Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Creature feature, the show where we
Speaker 1: take a little sightseeing trip inside the minds of humans
Speaker 1: and animals, looking at some weird behaviors, taking photos of
Speaker 1: us next to the prefrontal cortex, and riding on the
Speaker 1: Hippocampus coaster. Today we're talking about city slickers, who do
Speaker 1: animals cope with human cities? What are some of the
Speaker 1: ways animals have adapted to human society? And did we
Speaker 1: domesticate dogs or did dogs domesticate us? And we're definitely
Speaker 1: not sick of these mother heckan dogs on this mother
Speaker 1: heck and train. We'll discuss this and more as we
Speaker 1: answer the age old question how much trash can you
Speaker 1: fit inside a seagull? Spoiler A lot? And later I'll
Speaker 1: be talking to Dr Greg Paully, a real life researcher
Speaker 1: and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is Katie Willard, actor, writer, producer, cat
Speaker 1: owner and snail superhero. Hello, quickly, explain why I call
Speaker 1: you a snail superhero. This is very cute because ever
Speaker 1: since I was a kid um seeing snail smushed on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk made me so sad and so ever since
Speaker 1: I was a kid. If I see a snail on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, obviously going in a line, I pick them
Speaker 1: up and take them to the other side off the
Speaker 1: sidewalk so they don't get crushed. I like to imagine
Speaker 1: they've just kind of created a whole religion around you,
Speaker 1: as like this being that's like the savior. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the ultimate goal is made to be the head
Speaker 1: of some of a of a religion, some kind of
Speaker 1: snail religion. Yeah, it's great because like I don't have to.
Speaker 1: I won't go to jail because I'm a cull latter.
Speaker 1: One of the most defining characteristics of humans is our
Speaker 1: ability to form society, get enough of us together and
Speaker 1: well from entire cities bustling with connections. But what happens
Speaker 1: when you have a phobia of cities themselves. One group
Speaker 1: of anthropophobia patients coped with their phobia groups by forming
Speaker 1: a club. It sounds like someone with arachnophobia jumping into
Speaker 1: a bathtub full of spiders, but it's actually one of
Speaker 1: the most logical ways to treat their phobia of society.
Speaker 1: In nine seventy a group of anthropophobic men were discharged
Speaker 1: from a private therapeutic institute in Tokyo. They started meeting
Speaker 1: at coffee shops to discuss their fear of socializing. It
Speaker 1: may sound oxymoronic, but it makes sense when you think
Speaker 1: about it. They all shared a common fear, so they
Speaker 1: could bond and discuss the fear in a way that
Speaker 1: felt more like therapy than socializing, tricking their brains into
Speaker 1: allowing them to form what a mounted to a social
Speaker 1: club they wittingly are not also treated themselves with exposure therapy.
Speaker 1: Remember how I joked about jumping in a bath with
Speaker 1: the spiders. That's actually not a bad way to treat
Speaker 1: arachnophobia or any other phobia. When you expose yourself to
Speaker 1: your fear repeatedly and find you survive it, the fear
Speaker 1: will go away. Maybe I should jump in a bathful
Speaker 1: of the concept of death. Anyways, this club for clinical
Speaker 1: misanthropes was actually a genius way to hack their brains
Speaker 1: and cope with their peers. But how do animals cope
Speaker 1: with human cities. Society is not made for them and
Speaker 1: in fact, is often completely antithetical to their survival as well.
Speaker 1: Discuss some animals can't hack it in the big city,
Speaker 1: but others, like the anthropophobic men who formed a club,
Speaker 1: have found incredible loopholes that allows them to exploit a hostile,
Speaker 1: human dominated world and thrive. Anyways, Katie, uh, what would
Speaker 1: be your response to robots slowly taking over society? And
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be like the cool robots who are like
Speaker 1: as Katie willert is to snails. Robots are not to us.
Speaker 1: They don't like pick us up and like put us
Speaker 1: on a little soft patch of grass. They are big
Speaker 1: robots who just really don't give a care about us.
Speaker 1: I guess I would probably go off into the nature
Speaker 1: where there is no far away from where they are
Speaker 1: and just continued to live a no matic existence. I
Speaker 1: think it's less of a like fleeing scared thing and
Speaker 1: more of just like, oh, it's time to move again,
Speaker 1: It's time to go just start using rocks is toilets again.
Speaker 1: Let's just get out of the get out of dodge,
Speaker 1: Let's go to you know what. Bakersfield was the first
Speaker 1: place in Pine count My mom grew up in Bakersfield.
Speaker 1: And it's like when they rerouted the highway so it
Speaker 1: didn't go through there, it's just like it's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's still nineteen sixty. Yeah. I ever now I went
Speaker 1: to the Current County Oil Museum. One. Yeah, because Rolling
Speaker 1: Road Show, which does like screenings of movies in their locations,
Speaker 1: did there will be blood at Current County Oil Museum
Speaker 1: because that was where Paul Thomas Anderson did a lot
Speaker 1: of his like research for it. Interesting. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like just there's just not a lot. It's
Speaker 1: just not a lot going on. It's going to be
Speaker 1: the sixties forever. And you know that's that's line. That's fine,
Speaker 1: it works. Other than the racism, that's okay, you know,
Speaker 1: just a little bubble um. I feel like if for me,
Speaker 1: I would feel like it's inevitable that the robots are
Speaker 1: going to find me in the woods or in Bakersfield,
Speaker 1: So like I would, uh, I think that I would
Speaker 1: try to ingrace sheet myself as like a pet, like
Speaker 1: like you can comb my hair and give me treats. Oh,
Speaker 1: and I snuggle and I snuggle. Yeah. I will wear
Speaker 1: ridiculous clothing at your behest. I will put on a cape.
Speaker 1: I will poop on command. Take me outside, I'll poop anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I guess isn't that the path of all animal,
Speaker 1: you know, all eventually domesticating animals, run, run, run, and
Speaker 1: then then oh you'll feed me, you know, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: hang outs and you give me enough corn and I'll
Speaker 1: just lie down on my back. Well, like you think
Speaker 1: of it, just a ferrel. I mean I have plenty
Speaker 1: of friends who have ferrell who now have feral cats
Speaker 1: that live in their house, like cats that would not
Speaker 1: be anywhere near them, and then we eat a little food, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then get a little kind of like squatting. I
Speaker 1: feel like cats are squatters. Yeah, they can pretty much
Speaker 1: just be anywhere. But so it's interesting. What I'm getting
Speaker 1: at here with my robots thing is that there are
Speaker 1: different ways that animals respond to urbanizations. So human cities
Speaker 1: encroaching on their habitat. There's um avoiders, which is what
Speaker 1: you would be if you was animals, if I was
Speaker 1: all those animals, and so they are not able to
Speaker 1: adapt to human environments, and so they avoid urbanized areas,
Speaker 1: they avoid contact with humans, and they really only make
Speaker 1: appearances in the city if they're migrating or fleeing their
Speaker 1: shrinking habitat. And they're usually unable to adapt due to
Speaker 1: very specialized survival reproductive or feeding strategy, or like they
Speaker 1: come into conflict with humans. And then there's a few
Speaker 1: other ways that animals respond to urbanization. There's adapters and exploiters,
Speaker 1: and they respond by changing their behavior or physiology to
Speaker 1: better fit their new human altered environments. So they try
Speaker 1: to use human cities as best as they can. What
Speaker 1: I see in my head is just that gift of
Speaker 1: the raccoon going up on the porch to the cat
Speaker 1: food and getting a hand scoop of the cat and
Speaker 1: then running away on the tiny legs. But I love
Speaker 1: about raccoons, and as we'll talk about in a little
Speaker 1: bit of seagulls, is that when they do the stealing
Speaker 1: they do a burglary, they have that little jaunty runaway
Speaker 1: where they're like, gotta go go, gotta go out of here. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: raccoons are that. What I think is funny about raccoons
Speaker 1: do is like most of the time it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta grab the trash, get out of here, like
Speaker 1: we gotta go. But then there are some that are
Speaker 1: just like I mean, my mom and I once almost
Speaker 1: got trapped in our subterranean parking garage because there were
Speaker 1: two raccoons on the stairs that were the under the stairs,
Speaker 1: that were the size of golden retriever, Like they were
Speaker 1: really big and like, I don't think I've ever been
Speaker 1: worried about like a raccoon because most of the time
Speaker 1: they scurry right like when you get near there, like
Speaker 1: oh no, no, not worth it, like abort mission, let's
Speaker 1: go away. Um. We walked up saw them and they
Speaker 1: just stood there and she stared at us like, Um,
Speaker 1: a raccoons stands up and is bold is just kind
Speaker 1: of scary. But that's not that's not good news because
Speaker 1: it doesn't go in my head. Was like, oh, the
Speaker 1: animals are just afraid of us, Like they're more afraid
Speaker 1: of you than you are. A bold raccoon is one
Speaker 1: to be feared. My favorite bold raccoon story is one
Speaker 1: of my mom's best friends, Donna Marie, was sleeping one
Speaker 1: night and she heard noise in her backyard and she
Speaker 1: was like, so she turned on the back of the
Speaker 1: lights to the backyard and looked out over her balcony
Speaker 1: to her pool and there was a family of five
Speaker 1: raccoons swimming in her pool, just having a family, just
Speaker 1: chilling doing swimming in the swimming pool and she just
Speaker 1: turned off the light and went back to bed. I mean,
Speaker 1: no one else is using it time. I know it's
Speaker 1: offsets raccoon swim. Yeah. Uh so that would be an
Speaker 1: urban adapter for sure. That is the most adaptive adaptation. Kids,
Speaker 1: Let's go to the pool we're going to. It's just
Speaker 1: like it's like a doofy Dad and like like a
Speaker 1: Marge like mom, where it's like, well, well we'll just
Speaker 1: use their pool them and then the kids are like
Speaker 1: me when Kim Apple or whatever. Just the raccoon family. God,
Speaker 1: that's going to be a cartoon, I'm sure. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the unfortunate urban avoiders. And there's
Speaker 1: one that's uh native to Los Angeles, the mountain lion. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And have you ever seen a mountain lion in person?
Speaker 1: I have not. I've seen tracks. And I've also heard like,
Speaker 1: oh they just saw what, Like if I was in
Speaker 1: Griffith or whatever, it'd be like, oh, they saw one
Speaker 1: like yesterday, it was like when you were out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's I mean, I've never seen one in person either. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's I think it's just so rare because they'll
Speaker 1: avoid the city. They don't want no part of it.
Speaker 1: And like I said, it's because I mean they will
Speaker 1: come into conflict with humans and they just they're too
Speaker 1: specialized of an animal to really be able to adapt
Speaker 1: like a raccoon can. So I want to tell you
Speaker 1: the story about Griffith Park's lonely single mail metal Um.
Speaker 1: He's seeking hot cougars in his area, but there aren't any.
Speaker 1: He's the only one. So the National Park Service named
Speaker 1: him P twenty two UM, which is I wish it
Speaker 1: stood for something cool like predator twenty two, but I
Speaker 1: think it's just like like how many ladies whose bang
Speaker 1: Like he's really super handsome. He's like He's like it
Speaker 1: is hottest cougar ever. Um. But now it's just like
Speaker 1: the like sequence in which they market Yeah. UM. So
Speaker 1: he traveled from the Santa Monica Mountains to try to
Speaker 1: find his own territory, and in the wild they require
Speaker 1: a really large toys. I'm Elmer Fudd all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: um over two hundred square miles uh is for like
Speaker 1: one male and his current range in Griffith Park is
Speaker 1: nine square miles. It's tiny. It's like trying to live
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. I'm all right, it's hard. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get by these days. It's hard. It's very high expensive, expensive,
Speaker 1: it's hard to date. Hard in this city. I feel
Speaker 1: like twenty two is just like the millennial experience just
Speaker 1: in Mountain Lion from Can I ask you a question?
Speaker 1: So because there were cubs recently born, I think in
Speaker 1: the Mounta Lion cubs because there used to be female
Speaker 1: there was like was it right? Wasn't there? I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was in Grip Parkrint, San would be
Speaker 1: probably the San Monica Mountains, Yeah, okay, because yeah, something
Speaker 1: had happened during the fires. I think where they were
Speaker 1: like really nervous that the cups had been killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was the Santa Monica Mountains Griffith Park.
Speaker 1: The issue with that why he's so isolated is he
Speaker 1: surrounded by freeway. There's no way to get and he
Speaker 1: actually had traveled with a few of his companions but
Speaker 1: then they got killed by vehicles, so he was like
Speaker 1: the only one to survive. He's got a tragic Disney
Speaker 1: back story. Um, and so yeah, there's no mate for him,
Speaker 1: and he's able to survive by eating the raccoon coyote. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also dear, And it's interesting because the reason dear
Speaker 1: can drive is that we have these big cemeteries and
Speaker 1: golf courses, which is like, as you may know, like
Speaker 1: the only green parts in Los Angeles is either rich
Speaker 1: people golf courses or dead people cemeteries. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: actually there's like a few creepy stories of people like
Speaker 1: they'll give the flowers to their their dead loved ones
Speaker 1: in the cemeteries, deers will come to eat them, and
Speaker 1: then the mountains p. Twenty two will just like like
Speaker 1: just like metal cup and there and like just just wait,
Speaker 1: like I imagine like you're grieving. You're like, oh man,
Speaker 1: look it's maybe it's Grandpa's spirit come in the form
Speaker 1: of a deer and he's eating the flowers and you're like, look,
Speaker 1: Grandpa's visiting us. And then this mountains just like guts
Speaker 1: everywhere and it's like, I don't look, children, Grandpa's dying again.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the spirit there's time is souls dead. Now.
Speaker 1: My my best friend Sheet puts flowers on Mama Cass's
Speaker 1: grave at Fort Lawn and at the flower Place, they
Speaker 1: have like a specific they they have flowers that you
Speaker 1: don't put in like offerings for grave sites because of
Speaker 1: deer like flowers that if deer eight their plants of
Speaker 1: deer eate them, it would poison the deer. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good differ, yeah, because there are like certain
Speaker 1: flowers that are inedible, and like literally that would suck
Speaker 1: even worse. Like you're visiting your grandma's grave and like
Speaker 1: a deer comes up and it's like, oh, it's so
Speaker 1: lovely the circle of life and just starts vomiting like
Speaker 1: a frat bro just like before you leave the flowers,
Speaker 1: and then you come back a week later and there's
Speaker 1: just a dead deer you just sacrifice on your grandmother's grave.
Speaker 1: So actually, also speaking of being poisoned. P. Twenty two
Speaker 1: has faced some troubles because he eats you know, rodents
Speaker 1: and stuffy. They're pretty opportunistic. They'll eat any meat they
Speaker 1: can get their hands on. But he was found with
Speaker 1: rodenticide in his bloodstream a few times when like the
Speaker 1: conservationists will capture him and check up on his health
Speaker 1: and um and like in high enough doses, like the
Speaker 1: rodenticide can kill mountain lions. But actually, like just for him,
Speaker 1: it caused him to have match right, right, because it
Speaker 1: compromises their immune systems UM, and then like it makes
Speaker 1: it harder for them to fight maange. But he is
Speaker 1: actually I think so as of now, I think he's
Speaker 1: made a full recovery and he's doing pretty well. Two
Speaker 1: is scrappy. He is scrappy, and it's I feel so
Speaker 1: bad firm because like he's doing all these things, crapping
Speaker 1: on by but there's just like he is never going
Speaker 1: to find I made. Is it a situation where it's
Speaker 1: too detrimental to the ecosystem to introduce Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that they don't really want to miss, Like they don't
Speaker 1: want to transport a female line who's doing well and
Speaker 1: like the Santa Monica Mountains because Griffith Park is not
Speaker 1: really a good zone. And it's also like I think
Speaker 1: if they took him and put him in the Santa
Speaker 1: Monica Mountains, he in another male mountain line might just
Speaker 1: like kill each other. He moved for a reason, right,
Speaker 1: So that's an avoid er. UM. So now let's talk
Speaker 1: about adapters and exploiters because this is really interesting. Adapters
Speaker 1: are a little less aggressively successful than UH exploiters, but
Speaker 1: they can manage in urban areas. So an example would
Speaker 1: be bobcats. You know, they live on the periphery of
Speaker 1: urban areas. They are smaller. There's not really conflict with
Speaker 1: humans as much because they're not big. Humans aren't like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know a bobcat, gotta kill it um and like, uh,
Speaker 1: they feed on rodents and small mammals, and rodents are exploiters.
Speaker 1: They do super well in cities. Yeah, pizza at Pizza
Speaker 1: for that little what was it a chinchilla? It was
Speaker 1: some rodent in Australia that got into the bakery and
Speaker 1: made all the pastries until it couldn't mean yes, that
Speaker 1: was actually an Australian opossum. Yeah, yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: in like a box of jelly doughnuts. And Australian opossums
Speaker 1: are way cuter than American possums, Like American possums are
Speaker 1: just such like their nightmare the grunge versions of like
Speaker 1: the cute, fluffy Australian opossums. I just think there's so misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: People are so mean. They just they're trying their best.
Speaker 1: They do. They are really scary though, the way they
Speaker 1: just come back to life and just like yeah, but
Speaker 1: they are they are great there. I do like them too,
Speaker 1: so you know the bugcats do. Okay, they still face
Speaker 1: some threats from urbanization. Like we talked about the highway
Speaker 1: system and freeways and roads really screw up with animals
Speaker 1: because like what happens is it's called habitat fragmentations. So
Speaker 1: you know, they try to cross the highway, they could
Speaker 1: get killed, and so it creates these genetic islands basically
Speaker 1: where they have these kind of this genetic bottleneck where
Speaker 1: they can't really cross the freeways, so they just have
Speaker 1: this smaller community where it's not as much genetic diversity
Speaker 1: and they can be taken out more quickly essentially by
Speaker 1: genetic or whatever, right right, and or just come out weird,
Speaker 1: you know, with like six fingers off like a lazy eye.
Speaker 1: I well, I think as in Norway or the Netherlands
Speaker 1: or somewhere I can't remember where, but they have those
Speaker 1: animal crossing high like overpasses that go from one side
Speaker 1: of a territory to another so that animals are able
Speaker 1: to cross over without risk of being hit by cars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. That's also sort of like in Japan
Speaker 1: they're the snow monkeys who um, they use telephone wires
Speaker 1: to cross like when it's snowy because they just don
Speaker 1: won't get there. It's too cold. You're going to telephone wires.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a really funny video you could just
Speaker 1: if you look like snow monkeys Japan, Like, you'll find
Speaker 1: a video of them hours of joy. Well, and and
Speaker 1: they're they like, I'll go in a little a neat,
Speaker 1: little line on these telephone wires. It's just like you
Speaker 1: can just hear that. It's really cute. So here's an
Speaker 1: urban exploiter that everyone knows and loves. The seagull. It
Speaker 1: is just a trash compactor of an animal. It is
Speaker 1: so opportunistic. It'll eat fish, human food, garbage, cat food
Speaker 1: in small rodents, eggs, doritos, small reptiles, smaller birds, sandwiches,
Speaker 1: vats of tiki masala, hotdogs, pigeons, potato chips, tinfoil coins, socks,
Speaker 1: human fingers, small babies, cookies, and Claire's house keys, their
Speaker 1: own babies, flying rats. I'm from San Diego, so like
Speaker 1: I grew up in a beach community and seagulls are
Speaker 1: just yeah, they are. They're so aggressive too. If you
Speaker 1: go to the beach and you have any food, they
Speaker 1: will swarm you and they're they're very so it's interesting
Speaker 1: because they're highly social animals, and this is what kind
Speaker 1: of is distinctive about them versus like a mountain lion.
Speaker 1: They're small, highly mobile, very socially intelligent, and they have
Speaker 1: this mobbing behavior where you know, like they just like
Speaker 1: in the hitchcock birds, they'll surround you, they'll bully other
Speaker 1: birds out of their territory, and so it like really
Speaker 1: helps them in a city because they can just kind
Speaker 1: of bully their way into these niche feeding areas. And
Speaker 1: they also will eat literally anything. The tiki masala thing mentioned,
Speaker 1: that's not a joke. There was there's a picture of
Speaker 1: the seagull who landed in a vat of tiki masala
Speaker 1: and he's like bright orange. It's a pretty cute. Probably
Speaker 1: put that on Twitter or something. What a piece of garbage?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine if you like got some tika masala
Speaker 1: and you're like, tastes a little tastes like bird, tastes
Speaker 1: like birds. This tastes like bird. So they're very inquisitive.
Speaker 1: They'll boldly investigate their environment and they'll go to landfills
Speaker 1: and just cram themselves full of garbage and trash like
Speaker 1: they've opened up seagulls that have been eating at landfills
Speaker 1: and there's just like tinfoil plastic like pieces of metals POGs. Probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think about with seagulls. Like I grew up in
Speaker 1: La Joya and San Diego, and my high school is
Speaker 1: primarily outdoors. There's a lot of southern California schools are
Speaker 1: because the weather is nice, so you can want for
Speaker 1: building a building. It's not a huge deal. And we
Speaker 1: a huge odd where you'd eat lunch, and I think
Speaker 1: lunch was like at noon, and so around one they
Speaker 1: would start to circle because they knew that lunch would
Speaker 1: be over and then they could descend. And then once
Speaker 1: that bell rang, they started to descend, and so we'd
Speaker 1: all you'd have to like run go with your your
Speaker 1: binder on your head because they start shitting. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the funny part about him is the uncontrollable crap just everywhere,
Speaker 1: just raining down seagulls. They don't have the cute little
Speaker 1: tin like bird duke. You know, it's like big water
Speaker 1: with it's like toothpasted, like brown, big glob of stinky toothpaste.
Speaker 1: But then on days where we had um, like half
Speaker 1: days for whatever reason. Uh, and we'd get out, they'd
Speaker 1: still on the dot at one start to circle even
Speaker 1: though no one was at school anymore. We should break legs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are. They are mobs. They will form literal mobs
Speaker 1: and they will attack other birds. And they're actually really intelligent.
Speaker 1: So like, you got to respect the seagull because they um,
Speaker 1: they can understand each other's warning vocalizations, and they even
Speaker 1: learn each other's personalities. So if you have like a
Speaker 1: kind of twitchy seagull who's like always doing false alarms,
Speaker 1: they learned to ignore them, like like the seagull who
Speaker 1: cried um, and they'll listen more to the ones that
Speaker 1: are like the trustworthy seagulls. Like we were like, m hmm,
Speaker 1: this is a situation in which I should go. I
Speaker 1: think about being on um. There's a bad Liberating did
Speaker 1: a series of Star Wars songs, and one of them
Speaker 1: is called Seagulls. But now that I just listened to
Speaker 1: because it's a good song about the yodo one like
Speaker 1: where everyone listened to it. It's fabulous. But my mom
Speaker 1: really got into the song, and so we were listening
Speaker 1: to in the car and we were driving south on
Speaker 1: Fairfax almost to will Shure, and then there's just a
Speaker 1: seagull above our car, and I'm like, what are you
Speaker 1: doing here? Why are you at Fairfax and Wilsher. You
Speaker 1: are far away from God seagle and he sent you
Speaker 1: his profit sign. I was like almost looked at like
Speaker 1: the animal meaning of seagull. It's like, you are garbage.
Speaker 1: We're listening to seagulls and there's a seagull. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a meaning just some ass backwards done seagull.
Speaker 1: This fucking type. Dude, bro bro bro this It was
Speaker 1: so great. Sick. You just gotta pay attention to the
Speaker 1: world around good tune in, dude. So also a cute thing.
Speaker 1: Here's one cute thing about seagulls. The only cute thing
Speaker 1: about them. Mated pears will utter soft murmurs to each
Speaker 1: other as they seek out a nesting area for their eggs.
Speaker 1: They're very particular about where they nest their good parents,
Speaker 1: but other wise they're good parents. And their murmurs are
Speaker 1: vocalizations indicating where they think the nest should be put,
Speaker 1: and they kind of work together to reach a consensus,
Speaker 1: like here's where little leg nursery will be. It's like
Speaker 1: what about here? What do you think about this? It's
Speaker 1: like like it's like the husband seagulls like, what about
Speaker 1: over here? And then the wife is like, that's like
Speaker 1: literally on the edge of a rock. You like, at
Speaker 1: least try so. Some of the less intuitive effects of
Speaker 1: urbanization is seen in birds, who are not exploiters, they're
Speaker 1: actually avoiders. Um. And that is bird divorce. Bird divorced
Speaker 1: divorce legally binding in the state of Californias, the saddest
Speaker 1: thing out into American society today. Bird divorce. Come on,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's just the degradation of society of
Speaker 1: morals and the bird family and the bird family. Um.
Speaker 1: So in humans, people are more likely to divorce in
Speaker 1: cities versus suburbs. Um. And you know, there's like a
Speaker 1: variety of causes, but one potential causes like difference and income.
Speaker 1: So people in suburbs are typically more financially stable. So
Speaker 1: it turns out, you know, having money and resources to
Speaker 1: like go to couples therapy or like money makes quality
Speaker 1: of life better. It turns out, um, but you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know what the exact causes. But in birds,
Speaker 1: the contrast is uh, in suburbs are real bad news
Speaker 1: for birds. They will get divorced a lot due to
Speaker 1: suburban crawl into their territory because suburbs usually it's like
Speaker 1: around you know the nice leaf line streets. Well, the
Speaker 1: reason it's lined with leaves is you're like kind of
Speaker 1: near like wooded areas. Um. So uh, there's a study
Speaker 1: um done in Seattle, Washington of these urban avoiders songbirds. Um.
Speaker 1: They looked at the Swainson's thrush and Pacific Rends, who
Speaker 1: are both urban avoiders, and they will divorce each other
Speaker 1: in response to the trauma of the suburbs invading their habitat.
Speaker 1: So they abandon their nests and then they just like
Speaker 1: stop seeing each other and they get with new new mates.
Speaker 1: And this is like similar to the human patterns of divorce,
Speaker 1: where like environmental and economic stress may factor into splitting up.
Speaker 1: That's like when you move you have your college boyfriend
Speaker 1: and then you decide to like after you out of college,
Speaker 1: like go moving together, but then everything is different. I
Speaker 1: don't know. This was a terrible idea only worked in college.
Speaker 1: Must It must have been the chicken nuggets and the
Speaker 1: tater taught the chicken nugget hates These tater tots held
Speaker 1: a relationship together. Dude, bro, it's a glue that kept
Speaker 1: us together. Is literally like some kind of industrial glue,
Speaker 1: some starchy cement, some starchy cement that held their love together.
Speaker 1: That's really upsetting, I know, because songbirds are so lovely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be sort of like the doves that
Speaker 1: you release on your way, which you shouldn't. Don't do that,
Speaker 1: murdering doves monsters really seriously, like if you have like
Speaker 1: captive doves and you release them, they're like, uh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: Like what now, dude, Yeah, where do I go? You've
Speaker 1: remin me from everything? I know? What? What? What? What
Speaker 1: is this open sky? I mean, like congratulations and everything.
Speaker 1: But also I'm woefully underprepared for this. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: like they will they will die, but also they will
Speaker 1: may be divorced too, because birds are just you know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing sacred. Birds are as messed up as we are.
Speaker 1: I just mentioned little bird feet signing a little piece
Speaker 1: of paper bird attorneys, Like, I guess, I guess this
Speaker 1: is it just going like and you will get half
Speaker 1: of the millet and some sticks. That's my favorite stick,
Speaker 1: you know, that's my favorite stick. Oh upsetting, so sad,
Speaker 1: But I mean if they're happier in the long run,
Speaker 1: I guess it's better. Yeah, I mean until all of
Speaker 1: their territories by suburbs and stuff. The world sucks. Not
Speaker 1: all birds are as shy as our divorcee songbirds. There's
Speaker 1: a type of bird who looks innocent enough but is
Speaker 1: actually a vicious invader, and it's all Shakespeare's fault. Starlings
Speaker 1: are small blackbirds with white dots, named such because they
Speaker 1: look like a star speckled sky. They're highly intelligent, able
Speaker 1: to open the tops off of milk jugs, and like parrots,
Speaker 1: they're able to learn and mimic human words. So what's
Speaker 1: the problem, Well, there are over two hundred million European
Speaker 1: starlings in North America, with flocks big enough to sometimes
Speaker 1: darken the sky, looking like a large cloud, strobing in
Speaker 1: what is known as murmurations as they change directions. But
Speaker 1: they're non native, in a big problem for North American birds,
Speaker 1: including bluebirds, flickers, and woodpeckers only two of which sounds
Speaker 1: like a slang for wieners. Starlings will kick them out
Speaker 1: of their nests, making it difficult for these indigenous species
Speaker 1: to breathe successfully, they can be a nuisance for humans
Speaker 1: as well. Large flocks can demolish entire crops of wheat
Speaker 1: their vectors for disease, and their nests are even known
Speaker 1: to cultivate a spooky fungus called Pistoplasma capsulatum, whose fungal
Speaker 1: spores can cause pistoplasmosis and humans, which can cause fever, chills,
Speaker 1: coughing up blood, and if left untreated, will attack your
Speaker 1: whole body, including the central nervous system, adrenal glands, and liver,
Speaker 1: causing blindness and a vicilly death. So how did these
Speaker 1: little harbingers of doom get to North America the cause
Speaker 1: of most of our problems? An overenthusiastic fanboy in Night,
Speaker 1: Eugene Chfel in New York pharmaceutical manufacturer, had an evil
Speaker 1: nerdy plan. He wanted to introduce every bird mentioned in
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's plays and poems to North America. Other birds he
Speaker 1: had tried, such as nightingales and skylarks, had failed to
Speaker 1: thrive and died off. Unfortunately, Shakespeare had faithfully made mention
Speaker 1: of one other bird in Henry the Fourth, the Starling. Remember,
Speaker 1: starlings can be taught human words so Shakespeare wrote this line, Nay,
Speaker 1: I'll have a starling shall be brought to speak nothing
Speaker 1: but Mortimer, and give it to him to keep his
Speaker 1: anger still in motion. So basically, as Starling was taught
Speaker 1: to say, a name that annoyed the king is a
Speaker 1: sort of old timey prank. Uh. So Shakespeare dork Sheffilin
Speaker 1: imported sixties starlings from Europe and released these winged demons
Speaker 1: into New York Central Park. Today there are hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of these feathered bullets, as the U. S. Department
Speaker 1: of Agriculture likes to call them. So there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of birds outside our window staring a menacingly. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break to adjust the situation. So our
Speaker 1: dogs parasites? A newspaper column once answered this with a
Speaker 1: controversial yes. The San Diego Union Tribune, my hometown, by
Speaker 1: the way, ran a column titled, let's be honest, America,
Speaker 1: dogs are parasites, not Man's best friend. Twitter responded, let's say, tepidly,
Speaker 1: telling the newspaper to go funk itself, amongst other strongly
Speaker 1: worded complaints. But is there any truth to the claim
Speaker 1: that dogs are parasites? The article's main assertion is that
Speaker 1: dogs are master manipulators. All the pampering, stroller rides, grooming,
Speaker 1: expensive care, these are all signs that dogs have gained
Speaker 1: the system and asserted themselves as our furry overlords. The
Speaker 1: author sites in article called the Truth about Dogs, which
Speaker 1: explains that rather than us humans domesticating dogs, dogs may
Speaker 1: have exploited human empathy in order to live with us,
Speaker 1: in a way domesticating themselves so the less aggressive, more
Speaker 1: human friendly proto dogs would be favored by our human ancestors,
Speaker 1: and they'd earn the enviable position of man's best friend. This,
Speaker 1: I think is a pretty strong and compelling theory. But
Speaker 1: to then call dogs parasites is not only cynical but
Speaker 1: scientifically inaccurate. The definition of parasites are organisms that benefit
Speaker 1: at the cost to a host. Dogs are at worst
Speaker 1: commence alistic symbiots of fancy way of saying, an animal
Speaker 1: who benefits from a host at no cost or harm
Speaker 1: to the host. But in my opinion, they are mutualistic,
Speaker 1: meaning we gain as much from them as they gain
Speaker 1: from us, be it in the work they do for us,
Speaker 1: hurting sheep and eating rats. The emotional benefits we receive
Speaker 1: and all the Instagram likes we'd get when we post
Speaker 1: pictures of them in cute shirts. Seriously, look me in
Speaker 1: the eye and tell me that a dog who tolerates
Speaker 1: being costooned with bows, hats, and booties isn't paying for
Speaker 1: his meals. Some dogs, however, have figured out a way
Speaker 1: to leach off of human society without having to pay
Speaker 1: with their dignity, and we have to go to Russia
Speaker 1: to find them. Katie, Yes, you like dogs? I do
Speaker 1: you like dogs? I love dogs. They are good papas.
Speaker 1: They're good papa. They are heck and sweet, and I
Speaker 1: want us motionales. Would you want dogs to be able
Speaker 1: to talk? No? I know right, I feel like it
Speaker 1: would just make things weird. Like it's fine the way
Speaker 1: it is. You know, they express through their behavior how
Speaker 1: they're feeling. That's all I need, DoD. You'd imagine like
Speaker 1: like an updog, like like you know, the dog from
Speaker 1: up going like you know, I'm sweet and lovable because
Speaker 1: I love you. Yeah, But in reality they'd be like Mia, Mia, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm gonna poop everywhere? What is that? What
Speaker 1: is that? I feel like it'd be a lot of yelling,
Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, someone needs a block away
Speaker 1: and you'd just be like I can't, like you already
Speaker 1: bark like I know what you are saying. Someone is away,
Speaker 1: like close to our door. The Maleman is here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do, I have a I mean, I love cats
Speaker 1: and I love dogs, and I have a cat. Just
Speaker 1: well I love cats, but also it's just easier for
Speaker 1: me right now, and I can't live in a place
Speaker 1: where I have a dog, but like I do just
Speaker 1: want like just like a sweet boy. It's like a
Speaker 1: swoo boy dog, just as like a dope, big doofy dog.
Speaker 1: But they're I mean, like I got a dog. And
Speaker 1: my impression as a former cat owner is like dogs
Speaker 1: are all these sort of doofy lovable dogs, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them just are extremely emotionally needy, like neurotically neurotic.
Speaker 1: Like just like my dog who every time the printer
Speaker 1: goes off or something beeps or my phone gets a
Speaker 1: HEXT message, she like gets on my shoulders and like
Speaker 1: it's like her face is in my face and she's like,
Speaker 1: what is that? What is that? What is that? What
Speaker 1: does that sound? At least my cat, my cat is neurotic,
Speaker 1: but my cat is also a loof right, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of just like I'm gonna just deal with my
Speaker 1: my stuff like over here, whereas dogs are like, I'm
Speaker 1: having problems and you need to dress them here, you
Speaker 1: need to fix it. Yeah, you need to fix this
Speaker 1: or right now. And so there's a good reason that
Speaker 1: they're like that. Dogs have been domesticated for around fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand years. Um, so they've basically co evolved with us
Speaker 1: over a really long period of time, which, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's created this situation where we can kind of communicate
Speaker 1: with them in a way, we can train them, and
Speaker 1: they also are sort of like they're very good at
Speaker 1: getting us to pay attention to them, those big puppy dogs,
Speaker 1: and like just like the wines they make, we we
Speaker 1: feel the need to to help them, and they also
Speaker 1: help us. So um. But what it's crazy is so
Speaker 1: you would think that most dogs in the world are
Speaker 1: pet dogs, but of dogs are unrestrained, so that means
Speaker 1: they're either feral, they're stray, or their village free range dogs.
Speaker 1: There's nine hundred million dogs in the world, two hundred
Speaker 1: million are strays, and in Moscow alone there are thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand stray dogs. That's a lot. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of that's a lot. But I can't I apologize.
Speaker 1: I cannot help it when I talk about dog kind
Speaker 1: of to to put that in perspective, the number of
Speaker 1: wolves in all of Russia is around fifty thou Yeah,
Speaker 1: um so there's a small group of intrepid stray dogs
Speaker 1: in Moscow who have learned to navigate the subway system. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're great videos online of these dogs where they
Speaker 1: just like they're like in the subway. Uh, They're they're
Speaker 1: at like the subway station. They're just like waiting around
Speaker 1: with all the other commuters, and they're like kind of
Speaker 1: go to work, kind of go to work than the
Speaker 1: trade doors. And they're like they're like excuse me, pardon me, ma'am.
Speaker 1: Just me and dog going to work. Um so. They
Speaker 1: were studied by Russian biologists Andre Poyarkov and animal expert
Speaker 1: Andre neronov Um. So poiarkov Um observed stray dogs becoming
Speaker 1: more wolf like with greater intelligence, pack structure, and they
Speaker 1: were losing domesticated dog behaviors such as tail wagging and
Speaker 1: physical traits such as spotted coats. So the more feral,
Speaker 1: they became the more wolf like um. And then these
Speaker 1: more feral wolf like dogs were also exploiting the subway system. Um.
Speaker 1: So there are three types of dog commuters. There are
Speaker 1: dogs who live in the subway, but they don't travel.
Speaker 1: They just lived there because it's warm. Lots of people
Speaker 1: in Russia it's snow it's snowy. And it's also just
Speaker 1: like you know, commuters bumping up, dropping their pretzels and stuff.
Speaker 1: They're borsh, that's not really right. It's trash and polish.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's polish, but also like who's walk around with
Speaker 1: a big old bottom? I don't know. I'm like a
Speaker 1: couple of generations removed Russians, so I don't actually knowsh
Speaker 1: it around. I just don't actually um so uh. And
Speaker 1: then the second type of subway dogs are those who
Speaker 1: use the subway to travel instead of walking there. They're
Speaker 1: just like, you know, I need to get from point
Speaker 1: A to point B. I know the subway will take
Speaker 1: me there, and so I just hop right on there,
Speaker 1: you know, open up a good newspaper and eat that
Speaker 1: newspaper because on top of it, um and it's really
Speaker 1: cute too, because like sometimes they travel and like pairs
Speaker 1: or groups, and like when one dog is like, it's
Speaker 1: our stop now, they'll like inform the other dog like, hey, hey, barfie,
Speaker 1: just our stop. Oh my god, we gotta go. Um.
Speaker 1: The third type is my favorite. It's dogs who use
Speaker 1: the subway to commute to location for busking purposes. So
Speaker 1: they will uh live in areas that are good for sleeping,
Speaker 1: so like suburban areas. Um. And then like they will
Speaker 1: go into the urban areas, like into the city to
Speaker 1: go beg for food. It's like people who work in
Speaker 1: in Manhattan but commune from there, Like it's easier to
Speaker 1: buy a house out there, and you know, we like
Speaker 1: the wide open space. Dog, I can't afford rent. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't rent. No, I'd rather just live in Jersey, live
Speaker 1: in a drain pipe, and I gotta commute to work.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like my workout a talk start up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you live in like out in in uh in my
Speaker 1: own dookey. I just like. But my favorite thing about
Speaker 1: that is there's the first dog, Like the first dog
Speaker 1: who accidentally like got on the subway and realize what
Speaker 1: happened and then was like he's like, oh, we gotta
Speaker 1: I gotta tell every about it a good portal. Rich
Speaker 1: wizards were like, oh man, I've been here before, but
Speaker 1: it took me way longer to get here before, like
Speaker 1: the thought process that had to go, yeah, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is something we gotta keep doing because my legs
Speaker 1: are small. Have you heard of train It's the hot
Speaker 1: new trend. They're like Ted's drunk again, someone taken away
Speaker 1: from him? Take the borched away from the dog. Another
Speaker 1: fun thing that straight dogs will do that's really like intelligent,
Speaker 1: the big limpse. Oh my god, I love it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll like they'll like drag one leg on the ground
Speaker 1: and be like, oh no, whoe is me. I'm just
Speaker 1: a poor dog and it's our board. I am just
Speaker 1: a good boy. And then as soon as they get
Speaker 1: that sausage there, like got you suck it, and then
Speaker 1: they hop away giving you they run away giving you
Speaker 1: the middle finger. Um. Pet dogs also do this. So
Speaker 1: sometimes my dog will shiver as if she's scared, and
Speaker 1: it's like usually after so like there will be a
Speaker 1: thunderstorm and she's shivering out of true fear and she
Speaker 1: gets a lot of attention, and then the next day
Speaker 1: there's freaking nothing going on. She starts shivering. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you want hugs and treats, and she's like yuh huh,
Speaker 1: And then I also give it to her, though I
Speaker 1: do give in. She played like a fit. You're technically
Speaker 1: not supposed to You're not like supposed to coddle them
Speaker 1: because they learned that to do the fear response in
Speaker 1: order to get the coddling. But I just I caught
Speaker 1: I'm a coddler. Why can I say? Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: with kids when they learned that if they freak out,
Speaker 1: like at Walmart or I don't know why that was
Speaker 1: like a target, they have a melting to take the
Speaker 1: kids to Walmart and they throw a tantrum, then you
Speaker 1: buy him a fit if you buy the thing to
Speaker 1: make them quiet, And then anytime you go anywhere, they
Speaker 1: started tying. I hope if and when I become a parent,
Speaker 1: I don't treat my children like a treatment we would have.
Speaker 1: It's like, I hope I would have better better boundaries.
Speaker 1: I think so um so, just me with a thousand
Speaker 1: miles stare of like, damn it, dog raising is hard, parenting,
Speaker 1: oh geez. So the idea that they can kind of
Speaker 1: like tap into our human empathy and exploit. It does
Speaker 1: tie into that theory of dog evolution that wolves with
Speaker 1: certain affable temperaments could exploit human kindness, and so they
Speaker 1: were kind of responsible for domesticating themselves. Maybe. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting that it's like domesticated going up in
Speaker 1: a bell curve and then as they became feral again,
Speaker 1: losing some of the behaviors again. But yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like you can't unknow what you know because they're I
Speaker 1: don't think they're vicious. They're not necessarily friendly dogs, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they and they are more or they have that pack structure.
Speaker 1: I think they like their ears get stiffer to they
Speaker 1: lose the spotted coats. Because what's interesting is that all
Speaker 1: domesticated animals share certain genetic markers, like the the weak
Speaker 1: cartilage in the ears that causes like floppiness, sloppy ears
Speaker 1: like pigs, cows, dogs, um. Notably cats don't don't know,
Speaker 1: cats are not really as domestic. They're very close to
Speaker 1: their wild counterparts. They're very genetically similar to the wildcats.
Speaker 1: And then like other things like spotted coats, you see
Speaker 1: that in cows, dogs, pigs, rabbits, you know, um, constructors, um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Like I don't know if reptiles actually counting this,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, most domesticated mammals share these genetic markers.
Speaker 1: As dogs become more feral, they kind of lose some
Speaker 1: of those some of those traits. It is the ears
Speaker 1: thing that like, Okay, when they're stiff, they're better, they're
Speaker 1: eat they can hear, and they're more like aware. And
Speaker 1: then as they been domesticated, it's like the chiller lazier
Speaker 1: dogs that get bread to be like pets, and so
Speaker 1: then they're just all their skill, they're just so relaxed,
Speaker 1: they're like or that they're like spotted coats. I don't
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't think so. I think it's just
Speaker 1: sort of arbitrarily attached to certain behavioral traits, so like
Speaker 1: more um, you know, the chiller behavior is it's just like,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, be less less aggressive. Also, maybe less
Speaker 1: of certain hormones are attached to like cartilage productions. So
Speaker 1: these things just like that just happened to be biologically linked.
Speaker 1: But I don't think there's any like actual structural purpose
Speaker 1: of like the ears flopping down kept Sometimes my dog
Speaker 1: has one ear that sticks up and the other one.
Speaker 1: I just oh, just I'll buy, but you don't. You
Speaker 1: love it when cats get their ear turned inside out
Speaker 1: and they're just like going around like my always book,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, you look like such a picking because
Speaker 1: Lila likes to look cool and smart all the time,
Speaker 1: and when she looks dumb, I'm like, you're an idiot.
Speaker 1: Like they go from being like British Bond villain of
Speaker 1: like yes, feed me la tuna, to like, oh you pokey, mommy,
Speaker 1: mommy fixs me. You always spoke in. My favorite is
Speaker 1: when Lola rolls off the bed accidentally and then like
Speaker 1: hits the deck and looks around like like tries to
Speaker 1: act like nothing just happened. I was like, you fell.
Speaker 1: Your dog sometimes miscalculates to jump on the bed and
Speaker 1: just like wipes out. She kind of just like looks
Speaker 1: around like what what just happened? Who did that? Who
Speaker 1: was responsible? The couch was responsible for this. No one
Speaker 1: moved the couch. Nobody moved the couch. You're just stupid,
Speaker 1: Yeah you. So we talked briefly about how dogs may
Speaker 1: have domesticated themselves, but they may not be the only ones.
Speaker 1: There's a theory that humans are self domesticated, that the
Speaker 1: reason we conform societies and civilizations is our ability to
Speaker 1: be docile and cooperative, a trait we may have self
Speaker 1: selected for. The theory is that humans depended on group
Speaker 1: dynamics to survive or not the strongest, fastest, or large
Speaker 1: tooth eist of them all. But we are smart and
Speaker 1: we can work together, so groups of our pre Homo
Speaker 1: sapien ancestors would weed out those who were overly anti social.
Speaker 1: So say there's that one asshole auster Lepithecus, an early
Speaker 1: human ancestor, though we'll call Lucy. Lucy is a general
Speaker 1: asshole to other austro Lepithecai, especially one name, let's say,
Speaker 1: Charlie Grog. And whenever they're playing kick the oblong rock,
Speaker 1: she pretends as if she's holding it for Charlie Grog,
Speaker 1: but then she lifts it up at the last second,
Speaker 1: causing his kick to send him flying onto his back.
Speaker 1: Then she smashes Charlie Grog's head in with the rock
Speaker 1: and eats the soft brain tissue. Lucy would quickly be
Speaker 1: excommunicated from the group of Australopithecus and left to die.
Speaker 1: Her homicidal asshole genes meaning a quick ant Recently, genetic
Speaker 1: studies have shown this theory may have some solid scientific merit.
Speaker 1: Researchers compared the genomes of humans with that of domesticated animals,
Speaker 1: finding similar genetic markers that all domesticated animals share. So
Speaker 1: there you go, we probably domesticated ourselves. I am now
Speaker 1: going to scoop my butt across the carpet because science
Speaker 1: says I can. So I'm about to have an interview
Speaker 1: with Dr Greg Pauley. But first, Katie, you got anything
Speaker 1: you want to plug? Oh? You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at k A w I L L
Speaker 1: e r T. That's at k A Willard. Nice. Our
Speaker 1: names are the same, I know, and it's spelled the same,
Speaker 1: and I'd be happy. We're doing a D and D
Speaker 1: campaign to have it do. Yeah, yeah, it's the best.
Speaker 1: Stay stay there, good yo. We'll be right back after
Speaker 1: these messages and we're joining me. Is Dr Greg Paully,
Speaker 1: researcher and herpetology curator at the Natural History Museum of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles County. He studies things like conservation, genetics, the
Speaker 1: effects of urbanization, and he's a herpetologist. Great, can you
Speaker 1: explain what that means to our audience. Yeah, so herpetology
Speaker 1: is the study of reptiles and amphibians. And then the
Speaker 1: curator part of what I do is at the Natural
Speaker 1: History z M, I do a combination of research. We're
Speaker 1: working on exhibits in that region, and maybe the most
Speaker 1: important part of my job is actually taking care of
Speaker 1: this research collection, which is we have a hundred ninety
Speaker 1: thousand research specimens that are opped out to researchers all
Speaker 1: around the country, um for their own research needs. Now,
Speaker 1: are these are these specimens alive or preserved in some way?
Speaker 1: These are all one ninety of those are preserved animals.
Speaker 1: So they are animals that we either received dead or
Speaker 1: some researcher in the past used for their research and
Speaker 1: then it's still had research you know, potential, and so
Speaker 1: it was preserved and it's still now available for scientists
Speaker 1: to use. And so how do you maintain preserved a
Speaker 1: bunch of preserved reptiles? Yeah, so it'll depend on what
Speaker 1: kind of collection you're thinking about. For a collection like
Speaker 1: reptiles amphibians, we have what are called wet specimens, So
Speaker 1: we preserve all of our animals first and formulae and
Speaker 1: then transfer them over to alcohol and then they will
Speaker 1: stay in a jar of alcohol for literally decades, you know,
Speaker 1: really centuries to come. Yeah, I've seen like, uh, specimens
Speaker 1: that are like hundreds of years old and they look
Speaker 1: pretty good. Yeah, it's amazing. So we that method of
Speaker 1: form of preserving and formulat and then switching to alcohol.
Speaker 1: That method has only been around since about nineteen o
Speaker 1: five six. And if you look at a specimen that
Speaker 1: was preserved that way, say in five, and you look
Speaker 1: at one that was preserved in nine, you can't tell
Speaker 1: the difference. If I show you one that I preserved
Speaker 1: last year and I show you one that was preserved
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, yeah there's a little bit of a difference.
Speaker 1: But we estimate that these specimens have cared for properly,
Speaker 1: will be useful for researchers for a minimum of three years.
Speaker 1: But there are specimens that were preserved in all sorts
Speaker 1: of bizarre ways, usually like in some sort of alcohol
Speaker 1: e spirit from the late sixteen hundreds, that are still
Speaker 1: in European museums and still available for research use. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: So like, uh, does research ever take one of those
Speaker 1: really old specimens and do genetic testing on them or
Speaker 1: so It's funny like, once you preserve something in formula,
Speaker 1: it makes it really hard to get DNA out of.
Speaker 1: So actually those older specimens that were never exposed to
Speaker 1: formula oftentimes are better at DNA then, say something that's
Speaker 1: from the nineteen thirties, and then what we do today
Speaker 1: is before we expose it to formula and we take
Speaker 1: a tissue sam. I see, so you have the d
Speaker 1: N a kind of lot. Yeah, so I I curate
Speaker 1: the what collection. We also have a skeletal collection, and
Speaker 1: on top of that, we have a tissue collection which
Speaker 1: is in a negative a d degree Celsius freezer, and
Speaker 1: so we have all these tissue samples, and so when
Speaker 1: researchers just want to look at a tissue, they can
Speaker 1: request that tissue stample and we might then ship that
Speaker 1: off to them for them. That's some Jurassic Park stuff situation.
Speaker 1: We hope that nobody's cloning, you know, trying to bring back,
Speaker 1: you know, something that hasn't been approved. Yeah, we're not
Speaker 1: too worried about that. Yeah, no, that that's awesome. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you a bit about the
Speaker 1: Citizens Science Initiative that you and the Natural History Museum
Speaker 1: are doing so, you're recruiting l A residents to help
Speaker 1: with documenting animal populations and behaviors. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what citizen science is in how it
Speaker 1: helps with your research. Yes, a citizen science, I mean
Speaker 1: the basic idea of citizen sciences. It's crowdsourcing. It's basically
Speaker 1: asking members of the public to help answer to work
Speaker 1: with a professional scientist to help answer some research question.
Speaker 1: And as a museum curator, I have this amazing time
Speaker 1: machine where I can go into the collections and I
Speaker 1: can find all these specimens that tell me for a
Speaker 1: place like l A. You know this absolutely amazing huge cities,
Speaker 1: one of one of the biggest cities in the world.
Speaker 1: We have the specimens that tell us where species were
Speaker 1: found at a particular place at a particular time. So
Speaker 1: we know like the distributions of species in the past,
Speaker 1: But how do you learn where some of those species
Speaker 1: are found today? When everything is private property? Like, that's
Speaker 1: not places that I can easily as a scientist go
Speaker 1: do research. You can't take your team of grad students
Speaker 1: into someone's lawn up not ly usually so in order
Speaker 1: to avoid being shot or you know, getting getting trespassing
Speaker 1: tickets all the time. Um, we use this crowd sourcing approach.
Speaker 1: We use citizen science. So we basically just asked people
Speaker 1: to pull out their smartphones and their digital cameras and
Speaker 1: take photographs of what they see and upload it to
Speaker 1: this amazing website, this this online community of science or
Speaker 1: citizen science platform called by naturalists. So by doing that,
Speaker 1: I can learn where things are found today, compare that
Speaker 1: to the historical records in the museums, and see how
Speaker 1: ranges are shifting over the course of urbanization. So it
Speaker 1: has these massive conservation benefits and you can use that
Speaker 1: information for landscape and urban planning. But these photographs that
Speaker 1: people are taking aren't just like, oh, here's an animal
Speaker 1: and it shows you where it is. Yes, that's all true,
Speaker 1: But sometimes they're photographing really interesting ecological or behavioral phenomena
Speaker 1: as well. I know this because so you had asked
Speaker 1: for photos of alligator lizards, which is a totally normal
Speaker 1: thing to ask for, right, Yeah, And I wass thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: that'd be cool if I could could find them. But
Speaker 1: I didn't have much hope because I live in a
Speaker 1: very sort of uh like a bunch of apartments and
Speaker 1: streets and I thought there's no way they would want
Speaker 1: to be here. But there's a pair of them right
Speaker 1: in the middle of the sidewalk, um doing their weird
Speaker 1: mating ritual where the male bites down on the female
Speaker 1: head and they just like stay there. And so like
Speaker 1: there's all this foot traffic and like I'm on like
Speaker 1: kneel down onto the sidewalk with my phone and like
Speaker 1: do close ups. And people are kind of laughing because
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, a little different is the weirdo
Speaker 1: and the yoga pants taking photos of of lizards getting
Speaker 1: it on. Um, But yeah, that is it's really fun
Speaker 1: to kind of be feel like you're contributing to science
Speaker 1: without having to do any of the other hard work.
Speaker 1: So this is and this is such a great example.
Speaker 1: So what you have seen, you've now seen to southern
Speaker 1: alligator lizards mating. I've lived within the range of the
Speaker 1: southern alligator lizard for thirty six years of thirty four
Speaker 1: years of my life, I've never seen this. Um, you
Speaker 1: have now seen something that I've never seen. And yet
Speaker 1: I study this. And the reason that we rely on
Speaker 1: citizen science is for exactly that it's just random chance
Speaker 1: that you're going to happen upon them. And so if
Speaker 1: enough people know about it, they'll be able to And
Speaker 1: everyone has smartphones now, like you have your camera on
Speaker 1: you at all times, and so I mean here you
Speaker 1: have the situation where an observation that's rarely observed by
Speaker 1: any one person, but by crowdsourcing it, we can generate
Speaker 1: this amazing data set. So as of this morning, over
Speaker 1: five years of doing this on citizen Science, we've generated
Speaker 1: a data set of roughly three hundred and fifty observation.
Speaker 1: Well I shouldn't say rough actually did the math this morning,
Speaker 1: so it's actually like three d and fifty two observations
Speaker 1: this morning, and five years of promoting this on citizen science,
Speaker 1: I myself has still never seen this in the entirety
Speaker 1: of the pure view scientific literature. There are three reported
Speaker 1: dates of when alligator lizards have been observed mating, and
Speaker 1: so you can't do anything. You can't do anything with
Speaker 1: three observations, like you can infer like how do how
Speaker 1: does the timing of breeding whether from year to year?
Speaker 1: The sample size as too small, you can't you can't
Speaker 1: do any statistics on it. You can infer any general putnis.
Speaker 1: But with three observations. So I'm pretty sure. I'm still
Speaker 1: like a little hesitant to say this, but I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that the data set we've generate it is the
Speaker 1: largest data set of like of matings for any lizard
Speaker 1: species ever, which is, I mean pretty amazing. And I
Speaker 1: still haven't even seen this. And I know there's like
Speaker 1: some some listeners are like, yeah, but like what can
Speaker 1: you do with that? Like right, But the reality is
Speaker 1: that for the entire field of animal behavior, a huge
Speaker 1: chunk of research is all about mating behaviors because that's
Speaker 1: sort of the necessary step to population growth. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of critical to keeping your species going.
Speaker 1: And so it's you know, it's really common that people
Speaker 1: and it's there's so many amazing sort of evolutionary stories
Speaker 1: within that field of like making behaviors and behavior. So
Speaker 1: it's this amazing thing to be able to study. But
Speaker 1: for most species, you're never going to be able to
Speaker 1: generate enough observations. But you can solve that problem by
Speaker 1: crowdsourcing too. I remember, I think you guys you released
Speaker 1: a really funny Valentine's Day called action or it is,
Speaker 1: like do you remember that. Well, we've done this so
Speaker 1: This was not I wish this is my good idea,
Speaker 1: but it was not. It was somebody in our marketing
Speaker 1: group said, if you're you know, if they ead in
Speaker 1: the spring, why are you announcing this in early March.
Speaker 1: Why don't you just announce it on Valentine's Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so we absolutely just started making you know, we have this,
Speaker 1: we have this nature and l a blog and it's
Speaker 1: a way to reach out to a broad audience to
Speaker 1: get people excited about you know, nature events that are
Speaker 1: happening across across the region. And so yeah, we just
Speaker 1: started producing it on Valentine's Day. And I forget all
Speaker 1: the titles that we've used, because we've done we've done
Speaker 1: a handful of these now. But it's basically, you know,
Speaker 1: just trying to you know, get the word out. In
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day is a great day to do that because
Speaker 1: it's when when humans are thinking about sort of romance,
Speaker 1: and we've got alligator litles thinking about romance and pair
Speaker 1: those things toge and also other odors related to us alligator.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of great stuff going on. Um, what's
Speaker 1: have you ever gotten a really weird or exciting submission
Speaker 1: like a submitted photo of something that's just like blew
Speaker 1: your mind. I mean, it's so hard for me to
Speaker 1: whittle it down to one because we get these amazing
Speaker 1: photographs I mean all the time, Like I feel like
Speaker 1: I could give you a different answer to this almost
Speaker 1: every other week. So I mean, I think some of
Speaker 1: the neatest photos that we've received are things like I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes there's a single photo that literally does tell a
Speaker 1: thousand words, and so that single photograph. UM. For some
Speaker 1: of the cases that we've had recently have been things
Speaker 1: like somebody took a photograph of some lizard species, for example,
Speaker 1: that had never before been documented in California. So a
Speaker 1: great example of this is this guy by the name
Speaker 1: of Glenn Yoshida. I hope Glenn doesn't mind me using
Speaker 1: his name. UM. And I never met Glenn when this
Speaker 1: story actually happened. But Glenn was walking into his house
Speaker 1: one day after work, and I think he even had like,
Speaker 1: you know, groceries in one hand, and there's a gecko
Speaker 1: hanging out right above his front door. And he took
Speaker 1: a photo of this gecko and he emailed it to
Speaker 1: the to the Natural History Museum where I work, and
Speaker 1: so he didn't actually just upload a tin Naturalists. He
Speaker 1: wasn't a Ninaturalist user at the time. He just he
Speaker 1: just sent it right to us until I got this
Speaker 1: email from Glenn, and I was like, whoa, I don't
Speaker 1: I basically, I mean, I knew it was a house
Speaker 1: gecko of some kind, so I knew the genius, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know what species it was. And so I
Speaker 1: actually emailed back to Glenn and I said, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a really interesting find. Um, would could I
Speaker 1: could you send me your phone number? I'd like to
Speaker 1: chat with you about this, And so he sent me
Speaker 1: send me his phone number. So I called him up.
Speaker 1: This is like two hours later, It's like at nine
Speaker 1: o'clock on a Wednesday night or something. So I called
Speaker 1: up Glenn and I said, hey, you know, I know
Speaker 1: it's one of two species. I don't know which one.
Speaker 1: Neither has ever been documented as established in California. UM,
Speaker 1: do you have have you seen multiple individuals? He goes
Speaker 1: like yeah, I have seen multiple individuals for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. And I said, okay, well, like, can I
Speaker 1: just come to your house tomorrow at around a p m.
Speaker 1: And then we'll just wander around your neighborhood and see
Speaker 1: if we can. Yeah, just hanging out looking for geckos.
Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, you seem like a totally normal human. Sure. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah. The next night I showed up at Glenn's house.
Speaker 1: We wandered around his house and we did find some
Speaker 1: more geckos, and once I had one in hand, I
Speaker 1: knew what it was. It's a thing called the Indo
Speaker 1: Pacific gecko. And it's an Yeah, it's not it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's from the Indo Pacific region, so in
Speaker 1: their native range. I mean it's thousands of miles away
Speaker 1: from here and so, but they are in Hawaii and
Speaker 1: they get moved around in the nursery plant trade. There
Speaker 1: also some populations on a plant exactly so, and it's
Speaker 1: an all female species. So one individual shows up, she
Speaker 1: lays eggs, her daughter's hatch out, and then they grew
Speaker 1: up to lay eggs as well. It's it's like parthen
Speaker 1: exactly so. This is an a sexual species of parthenagenetic species.
Speaker 1: So it just takes one individual to start a new population.
Speaker 1: And we see this a lot a lot of these
Speaker 1: non native species, particularly in reptiles. A lot of the
Speaker 1: non native species that show up, are these a sexual
Speaker 1: lineages because it only takes you don't need to individuals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you get all these crazy thing time me. So
Speaker 1: like literally a lot of my field work is doing
Speaker 1: things like wandering around neighborhoods and Torrents. Were wandering around
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and Orange or you know, all across southern California.
Speaker 1: I'm just out looking for geckos and so. But that
Speaker 1: one photograph and that triggered us doing this field work.
Speaker 1: I never would have found this on my own. It
Speaker 1: turns out they were only on basically Glenn's house. He
Speaker 1: doesn't know how about how happened. They actually died out
Speaker 1: after about five years, so they're not there anymore. But
Speaker 1: we have since then found actually two months after Glenn's discovery,
Speaker 1: we found them down in Um in Orange County as well,
Speaker 1: in the Lake Forest neighborhood. Again, a single photograph started that,
Speaker 1: and so Glenn and the gentleman down in Um in
Speaker 1: Lake Forest and Orange County he made this discovery. His
Speaker 1: name is Bob. Were all so Glenn and Bob and
Speaker 1: I actually the three of us together wrote up a
Speaker 1: little paper on this, published it, and so Glenn and
Speaker 1: Bob started out as you know, people taking photographs. He
Speaker 1: being these sort of citizen scientists participating in this project.
Speaker 1: Then they went all the way through the scientific process,
Speaker 1: all the way to publishing in the peer reviewed scientific literature,
Speaker 1: which and that all starts with one photo. That's amazing,
Speaker 1: so you can, like, you can become peer reviewed if
Speaker 1: you have your phone and you take some if you
Speaker 1: get if you end up happening to take a photograph,
Speaker 1: that is somehow you know, extra Sit and Glenn and
Speaker 1: Bob's case. You know, these are the first documented established
Speaker 1: populations of these geckos in the state of California, so
Speaker 1: first state record and then first county record and a
Speaker 1: and first county record in origin. So it was really significant.
Speaker 1: You know, most of the observations aren't something that's quite
Speaker 1: that significant, but are still really important for thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, how species are responding to urbanization. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know this whole effort, this sort of citizen science effort,
Speaker 1: sort of using these photographs that are put up on naturalists.
Speaker 1: This has been going on for ten years. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good amount of time to get it's great,
Speaker 1: but what about the scientists that are here two hundred
Speaker 1: years from now, three years from now, you think about
Speaker 1: the digital legacy of biodiversity data that we're leaving these
Speaker 1: future scientists. I mean, it's amazing to think that like
Speaker 1: any person out there can actually create this absolutely amazing
Speaker 1: research potentially of conservation value for for scientists of the future.
Speaker 1: So we can think about leaving this like digital biodiversity data.
Speaker 1: It's really kind of and it plays into this whole
Speaker 1: idea of like now that it's everyone's responsibility what's happening
Speaker 1: to our planet? And um, I think you know, most
Speaker 1: people think about it in terms of like recycling and
Speaker 1: and being you know, a good conservationist, and that's all good,
Speaker 1: but I think that they're these un lesser known things
Speaker 1: that you can do and really take an active role
Speaker 1: in helping conservation efforts. And that's a great way to
Speaker 1: think about it. Yeah, and it's it truly is this
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing resource. And so if we just think about
Speaker 1: like a place like Los Angeles a hundred years ago
Speaker 1: or even fifty years ago, and you think about the
Speaker 1: species that we're common here, and in fact, one of
Speaker 1: the species it was really common here was the horn lizard,
Speaker 1: which is species that you're super excited about. So, that
Speaker 1: was the most common backyard lizard in UM, some of
Speaker 1: the foothill communities in the San Gabriel Valley up until
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, and they're now gone, completely gone. And
Speaker 1: so in this relatively short period of time, we've seen
Speaker 1: this massive change in the fauna. Well, the data that
Speaker 1: we're generating today, we might even it might even be
Speaker 1: for common species, but it's the thing that we think
Speaker 1: is common now. Maybe fifty years from now it won't
Speaker 1: be called yeah, and we'll we'll have a much more
Speaker 1: sort of like UM, subtle we'll see be able to
Speaker 1: track subtle changes much better with larger data exactly. So. UM.
Speaker 1: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County recently released
Speaker 1: a new book called Wild l A, exploring the amazing
Speaker 1: nature in and around Los Angeles. UM. So I got
Speaker 1: a sneak peek, and it's really beautiful. It's got these
Speaker 1: amazing photos, and it's also really exciting for l A
Speaker 1: residents in understanding native species in our own backyards and
Speaker 1: being able to see like, oh, here's this cool photo
Speaker 1: and then know exactly like where the species kind of
Speaker 1: is found. Um, what are some of the unique things
Speaker 1: that people could learn from this book. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: I mean this is this was a really fun project
Speaker 1: to be a part of UM. One of the four
Speaker 1: authors UM, and it's it's really written for people who
Speaker 1: live in Los Angeles or even or people who are
Speaker 1: visiting Los Angeles because it's the book is really in
Speaker 1: three parts. It's sort of like ten introductory chapters, and
Speaker 1: as you said, tons of photos, tons of factoids, like
Speaker 1: lots of these little call out and then they're is
Speaker 1: a hundred one species accounts and it's native and non
Speaker 1: native species and every and a lot of it are
Speaker 1: the common species that people are going to see on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, but there's also aspirational species like bighorn
Speaker 1: sheep and and mountain lions. You know, things that are
Speaker 1: unlikely to see but like you, you might see them
Speaker 1: if you get lucky. And then it ends with twenty
Speaker 1: five UM recommended excursions all across the Los Angeles region.
Speaker 1: And so for people who are coming in from out
Speaker 1: of town, it's like we sort of hope that this
Speaker 1: is like one stop shopping, Like grab the book. You
Speaker 1: can quickly plan out a couple of hikes. You can
Speaker 1: identify some of the stuff that you see, and you
Speaker 1: can learn a lot about sort of nature and Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and why it's interesting. Um I think that when
Speaker 1: people think about l A, they think like Hollywood, the
Speaker 1: Hollywood star Walk of Fame, but there really is some
Speaker 1: pretty made, amazing habitats. So that's that's the single most
Speaker 1: that's the single biggest message we have in this book,
Speaker 1: which is that l A is absolutely amazing place for nature.
Speaker 1: And so I have a couple of factoids that I
Speaker 1: always like try to share with people. Um so, and
Speaker 1: I think this is something that like Angelina should be
Speaker 1: bragging about, and it's something that people should be coming
Speaker 1: to l A to experience. So um quick quick, first factory.
Speaker 1: This is actually one of my favorite things about Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So California is always bragged that you can ski and
Speaker 1: surf in the same day, which is true, but l
Speaker 1: A naturalists can also brag as well because you can
Speaker 1: see wild bighorn sheep and green sea turtles in the
Speaker 1: same day. And this is totally doable, like we could
Speaker 1: actually how how would you go about doing that? So
Speaker 1: it's actually not that hard. So first of all, the
Speaker 1: sea turtle part is almost guaranteed because The northernmost resident
Speaker 1: population of sea turtles is in the lower San Gabriel
Speaker 1: River in Long Beach, and as long as it isn't
Speaker 1: as long as it hasn't been a day with recent
Speaker 1: rain so that the river is up and maybe it's
Speaker 1: kind of murky and and it sometimes it's easy to mistake,
Speaker 1: you know, some chunk of trash for maybe a turtle
Speaker 1: that just quickly hops its head up and disappears. But
Speaker 1: if you go on like a regular day where it
Speaker 1: hasn't had it like a recent flood of it, you're
Speaker 1: almost guaranteed to see a green sea turtle. And the
Speaker 1: crazy thing is that the platform above the river that
Speaker 1: you can stand on to look at these green tea journals,
Speaker 1: at times these turtles pop up and they're like eight
Speaker 1: feet away from you, like a green, a wild green
Speaker 1: sea turtle. That's incredible. So that alone, like you don't
Speaker 1: have to go out like scuba diving to no, you
Speaker 1: just you can like be sitting there in your flip
Speaker 1: flops and t shirt, sunglasses and hat and you're just like,
Speaker 1: there's a sea turtle. My day is made. Head back,
Speaker 1: go grabbing margarita somewhere. And then after the Margharita, you
Speaker 1: go see a big horn sheep. Yeah, so the big
Speaker 1: horn is not quite as guaranteed, but also you have
Speaker 1: a good shot at And the way to go see
Speaker 1: a big horn sheep is you drive up into the
Speaker 1: sand Gabriel Mountains up towards Mount Baldy and there's a
Speaker 1: couple of good spots. We recommend a few of them
Speaker 1: in the book. There's a couple of good spots where
Speaker 1: you can stop and check them out. And actually, one
Speaker 1: of the funny things that happened us is as we
Speaker 1: were doing research for the book, we went up to
Speaker 1: Mount Baldy up to the ski area, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's only like an hour and twenty minute drive or
Speaker 1: something like that from downtown Towline. So we just zipped
Speaker 1: up there and got out of the car, walked like
Speaker 1: six steps and I look over and there's these two
Speaker 1: rams just on the hillside, right across from the parking lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, we couldn't have planned it better. And it
Speaker 1: was like, okay, well, like we're done, you know, let's
Speaker 1: at a few photos and go home. And then the
Speaker 1: funny thing that that happened is that in our photographer,
Speaker 1: who is also one of the writers Charles Hood was
Speaker 1: there and we were trying to get some photos of
Speaker 1: these of these rams. And what we didn't know at
Speaker 1: the time but we quickly learned, is that um, during
Speaker 1: certain times of the year, the rams have all of
Speaker 1: these dominance behaviors, and so they basically engage in lots
Speaker 1: of sort of homosexual behaviors and do things like mounting
Speaker 1: each other, you know, standard sort of dominance displays. Not
Speaker 1: at all female hyenas. Lots of canids do it, so like,
Speaker 1: not at all uncommon. But we couldn't necessarily use a
Speaker 1: photograph of two very you know, very clearly rams like
Speaker 1: you know, big curving horns. We couldn't use photos of those,
Speaker 1: like if we only have one photo of big horn
Speaker 1: sheep in the book. We didn't think that the probably
Speaker 1: the best photo to have sort of this photo that's
Speaker 1: got this complex sort of behaviors behind it, not not
Speaker 1: in today's society. Maybe soon, maybe soon, hopefully, so it
Speaker 1: would have taken a longer caption like but it is
Speaker 1: such a I mean, so we actually, you know, we
Speaker 1: we literally could have done that. If we turned around
Speaker 1: that day and went straight back down, we could have
Speaker 1: seen big horn cheap and green sea turtles, and that's
Speaker 1: like pretty much the only place in the world that
Speaker 1: you could sort of do that, and what an amazing
Speaker 1: thing to be able to do, you know, and you're
Speaker 1: in both of those cases, you're like never more than
Speaker 1: like probably thirty thirty five miles as the crow flies
Speaker 1: from downtown and almost completely opposite sort of like biomas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very very different, very different, and each of them has
Speaker 1: their own Like this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: we really try to focus on in Los Angeles is
Speaker 1: like we've had so much change, you know, because of
Speaker 1: urbanization and you know, the modification of the l A
Speaker 1: River and the same Gabriel River and also the things
Speaker 1: that have happened that every single species you see has
Speaker 1: this absolutely amazing story. Like green sea turtles have an
Speaker 1: amazing story. Big horn sheep and how they're managing to
Speaker 1: make it in the same Gabriel's you know, is a
Speaker 1: really interesting story. But you know how the eastern fox
Speaker 1: squirrel that we can almost certainly see, you know, right
Speaker 1: on the block outside of the studio, they have an
Speaker 1: amazing story as to how they got here. You know,
Speaker 1: every species here has an amazing story, and we tell
Speaker 1: as many of those as we can in this book.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic, I think as I mean, even if you're
Speaker 1: just coming to visit as a tourist, I feel like
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Walk of Fame is a little bit overrated,
Speaker 1: super crowded, kind of annoying. It's it's basically a sidewalk
Speaker 1: and people dressed as avatar blue avatars screaming at you,
Speaker 1: um and like seventy jack sparrows. It's not that cool.
Speaker 1: I think going and visiting some of the really incredible
Speaker 1: natural habitats around l A is a lot cooler. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you know, when people say, oh, there's not
Speaker 1: much nature in l A, my my response is always,
Speaker 1: there are twelve million people who can get onto public
Speaker 1: transit and can be guaranteed to see a midsized carnivore
Speaker 1: by the end of the day. And it's easy to
Speaker 1: do that. All you have to do is show up
Speaker 1: at Griffith Park right around sunset and hang out around
Speaker 1: the picnic tables. Right with the picnic table grounds, meet
Speaker 1: the edges of the of the sort of coastal stage
Speaker 1: group there, the Chaparale there, and at dusk every single night,
Speaker 1: coyotes wander through this Like, what do you mean there's
Speaker 1: no nature? I guarantee you I can. I can twelve
Speaker 1: million people and go see a coyote on any given night.
Speaker 1: Like that's incredible. Yeah, and it should be celebrated, like
Speaker 1: this is an amazing place to see nature. It really is.
Speaker 1: Uh So, we've been talking today about urban avoids, exploiters
Speaker 1: and adapters. Do you have a favorite story of urban
Speaker 1: exploitation or adaptation? I mean, I think that the Eastern
Speaker 1: fox squirrel is a pretty amazing I mean there's so
Speaker 1: many stories of like amazing stories, but here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I think especially the Eastern fox world. And this has
Speaker 1: actually played out over many cities. The Eastern fox squirrel
Speaker 1: has been introduced to a huge numbers of cities in
Speaker 1: the western YUS. The closest that s PCs should get
Speaker 1: to hear is like central Texas. But um, here in
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles region, what happened is that we have
Speaker 1: the Sautel Veterans However, what used to be called the
Speaker 1: Sautel Veterans zone. It's actually quite close to U C
Speaker 1: l A. It's just it's just west of the four
Speaker 1: oh five um in sort of the west all A
Speaker 1: region and so in the in the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, the people who are living that the
Speaker 1: Sawtel veterans homes were mostly Civil War soldiers. And so
Speaker 1: we had people there who might have grown up in
Speaker 1: Kentucky or Tennessee or elsewhere in the Eastern US. And
Speaker 1: it's not totally clear whether they were pets or whether
Speaker 1: they were being raised for food, but they had a
Speaker 1: bunch of Eastern fox squirrels like in pins. And what
Speaker 1: they would do is they would take scraps from the
Speaker 1: commissaria or from the cafeteria there, and they would give
Speaker 1: the scraps to the squirrels. And eventually some you know,
Speaker 1: administrators said, hey, that's a waste of government funded you
Speaker 1: know food, and so you have to get rid of
Speaker 1: those squirrels. And so the story is that the squirrels
Speaker 1: were then released. But at that point you have, you know,
Speaker 1: l a sort of building up. You've got you know,
Speaker 1: telephone lines and power lines running all across the place,
Speaker 1: and so instead of having to run around down low
Speaker 1: where all these cars are, these squirrels are just running
Speaker 1: around on all these powers. So, yeah, exactly, and so
Speaker 1: um in fact, we actually you're asking about interesting naturalist observations.
Speaker 1: I just saw a photo two weeks ago of an
Speaker 1: Eastern fox squirrel that had been electrocuted, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, that's horrible, But it's also like an
Speaker 1: it's an interesting aspect of sort of urban nation. Like
Speaker 1: there are these unusual sort of aspects of the urban environment.
Speaker 1: The burning squirrel. If yeah, it smells good just for
Speaker 1: like the first few minutes, and then once it once
Speaker 1: it hits well done, smells good, it's too well done. Um,
Speaker 1: you gotta take it off distant time and so um,
Speaker 1: you know, they have this amazing story of how this
Speaker 1: is this non native squirrel that is now spread all
Speaker 1: across the landscape and it's totally doing well here because
Speaker 1: it just happens to do really well in urban places.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need a high density of trees. Are native
Speaker 1: Western gray squirrel needs high densities of trees. Just squirrel.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I've got some you know, I've got
Speaker 1: some lawn, I've got occasional tree, I've got some cat
Speaker 1: food to eat, I've got some fruit. So they just
Speaker 1: do really well in urban places. So it's a species
Speaker 1: is doing incredibly well as an urban exploitter. That's amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: So do you have any calls to action that you
Speaker 1: can give people or anything else to plug? So I
Speaker 1: think I mean the biggest called action I would suggest
Speaker 1: to folks is, um, get involved in a citizen science project.
Speaker 1: How do you How would you do that? So? I
Speaker 1: think it's really easy. Um. Most people are already walking
Speaker 1: around with smartphones, and that smartphone for reasons that are
Speaker 1: not clear, mostly historical artifact, we still call it a phone. No,
Speaker 1: we use it for dozens of other things. You know
Speaker 1: that that smartphone has a GPS and camera. It's a
Speaker 1: lizard sex can You can take all sorts of great
Speaker 1: lizard sex shots and so yeah, people can just pull
Speaker 1: out their cameras and start taking photos. And the best
Speaker 1: thing to do is to download this app called I Naturalist. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a web platform for I naturalists and there's an app.
Speaker 1: You can download this app. You take the photos through
Speaker 1: the Naturalist app, it uploads them to our naturalists. You
Speaker 1: can see your photos online. You can participate in literally
Speaker 1: one of hundreds of projects on a naturalists on that platform.
Speaker 1: Here in southern California, I always promote our projects at
Speaker 1: the natural History Museum. So my my research is on
Speaker 1: is this project called rough Tiles and Amphibians, and Southern
Speaker 1: California we have another and the acronym for that as rascals,
Speaker 1: we haven't really like acronyms. UM. We have a snail
Speaker 1: and Slug project, which is snails and slugs living in
Speaker 1: metropolitan environments. That's called slime again because UM. And then
Speaker 1: we also have the Southern California Squirrel Survey, which which
Speaker 1: sadly we did not come up with a great acronym
Speaker 1: for UM. But those are all projects that people here
Speaker 1: in Southern California can participate in. But no matter where
Speaker 1: people are, there are there are observations up on our
Speaker 1: naturalists from every continent, you know, from all around the world.
Speaker 1: And so no matter where people are, they can start
Speaker 1: doing this and making observations that you know, researchers today
Speaker 1: and researchers into the future might might be then using
Speaker 1: that's great. So like like whenever people take photos of
Speaker 1: a squirrel and try to send it to all their
Speaker 1: friends and your friends not necessarily going to care, but
Speaker 1: I naturalist is that's exactly somebody actually does care about
Speaker 1: that squirrel photo. Yeah. Yeah, It's like I've found a
Speaker 1: really fat squirrel. Friends don't care, naturalists, scientists to the rescue. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for sitting down and letting me
Speaker 1: grillly over these these reptile stories and aways happy to
Speaker 1: chat about citizen science. Um. You can find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Creature Feet Pod. That's not feat as in
Speaker 1: stinky beat, it's fat as in f E A T.
Speaker 1: And you can find me at Katie Golden. Golden is
Speaker 1: spelled wrong, by the way, It's g O L d
Speaker 1: I N. And you can also, you know, follow me
Speaker 1: on my bird Twitter at pro bird Writes, where I'm
Speaker 1: a bird and you know that's what I am on Twitter,
Speaker 1: little bird. And thanks to the Space Colssics for their
Speaker 1: awesome song ex Alumina