Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to huntcast,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by first Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear.
Speaker 1: For every hunt first Light, go farther, stay longer, All right, Everybuddy.
Speaker 1: In the Animals of Sexy Animal podcasts, of which we've
Speaker 1: done many, this one takes the cake. The MYSTERI Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be exploring the mysterious family of what was
Speaker 1: it family? H Yeah? Order the order of Crocodilian Crocodilia Yeah,
Speaker 1: meaning we're gonna focus on the American alligator in the
Speaker 1: American crocodile sure with Chris Murray of Southeastern Louisiana University
Speaker 1: also does a lot of like you, also do a
Speaker 1: lot of little TV stuff. I did some stuff for
Speaker 1: Animal Plant in a while back. Yanni saw you gator wrestling. Yep,
Speaker 1: it happens. Part of the job, dude, I got some
Speaker 1: gator questions for you. Man, let's do it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stump you with some basics, good studies. Check this out
Speaker 1: his expertise. Now you got so many things stacked in here.
Speaker 1: That is it really uh fair to say it's expertise
Speaker 1: depends on what you're looking at. Well, I'm told I'm
Speaker 1: looking at comparative morphology yep. Check, physiological ecology check, Eco
Speaker 1: toxicology check. That's got to be like um um contaminants yep,
Speaker 1: building up in animals yep. So eco talk like why
Speaker 1: how if you eat too much TUNEA, your hands go
Speaker 1: numb and you can't remember why you called your friend?
Speaker 1: Exactly like that eco toxic with alligators. Oh so withinligators,
Speaker 1: they they stored that shit up. Oh yeah, and they're
Speaker 1: really good at letting us know what's out there in
Speaker 1: the ecosystem. Yeah, I'll go on evolution. I'll buy that.
Speaker 1: Biogeography in part philosophy of biology. Oh that's my jam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we could talk about that herpetology. I'll buy that originally
Speaker 1: from New York City. I have a hard time buying that.
Speaker 1: And still a drummer in the band called the Clado Jams.
Speaker 1: I don't know clayto jams yep. I wish that wasn't
Speaker 1: brought up, but I guess it was Crane put in
Speaker 1: the notes. Yeah, but you don't know because, as Yannie
Speaker 1: likes to point out to every single person that walks
Speaker 1: in the door, you don't get to see the notes
Speaker 1: that comfortable. I'm so explained it because all of us
Speaker 1: would be looking at this document besides you. But then
Speaker 1: not to worry. It's better that way. Joined it also
Speaker 1: by Yannis, but tell us Currant of course is here.
Speaker 1: Wild Phil on the keyboards, and uh we call it
Speaker 1: a little thing you got down there film just a
Speaker 1: soundboard sound boy. Yeah, I'll take a wild field though.
Speaker 1: And Brodie Henderson is here. This is a quick promotion
Speaker 1: something I didn't even know about until right now. Our
Speaker 1: guests still doesn't know about because he can't see the notes.
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon's Working for Wildlife Tour, Mark Kenyon, how thanks
Speaker 1: for letting me know, Buddy Yanni wanted to go. He
Speaker 1: didn't know about it, Mark Kenyon, says Mark kennyon a
Speaker 1: very Mark Kenyon from Wired to Hunt. I've put together
Speaker 1: something called the Working for Wildlife Tour, which is great.
Speaker 1: That's me editorializing back to Mark to help bring attention
Speaker 1: to public land volunteer days by way of participating in
Speaker 1: promoting and documenting six of these events across the country.
Speaker 1: So this is people. This is uh, you don't need
Speaker 1: to be one, but I'm guessing a lot of hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers and maybe just other folk getting together to
Speaker 1: do working for wildlife work on public lands. Okay, the
Speaker 1: first event kicked off in Massachusetts. Over the rest of
Speaker 1: the year, they got him coming up in Michigan, Idaho, Missouri, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and Kentucky. If you want to help out how they're
Speaker 1: gonna find his link? Rin Okay, you know what, like,
Speaker 1: can you put it in the notes? Yeah, I'll put it.
Speaker 1: I'll put the link in the show notes. But you
Speaker 1: can also go to the meat Eator website and uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, you can search yeah, working for wildlife in
Speaker 1: this in the little search bar on the meat eater
Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah. So if you're on Spotify right and
Speaker 1: you go, um, you're looking at media podcasts and you're
Speaker 1: thinking what you want to listen to, and you see like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a clever title. Um. If you keep reading beyond
Speaker 1: the clever title, you'll find the link too if you
Speaker 1: want to participate again. Massachusetts already been mopped up, but Michigan, Idaho, Missouri, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and Kentucky public land users getting together to volunteer to
Speaker 1: do wildlife work on public lands. Also still out, still
Speaker 1: coming our brand new title Catch Crayfish Coump Stars, available
Speaker 1: for pre order now ships in June. Again it is enacted.
Speaker 1: How many activities are in there, Brodie hundred No, I
Speaker 1: think it's night around eighty total activities to get kids
Speaker 1: engaged with involved and educated about the outdoors, educated about
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing and wildlife, educated about gardening, preparing foods
Speaker 1: in the home, celestial navigation, making various weapons, everything you
Speaker 1: need to raise to raise a smart engaged kid who
Speaker 1: I like to point out has kind of a raw
Speaker 1: edge to him. Catch Crayfish Coump Stars. We just found
Speaker 1: out about some hoser on Amazon selling of fake which
Speaker 1: I didn't know till this morning is very common um,
Speaker 1: and I don't even think they go after him. I
Speaker 1: think they just shut him down. I want to know
Speaker 1: if you get an actual book or if you just
Speaker 1: send money and just never see anything. My wife said
Speaker 1: that one time there was a guy who had somehow
Speaker 1: printed off and was selling my book, but it was
Speaker 1: a spiral bound copy of one of my books. He's
Speaker 1: just like making him in his kitchen. This guy's name
Speaker 1: is Oh, well, it's probably not his actual name, Robert G. Burgoyne. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get his ass him. Yeah, don't buy that one. You
Speaker 1: know what happened last night. That's how we got a
Speaker 1: sixty two pound beaver over the weekend. So he had
Speaker 1: this beaver had I'm not kidding you, in the back
Speaker 1: of his skull. He had a mushroomed, a perfectly mushroomed
Speaker 1: twenty two round mushroomed against the back of its skull.
Speaker 1: The way mushroomed that dude had to be like got him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't like just through the high land like land against
Speaker 1: the skull. I said, I'm gonna save it. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I already did save it, perfectly mushroomed lead twenty two
Speaker 1: round baked against the back of its skull. But was
Speaker 1: there any cracks in the skull or just the Yeah, nothing,
Speaker 1: just an annoyance to that big beaver. Yeah, you didn't
Speaker 1: imagine that dude all day. It was like, I swear
Speaker 1: I got him right in the head. Uh. Oh. So
Speaker 1: to get the book, go on Amazon wherever you buy books.
Speaker 1: You know, in the old days, you get in trouble
Speaker 1: for sending people to Amazon because other bookstores to get annoyed.
Speaker 1: So go wherever you buy books, call your local friendly bookstore.
Speaker 1: If you have a local bookstore, that'd be a good idea,
Speaker 1: and tell me you want the book. It releases in June.
Speaker 1: So we're gon we're gonna talk a lot more about
Speaker 1: it and do some stuff. But um, I become intensely
Speaker 1: interested having three kids in mine, I become intensely interested
Speaker 1: in making sure I expose them um to the outdoors.
Speaker 1: And two issues about wildlife management. And if you know,
Speaker 1: if they grow up and become total city slickers, at
Speaker 1: least know they got that floating around the back of
Speaker 1: their head. Uh, Carmen, right, we should we talk to
Speaker 1: Carmen now man, we had on a quite a few
Speaker 1: What was that episode called Krin Do you remember when
Speaker 1: we had Carmen van Bianchion. It was called Split and Delivered,
Speaker 1: episode four thirteen. If you go back to the if
Speaker 1: you go back to the episode called Split and Delivered, Oh,
Speaker 1: Krann on the point of that beaver with the yep, Um,
Speaker 1: you know what I say, if I keep I heard
Speaker 1: about this and I was gonna bring it to you,
Speaker 1: is have you heard like that? You just take those
Speaker 1: feet and give them to those big ass back feet
Speaker 1: from Chew Toys for dogs. No, I had no idea
Speaker 1: people do that. There's a lot of gold, but it's
Speaker 1: like how much better to salt it, preserve it and
Speaker 1: make like a pendant out of it. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: something I was saving for you too. I got anything
Speaker 1: to give you. I think I gotta right here, Hormett.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to see what this is, Steve YETI
Speaker 1: el Camino bag where there's beaver hats best? Oh no, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll find it. Um, let's get let's get Karmen. Oh.
Speaker 1: So if you go back to the episode, um, a
Speaker 1: few episodes back, I'll see an episode called Splitting Delivered
Speaker 1: in which up top. In that episode we spoke with
Speaker 1: frequent podcast guests. We've kind of tracked her through her
Speaker 1: her career. I don't want to say her young career,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like at her I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: she's still in her young career. Yeah, it's pretty you know,
Speaker 1: she's just getting going as a body. Yeah, it's been fun.
Speaker 1: So we've had Karmen and I don't know, four or
Speaker 1: five times as she's gone through like tech positions and
Speaker 1: now she's very established with Home Range is a home
Speaker 1: Range Wildlife. She came on the show and she has
Speaker 1: started with some colleagues or her they started a nonprofit
Speaker 1: wildlife research organization and they are working on a project
Speaker 1: where they're studying how links are using burned off landscapes
Speaker 1: so successional forests coming in after these mega wildfires that
Speaker 1: we have in the west. Now, how links use those landscapes?
Speaker 1: Are those landscapes helpful? The links? Like, what how to
Speaker 1: links interact with this new emerging ecosystem out there that's
Speaker 1: coming in the back end of fires. But one of
Speaker 1: the big things befuddling their efforts to get some links
Speaker 1: Radio Collared was having a bunch of snowmobiles that were
Speaker 1: like older than Carmen. Carmen came on the show and
Speaker 1: she had put together a way to help her nonprofit
Speaker 1: raise money for snowmobiles. And my god, did you guys
Speaker 1: um really come forth in a huge way. Carmen's embarrassed
Speaker 1: to admit how much money they raised. Yeah, let's get
Speaker 1: it on the line. Let's get it on the line.
Speaker 1: And we're just gonna do a quick quick check in
Speaker 1: because they've been they've been whacking the links you. I
Speaker 1: don't think you say that when your radio collar. Probably
Speaker 1: not a good way to put it, all right, Carmons.
Speaker 1: So you guys, since you, since you've been on, you
Speaker 1: and your colleagues at Home Range Wildlife have gotten three links. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to get you're trying to get four. Well,
Speaker 1: that would be amazing because we've got four collars, but
Speaker 1: we've already, um one was my goal, So to have
Speaker 1: three is just awesome. We're already now because really one
Speaker 1: collar left, we've got a hole more night so their
Speaker 1: traps open that. Well, we'll try for a miracle to
Speaker 1: get all four out, but otherwise we'll be you know,
Speaker 1: getting more callers for next year. And so everything now
Speaker 1: is just sort of a cherry on top. What's the
Speaker 1: farthest that one of those links as strayed from the
Speaker 1: capture site yet? Oh? I haven't measured that, but not
Speaker 1: very far, not going very far, yeah, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. I mean totally anecdotal at this point. But um,
Speaker 1: and this, you know, my thinking may change down the
Speaker 1: road as we learn more. But one thing people have
Speaker 1: feared is that because they're living in what's a regenerating
Speaker 1: burn that they in theory might have really large home
Speaker 1: ranges because the habitat quality could be poor. So to
Speaker 1: see that they're not covering a whole lot of ground
Speaker 1: could be a good sign that the habitats richer than
Speaker 1: people have supposed got it. And then you can you
Speaker 1: give us quick so that we'll be update like where
Speaker 1: you guys are at on snow and bills. Oh man,
Speaker 1: we're in a good spot. So we have since that
Speaker 1: since we were on we got a nice twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one uh Polaris that has been doing really well. And
Speaker 1: then we also were able to purchase two brand new
Speaker 1: Scudo expeditions that have just been awesome. And we've already
Speaker 1: put almost two thousand miles on those brand new sleds.
Speaker 1: Really well. Oh yeah, we're going at least fifty miles
Speaker 1: a day, sometimes one hundred, So damn really do a
Speaker 1: lot of writing. Yeah, oh yeah, man, I want to
Speaker 1: switch jobs. Man. Then uh, you guys, you guys got
Speaker 1: to do trailer for him too. We gotta do trailer
Speaker 1: and enclosed trailer, which for where we live that there
Speaker 1: are tons of mormots, uh and mice and stuff. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be really nice for in the summer for storing them.
Speaker 1: So we feel like we've protected our investment. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we're feeling pretty pimped out. That is great. I appreciate
Speaker 1: the check in. I know that, man, I had a
Speaker 1: lot of friends after you came out. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of friends text me their little receipt things from
Speaker 1: having participated in the from having participated in the adopted
Speaker 1: set thing. And I know that I've been dealing with
Speaker 1: Ford Well krimsmen deal with forward over at first Light
Speaker 1: to get the winners set up with their cold weather gear,
Speaker 1: of their cold weather collection of First Light gear. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate it coming back on and check and then
Speaker 1: was I'm glad you guys got the snow bill problem
Speaker 1: taken care of, and I hope you catch the fourth links.
Speaker 1: Thanks well, we just appreciate so much you and your listeners.
Speaker 1: The outpouring has been incredible, so I just want to
Speaker 1: thank everybody for your support. It's been super fun. I
Speaker 1: got one request for our you don't need to print it,
Speaker 1: but can you make us for our podcast studio a
Speaker 1: graphic that has all the lines running around when you
Speaker 1: eventually look at all the data. That's cool. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be awesome, Like, so a different color for each
Speaker 1: link and show how they're zooming around. Yeah yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: like that. Um yeah, and then when one dies, you're
Speaker 1: gonna go find out what happened to it, right, yep? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want the skull off that links. Is that possible?
Speaker 1: Tell you what. That's one of the skulls that I
Speaker 1: don't have in my collection, So we might have to fight. Well,
Speaker 1: I have the second one. I'm not wishing. I'm not
Speaker 1: like wishing ill upon your links, you know. I hope
Speaker 1: they have. I hope they die old age someday. Oh hey,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you. I gotta tell you a tip,
Speaker 1: and then then I'm gonna let you go. All right.
Speaker 1: We had that bobcat at that Bobcat expert on Mrcer Longing,
Speaker 1: and I think that you later had some communication with
Speaker 1: Mercer about because he's he's he does a lot of
Speaker 1: cage he catches bobcats for research and also the fur markets.
Speaker 1: He the other day told me about how they were
Speaker 1: out doing the telemetry. I think they still do that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, telemetry on a Bobcat and they lost the
Speaker 1: signal and he thought it must have went into a
Speaker 1: cave or something. So he started wailing on a predator
Speaker 1: calling Alsen got the signal back huh, Like he pulled
Speaker 1: it out, he drew it, and he drew it out
Speaker 1: of his spot enough to pick the signal back up.
Speaker 1: All right, send me that post. Yeah, you don't need
Speaker 1: to print it. We'll print it, but send me my
Speaker 1: poster and at school. All right, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: You're welcome back on the show anytime. All right, Mike
Speaker 1: m see you guys. Thank you everybody so much. Okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: speaking of capturing and collar and stuff, this is a
Speaker 1: crazy story. So they just got the first ever wolverine captured, collared,
Speaker 1: and released in Utah. So basically, like, um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if Cowwell Print did her math on this. She
Speaker 1: thinks it was. Basically, while we were recording our wolverine
Speaker 1: episode with with Rebecca Waters Waters wols Waters, a wolverine
Speaker 1: was seen in Utah, Okay, only the eighth confirmed sighting
Speaker 1: in the state of Utah since nineteen seventy nine, the
Speaker 1: first one ever captured biologists in Utah. This thing had
Speaker 1: had a busy morning. He had killed how many sheep?
Speaker 1: I think it was it eighteen? This guy killed this
Speaker 1: wolverine comes in and kills eighteen sheep in a morning.
Speaker 1: What's the term for that, when a predator goes surplus killer?
Speaker 1: Yea wait, let me make sure I didn't make a mistake. Yeah, eighteen.
Speaker 1: What to ask the croc guy if they do surplus killer,
Speaker 1: if gatters do surplus killing crocs and gators, let's ask
Speaker 1: him right now, right now. You know what surplus killing is,
Speaker 1: killing more than you can eat. They get a little
Speaker 1: carried away. Yeah, they're getting a pen full of llamas
Speaker 1: like a mountain lion. It's always it's always domestic animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really see that at all in alligators and crocodiles.
Speaker 1: I mean, they pretty much have a hard enough time
Speaker 1: eating what they actually are able to acquire. Shrimp and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean they eat a lot of those, but if
Speaker 1: they grab a hole to something pretty big, it takes
Speaker 1: them a long time to actually, you know, actually do
Speaker 1: anything with that meal. Like a deer, So if he
Speaker 1: kills killing, if he kills a deer and he stashes
Speaker 1: it and another deer shows up, he's not gonna grab
Speaker 1: that one and stash it too. Probably not. I mean,
Speaker 1: they'll typically like launch at a deer from the water's edge,
Speaker 1: and they'll stick it in the water and then stick
Speaker 1: it under a log under the water until the meat
Speaker 1: gets a little bit a little bit easier, and then
Speaker 1: have a snack for a month or two. They blow
Speaker 1: a lot of energy killing one large thing, tons of ends,
Speaker 1: so they can't kill another one, you know, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this guy. So they go in there, they want
Speaker 1: to catch it, put a collar on it. They're going
Speaker 1: to clean up all the dead sheep. Then they set
Speaker 1: two barrel traps with hind quarters and later catch the wolverine.
Speaker 1: Where where where was this? Randolph? Utah? Jannat used to
Speaker 1: live in Utah? Where's that? Never heard of ring in
Speaker 1: rich County. I don't know where that is. Oh they
Speaker 1: even they brought it out of the wild and into
Speaker 1: a yea lab of sorts and to do the study,
Speaker 1: do the work up. Three to four years old, twenty
Speaker 1: eight pounds, forty one inches. Tip of nose, the tip
Speaker 1: of tail forty one's big. Because Rebecca, I remember, he's
Speaker 1: writing line, he's writing line, He's cute. After the um,
Speaker 1: after the aired, I had a lot of friends sending
Speaker 1: me like um pictures of wolverines that they are in
Speaker 1: the news or that they found or their buddy found.
Speaker 1: And then I'd be like, what's up with that? He goes, well,
Speaker 1: that was eight years ago. I'm like, oh, okay, cold,
Speaker 1: it's cold trail now Randolph looks like it's about eighty
Speaker 1: ish miles northeast of Salt Lake City. Thanks Phil. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool and interesting. Um, okay, this is the
Speaker 1: absolute final word. Krin thinks it's perhaps the final word.
Speaker 1: It's the final word. That's the final word. I'd refried beans.
Speaker 1: I grew up, someone wrote in He says he's got
Speaker 1: a potentially controversial take on the whole subject. He grew
Speaker 1: up in New Mexico, but spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: living in Chile. I'm thinking about switching. Switching what well,
Speaker 1: I went from Iran to Iran. Oh, it's on. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about going from Chile to Chile. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: you already made the transition. A matter of fact that
Speaker 1: had I was doing one of my old books. I
Speaker 1: was doing a new audio because we got the audio
Speaker 1: rights back one of my old books at the ten
Speaker 1: year mark, and I had to do it. And I
Speaker 1: did Chile sound a little pretentious, but um, spend some
Speaker 1: time living in Chile. Not being a native Spanish speaker,
Speaker 1: I learned to speak fluently when living in South America.
Speaker 1: I believe this issue is more of a translation issue.
Speaker 1: The word in Mexican Spanish is frijoles rifritos or in
Speaker 1: Chilan Spanish pirotos rifritos. Am I doing semi good? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The issue is The issue is the suffix re. In English,
Speaker 1: this suffix means to fry again. It would be taken
Speaker 1: to be fry again refried. But in Spanish this suffix
Speaker 1: can mean very fried. You can add this to any
Speaker 1: word in Spanish, such as beating a dead horse. Like
Speaker 1: this topic, what would be goan Yanni Cabio. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is true, but when I hear refried beans,
Speaker 1: I hear very fried beans. I don't know. I wish
Speaker 1: I would need to read that. I'll buy it. You
Speaker 1: don't not really, I think it makes sense very fried beans.
Speaker 1: It might. I'm bad I read it guys in Texas. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this for like an hour.
Speaker 1: Come on, let's just jump in and get it over with.
Speaker 1: You want, okay? Yeah, it's an old story. Now it's
Speaker 1: getting old. Kansas bans trail cams on public land. I
Speaker 1: own trail cams. I like trail cams. I as we speak,
Speaker 1: have a trail cam on public land in a place
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna visit. I put it and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go on the one year mark and retrieve it. Last
Speaker 1: time I did as I had forgot to turn it
Speaker 1: on all winter. I'll wonder I'd rolled my wife not
Speaker 1: talking about going up getting my camera. I got in
Speaker 1: the coolest spot. I'm like, man, can you wait to
Speaker 1: go and get my camera. It's gonna be amazing all
Speaker 1: the ships on my camera. Now I go up there,
Speaker 1: I'm like, dah, hadn't turn it on. Batries are still good.
Speaker 1: Now wait a minute. In Montana, can you have him
Speaker 1: out on public land? You can't transmit a signal? Oh?
Speaker 1: I thought you couldn't have him out on public land
Speaker 1: during big games? No, I think they can't. If that's
Speaker 1: the case, I'm in violation. I could be making that
Speaker 1: up in my head, but I think you can't have
Speaker 1: any of that transmits a signal. You're talking the wrong person.
Speaker 1: You're waiting to cut this out, and I'm minded to
Speaker 1: go take my camera down. Yeah, it sounds like it.
Speaker 1: For a while there's no trail cam use then it
Speaker 1: became no trail cams that transmit a signal. I thought
Speaker 1: there was a during big game season component to it.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, Yeah, but it seems it's changed
Speaker 1: every year. You can't use one that transmits a signal
Speaker 1: in any capacity toward using it to cat to process
Speaker 1: taking game. That's the case. I'm gonna call a pancrats
Speaker 1: and turn myself in. It's just thinking about calling him. Oh,
Speaker 1: back to Kansas. I don't think that's true. Is it true? Well,
Speaker 1: we should find out. Jesus. There's not even a place
Speaker 1: I would hunt. I'm see you guys ever using for gators. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do, actually, especially around alligator nests and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I have no idea regarding the legalities of that
Speaker 1: where well, I'm sure for research purposes worry about it. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the semi headline or not not, I mean, like
Speaker 1: the one liner. The one liner is this. With a
Speaker 1: unanimous vote by its Game Commission, Kansas becomes the first
Speaker 1: Midwestern white tail state to impose a year round dam
Speaker 1: trull camera ban. So what was Arizonas was only partial
Speaker 1: only during well. Arizonas in Utahs was public private this
Speaker 1: they did it for private land too. Oh. I called
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. I don't want to say his
Speaker 1: name because I didn't ask me if I could say
Speaker 1: his name. I call a friend of mine who like,
Speaker 1: he does a lot of scouting for outfitters, and he
Speaker 1: finds a lot of animals, you know. And I said,
Speaker 1: I said, man, what's your take on it? He goes,
Speaker 1: I love it. I go, you like the trail cam bam,
Speaker 1: love it. He said, I'm a dinosaur. I've been in
Speaker 1: this business a long time. I've been this game a
Speaker 1: long time, and glassing, looking for tracks, looking for sheds.
Speaker 1: That's where I excel because it goes. That's how I
Speaker 1: was brought up. I learned my I learned my abilities
Speaker 1: being in the woods. Yeah, I fall on that, and
Speaker 1: he goes, and I got into it like I got
Speaker 1: into it. But for me, I think it's great. And
Speaker 1: he said, too, he saw what places like the Arizona strip.
Speaker 1: He thinks you're gonna have it's gonna This is him
Speaker 1: speaking and like him guessing, you're gonna have an improvement
Speaker 1: of an age class box because he thinks it's gonna
Speaker 1: go back to being there's bucks people don't know about,
Speaker 1: because he said in the in these areas, like where
Speaker 1: he's at, he said, it's different. He goes where you're at,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of water. He's come about Montana. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of water here. Water is the thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: all big game goes to water, and there's a finite
Speaker 1: place for them to find water. So when you get
Speaker 1: in the late summer, okay or whatever, the dry dry
Speaker 1: seas probably that late summer, but but pre mon soon
Speaker 1: when you go out, you're like, any deer is gonna
Speaker 1: go here, here or here. Yeah, and with cameras and
Speaker 1: and everybody knows about every deer. So he's he's optimistic
Speaker 1: that it's gonna be that there's more dear slipping through
Speaker 1: the cracks and it's going back to being like that
Speaker 1: the woodsmen find the deer and it's not and it's
Speaker 1: not a tech game. He knew a guy, he knew
Speaker 1: a guy that was running over one hundred cameras. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's common. I don't I don't think that one
Speaker 1: hundred cameras is out of the ordinary. He had two
Speaker 1: guys he talked about an outfitter that had two guys
Speaker 1: on payroll that only ran cameras in searching for searching
Speaker 1: for stuff for clients. Yeah. I like the mystery of
Speaker 1: it all. So Kansas on public land there is like,
Speaker 1: this is the thing I've become aware of in places.
Speaker 1: It just kind of depends. We were in a place
Speaker 1: in Florida where it was like it was like being
Speaker 1: at seven to eleven for the amount of cameras aimed
Speaker 1: at you on public land. Oh yeah, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: see it becoming. Um, people that don't want to be
Speaker 1: surveiled in photographed and do you have a sort of
Speaker 1: like expectation of privacy. But in these areas where like
Speaker 1: all the roads, all the trails are done, it like
Speaker 1: I could see that it would get on people's nerves.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Um. And like I said, man, I like like,
Speaker 1: if it became that you couldn't, I wouldn't. Right, If
Speaker 1: you couldn't, I wouldn't, But I I did. It's fun
Speaker 1: using them. But I'm empathetic of the situation and the
Speaker 1: fact that all unanimous vote no. It'll generate some hate
Speaker 1: mail because I think people will say, well, you guys
Speaker 1: get to hunt wherever you want to hunt, you're always
Speaker 1: hunting some fancy private ranch and you don't need to scout.
Speaker 1: And I'm a working man. I need these cameras to scout.
Speaker 1: But it's we hunt a lot of public land and
Speaker 1: that hunt. By having all those cameras that we had
Speaker 1: to walk by every single day multiple times, it changed
Speaker 1: the experience. Yeah, then people are like sending you messages
Speaker 1: telling you finding you and on social like Yani, people
Speaker 1: sending him messages on social being like I know where
Speaker 1: you're at. That's ridiculous. Yeah, is this you, guys? Which
Speaker 1: is that? That part? Like, I don't mind the person
Speaker 1: reaching out. I try to answer to all the dms
Speaker 1: on Instagram. That part's fine, But the experience of being
Speaker 1: out there hunting, like I like to go into the
Speaker 1: woods to be alone and be quiet and not have
Speaker 1: I think another concerned people have about these kind of
Speaker 1: laws too, is that they're coming from these UH commissions
Speaker 1: that are appointed members and perhaps some of their like
Speaker 1: there might be a non hunting angle coming from some
Speaker 1: of those commissioners, Like I've heard that in places too,
Speaker 1: like the more he can restrict use, the more here
Speaker 1: restricting hunters. You know, So three percent of Kansas is public. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's an interesting thing. Here's what one of the commissioners
Speaker 1: had to say. He said, So this is where he's
Speaker 1: going on. He's not going on. He's not he This
Speaker 1: commissioner is not speaking of the issue on a fair chase,
Speaker 1: fair take. Okay, like unfair advantage. That's not where he's
Speaker 1: going with it. Commissioner Gerald Lauber said that trail cameras
Speaker 1: cause privacy issues and give rise to conflict when used
Speaker 1: on heavily trafficed public land in Kansas. He didn't say that.
Speaker 1: Here's what he says. Quote, there are some deliterious issues
Speaker 1: when it comes to trail cameras. In some places, cameras
Speaker 1: are used to spy on other hunters, and some people
Speaker 1: recoil from seeing a camera. They're private, they don't want
Speaker 1: to have somebody take their picture and then have it
Speaker 1: on Facebook, which absolutely happens. Lawber went on to say
Speaker 1: that trail cameras were sometimes used by hunters as a
Speaker 1: means of staking claim to a particular section of public land.
Speaker 1: Bubbly Dougs got all kinds of thoughts about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I can't I'll have to get back to. It's so
Speaker 1: much I have to. I have to dig into it,
Speaker 1: say about it. You can get mad at me, Oh
Speaker 1: you want I'm out on the Kansas Game Commission. Sure,
Speaker 1: I was reporting the facts. Dude, it's the thing I see.
Speaker 1: I see both sides. I see both sides to it.
Speaker 1: As a camera owner, I like cameras. I have a
Speaker 1: subscription m I like to putting them on beaver dams
Speaker 1: to see what all goes over the beaver dam. I
Speaker 1: like everything about them. If there was a thing where
Speaker 1: you couldn't use them, I just I don't know. I'd
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I understand, it's not something you know
Speaker 1: what it is. It's not something. It's not something I
Speaker 1: would take up. It's not something I would take up
Speaker 1: the fight about because you can imagine, like it's easy
Speaker 1: to imagine the extreme, where the extreme being you can't
Speaker 1: walk down a trail without being photographed, which is probably
Speaker 1: the case in many places that you can't go down
Speaker 1: a path without being photographed. The guy I was talking about,
Speaker 1: I wish I could. I should have checked with them
Speaker 1: to talk about him. He said, Now every camera you
Speaker 1: find an Arizona's got a bullet hole through it. Now
Speaker 1: they're illegal people to shoot him. He said, there's still ones.
Speaker 1: Just got a band it out in the woods, but
Speaker 1: they all been shot by pistols. Wow, think about that. Hardcore. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're ready to dig in on gators, dude. I got
Speaker 1: some questions about gators. But first I want to tell
Speaker 1: you something. Do you hear about this that the Texas
Speaker 1: Zoo rescues an alligator that was stolen as an egg
Speaker 1: twenty years ago? Yeah? I did hear something about this
Speaker 1: on social media. I don't know the full story though
Speaker 1: a Texas Zoo. This is reported in the Guardian. I'm
Speaker 1: the lukewarm on the Guardian sometimes I like it. A
Speaker 1: Texas zoo said it had taken back an eight foot
Speaker 1: alligator which was stolen as an egg more than twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, then kept as a backyard pet. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is from Texas Parking Wildlife. A woman
Speaker 1: confessed to taking an egg from Animal World and Snake
Speaker 1: Farm Zoo near Austin. It's just a non on her
Speaker 1: for twenty for twenty that is heartbreaking. She was a
Speaker 1: volunteer at Animal Farm way back then twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: apparently stole the alligator as an egg. She put in
Speaker 1: her pocket. That's heartbreaking, heartbreaking. It's actually kind of hard
Speaker 1: to do. I can an alligator egg. It can't roll
Speaker 1: one way or another, or the embryo will die. Is
Speaker 1: that right? So she had to know what she was doing.
Speaker 1: She put her an alligator egg and incubate it long
Speaker 1: enough for it to hatch successfully. That's pretty hard to do.
Speaker 1: Maybe she learned that at the Zoo Disney movie about
Speaker 1: this lady. It's twenty years and they took it back.
Speaker 1: Is it a mature gator at that? Oh? Yeah, eight
Speaker 1: foot alligator is mature. And I could see an eight
Speaker 1: foot alligator being twenty years old, especially in captivity. Talk
Speaker 1: about being able to see two sides of a story.
Speaker 1: I could see him one the alligator bag for twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's like losing a leg. She faces misdemeanor charges for
Speaker 1: a legal possession of an egg and possession of an
Speaker 1: alligator without a permit. I mean, I get it, I
Speaker 1: get it, But but misdemeanor. Though I get it. We
Speaker 1: think about that film. You shouldn't have done it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, Okay, picture it. You shouldn't have done it, Okay,
Speaker 1: shouldn't have done it? Everybody knows that sure, does there
Speaker 1: any little part in the back of your head be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like losing a leg. Well, maybe she hated that alligator.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It looks like she took pretty good
Speaker 1: care of it. Twenty years. She's had that pet a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of chickens and rats. Imagine, huh.
Speaker 1: And if she stole it as an egg, so it's
Speaker 1: like what you think, like it bonded to her. I'll
Speaker 1: take that to our guests. I have seen alligators in
Speaker 1: that are pretty well trained, So I would imagine that
Speaker 1: she would have a pretty strong emotional attachment to that animal.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about the opposite. So he's not crying,
Speaker 1: he's not crying crocodile's years. Probably not, But would would
Speaker 1: he be when he goes back to the zoo. Is
Speaker 1: he going to be completely thrown off and out of
Speaker 1: his element now? Or gosh? I think that's tough With
Speaker 1: all crocodilians, I mean, I think they're they're really good
Speaker 1: at just sort of surviving in whatever enclosure they're in
Speaker 1: until they're no longer surviving, you know, like it'll be fine,
Speaker 1: I would imagine, But what about her? That's a different.
Speaker 1: You see, like hate New Jersey cat laters ladies, but
Speaker 1: he loved Texas ladies. Listen, if you said you can
Speaker 1: spend a weekend or the New Jersey Cat lady or
Speaker 1: a Texas gator lady, what do you say? Okay, when
Speaker 1: you put it that way. Now, I know you don't
Speaker 1: like doing this very much, Krim, but can you please
Speaker 1: get her on the show for a calling? Just a calling? Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not that I don't like doing it. I'll tell her.
Speaker 1: I said that. I know it was bad what she did,
Speaker 1: and we all know what she did was bad, but
Speaker 1: we just want to hear about how tore up she is. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, and like what she fed it? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: I want to go back at the beginning on gators
Speaker 1: and crocks in America. But first I want to I
Speaker 1: got to clear something up which I can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about and talking about. I had occasion, Yannie and I
Speaker 1: drew um some pretty sweet Wildlife Management Area turkey tags
Speaker 1: in Florida this year. But I was down a few
Speaker 1: days early and I did a little tour on some
Speaker 1: public land right up against Everglades or up against the
Speaker 1: National Park. Okay, okay, So I went out the guy
Speaker 1: that has one of them big buggies. You know, the
Speaker 1: ground was dry, but we took a swamp buggy, but
Speaker 1: you could have driven into golf court golf cart. We
Speaker 1: did with a little swamp buggy tour just for gets
Speaker 1: some higgles, okay, and um in Big Cypress cool, yeah,
Speaker 1: dry as a bone. Okay, there was a canal that
Speaker 1: had water, but prior to it becoming um, prior to
Speaker 1: becoming like Big Cypress, it had been at various times
Speaker 1: grazed by cattle and people had had little homesteads out there.
Speaker 1: So some of the areas out in Big Cyper, she'll
Speaker 1: run into groves okay, like they'll be like fruit trees planted. Um,
Speaker 1: you'll see like rusted old chunks of fence, you know,
Speaker 1: hog fences like people would just kind of live and yeah,
Speaker 1: probably squashed any of those. Any that fruit that you
Speaker 1: saw hanging, We didn't find anything that was any fruit
Speaker 1: that was fruiting except for sour oranges. We're trying that
Speaker 1: bad like like some native but to see that wasn't
Speaker 1: even like native citrus. But it was in this area,
Speaker 1: so maybe someone would have just cultivated it there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I found grapefruit and those oranges, and it kind of
Speaker 1: it might have been passed due, but yeah, they were
Speaker 1: kind of just I don't want to say it, not
Speaker 1: merely but grainy. Just yeah, a lot of That's what
Speaker 1: I had was like that. Yeah, I mean you could
Speaker 1: eat it, but it wasn't as you know, you've just
Speaker 1: been trained up one on our sweet oranges. So at
Speaker 1: a time, someone had developed water holes for cattle, okay,
Speaker 1: And so when you're cruising around, everything's like dry as
Speaker 1: a bone. It gets wet sometimes but not right now.
Speaker 1: It's dry as a bone, and you'll see these dirt
Speaker 1: tanks and you could even see like where years ago
Speaker 1: someone had mounted all the dirt up so they'd be
Speaker 1: like a berm or an impoundment. In some water holes
Speaker 1: that I'm not shipping you are not that much bigger
Speaker 1: than this podcast studio. Okay, but there's some eight foot
Speaker 1: alligator ly in there. Yeah, I'm not surprised at all.
Speaker 1: The hell is he eating? Like, what is he doing?
Speaker 1: Probably just hanging out in water until there's a lot
Speaker 1: more of it. I mean, alligators a lot of research
Speaker 1: on alligators being really good ecosystem engineers. So when the
Speaker 1: water goes away, they will dig out a hole like
Speaker 1: that themselves that allow a lot of water or to
Speaker 1: be there for other wildlife to come and utilize. Really,
Speaker 1: so they can do that themselves and do every year.
Speaker 1: But how long can he wait before, like presumably he's
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking someday someone's gonna come get a drink yep, exactly,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna smack it yep. And it happens all
Speaker 1: the time. But how long can it not happen before
Speaker 1: he's got a split? Yeah, Well, I don't think there's
Speaker 1: anywhere else to go, you know, for them. But I'll
Speaker 1: give you an example. So in Costa Rica, American crocodiles
Speaker 1: will estivate during the dry season and bury themselves under
Speaker 1: the mud for estivates, like try to avoid dying from
Speaker 1: lack of water or heat. Right, So, like sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: go into the woods. We don't actually know what they
Speaker 1: do in the woods. Sometimes they'll go in like these
Speaker 1: little limestone cave things, and sometimes they'll just let the
Speaker 1: mud harden over top of them, and you can be
Speaker 1: walking around they'll be under your feet. You can't see them,
Speaker 1: but they'll stay there for a couple months before the
Speaker 1: wet season returns in like early to mid May, not
Speaker 1: even a chance to eat, not a chance to eat,
Speaker 1: just hanging out waiting, So that alligator probably has a
Speaker 1: pretty good shot at being successful for however long it
Speaker 1: has to be there. The guy was with told me
Speaker 1: that he's got I can't remember what he called him
Speaker 1: caves or dens. What was he calling them? Probably wallows.
Speaker 1: He's dug out the alligator holes. Yeah, they I mean,
Speaker 1: they'll do that themselves. Talk about what that is alligator holes?
Speaker 1: Really you only see that down in South Florida where
Speaker 1: there's times of the year where there's lack of water,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of research on the utility
Speaker 1: of alligator holes. But they'll essentially dig out a hole
Speaker 1: that is, yeah, no bigger than this room we're in
Speaker 1: right now, and allow themselves to hang out there in
Speaker 1: water for months. And other animals need to utilize those
Speaker 1: holes as well. So that's well, he's I thought he's
Speaker 1: talking about like a like a little deep cave area.
Speaker 1: He does, that's a walloway. The alligators will dig wallows
Speaker 1: like in the sides of those holes. Yeah, and they'll
Speaker 1: just go hang out in there underground, um for a
Speaker 1: long time. How are they digging? Mm? They use it all.
Speaker 1: They'll use their head, they'll use their front limbs and
Speaker 1: just make a big hole. In fact, I don't think
Speaker 1: we have a lot of footage on them making those
Speaker 1: alligator wallows, which would be really cool footage to get,
Speaker 1: but I guess not in Kansas because there's no cameras allowed. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the private land gators, those are the spoiled gators. They
Speaker 1: got it made. But like every time you see an
Speaker 1: alligator nest, you'll see the nest up top and then
Speaker 1: on the edge nearest the water, you'll see a hole.
Speaker 1: And mom usually is sitting in that hole or outside
Speaker 1: of that hole by her nest. If she's a good mom.
Speaker 1: Got it. I want to go back to the beginning
Speaker 1: on gators. We should go back at the beginning on YouTube.
Speaker 1: How um you grew up in New York. Grew up
Speaker 1: in New York, New Rochelle, New York. Turned nine there,
Speaker 1: I think, spend a year in England. My dad was
Speaker 1: a high school art teacher. Moved back to New York.
Speaker 1: Moved to Connecticut to play high school baseball. That didn't
Speaker 1: pan out very well. I'm a biologist, not a baseball player. Now,
Speaker 1: but you wanted to be a full time baseball I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a baseball player. I'm just not good
Speaker 1: at baseball. It's the problem. Yeah, I could get in
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, it's a hardship I couldn't overcome. How'd
Speaker 1: you get interested in I like living there where they
Speaker 1: don't have them? How'd you get interested in them? Steve
Speaker 1: Irwin watching the Steve Rwin Animal Planet when I was
Speaker 1: a kid with my neighbor, we would I just got hooked.
Speaker 1: We'd watch it every week and we actually we actually
Speaker 1: bought one of those VHS recorders from a tag sail
Speaker 1: and I would pretend to be Steve Irwin in the
Speaker 1: backyard with toads and snakes and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it went down the whole it up. I never
Speaker 1: watched them. Wow, look at this is he the guy
Speaker 1: that had that tragic death where he got hit by
Speaker 1: a stingray right through the heart. Is true? But yeah,
Speaker 1: we would, uh make little home videos and then he
Speaker 1: actually did a senior project when he was a senior
Speaker 1: in high school. My buddy, my neighbor, No, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he did uh where we went
Speaker 1: down to South Florida and went to a wildlife refuge
Speaker 1: and alligator farm, and we made a video there for
Speaker 1: his senior project, and uh, that got me in touch
Speaker 1: with sort of the more hands on aspect of working
Speaker 1: with these animals. And I said to myself, I want
Speaker 1: to work here. And then having worked there for a while,
Speaker 1: I learned that this could be a real job for me.
Speaker 1: So I went to college. And before that, like, when
Speaker 1: you were a kid, did you have like an affinity
Speaker 1: for going out and catching like garter snakes and fro Yeah,
Speaker 1: in Connecticut, I mean I would catch everything I get
Speaker 1: my hands on. Me and my neighbor frogs and milk
Speaker 1: snakes and hog no snakes and everything. I think it's
Speaker 1: just something that is in people. You gotta go catch
Speaker 1: stuff called it's called worrying wildlife. Yeah, I mean kids
Speaker 1: used to do it all the time. Now their parents
Speaker 1: don't let them. Now they do it on an iPad.
Speaker 1: They worry wildlife on an iPad. My kid does. He
Speaker 1: likes to sund them stupid hunting video games drives um.
Speaker 1: And then he studied what would you study general biology
Speaker 1: and undergrad then went on for a master's degree at
Speaker 1: Southeastern Louisiana University where I am now, and I focused
Speaker 1: on My advisor was an evolutionary biologist, but I did
Speaker 1: not focus on evolutionary biology at all. I focused on
Speaker 1: the effects of stress on the reproductive output of American
Speaker 1: alligators in Louisiana in Texas, and I was there at
Speaker 1: a community time because the oil spill occurred, and so
Speaker 1: I was able to look at how the oil spill
Speaker 1: affected the stress of alligators as well, how the actual
Speaker 1: oil or how the activity around the cleanup. What were
Speaker 1: you looking at. Well, that's a tough thing to separate.
Speaker 1: So there was this like dispersing stuff that was put
Speaker 1: out because in eco toxicology, if it's out of sight,
Speaker 1: it's out of mind kind of thing. Um, So it
Speaker 1: was sort of a combination of just looking at the
Speaker 1: entire scenario, either oil in the marsh I was working
Speaker 1: in in southeast Louisiana or the dispersing stuff that was used.
Speaker 1: Turns out large alligators just leave and small alligators stay
Speaker 1: and get really stressed out. So the disperse it was
Speaker 1: meant to to make it the alligators want to split.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell if it was the oil or
Speaker 1: the dispersing what like, what do you what is dispersing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's this uh, it's this chemical they put out
Speaker 1: in oil spills. I don't know much about it from
Speaker 1: that's the oil from like getting together with other oil molecules.
Speaker 1: So I thought you meant they were putting something out
Speaker 1: to try to drive to disperse animals, to try to
Speaker 1: get gators to move away from the oil spill. It's
Speaker 1: oil spill clean up tactic. I believe I got you.
Speaker 1: So the impacts of that and the little ones to
Speaker 1: stay get stressed out? Was it impactful on them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get pretty stressed out, it turns out, which was
Speaker 1: obviously expected. But larger ones just leave and the results
Speaker 1: to get it and stressed out or what like loss
Speaker 1: of weight, slower grow Like, yeah, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I think that the results are getting stressed out. Are
Speaker 1: you know a lot of physiological things. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't allocate a lot of energy to your immune system
Speaker 1: when you're stressed out, so you're more susceptible to the
Speaker 1: environmental problems that are already in your face that alligators
Speaker 1: can pretty well handle when they're not stressed out. When
Speaker 1: you I would say that most Americans do not know
Speaker 1: that there's a crocodile in America, American crocodile South Florida.
Speaker 1: How many of them? Like, I mean, did they used
Speaker 1: to be pretty thick? Did they used to be that
Speaker 1: they were eating people and stuff all the time, like
Speaker 1: African crocodiles in the Nile or whatever. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't really think that they ever became a human
Speaker 1: crocodile conflict issue in South Florida. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they are now because there's just so many people in
Speaker 1: such little space. But there's a great book that recently
Speaker 1: came out, maybe five or sixty years ago, that talks
Speaker 1: about the Spanish when they settled South Florida. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: would talk about it and talking about just how many
Speaker 1: alligators there were, And specifically there's mentioned like on the
Speaker 1: what would it be southwest side of Florida towards like
Speaker 1: Santa Belle Island, how many American crocodiles there were, lay
Speaker 1: out the difference between an alligator and a crocodile. So, okay,
Speaker 1: are you ready for this? This is a question that
Speaker 1: people ask a lot, and it's not easy for a
Speaker 1: crocodile biologist to answer, because you guys like to everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're terrible. But the issue is that there's like sixteen
Speaker 1: species of crocodile globally globally, and there's eight species of
Speaker 1: ALLIGATORI including Cayman. So to say, what's the differ between
Speaker 1: an alligator and a crocodile, It's a difficult situation. It's
Speaker 1: a difficult thing to answer between much variation. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's stick to the American alligator in the American crocodile. Okay,
Speaker 1: and let's stick to from from a layman observer's perspective.
Speaker 1: Gotcha like, meaning, you're hanging out on vacation in Florida
Speaker 1: and you see a crocodile alligator esque creature and you
Speaker 1: say to yourself, I wonder if that's a gator or
Speaker 1: a croc Sure, what are you looking at? I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a couple of things. The shape of the snout
Speaker 1: is sort of the obvious answer. Alligators have a more
Speaker 1: rounded snout and the American croc is going to have
Speaker 1: a more narrow, longer pointed snout. But I'm also looking
Speaker 1: at other things, like where is it an estuarine environment?
Speaker 1: If so, I'm leaning towards an American crocodile is it
Speaker 1: in the Everglades or Big Cypress National Preserve or somewhere
Speaker 1: more where there is no salt intrusion that'll lead towards
Speaker 1: an American alligator in that scenario. But they're pretty easy
Speaker 1: to tell just by looking at them. So could they, like,
Speaker 1: could the American crocodile just head out into open salt water? Yes,
Speaker 1: there's one or two species of crocodile, the saltwater crocodile
Speaker 1: hence the name, and the American croc that readily enter
Speaker 1: marine environments and disperse from islands to other places throughout
Speaker 1: the ocean. So it's feasible that you could be out
Speaker 1: in the ocean ten miles offshore or something, and here
Speaker 1: comes a crocodiles going by in Costriaca. That happens all
Speaker 1: the time to surfers and other people out there, especially
Speaker 1: on the Pacific coast. Just see them. Yeah, there's out there,
Speaker 1: look like logs on the top of the water. Then
Speaker 1: go under and then you get off your board. Are
Speaker 1: they hunting? What are they doing out there? I think
Speaker 1: for yeah, I mean they're they're eating out there, you know.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people like to think of
Speaker 1: crocodilians in general is eating large animals, right, sure, But
Speaker 1: I think you know, what we know from a lot
Speaker 1: of really good research in South Louisiana and Southeast Texas
Speaker 1: is that alligators eat a lot of blue crab. And
Speaker 1: we know that American crocs are eating a ton of
Speaker 1: shrimp when they can really so yeah, So I think like, like,
Speaker 1: how in the hell are they doing that? They just
Speaker 1: go out and open their mouths and swim and shrimp
Speaker 1: goes near them. In fact, I saw a video. I
Speaker 1: saw video last night on social media of a crocodile
Speaker 1: using its tail to flick shrimp up in the air
Speaker 1: and they were landing in his mouth. It was awesome.
Speaker 1: I'll try to find that video for you. Wow. The
Speaker 1: crocs like in Costa Rica, the ones that get real big,
Speaker 1: same exacts sees as the one in South Florida. Yes,
Speaker 1: how come the ones in South Florida don't get big?
Speaker 1: They get pretty big, do they? Oh? Yeah? South Florida
Speaker 1: is a is a tricky scenario in terms of American
Speaker 1: crocs because there's so much there's there's so little habitat
Speaker 1: and so much attention paid because they're the only American croc.
Speaker 1: As you say, in the commental US or in the
Speaker 1: US in general. So the numbers are pretty low. So
Speaker 1: they're sort of a high conservation concern, and there's really
Speaker 1: been a really good effort to monitor populations in particular
Speaker 1: successful nesting events, sort of in collaboration with land use
Speaker 1: down there. Um, a lot of folks at like University
Speaker 1: of Florida have spent long time studying those populations, like
Speaker 1: how many are there, how many were there, and how
Speaker 1: many are there? It's hard to say how many there were.
Speaker 1: I want to make an educated guests and say more.
Speaker 1: But I would say right now, I think a colleague
Speaker 1: might correct me. But I would say a thousand American
Speaker 1: crocs in South Florida would be a generally good ballpark.
Speaker 1: And they can at times be intermixed with alligators, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially way down in South Florida. Like if you go
Speaker 1: down to like nine Mile Pond Flamingo way down there
Speaker 1: in never Glades National Park, you'll be in water bodies
Speaker 1: where you can see them both and they can be
Speaker 1: fourteen feet crocs. Yeah, I mean alligators Cuba eating shrimp
Speaker 1: eating crabs. I like to think of them eating wild fish.
Speaker 1: I know that's the cool stuff. Oh yeah, man, like
Speaker 1: doing crazy stuff. I mean, really, whatever swims near their mouth,
Speaker 1: they're gonna try to eat. You know, when I was
Speaker 1: down there, I was with Clay Nor, my colleague, Clay Nucam,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, Man, if you came to me
Speaker 1: and said, um, you have to go get attacked by
Speaker 1: a bear, he said, it'd actually be hard to get
Speaker 1: attacked by a bear. There's actually a movie about this
Speaker 1: where a guy got mauled by a grizzly. Then he
Speaker 1: built a grizzlyproof suit. He couldn't get mauled again. He
Speaker 1: tried his ass off to get mauled again in his
Speaker 1: grizzlyproof suit, but could never get mauled again. So Clay's like,
Speaker 1: you couldn't. If you said to go get mauled, you
Speaker 1: probably are going to fail. But he said, I feel
Speaker 1: like he doesn't know. He doesn't live in gator country.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, I'm far from gator No. He said,
Speaker 1: I feel like if you told me I had to
Speaker 1: get mauled by a gator, I'd be able to figure
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah, that's definitely the possibility. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's a lot easier. So because yeah, we're because
Speaker 1: we don't We don't know because we're not familiar with him.
Speaker 1: But we thought, like, how would you not go to
Speaker 1: that little pond where you know that some bitches in
Speaker 1: there and just stick your foot in there and wiggle
Speaker 1: it around. How's he not gonna want to bite it? Well,
Speaker 1: he might be afraid, you know. I think the easiest
Speaker 1: thing to do is to make yourself look like you're
Speaker 1: the size of a manageable prey item. That's what happens
Speaker 1: when you see all these media reports of stuff getting eaten,
Speaker 1: is that they're usually in the water part way, or
Speaker 1: the size of a small dog or something like that.
Speaker 1: So I would go to the pond and I would
Speaker 1: kneel at the water's edge. You're trying to get my waist,
Speaker 1: kneel down. Look small at night. Then you'd have a
Speaker 1: good chance and you can pull it off. Have you
Speaker 1: ever been have you ever been part of like an
Speaker 1: investigation of an attack at all? Done anywhere without going
Speaker 1: into too much detail. Yes, but we'll say, okay, let's
Speaker 1: do the version where you do go into detail. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's been a situation. Things off, Please my teacher. I'm
Speaker 1: not joking, man, I don't know if she's still alive
Speaker 1: or not. I don't I don't want to say her name.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that she lived on the Mosquegan River.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say her name. She might have
Speaker 1: to look at so she's passed away or not. My
Speaker 1: fifth grade teacher was in the Peace Corps in Africa,
Speaker 1: and I think she got reprimanded for this. She brought
Speaker 1: us photographs into school and showed in school photographs of
Speaker 1: the remains of her boyfriend who has recovered from the
Speaker 1: belly of a crocodile and at whoam yikes? So you
Speaker 1: now you go? Now I go. Now you tell us
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Well, I just spilled the beans,
Speaker 1: you know. I think when there's human crocodile conflict in
Speaker 1: the population that involves a population of animals that a
Speaker 1: particular researcher works in, they like to get as much
Speaker 1: information as they can on who or which animal they
Speaker 1: think was responsible for the attacks understood, and I have
Speaker 1: been inquired about who is involved. The problem is it's
Speaker 1: an impossible thing to answer. Oh, someone want to know
Speaker 1: which of the gators that you might be looking at,
Speaker 1: and what could they tell about its behaviors and whatnot? Yeah,
Speaker 1: do I have any ideas on if which alligator may
Speaker 1: have done this bad. Yeah, it's like when they try
Speaker 1: to go after the rogue shark or whatever. Right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And I find that a little bit ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's in a scenario where there's an alligator in
Speaker 1: a communal pond in Florida and that's where somebody went missing,
Speaker 1: well it was that alligator, that's an easy one. But
Speaker 1: if it's somebody swimming off the coast of Florida and
Speaker 1: somebody goes missing, then how are you supposed to know
Speaker 1: which animals responsible? Right? Usually the management tactic is to
Speaker 1: go out and see if there's a size animal that
Speaker 1: could have been responsible. But in most scenarios, like way
Speaker 1: out in the wild, it's that's an impossible thing too
Speaker 1: to know. Every year, man, I'll get back to the
Speaker 1: history stuff. And now we're on this subject. I want
Speaker 1: to go with it. And and I know that you're
Speaker 1: a good person asks because you're not gonna want to
Speaker 1: sensationalize stuff because you're you're you're dealing in facts and
Speaker 1: you you know gather you liked the animals, I do
Speaker 1: very much, so you don't want to sensationalize this. But
Speaker 1: I'll say this and the Okay, in the lower forty eight,
Speaker 1: every year grizzly bears kill zero, one, two, or three.
Speaker 1: People's never more than two or three. Sometimes there's none.
Speaker 1: Usually there's one. Okay, where are we at with alligators?
Speaker 1: Alligators and crocodiles in America? Like about the same? Right? Yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: I don't know in recent years of reported crocodile attack, Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's not even a thing. I mean, maybe even
Speaker 1: one every five years. God, as an educated guest, it's
Speaker 1: like I would declare that not a thing. Not a thing.
Speaker 1: I would also agree, Yeah, alligators, I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say, annually we hear about some new story
Speaker 1: where there was an alligator attack, right, but we don't
Speaker 1: hear about it fifty times a year. We hear about
Speaker 1: it one, two, or three, So it remains almost in
Speaker 1: the category of not a thing. I yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: So when you're an alligator country, are there are there
Speaker 1: things that you just don't do make yourself the size
Speaker 1: of a prey item at the water's edge, and that
Speaker 1: becomes like a widely known thing. No, otherwise it wouldn't happen.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that, you know, let's say, we're
Speaker 1: at these ponds, okay, and I had my kids with me,
Speaker 1: which could totally happen. And when my kids getting near
Speaker 1: a pond, what do they want to do? They want
Speaker 1: to go throw shit in the pond. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: they're down. Yeah, they're down throwing shit in the pond,
Speaker 1: falling into the pond. Um would you are you hysterical
Speaker 1: to be like, don't do that? Or is that reasonable
Speaker 1: to be like that? I would say you can throw
Speaker 1: stuff in the pond, because that's the urge that everyone has,
Speaker 1: But don't go down to the water if you're a kid, hmm,
Speaker 1: I mean, just don't. Why risk it? And you're not
Speaker 1: you don't rate yourself a paranoid person, No, I don't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say why. Or so getting bit by getting
Speaker 1: killed by an alligator resides somewhere into like the not
Speaker 1: a thing thing. But they're hell on dogs or that
Speaker 1: is that like a thing? That is that overblown? And
Speaker 1: you know, I mean they are hell on dogs. I
Speaker 1: think that most of the time. Like there was a
Speaker 1: couple videos recently where the dog got attacked and the
Speaker 1: owner went to save the dog, and I think that
Speaker 1: leads to a lot of this stuff um. When they're
Speaker 1: walking their dog near a pond, those dogs have the
Speaker 1: same inclination to go to the water's and then alligator says, ooh,
Speaker 1: a prey size organism. I'm gonna eat that, and the
Speaker 1: owner says, no, you're not. And then that leads to
Speaker 1: an issue between the alligator and the owner because he's
Speaker 1: in there trying to do because they're trying to save
Speaker 1: their dog, which I get as well. So my suggestion is,
Speaker 1: don't walk your dogs near the water's edge if you
Speaker 1: know that there's an alligator in that pond, or even
Speaker 1: if you don't, if you're if you're not sure, don't
Speaker 1: do it. Name for me all the junk you've heard
Speaker 1: of him eating, because it's a crazy list, right, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've we opened up thirteen big harvest the alligators
Speaker 1: stomachs um from a kind of a unique habits at
Speaker 1: a reservoir in Alabama on the Chattahoochee River, and we
Speaker 1: found the alligators thirteen fourteen feet damn big and they stunk. Man,
Speaker 1: But we found they stunk just the animal stunt. No,
Speaker 1: when you open that gut, I mean stuff's been there,
Speaker 1: a wild rotten it's the worst smell I've ever smelled,
Speaker 1: and I can smell it to this day if I
Speaker 1: try hard enough. It was all experience. We covered that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the leading source on day this podcast is
Speaker 1: a leading source of information on DEA. Who yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we found so much stuff in those guts. Particularly, we
Speaker 1: found fish scales from stuff like alligator gar along noose gar,
Speaker 1: spotted gar. We found an entire h hog parts all
Speaker 1: in there, turtle scoots from alligator snappers, which is a
Speaker 1: hard thing to eat, really, snake vertebrae like the carrotonized
Speaker 1: plates on top of the show. Uh. And then the
Speaker 1: coolest thing we found was a fawn that looked like
Speaker 1: it was a sleep in the gut. It was about
Speaker 1: oh man, that big, and it was just sitting dog
Speaker 1: like it was a sleep, Like he was gonna get
Speaker 1: around to digesting it at some point exactly eventually that
Speaker 1: thing was going to pass through, but not that day.
Speaker 1: How long had they been in there, Oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was it was incredibly intact, so I would say
Speaker 1: not long. But he also found a lot of man
Speaker 1: made stuff in there, a lot of shell casings in there,
Speaker 1: and bullets. I don't know. It's shiny stuff. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of shiny stuff. And I still don't know if
Speaker 1: the alligator had eaten things that had been shot, or
Speaker 1: if people were shooting at the alligator and it didn't die.
Speaker 1: Are the bullets deformed or the bullets in their original
Speaker 1: state like pre firing, original date, not mushroomed like on
Speaker 1: the on the beaver skull or anything. But if so
Speaker 1: you saw, we've found it all, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: like he's just eating the eating stuff. Yeah, but then
Speaker 1: you found also just the projectile, the bullets not not
Speaker 1: mushroomed like a lot of them. I also could imagine
Speaker 1: that it's like, yeah, I wonder if that's picking up
Speaker 1: Like a lot of times, if they're trying to eat
Speaker 1: something off the bottom, they'll get a lot of other
Speaker 1: stuff in their mouth. So they're probably about the one
Speaker 1: that had some Indian arrowheads in it, remember that eating
Speaker 1: so much garbage off the bottom. He actually inadvertently, assumably
Speaker 1: assuming he inadvertently picked up type that in Crinton type
Speaker 1: in alligator arrowhead was flint arrowhead. I forget where that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go on, well that's that's really awesome. Do you know,
Speaker 1: but the bullets, do you have pictures of the bullets. No,
Speaker 1: I mean this was this was twenty twenty eleven, twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Got it around then Mississippi, Mississippi read that this might
Speaker 1: tickle your fancy. The title is out. This is CNN.
Speaker 1: Just so happens. Alligators eat lots of things. These prehistoric
Speaker 1: artifacts were an unusual snack. So this was a Mississippi
Speaker 1: gator in well, the guy who found found it was
Speaker 1: based in Yazoo City, Mississippi. But he found yeah, part
Speaker 1: of uh like the base part of an arrowhead, and
Speaker 1: then some other kind of like uh like an adiladdle
Speaker 1: dark point. Yeah, they're like a like a counterbalance to
Speaker 1: an adiladdle. I don't think if I remember. So when
Speaker 1: when he picks that junk up, what's he doing? He
Speaker 1: just inadvertently getting it while he grabs other stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd imagine. So, like, have you ever seen an alligator
Speaker 1: attempt to eat something off the bottom. They're horrible at it.
Speaker 1: They just sort of turn their head and kind of
Speaker 1: rub on the bottom and anything that's in their mouth
Speaker 1: they'll lift their head up and might go down. Is
Speaker 1: it just like like a shovel basically? I mean it's yeah,
Speaker 1: like a like you were to take two shovels try
Speaker 1: to use them as a tool to lift something up
Speaker 1: off the table, you know, and they're and you're really
Speaker 1: bad at it. So so's the alligator. They just siphon
Speaker 1: all that junk down there. It all goes down and
Speaker 1: they get what they want to eat whatever else is
Speaker 1: near that thing's going down. Lay out for me, how
Speaker 1: this is the thing I hear about um people like
Speaker 1: talking about the death roll and then them and then
Speaker 1: them burying junk and scavenging junk, and if they catch
Speaker 1: a person, they'll stash a person under a log or something.
Speaker 1: Or a deer walking through all that, like so here
Speaker 1: here he is, he's in his he's laying there, and
Speaker 1: a deer comes out to get a drink. Okay, laying there.
Speaker 1: He's seeing the deer at night at the water's edge.
Speaker 1: He's under the water. He or she's under the water,
Speaker 1: and approaches slowly under the water until he's near enough
Speaker 1: to attack the deer. Happens in a mill a second.
Speaker 1: If he can get ahold of the animal, he'll bring
Speaker 1: it back into the water and grab it by whatever
Speaker 1: he can grab and then walk back into the water
Speaker 1: with it. And usually the prey dies by drowning. Okay,
Speaker 1: But then what happens is this is a thing that
Speaker 1: some colleagues he might have published recently about. It's called
Speaker 1: prey cashing. Okay. So they'll go like, find a wallow
Speaker 1: or a log, or it's coming, it's coming. Oh it's yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's coming. It's dead. But how do they
Speaker 1: get a leg off of a big deer? The death
Speaker 1: roll and a lot of times I'm going there, I'm
Speaker 1: not leading your way. Yeah, so they'll take that animal
Speaker 1: and stick it under the water for a couple of
Speaker 1: days a week, and then they'll reapproach it and roll off.
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's data to suggest that a
Speaker 1: single animal will guard a prey cash. Well, how does
Speaker 1: how does it not? Just like if you stick a
Speaker 1: deer under the water, how does every gator in town
Speaker 1: not come and eat it? Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: they do. I think a big alligator might have some
Speaker 1: say and who comes and eats it? So like a
Speaker 1: large male crocodilian usually has a home territory and if
Speaker 1: a smaller male comes into that territory, they either get
Speaker 1: eaten or gotta got it. So if they put it
Speaker 1: in a spot that's there's I doubt there's much of
Speaker 1: a struggles. Granted, if another alligator sees that deer being
Speaker 1: pulled into the water, it's going to make an attempt
Speaker 1: to try to eat something, So either at that time
Speaker 1: or after cashing has occurred, they'll bite onto what they
Speaker 1: think is a swallowable size part and roll it off
Speaker 1: to the death, roll underwater, roll it off, or that
Speaker 1: alligator trying to come steal a meal might latch onto
Speaker 1: something and roll and get a bite. So him him,
Speaker 1: that's his fork and knife, Yeah, his teeth, his roll. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What about sense of smell? Like you met, you talked
Speaker 1: about they see this deer at the water's edge, But
Speaker 1: like dudes who go out and like are catching crocks
Speaker 1: or whatever, the commercial market meat or whatever, they're often
Speaker 1: like hanging a big chunk of chicken. Like, are they
Speaker 1: finding that I'm assuming by smell? Right? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know a lot about the chemosensory ability of crocodilians.
Speaker 1: We know that it's probably pretty complex. Like we know
Speaker 1: that they probably use a lot of uh pheromones to communicate,
Speaker 1: but gosh, it's a challenge trying to isolate that stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's really looked into that too much.
Speaker 1: But they don't have a mechanism by which you can
Speaker 1: They can't smell underwater cracked. Yeah, I mean I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you hang that piece of chicken and
Speaker 1: it's rotting in the Louisiana sun and some of it
Speaker 1: starts to drip off into the water, they know it's there. Okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, well he does because he's taking he's taking
Speaker 1: water in. But when you're underwater, you're not gonna smell underwater.
Speaker 1: You're not you're not making anything in, you're not taking
Speaker 1: part of all that's like all that liquid is passing
Speaker 1: through their I don't know. That's why I'm that's why,
Speaker 1: that's why we have a guest on the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is I don't know if that's true. Like
Speaker 1: when you knew, when you know, I'm telling you this,
Speaker 1: when you go underwater, Okay, like a beaver. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're trapping beaver and you put out beaver cast, right,
Speaker 1: he knows about it. When he's at the surface, he's
Speaker 1: gonna smell it on the air. When he's underwater, he's
Speaker 1: locked down, he's not he's not inhaling and picking up particles.
Speaker 1: A shark's underwater moving all that water through. And however
Speaker 1: they're doing it, they're tasting all the particulate matter in
Speaker 1: the water. You're not, buddy, Yeah, but humans have a
Speaker 1: horrible sense of smell, So how can you make the comparison.
Speaker 1: I could put you underwater, Okay, I could put you
Speaker 1: underwater with some skunk smell, right, but I'm not. And
Speaker 1: can they smell underwater? I'll say this, when they're hunting,
Speaker 1: they use their site first, I'd imagine certain in certain scenarios.
Speaker 1: But the other thing we know about all crockatilians is
Speaker 1: that they have these really cool pits on their face
Speaker 1: that sense change in water pressure. So when they can't
Speaker 1: see underwater, they can feel really well what's going on
Speaker 1: around them and snap it stuff. Oh really, So I
Speaker 1: think that those are the top two sort of modes
Speaker 1: of finding prey. But I know that there's a chemosensory
Speaker 1: ability there that is poorly understood or not understood well
Speaker 1: by me, which is likely possibility underwater, even underwater underwater body,
Speaker 1: I figured duding triviat Now man is gator questions? I
Speaker 1: be all over that now I'm gonna go back to
Speaker 1: the beginning a little bit. Why you always hear the
Speaker 1: alligators were one so Endangered Species Act was seventy three,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. Oh no, I got another question, Okay,
Speaker 1: before I get into this. Oh, this is the thing
Speaker 1: I was wondering about when I was in Florida. And
Speaker 1: this might not be your I'm sure it's not your
Speaker 1: ara of expertise, but maybe you've had some um run
Speaker 1: ins on this one. I learned it when we say
Speaker 1: um the Seminal, Okay, that that was a sort of
Speaker 1: I always thought that the Seminal. I thought the Seminal
Speaker 1: were a like a sort of like always existing, like
Speaker 1: a like a pre contact, pre existing tribe of Native
Speaker 1: Americans that lived in Florida. I later learned that the
Speaker 1: Seminal was sort of like a later congregation of a
Speaker 1: later congregation of Native Americans and even others escaped slaves
Speaker 1: and things like formed this sort of like unit, the Seminal.
Speaker 1: And then the Seminal wars was against these tribes, but
Speaker 1: they were that they were assembled out of other tribes.
Speaker 1: So had you asked me a month ago, I would
Speaker 1: have asked the question this way how did the seminal?
Speaker 1: Did they use these did they use alligator resources in
Speaker 1: their in their life ways for food and material products?
Speaker 1: But now I know that you wouldn't say that, you'd
Speaker 1: say groups that I don't know their names. Is like,
Speaker 1: have you ever run into have you ever had any
Speaker 1: exposure to this question, like historically, like five hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: six hundred years ago, were humans using this resource? I've
Speaker 1: never been asked that question before, but I would venture
Speaker 1: to say yes, because I know that in like artifact
Speaker 1: site where they finally lot of stuff, they find a
Speaker 1: lot of alligator scoots got in some of those sites. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they were used for food. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was talking with this he's like, well, why
Speaker 1: in the hell not, I'm like, I don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems obvious, but I don't know. Yeah, why not? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean I think that there's in South Florida in particular,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of sort of heritage based,
Speaker 1: sort of cultural based, um, you know, efforts to alligator
Speaker 1: wrestling as a sport that I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: has pre European contact ties. Someone told me that, Ye,
Speaker 1: So that would venture to guess you know at that
Speaker 1: time then, yeah, they were probably utilized as a resource.
Speaker 1: I realized, I'm asking you something way outside of your wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: But it's okay, I appreciate the input. I'll comment on anything.
Speaker 1: Now here's my question. Okay, they're everywhere, dude, Like now, okay,
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe when we were turkey hunting right in
Speaker 1: our little Turkey area, there's like this. They were laying
Speaker 1: on top of each other. You're going down this canal
Speaker 1: and it's dry right now, So I understand they're concentrated
Speaker 1: where you're going down to canal and you get to
Speaker 1: where you don't eat, Like at first, because we're from
Speaker 1: the north, they're like, oh my god, like you know,
Speaker 1: and the guy we're with that's from Florida, he don't,
Speaker 1: he can't even he don't even look like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: oh my god, are you seeing this? You know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Richard just rolling his eyes. He's like, holy shit, man,
Speaker 1: another one. They're all over, you know. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: there's too many of them, just saying there is a lot.
Speaker 1: But it blows my mind that, like in seventy three,
Speaker 1: they were they were kind of like one of the
Speaker 1: early endangerous species act things. How did they how did
Speaker 1: they get reduced that bad? You know what I mean
Speaker 1: when you look at like how abundant they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a sort of classic story of unregulated harvest
Speaker 1: for meat and hide. And they were just harvest I
Speaker 1: mean throughout the forties, nineteen fifties into the sixties, there
Speaker 1: was really no legislation that said you can't harvest as
Speaker 1: many as you can find, and you know, they nearly
Speaker 1: went extinct. It was it was that from like mechanically,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't from pollution now, woll No, that
Speaker 1: was not the major culprit at bad. It was like mechanically,
Speaker 1: one by one removing killing them all. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course pollution and habitat instruction have a hand in
Speaker 1: any decline in his species numbers. Yeah, but this was
Speaker 1: directly tied to unrelated harvest. Yeah, but I mean there
Speaker 1: is like you get my distinction, right, like if you
Speaker 1: look at something, you know, the cormorant, when the cormaron
Speaker 1: was imperiled, the cormon was imperiled because of of like biotoxins, right,
Speaker 1: And certainly we lost certain or almost lost some avian
Speaker 1: predators from what was it was it DDT from from DUS.
Speaker 1: So it was like, you know, environmental factors drove them
Speaker 1: to your extinction. Compare that to sort of, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the American buffalo. You'd be like buy and large. They
Speaker 1: were mechanically removed, I mean like one, two, three, like
Speaker 1: kill kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill to the point
Speaker 1: where you killed them all. And that's why I couldn't understand,
Speaker 1: like so with gators, like the gator hunters literally just
Speaker 1: like got them all. Yep, completely unregulated. That's the story, right,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a fair bit of commercial harvest of
Speaker 1: wild gators. Now, well that's what saved them, ironically, is
Speaker 1: the regulation harvest actually saved them. And more than that,
Speaker 1: the utility of the American alligator as a natural resource
Speaker 1: became monetized in such a way that was reliant on
Speaker 1: successful wild populations. How do they how do they bake
Speaker 1: that up? So they were there were sort of two
Speaker 1: teams of people, one in southwest Louisiana and one in
Speaker 1: South Carolina that were sort of working towards the same
Speaker 1: end goal at the same time. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if they collaborated or not, but essentially how it happened
Speaker 1: was that was that ranchers and harvesters, especially ranchers for
Speaker 1: eggs for hides, had to harvest eggs from wild populations
Speaker 1: near where they were located or otherwise, and they had
Speaker 1: to return a bunch. But if you're monetizing, if you're
Speaker 1: making money off of the existence of eggs being out there,
Speaker 1: there's got to be eggs out there the next year.
Speaker 1: So really the amount of money that went into alligators
Speaker 1: as a natural resource saved the American alligator because now
Speaker 1: all these folks need there to be a bunch of
Speaker 1: alligators out there every year. Like if you based it
Speaker 1: on pounds of meat or number of hides like total
Speaker 1: in the US, what would be the percentage coming from
Speaker 1: wild gators versus like farm If you had to guess,
Speaker 1: I've seen these stats, I I would venture that most
Speaker 1: of the hide industry comes from wild populations. But they're
Speaker 1: required to put back a ton of alligators every year
Speaker 1: that they're not allowed to harvest. They have size limits
Speaker 1: and things, well they have they have I think in
Speaker 1: most states they have proportioned limits. So whatever you collect
Speaker 1: in eggs, you got to put half of that back
Speaker 1: or a quarter of that back or third of that back.
Speaker 1: But I would imagine that the meat industry recreationally is
Speaker 1: all from wild harvest. But I'm not sure about you know,
Speaker 1: large scale meat operations. I've never seen a farm that
Speaker 1: whose sole product is alligator meat, but I'm sure they
Speaker 1: exist because they traffic and hides. Two. Yeah, I mean hides.
Speaker 1: Hides is where the money is. That's the big money,
Speaker 1: and that's for boots sold. One did I did I
Speaker 1: miss it? How did they get the eggs back? And
Speaker 1: how does that come into play? So I think most
Speaker 1: states have it where you harvest eggs, incubate eggs, hatch
Speaker 1: them out, and then a large number of what you
Speaker 1: hatch out has to go back to where you harvested
Speaker 1: those eggs. Why not just leave half the eggs because
Speaker 1: there's the probably a higher likelihood that it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a successful It's probably a higher likelihood there'll be a
Speaker 1: successful reproduction if you hatch them yourself. You look at
Speaker 1: when they're doing stuff, when you're doing stuff with salmon,
Speaker 1: like you could take a salmon. You take a salmon
Speaker 1: out of the wild, take its eggs, and then you
Speaker 1: bring them um, you rear them. You know you're you're
Speaker 1: close to like one hundred percent of those eggs putting
Speaker 1: off a fingerling. Yeah, I mean I think in the
Speaker 1: while it'd be like maybe like zero or one percent
Speaker 1: would make it that far. Yeah, they do leave a
Speaker 1: lot of nests out there. I mean, it's impossible to
Speaker 1: harvest all these nests. But there's some great data out
Speaker 1: of central Florida in the nineties that suggests that the
Speaker 1: number of eggs that are laid in a specific area,
Speaker 1: only about a third or less of those eggs reach
Speaker 1: one year old after hatching. So survivorship is super low anyway,
Speaker 1: So to leave them out there would be kind of
Speaker 1: a futile task. But it's a great story. How do
Speaker 1: they go coovery of the alligator? How talk about like
Speaker 1: like walk me through how an alligator? Like what is
Speaker 1: its reproductive cycle? So yeah, American alligator typically lays its
Speaker 1: eggs June July, and you can tell. So if you
Speaker 1: live in Texas, egg laying anecdotally starts in Florida and
Speaker 1: spreads westward. So if you have egg laying in Florida,
Speaker 1: you can expect it to be upcoming. An all Obama,
Speaker 1: you can expect it to be upcoming in Louisiana and
Speaker 1: finally over there in East Texas. What time of year
Speaker 1: does she does she will she make love with a
Speaker 1: lot of males or are they somewhat monogamous? Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: alligators have sperm storage and multiple paternity. We know that
Speaker 1: from a lot of work actually in Louisiana. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there'll be more than one So she'll breed with multiple
Speaker 1: males and then so those eggs could bear multiple fathers,
Speaker 1: it could be represented by multiple fathers. Yeah, some data
Speaker 1: from Cayman populations suggests that even though females are breeding
Speaker 1: with multiple males, there's really only one or two males
Speaker 1: that sire pretty much all the eggs. But it's possible
Speaker 1: and so that that courtship occurs, you know in springtime,
Speaker 1: you know in South Florida, mark April, and then a
Speaker 1: little bit later as you move more north and more west,
Speaker 1: and then eggs are oviposited. You know. Nests are constructed
Speaker 1: essentially overnight and laid in mid June, late June, early July,
Speaker 1: laying out and they're laying out on the surface and
Speaker 1: like a little nest. The mounds. Yeah, so they'll build
Speaker 1: mounds of like degraded vegetation. Well, they'll it won't be
Speaker 1: it won't be rotting vegetation at the time, but they'll
Speaker 1: harvest you know, spartana grass, whatever sort of vegetations available
Speaker 1: on the on the edge of the water, and they'll
Speaker 1: build a mound of it and then lay their eggs
Speaker 1: within that mound and then seal the mound up. So
Speaker 1: it's how many eggs, it's a pretty compact little little thing.
Speaker 1: How many eggs. The lowest I've ever seen is nineteen
Speaker 1: and the most eggs I've ever seen in nest is
Speaker 1: fifty two. But I think you would say they would
Speaker 1: probably average thirty five eggs or so. Damn. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of disparity in the number of eggs that
Speaker 1: a mother will overposit. Man, you can see it. It
Speaker 1: would be impactful. If you took those and protected them
Speaker 1: and incubated them, you get a lot of returns, a
Speaker 1: lot of gators back out there. So then continuing the timeline,
Speaker 1: what do we got we're in early July and by
Speaker 1: that nest if yes, so alligators typically wow, typically they're
Speaker 1: they don't. But I would say about a third of
Speaker 1: alligators we'll hang out by that nest. Really early to
Speaker 1: start um and then they'll sort of ease off the
Speaker 1: nest during the middle of development and then return to
Speaker 1: the nest to assist with hatching. Well they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're they're really good moms in there and they
Speaker 1: come and they are they reliable to come back to
Speaker 1: their own nests like another year. No, no no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: saying it wouldn't be like like she's going to return
Speaker 1: to the nest she laid right, She's not gonna just
Speaker 1: randomly just go to any old nest like she knows.
Speaker 1: They have fidelity to their own nest. They do, although
Speaker 1: there's some really cool data out of South Carolina that
Speaker 1: suggests that there's potentially some kind of altruism and nest defense,
Speaker 1: so like they found footage of multiple mothers defending the
Speaker 1: same nest and they were sort of unsure why at
Speaker 1: that time. But normally the assumption is that, yeah, mom
Speaker 1: will hang out by her nest in a wallow and
Speaker 1: defend it or not from a predator. And there's a
Speaker 1: degree to which they defend, Like if you pull up
Speaker 1: in a boat, some moms will just run away and
Speaker 1: hang out one hundred yards away and say what are
Speaker 1: you doing in my nest. Other moms will attempt to
Speaker 1: roll the boat over, so you get it from time
Speaker 1: to time, but alligators are probably the most frequently. They
Speaker 1: will attend and defend the nest as frequently as any
Speaker 1: other species of crocodilia. Got it, so she'll hang out
Speaker 1: lay it, and then how long is incubator or how
Speaker 1: long do they lay there? That's incubation, rightation alligators on
Speaker 1: average about sixty five days. And is it true that
Speaker 1: the temperature determines the sex of hackling? Yes, it is true,
Speaker 1: so that nest will throw all males or all females
Speaker 1: depending It could depending on the temperature. But usually there's
Speaker 1: a well, usually there's a thermal regime within the nest
Speaker 1: cavity that allows for potentially both sexes to be produced.
Speaker 1: But it could be manipulated where thirty eggs are all male. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you put it in a lab and put it
Speaker 1: at like whatever, you set the temperature for, like seventy
Speaker 1: eight degrees yeah, or whatever the hell it is may be.
Speaker 1: Yea like eighty one and a half to eighty three
Speaker 1: fair knights is the temperature regime for one sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's they exhibit FMF sex termination it's called type
Speaker 1: two sex termination. So at low incubation temperatures you get females,
Speaker 1: and that the sort of narrow range you get males,
Speaker 1: and when you get above that second pivotal temp you
Speaker 1: get females again. But there's some argument that that upper
Speaker 1: pivotal temper has never reached more more coming on that
Speaker 1: next time. I'm here, what happens working on that right now?
Speaker 1: Somebody's not me. What happens if that nest gets rated
Speaker 1: by a raccoon or whatever, all the eggs get destroyed.
Speaker 1: Does she just start over or she can't start over?
Speaker 1: She may wait till next year. There are a few
Speaker 1: species of crocodilian that have multiple clutches in the year,
Speaker 1: but those that's very rare. Okay, what's the primary raccoons?
Speaker 1: By far, raccoons and hogs that old bandit hogs like
Speaker 1: aigator eggs. I just have a question for You're saying
Speaker 1: within one nest, based on the temperature regime, you can
Speaker 1: have males and females. Is there any data on like
Speaker 1: how eggs are dispersed within the nest in terms of
Speaker 1: like an area under more vegetation, which would be colder
Speaker 1: or warmer or like if there's any kind of yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So those questions we thought would be really interesting to
Speaker 1: ask in whole nesting animals like the American crocodile. What
Speaker 1: we find an American alligator nest is that they're essentially
Speaker 1: within a compost pile of rotting vegetation, and the temperature
Speaker 1: seems to stay relatively hot and relatively stable in there.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there are nests that that bridge that
Speaker 1: the lower pivotal temp which means males and females will
Speaker 1: thermally be produced. But we had the same idea as
Speaker 1: you in Costa Rica. So the American crocodiles dig holes
Speaker 1: in the sand and deposit their eggs in there, like
Speaker 1: similar to a turtle exactly like a turtle, yeah, just
Speaker 1: a lot more eggs and a lot bag. So they'll
Speaker 1: pull up on a sand bar and dig with their
Speaker 1: back feet and no deposit and then covered up back up.
Speaker 1: But we thought, yeah, if it's if it's under some shade,
Speaker 1: under a tree, then that may play a role in
Speaker 1: the thermal regime of that nest. If it's really deep
Speaker 1: in the sand exactly, then that will also probably play
Speaker 1: a role. But we actually found that neither of those
Speaker 1: things matter at all. They're completely uncorrelated to the thermal
Speaker 1: regimes of these nests. But what happens to be correlated
Speaker 1: is the egg size. So metabolic heating is playing more
Speaker 1: of a role in determining the thermal regime of these
Speaker 1: nests than how much shade or how deep the nest is.
Speaker 1: That's a sample size of you know, fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: or so nests, which was hard enough to get. Meaning
Speaker 1: the same way that the human body generates heat metaball heating, yep, metabolism.
Speaker 1: Heat is given off x organic reactions. So the larger
Speaker 1: warmth is generating warmth in the nest. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: put in these little I couldn't be that you put
Speaker 1: your hand on and it felt warm. It's just like slight,
Speaker 1: right U two point five degrees c. So we put
Speaker 1: an eye button in the center of the nest cavity,
Speaker 1: and then we put an eye button at the exact
Speaker 1: same depth of that eye button a meter away from
Speaker 1: the nest. And we found that the average difference in
Speaker 1: temperatures between those two little eye button loggers was two
Speaker 1: and a half degree celsius, which is a lot hm. Right,
Speaker 1: what is now, kid? There somebody google that it's got
Speaker 1: to be like five or six degrees fahrenheit or more
Speaker 1: so when those little baby alligators are ready to how
Speaker 1: many days gestation or not gestation? Alligators incubation about sixty
Speaker 1: five on average. So she lays them, Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: might scraaddle, she could, she might yep, but then she
Speaker 1: might come back around hatch time. Well, she usually stays
Speaker 1: there for a week or two after ovipositing, defends the nest,
Speaker 1: is hanging around. You see them at the nest. And
Speaker 1: then we find that the frequency of attendance goes down
Speaker 1: towards the middle of incubation, likely because mom's got other
Speaker 1: things to do. She has probably hasn't eaten in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, she needs to seek some other thermal
Speaker 1: refugia besides sitting on the bank of a swamp, you know,
Speaker 1: and then returns a week or two before hatching and
Speaker 1: hangs out with them. And does she need to dig
Speaker 1: them out or they dig themselves out like turtles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's a lot of interesting stories that
Speaker 1: alligator moms will open the nest for them and remove
Speaker 1: them and sort of carry them over to where they
Speaker 1: need to be in the water or whatever. But most
Speaker 1: of the nest that I approach that have hatched, that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. The eggs just hatch, and the hatch things
Speaker 1: just sort of move around and wriggle themselves to the top.
Speaker 1: How long are they when they come out? Six inches seven?
Speaker 1: But they do make a lot of sounds. So alligator
Speaker 1: hatchlings in the egg when they're ready to hatch will
Speaker 1: kind of make this little chirp noise like dude, ye
Speaker 1: or you hear the eggs doing that. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: signals hatching to occur theoretically in the other eggs around
Speaker 1: that eggs, and it also theoretically we have but it
Speaker 1: also helps mom know that it's time to come over.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I mean that's the That was the nice story.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a guy that hunt they're hunting
Speaker 1: gators down in Florida, and they use that sound like
Speaker 1: if they're looking for a big gator, don't make that
Speaker 1: sound and get that thing to like show itself. I
Speaker 1: do it all the time. Yeah, Yeah, it works, It
Speaker 1: works pretty well. Ye be honest, is next calling U
Speaker 1: and they're there? Yeah, do a gator way way of
Speaker 1: baby gator. You said two and a half degrees celsius. Yeah, Chris,
Speaker 1: that's four and a half degree fair knight really feel
Speaker 1: it though? Yeah it's hotter. Wait what like the difference?
Speaker 1: So like, so if something is two and ashcree celsius
Speaker 1: more than it would be fourie fare kneit um. When
Speaker 1: she comes back to hang out of them, what is
Speaker 1: she actually doing? I mean, do the little baby gators
Speaker 1: come out, let's say twenty of them come crawling out
Speaker 1: of the mud. Yeah, they don't imprint on her like
Speaker 1: I mean, does she is she able to sort of
Speaker 1: manipulate the group and orchestrate and be like I'll show
Speaker 1: y'all how to catch shrimp? Like do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like, what is she really doing? Or she
Speaker 1: just keeping predators away from the general vicinity? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think most of her role at that time is trying
Speaker 1: to not let herrings and raccoons and large stuff eat them. Okay,
Speaker 1: she's a presence, she's exactly she's there to say, don't
Speaker 1: come eat my hatchlings kind of thing. But there's I mean,
Speaker 1: there are some some crocodilians that are, you know, really
Speaker 1: incredible from a parental aspect, like the male garial in
Speaker 1: India will essentially let all the hatchlings ride on its
Speaker 1: back for quite a long time after after hatching there there,
Speaker 1: I would say that of all the vertebrates that I've
Speaker 1: ever learned about, my favorite parents are crocodilians. I'm also biased,
Speaker 1: but take that for what. Is there a fair bit
Speaker 1: of cannibalism that goes on. Oh yeah, at larger sizes.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember going out collecting samples in Louisiana
Speaker 1: and seeing an eight foot alligator with a four foot
Speaker 1: alligator hanging out of its mouth, But not so much
Speaker 1: the little babies. Yeah. I mean, if you're a male
Speaker 1: alligator and you hear that sound, you're gonna come eat
Speaker 1: those babies. Oh that's why they're liking that sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why it's easy to use to get
Speaker 1: an alligator to show itself, because I mean, I wants
Speaker 1: to eat it, or a female that's outside of the
Speaker 1: reproductive time probably will want a snack. Then there's no
Speaker 1: paternal The males have no as far as we know,
Speaker 1: no comprehension of what females and what nest they sired.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just they're out of the picture in alligators. Yeah, that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my understanding. There's no paternal investment really in the clutch,
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll mild those little babies down, they'll eat
Speaker 1: them up. Yeah, huh yeah, And that's probably I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say that's true for most crocodilian species, where
Speaker 1: the paternal aspect is effectively irrelevant after fertilization. When they're
Speaker 1: real little like that, six inches long. Yeah, what are
Speaker 1: they trying to feed down? Bugs and stuff? Little bugs?
Speaker 1: I mean for a long time, they probably don't even eat.
Speaker 1: You know, they come out with a yolk sac that's
Speaker 1: hanging behind him, that's not fully shut yet, So in
Speaker 1: the a they've got this yolk sac on their belly,
Speaker 1: and when they hatch out, there's essentially a I mean
Speaker 1: you can see it still there. And then eventually the
Speaker 1: yolk will get absorbed in the skin will heal around it.
Speaker 1: So they're sustaining on that for a good while, I
Speaker 1: don't really think, I don't know how long, but a
Speaker 1: little while before they start getting there swimming legs under
Speaker 1: them and can go eat bugs and little fish and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But they hang by the nest for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. You know, they'll hang arout by it,
Speaker 1: They'll hang around. Yeah, what are you guys, you or
Speaker 1: your colleagues, what are your theories on in South Florida?
Speaker 1: What are your theories on what's happening with the dynamic
Speaker 1: between the pythons and gators? Like you hear these crazy
Speaker 1: cases where like a python grabs the gator and it
Speaker 1: swallows it in the gator fights his way back out
Speaker 1: of its gut. Yeah, I mean, what is there anything
Speaker 1: substantial going on here between? Is it like a new
Speaker 1: great food source? Is it negligible impact? Yeah? I mean
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot better people to ask than
Speaker 1: me who work on crocodilians and Florida about that particular topic.
Speaker 1: But for me, not knowing much you know, in that area,
Speaker 1: I would say that it's kind of a negligible thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you get these interesting stories of large
Speaker 1: pythons that have killed in our eating a smaller alligator,
Speaker 1: and you see potentially alligators with a snake in their mouth.
Speaker 1: But I think you just sort of introduced one and
Speaker 1: more organism to the assemblage there that that gets eaten
Speaker 1: or is eating, you know, is eating or eats can
Speaker 1: chomp on each other. But I don't. I don't see
Speaker 1: that as a necessarily a prevalent, mainstay, viable resource for
Speaker 1: either one of those species. Speaking of pythons, we had
Speaker 1: a guy he didn't work on this project, but his
Speaker 1: colleagues did. Is they were trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: far pythons can spread. Yeah, and I feel like it
Speaker 1: involved making these little enclosure like barying pythons or something
Speaker 1: in the for the winter and in the spring see
Speaker 1: that they were dead or alive. Anyways, they drew a
Speaker 1: sort of hypothetical line, I mean how far north thing? Sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're trying to be like, okay, in the future house,
Speaker 1: like at what point will what would be the climate restriction? Sure,
Speaker 1: and they drew a rough line maybe went through something
Speaker 1: like I can't remember if it reached South Caroline or not,
Speaker 1: or feasibly they could like reliably survive the winter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what prevents gate? Like why why can't we have alligators
Speaker 1: in the Great Lakes? It's too cold? That's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's obvious, but that that that is what
Speaker 1: it is, because it would do the cold would do
Speaker 1: what the cold would metabolically shut them down to a
Speaker 1: state in which the when the temperatures were adequate in
Speaker 1: the summer, they would have they wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: harvest enough resources to survive the extended period that's below
Speaker 1: their critical thermal mini So there's a realizing niche and
Speaker 1: a fundamental niche. Realizing niches. What aspects of your environment
Speaker 1: do you commonly see or are exposed to? A fundamental niches,
Speaker 1: what aspects of this undimensional hyper volume of environment will
Speaker 1: kill you or not? And the thermal regime of somewhere
Speaker 1: that far north is outside of the fundamental niche of
Speaker 1: an American alligator. So it's a length of exposure thing. Yea.
Speaker 1: You see them with their nose up in North Carolina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the ice and that kind of stuff. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they can't sustain that for I mean six months of
Speaker 1: the year. It feels like up here, you know, it'd
Speaker 1: be cool though. I wish they were in the Great Lakes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you what's crazy? If you think, um, you imagine
Speaker 1: a grizz on the north slope, you know, grizzly in
Speaker 1: a lot of places they're black bears, and a lot
Speaker 1: of parts of their range they're spending more months underground.
Speaker 1: They are up, yeah, up and about they're spending more
Speaker 1: months not not foraging. Yeah, spending more months not foraging
Speaker 1: than foraging. Yeah, but that would become bad news for
Speaker 1: a gator. Yeah, I mean, aside from just the temperature
Speaker 1: being so called that it kills them. Oh, gotcha know?
Speaker 1: And then uh, well how long can they make it
Speaker 1: between meals? Yeah, I mean yeah, I think that that
Speaker 1: crocodilians can survive in theory months without a meal. From
Speaker 1: a sort of low metabolic standpoint, right, we talked about
Speaker 1: the animals estivating um in Costa Rica. That's two three
Speaker 1: months without literally no chance to eat, right, Um, So metabolically,
Speaker 1: since they're sort of low profile on that, they can
Speaker 1: go a long long time without eating. But when they do,
Speaker 1: they utilize it relatively efficiently. From a cellular perspective, I
Speaker 1: had a guy that guides on Okachobe, Captain Bob Stafford
Speaker 1: guides gator hunts on Okechobee, and he says, when he's
Speaker 1: gotten a client, okay, who wants a trophy gator. He says,
Speaker 1: a trophy gator is ten feet that in his mind
Speaker 1: is like trophy gator land. Okay, So when he has
Speaker 1: like a client that really wants a big gator. They're
Speaker 1: looking for a ten plus gator. How old is that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a hard question because growth rates are directly correlated
Speaker 1: to the thermal environment and resource acquisition for that animal.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you an example. I know of a
Speaker 1: seventy five year old wild alligator in Okifinoki Swamp. He's
Speaker 1: alive right now. Well was in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: It was seventy five at the time, and that animals
Speaker 1: about twelve feet long. Seventy five years old, and he's
Speaker 1: twelve feet long, so I don't maybe a little bigger,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that you can draw, you know,
Speaker 1: a clear straight line between age and length. But I
Speaker 1: would imagine you could have one this twelve feet and
Speaker 1: sixty years old, right, or you could have one this
Speaker 1: fourteen feet and seventy five years old, right, A male, yeah,
Speaker 1: at that size. But I'll tell you. In Costa Rica,
Speaker 1: you know, we would mark hatchlings in hopes of finding
Speaker 1: them again and the next year, so we mark a
Speaker 1: hatchling that's also about you know, six or seven inches long.
Speaker 1: We found one the next year, twenty two kilometers away
Speaker 1: from where we marked it that was over a meter long.
Speaker 1: So what the heck is going on there? That thing
Speaker 1: grew incredibly fast. He went from six inches to roughly
Speaker 1: mid thirty three and a half feet yeah, to three
Speaker 1: and a half year really yeah, which I was blown
Speaker 1: away by. We found that someone more like someone moved
Speaker 1: your tag. Well, it's impossible someone's a scoot that's removed
Speaker 1: from the back. So they all get an individual ID number.
Speaker 1: But that makes me say, you know, I've always thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, in general of crocodilian will grow up like
Speaker 1: a foot a year if you're an alligator, which makes
Speaker 1: a nine foot long animal, you know, not nine years
Speaker 1: older or a little older. But that really changed my
Speaker 1: perspective on stuff like when you see a three meter
Speaker 1: animal in Costa Rica, do we really think that that's
Speaker 1: only three or four years old? Potentially? Like there needs
Speaker 1: to be a lot more investigation done on on that.
Speaker 1: What's the oldest you've heard about for them? For the
Speaker 1: American alliger, seventy five from Okay Finochi. But that so
Speaker 1: that as far as to end in the wild, that's
Speaker 1: the that's the top end that I've heard of. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if they live eighty years, you know,
Speaker 1: for for a statistical outlier, but I would say forty
Speaker 1: five to sixty years. If you make it past that
Speaker 1: an initial small stage, you got a good shot. Older
Speaker 1: for crocs, sir h. Hard to say. Hard to say,
Speaker 1: especially if we're talking about that potentially super fast young
Speaker 1: rate of growth in Costa Rica. How how old are
Speaker 1: those monsters out there? Are they only fifteen or twenty?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't, I don't know. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think we know. I bet Australia has a really
Speaker 1: good data on that for saltwater crocodiles because they and
Speaker 1: when they get to the end of their lifespan, just
Speaker 1: like us, they just they age out. They go. Yeah. Week,
Speaker 1: I found a dead croc sitting on the bank. I
Speaker 1: was actually on a on a tour in Costa Rica,
Speaker 1: helping with a tour and there was a crocodile on
Speaker 1: the bank and I said, let's go over and see
Speaker 1: that thing. And we approached it and it was just dead.
Speaker 1: No idea why, just got old and died there. He said,
Speaker 1: Boys on that bank and die a peaceful place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, never seen anything like that before. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this thing was probably three and a half meters long,
Speaker 1: So like twelve thirteen. So what is what is? What
Speaker 1: do you call an adult alligator? How do you define
Speaker 1: an adult alligator? Like I was saying an adult wild turkey? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's call it tom it's two full Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: use that term. But at what age is he at?
Speaker 1: What age would you say like, that's a mature adult? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So when when they I would use the word adult
Speaker 1: when they're obviously of reproductive status. And give me a
Speaker 1: rough ballpart for a male seven eight feet for a
Speaker 1: female six six feet plus? Okay, once he gets to
Speaker 1: that size, is what's gonna kill him? Is that to
Speaker 1: be a human or another alligator? Okay, bigger alligator but yeah,
Speaker 1: humans or ecotoxins or another bigger bull alligator. What's the
Speaker 1: uh male female like max size difference? Yeah, males get
Speaker 1: get larger than female and that's like across the board
Speaker 1: with crocodilians or yeah pretty yeah, um, but I mean
Speaker 1: sexual dimorphism, good phrase, nice job. Yeah. I mean an
Speaker 1: adult male can you know pretty easily reach ten twelve
Speaker 1: fourteen feet? Um? I think the biggest female I've ever
Speaker 1: called caught was, you know, nine and a half feet
Speaker 1: and that's a that's a big female, got it. So
Speaker 1: when people are like one in the case, these guys
Speaker 1: hunting trophy gators are hunting. Those are males. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: hunting big bull males, usually open water. Is there any
Speaker 1: visual like if you were looking at justica pile of crocodiles,
Speaker 1: could you, let's say they're all roughly the same size,
Speaker 1: could you pick out the males and the females anyway
Speaker 1: to do like a physical attribute, you know that becomes
Speaker 1: pronounced at a certain year. I had a student that
Speaker 1: was interested in that question and utilized a tool called
Speaker 1: geometric morphometrics, which is a shape quantifics a lot of morphs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: geometric morphometrics. It's a shape quantification tool where he took
Speaker 1: photos of heads of males and photos of heads of
Speaker 1: females and sort of allowed the software to see if
Speaker 1: there were any subtle differences. And there are. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what they were because we haven't published those data yet.
Speaker 1: But I think that I have a little instinct to
Speaker 1: say that's a male and that's a female, but to
Speaker 1: be able to describe, like they can't explain what they're
Speaker 1: doing when they do it. Yeah, And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of valigator Bible just might have that. You know,
Speaker 1: when you look at that and say that's a male,
Speaker 1: but there's no clear thing for the average person be like,
Speaker 1: that's a no, And I don't even think it's clear
Speaker 1: to us. Like when I'm doing it, I say, seventy
Speaker 1: percent in my mind, that's a male. Yeah, but am
Speaker 1: I am? I right? That's like that blackbear hunters. Well,
Speaker 1: there a range of black bears where it's like they're
Speaker 1: of a size that you're like, I don't know, could
Speaker 1: be you know, but now and then, well, Yanni was
Speaker 1: telling me the other day, when you see a mountain
Speaker 1: lion with the big forehead wrinkles, explain that the once
Speaker 1: that look real angry. Yeah, they got the fat rolls
Speaker 1: on their forehead. It's actually a vertical crease. It's a
Speaker 1: vertical crease. Okay, I've ever talking about that. It looks
Speaker 1: like darker than the rest of the day. When you
Speaker 1: see that vertical crease, you're looking at a big male
Speaker 1: or or so they say, Yeah, do you you ever
Speaker 1: eat alligators? Or you or you don't? Are they not
Speaker 1: advertising to you? Oh they're great? Yeah? How many how
Speaker 1: many times a year to eat alligator? Well? Maybe three?
Speaker 1: I make an alligator sauce pecant of the old old
Speaker 1: Louisiana recipe that is just dynamite. Okay. It's a tomato based,
Speaker 1: rue based sort of soupy stew. And it's hot, it's spicy,
Speaker 1: and uh put my alligator meat in there. Oh man,
Speaker 1: So I know you're fisherman. Do you have you ever
Speaker 1: hunted gators or just get meats somewhere else? I just
Speaker 1: buy it from the sustainably harvested meat that's sold. You
Speaker 1: never put in for gator permits or nothing. No. Let's
Speaker 1: say I handed you a gate or tag right now,
Speaker 1: would you be like sweet? Would you be like no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go out in the wild and harvest
Speaker 1: an alligator myself. I catch them all the time for
Speaker 1: for the stuff that I do for my job, But
Speaker 1: just not. You don't. You don't have that. You don't
Speaker 1: have that. It's just not when you guys are catching
Speaker 1: them to do whatever research on an individual animal you
Speaker 1: want to do, how are you getting them? Are you
Speaker 1: putting hook baited hooks out or no, that'll hurt the thing.
Speaker 1: As a physiological ecologist, I need that thing to last
Speaker 1: a lot longer than after it deals with me, right,
Speaker 1: so we can catch them by hand. If they're small,
Speaker 1: we can catch them by a snare on a on
Speaker 1: a pole. So it literally takes like like a snare
Speaker 1: that makes like a lasso with a tree lock mechanism
Speaker 1: on it, and I electrical tape it to a cane
Speaker 1: pole and I'm on in a boat on the front
Speaker 1: of the boat, and I try to put that that
Speaker 1: open open part of the snare over its neck and
Speaker 1: yanket shut. And then as soon as I get it
Speaker 1: on the boat, I opened the snare get it off
Speaker 1: of them. So you're not setting snares for him, No,
Speaker 1: And when I was just the floor, we were talking
Speaker 1: about you know there's a conna bears, there's a body
Speaker 1: gripping trap, okay, one ten, two, twenty three thirty and
Speaker 1: then they've started to fill it in like one sixty. Anyways,
Speaker 1: mean seth or Tom about get some a eighties because
Speaker 1: we found some pinch points for gators that have been
Speaker 1: dynamite man, well yeah, eighty connor bear setting at little
Speaker 1: where these channels would neck down due would you'd be
Speaker 1: getting like, do you guys ever capture like real big ones?
Speaker 1: And how would do so? How are you doing that?
Speaker 1: Same way. Yeah, we'd use a snare, so you guys
Speaker 1: don't set like some kind of trap that that thing would.
Speaker 1: I've set traps for alligators before, but that's because I
Speaker 1: need specific individuals, like the mom that laid that nest,
Speaker 1: So I set the trap at a nest site. We're
Speaker 1: kind of I want only those that individual gator. It's
Speaker 1: essentially a two by four eight foot by three foot
Speaker 1: box that I wrap in chain link and has like
Speaker 1: a a piece of fence in the front where they
Speaker 1: go in the back and get a bait, not off
Speaker 1: of home, but just off off a thing and it
Speaker 1: pulls a pin in the door and then I get
Speaker 1: him the next morning and work them up and get
Speaker 1: them out. That's gotta be a hefty contraption. I've built
Speaker 1: probably four of them. Most of them burn up in
Speaker 1: marsh fires, to be honest. But I during a matter
Speaker 1: during my matters, I had really good successful Like how
Speaker 1: long is It's about eight feet long and you set
Speaker 1: it on the ground, setting on the ground so he's
Speaker 1: coming out of the water to come right well, like
Speaker 1: the front lip of it is at the water's end,
Speaker 1: and what are you baiting with? Chicken? Really like that yeah,
Speaker 1: people do that. I've had up on them. Yes, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, they oh my god. Yeah, they're tearing everything apart.
Speaker 1: They don't. But then you have to somehow get in
Speaker 1: the trap with it to work it out, and that's
Speaker 1: always problematic. What's the biggest gator you can rassle? I
Speaker 1: asked this to a guy the other day. This guy's
Speaker 1: name begins with alligator. Let's do many people down there?
Speaker 1: I realized, Yeah, I said, what's the biggest gator you
Speaker 1: can rassle? He said, you could rasp the ten foot gator.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how could that be true? The biggest alligator
Speaker 1: I've ever caught was ten ten fix. So really, yeah,
Speaker 1: by yourself, you're saying, but it was some else more
Speaker 1: than you do though. Yeah, I mean, it's all just rules.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know a guy who wrestles alligators better
Speaker 1: than anybody, and he's one hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. Okay,
Speaker 1: want me through it. Here he is, there's a gator
Speaker 1: ten fo there's a gator in the water. Let's say
Speaker 1: he's in the water and I'm on a boat with
Speaker 1: a headlamp and I see that in the water. How
Speaker 1: deeps the water six feet really eight feet though they
Speaker 1: had to be on a bank. But no, But now
Speaker 1: it depends visibility in the water. Is there visibility gin clear? Oh,
Speaker 1: well then it's cake. I win every time, like a
Speaker 1: chocolate shake. Then a gator wins almost every time on
Speaker 1: the top, and get the snare on like pretty good visibility, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so clear, but pretty chocolate six feet of water, ten
Speaker 1: foot gator. So usually we'll like approach it pretty slow,
Speaker 1: shut the motor off in a mud boat or something
Speaker 1: like that, and try to get close enough with angling
Speaker 1: the beam of the head lamp just off of the
Speaker 1: head so that the eye is still in sort of
Speaker 1: that peripheral light that's emitted, but it doesn't think that
Speaker 1: you're looking directly at it. Ye, these are secrets that
Speaker 1: I really shouldn't be sharing. Trade secrets. Trade secret I mean.
Speaker 1: And then uh, try to get near enough to put
Speaker 1: that snare around around its head and come about rastling it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the first step. Then you bring it over to
Speaker 1: the boat because you can rassle them without a snare.
Speaker 1: You just mean in the water the circus and see
Speaker 1: a guy rastling a gator. Yeah, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: tons of people who do that really well in captive
Speaker 1: environments in South Florida. I mean there's there's folks. No, okay,
Speaker 1: so okay, I want to hear what you do. But
Speaker 1: I thought that like I thought it was a thing
Speaker 1: where like you grab the gator by the tail, he
Speaker 1: goes left, you manipulate his tail. Oh and yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you can do that stuff if you're in an enclosure.
Speaker 1: I don't do that. I work in wild populations. You
Speaker 1: can't just walk up to an alligator and reliably catch it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure it's happened. Got people that are
Speaker 1: really good at this, but better than me. But but
Speaker 1: that's not like if you're gonna go get one tonight,
Speaker 1: that's not your plan, No, because usually I need to
Speaker 1: get one hundred in a month or something like that.
Speaker 1: So wasting that time plus the yeah, plus it's unsafe
Speaker 1: and would be um, you would be viewed poorly by
Speaker 1: my employer. We had we're friends with this guy who's
Speaker 1: a Turkey biologist. Yeah, I Heed was telling us a
Speaker 1: story about an unkillable gobbler. Is there like like old
Speaker 1: gators that are like uncatchable, like they hear the boat
Speaker 1: and they're just unkillable gobbler because someone killed the unkillable
Speaker 1: gobbler in a tree. Nope, but the new unkillable gobler
Speaker 1: telling me, hone uh. He said that, Um, they think
Speaker 1: they got a gobbler that as you're calling him in,
Speaker 1: he gets to a certain distance and then flies up
Speaker 1: into the tree. That's the one I'm talking about. Look around,
Speaker 1: that's the one I'm talking and then like hops from
Speaker 1: tree to tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I must have told you about after I've seen him,
Speaker 1: because I can imagine there's got to be some old
Speaker 1: ass gators that are just ghosts. Like he's not gonna
Speaker 1: get me. That's what that that guy in Oakachobi. I said,
Speaker 1: other gators out here that can live their whole life
Speaker 1: and not get killed. And he said they get smart, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he goes, they get like hunting a weary white tail.
Speaker 1: You get to be fifty years old. And he said
Speaker 1: they know like they don't they don't make big mistakes.
Speaker 1: They like they they they'll like hold up and thick shit.
Speaker 1: You don't just catch them out dicking around like they
Speaker 1: get cautious. Because he's looking for they're looking for gators
Speaker 1: in like certain situations. Are they cracking them with rifles
Speaker 1: or how they get no know He takes Cornish game
Speaker 1: hens fills them with fill a foam so they crack sealer.
Speaker 1: You can't use a hook, so they use a wooden
Speaker 1: dowell sharpened on each end and you bury that in
Speaker 1: the Cornish game hen. And what they do is they
Speaker 1: find the gate or they want watch it. And he
Speaker 1: gets to spot where he feels like he can approach
Speaker 1: it and it's in its instinct isn't going to be
Speaker 1: to run away, but he can approach it where it's
Speaker 1: instinct's gonna be good. Go down, lay on the bottom.
Speaker 1: So they'll watch with buyos. They hunt the daytime and
Speaker 1: he'll get to be like, okay, we can approach it
Speaker 1: now and its response will be to hide and not book.
Speaker 1: They go to it and they know right where it is,
Speaker 1: and he says he sets that bait right where he
Speaker 1: knows that when he comes up he's gonna find the bait,
Speaker 1: opens the bail on his fishing rod and goes and
Speaker 1: gets a couple hundred yards away and waits. He says,
Speaker 1: eventually it's gonna come up if you did your job right,
Speaker 1: and he goes you gotta put an up current or
Speaker 1: up wind. When he comes up, he's gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 1: shoot a corners game, hen and go eat it. And
Speaker 1: he said, you'll watch and you'll know when he ate it.
Speaker 1: Good is his tail and his head come up because
Speaker 1: he's trying to choke it down. He goes because says,
Speaker 1: sometimes they'll carry it. Yeah, and if you pull, he's
Speaker 1: just gonna drop it. But you why wait until and
Speaker 1: if you get if you're too close him, he's never
Speaker 1: gonna eat it, he said. If he if he knows
Speaker 1: you're there, he's gonna grab it and leave. If he
Speaker 1: thinks he's cool, you wash and you'll know that he's
Speaker 1: swallowed it, at which point he closes the bail and
Speaker 1: tightens up on it and first takes up all the
Speaker 1: braid and gets it to like a cable leader, and
Speaker 1: then they just start fucking rastling it on the end
Speaker 1: of that cable leader. Eventually they use a um. Eventually
Speaker 1: he's a bankster. Yeah. Yeah, they'll get another hook into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah you can't. You can use a hook, but you
Speaker 1: can't bait it. So then they'll get a snag like
Speaker 1: a big treble. Then they'll get a snag and hooking
Speaker 1: it and then they and then they get it up. Said,
Speaker 1: everybody's got a job. Everybody on the boat like does this.
Speaker 1: Yeah that you do this and eventually a banks ticket. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you go, you you you, you approach your gator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with a snare, with a snare. But aren't there a
Speaker 1: lot of them just aren't going to never let you
Speaker 1: approach it? Yeah? Yeah, I mean back to your point,
Speaker 1: I mean, there was there are some folks in Costa
Speaker 1: Rica who talk about seven meters sized animals in the
Speaker 1: Tempisk River and um, I mean those are gigantic animals
Speaker 1: and the reason they get that big is because nobody
Speaker 1: can ever get a hold of them, right, So I
Speaker 1: there are animals out there that are sort of iconically
Speaker 1: large that you see, you know, once a decade, But that,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's obviously really hard live, uncatchable, undetected. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Me and my buddy were standing on the bank of
Speaker 1: a boat dock in Costa Rica once and we saw
Speaker 1: a head off in the distance in the river that
Speaker 1: looked to be like five feet long. Just the head,
Speaker 1: the head, just the head. I mean, obviously me I
Speaker 1: want I want that to be this massive thing but man,
Speaker 1: never seen a head that big. I never saw it again.
Speaker 1: You didn't go rastle it, couldn't rastle it percent of
Speaker 1: the time for the head thing. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this applies to crocodise, but isn't it for alligators? You
Speaker 1: can estimate their length by the width of they're like
Speaker 1: they're length of their head or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that. There's a sort of crude anecdotal metric of
Speaker 1: the distance from the naars to the eyes in inches
Speaker 1: is roughly how long the animal is in feet. But
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's relatively reliable. Yeah, So you
Speaker 1: approach them in the boat. Approach them in the boat.
Speaker 1: You're come in behind them any which way they'll let
Speaker 1: me approach. I mean most of the time they'll just
Speaker 1: run or go under, swim away, and they'll reappear, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty yards to your left. Oka you do the whole
Speaker 1: whole thing again, start the boat up, move over to them.
Speaker 1: If you can get within twelve feet or so, is
Speaker 1: is the cane pole length, then great, he's something. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: I try to put the snare on and miss and
Speaker 1: do it again. But what if he just goes into
Speaker 1: some real thick shit, you can't go in. Or after all,
Speaker 1: if they go on land, then they're mine. They go
Speaker 1: up in the vegetation, I can work my way up
Speaker 1: in there and put the snare on them. But it's
Speaker 1: when they go down then I have no idea. When
Speaker 1: they're coming up, I mean, I'll I'll chase an out. Well,
Speaker 1: I've learned now to just not like in open waters
Speaker 1: in Mobile Bay where we're doing research, I could. You
Speaker 1: could be after the same alligator for eight hours and
Speaker 1: never catch it. So after like three tries, I move
Speaker 1: on to green your pastures, like you're not gonna get them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I give up on them. And when you put the snare,
Speaker 1: run it where you trying to put it around his neck?
Speaker 1: Do you place it with that pole? Place it with
Speaker 1: a pole? And then them you ain't get shut bring
Speaker 1: them in or if they're too big to be in
Speaker 1: the boat, move the boat onto shore and move the
Speaker 1: animal up on the shore. And what's his attitude about
Speaker 1: this whole thing? He's pissed. They're not happy. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be happy. And you get them up on shore and
Speaker 1: then how do you how do you eventually get control
Speaker 1: of them? Cover their eyes? Usually with something if they're
Speaker 1: really angry, and then one person holds the rope, the
Speaker 1: other person hops on, shuts their mouth. Use gator tape
Speaker 1: aka electrical tape. Tape their mouth shut. Not even electrical tapes. Fine,
Speaker 1: a couple of raps, mouth shut. Tavi's mouth shut. Get
Speaker 1: the snare off as soon as you can process the animal.
Speaker 1: So as powerful as that jaw is, yeah, but when
Speaker 1: it's closed, to get it open, a little bit of
Speaker 1: resistance is going to keep them from doing that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are big animals in cost Rica that we've called
Speaker 1: I think the biggest crocodilian we've ever caught was a
Speaker 1: little over sixteen feet. Those are difficult animals to move.
Speaker 1: Takes a whole team of six or eight of us
Speaker 1: to move them, well, sometimes less. But the hard part
Speaker 1: is getting the mouth shut enough to actually put electrical
Speaker 1: tape on it. Because the top of the jaw to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the jaw of animal that size is
Speaker 1: like a foot tall. So I am using all my
Speaker 1: strength in my arms just to get the mouth shut.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody runs over and tapes the mouth real quick.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten nipped or got your hand in
Speaker 1: there on accident or has seen that happen. Man, go
Speaker 1: ahead and knock on wood right now. No battle scars whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I have never been seriously injured by a crocodilian. Goodness again,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen anyone get nipped or got their
Speaker 1: hands stuck in there? Yeah? Yeah, that's just like a
Speaker 1: good way to get an infection. Yeah sure, I imagine
Speaker 1: you got to watch out for that tail too. Huh.
Speaker 1: People say that, really, but it's not a yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it hurts if it hits you. I mean on a
Speaker 1: really big animal, you can knock you off your feet,
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna snap your leg and a half. No.
Speaker 1: People say that, but that's just hype. So ask you.
Speaker 1: He can't hurt you with any other body part other
Speaker 1: than that jaw, really, like you can't. I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole process is painful for me, especially like in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: So usually I jump first on the head and then
Speaker 1: there's two hundred and fifty pound former football player jumps
Speaker 1: on behind me and mashes me down onto the animal.
Speaker 1: That hurts more than anything, as that hurts a lot,
Speaker 1: but at my age, I try to do that as
Speaker 1: little as possible. Now and it's his instinct when you're
Speaker 1: messing with them. It's instinct is to bite you. Well,
Speaker 1: it's instinct just to get out of the situation that
Speaker 1: I rudely put it in. Yeah, you know, in this
Speaker 1: whole scenario. But I mean he'll he'll deliterally snap at
Speaker 1: you or no, yeah, okay if you can Yeah, got it.
Speaker 1: So that's on its mind to defend itself by snap
Speaker 1: and not just to get away. Yeah, and any means
Speaker 1: necessary to get off of it. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: have a rope around your neck, you can't get away.
Speaker 1: Your last resort is to just not get killed, and
Speaker 1: that's what probably it thinks it's going to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can we get into their immune system a bit, because
Speaker 1: you're telling me how interesting, how robust the immune system is.
Speaker 1: I know we don't have too much time yet left,
Speaker 1: but immune this is some really interesting work done. Adam McNeice,
Speaker 1: colleague of mine. Um. Can I say his name? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Mark Merchant. He's a phenomenal biochemist who studies alligators and
Speaker 1: his work has shown that. So he essentially wanted to
Speaker 1: say how strong is alligator blood at killing stuff? And
Speaker 1: he threw like every kind of fungal pathogen at it
Speaker 1: a ton of viruses, any bacteria, like twenty three bacteria
Speaker 1: and it killed them all. Their innate immune system is
Speaker 1: just so robust at killing pathogens. It's blood. You're saying
Speaker 1: that it put bacteria and viruses in alligator blood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They take blood from the alligator and have like super
Speaker 1: controlled assays in which they do this stuff. You put
Speaker 1: blood in a little plate toobe in the plate, and
Speaker 1: then put other stuff, bad stuff in there, and you
Speaker 1: can measure how much of the bad stuff was killed.
Speaker 1: They also do this like zone of inhibition style metric
Speaker 1: where they they grow a bacteria on a plate and
Speaker 1: then they put a drop of alligator blood plasma in
Speaker 1: the center and then measure the diameter of bacteria that
Speaker 1: is no longer on that plate because it was killed. Wow.
Speaker 1: And they are so so fast good and killing stuff,
Speaker 1: and people are probably interested in this whole exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll say this now because it's a good segue.
Speaker 1: Alligators are great model organisms for human health from an
Speaker 1: immune perspective, from an eco toxicological perspective, from an endocrine perspective.
Speaker 1: I mean they they should be more highly regarded in
Speaker 1: that capacity, and they're starting to be what um, But
Speaker 1: but they're they're not sensitive to ecotoxics. Oh they are.
Speaker 1: They are because I know, like like frogs are horrifically sensitive, right,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I would say, So there's this There
Speaker 1: are these things called endocrine disrupting contaminants or endocrine disrupting compounds.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest case studies used alligators in
Speaker 1: Florida out of the Lugillette lab and continued Lugillette lab lineage.
Speaker 1: They looked at how how synthetically produced contaminants in a
Speaker 1: lake actually bias the sexual differentiation of hatchling alligators and
Speaker 1: subsequent age classes. So like, if you expose an alligator
Speaker 1: to a compound that mimics estrogen or antagonizes estrogen or
Speaker 1: antagonizes androgens, like all like birth control stuff in the
Speaker 1: water supply and everything. Yeah, but those receptors are pretty good. Well,
Speaker 1: the things we make are really good at binding to
Speaker 1: those receptors or antagonizing them. And the first real case
Speaker 1: study on environmental estrogens was done in Lake Apopka in
Speaker 1: central Florida. And I mean you talk about paragrine falcons
Speaker 1: and cormorants and all that type of stuff, I would
Speaker 1: say you know, the biggest case study that sort of
Speaker 1: taught the world about the power of endocrine disrupting cataminants
Speaker 1: was on alligators. Really, and that study system is still
Speaker 1: producing tons of really interesting information. Tons like that stuff
Speaker 1: is damaging. Oh yeah, So in that scenario, most of
Speaker 1: the toxins, if memory serves, were environmentally estrogenic, probably anti androgenic.
Speaker 1: So when when you're exposing mom to these compounds through people,
Speaker 1: mostly like organic chlorine pesticide use usually I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: thought you were saying that that. You know, there's you
Speaker 1: hear about hormones and drinking water from various from various
Speaker 1: human treatments, hormones. Get I thought you meant that that's
Speaker 1: what's happened. No, no no, no, yeah, so those are the
Speaker 1: same thing, because these biotoxins are these biotoxins are influencing
Speaker 1: the hormones in gators. Not that we're putting hormones in
Speaker 1: the water that's affecting gators, right, They're they're mimicking endogenous hormones,
Speaker 1: hormones that naturally exist within the body or at least
Speaker 1: binding to their receptors. And that because these things are
Speaker 1: have temperature dependent sex determination, all that really means is
Speaker 1: the temperature creates up a genetic cascade that turns on
Speaker 1: one enzyme or turns on a different enzyme, and that's
Speaker 1: where those enzymes take a maternally supplied hormone pool and
Speaker 1: say this is all going to become estrogen or this
Speaker 1: is all going to become androgen like like testosterone. And
Speaker 1: when you bias that maternally supplied steroid pool was something
Speaker 1: that looks like estrogen or looks like an androgen, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the signals become a little washy, and
Speaker 1: you're able to produce in that case, feminized male alligators
Speaker 1: or super female alligators, in which you see things like
Speaker 1: like polynuclear oocytes more than one nuclei per egg, or
Speaker 1: polyovular follicles more than one egg per follicle in females,
Speaker 1: which is an abnormality, and then you see feminized male
Speaker 1: individuals that maybe have If you take the gonad out
Speaker 1: and histologically examine it, slics it really really thin and
Speaker 1: look at under a microscope, you'll see seminiferous tubules, which
Speaker 1: are the portions of the gonad that makes berm and
Speaker 1: then right next to those you may see one egg
Speaker 1: and You're like, what the heck is going on here?
Speaker 1: Must be an intercondisrupting contaminant. Better apply for a grant. Man,
Speaker 1: It's what degree is that going on? I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess that's the question. Ultimately, people are gonna want to
Speaker 1: know us to what degree is that going on with humans? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I teach an eco toxicology class at the
Speaker 1: master's level of Southeastern and a lot of the literature
Speaker 1: that we read tends to focus on how potentially volatile
Speaker 1: these things are. So in the air, So polar bears
Speaker 1: in the North Pole have super high amounts of PCBs,
Speaker 1: a synthetic thing that they would never have otherwise been
Speaker 1: exposed to aside from than being in the air. So
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're talking about humans, yeah, we're exposed
Speaker 1: to a lot of stuff all the time. Um, red
Speaker 1: meat in farm mistake has dioxins in it to a
Speaker 1: higher degree than almost anything else that you eat. I'm
Speaker 1: really throwing throwing stuff under the bus here. But I
Speaker 1: mean maybe we should drink alligator blood and be perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that doesn't yeah, but I mean, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that the use of alligators to teach us about how
Speaker 1: these ecotoxins may or may not be affecting humans is
Speaker 1: a super viable pathway for research and is and continues
Speaker 1: to be. Man, you got me thinking about that gator blood.
Speaker 1: What's the uh what was it that? Remember one early
Speaker 1: in the pandemic um python oil? No, what President trol
Speaker 1: mused about has anyone looked into that you would drink
Speaker 1: well each No, no, it caused a big shit storm
Speaker 1: in the news that I can't know. It wasn't no, no, no,
Speaker 1: what No. There was like a there was a press
Speaker 1: conference and someone mentioned that there was some impact of
Speaker 1: something and there was like a wondering if if, like
Speaker 1: somehow there was a way to sort of metabolize the substance.
Speaker 1: Either way, it's got me wondering about you know, you
Speaker 1: could see a sci fi movie right where people were
Speaker 1: wanting to consume gait or blood. Well, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of I mean there has there harveston hide and meat.
Speaker 1: They could start like a whole supplement thing with the blood.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the worst movies ever made, um
Speaker 1: one of my favorite actors worst movies was called The Hunter.
Speaker 1: Not yeah, not dar Suzala one of the greatest movies
Speaker 1: ever made. Last Uh, He's hunting for the biomedical. The
Speaker 1: biomedical evil people wanted their hands on the last thera.
Speaker 1: What's the what's a Tasmanian tiger? Is a therascene? They
Speaker 1: got some name. It's a Lazarus species where people are
Speaker 1: eyes like that it saw one, but maybe it didn't
Speaker 1: actually go extinct. The evil Like, if there's a movie
Speaker 1: and there's biomedical people in it, those people will be bad.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, I can promise you. Generally the hunters
Speaker 1: are bad too. And the oil, big oil Disney movies.
Speaker 1: When they got to set up a conflict, it's the
Speaker 1: oil people. But BioMed, you're gonna be bad. Never be
Speaker 1: cast in a movie if you're a BioMed person. They
Speaker 1: want the lasts. It's not a Tasmanian devil. It's something
Speaker 1: bigger than Tasmanian tiger. Yeah, there's a tiger or Tasmanian wolf.
Speaker 1: Maybe William Dafoe. They catch word that there's one left
Speaker 1: in Willem dafolds like a hunter slash mercenary. And he's
Speaker 1: and he gets and he takes off with some He
Speaker 1: has a magical backpack. He heads into the Tasmanian outback
Speaker 1: with a little backpack, but keeps producing amazing things from
Speaker 1: this little backpack. There's like an also like side love
Speaker 1: story going of course. Yeah, um, it's a good movie.
Speaker 1: He's got a little pack, but also he's got like
Speaker 1: a shitload of giant traps and gun he needs to
Speaker 1: go kill this stra scene for the Evil BioMed people,
Speaker 1: This evil Tasmanian tiger, which is a mark. It's the
Speaker 1: cool animals. A marsupial like a like a marsupial predator
Speaker 1: and uh, in the end, he gets kind of burned
Speaker 1: out on the Evil Biomedical people, shoots it anyway, which
Speaker 1: really surprised me. Shoots it anyway and then burns it up.
Speaker 1: He's like in the end, it's kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: by god, no one's gonna have it, right, It's a
Speaker 1: weird way to handle it, but yeah, shoots the last
Speaker 1: one and burns it up, being like they're not gonna
Speaker 1: have it. No one's gonna have it. Damn it. What
Speaker 1: was that time on this first Yet that thing's blood
Speaker 1: to cure sicknesses, to make sicknesses. They're gonna do something
Speaker 1: with it. So now you know a picturing like does
Speaker 1: the alligator blood having some kind of that's I mean
Speaker 1: that ultimately has to be the The idea that like
Speaker 1: that would be where the big time funding comes from
Speaker 1: is that if they have this ability to fight off
Speaker 1: all these infections, then um, that would be a biomedical interest.
Speaker 1: And I imagine if they have this demonstrable if if
Speaker 1: synthetic substances in the environment in the form of pollution,
Speaker 1: have this demonstrable effect on their hormone development and reproduction,
Speaker 1: that probably becomes of great interest to medical researchers. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. I would as a disclaimer, say, do not
Speaker 1: go try to get alligator blood for any purpose ever.
Speaker 1: Thank you. What's the but? But yeah, I think you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, and I think there's a lot of work
Speaker 1: that are that's beginning to use alligators as model organisms
Speaker 1: for human health. What's that's a great thing. What's the
Speaker 1: state of the gator in the US? How are they
Speaker 1: They're doing great? I'll handle that one. Yeah, okay, sit, ye.
Speaker 1: So there's no places where there's like, man, things aren't
Speaker 1: going well here, they're like generally doing very well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean throughout the range. Since they're since there need
Speaker 1: to be a sustainable resource, they're quite readily managed. In
Speaker 1: the states that they're abundant you know, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia,
Speaker 1: South Carolina has a great program. There are people that
Speaker 1: manage these things just like any other harvestable resource. And
Speaker 1: when you see a gator hunter, you're not like you
Speaker 1: hell billy rednecks. You're like, uh, no, I was going guys,
Speaker 1: you've been seeing any Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm not.
Speaker 1: It's it's the it's the regulations and the promotion of
Speaker 1: them being used as a sustainable resource that ultimately brought
Speaker 1: them back from extinction. So if it's managed well and
Speaker 1: effectively and seems to be very well throughout the southeast US,
Speaker 1: then then that's fine. Have fun. I stay within the loss.
Speaker 1: You don't wear gator skin boots, I don't. You don't
Speaker 1: have big gator teeth necklaces. I don't. I'm a biologist, guys.
Speaker 1: You guys can't do that. You can't. But you can't
Speaker 1: become like a guy with a gator hat and gator boots.
Speaker 1: And could you got a gator skull on your desk
Speaker 1: at work? No, they're in the lab all for teaching.
Speaker 1: I want one of the skulls bad. How many gators
Speaker 1: have handled Oh, can you set us up a big,
Speaker 1: huge gator skull, I mean a big one. Are the
Speaker 1: transport of alligator materials across state lines? Animal sites? Animal
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, Oh they are so so. But they
Speaker 1: just need to be because we're hunting. Some of us
Speaker 1: meteor folks are hunting in September. So but you are
Speaker 1: allowed to grins going to transport them, but you need
Speaker 1: to make But won't you just ask the question? Somebody
Speaker 1: just asked a question. Send me a big, old, huge games.
Speaker 1: This is my last question. How many gators? How many
Speaker 1: gators have you touched? Wild gators, wild alligators, crocodilians or whatever?
Speaker 1: You know? Oh? In total? Well, we've caught fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: American crocodiles in Guanta Coste that are marked, so probably
Speaker 1: add five hundred or so onto that that aren't marked.
Speaker 1: And for alligators, I would say maybe three or four thousand. Damn,
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot. It is my job. Are
Speaker 1: those are those crocs in Costa Rica protected? Are they
Speaker 1: a species that are used? No, they're not. They're not harvesting,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of a different great story in the
Speaker 1: sense that they're they're used profitably for eco tourism, so
Speaker 1: the management of those populations is also a renewable resource,
Speaker 1: but in a different, different sort of vein. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I don't got any more questions. Okay, is there anything
Speaker 1: we missed that You're like, No, this was really fun.
Speaker 1: These guys really need to know about this about crows.
Speaker 1: I want to return to my first question. Okay, Oh
Speaker 1: heart chamber. Oh what was that? Like? Why they can stand? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that it was right in the same paragraph as
Speaker 1: talking about how long they can hold their breath, which
Speaker 1: I think is dying to know that. How long can
Speaker 1: they hold their breath? He's gonna give us some wishy
Speaker 1: washy science. Seven hours? Oh no, he did. I think
Speaker 1: that's an imperial Well it's all true, that's all true,
Speaker 1: but no one wants to hear that. They want to
Speaker 1: hear a number seven hours I think has been recorded
Speaker 1: in But they do that by by circulating blood through
Speaker 1: the systemic circuit and bypassing the lungs. They don't actually
Speaker 1: have a fifth chamber, but they have a forumin of
Speaker 1: beniza it's called which bypasses the lungs so they can
Speaker 1: recirculate blood throughout the body, maximizing the exchange of oxygen
Speaker 1: to cells. Yeah, seven hours. I think that's a number
Speaker 1: that has been recorded. But if I were to give
Speaker 1: you a real answer, a layer seven hour, something something
Speaker 1: cool down there. Somebody needs to like try to create
Speaker 1: like an external pack of that that, like you you know,
Speaker 1: instead of an oxygen, instead of that, instead of that,
Speaker 1: this would be cool. It doesn't bubble um. So so
Speaker 1: they got that seven hours under water. Oh here's my
Speaker 1: last question. I'm going back to my first question. You
Speaker 1: know those a little stock tanks I was talking about,
Speaker 1: to have him living in it. Yeah, let's say the
Speaker 1: rainy season never came. Okay, the water never came. He
Speaker 1: could feasibly live in that little hole the size of
Speaker 1: his studio. How long long time? Years? Okay, years, I think.
Speaker 1: So he's not like, holy cow, it's getting close if
Speaker 1: the if the water doesn't rise, I'm doomed. Like he
Speaker 1: could he could survive a dry season. I think that
Speaker 1: if a prey item, and in that scenario it's likely
Speaker 1: to happen, waterfowl or some animal that needs water approaches
Speaker 1: that watering hole and they're successfully eating every six months,
Speaker 1: something kind of big that they can probably live for
Speaker 1: years and really they metabolically, they're just so efficient. Well,
Speaker 1: let's say that thing that, let's say it's a little
Speaker 1: hole dries up. Then I think that Steve's question is
Speaker 1: that but he only needs the water because it attracts prey,
Speaker 1: or does the does the gator need water to survive? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's interesting. We like to think that all
Speaker 1: crocodilians need water to survive. But during the dry season
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica, you see him walking in the woods.
Speaker 1: I was like, how way far away from any water,
Speaker 1: like how many miles? Like we've seen him like five
Speaker 1: kilometers from the nearest water body or more. But presumably
Speaker 1: presumably he's heading out looking for a new water hole.
Speaker 1: That's penguin the problem. Well, I don't know, Like intuitively,
Speaker 1: going up a limestone mountain escarpment would not be where
Speaker 1: you'd go to find water. But yet sometimes you see
Speaker 1: them up there in the middle of it. If he's
Speaker 1: up there where he eats something, if it came in
Speaker 1: front of him, he tried to eat me. Oh really, well,
Speaker 1: I'm the jerk again. I caught him and so we
Speaker 1: had an aggressive interaction, but caught him up in the woods,
Speaker 1: caught him up in the woods. We were driving back
Speaker 1: from sampling to where we stay a station, a little
Speaker 1: biological station, and on the road we saw nine footer.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, We got out of the car, chased him
Speaker 1: ind of the woods, caught him, got her sample. I mean,
Speaker 1: those those are the animals that you really want to
Speaker 1: put like a SAT tracker on to find out what
Speaker 1: he's up to. What are they up to in the
Speaker 1: woods up there? I mean it's crazy, But yeah, if
Speaker 1: the water hole dries up, I give him less of
Speaker 1: a chance. But again, you see, alligators would walk to
Speaker 1: go but yeah, whole of dry up and he would
Speaker 1: eventually light out. Yeah, yeah, he's out. It's gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm doomed. Unlike that one I saw on
Speaker 1: the bank. It just goes up there and sits down here,
Speaker 1: strike out looking for water. Yeah, they'll walk around, and
Speaker 1: I think they walk around on land so much more
Speaker 1: than we give him any grud for got it all
Speaker 1: right for a real My last final one. If I'm
Speaker 1: down the floor with my kids and you know it's
Speaker 1: pawd nearby, there's eight foot or sun in itself, what's
Speaker 1: the best way to approach it? How close can you
Speaker 1: get and be safe, check it out, you know, let
Speaker 1: your kids get a good love, you know, worry it
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, yeah, but but but be safe. Well,
Speaker 1: the safe answer, there's a pair of binoculars. That's not
Speaker 1: the answer. You're listening, we're looking for. You want to
Speaker 1: get close. Say now, I'm liable here. I would say
Speaker 1: that if you stay outside of fifty feet of that thing, now,
Speaker 1: assuming that there's not a nest around, because nesting females
Speaker 1: that are attentive will not want you there, varying personality
Speaker 1: far out of their way to make sure you don't
Speaker 1: go in hear that nest. So I mean I would
Speaker 1: stay as far away as feasibly possible, and don't mess
Speaker 1: you at the water's edd. I would use binoculars and
Speaker 1: don't mess around at the water's edd. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: have meant that my childhood hadn't happened. Take the water's
Speaker 1: edge away. It was spent the water's edge. It's all
Speaker 1: you ever did. Yeah, you don't go down by the lake.
Speaker 1: See what's going on down there? Go rastle a gate.
Speaker 1: I mean a huge impact on yeh. We staid at
Speaker 1: that house down there and we were what was that
Speaker 1: river that was falling bias that we went fishing at. Anyways,
Speaker 1: there was a dock and a some kind of a waterway,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was nice enough where you think, gosh,
Speaker 1: we could just go for a swim. But you can't
Speaker 1: go for a swim. You can, but you assume a
Speaker 1: large risk in doing so, right, I mean, nobody in
Speaker 1: the right minds gonna let their kids go jumping off
Speaker 1: the dock. I'm not gonna let my kids go jumping
Speaker 1: off that dock. Yeah, and when I say fifty feet,
Speaker 1: I would say fifty feet with a fence between you
Speaker 1: and the animal. Okay, So follow up question, how fast
Speaker 1: can that eight foot or move on dry ground covered
Speaker 1: at fifty feet? They can move surprisingly fast if they
Speaker 1: want you away. I mean, if you're an alligator on
Speaker 1: not me, okay, No, I mean you guys can run away.
Speaker 1: But if you're approaching that thing, it has explosive energy
Speaker 1: and it can move pretty short distances, way faster than
Speaker 1: people give it credit for. Just stay away from it.
Speaker 1: Go to a zoo home. What are you into the zoo?
Speaker 1: Look at it? But oh, if you want to get
Speaker 1: a glass pane between you, yeah, yeah, all right, so
Speaker 1: you probably don't want people tracking you down? Do you
Speaker 1: want people to get a hold you and say, like,
Speaker 1: here's where you're wrong? Now they can email us, I
Speaker 1: mean email you. Yeah, I'll be happy to take follow
Speaker 1: up stuff email. I mean a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: we're talking about so interesting, but there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of empirical they published on some of this stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: so so it's all out for exploration, a lot of it.
Speaker 1: And hence I have a job. Well, like if someone
Speaker 1: wanted to read some of your research, where would they
Speaker 1: go do that and find it? Or they can go
Speaker 1: to my website, they can go to research gate, which
Speaker 1: is sort of a yepe nerd repository for all things
Speaker 1: that you publish. Google scholar is a phenomenal resource that
Speaker 1: the public usually doesn't know about, but they can search
Speaker 1: peer view literature using Google scholar and help bridge the
Speaker 1: gap between science and the public. Wonderful resource there, Crocodilian
Speaker 1: biologist Chris Murray of Southeastern Louisiana University. You can send
Speaker 1: all of your anecdotal contradictions to war he said today
Speaker 1: address it's just the meat Eater podcast at the meat
Speaker 1: Eater dot does that live else? We've got our own
Speaker 1: email Okay, So when something crazy happens and you find
Speaker 1: a human skull in the woods, call email us. Then
Speaker 1: call nine one one right exactly. We want we want
Speaker 1: all your breaking news stuff. The meat Eater podcast at
Speaker 1: the mediator dot com. Who came up with that? Me
Speaker 1: and GRN texts about it yesterday? If you really need
Speaker 1: to know, Um, it could have been podcast, But I
Speaker 1: was like, we have that, but it's so but no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We want our own for our own
Speaker 1: hot tips, yeah, hot, and then and then, but don't
Speaker 1: when you want to have when you want to have
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence that contradicts what you heard to day, Chris
Speaker 1: Murray send it to Southeastern louis Louisiana University saying I
Speaker 1: killed one that was eighty easy. You can still send
Speaker 1: that to us. I'll filter it, Chris, don't you worry
Speaker 1: anything to begin with? She send it up. Steve. Did
Speaker 1: he feel about a biologist coming in here and giving
Speaker 1: relatively direct answers and not trying to get it good?
Speaker 1: He got? He did that little wishy washy deal they do.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what he was doing it about. Oh
Speaker 1: how fast they grow, little wishy washy. He brought home.
Speaker 1: He brought it home, he brought home. He he want
Speaker 1: up coming down with an answer. It wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: all like it depends what about this depends and this depends.
Speaker 1: It does depend, But nobody wants to hear that on here.
Speaker 1: So what I like asking scientists is when they're doing research,
Speaker 1: like asking what do they hope happens? Smoke comes out
Speaker 1: of their ears? What do you hope happens? Well, that's
Speaker 1: the whole point. I can't hope because I gotta be unbiased.
Speaker 1: I'm like, by no, you hope something that happens. I know,
Speaker 1: you hope it's interesting. Yeah, Like when you put a
Speaker 1: collar on the links, I'd be like, be like, what
Speaker 1: do you hope happens? And they're supposed to Probably they'd
Speaker 1: be like, well, we just want to catch the data.
Speaker 1: I'd put it on and be like, I hope this
Speaker 1: thing turns up some crazy that's place. But I would
Speaker 1: never be able to say it. I'd say I just
Speaker 1: want to have an accurate representation. I mean, while I'm like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be sweet of some guy in Iowa found this links?
Speaker 1: You know they're hoping, they're hoping it happens all right,
Speaker 1: thank everybody, thanks, thank you. Right, oh see your gray
Speaker 1: shine like silvering in the sun. Right, all right, my right, sweetheart,
Speaker 1: we're done. Beat this damn course, dad taking her now
Speaker 1: one right, unbeat this damn horse today, So take your
Speaker 1: new one and ride on.