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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. This originally aired on March. It's part

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Speaker 1: two of our series about the Moa. That's right. The

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Speaker 1: first one was more about the Wingless Wonders themselves themselves,

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Speaker 1: and this is more about, you know, the fall of

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Speaker 1: the Moa, the twilight of the Moa, their extinction and

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Speaker 1: what we know about how we can you know, put together, uh,

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Speaker 1: their final days, where they went, and we'll even touch

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Speaker 1: on the question of what if we could bring them back. Hi, everybody,

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Speaker 1: it's Seth the producer of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: I'm here in March to just pop on a quick

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Speaker 1: note into this episode saying, Hey, it's March, and you

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Speaker 1: know what that means. We're all recording from our own homes,

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Speaker 1: all separate and all social distancing, so that means the

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Speaker 1: sound quality of this one is a little strange. But

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Speaker 1: just to let you know, each time we've been doing

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Speaker 1: these home recordings, they've been getting better and better and better.

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Speaker 1: So I can guarantee you that next one is going

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Speaker 1: to sound a little better than this and the next one,

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Speaker 1: and after that's going to sound a little bit better

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Speaker 1: than that one, etcetera, etcetera. So just so you know,

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Speaker 1: this is all temporary and we'll get back to our

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Speaker 1: regular episodes as soon as we can sound quality wise.

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Speaker 1: Thank you very much, and enjoy the show. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back. We're

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Speaker 1: still social distancing now. There must have been a weird

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Speaker 1: back and forth year because Thursday of last week's episode

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Speaker 1: we were broadcasting from our closet and our laundry room, right,

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Speaker 1: but then Tuesday of this week's episode. I think that

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Speaker 1: was recorded in the studio before we came home for

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Speaker 1: the Great Retreat, that's right. And also we record our

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Speaker 1: vault episode intros about a month out, so people might

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Speaker 1: have noticed that as well. But this episode, part two

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Speaker 1: of our Look at the Moa, Twilight of the MOA

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Speaker 1: we're calling it. This episode is recorded from our respective

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Speaker 1: closets in our homes. You're actually in a closet now,

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Speaker 1: as opposed to your your laundry roomness. That correct, that's true.

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Speaker 1: I decided to become a monster in the closet. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And I've got so I've got the same talisman's that

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Speaker 1: I had last time in order to bring me good

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Speaker 1: luck and watch over me while making this recording. I've

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Speaker 1: got tom Atkins from Night of the Creeps. I've got

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Speaker 1: my thor Christ. But this time I also brought in

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Speaker 1: an extremely tasteful novelty mug that my wife found an

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Speaker 1: East Tennessee thrift store. Which is great because I cannot

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Speaker 1: bring this mug to the office. I am sure I

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Speaker 1: haven't get in trouble for that. Yeah, the home office

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Speaker 1: brings with it certain advantages, doesn't it? For For me?

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Speaker 1: I looked around the house. I would have loved to

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Speaker 1: have had a toy of a moa, like a little

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Speaker 1: plastic like Schleck moa, but sadly we do not have one,

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Speaker 1: and it would be irresponsible for me to even try

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Speaker 1: and mail order one at the moment. So you have

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Speaker 1: a plastic Shrek, no I have. I do have a

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Speaker 1: plastic terror birds. So it's not accurate, but it's it

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Speaker 1: is still an extinct flightless bird. Uh. So I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: set it right here next to my microphone and it

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Speaker 1: will it will serve as my mascot. Well mayor pocket

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Speaker 1: sized titles watch over us. So, so where do we

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Speaker 1: leave off last time? All right? So in our last episode,

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Speaker 1: and if you didn't listen to it, do go back

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Speaker 1: and listen to that episode before this one. In it,

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Speaker 1: we discussed the evolution of flightless birds and the rise

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Speaker 1: of the moa, nine species of large flightless birds that

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Speaker 1: evolved as the dominant vertebrates on the isolated islands of

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Speaker 1: what he's currently known as New Zealand. But the rule

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Speaker 1: of the moa did not last forever because Homo sapiens arrived,

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Speaker 1: and this episode will deal with the subsequent extinction of

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Speaker 1: the moa because you know what they say, more humans

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Speaker 1: moa problems. I wondered how you were going to work

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Speaker 1: that in, saying, you know, I had to get to

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Speaker 1: it eventually. Yeah, yeah, that's true for I'd say every

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Speaker 1: organism except us, right, except maybe like Hathogen's that that

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Speaker 1: prey upon us. Right, Yeah, it's certainly when we're dealing

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Speaker 1: with with megafauna um creatures of that nature, there's this

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Speaker 1: is a tale of doom whenever humans enter the equation,

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Speaker 1: and we'll we'll point out some other examples of that

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Speaker 1: as we'd move along. No, wait a minute, I'm thinking

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Speaker 1: of some more exceptions. We've got rats too. I mean

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Speaker 1: rats were great for them, and rats will come up. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so so yeah, a few exceptions there. But you don't

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Speaker 1: want to be a moa when humans show up. Right,

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Speaker 1: So the rule of the moa was lengthy. They evolved

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Speaker 1: into the into these dominant positions in New Zealand, but

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Speaker 1: as we discussed on the show before, it can be

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Speaker 1: precarious at the top, certainly for apex predators, but also

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Speaker 1: from massive dominant herbivores, especially when something changes. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: we also talked about this in our episode. I believe

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Speaker 1: it was on the Leviattan or the Leviathan genus of

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Speaker 1: like the the ancient predatory sperm whale. That's right, yes,

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Speaker 1: where it's easy to look at a creature like that,

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Speaker 1: or a creature like hosts eagle, which we discussed in

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Speaker 1: the last episode, to look at these creatures and think, well,

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Speaker 1: that's there's no taking that down. That's that's that's a

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Speaker 1: dominant organism. But it is, uh, you know, it is

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Speaker 1: the ruler. But it is it is it's thrown rest

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Speaker 1: upon a precarious pyramid of bones. Yeah, heavy lies the

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Speaker 1: crown exactly. So Yeah, when something changes, it can topple

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Speaker 1: everything over. And in the thirteenth century, see I've seen

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Speaker 1: twelve a d c. As a potential date, a major

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Speaker 1: change arrived on the shores of New Zealand. And that

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Speaker 1: change came in the form of Homo sapiens. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: long world changing wave of human migration had only made

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Speaker 1: its way to you know, near the bottom of the world,

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Speaker 1: to this nation of the birds, and this would have

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Speaker 1: been what would come to be known as the Mallory. Uh.

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Speaker 1: These were uh, these settlers were a Polynesian people who

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Speaker 1: arrived in several waves uh in what is now New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: This is one of the later regions of planet Earth

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Speaker 1: to be settled by humans. Absolutely like these were some

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Speaker 1: of the last in true pioneers heading into parts of

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Speaker 1: the world, not not only parts of the world that

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Speaker 1: they had not been to before, but where no human

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Speaker 1: had gone before. Um. You know, the European colonists and

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Speaker 1: explorers would only come in the wake of these true pioneers. Now,

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Speaker 1: Polynesian culture itself is endlessly fascinating, and I'd love to

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Speaker 1: come back and deal with some of the related topics

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Speaker 1: on the show, such as their amazing navigational abilities or

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Speaker 1: the use of aquaculture in in the Lion Islands. But

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Speaker 1: essentially we're talking about a long curving leg of human

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Speaker 1: expansion that extends from China through the Philippines, New Guinea,

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Speaker 1: the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Tahiti, uh Hawaii, Eastern Island, and

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Speaker 1: other islands in this broad stretch of the ocean. Again,

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Speaker 1: they were the Polynesians were the last true pioneers of

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Speaker 1: human expansion, and Polynesian expansion took place over the course

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Speaker 1: of thousands of years as well, and the culture evolved

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Speaker 1: along the way it takes on ends up taking on

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Speaker 1: different forms in the locations where they land, often due

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Speaker 1: to resulting isolation, uh, you know, because these are in

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Speaker 1: many cases very far flung islands and and and sometimes

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Speaker 1: we're talking about, you know, centuries and centuries between people

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Speaker 1: making it to one island versus another. So New Zealand

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Speaker 1: was discovered and colonized very late in human expansion, and

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Speaker 1: when the archaic Mallory arrived, they encountered the Moa Following

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Speaker 1: this encounter, the nine species of moa would scarcely last

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Speaker 1: more than another century, and they were extinct by fourteen five.

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Speaker 1: So let's get into what we're mainly going to discuss

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Speaker 1: in this episode. This this collision between Homo sapiens and moa,

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Speaker 1: And probably the best place to start there is by

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Speaker 1: talking about just the word moa. Where does it come from?

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Speaker 1: I was reading in Prodigious Birds, MOA's and Moa Hunting

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Speaker 1: in New Zealand by Athol Anderson, and the author shares

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Speaker 1: that the earliest recorded use of the word moa comes

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Speaker 1: via Cornish missionary William Colenso who in eighty eight heard

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Speaker 1: that some mallory described the moa as a large bird,

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Speaker 1: others as a large bird with a face like that

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Speaker 1: of a man, lived in a mountain cavern that was

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Speaker 1: guarded by two giant lizards. This in other tales described

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Speaker 1: the residents of Mount uh Taranaki or Mount Egmont's described

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Speaker 1: the very strange residents that live there, often taking the

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Speaker 1: form of abnormal birds or lizards, sometimes with human qualities.

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Speaker 1: And this really lines up with what we've talked about

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Speaker 1: on the show before about sacred mountains and holy mountains

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Speaker 1: and the various myths that people accumulate regarding the sorts

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Speaker 1: of things you would find there, in the sorts of

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Speaker 1: creatures that would populate those uh, those mysterious cliffs up there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are a couple of ways of looking at that.

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Speaker 1: In our episode on the Sacred Mountains, I guess we

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Speaker 1: did two of those episodes. I mean, one thing is

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Speaker 1: we talked about the idea that if you get really

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Speaker 1: really high up there, there's some evidence that people sometimes start,

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Speaker 1: you know, experiencing psychosis or hallucinations. Um, so, like that

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Speaker 1: could be a source of some supernatural beliefs in some cases.

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Speaker 1: But but I'd say probably the more prevalent issue is

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Speaker 1: just that the top of the mountain is inaccessible, so

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Speaker 1: it is naturally a place to put your mythical creatures

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Speaker 1: at home in You know that that is where they

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Speaker 1: hide absolutely now I know it. As some people were

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Speaker 1: probably wondering, here is eighty eight. That sounds kind of

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Speaker 1: late for the earliest recorded use of the word moa. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so how long would the species have been extinct before

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Speaker 1: the word appears in writing? Yeah? Yeah, it's uh, it

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Speaker 1: seems a little confusing at first, right, because first contact

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Speaker 1: between Europeans and Maori occurred December eighteen, sixteen forty two,

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Speaker 1: with Able Tasman's Dutch East India Company expedition. Now specifically,

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Speaker 1: Europeans had been asking the Mallory about other giant creatures

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Speaker 1: recorded in their traditions since the seventeen seventies. In the

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Speaker 1: near two centuries after, there was certainly communication and exchange

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Speaker 1: between Europeans and Mallory, in addition to, of course colonial subjucation.

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Speaker 1: Uh Anderson discusses this uh in his book, and it

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Speaker 1: points out that earlier references to the moa might either

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Speaker 1: have not been recognized or not associated with the term

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Speaker 1: moa self, so you know, descriptions of the animal might

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Speaker 1: not have been immediately tied with moa. For instance, there

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Speaker 1: were accounts of spirits covered in hair in the form

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Speaker 1: of birds, and there was talk of how a giant

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Speaker 1: kiwi lived in the mountains. Uh and will again remind

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Speaker 1: everyone that the kiwi and the moa are not actually

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Speaker 1: all that related. But this UH, this sort of discovery

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Speaker 1: would have stemmed from Earth, from general European interests in

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Speaker 1: the extent kiwi, so you know, they might have been

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Speaker 1: asking about the kiwi and they would have been heard

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Speaker 1: about myths of giant birds that are in some way

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Speaker 1: like a kiwi. That is interesting, Yeah, the idea that

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Speaker 1: the concept could persist over time, especially if you have

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Speaker 1: like something that's morphologically very similar but just like much

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Speaker 1: smaller to refer to. Right. And in all of this,

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Speaker 1: again we're just we're discussing like European knowledge all of

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Speaker 1: the Moa, which is ultimately tied to European knowledge edge

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Speaker 1: and understanding of the Mallory, which of course is is

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Speaker 1: a strained relationship, you know, to say the least, because

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Speaker 1: again you're talking about the the indigenous people, the Maori,

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Speaker 1: and you're talking about the the colonial power that then

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Speaker 1: arrives on their shore in the form of the Europeans.

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Speaker 1: Anderson also points out that a major factor might be

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Speaker 1: that the Mallory conceptionalize the moa as not being true

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Speaker 1: birds but is just being is being bird like, which

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Speaker 1: Nights had a little confusing. But then I think back

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Speaker 1: to just some of the weird things about the moa,

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Speaker 1: you know, like they had the thing that the fact

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Speaker 1: that they had no wings, not even vestigial wings. They

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Speaker 1: were just two limbed organisms. Um, you can see why

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Speaker 1: they might defy easy categorization. Likewise, they're just the size

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Speaker 1: of the larger species. Well, sure, I mean when we

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Speaker 1: use the term bird now, I think like you and

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Speaker 1: I are going to be referring to an evolutionary clade,

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Speaker 1: uh that is defined by evolutionary relationships. But if you're

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Speaker 1: just categorizing animals that you see in the world, what

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Speaker 1: are the bases on which you form your categories? Like

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Speaker 1: a bird might well be understood as something that flies.

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Speaker 1: So if there's something that, look, this is kind of

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Speaker 1: like a bird, and that it has a beak and

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Speaker 1: all that, but it doesn't fly, it doesn't meet your

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Speaker 1: necessary criteria for what makes something a bird exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so the bones of the moa were apparently not

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Speaker 1: described by the Mallory as bird bones, but they were

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Speaker 1: described as moa bones. So here's the here's a quote

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Speaker 1: from from Anderson on all of this quote, it is

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Speaker 1: very difficult to document this point, but the separation of

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Speaker 1: dangerous mythological moa from large birds used as food and

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Speaker 1: easily hunted to extinction in Pollock's description, and the lack

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Speaker 1: of any comparable prosaic tradition about MOA's in most of

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Speaker 1: the moa stories collected by missionaries seem suggestive. Certainly, it

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Speaker 1: was the very lack of an unequivocal association between the

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Speaker 1: term moa and any straightforward account of large birds hunted

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Speaker 1: and eaten by maories which formed the main flaw exploited

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Speaker 1: throughout the long debate about what, if anything malories had

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Speaker 1: known about the dinner riforms. Oh, and the dinner if

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Speaker 1: the forms that refers to the group to which the

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Speaker 1: moa belong, right, Yes, so, well, we'll ponder this dangerous

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Speaker 1: versus easy to drive to extinction question as we perceive,

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Speaker 1: because I'm not entirely convinced this species can't be both

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Speaker 1: of these things. You know, certainly when humans and the

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Speaker 1: humans in question have tools, tactics, and invasive species on

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Speaker 1: their side. Oh sure. I mean some of the most

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Speaker 1: dangerous creatures in a one on one context are also

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Speaker 1: some of the easiest to drive extinct. I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you just wanted to drive an animal extinct, what would

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Speaker 1: be like the easiest ones to do? Probably like large carnivores,

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Speaker 1: because there's already so few of them. Of course, the

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Speaker 1: moa were not carnivores like this, But yeah, of course,

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Speaker 1: like large animals generally being fewer in number because of

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Speaker 1: their energy requirements within the environment, would seem to be

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Speaker 1: easier to drive to extinction than if you were trying

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Speaker 1: to exterminate something that's very easy to kill like rats. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and again I think they the evidence seems to indicate

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Speaker 1: they would have been dangerous creatures because these were big animals.

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Speaker 1: Even the little bush moa was four and a half

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Speaker 1: feet tall. Now that's smaller than an adult southern castlewary,

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Speaker 1: which is generally five to six feet taller one and

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Speaker 1: a half to one point eight meters, But if you

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Speaker 1: see one, you would not mess with it, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: They're they're fierce creatures. So it seems like the larger

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Speaker 1: species of moa especially would certainly be in a position

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Speaker 1: to put the hurt on an aggressor and do so

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Speaker 1: in a way that's in keeping with what we see

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Speaker 1: in in extant rack eye species. But does that mean

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Speaker 1: they were a match for the humans that arrived on

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Speaker 1: their shores. No, because the archaic nowory were a very

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Speaker 1: skilled and advanced people. They arrived in waves from Hawaiki.

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Speaker 1: This is a mythical land that is usually identified as

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Speaker 1: to Hiti by historians. And they were of course skilled

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Speaker 1: sailors that arrived on wooden vessels capable of traversing great

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Speaker 1: distances at sea. For instance, the distance between Tahiti and

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Speaker 1: New Zealand is two thousand, nine hundred and fifty miles

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Speaker 1: or four thousand, seven hundred forty seven kilometers. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's a long way to go, even if you know

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Speaker 1: exactly where you're going. But here we're talking about like

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Speaker 1: the settlement of a new, previously unknown island, right, So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just I just really want to drive home. Like

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Speaker 1: the skilled nature of these Homo sapiens that arrived um,

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Speaker 1: and what's more, they brought with him both human cunning

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Speaker 1: and human tool use. They were masters of the club

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Speaker 1: and the spear especially. They also brought with them other animals,

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Speaker 1: including a breed of domesticated Polynesian dog known as the curry, which,

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Speaker 1: as with other Polynesian dogs, did not bark. But apparently

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Speaker 1: how they also brought with them, quite by accident, the kiori,

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Speaker 1: the an Asian rat um. Now, the curi is still

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Speaker 1: a pest species in New Zealand because, as we know,

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Speaker 1: once rats become established anywhere, they're very difficult to get

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Speaker 1: rid of. The curry dog, on the other hand, has

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Speaker 1: been extinct since the arrival of Europeans, and we'll talk

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Speaker 1: more about that species in a minute. And they also

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Speaker 1: brought with them um plants as well, such as the

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Speaker 1: sweet potato. Well way, does there any thinking that the

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Speaker 1: sweet potato could be involved in driving them OA extinct

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Speaker 1: or not? I have not read anything to suggest that,

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Speaker 1: but I mean that kind of that sort of thing

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Speaker 1: is certainly possible, right and generally speaking, when you have

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Speaker 1: humans from a distant land show up and introduce into

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Speaker 1: the ecosystem not only their destructive selves, but also invasive organisms,

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Speaker 1: uh there's you know, you're just really up ending the

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Speaker 1: croc pie. You know, you're really changing the chemistry of

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Speaker 1: the whole ecosystem around potentially. Oh yeah, well, actually, now

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Speaker 1: that I think about it, I could totally see how

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is the case here, but I

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Speaker 1: could totally see how something like this wheat potato could

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Speaker 1: drive a native species extinct. Because humans come, they bring

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Speaker 1: with them their crop staples. In order to plant those crops,

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Speaker 1: they have to, uh to establish agricultural zones that destroy

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Speaker 1: natural ecosystem. So yeah, I could see it. Again, not

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Speaker 1: saying we know that happened here right. All right, On

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Speaker 1: that note, let's take a quick break, and when we

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Speaker 1: come back, we will continue to discuss the collision between

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Speaker 1: Homo sapiens and the Mola. Thank alright, we're back. So

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Speaker 1: what do you need as fresh colonists in a world

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Speaker 1: like New Zealand. Well, let's see classic hierarchy of needs.

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Speaker 1: I'd say first you need you need fresh water, food,

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Speaker 1: and shelter probably right, Oh yeah, absolutely, Am I on

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Speaker 1: the right track here? Yes? Yes, another need that I

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Speaker 1: I didn't instantly think of. And part of this is

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Speaker 1: probably because I've never been to New Zealand myself, so

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Speaker 1: I don't have like the bodily experience of this. But

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Speaker 1: New Zealand can be quite cold, so you know you're

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Speaker 1: you're arriving in an new land, but also a land

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Speaker 1: where the temperature has dipped down a bit more. Uh

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Speaker 1: So the the archaic mallory. Uh they were fortunate and

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Speaker 1: they did bring within the couri dogs, which helps solve

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Speaker 1: some of these issues. Because the creatures had many utalitarian uses.

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Speaker 1: They could be eaten, their pelt could be made into clothing,

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Speaker 1: and other parts of its body could be used for

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Speaker 1: bits of clothing and tool use and so forth. But

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Speaker 1: beyond that, you know, when they started exploring this new world,

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Speaker 1: they very quickly would have discovered the moa, and the

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Speaker 1: moa would be just a gift of resources to these people.

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Speaker 1: Now here's a question that researchers and historians have have

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Speaker 1: pondered over the years. So what sort of moa population

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Speaker 1: did the archaic Mallory encounter. It's long been widely accepted that,

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Speaker 1: you know, the newly arrived humans at least played a

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Speaker 1: role in the extinction of the moa. But there there

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Speaker 1: there's been some disagreement in the past over to what extent.

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Speaker 1: For example, did the archaic Mallory encounter thriving populations of

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Speaker 1: moa across much of the islands, or did they encounter

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Speaker 1: dwindling populations of moa that were restricted to certain areas,

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Speaker 1: or did they find moa populations that were already in

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Speaker 1: severe decline. And of course, depending on the answer, it

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Speaker 1: paints a different picture of the extent of Maori moa

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Speaker 1: hunting and the impact of their arrival. You know, some

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Speaker 1: could argue that well, in perhaps climate change, volcanic eruptions,

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Speaker 1: and or disease had already impacted moa populations, and humans

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Speaker 1: were just the final straw. So the moa certainly went

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Speaker 1: extinct over the next century or so. You know, there's

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Speaker 1: no moa hiding in the wilds of New Zealand, sadly,

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Speaker 1: no matter what anybody might try and tell you. And

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Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteenth century the Europeans discovered evidence

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Speaker 1: of the great birds, consisting of charred skeletons, gizzard stones,

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Speaker 1: and eggshells. They certainly told the tale of their demise.

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Speaker 1: DNA evidence, however, does shine light on the question of

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Speaker 1: pre maori moa populations. As Rachel Newer wrote in The

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Speaker 1: New York Times back in quote Morton Eric Allentoft, the

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Speaker 1: researcher the University of Copenhagen and colleagues analyzed DNA from

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Speaker 1: two D one moas collected from museums and new excavations

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Speaker 1: and estimated the age of these specimens using radio carbon dating.

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Speaker 1: They found that in the millenniums before humans arrived in

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Speaker 1: New Zealand, the moa displayed none of the genetic bottlenecking

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Speaker 1: indicative of a declining population. So there's no genetic evidence

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Speaker 1: of any of a decline in the moa during the

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Speaker 1: five thousand years prior to their rapid extinction. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: via the human arrival. Okay, so what does that tell us? Well,

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Speaker 1: that leaves us with this version of the story. The

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Speaker 1: archaic Mallory arrived on the shores of a new land

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Speaker 1: where strange, often gigantic birds were roaming around, and through

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Speaker 1: the use of spears and snares and hunting dogs and

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Speaker 1: the human cunning, they were able to bring the birds

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Speaker 1: down and process their kills with the same sort of

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Speaker 1: efficiency we see, you know, with the curios. It's also

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Speaker 1: possible that the moa had no natural fear of humans

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Speaker 1: as well, which would have just made them even more

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Speaker 1: susceptible to this kind of harvesting. Well, yeah, i'd imagine

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Speaker 1: that's possible, especially without um, without large mammalian predators on

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Speaker 1: the island of New Zealand, like they're only real predator

386
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Speaker 1: would have been the hostile eagle, right, which they're adapted

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Speaker 1: to a landscape in which the only thing to worry

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Speaker 1: about comes down at you from above. Who knows what

389
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:32,200
Speaker 1: they would have done if, like, you know, a bipedal

390
00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:35,440
Speaker 1: hommaid walks up to them in a group. Yeah, exactly,

391
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Speaker 1: and and plus their extinction didn't just come via the

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Speaker 1: hunting of grown adult MOA's because they're they're large, eggs

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Speaker 1: were certainly sought after foods as well. We see that

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Speaker 1: from some of the you know, the evidence of you know,

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Speaker 1: they're finding egg shells and evidence of the eggs having

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Speaker 1: been consumed. And since the moa produced just one or

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Speaker 1: two eggs, the harvesting of their eggs would have further

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Speaker 1: spelled doom for nine species of moa. For example, the

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Speaker 1: I believe this is a co Cora egg, the largest

400
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Speaker 1: moa egg ever uncovered, would have weighed nine pounds when fresh. Wow.

401
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Speaker 1: To put that in perspective, an ostrich egg typically weighs

402
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Speaker 1: one point four kilograms or three point one pounds, which

403
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:22,800
Speaker 1: is more than twenty times the weight of a chicken egg.

404
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:27,040
Speaker 1: So we're talking about you know, two people, uh that

405
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Speaker 1: have arrived on these islands, you know, struggling for existence

406
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Speaker 1: like that. That's a huge bounty of resources in that egg.

407
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Speaker 1: Do you ever see anybody eat an ostrich egg? I

408
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 1: feel like I have before in the past, but I haven't.

409
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Speaker 1: It's not the kind of thing I've seen on a

410
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Speaker 1: menu recently. It did not come highly recommended to me.

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Speaker 1: Apparently in addition to being very large, it's gott a

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Speaker 1: it's got a tough shell, I guess as you might imagine.

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Speaker 1: You know, it can't just have like an egg shell

414
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Speaker 1: thick like a chicken egg shell thickness shell. Uh, that's

415
00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 1: a little bit difficult to get into. But then once

416
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Speaker 1: you do get into it, tremendous nutritional resources. Yeah, I

417
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Speaker 1: mean that that that's a one egg omelet for you. Yeah.

418
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Speaker 1: So basically the situation is the maori ended up hunting

419
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Speaker 1: and harvesting the moa faster than the moa could reproduce,

420
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:19,520
Speaker 1: and as the bounty of moa flesh and bone dwindled,

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Speaker 1: the moa hunting Maori diversified and came to depend on fishing,

422
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Speaker 1: fouling uh in the gathering of mollusks, etcetera. And this

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Speaker 1: led to the establishment of more permanent and semi permanent settlements.

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Speaker 1: So then it looks like it really was us. It

425
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:37,159
Speaker 1: was people that drove the moa extinct. Oh yes, I

426
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:40,680
Speaker 1: think at this point, especially with the genetic evidence, that's

427
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:44,080
Speaker 1: that's what without question. Now it is reported in why

428
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:48,159
Speaker 1: did New Zealand's moas Go Extinct? By Virginia Morrell Morton Allentoft,

429
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: who mentioned earlier evolutionary biologists of the University of Copenhagen,

430
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:56,360
Speaker 1: remarked that the idea may run counter to some ideas

431
00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:59,160
Speaker 1: that we tend to have about indigenous people. We often

432
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: think of them, uh, you know, living in equilibrium with nature.

433
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: But the Maori end up killing and eating the moa

434
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:10,359
Speaker 1: at every stage of the creature's life. So alan Toft

435
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: contends that this sort of harmony with nature that we

436
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 1: sometimes envisioned ultimately rarely exists within human beings, and that

437
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: any arriving humans would have extinguished the moa the same way.

438
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 1: And certainly we see other such extinctions, um, you know,

439
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:29,639
Speaker 1: including the distinctions of large flightless birds due to the

440
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: arrival of humans. So again, don't think less of the

441
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: Maori for the extinction of the moa. Uh. These great

442
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,679
Speaker 1: birds were always on a collision course with humans, and

443
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 1: if by some miracle the Polynesians had never found New Zealand,

444
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:46,640
Speaker 1: the Europeans would have eradicated the moa on their own.

445
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: So again, it's an old story. Humans arrive somewhere, mega

446
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: fauna is hunted into extinction. We see that with the mammoths.

447
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 1: We see that with cave bears, giant kangaroos, etcetera. Oh yeah,

448
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: I mean it seems like a ubiquitous picture of human

449
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:07,119
Speaker 1: development and geographical spread, like it is absolutely nothing unique

450
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 1: about whatever individual culture reached this megafaunt of first. Now,

451
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:14,199
Speaker 1: I think one of the really fascinating questions in all

452
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: of this is beyond the questions of like Europeans figuring

453
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:21,399
Speaker 1: out what the Mallory thought about the moa, is just

454
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: a question of like, what how does that impact a people?

455
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 1: You know, to to have come to this, to come

456
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 1: to New Zealand to be essentially become the Mallory. And

457
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:32,440
Speaker 1: in the process of becoming the Mallory, you go through

458
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 1: this period of moa hunting Mallory in which you have

459
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:39,040
Speaker 1: this you know, this bounty of these these creatures too

460
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 1: to to hunt and feed on, and then they're gone.

461
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 1: Then you have to diversify and change the way you live,

462
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:48,680
Speaker 1: Like what is the memory of that like in a people.

463
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:53,200
Speaker 1: I found a fascinating article about this published on the Conversation.

464
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:59,880
Speaker 1: It's by conservation biologist Priscilla Way, University of what Kat

465
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:05,399
Speaker 1: Associate Professor him A Wanga and Professor of computational biology

466
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: Murray Cox. It was published in two thousand and eighteen

467
00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:12,200
Speaker 1: in its title Dead as the Moa oral traditions show

468
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:17,159
Speaker 1: that early Maori recognized extinction interesting. So the team of

469
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:21,880
Speaker 1: researchers here, which includes a conservation biologist, a linguist, bioinformationist,

470
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 1: and experts in Maori culture, they stressed that tracing the

471
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:30,359
Speaker 1: centuries old extinctions is difficult, but that through the collaborative

472
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:36,479
Speaker 1: analysis of ancestral sayings traditional ancestral sayings in Maori culture,

473
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 1: they found that early Maori certainly paid attention to the

474
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:42,520
Speaker 1: state of flora and fauna in their environment, and that

475
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: they recognized the extinction of the moa. But despite knowing

476
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,959
Speaker 1: roughly when and who you know regarding the more extinction,

477
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: we don't really know a lot about how the Maori

478
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: felt about and how they processed this event, which again

479
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:57,960
Speaker 1: would have been a major event in their lives. This

480
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,880
Speaker 1: was the destruction of an important food source as well

481
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:03,960
Speaker 1: as a source of various tools and parts. Uh. Some

482
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: of this remains in the Maori oral traditions, specifically in

483
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:12,640
Speaker 1: these various ancestral sayings. So the researchers here they point

484
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 1: out that of these ancestral sayings. Uh, the ones that

485
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 1: refer to birds anyway, A disproportionate number of them refer

486
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: to the Moa, to their appearance, to their into their nature,

487
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: and their uses to humans. All right, so what would

488
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:30,800
Speaker 1: these things go like in translation? Well, yeah, I'm just

489
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 1: gonna share the translations. So they do. They include the

490
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: original Maori versions in this article, so encourage anyone to

491
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: it's interested to check that out. But like, one of

492
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: them is lost as the Moa was lost. So that's

493
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: kind of like an expression like dead as a doornail,

494
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: like yeah, or hidden as the Moa hit. And then

495
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 1: here's another one. The people will disappear like the Moa.

496
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: And this this one's really haunting because they point out

497
00:28:56,880 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 1: that as the Europeans arrived, the Maori compared their plight

498
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:04,719
Speaker 1: to that of the Moa. Wow. So here's a quote

499
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 1: Maori recalled the Moa after Europeans arrived, too malory. We're

500
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: suffering badly from diseases and deprivation. In the late eighteen hundreds,

501
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: it was as though the Maori world was being felled

502
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 1: along with the forests. There was a very real fear

503
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: among both Maori and Europeans that Maori people and culture

504
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: would also disappear, just like the moa wow, that is haunting. Yeah,

505
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about these expressions. I was trying to

506
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 1: think of a point of comparison. Of course, one is

507
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 1: uh is like gone the way of the dinosaurs uh,

508
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: an expression in English. Though, of course, our knowledge of

509
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: where the dinosaurs went does not come from cultural memory.

510
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 1: It comes from like something we learned through science. I

511
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 1: guess you could maybe say gone the way of the dodos.

512
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: Some people say that that. Yeah, though I guess when

513
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: people say that, they tendn't they tend not to do

514
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: it with any accepted role in the in the extinction,

515
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 1: you know, Like I feel like that's one of the

516
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 1: aspects here worth pondering is that, you know, the Mallory

517
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 1: would have have realized that their ancestors played this role

518
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: in the extinction. Now that's not to say that, you know,

519
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:17,440
Speaker 1: did it on purpose. Obviously, there's a there's a huge

520
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: difference between you know, say, setting out to cause an

521
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: extinction and I don't. You know, obviously they wouldn't want

522
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:24,959
Speaker 1: to have to have done that, because these creatures were

523
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: a source of of of of vast resources to them.

524
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: But you know, they were you know, ultimately it was

525
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 1: it was not something that were capable of exerting control over,

526
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like it's it's really has always

527
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: been a human struggle to figure out to what extent

528
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: we can exploit the natural world without damaging it beyond control.

529
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 1: And clearly like that is something that is still a

530
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:55,520
Speaker 1: major stumbling block to human beings. We still mishandle that

531
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 1: same equation on a on a daily basis. All Right,

532
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 1: we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back,

533
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to move beyond the extinction of

534
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: the moa and ponder the question, well, could we bring

535
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: the moa back? Than alright, we're back a dinosaur story?

536
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 1: Is that a movie? We're back a dinosaur story? You

537
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: don't know that movie? I don't know that. I do.

538
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: Oh man, I think I rented that when I was

539
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: a kid. Let's see when did that come out? Based

540
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 1: seven book? Oh yeah, I rented that one when I

541
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: was a kid. That was that was a Turtles video

542
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: find that I brought home, avenge that from the from

543
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 1: the bone heap, and I don't think it was good.

544
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a child.

545
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 1: It does not seem like one of the animated dinosaur

546
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: movies that would hold up best. I don't know. I'm

547
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: looking it up. And this voicecast. You got John Goodman,

548
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: you got Jay Leno, Walter Cronkite. I think Walter Cronkite

549
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: plays like a mad scientist who brings dinosaurs through a

550
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: time portal or something and puts him into New York

551
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 1: in the in the nineties. And Julia Child is in

552
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: this really yeah, does she play one of the dinosaurs. No, sadly,

553
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: she plays a worker at the Museum of Natural History. Okay, well,

554
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,480
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe that would be uh interesting to

555
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: go back and excavate at some point. But it looks great.

556
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: It has four directors, a mark of quality. Okay, so

557
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,760
Speaker 1: we're talking about the possible resurrection of the moa. Now,

558
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: there was a pretty good article I was reading about

559
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: this on stat by the science writer Sharon Begley from

560
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 1: February seven, uh and concerned the possible d extinction of

561
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 1: one species of moa. Of course, if you're not familiar

562
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 1: with the concept of d extinction, it has come up

563
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:47,600
Speaker 1: on the show before, but you can probably figure it

564
00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: out from the name, right It's also known as a

565
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:53,239
Speaker 1: resurrection biology. It refers to the process of bringing an

566
00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: extinct species back to life. The pop culture example that

567
00:32:56,680 --> 00:33:00,120
Speaker 1: everybody knows is Jurassic Park. Now, what did they do

568
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:04,440
Speaker 1: In Jurassic Park? They found ancient deposits of amber or

569
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 1: fossilized tree sap in which dinosaur era mosquitoes had been

570
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: trapped when the sap was still soft, and then the

571
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: sap hardened over time and then fossilized in the ground.

572
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,360
Speaker 1: Presumably the the mosquitoes in the sap were trapped with

573
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: their bellies full of dinosaur blood that they had just

574
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: feasted on. And so the scientists in the book, in

575
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:28,479
Speaker 1: the movie Jurassic Park, they extract the preserved dinosaur blood,

576
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 1: they sequence it out, they get mr DNA from the

577
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: from the insect bellies, and then they used that blood

578
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: and the DNA sequenced from it to clone dinosaurs. It was,

579
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: of course, I would say, a very ingenious plot device,

580
00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: but unfortunately it looks like it probably would not work

581
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: in reality. What if? What if? The reason it didn't work, though,

582
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: was that it turns out the mosquitoes had not consumed

583
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:54,760
Speaker 1: the blood of dinosaurs, but he consumed the blood of

584
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 1: the Time Travelers from Ray Bradberry Sound of thunder Man.

585
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 1: What what were the chances that would be a very

586
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 1: good closed time travel loop? What? What do you like

587
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: better the time travel movies where you go back and

588
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: actually change the past, or the ones where you go

589
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 1: back and it proves to be a closed loop where

590
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:18,279
Speaker 1: you just cause whatever present already happened. Oh, you have

591
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:20,279
Speaker 1: to go back and forth between the two. You know.

592
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the only way it really works.

593
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:26,320
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it's the sour in the suite

594
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 1: with your time travel. But let's bring things back to

595
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park. Why didn't it work? Okay, so basically there

596
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: are several reasons, but they all come down to time. Now.

597
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 1: One of the reasons is not in fact that you

598
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: couldn't discover a mosquito with prehistoric blood and it's guts

599
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: that uh. But believe it or not, paleontologists actually have

600
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 1: discovered preserved insects full of the remains of not not intact,

601
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: but the remains of prehistoric blood in fossil beds. Uh.

602
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 1: And this is a slight tangent. But I didn't already

603
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:00,320
Speaker 1: know this, and I was amazed by what I was

604
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:03,839
Speaker 1: reading here, so there's one prominent example I could find.

605
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:05,880
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is still the only major

606
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 1: example known today, but it was described in a research

607
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 1: article published in P and A s in called hemoglobin

608
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 1: derived porphyrins preserved in a Middle Eocene blood engorged mosquito,

609
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: and it was by Daily Greenwall to Julia S. Garreva,

610
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: Sandra M. Celia Strom, tim Rose, and Ralph E. Harback,

611
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 1: and the discovery was also written up by Ed Young

612
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: in a short news item for the journal Nature on

613
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: October four. So the researchers here were examining a total

614
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:41,439
Speaker 1: of thirty six mosquito specimens from a shale deposit known

615
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: as the Coal Creek member of the kischen In formation

616
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:49,879
Speaker 1: in northwestern Montana, and the layer from which they were

617
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: recovered is estimated to be about forty six million years old.

618
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:58,240
Speaker 1: So this collection of fossilized mosquitoes included two previously unknown

619
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: species of the genus Lisda. One was cool Assada kischen

620
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 1: in and one was cool Asda lemniscata. But one of

621
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: the mosquitoes from this boniard was truly special and you

622
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 1: can look up images if you want on the Internet.

623
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: In the words of the researchers, the image of this

624
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: specimen was quote obviously that of a female blood engorged

625
00:36:21,239 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: mosquito with non plumos antennae and a very dark red

626
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 1: black distended abdomen compared with the non hematophagus male. Uh

627
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: so there's a new word for your vampire fiction. By

628
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:37,720
Speaker 1: the way, him at aphagus means eats blood or drinks blood.

629
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: Non hematophagus would mean does not drink blood like the

630
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 1: male mosquitoes. The male mosquito doesn't drink blood. Obviously, if

631
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,719
Speaker 1: your gut is busting with blood like this, uh, this

632
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: female mosquito here, you are him atophagus. But but ed

633
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:54,719
Speaker 1: Young writes in his summary that prior to this discovery,

634
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 1: paleontologists had found fossils of blood sucking insects, but we

635
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: always had to yes what these insects were feeding on

636
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:05,960
Speaker 1: through kind of indirect cues, like preserved evidence of blood

637
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 1: borne parasites contained in their digestive systems. This fossil find

638
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:14,960
Speaker 1: was totally different because it contained direct molecular evidence of

639
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:18,800
Speaker 1: blood feeding within the insects gut, specifically lots of iron

640
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 1: and organic compounds called porphyrans, which are constituents of hemoglobin,

641
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 1: that's the protein responsible for transporting oxygen and blood uh.

642
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 1: And the find was also extremely unlikely. In the words

643
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: of the lead author, Dale Greenwalt quote, the abdomen of

644
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 1: a blood engorged mosquito is like a balloon ready to burst.

645
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: It is very fragile. The chances that it wouldn't have

646
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 1: disintegrated prior to fossilization were infinitesimally small. And it's amazing

647
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:50,799
Speaker 1: because that's on top of the already minuscule chances of

648
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: any animal being fossilized in the first place. I mean, remember,

649
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 1: the fossil lottery has few winners. Almost all organisms that

650
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: ever live just decom hose and disappear without leaving a trace.

651
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, there are a couple of reasons you cannot

652
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:08,840
Speaker 1: use this mosquito or a mosquito like it to extract

653
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 1: dino d NA DINO. Both of these reasons have to

654
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 1: do with time. So the first is that the fossil

655
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,480
Speaker 1: mosquito is only forty six million years old. So the

656
00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:23,399
Speaker 1: last of the non avian dinosaurs we know died out

657
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: in the KPg extinction that was about sixty six million

658
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: years ago. This Mosquito would have been from the Middle

659
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: EO scene. So if it were possible to clone anything

660
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: based on what was in the mosquitoes guts, it would

661
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 1: have to be something that lived in North America around

662
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: that period. And I was like, well, hell, I'll look

663
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 1: up a candidate, and I found a pretty cool one

664
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: that the coolest candidate I could come up with was

665
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:51,359
Speaker 1: named Miss Sonics, whose name means middle claw, and who

666
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:56,040
Speaker 1: was part of a now extinct larger group of carnivorous ungulates.

667
00:38:56,400 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: Carnivorous ungulates. Remember the unguluts are the hoof to mammals. Uh.

668
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 1: So examples would be dear you know, bo vines, uh, horses,

669
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: but these, of course are carnivorous. You can't think of

670
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: on gill. It's like that today there were once predatory

671
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: carnivorous hoofed mammals roaming the continents. Uh. You know, trying

672
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 1: to think of a donkey that could eat you. Yeah.

673
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:24,279
Speaker 1: And this is a really cool and to look up

674
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:27,799
Speaker 1: paleo art for because it seems like it's just a

675
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: very hard creature to try and envision in your head.

676
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the illustrations end up just

677
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 1: looking like this weird kind of like long snouted, almost

678
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:41,239
Speaker 1: almost like a cross between a rodent and a lion. Uh.

679
00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 1: It's you get a really really weird sense of category

680
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 1: confusion when you look at these images. I mean a

681
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:49,560
Speaker 1: lot of uh descriptions say it would have been in

682
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: some ways superficially like a wolf, but of course it

683
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: was not of the order of the dogs. It was

684
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:57,839
Speaker 1: not like a big cat. It's not like a wolf.

685
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:00,920
Speaker 1: It's not any of that In terms of evolution airy relationships.

686
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 1: It's more like a deer or a cow or a

687
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: horse or something. But it is a carnivore that would

688
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 1: you know, might bite your leg off. So anyway, I'm

689
00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 1: all for cloning a ton of those if we could,

690
00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:15,319
Speaker 1: But again I want to stress that, uh, there was

691
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:19,320
Speaker 1: not clonable material within that mosquito's abdomen, and in fact,

692
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:22,640
Speaker 1: based on what we know, there couldn't be because the

693
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 1: other reason you couldn't clone dinosaurs from the gut contents

694
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: of any mosquito is that DNA is extremely fragile. It

695
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 1: breaks down very quickly and starts breaking down within hours

696
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: of the death of an organism. After forty six million years,

697
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 1: DNA would degrade to the point where a genome can

698
00:40:39,960 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: no longer be recovered all the more at anything older

699
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 1: than sixty six million years, so you can't get to

700
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:48,799
Speaker 1: a dinosaur. Uh So, then you might wonder, well, how

701
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: long can DNA last in in preserved animal remains? What's

702
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 1: the farthest back that we could go to sequence the

703
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:59,399
Speaker 1: genome of an extinct creature, extract all that information, and

704
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,879
Speaker 1: then maybe even clone it back to life if possible. Well,

705
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:05,760
Speaker 1: the MOA has a part to play in the answer

706
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: to this question. I found this out by total serendipity.

707
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:10,839
Speaker 1: I didn't even know this when I started looking into

708
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:14,839
Speaker 1: this subject. Uh So, to determine the period within which

709
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:18,440
Speaker 1: you could reasonably expect to extract usable DNA from a sample,

710
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: you need to know the rate of molecular decay for

711
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:25,840
Speaker 1: DNA as a molecule. And there was a study inve

712
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 1: that looked into this question. It was by our friend

713
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 1: Morton E. Allentoft that you mentioned earlier, but also by

714
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:38,600
Speaker 1: Matthew Collins, David Harker, James Highly, Charlotte L. Oscome, Marie L. Hale,

715
00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 1: Paula F. Campos uh oh, and apparently add others. I

716
00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 1: guess it had a lot of authors. Sorry, but it

717
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 1: was called the Half Life of DNA and Bone Measuring

718
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 1: Decay Kinetics in a hundred and fifty eight dated Fossils

719
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 1: published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society b So.

720
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: The authors here examined mitochondrial DNA from a hundred and

721
00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 1: fifty eight radio carbon dated bones of the extinct New

722
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:05,280
Speaker 1: Zealand MOA, all from between six hundred and eight thousand

723
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 1: years ago, and all preserved in roughly equivalent environmental conditions.

724
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:12,120
Speaker 1: And that's very important because it gives us a point

725
00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:15,240
Speaker 1: of reference. If like the conditions under which the bones

726
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:18,320
Speaker 1: are preserved or roughly the same, then you can start

727
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: to get a good idea between them what the average

728
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: rate of decay is. It's not going to vary as

729
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:27,840
Speaker 1: much due to differing environmental factors. Um so, they estimated

730
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: from this sample that the average half life of DNA

731
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 1: was about five hundred and twenty one years. So you

732
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:37,280
Speaker 1: start with an original sample of DNA and a bone,

733
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,480
Speaker 1: and after five twenty one years half of it's gone.

734
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:43,760
Speaker 1: Then after another five hundred and twenty one years, half

735
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 1: of what remains is broken down, So now you're down

736
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: to a quarter of the original concentration. So the the

737
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: decay adds up fast. Now, of course, the decay rate

738
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 1: of DNA will not be the same in all cases.

739
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:59,480
Speaker 1: It's going to depend on factors about in what conditions

740
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 1: it's preserved. But even in ideal conditions, there does appear

741
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: to be a ceiling on how long DNA lasts, or

742
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: or how long you could expect to get any usable

743
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:13,440
Speaker 1: information out of it. Under the absolute best conditions. This

744
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 1: means basically every molecular bond between the nucleotides of the

745
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 1: DNA would be broken down after about six point eight

746
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:24,280
Speaker 1: million years, but long before that, even if some bonds

747
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:27,440
Speaker 1: are still intact, the DNA would be so broken up

748
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 1: that would be unreadable. The maximum recoverability threshold for meaningful

749
00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:35,840
Speaker 1: genetic information might be something like one point five million

750
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: years or so. So it seems to have been the

751
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: scientific consensus for for several years now that DNA is

752
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 1: way too short lived for us to ever clone dinosaurs.

753
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:48,160
Speaker 1: Except I did come across a really recent study just

754
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:53,400
Speaker 1: from this month March. Uh. Now, it doesn't disprove that this,

755
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:57,759
Speaker 1: but it is a still controversial reported finding that would

756
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:00,880
Speaker 1: seem to challenge this if it's correct. So it was

757
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: published in National Science Review in March by Alita im

758
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:09,799
Speaker 1: Baliol at All and uh so the the author's right

759
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: here quote a histological ground section from a duck build

760
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: dinosaur nestling in the species is uh. Hippacrosaurus Stebben Jerry

761
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:26,719
Speaker 1: revealed micro structures morphologically consistent with nuclei and chromosomes in

762
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:32,480
Speaker 1: cells within calcified cartilage. We hypothesize that this exceptional cellular

763
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:37,920
Speaker 1: preservation extended to the molecular level and had molecular features

764
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:41,759
Speaker 1: in common with extant avian cartilage. So this is a

765
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:45,200
Speaker 1: duck build dinosaur. It's another Montana special discovered in the

766
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:47,919
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. It would have been a nest of young

767
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:51,479
Speaker 1: duck build herbivores that all died sometime around seventy five

768
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 1: million years ago, and the paleontologists here were examining skull

769
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,279
Speaker 1: shards from these juveniles, and the shards would have been

770
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 1: made out of car ritilage rather than out of bone.

771
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:06,360
Speaker 1: But when examining these cartilage skull shards are the remains

772
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:10,920
Speaker 1: of them. Uh. The researchers believe that they discovered signs

773
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: of intact cell nuclei and DNA within these fragments, but

774
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:18,400
Speaker 1: then again, I want to say a lot of paleontologists

775
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 1: are skeptical about this supposed find. Of course, there's the

776
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 1: theoretical limitation on how long DNA would last, or at

777
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: least is believed to last on a molecular basis. But

778
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 1: I was also reading a piece by a University of

779
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:36,080
Speaker 1: Bristol vertebrate paleontologists named Michael Benton, who thinks it's more

780
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 1: likely that if there is any actual DNA in this sample,

781
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: it came from recent external contamination, not from a dinosaur.

782
00:45:44,040 --> 00:45:45,400
Speaker 1: So I guess we'll have to wait and see what

783
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:49,120
Speaker 1: happens there with follow up research. But I don't know.

784
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: That's interesting and he gives us some hope, right, But

785
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:55,120
Speaker 1: I've got to bring it back to the MOA. So,

786
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:57,919
Speaker 1: whatever the truth about DNA from millions of years ago,

787
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: as unlikely as that seems, the MOA has existed much

788
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:04,640
Speaker 1: more recently, and for that reason, the idea of recovering

789
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 1: the genome of the MOA and bringing a species of

790
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: MOA back from extinction is much more plausible by orders

791
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: of magnitude. So back to that Sharon Begley article from

792
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 1: She writes about how there's a team of researchers based

793
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 1: out of Harvard University that were able to assemble an

794
00:46:21,600 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: almost complete genome for our old friend we mentioned in

795
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: the last episode, and I think earlier in this one,

796
00:46:27,719 --> 00:46:31,319
Speaker 1: the little bush moa or a nomal opterics did aform us.

797
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: So these again would not be the biggest ones. These

798
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:37,439
Speaker 1: are not the towering moa. These would be the smaller variety.

799
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:39,279
Speaker 1: But I would not be surprised if they could still

800
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: kick your throat out. You know, they probably were some

801
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 1: tough little customers. As we were talking about earlier, the

802
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: little bush moa when extinct in the thirteenth century. Now,

803
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: this work was dependent on DNA extracted from the tow

804
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:54,239
Speaker 1: bone of a moa that was housed in the Royal

805
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:57,319
Speaker 1: Ontario Museum in Toronto. And this kind of reconstruction is

806
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: not easy at all because, well, you can extra act

807
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:04,719
Speaker 1: a lot of genetic information the physical genome that, like

808
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 1: the chromosomes, are often kind of shattered, so you have

809
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,319
Speaker 1: to figure out how all the pieces of information that

810
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 1: you've extracted fit together into a broader chromosomal structure. And

811
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: as with other assemblies of this kind, the researchers here

812
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:20,800
Speaker 1: looked into the genomes of living relatives for clues, basing

813
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 1: the reconstruction of the pieces on the reference template of

814
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:27,120
Speaker 1: an EMU, kind of like how mammoth reconstruction would be

815
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: based on the genome of of living elephants and things

816
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: like that. Now, at the time of Begley's article, there

817
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 1: were several experts in the field who praised the work.

818
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:38,839
Speaker 1: Morton Allan Toft, who we were talking about several times, Uh,

819
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: he called it a significant step forward. Also, the evolutionary

820
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 1: molecular biologist Beth Shapiro of You See Santa Cruz praised

821
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:49,240
Speaker 1: the research. There was one concerning feature. So this paper

822
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 1: in ten was published on bio archive, which is a

823
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:56,840
Speaker 1: non peer reviewed preprint server. It's so it's like, nothing

824
00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: wrong with something going up on there. It's a place

825
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 1: to post research for public access and review before it

826
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:04,960
Speaker 1: gets published in a journal. But I was unable to

827
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 1: find evidence of this paper appearing in an actual journal

828
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 1: since then, So I'm not sure what that means. Uh,

829
00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:13,360
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't mean anything, or maybe it means something

830
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:16,240
Speaker 1: about this genome assembly didn't hold up to scrutiny. I guess.

831
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: I guess we'll have to wait and see. But either way,

832
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:22,560
Speaker 1: the recent disappearance of the moa I think absolutely makes

833
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:26,000
Speaker 1: them a potential candidate for de extinction, and this research

834
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:28,880
Speaker 1: helps move things in that direction. Now. Of course, just

835
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: because we could doesn't necessarily mean that we should. I

836
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:33,520
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if I have a

837
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:36,879
Speaker 1: position on the ethics of de extinction overall. But uh,

838
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 1: obviously that's a question that should be considered before we

839
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 1: bring these things back and just set them loose at

840
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: Disney World. But what an attraction that would be at

841
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 1: disney World, Right, you go up to the Mickey, you

842
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: get your picture taken with the Mickey, then you go

843
00:48:48,560 --> 00:48:50,759
Speaker 1: up to the moa, you try to get your picture taken.

844
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:55,279
Speaker 1: You see if it cooperates danger Sure, but it's like

845
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: what if what if Jonald Duck could kick what if

846
00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 1: you had them my decloto? Yeah, I mean there's so

847
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:07,319
Speaker 1: many factors to consider and potentially reintroducing a creature like this,

848
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:11,719
Speaker 1: you know, even if it's feasible to to bring them back,

849
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: because again, you're you're to a certain extent doing what

850
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:18,800
Speaker 1: all these different waves of interference have done in the past.

851
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:21,560
Speaker 1: You're taking the environment and you're shaking it up again.

852
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:24,200
Speaker 1: You're you're adding something to it, even if it's something

853
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:27,839
Speaker 1: that used to be there in some form. Um, it's uh,

854
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: it's a difficult equation. And then I imagine also there's

855
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:33,399
Speaker 1: the argument of is this the best use of our

856
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:36,400
Speaker 1: our energy towards you should we instead be focusing on

857
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 1: creatures that are still with us, that can be um,

858
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: that can be saved, or creatures that are saying extinct

859
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 1: in the wild but can still be reintroduced. I mean

860
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: a lot of those are are you know, entirely separate

861
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:48,840
Speaker 1: battles so that you know that that you know certainly

862
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:52,680
Speaker 1: involved genetics. But um, yeah, it's it's it's it's a

863
00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:55,319
Speaker 1: complex situation. It's not just a matter of, oh, well

864
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:57,960
Speaker 1: we can bring it back, let's do it. Moa is everywhere.

865
00:49:58,239 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, if we were going to make a

866
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: hark with de extinctive animals, maybe maybe extinct giant birds

867
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 1: rather than dinosaurs. Since you can't do the non avian dinosaurs,

868
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 1: why not terror birds in MOA's Without a doubt, I would.

869
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 1: I would love to see one of these creatures in

870
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: real life. They just sound amazing. It's you know, to

871
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 1: see these these two legged organisms handling about, Uh, muntioned

872
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:31,680
Speaker 1: on twigs and branches. Uh, it would be beautiful, provided

873
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:34,520
Speaker 1: you know, there was there was the space for it. Um.

874
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:35,919
Speaker 1: So I don't know it would be interested to see

875
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:37,759
Speaker 1: what happens with this. I know it's been It's been

876
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: brought up before sometimes I think by politicians even um,

877
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:45,280
Speaker 1: and it's been kind of controversial. There's a New Zealand

878
00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 1: politician who for some reason has been very in favor

879
00:50:48,640 --> 00:50:52,279
Speaker 1: of bringing back the moa. I'm not sure why, by

880
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: the way, I just looked it up. Unfortunately, the terror

881
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: birds appeared to be just out of range given the

882
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:01,200
Speaker 1: figures we were citing early I think they went extinct

883
00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 1: probably around one point eight million years ago. Uh. Well,

884
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: there you go, the mo moas it is then MOA's

885
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:13,840
Speaker 1: elephant bird's anything else you know within within reach that

886
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:15,520
Speaker 1: would have to Those would have to be the main

887
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:18,280
Speaker 1: attractions at our park. Give me a host eagle baby,

888
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for for sure. All right, So there you

889
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:25,279
Speaker 1: have it are two part look at the Moa, The

890
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: Rise of the Moa, the Twilight of the Moa. I

891
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:32,760
Speaker 1: found this to be just a really engrossing, uh project

892
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: to work on because it ends up, you know, dealing

893
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:38,319
Speaker 1: with so many things you're dealing with, uh, with biology,

894
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 1: evolution of organisms, You're dealing with the history of human migration, UH,

895
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:48,839
Speaker 1: colonial disruption, and then the possibility of of bringing an

896
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:52,759
Speaker 1: extinct creature back to life through genetic science. Uh. It

897
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 1: really has everything spared no expense. Yeah, all right, So

898
00:51:57,520 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 1: obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there. I

899
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: also know that we have you know, we have plenty

900
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:05,080
Speaker 1: of listeners who live in New Zealand and who have

901
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:07,720
Speaker 1: traveled to New Zealand or have some sort of roots

902
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:10,719
Speaker 1: or connection to New Zealand. We would love to hear

903
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,320
Speaker 1: from you about this topic. What are your thoughts about

904
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: the moa uh and what you have to add to

905
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:19,640
Speaker 1: our discussion here. What are your thoughts about being called Kiwi's?

906
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:22,040
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I would. I would love to hear

907
00:52:22,080 --> 00:52:25,439
Speaker 1: from actual uh New Zealand residents on the matter. Would

908
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 1: they rather be called MOA's Mm hmm, Sorry, I mean

909
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:36,080
Speaker 1: both of the names of birds, so I don't know.

910
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

911
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,239
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where

912
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:43,440
Speaker 1: to find them. Wherever you get your podcasts and wherever

913
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:47,959
Speaker 1: that happens to be make sure you rate, review, and subscribe. Hue.

914
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson,

915
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:54,319
Speaker 1: who's doing a heroic job of helping us cope with

916
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:57,479
Speaker 1: recording from home, so so big shout out to Seth.

917
00:52:58,200 --> 00:52:59,719
Speaker 1: If you'd like to get in touch with us with

918
00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:02,640
Speaker 1: back on this episode or any other, to suggest a

919
00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hi, you can

920
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 1: email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind

921
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of

922
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:20,560
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923
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