WEBVTT - Ep. 711: So Are Dire Wolves Back From The Dead Or Not? 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.280 This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:15.280 bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:19.320 Listening to podcast, you can't predict anything. 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.800 The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.040 Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.520 for ELK. First Light has performance apparel to support every 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.400 hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.640 dot com. F I R S T L I T 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:41.120 E dot com. All right, everybody hot, damn. 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:44.800 It's first episode is doctor Renela. 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.560 Oh you stole the okay, Phil, cue up the music. 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.879 I was you weren't supposed to introduce yourself that way. 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:54.560 It was gonna be a surprise. 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:03.200 My daughter teases my ears. With that hat on? Do 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.760 you know what you can tell by the hat? What 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:08.679 you got going on? 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:11.680 Yeah? Like lesser people with the square hat, they don't. 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:14.160 They're not they don't have that hat. Notice that you've 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:18.200 got an octagon going You get a different You get a. 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:21.679 Taking photos of Steve with his diploma. 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:24.800 Hey man, you guys, just is there a tier above 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:26.720 that of other hands? 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:28.119 No? 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:29.479 I think that's the top half. 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:31.039 Okay, it's like Pope after that. 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:34.840 I don't know that they make a better. 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:35.040 Hat than that. 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:37.399 Where'd you put that diploma? 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:41.479 Well, that's just the you know, a little inside. 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.800 Baseball here, it's just a mod that's a prop. 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.000 My actual diploma, my actual diploma is a big framed thing. 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:49.120 And you can imagine that. 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:56.120 It'll be right over your head probably right here is 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.520 the time of my life. Down there is the tassel. 0:01:58.600 --> 0:01:59.720 Go on a certain side. 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:08.320 It's pinned. Oh, it's pinned in place. M a couple 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:11.239 of things. You guys think it's all like. You guys 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:13.280 think it's all grave. You haven't that happen to you. Well, 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:18.000 I'll tell you something, something you might not realize. So 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:18.560 you go up. 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:20.079 You go up. 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:23.480 It's in the it's in the arena, you know, like 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.400 one hundreds, like six hundred and fifty students, all their parents. 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.040 You march up and the seat they give you is 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:33.760 right by the right in the line of action. 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:35.080 Mm hmmm. 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:37.040 And it's televised. 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.600 So you stand up and you get what they call hooded, 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:45.760 which you can't really see in that picture because it's 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.079 all going on behind your hood's all going on behind you. 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:50.720 They give you that. You give up, and you give 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:53.920 your speech, and I gave a speech called There's No 0:02:54.000 --> 0:03:00.520 Plan B. Then you sit down and then they have 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:05.639 to hand six hundred and fifty diplomas. But you're on 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:09.200 the camera is aimed in such a way that you're there. 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:10.400 Not doing anything. 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:15.560 They've warned you, don't fiddle around, don't look at your phone. 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.480 I fell asleep during my graduation. There's a picture of 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:22.359 me sleeping. 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:24.880 I was wide away because you had to sit there 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:25.600 for all those people. 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:27.000 How long did that take? 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:28.040 A couple hours? 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:28.880 Yeah? 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.320 Yeah, So there was a morning and an afternoon ceremony. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:33.320 They split the schools. 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:34.480 Which one were you? 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:36.040 I was in the morning. 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:37.600 Sce Is that one more prime time? 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:40.600 I don't think that anybody looks at it that way. 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:46.520 They split the schools. So my honorary doctor was from 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.600 the School of Forestry and Conservation. So that school all 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.360 the foresters were coming up. Which is like a stressful 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:56.560 time to be coming out of a forestry program right now, 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:58.520 because that was like, you know, so many of those 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:00.440 kids that come out of that forestry program, I'm going 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:04.400 to land management agencies. It's stressful. 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:08.120 A doctorate in an area outside of your your area 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:08.960 of expertise. 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:18.680 Yeah, well, like technically, like I think the forestry part, 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.520 but the School of Forestry and Conservation covers a lot 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.720 of areas that are of relevance. The fact I went 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.240 and had I went and did like a Q and 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:29.599 A with the forestry students who have a lot of 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.080 considerations around conservation funding and other issues. So I don't 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:35.799 think they mean that I'm like as good as Seth 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.320 as telling what trees are what right. 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:42.119 Jean Seth was in forestry school. 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.159 There's a test where you have to identify a hundred 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:49.719 and some trees by the bud, not the leaf a stick. 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:53.200 Bet you Doug Dern could do that. 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.440 Yeah, he's pretty good. So they were doing a podcast 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:00.800 on something hardly anyone know about except for people who 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:03.200 listen to this show. This is old subject for people 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:08.520 who listen to the show, but other than that, everybody 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:10.120 found out about them from Game of Thrones. 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:13.640 Dire Wolves. 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:16.680 This is our current estimate. Is this to be our 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.200 second and a half episode on this subject. 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:21.120 Yeah, because we had a first one. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.880 We had a first one which was episode four six six, 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:27.960 which was called dire Wolves and Ancient Hunting Dogs, which 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.320 was with Doctor Angela Perry. 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.160 That was number one, and then our half one half one, 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.279 touching on it with today's guest. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:41.320 With today's guest Matt James from Colossal Bioscience, as we 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:44.320 touched on dire wolves, so there's one point five. At 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.000 the conclusion of today's episode, the count will be up 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:52.400 to two point five. If you if you did learn 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:54.200 about that there was such a thing once upon a 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:58.599 time called a dire wolf from Game of Thrones, which 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:03.680 was a misleading portrayal, then you might have caught headlines 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:09.479 such as everywhere, a headline everywhere on the planet that you 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.320 could possibly have a headline. Scientists say they have resurrected 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.680 the dire wolf, the return of the dire Wolf, the 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.279 dire Wolf is back, Scientists revived the dire wolf or 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:25.239 something else. Massive amounts of coverage everywhere about Colossal Bioscience's 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.960 dire Wolf project. So today we're going to dig into 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:33.800 all kinds of questions around that, including the big one, 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:37.479 why why would you do that? What exactly are they 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:42.440 and uh is it in fact? Like how do you 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:48.520 make it relevant to conservation? But first the news here's 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:55.760 my news item. We already covered my my heightened level 0:06:55.800 --> 0:07:00.360 of everything, which is my ascendency. 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.919 Certainly a framing coming home from my ascendency. 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:07.800 We drive all the way home and I'm pulling into 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:10.400 my you know, like not my driveway, but our circle 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:14.880 where our house is off, and I see a crow 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.760 like we pull in and up ahead of me, I 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.920 see a crow like regurgitate what I take to be 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:31.640 a synthetic item, baby blue like a baby. And I'm like, 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:33.560 and I already tell my kids, like, what is that 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:36.480 thing doing? And all of a sudden, he's he like 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:41.679 deposits out of his mouth two robin eggs he carried 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:47.400 at the same time, mm just standing in the road, 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:51.760 and he like spits two robin eggs out. He starts 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:59.280 pecking at one and pulls out a little robin undeveloped robin. 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.120 At this point, my younger boy and my daughter out 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:10.760 of the truck, heading toward the crow, which leaves its 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:13.720 whole project in the road and flies off. My older 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:16.320 boy is now heading to he's like making plans to 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:20.600 kill the crow in retaliation. But my daughter gets there 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:23.840 and she comes back to the truck and in her 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:32.439 hand is a little writhing, featherless pink robin, and on 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:34.760 the other hand is an egg with a little crack. 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:37.840 I know where this is going. 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.959 Well, I make my older boy dispatch the I make 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.319 him kill the one that isn't going to survive. He 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:49.120 use his boots, but his fingers. Then my daughter goes 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.000 around everywhere trying to find a robin ness to put 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:52.480 the egg in. 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:54.439 And I'm telling you it what works. It's cracked. 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:57.480 And then she's getting upset and more upset and can't 0:08:57.520 --> 0:08:59.640 find a nest. I said, but I want to return 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:03.480 to what I telling you. It'll never live. It's cracked, 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.760 so now is living in it's buried, no garden. I 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.160 thought it was gonna's nutrients will return. 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:14.839 I thought this was like, you're gonna put it under 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:15.880 like a pen picture. 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:21.520 She was, she was, She's like, I know, it's expensive, 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:28.000 we need to get in. I'm like, sweetheart, it's cracked. 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.040 Like there's nothing you're gonna do. You're gonna put it 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.480 so it's returning to the earth. In fact, it's gonna 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.600 turn into raspberries. No, it's it's actually where it's positioned, 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.400 it will be an acorn squash. 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:43.440 We've got. 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.000 You've got to rob a nest up under our portrait 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.320 now and I'm just waiting. You know how those babies 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:51.320 they can't. They'll come out of the nest, but they 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.760 can't really fly real well, when that happens, the dog's 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:56.360 going to eat them. 0:09:57.280 --> 0:09:58.360 This is just gonna happen. 0:09:58.400 --> 0:09:59.760 Well yeah, I mean, what am I gonna do? 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:05.080 Mo the whole nest? No? I would be smart. You 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:07.120 know what was one of the more interesting things we've 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:09.920 had on the show over the years is, you know 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:11.960 the myth that if you like go near the egg 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:14.800 as abandoned or something. You remember when we had you know, 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.800 the whole thing if you touch a fawn, remember we 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:26.160 had Randall Kaufman and Matt from Keith or montef He's like, well, 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.280 that's true. None of our colloring projects would ever work out. 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:31.319 Where we like. 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:37.480 Net them, handle them and then they stand up and 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:38.480 go back with their mom. 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:43.440 You know, uh, probably I was raised to believe it's. 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:44.840 A good assumption to operate under. 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.120 That's what I was telling my daughter to She says, well, 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:48.720 she won't take care of it anyway, And I'm like, 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:49.280 that's a myth. 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:50.280 But they tell you that so you. 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.959 Don't mess with stuff, but it's not true. It's just 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.800 the manipulating you into not they're manipulating you into not 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:02.920 messing with things you shouldn't mess with. Two book thing 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.640 News is one forever for those of you awaiting it. 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:11.319 Our guide to wilderness skills and survivals out in Japanese. 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:13.160 How many other languages don't know? 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:14.679 I'm not sure of any of the life. 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:15.480 I don't think any other. 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:17.520 So they usually buy. When they buy, it'll get it'll 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.560 go to like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America. This is 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:23.040 the only translation I'm aware of. 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:26.480 But you, being you know, a. 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:28.560 Little adjacent to. 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.480 You know, here we go significantly Chinese, perhaps you can 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:34.240 help me with something. 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:39.400 Yep, there are there are some kanji. Uh, there's there's Yes, 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:43.680 there are some script characters that are similar. But I 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:45.040 long long forgot how. 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:47.520 In China do they read books backwards or forwards? 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:55.040 So traditionally it's compared to us backwards, and it's not backwards, right, 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:57.280 it's not backwards to them, and let's be friends. 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:02.960 I'm looking at this from American right to left. 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:05.800 If I'm not mistaken, right, I think that's what it 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:06.640 is traditionally. 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.640 Okay, that's interesting. You already kind of answered my question. 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:12.600 Traditionally because I have a Japanese fish Cleaning Book, which 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:14.959 is my favorite book of all the books I've ever owned. 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:17.760 It's like process descriptions on how to clean all kinds 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.440 of fish. But if you read it the right way, 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:25.840 the American way, the fish get put back together. So 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.839 you're like, this is a book about resurrecting fish. But 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:34.720 you're supposed to go back to what would be for us, 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:37.480 back to front. So when I picked this up, I 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:39.920 expected it to be that they would have reversed. 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.760 It, but they because it's more modern now. 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.280 So you might if you lived in Japan, you might 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:49.360 grab a book and you might encounter a book that 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:53.920 has read from from our perspective, back to front, or 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:55.640 you might pick up a book that's read front to 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:59.280 back and it would just be like whatever, You're adaptable 0:12:59.320 --> 0:12:59.640 either way. 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:01.920 I think I think more. I think books that are 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:07.320 printed uh these days are just done in the I 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.280 don't know if I mean Western orientation. 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.439 Me and doctor Randall were trying to find the translator online. 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:22.640 We found her LinkedIn. I couldn't read it being in Japanese, 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:24.640 just in Japanese. I just wanted to get her impressions. 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:26.000 I wanted to get her impressions. 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:27.800 I thought that was a bootleg copy. 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:28.520 I saw it. 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:31.880 It's interesting how they put a dust jacket on a paperback. 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:33.880 I thought that too. I also thought this version was 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:35.920 prettier than that's a gorgeous cover. 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:40.600 Yeah what what didn't the American one? 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:41.440 Americans aren't that. 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:43.479 Americans aren't that discrete. 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:48.400 As well, like the the Japanese have this wonderful art 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.000 at packaging things up. So if you if you go 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.840 there and you buy I don't know, cookies, there's a 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:59.520 problem because there's a ton of waste, but individual cookies 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.120 have their own wrapping and then these wrapped individual cookies 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.840 are in a wrap box maybe with wrapping paper around it, 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:12.000 as you know, presentation as a reflection of respect and 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:13.160 of mil and so. 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:17.040 It's not ell that. It's like it's three times the 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:20.080 pack international business. 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:25.160 Yeah, three that's right, that's right. I mean they have 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:29.200 a huge, like plastic waste problem in Japan, but I'm 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.680 not surprised that there is a cover on a soft bound. 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:35.920 Book another paper But oh, you know, I had a 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:38.720 joke I liked a lot and when I put that 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:41.200 Japanese book on Instagram, and I said, if this book 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:43.640 would have come out in nineteen forty we'd still be 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:44.680 fighting in the Pacific. 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:50.240 That was pretty funny, get it, That's pretty funny. 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:54.320 This catch our Kids book, Catch Crayfish, Count Stars is 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:55.040 out in paperback. 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:55.760 Yep. 0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:57.440 So I was saying, if you had a kid that 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:00.240 you don't like enough for a hardcover, or who's out 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.080 well behaved enough to deserve a hardcover. 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:05.479 Or if you have a kid that trashed the hardcover. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.320 Now there's every kid in America should deserve a soft 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:11.120 cover too. 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:12.600 Let there's no kids that are that bad. 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:18.600 Number one New York Times bestseller. This book, Catch Crayfish, 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.880 Count Stars fun projects, skills and adventures for outdoor kids. 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.080 So if you want to raise outdoor competent children who understand, 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:28.160 as Doug durn puts it, life and death on the 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:34.239 farm or life and death on the asphalt with bird eggs, 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:37.480 this is this is a phenomenal book to get your 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:40.560 kids involved with. It's just projects. There's things they do 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.200 and ways to engage them with discussions about ecology and 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:50.520 biology and everything outdoors. Yep. May the gold being if 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:52.680 you see a mouse and you say to your kid, 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:53.720 grab that, it'll grab it. 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:57.440 And then ideally turn it loose. 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:01.200 Well, I don't mean just the fact that they'll, Yeah, 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:04.040 you know, that's why I let my kids tell them 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:06.920 grab my mouse, You're probably gonna grab. It's doing a. 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:08.920 Lot of spiders. 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.240 We have an Iraq noophobia problem. 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:15.360 But I've accepted that it's true. 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.600 It's not just I think it's a psychological like. I 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:24.200 think it's a legitimate psychological thing, the Iraq and noophobia. Now, 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:29.120 this is harrowing. In Florida, a sixty one year old 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.400 woman and her husband were in a canoe in central Florida. 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:37.960 They went over they passed over an eleven foot alligator. 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:45.200 It's it seems like it's spooked and that's the noise 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:50.160 of it spooking in shallow water, flipped the canoe and 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:56.680 then decided and then killed the woman Tiger Creek near 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:59.240 Lake Kassimi, south of Orlando. 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:04.800 How harrowing be a rough way to go? I think 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:07.040 be worse than getting eaten by a grizzly. 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:12.480 Bear her husband? How hairing for her husband? Oh way 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:14.840 worse than getting killed by grizzly bear. There's just not 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:16.359 a lot of romance in now. 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:23.040 No hopefully drowned first, I guess. 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:29.240 Yeah. Just the question is is. 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:31.960 Are more people getting killed by alligators these days and 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:33.080 in days past. 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.560 Well, here's the real question. You're right, but there's a 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:38.320 way to arrive at that that. I like, I can't 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:41.439 remember who introduced this idea. Oh, I think it was 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.520 a podcast guest. Remember we had Adam Pancrats on the show, 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:52.439 and well, there's there's there's so like, so grizzly bears 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:56.280 dust off, Like, that's that's crass. Grizzly bears kill a 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.720 person or two every year in Montana. Right, So you'd 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:03.080 look be like, as grizzly bears have recovered and hit 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:07.280 recovery objectives, and there's like more bears at higher populations, 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:12.080 you'd be like, are bears more likely to kill a person? 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:15.680 Be like, well, let's look at what an individual's bear. 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:21.960 An individual bears chance of having a violent encounter with 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:22.440 a human. 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:24.680 We're a run in with a human to begin with, 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:26.360 and you look at human populations. 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:28.040 Yeah, but the thing but what I'm getting at is 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:34.359 like a bear today, a grizzly today in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:39.320 a grizzy today an individual bear is not that bear 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.480 is not more likely to maul a person. No, it's 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:48.560 not like their psychology has changed. There's more of them. Ye, 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.560 So if you went point me, if you went and 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:56.280 looked at Florida, like you know, alligators were had endangered 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:01.040 species protections in the seventies. Now they got one point 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:01.960 five million. 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:07.520 Golf course ponds and canals in people's backyards. 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.359 So don't Yeah, it's not like gators are like individual 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.480 gators are like, man, I wouldn't have before, but now 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:16.800 I'm gonna bite a person. It's just like there's you know, 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:21.000 so it might even be that alligator, an individual alligator 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:29.719 still has a point oh whatever percent chance of doing it, 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.000 and an individual alligator is not like more likely to 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.480 attack a person, but you just have more opportunities. But 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:37.280 still be like, what a couple of people. I don't 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:39.040 know how many people get attacked every year in Florida. 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.600 Couple die. 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.800 We've talked about a bunch that died, But I mean, 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:47.760 what is it like five six people per year? That's 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.200 easy in March get bit in Florida. How many people 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:52.800 get bit in Florida by an alligator? Divided? 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.280 I think Spencer is checking up on that. But in March, 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:01.639 this same area where this woman got was killed, another 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.800 woman was killed brilliantly. Yeah in March. 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:08.000 Same Did that one have something to do with a 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:09.080 dog rescuing a. 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:09.840 Dog or something? 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:12.040 Oh, yeah, there's something about a dog. 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.920 Because yeah, eighteen hundred grizzly bears and the lower forty 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:18.560 eight eighteen hundred grizzly bears kill a couple people a year, 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:25.440 so and so they're more dangerous per bear than gators. 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:27.320 If you have one thousand gators. 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:28.960 Yeah, but the other thing is you got tons of 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:30.920 dinky gators that you can't really count. 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:33.240 You have to start counting them out a certain size. 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.200 I guess Since nineteen forty eight, there have been four 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:40.280 hundred and fifty documented alligator bites in Florida. Thirty of 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:46.200 them were fatal. It's a eighty years seven years span. 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.040 I think we should finally get you on a gator 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:52.080 hunt for an episode. 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:54.400 Yeah, you know, I'd like to. I just never had 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:56.359 not that I don't want to. There's a lot of 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:57.320 stuff to do in this life. 0:20:57.359 --> 0:20:58.080 There's a lot of stuff to. 0:20:58.080 --> 0:20:58.600 Do in this life. 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:00.000 The gator nuggets are really good. 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:03.040 Yeah, I've had friends give me sax a gator me. 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:04.440 I just have never like. 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:11.520 Planned it, you know what I mean? This got us 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:14.760 thinking about this. Did you know that there used to 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:21.480 be it's so crazy and eleven thousand pound alligator? 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.119 You mean used to be like ten years ago, like 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:28.640 ten million years. 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:31.440 Ago, seventy eighty million years ago. 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:33.960 My colossal probably doesn't want to work on this. 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:37.800 Yeah, that one's a little too old. It's old. 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.680 Six to eight foot long, teeth. 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:44.400 Six to eight inch long? 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:53.080 What am I saying that would be? But do you 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:58.520 maybe mean inches? Yeah? Yeah, that's right, six to eight 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:00.720 inch teeth. There's a picture of one eating. There's like 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:02.399 a like a fanciful. 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:04.200 Painting of an artist rendering. 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:06.840 Oh yeah, but it's like it's not an actual photo. 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:13.160 R a t rex, which I love. 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:14.480 Yeah, you know what I mean. 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:17.840 But you can't rule out an eleven thousand pounder. 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:20.760 Uh. They found the bones from one in North Carolina 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.480 in eighteen fifty how long, I don't know. 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:26.800 I mean, that's an alligator the size of an orca 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:31.359 gown with. 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:34.560 Your kid, and they nudging up to the edge of 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:35.360 the pond. 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.760 And the head would be the size of this table. 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:39.959 Mm hmmm. 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:44.320 You'd seen him from so far away. 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:48.199 That's the thing I think about with dinosaurs is like, 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:53.919 what's that big ass dinosaur, the big plant eater. If 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:58.160 you're driving down the road, you'd be like, hey, look, 0:22:58.200 --> 0:22:59.400 five miles away, there's one. 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:00.920 Do you know what I mean? 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:08.520 It'd be so obvious. Uh quick? How many other news 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:09.080 items we get? 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:13.920 It's even bigger than an orca. 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:18.520 This is an interesting deal because we had a wildlife 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:22.920 We had a retired US Fish and Wildlife Service agent 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:25.280 on the show not long ago talking about the smuggling 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:30.400 of wildlife parts, and there's this is reported that there 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:35.480 has been a post COVID decline in the smuggling of 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:47.280 panglin scales and elephant ivory, related to a Chinese encyclopedia 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:53.520 of medicine having said perhaps there is no health benefit 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:57.520 to panglin scales, I love it and ivory. 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:02.960 How was the eye every tied to medicine? 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:03.520 I don't know. 0:24:04.119 --> 0:24:06.440 And I feel like the black market is always operated 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:11.560 outside of what traditional medicine would say is useful for 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:15.600 curing or doing something. So I can't believe that, like 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:20.679 they're attributing this to an official journal saying, hey, penguins 0:24:20.720 --> 0:24:23.359 don't help your libido or whatever. 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:31.000 In twenty nineteen, smugglers crime syndicates were shipping vast quantities 0:24:31.040 --> 0:24:39.080 of the two products from Africa into China. Says trafficking 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:45.760 fell during the pandemic has remained low. Law enforcement efforts 0:24:45.800 --> 0:24:48.439 have helped. Falling prices have helped, and it goes on 0:24:48.480 --> 0:24:52.439 to say another possible factor is that in twenty twenty, 0:24:52.480 --> 0:24:58.880 Panglin scales were removed from an important encyclopedia of Chinese medicine. 0:24:59.080 --> 0:25:00.080 We found out why. 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:05.280 Ivory quote ivory can purge the body of toxins and 0:25:05.440 --> 0:25:06.919 enhance the complexion. 0:25:07.119 --> 0:25:10.720 Sure, now do you just like rub a piece of 0:25:10.760 --> 0:25:11.680 ivory on your face? 0:25:12.520 --> 0:25:14.800 I think you grind didn't eat it? You know, obviously 0:25:15.240 --> 0:25:17.480 not backed by science, but that's the. 0:25:17.880 --> 0:25:20.240 My wife was getting off her toxins out last week, 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:29.600 she did a cleanse, and I was like, what toxins specifically, 0:25:30.280 --> 0:25:33.840 the same way anybody answers it. They don't know what? 0:25:34.200 --> 0:25:36.600 Tell me what toxins are coming out of you? 0:25:38.800 --> 0:25:41.679 Pepass which we can't get out of us. 0:25:43.840 --> 0:25:45.760 I had a social media hissy fit. 0:25:45.680 --> 0:25:50.920 When and when uh, the Trump administration canceled some federal 0:25:50.960 --> 0:25:53.720 spending on the lamp ray problem in the Great Lakes, 0:25:53.760 --> 0:25:56.400 which I thought was a huge mistake and perhaps quite 0:25:56.400 --> 0:26:00.560 expensive in the long run, and better news they're following 0:26:00.680 --> 0:26:06.879 through now with trying to keep big head carp, silver carp, 0:26:06.960 --> 0:26:09.239 the asiatic carp species out of the Great Lakes, And 0:26:09.240 --> 0:26:12.439 in fact, which surprised me, is they've now working with 0:26:12.520 --> 0:26:18.640 Michigan's Governor Jennifer Whitner. Whitmer, the administration is fast tracking 0:26:19.920 --> 0:26:24.720 a barrier system to keep carp going through the Chicago 0:26:25.000 --> 0:26:28.960 Canal and into the Great Lakes. There's often there's also 0:26:29.040 --> 0:26:32.879 been a big argument among ecologists and fisheries people is 0:26:33.119 --> 0:26:35.800 would those carp even like the Great Lakes anyways? 0:26:37.560 --> 0:26:37.600 Do? 0:26:37.840 --> 0:26:38.200 I mean? 0:26:39.640 --> 0:26:41.800 The current thinking the only way to figure that out 0:26:41.920 --> 0:26:44.359 is let them get in there, right, Like what you don't? 0:26:44.400 --> 0:26:46.679 I mean, that could be devastating to the Great Lakes. 0:26:46.800 --> 0:26:49.320 The current thinking is they would. Because some people said that, 0:26:49.359 --> 0:26:53.280 well they probably wouldn't like it. The current thinking is 0:26:53.320 --> 0:26:57.119 that they would like it and that it would be devastating. 0:26:57.200 --> 0:26:59.800 Yeah. Well, the problem with carpe is they seem to 0:26:59.840 --> 0:27:01.720 like almost everybody at water they've ever been in. 0:27:03.480 --> 0:27:10.399 I liked everything. Yeah, all right, we're gonna do a 0:27:10.400 --> 0:27:12.119 little background on dire wolves here. 0:27:13.119 --> 0:27:15.360 You mentioned Game of Thrones twice earlier. Have you seen 0:27:15.400 --> 0:27:15.960 Game of Throne. 0:27:16.080 --> 0:27:18.560 Never I'm aware of it, have you? 0:27:19.200 --> 0:27:19.400 Yes? 0:27:19.520 --> 0:27:21.080 But I wanted your review on it. 0:27:21.600 --> 0:27:24.600 Never watched it, Okay, I watched serial drama like it. 0:27:24.680 --> 0:27:26.159 I don't watch serial dramas. I wouldn't like. 0:27:26.160 --> 0:27:27.440 Did you watch Narcos? 0:27:27.800 --> 0:27:27.960 Oh? 0:27:28.000 --> 0:27:30.000 Wait, Narcos? 0:27:30.040 --> 0:27:31.240 And then what's that? 0:27:31.800 --> 0:27:35.000 There wasn't there a Danish serial dramas. 0:27:37.160 --> 0:27:40.080 Fantasy stuff other than Star Wars. 0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:41.720 A little bit of Star the Star Wars guy, a 0:27:41.760 --> 0:27:44.520 little bit of Star Wars guy. I don't watch serial 0:27:44.560 --> 0:27:49.320 dramas because I don't with the exception of what did 0:27:49.320 --> 0:27:49.879 you just name that? 0:27:49.960 --> 0:27:53.560 I did watch Danish drama and. 0:27:53.960 --> 0:27:58.520 There's no date yet, okay, d Narcos, Yes, that's it. 0:27:59.000 --> 0:28:03.280 Oh there's another one, push your one, Pushura or something. 0:28:03.280 --> 0:28:10.879 An Italian an Italian series. I did watch that, Tina. 0:28:09.680 --> 0:28:13.840 No Gomora well, because Gomora was a book, was a 0:28:13.880 --> 0:28:19.240 nonfiction book about the Italian mafiosa. Out of that came 0:28:19.440 --> 0:28:23.919 a film called Gomorra, which was a devastating film about 0:28:23.920 --> 0:28:26.720 the Italian mafia. And then out of that so I 0:28:26.840 --> 0:28:30.520 watched because I was liking Gomore of the book, Gamore 0:28:30.600 --> 0:28:33.840 of the movie. I watched some of the Gomora the series. 0:28:35.000 --> 0:28:37.359 What I not that it matters. What I don't like 0:28:37.400 --> 0:28:39.320 about serial dramas is after a while, I want to 0:28:39.320 --> 0:28:40.120 get out with my life. 0:28:40.720 --> 0:28:41.760 Did you watch Breaking Bad? 0:28:41.880 --> 0:28:42.400 Can you? 0:28:42.800 --> 0:28:44.880 I've got the top five here. See if you've seen 0:28:44.920 --> 0:28:48.920 any TV dramas of all time from the University of 0:28:48.920 --> 0:28:52.520 Pennsylvania and the Sopranos. No The Wire, no Breaking Bad, 0:28:53.120 --> 0:28:57.680 Mad Men, no Game of Thrones. Okay five, I trust 0:28:57.680 --> 0:28:57.959 you now. 0:28:58.080 --> 0:28:59.200 I'm not hacking on it. 0:28:59.280 --> 0:29:00.560 I just can't sure. 0:29:00.640 --> 0:29:03.200 I need to move on, like I can't give you 0:29:03.240 --> 0:29:04.000 know me movies. 0:29:04.040 --> 0:29:06.680 I could have watched in that amount of time and 0:29:06.680 --> 0:29:07.280 then I could start. 0:29:07.280 --> 0:29:08.840 Here's the other problem I have, and I don't want 0:29:08.840 --> 0:29:11.240 to take up too much of our time. Here I 0:29:11.280 --> 0:29:14.360 can start to smell the writers keeping it going. The 0:29:14.360 --> 0:29:16.320 minute I get a whiff of them keeping it going, 0:29:16.600 --> 0:29:20.120 getting extra season or two of yeah it is, Oh brother, 0:29:20.240 --> 0:29:22.000 you know you can just smell them keeping it jump 0:29:22.040 --> 0:29:23.000 the shark. Yeah. 0:29:23.080 --> 0:29:23.200 Well. 0:29:23.200 --> 0:29:25.160 The good news about Game of Thrones is it wasn't 0:29:25.160 --> 0:29:26.680 that they were struggling to keep it going as they 0:29:26.720 --> 0:29:29.400 were struggling to condense it into what they did. Oh, 0:29:29.440 --> 0:29:31.920 because the books are just so the books kept it 0:29:31.920 --> 0:29:35.120 going for them. 0:29:35.360 --> 0:29:38.280 Oh, interesting thing here just about wolves in general. So 0:29:38.360 --> 0:29:40.520 the two dire wolves were going to discuss today are 0:29:40.560 --> 0:29:44.120 Romulus were named Romulus and Remus, which are fitting for 0:29:44.200 --> 0:29:47.480 wolf names because Romulus killed his brother. 0:29:49.000 --> 0:29:51.000 Was that part of your thinking, Well, we were. 0:29:50.880 --> 0:29:53.880 Hoping nobody wolves are hipped to frat. 0:29:54.080 --> 0:29:56.480 Sorry, yeah, exactly, it was fitting and plus the you 0:29:56.480 --> 0:29:59.000 know race by a she wolf and h. 0:29:58.920 --> 0:30:01.440 There's a statue in in sus Saint Marie Michigan of 0:30:01.520 --> 0:30:06.000 Romulus and Remus suckling from the mother's the wolves teats. 0:30:06.080 --> 0:30:09.880 Ye, do you feel like rolling pictures for the video audiences. 0:30:09.680 --> 0:30:12.680 There on the little. 0:30:14.080 --> 0:30:16.239 You want to start with the then adults? I mean 0:30:16.240 --> 0:30:18.640 they're now what Matt, you said, seven. 0:30:18.360 --> 0:30:22.040 And a half at seven point five months old, and 0:30:22.080 --> 0:30:24.080 they're tipping the scales nearly your past. 0:30:24.120 --> 0:30:26.880 Their little white fluffy pops. 0:30:28.440 --> 0:30:33.800 Cute. Uh let me let me kick off a little bit. 0:30:34.720 --> 0:30:37.000 Despite characters like that Game of Thrones are supposed to 0:30:37.040 --> 0:30:41.480 be up north, right, it is a fictional Uh yeah, 0:30:41.880 --> 0:30:44.960 it's like show in Canada. 0:30:46.560 --> 0:30:49.480 It's a whole world. So there's like up north stuff and. 0:30:49.400 --> 0:30:52.960 Down the family associated with dire Wolves. They're in the north. 0:30:53.080 --> 0:30:55.800 Yes, despite because in my thing I have here. I 0:30:55.800 --> 0:30:59.520 wrote this like, despite characteristics otherwise, dire wolves were Southern animals. 0:31:00.560 --> 0:31:04.080 They ranged throughout the lower forty eight. They liked the 0:31:04.120 --> 0:31:06.440 south and the hot so much that four thousand died 0:31:06.440 --> 0:31:11.880 in La Have I told my story eighteen times about 0:31:11.880 --> 0:31:14.240 my first date with my wife twenty Okay, yeah, at 0:31:14.320 --> 0:31:18.520 least there were dire wolves in Mexico. There were dire 0:31:18.560 --> 0:31:22.280 wolves in South America. I think there's one instance of 0:31:22.280 --> 0:31:26.040 a dire wolf showing up in extreme southern Canada. A 0:31:26.080 --> 0:31:28.920 way to think about it, which I realized looking at maps. 0:31:31.800 --> 0:31:36.520 If you look where turkeys are, that's where dire wolves were. 0:31:37.320 --> 0:31:40.200 Little teeny bit in Toronto, like a little teeny bit 0:31:40.320 --> 0:31:41.160 in Ontario. 0:31:42.120 --> 0:31:44.240 The National Park Service says they were found as far 0:31:44.280 --> 0:31:45.160 north as Alaska. 0:31:45.400 --> 0:31:46.120 That's not true. 0:31:46.240 --> 0:31:48.720 I'm just telling you what the National Park Service says. 0:31:48.880 --> 0:31:50.960 We've debated that and we haven't even talked about it 0:31:51.000 --> 0:31:52.600 with our multiple people. 0:31:52.840 --> 0:31:56.120 But the one guy who debated it said that they 0:31:56.120 --> 0:31:58.240 weren't found at the Lebrea tar pits. 0:32:00.680 --> 0:32:03.000 Who said that Angela Perry. 0:32:02.840 --> 0:32:07.280 No, he was an older fella, got it got mildly 0:32:07.360 --> 0:32:09.640 uncomfortable because I was like, no, I've I've seen him there. 0:32:09.840 --> 0:32:11.200 We talked about that with the old person. 0:32:11.320 --> 0:32:17.960 Yeah, we didn't, and we did. I could probably find it's. 0:32:17.680 --> 0:32:22.560 Not talking about the guy that fishes muskies all the time. 0:32:23.560 --> 0:32:24.800 When we can come back to this. 0:32:25.120 --> 0:32:27.480 I think you're I think you're talking about a dream sequence. 0:32:28.520 --> 0:32:31.479 They're definitely in lebre A lot of them, A lot 0:32:31.520 --> 0:32:31.719 of them. 0:32:32.040 --> 0:32:33.760 I have to tell my story about my first date and. 0:32:33.800 --> 0:32:34.560 My wife all over. 0:32:35.000 --> 0:32:35.680 I know, I know. 0:32:37.560 --> 0:32:40.880 Oh, do you mean seem to have like Jack Carr? No, 0:32:41.000 --> 0:32:44.880 I'm not, Jack said not. Sorry, we can visit this. 0:32:45.160 --> 0:32:45.800 I will find it. 0:32:46.840 --> 0:32:48.920 We know there'ner. 0:32:49.720 --> 0:32:53.640 No Jack Corner. He was on the show Big Dinosaur Guy. 0:32:54.280 --> 0:32:55.680 Spencer was talking about. 0:32:55.680 --> 0:32:57.480 John Corner is composed. 0:32:57.560 --> 0:32:59.880 They seem to have like water Florida and Texas has 0:33:00.200 --> 0:33:04.680 a dire wolf. I don't believe we have good archaeological 0:33:04.720 --> 0:33:08.000 sites showing humans and dire wolves together. How do you 0:33:08.040 --> 0:33:09.920 feel about that statement, Matt. 0:33:10.320 --> 0:33:12.480 I think that's directionally accurate. 0:33:15.680 --> 0:33:17.360 If you took a dire wolf skull and a gray 0:33:17.360 --> 0:33:20.959 wolf skull and you take fifteen measurements on it, this 0:33:21.040 --> 0:33:25.320 is a good little tidbit. Four of those measurements are different. 0:33:27.160 --> 0:33:28.560 I'd like to know what a black bear and a 0:33:28.600 --> 0:33:30.920 grizzly bear. How many measurements are different on their skulls. 0:33:31.560 --> 0:33:34.040 So if you take like somehow like you're doing like 0:33:34.600 --> 0:33:41.440 skull morphology, they have four differences wider, wider, and burlier 0:33:41.440 --> 0:33:50.800 than a gray wolf. Colossal says that ninety nine point 0:33:50.840 --> 0:33:55.240 five percent similarity between a gray wolf and a dire wolf, 0:33:55.520 --> 0:33:57.480 which always sounds like a lot until you think about 0:33:57.480 --> 0:34:00.760 some other things. They say, we have sixty percent. We 0:34:01.040 --> 0:34:04.000 humans have sixty percent genetic similarity with a carrot. 0:34:07.600 --> 0:34:08.280 In this world. 0:34:08.280 --> 0:34:11.080 What I'm pointing out is in this world little do 0:34:11.120 --> 0:34:13.440 you know what I mean? Like in this world, little 0:34:13.480 --> 0:34:17.640 things get different. I mean, like the differences of when 0:34:17.680 --> 0:34:22.040 you start talking about these like numbers, what you're arguing 0:34:22.040 --> 0:34:24.600 about is what comes after the last decimal point. 0:34:24.920 --> 0:34:27.759 And we're talking about billions of base pairs in the genome. Okay, right, 0:34:27.840 --> 0:34:29.719 So when you say ninety nine point five percent, you're 0:34:29.760 --> 0:34:32.239 still looking at point five percent of three billion base pairs. 0:34:32.400 --> 0:34:34.200 Yeah, a lot, but I mean like hearing it in 0:34:34.239 --> 0:34:37.000 the percentage thing that gives you like a different idea. 0:34:36.719 --> 0:34:39.279 And the percentage thing can be is one way to 0:34:39.280 --> 0:34:42.440 explain it is a hard way to conceptualize it, because 0:34:42.440 --> 0:34:45.160 at the same time, you could say African elephant and 0:34:45.200 --> 0:34:47.840 an Asian elephant are early ninety eight percent similar. 0:34:48.680 --> 0:34:51.640 Oh well, because I was just going to point out 0:34:51.680 --> 0:34:58.120 that according and people debate these counts humans and chimpanzees 0:34:59.040 --> 0:35:01.880 ninety eight point eight percent similar m. 0:35:03.760 --> 0:35:07.120 And I think an important part of to remember when 0:35:07.120 --> 0:35:09.960 we talk about percentages of genome is what part of 0:35:10.000 --> 0:35:13.120 the genome is coding for very specific traits that end 0:35:13.239 --> 0:35:17.800 up expressing as differences between us and a chimpanzee size, strength, 0:35:18.080 --> 0:35:24.279 you know, musculature, hair, some pretty significant differences, so that 0:35:24.400 --> 0:35:26.600 that doesn't require a huge piece of the genome to 0:35:26.640 --> 0:35:29.040 make those changes. A lot of the genome actually doesn't 0:35:29.040 --> 0:35:31.760 code for anything. It's just sort of, you know, it's 0:35:31.800 --> 0:35:34.440 what we call non coding regions that we don't fully understand. 0:35:34.560 --> 0:35:36.040 That's the part that's the part. 0:35:35.840 --> 0:35:38.279 Of this that puzzles me that I don't get, And 0:35:38.320 --> 0:35:40.800 that's probably why you can't look up how much genetic 0:35:40.840 --> 0:35:43.440 similarity do we have with carrots, which I was doing 0:35:43.840 --> 0:35:46.480 because it's like a lot of people areaying that's not 0:35:46.520 --> 0:35:47.920 really a good way of looking at it. 0:35:48.080 --> 0:35:51.640 I've seen a few people that look like a carrot was. 0:35:51.719 --> 0:35:52.319 Do you know. 0:35:54.239 --> 0:35:57.360 The form of former his genetics similarity might be like 0:35:57.440 --> 0:36:00.240 sixty one percent sixty. 0:36:02.400 --> 0:36:09.439 Okay, explain that point five percent? Like it like to you, Matt, 0:36:09.520 --> 0:36:13.760 explain that if there's a gray wolf and a dire wolf, 0:36:13.880 --> 0:36:16.000 and it seems like a gray wolf and a dire 0:36:16.000 --> 0:36:20.600 wolf for ninety nine point five percent similar, what is 0:36:20.640 --> 0:36:22.960 the point five and is it accurate to go and 0:36:23.000 --> 0:36:25.839 look and say, like, I'll think about this with chimpanzees, 0:36:26.480 --> 0:36:28.360 just to set up the question a little more specifically, 0:36:28.400 --> 0:36:31.399 because everybody knows humans because you're one, we're all one, 0:36:32.040 --> 0:36:34.520 and we know chimps because we've been watching nature documentaries 0:36:34.520 --> 0:36:38.200 for a long time. So if humans and chimps are 0:36:38.280 --> 0:36:42.840 ninety eight point eight percent similar, is it fair to 0:36:42.920 --> 0:36:48.279 say two hundred and forty genes separate us from chimps? 0:36:48.320 --> 0:36:49.600 Or is that a dumb way to look at it? 0:36:51.440 --> 0:36:54.279 I mean, we're waiting into dangerous territory. Because I'm more 0:36:54.600 --> 0:36:57.400 a conservation guy than a geneticist. I just play a 0:36:57.440 --> 0:36:59.840 geneticis at back home, right. I work with really some 0:37:00.160 --> 0:37:03.359 people like Beth who really explain these things really well. 0:37:03.400 --> 0:37:06.239 But yes, I think it would be an oversimplification to 0:37:06.239 --> 0:37:08.799 say two hundred and forty genes separate us from a chimpanzee. 0:37:09.239 --> 0:37:12.440 Yeah that said, I mean when we talk about the 0:37:12.440 --> 0:37:15.080 differences between dire wolves and gray wolves, well, we're really 0:37:15.080 --> 0:37:17.719 looking for what are the core you know types, What 0:37:17.760 --> 0:37:20.480 are those key areas of the genome in that point 0:37:20.480 --> 0:37:23.440 five percent that we need to target in order to 0:37:23.560 --> 0:37:28.239 confer the difference the primary difference, which is, like you said, 0:37:28.280 --> 0:37:31.600 you know, sort of a robustness of a size, a musculature, 0:37:31.840 --> 0:37:35.560 a hair difference, a coat difference that we've identified. And 0:37:36.000 --> 0:37:38.480 how can we then identify those within that point five 0:37:38.520 --> 0:37:41.960 percent and pick the few most impactful changes. 0:37:43.680 --> 0:37:45.799 How do you decide look at. 0:37:48.480 --> 0:37:53.000 Let's look at color? Why white? 0:37:53.880 --> 0:37:56.640 So if you look at the genome of the dire wolf. 0:37:56.640 --> 0:37:58.600 And this is a really great question and one that 0:37:58.680 --> 0:38:01.120 kind of goes back to know when you talk about 0:38:01.160 --> 0:38:04.360 having doctor Perry on earlier. Doctor Perry was part of 0:38:04.640 --> 0:38:06.520 a paper that came out of twenty twenty one along 0:38:06.520 --> 0:38:11.920 with Best Shapiro or chief scientist, who sequenced the genome 0:38:11.960 --> 0:38:14.359 of the direwolf, and they only got what we would 0:38:14.400 --> 0:38:16.520 say is about a zero point two five percent cover 0:38:16.640 --> 0:38:19.320 or point twenty five x coverage, so sort of on average, 0:38:19.400 --> 0:38:21.400 they were able to sequence a quarter of the genome 0:38:21.440 --> 0:38:24.879 one time, so not a lot of data. We went 0:38:24.920 --> 0:38:29.560 back and we started and found two samples of dire 0:38:29.640 --> 0:38:33.240 wolf specimens that we were able to sample and sequence 0:38:33.239 --> 0:38:36.040 their DNA, one from a seventy two thousand year old 0:38:36.040 --> 0:38:39.239 skull and another from a from a thirteen thousand year 0:38:39.280 --> 0:38:42.520 old tooth. We ended up producing what we would call 0:38:42.560 --> 0:38:46.120 thirteen x coverage, so on average we sequenced every base 0:38:46.160 --> 0:38:48.439 pair in that genome about thirteen times, so that gives 0:38:48.520 --> 0:38:51.000 us a really robust data set as compared to the 0:38:51.040 --> 0:38:54.040 twenty twenty one paper. What we identified when we have 0:38:54.239 --> 0:38:59.120 this new robust data set is that they're between these 0:38:59.160 --> 0:39:02.200 two investments that one was from Idaho, one from Ohio, 0:39:02.280 --> 0:39:04.520 one from seventy two thousand years old, and one that's 0:39:04.520 --> 0:39:07.759 thirteen thousand years old. Both code for the same light 0:39:07.920 --> 0:39:12.680 coat color, not necessarily stark white like what we ended 0:39:12.760 --> 0:39:15.160 up getting, but they could have and we don't know that. 0:39:15.680 --> 0:39:18.279 But did you guys tweak it to make it white? No, 0:39:18.480 --> 0:39:20.600 So it's because it's like such a wild I mean, 0:39:20.640 --> 0:39:24.359 you have to admit, like the Game of Thrones thing 0:39:24.440 --> 0:39:27.000 and people like the writer is involved with you guys, 0:39:27.239 --> 0:39:28.440 like he makes them white. 0:39:28.680 --> 0:39:31.200 Yep, well he made one of them white. 0:39:30.920 --> 0:39:31.680 Like for the show. 0:39:31.800 --> 0:39:34.080 Yeah, there's five of them that are sort of characters 0:39:34.080 --> 0:39:35.480 in that show. Only one of them is white. The 0:39:35.560 --> 0:39:40.759 other have very typical morph I'm sorry, wolf or coat colors. 0:39:40.960 --> 0:39:44.399 So but when it was born, you didn't know what 0:39:44.440 --> 0:39:45.600 color would be, knew it? 0:39:45.920 --> 0:39:48.440 Okay, Yeah, we already knew because we had made that change. 0:39:48.520 --> 0:39:50.920 So so you had like purposefully made it white. 0:39:51.360 --> 0:39:54.920 Yes, Okay, So when we identified that definitely over this 0:39:55.600 --> 0:39:59.560 sixty thousand years of divergence and this huge geographic distribution 0:39:59.640 --> 0:40:05.359 between Ohio and Idaho, both animals coated for a very 0:40:05.440 --> 0:40:08.160 light colored coat as compared to what we would have 0:40:08.200 --> 0:40:09.120 seen in a gray wolf. 0:40:10.880 --> 0:40:13.040 Like perhaps it was like kyot colored. 0:40:12.800 --> 0:40:14.279 Could have been. Yeah, it could have been where it 0:40:14.320 --> 0:40:16.279 could be even lighter like this white we saw. 0:40:17.200 --> 0:40:21.760 We said, mountain pale if you look over your shoulder. 0:40:21.120 --> 0:40:23.600 Yeah, I mean that could certainly be it, or it 0:40:23.640 --> 0:40:26.880 could be white. You know, there there are reasons for that, 0:40:26.880 --> 0:40:30.640 that white coat that could have persisted. But since we 0:40:30.680 --> 0:40:34.239 saw this common trait between across space and time and 0:40:34.280 --> 0:40:37.080 these two specimens We said, well, that's certainly interesting. We 0:40:37.120 --> 0:40:40.040 only have two sequences, so that means one hundred percent 0:40:40.080 --> 0:40:44.000 of what we sampled, you know, had this coat color. 0:40:44.040 --> 0:40:45.719 So we said, well we should code for that. The 0:40:45.880 --> 0:40:49.080 trick there is that we also identified very close to 0:40:49.120 --> 0:40:52.160 that gene and what we had seen if you use 0:40:52.200 --> 0:40:54.920 the genetic background of a wolf, wolfs that have that 0:40:54.960 --> 0:41:00.640 same mutation also often can have an issue with deafness 0:41:00.719 --> 0:41:04.040 or blindness. So we said, well, we don't want to 0:41:04.160 --> 0:41:06.799 use the exact variant from the dire wolf genome that 0:41:06.840 --> 0:41:11.440 we sequence because it could confer a deafness or blindness issue. 0:41:11.560 --> 0:41:14.600 Can you explain that more? I don't understand. I don't 0:41:14.680 --> 0:41:16.279 don't have the background to understand what you mean. 0:41:17.040 --> 0:41:20.600 The dire wolf had this specific trait. We know when 0:41:20.600 --> 0:41:23.760 we've seen that trait in the in a gray wolf, 0:41:24.280 --> 0:41:27.120 like did it a naturally occur? It isn't naturally occurring. 0:41:28.200 --> 0:41:30.120 It would be closely associated with. 0:41:30.120 --> 0:41:34.520 So like a white gray wolf would be more likely to. 0:41:34.760 --> 0:41:38.440 Yeah, exactly have that those issues. So we made a decision. 0:41:38.480 --> 0:41:40.880 We said, well, so that's that's not something that was 0:41:40.920 --> 0:41:43.560 found out. That's not something that people found out by 0:41:43.560 --> 0:41:45.840 trying to insert that into. 0:41:46.200 --> 0:41:48.560 Now that's just from people that had studied Kana genetics 0:41:48.600 --> 0:41:50.080 across Yeah, across that. 0:41:50.400 --> 0:41:52.480 I didn't understand. I was like, because I was like, 0:41:52.520 --> 0:41:55.160 that would be a lot of experimentation to real exactly. 0:41:55.760 --> 0:41:58.279 So our computational team is able to sort of run 0:41:58.320 --> 0:42:00.720 these simulations that tell us what they think the gene 0:42:00.800 --> 0:42:03.520 will code for, what it could also be associated with. 0:42:03.560 --> 0:42:05.919 What could be an off target effect if you made 0:42:05.920 --> 0:42:09.000 that edit and you know it had an unintended consequence. 0:42:09.480 --> 0:42:12.399 So we elected. You'll you'll see in our press release 0:42:12.480 --> 0:42:14.240 or in our news we talked about we made twenty 0:42:14.320 --> 0:42:18.480 edits across fifteen genes with fifteen specific diabolf variants. I mean, 0:42:18.600 --> 0:42:21.040 there are five variants that we edited for that were 0:42:21.040 --> 0:42:23.719 not actually dire wolf. What we did is we went 0:42:23.719 --> 0:42:26.759 and found analogous genes in closely related species. In the 0:42:26.760 --> 0:42:29.680 case of the white coat, it was from domestic dogs. 0:42:30.680 --> 0:42:33.680 We chose that specifically because we wanted to confer the 0:42:33.680 --> 0:42:39.000 coat phenotype without risking welfare of the animal. So we 0:42:39.080 --> 0:42:43.279 made a decision that said the safest way in order 0:42:43.320 --> 0:42:46.080 to do this functional the extinction project we were working 0:42:46.120 --> 0:42:49.680 on without risking the animal's health or welfare was took 0:42:49.719 --> 0:42:53.880 it from a dog exactly. So that's why you know, 0:42:53.880 --> 0:42:55.880 people go is it one hundred percent? Direbolf when you go, well, 0:42:55.920 --> 0:42:57.680 number one, this whole hundred percent thing we just talked 0:42:57.719 --> 0:43:01.120 about percentages of relatedness. It's kind of hard, it's not 0:43:01.160 --> 0:43:03.160 a very clean way to explain it. On hundred percent 0:43:03.200 --> 0:43:05.080 is kind of a bullshit argument. 0:43:06.040 --> 0:43:08.560 But it's why is that not a good way looking 0:43:08.600 --> 0:43:08.960 at it? 0:43:09.000 --> 0:43:11.680 Well, just the variation between two individuals like you and 0:43:11.760 --> 0:43:14.880 I have a significant variation. We're not one hundred percent identical. 0:43:15.280 --> 0:43:20.080 So if aliens came and abducted you and I, right, 0:43:20.280 --> 0:43:23.120 they would not then go and clone a human and 0:43:23.200 --> 0:43:26.399 make current right. They would say, well, all humans look 0:43:26.480 --> 0:43:29.280 like you and I. Well, we know that we represent 0:43:29.320 --> 0:43:32.120 a very small portion of the genetic variability across the globe. 0:43:32.560 --> 0:43:34.439 The one's got an honorary doctorate. 0:43:35.440 --> 0:43:36.839 That's coded in there, I'm sure. 0:43:36.920 --> 0:43:39.680 Yeah, so did. 0:43:39.600 --> 0:43:40.960 You probably have a legit one right? 0:43:41.600 --> 0:43:44.799 Not a doctor? No. I stopped at the master's level 0:43:44.840 --> 0:43:50.160 and said this isn't for me. Yeah, So we we 0:43:50.320 --> 0:43:53.680 tried to avoid this one hundred percent because that's really cloning, right, 0:43:53.960 --> 0:43:56.840 We're not creating the identical individual we sequenced. 0:43:57.080 --> 0:44:01.000 Yeah, because I think this is the thing that people 0:44:01.040 --> 0:44:03.840 don't understand and it's hard for me to understand, is 0:44:03.880 --> 0:44:09.800 that there's an idea from watching like Jurassic Park or whatever, 0:44:10.200 --> 0:44:14.640 that you're able to pluck some living thing out of 0:44:14.680 --> 0:44:18.720 a dire wolf bone and like add it into something. 0:44:19.239 --> 0:44:23.880 It's more like you're looking at trying to think of 0:44:23.920 --> 0:44:27.879 it like a I shouldn't do an analogy, but it's 0:44:27.960 --> 0:44:31.200 like you're you're looking at a someone's got a paint 0:44:31.320 --> 0:44:36.040 sample and you're like, oh, I could make something that color. 0:44:37.280 --> 0:44:38.880 I don't know how they made that that color, but 0:44:38.960 --> 0:44:43.000 I could make something that color, right, yep. And in 0:44:43.040 --> 0:44:44.759 the end I'd look and be like, wow, that is 0:44:44.760 --> 0:44:46.520 that kind of same color, but it might have different 0:44:46.520 --> 0:44:49.120 constituent parts exactly. Is that a good analogy? 0:44:49.120 --> 0:44:50.759 I think that's pretty good analogy. I might use it 0:44:50.800 --> 0:44:51.759 later too. It's good. 0:44:52.920 --> 0:44:54.279 Yeah, let me refine it for a day. 0:44:54.600 --> 0:44:58.239 A doctor should have a more refined The way I. 0:44:58.200 --> 0:45:00.880 Think about it is when we seek it's ancient DNA, 0:45:01.000 --> 0:45:03.960 which is what best specialty is. Right when we go in, 0:45:04.200 --> 0:45:06.960 what we're really sequencing is we're pulling out like a 0:45:07.000 --> 0:45:11.160 two billion piece puzzle from that specimen. The DNA has 0:45:11.160 --> 0:45:14.000 been fragmented over time and time, and you know, things 0:45:14.000 --> 0:45:16.319 have been introduced like bacteria that chop up DNA into 0:45:16.360 --> 0:45:20.080 small pieces. All we get out is we're able to 0:45:20.120 --> 0:45:22.320 sequence all that, and we get these two billion puzzle 0:45:22.360 --> 0:45:23.799 pieces and we have to figure out how to put 0:45:23.840 --> 0:45:26.799 them back together. But we don't have the reference on 0:45:26.840 --> 0:45:29.400 the cover of the puzzle, right, so we have to 0:45:29.480 --> 0:45:32.959 use artificial intelligence machine learning algorithms in order to help 0:45:33.120 --> 0:45:34.600 tell us how to do that. We also have to 0:45:34.600 --> 0:45:37.719 align it to a close living relative, so then we go, well, 0:45:37.719 --> 0:45:39.080 we know a dire wolf was sort of like a 0:45:39.120 --> 0:45:41.680 gray wolf, so we can start building towards a gray wolf. 0:45:43.280 --> 0:45:45.319 Then there are specific parts that we go, well, we 0:45:45.400 --> 0:45:47.440 know it wasn't totally gray wolf, so we have to 0:45:47.480 --> 0:45:51.160 start making educated decisions. Here almost guesses as to what 0:45:51.400 --> 0:45:55.000 puzzle piece goes where, and so that's when you won't 0:45:55.080 --> 0:45:58.080 end up with one hundred percent accurate representation of the 0:45:58.160 --> 0:46:01.560 animal you sequence. Because there was non viable DNA in there, 0:46:01.560 --> 0:46:03.879 you can't clone it. And now we're trying to put 0:46:03.880 --> 0:46:05.880 something back together without a clear picture of what it 0:46:05.880 --> 0:46:06.399 should have been. 0:46:07.400 --> 0:46:10.120 So let me hate you with this one. Let's say 0:46:10.360 --> 0:46:13.000 you took one of you took one of your animals 0:46:13.080 --> 0:46:19.839 Romulus or Remus, and you uh have them forbid something 0:46:19.880 --> 0:46:22.520 were to happen to it, and you boiled its skull 0:46:22.560 --> 0:46:26.080 down and cleaned it up and threw it into. 0:46:25.880 --> 0:46:27.280 A pile of la Brea tar pits. 0:46:28.520 --> 0:46:28.800 Right. 0:46:28.880 --> 0:46:31.680 Yeah, and then there's the person there sorting skulls. 0:46:32.160 --> 0:46:34.399 What do you think the likelihood is that they would 0:46:34.400 --> 0:46:36.279 grab that skull and they would throw in the dire 0:46:36.320 --> 0:46:36.839 wolf pile. 0:46:37.320 --> 0:46:39.000 That's a good question. I haven't thought about it that way. 0:46:39.000 --> 0:46:42.200 I would do it in a much less uh fatalistic way. 0:46:42.520 --> 0:46:45.480 I would. We can use uh you know, high tech 0:46:45.520 --> 0:46:48.600 CT image in an actually three D print their skeleton, 0:46:48.640 --> 0:46:50.239 which is one of the things we will be doing 0:46:50.360 --> 0:46:52.560 is as a mature as they kind of come into 0:46:52.560 --> 0:46:55.640 their full size, we're using CT imaging in order to 0:46:55.719 --> 0:46:58.560 kind of get a clear picture of morphology from a skeleton. 0:46:58.680 --> 0:47:02.120 Yeah, we're gonna like you mentioned that, we know, like 0:47:02.400 --> 0:47:06.239 there's four skull measurements that are different, Like did you 0:47:06.400 --> 0:47:07.719 build that into these? 0:47:08.760 --> 0:47:12.759 Yeah? The diurbl farians we picked were specific to changes 0:47:12.840 --> 0:47:16.080 that we knew would be associated with those few morphological 0:47:16.080 --> 0:47:18.760 differences between the species, so you could. 0:47:18.560 --> 0:47:20.600 You were you looked in at like what is with 0:47:20.760 --> 0:47:24.000 the wide skull, the strong skull, or whatever you put it. 0:47:25.320 --> 0:47:27.080 You know, we're talking about dogs, mingol this is one 0:47:27.160 --> 0:47:29.239 and reading all the coverage about your projects, why did 0:47:29.239 --> 0:47:31.160 the dogs get Why did the dog that birth? 0:47:31.280 --> 0:47:32.680 Why was it a cesarean section? 0:47:33.680 --> 0:47:36.400 Well, so it's a good question. I So one of 0:47:36.400 --> 0:47:38.840 the things we did is while we were starting this project, I, 0:47:39.200 --> 0:47:40.759 me and my team we put together this one hundred 0:47:40.800 --> 0:47:43.400 and sixty page document that is the Animal Care Manual 0:47:43.480 --> 0:47:45.640 of the Direwolf. Right, so we wrote an animal care 0:47:45.680 --> 0:47:48.319 and management manual for species that nobody's ever worked with. 0:47:48.360 --> 0:47:52.439 That's twelve thousand years extinct, super fun project. In there, 0:47:52.480 --> 0:47:55.799 we had very specific uh protocols for how would we 0:47:55.880 --> 0:47:58.680 birth this animal. Well, one of the fears was is 0:47:58.960 --> 0:48:02.160 we don't know the fetal development rate and the size 0:48:02.200 --> 0:48:06.000 of a newborn dire wolf. So we had one contingency 0:48:06.120 --> 0:48:09.839 was cesarean section. The other plan was natural birth. As 0:48:09.880 --> 0:48:13.360 we got closer, we were taking skull measurements via ultrasound 0:48:13.880 --> 0:48:16.520 and comparing that to the pelvic opening of our surrogate. 0:48:16.719 --> 0:48:19.600 Turns out would have been totally fine. We could have 0:48:19.719 --> 0:48:25.399 passed those those pups naturally. That however, day sixty two 0:48:25.600 --> 0:48:27.360 was sort of our cutoff. We said, if she doesn't 0:48:27.400 --> 0:48:29.959 give birth by six day sixty two, they're gestations about 0:48:30.000 --> 0:48:34.080 sixty to sixty three days. But using cloning technology, usually 0:48:34.080 --> 0:48:37.480 you're a day or two ahead, right because the embryo 0:48:37.520 --> 0:48:43.239 has developed in vitro before you've transferred it, So say 0:48:43.320 --> 0:48:45.279 day sixty two might be more like day sixty four, 0:48:45.360 --> 0:48:48.760 day sixty five. So we just had just like most humans, 0:48:48.800 --> 0:48:51.920 sort of their doctor, if they're pregnant, will tell them, hey, 0:48:51.960 --> 0:48:53.799 if you don't give birth by this date, we will 0:48:53.800 --> 0:48:57.600 induce you. Well, we don't really do inductions with dogs. 0:48:57.840 --> 0:49:01.560 The safest way to remove all the variables was just 0:49:01.600 --> 0:49:04.680 a cesarean section, and it's a very common procedure dogs, 0:49:04.719 --> 0:49:07.000 and we have you know, we had an amazing team 0:49:07.000 --> 0:49:09.360 of surgeons that were able to do it, and you know, 0:49:09.600 --> 0:49:12.400 I think the results speak for themselves. We remove those variables, 0:49:12.440 --> 0:49:15.279 we give health, give birth to two healthy puppies, a 0:49:15.280 --> 0:49:19.120 third on a second litter, and then and then all 0:49:19.120 --> 0:49:21.239 the moms you know, ended up great and now they're 0:49:21.480 --> 0:49:24.040 in their forever homes, you know, living life and. 0:49:24.080 --> 0:49:26.520 When you say a second litter, like did you was 0:49:26.560 --> 0:49:29.960 there only two puppies in? Like you weren't trying to 0:49:31.040 --> 0:49:32.000 grow six of them? 0:49:32.120 --> 0:49:34.960 It was like, well read, embryology is the numbers game. 0:49:35.120 --> 0:49:37.800 If you've you know, know anybody it's gone through IVF, 0:49:38.200 --> 0:49:40.280 you know years ago that used to put multiple embryos 0:49:40.440 --> 0:49:44.120 into into a mom. The same idea with us is 0:49:44.200 --> 0:49:48.040 when we're transferring embryos into a surrogate, we're transferring, you know, 0:49:48.560 --> 0:49:52.400 twenty five embryos understanding that only two to six of 0:49:52.400 --> 0:49:54.719 those would take, and in our case we got two 0:49:54.840 --> 0:50:01.239 of them. We had another female that was had was 0:50:01.280 --> 0:50:03.719 pregnant with a second letter and that's where Callisi, our third, 0:50:03.920 --> 0:50:07.880 our female dire wolf was born in January. She actually 0:50:07.880 --> 0:50:10.400 had a second puppy that she was born with. That 0:50:10.480 --> 0:50:14.319 puppy unfortunately pass away in day ten of antritis, so 0:50:14.600 --> 0:50:17.880 basically a perforated gut, and she got septically ill, which 0:50:17.920 --> 0:50:20.120 is you know, we did a lot of looking and 0:50:20.200 --> 0:50:22.080 we were able to determine it wasn't related to any 0:50:22.120 --> 0:50:25.480 sort of effects of editing or cloning. It was sort 0:50:25.480 --> 0:50:28.360 of an unfortunate event of puppy development that we see, 0:50:28.560 --> 0:50:32.279 you know, a certain level of mortality. So that's how 0:50:32.280 --> 0:50:34.360 we got to three. We originally thought we were going 0:50:34.400 --> 0:50:34.839 to have four. 0:50:35.400 --> 0:50:37.160 Will the dire wolves be fertile? 0:50:37.920 --> 0:50:41.799 Yes, yeah, they would, They would be very fertile. We 0:50:42.000 --> 0:50:45.320 have specific strategies we can deploy in order to ensure 0:50:45.440 --> 0:50:47.239 that they would only breed when we intend to breed. 0:50:47.320 --> 0:50:49.960 Right now, our interest is not in breeding at the moment, 0:50:50.560 --> 0:50:54.200 but we could use things like contraceptive strategies or reproductive 0:50:54.239 --> 0:50:56.360 management of you know, time in when the female is 0:50:56.400 --> 0:50:58.040 with the pack or outside of the pack. 0:51:00.760 --> 0:51:02.719 Can you give us some other examples of things that 0:51:02.760 --> 0:51:05.560 are in this manual for raising a dire wolf? And 0:51:05.600 --> 0:51:07.000 how do I get my hands on one? 0:51:08.200 --> 0:51:09.760 The manual or the dire the manual? 0:51:10.280 --> 0:51:12.920 I'm ment well both, but I'm I'm let's settle for 0:51:12.920 --> 0:51:13.400 a manual. 0:51:13.480 --> 0:51:15.440 The really cool thing is we published the manuals on 0:51:15.440 --> 0:51:17.440 our website. So if you go to the fossil dot 0:51:17.480 --> 0:51:19.680 com fors dire Well f you'll see there is a 0:51:19.800 --> 0:51:25.760 downloadable animal care manual there. So it's everything from the 0:51:26.200 --> 0:51:28.640 partuition issues. So how do you take care of a 0:51:29.800 --> 0:51:33.080 of a whelping litter of puppies to how do we 0:51:33.120 --> 0:51:34.960 manage them socially as they grow up. What is the 0:51:35.000 --> 0:51:38.120 diet that they should be eating as they grow, What 0:51:38.200 --> 0:51:41.560 are the expected milestones developmental milestones. These are things we're 0:51:41.600 --> 0:51:43.800 sort of extrapolating from our worked with gray wolves and 0:51:43.840 --> 0:51:45.240 other wild canids. 0:51:45.000 --> 0:51:46.759 Who nursed them. The dog didn't nurse them. 0:51:46.800 --> 0:51:49.160 So the dog did nurse them for the first few days, 0:51:49.600 --> 0:51:53.640 and so Romulus and Remus there surrogate was a very 0:51:53.680 --> 0:51:56.440 attentive mother, and she got to be so attentive that 0:51:56.480 --> 0:51:59.560 she If you've ever had puppies with a mom, sometimes 0:51:59.600 --> 0:52:01.759 they get to be a little nervous and they pick 0:52:01.800 --> 0:52:04.000 them up and they just poke them too much and 0:52:04.160 --> 0:52:06.920 starts to interrupt their feeding and sleeping cycles. So we 0:52:07.000 --> 0:52:10.200 just said, you know, it's similar to the precautionary approach 0:52:10.239 --> 0:52:12.520 we took with cesarean section. We said, we're gonna pull 0:52:12.560 --> 0:52:15.560 them and we're gonna hand rear them on bottles. So 0:52:15.600 --> 0:52:17.520 on day three we ended up pulling them. 0:52:17.760 --> 0:52:19.719 Where's that dog. Now, that'd be a valuable dog. 0:52:19.760 --> 0:52:21.799 It's a very valuable dog. And it was sort of. 0:52:21.760 --> 0:52:24.640 Become a famous little like a famous little donor dog. 0:52:24.719 --> 0:52:28.560 Yeah, we did this We worked with the American Humane Society, 0:52:28.640 --> 0:52:32.280 is sort of the oldest global welfare society in the world. 0:52:32.960 --> 0:52:35.400 We worked through them to do a double blind adoption, 0:52:35.640 --> 0:52:37.680 so they vetted a home for them. 0:52:37.719 --> 0:52:38.640 Whoever has it doesn't know. 0:52:38.680 --> 0:52:39.120 They has no. 0:52:39.080 --> 0:52:44.440 Idea what that whoa They don't know correct, nobody knows. 0:52:44.760 --> 0:52:46.840 I don't know where they are and the home doesn't know. 0:52:47.040 --> 0:52:49.920 Someday, that dog this is gonna do like a lot 0:52:49.920 --> 0:52:52.440 of people do, where they start getting like I need 0:52:52.440 --> 0:52:55.480 to find on my real parent. It's gonna look for 0:52:55.520 --> 0:52:59.280 its incredible Disney movie. It's trying to find its children. 0:53:00.000 --> 0:53:03.279 I'll be quite surprised when it finds them. You're so 0:53:04.600 --> 0:53:07.880 big and white. What kind of dog was this? 0:53:08.320 --> 0:53:09.000 You probably want to. 0:53:08.960 --> 0:53:10.080 Say, this is give it up. Yeah, it was. 0:53:10.239 --> 0:53:11.840 It was. It was a mutt, right, it was. It was. 0:53:11.960 --> 0:53:14.160 It was a large hound that was mixed with a lot. 0:53:14.000 --> 0:53:16.920 Of other rough big. 0:53:16.880 --> 0:53:19.040 Somewhere between forty and seventy pounds. 0:53:19.080 --> 0:53:21.359 Okay, you know. 0:53:21.280 --> 0:53:23.640 I don't know if you're in a color you recently 0:53:23.680 --> 0:53:27.160 got a dog. It's forty to seventy pounds. 0:53:29.440 --> 0:53:31.719 I should have adopted the dog, like in Australia or 0:53:31.719 --> 0:53:32.760 something where they would. 0:53:32.920 --> 0:53:34.880 They'll never put together. Yeah, I know, it would be 0:53:34.920 --> 0:53:38.560 like a real it's a little science project. Huh. So 0:53:38.680 --> 0:53:39.600 that's what happened to it. 0:53:40.200 --> 0:53:41.560 What do you feeding those things? 0:53:41.600 --> 0:53:41.719 Now? 0:53:41.840 --> 0:53:43.319 They're six months old? 0:53:43.600 --> 0:53:47.760 So they started on a very typical milk replacer formula 0:53:47.800 --> 0:53:49.440 once we pulled them from mom, and then we started 0:53:49.480 --> 0:53:53.200 introducing ground meats, like really slurried meats, until they eventually 0:53:53.239 --> 0:53:57.080 startied in ground meats mostly beef and horse meat. Raw meat, yeah, 0:53:57.160 --> 0:53:59.759 rob me. And then we also had some dry kibble 0:53:59.800 --> 0:54:02.000 in there, you know, essential nutrients things that like that 0:54:02.080 --> 0:54:05.520 for development. Now that you know they're almost eight months old, 0:54:05.520 --> 0:54:09.359 we're they're they've transitioned from that sort of ground meat 0:54:09.560 --> 0:54:12.320 to whole prey item. So I get a whole rabbit, 0:54:13.160 --> 0:54:15.520 a whole chicken, they'll get a quarter of a deer, 0:54:15.920 --> 0:54:17.719 things like that. So we're starting to get them away 0:54:17.719 --> 0:54:20.839 from the two square meals a day to a sort 0:54:20.880 --> 0:54:23.920 of a gorge and fast more similar to a wild 0:54:25.680 --> 0:54:26.520 cadence of feeding. 0:54:26.640 --> 0:54:29.560 Are they in like a big outdoor enclosure? 0:54:30.040 --> 0:54:30.279 Yeah? 0:54:30.400 --> 0:54:33.520 So I heard a rumor where it is. Oh you did, Yeah, 0:54:33.640 --> 0:54:34.279 that should be good. 0:54:34.320 --> 0:54:39.040 Wait are you letting out private? Yeah? 0:54:39.440 --> 0:54:43.160 Okay, I'll tell private because it might be accurate. 0:54:43.160 --> 0:54:44.000 I just heard and I was like. 0:54:44.000 --> 0:54:45.640 Really, oh that would be good. 0:54:45.800 --> 0:54:46.520 I want to hear that off. 0:54:47.280 --> 0:54:49.200 I'll tell you what what I'll tell you what I heard. 0:54:49.320 --> 0:54:51.960 I will tell you they are in the northern continental 0:54:52.080 --> 0:54:55.120 United States. They live on about two thousand acres of 0:54:55.680 --> 0:54:56.640 a wildlife preserve. 0:54:56.880 --> 0:54:58.600 Oh yeah that fits. 0:54:58.719 --> 0:55:01.920 Yeah, we might be we might have to go, you know, 0:55:02.000 --> 0:55:04.799 snuff somebody out if they're telling our secrets. The real 0:55:05.640 --> 0:55:09.719 reason behind the secrecy is there. Did you guys see 0:55:09.719 --> 0:55:11.560 that we came out with this news about a month 0:55:11.600 --> 0:55:14.040 before dire Wolf that we made a wooly mouse. Yeah, 0:55:14.320 --> 0:55:16.480 I saw this. Kind of a silly thing, but a 0:55:16.480 --> 0:55:19.120 lot of fun. The idea was this was like a 0:55:19.120 --> 0:55:24.000 phenotype validation study. We were taking traits we knew existed 0:55:24.160 --> 0:55:26.920 in wooly mammoths and that we're targets for us to 0:55:27.080 --> 0:55:29.879 edit into wooly mammoth. But we wanted to say, oh, 0:55:30.120 --> 0:55:33.160 these edits are having the intended effect, So we didn't 0:55:33.200 --> 0:55:35.480 take the same wooly mammoth edit and edit that into 0:55:35.719 --> 0:55:38.560 a mouse. That just wouldn't work. We found the analogous 0:55:38.640 --> 0:55:41.879 genes in mice and conferred those changes and we made 0:55:41.920 --> 0:55:45.640 these little wooly mice. The idea that it showed that 0:55:45.800 --> 0:55:48.720 they had the same effects on coat length, coat color 0:55:49.080 --> 0:55:50.960 at a post tissue. Things like that that would be 0:55:51.000 --> 0:55:54.799 important to make an Asian elephant a wooly mammoth. We 0:55:54.920 --> 0:55:57.160 came out that news and I thought, I can't believe 0:55:57.160 --> 0:55:59.279 we're going to go public with this thing. And it 0:55:59.320 --> 0:56:01.839 broke the Internet and people just started showing up at 0:56:01.840 --> 0:56:04.759 our front door of our office building, not where the 0:56:04.800 --> 0:56:05.600 mice are. 0:56:05.960 --> 0:56:06.120 One. 0:56:06.160 --> 0:56:08.000 They wanted one, They wanted to see one. They wanted 0:56:08.000 --> 0:56:10.360 to talk to the people that did that. So we 0:56:10.480 --> 0:56:13.840 quickly said, well, this was a month before launch a direwolf. 0:56:13.840 --> 0:56:16.719 We knew we were about to launch a direwolf. We said, 0:56:16.800 --> 0:56:19.600 there's no way we could tell anybody even what state 0:56:19.640 --> 0:56:22.360 these animals are in, because suddenly people will be showing 0:56:22.440 --> 0:56:24.760 up and two thousand acres is a lot to protect. 0:56:24.800 --> 0:56:27.520 So if they're on two thousand acres, they there's no 0:56:27.560 --> 0:56:30.320 way you have a two thousand acre parcel that's free 0:56:30.360 --> 0:56:32.399 of other animals. 0:56:32.800 --> 0:56:34.480 No, yeah, it's so. 0:56:34.440 --> 0:56:37.080 Are they hunting whatever's on this two thousand acres. 0:56:36.800 --> 0:56:40.560 And they're fed so regularly it's like a zoo animal. 0:56:40.280 --> 0:56:42.840 But they're interacting. They're interacting with wildlife. 0:56:42.840 --> 0:56:45.880 I've seen them chase deer off things like that, so 0:56:45.920 --> 0:56:48.239 they definitely have that instinct and they're interested in it. 0:56:49.000 --> 0:56:52.120 But yeah, they also don't have some adult wolf that's 0:56:52.200 --> 0:56:54.640 showing this is how we sort of stalk a prey 0:56:54.760 --> 0:56:56.200 and then we get on it and this is the 0:56:56.280 --> 0:56:59.600 kill move. They don't have that yet. We could, over 0:56:59.680 --> 0:57:02.960 time and over generations do that similar to what they 0:57:03.000 --> 0:57:05.040 do with Mexican gray wolves and red wolves in terms 0:57:05.040 --> 0:57:06.800 of preparing them for introduction to the wild. 0:57:07.120 --> 0:57:10.279 And ye aren't you worried that like they could pick 0:57:10.360 --> 0:57:14.359 up like canine distemper or some disease from a wild canine. 0:57:14.560 --> 0:57:18.800 So we were pretty meticulous in our site selection process 0:57:18.800 --> 0:57:20.880 and one of the things we wanted to ensure was 0:57:20.920 --> 0:57:24.200 that it was an area that you know, gray wolves 0:57:24.400 --> 0:57:29.520 had been extirpated from, so there wasn't a potential issue there. Obviously, 0:57:29.560 --> 0:57:31.680 there's still coyotes in those areas, so we have to 0:57:31.720 --> 0:57:34.680 worry about that. We have coyote pre fencing, but coyotes 0:57:34.720 --> 0:57:36.800 are pretty widely they can get through some of that. 0:57:37.000 --> 0:57:40.280 So you got two thousand acres with no coyote on it. 0:57:40.320 --> 0:57:41.800 There's gonna be some people to want to talk. 0:57:42.080 --> 0:57:47.760 Yeah, yeah, but you know they undergo a pretty typical vaccination, right, 0:57:48.000 --> 0:57:50.600 and similar to what we would do with other animals. 0:57:51.240 --> 0:57:55.160 I'm looking at the care program milestone. There's a lot 0:57:55.200 --> 0:57:58.760 of things about social interaction in here. How does that 0:57:58.800 --> 0:58:00.000 work when you only have two of them? 0:58:00.320 --> 0:58:01.360 Oh? If three? Okay? 0:58:01.480 --> 0:58:03.560 So if three and there is an intention that will 0:58:03.560 --> 0:58:06.280 bring new litter on. Because our goal was to get 0:58:06.280 --> 0:58:09.520 to six to eight sort of a typical pack size. Obviously, 0:58:09.720 --> 0:58:11.880 you know we ended up at three, so we'll look 0:58:11.920 --> 0:58:14.360 at adding another litter to that to that group. 0:58:15.920 --> 0:58:16.560 Hit me with it. 0:58:16.720 --> 0:58:19.760 We're gonna get in this earlier. Tell me the why. 0:58:20.760 --> 0:58:22.600 I mean I get the why, like I get the 0:58:22.600 --> 0:58:27.200 why from a showman like that. You would build a park, right, 0:58:27.280 --> 0:58:29.400 you'd be able to use them for movies, and that'd 0:58:29.440 --> 0:58:32.840 be valuable. You'd build a theme park and that would 0:58:32.880 --> 0:58:36.440 be valuable. But what is like the what is the why? Like? 0:58:36.560 --> 0:58:38.280 Or maybe that is the why? Why? 0:58:38.440 --> 0:58:40.280 Yeah, you could do those things. That is not our why. 0:58:40.360 --> 0:58:43.400 That is not what we're doing. Our why is really 0:58:43.400 --> 0:58:48.520 built more around around this selection process that we had 0:58:48.560 --> 0:58:51.320 about two years ago we were looking at, you know, 0:58:51.320 --> 0:58:54.360 knowing that our big three projects Willie mammoth, Tasmani, and 0:58:54.360 --> 0:58:56.360 tiger ditto, those are going to take us a while. 0:58:56.640 --> 0:58:58.680 He said, well, we should start working on other projects 0:58:58.680 --> 0:59:01.160 that we could also help develop some of these de 0:59:01.240 --> 0:59:04.120 extinction pipelines, get through this process a little quicker and 0:59:04.160 --> 0:59:07.240 be able to see and learn and help inform the 0:59:07.280 --> 0:59:10.960 other projects. In addition to that, in twenty sixteen, the 0:59:11.240 --> 0:59:15.200 ICN came out with a Proxy Species Rewilding Guide or 0:59:15.280 --> 0:59:19.080 a creation guide, basically this guideline document that an independent 0:59:19.080 --> 0:59:22.560 group of international experts wrote something like thirty five key 0:59:22.600 --> 0:59:26.520 points in this guideline that talks about if you were 0:59:26.640 --> 0:59:29.720 to pursue de extinction or the creation of a proxy 0:59:29.760 --> 0:59:32.720 of an extinct species which is easier just called the extinction, 0:59:34.560 --> 0:59:36.160 here is how you should do it. And one of 0:59:36.200 --> 0:59:38.760 the most important things that it talks about there is, 0:59:38.840 --> 0:59:41.320 you know, there's a big welfare implication which sort of 0:59:41.360 --> 0:59:44.040 goes back to why we selected the specific edits we selected. 0:59:44.440 --> 0:59:47.840 There's also this process that these things should happen sort 0:59:47.840 --> 0:59:51.640 of in this contained, almost laboratory environment where we if 0:59:51.640 --> 0:59:53.640 you're going to pursue this the first time you do it. 0:59:53.640 --> 0:59:56.560 You should find a species that you know a lot about. 0:59:56.760 --> 0:59:58.920 You should do these things in a very controlled setting 0:59:58.960 --> 1:00:01.880 so you can study all the impacts from cradle to grave. 1:00:02.600 --> 1:00:07.600 Oh, just to be clear, the IUCN did this independent. 1:00:07.080 --> 1:00:09.720 Of you guys in twenty sixteen, way before Colossal was 1:00:09.760 --> 1:00:10.040 the thing. 1:00:10.680 --> 1:00:13.200 This was long. Yeah, so they were operating on like 1:00:13.240 --> 1:00:15.960 an assumption that we'll get there, but we weren't there yet. 1:00:16.000 --> 1:00:18.560 And that was when the Wooly Mammittee things and stuff 1:00:18.600 --> 1:00:21.160 was really bubbling up, and so it started. Biotechnology was 1:00:21.160 --> 1:00:23.040 getting to a point where they said we should come 1:00:23.120 --> 1:00:25.520 up with some sort of advantage. Yeah, so it was 1:00:25.560 --> 1:00:28.480 really it was great forethought. We use that as as 1:00:28.760 --> 1:00:30.720 a bit of a guiding light in the way that 1:00:30.760 --> 1:00:34.960 we designed this project. Because so we know a lot 1:00:34.960 --> 1:00:38.160 about canids and canad genetics. Right, we know more about 1:00:38.240 --> 1:00:41.480 canids than almost any other species, mostly because we all 1:00:41.480 --> 1:00:44.200 have you know, a gray wolf in our house, right, 1:00:44.760 --> 1:00:47.040 I mean it is dog days, right, we all have dogs. 1:00:47.040 --> 1:00:49.600 We all love our dogs. We study a lot about them, 1:00:49.800 --> 1:00:53.480 and we know a lot about North American canids. So 1:00:53.560 --> 1:00:55.640 that gave us a really strong foundation in order to 1:00:55.680 --> 1:00:58.280 be able to predict what were the effects of edits, 1:00:58.320 --> 1:01:01.640 what genes were responsible for, what physical trait, things like that. 1:01:02.240 --> 1:01:06.640 At the same time, there was this sort of you know, 1:01:06.800 --> 1:01:10.240 opportunity for us to show the de extinction pipeline is 1:01:10.280 --> 1:01:12.320 a real thing. I think when we talk about bringing 1:01:12.360 --> 1:01:14.320 back Willie Mammos, people sort of giggle and they go, 1:01:14.360 --> 1:01:16.480 that's never going to happen. So there was sort of 1:01:16.480 --> 1:01:18.280 this proof of principle need that we said, well, we 1:01:18.280 --> 1:01:21.640 could show how this would work. And finally, there was 1:01:21.680 --> 1:01:24.360 also the pop culture bit you touched on Direwolf, right, 1:01:24.880 --> 1:01:28.200 this idea that we could bring science into the pop culture, 1:01:28.240 --> 1:01:31.480 blend those, bring more eyes and attention onto de extinction, 1:01:31.560 --> 1:01:34.880 onto extinction conservation things like that. So there was this 1:01:35.040 --> 1:01:37.720 perfect ven diagram that sort of overlapped with gray Wolf 1:01:37.760 --> 1:01:40.960 and dire Wolf, that we could do all of those 1:01:41.000 --> 1:01:44.720 things while creating technologies that were responsible or could help 1:01:45.040 --> 1:01:48.640 save other endangered canids like the American red wolf, which 1:01:48.880 --> 1:01:52.360 you know lost in our bit of a media circus 1:01:52.400 --> 1:01:54.400 that occurred after Direwolf was this idea that we were 1:01:54.400 --> 1:01:57.480 also working on American red wolves and there's some cool 1:01:57.480 --> 1:01:59.480 stuff that we should talk about there. But so the 1:01:59.520 --> 1:02:03.480 why was sort of that perfect opportunity to blend in 1:02:03.560 --> 1:02:07.640 pop culture with a proof of principle of de extinction 1:02:07.840 --> 1:02:11.200 and taking that first passive de extinction that this twenty 1:02:11.200 --> 1:02:13.400 sixteen guideline sort of showed us how to do it, 1:02:13.720 --> 1:02:17.040 and that really outlined you know, know a lot about 1:02:17.080 --> 1:02:18.920 the animal, put them in an area where you can 1:02:18.960 --> 1:02:21.840 study them closely, and these would not be animals that 1:02:21.880 --> 1:02:24.800 would be a generation ready for release. We knew dire 1:02:24.840 --> 1:02:27.439 wolves were not going back into the wild. We made 1:02:27.480 --> 1:02:31.240 these as part of that pursuit of de extinction. 1:02:31.560 --> 1:02:34.440 So you do it knowing they won't go into the wild. 1:02:34.480 --> 1:02:36.520 Because those are our questions that have is how much 1:02:36.560 --> 1:02:41.920 do you like? How much how worried or wildlife professionals 1:02:42.000 --> 1:02:43.960 This is a question they hadn't had to grapple with before. 1:02:44.960 --> 1:02:50.040 How worried are wildlife professionals and conservationists that you would 1:02:50.280 --> 1:02:55.840 create a that you would like, create a creature that 1:02:55.920 --> 1:03:01.960 could potentially get out and then reproduce what imperiled species 1:03:02.320 --> 1:03:04.920 in a way that might be negative for those imperiled species, 1:03:04.960 --> 1:03:07.080 Like that's got to be a real concern. We're having 1:03:07.120 --> 1:03:09.600 a conversation right now where guys are like in the 1:03:09.600 --> 1:03:12.920 deer in the servid world, people are saying, oh, we 1:03:13.000 --> 1:03:17.800 can make We have some examples of deer that are 1:03:17.920 --> 1:03:22.120 very slow to develop CWD or they get CWD, but 1:03:22.160 --> 1:03:25.880 they're slow to be affected by it, And they say, 1:03:25.960 --> 1:03:28.880 what we'd like to do is cut these deer loose, 1:03:29.320 --> 1:03:32.280 just to introduce some of this besides it being, as 1:03:32.280 --> 1:03:35.400 it's been explained to me by many servid experts, is 1:03:37.160 --> 1:03:39.400 kind of like doesn't make sense when you understand the 1:03:39.440 --> 1:03:43.320 scale of the millions of deer out there and that 1:03:43.400 --> 1:03:46.080 you're going to try to like influence gene flow by 1:03:46.120 --> 1:03:49.080 cutting animals loose. But they also point to all these 1:03:49.120 --> 1:03:53.040 moral issues and other like issues like what if those 1:03:53.080 --> 1:03:58.080 things also carry a susceptibility to other diseases? What if 1:03:58.120 --> 1:04:02.840 that infers upon them a so sort of hidden weakness. Right, So, 1:04:02.880 --> 1:04:06.000 if you have these creatures and they get out and 1:04:06.040 --> 1:04:09.240 they start breeding with wolves, I assume they could breed 1:04:09.280 --> 1:04:13.480 with wolves. How nervous are people that that'll happen? 1:04:13.640 --> 1:04:15.840 I mean, that's a question we get almost every day 1:04:16.000 --> 1:04:18.880 when when people talk about it. So, first, the first 1:04:19.320 --> 1:04:23.280 step to protect against that is the facility itself, you know, 1:04:23.360 --> 1:04:26.800 extremely secure double fence actually triple fence if you include 1:04:26.840 --> 1:04:30.320 our perimeter fence. You know, we just we've had to 1:04:30.360 --> 1:04:34.440 have really thorough conversations with government agencies to explain all 1:04:34.440 --> 1:04:36.160 the measures that have been taken to ensure it's a 1:04:36.160 --> 1:04:40.760 biosecure facility. So there's that piece of it. The other 1:04:40.840 --> 1:04:43.720 side of it is is really sort of like the 1:04:43.760 --> 1:04:47.520 CWD example is really good is you know, we need 1:04:47.560 --> 1:04:50.960 to know more about these animals before you would ever 1:04:51.000 --> 1:04:53.160 cut something loose, whether it's a dire wolfer, it's a 1:04:53.200 --> 1:04:55.160 wooly mammoth, right, we need to know a lot about 1:04:55.160 --> 1:04:57.520 these animals and what are the effects of gene editing, 1:04:57.520 --> 1:04:59.840 what are the effects of cloning, what are the effects 1:04:59.840 --> 1:05:03.040 of the specific edits we chose, which is exactly why 1:05:03.080 --> 1:05:05.040 we chose dire wolf because we knew it'd stay in 1:05:05.080 --> 1:05:07.240 this area and we can do that cradle to grave 1:05:07.960 --> 1:05:10.960 sort of research with them. So this is a great 1:05:10.960 --> 1:05:13.800 opportunity for just to show what are those impacts. But 1:05:13.880 --> 1:05:17.040 you know, the CWD example is really interesting because you 1:05:17.120 --> 1:05:19.480 are you know, we get a question about playing God 1:05:19.520 --> 1:05:21.200 a lot, and that is sort of one of those 1:05:21.240 --> 1:05:23.880 sort of God decisions we're making. As we said, these 1:05:23.920 --> 1:05:28.080 animals have this specific preon gene that makes them more 1:05:28.240 --> 1:05:32.760 resistant or you know more can can bear the preonic 1:05:32.800 --> 1:05:36.000 disease more than others. But what are the what are 1:05:36.040 --> 1:05:38.680 the things that tag along with that? Or if all 1:05:39.040 --> 1:05:42.360 that's say, all the white tail in Texas were suddenly 1:05:43.160 --> 1:05:45.840 wiped out by CWD and only the animals that were 1:05:45.840 --> 1:05:50.680 released are remain you've created this sort of genetic bottleneck 1:05:50.680 --> 1:05:53.400 because I guess you didn't make ten thousand of those, right, 1:05:53.440 --> 1:05:56.000 you only made a hundred of them. So there is that, 1:05:56.240 --> 1:05:58.440 you know, there are a lot of these ethical decisions 1:05:58.440 --> 1:06:01.560 we have to have. Love the extinction, I love class. 1:06:01.640 --> 1:06:04.000 I love the Diary Project because it push puts that 1:06:04.120 --> 1:06:06.600 debate forward because we're gonna have to start having these 1:06:06.600 --> 1:06:07.479 conversations more. 1:06:08.240 --> 1:06:12.200 Right, That's that's like in my mind, that is the Yeah, 1:06:12.920 --> 1:06:16.120 Like that is the conversation. And and and I credit 1:06:16.240 --> 1:06:19.960 like to get somewhere, like, you know, let's let's say 1:06:20.000 --> 1:06:22.440 look at the people that are eager about the idea 1:06:22.480 --> 1:06:27.480 of colonizing Mars. Right, Yeah, there's all kinds of questions, 1:06:27.920 --> 1:06:32.040 huge questions about the possibility that but at some point 1:06:32.120 --> 1:06:34.040 you just go like, well we'll start going that direction. 1:06:34.840 --> 1:06:37.880 We'll solve what we can solve, understanding that there could 1:06:37.920 --> 1:06:42.200 possibly be a wall that we don't see. Like that 1:06:42.480 --> 1:06:45.200 you start before the pathway is clear, yep, right, you 1:06:45.320 --> 1:06:47.080 just like I don't know, we'll start walking that way 1:06:47.120 --> 1:06:47.800 and when. 1:06:49.360 --> 1:06:51.240 What happens, what happens, may we fall off the end 1:06:51.280 --> 1:06:51.600 of the earth. 1:06:51.640 --> 1:06:53.320 At some point it was all or not, but we 1:06:53.400 --> 1:06:57.640 got to start asking questions answer questions. I feel that 1:06:57.680 --> 1:07:01.760 with anything to do with the extinction, Like, because I 1:07:01.800 --> 1:07:04.439 don't understand the science, I'm not like train enough, smart 1:07:04.520 --> 1:07:04.760 enough to. 1:07:04.800 --> 1:07:05.640 Understand the science. 1:07:05.840 --> 1:07:09.120 You are a doctor, though I am. 1:07:08.240 --> 1:07:09.400 Other area of forestry. 1:07:11.040 --> 1:07:14.280 I can't understand the science, like I'm incapable of understanding science, 1:07:14.800 --> 1:07:18.560 but I can understand this. At some point, the de 1:07:18.720 --> 1:07:24.320 extinction process will be that we have, like we have 1:07:24.520 --> 1:07:30.160 a Tasmanian tiger, or a thiosine or an approximate we 1:07:30.240 --> 1:07:37.320 have an approximate ivory built woodpecker. We humbly ask your 1:07:37.360 --> 1:07:42.200 permission to let it go. And like I can just 1:07:42.400 --> 1:07:49.360 imagine the resistance, maybe even a knee jerk resistance, maybe 1:07:49.400 --> 1:07:54.400 an unwarranted resistance, but that will that to me not insurmountable, 1:07:54.400 --> 1:07:57.800 But that to me is the final argument. 1:07:57.760 --> 1:08:00.000 Because there's got to be a like, what's going to happen? 1:08:00.000 --> 1:08:02.240 And if we do, yes, we want to see what's 1:08:02.280 --> 1:08:02.840 going to happen? 1:08:02.920 --> 1:08:05.680 Right, But I think what's missed often in that sort 1:08:05.720 --> 1:08:08.520 of that very conservative approach to these things of well, 1:08:08.560 --> 1:08:10.520 we need to answer every question before we take the 1:08:10.560 --> 1:08:13.160 next step, is what is the opportunity cost of not 1:08:13.240 --> 1:08:17.160 acting right? If we could restore a diallyscene to Tasmania, 1:08:17.200 --> 1:08:20.559 could we start to reduce wildlife disease and level out 1:08:20.600 --> 1:08:24.800 prey populations in a way that helps support biodiversity of Tasmania? Yeah, 1:08:24.880 --> 1:08:27.559 I think we could. Are there some other negative effects 1:08:27.960 --> 1:08:30.320 there might be, and we should understand those. But we 1:08:30.400 --> 1:08:33.559 also can't say we need to tick one hundred percent 1:08:33.560 --> 1:08:35.400 of the boxes before we take the next step, because 1:08:35.439 --> 1:08:36.599 we will never get anywhere. 1:08:37.000 --> 1:08:37.200 Yeah. 1:08:37.200 --> 1:08:39.160 I think you know, Teddy Roosevelt had that really famous 1:08:39.240 --> 1:08:41.920 quote in the moment of any decision, the best thing 1:08:41.960 --> 1:08:43.800 to do is the right thing, The next best thing 1:08:43.840 --> 1:08:45.280 to do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing 1:08:45.320 --> 1:08:48.240 to do is nothing right. And so that's really our 1:08:48.280 --> 1:08:50.200 mentality is we need to push forward. We need to 1:08:50.200 --> 1:08:53.639 push technologies forward that give us an opportunity to solve 1:08:53.640 --> 1:08:56.639 for some issues, and could there be this butterfly effect 1:08:56.640 --> 1:09:00.000 that creates an unforeseen issue. Absolutely, should we be prepared 1:09:00.280 --> 1:09:03.320 as possible before we take those steps. Absolutely, I'm not 1:09:03.400 --> 1:09:08.519 debating that. But right now there is there is an 1:09:08.520 --> 1:09:11.679 issue in the conservation community that we are accepting status 1:09:11.760 --> 1:09:15.080 quo because we're afraid of the unknown, and we haven't 1:09:15.120 --> 1:09:18.880 acknowledged that status quo means a reduction of biodiversity over 1:09:18.920 --> 1:09:21.040 the next twenty five years of maybe up to fifty 1:09:21.080 --> 1:09:25.040 percent of the biodiversity that exists today. We need to 1:09:25.120 --> 1:09:28.880 start taking steps and bringing tools to the to the 1:09:28.920 --> 1:09:33.719 conservation game that create fundamental change, that create magnitudes of change, 1:09:33.760 --> 1:09:37.360 because we are getting our asses kicked on the biodiversity front. 1:09:37.960 --> 1:09:42.880 So another why that I've heard is like, why work 1:09:42.920 --> 1:09:46.639 with a species like a dire wolf that ultimately proved 1:09:46.640 --> 1:09:51.479 to be like unsuccessful. You know, it had its time 1:09:51.560 --> 1:09:55.160 and then was unable to cope with whatever changes led 1:09:55.200 --> 1:10:00.439 to its extinction. Why not work with like Siberian tis 1:10:01.240 --> 1:10:04.840 that are like imperiled and you could grow those. 1:10:04.680 --> 1:10:06.080 If they won't let them caught them loose. 1:10:06.800 --> 1:10:09.639 I'm just saying I think it's also not an either 1:10:09.760 --> 1:10:11.920 or proposition, that's not how we work. We are a 1:10:11.960 --> 1:10:15.120 mores more yes and type of group. So we loved 1:10:15.200 --> 1:10:18.400 using de extinction as this ability to bring new eyeballs, 1:10:18.400 --> 1:10:21.040 new funding to the table, bring attention and awareness and 1:10:21.080 --> 1:10:23.640 money to the conservation battles that we face on the 1:10:23.720 --> 1:10:27.240 endangered spaces front by using the extinction as an engine 1:10:27.640 --> 1:10:32.400 to fuel that that fight. So with the with the 1:10:32.520 --> 1:10:35.479 de extinction of the dire wolf, we have also been 1:10:35.520 --> 1:10:38.880 working on the genetic rescue of the American red wolf. 1:10:39.000 --> 1:10:43.040 Right red wolf declared extinct in the wild in nineteen eighty. 1:10:43.120 --> 1:10:45.400 In the sixties and seventies, US Fish and Wildlife realized 1:10:45.439 --> 1:10:47.200 that we had almost killed them all. So they went 1:10:47.200 --> 1:10:51.040 to Louisiana and Texas and they captured what they thought 1:10:51.120 --> 1:10:54.160 was the remaining group of red wolves using very specific 1:10:54.640 --> 1:10:58.960 morphological measurements similar to this dire wolf gray wolf debate right, Well, 1:10:59.240 --> 1:11:01.719 in reality with they did is they caught fourteen animals 1:11:01.880 --> 1:11:04.000 and they said this is now the founding population of 1:11:04.000 --> 1:11:07.000 a captive group that will then be kept in human 1:11:07.040 --> 1:11:09.000 care until we figure out how to get them back 1:11:09.000 --> 1:11:09.479 into the wild. 1:11:09.600 --> 1:11:11.519 Yeah. On what was the island they put them on? 1:11:11.760 --> 1:11:14.720 Oh? Yeah, I can't even was it off South Carolina? Yeah, 1:11:14.760 --> 1:11:18.040 it was off South Carolina. Now now they're in northeastern 1:11:18.280 --> 1:11:22.840 North Carolina, which is the experimental release site. Well, the 1:11:22.880 --> 1:11:25.680 problem with that is they were looking for a very 1:11:25.720 --> 1:11:28.640 specific phenotype and they didn't have the power genetics in 1:11:28.680 --> 1:11:31.479 the seventies when they were trying to understand what was 1:11:31.479 --> 1:11:33.559 a red wolf and what was a coyote in Louisiana 1:11:33.600 --> 1:11:36.400 and Texas. So what they did is they caught fourteen 1:11:36.400 --> 1:11:41.679 animals that fit a very specific bill. Wind the clock 1:11:41.760 --> 1:11:44.320 back about eight nine years ago Bridget von Holt from 1:11:44.320 --> 1:11:48.640 Princeton University in Chris Enbreski for Michigan Tech, they rediscovered 1:11:48.800 --> 1:11:51.680 that there is actually this extremely high level of red 1:11:51.760 --> 1:11:55.200 wolf ancestry in that canid population in Louisiana and Texas. 1:11:55.439 --> 1:11:58.919 And if you look at the genetics of those canids 1:11:59.240 --> 1:12:01.559 from this sort of high spot and it radiates out, 1:12:01.800 --> 1:12:04.160 you can see that the proportion of red wolf within 1:12:04.280 --> 1:12:08.160 these these Louisiana and Texas populations is about seventy percent 1:12:08.240 --> 1:12:11.799 red wolf thirty percent coyote. As you radiate out, you 1:12:11.840 --> 1:12:13.479 sort of flip it and by the time you get 1:12:13.520 --> 1:12:16.800 to like Dallas where I live, it's totally inverse. It's 1:12:16.920 --> 1:12:19.320 barely any red wolf in totally coyote. So this is 1:12:19.360 --> 1:12:22.320 a very unique group of canids that have persisted since 1:12:22.360 --> 1:12:27.799 the seventies. Meanwhile, the closed population that used the captive 1:12:27.840 --> 1:12:31.479 population that used for reintroduction to North Carolina has had 1:12:31.520 --> 1:12:34.639 the same fourteen founders. Actually only twelve of those bred 1:12:34.640 --> 1:12:36.920 and are represented. So now you have about two hundred 1:12:36.920 --> 1:12:39.800 and fiftywo hundred and seventy animals in captive population that 1:12:40.160 --> 1:12:45.519 stemmed from twelve individuals, huge genetic bottleneck and totally missed, 1:12:46.840 --> 1:12:50.240 you know, some of the phenotypic diversity of the red wolf. 1:12:50.400 --> 1:12:52.880 Going back to aliens abducted you and I, they would 1:12:52.880 --> 1:12:55.559 have missed all the people you liveing in Asia and 1:12:55.760 --> 1:12:58.639 Africa and South America, and they, you know, they would 1:12:58.640 --> 1:13:01.600 think everybody looks like like us, and that would be 1:13:01.640 --> 1:13:05.760 a horrible representation of what our species actually is. They 1:13:05.760 --> 1:13:08.240 did similar to that, they missed a lot of genetic 1:13:08.240 --> 1:13:10.920 diversity that still exists there. So we've created using the 1:13:10.960 --> 1:13:14.000 same technology used to make dire wolves, we now have 1:13:14.080 --> 1:13:16.559 this ability to be able to sequence all of these 1:13:16.600 --> 1:13:19.080 red wolves or these Gulf Coast canids, is what we 1:13:19.120 --> 1:13:21.519 call them or ghost wolves, because they have such high 1:13:21.600 --> 1:13:25.519 levels of genetic ancestry of the American red wolf. They 1:13:25.560 --> 1:13:28.639 also have a portion of their genome that's not assigned 1:13:28.680 --> 1:13:32.200 to any other canid. So it's likely that ghost portion 1:13:32.920 --> 1:13:35.840 is the ancestral red wolf, the pre extinction red wolf 1:13:36.280 --> 1:13:38.599 that we don't have our reference to yet, but we're creating. 1:13:38.840 --> 1:13:42.000 We're doing historic sequencing to understand before the extinction what 1:13:42.680 --> 1:13:45.519 was red wolf, and then that would assign how much 1:13:45.560 --> 1:13:49.160 red wolf are these coyotes. Now that's an opportunity, and 1:13:49.240 --> 1:13:50.920 this is one of the things we've been meeting with 1:13:51.040 --> 1:13:53.479 the US government and Secretary of Bergamon is now we 1:13:53.520 --> 1:13:55.720 have this opportunity to create a genetic rescue tool that 1:13:55.760 --> 1:13:58.559 could be an you know, sort of an opportunity to 1:13:58.640 --> 1:14:01.920 the US Fish and Wilde Recovery program to say, your 1:14:02.040 --> 1:14:04.720 species is sort of headed for extinction because of its 1:14:04.960 --> 1:14:09.759 extreme genetic inbreeding. We have a fresh set of genetics 1:14:09.760 --> 1:14:13.439 that we could plug into your population and help sort 1:14:13.439 --> 1:14:16.800 of revitalize. Similar to when Texas cougars went into the 1:14:16.800 --> 1:14:20.880 Florida panther population. We could do that type of genetic rescue. 1:14:20.520 --> 1:14:22.719 Effort, which was controversial at the time. 1:14:22.760 --> 1:14:25.000 And now people hail it as one of the biggest successes. 1:14:25.080 --> 1:14:29.479 What it was like, well, you're corrupting the Florida gene 1:14:29.479 --> 1:14:33.200 pool or it's not the same thing. Yeah, those Florida 1:14:33.200 --> 1:14:36.840 panthers will now be not quite Florida panthers. 1:14:36.720 --> 1:14:38.960 But they won't be cross eyed and can Yeah, And. 1:14:38.920 --> 1:14:40.880 People are like, well they're closer than none. 1:14:41.040 --> 1:14:43.799 Yes, would be the art. That's our focus is function 1:14:44.000 --> 1:14:47.639 within an ecosystem. Can we create a direwolf that would 1:14:47.640 --> 1:14:50.920 have performed the same function in its ecosystem or can 1:14:50.960 --> 1:14:55.600 we help rescue a species and it still performed the 1:14:55.600 --> 1:14:57.960 same function. The answer is yes, we absolutely can, and 1:14:58.000 --> 1:15:00.000 we need to be more focused on the pragmatic idea 1:15:00.120 --> 1:15:02.720 of what function does the species provide to its ecosystem 1:15:02.960 --> 1:15:06.360 versus genetic purity in this weird eugenics mentality we have 1:15:06.479 --> 1:15:11.000 about species. So that's why we sort of I think, 1:15:11.520 --> 1:15:14.679 raise eyebrowsers because we are more focused on that side 1:15:14.760 --> 1:15:18.559 than this idea of what is one hundred percent gray wolf? 1:15:18.600 --> 1:15:19.639 What is one hundred percent tire? 1:15:20.080 --> 1:15:22.519 I think there's some of the blowback is like you 1:15:22.600 --> 1:15:25.280 have an animal and that animal is that animal out 1:15:25.320 --> 1:15:29.599 in the wild and it becomes like less wild when 1:15:29.600 --> 1:15:31.160 you start tinkering with its. 1:15:31.080 --> 1:15:34.280 Genes and laying the hand of man on it. And 1:15:34.600 --> 1:15:35.240 you know what I mean. 1:15:35.439 --> 1:15:37.800 But in that case, the hand of man, I mean 1:15:37.920 --> 1:15:42.599 they were in a pen. Off of that, they were 1:15:42.600 --> 1:15:45.280 in an enclosure on an island, right to build up 1:15:45.320 --> 1:15:48.840 a reproducible numb I understand. I'm just saying it's very different. 1:15:48.920 --> 1:15:51.400 Yeah, Well, and the hand of man is why they're 1:15:51.479 --> 1:15:54.519 going extinct, right we were, Yeah, we were poaching them 1:15:54.520 --> 1:15:55.440 out of existence. 1:15:58.479 --> 1:15:59.920 But let me hit you with a critical let me 1:16:00.160 --> 1:16:01.120 red wolf criticism. 1:16:01.240 --> 1:16:04.840 Yeah, And in some ways I think this criticism was 1:16:04.880 --> 1:16:06.759 a little bit unfair because it's not like you're taking 1:16:06.800 --> 1:16:10.320 federal money that would normally go to red wolf, recovering 1:16:10.360 --> 1:16:12.519 it and using it for something else exactly. So it's 1:16:12.520 --> 1:16:15.040 like it's pure what the work is added. Well, there's 1:16:15.040 --> 1:16:17.760 the criticisms that would say this, like, guys that work 1:16:17.760 --> 1:16:20.240 on the red wolf problem are like, our problem is 1:16:20.280 --> 1:16:23.719 that people shoot them, yep, and they get hit by cars. Yes, 1:16:24.439 --> 1:16:29.160 So we're not looking for new animals. We're looking for 1:16:29.280 --> 1:16:31.599 how do we create an atmosphere in a place where 1:16:31.600 --> 1:16:35.120 they don't get shot and hit by cars. So it 1:16:35.200 --> 1:16:38.599 was like it's like, that's beside the point it is. 1:16:38.840 --> 1:16:41.080 It is not a silver bullet to the red wolf problem. 1:16:41.200 --> 1:16:43.720 It provides a genetic rescue and get buys them more time. 1:16:43.760 --> 1:16:46.120 Their captive population will begin to suffer as it's a 1:16:46.120 --> 1:16:48.640 closed population, right, so this gives us an opportunity to 1:16:48.680 --> 1:16:53.679 inject fresh genetics. Also, that North Carolina site, you know, whatever, 1:16:54.120 --> 1:16:55.760 you take it back eight years ago or so, the 1:16:55.800 --> 1:16:58.000 US Fishing Wildlife announced, Hey, we're gonna start finding a 1:16:58.040 --> 1:17:01.680 second site. A parallel left it because obviously, you know, 1:17:01.880 --> 1:17:04.719 if you're familiar with the red wolf issue, red wolf 1:17:04.760 --> 1:17:07.080 population in that area got north of one hundred and 1:17:07.080 --> 1:17:12.479 fifty individuals in around twenty thirteen. Basically people started shooting 1:17:12.479 --> 1:17:14.479 and they started getting hit by cars. Today their primary 1:17:14.520 --> 1:17:18.400 issues car strikes. What's interesting is it's a different area. 1:17:18.439 --> 1:17:21.080 In Louisiana and Texas, you have larger landscapes, but you 1:17:21.080 --> 1:17:24.679 don't you don't have as many public lands that protect 1:17:24.720 --> 1:17:27.479 the animals there, and those animals have persisted since we 1:17:27.520 --> 1:17:29.439 thought they would have gone extinct. I think there is 1:17:29.479 --> 1:17:32.759 this weird issue that people sort of say, well, if 1:17:33.320 --> 1:17:36.280 we acknowledge that these animals are predominantly red wolf or 1:17:36.280 --> 1:17:38.679 maybe even truly red wolf as we understand more about 1:17:38.720 --> 1:17:41.360 their genetics. That's also acknowledging the fact that we didn't 1:17:41.400 --> 1:17:44.960 need to intervene in nineteen seventy. They would have continued 1:17:45.000 --> 1:17:46.799 to persist in that area. 1:17:46.920 --> 1:17:49.160 Yeah, because where they do or they did bring them, 1:17:49.200 --> 1:17:50.040 they've tried. 1:17:49.760 --> 1:17:53.599 To keep coyotes. Yeah, right, like that understanding of that 1:17:53.640 --> 1:17:56.000 species with coyotes, and then here you have that other 1:17:56.080 --> 1:18:00.639 source population that probably has a bleeding edge where Kyle's 1:18:00.720 --> 1:18:00.960 roll in. 1:18:01.040 --> 1:18:03.880 People talk about admixture. You know, people will say call 1:18:03.920 --> 1:18:06.480 it hybridization, and hybridization is the wrong word, but admixture 1:18:06.560 --> 1:18:09.160 sort of this idea that two species have this you know, 1:18:09.240 --> 1:18:12.280 blending of genetics. They look at that as a bad thing, 1:18:12.320 --> 1:18:15.919 as it as diluting the gene stock of a species. 1:18:16.200 --> 1:18:19.320 But you know, hybridization and admixture of species is a 1:18:19.400 --> 1:18:23.320 natural process. It's actually evolutionary process that confers evolutionary advantages 1:18:23.360 --> 1:18:26.320 to animals, gives them the opportunity to thrive with a 1:18:26.360 --> 1:18:29.360 new within an evolving habitat. Right, they can look at 1:18:29.360 --> 1:18:32.439 a species and say, oh, that coyote actually is you know, 1:18:33.080 --> 1:18:35.439 much faster or stronger, whatever it is, and they breed 1:18:35.479 --> 1:18:37.519 with that, and that that it brings that into their 1:18:37.560 --> 1:18:39.720 gene pool. That's an adaptive strategy. 1:18:40.560 --> 1:18:44.360 That's a criticism you hear of the Linnaean system of 1:18:44.720 --> 1:18:45.400 know that we. 1:18:48.360 --> 1:18:49.599 What's wolf, canis lupus. 1:18:49.680 --> 1:18:50.559 Yeah, canis lupis. 1:18:50.640 --> 1:18:55.439 We're Homo sapien. The rainbow trout is on crinth, on corinth, 1:18:55.520 --> 1:18:59.559 this micas micas whatever the hell you go in and 1:18:59.600 --> 1:19:02.280 you say, ki, I'm gonna take all creatures on Earth 1:19:02.439 --> 1:19:06.879 and I'm going to say that they're all. Whatever causes 1:19:06.920 --> 1:19:10.439 you to lose sight of the long time, and the 1:19:10.520 --> 1:19:11.440 long time. 1:19:11.280 --> 1:19:12.880 Is that there's fluidity. 1:19:13.000 --> 1:19:17.400 Yes, things right, It's similar to things come together and 1:19:17.400 --> 1:19:19.480 fall apart, and it's not static. It's a snapshot. 1:19:19.520 --> 1:19:21.840 When we talk about species recovery, it's the same problem. 1:19:21.880 --> 1:19:24.680 We say recovered to what right are we recovering? You know, 1:19:24.720 --> 1:19:28.960 in North American centric conservation we say recover to fourteen 1:19:29.040 --> 1:19:32.519 ninety two, right, recovered before Europeans came in and ruined 1:19:32.520 --> 1:19:32.880 the place. 1:19:33.040 --> 1:19:35.120 Yeah, that's always my view. 1:19:35.400 --> 1:19:39.200 Yeah, but you know there was a there ebbs and 1:19:39.240 --> 1:19:41.640 flows before that, and there would have been ebbs and 1:19:41.640 --> 1:19:44.200 flows after that. At what point, why do we pick 1:19:44.240 --> 1:19:46.080 an arbitrary point in time. Why do we pick an 1:19:46.200 --> 1:19:49.280 arbitrary definition of a species in time to say that's 1:19:49.320 --> 1:19:52.960 the species it's it's I think it makes sense from 1:19:53.000 --> 1:19:55.080 a communication standpoint, we need to be able to talk 1:19:55.120 --> 1:19:58.919 about these things, classify things, have goals. That's very important. 1:19:59.600 --> 1:20:02.679 But to use that as this ideology that we cannot 1:20:02.680 --> 1:20:04.519 stray from, I think is naive. 1:20:05.479 --> 1:20:08.400 When I had many conversations with friends of mine in 1:20:08.439 --> 1:20:11.320 the wildlife world, when when Colossal made its announcement about 1:20:11.320 --> 1:20:13.679 the dire wolves, one of the conversations I can't remember 1:20:13.680 --> 1:20:16.200 who the hell is talking to was saying to me, 1:20:16.520 --> 1:20:21.720 you know where this would be really helpful. Blackfooted ferrets. Absolutely, 1:20:23.360 --> 1:20:25.840 blackfooted ferriests went through a ten ferret bottleneck. 1:20:25.960 --> 1:20:26.320 Mm hmm. 1:20:27.160 --> 1:20:28.800 Okay, but I want to return. I want to do 1:20:28.800 --> 1:20:32.400 the regulatory thing about ivory built woodpeckers and blackfooted ferrets 1:20:33.479 --> 1:20:38.679 who like who? What would ever have to say? Okay 1:20:40.360 --> 1:20:44.519 to be that like our population? Our global population of 1:20:44.560 --> 1:20:48.200 blackfooted ferrets was reduced down to ten animals, But we 1:20:48.320 --> 1:20:53.280 have all these specimens that show a level of genetic 1:20:53.320 --> 1:20:58.320 diversity that did not exist in those ten Those blackfooted 1:20:58.360 --> 1:21:01.800 farans aren't getting shot they're not getting run over, right, 1:21:01.800 --> 1:21:05.000 they're fairly easy to protect. Who has to say yes 1:21:06.360 --> 1:21:12.240 to start inferring lost genetic diversity into blackfooted ferrets, Like 1:21:12.320 --> 1:21:14.960 who would be the who is the one that goes okay, 1:21:16.400 --> 1:21:17.439 it's it's it's hard. 1:21:17.520 --> 1:21:20.240 So blackfoot affair, it's a great example because they've been 1:21:20.320 --> 1:21:23.960 using biotechnology to try to genetically rescue blackfooted ferret because 1:21:24.000 --> 1:21:28.200 people were banking tissues of blackfoot affairs back into the seventies. 1:21:28.680 --> 1:21:31.280 So if you heard Elizabeth Ann, she was the clone 1:21:31.320 --> 1:21:34.639 that they brought back. She was, you know, an unrepresented founder. 1:21:34.760 --> 1:21:38.439 They cloned her. Unfortunately that that single individual she didn't 1:21:38.479 --> 1:21:41.320 actually she wasn't able to reproduce, but they cloned her again, 1:21:41.960 --> 1:21:45.120 and now they've had the first ever clone breed and 1:21:45.200 --> 1:21:48.360 give give birth to offspring. Who's the US Fish and 1:21:48.360 --> 1:21:51.920 Wildlife Service recovery program. So that's where we would start. 1:21:52.000 --> 1:21:54.040 You start with the US Fish and Wildlife Service because 1:21:54.040 --> 1:21:56.479 they are the ones that are mandated by the Endangered 1:21:56.520 --> 1:22:00.599 Species Act to recover species listed by the Act, so 1:22:00.680 --> 1:22:03.679 they have the jurisdiction in that area. Now, if we're 1:22:03.720 --> 1:22:05.720 just using cloning like what they did, US Fish and 1:22:05.720 --> 1:22:07.800 Wildlife has been able to do that on their own. 1:22:08.000 --> 1:22:10.720 Now if we were to bring colossal type technology, which 1:22:10.720 --> 1:22:14.840 is cloning plus genetic editing, and we said one of 1:22:14.840 --> 1:22:18.720 the primary drivers is the blackfooted ferret extinction crisis we're 1:22:18.760 --> 1:22:22.240 facing is sylvatic plague. Sylvatic plague is present in their 1:22:23.360 --> 1:22:30.200 obligatory prey species, the paradog. Thanks, that's a hard one 1:22:30.200 --> 1:22:33.680 to remember. So parad dogs are carrying sylvatic plague, and 1:22:33.720 --> 1:22:37.160 that when they predate on an animal that has plague, 1:22:37.200 --> 1:22:40.639 they also get plague and they die. We know for 1:22:40.840 --> 1:22:43.880 a fact that the closest living relative of the blackfooted ferret, 1:22:43.920 --> 1:22:48.320 which is the domestic ferret, has a naturally occurring resistance 1:22:48.360 --> 1:22:52.160 to plague. And it's a very small change. So you 1:22:52.160 --> 1:22:54.080 could go in and make a genetic edit within the 1:22:54.080 --> 1:22:58.479 black footed fair genome and suddenly ferrets are resistant to 1:22:58.520 --> 1:23:02.400 blackfooted to sylvatic plaque. And now we can make a 1:23:02.479 --> 1:23:06.200 huge difference in the recovery of blackfoot affairs. 1:23:06.240 --> 1:23:08.719 But now it's like, now we're going to have whatever. 1:23:08.880 --> 1:23:13.880 Yeah, now someone's now we're dealing with multiple agencies, the USDA, 1:23:14.479 --> 1:23:18.080 the FDA, they all have they all have some jurisdiction 1:23:18.200 --> 1:23:20.160 in what we call intentionally altered genomes. 1:23:20.240 --> 1:23:24.120 Okay, there are examples of US Fish and Wildlife Service 1:23:24.280 --> 1:23:29.120 like saying this is an acceptable level of genetic representation. 1:23:29.320 --> 1:23:33.320 Like in Colorado, they like with cutthroat trout, they would 1:23:33.360 --> 1:23:38.280 find like an isolated like subspecies of cutthroat trout and 1:23:38.320 --> 1:23:41.439 be like, it's like pretty much there, So we're going 1:23:41.479 --> 1:23:44.800 to put it back into this place. And so I 1:23:44.800 --> 1:23:47.679 mean someone's capable of saying like it's close enough. 1:23:48.400 --> 1:23:50.519 And that's US Fish and wildlife typically. But once we 1:23:50.520 --> 1:23:53.200 start getting into gene editing and sure start inviting more 1:23:53.280 --> 1:23:55.360 regulators to the table. And that's what we're doing right now, 1:23:55.400 --> 1:23:59.200 and we're actually pushing the boundaries of the regulatory environment 1:23:59.240 --> 1:24:02.120 because this you know, these were all hypotheticals and now 1:24:02.120 --> 1:24:04.600 their realities and people are scrambling to say, how the 1:24:04.600 --> 1:24:05.280 hell do we do this? 1:24:05.560 --> 1:24:09.120 So could you run? Could you How long does a 1:24:09.160 --> 1:24:10.120 blackfooted fair it live? 1:24:10.760 --> 1:24:11.519 Ten twelve years? 1:24:11.560 --> 1:24:11.840 Okay? 1:24:12.560 --> 1:24:13.400 Could you run? 1:24:13.560 --> 1:24:21.080 Would it makes sense that you would run a generation? Right, 1:24:22.560 --> 1:24:27.240 you'd make a plag resistant blackfooted ferret if you ran 1:24:27.320 --> 1:24:28.720 it for a if you just let it go for 1:24:28.760 --> 1:24:32.400 a generation in captivity, would you then be able to 1:24:32.439 --> 1:24:35.000 be like would you then be able to dispel Would 1:24:35.080 --> 1:24:39.280 that be enough time to dispel some of the questions? Yeah, 1:24:39.320 --> 1:24:41.680 I think does it take like would you have to 1:24:41.760 --> 1:24:45.120 run five generations? It's a good question that puts you 1:24:45.160 --> 1:24:46.240 sixty years down the road. 1:24:46.240 --> 1:24:48.280 I mean, I certainly don't think Colossal has the answer 1:24:48.320 --> 1:24:50.360 for that, For that specific question. I think that is 1:24:50.400 --> 1:24:52.760 a regulatory question. You know, at what point do we 1:24:52.800 --> 1:24:56.400 feel comfortable with this now, knowing that they have a 1:24:56.400 --> 1:25:00.080 close living relative with this exact gene doing how how 1:25:00.160 --> 1:25:02.200 much do we need to do Because we've studied domestic 1:25:02.200 --> 1:25:08.160 ferrets for mm hmm hundreds of years, right, that might 1:25:08.240 --> 1:25:10.680 inform what's happening here. But I think you could set 1:25:10.720 --> 1:25:13.280 up an experimental population where you're able to do a 1:25:13.280 --> 1:25:15.200 lot of those things and within a generation or two 1:25:15.240 --> 1:25:17.360 begin to put animals back into the wild. Now, the 1:25:17.439 --> 1:25:21.880 trick with blackfooted ferret is that, you know, we probably 1:25:21.920 --> 1:25:23.920 need to find some resistance for prairie dogs as well. 1:25:24.720 --> 1:25:26.599 All right, if they're going to continue being the vector 1:25:26.680 --> 1:25:30.040 of the disease, you need to remove the vector, and 1:25:30.120 --> 1:25:31.559 they have to you know, you have to have parade 1:25:31.600 --> 1:25:34.680 dogs because parade dogs are blackfoot af fairts rely on 1:25:34.720 --> 1:25:39.320 their holes. Plus they eat them. So, you know, ranching 1:25:39.520 --> 1:25:42.360 folks don't really love parade dogs. They create a lot 1:25:42.360 --> 1:25:45.320 of problems for cattle, and so to go and convince 1:25:45.360 --> 1:25:47.920 people that we should do something protect parade dogs might 1:25:47.960 --> 1:25:48.919 be a harder sell. 1:25:48.960 --> 1:25:55.920 Like you feel that that the constant exposure could in time, 1:25:56.920 --> 1:25:59.080 that the susceptibility could could. 1:25:58.880 --> 1:26:00.679 Return potentially, I see. 1:26:00.920 --> 1:26:02.400 Yeah. 1:26:02.680 --> 1:26:06.479 A month ago, Time magazine reported that the Mandan and 1:26:06.600 --> 1:26:09.960 Ricara tribes have expressed a desire to have dire wolves 1:26:10.000 --> 1:26:13.240 live on their lands in North Dakota, a possibility Colossal 1:26:13.320 --> 1:26:15.920 is studying. So two things. One that seems to go 1:26:15.960 --> 1:26:18.559 against what you said earlier about the dire wolves living 1:26:18.560 --> 1:26:21.519 in the wild. And then two, what is that tribal 1:26:21.520 --> 1:26:24.920 communication been like with you guys about why they have 1:26:25.040 --> 1:26:28.400 a desire to have dire wolves on their reservation. 1:26:28.760 --> 1:26:30.360 Yeah. I wouldn't say it goes against what I was 1:26:30.360 --> 1:26:32.479 saying earlier. I think it would be replicating what we've 1:26:32.479 --> 1:26:34.200 done already, but on tribal lands. 1:26:34.240 --> 1:26:37.760 So in two thousand acre enclosure, Yeah, okay. 1:26:37.720 --> 1:26:40.879 So a year and a half ago we launched Colossal's 1:26:40.880 --> 1:26:44.759 Indigenous Council, which was bringing leaders in the conservation community 1:26:44.880 --> 1:26:48.200 from the indigenous world to the table to say, how 1:26:48.200 --> 1:26:51.639 can we enhance the conservation work you're already leading. How 1:26:51.680 --> 1:26:56.040 could we adopt you know, things like coexistence strategies that 1:26:56.640 --> 1:26:59.360 our Native American partners have been much better at than 1:26:59.400 --> 1:27:02.559 we have uh and and so part of that was, 1:27:03.479 --> 1:27:06.280 you know, one of the reasons for dire Wolf when 1:27:06.280 --> 1:27:08.720 we were launching is we were working with Chairman Fox 1:27:08.760 --> 1:27:11.040 at mh a nation in North Dakota, and we were 1:27:11.040 --> 1:27:13.040 talking to him about some bison genetic work that we 1:27:13.040 --> 1:27:15.040 were doing because Beth has a big background and by 1:27:15.120 --> 1:27:18.760 some genetics and and and Chairman Fox had started telling 1:27:18.800 --> 1:27:21.040 us an origin story of his of his people, and 1:27:21.080 --> 1:27:24.439 it talks about the great wolf, which was this large, 1:27:24.600 --> 1:27:25.840 extremely large wolf. 1:27:26.600 --> 1:27:26.720 UH. 1:27:27.040 --> 1:27:28.840 It was it was a white wolf or a light 1:27:28.880 --> 1:27:32.120 colored wolf, similar to what we're talking about, and it 1:27:32.240 --> 1:27:34.879 was part of their origin stories passed down through oral tradition, 1:27:35.360 --> 1:27:39.640 and their people believe that that that they had coexisted 1:27:39.680 --> 1:27:42.040 with dire wolves and that's part of their origin story. 1:27:42.280 --> 1:27:43.800 So there was a big interest. They said, if you 1:27:43.840 --> 1:27:45.320 guys are able to do this, we would love to 1:27:45.560 --> 1:27:47.120 bring the dire wolves back to our lands so we 1:27:47.160 --> 1:27:50.799 can also honor this UH this ancestral wolf that's important 1:27:50.840 --> 1:27:51.360 to our people. 1:27:52.200 --> 1:27:54.720 Who has done this is a global story? Who's done 1:27:54.760 --> 1:27:57.640 a good or a bad job? From your perspective of 1:27:57.680 --> 1:27:58.280 covering it? 1:28:00.439 --> 1:28:01.679 That's a that's a great question. 1:28:02.040 --> 1:28:06.080 I don't know. Yeah, there was one that was crazy. 1:28:06.479 --> 1:28:07.080 What's that one? 1:28:08.439 --> 1:28:10.680 It was like, I don't even want to say on 1:28:10.760 --> 1:28:11.080 the air. 1:28:12.240 --> 1:28:13.719 It was like a cult reporter. 1:28:14.320 --> 1:28:19.400 Oh yeah, we won't give them any clicks. That was wild. 1:28:19.720 --> 1:28:22.599 That was that was just looney tune stuff. I think 1:28:22.600 --> 1:28:27.080 there's been some bad stuff. A good example is what 1:28:27.240 --> 1:28:30.639 is the Cowboy Statesman. There's a Wyoming publication. They wrote 1:28:30.680 --> 1:28:32.680 an article about, you know, this is what's going to 1:28:32.680 --> 1:28:35.400 happen when direwolves introduced to Yellowstone, Like there's such a 1:28:35.479 --> 1:28:39.360 leap of logic, steps to the end. Yeah, yeah, And 1:28:39.400 --> 1:28:40.680 it was just you know, this is going to be 1:28:40.680 --> 1:28:41.920 horrible for Yellowstone. You know. 1:28:41.960 --> 1:28:44.920 Well, I like their stuff generally, but they are kind 1:28:44.960 --> 1:28:47.040 of bulldogs. I could see how they could take a 1:28:47.080 --> 1:28:49.479 story like this and and do exactly what you're saying. 1:28:50.080 --> 1:28:51.920 Yeah, I was skipping a lot of steps. 1:28:52.120 --> 1:28:52.320 Yeah. 1:28:52.360 --> 1:28:54.400 Another one that did a poor job that I was 1:28:54.520 --> 1:28:56.439 disappointed with because it's a friend of ours that we 1:28:56.479 --> 1:28:59.960 know pretty well. Was the Washington posted after Secretary Bergham 1:29:00.040 --> 1:29:01.720 had come out with the public statement of support for 1:29:01.800 --> 1:29:05.840 the extinction technologies as a tool for conservation. Was basically there. 1:29:05.880 --> 1:29:10.160 The headline was this really superficial stretch that said, oh, 1:29:10.200 --> 1:29:13.080 Secretary Bergham and the Trump administration will use the extinction 1:29:13.160 --> 1:29:16.960 to gut the Endanger Species Act. And they've said that. Well, 1:29:17.000 --> 1:29:19.479 they didn't say that. I mean his act, his quote, 1:29:19.479 --> 1:29:21.519 which is pretty powerful, and I was blown away that 1:29:21.640 --> 1:29:25.040 he took such a bold stance. Basically said, this is 1:29:25.160 --> 1:29:29.160 technology that could be fundamentally game changing to the recovery 1:29:29.200 --> 1:29:34.040 of species, which would lead to delisting. This wasn't just 1:29:34.120 --> 1:29:35.080 gutting the endangers. 1:29:35.240 --> 1:29:37.519 I read that, and that was but that's a very 1:29:37.560 --> 1:29:43.479 common kind of environmental reporting. Yeah, that it was. He 1:29:43.880 --> 1:29:46.559 he said something to the effect of in a perfect world, 1:29:47.040 --> 1:29:48.040 we would never get there. 1:29:48.160 --> 1:29:50.800 Yes, And then that was taken like, in. 1:29:50.760 --> 1:29:54.360 A proper role, we would never get to needing the 1:29:54.680 --> 1:29:58.519 ESA correct, which would wind up being if you if 1:29:58.560 --> 1:30:01.479 you pull a bunch of Americakinson said, would you like 1:30:01.560 --> 1:30:04.960 to live in a world where the Endangered Species Act 1:30:05.000 --> 1:30:10.400 was never necessary? Everyone will go Well, sure, he says that, 1:30:10.680 --> 1:30:12.800 and it's that he must mean he's going to get 1:30:12.880 --> 1:30:14.479 rid of it. 1:30:13.840 --> 1:30:15.760 Yeah, it's just funny and it happens. 1:30:15.800 --> 1:30:18.320 It was like it was it was a wild extrapolation, 1:30:18.640 --> 1:30:20.519 but I see what they were getting at. They're getting 1:30:20.560 --> 1:30:22.880 at that. It would be like, oh, they're going to 1:30:23.080 --> 1:30:28.240 use a squishy definition, right that, Like like, here's the fear. 1:30:28.280 --> 1:30:31.479 I'm guessing, like what what's driving the mentality? It would 1:30:31.520 --> 1:30:36.599 be that you get down to ten blackfooted ferrets and 1:30:36.680 --> 1:30:38.240 someone saying like, wow. 1:30:38.400 --> 1:30:40.720 They really should have ees a protection. 1:30:40.760 --> 1:30:45.479 And they'd be like, don't worry, we just ordered two hundred, right, 1:30:45.560 --> 1:30:48.120 But what's missing and like that's like I think that's 1:30:48.120 --> 1:30:50.439 what they're getting That would become the play in that 1:30:50.600 --> 1:30:53.600 sort of that just you know, menu of options and 1:30:53.720 --> 1:30:56.000 ordering the next species of interest. What's missing in that 1:30:56.040 --> 1:30:58.960 whole thing is habitat. And that's what I think a 1:30:58.960 --> 1:31:01.400 lot of these environmental reporters that have taken that very 1:31:01.479 --> 1:31:05.280 hardline stance are missing. Is this idea that recovery has 1:31:05.560 --> 1:31:09.879 very specific parameters around habitat requirement, right and sustainable population 1:31:09.960 --> 1:31:12.639 in the wild. So in order to achieve recovery, there's 1:31:12.680 --> 1:31:16.840 a habitat requirement. Also, I think de extinction technologies and 1:31:16.920 --> 1:31:20.880 using de extinction technologies to recover in danger species also 1:31:21.000 --> 1:31:23.080 has this really great sort of beacon of hope and 1:31:23.160 --> 1:31:26.479 sort of inspirational effort that if we said tomorrow we 1:31:26.560 --> 1:31:30.479 could bring back the I rebuild woodpecker, would we start 1:31:30.520 --> 1:31:35.160 suddenly protecting doing a better job of protecting habitat in Arkansas? 1:31:35.760 --> 1:31:36.519 Well, that's the thing. 1:31:36.560 --> 1:31:36.840 I mean. 1:31:36.960 --> 1:31:41.160 If the ESA comes with what many people would call 1:31:41.479 --> 1:31:47.439 like onerous regulations right regarding protecting habitat, other people would 1:31:47.479 --> 1:31:48.120 be like, oh. 1:31:47.960 --> 1:31:49.679 No, it's like we need them anymore. 1:31:51.920 --> 1:31:55.840 So bringing them back doesn't necessarily solve the problem exactly. 1:31:56.160 --> 1:31:59.240 It is a tool that could help accelerate and scale recovery. 1:31:59.600 --> 1:32:00.360 That's what it is. 1:32:00.960 --> 1:32:02.400 I want. I want a narrow one on the ivy 1:32:02.439 --> 1:32:04.559 build woodpecker. Maybe you can correct me on some of this, 1:32:04.600 --> 1:32:07.000 but here's why it excites me. It's like. 1:32:09.960 --> 1:32:11.480 There still is habitat. 1:32:12.040 --> 1:32:15.080 There is people more today than when they went extinct. 1:32:15.160 --> 1:32:17.960 Yeah, Like, I mean, there was a lot of habitat 1:32:18.000 --> 1:32:22.720 destruction that led to the problem, but there is habitat. Uh, 1:32:24.080 --> 1:32:29.759 this was so recent, right, there's people alive right now, 1:32:29.960 --> 1:32:33.160 there are people alive that saw Ivory build woodpeckers. 1:32:33.240 --> 1:32:35.920 Yeah, there's actually like photographs of them. There's a real 1:32:35.960 --> 1:32:38.439 to real video of what they think was the last 1:32:38.479 --> 1:32:42.080 Ivory build woodpecker leaving as singer was cutting down the tree. 1:32:42.160 --> 1:32:42.599 Yeah. 1:32:43.040 --> 1:32:44.000 It's pretty powerful. 1:32:44.080 --> 1:32:46.519 Yeah, there's like, yeah, that's the craziest part about it. 1:32:46.600 --> 1:32:47.000 Yeah. 1:32:47.400 --> 1:32:51.599 Dan Flores talks about that while New World is They're like, oh, yeah, 1:32:51.800 --> 1:32:55.519 there's some in that tree. Literally, I mean, I'm not 1:32:55.640 --> 1:33:01.479 joking literally that they actually cut the tree during a 1:33:01.520 --> 1:33:05.599 logging project. There was a contentious logging project cut the tree. 1:33:06.600 --> 1:33:08.320 No one really knew that it was the last ones, 1:33:08.360 --> 1:33:10.320 but they knew it was damn near and it turned 1:33:10.320 --> 1:33:12.320 out probably to be the last ones. They cut the 1:33:12.360 --> 1:33:15.680 tree down with the thing in there as like a 1:33:15.680 --> 1:33:17.519 hey man, don't tell me what to do kind of thing. 1:33:18.360 --> 1:33:26.880 So here you have where there's habitat. It's it like 1:33:27.720 --> 1:33:30.599 it's hard to put it a try, Like it might 1:33:30.640 --> 1:33:33.479 as well have not gone extinct, do you know what 1:33:33.520 --> 1:33:35.800 I mean? Like it's like it one extinct. It seems 1:33:35.840 --> 1:33:37.920 to almost have gone extinct by like a freak chance, 1:33:38.439 --> 1:33:40.559 or it might as well if it didn't, if it had, 1:33:40.600 --> 1:33:44.920 if it had stayed intact, we wouldn't think it was weird. Yeah, 1:33:46.080 --> 1:33:49.439 follow me, yep. If we had, if we had kept 1:33:49.840 --> 1:33:53.920 short faced bears and tact, it would be a thing 1:33:53.920 --> 1:33:57.000 that people remarked on every time they killed a person. 1:33:57.160 --> 1:33:58.920 You know, I'd be like, my god, can you believe? 1:33:59.400 --> 1:34:03.080 Right? The same way we marvel over alligators, we marvel 1:34:03.120 --> 1:34:05.400 over grizzly bears, we marvel over polar bears, and just 1:34:05.439 --> 1:34:06.040 be a bird. 1:34:06.360 --> 1:34:08.160 Yep, it'd be like a bird. 1:34:08.439 --> 1:34:11.720 It was kind of cool, but like a bird, you know, 1:34:12.360 --> 1:34:16.280 so like it's not an earth shattering environmental thing to 1:34:16.360 --> 1:34:21.320 have it around the ranch and farm community is not 1:34:21.720 --> 1:34:23.880 gonna have a be jeopardized by this. 1:34:24.120 --> 1:34:24.200 Ye. 1:34:26.680 --> 1:34:30.080 I can't think of anyone except affiliated woodpecker that would 1:34:30.120 --> 1:34:31.040 maybe be annoyed. 1:34:31.640 --> 1:34:33.959 They would like they're like, dude, we were the biggest woodpecker. 1:34:33.960 --> 1:34:34.360 Now we're not. 1:34:34.960 --> 1:34:37.920 Like they might be annoyed, but it's just there's no 1:34:38.120 --> 1:34:39.639 it doesn't seem like there's friction. 1:34:39.920 --> 1:34:41.639 No, there's not there. 1:34:41.800 --> 1:34:44.720 If we people you go like, how do you feel 1:34:44.720 --> 1:34:47.000 about bringing the irobialt woodpecker back, most people would be 1:34:47.040 --> 1:34:49.400 like the what Yeah, like it's the woodpecker is here, 1:34:49.439 --> 1:34:51.200 not long ago, We're gonna put it back. 1:34:51.280 --> 1:34:55.320 It's just it's a woodpecker. They'd probably be like, Okay, 1:34:56.000 --> 1:34:56.280 you know what I. 1:34:56.320 --> 1:35:00.120 Mean, Like like that seems to me, just from from 1:35:00.160 --> 1:35:03.680 a novice perspective, that seems to me like the thing. 1:35:05.000 --> 1:35:08.679 To do first, Well first is hard, right, there's technical 1:35:08.760 --> 1:35:11.880 challenges and the extinction of a bird. Right, So we 1:35:12.040 --> 1:35:15.080 have the Dodo project, which is our flagship avian species, 1:35:16.080 --> 1:35:18.479 and this is sort of leading the charge and overcoming 1:35:18.520 --> 1:35:21.639 the technical challenges, the biggest challenges. There is an important 1:35:21.680 --> 1:35:25.439 step in a d extinction where you've edited a cell 1:35:25.479 --> 1:35:26.960 line to the point where you go, this is now 1:35:27.200 --> 1:35:29.720 a cell of the animal of interest. This is now 1:35:29.720 --> 1:35:33.000 a direable cell. Now we'll use somatic cell nuclear transfer, 1:35:33.040 --> 1:35:36.320 which is most famously Dolly the Sheep cloning. That's called 1:35:36.479 --> 1:35:40.599 somatic cell nuclear transfer, and that's taking the DNA from 1:35:40.640 --> 1:35:43.200 that cell, removing the DNA of an egg cell and 1:35:43.240 --> 1:35:46.000 putting your DNA in and that fertilizes the cell and 1:35:46.040 --> 1:35:47.600 it becomes an embryo, and then you can transfer it 1:35:47.600 --> 1:35:51.439 into a circuit. With birds, very early on in the 1:35:51.479 --> 1:35:55.479 development of their egg they're calcifying the outside of it. Right, 1:35:55.520 --> 1:35:58.559 we can't access the eggs internally of the of a bird. 1:35:58.680 --> 1:36:01.000 We have to wait for them to lay those. So 1:36:01.640 --> 1:36:05.880 we are creating new platforms in order to edit germ cells, 1:36:05.960 --> 1:36:09.400 or the cells that eventually become sperm and egg. So 1:36:09.760 --> 1:36:12.240 as an egg is laid, you can window the egg, 1:36:12.560 --> 1:36:15.479 you can extract a few microleaders of blood. You can 1:36:15.520 --> 1:36:18.880 plate that blood and take out what we call them 1:36:19.400 --> 1:36:23.240 primordial germ cells. Those primordial germ cells are the cells 1:36:23.240 --> 1:36:26.280 that are circulating freely in the blood of this early fetus, 1:36:27.160 --> 1:36:29.360 and they eventually migrate to the gonads and they become 1:36:29.400 --> 1:36:33.160 sperm or egg, depending on the gender of that egg. 1:36:34.520 --> 1:36:37.559 If we then edit those while they're plated, you can 1:36:37.600 --> 1:36:41.080 create a stable line of these in vitro. Then now 1:36:41.160 --> 1:36:44.439 you have edited the germ cell that will eventually become 1:36:44.479 --> 1:36:47.120 Spermer egg, and then in a different egg, which is 1:36:47.479 --> 1:36:50.600 you know, sort of an egg that's been engineered to 1:36:50.640 --> 1:36:52.840 be sterile so they don't produce any of their own 1:36:52.840 --> 1:36:55.840 Spermer egg. At that same point of development, you can 1:36:55.960 --> 1:36:59.240 check you'll edited germ cells, they migrate to the gonads, 1:36:59.439 --> 1:37:01.840 and then you could have a pigeon or a chicken 1:37:02.000 --> 1:37:04.680 that's creating the sperm or egg of a dodo. When 1:37:04.720 --> 1:37:08.200 they breed, they give birth, they lay a Dodo egg 1:37:08.840 --> 1:37:11.840 or in this case, an I Rebuild woodpecker egg. So 1:37:12.040 --> 1:37:14.640 we're overcoming those challenges. Right now, we don't know a 1:37:14.640 --> 1:37:18.080 lot about woodpeckers, so we need to study more. Last 1:37:18.160 --> 1:37:22.240 year we launched Colossal's nonprofit, the Colossal Foundation. I'm the 1:37:22.240 --> 1:37:24.800 executive director of that foundation, which is meant to sort 1:37:24.800 --> 1:37:27.760 of be where the rubber of de extinction meets the 1:37:27.840 --> 1:37:28.559 road where. 1:37:28.360 --> 1:37:30.599 It meaning the road being the regulatory structure. 1:37:30.720 --> 1:37:34.000 Regulatory structure and critically endangered species. How do we literally 1:37:34.080 --> 1:37:35.519 keep species off our duty lists? 1:37:35.800 --> 1:37:36.040 Right? 1:37:36.520 --> 1:37:39.320 But also in some cases there's a North American conservation 1:37:39.360 --> 1:37:41.800 focus of that. So one of the flagship projects for 1:37:41.880 --> 1:37:44.200 the foundation is the I Rebuild Woodpecker. 1:37:45.040 --> 1:37:47.680 What is is it? Mauritius mauritious? 1:37:47.720 --> 1:37:48.520 Yeah? 1:37:48.560 --> 1:37:51.240 What is their attitude toward the Dodo? 1:37:51.840 --> 1:37:57.080 It's interesting it is a culturally significant icon of Mauritius. 1:37:57.360 --> 1:38:03.120 It is also closely associated with colonization. Right as colonizers 1:38:03.120 --> 1:38:06.000 showed up, they brought this species that wiped out this 1:38:07.000 --> 1:38:09.439 the Dodo. Now what's interesting there was not. 1:38:09.520 --> 1:38:10.880 Wasn't it people that wiped out the dodo. 1:38:11.280 --> 1:38:13.200 Yeah, it was the colonizers that came in, right. But 1:38:13.360 --> 1:38:15.840 what's interesting is Mauritius didn't have an indigenous people at 1:38:15.840 --> 1:38:18.679 that time, right, so they sort of came into the island. 1:38:18.760 --> 1:38:22.720 They introduced invasive species. So it was primarily rats and 1:38:22.760 --> 1:38:25.520 cats that were introduced to the island that started decimating 1:38:25.520 --> 1:38:29.400 a ground nesting bird and a flightless bird at that 1:38:29.400 --> 1:38:30.679 that's what led to the dodo. 1:38:30.760 --> 1:38:32.920 Plus sometimes I thought they just ate them all. 1:38:33.160 --> 1:38:37.240 There's there is a common misconception that they were a 1:38:37.280 --> 1:38:40.519 favorite food of sailors. There are also some really interesting 1:38:40.560 --> 1:38:43.120 funny logs you can read of, you know, sailors that 1:38:43.200 --> 1:38:45.519 said they would bring them on to provision the boat 1:38:45.640 --> 1:38:48.200 and then people would just resent having to eat it 1:38:48.240 --> 1:38:51.160 because it was all they had was this gross, greasy bird. 1:38:51.240 --> 1:38:53.639 So it was probably some combination thereof but the real 1:38:53.680 --> 1:38:56.720 issue was habitat was being destroyed as people came in 1:38:56.760 --> 1:39:00.240 to make room for colonies, and invasive species were just 1:39:00.439 --> 1:39:04.439 wiping out nests. And the dodo hadn't evolved with a 1:39:04.439 --> 1:39:07.960 mam million predator, so it didn't have this natural instinct 1:39:08.040 --> 1:39:10.519 to run or to do any so, you know, I 1:39:10.520 --> 1:39:12.800 think they said from the time Dodo was discovered to 1:39:12.800 --> 1:39:15.720 it when extinct was eighty years so just a really 1:39:15.800 --> 1:39:20.120 rapid extinction event. So Mauritius is really interested in recovering 1:39:20.160 --> 1:39:24.519 the Dodo. They on Mauritius, So we engage directly with 1:39:24.800 --> 1:39:27.600 the government of Mauritius with the Mursian Wildlife Foundation to 1:39:27.640 --> 1:39:29.840 talk about how can we use the extinction to drive 1:39:29.880 --> 1:39:32.920 conservation projects and habitat restoration projects on the island of 1:39:33.000 --> 1:39:36.320 Mauritius and the islets that surround Marcius. And then also 1:39:36.600 --> 1:39:38.920 in preparation for a Dodo, can we start to find 1:39:38.960 --> 1:39:43.799 habitat suitable habitat that would include us removing invasive species, 1:39:43.840 --> 1:39:46.400 not just invasive animals, but invasive plants have taken over. 1:39:46.600 --> 1:39:49.839 How can we restore the you know, the lost ebony trees, 1:39:50.120 --> 1:39:52.240 How can we start to bring back, you know, the 1:39:53.040 --> 1:39:56.920 forest of sixteen hundreds in order to prepare it for 1:39:58.040 --> 1:40:00.360 the Dodo. And so there's there's this amazing the interest, 1:40:00.400 --> 1:40:03.639 we have, this great underswellow support. We've launched a council 1:40:03.680 --> 1:40:07.120 of people, a stakeholders group that is about ten fifteen 1:40:07.120 --> 1:40:10.200 people that sort of represent a variety of industry from 1:40:10.240 --> 1:40:15.000 tourism to science to government, and regulatory so that we 1:40:15.040 --> 1:40:18.559 can begin to say, hey, we're making progress towards restoring 1:40:18.600 --> 1:40:20.840 the dota from extinction. What do we need to be 1:40:20.920 --> 1:40:23.240 doing here with the people of Mauritius, with the land 1:40:23.280 --> 1:40:26.880 of Mauritius, in order to make sure society, society is 1:40:26.960 --> 1:40:29.120 prepared and ecosystems are prepared. 1:40:32.880 --> 1:40:36.880 So crystal ball it for me? What ook at never 1:40:37.520 --> 1:40:39.519 not the science, the social component. If you had a 1:40:39.520 --> 1:40:45.000 crystal ball the social component, what are the odds socially, 1:40:45.479 --> 1:40:50.599 socially regulatory, whatever that you would get that you could 1:40:50.680 --> 1:40:52.880 get to where they would say, let's do it. Let's 1:40:52.880 --> 1:40:56.600 take this little islet and let's yeah cuss somehow, and 1:40:56.600 --> 1:40:59.960 they're just gonna They're gonna just live or die. They 1:41:00.280 --> 1:41:02.280 their ability to make a living here. 1:41:04.479 --> 1:41:06.560 I would never say anything's one hundred percent, because we 1:41:06.560 --> 1:41:08.760 could get wiped out by a night an asteroid. But 1:41:08.880 --> 1:41:11.519 right there there's I mean, I'm ruled out that. I 1:41:12.160 --> 1:41:14.639 like that the Earth kind of keeps going along. Yeah, 1:41:14.640 --> 1:41:17.559 I think it's ninety nine percent. Beth and I went 1:41:17.560 --> 1:41:20.000 to Murcius last year and had an incredible visit. We're 1:41:20.000 --> 1:41:22.040 going again this year, and the idea is to kind 1:41:22.040 --> 1:41:25.400 of keep these conversations. Moving forward, Mauritius has done an 1:41:25.400 --> 1:41:28.320 incredible job on their own of going and recovering some 1:41:28.360 --> 1:41:30.759 of the islets around there. There's this really famous island 1:41:30.960 --> 1:41:34.000 or islet on the north end of Mauritius called Round Island. 1:41:35.000 --> 1:41:39.280 It's this massive, round rock island. You know, you can't 1:41:39.280 --> 1:41:41.160 even you know, we landed a helicopter on it in 1:41:41.240 --> 1:41:43.040 order to get out there, and you're sort of at 1:41:43.040 --> 1:41:45.479 this twenty degree angle as you land, and you're landing 1:41:45.520 --> 1:41:48.400 on top of giant tortoises, and it was basically an 1:41:48.439 --> 1:41:52.120 island that was stripped down to just the rock. All 1:41:52.160 --> 1:41:54.720 the soil and plant life had been completely eradicated because 1:41:54.720 --> 1:41:58.519 they had introduced goats, and the goats were left there 1:41:58.880 --> 1:42:00.960 so that when you sailed buy you could pick up 1:42:00.960 --> 1:42:04.320 a few, you know, and you could provision the boat. Well, 1:42:04.360 --> 1:42:06.639 they just grazed the hell out of the whole thing, 1:42:06.680 --> 1:42:10.000 and basically every species native to that little islet was 1:42:10.320 --> 1:42:13.080 basically wiped out. So they've been recovering it for twenty years. 1:42:13.479 --> 1:42:15.600 And when you go and see where they were to 1:42:15.600 --> 1:42:17.439 where they are today, it's incredible work. 1:42:17.479 --> 1:42:19.639 So for all the reasons they've been recovering it Yeah. 1:42:19.479 --> 1:42:21.400 Yeah, they just wanted to bring background island. It has 1:42:21.439 --> 1:42:24.160 a lot of endemic species that we're important to try 1:42:24.160 --> 1:42:28.680 to save. So they're already doing this great work, I 1:42:28.680 --> 1:42:32.280 think colossal showing up with an opportunity to accelerate, enhance, 1:42:32.439 --> 1:42:35.679 bring more funding, try to bring technology to the table 1:42:36.000 --> 1:42:38.280 to do just that. So there are the reason why 1:42:38.320 --> 1:42:40.000 I think it's so high and imercious. The chances are 1:42:40.000 --> 1:42:42.280 so high and maercious. It's because there's all these islets 1:42:42.280 --> 1:42:44.760 that are sort of like living laboratories. You know, you 1:42:44.880 --> 1:42:48.320 can mitigate risk of some of these fears around GMOs 1:42:49.160 --> 1:42:51.559 or what is going to be the effect of this 1:42:51.640 --> 1:42:54.000 reintroduction by putting them on an island. 1:42:54.160 --> 1:42:58.439 Yeah, like if suddenly tomorrow all the grizzly bears in 1:42:58.439 --> 1:43:02.759 the lower forty eight when extinct us and you guys 1:43:02.840 --> 1:43:07.200 were like, oh that's okay, we can repopulate. There's still 1:43:07.280 --> 1:43:12.920 only so there's not a lot of appropriate habitat available 1:43:13.000 --> 1:43:14.760 for them, right, So. 1:43:16.280 --> 1:43:17.440 In an island. 1:43:17.040 --> 1:43:22.360 Situation, you have way more control. But it seems like 1:43:22.680 --> 1:43:29.000 your challenge is not like growing the animal, it's like 1:43:29.280 --> 1:43:33.280 cultivating a place where that animal can live successfully. 1:43:33.840 --> 1:43:36.400 Yeah, I think there's a lot of challenges around preparing 1:43:36.439 --> 1:43:38.639 the habitat for one of these animals and making sure 1:43:38.680 --> 1:43:40.920 the protections are in place, but also making sure that 1:43:41.000 --> 1:43:42.920 the people are ready for that. 1:43:43.000 --> 1:43:43.200 Yeah. 1:43:43.200 --> 1:43:45.240 I think this is a huge step for a society 1:43:45.280 --> 1:43:48.679 to say we want to take this next step. Whoever 1:43:48.800 --> 1:43:54.080 is will be the first government regulator culture to say 1:43:54.400 --> 1:43:57.160 we want to introduce a species return from extinction to 1:43:57.320 --> 1:44:00.200 the wild. I mean that is a massive step. I 1:44:00.200 --> 1:44:02.680 mean that is going to take somebody very bold, and 1:44:02.680 --> 1:44:04.800 I think that's why island nations are a little more. 1:44:05.880 --> 1:44:08.160 They have a little more opportunity because they can mitigate 1:44:08.200 --> 1:44:10.200 the risk because they don't have to worry about their 1:44:10.200 --> 1:44:11.880 neighbors say you no time out, you're doing what? 1:44:12.160 --> 1:44:12.360 Yeah. 1:44:12.479 --> 1:44:14.599 If we did this in the US, Canada would say 1:44:14.640 --> 1:44:15.519 what the hell are you doing? 1:44:15.680 --> 1:44:20.639 Yeah, we know it's a little bit interesting. A similar 1:44:20.680 --> 1:44:27.360 approach was we wound up introducing wild turkeys in a 1:44:27.360 --> 1:44:31.000 lot of places that wild turkeys weren't from. Yeah, so 1:44:33.280 --> 1:44:36.080 you know they think that historically he had turkeys and 1:44:36.560 --> 1:44:39.320 what's today thirty four states. Now we have turkeys in 1:44:39.400 --> 1:44:43.519 forty nine states. Very little friction there was I remember 1:44:43.560 --> 1:44:45.680 one state there was some friction in there and it 1:44:45.840 --> 1:44:52.240 was a worried about some rare annual and these guys 1:44:52.280 --> 1:44:56.519 wound up doing a big crop survey like bird crops, 1:44:56.760 --> 1:44:58.960 you know, and they just didn't find anything analogous to 1:44:59.000 --> 1:45:02.679 this and wild turkeys around the world or around the country, 1:45:02.840 --> 1:45:04.880 Like it just doesn't seem to think turkeys would pray on. 1:45:05.520 --> 1:45:06.760 But that was like one little. 1:45:06.520 --> 1:45:10.160 Test and they let them go, and it wound up 1:45:10.160 --> 1:45:12.880 being that we always talk about, well you have like invasives, 1:45:12.880 --> 1:45:15.120 which are bad, but it wound up being like it's 1:45:15.160 --> 1:45:20.680 like a species of no known negative. It's like no 1:45:20.680 --> 1:45:25.559 no negative. But the climates changed so much you might 1:45:25.560 --> 1:45:27.400 not get away with that what they were doing with 1:45:27.400 --> 1:45:31.679 turkeys into seventies, eighties, early nineties. You might not today 1:45:33.120 --> 1:45:36.439 be able to go into I'm not trying to pick 1:45:36.479 --> 1:45:38.160 on California today, it might not be able to go 1:45:38.240 --> 1:45:40.120 into California and say, hey, we're going to turn some 1:45:40.960 --> 1:45:41.840 wild turkeys loose. 1:45:42.120 --> 1:45:44.080 Oh like the cultural climate change. 1:45:43.880 --> 1:45:45.519 Yeah, you know what I mean, Like you might hit 1:45:45.560 --> 1:45:48.240 resistance for something that was just that happened. Because if 1:45:48.280 --> 1:45:50.960 you look at like the shift too in the fifties, 1:45:51.120 --> 1:45:54.960 they brought add ad into Texas, they brought Ibex into 1:45:55.000 --> 1:45:55.679 New Mexico. 1:45:56.080 --> 1:45:58.360 They bought oricx in New Mexico, and there. 1:45:58.280 --> 1:46:00.439 Was kind of a let's just see what happened, like 1:46:00.479 --> 1:46:05.480 they can't be bad attitude. That's that's built up resistance. 1:46:05.920 --> 1:46:09.200 And now even when people look like with ELK, we've 1:46:09.200 --> 1:46:14.160 only recovered ELK on fourteen percent of twenty percent of 1:46:14.360 --> 1:46:16.960 historic range. Fourteen percent of historic range, there's kind of 1:46:16.960 --> 1:46:20.519 mind boggling. Yeah, and that recovery effort is ground to 1:46:20.560 --> 1:46:25.679 a halt over chronic wasting disease. Just there's a less 1:46:25.720 --> 1:46:29.559 of an appetite to move servids from one area to 1:46:29.640 --> 1:46:33.519 another because like disease transmission. So it is in the 1:46:33.560 --> 1:46:35.800 conversation about what we get to a place where we're 1:46:35.840 --> 1:46:41.479 actually trying to do this, it's like the appetite seems 1:46:41.520 --> 1:46:44.760 to be just generally declining to like any kind of 1:46:44.920 --> 1:46:45.679 dice rolling. 1:46:46.120 --> 1:46:49.080 Well, yeah, I think you know there is a certain 1:46:49.120 --> 1:46:51.040 aspect of this that is you know better than you 1:46:51.080 --> 1:46:54.720 do better. Right, So we know that these animals, you know, 1:46:55.120 --> 1:46:58.679 a foreign animal or an invasive animal would have certain 1:46:58.720 --> 1:47:01.640 impacts on an ecosystem. So that is important that we 1:47:02.400 --> 1:47:04.960 take that precautionary approach because now we know better, so 1:47:05.000 --> 1:47:07.679 we must do better. However, I think the pendulum swunk 1:47:07.680 --> 1:47:11.160 all the way where now it's you know, any change 1:47:11.760 --> 1:47:15.200 is bad. Oh, and right now, if we do anything, 1:47:15.240 --> 1:47:17.320 if we try to change anything about the status quo, 1:47:17.680 --> 1:47:21.519 there are things we cannot account for. Yet therefore we 1:47:21.560 --> 1:47:23.599 should not take that step. And so we've moved into 1:47:23.600 --> 1:47:27.720 this fear based decision making, which is grinding recovery to 1:47:27.720 --> 1:47:29.000 a halt of a lot of species. 1:47:29.120 --> 1:47:32.400 No, and look, I was management help, Yeah, exactly. 1:47:32.520 --> 1:47:34.719 So I think we need to sort of the pendulum 1:47:34.800 --> 1:47:36.560 needs to come back to the center. I think, you know, 1:47:36.640 --> 1:47:38.840 on most things in life, from this moderate approach is 1:47:38.840 --> 1:47:41.479 probably the best approach. So how can we make the 1:47:41.520 --> 1:47:44.760 most informed decision while also having a certain appetite for risk, 1:47:45.040 --> 1:47:47.160 and with this idea that without risk there is no 1:47:47.280 --> 1:47:50.200 chance for a win out there, right, we need to 1:47:50.240 --> 1:47:52.200 take certain risks in order to recover species. 1:47:53.479 --> 1:47:56.200 You mentioned earlier that you didn't care for the reporting 1:47:56.240 --> 1:47:59.160 by Washington Posts and Cowboys Stay Daily, who did a 1:47:59.160 --> 1:48:00.799 good job of covering the story. 1:48:01.360 --> 1:48:03.320 Well, we had a lot of great folks, I mean, 1:48:03.600 --> 1:48:06.960 you know, obviously we were blown away that we got 1:48:07.000 --> 1:48:09.639 the cover Time magazine and Time did a great job. 1:48:09.960 --> 1:48:14.680 Jeff Jeff Pluger. He did this great article on the 1:48:14.680 --> 1:48:19.040 whole thing. The New Yorker broke our embargo and published 1:48:19.040 --> 1:48:23.080 the story. Oh yeah, so, although we're mad at them, 1:48:23.120 --> 1:48:25.559 if you read the story, it's pretty good. It's pretty 1:48:25.560 --> 1:48:25.920 good story. 1:48:26.040 --> 1:48:27.240 They know they were breaking it. 1:48:27.439 --> 1:48:29.720 Yeah they did. There's you know, there's I'll just put 1:48:29.760 --> 1:48:31.439 it this way, there's some emails going back and forth 1:48:31.439 --> 1:48:33.760 saying can we do this? We said no, and then 1:48:33.880 --> 1:48:37.880 they did it. Anyways, So that was heartbreaking because there's 1:48:38.040 --> 1:48:39.519 so many, you know, there's one hundred and seventy five 1:48:39.560 --> 1:48:41.760 people at Colossal that we're working their tails off to 1:48:41.800 --> 1:48:44.280 do this thing. Our marketing team was killing themselves, their 1:48:44.320 --> 1:48:47.320 PR teams were killing themselves to have this really ambitious 1:48:47.400 --> 1:48:50.320 launch event and then for somebody to selfishly try to 1:48:50.360 --> 1:48:54.400 go first was really frustrating. But despite all of that, 1:48:54.439 --> 1:48:56.840 New Yorker read a pretty cool piece now that said, 1:48:56.920 --> 1:48:58.920 he gave me like the dumbest quote ever and that thing, 1:48:59.000 --> 1:49:00.400 so I'm a little up about it. 1:49:00.439 --> 1:49:01.280 He gave you a bad quote. 1:49:01.360 --> 1:49:03.080 Yeah, well, you know, I was. I was out of 1:49:03.080 --> 1:49:05.240 the country when he was visiting, so I was zooming 1:49:05.240 --> 1:49:06.960 into a few calls and he was interviewing me over 1:49:07.080 --> 1:49:09.040 zoom and I just didn't have a lot of time. 1:49:09.080 --> 1:49:11.880 He basically said, what do you do here? You know, 1:49:12.040 --> 1:49:14.479 chief Animal Officers not a title. People really know what 1:49:14.520 --> 1:49:16.360 the hell it means. I'm not sure I know what 1:49:16.400 --> 1:49:18.599 it means. It's like you're a zoo keeper or something, 1:49:18.920 --> 1:49:21.840 chief zookeeper. One of my guys on my team calls 1:49:21.840 --> 1:49:25.400 me the chief pet officer. So I just told him 1:49:25.439 --> 1:49:27.280 I play with animals, just joking. 1:49:27.560 --> 1:49:27.840 Of course. 1:49:27.920 --> 1:49:29.360 That's the one thing he published. 1:49:31.120 --> 1:49:32.200 Like a cocky. 1:49:33.360 --> 1:49:34.840 I was like, there's a lot of thought that goes 1:49:34.880 --> 1:49:37.240 into what I do, right, But but it was fine. 1:49:38.240 --> 1:49:40.760 But yeah, I think there was a vast majority. I's 1:49:40.800 --> 1:49:43.559 a ninety five percent of the things that were published 1:49:43.600 --> 1:49:47.400 I thought were fair balanced, shed a positive light on 1:49:47.439 --> 1:49:49.960 what we were doing. Five percent of them were hyper 1:49:49.960 --> 1:49:53.799 negative to ass like almost just for the purpose of clickbait. 1:49:54.720 --> 1:49:58.840 Yeah, well, I mean you have to acknowledge that there's 1:49:58.880 --> 1:50:02.120 a real stir of the pot. Yeah yeah, I mean 1:50:02.160 --> 1:50:03.000 you're starting the pot. 1:50:03.080 --> 1:50:05.560 That's what I like about it. I think the conservation 1:50:05.600 --> 1:50:08.080 pot needs to be stirred. Like I said, I think 1:50:08.080 --> 1:50:11.240 we've gone to this fear based approach, where you know, 1:50:11.320 --> 1:50:13.360 in the Teddy Roosevelt quote, we're at we're at the 1:50:13.400 --> 1:50:15.920 third point where we said, you know, the worst, We're 1:50:15.960 --> 1:50:17.920 doing the worst thing, which is we're not making decisions. 1:50:18.000 --> 1:50:22.040 But do you guys feel an urgency to you're not 1:50:22.080 --> 1:50:26.639 going to stop messing around with ancient extinct species, but 1:50:27.040 --> 1:50:31.600 do you feel an urgency to like do something like 1:50:31.720 --> 1:50:34.599 more timely, like with a specie that is like. 1:50:34.560 --> 1:50:36.360 We I mean, the American red wolf is a good 1:50:36.400 --> 1:50:39.440 example of how what exactly what we're doing. But the Foundation, 1:50:39.840 --> 1:50:42.960 the Colossal Foundation, has forty five conservation partners. That's forty 1:50:42.960 --> 1:50:46.160 five separate projects that we're running for endangered species conservation. 1:50:46.479 --> 1:50:51.759 Everything from how can we use artificial intelligence to unlock 1:50:51.800 --> 1:50:54.439 the language of wolves? Right here in Yellowstone working with 1:50:54.760 --> 1:50:57.600 the Yellowstone Wolf Project Yellowstone Forever, Jeff Reed and the 1:50:57.600 --> 1:51:01.160 Grizzly Systems team trying to unlock language and in a 1:51:01.160 --> 1:51:03.040 way that we can track wolves over space and time 1:51:03.080 --> 1:51:06.679 without requiring collars and understand what are they talking about. 1:51:07.000 --> 1:51:12.280 To conferring resistance to toxins from invasive species. The Northern coal 1:51:12.280 --> 1:51:15.880 from the Northern Territory of Australia, is being decimated because 1:51:15.880 --> 1:51:18.160 one of the animals that predates on is the invasive 1:51:18.200 --> 1:51:20.800 cane toad, which has a buffotox in the boo. That 1:51:20.880 --> 1:51:24.400 neurotoxin kills the cane the coal when they eat them. 1:51:24.600 --> 1:51:28.240 So we've actually found one base pair change that animals 1:51:28.280 --> 1:51:31.120 that co evolved with the cane toad in South America 1:51:31.280 --> 1:51:34.240 have evolved that. So we're changing that one base pairent 1:51:34.320 --> 1:51:37.000 coal and we've already shown in the lab that it 1:51:37.080 --> 1:51:40.840 confers resistance to bufotoxin. So now we can give that 1:51:40.920 --> 1:51:44.479 to the government off Australia and say here is a 1:51:44.520 --> 1:51:47.639 tool for you guys to recover your northern coal and 1:51:48.479 --> 1:51:50.680 as a bonus, they'll eat all those cane toads that 1:51:50.720 --> 1:51:52.439 are invasive and are sort of one of the most 1:51:52.560 --> 1:51:56.519 famous examples of an invasive species. We also created a 1:51:56.560 --> 1:51:59.599 vaccine to help elephants with one of the most deadly 1:51:59.680 --> 1:52:02.880 virus as they face the elephant indo, thelotropic Herpes virushi, 1:52:02.960 --> 1:52:05.200 kills about thirty percent of elephants and human care and 1:52:05.280 --> 1:52:09.160 more and more, we understand that is an is decimating 1:52:09.160 --> 1:52:12.960 wild populations. So you know, we have forty five of 1:52:12.960 --> 1:52:15.880 these projects ongoing. Obviously, What makes it to the top 1:52:16.200 --> 1:52:19.320 of that of the storyline is always the exction. But 1:52:19.400 --> 1:52:22.000 that's the power of the extinction is it does bring awareness, 1:52:22.000 --> 1:52:25.960 It brings attention, it brings funding. Four hundred and fifty 1:52:26.000 --> 1:52:29.120 million dollars we've raised over four years to support the 1:52:29.240 --> 1:52:32.240 business of Colossal, and we've raised another seventy five million 1:52:32.280 --> 1:52:35.320 dollars for the Colossal Foundation. So you know, we talk 1:52:35.400 --> 1:52:39.639 about conservation is an under resourced fight. We're bringing resources 1:52:39.680 --> 1:52:42.559 to table. These are not a distraction of resources from 1:52:42.680 --> 1:52:45.360 places where you know you would have normally given money 1:52:45.360 --> 1:52:48.200 to WWF. Now we're going to Silicon Valley, We're going 1:52:48.240 --> 1:52:51.200 to capital you know, venture capital investors, and. 1:52:51.160 --> 1:52:55.240 We're right vay getting They like, what in the end, 1:52:55.439 --> 1:52:57.439 because you're not a nonprofit, you're not an. 1:52:57.400 --> 1:52:59.519 Environmental we have a non profit, you have oh not 1:53:00.000 --> 1:53:00.679 a foundation? 1:53:00.800 --> 1:53:03.439 Yep, Well, then there's a for profit component one in 1:53:03.479 --> 1:53:05.080 the end, what is the product? 1:53:05.240 --> 1:53:07.839 The product is the all of the technology we're creating. 1:53:08.320 --> 1:53:10.840 So it's more about process. Les's it's about product. We're 1:53:10.880 --> 1:53:14.200 creating processes that then we can license that IP to 1:53:14.920 --> 1:53:19.960 other fields of science, human healthcare research, you know, university research, 1:53:20.000 --> 1:53:22.000 things like that. We've already spun out two companies out 1:53:22.000 --> 1:53:25.520 of Colossal that are now standalone businesses, self sufficient businesses. 1:53:25.760 --> 1:53:28.240 One is a computational biology platform, So it's an AI 1:53:28.320 --> 1:53:31.800 tool that essentially helps you compare genes of animals and 1:53:31.880 --> 1:53:34.639 understand this gene codes for this trade god that type 1:53:34.640 --> 1:53:34.840 of thing. 1:53:35.160 --> 1:53:38.960 Now clients being universities and research facilities. Exactly, I gotcha. 1:53:39.000 --> 1:53:42.560 Another one is a plastics degradation company. So we've identified 1:53:42.560 --> 1:53:46.680 a microbe that's able to consume almost every plastic we've 1:53:46.720 --> 1:53:49.320 ever thrown at it, everything from really soft plastics to 1:53:49.479 --> 1:53:52.960 very hard, high density plastics, and we're using genetic engineering 1:53:52.960 --> 1:53:55.479 to try to enhance those types of qualities. And so 1:53:55.560 --> 1:53:57.240 this gives us, you know, a new tool in the 1:53:57.280 --> 1:54:00.439 way to recycle plastics. And it doesn't just recycle limit 1:54:00.520 --> 1:54:03.400 to you know, smaller pieces of plastic microplastic. This is 1:54:03.439 --> 1:54:07.320 breaking down the molecular bonds of this. So that's sort 1:54:07.360 --> 1:54:09.640 of what we're doing, is we're this incubator of technology 1:54:09.800 --> 1:54:12.759 that we can spin out and it funds the whole program. 1:54:14.800 --> 1:54:18.400 I've seen how wrapped or recovery centers when they're feeding, 1:54:18.439 --> 1:54:20.400 like an eagle chick or a hawk chick, they'll cover 1:54:20.479 --> 1:54:22.160 themselves in a bed sheet and they'll put like a 1:54:22.200 --> 1:54:25.200 puppet on their end to feed the chicks. To prevent 1:54:25.280 --> 1:54:30.400 human imprinting, And what kind of protocols that you guys 1:54:30.439 --> 1:54:33.280 have about dealing with your three dire wolves, Like how 1:54:33.280 --> 1:54:34.480 many humans have they seen? 1:54:34.800 --> 1:54:40.160 Oh, they've probably seen say fifteen or twenty, but they 1:54:40.200 --> 1:54:43.880 see four or five on a regular basis. These are 1:54:44.200 --> 1:54:46.440 not candidates for release into the wild. So we take 1:54:46.440 --> 1:54:48.800 a slightly different approach. Right if we're creating a stable 1:54:48.840 --> 1:54:51.800 population of captive animals that could eventually go back into 1:54:51.800 --> 1:54:53.640 the wild, which is not the case with the dire wolves, 1:54:53.640 --> 1:54:56.600 but with the red wolves that we cloned, you know, 1:54:56.760 --> 1:54:59.760 this generation is not a candidate for rewilding. We'll begin 1:54:59.760 --> 1:55:01.800 to take a more hands off approach as you create 1:55:01.880 --> 1:55:05.560 subsequent generations and model after very similar projects that are 1:55:05.560 --> 1:55:09.280 already going on with red wolf release into North Carolina, 1:55:09.760 --> 1:55:14.280 Mexican gray Wolf into the American Southwest. So mammals are 1:55:14.280 --> 1:55:16.240 a little different. They don't imprint the way birds do. 1:55:16.480 --> 1:55:22.200 Birds have a very strong imprint potential, so you can 1:55:22.280 --> 1:55:27.000 really mess a chick up if it imprints on a human, 1:55:27.040 --> 1:55:30.400 whereas with the mammals, they don't take that same level 1:55:30.640 --> 1:55:31.560 of their habituation. 1:55:31.800 --> 1:55:34.760 There's a certain degree of like learn behavior too, right, 1:55:34.960 --> 1:55:37.920 Like wolves need to be taught how to hunt by 1:55:37.920 --> 1:55:40.440 their pack, and. 1:55:39.640 --> 1:55:41.760 So there's a lot of opportunity for cross fostering. So 1:55:42.480 --> 1:55:45.200 you know, you can create puppies that then you would 1:55:45.280 --> 1:55:48.520 drop into dens of wild wolves if you wanted to, 1:55:48.720 --> 1:55:51.760 like say this was a gray wolf project. As you know, 1:55:51.840 --> 1:55:53.920 the pack it leaves the den for a bit, you 1:55:53.920 --> 1:55:56.959 can go and drop puppies in, and that's called cross fostering. 1:55:57.000 --> 1:55:57.800 So we could do that. 1:55:57.800 --> 1:56:00.480 Drop bunch nerd because someone we're going to get at. 1:56:03.000 --> 1:56:06.000 But as far as like you never. 1:56:07.480 --> 1:56:09.720 You would never be able to get to a situation 1:56:09.760 --> 1:56:13.320 where you would have real dial like diar Rols teaching 1:56:13.400 --> 1:56:14.200 diar Rolls how. 1:56:14.120 --> 1:56:16.240 To be direbls. You know that's impossible. 1:56:16.280 --> 1:56:21.280 Yeah, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it's impossible generations 1:56:21.320 --> 1:56:22.720 to get to, but you first have to. 1:56:22.720 --> 1:56:24.840 Know what there's no way to find out. 1:56:25.200 --> 1:56:26.720 Yeah, I mean this kind of goes back to some 1:56:26.800 --> 1:56:28.600 of the debate that you know, I thought people were 1:56:28.600 --> 1:56:30.280 going to say, you made a dire wolf, What the hell? 1:56:30.400 --> 1:56:33.720 This thing's an enormous hyper carnivore and really what they 1:56:33.720 --> 1:56:37.320 were going, well, that's not a direolf. You're so sure 1:56:37.360 --> 1:56:38.920 that's not a diarolf? Can you please tell me what 1:56:38.960 --> 1:56:41.480 a dire wolf is? Because if you can't tell me 1:56:41.520 --> 1:56:43.240 definitively what it is, you can't tell me what it 1:56:43.280 --> 1:56:46.480 isn't uh, you know, there's there's a lot of nuance 1:56:46.560 --> 1:56:51.400 to taxonomy, and we don't know how transgenics fall into 1:56:51.520 --> 1:56:54.080 taxonomy that you know, taxonomy wasn't built with this idea 1:56:54.120 --> 1:56:58.080 that suddenly along the evolutionary tree something just pops up 1:56:58.600 --> 1:57:03.680 on its own branch, right, So transgenics really challenge taxonomic classification. 1:57:04.520 --> 1:57:07.600 So you know, we're trying to help the world cope 1:57:07.600 --> 1:57:09.960 with that. We're trying to challenge taxonomists to figure out 1:57:10.040 --> 1:57:12.400 because transgenics are not going to stop a dire wolf. 1:57:12.440 --> 1:57:16.000 It won't stop with colossal they're synthetic. Biology is now 1:57:16.000 --> 1:57:18.840 a tool that conservation can use to cover a number 1:57:18.880 --> 1:57:23.240 of animals, a number of species issues. There will be 1:57:23.360 --> 1:57:25.280 the use of one gene from one animal put into 1:57:25.320 --> 1:57:26.760 another animal, and then they go, well, how do you 1:57:26.800 --> 1:57:30.320 now classify that animal? You know, taxonomy wasn't built to 1:57:30.360 --> 1:57:31.000 handle that. 1:57:31.800 --> 1:57:34.560 But and the thing and the behavior thing though this 1:57:34.600 --> 1:57:35.560 isn't the hack on it. 1:57:35.840 --> 1:57:37.880 But I'm saying, like you just. 1:57:40.880 --> 1:57:43.720 You might get you might get where you can win 1:57:43.760 --> 1:57:48.480 the debate and say, like, based on an agreed upon definition. 1:57:48.040 --> 1:57:49.240 This is a dire wolf. 1:57:49.320 --> 1:57:54.320 But what the problem is when you if you say like, behaviorally, 1:57:55.760 --> 1:57:57.080 there's no foundation for it. 1:57:57.160 --> 1:57:59.560 We can't say definitively no, you would never know what 1:57:59.600 --> 1:58:01.920 the animal what was doing. We haven't studied it. I mean, 1:58:01.960 --> 1:58:04.480 there's how many species across the world that are live 1:58:04.560 --> 1:58:06.880 today that we don't know behaviorally what they do, what 1:58:06.960 --> 1:58:08.520 is their function with an ecosystem? 1:58:08.760 --> 1:58:08.960 You know. 1:58:09.040 --> 1:58:12.640 So it's it's a valid point. It's one that it 1:58:12.720 --> 1:58:15.640 will challenge the extinction as we go forward. But I 1:58:15.680 --> 1:58:17.880 don't think it's a reason to not pursue the. 1:58:17.840 --> 1:58:20.640 Exc Has there been anything with their behavior that really 1:58:20.720 --> 1:58:24.360 surprises the people who watch them, Like they never howl 1:58:24.720 --> 1:58:26.640 or boy, they sure like digging holes. 1:58:27.240 --> 1:58:30.080 They love sticks, O big fans of sticks. 1:58:30.320 --> 1:58:31.840 Like wolf puppies love sticks. 1:58:31.880 --> 1:58:33.480 I don't know, yeah, I mean I don't think they 1:58:33.560 --> 1:58:36.960 get a lot of sticks to say, and tire. 1:58:36.880 --> 1:58:38.440 You guys carrying bones around it? 1:58:38.600 --> 1:58:40.440 Do you guys like go in there and cuddle with them, 1:58:40.520 --> 1:58:41.600 or will they rip your arm off. 1:58:42.960 --> 1:58:44.720 There's no cuddling at this point. You know, we were 1:58:44.760 --> 1:58:49.200 pretty specific early on. Contact was only what was required 1:58:49.200 --> 1:58:51.920 for the care and health of the animal. Now contact 1:58:51.960 --> 1:58:54.800 is basically not required. We'll drive in in order to 1:58:54.880 --> 1:58:57.520 drop feed and things like that. They also have an 1:58:57.600 --> 1:58:59.760 indoor building that they have access to, and it's sort 1:58:59.760 --> 1:59:01.840 of a smaller pen where they we can coax them 1:59:01.880 --> 1:59:04.000 into that so that we can do some basic management 1:59:04.000 --> 1:59:07.720 stuff if we ever had to, you know, anesthetize an 1:59:07.720 --> 1:59:11.000 animal because it was sick or injured. We use these areas, 1:59:11.040 --> 1:59:13.520 so there is some habituation to those areas because it's 1:59:13.520 --> 1:59:16.000 a management advantage for us to be able to not 1:59:16.120 --> 1:59:17.680 have to go out there and dart one. 1:59:17.880 --> 1:59:19.880 So what about their behavior is surprised you though? 1:59:20.960 --> 1:59:23.080 I know it is so early. It's hard to say, right, 1:59:23.120 --> 1:59:25.360 because they were just really goofy puppies that were that 1:59:25.400 --> 1:59:28.040 were around people and now they're really developing into their 1:59:28.080 --> 1:59:32.040 own I think the level of despite the habituation early 1:59:32.120 --> 1:59:35.360 on in their life, the level of flight distance that 1:59:35.360 --> 1:59:38.760 they still maintain with people outside of like two people 1:59:38.800 --> 1:59:43.080 on my team is pretty startling. Whereas I've worked with 1:59:43.120 --> 1:59:46.560 a lot of other captive wild canids and and they 1:59:46.680 --> 1:59:49.120 are go, oh, person equals food and they come running 1:59:49.160 --> 1:59:51.520 over all right. That these guys do not have that. 1:59:51.560 --> 1:59:55.720 There is a real fear of new people, new things. 1:59:56.920 --> 2:00:00.480 They how like they do, Yeah, they do. They They 2:00:00.560 --> 2:00:02.960 have a good howl. There's really you know, famous video 2:00:02.960 --> 2:00:04.920 that we put on YouTube that was their first howl, 2:00:04.960 --> 2:00:08.400 which was pretty powerful moment for the team, you know, 2:00:08.800 --> 2:00:10.680 sitting there holding them in one of the vetexs that 2:00:10.720 --> 2:00:12.640 works in the clinic we were giving we were doing 2:00:12.640 --> 2:00:14.720 a check up on them. It was like singing a song, 2:00:15.120 --> 2:00:18.840 a little mermaid song, and there's a part where it's like, uh, 2:00:18.880 --> 2:00:20.880 and she starts doing that, and all of a sudden, 2:00:21.040 --> 2:00:24.880 both boys just popped into a howl. That was pretty 2:00:24.960 --> 2:00:25.760 pretty incredible. 2:00:25.920 --> 2:00:29.760 Is their body size on track with what you'd expect 2:00:29.880 --> 2:00:31.680 the body signs of a dire wolf to be. 2:00:32.120 --> 2:00:34.840 Yeah, so we're looking you know, fossil record kind of 2:00:34.880 --> 2:00:37.520 suggests dire wolves were somewhere between that one hundred and 2:00:37.520 --> 2:00:39.800 thirty hundred forty pounds up to one hundred and sixty pounds. 2:00:40.280 --> 2:00:42.600 I think we're on pace for one hundred and forty pounds. 2:00:42.640 --> 2:00:45.120 Where we stand today, we're seven and a half months 2:00:45.120 --> 2:00:48.640 as shy of one hundred pounds. As is, their growth 2:00:48.680 --> 2:00:51.880 curve is definitely leveling out. But you know what we 2:00:51.920 --> 2:00:53.640 know from gray wolves is we could expect them to 2:00:53.680 --> 2:00:56.840 continue to grow until they're about twelve fifteen months and 2:00:56.920 --> 2:00:59.000 then from there they'll continue to put on weight. But 2:00:59.000 --> 2:01:01.960 they're they're pretty hall leggy animals as they are today. 2:01:03.040 --> 2:01:08.320 M I'm excited for this Ivory build woodpecker situation. 2:01:09.800 --> 2:01:12.120 Well yeah, I mean we gotta we got to get 2:01:12.160 --> 2:01:13.560 you down to the lab and we can show you 2:01:13.560 --> 2:01:15.720 what we're doing with with the woodpecker stuff. 2:01:16.480 --> 2:01:17.720 You know who else wouldn't like it to see? For 2:01:17.760 --> 2:01:19.960 the people who claim they see them now because they 2:01:20.080 --> 2:01:21.280 kind of they're like special. 2:01:21.440 --> 2:01:23.200 We get that on the thighlasting project too. 2:01:23.280 --> 2:01:26.480 Oh don't need Yeah, there's one behind my own. 2:01:27.240 --> 2:01:29.560 We were at a town hall meeting because we we 2:01:29.600 --> 2:01:32.120 will visit Tasmani and have town halls and try to 2:01:32.160 --> 2:01:34.120 hear from from the locals, and we have it at 2:01:34.120 --> 2:01:38.160 that Thilasting stakeholder group and one of them said, you know, 2:01:38.280 --> 2:01:41.000 I this is ten years ago. I was pumpkin gas 2:01:41.040 --> 2:01:43.560 down at this intersection. I saw one run by you. 2:01:43.960 --> 2:01:45.720 It's like, I don't want to be rude, but if 2:01:45.760 --> 2:01:48.440 they do exist, I don't think they're visiting gas stations. 2:01:48.560 --> 2:01:52.680 Yea, yeah, do you guys use that term Lazarus? We haven't. 2:01:53.120 --> 2:01:55.520 Yeah, but it's good. It's a good analogy. 2:01:58.200 --> 2:02:00.600 I was going to get to this before we're running 2:02:00.640 --> 2:02:05.560 out of time, but uh, Crystal ballt on Crystal Ball 2:02:05.640 --> 2:02:11.920 at on Tasmania saying hell, yeah, let's cut some thiosines loose. 2:02:13.120 --> 2:02:15.520 I think the chances will go much higher once we 2:02:15.640 --> 2:02:17.600 have a thioasine in hand, because I think there will 2:02:17.600 --> 2:02:19.560 suddenly be oh, this is a real thing that we 2:02:19.600 --> 2:02:23.640 need to be very serious about. Australia has a very 2:02:23.640 --> 2:02:28.240 conservative approach to wildlife management, and they've been burned. 2:02:28.680 --> 2:02:29.880 They don't have any non natives. 2:02:29.960 --> 2:02:33.120 Yeah, yeah, they've been burned in the past. Right, Cane 2:02:33.120 --> 2:02:34.120 toads a great example. 2:02:34.920 --> 2:02:35.480 I can see that. 2:02:35.720 --> 2:02:38.480 So I think there will be an onerous owner's process 2:02:38.760 --> 2:02:40.560 in order to get there. But I would say, yeah, 2:02:40.840 --> 2:02:43.160 you know, you know, that's sort of seventy five eighty 2:02:43.240 --> 2:02:46.280 five percent chance that they will definitely come along. I 2:02:46.280 --> 2:02:49.400 think Mauritius is much more willing to take that. 2:02:49.440 --> 2:02:52.400 What was the percent chance on Tasmania seventy five eighty five? 2:02:52.680 --> 2:02:53.640 Really optimistic. 2:02:53.840 --> 2:02:56.680 I'm telling you, what's these animals are back? I think, well, 2:02:56.800 --> 2:03:00.480 he'll be fighting people to say why is it in 2:03:00.760 --> 2:03:03.160 Texas in the United States and not in Tasmania. 2:03:05.960 --> 2:03:09.840 I love Willem Dafoe. One of the worst movies ever made. 2:03:09.880 --> 2:03:12.960 His style of scene movie, it's really bad. Just the logic. 2:03:13.520 --> 2:03:15.280 They had magical backpack syndrome. 2:03:17.400 --> 2:03:18.000 What is that? 2:03:18.960 --> 2:03:22.760 Magical backpack syndrome is a person has a little knapsack. 2:03:24.280 --> 2:03:26.880 Inducing like all sorts of ships. 2:03:28.400 --> 2:03:30.320 It's like a Harry Potter bag and I just keep 2:03:30.400 --> 2:03:31.640 pulling stuff out of it. 2:03:31.600 --> 2:03:33.600 And it's it's just the logic. 2:03:33.680 --> 2:03:35.839 It was like a great They're like, we should do something, 2:03:35.920 --> 2:03:38.720 or the idea is we should do something around Tasmanian times, 2:03:39.720 --> 2:03:42.880 and then that's just what came out in the end. Terrible. 2:03:43.280 --> 2:03:46.320 I assume on the show. 2:03:46.360 --> 2:03:46.880 I'd love to have. 2:03:48.080 --> 2:03:52.480 I assume your company has competitors. Have they Have they 2:03:52.520 --> 2:03:55.440 been excited for you guys? Have they been critical of 2:03:55.440 --> 2:03:58.000 what you've done? Are they like, damn, we thought we'd 2:03:58.080 --> 2:03:59.120 land on the moon first. 2:03:59.360 --> 2:04:01.720 I think it's I'm aware we're the only the extinction 2:04:01.800 --> 2:04:02.800 species preservations. 2:04:02.840 --> 2:04:04.560 Nobody else, the only people. 2:04:04.280 --> 2:04:06.800 We truly compete with the other nation states. You know, 2:04:06.880 --> 2:04:09.040 Korea has pursued some of the stuff. We know China 2:04:09.080 --> 2:04:11.240 has an interest in it, but it's not really at 2:04:11.280 --> 2:04:14.840 a company level. I think you're acutey. I think you're 2:04:14.840 --> 2:04:17.040 about to see people come in, but they're about four 2:04:17.120 --> 2:04:18.920 hundred and fifty million dollars in five years late. 2:04:19.400 --> 2:04:21.640 Are you guys constantly suns discouraged? 2:04:22.160 --> 2:04:27.040 Are you guys constantly getting like petitioned by people or 2:04:27.360 --> 2:04:32.080 or organizations about like their pet the extinction project or 2:04:32.120 --> 2:04:36.560 their pet project to prevent something from their animal. 2:04:36.800 --> 2:04:38.320 You know what we get. We get a lot of 2:04:38.320 --> 2:04:40.080 that where it's you know, hey, THI listen, is a 2:04:40.080 --> 2:04:43.000 really cool project. But did you consider about like the 2:04:43.400 --> 2:04:47.400 red pilliated northwest woodpecker. Right, it's like some random bird 2:04:47.440 --> 2:04:49.080 that you got well I didn't actually let me look 2:04:49.120 --> 2:04:50.800 it up, and you go, well, it's not really just 2:04:50.880 --> 2:04:53.360 extirpaated from that area. It's still lounge. Yeah, right there, 2:04:53.400 --> 2:04:54.600 you get a lot of that type of stuff. 2:04:56.520 --> 2:04:57.440 Dude, Thanks for coming on. 2:04:57.560 --> 2:04:59.800 Man, Hey, always great to be here. You guys, come 2:04:59.800 --> 2:05:02.040 on time you want I appreciate that, because I'll take 2:05:02.080 --> 2:05:03.840 you up on that, because you know, we're working in 2:05:03.920 --> 2:05:06.000 Yellowstone on a pretty regular basis now, so we're up 2:05:06.000 --> 2:05:06.880 in your neck of the woods. 2:05:07.480 --> 2:05:08.720 People aren't gonna like to hear that. 2:05:08.760 --> 2:05:09.240 I don't think. 2:05:09.320 --> 2:05:11.560 Well, if you're not dire related. 2:05:11.320 --> 2:05:13.040 Let me give you my end, let me give you 2:05:13.080 --> 2:05:15.320 my end sentiment about the whole thing. I think there's 2:05:15.360 --> 2:05:19.480 things that happen in American culture, global culture, whatever. There's 2:05:19.520 --> 2:05:22.920 things that happen to make everyone dumber, and there's things 2:05:22.920 --> 2:05:26.920 that happen to make everyone smarter. Right, this is definitely 2:05:27.280 --> 2:05:30.440 whatever ends up happening, like whatever happens with romulus and remissing, 2:05:30.800 --> 2:05:36.720 like whatever happened. This made everybody smarter because everybody said, wow, 2:05:36.760 --> 2:05:41.160 I never really thought about what is a species? What 2:05:41.360 --> 2:05:45.080 is de extinction? How do you define a blank? Is 2:05:45.160 --> 2:05:48.960 this okay or not okay? Like everyone got smarter and 2:05:48.960 --> 2:05:50.560 normally stuff happens. Every big is dumber. 2:05:50.680 --> 2:05:52.720 I love that. I'm going to steal that from you 2:05:52.760 --> 2:05:53.480 as well, because. 2:05:53.240 --> 2:05:55.280 I'm trying to get things that made everybody dumber. 2:05:55.360 --> 2:05:56.360 This isn't that positive. 2:05:56.880 --> 2:05:59.920 I think, Yeah, everybody got dumber. 2:06:00.080 --> 2:06:03.240 Yeah, people got a lot dumber TikTok. Yeah, net positive 2:06:03.280 --> 2:06:05.320 for the world. I think that's you know, if we're 2:06:05.360 --> 2:06:08.160 boiling down the story, this is a net positive because 2:06:08.200 --> 2:06:11.720 no one got hurt. Nobody got hurt. We're injecting, you know, 2:06:11.760 --> 2:06:14.840 we're injecting science into pop culture. We're injecting conservation where 2:06:14.920 --> 2:06:16.960 you know, if you look at Google search terms and 2:06:16.960 --> 2:06:20.920 hashtag trends from when we launched that first week, we 2:06:20.960 --> 2:06:23.600 saw all time highs of Google searches for red Wolf, 2:06:23.640 --> 2:06:25.560 for conservation, for the term extinction. 2:06:26.120 --> 2:06:26.640 Yeah. 2:06:26.880 --> 2:06:30.120 You know, if we can push this into a dinner 2:06:30.160 --> 2:06:33.280 table conversation for families to have with their kids talk 2:06:33.280 --> 2:06:36.400 about the biodiversity crisis, that is a win in and 2:06:36.440 --> 2:06:36.960 of itself. 2:06:37.120 --> 2:06:37.680 Yeah, you didn't. 2:06:37.720 --> 2:06:39.840 But and the other thing is you didn't siphon off 2:06:39.880 --> 2:06:44.920 of limited federal spending. No, it was like willing seller, 2:06:45.000 --> 2:06:47.880 willing buyer, willing investor, willing investment. 2:06:48.040 --> 2:06:50.040 Ben loves to say, we spared the world in another 2:06:50.080 --> 2:06:51.200 shitty software company. 2:06:52.000 --> 2:06:56.440 I like that, right, I like that. 2:06:56.920 --> 2:07:00.720 Yeah, it's a potster, dude, but it made everybody smarter exactly. No, 2:07:00.760 --> 2:07:02.640 I like I like it. It's like it's like a 2:07:02.680 --> 2:07:06.680 real mental It causes a lot of mental wrestling. Yeah, 2:07:06.760 --> 2:07:09.560 you know, what was that quote we had recently? That's 2:07:09.560 --> 2:07:11.760 the last thing I say. But it's not really applicable here, 2:07:11.800 --> 2:07:14.520 but I think we're Dan Floyda. No, it's a great quote. 2:07:15.000 --> 2:07:15.840 Dann Floyes was. 2:07:15.840 --> 2:07:17.320 Saying about historians. 2:07:17.920 --> 2:07:21.200 He goes, the reason the arguments are so the reason, 2:07:21.360 --> 2:07:24.480 it's like, the reason the arguments are so vicious is 2:07:24.480 --> 2:07:25.560 there's nothing at stake. 2:07:29.520 --> 2:07:31.480 But he was just making a joke about his own. 2:07:31.320 --> 2:07:33.800 Discipline as a historian, you know, like, how could people 2:07:33.840 --> 2:07:38.080 get so worked up about Clovis first or whatever? Right, 2:07:39.560 --> 2:07:41.560 But there's something at steak here. But I think the 2:07:41.600 --> 2:07:43.840 main thing is it's like, not the main thing. It's 2:07:43.840 --> 2:07:44.480 just fun to watch. 2:07:44.640 --> 2:07:46.680 Yeah, I appreciate that. It's fun to watch. 2:07:46.440 --> 2:07:49.040 People like all of a sudden arguing about stuff that 2:07:49.080 --> 2:07:50.200 the day before they didn't know. 2:07:50.880 --> 2:07:51.800 Yeah, it's perfect. 2:07:51.920 --> 2:07:53.760 You guys should do an Irish el connect. 2:07:55.120 --> 2:07:56.440 I won't tell you we're not going. 2:07:58.560 --> 2:08:01.640 Hunters would love that. Diarls could eat him. 2:08:01.960 --> 2:08:02.600 It works for me. 2:08:02.840 --> 2:08:06.320 He's got the amusement part figured out, all right. Thanks man, 2:08:06.480 --> 2:08:07.400 I really appreciate you coming. 2:08:07.400 --> 2:08:08.000 Thank you so much. 2:08:08.200 --> 2:08:08.440 Thank you