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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back today

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Speaker 3: with the third part in our series on the prairie,

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Speaker 3: the temperate grassland ecosystem of North America. In Part one

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Speaker 3: of this series, we talked about what defines the prairie

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Speaker 3: and kind of what sets it apart from other ecosystems

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Speaker 3: similar grasslands and stuff, And we discussed the question why

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Speaker 3: historically were prairies not just covered in trees. What keeps

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Speaker 3: a prairie from becoming a forest. The answer to that

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Speaker 3: was interesting and a little bit complicated, but it involves,

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Speaker 3: among other things, climate and rainfall, the presence of particular herbivore,

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Speaker 3: something we're going to revisit today, and very importantly fire

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Speaker 3: frequent fires. After that, in part one, we talked about

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Speaker 3: grizzly bears of the prairie. Maybe a surprising concept. Grizzly

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Speaker 3: bears are now mainly associated with mountains and forests, but

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Speaker 3: they were once an apex predator of the North American

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Speaker 3: grasslands before they were driven out by humans in the

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Speaker 3: late nineteenth century, and we looked at some fascinating encounters

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Speaker 3: with prairie bears in the journals of the Lewis and

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Speaker 3: Clark expedition. In part two of the series, we talked

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Speaker 3: about prairie madness, which is not a recognized medical condition today,

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Speaker 3: but a historical cluster of psychological symptoms, including depression, forms

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Speaker 3: of anxiety, and general psychic distress, reported by some European

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Speaker 3: American settlers in the Great Plains in the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 3: At the time, these symptoms were at least in part

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Speaker 3: blamed on environmental factors of the prairie itself, things like flatness,

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Speaker 3: long sight lines, cold winters, and un ceasing winds. But

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Speaker 3: we also acknowledged some other things that could have contributed

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Speaker 3: to these symptoms as well, you know, things as diverse

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Speaker 3: as loneliness and isolation, domestic violence, generally harsh living conditions,

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Speaker 3: all lots of things that could have made life hard.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Plus perhaps over reporting of these conditions as well,

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Speaker 2: and the fact that it became basically a literary trope

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Speaker 2: unto itself totally.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And then after that we talked about an interesting

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Speaker 3: type of prairie feature, a physical feature called mima mounds

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Speaker 3: named after the formations found at a place called the

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Speaker 3: Mama Prairie in southwest Washington State. That you can find

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Speaker 3: these things in a lot of places. They're not only

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Speaker 3: in Washington State, they're in I think most states west

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Speaker 3: of the Mississippi. These are interesting because of how they look,

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Speaker 3: but also because there's a mystery about how they form.

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Speaker 3: And we got into several different hypotheses that are sort

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Speaker 3: of in the mix to explain them, including everything from

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Speaker 3: glaciers to gophers, and that question is not settled yet.

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Speaker 3: And so we're back today to talk prairies yet again. Now, Rob,

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Speaker 3: we both have sections focusing on animals historically associated with

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Speaker 3: the prairie today, do you mind if I kick things

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Speaker 3: off today talking about itchy buffalo.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, this is great. This is a great topic, and

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Speaker 2: it concerns like one of the most well known prairie

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Speaker 2: animals of all time, the bison. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So it is commonly estimated that before the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 3: before the bison were systematically brought to near extinction, especially

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Speaker 3: by commercial US hunters who were encouraged and supported to

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Speaker 3: over harvest by policies of the United States military who

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Speaker 3: were trying to weaken the planes Native American tribes. At

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Speaker 3: the time before they were brought to near extinction, there

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Speaker 3: were somewhere between thirty and sixty million bison in North America,

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Speaker 3: so incredibly dominant life form on the North American continent.

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Speaker 3: They were the most numerous and the most geographically widespread

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Speaker 3: of all the large terrestrial animals on the continent, and

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Speaker 3: they were of course a key part of the way

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Speaker 3: of life of plains Native American tribes. And they were

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Speaker 3: also a keystone species for the prairie ecosystem itself, meaning

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Speaker 3: that sort of in the same way that prairies depend

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Speaker 3: on fire to maintain their native biodiversity, they also depended

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Speaker 3: on bison. Bison are interesting natural ecoregulators. They sort of

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Speaker 3: shape and maintain the ecosystems that they live within. And

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Speaker 3: there are several examples of this, just a few that

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Speaker 3: there are more than the ones I'm about to mention,

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Speaker 3: but a few that I was reading about before we started.

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Speaker 3: There is research showing that areas of prairie that have

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Speaker 3: been grazed by bison may actually be more resistant to

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Speaker 3: because bison preferentially eat taller grasses that are less drought tolerant,

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Speaker 3: but might outcompete short grasses during wet times, so the

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Speaker 3: grazing leaves a greater mix of shorter, more drought tolerant

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Speaker 3: grasses behind. Also, in a previous episode, we talked a

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Speaker 3: lot about how fire is a crucial element that protects

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Speaker 3: eastern tall grass prairie from being colonized by trees. But

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Speaker 3: fire is not the only factor that plays here. It

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Speaker 3: turns out that bison also protects the prairie from encroachment

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Speaker 3: by woody plants and trees, especially trees like cedars, and

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Speaker 3: this is through several mechanisms. One is just sheer mechanical attack,

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Speaker 3: like bison will aggressively rub their horns or bodies against

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Speaker 3: young trees, often stripping bark or severely damaging or even

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Speaker 3: killing trees in the process, especially areas that are heavy

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Speaker 3: you know, where herds are moving through. The trees will

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Speaker 3: suffer a lot from this. Young trees also suffer from trampling,

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Speaker 3: you know, seedling or sapling trees suffer from trampling and

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Speaker 3: from grazing because grasses bounce back from trampling and grazing

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Speaker 3: better than the tree seedlings do. Especially when this happens

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Speaker 3: over and over repeatedly. But there's another way that I

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Speaker 3: want to talk about that bison alter and regulate the

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Speaker 3: landscape they live in, and this is by wallowing. So

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Speaker 3: this is not a new subject on stuff to blow

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Speaker 3: your mind. I think even just in the past couple

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Speaker 3: of years, we've done several episodes that touched on animal

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Speaker 3: wallowing or dust bathing behavior. I don't remember all the

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Speaker 3: contexts in which it came up, but it's it's been

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Speaker 3: on our minds recently.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like dust is a way for animals to

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Speaker 2: mechanically remove parasites from their bodies.

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Speaker 3: That's a big one. There are actually multiple reasons animals

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Speaker 3: go for dust bathing. I remember actually now that came

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Speaker 3: up in the context of us talking about dietamacous earth.

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Speaker 3: We went on a tangent about like birds.

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Speaker 2: Dusty and particularly we'll use it as a mechanical means

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Speaker 2: of removing barosyites. But then when you get into things

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Speaker 2: like elephants and so forth. Yeah, different different dose scenarios

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Speaker 2: come up, for sure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, thermoregulation, all different kinds of things. And I'll talk

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Speaker 3: about reasons that are hypothesized why the bison do it

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Speaker 3: as well. But wallowing in bison is defined as a

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Speaker 3: behavior in which the bison they first expose the bare

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Speaker 3: ground by repeatedly pawing, horning, and trampling the earth. And

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Speaker 3: then once an area is formed where the plant cover

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Speaker 3: is cleared, the bison then roll around in the patch

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Speaker 3: of dry exposed soil. So you kind of strip away

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Speaker 3: the grass. You've got a bunch of bear earth now,

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Speaker 3: and then you roll around and roll on your sides,

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Speaker 3: you rub your head in it, just generally just getting

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Speaker 3: your body up in there. Now, Why do the bison

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Speaker 3: do this? From what I can tell, this is still

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Speaker 3: being researched, and there are multiple explanations. But I was

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Speaker 3: reading an article from the US National Park Service that

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Speaker 3: summarize some of the main ideas here. And the main

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Speaker 3: ideas include A big theme is getting relief from skin

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Speaker 3: to irritation, which could have multiple causes. One is the

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Speaker 3: need for shedding of the winter coat. So the warm

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Speaker 3: months come on and you have some leftover winter fur

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Speaker 3: that you need to rub off. You know, it's heating

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Speaker 3: up and that's going to be very itchy and uncomfortable,

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Speaker 3: and rolling in the dirt can apparently help the bison

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Speaker 3: shed its winter fur. I think that might also be

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Speaker 3: a reason why they preferentially like really rub hard against

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Speaker 3: like young seed or trees and stuff. You know, they're

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Speaker 3: trying to shed that winter coat. Also, rolling in the

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Speaker 3: dirt or dust can create a layer of dirt on

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Speaker 3: the fur or the skin that can serve as protection

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Speaker 3: against or at least reduce irritation from ectoparasites like lice, ticks,

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Speaker 3: and biting flies. So here we're back to a parasite explanation,

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Speaker 3: like you just mentioned with birds. And I think this

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Speaker 3: works by several mechanisms. You know, the rolling can, for

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Speaker 3: one thing, just like get stuff off of you and

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Speaker 3: you know, like knock it off. But also I think

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Speaker 3: having the dust on there like interferes with these small

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Speaker 3: arthropod's ability to stay in your fur and get what

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Speaker 3: they need there, Like the dust can kind of be

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Speaker 3: suffocating to them.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, I remember is discussing the dust in and

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Speaker 2: of itself could be thought of as kind of a

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Speaker 2: mechanical insecticide.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, in some cases, like it's not all going to

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Speaker 3: be like you know, little razors like dietamacious earth, but

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Speaker 3: it still might.

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Speaker 2: End on what the parasites happen to be for sure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, but it can help with that, we think. Also,

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Speaker 3: wallowing can be a social behavior that facilitates types of

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Speaker 3: communication between bison, particularly relating to competition between males during

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Speaker 3: mating season, which is called the rut. This is in summertime,

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Speaker 3: so during the rut, males who are sexually mature ready

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Speaker 3: to mate, will engage in aggressive or competitive wallowing. One

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Speaker 3: such behavior is that a male bison will pee in

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Speaker 3: the wallow, will urinate in the wallow, and then roll

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Speaker 3: around in it, and this is in service of advertising

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Speaker 3: their physical condition or fitness. It's like smell my pee. Obviously,

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Speaker 3: I am quite the cash. Bison also like to lay

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Speaker 3: on the exposed soil of a wallow during hot weather,

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Speaker 3: and this is thought to help them cool off because

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Speaker 3: the exposed soil in the wallow is typically cooler than

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Speaker 3: the surrounding grass, which I think about it grass as

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Speaker 3: a kind of insulating quality. You know, it can kind

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Speaker 3: of like trap air wow.

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Speaker 2: So you Yeah, it's easy to see footage of bison

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Speaker 2: and be familiar with bison and not think of them

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Speaker 2: as the type of species that would end up like

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Speaker 2: creating a little like pocket area that can that has

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Speaker 2: multiple uses for them. Some of which you know, may

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Speaker 2: be social. This is pretty amazing.

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Speaker 3: It is really interesting. So, yeah, they create these wallows

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Speaker 3: and then also they can return to the same wallows

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Speaker 3: over the years and like enlarge them and keep using

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Speaker 3: them over time. So it's a a cross generational development

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Speaker 3: project for some of these pits.

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Speaker 2: You know, just the itching side of things alone. I

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Speaker 2: was just thinking about this earlier. Like, we as humans

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Speaker 2: are have so many benefits when it comes to to itching.

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Speaker 2: You know, like a number of species out there have

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Speaker 2: various things they can and will do to mitigate parasites

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Speaker 2: and mitigate itching, but like we could do all of them.

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Speaker 2: Like we you know, we can scratch you with hands.

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Speaker 2: We can scratch pretty much every part of our body.

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Speaker 2: We don't have to lean up against trees. And if

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Speaker 2: we do well, we've already taken a piece of a

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Speaker 2: tree and made it into a tiny little hand that

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Speaker 2: we can scratch that one part in our back with.

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Speaker 2: We have, you know, all sorts of medications as well

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Speaker 2: that we can turn to. Like we are better prepared

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Speaker 2: than any other species on earth to deal with itchy skin.

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Speaker 2: Where has a creature like the bison, it's going to

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Speaker 2: have fewer tools at its disposal, but those are still

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Speaker 2: going to be very important tools in order for it

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Speaker 2: to alleviate these symptoms. Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 3: I think about this sometimes, just how much itchiness there

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Speaker 3: is in nature beyond the human realm, and.

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Speaker 2: When we itch, we hate it understandably, but we just

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Speaker 2: were blessed that we have so many different levers we

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Speaker 2: can pull when we do itch.

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Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's hard to remember this when itching

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Speaker 3: is really driving you crazy, but if you can keep

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Speaker 3: it in mind, it's for your own good, your body

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Speaker 3: trying to protect you. It's letting you know something's wrong

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Speaker 3: need some attention. Yeah, kind of like pain in that regard. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: thank God for pain. But anyway, So a cool thing

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Speaker 3: about bison wallowing, A really interesting thing about it is

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Speaker 3: that bison wallowing behavior actually creates a sort of feedback

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Speaker 3: loop with the land and the ecosystem itself. So places

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Speaker 3: where bison wallow become bison wallows wallow as a noun,

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Speaker 3: which a bison wallow is a bowl shaped dip in

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Speaker 3: the earth where the soil is exposed. As bison used

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Speaker 3: these exposed patches of earth, time after time, the soil

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Speaker 3: becomes packed down, it becomes disturbed like they you know,

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Speaker 3: disturb and sort of turn the soil a little bit,

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Speaker 3: and so they uproot some plants that could be there.

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Speaker 3: But then they also pack down the soil and the

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Speaker 3: wallow then becomes a place where other interesting changes to

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Speaker 3: the prairie can happen, Like these wallows become tiny contained

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Speaker 3: ecosystems in themselves. Different plant species can take root, plant

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Speaker 3: species that might not be able to get a foothold

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Speaker 3: in the already fully you know, grass covered areas in

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Speaker 3: the surrounding landscape. So this creates opportunities for different types

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Speaker 3: of plants to come in and you know, let their

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Speaker 3: seeds come down and take root. The wallow can also

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Speaker 3: fill with water, becoming a mud pit or a pond,

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Speaker 3: and then these little ponds on the prairie can become

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Speaker 3: important sources of water for animal life, both vertebrates and invertebrates,

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Speaker 3: and for plants. Like some prairie plants that require more

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Speaker 3: access to water can survive because of these wallows turned

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Speaker 3: in into ponds, and then because different plants can survive

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Speaker 3: within them, wallows create points of plant diversity compared to

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Speaker 3: the rest of the landscape. So the overall prairie has

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Speaker 3: more plant diversity because of what can survive in the

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Speaker 3: wallows that couldn't survive outside of them. One thing that

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Speaker 3: is kind of cool is that you can find archaic wallows,

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Speaker 3: Like sometimes they get kind of covered over, but in

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Speaker 3: some cases ancient bison wallows can still be found as

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Speaker 3: depressions in the land or small areas filled with different

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Speaker 3: patches of plant life than the surrounding field. Rob, I've

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Speaker 3: got one picture in the outline for you to look at.

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Speaker 3: That is a picture taken in Haskell County, Kansas in

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Speaker 3: eighteen ninety seven of somebody just standing in front of

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Speaker 3: this giant buffalo wallow. It's pretty cool looking.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it's big ground and intention it.

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Speaker 3: Looks like a meteor impact site or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. If you didn't know what you're looking at,

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Speaker 2: you might think there was some sort of cosmic cause

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Speaker 2: for this.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, aliens yet again. Yeah, UFO has proven disprover except

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Speaker 3: but so here, I'd like to mention a paper that

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Speaker 3: I thought was interesting. It's a paper called Spatial and

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Speaker 3: Physical Characteristics of Bison Wallow's in the Flint Hills of

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Speaker 3: Kansas by some researchers named Eva Horn Pam Blackmore, Nora Imbello,

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Speaker 3: Jeffrey Taylor, and Adam Skibby published in the journal Ecosphere

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Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four and the author's first sentence in

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Speaker 3: this paper, I think is a really interesting framing of

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Speaker 3: what the prairie is. What is its nature? They write, quote,

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Speaker 3: North American tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem defined and maintained

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Speaker 3: by disturbance, primarily consisting of climatic variability, frequent fire, and

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Speaker 3: the presence of large herbivores. Isn't that interesting? I mean,

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Speaker 3: this has been coming through in a It's kind of

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Speaker 3: an undercurrent in everything we've talked about already in this

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Speaker 3: series that what makes the prairie able to survive as

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Speaker 3: prairie are things like fire and these you know, big

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Speaker 3: in some ways, you could think of them as destructive

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Speaker 3: herbivores that are you know, like disturbing and turning the

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Speaker 3: soil and packing it down in places and causing damage

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Speaker 3: against these woody plants. And also these harsh climate conditions

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Speaker 3: like you know, not as much rainfall as a forest

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Speaker 3: environment might get, or maybe just swings in climate conditions

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Speaker 3: across the seasons. All of these chaotic and destructive elements

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Speaker 3: are what make the prairie able to survive as the

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Speaker 3: thing that it is.

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Speaker 2: That is fascinating especially you know, you look at images

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Speaker 2: of the prairie and it just it seems vast, eternal.

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Speaker 2: It seems like something that is in and of itself

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Speaker 2: like the natural way of things and has to be

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Speaker 2: just purely protected from disturbance. But there is a balance

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Speaker 2: here that it seems to demand a certain amount of

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Speaker 2: disturbance on one end, and then of course is highly

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Speaker 2: susceptible to disturbance on the other end of things. So

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Speaker 2: do you know, mainly being all the ways that human

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Speaker 2: civilization has impacted it and disturbed the way that it operates.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like the kinds of human development that have

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Speaker 3: gone on in the prairie since you know, United States

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Speaker 3: settlement by like US farmers and stuff like that, that

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Speaker 3: has been incredibly disturbing to the natural balance of the prairie.

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Speaker 3: But at the same time, the prairie depends on all

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Speaker 3: these more natural form, more natural and ecocompatible forms of attack,

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Speaker 3: attack by fire, attack by these big animals, all these

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Speaker 3: attacks actually sustain the prairie itself.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's so amazing.

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Speaker 3: So one way that the prairie historically was actually defined

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Speaker 3: by disturbance was in how its plant and animal diversity

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Speaker 3: were maintained by the bison, particularly by the creation of

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Speaker 3: bison wallows, and so sometimes bison in the literature today

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Speaker 3: are called ecosystem engineers. You can almost imagine them through

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Speaker 3: their wallowing behavior, through you know, horning, stomping on the ground,

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Speaker 3: tearing up these patches of earth, making these little bowls,

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Speaker 3: exposing the mud and the dust, rolling around in it,

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Speaker 3: peeing in it, rolling in it some more. All this stuff.

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Speaker 3: They are creating tiny nature preserves and little wetland gardens

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Speaker 3: that spread all across the prairie. I've read some estimates that,

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Speaker 3: you know, we don't see them as much anymore, obviously,

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Speaker 3: because the bison have been so terribly reduced from how

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Speaker 3: many there once work and you know, at their height,

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Speaker 3: maybe thirty to sixty million bison roaming the Prayer or

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00:20:01,119 --> 00:20:05,399
Speaker 3: roaming the continent of North America in general. But there

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Speaker 3: were tons of wallows back of the time when the

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Speaker 3: bison were at their peak. I've seen estimates that there

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Speaker 3: may have been multiple wallows per acre, you know, maybe

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Speaker 3: up to five per acre. So just imagine that spread

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Speaker 3: out across the Great Plains, So tons and tons of

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Speaker 3: these little nature preserves and wetland gardens that allow different

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Speaker 3: types of plant and animal diversity to survive on these

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Speaker 3: islands within the prairie. And of course these islands would

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Speaker 3: help maintain the plant and animal diversity of the landscape

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Speaker 3: as a whole.

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Speaker 2: They were like bison gas stations and rest stops with

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Speaker 2: their own little economic system going on, right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, little havens, little havens, little things can happen.

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Speaker 3: So this study by Horn at all, the goal of

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Speaker 3: it was, they say, quote, to characterize spatial and physical

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Speaker 3: characteristics of bison wallows at the Konza Prairie Biological Station,

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00:21:04,760 --> 00:21:10,200
Speaker 3: a tallgrass prairie preserve in northeastern Kansas. So the Konza

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Speaker 3: Prairie Biological Station is like an eighty six hundred acre

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Speaker 3: native tallgrass prairie preserve. This is in the Flint Hills

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Speaker 3: of northeastern Kansas. It's been used for ecological research and

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Speaker 3: conservation since nineteen seventy one. Bison were reintroduced to it

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Speaker 3: sometime shortly after its creation, I think in the early eighties.

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Speaker 3: I believe sometime in the eighties, bison were reintroduced, and

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Speaker 3: now there are a bunch of bison there and they

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Speaker 3: are used for ecological research, but also just they're allowed

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Speaker 3: to live there. So it's a place where they are

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Speaker 3: trying to recreate some of the more original conditions of

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Speaker 3: the tallgrass prairie and preserve them. So in this study,

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Speaker 3: the authors relied on aerial photography from two different years

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Speaker 3: from twenty eleven and twenty nineteen, and they looked at

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Speaker 3: questions like how many wallows were there, where were they located,

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Speaker 3: what are the characteristics of the sites, and how the

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Speaker 3: wall They tried to see how the wallows related to

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Speaker 3: things like fire, elevation, and slope. They also randomly selected

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Speaker 3: certain wallows and analyzed their characteristics up close in the

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Speaker 3: year twenty twenty and the author's main findings were that

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Speaker 3: wallows were more abundant in places with combinations of quote,

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Speaker 3: more frequent burning, higher elevations, and little or no slope,

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Speaker 3: So for wallows, the bison like well burned areas, places

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Speaker 3: that are higher and flatness. They also say that wallows

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Speaker 3: tended to be smaller in places that experienced more frequent

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Speaker 3: fires and tended to be shallower in depth that higher elevations,

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Speaker 3: especially in the middle of heavily grazed areas. The authors

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Speaker 3: also sampled plant life growing in the wallows and robin

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Speaker 3: the outline just above this section I'm looking at. There's

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Speaker 3: a picture photograph from the paper that shows what some

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Speaker 3: of these fairly fresh buffalo wallows look like. These are

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Speaker 3: not like the ancient ones. These are the ones that

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Speaker 3: the bison are creating within the concept Prairie Biological Station

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Speaker 3: at in the past few years. The authors found that

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Speaker 3: within these wallows quote some quantity of aquatic plants in

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Speaker 3: approximately seven point one percent of the sampled wallows. The

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Speaker 3: probability of finding aquatic vegetation in wallows was higher on

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Speaker 3: grazing lawns and in areas burned less frequently, particularly every

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Speaker 3: twenty years. Now for some reflection by the first author,

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Speaker 3: I was looking at a Kansas State University article called

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Speaker 3: Biologists Are Protecting and Preserving Bison in the Prairie Home

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Speaker 3: by Taylor Provine. This article is generally focused on research

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Speaker 3: taking place at the Conzapt Prairie Biological Station focusing on bison,

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Speaker 3: and about this wallows research. They point out that one

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Speaker 3: thing that might not be very surprised is that these

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00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 3: conditions where you find the most wallows, you know, areas

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00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:10,399
Speaker 3: with a very gentle slope, basically flat surfaces, higher elevations,

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00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:13,560
Speaker 3: hot places with higher rates of fire. These are also

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Speaker 3: just the places where bison tend to spend most of

386
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Speaker 3: their time. Now, that might be kind of surprising, like

387
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 3: why would bison spend most of their time in areas

388
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Speaker 3: that have higher rates of fire, But actually this is

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Speaker 3: a well documented phenomenon because fire tends to clear out old,

390
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:38,320
Speaker 3: maybe dried out, older, tougher grasses and allows new, fresh

391
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:41,879
Speaker 3: green shoots of grasses to come back up from the roots,

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Speaker 3: and that is the most delicious type of grass for

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Speaker 3: the bison. And so traditionally fire was used as a

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Speaker 3: landscape management technique biplanes Native American tribes to try to

395
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Speaker 3: make the areas more attractive to bison that we're eventually

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00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,600
Speaker 3: going to be used for hunting. You know, you might

397
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 3: burn area and then have these fresh green grasses come

398
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 3: in that are just like it's setting out the buffet

399
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:07,400
Speaker 3: for the bisons, like the.

400
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:10,800
Speaker 2: Fresh steamer tray coming out, Like the bison take note.

401
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:14,440
Speaker 3: Totally, Yes, it's like they got new crab. That's not yeah,

402
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:18,160
Speaker 3: so again, maybe not very surprising, but the places where

403
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,240
Speaker 3: they found the most of these wallows tend to be

404
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:22,680
Speaker 3: the places where bison just liked to hang out the most.

405
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Speaker 3: But then there was another part that I thought was

406
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:29,679
Speaker 3: interesting about these wallows, as little little nature preserves little

407
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:34,640
Speaker 3: ecological zones of their own. And so this article quotes

408
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:38,680
Speaker 3: the first author of that paper, Eva Horne, saying, quote,

409
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Speaker 3: there are at least three species of frogs that breed

410
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Speaker 3: in the wallows, and numerous different insects and arthropods can

411
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:49,040
Speaker 3: be found in them. It changes the diversity of the

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00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:52,360
Speaker 3: plants around the wallows, even when they're dry, because sometimes

413
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 3: annual species of plants that don't have any other place

414
00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 3: to live can grow in these wallows. So that's interesting

415
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 3: thing about the plant species. But also I didn't know

416
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:07,680
Speaker 3: this about the frogs. You know, obviously I was no

417
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 3: expert on on the prairies, certainly not before we started

418
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Speaker 3: the series. I mean, I'm expert now, but you know,

419
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:16,400
Speaker 3: I knew even less before we started, but I certainly

420
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 3: didn't associate the prairies with frogs very much with amphibians generally.

421
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this, this, this reminds me of some of

422
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 2: our past discussions with Martin Mandinka of the Amphibian Foundation

423
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 2: about certain amphibians that you know that depend on very

424
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 2: particular water environment, the water environments like this, you know,

425
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Speaker 2: and outside of the prairie. I think we we've talked

426
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:46,199
Speaker 2: about Georgia related species in the past, but you know,

427
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:49,640
Speaker 2: they'll be very specific, you know, micro habitats that they'll

428
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 2: depend on, and those micro habitats are in many cases

429
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 2: very susceptible to disruption. And and this is another case

430
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Speaker 2: of the case of that for sure. Yeah, this is fast.

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00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 3: Was it the case when we spoke to Mark Mandica

432
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 3: the last time he was talking about the frosted frosted

433
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:13,080
Speaker 3: salamanders that, unless I'm remembering this wrong, their way of

434
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:16,360
Speaker 3: life to some degree depended on fire. I think fires

435
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:20,479
Speaker 3: that are now naturally that are now suppressed. But in

436
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 3: whatever ecosystem they were in, I think it maybe like

437
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 3: southern pine forests or something like that, they for some

438
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 3: reason depended on fires. And now that like we're preventing

439
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 3: some of those fires from happening, it's made the landscape

440
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 3: harder for the salamanders to live in.

441
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:39,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, disruption creates opportunity, I mean, that's that's that's a

442
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:41,000
Speaker 2: fact of life in general, and we see it. We

443
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 2: see it everywhere. We see it in economics, we see

444
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 2: it in politics. It's it's a fact of life, and

445
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 2: we see it boiled down in these particular cases.

446
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 3: Here to follow up on the idea of frogs and

447
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 3: amphibians using these wallowing sites as habitats within the prairie,

448
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 3: I was trying to find and if there was a

449
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 3: paper that addressed this directly, and I did come across one.

450
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 3: So this is an earlier paper from two thousand and

451
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:11,439
Speaker 3: three by Nicole Gerlank and Glennis Kaufman called use of

452
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 3: Bison wallows by Anurines on Konza Prairie, the same place

453
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,440
Speaker 3: in Kansas. This was published in the American Midland Naturalist

454
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,200
Speaker 3: again the year two thousand and three, and the authors

455
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 3: write that quote bison may have been important in the

456
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 3: life histories of prairie and urines by creating pools in

457
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:32,440
Speaker 3: the form of wallows that could be used as breeding sites.

458
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:35,320
Speaker 3: Now they say that more is going to have to

459
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 3: be learned about this because it's not fully understood how

460
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 3: amphibians and especially frogs and toads use these sites. But

461
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 3: the paper does mention several anurine species that have been

462
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 3: observed in this study and in others breeding and living

463
00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:56,720
Speaker 3: in bison created wetlands. These wallows turned into wetlands that

464
00:28:56,840 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 3: serve as islands of wetness in the prairie. And so

465
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 3: the species that have been observed include the western chorus frog,

466
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 3: the northern cricket frog, woodhouses toad, the Great Plains narrowmouth toad, copes,

467
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 3: gray tree frogs, and planes spade foot toads. And I've

468
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 3: seen a couple other sources mention that sometimes these wallow

469
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 3: ponds can be great for amphibian reproduction because they lack

470
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 3: the main natural predators of amphibian eggs and tadpoles, particularly fish,

471
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 3: which are very efficient predators of young amphibians and young frogs.

472
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:38,640
Speaker 2: That's a great point as well.

473
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in general, I thought this was fascinating, like

474
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,720
Speaker 3: I'd never thought about this before, that the idea that

475
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 3: large herbivores like bison would be out there creating little

476
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 3: wetland islands of biodiversity within the broader prairie ecosystem. They're

477
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 3: out there like making these little almost like crea eating

478
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 3: little terraria where different plant and animal life can can

479
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 3: take hold and can spread out across the prairie in

480
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 3: this way kind of from island to island.

481
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 2: Also, Yeah, and it all began because a bison had

482
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 2: an itchy flank and just had to roll around in

483
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 2: the dust and where was the dust? I had to

484
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 2: make dust, had to make a spot. And then that

485
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 2: creates opportunity for all these other life forms to move

486
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:37,719
Speaker 2: in and take advantage of the scenario. Yeah, amazing, very cool. Yeah,

487
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 2: all right, Well, for the rest of this episode, I

488
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 2: want to talk about another creature that that had that

489
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 2: that has historic origins in the prairie environment and in

490
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 2: some adjacent environments. And now this is also a story

491
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 2: that is going to involve a lot of disruption and opportunity,

492
00:30:57,200 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 2: and it is going to concern coyotes because so in

493
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:02,040
Speaker 2: the first episode, you know, we discussed how the grizzly

494
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 2: bear was once a creature of the prairie but was

495
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 2: pushed out by Western colonists and their widespread eradication efforts.

496
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 2: We also have, of course, discussed the ratit the widespread

497
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 2: eradication of the American bison, one of the grizzlies historic

498
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 2: prey animals. And I think we also mentioned the wolf

499
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:21,959
Speaker 2: as well as being another one of the creatures that

500
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 2: was vilified and seen as a threat to livestock and

501
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 2: to humans Westerners that were moving out and taking advantage

502
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 2: of the landscape. But yeah, today I want to talk

503
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 2: in this episode by talking about another creature that was

504
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 2: historically at home on the prairie and the human eradication

505
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:46,520
Speaker 2: efforts that catastrophically failed due in large part to the

506
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 2: particular resilience all of the species in question. This is

507
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 2: again the coyote kiness latrans, also known as the prairie wolf,

508
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 2: the brush wolf, and the American jackal. This last one

509
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 2: sounds like something I see a bumper sticker from out

510
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 2: driving about, But no. It was also sometimes called the

511
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 2: American jackal, and this I think some of these names

512
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 2: stem from the fact that when Europeans and Americans from

513
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:18,160
Speaker 2: the East began to encounter the coyote for the first time,

514
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 2: they didn't really know what they were looking at the

515
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:21,800
Speaker 2: like is it a jackal? Is it a wolf? Is

516
00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 2: it a fox? What are we dealing with here? Yeah?

517
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 3: American jackal sounds like the name of a movie. Really

518
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 3: an American jackal?

519
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 2: Now, I want to mention before I get into the

520
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 2: rest of this that My sources for this included a

521
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 2: number of different like code conservation and research organizations. This

522
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 2: includes Project Coyote dot org, Urban Coyote Research dot com,

523
00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 2: and Vermont Coyote dot org. These are all very informative websites.

524
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 2: So today the vast majority of our North American listeners

525
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 2: are going to be familiar with the coyote. You have.

526
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 2: If you're blood lucky, maybe you've seen them. They are

527
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 2: see and they especially in urban environments, they tend to

528
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 2: be more nocturnal. They're there, they're they're they're major survivors.

529
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:13,600
Speaker 2: More likely you've maybe heard them at times, maybe out camping,

530
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 2: and you've heard their their their varied and strange vocalizations.

531
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 2: They have a lot more variety in their sounds compared

532
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:23,959
Speaker 2: to domesticated dogs. And you know, at times they can

533
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 2: sound like cackling children or goblins. It can be very unsettling.

534
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 3: They there's a musicality and a conversational quality to coyote vocalizations.

535
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 3: You can almost feel like you're following a grammar when

536
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 3: when you hear them making noise, If that makes any sense.

537
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There are now some nineteen subspecies of

538
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:49,280
Speaker 2: the coyote, currently ranging across North and Central America, from

539
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 2: California to Newfoundland, from Alaska to Panama. They thrive in

540
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:58,440
Speaker 2: a vast array of environments, now including urban landscapes, where

541
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 2: they have often been left to claim the mantle of

542
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 2: apex predator in the absence of wolves, especially the red

543
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 2: wolf in the east, and bears and so forth. And

544
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 2: yet historically the coyote was a creature of the flatlands.

545
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:18,799
Speaker 2: Prior to the seventeen hundreds, coyotes in North America were

546
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:22,799
Speaker 2: restricted to the prairies and desert areas of Mexico and

547
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:27,840
Speaker 2: central North America. So most of these, for a number

548
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 2: of you, you live in places that now have coyotes,

549
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 2: and just a few centuries ago this was not the case.

550
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 2: They were just not there at all, and in some

551
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 2: cases much more recently. I'll get into some examples of

552
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 2: this as we go. So there, the cotes evolutionary journey

553
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 2: had landed them in a niche that was somewhat below

554
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 2: the bears and the cougars, below the dire wolves that

555
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:55,239
Speaker 2: existed there prior to ten thousand years ago, And when

556
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 2: the dire wolf went extinct, the gray wolf moved up,

557
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:00,839
Speaker 2: so the coyote was relegated to the role of a

558
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 2: subordinate meso predator, which itself directly suppressed top down by

559
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:11,560
Speaker 2: wolves and cougars. It lived very much in the shadow

560
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 2: of these greater killers, just as it had lived in

561
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:17,359
Speaker 2: the shadow of greater ice age species before them. So

562
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:21,280
Speaker 2: they were predators that fed a lot on rodents and rabbits.

563
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 2: They also ate carrion. You know, they were fairly opportune, opportunistic,

564
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:30,240
Speaker 2: and they suppressed smaller predators themselves, but again top down

565
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,839
Speaker 2: pressure from the bigger guys ahead of them.

566
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 3: Now, does that mean that the wolves and cougars would

567
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 3: just tend to out compete coyotes for better sources of

568
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 3: prey or would they actually prey directly on coyotes as well.

569
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 2: From my reading here, I think most of it is

570
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:50,719
Speaker 2: just like the pressure is going to be competing for

571
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 2: the same resources, driving them off from those resources, and

572
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 2: in some cases a kill might take place. Yeah, but

573
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 2: you know, basically just a situation where they had a

574
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 2: lot of enemies, you know, but they and they had

575
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:09,239
Speaker 2: to be really cagey and scrappy to get by. They

576
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 2: had to be clever. They're competing with and living an

577
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 2: active fear of these apex predators above them, and they

578
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:18,840
Speaker 2: had to stick together. They had to be highly social animals,

579
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,839
Speaker 2: which they were and they remained to be. They had

580
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 2: to be highly versatile. And it is interesting that indigenous

581
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 2: people's found many parallels, many positive but also some cautionary

582
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 2: regarding the coyote. And so the mythical coyote as a

583
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 2: as a trickster, you know, a deity factors or here

584
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 2: and or hero factors into many of these traditions. You know,

585
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:47,719
Speaker 2: where the coyote is to be admired because the you know, coyote,

586
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 2: like a lot of trickster characters, you know, gets by

587
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 2: and finds clever ways to survive, much like human beings do.

588
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,200
Speaker 2: But also their tales about you know, a coyote, you know,

589
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 2: took the easy way way out here, and maybe you

590
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 2: shouldn't do that. Coyote was slothful, coyote was gluttonous, and

591
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 2: so forth again. Western colonists didn't quite know what to

592
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,840
Speaker 2: make of the coyote at first. Was it a fox?

593
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 2: Was it a wolf? Was it a jackal? In fact,

594
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark, in their journals, initially labeled it a

595
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:20,960
Speaker 2: prairie wolf in eighteen oh four. I looked up the

596
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 2: exact first reference in their journals and it's Monday seventeenth,

597
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 2: the seventeenth of September eighteen oh four. Quote killed a

598
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 2: prairie wolf. These wolves are larger than a fox. And

599
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 2: this is about as interesting as it gets with Lewis

600
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:39,359
Speaker 2: and Clark's coyote interactions. They kill a few more, they

601
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 2: have a few more, just brief comments about them, but

602
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 2: nothing on the scale of their discussions of grizzly bears

603
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:51,920
Speaker 2: and so forth. But still Western colonists, they knew they

604
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:55,799
Speaker 2: did not like coyotes, and there are numerous examples of

605
00:37:55,800 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 2: this found in literature. Probably one of the most it's

606
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:04,439
Speaker 2: really meanest you find from eighteen seventy two in Mark

607
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:08,880
Speaker 2: Twain's roughing It. So Twain just lays into the coyote

608
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:13,479
Speaker 2: for multiple paragraphs here. It also has to be clear

609
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:17,000
Speaker 2: horrible dehumanizing things to say about native people's as well.

610
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 2: But I'm just going to read just a little of

611
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 2: the coyote specific material here. Twain wrote, the coyote is

612
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:27,239
Speaker 2: a long, slim, sick and sorry looking skeleton with a

613
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:31,040
Speaker 2: gray wolf skin stretched over it. A tolerably bushy tail

614
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:35,720
Speaker 2: that forever SAgs down, with a despairing expression of forsakenness

615
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:39,040
Speaker 2: and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long,

616
00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 2: sharp face with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He

617
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:47,359
Speaker 2: has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is

618
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 2: a living, breathing allegory of want. He is always hungry.

619
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:57,799
Speaker 3: That's interesting because it's like, I don't like this kind

620
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 3: of sentiment as nature writing, but also I think that's

621
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 3: somewhat beautifully expressed.

622
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:07,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a little more. He says he is

623
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:10,360
Speaker 2: always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures

624
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:14,280
Speaker 2: despise him, and even Fleas would desert him for a velocipede.

625
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 2: Joe will remind us what a velocipede is.

626
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,279
Speaker 3: It's like that it's that old timey big bicycle with

627
00:39:19,360 --> 00:39:20,240
Speaker 3: a big front wheel.

628
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 2: Okay, So Fleas would rather be on that than on

629
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 2: the coyote, I guess so. Okay. He is so spiritless

630
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:30,760
Speaker 2: and cowardly that, even while his exposed teeth are pretending

631
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:33,759
Speaker 2: a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it.

632
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 2: He is so homely, so scrawny and ribby and coarse

633
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 2: haired and pitiful. Wow, So I agree with you, Like

634
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:47,840
Speaker 2: all of this is obviously editorializing too much and presenting

635
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,719
Speaker 2: the coyote is just a just a you know, a pitiful,

636
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:57,200
Speaker 2: hatable villain, But I mean it is stemming from an understanding.

637
00:39:57,239 --> 00:40:01,000
Speaker 2: I guess that the coyote exists in a place where, yeah,

638
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:05,200
Speaker 2: he has no friends. He's positioned and certainly was positioned

639
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 2: historically between the pressures of the apex predators that, according

640
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 2: to Twain, you know, hate him, and and then the

641
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 2: creatures that he preys upon. And yeah, he is probably

642
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 2: always hungry, like a lot of animals are. It's always

643
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:22,880
Speaker 2: about that next meal. And the coyote is a survivor,

644
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 2: scraping by, you know, engaging this opportunistic lifestyle and you know,

645
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 2: getting what it can get when it can get it.

646
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:32,359
Speaker 3: And even the fleas are like, no, thank you.

647
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:35,720
Speaker 2: That I highly doubt I think the fleas were happy

648
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 2: to have a coyote. Yeah, So, you know, I think

649
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:43,080
Speaker 2: it also is worth reading these lines because it does

650
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 2: sum up how the code he was viewed and in

651
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:49,720
Speaker 2: many places is still viewed, not as a subordinate mezzo

652
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 2: predator with an important role in the ecosystem, because that

653
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 2: is that is essential to note here. Just as apex

654
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 2: predators have have a very important role, so do predators

655
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:01,000
Speaker 2: all the way down the lawn. Like you know, they're

656
00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 2: all part of the web and they do us a

657
00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 2: service in that role. But this is not how they

658
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 2: were seen. They were seen as vermin that we were

659
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 2: just better off without a loathsome creature that lived in

660
00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 2: loathsome places. And then on top of that, like higher

661
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,200
Speaker 2: ranked predators, it was seen as a threat to livestock

662
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:28,120
Speaker 2: and even to human beings. Now they are livestock predators

663
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:30,759
Speaker 2: when they can get it. I mean, you can't bumblame

664
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 2: any livestock predator. You know, they're chickens around, and you

665
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:35,959
Speaker 2: eat chickens, and they're a bunch of them and they're

666
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 2: in a little pen. You might go in and kill

667
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 2: one or all of them because they are good to eat.

668
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 2: That's understandable. That's how predators view things as for it,

669
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:48,799
Speaker 2: and you know, it's going to depend on what the

670
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:51,319
Speaker 2: livestock happened to be. But yeah, they're not immune from

671
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:54,240
Speaker 2: those kind of temptations When it comes to humans. However,

672
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 2: coyotes are generally not a threat to adult humans. The

673
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 2: exceptions to this are tragic and and also you know,

674
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 2: highly circulated. I think, but statistically, your chances of being

675
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:07,520
Speaker 2: hurt by a coyote are close to zero. And again,

676
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:09,840
Speaker 2: I think that this attitude is still a part of

677
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:13,280
Speaker 2: how we view coyotes, like some kind of like loathsome

678
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:16,799
Speaker 2: ghost that lives in the shadows. You know, I've never

679
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,319
Speaker 2: you know, I was not engaged in livestock growing up,

680
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:22,720
Speaker 2: so I never had that influencing my way of thinking

681
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:27,040
Speaker 2: about them. But I would hear them very occasionally, see one,

682
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 2: and there was this kind of idea that like, that's

683
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to feel negatively about this creature, and certainly

684
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:38,719
Speaker 2: just hearing their vocalizations while camping. You know, I've been

685
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 2: slightly unnerved by that, Like I don't like that. I

686
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 2: don't like these guys making all this racket and being

687
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 2: so close to my camp.

688
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's a there's a special kind of

689
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 3: disrespect I think, reserved for what you might call the

690
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:59,040
Speaker 3: maso predator that we can, like an apex predator, we

691
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 3: could be scared of, but that fear is accompanied more

692
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 3: often by a kind of awe and respect, whereas a

693
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 3: second something that you think might still be a little

694
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 3: bit dangerous to you. But it's not like in the

695
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:16,279
Speaker 3: top tier of predators. I think people are more likely

696
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,320
Speaker 3: to just treat that animal with disgust and contempt.

697
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always almost like I think there's like a

698
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:26,360
Speaker 2: crime comparison to being made here, like a serial murder

699
00:43:26,600 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 2: like those those guys are on T shirts for some reason,

700
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,719
Speaker 2: you know, like people people like hate and love them

701
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 2: at the same time. And likewise, you know, these major

702
00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:40,280
Speaker 2: apex predators like those are those those have become icons

703
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:45,400
Speaker 2: that we like associate with, you know, regardless of actual contact,

704
00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:48,960
Speaker 2: like historic contact with those species within an environment of

705
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 2: a given culture. Like the lion. How like how how

706
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 2: many different cultures have taken up the lion as a

707
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 2: symbol even if they did not have lions within their

708
00:43:57,040 --> 00:44:00,719
Speaker 2: historic environment. You know, it's just a potent symbol. The coote. Again,

709
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 2: the coyote has been taken up by people who lived

710
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 2: long term with them in their natural environment, but has

711
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 2: maybe traveled less well outside of that context. Now, I

712
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 2: want to come back to what I said earlier though

713
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 2: about the historic range of the coyote. This is what

714
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 2: I found really interesting here. So they were once creatures

715
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 2: of the plain in Desert Mexico and central North America

716
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:35,480
Speaker 2: already a huge swath of the land, to be clear,

717
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:38,279
Speaker 2: So it's not like they had a tiny range. But

718
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:42,879
Speaker 2: today their range is even faster, having expanded significantly since

719
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 2: the seventeen hundreds, and they've expanded farther south in Central

720
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:52,800
Speaker 2: America and farther north into most of Canada and into Alaska.

721
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:56,120
Speaker 2: They've expanded slightly west to reach the Pacific coast, and

722
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:58,799
Speaker 2: they've expanded all the way to the Atlantic Coast in

723
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 2: the east. You know, they have conquered the conquered North America,

724
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 2: to be clear. So again, we both grew up in

725
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 2: Coyote lands, you and I, but the coyote didn't expand

726
00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 2: into the American southeast until the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties.

727
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 2: They didn't reach Florida until the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,

728
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 2: and eventually like covered the entire south by the nineteen nineties.

729
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 2: So that's how recent we're talking about them getting like

730
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:33,799
Speaker 2: a firm foothold in these areas, or maybe I should

731
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 2: say pad instead of foot, but you can get what

732
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 2: I'm saying.

733
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it's interesting that we see the coyote as

734
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 3: this type of you know, this not the only species

735
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:46,480
Speaker 3: like this, but as this type of species that benefits

736
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:50,800
Speaker 3: where many other species are harmed. You know, from circumstances

737
00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:56,840
Speaker 3: that circumstances and disruptions of natural ecological balances that on

738
00:45:57,000 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 3: the whole are harmful to natural plants and animals. There

739
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 3: are some species that see an opportunity there, like you

740
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 3: were saying earlier, and they can fill the gap, they

741
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:07,839
Speaker 3: can spread out.

742
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're already opportunistic. They're great at scraping by,

743
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:14,880
Speaker 2: and suddenly there is a widespread opening for an apex

744
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 2: predator and they are there to accept the mantle. They

745
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,000
Speaker 2: are ready to headline. Baby, They've been ready all this time.

746
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:25,359
Speaker 2: They're ready when the dire wolf got promoted. They were

747
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 2: ready when the gray wolf got promoted. And now there's

748
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 2: nobody else ahead of them. It is now their time

749
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:32,919
Speaker 2: and we are living in their time.

750
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 3: Interesting.

751
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:36,799
Speaker 2: Yeah. During the nineteen nineties, this is I think when

752
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 2: we really begin to see the coyote move into the

753
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 2: sprawling urban areas, both like metropolis areas and suburb environments.

754
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 2: Even places like New York City and la have become

755
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 2: the domain of the coyote, including I should mention the bronx,

756
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:54,839
Speaker 2: which we previously were talking about in Weird House Cinema,

757
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 2: you will find the coyote and the bronx. Certainly I

758
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 2: find them in or there out here in the Atlanta area.

759
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 2: I I don't think I've ever seen one in Atlanta,

760
00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:06,359
Speaker 2: but I hear stories of people, you know, seeing them

761
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:08,439
Speaker 2: or catching one on a cam that sort of thing.

762
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:10,160
Speaker 3: Totally yeah, uh.

763
00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 2: They are firmly established throughout North America. Outside of the

764
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 2: High Arctic and certain island environments. You know, there are

765
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 2: certain areas that that they have been cut off from claiming,

766
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:23,880
Speaker 2: but again they've pretty much spread everywhere else. So the

767
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:28,040
Speaker 2: reasons for this explosion of coyotes are pretty fascinating. And

768
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 2: I do want to stress that, like we have some

769
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 2: key you know, building blocks to our understanding, some key

770
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:37,520
Speaker 2: things to put into the equation, but there is still

771
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 2: a fair amount of back and forth among researchers about

772
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:43,839
Speaker 2: actually how this comes together. So I do want to

773
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 2: know say that none of this is completely settled. But

774
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:50,840
Speaker 2: there are two of the major factors that are discussed

775
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:53,400
Speaker 2: the most are as follows. First of all is that

776
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:57,320
Speaker 2: absence of historic apex predators like the wolf or the cougar,

777
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 2: and and and In this absence, the code becomes the

778
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 2: de facto apex predator in many areas, still an important

779
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:09,719
Speaker 2: role that something needs to play, and the coyote, again

780
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:12,800
Speaker 2: long overlook for promotion, just slides right into that spot.

781
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:16,280
Speaker 2: They're adaptable predators and can even take down large prey

782
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:20,040
Speaker 2: like moose and elk if conditions are just right. However,

783
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 2: at the same time, they cannot exert the same top

784
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:27,160
Speaker 2: down pressure that former apex predators did, so for instance,

785
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 2: you don't see them actively impacting adult white tailed deer populations,

786
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 2: though they'll highly They're like, they're the number one predator

787
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:41,239
Speaker 2: for white tailed deer fawns, so you know the young,

788
00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:45,520
Speaker 2: the weak, the injured. You know, they are absolutely there

789
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 2: to eat those guys up, but they don't really have

790
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 2: the pressure to impact the adults in the way that

791
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 2: a true apex predator would have. Also important that in

792
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 2: becoming the new apex predator, they are also just not

793
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:04,840
Speaker 2: touched by any top down pressure from higher level predators.

794
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:07,719
Speaker 2: So it's part of it is them moving up, but

795
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:10,000
Speaker 2: the other part is just like there's nothing keeping them

796
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 2: down anymore. The other fascinating reason for their expansion is actually,

797
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:18,480
Speaker 2: and again some researchers go back and forth on this,

798
00:49:18,560 --> 00:49:21,399
Speaker 2: but it seems to be that one of the major

799
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:24,799
Speaker 2: factors here, and this is that their population surge and

800
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:30,400
Speaker 2: expansion is also tied directly to concentrated human eradication programs.

801
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:35,799
Speaker 2: So humans eradicated and expatriated the grizzly bear from the

802
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 2: planes they did. They did the same with the wolf

803
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:41,200
Speaker 2: and to a very large extent, the bison. But when

804
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:44,280
Speaker 2: they tried the same with the coyote, the coyotes simply

805
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 2: conquered the whole continent instead. So poisoning, shooting, trapping, and

806
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 2: really the efforts that the US governmental agencies and state

807
00:49:57,239 --> 00:50:01,120
Speaker 2: agencies as well put into trying to eradicate the coyote

808
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 2: we could do a whole podcast on these. You know,

809
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 2: different technologies were developed, all sorts of means were tried.

810
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:11,359
Speaker 2: It wasn't just okay, go out and shoot a bunch

811
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 2: of coyotes, though that was still absolutely it, you know,

812
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:18,839
Speaker 2: bounty programs and the like. So how did anti code

813
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 2: crusades fail so absolutely again, not only failing to achieve

814
00:50:22,600 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 2: the stated goal, but actually actually resulting in the opposite,

815
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,239
Speaker 2: you know, actually spreading the coyote the rest of the

816
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 2: way across the continent. So for starters, let me stress

817
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:37,520
Speaker 2: that eradication efforts here aimed at predators that included the

818
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:40,080
Speaker 2: coyote were not merely the product of say the nineteenth

819
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 2: century or earlier. They continued in a major government sanctioned

820
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 2: capacity well into the mid twentieth century, you know, preaching

821
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 2: total eradication of the coyote, seeing that as an achievable goal,

822
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 2: and then they continue to this day via various federal

823
00:50:58,040 --> 00:51:01,520
Speaker 2: animal damage control programs, like half a million coyotes are

824
00:51:01,560 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 2: still eradicated each year in the US alone. Wow. And

825
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 2: here's the thing. Under normal conditions, a population of coyotes

826
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 2: is thought to be somewhat self sustaining. So only a

827
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:18,120
Speaker 2: dominant in a given coyote pack, only a dominant pair

828
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 2: in that pack are going to reproduce. Reproduction by others

829
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:24,799
Speaker 2: in the pack is going to be repressed, and litercizes

830
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 2: are going to be kept small. Lethal intervention. Intervention will

831
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:32,920
Speaker 2: temporarily reduce numbers because of you know, death, you know,

832
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:37,400
Speaker 2: if you're literally reducing the head count of the coyotes.

833
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:41,799
Speaker 2: But one argument here is that what happens in this

834
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:45,680
Speaker 2: case is when a coyote pack is disrupted, the survivors

835
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:49,080
Speaker 2: are going to like splinter off, and when they splinter off,

836
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 2: they're going to spread to new territories, so transient loaner coyotes.

837
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:55,400
Speaker 2: I've read a couple of different figures here. One figure

838
00:51:55,480 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 2: was that they'll travel fifty miles or more when they

839
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:00,760
Speaker 2: splinter off and try to find a new place to

840
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:04,759
Speaker 2: establish their presence. I've also seen five hundred kilometers or

841
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 2: three hundred and ten miles as a possibility. So at

842
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 2: any rate, there is a you know, however far they're traveling.

843
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,040
Speaker 2: The idea is if you if you shatter the pack,

844
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 2: the pack is going to like spread out. There's like

845
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 2: like a hydra.

846
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:23,360
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah. So so one pack has natural limits

847
00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 3: on how much each individual in the pack can reproduce,

848
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 3: but disrupting the pack causes more members of the pack

849
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 3: to become reproductively active.

850
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 2: Right right, Okay, that's the idea here. The other way

851
00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:38,319
Speaker 2: of looking at it is also that on top of

852
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:42,759
Speaker 2: this or again, researchers go back and forth on some

853
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 2: of the particulars here. But the other idea is that

854
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:49,680
Speaker 2: since they're no longer bound by pack limits on reproduction.

855
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 2: Reproduction is just going to increase after the fracture, So

856
00:52:53,480 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 2: this is going to result in a rebound of reproductive compensation. Also,

857
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 2: localized kills are going to open up territory for Roman

858
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:06,799
Speaker 2: coyotes to settle into. So you know, you encountered this

859
00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:09,840
Speaker 2: with other like like feral cat populations and so forth

860
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 2: as well. Like you if you were doing like lethal eradication,

861
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 2: you kill all the coyotes in an area, Well, now

862
00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 2: you have an area that can clearly sustain coyotes that

863
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:22,600
Speaker 2: has no coyotes. And if these coals are taking place

864
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:26,359
Speaker 2: elsewhere within say you know, fifty miles one hundred miles

865
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty miles, then you have a high

866
00:53:29,160 --> 00:53:31,439
Speaker 2: possibility that new coyotes are just going to move into

867
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 2: occupy that gap. And as all of this is happening,

868
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:39,319
Speaker 2: and what was happening, the spread into urban areas and

869
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:43,280
Speaker 2: surrounding areas is occurring. And in this case, the coyote

870
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 2: is encountering what is referred to as edge heavy areas,

871
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 2: so places edge areas being like places where two different

872
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:53,600
Speaker 2: cover types converge, two different ecosystems kind of converge. You

873
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:56,640
Speaker 2: have a lot of that occurring artificially in an urban environment,

874
00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 2: and these are environments that they already thrived in. And

875
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:02,560
Speaker 2: then and on top of that, they're going to suddenly

876
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:06,000
Speaker 2: find things like augmented food sources in the form of

877
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 2: urban rodent populations that all time favorite human garbage pets,

878
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:15,799
Speaker 2: as well as a certain amount of crops and small livestock,

879
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:18,840
Speaker 2: as well as various lower food chain urban adapters like

880
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:23,880
Speaker 2: raccoons that were already a part of their diet. H Okay, Yeah,

881
00:54:23,920 --> 00:54:27,920
Speaker 2: So coyote's, after all the opportunistic gomnivores with a heavy

882
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,759
Speaker 2: lean toward carnivore. But they can scrape, buy, and they

883
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:31,759
Speaker 2: will eat vegetation.

884
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 3: So coyote probably wouldn't turn down a piece of pizza.

885
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:38,239
Speaker 2: What do you think, Yeah, my understanding is that if

886
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:40,439
Speaker 2: it was a meat lover's pizza, they would definitely be in,

887
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 2: But if conditions were right, they would still go for

888
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:43,240
Speaker 2: plant lovers.

889
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 3: What do you think about a tub of yogurt? Do

890
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:48,200
Speaker 3: you think coyote is getting in there with the tongue?

891
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know. I think I just

892
00:54:52,120 --> 00:54:54,400
Speaker 2: don't know. I have a maybe the raccoon.

893
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:57,880
Speaker 3: No expertise here, but my gut feeling is yes, I

894
00:54:57,920 --> 00:54:59,959
Speaker 3: think they're getting the head and the yogurt tub.

895
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:05,319
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'm gonna again, though add a little

896
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 2: nuance here. So the coyote explosion is not in question,

897
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:13,000
Speaker 2: nor is the coyote's resilience to culling methods. But there

898
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 2: is at least some disagreement out there about the different

899
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 2: factors and how it all comes together. So, for instance,

900
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 2: some experts argue or counter argue that lethal enforcement actually

901
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:26,080
Speaker 2: does work. So this is kind of like the back

902
00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:28,760
Speaker 2: and forth. Some people are like, lethal enforcement does not work.

903
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 2: We shouldn't do it. We should look at other ways

904
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 2: to manage them. Others are saying lethal enforcement does work,

905
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:40,000
Speaker 2: but we see these initial rebounds due to how it

906
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:43,839
Speaker 2: alters food availability for animals in the aftermath. So this

907
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,120
Speaker 2: idea being it's like, okay, this is another factor to consider.

908
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:49,000
Speaker 2: It's like, you kill all the coyotes in an area,

909
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:52,239
Speaker 2: and then the food sources for the coyote in that

910
00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:55,279
Speaker 2: area may rebound, and this just enables more of a

911
00:55:55,320 --> 00:55:56,240
Speaker 2: coyote rebound.

912
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 3: I see.

913
00:55:57,480 --> 00:56:00,600
Speaker 2: Some also counter that the packs don't all seem to

914
00:56:00,680 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 2: shatter in the way we just described. When they lose

915
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:06,359
Speaker 2: a breeding pair, sometimes a new alpha may rise up

916
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:08,360
Speaker 2: and the pack more or less remain stable, and we

917
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 2: don't have this explosion factor. And others argue that lethal

918
00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 2: enforcement in general and at least mathematically works, but the

919
00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:21,799
Speaker 2: problem is that the kill threshold for effectiveness with coyotes

920
00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:27,160
Speaker 2: is just impossible to hit. So, for instance, and I'm

921
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,320
Speaker 2: not sure this is indeed the target number, but say

922
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:32,759
Speaker 2: you're looking at and I think this is more or

923
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:34,799
Speaker 2: less what is discussed, but say you need to hit

924
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:39,240
Speaker 2: a theoretical sixty to seventy percent kill rate to outpace

925
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:44,720
Speaker 2: reproduction among coyotes, that would just be astronomically high. For instance,

926
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:47,439
Speaker 2: already mentioned like how many coyotes are cold a year,

927
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:50,799
Speaker 2: and I think the current actual rate is closer to

928
00:56:50,840 --> 00:56:55,120
Speaker 2: like twenty percent. So I mean, I don't know what

929
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 2: good that really does you know, to to point that

930
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 2: out that you know that killing does work, but we

931
00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:03,280
Speaker 2: just on a level that we're just incapable of achieving.

932
00:57:04,239 --> 00:57:06,480
Speaker 2: But that is one of the arguments that I was

933
00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:11,480
Speaker 2: running into. And then I found this interesting. A twenty

934
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:14,720
Speaker 2: twenty five study by Gaya at All published in Ecosphere

935
00:57:15,280 --> 00:57:21,080
Speaker 2: argue that coyote populations can decline under sustained intensive control efforts,

936
00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 2: but the problem is once you cease those efforts, a

937
00:57:25,040 --> 00:57:28,240
Speaker 2: rapid rebound is just going to ensue. So you know,

938
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:31,760
Speaker 2: you so there's this counter argument that, Okay, yes you can,

939
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:34,520
Speaker 2: you can really try and suppress them, you know, through

940
00:57:34,680 --> 00:57:38,520
Speaker 2: lethal suppression, but are you going to keep that up forever?

941
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 2: And if not, well they're just going to bounce back,

942
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:42,960
Speaker 2: like and again, they're just too well established in the

943
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 2: areas that they've ventured into at this point. And so

944
00:57:47,240 --> 00:57:49,560
Speaker 2: they they argue, I think they're most mostly talking about

945
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 2: white tailed deer here for example, but they say lethal

946
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 2: control efforts for coyotes are prohibitively expensive at a large

947
00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:58,760
Speaker 2: scale and are unlikely to be a viable long term

948
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:04,040
Speaker 2: management strategy. So they argue that, like, whatever your concern

949
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:08,120
Speaker 2: is regarding the coyote, like for instance, kills on white

950
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:12,640
Speaker 2: tail deer fawnds something like that, well we should maybe

951
00:58:12,680 --> 00:58:15,640
Speaker 2: move past looking at the coyote as being the factor

952
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 2: that we should adjust. So if we're worried about whitetail deer,

953
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 2: then maybe we need to talk about like how many

954
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:24,920
Speaker 2: you know, what the what the kill limit for hunters

955
00:58:25,000 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 2: is or some other environmental or ecological factor, because the

956
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:33,480
Speaker 2: coyotes can just only be controlled so much at this point. Yeah.

957
00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:37,640
Speaker 2: So anyway, just I found that really fascinating, especially after

958
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 2: talking about some of these other cases where human disruption

959
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:46,440
Speaker 2: has just completely eradicated and or expatriated animals from the

960
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 2: prairie environment, Like here's an example where we just ended

961
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:51,800
Speaker 2: up spreading them everywhere. And to be clear, they are

962
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:54,200
Speaker 2: still very much in the prairie environments as well. It's

963
00:58:54,200 --> 00:58:58,120
Speaker 2: not like they left there either. They're still they're you

964
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:00,400
Speaker 2: know that they're the apex predators in those ens in

965
00:59:00,400 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 2: many cases as well.

966
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the coyote cannot be stopped.

967
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:07,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. It cannot be stopped.

968
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:08,680
Speaker 3: Like an incredible hulk.

969
00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:13,000
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, really, it really is. But and that's an

970
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 2: interesting comparison because the Hulk is very much an idea

971
00:59:16,760 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 2: of the human apex predator, you know, like human like large, strong, powerful,

972
00:59:23,040 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 2: you know, not worried with stealth at all. And that

973
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:29,880
Speaker 2: is the type of predator that human civilization decided should

974
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 2: not be allowed to exist in close proximity with humans.

975
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:36,720
Speaker 2: For the vast you know, the vast majority of North America.

976
00:59:37,760 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 2: But the Coyote is, you know, it's like a you know,

977
00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 2: it's more of a mid level hero, a mid level villain,

978
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:47,840
Speaker 2: and has therefore never gone away and will likely never

979
00:59:47,920 --> 00:59:51,520
Speaker 2: go away, has only gotten stronger. So I guess, if

980
00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 2: you were con compare it to the Hulk, the coyote

981
00:59:54,840 --> 00:59:58,000
Speaker 2: is like Hawkeye or something, you know, just saying, you know,

982
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:00,640
Speaker 2: Hawkeyes can I guess always be around even if the

983
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:01,640
Speaker 2: Hulk gets killed off.

984
01:00:01,680 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 3: I don't know, I forget which one Hawk I is.

985
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:06,000
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly.

986
01:00:06,480 --> 01:00:12,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I guess that means I don't see him coming. Yeah, well,

987
01:00:12,800 --> 01:00:15,520
Speaker 3: I have great respect for the coyote, especially after this.

988
01:00:16,200 --> 01:00:18,360
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I as well feel like I have a

989
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:20,760
Speaker 2: lot more respect for them. So the next time I

990
01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:23,280
Speaker 2: hear hear one, I'll just be like, Okay, fair enough,

991
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:26,280
Speaker 2: fair enough, Coyotes, you got it, fair and square.

992
01:00:26,480 --> 01:00:29,439
Speaker 3: That's some great wicked cackling you got going on out there.

993
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:31,480
Speaker 3: Yeah that's off to you.

994
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:35,240
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna go and close out this episode, though. Yeah,

995
01:00:35,240 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from any of you, so feel

996
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:38,840
Speaker 2: free to write in in the meantime. Just want to

997
01:00:38,840 --> 01:00:40,640
Speaker 2: remind you, though, that stuff to Blow Your Mind is

998
01:00:40,640 --> 01:00:43,400
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on

999
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:47,000
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.

1000
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns, so just talk about

1001
01:00:49,080 --> 01:00:51,280
Speaker 2: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.

1002
01:00:51,480 --> 01:00:55,200
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1003
01:00:55,440 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1004
01:00:57,120 --> 01:00:59,640
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1005
01:00:59,640 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1006
01:01:01,840 --> 01:01:04,439
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1007
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:13,080
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1008
01:01:13,160 --> 01:01:16,120
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1009
01:01:16,200 --> 01:01:19,000
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1010
01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:36,360
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