WEBVTT - Goats, Rams and Conflict at Earth’s Edge, with Joel Berger 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:15.040 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.680 My name is Robert Lamb. Like co host Joe, is 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:21.840 still out on parental leave, so today I'd like to 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:26.040 present a brand new interview episode. Today's guest is Dr 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:30.400 Joel Berger. He's a senior scientist for the Wildlife Conservation 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:34.000 Society as well as a professor at Colorado State University. 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.920 He has decades of experience exploring biological diversity around the 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.800 world and his author of several books, including Extreme Conservation, 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:46.559 Life at the Edges of the World from Most recently, 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:49.720 he was an author on the paper Species Conflict at 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:55.640 Earth's Edges Contests, Climate and Coveted Resources, published last month 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.080 in the journal Frontiers and Ecology and Evolution. So we'll 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.240 be discussing that's study its findings, as well as some 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:07.120 broader issues in bio diversity and conservation. So without further ado, 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:11.880 let's jump right in. Hi, Joel, Welcome to the show. 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:14.440 Rob great to be here, Thanks for inviting me in. 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.840 You bet so. For listeners who are not familiar with 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:21.680 you or your work, how did you initially become interested 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:24.920 in conservation biology and where has your work taken you 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.520 over the decades. So I grew up in l A. 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:30.720 And that would not be Louisiana, was the l A 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.120 on the west coast, and a lot of people, a 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.360 lot of chaos, and I found some respite out in 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.320 the deserts, in the mountains hundred miles two hundred miles out. 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:47.200 So gradually, growing up, I spent more time away from people, um, 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:51.680 and that always felt somewhat invigorating. UM. And since then 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:56.160 I've spent um what I like to call different edges 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.840 of the planet. And so that would be the highest 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.040 latitudes where and hit sea up in the Arctic, the 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.080 lowest of latitudes, which is down in the Patagonia ice 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:11.000 fields where we drop almost to the well basically to Antarctic. 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:16.080 But I'm on land in South America. And then what's 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.880 called the third pole south north south. And then what's 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.320 referred to as the third pole would be the mountains 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:27.480 of Central Asia which rise to twenty nine thousand some feet. 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.960 So why are extreme environment so crucial to these studies, 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:35.280 especially so far as the impact of climate change is concerned. 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:40.040 So we know that Earth's atmosphere is warming, and certainly 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:43.320 at the edges of the planet is warming anywhere from 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.840 two to five times faster than it is at the 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.840 mid section. And so when we think across the realm 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:53.080 of environments, if we want to gain some insights into 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:58.760 what's going on most rapidly, it is these extreme edge environments. 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.280 And I tend to focus on the unsunk species mostly 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:07.880 that occur in these places. Not species like elephants or rhinos, 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.600 or lions or tigers or even whales, but species that 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.320 don't have much advocacy for them. Now, I know that 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.280 the list of organisms that you've you've studied over the 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:19.680 years is pretty pretty long. What are some examples of 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.880 some of these these creatures? So some of the ones 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.679 that might be slightly better known, So I go from 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.560 slightly better known to those that are lesser known. Um 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.640 So muskoks would be one, and they're um up in 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:37.040 the Arctic, and they're they used to roam with wooly mammoth. 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:41.280 Wooly mammoths didn't survive. Muskoks have long hair that drape 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:46.000 to essentially to their feet and helps to sustain them 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.640 throughout these long winters. So muskoks would be one from 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.440 the very north um over in the Himalayan realm. You 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.800 have a species called talking which are Bhutan's national mammal. 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.400 They go up to seventeen thousand feet. They have the 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.880 the remarkable distinction of being preyed on by tigers at 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.800 low elevation at three or four thousand feet, and then 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.760 up high snow leopards can take some of their young 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:12.960 and attacks, so they have the duality of a challenge 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:16.640 tigers and snow leopards. Um If we drop down into 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:21.480 the edges of the far southern tips of Chile and Argentina, 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:25.719 the Chilean national mammal are called why mole, and it's 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.839 the most endangered large mammal in the Western hemisphere. Large 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.320 and they're a type of a deer, but they have 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:35.640 a mountain goat nits and so they live in the 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:40.000 shadows of glaciers, usually cliffs and very rugged terrain. So 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.800 those are some examples. I've also worked with black rhinos 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.760 and the Nama Desert. I've worked with cariboo a little 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:51.400 bit in the Arctic. I've worked one of my students 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:55.760 is working with what are called large antler munchacks, which 0:04:55.800 --> 0:05:00.160 is one of the most recently discovered large mammals in 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.120 the nineteen nineties and the Animal Mountains of Vietnam, and 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.880 so a number of these species don't have much of 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:11.600 a vocal backing. Another one are called saiga, which occur 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:17.839 in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and their populations um. The ones in 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:21.400 Mongolia are listed is an endangered species. I've also worked 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:25.200 with wild yaks up on the Tibetan Plateau at sixteen 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.800 seventeen thousand feet. So lots of these things are either 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.960 threatened or endangered, but many of them are not known 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.919 to the general public, whether we're talking about the public 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.080 and their host countries or certainly and the North American 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:43.240 or US public. The saiga is that is that the 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.080 one that has a very unique nose or snout. Yeah 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.840 that's great robbed Yeah. Yeah. Psychos look like part camel, 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:53.440 part moose, and part antelope. And they're quite fast and speedy, 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.200 and yeah, they've got these amazing probosis um that just 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:02.720 hang down on wobble. I want to come to the 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:05.920 study here that I think we're mostly going to be 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:10.839 talking about here, species conflict that Earth's edges, contest, climate, 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.599 and coveted resources. This was published last month in the 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:18.640 journal Frontiers and ecology and evolution. Can you introduce this 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:24.159 to the extreme environment that where this takes place and 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:28.640 the species observed in the field work. So amongst the 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:34.240 iconic and not so frequently seen large mammals again in 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:38.360 western North America are mountain goats, which are not even 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.000 a goat. They're really goat antelope, which are more related 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.600 to the real antelope that we have over in Africa. 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.160 But so those are mountain goats, but they live on 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.720 cliffs and very steep terrain. They have white, long fur 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:56.960 and are cold adaptive species. Also, the additional or the 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.279 other species in which we were witnessing direct interact since 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.279 between the two were called big horn sheep. Big horn 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.839 sheep are like sheep, big round, thick horns, and the 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:12.920 males smaller, little pointy horns, and the females. And the 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:17.240 places where we were working on these stem from Colorado. 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:22.080 The Colorado Rockies up to about fourteen thousand feet along 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:25.080 about a fifteen hundred mile gradient that puts us into 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:30.520 Central Alberta in Canada, areas to the north of bamp 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:34.440 and Jasper, and those are a little bit lower elevation, 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:38.960 only at about we'll just say, at a lower elevation 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:43.040 across the realm of where we were working on these species. 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:47.560 We focused mostly on the population in Glacier National Park, 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:53.520 but we also worked at in Alberta, also in Colorado 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:58.720 areas above tree line is where we were doing our observations, 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.480 and this came about. I was working with another biologist 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.840 named Forest Hayes and another one named Mark Beale. Forest 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:09.360 is at Colorado State University, giving credit where credit is due. 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.560 Mark Beale's a biologist where the National Park Service in 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.760 Glacier and we were looking for grizzly bears and using 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:21.400 a spotting scope and looking above tree lined because you 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.880 don't have trees and so it's easier spot animals. And 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.600 we kept seeing these white dots, and we were doing 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:30.480 our observations from about a mile mile and a half 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.920 away looking at white dots and those were mountain coats. 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.800 And at about the same time in two thousand nineteen, 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.079 we also saw gray dots and these were big horn 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:44.720 sheet and one was moving across the mountains from the 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.160 left to the right and the other one moving from 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.560 the right to the left, and it looks like a 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.880 collision path. And then they got to these brown wet 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.920 soil areas, and that was when we thought this is 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:01.360 going to get interesting. I wonder what's going to happen. 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.520 Both these goats, the mountain goats and the big horn 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:08.280 sheep are approximately similar in size, so we didn't know 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.600 what was going to happen. And so as these animals 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:15.720 were moving towards these wet grayst spots, we noted that 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:18.720 the goats were eating soil and the big horn sheep 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:21.400 would approach, but if a goat got aggressive, the sheep 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:25.040 would move off, and so we thought, oh, that's interesting. 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.360 We did that a little bit that day. Forest Haze 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.280 and I, who were working together, molded over and we 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:35.040 decided the next day we were going to go back 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:38.120 up to these high alpine zones and again look and 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.240 we saw more sheet, more goats. And this went on 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.400 for a couple of weeks across a couple of different years, 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:49.079 actually across three different years, and in Glacier National Park. 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.720 It was becoming clear to us, in part because we're 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:55.360 both scientists and were familiar with the literature and some 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:59.160 climate change underpinnings, and we knew that these areas had 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:02.720 been under snow when ice and glaciated not that long ago. 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.240 In fact, Glacier National Park in the last hundred years 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:10.319 has lost about eight of its glaciers. So this area 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:14.120 where we were watching sheep and goats, we were speculating 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:17.839 that these animals were using areas that had been well 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.040 They had to have been under ice and snow because 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:25.680 glaciers were there and precipitating out were minerals and these 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.680 would be salts, these would be sodium, it would be potassium. 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.920 And the goats and sheep were interacting over priority of access. 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:39.040 And this was These weren't bloody encounters nature too thread 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:41.560 and claws tennis And had said over a hundred and 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:45.079 twenty years ago. But they were displacements, and they were 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.800 either passive meaning an animal walks toward another and they leave, 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.160 where they were aggressive active in which an animal was 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:56.280 swinging its head, lowering its horns, or maybe doing some 0:10:56.360 --> 0:11:00.280 rush charges at the other species. And at the end 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:02.760 of the day we had more than about a hundred 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:07.360 and twenty interactions, about only seven or eight I think 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.880 it was seven in Colorado where we saw them actively 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.960 at the same site at the same time, about a 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:18.080 hundred or so up in Glacier, and then another almost 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:24.040 twenty in the Canadian site, and what struck us was 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.680 the consistency. And what I mean by consistency is this 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:34.800 goats won something like of the interactions, the sheep just 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.160 moved off. They didn't want to deal with it. Goats 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:40.120 have small, pointy horns. But it may be that the 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.400 goats just don't give good signals. They just escalate real fast, 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:47.240 and the sheep wanted no part of it. Because the 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:51.120 big horn sheep. If if my childhood memories of watching 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:55.439 um nature documentaries are correct, I mean they're they're pretty 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:58.360 fierce looking when you see them engaging with each other 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.600 in combat. So I imagine it would be easy for 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:04.680 at least those of us who are not experts in this, 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:07.080 to assume that they could more than hold their own 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.080 against a mountain goat. The sheep rear up. They have 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:14.839 these club like horns, I mean almost like big thick hammers, 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.280 you know, the size of one's chest, maybe half the 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.000 size of one's cheffed. Don't want to be exaggerating here, 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.840 but they rear up and then they charged, sometimes reaching 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:27.920 twenty to thirty miles an hour, and they slam into 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.200 each other's horns, and then they reverberate and so we 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.720 were expecting, you know, given that they're about the same size, well, 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:38.080 if everything else is equal, about half the interactions, we 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.160 expect the sheep to win, half the goats to win. 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.280 People who know something about domestic goats, they just laughed 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:49.080 at us and said, what's wrong with you? Guys? We 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.640 knew that. And I'm thinking to myself and actually saying, well, 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.760 you know, I've spent three decades looking at these animals 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:59.040 and these extreme environments, including sheep and goats, and I 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:03.040 didn't know it. And maybe scientists are not always the 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:06.720 prescient ones in this, but our data were very very 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.200 clear because lots of times there's nuanced, lots of times 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:14.080 there's some counterintuitive results, and we didn't expect this to 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:17.840 happen so consistently, and it did across the three sites. Now, 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.200 first of all, are are both the big horn sheep 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.239 in the mountain goats in these scenarios and these encounters? 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:27.800 Are they both native to the regions or or or 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:32.400 is there an invasive layer to this? Yeah? Real good question, 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:39.440 rob Um. So big horns are native from essentially parts 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:44.600 of north central Canada or central British Columbia all the 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.440 way down into the deserts of Mexico. So they have 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.000 a very catholic range, meaning that a wide range of 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.199 tolerance that they can occur in deserts, they can occur 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.480 in mountains, they can occur in alpine zones. Mountain coats, 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:02.160 on the other hand, are elusively a cold adapted species, 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.120 and so when Lewis and Clark first arrived here, we'll 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:09.120 put it this way, their native ranges would have been 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:15.720 from central Idaho, Montana, Washington all the way up into 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:18.640 Alaska and the Yukon in a small part of the 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:22.680 Northwest territories. So cold adapted they occur in some of 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:29.760 the coastal ranges of Washington UM and certainly in Alaska UM. 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:33.600 But since different Fish and Game agency states in the 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:37.400 US have introduced goats into places like Oregon, where it 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.360 maybe it's a little controversial because there's some arguments that 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:43.640 they were once native there, But we know that they've 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:48.360 been introduced into Utah, introduced into Nevada, introduced into South Dakota, 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:54.120 and introduced into Colorado and Wyoming. And that's where some 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:59.640 of this gets interesting, because different parks manage exotic species differently. 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.360 The Tetons, for instance, Institute of the program where they 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:08.480 would remove the shape of the goats which are introduced 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.520 or an exotic species in the Tetons, and so they 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:16.160 were removed by harvest by shooting in the Yellowstone area. 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:20.680 Goats are not abundant in Yellowstone Park, but they're more 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:25.320 abundant in the Yellowstone ecosystem, and the Park Service Yellowstone 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:28.920 in particular has a different strategy than the Tetons, and 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:32.240 it's more lazy, fair, just letting things go until they 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.360 perhaps know more about it. Olympic National Park over in 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:41.760 western Washington, goats were introduced there in the twenties and 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:47.280 they've been removed mostly by helicopter removal, so not lethal means, 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:51.040 but non lethal means. Now, what are the what were 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.720 the reasons for introducing the mountain goats to these areas. 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:59.160 Goats were introduced by fish and Game departments for harvest, 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.640 so like in South with Dakota in the nineteen twenties, 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.640 they were introduced into the Black Hills. I don't remember 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.840 the years at which they were introduced into Nevada. They 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:12.800 were introduced into Colorado in the late forties. UM today 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:18.200 with a focus also on bio diversity in addition to 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:22.560 big game, there would probably be more studies done about 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:27.800 potential impacts of introducing these large mammals. For instance, moose 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:32.560 have been introduced into Colorado in the early in mid seventies, 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.680 it may have been the late seventies. And moose, of 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:39.480 course are riperian dependent species, and so they affect willows, 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:44.840 they affect cotton woods, and they affect neotropical migrant birds. 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:49.520 But when these initial introductions occurred, both for mountain goats, 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.560 for moose and some other species, there was far less 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:57.520 attention on biological diversity and more is providing a resource 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:03.000 for people, either for a trophy, animal management, for bringing 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.520 some trophies home, or for meat meat on the table. 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.399 So in this scenario again we have we have mountain goats, 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:20.480 big horn sheep and the mountain goats are essentially out 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:24.240 competing for the same resource. And you mentioned that the 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.520 goat farmers and people familiar with with with goats lived 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.480 with goats were not surprised that the goats were winning 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.040 out here, and and a certain certainly brings to mind 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:38.560 examples of invasive or fairal domestic goats taking over various 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.439 areas and thinking specifically of like the Galapagos islands. Is it? 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:44.920 What is it do you think about? Or what is 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.160 known about like the the sort of nature of the goat, 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:52.880 Like what is it about the goats? Um Either it's 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.480 morphology or it's like tenacity, like what why does it? 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:58.399 Why does it win out? Why does it seem to 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:03.360 win out in these instances? Provocative question um so. One 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:07.399 idea goes as following um so, and I'm going to 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:10.280 focus on again big horn sheep and mountain coats. I'm 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.800 talking about native species and not stepping aside because maybe 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:17.760 we'll return to feral species or so. Big horn sheep 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.200 have an array of ways at which they communicate, and 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:26.520 they're very visual, so they have a very diverse behavioral 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:31.040 repertoire as to how they interact. Um. Goats are part 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:35.720 of a more primitive lineage and their ancestral origins are 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:40.359 over into Central Asia as our sheep origins, and then 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:45.840 further over into the Mediterranean amidiest But the goat lineage 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:48.800 and the mountain goat lineage in particular, the species that 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:53.080 are ancestral, they don't have a lot of behavioral diversity. 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.920 They don't have a lot of signals um and so 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.320 they escalate very fast, and the escalations are with their 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:06.360 horns either a thrust headlow rush, and I'm not sure, 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:08.960 and people haven't looked at this, and so this is 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:13.040 either wild hypothesis telling to fit with stuff to blow 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:18.080 your mind, or it's um maybe some speculate, well, it 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.840 is some speculations on my part, but without the potential 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:26.360 for signaling and recognizing other signals. What we see is 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:30.120 that the goats escalate fast, the sheep want no part 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.440 of it. And I want to point out that these 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:36.960 are for what we refer to as a biotic resources, 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.160 those not of a biological nature. So when we talk 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:46.720 about the competition and the behavioral or social interactions between 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:51.400 bighorn sheep and between with mountain goats, what we see 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:55.640 is that the species are clumped around those dirt patches 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.080 that I talked about the moist soil, and this is 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:03.520 again referred to as a mineral lick, and these are 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.439 very patchy and distributions, sometimes they may be ten or 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.480 more miles apart. So the animals go to great length 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:12.800 to access these, and the goats just having a more 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:16.119 aggressive nature, they don't mess around, and the sheep have 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:19.040 somehow figured that out and they back off. So I 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:21.879 know this. This probably brings to mind salt licks and 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:24.280 and so forth with some of our our listeners, but 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.840 for many others we might might be a surprise to 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.720 hear about this conflict over things that are are not food, 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:36.560 that are not a biological resource. So, how how rare 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:40.360 is this in general a biotic resources being feuded over 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.639 by organisms? However rare is it in human observation? And 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:46.119 how rare do we think this sort of thing is 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.760 in the wild? So um our paper which you did 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:52.879 refer to, and thanks for referring to that, we focused 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.879 on for a biotic resources, which will describe in a moment. 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:01.480 Actually i'll describe them now. We focused on shade because 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.440 if one's ever watched a dog or a cat, or 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:08.280 a horse or a cow or a domestic goat, it's 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.840 getting warm, the earth is warming up. Shades an important 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:17.080 way to try to adjust one's thermal abilities to regulate 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:21.639 um So shade was one snow patches, which are disappearing 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:23.960 at a more rapid rate at high elevation. Is the 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.600 second one mineral licks or a third one. And at 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:30.280 the outset when I had mentioned we were working at 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.879 the extreme edges of the planet you think about deserts. 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:38.600 So the fourth a biotic resource our water holes springs 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:41.920 in the desert, which of course are important because many 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:46.600 species need water, not all. So are four a biotic resources. 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:50.520 We selected because they're discreet and we could measure them. 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.720 When is shade available? Are there no shade trees? If 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:58.159 there are shade trees, can we observe interactions between different 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:03.200 species for access in shade? Do larger species when same 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:05.840 for water in the deserts? You know, we have I 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:11.440 mentioned and you mentioned rob domestic goats getting loose, becoming feral, 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:14.760 and we have certainly in the American West thousands and 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:18.960 thousands of feral horses and ferreal burrows, and there are 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.800 feral pigs, and so our interest was trying to understand 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:26.960 the nature of interactions for these very limited resources, what 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:31.119 we're calling coveted resources, so mineral licks at high elevation, 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:36.920 UH water and deserts shade. We were able to observe 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:39.879 a few interactions, and those were mostly over the Kalahari 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:43.840 Desert in the Nama Desert where rhinos displaced some antelopes. 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:47.840 But we only saw that those interactions very few times. 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.720 You had asked earlier, how rare is this doing these 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:55.280 kind of observations. I think we got lucky and at 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:57.520 the outside I said, we were looking for grizzly bears, 0:22:57.520 --> 0:22:59.680 and so there was a lot of serendipity to what 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:02.480 we are doing. But science has a let of serendipity, 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:05.720 just like all of us as humans. It's like which 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:09.920 is the path we pick their serendipity. Going back though, 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.760 to minerals at high elevation and the conflicts that we 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:17.760 were watching between sheep and goats at some level, as 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:21.000 the climate is changing and warming, we see parts of 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:24.760 the Arctic where surface the surface structures are being exposed 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:27.840 now because we no longer have ice and perma frost, 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:31.360 and so the same kind of patterns that we're watching 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:35.120 for sheep and goats are not that different perhaps than 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:38.800 what we're seeing with the eight countries that have access 0:23:38.880 --> 0:23:41.919 to the Arctic Ocean and Arctic resources. And we know 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:47.240 Russia has over the last ten years either reconstituted or 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:50.760 built new military basis in places where that they didn't 0:23:50.800 --> 0:23:55.320 exist in the past, or fortified those. China now has 0:23:55.359 --> 0:23:59.040 a cruiser ice breaker that they use in the Arctic, 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:02.440 even though they're not an arctic country, and so thinking 0:24:02.480 --> 0:24:08.080 about mineral resources and access and conflict. UM, maybe there 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:12.439 are some lessons that can be learned from sheep and goats. However, 0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:14.480 the good thing about the sheep and goats is that 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:17.720 they're not killing each other over the stuff. I'm not 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:20.000 sure I want to think forward ahead of the next 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:23.399 fifty years what we might be doing with those resources 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:26.399 as humans. So do you think that this, uh, this 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:29.280 this scenario, this conflict over the resources, like we can 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:31.800 sort of we can hold it up kind of a 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:36.320 mirror to human activities and and how we fit into 0:24:36.440 --> 0:24:40.200 the into the natural world and it's resources as well. 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:42.840 So I'm going to answer at two levels. I'm going 0:24:42.920 --> 0:24:47.840 to point out first and foremost that our observations were 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:53.240 over different species competing for a limited resource, and so 0:24:53.359 --> 0:24:57.600 that is referred to as inter specific or differences between 0:24:57.640 --> 0:25:02.960 species competing for the um drawing in the analogy for humans, 0:25:03.520 --> 0:25:07.160 we have certainly different geographies as humans. We live all 0:25:07.200 --> 0:25:10.119 over the world, we have different cultures, we have different 0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:13.840 belief systems, but we all have the same fundamental needs. 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:18.640 It's usually security, it's food, it's mates, it's shelter, and 0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:22.919 so as we continue moving beyond the eight billion that 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:26.440 we're at now, it's inevitable that we're going to end 0:25:26.520 --> 0:25:30.520 up competing at some level for some of the same resources. 0:25:30.560 --> 0:25:34.840 I mean, obviously, even though I'm looking now within species 0:25:34.880 --> 0:25:40.879 and not between the same patterns, the same competitive interactions 0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:44.600 at one level, whether it be combat, whether it be bluff, 0:25:45.080 --> 0:25:49.159 whether it be escalation or de escalation, we see the 0:25:49.240 --> 0:25:53.959 same things within species of other non humans, or we 0:25:54.040 --> 0:25:57.720 also see this between species. Fascinating. Yeah, I know that 0:25:57.880 --> 0:25:59.840