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Speaker 1: From Media Doors World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This

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Speaker 1: is Kel's we can review with Ryan kel Kelly and

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Speaker 1: now here's Kel coming to you alive from Portland, Maine.

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Speaker 1: That We're gonna need a bigger boat department. Researchers from

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Speaker 1: o Search have found what they call the Queen of

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Speaker 1: the Ocean, a great white shark estimated to be seventeen

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Speaker 1: feet long, three thousand, five hundred and forty one pounds

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Speaker 1: and around fifty years old, tagged off the coast of

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Speaker 1: Nova Scotia on October two. It's the largest shark O

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Speaker 1: Search has tagged in the Northwest Atlantic. The Shark Research

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Speaker 1: Organization has a very popular and cool program where you

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Speaker 1: can follow along with the research by tracking the sharks

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Speaker 1: on their website o search dot org. They named this

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Speaker 1: one Nakumi, for the legendary wise old grandmother figure of

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Speaker 1: the Micmac people who have long lived and thrived in

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Speaker 1: this part of the world. By any name, a shark

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Speaker 1: like this one is a fearsome specimen. The average great

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Speaker 1: white gobbles down about eleven tons of food per year,

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Speaker 1: meaning over the course of this old girl's life, she

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Speaker 1: has hunted and eaten somewhere around five and fifty tons

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Speaker 1: of seals, tuna, dolphins, whales, raise other sharks, sea turtles,

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Speaker 1: and pretty much anything else she could get her mouth on.

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Speaker 1: It's estimated that great whites can live to sixty or

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Speaker 1: perhaps seventy years old, so Nakumi still has plenty of

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Speaker 1: time left inner. Certainly, one of the factors that's helping

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Speaker 1: sharks like this live long and grow huge is the

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Speaker 1: remarkable recovery of the gray seal population. The gray seal

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Speaker 1: population has exploded from record loads in the seventies to

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Speaker 1: healthy populations in many areas along the coast. Nowhere is

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Speaker 1: this more evident than on Cape Cod, where the seals

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Speaker 1: have come back in abundance, and with them record numbers

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Speaker 1: of sharks. They're in a number of white shark attacks

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Speaker 1: on humans off the cape in recent years, including fatalities,

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Speaker 1: and signs about shark warnings, are as common as steamers

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Speaker 1: during the summer. Many local striper fishermen say stripe bass fishing,

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Speaker 1: while still good, just ain't what it used to be.

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Speaker 1: There could be a number of reasons for that, but

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Speaker 1: seals get most of the blame. Recently, at the meat

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Speaker 1: eater dot Com, Tom Kier wrote about the attacks on

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Speaker 1: Cape cod in an article titled blood in the Water,

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Speaker 1: and I gotta say it didn't make me eager to

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Speaker 1: take a dip. We're going to keep an eye on

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Speaker 1: Old Nakumi on o search dot org as she swims

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Speaker 1: and eats her way along the Atlantic coast this week

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Speaker 1: Big Sharks, fat bears, and picky eaters. But first I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna tell you about my week and my week as

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Speaker 1: well as This podcast is sponsored by Steel Power Equipment.

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Speaker 1: Steel the brand that made flying with pruning shears and necessity.

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Speaker 1: See seriously, I've been traveling with a pair of steel

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Speaker 1: pruning shears in my check baggage. Super handy when t

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Speaker 1: s A puts those giants super tough zip ties on

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Speaker 1: your gun case, or when you're breaking down birds like

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Speaker 1: rough to grouse and woodcock. Pick up a pair. Today,

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Speaker 1: When I don't travel with them, they're standing at the

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Speaker 1: ready in my kitchen. This week, I traveled all the

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Speaker 1: way to the state of Maine and check back in

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Speaker 1: with Brent West of the High Peaks Alliance and Shiloh Pond.

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Speaker 1: I have to tell you that Old Shilo Pond, the

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Speaker 1: property that we all helped raise, just to touch over

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Speaker 1: seventy tho dollars to get out of hawk and into

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Speaker 1: the public domain. Looks awfully awfully pretty wearing her fall colors.

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Speaker 1: A lone loom was, you know, learning about Maple and

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Speaker 1: oak leaves are flying high on the wind from a

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Speaker 1: tall ridge to the pond's north, and although I did

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Speaker 1: not see them, a few brook trout we're probably going

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Speaker 1: about their spawning business somewhere on the pond's edge. It

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Speaker 1: was good to check up on the place. If you

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Speaker 1: don't remember, Maine is over private land. The Shiloh property

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Speaker 1: will be just a drop of public land in a

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Speaker 1: big state, but it's just a good thing. It's a

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Speaker 1: good thing to do with. The property has a permanence

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Speaker 1: to the people that will go out on the water

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Speaker 1: for a paddle or take just that short walk around

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Speaker 1: its shore. Although Maine has an incredible history of landowners

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Speaker 1: allowing legal trespass on their lands for all types of recreation,

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Speaker 1: which I sincerely hope continues forever, having the pond in

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Speaker 1: public hands, specifically for public use, just gave me the

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Speaker 1: feeling of ease, I guess. Let me describe it like this.

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Speaker 1: Imagine you are a month to month renter and you

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Speaker 1: come home one day after a long day's work, you

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Speaker 1: see like a four sales sign on the property you're renting.

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Speaker 1: That type of uneasiness. That's kind of uneasiness I get

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Speaker 1: on some of these big chunks of private even huge

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Speaker 1: chunks of private ground we were on in Maine. By

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Speaker 1: acquiring that Shilo Pond property and keeping it specific ckly

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Speaker 1: for public use, there is just a feeling of permanence.

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Speaker 1: That's all I can say. But that's not all I

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Speaker 1: checked out. While I'm Maine. Brent showed me some standard

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Speaker 1: October main pursuits. We hunted woodcock, roughed grouse, mushrooms, and ducks,

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Speaker 1: and we hunt all of them on private land because

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Speaker 1: of mains de facto trespassing law. The private land we

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Speaker 1: hunted is essentially open to the public, but it is

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Speaker 1: still private owned by corporations or family trust. We basically

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Speaker 1: did as we pleased, just as if we were on

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Speaker 1: US Forest Service or BLM ground. No real difference. But

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Speaker 1: here is what is different and what makes me want

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Speaker 1: to be so protective over that U S Forest Service

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Speaker 1: or BLM ground. They're gated roads with checkpoints in the

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Speaker 1: main woods, folks and warming huts taking fees to allow

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Speaker 1: trespass in some areas. You can think, well, what's the

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Speaker 1: difference between that and the National Park. Well, it gets

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Speaker 1: more complicated as some of these areas that have been

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Speaker 1: known as the say Great Moose or bear areas are

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Speaker 1: then put up for lease and privatize as and like

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Speaker 1: no trespassing signs go up around their hunt to areas

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Speaker 1: as our whole bodies of water. It's a pay to

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Speaker 1: play a system which from landom perspective, is still pretty

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Speaker 1: darned generous. I cannot imagine this pace for maintenance and

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Speaker 1: upkeep of the extensive road systems in these areas right now,

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Speaker 1: the system that they have in the state of Maine

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Speaker 1: seems to work pretty darn well, to be honest. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of access and hunting and fishing opportunity on

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Speaker 1: that private land, but the situation seems very tenuous. Like

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Speaker 1: I said, you could come back to your spot and

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Speaker 1: see that trespassing sign and that's all there is to it.

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Speaker 1: Very excited to get my first woodcock. It's a strange

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Speaker 1: little bird. I had a bunch of listeners right in

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Speaker 1: and even invite me to come woodcock hunting. I managed

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Speaker 1: to knock a couple down this week for those of

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Speaker 1: you who need to know which is everyone. The woodcock

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Speaker 1: is a long legged similar to a snipe, but slightly larger.

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Speaker 1: Their primary feed or earthworms, and I found them to

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Speaker 1: be quite greasy, tasty birds. Here's a few fun facts

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Speaker 1: for you. The woodcock is a migratory bird that averages

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Speaker 1: only fifty feet in elevation duran's migratory flights. They have

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Speaker 1: long hinged bills like the top part of the bill

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Speaker 1: has some flex in it, which is unique. Imagine a

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Speaker 1: pair of tweezers with a little extra range motion on

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Speaker 1: one side. Their eyes are abnormally set far back in

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Speaker 1: the rear of their heads, their noses around just the

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Speaker 1: very base of the bill, and their ears are in

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Speaker 1: between that. Their brains are also oriented upside down. You

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Speaker 1: could say they have two unique calls, and they even

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Speaker 1: fan out their hind feathers and strut almost like a

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Speaker 1: tiny turkey. Very cool. The roughed grouse is the other

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Speaker 1: species that we busted through the may and brush to find.

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Speaker 1: Very very cool bird. A male rough grouse, once he

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Speaker 1: finds a place to drum it's drumming log, will spend

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Speaker 1: the rest of its life no further than eight hundred

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Speaker 1: feet from that drumming log, which is you know, quite

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Speaker 1: unique that that little stack got a couple of inquisitive

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Speaker 1: looks from some of the mainers I was hanging out with.

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Speaker 1: So if there's some rough grouse biologists out there, please

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Speaker 1: let me know. I have to say, absolutely gorgeous birds

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Speaker 1: and hunting them the way that we were with pointing

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Speaker 1: dogs and hiking through the brush is no easy task.

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Speaker 1: You end up shooting a lot of trees in the

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Speaker 1: day of May, and I found all right. Moving on,

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Speaker 1: and you know, keep in mind, I gotta wrap this

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Speaker 1: up before I board this flight. Now on to the

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Speaker 1: most truly American contest ever created, cat My National Parks

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Speaker 1: Annual Fat Bear Week. I'm stuck drugging. Let it all

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Speaker 1: come from taking too much. You heard that right. One

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Speaker 1: of Alaska's most famous bear viewing parks holds a tournament

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Speaker 1: every year to determine the chunkiest brewing. Cat My was

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Speaker 1: established in nineteen eighteen and part to help protect important

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Speaker 1: habitat for salmon and thousands of brown bears. So what

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Speaker 1: the hell when I have some fun with it. This

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Speaker 1: annual elimination tournament began two thousand fourteen as a trendy

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Speaker 1: social media stunt in a way to celebrate these healthy

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Speaker 1: bears as they binge on migrating soak salmon before heading

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Speaker 1: towards hibernation. Want to keep track of these bears from

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Speaker 1: your couch, you can visit the park's bear cam web

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Speaker 1: page to watch the bears splash around in the Brooks River.

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Speaker 1: Earlier in July, the bear cam that looks in on

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Speaker 1: Brooks Falls had twenty five bears on screen at once.

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Speaker 1: These bears were in the coveted quote jacuzzi below the falls,

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Speaker 1: which cat might describes as a sort of plunge pool

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Speaker 1: where the bears can simply sit and wait for the

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Speaker 1: fish to come close enough to grab. Fans of the

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Speaker 1: tournament can check in on the atness of their favorite

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Speaker 1: bears live and in color. You'll want to know all

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Speaker 1: of the various fishing styles cap my lists for the bears,

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Speaker 1: which include stand and wait, sit and wait, dash and grab, snorkeling,

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Speaker 1: pirate ing, diving, and of course begging. All the need

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Speaker 1: is a drive through window and they'll be set. Twelve

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Speaker 1: bears were chosen this year with names like Chunk Walker, Otis,

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Speaker 1: and grazer to battle it out for the ultimate hyper

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Speaker 1: fagic eater. I know what you're thinking, how do they

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Speaker 1: weave the bears? I'm surely not going to volunteer to

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Speaker 1: coax one onto a scale. Well, this season was the

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Speaker 1: first time the park was able to gauge the actual

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Speaker 1: weight of the bears by using a three D scanner.

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Speaker 1: This year's winner was a big fat bear named seven

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Speaker 1: forty seven, weighing in at four hundred pounds. The park

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Speaker 1: posted the news on their Twitter accounts, saying the votes

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Speaker 1: are in. You've crowned the Earl of war de pose Bear,

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Speaker 1: seven forty seven, the fat Bear Week champion, no longer

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Speaker 1: the runner up. Seven forty seven fulfills the fate of

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Speaker 1: the fat and fabulous as he heads off to hibernation.

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Speaker 1: Oh seven seven received more than forty seven thousand, three

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Speaker 1: hundred votes, fending off Chunk to weighed in at a

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Speaker 1: whopping pounds and got twenty one thousand, nine hundred votes.

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Speaker 1: On this show, we don't promote feeding bears, but watching

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Speaker 1: them feed on webcam, naming them, weighing them with three

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Speaker 1: D scanner, making a tournament, and voting for the fattest

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Speaker 1: in an online contest. Well, I guess that's okay. It's

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Speaker 1: a little weird, but we'll let it slide. Whatever we

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Speaker 1: have to do to bring attention to our wild places

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Speaker 1: in the animals that call them home. I can make

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Speaker 1: some excuses for I got to get these uh COVID

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Speaker 1: kids locked in on zoom and video games little taste

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Speaker 1: of the out of door somehow, some way. But keep

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Speaker 1: in mind, live and in person bear viewing can be

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Speaker 1: a great way for people of all ages to get

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Speaker 1: a chance has to safely enjoy these big, bold and

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Speaker 1: beautiful bruins while also adding an important piece to the

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Speaker 1: economic puzzle. In Alaska, fat bears can be fun at

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Speaker 1: a respected distance. Next, we're heading to the reproduction desk,

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Speaker 1: where age is just a number and size definitely matters.

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Speaker 1: The oldest known sperm in the world has been discovered

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Speaker 1: locked in a piece of solidified amber. I know what

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Speaker 1: you're thinking, cal isn't that just the plot of Jurassic Park? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I know, but sometimes Hollywood kind of gets something right.

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Speaker 1: In this case, the giant sperm comes from a minuscule

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Speaker 1: creature called an ostracod, also known as a quote seed shrimp.

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Speaker 1: Kind of fitting ostracods typically grow just a few tents

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Speaker 1: of an inch long. Their bodies are protected by a

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Speaker 1: bivalve shell, from which tiny crablike appendages is sometimes protrude.

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Speaker 1: They typically boast giant relatively speak, king sperm cells that

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Speaker 1: are much longer than they are, to the tune of

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Speaker 1: point four six inches. So if I'm doing my math right,

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Speaker 1: these sperm are up to four times bigger than the

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Speaker 1: tiny creature that produces and expels them. Though there are

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Speaker 1: thousands of ostracod species around today, the giant sperm found

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Speaker 1: inside a disc of amber about the size of a

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Speaker 1: postage stamp in a mine in northern Myanmar is from

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Speaker 1: the Cretaceous period one hundred million years ago. It's the

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Speaker 1: oldest unambiguous example of any animal sperm. By fifty million years.

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Speaker 1: There were a total of thirty nine ostracods found in

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Speaker 1: the resin, thirty one of which belonged to a never

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Speaker 1: before seen species now called Myanmar Cyprus. Hui paleontologist and

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Speaker 1: a postdoctoral researcher at the Chinese Academy of Science named

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Speaker 1: He Wang, was the first to reconstruct a three dimensional

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Speaker 1: image of the sperm. Put your childish humor away. He

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Speaker 1: sent it to an ostracod expert and paleontologists at the

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Speaker 1: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, who immediately congratulated him on

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Speaker 1: having reconstructed the oldest animal sperm. For Whang and others

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Speaker 1: in the field, this is incredibly exciting stuff and there

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Speaker 1: is so much to learn going forward. For now, let's

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Speaker 1: just sit back and wonder at how hard it must

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Speaker 1: have been for ostrocod to mate. Think about it, how

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Speaker 1: do well? Anyway, we'll just focus on science and not

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Speaker 1: the sex here. That's what's important. Well, you know, that's

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Speaker 1: just like your opinion man. Moving on to the picky

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Speaker 1: eater desk, or you could say that's pretty gross desk.

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Speaker 1: Introducing Thailand's small banded kukri snake and its unique feeding

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Speaker 1: method on the local toad population. Way back in two

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Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, herpetologists were studying snakes in Thailand, the same

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Speaker 1: place that sends trashy act campers with a nice note,

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Speaker 1: They came across an interesting technique for how the kirky

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Speaker 1: gets its meal. The small banded kirky is found in

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Speaker 1: relatively large numbers in the forests of Cambodia, allows southeastern Myanmar, Thailand,

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Speaker 1: and Vietnam, where they're typically light brown or buffed to

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Speaker 1: gray brown color, and irregular dark brown cross bands which

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Speaker 1: are edged in black. According to new research published this

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Speaker 1: month in the journal her pet Azoa and republished on

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Speaker 1: Smithsonian mag dot com, the scientists observed the snakes as

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Speaker 1: they used a set of enlarged curved teeth to the

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Speaker 1: back of its jaws to make a slice on the

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Speaker 1: left side of the large poisonous toad's belly. The snake's

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Speaker 1: head swung from side to side as it made the incision,

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Speaker 1: and then slowly plunged entirely inside the toad's body and

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Speaker 1: pulled out the unfortunate amphibian's liver, heart, lung, and stomach.

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Speaker 1: The snake then proceeded to eat the toad's organs one

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Speaker 1: by one. In case you're wondering, this feeding behavior is

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Speaker 1: different than any other snake ever described. Normally, snakes swallow

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Speaker 1: their prey hole, but that isn't the case here. This

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Speaker 1: is a quote. During those macab attacks we managed to

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Speaker 1: capture on camera three times, the toads struggled vigorously to

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Speaker 1: escape and avoid being eviscerated alive, but on all occasions

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Speaker 1: this was in vain. The fights we saw lasted for

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Speaker 1: up to a few hours, depending on the organs the

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Speaker 1: snake would pull out first. Thankfully, these snakes are relatively

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Speaker 1: harmless to humans. I say relatively because while not poisonous,

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Speaker 1: small banded Kirky can slice you open really good while

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Speaker 1: also injecting an anti coagulant agent that will make you

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Speaker 1: bleed like crazy. Kirky's teeth are designed to inflict lacerations,

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Speaker 1: not punctures, which would make a bad day for us,

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Speaker 1: but they produced some horrific deaths for these toads, as

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Speaker 1: the snakes spend hours ripping out their organs. Maybe I

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Speaker 1: should have saved this one for Halloween type special. Thanks

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Speaker 1: so much for listening. I know this is a short one,

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Speaker 1: as per usual. Let me know what I'm getting right,

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Speaker 1: let me know what I'm getting wrong, and more importantly,

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Speaker 1: let me know what's going on in your neck of

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Speaker 1: the woods. By writing into a s k C a L.

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Speaker 1: Let's ask cal at the Meat Eater dot com. I'll

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Speaker 1: talk to you next week.