors From A Lost World 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:05.440 Since Americans encountered the beautiful Western prong horn, We've struggled 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:08.560 to understand an animal that looked like a gazelle but 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.640 couldn't jump, could outrun all its predators by twenty miles 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:15.920 per hour, yet like bison, was on the cliff of 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:20.840 extinction by nineteen hundred. I'm Dan Flores and this is 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:25.840 the American West, brought to you by velvet Buck. Still 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.280 in barrel. Velvet Buck arrives this summer, just in time 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.400 for the season that calls us home. A portion of 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:37.120 every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers to protect public lands, 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:56.880 waters and wildlife, enjoy responsibly survivors from a lost world. 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.160 From the accounts of all the Indians I have seen, 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:07.520 it is probable there may be a species of antelope 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:12.200 near the headwaters of Red River. Those words were written 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:17.280 by a young Virginia named Peter Custis, who from Louisiana 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.760 was taking a wistful look up the Red River of 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:25.039 the South in the year eighteen oh six. I'll have 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.560 much more to say in the next episode about Custis 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:29.479 and why he was on the edge of the West 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.200 that early in the nineteenth century. But the Louisiana purchase 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:36.760 had just doubled the size of the United States, and 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:42.400 Custus's wonderment about a likely African type antelope roaming the 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:46.959 horizontal Yellow Prairies was just the kind of story literary 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:52.280 Americans were hearing from their native Spanish and French predecessors 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:57.840 in the West. And while accounts of unicorns, giant horned serpents, 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.320 and mountains made of pure salt in the West were 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:05.000 like the early stories of mermaids in New England waters, 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:12.680 the antelopes that Custus heard about were very real. I've 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.280 long been drawn to pronghorns, the more accurate name for 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:21.000 America's gorgeous striped western antelopes, at least since driving a 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.760 dusty two track along the Powder River of Wyoming many 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:29.519 years ago and watching a young buck pronghorn running at 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.920 fifty miles an hour clocked by the speedometer alongside me. 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.800 Suddenly crossing the road in front of my bronco at speed. 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:43.760 He turned straight towards a barbed wire fence, but rather 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.000 than jumping over it, more quickly than I could register 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:51.840 the move, he turned his body sideways and darted between 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:57.440 the strands. The impact of thwanging explosion of white hairs 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:02.880 drifting in the wind as he trotted off, daydreaming of, well, 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:07.120 what do prong horns daydream about? As my panic for 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.520 him subsided, I decided I ought to try to find 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:24.480 out when Americans finally made it to the Great Plains 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.360 at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We call these 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:32.600 fabled animals antelopes for good reason, since in size, form, 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.960 and speed they resemble no other creatures quite so much 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:40.040 as the antelopes and gazelles of Africa. But prong horns 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:46.120 are not true antelopes. The antelope capri day antelope goats 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:51.440 emerged as a distinctly American family of animals roughly twenty 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:56.520 five million years ago, but paleontologists still don't agree on 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:01.559 their earlier provenance. They may be anciently related to the Servidae, 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.720 the deer family, but there are some modern biologists who 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:09.560 think pronghorns closest living relatives are in the family Giraffiday, 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:16.640 the giraffes whose legs resemble pronghorn legs. Whatever their origins 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.480 in ancient America, modern pronghorns are actually. 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:20.839 Just like us. 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:26.360 There are species that today represents the sole remaining survivor 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.120 of a large family of animals and thus a rarity 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:34.440 in nature. Fossil records in North America show that the 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:41.440 antelope Caapridae actually consisted of two major, big subfamilies. The 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:46.799 earlier of these subfamilies included several species of graceful, dainty 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:53.159 ungulates possessed of permanent, multi branched, antler like horns. This 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:55.400 group of creatures was extinct by the end of the 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:59.240 Miocene around five point three million years ago, but they 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.400 gave rise the other subfamily, which soon replaced them on 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:07.520 the grasslands that were then starting to emerge in Western America. 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:13.080 This subfamily of larger antelope goats were high speed runners, 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:18.320 but with quite different horns made around a deciduous sheath, 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:22.640 with some versions sporting four horns and others as many 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.719 as six. There was even a dwarfed four horned version 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.880 not much larger than a jack rabbit, so this quite 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.960 real version of a jackalope still spreaded across the Great 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:40.640 Plains as late as ten thousand years ago. Occasionally, four 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:45.400 horned fawns are still born to pronghorns as one genetic 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:49.039 reminder among a great number. As we're about to see 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:55.080 of the pronghorn's deep and varied past Antelo capra Americana. 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.240 Our present day pronghorn from this evolutionary family, dating back 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:03.240 twenty five million years, is now the last living representative 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:09.240 of evolution's wild genetic experimentation, with America's answer to the 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:18.960 gazelles of Africa. Back in nineteen ninety seven, a biologist 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.760 named John Byers, who had spent years studying pronghorn behavior 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:27.760 and natural history on western Montana's National Bison Range, stepped 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.320 up to answer most of my questions about the mysterious 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:37.480 nature of the American pronghorn. Buyers's provocative argument finally made 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:41.440 clear much about an animal that had seemed inexplicable to 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:46.640 its admirers. Many of us had noted the pronghorn's apparent disinclination. 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.880 It's probably not a true inability, but a disinclination to 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:55.320 jump fences. Why would a creature as fleet and athletic 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.679 prefer to go through barbed wire fences rather than over them? 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:04.960 With long suspected pronghorn evolution as the answer, and Buyers agreed, 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:09.720 a grasslands creature shaped by the open country niche it occupied, 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:14.080 pronghorns never experienced any selective pressures to be able to 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:18.520 jump obstacles that produced the kind of drama I'd witnessed 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:23.560 in Wyoming. But unfortunately, it could also become a maladaptation 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.000 in a fenced modern world, and one that played a 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.960 critical role in pronghorn history over the past one hundred 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:36.840 and fifty years. Pronghorns are one of only a handful 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.960 of great plain species that managed to survive the epic 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.720 extinction crash that ended the Pleisisain ten thousand years ago, 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:49.239 a best shary simplification that still stands as the most 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:54.240 profound ecological alteration in America since the extinction of the 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:59.000 dinosaurs in the biography of a species like us or 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.920 prong horns. How however, the Pleistocene was only a few 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:06.480 heart beats in the past. So what if much about 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.760 the behavior of modern prong horns has little to do 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.960 with their present circumstances. 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:13.840 As we find them. 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.440 The primary predators of prong horns for the past ten 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:21.720 thousand years we know, have been wolves and coyotes, neither 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.680 of which is capable flat out of running much more 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:28.160 than about forty to forty five miles an hour. Prong Horns, 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.320 on the other hand, are the ferraris of the American 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:35.440 natural world. Their delicate bones in frames and remarkably low 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:39.320 body fat keep them light, while broad nostrils and a 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:44.640 huge windpipe deliver turbocharged oxygen to their outsize lungs and 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:49.319 heart pedal to the metal. They top eighty five kilometers 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:53.280 per hour at a dead run, some fifty five miles 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:55.480 an hour for the one hundred and twenty pound males 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:58.600 and as high as sixty five to seventy miles per 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.880 hour for the low females. That's as fast as an 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:07.559 African cheetah. Prong Horns can also run at ninety percent 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:11.679 of top end for more than two miles. Like horses, 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:16.840 to detect predators at great distances, they too evolve gigantic eyes. 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:21.480 Prong Horn behavior features other oddities. 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:25.560 Like Thompson's gazelles and other African ugults pursued by big cats. 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.560 Prong Horns have a powerful inclination towards a form of 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:33.959 grouping known as the selfish herd, with much of their 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:38.520 expression of dominance and rank focused on their physical position. 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:44.280 Inside these herd groups, the lower ranking, less dominant animals 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.360 get pushed to the outer margins, where if prong horns 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:50.520 were on the African veild, the low ranking members would 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:55.359 be in much greater danger from predatory attacks. But as adults, 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.839 American prong horns have no predators at all because of 0:09:59.880 --> 0:10:03.960 the impossible speed. Once they're grown, pronghorns are subject to 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:08.439 predation only as fonts. If a prong worn fund survives 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:10.959 to six or eight months of age, it will join 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.640 all other surviving fauns in living to the ripe old 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:19.440 age of eleven or twelve years old. Yet adult pronghorns 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:23.800 still persist in grouping and still fight for position in 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:29.240 those groups, as if predation somehow mattered to them. So why, 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.400 in a world where gray wolves and coyotes and maybe 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:36.280 occasionally a mountain lion are their threats, do prong horns 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:41.800 express so much protective excess. The question John Byers posed 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:46.920 then was this, what if most of their physical characteristics 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:51.920 and behavior are actually adaptations to a lost world that 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:56.599 winked out around them ten thousand years ago, leaving pronghorns 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.600 still living out their existence among us reacting to a 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:06.400 world of ghosts. The fascinating question, then, is whether the 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.840 whole suite of pronghorn behaviors, and not just their lack 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:13.120 of jumping ability has to do with the lost world 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.079 of the Pleistocene Great Plains. Prog Warns emerged in their 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.080 modern form at a time when the American Planes was 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:23.040 the scene of one of the great assemblages of savannah 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.720 step creatures anywhere on Earth, a more diverse collection of 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:31.240 animals than present today in the Serengetti or the Massaimara. 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:35.559 Along with the elephants and longhorned bison and enormous herds 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:39.479 of horses, along with bands of numerous types of camels 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:42.720 and deer, and of course elk and prong horns, the 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:47.520 Pleistocene planes featured an array of truly formidable predators that 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:52.200 hunted and scavenged. Among all those millions of ungulates, prog 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:55.480 Warns then spent the better part of four million years 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.800 perfecting their ability to survive. Where large and fast predators 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:05.080 looked hungrily at them over bright teeth. There were grass 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:11.040 aisle active and aggressive short faced bears. The smilodons are 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:16.360 sabertoothed cats that attacked mammoth calves, a steadily changing lineup 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:20.800 of wolf and coyote packs. There were jaguars and cougars 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.840 along with the steppe lion, a far larger version of 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:29.440 the African lion, as predators of the fastest grazers, the 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:33.320 horses and prong horns. There was a slender, limbed lion 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:38.000 size running cat known as the scimitar cat, along with 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:43.400 a particularly rapid and legging American hunting hyena. And there 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:47.679 were two species of large American false cheetahs, cats from 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:52.520 the same evolutionary line that produced cougars, but with elongated, 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:58.000 curved spines, long legs, and wide nostrils for gulping air 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:03.720 in open country pursuit are in rock slide ambushes. These 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.440 vanished creatures of the ancient planes, at least so biologists 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.800 like Buyers now argue, however long ago they passed the 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:15.120 veil of extinction, or why pronghorns seem mysterious and almost 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.560 alien to us now, why they struck early observers like 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:22.040 Lewis and Clark as possessing a speed that resemble more 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:26.360 the flight of birds than anything else. Pronghorns are at 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:32.920 once breathtakingly beautiful yet outrageously overbuilt relics that have outlasted 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:37.440 the conditions that created them. They offer almost our only 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:49.760 remaining glimpse of the American Pleistocene. Like most wild ungulates 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:54.120 then are now, pronghorns follow a yearly routine that varies 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:58.960 considerably by the seasons. At the conclusion of the September rut, 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:02.920 the exhausted bucks, which would once have been prime targets 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:08.439 for predators in that condition, disguised themselves by mimicking the females. 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.640 They shed the outer husk of their horns, and they 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:17.480 joined the female herds. Since the Pleistocene, winter has been 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.560 a time of migration for northern pronghorns. A few years ago, 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:24.640 with a friend who lives in Jackson Hole, I photographed 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.760 the famous Sublet pronghorn herd, which summers in Grand Teta 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.440 National Park but still migrates more than two hundred miles 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:37.440 south to near Green River, Wyoming in winter. This inclination 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:42.320 to migrate before severe winter storms was adaptive in the wild, 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:47.119 but couple with their inclination not to jump obstacles, ultimately 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:51.680 reproduced tragedy in the late nineteenth century, when legendary winters 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:55.880 in the eighteen eighties sent pronghorns southward by the thousands 0:14:55.960 --> 0:15:00.400 into a new world of barbed wire in the spring. 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.520 From a year old until they're three, young pronghorn bucks 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:08.520 segregate themselves into bachelor bands and spend most of their 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.840 time in all male groups. There, they express group position 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:16.960 dominance just as females do, but they also spar and 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:21.240 practice moves they will later use in earnest. Around three 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.440 years of age, pronghorn males become solitary for most of 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:27.440 the spring and summer, during which time, at least in 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:31.080 most pronghorn country, they set up territories of perhaps one 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.080 hundred and fifty acres whose perimeter they sent mark and 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.800 will use to cloister a harem of females to hide 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:43.440 from other males during the rut. In other circumstances, male 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:48.880 pronghorns protect harems of females, but without defending a territory. 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:54.280 Rather than our prime resource location, pronghorn territories actually seem 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:59.760 to be merely tactical space for defending females. Pronghorn bucks 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:04.320 fight over females too, in violent, quick and quite often mortal, 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:09.280 as high as fifteen percent of the encounter's fights. Reproduction 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:13.200 success is the prime directive, and some prong horned bucks 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.040 win the lottery. Others spend their entire lives without ever 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:23.000 siring any offspring at all. Then there is female selective behavior. 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:28.000 Female prong horns, which reach sexual maturity at eighteen months 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.040 of age and give birth every spring for the rest 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:35.680 of their lives, find themselves in harems that male pronghorns 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:41.080 judiciously protect during the brief September mating season. During the rut, 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:45.840 females repeatedly break away from their cloistered harems, however, joining 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:49.520 the other harems of other males and inviting males to. 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.080 Compete for them. What exactly are they looking for? 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:59.520 Apparently they're setting up contests of stamina, speed, and resolve 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:04.040 but between various males and observing the outcome before surrendering 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:08.040 themselves up to be bred by the winner, the pronghorn 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:12.800 male who demonstrates his genetic fitness by running faster and 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:17.679 longer than his rivals. But if you're already almost twenty 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.440 miles an hour faster than your fastest predators, why would 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:25.280 females set up games of natural selection and choose who 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:29.920 will impregnate them based on fitness as demonstrated by speed, 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:36.080 Because apparently you never know when American cheetahs are going 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:40.400 to show up on the planes again. Prong worn females 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:44.199 have evolved another strategy that's interesting with respect to what 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:49.040 it says about both past and present. After a remarkably 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.719 long gestation period of some two hundred and fifty two days, 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:57.600 they give birth not to single offspring, but to litters, 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:02.960 specifically litters of two fawns every spring, and they do 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:08.000 this throughout their reproductive lives. Twining, as well as the 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:12.359 week's long hiding of fawns which lie motionless and silent 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:16.720 for most of the day, are clearly responses to serious predation. 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:19.399 They too, probably. 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:23.600 Emerge as adaptations to the distant past, when pronghorns lived 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:24.919 in a world where they. 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:27.159 Were prey for three or four different predators. 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:32.320 Today, it means that coyotes, the principal predators of pronghorn 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:36.320 fawns for probably the last million years, are able to 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:40.000 pull down as much as fifty percent of a pronghorn 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:46.720 fawn crop without appreciably affecting pronghorn populations with litters, and 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:52.760 with their extremely high adult survivability rates, pronghorns were anciently 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:56.399 prepared to survive the culling of even so efficient a 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:01.200 predator of fawns as coyotes. But a mother pronghorn will 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.920 attack and fight a coyote to keep it from her faunds. 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:08.880 Pronghorn bucks don't defend faunds. Some biologists argue that this 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:13.639 is another leftover behavior from the Pleistocene, when fast predators 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.720 scattered groups of pronghorns across wide territories, and a male 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:21.359 pronghorn thus could never be sure that a fawn it 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:26.840 defended was its own. As cutschewing rumnants capable of processing 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:31.720 forbes and shrubs, pronghorns demonstrate yet another adaptation to the 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:36.800 ancient savannah ecology of Western America. For maybe four hundred 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:42.119 thousand years, pronghorns had been evolving a mutualistic relationship with 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:47.480 the bison herds. Bison i had survived the Pleistocene extinctions 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:51.719 and had increased dramatically in their wake, in numbers that 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:56.920 likely range somewhere between twenty and thirty million animals, depending 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:01.320 on climate cycles. So waves of bison and waves of 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:08.480 pronghorns cropping the same country produced mutually beneficial results. Cropping 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:12.879 the grasses and ignoring the often poisonous species like local weed, 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:18.960 rabbit brush, and sagebrush. Bison grazing encouraged forbes and shrubs 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.840 in their wake, coming along after the bison herds and 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:28.080 concentrating instead on the flowering plants and shrubs. Pronghorn browsing 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:33.440 shifted the advantage back to the grasses. Both preferred succulent 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.800 vegetation sprouting up after recent fires, which was a fact 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:47.040 that Native people long noted. So deep time history created 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:52.080 an entirely unique situation for pronghorn antelope. Since pronghorns had 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.439 out survived almost all their predators, had ended up with 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:59.199 few competitors for the often toxic shrubs and forbes they ate. 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:04.280 We're read everywhere there were vast horizontal planes, and they 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:09.720 increased into the millions. The writer Ernest Thompson's Seaton famously 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:13.320 estimated that in eighteen hundred, the moment in time when 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:17.280 pronghorns were in the verge of discovery by formal Western science, 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:20.280 there were as many as forty million of them in 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:25.000 the West. More recent estimates have advanced original figures of 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:26.800 something like fifteen million. 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:28.520 What we can. 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:31.120 Probably say is that on the Great Plains, where there 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:36.879 ranges overlap most precisely, pronghorn numbers very likely matched those 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:37.840 of buffalo. 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:40.920 We've long thought of the historic era. 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:44.600 Great Plans as the Great Bison Belt. In truth, it 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:49.639 was just as much the Great pronghorn Savannah. Their range 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:53.520 doesn't appear to advanced eastward beyond the ninety seventh meridian, 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.119 though at least in places like Texas and Mexico, and 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:00.400 it doesn't seem to have gone beyond the ninety third already, 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:04.640 and farther north in Iowa and Minnesota. But they were 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:08.880 found westward all the way to Baja California and into 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.919 eastern Oregon and Washington. Southward on the continent, prong horns 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:17.640 were able to colonize the desert grasslands of Mexico all 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:20.840 the way down to the vicinity of Mexico City at 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:25.680 twenty degrees latitude, considerably south of where bison ever ventured. 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:29.680 Although prong horns can derive adequate water from the plants 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:33.680 they browse in optimal wet years, they do need to 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:35.840 drink about three and a half quarts of water a 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.240 day during hot weather, which limited their numbers in the 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:47.439 Great Basin the Mohave, Chihuahuan, and Sonoran deserts. Abundant and 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:51.280 widespread as they were, prong worns attracted the attention of 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:55.520 Indian hunters from the very beginning of human arrival. There 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:58.679 a butchered prong horn remains in some of the Clovis 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:02.880 and Folksome archaeola logical sites, so at least some paleo 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:07.200 hunters did take the occasional pronghorn to vary a diet 0:23:07.240 --> 0:23:08.840 of mammoth and bison cuts. 0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:11.320 But it took fifteen or twenty. 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:15.280 Pronghorns to equal the caloric possibilities of a single giant bison, 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:19.080 and since prong worn flesh was so very lean, prog 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:23.200 worns commonly ranked well down the list of pursued prey 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:28.720 among Southwestern peoples. In fact, pronghorns ranked lower than rabbits, 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:31.600 even though it took sixteen jack rabbits to match the 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:35.879 edible flesh of a prong worn Native people, from hundreds 0:23:35.920 --> 0:23:39.040 of generations of experience with pronghorns knew how to exploit 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:43.800 their weaknesses and utilize pronghorned leather horns and hoofs for 0:23:43.840 --> 0:23:48.359 a variety of purposes. One aspect of pronghorn natural history 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:52.920 that made them vulnerable to Indian hunters was their disinclination 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:56.680 to leave their home ranges. Parts of the West yet 0:23:56.760 --> 0:24:01.520 show fading evidence of ancient pronghorn correct such as the 0:24:01.560 --> 0:24:06.200 Fort Bridger trap site in southwestern Wyoming, where local herds 0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:10.560 evidently were enclosed and pushed to run in circles until 0:24:10.640 --> 0:24:14.719 they were exhausted and could be clubbed to death. Another 0:24:14.840 --> 0:24:19.800 technique involved v shaped pairs of fence wings, often miles long, 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:24.639 made from piled up sagebrush, that sent stampeded pronghorns into 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:29.120 corrals or pits. There are also references from a variety 0:24:29.119 --> 0:24:32.960 of sources of horse mounted planes indians engaging in the 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:37.600 kind of pronghorns surround They often used for bison, again 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:41.040 with the goal of getting a pronghorn band to run 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:44.560 in circles until the spent and stumbling animals could be 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:49.840 ridden down on horseback. According to the writer Richard Irving Dodge, 0:24:50.000 --> 0:24:54.199 when pronghorns collected into the thousands in wintertime, some tribes 0:24:54.280 --> 0:24:58.919 even used rifles in pronghorn hunts from horseback, reacting as 0:24:59.000 --> 0:25:03.399 if pursued by editors. The antelope crowded together in their fright, 0:25:03.640 --> 0:25:08.120 Dodge wrote, and thus were easily shot down. When bison 0:25:08.160 --> 0:25:12.080 were scarce, planes hunters preferred antelope to deer because you 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:14.960 could take an entire herd of prong horns at once. 0:25:15.760 --> 0:25:19.920 Because local herds could be completely extirpated, by mass techniques. 0:25:20.000 --> 0:25:24.200 Like these, Indian hunters often spared some animals in order 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:29.200 to preserve the herd stock, whatever the technique. Unlike bison 0:25:29.359 --> 0:25:33.240 or elk, prong horns butchered out as all protein and 0:25:33.560 --> 0:25:37.199 very little precious fat. Their lean body mass may be 0:25:37.280 --> 0:25:41.040 the reason no tribe ever bothered to domesticate prong horns, 0:25:41.320 --> 0:25:49.800 which are actually easier to tame than any African antelope. 0:25:49.880 --> 0:25:54.400 Among Europeans, prong horns were first encountered by numerous Spanish 0:25:54.480 --> 0:25:58.159 travelers on the Southern Plains and in California, where they 0:25:58.200 --> 0:26:01.679 were known as barndos, and by French travelers to the 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:07.760 Great Plains, who called them cool de Blanc. Francisco Hernandez's 0:26:08.000 --> 0:26:12.960 sixteen fifty one Natural History of Mexico described and even 0:26:13.080 --> 0:26:18.159 provided an initial illustration of the western pronghorn, But like 0:26:18.280 --> 0:26:22.480 so many charismatic animals from the American West, pronghorns did 0:26:22.520 --> 0:26:25.840 not come to the official notice of Enlightenment age science 0:26:25.960 --> 0:26:29.600 until the time of the Jeffersonian expeditions into the New 0:26:29.720 --> 0:26:34.280 Louisiana Purchase. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark collected the type 0:26:34.320 --> 0:26:38.080 specimen of the species for Western science in eighteen o five, 0:26:38.680 --> 0:26:41.919 Lewis and Clark made more than two hundred pronghorn entries 0:26:41.920 --> 0:26:45.440 in their journals, although they found the animals like elk 0:26:45.520 --> 0:26:50.400 and deer far less numerous west of the continental divide. 0:26:50.440 --> 0:26:55.680 Back east, George Ord of Philadelphia Naturalists and Ornithologists, who 0:26:55.800 --> 0:26:58.480 was working up many of the Lewis and Clark specimens, 0:26:58.840 --> 0:27:02.600 published a science to description and the Lenaean name for 0:27:02.640 --> 0:27:07.840 the pronghorn in eighteen eighteen. Ord recognized that, despite their 0:27:07.880 --> 0:27:13.240 similarities to African antelopes and gazelle's, pronghorns were actually unrelated 0:27:13.359 --> 0:27:16.919 to any existing family of animals that he could find. 0:27:17.760 --> 0:27:22.119 So Antilope capra day the family name he devised, and 0:27:22.320 --> 0:27:26.639 Antilope capra the genus Ord fashion for an animal that 0:27:26.720 --> 0:27:30.200 seemed to combine the traits of both antelopes and goats 0:27:30.560 --> 0:27:34.680 have stood ever since. One of the best selling books 0:27:34.760 --> 0:27:37.760 of the West in the nineteenth century was the trader 0:27:37.960 --> 0:27:42.560 naturalist Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, first published in 0:27:42.680 --> 0:27:46.320 eighteen forty six. This is what greg had to say 0:27:46.600 --> 0:27:52.639 about the pronghorn. That species of gazelle, known as the antelope, 0:27:53.119 --> 0:27:57.440 is very numerous upon the high plains, This beautiful animal 0:27:57.600 --> 0:28:02.040 is most remarkable for its fleetness, not bounding like the deer, 0:28:02.400 --> 0:28:06.320 but skimming over the ground as though upon skates. The 0:28:06.359 --> 0:28:10.840 flesh of the antelope is but little esteemed, though consequently 0:28:11.160 --> 0:28:14.120 no great efforts are made to take them. Being as 0:28:14.240 --> 0:28:18.199 wild as fleet the hunting of them is very difficult 0:28:18.240 --> 0:28:23.840 as well. The commercial market hunt of wildlife in the West, 0:28:23.960 --> 0:28:26.880 though and more of that to come in future episodes, 0:28:27.280 --> 0:28:30.840 had been underway in earnest since at least the eighteen twenties, 0:28:31.680 --> 0:28:35.000 but so long as beaver lasted or bison roamed in 0:28:35.119 --> 0:28:39.240 numbers enough to produce robes, hides, and tongs, and as 0:28:39.280 --> 0:28:42.960 long as wolves and coyotes remained targets of traps and 0:28:43.040 --> 0:28:47.960 poisoned bait, the market hunt left pronghorns largely alone. 0:28:48.080 --> 0:28:50.240 Prong Horns had already reaped. 0:28:49.920 --> 0:28:53.800 The whirlwind in mining areas like California, where they were 0:28:53.800 --> 0:28:58.000 corralled and killed to feed miners, but was not until 0:28:58.040 --> 0:29:02.280 bison numbers began to drop that prong horns finally started 0:29:02.280 --> 0:29:06.560 to attract attention in the slaughter of Western animals for profit. 0:29:07.840 --> 0:29:11.440 With more than five thousand professional hunters in the West 0:29:11.600 --> 0:29:15.880 in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties. Once every last 0:29:15.920 --> 0:29:19.520 buffalo had been pursued to ground, hunters looked to see 0:29:19.720 --> 0:29:22.520 what they might turn their guns on for a final 0:29:22.680 --> 0:29:26.960 killing spree. Big horned sheep in the bad lands lasted 0:29:27.000 --> 0:29:30.480 only a handful of years, and those in the mountains 0:29:30.560 --> 0:29:35.000