WEBVTT - Lost Wonders, with Tom Lathan 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:15.120 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:17.599 name is Robert Lamb, and in today's episode, I'm going 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.360 to be chatting with Tom Lathan, author of the new 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.400 book Lost Wonders Ten Tales of Extinction from the twenty 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:29.000 first Century. It's out June tenth. Without further ado, let's 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:35.280 jump right into the interview. Hi Tom, Welcome to the show. 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:37.640 Hi that Rov, Thanks so much for having me. 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.000 The new book is Lost Wonders, Ten Tales of Extinction 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.880 from the twenty first Century, publishing June tenth here in 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:48.920 the States, came out earlier, what in November in the UK? Right, 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:49.839 that's right. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:50.240 Yes. 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.680 It tackles the sixth mass extinction event that we're all 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:58.320 living in by chronicling ten different recently extinct species. You know, 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:00.840 we've all read or heard about the I'm going Holo 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.240 scene extinction. But do you find that people have a 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.720 difficult time truly grasping what's happening or the scale of 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:07.400 what's happening. 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:11.080 Yeah, and I think it is a difficult thing to grasp, 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:13.560 you know, even for people who are following this and 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:16.840 who care about this. It is kind of crazy, and 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:19.040 I think, you know, mainly because of the timescale that 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:21.680 it's happening on the reason why I really wanted to 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:25.720 write this book, which is actually eleven species. It's ten stories, 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:29.720 but eleven species. Two of those species, their story is 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:34.640 so so similar, so intertwined. The two birds are mistaken 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.000 for one another. Even so, it made sense to tell 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.600 those in one story, as it were in one chapter. 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.600 But really the thing that unites the entire book is 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.440 that these are species that have gone extinct in the 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.960 twenty first century. The reason why I wanted to write 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:54.559 about those species in particular, it's because I really wanted 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.240 to get into the idea that extinction is unfolding all 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:01.120 around us, and that when we tip think of extinction, 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:04.840 it can be this this far flung thing from the past. 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:08.359 You know, virtually everyone's first encounter with the word will 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:10.160 be in the context of dinosaurs. You know, I was 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.440 a dinosaur kid. I was obsessed the Jurassic Park. That was, yeah, 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:15.919 we look like we're probably the similar age. So you 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:21.040 probably had your Jurassic Park phase, but absolutely either that 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.800 or the Dodo, and these are these are things from 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.000 the distant past, and I think that we all make 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:31.079 an unconscious association there with the word extinction and the past, 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.079 but it's it's obviously it's unfolding all around us. And 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:39.120 I actually came to the book, came to the idea 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.800 of writing the book when I learned that one of 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.680 these species, the Christmas eln in Pipastrell, had actually gone 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:48.280 extinct on my twenty third birthday. And when I learned 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:51.400 that fact, and I realized that I could remember, you know, 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:53.160 what I'd been doing that day, I could remember who 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.920 I'd been with, you know, I, well, most of most 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.359 probably can't really remember the evening, but I remember a 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:01.080 lot of the day. I could look back through emails 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.000 and texts, social media and really kind of get a 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.440 picture of what my world was like on the day 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:08.960 that as species went extinct. It was just a kind 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.440 of mind blowing realization, and it kind of got me 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.360 thinking about what else had gone extinct, you know, within 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:18.799 my lifetime, within the lifetimes of most people who read 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.760 the book. So that's what really kind of drove me. 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:23.760 Yeah, so you're kind of making something that's kind of 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.840 invisible to many visible and real in a way. 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.280 Yeah, you know, I think it's understandable that you know, 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.080 we don't necessarily as a species, we don't really necessarily 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:39.640 think about extinction that much, I would say, and it 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:43.200 can be quite a dour subject, and there's very often 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:48.600 you know, we are anthropercentric. We're obsessed with our own 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:51.800 stories and our own our own species. So you know, 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.360 an obscure back going extinct or a tiny snail going 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.600 extinct somewhere in the world isn't necessarily going to kind 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.000 of grab everyone's attention. I think it's really important that 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:05.120 we know what's going on, and you know, it probably 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:09.000 won't surprise anyone to hear that in all of these stories, 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:13.680 we're the cause, either in the here and now or 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:15.440 we set off the chain of events that have led 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:16.600 to these extinctions. 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.440 Now, I don't want to give potential readers the wrong idea, though, 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:22.800 because each chapter of your of your book is I 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.880 guess in a very real sense of tragedy, but there 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:29.320 that each chapter is also about like the wonders and 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:34.720 improbabilities surrounding these various species. So I definitely want to 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:39.200 get into some questions about those wonders and improbabilities as 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:42.520 we look at maybe a few examples. But how did 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:44.560 you how did you end up finalizing a list for 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:47.840 the book? Where did you? I mean, obviously have you 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:51.400 had the one in mind that corresponded with your your 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:54.280 twenty third birthday, But how about the rest of them? 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:55.120 How this come together? 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:58.680 Yeah? So, really, when I started the project, or actually 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.320 before I go into that, I think, Carle, echo what 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.520 you said. I think you're right. You know, extinction. I 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:06.839 think sometimes it's one of those issues that people might 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:09.920 not want to think about, because, you know, it just God, 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.680 it's just terrible, isn't it something going extinct, especially something 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:14.880 that's millions of years old. It's kind of mind boggling. 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:18.480 But one thing, and actually when I when I went 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:20.880 into writing the book, it was it was a doubt 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:22.800 I had, like, God, is this is anyone going to 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:24.400 want to read this? This is just going to be 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.200 so depressing. But as I actually got into the research, 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.320 and a big part of that research was actually talking 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.880 to the people who were there on the ground. In 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.360 some cases they may they discovered these species. In other 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.599 cases they'd taken care of the last individual of a 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:46.040 species and kind of dealt with the aftermath of extinction. 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.279 I actually really found a lot of grounds for hope 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:54.239 in that because it's really inspiring the lengths that people 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.680 go to in conservation. It's a field that is absolutely 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.640 jam packed with unsung heroes, people that go above and 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:06.520 beyond the call of duty every single day, who have 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:08.720 their who have their job, and there are just little 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.000 things that they do just completely off their own initiative, 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:13.520 just because they know they can make a difference. And 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:17.800 there are even stories of species being saved by people 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.920 who who aren't scientists, who are hobbyists. There's an example 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.520 in the book of a species of pupfish, which is 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:28.719 a tiny little fish from the American West, and also 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.239 also in Mexico. There are species spread across the arid areas. 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.760 And one particular one of the people that I spoke 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:40.880 to was actually a bus driver from New Jersey who 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:43.960 is a hobbyist. He just loves fish, you know, since 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.560 he was a kid, and he's actually become involved in 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:50.520 the efforts to save endangered species. He's when I spoke 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.120 to him, he had a critically endangered species just behind 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:57.679 him in his fish tank, and it's you know, obviously 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:01.560 there's there's no financial incentive for him, and I just 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.800 think that the more that you learn about these stories Yes, 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.560 the subjects of this book have gone extinct, but the 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:12.160 people who tried to save them have had other successes. 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:15.240 They've used the knowledge that they gained from trying to 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:18.640 save these species, which very often is uncharted territory. Some 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.680 of these extinctions happened because the scientists simply didn't know 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.920 how do we help this species. But from these experiences, 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.160 they've learned what they need to do to save other species, 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.160 and they've had success. And I just find that really inspiring. 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:33.640 But sorry to go on to your question. Could you 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:34.640 remind me again of what you are? 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:37.640 Oh? I asked just how you ended up coming up 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:38.160 with a list? 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:42.200 Yes, So, I as a journalist. I've been writing about 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:46.280 nature for a few years and it came out of 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:49.800 quite an organic conversation with my partner, who's also a writer, 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.440 and I just had this thought. I just wondered, you know, 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:55.840 what's I wonder what's gone extinct? You know, in the 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.400 last you know, in my lifetime essentially. So I contacted 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:03.080 the ice UCN, which is the International Union for the 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:07.160 Conservation of Nature, which is the global body that essentially 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:12.000 oversees the conservation status of everything. So they're the they're 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.200 the people essentially who give the final word and whether 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.160 something is endangered, critically endangered, extinct, extinct in the world, 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.840 and so on, And I just I just asked them, 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.360 you know, for a list of recent extinctions, and they 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:28.360 sent me back this enormous, sprawling spreadsheet full of hundreds. 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.520 I think it was up with the five hundred extinctions. 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:37.280 But thankfully that that spreadsheet included a by date of 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.880 extinction column, so I filtered by that, and these eleven 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:45.439 species are what kind of came out of that, and 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:47.880 I really kind of really that's when it really kind 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:49.560 of struck me. In fact, that's the moment where I 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.560 saw the the extinction date of the pipistre being my 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.480 birthday and made that connection and had that realization. 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:57.080 Well, I want to I'm want to ask about one 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.720 that I have to acknowledge that on the surface, this 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.360 one might not seem that exciting. And when I was 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.560 reading your book, that was my initial response. I was 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:07.680 kind of like, well this, I don't know how enthralled 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:09.040 I'm going to be by this one. But it ended 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.360 up being I think my one of my favorite chapters, 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:15.280 and this is the chapter dealing with the Saint Helena 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.800 Olive can you tell us a little bit about the 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:21.640 island of Saint Helena and the Saint Helena Olive. I 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.400 was not I was vaguely familiar with the island from 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.200 its prominence in history, but I was not familiar with 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:29.160 this organism at all. 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:34.880 Yeah, that is also one of my favorites. Before I 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:36.920 go into that, I think it's interesting. I was thinking 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.400 about this this morning. Actually, I think we're all kind 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:44.200 of conditioned to see wildlife in a certain way. You know, 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:46.800 if I don't know if you guys have I'm presuming 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:50.880 you guys have David Attenborough documentaries. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:53.120 National Hero, so that you know. I was raised on 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.760 his documentaries, and I think, as wonderful as they are, 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:57.960 they do condition you see the natural world in a 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.520 certain way. The focus is very much on charismatic species 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:05.760 or species that have some kind of quirk or fascinating behavior, 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.720 and I think that we tend to kind of unconsciously 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.719 and buy a sort of value system by which we 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:18.760 judge species on that basis. But actually, what I found 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:20.880 one of the really exciting things about writing a book 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:23.280 like this is that you know the decision of what 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:26.040 goes in this book It wasn't like I just picked 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.560 eleven species that fascinated me. It was decided for me. 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:32.600 And what that meant was I had to really kind 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.720 of approach species that, like you, I wouldn't necessarily think, Oh, 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:38.160 is this tree going to be interesting? Is this snail 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:41.439 going to kind of interest me personally? And I had 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.720 to find other ways of looking at them and find 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.240 the fascination and wonder in these species and that tree. 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:51.040 The Saint Lena olive is a particularly fascinating species because 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:53.560 it lived only on a single island in the middle 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:57.120 of the South Atlantic Ocean. And this island, Saint Helena, 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:06.559 is extraordinarily. It's nearly two thousand kilometers west of Africa, 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:10.560 slap bang in the middle of the South Atlantic and 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.160 when the it's so remote that when the International Space 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.360 Station is circling overhead, the astronauts on board are actually 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.880 the closest neighbors to the residents on Saint Helena. 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:21.800 Oh wow. 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:26.920 And remote islands are a very exciting place for biologists 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:32.720 because due to their isolation, species that end up making 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:37.240 it to those islands end up evolving in fascinating ways, 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.480 and you end up with these extraordinary ecosystems, and Saint 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:43.960 Nna is one of those examples. You know, there are 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.839 a few species that are capable of making that leap, 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:50.160 you know, crossing thousands of miles of ocean to reach 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.400 this tiny island, volcanic island. And what you end up 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:56.360 with in a place like that are things like trees 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.319 that have evolved from daisies, you end up with with 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:04.680 with earwigs, you end up with fluorescent wood lice, a 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.040 real bizarre kind of hodgepodge. There was a biologist that 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.360 I spoke to about the ecosystem who said he described 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.360 it as imagine if you just gave evolution another chance, 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.679 you just reset evolution on an island and allowed it 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.240 to kind of take a different course. This is the 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:23.800 kind of thing you would end up with, just this 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:28.160 kind of alien ecosystem. So, the Saint Lena olive is 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:33.160 a species of hardwood tree, and this family of tree species, 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.719 they all originate in Southern Africa, and they've made these 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:41.200 extraordinary journeys and radiated out Southern Africa and ended up 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:43.440 in islands in the Indian Ocean. And one of the 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:47.240 places they ended up was on Saint Helena, and it 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:51.920 was a mystery that really confounded scientists, because to get 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:56.640 to somewhere like Saint Helena, if you're a tree, your 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.640 seeds need to have a way to navigate thousands of 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:03.240 miles of ocean, and there are potential ways they could 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:06.360 do that. They might some seed pods can float, so 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:10.040 they would float there. The Saint Helena olive seed pods 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:12.920 didn't float. In fact, they were sterilized by saltwater and 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:17.280 other ways seas might be carried by the wind. They 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:21.360 wouldn't do that. They were quite large capsules. And the 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:24.559 other way that seeds can disperse is by growing a 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.160 fruit and being eaten by birds, same thing that olive 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:32.160 couldn't do any of those things. So the biologists, some 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:33.840 of whom I spoke to you for the book, they 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:37.080 eventually deduced that the way this species had to have 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.599 ended up on this remote island was by a bizarre 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:46.960 chain of coincidences, wherein an albatross or a similar seafaring 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:50.920 bird must have landed somewhere in southern Africa and picked 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.000 up a seed in its feathers or maybe in some 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.880 mud coating its foot, and then that albatross would have 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.240 ranged out over the ocean and eventually ended up at 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.680 Saint Helena, and just by chance, this seed had dropped 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:08.079 dropped from the feathers of this albatross, found its way 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:10.560 into the soil and the story of that species on 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:17.040 the island began, which is extraordinary. It's twelve million years old, 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:20.320 and it's so genetically unique that a genus had to 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:24.600 be created for the species. So the genus is the 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:29.880 classification that sits above species. And when you look away 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:33.320 from the charismatic species and species that are more often 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.560 kind of celebrated and featured in nature documentaries, you have 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:39.960 to kind of look at species in a different way, 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:44.560 and I think you find incredible stories when you start 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:46.360 to look at the natural world in a different way 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:47.800 and you can find that they're everywhere. 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.480 Yeah, there's a I just love this idea that it's 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:54.520 almost like this plant was not supposed to be there. 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.800 It's just such an incredible string of events that we 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.080 can kind of speculate on that that landed it there. 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:03.320 And I love the quote that you share about how 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:07.840 rare events happen over geological time. So, yeah, it's unlikely, 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:10.960 but given enough time, things like this do occur. In 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:11.760 this is the result. 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:14.400 Yeah, it's like, what are the chances. I mean, you know, 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.400 it's already just a seed being swept up in the 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.440 feathers of an albatross is already you know, it seems 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:23.120 quite an unlikely scenario. But then for it to have 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.000 dropped out just at the right place, it's kind of insane. 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:29.080 And that quote that you just mentioned, that was Mike Fay, 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.480 who was a geneticist from Q Gardens in the UK, 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:35.880 and Q Gardens did a lot of work to try 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:40.960 and conserve this species. He is, he was, he was 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.640 actually he led the attempt to propagate the species in 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:47.720 the end. But yeah, that was an incredible insight from him, 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:50.000 you know, he said, he said to me that, you know, 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.160 there were twelve million years for this to happen, and 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:54.560 it only had to happen once. 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.120 But of course another organism eventually came to the island, 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:02.360 and that would be us. This one was sheltered for 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:03.400 quite a while, right. 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:05.920 Yeah, I mean that's one of the it's a double 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:09.760 edged sword. You know, Isolation creates a fascinating breeding ground 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:16.520 for evolution, for interesting species to evolve and adapt. But 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:21.520 by the same token, when you have a species like 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:25.560 humans in the book I talk about how Saint Helena 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:29.600 was almost like a castle. It was fortified against the 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:31.920 outside world. You know, there were so few organisms who 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:34.440 could actually make that trip that the sea kind of 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:37.360 acted almost as a moat. And the arrival of humans 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:40.320 in fifteen oh six was essentially like lowering the drawbridge. 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:46.760 Enabled things like goats, cats, all kinds of invasive species 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:51.440 of plant. Rats are obviously a huge problem pretty much 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.960 everywhere they're introduced, and that's what happened on Saint Helena, 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:00.240 and it was an island that in history are it 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.560 was discovered, it was compared by many to Eden. It 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.919 was this verdant spot in the middle of the ocean 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:10.440 that was really kind of life sustaining for sailors who 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.439 at that point in time had to journey all the 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:18.760 way around Africa, around the bottom of Africa in order 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:22.480 to access Asia and India. So it was a really 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:25.800 big problem, you know, fighting off things like scurvy, restocking 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:28.679 with water, and Saint Helena was just this kind of 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:31.359 oasis in the middle of the ocean. But you know, 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:33.560 a few years later it was decimated. 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:36.520 In what led did this decimation, So, I mean. 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:41.680 One thing was the introduction of invasive species. Another thing 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.880 was habitat destruction. So once the island was settled by 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:50.200 the English East India Company, homes had to be built. 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:53.040 Enslaved people were brought to the island in order to 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:57.400 create some kind of economic purpose for the island. That's 0:17:57.400 --> 0:17:59.920 how it was viewed as the English East India comp 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.280 at the time described places like Saint Helina as factories. 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.760 That was their ambition for this place. So everything there 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.320 was a resource in order to pursue that aim, and 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:17.199 so massive deforestation things like goats were a particular problem, 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.679 eating native vegetation, and once you lose that vegetation, you 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:24.359 then get soil erosion, and there are these crazy reports 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.320 of the soil erosion being so bad that the sea 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:31.480 turned black around the island. And once you get into 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:33.880 that state, there's very few things that then can then 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.800 kind of grow back and get a foothold in the 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:41.679 soil which has essentially been completely transformed. And in Saint Helena, 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:46.320 all of these threats kind of conspired and the landscape 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.920 was transformed and native species shrank further and further back 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:52.320 to the center of the island, which is where the 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:58.880 last Saint Helena olive was found in the nineteen seventies and. 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:01.120 You read about that. Now we just an empty pot, right, 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:03.359 it's labeled as Saint Helena. 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:08.520 Yes, So in Q Garden's Temperate House, which is this fantastic, incredible, 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:14.119 decadent Victorian glasshouse in London and Q there is you know, 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:16.119 species from all over the world there, and then in 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.879 one corner there's just this empty terracotta pot, which is 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.880 an extraordinary kind of symbol of what could have been. 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:38.480 Now, you mentioned goats and the destructive powers of goats 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.200 when they're introduced to places like this, they factor into 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.399 at least one of the other extinction stories that you share, 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.440 and that is the Pinta Island tortoise of the Galapagos Islands. 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:53.280 This is another far flong island dwelling species, right. 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.960 Yeah, yeah, so a lot of these species were island 0:19:57.000 --> 0:20:02.320 dwelling species. For the reasons we discussed the Pinter Island tortoise. 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:07.560 It's yeah. The goats that came to Pinter Island were 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:12.720 introduced by fishermen and there were three of them deposited 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:18.040 in the nineteen fifties and that population swelled to two thousands. 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:20.000 In fact, you know, I actually don't off the top 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:24.119 of my head. I can't remember the exact number, but basically, 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:26.879 you know, the goats were far more efficient. If you 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:31.120 imagine a tortoise versus a goat in terms of grazing 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.840 and things like that, the torses really were no match. 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.080 You know. The Galapagos, because of its isolation, is a 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.840 place that you know, there were never things like goats there. 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.199 There were never those kind of specially adapted herbivores. And 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:46.960 it's a problem not just for tortoises, but also the 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:50.880 vegetation that tortoises feed on, because if you don't have herbivores, 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:54.240 plants don't learn to adapt to repel herbivores. So things 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:59.240 like thorns, certain kinds of chemical compounds, that all kinds 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:05.040 of adaptation that might make native vegetation resilient to goat. 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:08.400 It just it doesn't have that vegetation doesn't have time 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.280 to adapt when you suddenly release something like a goat 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:12.440 on the island. 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.080 Now, with the Galapagos tortoises in general, I feel like 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.840 these are some amazing creatures that we can They are 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.240 often featured in documentaries, the sort of Attenborough documentaries that 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:27.000 we've been discussing in the sort of documentaries that very 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:30.159 much were inspired by that kind of content, which is great, 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.040 but we can almost kind of grow numb to them. 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:35.320 I don't know if you've found this to be the 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:39.200 case as well. Like we see the Galapagos tortoises, maybe 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:42.119 if we're lucky we get to see one in the zoo, 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:45.600 or if not, a Galapago's tortoise and maybe an aldabra 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:48.800 tortoise that is in some way similar. But when you 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.840 really observe them like they are just so fabulously weird 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:53.760 and wonderful, right they are. 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.800 Yeah, I think that's key. I mean, I think appreciating 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.760 nature is it's always about looking a little closer because 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.640 I think think you're right with something like a giant tortoise. 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:06.199 You know, we've we've seen that, We've all seen that 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:11.000 many times. We kind of I think we think we 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:14.600 always think we understand the things we've seen many times, 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:16.720 so you know, our brain knows how to categorize that 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:20.239 so we can kind of just move on. But you know, 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:23.960 like any species, they are really fascinating there. In the 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:27.080 case of the giant tortises of Glapagos, I mean, what 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:29.760 fascinated me the most was how they got there, you know, 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:32.879 which similar to the same thing, not olive. It is another 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:38.679 incredible dispersal story. So something like a tortoise, something that 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:44.080 large and cumbersome and slow traversing an ocean, is just 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:49.680 as unbelievable as a you know, tiny seed. What they've 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:54.040 discovered is that the tortoises or their ancestors must have 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:57.240 been washed out to see from South America, which is 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:01.880 where their most recent ancestor lived, and the tortoises would 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:05.280 have had to have survived for god knows how long, 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:09.320