WEBVTT - Ep. 180: Teeth, Horns, and Claws 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.320 This is me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:18.319 bug bitten in my case, underwear lessening Hunt podcast. You 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.560 can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.160 the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.440 Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:36.000 where you stand with on X? All right? Can I 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:38.760 call you Professor dug Emlin. That's right, it works, Okay, 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.199 tell people what you do. I'm a biologist. I'm an 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:45.760 evolutionary biologist, and I study animal weapons at University of Montana. 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:50.400 Out there I got to take care of. Now. I'm 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.280 a biologist at the University of Montana, and uh, most 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:55.760 of my time I work on rhinoceros beetles with horns, 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.360 but more generally, I'm interested in how and why animal 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:06.600 weapons get really big, including dear teeth, saber tooths. Yeah, 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.160 including all of those things. We can talk about any 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:10.720 of them that you want to. One of the things 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:12.920 I stumbled on a few years ago while trying to 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:15.560 write a book was realizing that all these things that 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.880 we learned about insects and about beetles applied to things 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.000 like deer. And then the more I looked and the 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:24.400 more I dug into the sort of nitty gritty of 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.520 the biology, the more convinced I became that the same logic, 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.039 the same rules apply to all these cases of really 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:36.720 extreme weapons, including, to my astonishment, military technologies. Yeah, sort 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.360 of day to day research is on is on rhinoceros beetles. 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.440 The fact is, the concepts I study, the things I 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.640 think about applied just as much to military technologies as 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:48.280 they do to animal weapons. Okay, a couple quick things. 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.800 You do you know that you know? You know my 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.640 sister in law, I just figured this out two days ago. 0:01:55.880 --> 0:02:02.640 Who is now You're one of her stituents. Remember when 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:05.760 Clinton was being impeached and and there was this debate 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:10.000 about whether or not character matters. Yeah, she has character. 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:13.560 I think I could have told you that Rush Limbaugh 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:16.720 said character is above all else at the time he 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.560 felt that and um, yeah, she fits that point too. 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.960 You're comparing it to Russia. No, No, I'm saying that. 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:31.160 I'm saying that there was a debate, like, Okay, there 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:34.120 was a debate at the time in the nineties. There 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.720 was like there was this debate where people were saying, 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:41.160 um that, you know, a president does what he does 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.280 and character doesn't matter. Right, It's like it's it's it's 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:46.919 nice that they have good character, but it's not good 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.480 character is not essential for the job. And so at 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:53.760 the time, people that were voicing the opposite opinion were 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.240 understandably from the opposite side of the aisle, and so 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.280 they were like, oh my god, does character ever matter? 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.280 Like that's character out limball, that characters above ball else. 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:06.400 And then you know later in subsequent administrations, the people 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:10.280 who voiced the the importance of character have dramatically shifted. 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:16.920 But I want to get another point now, um uh, 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.360 I think I told you this before. Dog the best 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:26.600 one of the best lines in your book, isn't your Lineinstein? Quote? Yeah? 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:28.119 What do you call it? When you put a quote 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.639 it to be of a book? What doesn't ea mean 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.040 later we'll look it up really quick. I should know 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.160 when you die and they write something about you. Yeah, 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.920 that's not that. It's not that anyway, there's a quote 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:46.360 I don't have you have hit him with the quote, yeah, 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:48.120 but I can't. I don't have a memories. It's like 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:52.080 I've I've opened books with quotes. Oh you got it right, Yeah, 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.800 speak of for yourself. Sam epigraph a sam longer coming 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.640 to epigraph. So epigraph is before a book, and epitaph 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:01.240 is on your teamstone after it's after you die. So 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:06.680 epigraph is before your book. And so I know not 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:11.040 what I it's not what he said. Let me try again. 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:16.920 I know not with what weapons. World War three will 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.200 be fought, but World War four will be fought with 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:25.440 sticks and stones. It is good and and I guess 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:26.960 I can speak to it for a minute about why 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:28.560 I chose to put it at the front of the book. 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.120 It felt president somehow for a book on extreme weapons. 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:35.200 And one of the things I hinted at is that 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:37.279 I learned along the way while writing this book that 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:39.440 all these things that we've stumbled on as a biologist 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:43.159 applied to military technologies. And part of the exercise of 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:46.279 writing this book was really digging into the military literature 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.440 and reading about historical arms races and the deep past, 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.240 and and looking at these parallels and really trying to 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.120 unpack the parallels between the animal and the military weapons. 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.360 And that meant to do that right, that meant coming 0:04:57.400 --> 0:04:59.960 full forward and taking a really hard look at modern 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:03.720 times like the Cold War and post Cold War situations 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.760 and Einstein wrote that during the Cold War, very much 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:11.839 in that mindset and speaking to the I mean, I 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:16.720 guess the spectacular devastating capabilities of modern weapons of mass destruction, 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:18.919 And I think his point is it doesn't really matter 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.200 what the next world is, you know what the Third 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:23.799 World War is going to be fought with, because pretty 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:26.240 much anything they use these days is going to be 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:30.040 so destructive that everything will be rubble, and the people 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:32.760 that managed to stagger past that are going to be 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:35.000 hitting each other on the head with sticks and stones 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:37.359 because it's the only thing that will be left. There's 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.520 a kind of sobering, but it is a reflection of 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.599 the reality of where modern weapons of mass destruction are. 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.479 There's a thirty or forty thousand one of those thirty 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.320 or forty thousand year old skull from Europe that they had. 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.000 It was a pretty well preserved like in tax gold 0:05:55.040 --> 0:06:02.440 they had, and they had a uh peculiar concave cracking 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:06.200 on it. It suggested the person they pondered over it 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.480 like whether it was post mortem or not, like they 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:12.479 thought maybe just soil compacion or something had happened. Um, 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:14.600 and then they want up they worked up some kind 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:19.120 of technology where they can make these, uh like something 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.839 that's a fact simile of human bone and fill it 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.040 with what you call that stuff you shoot guns at, 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.839 ballistic gel fill it with a ballistic gels. See what 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.120 kind of and then yeah, and then give it various 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.480 injuries and um, they determined it thirty thousand years ago 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:39.159 he had likely been killed by someone who is left 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:46.000 handed and facing him. That's okay, uh, okay, that's my 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.520 favorite line from the book. And not just because I'm 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:50.160 not pointing out that you didn't write it, but it's 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:55.120 a great it's a perfect really it's a really good 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.479 h you know, deal best line in the book. My 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.719 favorite new word that I learned in your book, which 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.279 is called animal weapons, like you get, the title gets 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:05.960 right to it. The title is that leave you guessing? 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:08.799 I don't know. I mean it does like blood Meridian 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:14.640 at am. But the title doesn't tell you what the 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.440 book is about. Okay, But in all fairness, animal weapons 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.600 doesn't necessarily speak to the fact that half the book 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:27.360 is about the miltee. So we struggled with titles. We 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.720 are that we are animals, that is, but that might 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:32.680 not have be the how the average person on the 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.280 you know in the bookstore looking at the shelves would 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.920 think about it. So okay, one more quick comment and 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.760 I'm gonna have you digging on something. Um My favorite 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:48.960 word that learned in this book is supernate. That was 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:50.800 a new one for me too. You didn't know that word. No, 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.280 I do now explain to folks. It is who can 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:58.360 supernate and why it matters. Cats can supernate their four limbs, 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.280 and it refers to the way that they can articulate 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.720 and twist the way that we can with our risk too. 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:07.840 But most other carnivores like dogs or wolves cannot. They 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.080 can articulate and twist their fore limbs, and it is 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:13.000 relevant and I talked about it in the book in 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:17.120 the context of the evolution of the extreme canines and 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.560 things like sabretooth cats and and and The idea there 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.080 is that those weapons are so big. I mean, they're 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.680 phenomenal for piercing and for killing really big prey, but 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.400 they're also really vulnerable to breakage and snapping, and so 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.600 the cats need to be able to plunge the teeth 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:35.400 in and pull them right back out again. You can't 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.200 just lock them in and hang or you'll well maybe 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:40.680 they could. But the only way they could do that 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:42.840 is if they can hold on to the animal and 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.200 position themselves. You know, if otherwise you sink your teeth 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.040 in the animal runs away, it snaps your teeth. Thought 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:52.200 to hold onto that animal would be spidd four limbs 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:54.040 while it's trying to run like hell away from you. 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:56.880 Is part of how we think, or the paliontal just 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.680 think these cats are able to not snap their teeth, 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:01.080 but they it. You know, you look at the libery 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.240 a tart pit fossils, they had snap teeth. My first 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.600 date with my wife, did you that's a good first date. 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:09.560 But so they snapped their teeth all the time. I 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:11.600 mean that was definitely the big price tag of having 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.320 teeth like that, well one of the price tags, because 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:18.520 you think about like you look at a wolf, dragon elpdown. 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.640 He doesn't. He can't supernate, so he has to do 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.080 all with his teeth, just hanging on for dear life. 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.440 But they also do it as a group. So wolves 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:29.880 tend to hunt as a pack, and they can bring 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:34.000 down prey by pulling on them from different sides. I 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.360 think there's a debate actually about saber tooths for a 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.160 long time it was assumed that they were solitary hunters, 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:40.960 and now there's people arguing that they might have been 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:45.760 social to you. But I don't know. Not my forte 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:47.600 I work on beetles. But no, there's been a bunch 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:49.440 of stuff that's come out on saber tooths. I mean, 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.360 they were a real catalyst for me. We can get 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:54.080 we can get into this and whatever. What do you want? 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.440 But most of that I okay, Then I we'll come 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.320 back to that. I feel like I want to start 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:04.880 out by talking if you're comfortable with this about the 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:09.080 white and brown mice on the white sand. Okay, because 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:11.000 unless you think that's a bad am I messing my 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:12.840 job up or doing my job, we can do this 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.880 or whatever. Do you want? The logic that I got 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.000 one that I might be able to wedge in ahead 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:21.160 of that kind of try go for it. What I 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:23.120 just want to know what? Maybe what like the what 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.280 your definition of a weapon is? Damnit? Yanni, that's the 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:33.880 first question and I skipped it. Look Sam, that's number one. 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:35.959 Back me up. So this is when I struggled with 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:37.600 when I was trying to research the book too. There 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:42.240 isn't a simple definition. I mean if you think about it, teeth, claws, 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:45.640 anything that you stab or claw slash with, clearly that's 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:47.840 a weapon. You think of tusks and antlers that you 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:52.120 lock and spar with, those are weapons. But chemical things 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.480 that animals produce as a toxin to spray or inject, 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:58.839 those are weapons of a sort. And if you start 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.080 looking at military arsons and you start looking at what 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:03.200 soldiers carry in the battle, they carry a lot more 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.720 than than the firearms. They've got communication equipment. They've got 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.440 camo that helps them blend with their backgrounds, they've got 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:13.439 kevlar that protects them from certain vantages. All of that 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.040 stuff could be considered part of the arsenal of an 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:19.000 individual soldier, and so you can start to subdivide it 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:22.240 into things that mostly function for protection and defense, things 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.280 that function for attack and offense. I don't actually want 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:27.440 to go down that path of what is a weapon, 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:29.520 because there's a million things that could fit under that. 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:32.959 What I will say is I focus on a particular 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.679 subset of animal weapons, and those are the things that 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:38.600 get really big and so sort of from my perspective 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:42.079 as an evolutionary biologist, I'm constantly stumped by the fact 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:44.280 that there are species out there with these things sticking 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.240 off of them that are ridiculous. I mean, any hunter 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:49.520 loves a good rack of antlers, and we love looking 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.760 at caribou or elk, but you step back a look 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:54.960 at them like you're an alien from another planet looking 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:57.079 at these things for the first time. It's absurd. It's 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.560 absolutely insane that these animals would have that much stuff 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.480 sticking off their heads. And as a biologist, I want 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:05.280 to make sense of that. We know it's awkward, we 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:09.560 know it's expensive. Under what kinds of circumstances will the 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:13.040 benefits of a weapon like that be so profound that 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.679 animals with these huge weapons do better than other individuals 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:20.280 out there with weapons that that are smaller or less extreme. 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.319 And so that's my sort of thing as a biologist. 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.920 Under what kinds of social or physical environments or circumstances 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:29.760 will sort of the stars aligned so that the really 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:32.360 big weapons win. And so so it's it comes back. 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:34.280 I'm not giving you an easy answer to what is 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.360 a weapon. There's a lot of things that qualify as 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:38.760 a weapon, but I'm kind of hoping today we're going 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:41.760 to focus on things that are unquestionably weapons and they're 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:43.840 the big stuff, the tusks and the horns and the 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:48.440 antlers and the you know, the sabretooth cat keynines. Okay, 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:50.120 so here's here's what I want you to talk about. 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:52.800 Here's what I wanted to get into. The white and 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:57.280 brown mice. Okay, because you have a I'm gonna switch up. 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.079 You have a page on page six. Nice to know 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.320 I made its pitch six. Yeah, body, I made it 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:08.640 always through this book, man. So on page six you 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:12.559 have a quote where you say, whenever individuals differ and 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:18.600 how successful they are at propagating their kind, evolution occurs. So, 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:20.679 keeping that in mind and knowing this is something that 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:22.480 you chose to bring up early on in your book, 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.280 tell the story about the white mice and the brown 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.840 mice and the white sand. And that's the reason I 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:30.480 told that story was to try to provide sort of 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:34.520 a really simple, intuitive, real world example to hang that 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:38.560 logic on. So that essence of evolutionary biology people people 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:41.240 feel threatened by it, people misunderstand that, people run with 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:43.520 it in all kinds of crazy directions, But it is basic. 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:46.480 It really is a simple process. It it rests on 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.200 the fact that if you look at any population of 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.360 anything out there, you pick your favorite species. But in 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.320 this case, we'll start with old field mice. And you 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:57.760 go out and you start looking at the individuals. You 0:13:57.800 --> 0:13:59.680 look at the mice. You're not just saying, hey, there's 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.040 six or needy two of them, or you know, there's 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:04.160 more this year than last year. You're actually looking at 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.560 the mice. What you're gonna find is they're not the same. 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:08.640 Some of them are heavier, some of them are lighter, 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.000 some of them are darker. Some of them have I 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.840 don't know, longer legs, bigger teeth. If you go out 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.440 there as a biologist and you start measuring things, you're 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:18.680 gonna find that there's variation that some of the mice 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.200 are faster, some of them age more quickly, some of 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:23.600 them digest things better, some of them smell better. There's 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:26.320 tons of things about the mice that are different from 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.280 each other. And and evolution is about turnover. It's how 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:32.880 some types do about. It's winners and losers. Some types 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:34.760 do better than others, and the ones that do better 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:37.480 end up living when others die, and they end up 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:40.400 reproducing when others don't. And those are the ones that 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.080 end up producing offspring that carry with them these same characteristics. 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.000 And if you look at that population over time, from 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:49.400 one generation to the next generation to the next generation, 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:53.880 you follow that, you'll find that the average characteristics shift. 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:57.760 They get darker, they get faster, they get better. It's 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:01.000 smelling a certain thing. Populations are all was changing as 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:03.800 they sort of adapt to the environments around them. That's evolution. 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:06.880 That's the process that I'm looking at. So that you learn. 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.480 Mice is a really clear example. I can tell the 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.800 story if you want. I gotta like, I wanna a 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:17.600 couple of things that that brings up as a soth. 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:20.920 So often in biology you talk to people who are 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.840 looking at population like the general sense, and you're talking 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.160 about looking at the individual differences. And I think a 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:28.760 good way for people to understand that in the way 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:30.320 that struck and I was reading your book, is it 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.160 when we when we humans look at other humans, we 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.160 completely gloss over. We're not like, oh, they all look 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.640 the same. You're right, we are really good. You can 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:45.640 get the differences. Well, you see, I saw a man. 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.360 I'm like, that man has an extraordinarily long neck. It 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.240 wasn't thirty minutes ago. I thought that because you just 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:52.760 like you have a trained eye, so you're just like 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:54.600 the same way you can go you can recognize a 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:56.880 person and pick them out of hundreds of people. And 0:15:56.920 --> 0:15:59.920 so to talk about how mice we can't see it 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.240 is all we see is it's MOUs nous. That's a 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:04.880 great analogy though, because people ought to recognize that we're 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.280 really good if seeing those differences in ourselves. But what 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:10.800 you have to accept then is those kinds of differences 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.520 exist in everything from you know, from plants to snails 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:18.040 to mice. Every population out there has sort of standing 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:21.720 genetic variation. It has differences among individuals and the traits 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:24.520 that you might look at and measure, and sometimes those 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.560 differences matter. Sometimes individuals that run faster actually do better 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.040 at getting away from predators and they live longer, or 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:32.880 you know, who knows what the traits are. In my 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:35.600 case and today's interview case, you know, we're going to 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:38.160 be sort of playing around with what kinds of conditions 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.400 cause the individuals with the really big weapons to win 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:43.920 to do better than the other individuals, because those are 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.360 the conditions that will lead to the evolution of big weapons. 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:48.640 But but the light and dark mice, it's a it's 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.600 a simple example of a real world population that's been 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:54.560 studied really well all the way down to people have 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.440 figured out the genomes, they know the individual genes, they 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.320 know the mutations to the genes that contributed to the rights. 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:04.679 So so from a biology standpoint, it's a beautifully complete story. 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.800 But it's basic. It's really simple. Mice are dark, they're brown. 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.280 They usually go forage at night because there's predators that 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.240 can spot them and eat them. Owls are still really 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:16.760 good at seeing contrast in the dark, so their main 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.680 predators when they're out at night or owls. And and 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:22.800 if you're a mouse running around on dark soils and 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:26.440 most of their habitat and you're too light, the contrast 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:29.040 makes you stand out and you get nailed by the owls, 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:33.560 And so owls have historically kept mouse populations pretty dark 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:35.919 brown because any of that were too light got nailed 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.600 and the ones they got cold from the population because 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.480 they stood out. And then a few thousand years ago, 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:45.760 mice colonized, They expanded their range, and they colonized the 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:48.240 coastal sand dunes around the Gulf of you know, the 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.119 Gulf in the southern United States, around the coast of Florida, 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:53.720 and you get out onto these dunes, and all of 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:56.280 a sudden, the dirt's not rich and dark and brown anymore. 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:58.639 You're out on sand dunes, it's like piles of salt. 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:01.440 I mean, some places it's really white. And so what 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:03.680 happened is the mice are still being mice. They're doing 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:05.639 all the same things, but now they're running around at 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.120 night on white and all of a sudden, the dark 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.360 mice stood out really badly, and they got hammered by 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:13.800 the owls because they kept seeing these dark mice and 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:17.960 nailing them. And by pure dumb luck chance, a small 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:21.080 number of these mice carried mutations in their genome that 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:25.200 screwed around with the pathway that makes the dark melon 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:28.080 and pigment in the fur, and they happened, by chance, 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:30.600 to be lighter. More of their fur was white and 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.280 less of it was dark. And normally in the main 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:35.440 areas they get hammered because they look bad, they're they're 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:37.600 too light, they stand out. But out here on these 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:41.080 outer fringes, those individuals did better because they were lighter 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:42.959 in color and they were more likely to hide than 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:46.000 the dark mice. And so out on these coastal populations. 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:48.120 You know, owls are still being owls. They're just going 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.359 for whatever they find. But in those populations, they're eating 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:53.359 all the dark mice. And it was the ones that 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.560 carried these these random genetic mutations that made them lighter. 0:18:56.600 --> 0:18:59.800 Those mice survived, they had all the kids, and then 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.919 over time these mice populations got whiter and whiter, and 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.520 now we have two sort of side by side areas 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.359 with white mice and dark mice, and we think it 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:11.679 was driven by selection from these predators. And so the 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:13.600 experiment I talked about in the book was a classic. 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:18.119 They set up in the seventies where they had captive owls. 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.680 They trucked in truckloads of sand and they created arenas 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:24.159 with white soil, like like from the coast, and then 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.120 they had other arenas with dark soil, and then they 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:29.399 just released mice and let the owls do what the 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.280 owl's dead. And they showed really cleanly that on the 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:34.639 dark soil, it's the white mice that get nailed, and 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.240 on the light soil it's the dark mice that get nailed. 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:39.840 And they were able to show that the owls were 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:42.439 sort of to use the technical language, acting as agents 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:45.600 of selection. They were selecting for dark or light mice 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:49.200 on these different backgrounds. So it's a nice example of 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.600 a process of winners and losers. The color of the 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:56.120 mouse differed from mouse to mouse, and in each environment 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:59.399 it mattered. The ones that had the right color combinations lived. 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.080 The one that had the bad combination stood out, like 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.239 you know, like a hunter wearing the wrong camo. You 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.679 stand out, you get noticed. And in that case, because 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.040 they were getting eaten, it ended up that some mice 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.920 were being more successful at surviving and reproducing in each area. 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.200 They passed on their inherited characteristics and the population changed 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:20.200 over time. It evolved so that now several thousand years later, 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.280 you know, a couple of thousand mouse generations later, those 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:25.679 two populations are totally different from each other. I mean 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.679 they look like different species. One's white and one's dark. 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:32.560 And that was a very recent, sort of gradual evolutionary 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:37.840 shift in the color example of the process. But that 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:40.919 process is happening all the time and just about anything 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:45.080 out there, it's on us as the scientist to figure out, Okay, 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:47.639 what are the things that differences among individuals? What are 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:50.800 the variations in this species that excuse me that matter? 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:53.800 Why do they matter? Why are these ones the ones 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:55.240 that are winning and these ones are the ones that 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:56.919 are losing? And we can go out and sort of 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:01.040 study the process of evolution in the wild in real populations. 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:04.120 And again that's it's just a conceptual backdrop to turn 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.480 around and then say, wider weapons, get big. What I like? 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:09.760 What strikes me about that that quote that Steve just 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:12.240 read and what you're saying. And I know that happened 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:15.760 over whatever thousand generation might have even been less, but 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:19.720 it was fast. Yeah. But you know, the po posing 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:23.359 evolution that way, I think gives it a little bit 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.159 more of an immediacy. I think to a lot of 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.560 people it's it's kind of an abstraction. You know, it's 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:33.359 something that is working on like macro population levels, but 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:35.439 it really does come down to the individual and it 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:39.159 can change very rapidly. I'm really glad you brought that up. Actually, 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:41.080 if you forgive me for a digression here, I'm really 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:42.840 glad you brought that up because I run into this 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:45.919 in my classes. People have this antiquated notion of the 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:49.280 evolutionary biologist as this old, white haired geezer with a 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:53.320 big beard arguing about apes, and that's not what modern 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:59.680 I mean truly, My major professor was a white haired GUYE. No, 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:04.040 wasn't that. It wasn't that your dad. I'll take issue 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:08.239 of that. It that way, But wasn't your father an 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:14.600 evolutionary and my grandfationary biologist. It's like the family business. 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:17.399 But coming back, father was one of the founders of 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:22.680 the the field of animal Yeah, yeah, I broke away. 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:24.320 I don't work on birds, I work on beatles. That 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:32.800 was my radical Yeah, exactly, bigger sample sizes. But but 0:22:32.920 --> 0:22:35.480 back to the reality. What is an evolutionary bologist. Evolutionary 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.280 biology today is incredibly relevant to things that that everybody 0:22:39.320 --> 0:22:41.840 cares about. It's not a bunch of old timers arguing 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:46.199 about apes. It's about genomes and genetics and medicine. So huge, 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:48.840 just a list a couple issues that matter to people 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:51.760 every day. People on farms have to deal with the 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:54.040 fact that they go out there and try to control 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:58.320 pest populations on their crops by spraying pesticides, and very 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:01.879 quickly the insect pests evolvers asistance and they stop being susceptible. 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.400 That is evolution, no matter what people want to call it, 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:07.399 it's turnover. You're killing a bunch of the pests. Some 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:10.919 of the pests happen by chance to have variants in 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:14.520 their genomes that allow them to detoxify the chemicals that 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:18.400 you're spraying. Everybody else is dead. Those ones survive, they 0:23:18.400 --> 0:23:20.480 have lots of kids. All of a sudden, your pest 0:23:20.520 --> 0:23:25.520 population explodes. With all these competitions, no competition, they're all dead, right, 0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:28.119 And yet you saw suddenly you can detoxify these chemical 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:31.080 that nobody else. That's the winner, winners and losers. They 0:23:31.119 --> 0:23:35.199 start reproducing and the population evolves fast within it. You know, 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:37.920 most of the pesticides are obsolete within five to ten 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:42.520 years because insect populations adapt so quickly. Herb besides, same story. 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:45.320 You see the same thing with antibiotics. We're running into 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:47.520 huge problems now where you go to the hospital and 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:50.080 things that used to be standard can kill you because 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:52.800 the antibiotics that we have available to us don't work. 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:55.320 And again, people don't like to use the E word, 0:23:55.640 --> 0:23:58.520 but the fact is that's evolution. When you apply a 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:01.320 dose of antibiotics, you are trying to kill a population 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:04.440 of bacteria. And if you kill them all you win. 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:08.120 Population goes extinct, Your infection is cured. But if there's 0:24:08.160 --> 0:24:12.159 any genetic variation among individuals within that bacteria population that 0:24:12.160 --> 0:24:14.520 allow a few of them to survive the drug. Just 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:16.480 what you said down, If you kill all the competition, 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:20.000 they're all dead. And the heavy Yeah they got gravy. 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:23.080 It's awesome. There's no competition, there's all these resources. They explode, 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:26.439 and now your population is shifted from one generation to 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:28.960 the next, or over a couple of dozen bacterial generations 0:24:29.000 --> 0:24:32.320 yet is shifted from susceptible to resistance. And you, as 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:35.639 a as a doctor applying a drug, have driven that. 0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:37.879 You've acted as an agent of selection, and you've driven 0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:40.720 the evolution of that population. So modern evolutionary biology is 0:24:40.720 --> 0:24:43.639 about drug design. It's about trying to figure out ways 0:24:43.640 --> 0:24:47.600 to combat antibiotic resistant disease strains. It's about public health 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:51.639 trying to engineer mosquitoes so that they can't carry zickar denghy, 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:54.760 and and trying to figure out how to produce these 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:57.840 engineered mosquitoes and get them in the field to spread 0:24:58.080 --> 0:25:07.600 enough that the wild populations become resistant or it's not wet. Yes, 0:25:07.800 --> 0:25:12.520 it's a huge industry right now. Yeah, Genetically modifying mosquito. 0:25:12.600 --> 0:25:15.080 You can engineer one that can no longer carry malaria 0:25:15.280 --> 0:25:17.920 or zika or dangy, and I've had dany It sucks. 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:20.119 I mean, if this is a big deal. If you 0:25:20.119 --> 0:25:22.280 can figure out how to make a mosquito that normally 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:26.480 is a vector that carries the disease incapable of harboring 0:25:26.520 --> 0:25:29.679 the pathogen, You've done a lot. But you've just engineered this, 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:32.520 you know, screwed up genetically modified mosquito. You introduced it 0:25:32.520 --> 0:25:35.959 into the wild, and it's not going to outcompete all 0:25:36.000 --> 0:25:38.919 the other normal mosquitoes. So you can spend a fortune 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:41.119 building it in the lab, but trying to implement it 0:25:41.160 --> 0:25:43.080 in the field is a problem. And that's where evolutionary 0:25:43.080 --> 0:25:47.159 biology comes in. How figure out what kind of selective advance, 0:25:47.160 --> 0:25:49.119 you know, how can you figure out ways to to 0:25:49.240 --> 0:25:53.639 let something that is otherwise deleterious spread within a population 0:25:53.760 --> 0:25:57.680 so that it gets abundant enough that the mosquito population 0:25:57.760 --> 0:26:00.879 rit large stops being capable of sustaining the infections and 0:26:01.280 --> 0:26:04.040 involves a lot of theory, involves a lot of evolutionary biology. 0:26:04.200 --> 0:26:06.440 So that was a big tangent. But yeah, I'm glad 0:26:06.480 --> 0:26:09.280 you brought it up. Evolutionary biology is a vibrant, thriving 0:26:09.320 --> 0:26:14.840 field that's not arguing about apes. It's about molecular biology, genetics, genomics. 0:26:14.840 --> 0:26:16.719 It all comes back to the white mice, the light 0:26:16.720 --> 0:26:19.960 and dark mice turnover. When are their winners and losers? 0:26:19.960 --> 0:26:23.560 When individuals do better than other individuals and the traits 0:26:23.640 --> 0:26:26.199 that make them do better are heritable or passed on, 0:26:26.960 --> 0:26:29.600 you've got the raw material for revolution. You watch that 0:26:29.640 --> 0:26:33.080 population over time, and it's going to change. Okay, let 0:26:33.080 --> 0:26:36.159 me hear you with this one. Is it still in 0:26:36.200 --> 0:26:41.840 your circle? Um? Do we still talk? We meaning you 0:26:42.280 --> 0:26:45.800 do you guys still talk about Um, there being a 0:26:45.840 --> 0:26:52.000 difference between natural selection and sexual selections. Where I thought 0:26:52.000 --> 0:26:55.000 you're gonna go between biological evolution and cultural evolution that 0:26:55.280 --> 0:26:58.680 we can get there later. Between natural selection and sexual selection. Yeah, 0:26:59.000 --> 0:27:00.920 you do? You still view the as He's like, you 0:27:00.960 --> 0:27:02.840 think your audience is going to know what sexual selection is, 0:27:03.400 --> 0:27:06.800 step back and define it. So do it through? All right? 0:27:07.320 --> 0:27:11.080 So natural selection tends really a good way to think 0:27:11.119 --> 0:27:13.679 about it is survival. It's which are the individuals that 0:27:13.720 --> 0:27:16.679 are going to grow the fastest, are going to you know, 0:27:17.280 --> 0:27:20.320 get access to the best territories outcompete other individuals for 0:27:20.359 --> 0:27:23.480 access to food. They're going to be the most resistant pathogens, 0:27:23.680 --> 0:27:27.320 who are the healthiest animals in the population, and the 0:27:27.320 --> 0:27:30.760 ones most likely to survive a winter cold snap or 0:27:30.800 --> 0:27:33.479 to get through, you know, a reproductive season. It's all 0:27:33.520 --> 0:27:38.479 about sort of living and dying. Sexual selection is so 0:27:38.520 --> 0:27:41.639 almost like a subset it fits. It's also winners and losers, 0:27:41.680 --> 0:27:44.040 and it's it's very much an agent of selection that 0:27:44.119 --> 0:27:47.880 can cause populations to evolve, but it really focuses on reproduction. 0:27:48.359 --> 0:27:52.640 It's recognizing that even if everybody survives, they're not all 0:27:52.680 --> 0:27:55.560 going to reproduce. You have winners and losers when it 0:27:55.600 --> 0:28:00.000 comes to reproduction too, and that means that you've got 0:28:00.119 --> 0:28:03.960 individuals with traits like big antlers who are more likely 0:28:04.320 --> 0:28:06.919 to win access to the harems or to the territories, 0:28:06.920 --> 0:28:09.720 that are more likely to breed with the females and 0:28:09.760 --> 0:28:12.840 the population and transmit their genetic material to the next 0:28:12.840 --> 0:28:16.159 generation than other individuals in the population that might be 0:28:16.240 --> 0:28:19.040 more sickly, smaller antlers, not as good a condition, younger, 0:28:19.160 --> 0:28:22.000 less dominant, all those things you've got. It's it's the 0:28:22.040 --> 0:28:25.240 same raw material variation. You go out into a deer population, 0:28:25.280 --> 0:28:28.719 or an elk population measure a hundred bulls, they're not 0:28:28.800 --> 0:28:31.280 the same. Some of them are bigger than others, some 0:28:31.320 --> 0:28:33.280 of them are stronger, some are more aggressive, some of 0:28:33.320 --> 0:28:36.720 them have a lot bigger antlers than others. Those traits matter, 0:28:37.359 --> 0:28:40.200 and the weapons matter a lot. And in that case, 0:28:40.440 --> 0:28:44.200 sexual selection is the process by which you know individuals 0:28:44.200 --> 0:28:48.320 with big antlers reproduce more than individuals with small antlers. 0:28:48.400 --> 0:28:52.120 And since ultimately the currency for evolution isn't whether you 0:28:52.160 --> 0:28:55.840 live or die, it's whether you reproduce, what matters is 0:28:55.880 --> 0:28:59.000 who are the individuals in the population now that are 0:28:59.000 --> 0:29:03.200 contributing of spring their genetic material to the next generation. 0:29:04.280 --> 0:29:07.480 That's the end game. Doesn't matter if you're the healthiest, 0:29:07.480 --> 0:29:09.800 strongest animal out there, doesn't matter if you're resistant to 0:29:09.840 --> 0:29:13.000 every disease in the book and you live forever. If 0:29:13.040 --> 0:29:16.320 you fail in the game of producing offspring in a 0:29:16.320 --> 0:29:20.400 biological population of something like, it's a genetic dead end. 0:29:20.960 --> 0:29:24.360 And so the real end game is reproduction, and sexual 0:29:24.360 --> 0:29:28.840 selection is all the stuff the crazy sperm competition, battles, 0:29:28.920 --> 0:29:32.680 female choice, male competition, all the things that happen in 0:29:32.760 --> 0:29:35.920 real world animal populations that cause some animals to win 0:29:36.440 --> 0:29:40.440 and other animals to lose in the game of reproduction. Okay, man, 0:29:40.480 --> 0:29:41.640 that was a bunch of things. I want to ask 0:29:41.680 --> 0:29:46.360 you about my going off too far. You can strap 0:29:46.440 --> 0:29:49.280 me up if you need to say, help me keep 0:29:49.520 --> 0:29:52.080 help me, keep track, Johnnie. Okay, I want you to 0:29:52.120 --> 0:29:55.200 explain couple things. I want you to talk about the 0:29:55.240 --> 0:30:02.440 idea that UM the way in which differentiated land escapes. Okay, no, 0:30:02.600 --> 0:30:05.080 it's not okay, couldn't send me that on your I'm 0:30:05.080 --> 0:30:06.880 meant to ask you, did I have no idea what 0:30:06.960 --> 0:30:09.920 you mean by this? So you were talking? Okay, here 0:30:09.960 --> 0:30:12.960 we go. Okay, So I want to do differentiated landscapes. 0:30:13.000 --> 0:30:14.640 I don't know what that is. I'll tell you and 0:30:14.680 --> 0:30:17.000 I want to do I'm not using your word, I'm 0:30:17.040 --> 0:30:18.760 using my world. You'll know what I'm talking about. What 0:30:18.800 --> 0:30:21.520 you'll know what I'm talking at. Want to explain it. 0:30:21.560 --> 0:30:25.240 I'm learning differentiated landscapes and I want uh and I 0:30:25.240 --> 0:30:30.160 want you to talk about UM the different like you 0:30:30.160 --> 0:30:33.400 mentioned earlier. You could have like six bull elk right, Yeah, 0:30:33.400 --> 0:30:38.000 that the difference in size, how they can develop the 0:30:38.000 --> 0:30:42.360 difference in size of their bodies, which a're like relatively 0:30:42.400 --> 0:30:47.720 homogeneous versus the difference in size of their antlers. Yes, 0:30:48.800 --> 0:30:50.960 what does that have to do with differentiated? Two different ideas? 0:30:51.000 --> 0:30:54.360 But not explain differentiate landscapes. I'm talking to your book 0:30:54.400 --> 0:31:00.920 about what happens with an animal population where there's little 0:31:00.960 --> 0:31:05.520 pockets of good habitat or little bottlenecks like a water source, 0:31:05.920 --> 0:31:10.960 a certain food source, rather than this, rather than a 0:31:11.040 --> 0:31:16.400 landscape where all the resources are equally distributed an omnipresent, 0:31:16.960 --> 0:31:20.320 so there's no sort of like cool spot to hang out. Yes, 0:31:21.160 --> 0:31:22.600 which one of the which one of those you want 0:31:22.600 --> 0:31:25.840 to do first? Let's start with the second one, the 0:31:25.920 --> 0:31:29.240 landscape idea that was the first one. That was the 0:31:29.280 --> 0:31:33.320 first one, differentiated landscapes. I'm with Doug. I think that 0:31:33.320 --> 0:31:36.400 that one came second. Which let's start with that. So 0:31:38.240 --> 0:31:42.360 you're going to have potential for individuals, say elk, to 0:31:42.480 --> 0:31:45.719 be competing with each other over access to, say, females. 0:31:45.760 --> 0:31:47.280 So you can do beetles too, because I think I 0:31:47.320 --> 0:31:51.960 think you explain it like because there's a wound, Because 0:31:52.000 --> 0:31:53.880 actually it's a better it's a better tool for this. 0:31:53.960 --> 0:31:56.000 It's just fewer people are used to thinking about beetles 0:31:56.040 --> 0:31:58.719 the way I'm used to thinking about beetles. So in 0:31:58.800 --> 0:32:01.760 any situation, if the landscape is uniform and what I 0:32:01.800 --> 0:32:06.760 mean by that, I don't mean Kansas. There resources that 0:32:06.840 --> 0:32:10.880 the animals depend on, If they're distributed uniformly in space, 0:32:12.240 --> 0:32:14.040 then where are you going to guard? What the hell 0:32:14.080 --> 0:32:15.720 are you going to fight over? I mean I could 0:32:15.720 --> 0:32:18.240 be a bowl, and I could our beetle, and I 0:32:18.480 --> 0:32:20.800 there's my spot, and I'm going to guard that, and 0:32:20.840 --> 0:32:22.960 I stand over that, and I beat the crap out 0:32:22.960 --> 0:32:24.920 of any other beetle that comes near. And if I've 0:32:24.920 --> 0:32:27.160 got big enough weapons, and I might pay a price 0:32:27.240 --> 0:32:29.640 to have big weapons, but you know I got big weapons, 0:32:29.640 --> 0:32:31.760 and I fight, and I fight and I fight, and 0:32:31.840 --> 0:32:34.760 I'm holding that ground and nobody else. No other males 0:32:34.760 --> 0:32:37.800 get into my territory. And there's food in my territory. 0:32:37.840 --> 0:32:40.000 But you know there's food over there and food over there, 0:32:40.000 --> 0:32:42.120 and there and there and there. If the food resources 0:32:42.120 --> 0:32:45.640 are everywhere, then what have I gained? Where are the 0:32:45.680 --> 0:32:47.400 female is gonna go? They could go anywhere, they could 0:32:47.400 --> 0:32:49.600 feed on any spot on that landscape. And I spend 0:32:49.640 --> 0:32:52.720 all this money, not money, all these energetic resources and 0:32:52.760 --> 0:32:54.880 this cost of producing this weapon, and I fight and 0:32:54.880 --> 0:32:58.160 I fight, and I fight to guard my spot, but 0:32:58.240 --> 0:33:00.880 my spot isn't any more valuable than body else's spots. 0:33:00.880 --> 0:33:02.560 And there's all these other beetles out there that don't 0:33:02.560 --> 0:33:05.080 bother fighting at all, and they get just as good 0:33:05.120 --> 0:33:08.120 access to food. So what in the situation where the 0:33:08.160 --> 0:33:11.160 resources are uniform, there's no benefit to fighting to guard 0:33:11.160 --> 0:33:14.440 a territory. You don't win anything because everywhere is equally good. 0:33:15.000 --> 0:33:17.120 But when you have a landscape that's I think you 0:33:17.200 --> 0:33:19.560 meant differentiated, I would think of it as patchy, where 0:33:19.560 --> 0:33:23.040 the key resources are very rare and they're localized. They're 0:33:23.080 --> 0:33:26.040 clustered or clumped in space like a water hole you said. 0:33:26.160 --> 0:33:28.600 Or the beetles that we work on they feed on 0:33:28.680 --> 0:33:30.680 wounds on the side of a tree that ooze sap. 0:33:30.880 --> 0:33:33.160 These beetles flying and they feed on the sap like 0:33:33.240 --> 0:33:36.200 syrup on the side of the tree. In most places 0:33:36.240 --> 0:33:39.440 where these beetles live, they they've got wimpy little mouthparts. 0:33:39.440 --> 0:33:42.040 They can't drill into the trees like a woodpecker or 0:33:42.080 --> 0:33:45.440 something can. They're stuck finding a place where a branch 0:33:45.520 --> 0:33:48.000 struck the tree, or where some other animals already created 0:33:48.040 --> 0:33:51.240 a wound, and it's oozing that's a hot spot. But 0:33:51.320 --> 0:33:54.000 those things aren't everywhere. They're rare. I mean, there's only 0:33:54.040 --> 0:33:56.800 a couple of hot spots within a mile radius, say, 0:33:57.120 --> 0:33:59.000 and that's where you gotta be. That's the only place 0:33:59.000 --> 0:34:01.920 where the food is. That is not a uniform landscape. 0:34:01.960 --> 0:34:05.840 That's I guess you're saying differentiated. Good places to be 0:34:05.960 --> 0:34:09.160 in bad places to be. Now, if I'm a male 0:34:09.280 --> 0:34:11.280 and I've got a weapon, and I fight the crap 0:34:11.320 --> 0:34:13.760 out of all the opponents, and I hold my ground 0:34:14.160 --> 0:34:17.439 and I happen to be guarding the food spot, I win. 0:34:17.680 --> 0:34:19.440 I'm the only one in town that's got it. All 0:34:19.480 --> 0:34:21.760 the other males can't get it because I'm keeping them away, 0:34:22.080 --> 0:34:23.960 And where are the female is going to go? They're 0:34:24.000 --> 0:34:26.439 coming to me because I'm sitting on the only spot 0:34:26.480 --> 0:34:29.440 that's good. So when you have landscapes that are patchy 0:34:29.640 --> 0:34:33.120 and there are sort of hot spots of value interspersed 0:34:33.120 --> 0:34:36.120 with large areas that aren't very good, that's the that's 0:34:36.160 --> 0:34:38.239 the sort of physical environment that sets the stage for 0:34:38.280 --> 0:34:41.000 all this kind of stuff because it creates opportunities for 0:34:41.040 --> 0:34:43.880 winning and losing. It creates a situation where the dominant 0:34:43.920 --> 0:34:47.560 individuals can guard something that matters, and if you win 0:34:47.640 --> 0:34:50.640 those fights and you get that resource, you win because 0:34:50.680 --> 0:34:52.959 the females come to you. You're the male that meets 0:34:52.960 --> 0:34:54.959 with those females when they come in to feed. All 0:34:54.960 --> 0:34:57.880 the other males lose, Like the males in the population 0:34:57.960 --> 0:35:00.600 might get nothing because there's nowhere else to go and 0:35:00.640 --> 0:35:03.800 they're not strong enough to get it. That's sexual selection. 0:35:03.920 --> 0:35:07.880 It's competition about access in this case to a food resource. 0:35:07.920 --> 0:35:09.960 But it's a food resource that attracts all the females, 0:35:10.160 --> 0:35:13.440 so that's access to reproduction. The males that win in 0:35:13.480 --> 0:35:16.880 those fights mate with lots of females, produce lots of offspring, 0:35:16.960 --> 0:35:20.720 sire the next generation of the population, and the males 0:35:20.760 --> 0:35:23.960 that fail get nothing. That's over, they're done. So do 0:35:24.000 --> 0:35:30.040 you see less fighting in like the in the same 0:35:30.160 --> 0:35:32.879 or that's why beetles are better than elk, because it's 0:35:32.880 --> 0:35:34.719 hard for people to picture that in something like an 0:35:34.760 --> 0:35:37.640 ungulate or a deer. In insects, it happens all the time. 0:35:37.800 --> 0:35:40.640 A lot of times the food resources are so dispersed 0:35:41.040 --> 0:35:43.560 that what happens is it's not the animals that are 0:35:43.560 --> 0:35:46.560 built like tanks with big horns that win. It's the 0:35:46.600 --> 0:35:49.920 animals that are really agile and that are lightweight and 0:35:49.960 --> 0:35:52.600 have good wing ratios and store energy and they fly 0:35:52.719 --> 0:35:55.560 really far. It's the ones that can search, and so 0:35:55.680 --> 0:35:58.719 you find insects where they're really good at traveling long 0:35:58.800 --> 0:36:01.719 distances looking that the animals are so spread out and 0:36:01.719 --> 0:36:04.200 the unit the landscape is so sort of uniform, there's 0:36:04.239 --> 0:36:06.640 no obvious place to be that the ones who win 0:36:06.680 --> 0:36:09.880 are the ones that search, that can find members of 0:36:09.880 --> 0:36:12.520 the other sex the fastest. So there's some moths where 0:36:12.520 --> 0:36:15.440 the males have these antennae that are unbelievably good at 0:36:15.480 --> 0:36:18.600 detecting the smells of the females and they're out there 0:36:18.600 --> 0:36:21.359 cruising along for wind currents trying to pick up the scent. 0:36:21.520 --> 0:36:23.359 I mean, the military has looked into these things. They're 0:36:23.360 --> 0:36:27.120 the most sensitive chemo sensors known. They can actually detect 0:36:27.280 --> 0:36:30.560 individual molecules of these pheromones, and we've never come up 0:36:30.560 --> 0:36:33.120 with anything that's even within several orders of magnitude and 0:36:33.160 --> 0:36:36.080 being that sensitive to you know, a chemical that we 0:36:36.160 --> 0:36:38.399 might want to detect. But these moths are really good 0:36:38.440 --> 0:36:42.160 at it because their resources are sort of uniformly or 0:36:42.239 --> 0:36:44.560 randomly distributed, and the only way to win in that 0:36:44.640 --> 0:36:46.719 game is to be better at smelling a female, are 0:36:46.760 --> 0:36:49.680 better at finding a female than other males, and so 0:36:49.760 --> 0:36:52.719 competition plays out in a different way. They have huge antennae, 0:36:52.880 --> 0:36:55.759 they're really good at flying, they search, but they don't 0:36:55.800 --> 0:36:58.239 have weapons, they don't fight. Different kind of systems, so 0:36:58.280 --> 0:37:01.600 they fall outside of your interests. Well, they're cool systems, 0:37:01.640 --> 0:37:04.560 but yeah, I like I like the situations. You're differentiated 0:37:04.600 --> 0:37:07.800 landscapes where where there really is a hot spot that matters, 0:37:08.040 --> 0:37:10.480 and and if you can be the male that wins 0:37:11.280 --> 0:37:14.520 access to that resource, then you win in the evolutionary 0:37:14.560 --> 0:37:17.520 game because you're the one that gets access to the reproduction. 0:37:17.880 --> 0:37:20.080 You you mentioned a couple of times so far, I 0:37:20.160 --> 0:37:23.280 feel like you should pause and explain it in greater detail. 0:37:23.560 --> 0:37:27.120 Is the costs. You keep talking about the enormous cost 0:37:27.280 --> 0:37:30.880 or the expenditure of growing big horns or big teeth 0:37:31.000 --> 0:37:32.759 or big antlers. And I'm glad you bring that up 0:37:32.760 --> 0:37:35.560 because it come full circle back to the other half 0:37:35.560 --> 0:37:38.160 of the question, the fact that antlers are more variable 0:37:38.280 --> 0:37:41.279 an traits, because it actually ties into the costs. So 0:37:41.520 --> 0:37:45.280 in a system like this where imagine your differentiated landscape 0:37:45.280 --> 0:37:48.400 and you imagine your runounced speedle, and there's there's very 0:37:48.440 --> 0:37:51.600 occasionally rare wounds on the side of a tree. That's 0:37:51.640 --> 0:37:54.080 your oasis. That's like it. That's where the food is. 0:37:54.120 --> 0:37:55.960 That's where all the females are going to come flying 0:37:55.960 --> 0:37:58.799 from miles around to go feed at that spot. And 0:37:58.840 --> 0:38:01.719 if you can be the male, it wins that you 0:38:01.760 --> 0:38:04.359 win everything. And it really is winning everything. I mean, 0:38:04.360 --> 0:38:06.880 in some of these populations, a very small percentage of 0:38:06.920 --> 0:38:10.759 the males to all the reproducing, and the males lose 0:38:10.880 --> 0:38:14.360 every generation. The mails are gone dead end, they fail, 0:38:15.040 --> 0:38:18.399 and in a system like that, it really pays to win. 0:38:19.080 --> 0:38:21.319 And imagine in that case, then if I'm a beetle 0:38:21.400 --> 0:38:24.080 and I've got a bump sticking off me that allows 0:38:24.120 --> 0:38:27.279 me to reach under and flip an opponent, it's gonna 0:38:27.320 --> 0:38:29.200 be worth it no matter what that costs. If I've 0:38:29.200 --> 0:38:31.279 got that and the other males don't, I've got an 0:38:31.360 --> 0:38:33.120 edge and I'm going to win in these fights. And 0:38:33.120 --> 0:38:35.200 therefore I'm the one that's reproducing, and my kids and 0:38:35.239 --> 0:38:38.839 grandkids and great grandkids are the ones that populate the population. 0:38:39.160 --> 0:38:41.360 The beatles are going to start getting this horn or 0:38:41.400 --> 0:38:44.320 this thing sticking off their body that's used as a weapon, 0:38:45.000 --> 0:38:47.920 but over time it's sort of a relative landscape. If 0:38:47.960 --> 0:38:50.480 everybody's got horns the same size, and then another beetle 0:38:50.520 --> 0:38:53.200 comes out with an even bigger weapon and allows him 0:38:53.239 --> 0:38:55.840 to reach and flip his opponent before the other opponent 0:38:55.880 --> 0:38:58.080 can even reach him, then that mail is going to 0:38:58.160 --> 0:38:59.920 have an edge. So the weapons are gonna get bigger. 0:39:00.360 --> 0:39:02.600 And then when everybody's got weapons that big, then it's 0:39:02.640 --> 0:39:04.279 the one with the even bigger weapons that wins. And 0:39:04.320 --> 0:39:07.040 this process sort of cycles and ratchets, and the weapons 0:39:07.080 --> 0:39:09.800 get bigger and bigger and bigger, and as they get bigger, 0:39:09.800 --> 0:39:11.759 they get more expensive. I know, it seemed like I 0:39:11.800 --> 0:39:17.480 forgot your questions. You get caught in what we call 0:39:17.480 --> 0:39:20.120 an arms race, and and these things start ratcheting bigger 0:39:20.120 --> 0:39:22.280 and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and along 0:39:22.320 --> 0:39:24.480 the way they get more and more and more expensive. 0:39:24.640 --> 0:39:27.760 And so when you start looking at costs and animal weapons, 0:39:27.760 --> 0:39:29.839 we can talk about costs and military weapons too. They're 0:39:30.000 --> 0:39:34.160 very expensive, but the costs get really staggering. So so 0:39:34.520 --> 0:39:37.640 our rhinoceros beetle, the ones that we work on. A 0:39:37.760 --> 0:39:41.400 mail puts thirty percent of his body weight into a weapon. 0:39:42.200 --> 0:39:44.200 I mean I think about that weigh probably one eight 0:39:45.560 --> 0:39:49.520 that's like like that. It's like a sixty pound thing 0:39:49.680 --> 0:39:52.680 on top of my head. Be like this table glued 0:39:52.680 --> 0:39:54.840 to the top of my head. That's what these beetles 0:39:54.880 --> 0:39:56.880 are carrying around on their heads all day. That's a 0:39:57.000 --> 0:40:00.440 huge investment. It costs in terms of resource is that 0:40:00.480 --> 0:40:02.840 they need to grow that structure. Because all the material 0:40:02.880 --> 0:40:05.560 that goes into that coffee table isn't going into my 0:40:05.600 --> 0:40:07.759 heart or my lungs or my brain or anything else. 0:40:07.800 --> 0:40:09.680 I'm putting it all into the coffee table and put 0:40:09.680 --> 0:40:13.080 it into the weapon, So there's an allocation cost. Then 0:40:13.080 --> 0:40:15.319 you've got to carry this thing around everywhere you go. 0:40:15.400 --> 0:40:17.960 It's awkward and heavy, makes it harder to fly, makes 0:40:17.960 --> 0:40:20.759 it harder to run. So there's sort of production and 0:40:20.840 --> 0:40:23.680 maintenance costs that go with it. Weapons can get really 0:40:23.680 --> 0:40:26.920 expensive in the beetles. Putting a horn together for a 0:40:26.960 --> 0:40:30.200 male is so expensive that it forces these animals to 0:40:30.320 --> 0:40:33.160 shunt resources away from other things. So the beetles with 0:40:33.200 --> 0:40:35.920 the biggest horns have tiny eyes, and some of the 0:40:35.920 --> 0:40:39.440 species we studied have males where they've stunted genitalia and 0:40:39.480 --> 0:40:43.400 tiny testes, so they're really reallocating in the most absurd 0:40:43.440 --> 0:40:46.360 way to get these weapons that you talk about, the 0:40:46.560 --> 0:40:52.920 actually get a form of a form of osteoporosis studies. Yeah, 0:40:52.960 --> 0:40:57.319 because the antlers and the antlers, because they regrow them 0:40:57.320 --> 0:41:00.840 every year, they have to produce these enormous expensive structures, 0:41:00.840 --> 0:41:02.600 and they've got to grow fast. And as far as 0:41:02.600 --> 0:41:06.239 I know, antler bone is the fastest growing bone that's 0:41:06.239 --> 0:41:09.200 ever been described for any any vertebrate ever. It's it's 0:41:09.239 --> 0:41:13.400 growing at record speeds and they're pulling. They need calcium 0:41:13.400 --> 0:41:15.719 and phosphorus and all these minerals to produce the bone, 0:41:15.760 --> 0:41:17.640 and they don't get that much of that from the 0:41:17.760 --> 0:41:19.960 leaves and the things that they feed on. And so 0:41:20.080 --> 0:41:21.800 the people that have looked into this and studied have 0:41:21.920 --> 0:41:24.440 found that there's no way that these bulls and bucks 0:41:24.440 --> 0:41:27.239 can get enough from their food alone. They're growing it 0:41:27.360 --> 0:41:29.960 too fast and there's just not enough of these minerals 0:41:29.960 --> 0:41:31.960 in the food that they're eating. And that's when they 0:41:32.040 --> 0:41:35.120 figured out that they're actually siphoning these things off the 0:41:35.160 --> 0:41:38.120 other bones in their body. They're leaching calcium and phosphorus 0:41:38.160 --> 0:41:40.080 out of their ribs and their spine and their femurs 0:41:40.080 --> 0:41:42.960 and all the rest of the bones and reallocating it 0:41:43.000 --> 0:41:45.480 to the antlers. So that forces them to go through 0:41:45.480 --> 0:41:48.600 a period of osteoporosis during the rut before they have 0:41:48.600 --> 0:41:54.000 an opportunity to replenish those resources. Really bad time, because 0:41:54.000 --> 0:41:56.359 you're smacking into all these other bulls. So right when 0:41:56.360 --> 0:41:58.160 you need to fight and throw down with all these 0:41:58.160 --> 0:42:01.279 other eight hundred pound rivals, you've got brittle bones like 0:42:01.320 --> 0:42:03.520 an old person. It's it's a bad formula. And then 0:42:03.840 --> 0:42:06.440 they throw the antlers away and you gotta start. It's 0:42:06.440 --> 0:42:13.839 like you're not even recouping that loss. It's gone there, 0:42:13.840 --> 0:42:16.879 you know. Yeah, but you can imagine how that would 0:42:16.920 --> 0:42:19.680 place a premium on any individuals that were in good 0:42:19.800 --> 0:42:23.760 enough condition or had access to the best foraging spots. 0:42:23.840 --> 0:42:26.600 They might have less osteo. Again, it comes back to variation. 0:42:27.000 --> 0:42:30.120 Those bulls might pay a lower cost. They might have 0:42:30.239 --> 0:42:33.239 less osteo process than a medium or poor quality bowl 0:42:33.320 --> 0:42:36.000 that's in really crap quality territory that's also trying to 0:42:36.040 --> 0:42:39.960 produce antlers, and so it may not be equal, but yeah, 0:42:40.120 --> 0:42:42.080 they're all going through the same problem. They're all facing 0:42:42.120 --> 0:42:44.400 the same dilemma. These things are expensive and when it 0:42:44.440 --> 0:42:47.040 goes back to cost a great comparison. I think I 0:42:47.080 --> 0:42:51.360 remember this from your class back in the day. Was 0:42:51.360 --> 0:42:53.560 was that, like I think you said, for a bull 0:42:53.640 --> 0:42:57.360 elk to like a mature bull to create the antlers 0:42:57.400 --> 0:43:01.080 he needs for that year, it's a similar colore um 0:43:01.280 --> 0:43:06.080 cost as a cow birthing a calf. Yeah, good memory. 0:43:06.800 --> 0:43:09.600 This was a really clever Okay in time if I 0:43:09.600 --> 0:43:13.520 explain some of these, so point out that the Sam 0:43:13.719 --> 0:43:15.759 Longer and a very own special Sam Longer and too 0:43:15.880 --> 0:43:23.360 special Doug Ellen's class. Yes you did behavior class, University Montana. 0:43:22.880 --> 0:43:29.520 I went back in check he got today one of 0:43:29.520 --> 0:43:31.759 the one of the greatest classes I ever I ever 0:43:31.840 --> 0:43:35.359 took that. Paim say that fascinating fascinating, Well, you're just 0:43:35.480 --> 0:43:38.719 you just take it so seriously. Fun stuff, lots of 0:43:38.800 --> 0:43:41.680 lots of great video clips of animals beating the ship 0:43:41.800 --> 0:43:45.680 out of each other, imagine that elephant seals and stuff. 0:43:46.040 --> 0:43:48.400 But you bring up this point about, you know, the 0:43:48.640 --> 0:43:51.680 energetic expense of doing this and and this was a 0:43:51.719 --> 0:43:54.480 really clever set of studies and and I didn't do them. 0:43:54.480 --> 0:43:56.400 I mean this is from the literature, but these people 0:43:56.920 --> 0:43:59.680 they took advantage of the agriculture industry. So so if 0:43:59.719 --> 0:44:02.480 you have cattle and your cattle farmer, you know everything 0:44:02.560 --> 0:44:04.480 is about weight gain. I mean, you manage your you 0:44:04.520 --> 0:44:06.840 manage your heard, you manage the four the feeds that 0:44:06.880 --> 0:44:09.560 you're feeding them, the timing of things. Everything is coming 0:44:09.560 --> 0:44:11.600 down to how quickly your animals can gain at what 0:44:11.680 --> 0:44:13.839 rate they can gain weight. You want to buy them low, 0:44:14.320 --> 0:44:17.400 fatten them up, sell them high. There's a huge industry 0:44:17.400 --> 0:44:21.560 trying to understand the way that things like livestock put 0:44:21.600 --> 0:44:23.799 on and gain muscle mass and weight. And so they 0:44:23.800 --> 0:44:26.760 had actually broken this down and these really complicated models 0:44:26.760 --> 0:44:29.520 where they were looking at all nitrogen, phosphors, put all 0:44:29.520 --> 0:44:32.759 the different nutrients in paying attention to the diets. They 0:44:32.800 --> 0:44:36.240 had input bone mass, the skeletal weights, the muscle mass, 0:44:36.280 --> 0:44:40.320 the metabolic physiology, the weight, the sizes, all these parameters 0:44:40.320 --> 0:44:44.000 on these animals, and they could predict really really accurately 0:44:44.040 --> 0:44:46.759 how subtle changes to this or that piece of the 0:44:46.840 --> 0:44:50.840 diet would translate into the rate at which these animals 0:44:50.840 --> 0:44:53.839 were putting on muscle mass. And so, because people cared 0:44:53.840 --> 0:44:55.560 a lot about that, they put a ton of time 0:44:55.560 --> 0:44:58.719 and effort into parametizing these really complicated models, and they 0:44:58.760 --> 0:45:01.600 did a really good job to gribing growth and weight 0:45:01.680 --> 0:45:05.080 gain in vertebrates like that. So these biologists took the 0:45:05.120 --> 0:45:08.120 models and said, hey, let's look at moose. Let's look 0:45:08.120 --> 0:45:11.200 at something we care about. And they reset all the 0:45:11.200 --> 0:45:14.040 parameters based on the bone densities and the leg lengths 0:45:14.040 --> 0:45:15.759 and that, you know, all the height and all the 0:45:15.800 --> 0:45:19.080 weights of the of the things like moose or caribou. 0:45:19.239 --> 0:45:21.680 And turned around and said, all right, given the model 0:45:21.840 --> 0:45:25.480 now parametized for a moose, how expensive or antlers? They 0:45:25.520 --> 0:45:27.920 could burn antlers and figure out how many calories they 0:45:28.000 --> 0:45:30.520 knew what was in it. They could basically figure out 0:45:30.640 --> 0:45:33.520 what it costs in terms of nutrients and energy to 0:45:33.600 --> 0:45:36.200 make an antler and then put that into the energy 0:45:36.200 --> 0:45:38.080 budget of the animal and say how expensive is it? 0:45:38.360 --> 0:45:40.200 And that's when they were stunned there, Like I mean, 0:45:40.280 --> 0:45:42.760 they basically found I think it was two calves the 0:45:42.840 --> 0:45:45.680 male bullet. I can't amber if it was moose producing 0:45:45.680 --> 0:45:49.279 a full rack of antlers expended as much energy as 0:45:49.280 --> 0:45:52.239 it took a female to raise two calves all the 0:45:52.280 --> 0:45:56.040 way to weaning. Stunned, every nobody expected to be that expensive. 0:45:56.120 --> 0:45:58.640 But it's a clever approach. It's a neat way to 0:45:58.640 --> 0:46:01.280 do that. And then this guy great one step further 0:46:01.360 --> 0:46:03.719 and they took the Irish elk, the extinct Irish elk, 0:46:03.760 --> 0:46:06.839 which had these huge antlers, and try you know, they 0:46:06.880 --> 0:46:08.799 had to make some guesses because we don't have any 0:46:08.800 --> 0:46:11.000 living Irish elk, but they did a pretty good job 0:46:11.160 --> 0:46:13.319 setting the models for them to try to figure out 0:46:13.360 --> 0:46:16.440 just how expensive the antlers were. In they were pretty expensive. 0:46:16.600 --> 0:46:22.160 You can see why they might have gone extinct. Yeah, well, 0:46:24.560 --> 0:46:27.000 one could suggest, one could suggest. I'm not trying to 0:46:27.040 --> 0:46:29.359 say that that's why. Well, let's add the caveat, because 0:46:29.400 --> 0:46:31.239 because I think about these kinds of things, and and 0:46:31.239 --> 0:46:32.680 one of the things we may get to when we 0:46:32.680 --> 0:46:35.680 talk about arms racist today is that they cycle. There's 0:46:35.719 --> 0:46:39.560 a very predictable sequence of stages, and eventually arms racist collapse. 0:46:39.640 --> 0:46:42.040 The whole thing ends. The antlers or their weapons are 0:46:42.080 --> 0:46:44.399 so expensive that they're not worth it anymore, and they're gone. 0:46:44.840 --> 0:46:47.000 Normally in an animal when it happens, we're not arguing 0:46:47.000 --> 0:46:49.799 that they go extinct. What means is some males come 0:46:49.840 --> 0:46:52.960 along and don't bother producing the weapons, and those males win. 0:46:53.600 --> 0:46:55.840 They're not paying the price, and the weapons really aren't 0:46:55.840 --> 0:46:57.680 doing what they used to do any more, and all 0:46:57.680 --> 0:47:00.920 of a sudden, individuals that ditched the weapons are the winners, 0:47:00.960 --> 0:47:04.040 and the population loses the weapons and very quickly evolves 0:47:04.080 --> 0:47:06.400 to a state where they no longer have the big weapons. 0:47:06.440 --> 0:47:10.560 That's the normal way. The Irish elker the one exception 0:47:10.640 --> 0:47:13.960 where they really might have actually gone extinct because of 0:47:13.960 --> 0:47:15.839 the weapons. It's hard to say because we weren't there. 0:47:16.160 --> 0:47:18.400 But what they found with these models is that the 0:47:18.440 --> 0:47:22.040 antlers were so expensive that these bulls would have been 0:47:22.040 --> 0:47:24.799 sort of right on the metabolic edge, and they would 0:47:24.840 --> 0:47:27.920 have had barely enough time after the rut to recoup 0:47:27.960 --> 0:47:31.200 the energetic losses before the next cycle. And then what 0:47:31.280 --> 0:47:33.960 happened is not only were those antlers getting bigger and bigger, 0:47:34.440 --> 0:47:36.920 but they have evidence from the pollen and the foss 0:47:36.920 --> 0:47:40.960 and the climate records that the climate changed like pulling 0:47:40.960 --> 0:47:43.040 the carpet out from under these animals. All of a sudden, 0:47:43.080 --> 0:47:44.600 they went through I think it was called the Younger 0:47:44.680 --> 0:47:48.200 Dry ask. The climate changed rather abruptly, and they can 0:47:48.200 --> 0:47:50.040 tell from the pollen records that all the things that 0:47:50.080 --> 0:47:52.000 they used to feed and were gone, and they were 0:47:52.040 --> 0:47:55.239 forced to switch from herbs and things to grasses, things 0:47:55.239 --> 0:47:58.319 that were a lot less nutritious, and so it's the 0:47:58.400 --> 0:48:01.120 double It was the double punch, the expensive antlers that 0:48:01.160 --> 0:48:03.160 are sort of pushing the limit of what's possible, and 0:48:03.160 --> 0:48:04.840 then all of a sudden your food is gone and 0:48:04.840 --> 0:48:07.960 you're forced to switch to something that's really crap quality, 0:48:08.080 --> 0:48:11.279 and that combo might have been too much. So that's 0:48:11.320 --> 0:48:14.279 the reason. Some people argue that the Irish actually went 0:48:14.360 --> 0:48:16.640 extinct because of the weapons, But usually what happens is 0:48:16.640 --> 0:48:18.200 they get caught on an arms race, they get bigger 0:48:18.200 --> 0:48:20.120 and bigger and bigger, and then the whole thing collapses 0:48:20.120 --> 0:48:22.239 and they ditched the weapons and go off on another path. 0:48:23.920 --> 0:48:26.839 I never came back to you, But okay, don't do 0:48:26.880 --> 0:48:30.600 this one next here sculted now. But there's a funny 0:48:30.640 --> 0:48:33.759 story talking about with the Beatles. Where's this beetle And 0:48:33.800 --> 0:48:35.520 there's like a female that goes down in the hole 0:48:35.880 --> 0:48:38.360 and hangs out in the hole. Yeah, be he grows 0:48:38.360 --> 0:48:43.600 his big, badass horn reguards the whole. But then there's 0:48:43.600 --> 0:48:47.160 some little snaky dude with no horn who just burrows 0:48:47.239 --> 0:48:50.000 down and comes in from under beneath a little sneak 0:48:50.000 --> 0:48:52.080 attack and gets it on with the female and the 0:48:52.160 --> 0:48:53.879 and the do with the big horns is hanging out. 0:48:53.960 --> 0:48:55.560 Has no idea that it even happen. So these are 0:48:55.600 --> 0:48:57.719 these are dunge beetles that live in Panama. A lot 0:48:57.760 --> 0:48:59.359 of the dung bells have this problem. But the ones 0:48:59.400 --> 0:49:01.120 that I was looking that live down in Panama and 0:49:01.120 --> 0:49:03.279 the males have been nice, big rack of horns on 0:49:03.320 --> 0:49:05.880 their heads. So they're big tank. Well they're little beetles, 0:49:05.920 --> 0:49:07.640 but I mean the horns are big relative to the 0:49:07.640 --> 0:49:10.920 tank pair of horns on their head. And and it's 0:49:10.960 --> 0:49:13.239 important because again it depends on where we want to 0:49:13.280 --> 0:49:14.880 go with it is one of the catalysts, one of 0:49:14.880 --> 0:49:19.359 the things, one of the things that we think I 0:49:19.400 --> 0:49:22.600 think precipitates an arms race and animals that sort of 0:49:22.640 --> 0:49:25.640 aligns the last star into place. All of a sudden, 0:49:25.640 --> 0:49:28.279 the population shoots off on this trajectory of bigger and 0:49:28.280 --> 0:49:32.200 bigger and bigger weapons. Is a situation where the fight 0:49:32.280 --> 0:49:35.239 dynamics change from being something that is sort of a 0:49:35.320 --> 0:49:39.080 chaotic scramble to something that is much more consistently one 0:49:39.120 --> 0:49:42.680 on one. Something about the biology, the habitat, the structure, 0:49:42.800 --> 0:49:45.600 something about the way these animals are confronting each other 0:49:45.760 --> 0:49:48.160 changes and then all of a sudden what had been 0:49:48.200 --> 0:49:52.000 really chaotic becomes very consistent and predictable and repeatable one 0:49:52.080 --> 0:49:55.080 on one duels. And that's this thing that I learned 0:49:55.120 --> 0:49:57.480 actually from the military literature. Can spark an arms race 0:49:57.520 --> 0:49:59.720 and start the whole process. So in the dung beetles, 0:50:00.120 --> 0:50:01.879 most of the time we think of dung beetles, who 0:50:02.120 --> 0:50:03.680 you know, for those of us that actually think about 0:50:03.719 --> 0:50:05.600 dung beetles, But if you've ever been to Africa, you 0:50:05.640 --> 0:50:08.120 picture these things that they've got. The they carve these balls, 0:50:08.160 --> 0:50:11.000 they pushed the balls around on the ground. Those beetles 0:50:11.040 --> 0:50:13.680 fight all the time. They scramble. None of them have 0:50:13.760 --> 0:50:16.479 weapons never they do not have horns on those kinds 0:50:16.480 --> 0:50:19.000 of beetles. And the fights are all sort of pandemonium 0:50:19.040 --> 0:50:23.120 and scrambles, lots of animals all piling in. But there's subsets, 0:50:23.200 --> 0:50:26.000 some lineages of dung beetles where they started digging the tunnels, 0:50:26.040 --> 0:50:28.399 and you mentioned the whole and that was that, that 0:50:28.440 --> 0:50:31.360 was the behavior change, that that that rewrote the rules, 0:50:31.440 --> 0:50:33.200 because all of a sudden, the females are down in 0:50:33.200 --> 0:50:35.360 a hole, they're in a tunnel. It's a tube, and 0:50:35.400 --> 0:50:38.239 so the males plant themselves at the entrance and they 0:50:38.280 --> 0:50:40.839 guard the tunnel, and all of a sudden, it's not 0:50:40.880 --> 0:50:43.919 a scramble anymore, because you can't get attacked by ten 0:50:44.080 --> 0:50:46.600 rivals at once. It's a tube. Only one beetle can 0:50:46.640 --> 0:50:49.000 fit in the tunnel at a time, and so it's 0:50:49.000 --> 0:50:51.879 not like they consciously decided to fight duels because it's 0:50:51.880 --> 0:50:54.400 more honorable or anything like that. Suddenly they're in a tunnel, 0:50:54.400 --> 0:50:56.759 and because they're in a tube, they only ever fight 0:50:56.800 --> 0:51:00.160 one rival at a time. Boom, Just like that. It's 0:51:00.160 --> 0:51:02.440 the catalyst, as simple as that. All of a sudden, 0:51:02.800 --> 0:51:06.640 the males are fighting consistent, repeatable, pushing matches of strength, 0:51:07.040 --> 0:51:09.160 and in that kind of a fight, the bigger, stronger 0:51:09.200 --> 0:51:11.560 male wins. The mail with the weapons wins, and boom, 0:51:11.640 --> 0:51:15.000 those lineages start evolving. Horns. It could be big curved 0:51:15.040 --> 0:51:17.200 things on the thorax. It could be horns coming off 0:51:17.239 --> 0:51:20.160 the head. I mean, there's there's hundreds of configurations of 0:51:20.200 --> 0:51:22.480 these weapons. They've popped up again and again and again. 0:51:22.560 --> 0:51:25.200 Every single time these beetles switched from fighting in a 0:51:25.280 --> 0:51:27.440 scramble on the surface to fighting in a tube in 0:51:27.440 --> 0:51:30.160 a tunnel. Just like that on an arms race. They 0:51:30.200 --> 0:51:32.440 started getting weapons, and the weapons got bigger and bigger 0:51:32.440 --> 0:51:35.280 and bigger. So the ones I was studying, these males 0:51:35.280 --> 0:51:37.759 had big horns. They're guarding the tunnel. They're fighting these 0:51:37.840 --> 0:51:40.880 duels with rivals at the entrance, and that's when the 0:51:40.920 --> 0:51:43.440 little sneaky guys break the rules. The little males are 0:51:43.480 --> 0:51:46.000 never gonna win their smaller body size. They're not as 0:51:46.040 --> 0:51:48.200 strong they've got they don't even have horns, I mean 0:51:48.200 --> 0:51:50.279 little nubbins where the weapons would be, so they got 0:51:50.280 --> 0:51:53.799 no weapons. They're never gonna win a fair fight. But 0:51:53.880 --> 0:51:56.200 they don't fight fair. They break the rules, and so 0:51:56.239 --> 0:51:58.240 they act like a female. They dig their own tunnel, 0:51:58.360 --> 0:52:01.000 they mine down in there, and then they cut over 0:52:01.040 --> 0:52:03.080 and they intercept the guarded tunnel. So you're the big 0:52:03.080 --> 0:52:06.239 guy at the entrance fighting the little sneaky buggers are 0:52:06.320 --> 0:52:09.160 are basically mining their way in beneath you, getting into 0:52:09.200 --> 0:52:11.640 your tunnel, going down, finding the female, meeting with the female, 0:52:11.680 --> 0:52:14.239 sneaking out again. The big guys that the entrance are 0:52:14.239 --> 0:52:19.520 oblivious that same thing exists with salmon. Uh chinook. Salmon 0:52:19.600 --> 0:52:23.440 have an alternate life history called precocious males. Or the 0:52:23.520 --> 0:52:27.400 jack exactly, but there's one there's ones that um unlike 0:52:27.480 --> 0:52:30.040 Jack's don't even go to the ocean, so they'll they'll 0:52:30.560 --> 0:52:35.000 become sexually mature like six months. Yeah, so so they're 0:52:35.360 --> 0:52:37.239 like jack didn't go to the ocean, Well Jack's do. 0:52:37.520 --> 0:52:40.520 Jack's do go to the ocean. So so Jack's there's 0:52:40.560 --> 0:52:43.120 there's multiple life histories and and a lot of these 0:52:43.200 --> 0:52:45.279 these salmon species. So you know, you've got everything from 0:52:45.320 --> 0:52:47.759 the big forty pound males that spent four years in 0:52:47.760 --> 0:52:49.799 the ocean to the jack's that just spent one year 0:52:50.280 --> 0:52:52.520 to the precocious males that never even go out. And 0:52:52.520 --> 0:52:55.320 so they'll be sexually mature like three inches long, and 0:52:55.320 --> 0:52:58.080 they'll hiden the rocks with with like you know, to 0:52:58.360 --> 0:53:02.160 fifty pound chinook and then the hen goes to layer 0:53:02.239 --> 0:53:05.360 eggs and they I've seen videos of this actually my 0:53:05.360 --> 0:53:09.440 my my buddy John. Yeah, he'll go in and jizz 0:53:09.440 --> 0:53:12.120 on him before before the big buck can and never 0:53:12.200 --> 0:53:14.040 even know it, and he doesn't have to go to 0:53:14.080 --> 0:53:16.680 all the expense of going to the ocean and and 0:53:16.719 --> 0:53:21.360 all the dangers that after six months exactly, it takes 0:53:21.360 --> 0:53:25.160 four years opportunity. And I've also read about how that 0:53:25.160 --> 0:53:29.440 that's helpful. Um from a conservation standpoint, that that sometimes 0:53:30.040 --> 0:53:34.200 when runs get so bad, so low, as they often 0:53:34.280 --> 0:53:37.520 do in this day and age, that sometimes like if 0:53:37.560 --> 0:53:40.239 there's only the one like a couple of females who 0:53:40.280 --> 0:53:43.600 make it back to a stream to spawn, they're they're 0:53:43.640 --> 0:53:46.960 able to you know, keep the keep the line going, 0:53:47.080 --> 0:53:51.600 keep the population exactly. You know, in college you think 0:53:51.600 --> 0:53:54.080 about it too, is will be like it's like the 0:53:54.160 --> 0:53:59.919 dude who um, I can't wait to see like a dude. 0:54:00.000 --> 0:54:02.920 Of girls are like, oh he's funny, right, that's like 0:54:02.960 --> 0:54:06.520 your guy that like burrows in right exactly. He's like 0:54:06.600 --> 0:54:10.000 playing a totally different trip, you know, yeah the friend zone. Yeah, 0:54:10.000 --> 0:54:12.680 he's fun I like he's funny. It's like he's a 0:54:12.680 --> 0:54:15.480 little digger digging in. You can tell me any everybody 0:54:15.480 --> 0:54:18.680 else is all fighting, so in beatles and things like this, 0:54:18.760 --> 0:54:21.640 we call it an alternative reproductive tactic or an alternative 0:54:21.680 --> 0:54:24.560 meeting tactic. And and lots of big horn sheep they've 0:54:24.560 --> 0:54:28.000 got coursers that because when a big male is fighting 0:54:28.000 --> 0:54:30.239 and distracted in a battle, a little guys running and 0:54:30.320 --> 0:54:32.239 chase the females off in corner him. What do you 0:54:32.280 --> 0:54:35.719 call those coursers? Aren't they called coursers and big horn sheep? Well, yeah, 0:54:35.840 --> 0:54:38.400 he's got a favorite thing. Are you gonna bring up 0:54:38.400 --> 0:54:43.720 your shirkers? Johnie? I thought about him, then I started 0:54:43.800 --> 0:54:52.720 not too Yeah, anyone, I'll hit you because he's backed 0:54:52.760 --> 0:54:54.600 up as it is. But okay, he's backed up by 0:54:54.640 --> 0:54:59.040 one question. Well he's playing it safe. He's backed up 0:54:59.040 --> 0:55:01.200 by one question. But he happened with the shirts, happening 0:55:01.200 --> 0:55:04.320 with the shirkers. We just want to know dogs opinion 0:55:04.360 --> 0:55:08.960 on its opinion on shirkers. Uh, you've heard of val Geist? 0:55:10.040 --> 0:55:15.319 Yeah what was that? He's not like our uncle or anything. No, 0:55:15.480 --> 0:55:18.840 I mean that was a loaded Yeah, well he's a 0:55:18.880 --> 0:55:20.960 loaded character. I mean I never actually met him, but 0:55:21.000 --> 0:55:22.440 I've read a ton of his work because he did 0:55:22.480 --> 0:55:24.520 a lot of the early conceptual work on the evolution 0:55:24.560 --> 0:55:27.799 of crazy structures. Yeah. Yeah, that's the big problem is 0:55:27.840 --> 0:55:29.960 it was mostly ideas and not a lot of data. 0:55:30.320 --> 0:55:31.960 But you know, I mean, now and then people get 0:55:31.960 --> 0:55:34.480 it right in a surprising number of his ideas that 0:55:34.520 --> 0:55:36.680 he just threw out there and never actually backed up, 0:55:37.239 --> 0:55:40.359 a lot of those ideas are turning out to be right. Yeah, 0:55:40.400 --> 0:55:42.040 we've had this conversation a lot of times. We're a 0:55:42.080 --> 0:55:44.440 lot of researchers such as yourself. Well, we'll talk about 0:55:44.440 --> 0:55:48.160 the um you know, his practice of being like, you know, 0:55:48.239 --> 0:55:54.440 what might have happened right enough times, it's like probability 0:55:55.200 --> 0:55:58.439 at the wall. So the idea of shirkers, which were 0:55:58.760 --> 0:56:03.880 bucks or bulls that would remove themselves from the breeding 0:56:04.560 --> 0:56:07.440 game or the rut and for four or five years 0:56:07.480 --> 0:56:09.439 just hang out at the top of the hill where 0:56:09.440 --> 0:56:12.600 the grass is thick and green lush, load up and 0:56:12.640 --> 0:56:15.239 load up and load up until at the point where 0:56:15.239 --> 0:56:19.240 they were bigger body wise, there was some bigger antler wise, 0:56:19.280 --> 0:56:22.480 and they could stroll in and they could breed everybody 0:56:22.480 --> 0:56:25.200 in pass their jeans. In one season, they could own 0:56:25.680 --> 0:56:28.439 the you know, the breeding rights. So I don't know 0:56:28.600 --> 0:56:32.400 whether those animals exist because I don't study on gult populations, 0:56:32.400 --> 0:56:35.400 but it wouldn't surprise me really. So let me give 0:56:35.400 --> 0:56:41.919 you an extreme example. Wraps Like it's about so so 0:56:42.120 --> 0:56:44.360 there are fish that that go even one step further. 0:56:44.920 --> 0:56:50.920 So so they start out life as a female. Because 0:56:51.160 --> 0:56:55.200 most females are able to reproduce. The variance and reproductive success, 0:56:55.239 --> 0:56:57.880 the difference between winners and losers females is pretty small. 0:56:58.680 --> 0:57:01.480 And then it's the males where the competition is really stark, 0:57:01.520 --> 0:57:04.120 and them get nothing in a very small percentage of 0:57:04.160 --> 0:57:06.560 them get all the reproduction. And so they'll start out 0:57:06.560 --> 0:57:09.200 as females and play it safe and breed literally as 0:57:09.280 --> 0:57:12.680 females while you know the breeding is good. And then 0:57:12.760 --> 0:57:15.200 and only if they get big enough and strong enough 0:57:15.239 --> 0:57:17.440 and the alpha male gets killed and he's suddenly removed 0:57:17.440 --> 0:57:20.440 and there's a vacancy, then the sort of next biggest 0:57:20.440 --> 0:57:22.520 in line switches from female to male, takes on the 0:57:22.560 --> 0:57:25.440 male status and steps into that role. It's in a way, 0:57:25.520 --> 0:57:27.800 it's like your shirker, except that you're not just sitting 0:57:27.800 --> 0:57:30.640 there eating on the greener pastor you're actually reproducing as 0:57:30.640 --> 0:57:33.360 a female that whole time. But you only flip and 0:57:33.400 --> 0:57:36.840 take on the really risky you know, high reward high 0:57:37.200 --> 0:57:40.400 whatever you want to say, that risky strategy. If and 0:57:40.480 --> 0:57:43.000 when you're big enough to tell me again, what's pieces 0:57:43.160 --> 0:57:47.200 was that? W R A S S. It's it's a 0:57:47.280 --> 0:57:55.000 coral reef there like Napoleon rass And I was just 0:57:55.120 --> 0:57:57.960 I just saw this on the Ultimate The New Blue 0:57:58.000 --> 0:58:00.960 Planet um from from BBC, which is on Netflix. They 0:58:00.960 --> 0:58:03.919 have a really cool segment on that and and how 0:58:03.920 --> 0:58:07.160 it goes away and the body goes undergoes that incredible 0:58:07.240 --> 0:58:09.400 change and it grows that huge bump on its head 0:58:10.000 --> 0:58:14.040 and yeah changes, it's sex. Yeah, man, you know what 0:58:14.080 --> 0:58:18.880 that program needs is uh two versions, one with David 0:58:19.560 --> 0:58:22.640 and one without him. I cannot listen to that, dude. 0:58:22.680 --> 0:58:26.160 Oh my god, I could listen to that, dude. All 0:58:27.280 --> 0:58:30.440 it makes it. It makes it that I watch the 0:58:30.520 --> 0:58:38.320 high end nature documentaries really like I feel like everybody 0:58:38.400 --> 0:58:41.160 because I feel like we tried, didn't we try getting 0:58:41.200 --> 0:58:45.040 Morgan Freeman and uh, I would so much prefer that. 0:58:47.600 --> 0:58:50.280 I heard a bird show up, a bird, you know, 0:58:50.320 --> 0:58:53.040 and then like the bird joins the thing just kills me. Man. 0:58:53.080 --> 0:58:59.000 It's like, would you please just say the lines writes 0:58:59.080 --> 0:59:05.640 the lines that anyway? Anyway. Another example bull frogs or 0:59:05.680 --> 0:59:07.960 frog A lot of frog populations, not bull frogs, but 0:59:08.040 --> 0:59:12.000 like tangara frogs and chorus frogs. They sing and the 0:59:12.080 --> 0:59:14.560 call that they sing is an honest signal of the 0:59:14.600 --> 0:59:16.640 size of the male. I mean again, they're they're larynx 0:59:16.760 --> 0:59:20.439 size tracks with their bodies. The big the big bull 0:59:20.480 --> 0:59:23.200 frogs are deeper the females can tell. The females orient 0:59:23.280 --> 0:59:26.560 towards the big guys. But singing like that is dangerous. 0:59:26.560 --> 0:59:29.200 They're out there calling, calling, calling, calling, they get hammered 0:59:29.200 --> 0:59:31.720 by bats that q in on the same properties of 0:59:31.760 --> 0:59:34.000 the song and eat them all. And so when you're 0:59:34.000 --> 0:59:37.040 out there singing, it's dangerous. You're risking death. And if 0:59:37.040 --> 0:59:39.959 you're a medium quality, mediocre, puny, little male, why would 0:59:39.960 --> 0:59:42.480 you go risk death if you're not gonna win anyway, 0:59:42.480 --> 0:59:44.120 Because there's a big guy over there, and all the 0:59:44.160 --> 0:59:46.240 females are going to go over there. And so when 0:59:46.280 --> 0:59:48.320 you find these populations, you find, first of all, a 0:59:48.320 --> 0:59:51.080 lot of the smaller males shut up. They play it safe. 0:59:51.120 --> 0:59:53.680 So they are the ultimate shirkers. They sneak, they hang 0:59:53.720 --> 0:59:57.000 out quiet, acting like a female. They're not singing singing singing, 0:59:57.360 --> 0:59:59.240 they look and act like a female. They creep up 0:59:59.320 --> 1:00:01.680 to the territory is with the big stud males, and 1:00:01.720 --> 1:00:03.280 they hang out on the edges, and they try to 1:00:03.320 --> 1:00:05.640 intercept females and mate with them as they come into 1:00:05.640 --> 1:00:08.880 the big male and then and then when they get 1:00:08.880 --> 1:00:11.080 big enough, and only when they get big enough, they 1:00:11.120 --> 1:00:12.960 switch over and start calling. And you can show that 1:00:13.000 --> 1:00:14.560 you can go in and take out the big guys. 1:00:14.600 --> 1:00:16.720 Just pull him out, remove him. All of a sudden, 1:00:16.760 --> 1:00:19.280 there's this pond and the big studs are gone. The 1:00:19.360 --> 1:00:21.360 next male. It's like the males in line can figure 1:00:21.360 --> 1:00:23.600 it out, like, holy sh it, he's not there anymore. Boom, 1:00:23.640 --> 1:00:26.080 they stop sneaking and they start calling and they step 1:00:26.160 --> 1:00:29.240 into so so shirking is real. Whether it happens in dear, 1:00:29.280 --> 1:00:31.080 I don't know, but it happens in frogs. That happens 1:00:31.080 --> 1:00:33.520 in a lot of things. How are you feeling, because 1:00:34.040 --> 1:00:36.439 that's how you brought up sugars. You got shot down 1:00:36.480 --> 1:00:41.200 bad and the biologists didn't agree. He all but came 1:00:41.240 --> 1:00:46.280 over and hit up sugar. But let's come back to 1:00:46.400 --> 1:00:48.400 the one that I'm behind on. Can I do that? Well, 1:00:48.440 --> 1:00:50.360 you tell me what you're behind on. So when I'm 1:00:50.360 --> 1:00:52.760 behind on, you mentioned that, you know, body size is 1:00:53.160 --> 1:00:56.080 the same, but antlers differ a lot. And we started 1:00:56.080 --> 1:00:58.320 flirted with his topic from different angles. It comes back 1:00:58.360 --> 1:01:00.280 to the signal. It's like, what is the thing that's 1:01:00.280 --> 1:01:03.120 sort of advertising the status or the size or the 1:01:03.200 --> 1:01:05.720 quality of a male. And in the frogs we just 1:01:05.760 --> 1:01:08.040 talked about, you know, the big guys have a deeper call. 1:01:08.200 --> 1:01:11.000 They sound different. The females can tell. It's an honest signal. 1:01:11.080 --> 1:01:12.480 You can't fake it. The only way to have a 1:01:12.480 --> 1:01:14.960 low song is to be huge, and if you're a 1:01:15.000 --> 1:01:17.760 little wimpy guy, there's just nothing you can do. You're stuck. 1:01:17.840 --> 1:01:21.040 It is. It is an intrinsically honest signal because it's difficult. 1:01:21.080 --> 1:01:22.959 You can't fake it. You can't be a puny little 1:01:23.000 --> 1:01:25.080 male and just suddenly say I'm going to sing the 1:01:25.120 --> 1:01:27.640 sexy song today. If you don't have the body to 1:01:27.720 --> 1:01:30.479 do it, you can't fake it. And signals like that 1:01:31.040 --> 1:01:35.560 are more stable evolutionarily, they're less susceptible to cheaters to collapse. 1:01:35.640 --> 1:01:38.800 Those signaling systems last a long time, and females that 1:01:38.880 --> 1:01:42.080 happen to pay attention to honest signals do better. They 1:01:42.120 --> 1:01:44.880 make better decisions than females that that might be more 1:01:44.920 --> 1:01:47.200 fickle or pay attention to other things that don't matter. 1:01:47.600 --> 1:01:51.560 And over time, female preferences evolve and track in on 1:01:51.600 --> 1:01:54.520 the things that are the most expensive, the most difficult 1:01:54.520 --> 1:01:57.400 for males to do, the most honest signals that you 1:01:57.480 --> 1:02:00.560 really can't fake. And and that's a part to biology 1:02:00.600 --> 1:02:03.400 that we know a lot about for big bird displays 1:02:03.480 --> 1:02:06.040 and song bird calls, all these things. They tend to 1:02:06.040 --> 1:02:09.560 be very expensive, they tend to be almost impossible to fake. 1:02:09.960 --> 1:02:13.880 They tend to be extravagant, charismatic, obvious things that a 1:02:13.960 --> 1:02:16.800 female can see really easily from a long way away. 1:02:16.880 --> 1:02:18.960 And they tend to be super variable. So if you 1:02:19.040 --> 1:02:23.560 took ten, I don't want Let's go back to the aim. 1:02:23.640 --> 1:02:25.400 He took a whole bunch of mails and lined them up, 1:02:25.680 --> 1:02:28.200 and you looked at things like body size, they differ 1:02:28.240 --> 1:02:30.080 a little bit. You know, the little guys might be 1:02:30.120 --> 1:02:31.880 about half as big as the big guys. But you 1:02:31.880 --> 1:02:34.120 look at the ornaments or the songs or whatever the 1:02:34.240 --> 1:02:37.360 signal is that they're focusing on, and it's wildly variable. 1:02:37.440 --> 1:02:41.840 Be tenfold, twentyfold, fifty fold difference in size or quality 1:02:41.880 --> 1:02:44.360 between the puny guys and the big guys. And that's 1:02:44.400 --> 1:02:47.280 not an accident. That's sort of how these signaling systems 1:02:47.320 --> 1:02:50.440 evolved in these animals, and it makes them a really 1:02:50.440 --> 1:02:53.640 important sort of differentiator of winners and losers. Back to 1:02:53.680 --> 1:02:56.480 sexual selection, it's the males with the best calls, or 1:02:56.560 --> 1:03:00.600 the the sexiest signals, or the most charismatic colorful displays. 1:03:00.720 --> 1:03:02.600 Those are the ones that win. You can't fake it. 1:03:02.680 --> 1:03:04.040 The only way to do that is to be a 1:03:04.120 --> 1:03:06.400 rock star, and the females que in on that and 1:03:06.440 --> 1:03:09.280 they pick the rock stars. So in talking about the 1:03:09.320 --> 1:03:12.120 percentage differences, like like, imagine that you have a year 1:03:12.160 --> 1:03:14.880 and a half old white tailed deer. Okay, whatever, he's 1:03:14.880 --> 1:03:18.600 a hundred twenty pounds, he's got little spike antlers. But 1:03:18.680 --> 1:03:22.000 then that's exactly the next year the deer could be 1:03:22.520 --> 1:03:28.080 whatever pounds and how what magnitude larger. So so you're 1:03:28.120 --> 1:03:30.440 you're asking antler questions. I work on beetles. I can 1:03:30.440 --> 1:03:38.000 only get if I tooks beetles be so beetles are 1:03:38.000 --> 1:03:39.760 a little simpler in the sense that I don't have them. 1:03:40.000 --> 1:03:43.680 The age cohorts confounding things because the biggest bat bucks 1:03:43.680 --> 1:03:45.840 and bulls are also the oldest. It's not an accident 1:03:45.880 --> 1:03:48.000 and it's part of the same equation. At the end 1:03:48.000 --> 1:03:50.040 of the day, the males with the biggest antlers are 1:03:50.080 --> 1:03:52.400 also the oldest and the most dominant and in the 1:03:52.440 --> 1:03:55.760 best physiological condition. It's not a coincidence that you're boone 1:03:55.800 --> 1:03:58.560 and crockett bull has the antlers that it has that's 1:03:58.640 --> 1:04:01.080 not an accident. But age is part of that. With 1:04:01.160 --> 1:04:03.000 the beatles, it's simpler because they're all sort of the 1:04:03.000 --> 1:04:05.320 same age. That's the point I never thought of. That's 1:04:05.320 --> 1:04:07.840 a good point with insects. It's they're all the same age. 1:04:07.880 --> 1:04:10.240 They're all adults. A little teeny guy is never gonna 1:04:10.320 --> 1:04:12.520 once he comes out a metamorphosis, goes from a grub 1:04:12.520 --> 1:04:14.560 to a beetle. He's stuck. It's like a suit of armor. 1:04:14.600 --> 1:04:16.440 It's not going to change. A little guy has a 1:04:16.480 --> 1:04:18.400 little horn, and he's gonna have a little horn till 1:04:18.400 --> 1:04:20.680 the day he dies. So you take age out of 1:04:20.720 --> 1:04:23.960 the equation, but it's the same process. I never thought 1:04:23.960 --> 1:04:27.760 about how how much that kind of simplifies things, just 1:04:27.800 --> 1:04:30.560 in terms of explaining it. The biology is the same too. 1:04:30.640 --> 1:04:32.600 But say I took a hundred males line them. I 1:04:32.640 --> 1:04:34.840 showed you a box before we started today, a box 1:04:34.920 --> 1:04:37.000 with like a hundred beetles all lined up in a row. 1:04:37.640 --> 1:04:40.640 And if I took that sample and I measured body size, 1:04:40.760 --> 1:04:42.760 and I compared the smallest guy all the way to 1:04:42.800 --> 1:04:45.040 the biggest, i'd find a nice sort of even gradient 1:04:45.120 --> 1:04:47.560 from little to big, and it'd be about a twofold 1:04:47.720 --> 1:04:50.160 one and half to two fold difference. The biggest beetles 1:04:50.160 --> 1:04:53.400 probably twice as long or twice as wide as the 1:04:53.440 --> 1:04:56.320 littlest beetle. But if I look at the horns, I'm 1:04:56.360 --> 1:05:00.240 looking at about a sixtyfold difference. I mean much here, 1:05:00.320 --> 1:05:04.360 not How do I say that two times different? I'm 1:05:04.360 --> 1:05:07.600 getting confused on air. Here, it's more like a fifteen 1:05:07.600 --> 1:05:10.439 to twenty fold sorry, difference between antler size. So two 1:05:10.440 --> 1:05:14.000 fold difference embody size and a fifteen to twenty fold 1:05:14.040 --> 1:05:17.480 difference in the antler size or the horn size. So 1:05:17.480 --> 1:05:19.560 so it comes back to what you mentioned a minute ago. 1:05:19.560 --> 1:05:22.240 The antlers are more variable the horns, and these beetles 1:05:22.240 --> 1:05:24.720 are more variable. You look at tusks, you look at 1:05:24.760 --> 1:05:27.760 any of these big weapons systems, fiddler crab claws, all 1:05:27.800 --> 1:05:32.760 these kinds of weapons are big. They're expensive, and they're 1:05:32.840 --> 1:05:35.080 wildly variable from mail to mail, and that's all part 1:05:35.080 --> 1:05:37.880 of the same thing. The reason they're variable is they're expensive. 1:05:38.200 --> 1:05:40.800 The little guys can't afford it. Only the best conditioned 1:05:40.800 --> 1:05:43.640 animals can afford to produce the really big weapons. Everybody 1:05:43.640 --> 1:05:46.760 else is stuck with a compromise, and so you end 1:05:46.840 --> 1:05:50.040 up having this huge sort of spectrum from the whimps 1:05:50.080 --> 1:05:53.040 with a little tiny things to the superstar best condition 1:05:53.160 --> 1:05:56.440 studs with the massive weapons. And it's not an accident. 1:05:56.480 --> 1:05:59.600 It's not random at all. For the beatles is it's 1:05:59.600 --> 1:06:02.280 who who is best at being a grub. It has 1:06:02.320 --> 1:06:03.600 a lot to do with that has to do with 1:06:03.680 --> 1:06:06.440 access to food, but it's more complicated than that, because 1:06:06.440 --> 1:06:08.960 who gets the best food in the field. You know, 1:06:09.000 --> 1:06:10.840 in the lab, I can manipulate I give them a 1:06:10.840 --> 1:06:13.200 lot of food, and I get huge beetles with massive horns. 1:06:13.200 --> 1:06:15.240 I give them very little food. They all grow up 1:06:15.280 --> 1:06:17.080 stunted and tiny, and none of them have any big 1:06:17.080 --> 1:06:19.440 weapons at all, so I can manipulate it. But in 1:06:19.480 --> 1:06:22.000 the wild it's not an accident. Same with elk and deer, 1:06:22.240 --> 1:06:25.120 it's not a coincidence. The best dominant individuals have the 1:06:25.160 --> 1:06:26.960 best territories, and they're the ones that are able to 1:06:27.040 --> 1:06:29.280 keep everybody else away so their kids have the least 1:06:29.280 --> 1:06:32.320 amount of competition. They're the ones that are most resistant 1:06:32.320 --> 1:06:35.160 to pathogens and parasites, the healthiest, the least likely to 1:06:35.200 --> 1:06:38.560 get sick, so everything sort of lines up in their favor, 1:06:38.600 --> 1:06:41.400 and those individuals have the most resources available to them. 1:06:41.440 --> 1:06:44.720 Other individuals are forced to more peripheral habitats. They're dealing 1:06:44.720 --> 1:06:48.000 with more crowded conditions. They're stressed out because they're losing 1:06:48.000 --> 1:06:50.520 the competition for access to resources all the time. The 1:06:50.560 --> 1:06:52.840 stress interacts with their immune systems, so they're sick a 1:06:52.880 --> 1:06:55.680 lot more often. You know, they have access to less food, 1:06:55.760 --> 1:06:59.640 poor quality food, more competition, more disease, more parasites. All 1:06:59.720 --> 1:07:04.000 that stuff plays out and separates the winners from the losers. 1:07:04.000 --> 1:07:05.920 And none of it's an accident. I mean, it's it's 1:07:06.200 --> 1:07:09.120 compounding and sort of self reinforcing. But the best conditioned 1:07:09.160 --> 1:07:12.240 animals are the ones that tend to win. In the insects, 1:07:12.280 --> 1:07:14.800 it even gets into the parents behavior. The females that 1:07:14.840 --> 1:07:16.760 are the best at picking the right spots to lay 1:07:16.800 --> 1:07:19.480 their eggs, their kids hatch and they just eat what's there. 1:07:19.920 --> 1:07:22.040 But you know, there's some individuals that are in really 1:07:22.120 --> 1:07:25.520 good places and other individuals that are allowsy places, and 1:07:25.560 --> 1:07:28.000 so right from the day they're born, it's it isn't 1:07:28.000 --> 1:07:31.000 a fair world. There's winners and losers, but it's not random. 1:07:31.320 --> 1:07:34.240 Has a lot to do with the behavior of the parents. 1:07:34.480 --> 1:07:37.760 We had a guy on who deals with nutrition and ungulus. Yeah, 1:07:37.760 --> 1:07:41.200 I would love to have heard that, and I find it. 1:07:41.360 --> 1:07:45.040 And he talks about this idea that, uh, the people 1:07:45.080 --> 1:07:48.960 talk about an area having good genetics for box, right, 1:07:49.000 --> 1:07:52.160 and so there's some area grows big box because of genetics. 1:07:52.240 --> 1:07:55.360 And he refutes that and talks about nutrition being the 1:07:55.480 --> 1:07:58.960 driver and not that animals nutrition, but in some ways 1:07:59.240 --> 1:08:03.840 a deer's eventual rack, it's going to depend on both 1:08:04.080 --> 1:08:11.000 it's it's mothers in utero nutrition. Totally. We see this 1:08:11.040 --> 1:08:13.080 with people that you can take these animals, you can 1:08:13.120 --> 1:08:16.920 take these animals from places with quote shitty genetics and 1:08:16.960 --> 1:08:21.559 put them in a situation genetics and that would mean 1:08:21.640 --> 1:08:24.920 habitats that are marginal with poor quality indovice in our 1:08:25.040 --> 1:08:30.080 lingo and like hunter lingo genetics the animals. Yes, but 1:08:30.120 --> 1:08:33.439 I'm telling about what hunters talk about. Hunters will be 1:08:33.479 --> 1:08:36.679 like why you know, like why are all these big 1:08:36.720 --> 1:08:40.639 bucks coming out of Iowa right, and be like, oh, 1:08:40.720 --> 1:08:46.480 you know the ioh, they got the genetics the population. 1:08:47.040 --> 1:08:48.960 But I'm not I'm talking about how people use it. 1:08:49.720 --> 1:08:52.080 Use it like that. They're like, oh, it's got the 1:08:52.160 --> 1:08:55.799 feed and got the genetics right, and they take animals 1:08:55.840 --> 1:08:58.240 from these places that's supposedly like out of the mule 1:08:58.320 --> 1:09:01.880 here from the Black Hills, supposedly have bad genetics, So 1:09:01.920 --> 1:09:03.479 there's nothing you can do that it's gonna be small. 1:09:03.680 --> 1:09:06.479 But you take mulder from the Black Hills and move 1:09:06.560 --> 1:09:09.479 them to a place where no, you're not changing the genetics. 1:09:09.479 --> 1:09:12.200 You take males and females move into place with different nutrition, 1:09:12.400 --> 1:09:16.200 and all a sudden their giants. So in general, weapons 1:09:16.720 --> 1:09:20.960 and ornaments and all those other traits, but weapons this kind, 1:09:21.040 --> 1:09:25.839 the sexually selected weapons tend to be exquisitely sensitive to nutrition. 1:09:26.320 --> 1:09:28.439 More sense. So we did experiments in the beetles. Will 1:09:28.479 --> 1:09:31.000 will manipulate nutrition, same kind of thing I just talked 1:09:31.040 --> 1:09:32.360 about if I give them a little food or a 1:09:32.400 --> 1:09:36.000 lot of food. Body size about a twofold difference, wing 1:09:36.120 --> 1:09:39.759 size about a twofold difference, eye size about a twofold difference, 1:09:39.880 --> 1:09:44.240 horn size about a fifteen fold difference. And so same animals, 1:09:44.240 --> 1:09:48.240 same experiment, same difference in nutrition. And legs and eyes 1:09:48.280 --> 1:09:51.120 and wings and all those things are sensitive to nutrition. 1:09:51.160 --> 1:09:54.840 They're all responding, but the weapons are responding more so, 1:09:54.960 --> 1:09:58.400 weapons are exquisitely sensitive to nutrition. It doesn't mean it's 1:09:58.439 --> 1:10:01.080 not genetic because it's not an accident in the wild. 1:10:01.160 --> 1:10:04.480 It's the best quality animals that usually end up succeeding 1:10:04.479 --> 1:10:07.400 in defending the best quality nutrition and the best resources. 1:10:07.439 --> 1:10:10.840 So you get this interaction between the quality of the genetics, 1:10:10.920 --> 1:10:14.240 the genotypes of those animals, and the environments that those 1:10:14.240 --> 1:10:17.240 animals are in. But all of that comes together and 1:10:17.320 --> 1:10:20.040 is expressed in these traits, these weapons, and there you 1:10:20.200 --> 1:10:22.800 very minute, if you very nutrition, I guarantee you you're 1:10:22.800 --> 1:10:25.720 gonna have an enormous effect on antler size. So so 1:10:25.880 --> 1:10:28.320 let me follow the logic here. I want to step 1:10:28.320 --> 1:10:29.840 back because I know we've been going off on all 1:10:29.840 --> 1:10:32.640 these directions. What I've been trying to talk about is 1:10:33.680 --> 1:10:36.880 the kinds of ecological situations that can spark an arms race, 1:10:37.000 --> 1:10:39.519 that can take a population that doesn't have big weapons, 1:10:39.920 --> 1:10:43.680 that's going about its business. Something changes, and all of 1:10:43.720 --> 1:10:47.080 a sudden, from that point forward, it's the suit you know, 1:10:47.120 --> 1:10:49.320 it's the bigger, stronger males with the weapons that win. 1:10:49.520 --> 1:10:52.679 They're able to monopolize access to some kind of resource, 1:10:52.920 --> 1:10:55.120 something that gives them an edge in the way that 1:10:55.160 --> 1:10:58.280 they come into contact with females. Something changed, and all 1:10:58.320 --> 1:11:00.439 of a sudden, bigger is better, and mails with the 1:11:00.439 --> 1:11:03.200 biggest weapons win. I talked in the dung beetle example 1:11:03.240 --> 1:11:07.320 about how suddenly starting to fight over tunnels, a simple 1:11:07.400 --> 1:11:10.400 change in behavior aligns the fights so that they're not 1:11:10.439 --> 1:11:13.640 scrambles anymore, now they're duels. That change in behavior, all 1:11:13.640 --> 1:11:15.599 of a sudden, bigger is better, because in a duel, 1:11:15.960 --> 1:11:18.200 the stronger male wins, and if a mail has a 1:11:18.240 --> 1:11:20.280 longer horn and he can pry better and get rid 1:11:20.320 --> 1:11:22.519 of the opponent better with the weapon, than the mail 1:11:22.560 --> 1:11:24.799 with the longer weapon wins. And so all of a sudden, 1:11:24.840 --> 1:11:28.800 that population gets tipped into this trajectory that we're talking 1:11:28.800 --> 1:11:31.200 about as an arms race, and from that point forward, 1:11:31.240 --> 1:11:34.240 bigger is better, and so very quickly the population or 1:11:34.280 --> 1:11:36.760 cross generations is going to ratchet up to bigger and 1:11:36.760 --> 1:11:40.200 bigger weapons. So that kind of a phenomenon happens with 1:11:40.240 --> 1:11:43.400 elephant tusks, It happens with cariboo, it happens with fiddler crabs, 1:11:43.439 --> 1:11:45.839 It happens with all these animals with these crazy weapons. 1:11:46.240 --> 1:11:49.400 The particular trigger might be different, but they all fight 1:11:49.439 --> 1:11:52.559 in duels, one on one contest, and once they start 1:11:52.640 --> 1:11:56.240 on this path, the arms race plays out the same way. 1:11:56.360 --> 1:11:58.559 Every single time. And that's a point I kind of 1:11:58.560 --> 1:12:01.240 want to take a second to make. Once that button 1:12:01.280 --> 1:12:04.200 gets pushed, go that beatles on the trajectory. It's in 1:12:04.240 --> 1:12:07.080 an arms race. The weapons get bigger and bigger and 1:12:07.080 --> 1:12:10.760 bigger and bigger, and a very very set set of 1:12:10.840 --> 1:12:13.400 things happens. As they get big, they get expensive. We 1:12:13.479 --> 1:12:16.080 talked about cost, So they get more and more expensive. 1:12:16.439 --> 1:12:19.080 What that means is fewer and fewer mails are up 1:12:19.080 --> 1:12:21.280 to the muster. Most of the males now can't pay 1:12:21.320 --> 1:12:23.400 that price because it's getting more and more and more 1:12:23.439 --> 1:12:27.920 expensive very quickly, the mails are out of the game. 1:12:28.120 --> 1:12:30.840 They just don't have the resources to produce the really 1:12:30.840 --> 1:12:34.519 big weapons, and so they're pretty much gone. Colladteral they lose. 1:12:34.640 --> 1:12:37.880 The population becomes more and more concentrated around a smaller 1:12:37.880 --> 1:12:41.360 and smaller subset of victorious males, and the benefits of 1:12:41.400 --> 1:12:44.120 these big weapons get stronger and bigger and bigger, and 1:12:44.160 --> 1:12:47.519 the whole process ratchets up. But you reach a point, 1:12:47.600 --> 1:12:52.240 a tipping point, where the winners and losers are so 1:12:52.320 --> 1:12:54.800 starkly different from each other, and so many males are 1:12:54.800 --> 1:12:59.080 getting nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, that some of them somewhere 1:12:59.200 --> 1:13:02.200 stumble on a to break the rules. They cheat, Oh 1:13:02.280 --> 1:13:04.000 I forgot one more step. So the weapons get big, 1:13:04.080 --> 1:13:06.439 they get expensive. The fact that only a few males 1:13:06.439 --> 1:13:09.040 can do it, that's what gives us that variability we 1:13:09.040 --> 1:13:12.639 were talking about. That's the point where antlers are more 1:13:12.800 --> 1:13:15.960 variable than legs or ears or body size or fiddler 1:13:16.000 --> 1:13:18.400 crab claws are more variable than body size. All of 1:13:18.439 --> 1:13:21.559 a sudden, now those weapons are so expensive that only 1:13:21.600 --> 1:13:23.960 a few Boone and Crockett quality individuals can do it. 1:13:24.000 --> 1:13:26.920 The rest of them are stuck with suboptimal versions. The 1:13:27.040 --> 1:13:31.280 variation in the traits is pronounced that tip. That means 1:13:31.320 --> 1:13:33.679 that you suddenly got a signal. You've got a thing 1:13:33.880 --> 1:13:36.879 out there that is an honest indicator of fighting ability. 1:13:37.120 --> 1:13:39.200 It's not an accident that the biggest males have the 1:13:39.200 --> 1:13:42.360 biggest they're the studs. So if I'm a mediocre male 1:13:42.360 --> 1:13:44.479 with a medium rack and I look and I size 1:13:44.560 --> 1:13:47.439 up my opponent and he's got a massive rack, do 1:13:47.520 --> 1:13:50.719 I want to escalate in that fight? No, because really 1:13:50.800 --> 1:13:53.320 he's gonna beat me. Because it's an honest signal, and 1:13:53.360 --> 1:13:56.000 that male with bigger antlers is really the better fighter. 1:13:56.479 --> 1:13:59.559 And so in these animal populations, whether it's beetles, crabs, 1:14:00.160 --> 1:14:03.400 and I mean caribou, elephants, all these systems. Once the 1:14:03.479 --> 1:14:06.200 arms races at that point, and these weapons are big, 1:14:06.240 --> 1:14:10.040 they're expensive, they're variable, they're an honest signal of fighting ability. 1:14:10.200 --> 1:14:12.960 The next step kicks in and the weapons start acting 1:14:13.000 --> 1:14:15.840 as a deterrent. There a signal you don't actually have 1:14:15.920 --> 1:14:17.840 to fight with it, because all I need to do 1:14:17.880 --> 1:14:20.240 is look at that antler and I know I'm gonna lose. 1:14:20.600 --> 1:14:22.920 And so more and more in these populations, the small 1:14:22.920 --> 1:14:25.840 guys back down. They they size each other up, they 1:14:25.880 --> 1:14:27.800 spar a little bit, they look at each other. You 1:14:27.840 --> 1:14:30.840 see these great examples of antelope sort of strutt in 1:14:30.920 --> 1:14:33.640 side by side, or fallow deer. There's beautiful pictures of 1:14:33.680 --> 1:14:35.680 these males. They run side by side and they turn 1:14:35.720 --> 1:14:37.680 on the run back there like looking at each other 1:14:37.680 --> 1:14:40.760 whose antlers are bigger. And then the smaller ones usually leave. 1:14:41.120 --> 1:14:43.280 And so you reach this point in the cycle where 1:14:43.320 --> 1:14:46.320 the weapons are big, they're expensive, they're a signal, and 1:14:46.360 --> 1:14:49.000 all of a sudden they're a deterrent. You don't even 1:14:49.040 --> 1:14:52.240 have to fight anymore because most of your competition walks 1:14:52.280 --> 1:14:54.559 away because you're the stud and you've got the weapons 1:14:54.600 --> 1:14:58.320 and it's honest, And that's the point where you start. 1:14:58.400 --> 1:15:00.720 That's where there's tons of military pair aloes. By the way, 1:15:00.760 --> 1:15:03.800 if we go there and then you reach this point 1:15:03.800 --> 1:15:06.360 where the weapons are huge, only a tiny fraction of 1:15:06.360 --> 1:15:08.800 individuals can afford it. Nobody else is even in the game. 1:15:09.000 --> 1:15:10.800 They can't even not only can they not fight, I 1:15:10.800 --> 1:15:13.439 mean they don't even bother trying to fight. And that's 1:15:13.439 --> 1:15:17.240 the point where usually somebody breaks the rules the asymmetric warfare, 1:15:17.320 --> 1:15:19.960 the guerilla equivalent. Somebody cheats and figures out a way 1:15:20.000 --> 1:15:22.799 to screw that. Man, I'm not playing by those rules anymore, 1:15:23.120 --> 1:15:25.679 the sneaky dumb It's like, I'm not going to fight 1:15:25.720 --> 1:15:27.240 with the entrance. I'm not gonna win. So they dig 1:15:27.240 --> 1:15:29.720 a side tone and find another way, and that's the 1:15:29.760 --> 1:15:32.360 beginning of the end. Once the sneakers or the cheaters 1:15:32.360 --> 1:15:36.280 start doing too well, the whole thing collapses, The weapons disappear, 1:15:36.560 --> 1:15:40.640 and the whole process starts again. That cycle. Something aligns 1:15:40.640 --> 1:15:42.360 like a star so that all of a sudden, bigger 1:15:42.400 --> 1:15:47.599 is better population starts launching onto this trajectory bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. 1:15:47.920 --> 1:15:50.680 They get bigger, they get expensive, they become exaggerated as 1:15:50.720 --> 1:15:54.920 a signal, they become a deterrent cheaters, and aage collapse. 1:15:55.280 --> 1:15:58.160 That sort of process repeats itself over and over again, 1:15:58.160 --> 1:16:00.479 and I would argue that just about any animal you 1:16:00.479 --> 1:16:03.000 can imagine, with the exception of the saber tooth cats 1:16:03.040 --> 1:16:06.640 that has huge weapons like that, has gone through exactly 1:16:06.680 --> 1:16:09.639 that cycle. And that's the parallel with the military. Military 1:16:09.720 --> 1:16:12.240 technologies go through the same cycle. They get triggered for 1:16:12.240 --> 1:16:15.080 the same reasons. Once they get triggered, the weapons get 1:16:15.120 --> 1:16:17.479 bigger and bigger and bigger. As they get bigger, they 1:16:17.479 --> 1:16:20.120 get more and more and more expensive. As they get 1:16:20.120 --> 1:16:23.160 more and more expensive, fewer countries or nations can afford 1:16:23.200 --> 1:16:25.439 to play the game. And then you reach a point 1:16:25.439 --> 1:16:27.760 where they're a deterrent because you got the weapons and 1:16:27.800 --> 1:16:30.240 nobody else does. And then the cheaters invade and the 1:16:30.240 --> 1:16:32.960 whole thing class and along comes some guys with airplane 1:16:32.960 --> 1:16:37.240 tickets and box cutters and brings you to your knees exactly, 1:16:38.800 --> 1:16:41.240 or cyber hackers. All throughout your book, you talk, you 1:16:41.320 --> 1:16:45.040 talk about military. Yeah, sure, let me go off on that, 1:16:45.080 --> 1:16:50.080 but I wanted to throughout you but you talk about 1:16:50.080 --> 1:16:54.160 military parallels. So you get into armaments, um, the arms race, 1:16:54.560 --> 1:16:57.920 but there's one, there's one that doesn't go towards bigger, bigger, bigger, 1:16:58.520 --> 1:17:03.840 And you talk about, uh, projectile points. Can you tell 1:17:03.840 --> 1:17:07.720 everyone about? So I can't remember where it's it's it's 1:17:07.960 --> 1:17:10.479 like I'm losing myself now, Like I can't remember what 1:17:10.560 --> 1:17:13.080 example you brought up that got you to write about 1:17:13.760 --> 1:17:17.160 Clovis points and full time, I am a sucker for history. 1:17:17.360 --> 1:17:19.320 I love the past. I love the past. When I 1:17:19.360 --> 1:17:21.920 find a fossil and I realized I'm looking at something 1:17:21.960 --> 1:17:25.160 that's a snapshot from something way in the past. We 1:17:25.280 --> 1:17:27.439 just got back from taking our kids two weeks in Europe. 1:17:27.479 --> 1:17:29.639 I mean, I was blown away by POMPEII. The whole 1:17:29.680 --> 1:17:32.960 idea of walking around and looking at the mosaics in 1:17:33.040 --> 1:17:36.320 a bathroom of somebody's house from a thousand years ago. 1:17:36.439 --> 1:17:38.920 Just I mean, I get a rush. It's a palpable 1:17:39.160 --> 1:17:42.880 endorphin rush. I love that feeling. And for me growing up, 1:17:42.960 --> 1:17:45.559 I used to find arrowheads in my neighbor's tobacco field 1:17:45.600 --> 1:17:48.320 in Tennessee, and after the rains, I would go walk 1:17:48.360 --> 1:17:51.240 through these fields and just look at the slopes of 1:17:51.280 --> 1:17:53.240 the dirt at the basis of the plants. Look for 1:17:53.240 --> 1:17:55.720 the little glisten of pieces of flint or absidian that 1:17:55.760 --> 1:17:58.639 we're coming out of the dirt. And there's this feeling 1:17:58.680 --> 1:18:00.599 I don't have. Some people get it, some people don't. 1:18:00.640 --> 1:18:01.920 I don't know how to describe it. But if I 1:18:01.920 --> 1:18:03.680 pick up an arrowhead and hold it, and I'm the 1:18:03.720 --> 1:18:07.200 first person to touch that since the person that made it, 1:18:07.400 --> 1:18:09.559 and those things can be three, four or five, ten 1:18:09.680 --> 1:18:11.640 thousand years old, depending on where you are and what 1:18:11.680 --> 1:18:13.759 they are. If it's Clovis, it could be fifteen thousand 1:18:13.840 --> 1:18:18.240 years old. That's this priceless moment of touching the past. 1:18:18.320 --> 1:18:19.880 And I used to get a kick out of that 1:18:19.960 --> 1:18:23.000 from his I mean basically from when I could walk onward. 1:18:23.520 --> 1:18:25.479 I love that history. And so for me, when I 1:18:25.520 --> 1:18:27.120 had a chance to look at all these weapons, to 1:18:27.120 --> 1:18:31.120 go back and look at arrowheads and really think about what, 1:18:31.680 --> 1:18:35.040 you know, what kinds of processes, agents of selection sort 1:18:35.040 --> 1:18:37.760 of shaped the evolution of the form of these arrowheads. 1:18:38.600 --> 1:18:40.720 It was it was a fun, fun digression. But you 1:18:40.720 --> 1:18:42.840 brought it up in the context of them evolving to 1:18:42.880 --> 1:18:45.360 be smaller that rather than larger, And I think it's 1:18:45.360 --> 1:18:47.920 a really good parallel. I've tried to say it already 1:18:47.920 --> 1:18:52.759 in this interview. Most of the time animal weapons aren't big. 1:18:53.200 --> 1:18:56.160 Most animals don't have an enormous racks sticking on the 1:18:56.160 --> 1:18:58.439 top o coffee table fused to the top of their head. 1:18:58.479 --> 1:19:01.840 Most species, it's not worth it. It's too expensive, it's 1:19:01.880 --> 1:19:04.920 too awkward. Why the hell would you do something like that? 1:19:05.320 --> 1:19:07.000 And so most of the time it's not worth it. 1:19:07.080 --> 1:19:10.599 We talked today about the rare circumstances where the stars 1:19:10.640 --> 1:19:12.480 line up and all of a sudden, in one population 1:19:12.479 --> 1:19:14.160 of one species, it is worth it, and you go 1:19:14.240 --> 1:19:17.519 off on this trajectory. But the arrowheads are a really nice, 1:19:17.560 --> 1:19:20.599 clear illustration of a of a more typical situation where 1:19:20.600 --> 1:19:22.920 it's not worth it to get really big, and it 1:19:23.000 --> 1:19:25.840 illustrates the point that weapons are shaped by costs and benefits. 1:19:25.920 --> 1:19:30.640 And so with a with a projectile point, how do 1:19:30.680 --> 1:19:32.519 I where do I start? So so what I did 1:19:32.560 --> 1:19:34.439 is I picked up a literature that it looked at 1:19:34.520 --> 1:19:37.240 the so called evolution of projectile points in North America 1:19:37.400 --> 1:19:39.840 from you know, the earliest people that we think came 1:19:39.880 --> 1:19:42.200 across the Bearing Street, and these were the Clovis people, 1:19:42.200 --> 1:19:45.240 and the fulsome people's all the way through to you know, 1:19:45.280 --> 1:19:49.280 effectively that the colonization from Western Europeans and sort of 1:19:49.280 --> 1:19:52.480 the end of that era. And they have beautiful sequences 1:19:52.520 --> 1:19:55.559 of these projectile points through time, even from within the 1:19:55.600 --> 1:19:58.200 same areas. You can look sort of over time and 1:19:58.320 --> 1:20:01.240 how the technology changed the fla making patterns, the shapes, 1:20:01.280 --> 1:20:04.040 the sizes, and what they found is that the points 1:20:04.040 --> 1:20:06.640 got smaller. So if you go way back to the 1:20:06.640 --> 1:20:10.080 Clovised time period, they were using these primarily to hunt 1:20:10.160 --> 1:20:13.160 things like Columbian mammoths, and so we found that we 1:20:13.479 --> 1:20:16.880 they found the points almost always in association with mammoth kills. 1:20:16.880 --> 1:20:19.840 They were pretty confident that that was a major source 1:20:19.840 --> 1:20:22.599 of calories for these people. And if you're gonna try 1:20:22.640 --> 1:20:25.479 to puncture through the hide of something that's thick and 1:20:25.600 --> 1:20:28.439 that big, you need a big point. And there's some 1:20:28.439 --> 1:20:30.800 pretty tight physical constraints. I brought one that we can 1:20:30.840 --> 1:20:34.519 hold and look at pretty tight physical constraints on a 1:20:34.640 --> 1:20:39.920 napped stone projectile point that they have. You have to 1:20:39.960 --> 1:20:42.120 have a point that's tailored to the size of the 1:20:42.120 --> 1:20:44.519 shaft of the spear. It has to be about one 1:20:44.560 --> 1:20:47.240 and a half times the diameter of the shaft of 1:20:47.240 --> 1:20:50.559 the spear. If the points too narrow, then when it 1:20:50.640 --> 1:20:53.639 pierces the hide, it doesn't create a slit that's big 1:20:53.720 --> 1:20:55.680 enough to allow the shaft of the spear to go in, 1:20:55.720 --> 1:20:57.519 so it hits. It goes in like an inch and 1:20:57.600 --> 1:21:02.599 it stops. So longer wider blade cuts a bigger gash 1:21:02.680 --> 1:21:05.360 slice and it creates an opening that lets the shaft 1:21:05.400 --> 1:21:07.880 of the spear go into the animal. But if you 1:21:07.880 --> 1:21:10.400 make them too wide, it's brittle and they snap. So 1:21:10.479 --> 1:21:12.439 you have this sort of you know, the sort of 1:21:12.520 --> 1:21:16.080 tension between points that are too too small for your 1:21:16.080 --> 1:21:18.120 shaft of your spear and points that are too wide 1:21:18.120 --> 1:21:20.280 and they break. And the happy mediums about one and 1:21:20.320 --> 1:21:23.080 a half times, so we know the early Clovis this 1:21:23.120 --> 1:21:26.400 isn't Clovis, but they were big, big points with really 1:21:26.479 --> 1:21:29.640 thick shafted spears that they needed to puncture through the 1:21:29.720 --> 1:21:32.960 high of the mammoth. But those were very expensive points 1:21:33.000 --> 1:21:35.360 to make. It was hard to find pieces of obsidian 1:21:35.400 --> 1:21:39.080 without imperfections in it that would allow you to nap 1:21:39.120 --> 1:21:41.000 a point that was like you know, some of them 1:21:41.000 --> 1:21:44.280 were like six ten inches long, and it took a 1:21:44.320 --> 1:21:46.479 spectacular amount of skill to be able to pull that 1:21:46.560 --> 1:21:48.439 off without breaking these things. And then you had to 1:21:48.479 --> 1:21:50.760 carry the spears and the points with you everywhere you went. 1:21:50.840 --> 1:21:53.280 These were nomadic people. They're carrying everything with them everywhere 1:21:53.320 --> 1:21:56.160 they go. By some estimates, they'd moved two hundred miles 1:21:56.160 --> 1:21:58.559 in a year. You're carrying everything with you, so big 1:21:58.600 --> 1:22:01.559 spears are heavy. Is long as you're getting things like mammoths, 1:22:01.560 --> 1:22:03.680 it's worth it. The benefits of the big weapons are 1:22:03.720 --> 1:22:05.920 you can take down the huge prey feture people. It's 1:22:05.920 --> 1:22:09.080 a great thing. But the mammoths went extinct and they 1:22:09.120 --> 1:22:11.800 had to shift from mammoth to smaller species. The next 1:22:11.800 --> 1:22:14.160 one was the bison antiquois, which I think you've talked 1:22:14.200 --> 1:22:17.439 about in some of years of big bison but smaller 1:22:17.479 --> 1:22:20.880 than a mammoth, and so the shafts were overkilled. Suddenly 1:22:20.920 --> 1:22:23.160 it wasn't worth it to carry these huge, heavy spears 1:22:23.200 --> 1:22:25.960 and to make these really really hard to make points. 1:22:26.000 --> 1:22:29.200 So they started making smaller points that were better fit 1:22:29.400 --> 1:22:31.679 to the shaft sizes that they needed on the spears 1:22:31.720 --> 1:22:34.759 for the bison. And then when the bison antiquis went extinct, 1:22:34.760 --> 1:22:37.320 they shifted down again to big horn sheep into the 1:22:37.320 --> 1:22:41.280 modern American bison, and each time they shifted to smaller prey, 1:22:41.520 --> 1:22:43.760 they immediately got rid of the big stuff because it 1:22:43.760 --> 1:22:46.120 was too expensive to make, too expensive to carry, and 1:22:46.160 --> 1:22:48.800 they scaled down and got smaller and smaller until they 1:22:48.840 --> 1:22:51.160 had shaft sizes and point sizes that worked for the 1:22:51.200 --> 1:22:53.679 current prey. And then all that ended when they invented 1:22:53.720 --> 1:22:56.520 the bow and arrow, because suddenly you had a fundamentally 1:22:56.520 --> 1:22:59.439 different sort of projectile propulsion system and you could get 1:22:59.439 --> 1:23:01.759 by with really tiny points. And from that point forward, 1:23:01.800 --> 1:23:04.160 nobody wanted to carry the big stuff. It was too expensive, 1:23:04.200 --> 1:23:08.080 too heavy. They all switched to really lightweight, portable bone 1:23:08.200 --> 1:23:11.439 arrow technologies. So is that is that what you That? 1:23:11.520 --> 1:23:16.160 I got too far? But it's a nice illustration of 1:23:16.200 --> 1:23:19.640 costs and benefits that the big weapons were worth the 1:23:19.720 --> 1:23:22.240 price when the prey was really big and you could 1:23:22.320 --> 1:23:24.240 use them on bison, But when that prey was gone, 1:23:24.600 --> 1:23:26.920 it wasn't worth the price to make a big weapon, 1:23:27.000 --> 1:23:30.000 so you downsized it to something that was cheaper, and 1:23:30.040 --> 1:23:32.559 then you downsize it again it's something that was even cheaper. 1:23:32.800 --> 1:23:35.360 There's this sort of tension tug, a war between costs 1:23:35.360 --> 1:23:37.800 and benefits, and once the big prey were gone, the 1:23:37.840 --> 1:23:41.400 benefits weren't as big. So it's it ratcheted down to 1:23:41.439 --> 1:23:44.599 a smaller size. Explain your view on or not your view, 1:23:44.640 --> 1:23:46.919 but your insights how you want to put it into. 1:23:48.280 --> 1:23:52.160 Where we've looked, like in recent decades with our military, 1:23:52.479 --> 1:23:55.960 and how we imagined military might and how we would 1:23:56.000 --> 1:24:01.080 exercise military might, and where current lee Who is the 1:24:01.439 --> 1:24:05.000 sneak strategy, who's the beatle that tunnels who tunnels in 1:24:05.120 --> 1:24:09.479 and comes up through the floor? That one I can answer. 1:24:09.840 --> 1:24:13.000 So so step back a second and we okay, in time, 1:24:13.120 --> 1:24:15.360 I want to go out. Okay, so step back a second. 1:24:15.360 --> 1:24:16.720 I want to I want to make one thing clear. 1:24:16.800 --> 1:24:20.040 We've been talking about evolution of animal populations and winners 1:24:20.040 --> 1:24:23.479 and losers and sexual selection. In something like cariboo or elk, 1:24:23.880 --> 1:24:28.040 it's all about reproduction because the males that win, which 1:24:28.040 --> 1:24:31.519 presumably are the studs with the best antlers, the best condition, 1:24:31.560 --> 1:24:34.080 they win the harems, they get access to the most females. 1:24:34.720 --> 1:24:39.000 They win because they sire more offspring and they produce 1:24:39.080 --> 1:24:41.160 more of the kids in the next generation, and those 1:24:41.240 --> 1:24:43.919 kids carry the antlers because the way that the antlers 1:24:43.920 --> 1:24:48.240 are copied is through producing more elk. The winners have 1:24:48.360 --> 1:24:51.400 more kids, and the currency of success is numbers of offspring. 1:24:52.040 --> 1:24:54.360 When you talk about military weapons is different. We're not 1:24:54.400 --> 1:24:57.160 talking about who has kids, whether you have a better 1:24:57.200 --> 1:25:00.320 machine gun and more. We're not talking about reproduction they anymore. 1:25:00.360 --> 1:25:03.479 We're talking about manufactured techne But historically there's a lot 1:25:03.520 --> 1:25:06.439 of instances where it does control reproduction. There are the 1:25:06.479 --> 1:25:08.840 Middle Ages is a good one, and weapons are used. 1:25:09.840 --> 1:25:12.960 Definitely a factory production. But people find where like it 1:25:13.000 --> 1:25:17.400 seems like the male there will be a population and 1:25:17.479 --> 1:25:21.280 it will seem like there's a sudden, very radical shift 1:25:22.000 --> 1:25:24.639 and the population in the area from and you can 1:25:24.680 --> 1:25:28.880 see markers from a conquering invasion where it seems like 1:25:30.000 --> 1:25:35.639 want to go there. Yes, there seems with conquests, and 1:25:36.200 --> 1:25:40.400 there's no question that military leaders and political leaders tend, 1:25:40.640 --> 1:25:43.599 especially if you're including illegitimate offspring, to sire an awful 1:25:43.640 --> 1:25:48.840 of offspring. So reproduction. So reproduction, I'm not trying to 1:25:48.840 --> 1:25:51.760 say what you say is still the ultimate currency for 1:25:51.800 --> 1:25:53.920 success and us too. That will piss everybody off, But 1:25:53.960 --> 1:25:55.960 at the end of the day, you know, when you 1:25:56.000 --> 1:25:58.840 look a thousand generations from now, the people that are 1:25:58.880 --> 1:26:01.680 gonna be out there are going to be offspring from 1:26:01.680 --> 1:26:04.880 people that were here today. So so yes, reproduction still matters. 1:26:04.880 --> 1:26:06.120 But what I'm trying to say is, if I want 1:26:06.120 --> 1:26:08.599 to understand this arrowhead, or I want to look at 1:26:08.640 --> 1:26:12.680 airplane technology or a tank technology or missile technology, it 1:26:12.720 --> 1:26:15.320 really doesn't matter how many kids the person that designed 1:26:15.360 --> 1:26:17.240 it has or how many kids the person that flew 1:26:17.320 --> 1:26:21.160 it has. That's a separate question. So yes, military issues 1:26:21.160 --> 1:26:23.800 are associated with dying and with breeding, but we're not 1:26:23.880 --> 1:26:25.400 that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the 1:26:25.400 --> 1:26:28.000 missile or the tank or the arrowhead. And when you're 1:26:28.000 --> 1:26:30.240 talking about a weapon, or take a machine gun, you 1:26:30.240 --> 1:26:33.000 know in a K forty seven that is a thing there, 1:26:33.080 --> 1:26:35.559 there are copies made in a factory. They're cranking out 1:26:35.560 --> 1:26:38.200 a K forty seven's. The factory is making more a 1:26:38.320 --> 1:26:40.479 K for it. That's not me having kids, that's the 1:26:40.560 --> 1:26:42.640 factory making more a K forty sevens. But if I 1:26:42.680 --> 1:26:45.160 look at the population of submachine guns out there or 1:26:45.200 --> 1:26:47.720 assault rifles out there, I could go out there, just 1:26:47.800 --> 1:26:49.759 like I could say how many dark mice and white 1:26:49.760 --> 1:26:52.160 mice are out there in my population, I could say 1:26:52.240 --> 1:26:54.639 how many m sixteen. How many A K forty sevens. 1:26:54.640 --> 1:26:57.200 If I want to characterize the population of assault rifles 1:26:57.200 --> 1:27:00.280 on this planet right now, I could probably find fifty 1:27:00.640 --> 1:27:02.240 different models out there. A few of them are gonna 1:27:02.280 --> 1:27:04.080 be really rare. Some of them, like the a K 1:27:04.200 --> 1:27:07.320 forty seven, are going to be ridiculously common. I could 1:27:07.320 --> 1:27:10.840 talk about variation in the weapon out there now, and 1:27:10.960 --> 1:27:13.439 realistically that's going to change. Some models are going to 1:27:13.520 --> 1:27:16.000 get picked up and spread and they're gonna become more common, 1:27:16.000 --> 1:27:18.120 and they're gonna get adjusted and developed and get better 1:27:18.120 --> 1:27:20.719 and better over time. Others are gonna disappear. They're too clunky, 1:27:20.760 --> 1:27:22.800 they jam under you know, the sand gets in them, 1:27:22.800 --> 1:27:25.759 they don't work. Nobody wants them, they're too expensive. Nobody 1:27:25.800 --> 1:27:28.880 wants to produce them for their militaries. So the weapons 1:27:28.920 --> 1:27:33.200 are going to change over time, and it's a turnover process, 1:27:33.240 --> 1:27:35.760 winners and losers. It's exactly the same as what we're 1:27:35.760 --> 1:27:38.240 talking about with antlers or beetles, but it's not tied 1:27:38.280 --> 1:27:40.680 to reproduction. It's tied to who wants this. You know 1:27:40.720 --> 1:27:43.759 which models are being being picked up, manufactured and spreading, 1:27:44.120 --> 1:27:47.240 and which mant models are being discontinued because they suck, 1:27:47.320 --> 1:27:49.640 or they're not cost effective, or nobody wants them, and 1:27:49.720 --> 1:27:51.960 so you still have winners and losers. You can talk 1:27:52.000 --> 1:27:54.200 about the technology. It will change over time. If you 1:27:54.240 --> 1:27:56.880 look at the assault rifle, over the last fifty years, 1:27:56.880 --> 1:28:00.280 it's changed. It's better now, it's more efficient. Now. People 1:28:00.360 --> 1:28:02.639 have been playing around with it, trying to change the design. 1:28:02.960 --> 1:28:05.720 Sometimes it's by accident. Sometimes their engineers trying to make 1:28:05.760 --> 1:28:08.360 it more efficient, make the cartridges work better, make it 1:28:08.400 --> 1:28:12.000 more cost effective, make it more portable. People are tweaking 1:28:12.000 --> 1:28:14.040 it and playing around. It's still in a K forty seven, 1:28:14.520 --> 1:28:17.080 but they're playing with it to try to make it better. 1:28:17.240 --> 1:28:19.680 That's variation. That's just like mutations cropping up in a 1:28:19.680 --> 1:28:22.280 mouse population making them a little faster, a little thicker, 1:28:22.320 --> 1:28:25.200 a little lighter. You know, there's variation, and some of 1:28:25.200 --> 1:28:27.439 it sucks, it doesn't work at all, it's gone. Some 1:28:27.479 --> 1:28:29.599 of it works really well. People grab it and run 1:28:29.640 --> 1:28:33.719 with it. That's evolution. So without as a backdrop for weapons, 1:28:34.400 --> 1:28:36.360 now we can come back full circle and say, well, 1:28:36.360 --> 1:28:40.559 when would weapons particular technologies get caught up in an 1:28:40.640 --> 1:28:42.200 arms race where all of a sudden you need bigger 1:28:42.200 --> 1:28:45.479 and bigger and bigger and bigger, and historically there's really 1:28:45.520 --> 1:28:48.719 good sort of accounts of early weapons technologies and where 1:28:48.720 --> 1:28:50.759 this happens. So if you go back to the Romans 1:28:50.760 --> 1:28:54.000 and the Greeks and and the Syrian time periods Mediterranean, 1:28:54.640 --> 1:28:57.320 there were galleys that were these order you know, the 1:28:57.360 --> 1:28:59.920 try reams. There were these ships that were rowing soldier 1:29:00.160 --> 1:29:03.840 back and forth for many many years, like a thousand years. 1:29:03.880 --> 1:29:08.120 These ships were called penticonters. They had fifty rowers and 1:29:08.520 --> 1:29:10.800 there was nothing special about them. They just carried troops 1:29:10.800 --> 1:29:13.439 from place to place. They scrambled about on the ocean. 1:29:13.600 --> 1:29:16.240 They weren't actually weapons. They were just boats that took 1:29:16.280 --> 1:29:19.880 people along the shorelines to transport troops. For a thousand years, 1:29:19.920 --> 1:29:22.240 nothing changed. All the countries had the same basic ship. 1:29:22.320 --> 1:29:26.200 The design was pretty much indistinguishable. And then somebody invents 1:29:26.200 --> 1:29:29.800 a battering ram boom, just like that new technology. It's 1:29:29.880 --> 1:29:31.519 just it's like a beetle horn. It's a thing that 1:29:31.560 --> 1:29:33.559 sticks off the front of the boat. But oh my god, 1:29:33.600 --> 1:29:36.200 from that point forward, all the rules were written because 1:29:36.200 --> 1:29:38.960 now you could take your ship smashing into somebody else 1:29:38.960 --> 1:29:42.400 and saying k his his ship. And so overnight they went 1:29:42.439 --> 1:29:47.120 from shuttling people like a scramble to hitting another opponent 1:29:47.160 --> 1:29:49.600 ship one on one in a duel. That's that's the 1:29:49.640 --> 1:29:52.400 same trigger that works in animals. That's the spark. All 1:29:52.439 --> 1:29:55.320 of a sudden, whoever's got the fastest ship wins. Now 1:29:55.360 --> 1:29:57.240 you've got an arms race because a bigger ship, of 1:29:57.320 --> 1:29:59.920 faster ship wins in that kind of one on one encountering. 1:30:00.280 --> 1:30:03.240 Just like that, after nothing happening for a thousand years, 1:30:03.400 --> 1:30:07.400 overnight these technologies exploded. As people started making bigger and 1:30:07.400 --> 1:30:10.639 bigger and bigger ships. They started getting longer until they buckled. 1:30:10.880 --> 1:30:14.759 They started adding another row of rowers, so buyreams came along, 1:30:14.840 --> 1:30:17.639 than try reams, than five six is. They got bigger 1:30:17.640 --> 1:30:20.519 and bigger and bigger until these ships were monstrosities that 1:30:20.560 --> 1:30:24.080 were effectively useless. But the point is a change in 1:30:24.160 --> 1:30:27.720 technology caused the weapons the ships to line up one 1:30:27.760 --> 1:30:29.920 on one in a duel, exactly like the dung beetles 1:30:29.920 --> 1:30:32.240 in a tunnel. Suddenly they're facing each other one on one, 1:30:32.240 --> 1:30:35.000 and that was it. You can look at various periods 1:30:35.000 --> 1:30:37.719 throughout military history and the same kind of a process 1:30:37.760 --> 1:30:40.479 has happened. The Cold War was the most precedent and 1:30:40.520 --> 1:30:42.920 sort of alarming of those and in that case it 1:30:43.000 --> 1:30:45.880 happened at the level of nation states and political landscapes, 1:30:46.120 --> 1:30:49.639 but you effectively had the US and the USS are 1:30:49.680 --> 1:30:52.639 the superpowers that were still standing after the Second World War, 1:30:52.840 --> 1:30:54.559 going toe to toe and the scene that's a one 1:30:54.600 --> 1:30:57.360 on one duel, and that sparked an arms race that 1:30:57.439 --> 1:31:03.120 led to unbelievably appid development of missiles, aircraft, tanks, nuclear 1:31:03.160 --> 1:31:05.760 weapon everything, I mean, all the weapons technologies that we 1:31:05.800 --> 1:31:09.080 had sort of got folded into that race. And and 1:31:09.120 --> 1:31:10.800 if you want to go into that, it turns out 1:31:10.800 --> 1:31:13.200 the behavior of the nations during that time period was 1:31:13.280 --> 1:31:17.720 exactly like elk or fiddler crabs or beetles. Those two 1:31:17.800 --> 1:31:21.759 nations didn't go nuclear and all doubt full on battle. 1:31:21.880 --> 1:31:26.880 They sparred. They had little conflagrations in Afghanistan and Korea 1:31:26.880 --> 1:31:29.840 and Vietnam where they sort of pushed each other a 1:31:29.920 --> 1:31:32.080 little bit. They used conventional weapons, they didn't use the 1:31:32.160 --> 1:31:35.280 nuclear or the weapons of mass destruction. They sized each 1:31:35.280 --> 1:31:37.920 other up and then back down again. That's exactly what 1:31:38.120 --> 1:31:40.920 animals do in that kind of situation. You know what's 1:31:40.960 --> 1:31:43.519 interesting about when we think about the parallels and then 1:31:43.560 --> 1:31:47.599 the things that don't line up. Would be like with 1:31:48.760 --> 1:31:53.080 in World War Two, that the US becoming the people 1:31:53.120 --> 1:31:56.360 who developed that refers to develop the atomic bomb, would 1:31:56.360 --> 1:31:59.280 be as though, I mean, we started that war not 1:31:59.439 --> 1:32:02.400 a super power, right, but by the time we came 1:32:02.400 --> 1:32:04.280 out and we were emerging as it would be like 1:32:04.320 --> 1:32:07.599 if a giant. It wouldn't be that the hornless beetle 1:32:08.320 --> 1:32:12.160 suddenly came up. It would be like the horned beetle. 1:32:13.120 --> 1:32:16.040 The wolf with the big bad horn was like, oh 1:32:16.160 --> 1:32:21.600 and guess what else? I also have fangs. You know, 1:32:22.200 --> 1:32:24.519 it's a little bit like we we upset our, we 1:32:24.680 --> 1:32:27.880 upped our, we trumped our own action by developing the 1:32:27.880 --> 1:32:31.320 atomic weapon, and then thereby making in some in some degrees, 1:32:31.439 --> 1:32:36.280 made this man Japan this naval superpower. It made that 1:32:36.960 --> 1:32:39.960 naval might irrelevant because we had the atomic bomb. It 1:32:40.000 --> 1:32:42.760 rewrote the rules, completely changed the game. But that's again 1:32:42.800 --> 1:32:46.799 the arms races ratchet up, they escalate, so the simplest 1:32:46.840 --> 1:32:48.559 way to think of it as beatles again. And you 1:32:48.560 --> 1:32:51.280 know it got or an antelope picture. You've got seven 1:32:51.280 --> 1:32:53.600 inch horns out there, and suddenly somebody comes along with 1:32:53.640 --> 1:32:56.680 eight inch horns and they start winning. Pretty soon all 1:32:56.720 --> 1:32:59.639 their kids grandkids, great grandkids. Pretty soon everybody's got eight 1:32:59.640 --> 1:33:02.120 inch horns and that's not enough. And now somebody pops 1:33:02.160 --> 1:33:03.960 up with a nine inch horn, and and so in 1:33:03.960 --> 1:33:07.800 a sense, the sizes of these weapons ratchet and steps. 1:33:07.840 --> 1:33:10.800 But you can also have sort of fundamentally new technologies 1:33:10.840 --> 1:33:13.000 that pop up on the scene that just completely rewrite 1:33:13.040 --> 1:33:15.719 the rules. And so arms races can go in lots 1:33:15.720 --> 1:33:18.160 of directions, and usually they're additive. So you still need 1:33:18.200 --> 1:33:20.080 the first weapon, but now you need the second one too, 1:33:20.680 --> 1:33:23.240 and I need the third. You need tanks and submarines 1:33:23.439 --> 1:33:26.040 and bombers and nuclear weapons. You know, it got more 1:33:26.080 --> 1:33:29.120 and more expensive because all these things were sort of compounded. 1:33:29.240 --> 1:33:32.439 But the nuclear weapon game that was that was like 1:33:32.479 --> 1:33:37.000 a spontaneous mutation that completely rewrote the rules because incontinental 1:33:37.320 --> 1:33:41.040 and had delivered with the ship. It was like the Indianapolis. 1:33:41.080 --> 1:33:43.760 You had like deliver it to the Pacific theater in 1:33:43.800 --> 1:33:46.240 a ship. You had to have a powerful air force 1:33:46.920 --> 1:33:50.120 to get the thing a field and put it where 1:33:50.160 --> 1:33:51.920 you want it. And so you're, like you said, it's 1:33:51.920 --> 1:33:55.680 like a ratcheting up because you're relying on all these capabilities. 1:33:57.200 --> 1:34:00.599 Because really you're assessing your capabilities against to your opponent, 1:34:00.720 --> 1:34:03.080 and they're constantly trying to do better at their capability. 1:34:03.120 --> 1:34:05.400 So every time they get a new technology, then they're up. 1:34:05.400 --> 1:34:08.520 Then there ahead of you, the races on to surpass them. 1:34:08.560 --> 1:34:12.160 It really ratchets into this vicious cycle that can lead 1:34:12.520 --> 1:34:17.080 out of control. So so where a new weapons, So 1:34:17.160 --> 1:34:21.439 where we are today? That the Cold War obviously, but 1:34:21.600 --> 1:34:25.000 the technologies are still out there. And one interesting sort 1:34:25.040 --> 1:34:27.280 of twist on that system is during the Cold War, 1:34:27.880 --> 1:34:31.000 the most expensive state of the art weapons, the ones 1:34:31.040 --> 1:34:33.280 that were the equivalent of the antlers in your elk 1:34:33.360 --> 1:34:35.360 or your cariboo or the horns and my beetles, were 1:34:35.360 --> 1:34:38.439 the nuclear weapons. Though that was the new technology. That 1:34:38.560 --> 1:34:40.639 was the one that was the most sophisticated, the most 1:34:40.680 --> 1:34:44.160 difficult to to actually generate. And then you had to 1:34:44.160 --> 1:34:45.720 have all, like you said, the delivery. You had to 1:34:45.800 --> 1:34:49.080 have the infrastructure to be able to deliver that, which 1:34:49.120 --> 1:34:51.719 took all the sensor nets, that took all the guidance systems, 1:34:51.720 --> 1:34:54.479 it took the whole space race was basically a cloak 1:34:54.520 --> 1:34:57.240 and you know, a facade for developing this will technology 1:34:57.280 --> 1:35:00.200 that could deliver nuclear weapons to an opponent. And so 1:35:00.280 --> 1:35:03.280 all of that stuff had to be there. Today, we're 1:35:03.280 --> 1:35:06.000 in a very different world now. We've got stockpiles of 1:35:06.000 --> 1:35:08.760 these nuclear weapons cached away in places that I hate 1:35:08.800 --> 1:35:11.680 to think about, that are sort of rotting away and 1:35:11.720 --> 1:35:14.200 there their diamond doesn't because we produced a shipload of 1:35:14.240 --> 1:35:16.400 them during the Cold War. So there's tons of nuclear 1:35:16.439 --> 1:35:19.759 warheads out there that's not that's not that expensive. In fact, 1:35:20.320 --> 1:35:23.080 it's not that inconceivable that just about anybody could get 1:35:23.120 --> 1:35:25.599 their hands on them. Seven or I can't remember how many, 1:35:25.640 --> 1:35:28.559 seven or eight countries now maybe more. A couple more 1:35:28.560 --> 1:35:30.400 on the horizon. There are a couple more on the horizon. 1:35:30.760 --> 1:35:34.960 The the the really expensive weapons, the ones that are 1:35:35.000 --> 1:35:38.800 the equivalent of antlers now are conventional weapons. There are 1:35:38.800 --> 1:35:40.800 things like the F thirty five strike fighter and the 1:35:40.840 --> 1:35:44.880 new Jail four class aircraft carrier. These things cost billions 1:35:44.920 --> 1:35:47.800 and billions of dollars to produce, and only a very 1:35:47.840 --> 1:35:51.640 small number of nations have the technology, the sophistication, the infrastructure, 1:35:51.720 --> 1:35:54.800 the trained personnel, that all the stuff you need to 1:35:54.920 --> 1:35:59.200 produce and maintain and use these weapons. So I mean, 1:35:59.240 --> 1:36:01.000 I had a chance to is it one of our 1:36:01.080 --> 1:36:04.680 nuclear aircraft carriers? A couple of months ago. Astounding experience 1:36:04.760 --> 1:36:08.240 looking at our operations in action in the Pacific. As 1:36:08.240 --> 1:36:10.519 we cycled through, they have the F thirty five strike 1:36:10.600 --> 1:36:13.120 fighters landing on a carrier for one of the first 1:36:13.160 --> 1:36:14.880 times ever on a carrier. I got to stand like 1:36:14.920 --> 1:36:16.800 as close as I am to you and watch these 1:36:16.800 --> 1:36:20.480 things come screaming down and catch the tailhook. These technologies 1:36:20.479 --> 1:36:23.679 are incredible. A helmet on an F thirty five costs 1:36:23.680 --> 1:36:26.720 half a million dollars. Every single bomb that they put 1:36:26.800 --> 1:36:28.519 on these things as a million dollars out of the gates. 1:36:28.520 --> 1:36:31.080 I mean, we're spending billions of dollars the nuclear triad, 1:36:31.120 --> 1:36:33.839 the infrastructure that we have is is trillions of dollars 1:36:33.840 --> 1:36:36.400 a year. And and so these are the state of 1:36:36.400 --> 1:36:39.200 the art weapons now. And you asked about the sneaky beatles. 1:36:39.439 --> 1:36:42.679 What's the cheater that we have to worry about. It's 1:36:42.720 --> 1:36:45.439 cyber hackers. I mean, it seems crazy, but we're spending 1:36:45.720 --> 1:36:49.040 billions of dollars on some astoundingly good time. I mean, 1:36:49.080 --> 1:36:54.040 I got these fighters are amazing, absolutely amazing. I don't 1:36:54.040 --> 1:36:55.439 know if any of you had a chance to see them. 1:36:55.439 --> 1:36:57.080 If you know much about the F thirty five, it 1:36:57.200 --> 1:37:02.880 is a supersonic, super maneuverable stealth fighter that the helmets. 1:37:02.920 --> 1:37:04.800 The reason the helmets cost half a million dollars on 1:37:04.840 --> 1:37:07.760 these things is they're completely integrated with sensor systems so 1:37:07.800 --> 1:37:11.320 that the movements of the pilots are tracked within the 1:37:11.520 --> 1:37:14.439 within the cockpit of the plane. So any direction the 1:37:14.439 --> 1:37:18.200 pilot looks, the direction they're looking is automatically integrated with 1:37:18.240 --> 1:37:20.480 sensors that are built into the skin of the aircraft. 1:37:20.479 --> 1:37:22.960 In that direction they're tracking the pupils of the pilot. 1:37:23.520 --> 1:37:26.160 And so they've got infrared sensors, they've got all the 1:37:26.200 --> 1:37:30.679 GPS stuff, they've got this the topographic maps, everything all overlaid. 1:37:30.680 --> 1:37:32.519 It's not even like there's a screen. The old ones 1:37:32.560 --> 1:37:35.720 had a heads up display screen. It's just there. They 1:37:35.720 --> 1:37:38.479 can look straight through their legs. They're crotched down the 1:37:38.479 --> 1:37:40.920 bottom of the plane. There's it's gone. It's nothing. They 1:37:40.960 --> 1:37:43.360 see all the way to the ground because it completely integrated. 1:37:43.360 --> 1:37:46.719 They've unobstructed three and sixty degree view all the time, 1:37:47.120 --> 1:37:50.840 heat sensor, everything all sort of overlaid into an integrative picture. 1:37:50.840 --> 1:37:55.599 It's amazing. But all of these technologies depend on software, 1:37:56.439 --> 1:37:59.880 so we're spending a fortune on these incredible technologies and 1:38:00.040 --> 1:38:02.280 they you know, we're the Boone and crocket ball right now. 1:38:02.840 --> 1:38:04.559 Those are the state of the our weapons and we 1:38:04.640 --> 1:38:08.120 really are safer because of them. They're amazing. But the 1:38:08.160 --> 1:38:10.759 sneaky little beetles sort of worming away from the sidelines 1:38:10.840 --> 1:38:13.960 or the hackers because if they can get past, we can't. 1:38:14.160 --> 1:38:16.519 Pilot can't fly these things without software. You can't land 1:38:16.560 --> 1:38:19.880 these planes without software that they literally can't handle the 1:38:19.880 --> 1:38:23.160 planes without the software because the planes can too maneuvers 1:38:23.200 --> 1:38:25.760 that are fast enough that the pilot would black out 1:38:25.800 --> 1:38:28.400 from the g forces. So they have to integrate whatever 1:38:28.400 --> 1:38:31.360 the pilot does with the stick with sort of built 1:38:31.360 --> 1:38:36.160 in sensor systems that that that interpret the pilot's movement 1:38:36.520 --> 1:38:38.720 in a way that doesn't cause the plane to do 1:38:38.800 --> 1:38:41.679 something that the blacks out the pilot. So you literally 1:38:41.720 --> 1:38:44.280 can't even go old fashioned and fly these things without 1:38:44.280 --> 1:38:48.120 the software that the aircraft carry. Was awesome. I got 1:38:48.120 --> 1:38:49.800 to talk to Captain, I got to talk to the 1:38:49.880 --> 1:38:52.040 first officer, I got to talk to the master chief, 1:38:52.120 --> 1:38:54.240 the cooks, I got to talk to people running the 1:38:54.320 --> 1:38:56.559 nuclear actors. I mean I got to meet anybody and everybody. 1:38:56.600 --> 1:38:58.880 They were awesome about letting us as a civilian go 1:38:58.960 --> 1:39:02.280 in and just look what was happening. But every single 1:39:02.360 --> 1:39:04.920 step of that operation is critically dependent on software. They 1:39:04.920 --> 1:39:07.160 can't control the nuclear reactor on the ship without software. 1:39:07.200 --> 1:39:09.879 They can't navigate without software. They can't control the positions 1:39:09.880 --> 1:39:12.599 of the planes without software. They can't orchestrate the landings 1:39:12.600 --> 1:39:15.760 and the takeoffs of the planes without software. The way 1:39:15.760 --> 1:39:17.720 that they communicate with all the rest of Norad and 1:39:17.760 --> 1:39:21.919 everything is all software. So so our vulnerability the flanks 1:39:21.960 --> 1:39:25.280 that we've got exposed right now is the firewalls on 1:39:25.479 --> 1:39:28.320 our software. And they know it. I mean, I'm not 1:39:28.360 --> 1:39:30.719 teaching telling them anything. Yes, I did get a chance 1:39:30.720 --> 1:39:33.360 to go to find d C and give a talk 1:39:33.400 --> 1:39:35.120 in front of the former director of the n s 1:39:35.200 --> 1:39:37.400 A and the CIA and all these top brass from 1:39:37.400 --> 1:39:40.519 the military about sneaky dung beetles and sneaky big horn 1:39:40.560 --> 1:39:42.960 sheep and salmon, actually telling them the parallels. But you know, 1:39:43.000 --> 1:39:45.160 I'm not teaching them anything. They don't know. They they 1:39:45.160 --> 1:39:48.400 are totally aware of this and and that's the new 1:39:48.479 --> 1:39:51.360 arms race. So when I was at this conference talking 1:39:51.400 --> 1:39:54.439 to these guys, they said, yeah, yeah, we've the Chinese 1:39:54.479 --> 1:39:57.280 have buildings full of people that are trying seven to 1:39:57.320 --> 1:40:01.120 hack into our systems, and we've buildings full of people 1:40:01.160 --> 1:40:03.639 that are hacking into theirs. And the ideas each side 1:40:03.720 --> 1:40:06.799 is trying to insert code. It's not just stealing trade secrets. 1:40:06.840 --> 1:40:08.680 So they could go build their own F thirty five, 1:40:08.760 --> 1:40:11.320 that would cost them a fortune. Why go build your 1:40:11.360 --> 1:40:16.240 own jet if you can insert code that renders ours useless. 1:40:16.240 --> 1:40:19.120 So so the idea that they're called zero day attacks 1:40:19.200 --> 1:40:21.840 is if they can insert code that sits, then we 1:40:21.920 --> 1:40:24.000 can't find it because it's not doing anything. It's just 1:40:24.040 --> 1:40:26.040 sitting there. So it's harder for us to tell that 1:40:26.120 --> 1:40:29.800 it's there until you know, zero day when they need it, 1:40:29.840 --> 1:40:31.680 they turn it on and they can take over our 1:40:31.720 --> 1:40:34.680 technologies and use it against us. That's the fear. We 1:40:34.760 --> 1:40:38.200 spend all the money, we produce the technologies, they hijack 1:40:38.280 --> 1:40:40.720 those technologies and use them against us. That is the 1:40:40.800 --> 1:40:43.360 ultimate game changer sneak strategy that we gotta worry about. 1:40:43.520 --> 1:40:46.000 But the military is on it, and their argument is 1:40:46.040 --> 1:40:49.000 they have so much infiltrating all their technologies that we 1:40:49.040 --> 1:40:51.680 can damn sure shut them down too. So so the 1:40:51.720 --> 1:40:53.960 general actually said this is the new arms race. It's 1:40:54.040 --> 1:40:56.519 like we're all sort of racing each other to who 1:40:56.600 --> 1:40:59.120 can hijack and control the software or the other side. 1:40:59.520 --> 1:41:01.519 That's the new real that's that's our new Cold war 1:41:02.800 --> 1:41:05.519 crazy stuff. It's a long way from dung beetles and 1:41:05.600 --> 1:41:09.679 rhinoceros beetles, I'll tell you that. No, it's great though, man, 1:41:10.280 --> 1:41:12.799 you do a great job of bringing it all together. Thanks. 1:41:13.200 --> 1:41:18.120 Like the parts about deer, No, it's phenomenal. Is it 1:41:18.160 --> 1:41:21.719 possible to tell where you are in within an arms 1:41:21.800 --> 1:41:25.040 race in a partaylor species? Oh? I thought you mean us. 1:41:25.080 --> 1:41:26.840 It's like it's a little scary when you try to 1:41:26.880 --> 1:41:33.200 do that. That says our aircraft carriers. Had all kinds 1:41:33.200 --> 1:41:36.360 of human comparison questions coming through my head and I've 1:41:36.400 --> 1:41:41.040 passed it all. Elk kef bigger antlers or they have 1:41:41.200 --> 1:41:45.800 like very possible. Yeah, yeah, I think that arms racist. Still, well, 1:41:45.800 --> 1:41:48.640 it's hard to say so. First of all, with animal populations, 1:41:48.720 --> 1:41:50.280 you know, we talked. Sam brought up the fact that 1:41:50.320 --> 1:41:52.880 evolution can happen really fast. And when you're dealing with 1:41:52.880 --> 1:41:55.439 antibiotics applied to a population of BacT here as you're 1:41:55.479 --> 1:41:57.519 talking hours, you know, I met population is going to 1:41:57.560 --> 1:42:01.400 adapt within twenty four hours fast. Because they're head influenza. 1:42:01.439 --> 1:42:02.800 People want to know why they get to get a 1:42:02.800 --> 1:42:05.040 flu shot every single year. It's because the flu virus 1:42:05.160 --> 1:42:09.280 is evolving so fast that six months, eight months out, 1:42:09.520 --> 1:42:12.360 it's such a genetically different beast that the vaccinations we 1:42:12.439 --> 1:42:15.040 just produced don't match it anymore. And so those are 1:42:15.080 --> 1:42:18.800 situations where it's happening really fast. I mean hours to days, 1:42:18.840 --> 1:42:20.519 two weeks. You've got to stay on top of it. 1:42:21.000 --> 1:42:24.439 Elk rhinosters beetle is probably a little bit slower, still 1:42:24.520 --> 1:42:26.599 fast in the grand scheme of things, because these kinds 1:42:26.600 --> 1:42:29.320 of arms races are quicker than normal background evolution. But 1:42:30.240 --> 1:42:32.760 but we're talking decades, the hundreds of years. No, but 1:42:32.800 --> 1:42:35.639 I can flip that back getting smaller. We've got really 1:42:35.680 --> 1:42:37.640 good evidence. This will be a hot button topic for 1:42:37.680 --> 1:42:39.519 your audience, but I know some of the scientists. We 1:42:39.560 --> 1:42:42.439 have very compelling evidence that things like big horn sheep 1:42:42.520 --> 1:42:47.080 populations have been selected on by trophy hunting and have 1:42:47.320 --> 1:42:51.320 actually evolved in response to have smaller and smaller horns. 1:42:51.320 --> 1:42:54.640 So we've actually driven the evolution of smaller weapons in 1:42:54.760 --> 1:42:58.720 contemporary populations of an ungulate big horn sheep and they've 1:42:58.760 --> 1:43:00.760 got data where they stopped the trophy hunting and the 1:43:01.040 --> 1:43:04.040 horns rebounded and evolved to be really really big again. 1:43:04.120 --> 1:43:07.479 So we can see weapon evolution even on the scale 1:43:07.520 --> 1:43:09.719 of things like to you or big horn sheep happening 1:43:09.760 --> 1:43:13.000 over you know, two decades, three decades. It's not ours 1:43:13.080 --> 1:43:16.400 like flu, and it's not millennia. It's it's still pretty 1:43:16.400 --> 1:43:21.559 fast with that, you know, like a doll sheet, for instance, 1:43:21.640 --> 1:43:24.439 and most of Alaska, a doll sheep becomes legal when 1:43:24.439 --> 1:43:27.880 he develops the three sixty degree horn. If al's a 1:43:27.920 --> 1:43:33.719 doll sheet, you'd be better off. If that didn't, you're 1:43:33.720 --> 1:43:36.280 still vulnerable because of other things. But that's like the 1:43:36.360 --> 1:43:39.920 key indicator. And one that gets there fast, one that 1:43:39.960 --> 1:43:44.280 gets a full curl fast is I don't know, and 1:43:44.280 --> 1:43:47.559 I don't know how actually two. And if if there's 1:43:47.960 --> 1:43:50.840 tens of thousands of dollar sheep and a relatively light 1:43:50.880 --> 1:43:53.479 hunting pressure, so only a couple of dozen trophy animals 1:43:53.479 --> 1:43:56.320 get yanked, maybe that's not really that big an effect, 1:43:56.360 --> 1:43:58.760 and the benefits in the local populations are still going 1:43:58.800 --> 1:44:01.240 to be so great to keep going. But if you're 1:44:01.240 --> 1:44:04.479 talking about hunting pressure, where you're really taking a sizeable 1:44:04.479 --> 1:44:07.479 proportion of the top animals, then yeah, that would apply 1:44:07.600 --> 1:44:10.280 very strong selection to the males to not have that 1:44:10.360 --> 1:44:12.680 last curl. We do that with fisheries. One of the 1:44:12.680 --> 1:44:15.840 problems we have things like Atlantic cod populations is gill 1:44:15.920 --> 1:44:19.479 nets catch the big animals the small ones slipped through, 1:44:19.920 --> 1:44:22.760 so we tend to selectively harvest the older. Big fish 1:44:22.800 --> 1:44:24.439 keep growing as they get You know this better than 1:44:24.439 --> 1:44:27.160 me saying they get They keep growing as they get older. 1:44:27.240 --> 1:44:30.560 So big fish are also older fish. So we're selectively 1:44:30.640 --> 1:44:33.800 harvesting the biggest and the oldest fish on a very 1:44:33.920 --> 1:44:36.719 large scale. When you consider the scope of the Atlantic 1:44:36.720 --> 1:44:38.960 cod fisheries and the numbers of ships and the numbers 1:44:38.960 --> 1:44:41.599 of fish that they're taking, and there's really good evidence 1:44:41.600 --> 1:44:44.960 over the last thirty fifty years that the animals have 1:44:45.120 --> 1:44:48.240 both evolved to grow more slowly so they stay smaller, 1:44:48.640 --> 1:44:51.200 and they started reproducing at a smaller size and a 1:44:51.240 --> 1:44:54.000 younger age. So they're beginning to reproduce smaller than they 1:44:54.080 --> 1:44:56.400 used to because all the big guys are being pulled out. 1:44:56.800 --> 1:44:58.960 It's the small ones that stumbled on a way to 1:44:59.000 --> 1:45:01.639 reproduce early that now winning they're small enough to get 1:45:01.640 --> 1:45:04.160 through the gillnets and they're breeding. Those are the ones 1:45:04.200 --> 1:45:07.240 producing the offspring. So the populations evolving, you know, in 1:45:07.240 --> 1:45:09.439 a direction that's not so great for the fisheries industry, 1:45:09.479 --> 1:45:11.799 but it makes a lot of biological sense. We're applying 1:45:11.840 --> 1:45:14.719 selection by taking the big ones, the smaller ones start 1:45:14.760 --> 1:45:18.479 doing better, the population evolves towards a smaller size. What 1:45:18.520 --> 1:45:26.559 else you got yet, um on animal weapons? Like any 1:45:26.640 --> 1:45:29.360 like concluders, masks, like you're typing away over there. Oh, 1:45:30.320 --> 1:45:32.639 that was my question. There was about if we knew 1:45:32.680 --> 1:45:35.040 where the arms race was? Are you asked where we 1:45:35.040 --> 1:45:36.720 were in the animals? You can see in a lot 1:45:36.760 --> 1:45:39.240 of animals that the sneak tactics are already there. You 1:45:39.280 --> 1:45:41.719 study their behavior and you can find the sneaky mails 1:45:41.800 --> 1:45:45.200 or the what you call them precocious mails in the 1:45:45.240 --> 1:45:47.920 salmon and so in a way, you know you're already 1:45:47.920 --> 1:45:50.000 part way into that cycle. And by definition, if you 1:45:50.040 --> 1:45:52.320 picked it because it's got a huge weapon, it's probably 1:45:52.360 --> 1:45:55.439 already pretty far in. But but there is a fun 1:45:55.479 --> 1:46:00.639 twist there. We've known about sneaky mails for years. I mean, 1:46:00.640 --> 1:46:03.559 it's not a new aspect of animal behavior, but nobody 1:46:03.560 --> 1:46:06.479 had ever connected it to an arms race before seeing 1:46:06.520 --> 1:46:09.280 the sneaky mails as the beginning of the end, the 1:46:09.360 --> 1:46:12.519 sort of beginning of the collapse was totally new, and 1:46:13.000 --> 1:46:15.439 I got that idea from the military. And the reason 1:46:15.520 --> 1:46:17.320 is because he's saying you brought it's because it takes 1:46:17.320 --> 1:46:20.559 a long time. We can see arms races there. We 1:46:20.640 --> 1:46:23.280 see species with huge antlers. That's why I try to 1:46:23.280 --> 1:46:24.960 study these things in the first place. It's like, what 1:46:25.040 --> 1:46:27.400 the hell is happening in that beetle or this fly 1:46:27.920 --> 1:46:31.320 or that ungulate. We picked them because they've got the structures. 1:46:31.360 --> 1:46:33.559 We know something's going on, and we can infer from 1:46:33.600 --> 1:46:36.080 that that they're part way into this cycle. But we 1:46:36.160 --> 1:46:39.679 never actually get to see a collapse. But the military does. 1:46:40.000 --> 1:46:43.599 They've got really good records all the way through. They 1:46:43.720 --> 1:46:47.519 know why arms races collapse. They know why the arms 1:46:47.600 --> 1:46:50.519 raced with the Napoleon era sailing galleons collapsed. It was 1:46:50.600 --> 1:46:53.800 fire ships. Once that you know, you could set these 1:46:53.800 --> 1:46:55.800 things on fire, it was over. It was game over. 1:46:55.840 --> 1:46:58.920 They were done. We know about iron clad battleships. They 1:46:58.920 --> 1:47:00.800 know what started the arms race. They know how they 1:47:00.800 --> 1:47:03.719 got bigger and bigger and bigger. They know how nations 1:47:03.720 --> 1:47:06.439 sort of exploded in their attempts to build bigger and 1:47:06.479 --> 1:47:08.360 more of these battleships, and then they know why they 1:47:08.400 --> 1:47:11.200 became obsoleted with submarines. It was a sneaky beetle. Little 1:47:11.240 --> 1:47:14.680 beetle goes underground, minds his way into the tunnel. Submarines 1:47:14.840 --> 1:47:17.639 sneak under the surface, and they can sink even the biggest, 1:47:17.640 --> 1:47:22.280 best battleships from underwater. It's cheating that admirals hate submarines. 1:47:22.600 --> 1:47:25.320 It's an athema to them. It's dishonorable. It's like breaking 1:47:25.360 --> 1:47:28.160 the rules. It's exactly what it is, is breaking the rules. 1:47:28.479 --> 1:47:30.559 But once you've got submarines out there, you change the 1:47:30.560 --> 1:47:33.840 game and suddenly the really big battleships are obsolete. And 1:47:33.840 --> 1:47:37.760 so today it's not battleships and submarines. Well, so what 1:47:37.840 --> 1:47:40.040 we have our strike groups. We have our own submarines, 1:47:40.479 --> 1:47:43.599 and we surround our carriers now, which are the focus 1:47:43.640 --> 1:47:46.280 instead of the battleships. It's the carriers now we have 1:47:46.400 --> 1:47:48.559 to surround them with a strike group. You'll we would 1:47:48.640 --> 1:47:52.120 never send a carrier anywhere by itself. It only exists 1:47:52.120 --> 1:47:54.160 in a bubble that is created by the cruisers and 1:47:54.160 --> 1:47:56.720 the destroyers and the submarines, and the reason we need 1:47:56.760 --> 1:47:59.600 all that other stuff is because the submarines from the 1:47:59.600 --> 1:48:04.240 other side. So so the military figured out that changes 1:48:04.240 --> 1:48:07.479 in technology that broke the rules, that cheated were the 1:48:07.520 --> 1:48:10.080 things that collapsed in arms race. And they had studied 1:48:10.080 --> 1:48:12.519 it over and over again, from the ancient Mediterranean through 1:48:12.520 --> 1:48:16.480 the saline warships, the ironclad battleships, aircraft, all these systems 1:48:16.840 --> 1:48:19.280 had been worked out by military scholars and over and 1:48:19.320 --> 1:48:22.720 over again it's the sneaky, the cheaters that collapse the system. 1:48:22.800 --> 1:48:24.519 And so what was fun for me here, I'm a 1:48:24.560 --> 1:48:27.880 biologist reading all this military stuff, was to turn around 1:48:27.880 --> 1:48:30.960 and say, hey, we've got cheaters. We've known that forever. 1:48:31.040 --> 1:48:32.840 Oh they're sneak. I even found him as a grad 1:48:32.880 --> 1:48:35.840 student in my dung beetles, the sneaky mails. But putting 1:48:35.840 --> 1:48:38.320 the two pieces together and saying, wait a minute, maybe 1:48:38.320 --> 1:48:40.400 the sneakers or the collapse of the arms race in 1:48:40.439 --> 1:48:42.680 the animal systems too, that's new. We don't have a 1:48:42.680 --> 1:48:45.240 good way to test it yet because animal systems take 1:48:45.320 --> 1:48:47.320 long enough that we rarely ever get to catch it 1:48:47.400 --> 1:48:49.360 in action. So it's sort of a leap of faith 1:48:49.400 --> 1:48:51.960 at this point. It's an hypothesis that needs to be tested. 1:48:52.439 --> 1:48:54.040 But it's one of the ideas I put forward in 1:48:54.040 --> 1:48:57.519 that book, and it came from crossover between the military 1:48:57.520 --> 1:48:59.559 literature and the animal literature. And again it's it's fun, 1:48:59.560 --> 1:49:02.599 and it's only possible because these extreme weapons are so similar. 1:49:02.720 --> 1:49:05.960 The animal weapons story. Pretty much everything you could say 1:49:06.080 --> 1:49:10.120 about elk antlers or cariboo antlers you could apply verbatim 1:49:10.200 --> 1:49:13.559 to aircraft carriers or F thirty five strike fighters today. 1:49:13.600 --> 1:49:16.080 I mean, the parallels are so deep at every level 1:49:16.360 --> 1:49:18.080 that now we can go back and forth between the 1:49:18.160 --> 1:49:23.520 literatures and each side can learn from the other. Sam, 1:49:23.640 --> 1:49:27.000 what do you got? Oh, you got a good grade 1:49:27.040 --> 1:49:29.519 when you took his class. You don't, can't bring that up. 1:49:32.840 --> 1:49:38.639 Deserved a better grade? Um man? So many, so many things. 1:49:38.840 --> 1:49:41.920 One one thing I was I was curious about perusing 1:49:41.960 --> 1:49:44.759 the book, and you know, think about animal animal weapons. 1:49:44.960 --> 1:49:48.440 Um what? And you know, obviously my my mind gravitates, 1:49:48.520 --> 1:49:52.040 gravitates towards the young ulates and the antlers and everything. 1:49:52.479 --> 1:49:56.479 I was curious about non typical antler configurations and and 1:49:56.520 --> 1:50:02.120 if if that is adaptive in some way, and and 1:50:02.439 --> 1:50:06.880 I'm wondering if if perhaps that is is some form 1:50:06.960 --> 1:50:10.840 of cheating that it's a different configuration that might be 1:50:10.920 --> 1:50:17.519 able to um be defeat like that because they call 1:50:17.560 --> 1:50:22.559 it cheating because they're still paying the prosy. And I'm 1:50:22.560 --> 1:50:23.880 going to take your idea and run with it. What 1:50:23.920 --> 1:50:27.240 I would call it is variation. So again, all these 1:50:27.240 --> 1:50:31.320 populations start out with differences among individuals. Mutations pop up 1:50:31.320 --> 1:50:33.400 here and there, and if they happen to affect the 1:50:33.400 --> 1:50:36.920 way the antlers are developing, then you get a variant 1:50:36.960 --> 1:50:38.640 on the theme. The antlers a little bit different the 1:50:38.640 --> 1:50:40.800 times been. Who knows what it is, it's different. You've 1:50:40.840 --> 1:50:45.200 all seen crazy mutant antlers. Sometimes it's it's a genetic change. 1:50:45.240 --> 1:50:47.640 It's literally a heritable mutation in the genomes of these 1:50:47.680 --> 1:50:50.040 animals that affects the way they grow. And there's pretty 1:50:50.040 --> 1:50:51.519 good evidence of that. I don't know how many of 1:50:51.520 --> 1:50:54.559 you collect sheds, but probably all of you do. There's 1:50:54.600 --> 1:50:56.960 some neat places where you can show that the same 1:50:57.000 --> 1:51:00.559 bowl produces the same mutant form of the antler after year, 1:51:00.640 --> 1:51:03.080 and often you can find kids and grandkids in the 1:51:03.120 --> 1:51:05.479 same area that have the same variants. So some of 1:51:05.520 --> 1:51:09.879 these sort of defective antlers are heritable. They're they're produced 1:51:09.880 --> 1:51:12.799 somehow by something in the genome that's passed on other times. 1:51:12.880 --> 1:51:14.920 Who knows, it could be an injury to the cells 1:51:15.040 --> 1:51:17.160 or a burn or something that's not passed on. But 1:51:17.160 --> 1:51:20.760 but either way, their perturbations, their variations on the theme 1:51:21.080 --> 1:51:23.519 that's the raw material that evolution works on. I would 1:51:23.520 --> 1:51:25.960 expect most of the time they're not going to work 1:51:26.000 --> 1:51:28.160 that well. You know, thousands of millions of years of 1:51:28.200 --> 1:51:30.799 honing Antler shape and you go off in some wonkie 1:51:30.840 --> 1:51:33.360 direction and probably it's not going to function as well 1:51:33.800 --> 1:51:36.680 most of the time. But every now and then it 1:51:36.800 --> 1:51:39.639 might and all of a sudden you've got something that's better, 1:51:39.680 --> 1:51:41.439 and you might have an edge because now you've got 1:51:41.439 --> 1:51:45.000 a twist that nobody else has and that can really 1:51:45.040 --> 1:51:47.160 take off. And now your kids and grandkids and so 1:51:47.280 --> 1:51:49.559 what will happen is you'll start doing better because you've 1:51:49.600 --> 1:51:52.400 got that twist or the new time or whatever it is. 1:51:53.320 --> 1:51:56.920 And over time, across generations, if you're doing well enough, 1:51:57.040 --> 1:51:59.519 the population is going to evolve towards the point where 1:51:59.479 --> 1:52:02.200 everybody's got that new thing. And this may be the 1:52:02.320 --> 1:52:04.880 kind of process that Geist would talk about, but none 1:52:04.880 --> 1:52:07.400 of us ever get to actually see of how you 1:52:07.520 --> 1:52:09.760 go like, why why does a white tailed deer and 1:52:09.760 --> 1:52:12.240 a mule deer have, you know, antlers with the same 1:52:12.320 --> 1:52:15.400 number of times, but they branched differently. Who knows, but 1:52:15.479 --> 1:52:17.840 it might have been something like that and sistrally that 1:52:18.000 --> 1:52:20.559 sent one population off on a direction where they had 1:52:20.560 --> 1:52:23.680 a slightly different configuration than before. And so what you're 1:52:23.720 --> 1:52:26.160 talking about is the raw material that I would argue 1:52:26.479 --> 1:52:29.519 sets the stage for evolution of new shapes or new 1:52:29.600 --> 1:52:31.960 types of weapons. When we look across beetles, or you 1:52:32.000 --> 1:52:34.760 look across service, or you look across the antelope, it's 1:52:34.760 --> 1:52:36.960 really clear to us that the weapons change a lot. 1:52:37.080 --> 1:52:39.600 They don't just get big, they change in form. So 1:52:39.640 --> 1:52:42.639 there's all kinds of crazy differences and weapons, and that's 1:52:42.640 --> 1:52:44.600 sort of the big unknown mystery we're still trying to 1:52:44.600 --> 1:52:47.080 figure out. We don't have a good reason to explain 1:52:47.120 --> 1:52:49.439 why there's a thousand different kinds of beetle horns. If 1:52:49.439 --> 1:52:51.439 beetle horns are good and bigger is better, why don't 1:52:51.479 --> 1:52:53.160 they all have the same kind of horn. I can't 1:52:53.160 --> 1:52:56.200 tell you. I spent years trying to answer this stupid question. 1:52:56.240 --> 1:52:59.240 I can't tell you why two sister species of beetles 1:52:59.280 --> 1:53:02.120 have totally different shapes of horns. They're in tunnels, they're 1:53:02.120 --> 1:53:04.360 doing the same thing, they're finding the same kinds of fights. 1:53:04.400 --> 1:53:06.559 Everything else about their biology is the same. So why 1:53:06.600 --> 1:53:08.720 the hell does one of them have horns coming off 1:53:08.760 --> 1:53:11.360 the thorax and another one have a bent set of 1:53:11.360 --> 1:53:14.639 horns coming off the head. We don't know. But but 1:53:14.640 --> 1:53:17.000 but these kinds of things have to start with what 1:53:17.040 --> 1:53:20.040 you're talking about, differences, you know, those crazy variants that 1:53:20.080 --> 1:53:23.240 pop up and in some set set of circumstances and 1:53:23.280 --> 1:53:27.000 some population, it just works. Whatever it is about it, 1:53:27.000 --> 1:53:32.280 it's better and that spreads. Here's my last question for you, Um, 1:53:32.360 --> 1:53:36.920 what's the explanation of like, like, how did it come 1:53:36.960 --> 1:53:43.200 to be that starts all right there? How would it 1:53:43.240 --> 1:53:47.439 come to be? Uh, what is the advantage of losing 1:53:47.439 --> 1:53:51.519 your antlers? Or you know what I mean? Yeah, cost 1:53:52.240 --> 1:53:55.960 I think of them. I thought you man like nolutionarily, 1:53:56.000 --> 1:54:00.040 why would I get why? How? Curan warned me you 1:54:00.120 --> 1:54:01.599 might ask me that, And I was like, oh shit, 1:54:01.680 --> 1:54:03.720 I don't know the answer to that, Like how did 1:54:03.760 --> 1:54:05.400 it come to me that they like that they shed 1:54:05.439 --> 1:54:10.360 their antlers? And don't I don't know? And I quick 1:54:10.400 --> 1:54:12.280 because we've got some really good biologic here, and you 1:54:12.320 --> 1:54:14.200 were see Montana, and so I instantly as soon as 1:54:14.240 --> 1:54:15.880 I got that last night, it's like, oh my god, 1:54:15.920 --> 1:54:17.599 I don't know the answer to that. I quick wrote 1:54:17.640 --> 1:54:21.920 Mark Eva White, who's a phenomenal biologic here, really good biologists. 1:54:21.920 --> 1:54:26.200 It's like, he'll know. I don't think anybody knows. He 1:54:26.320 --> 1:54:28.840 flipped it around, he said, tell me why why Why 1:54:28.960 --> 1:54:31.920 don't you know why don't the bovids shed their antlers 1:54:31.920 --> 1:54:33.720 every year six and one half dozen of the other 1:54:33.760 --> 1:54:35.680 Why Why are you asking the question one way and 1:54:35.720 --> 1:54:37.360 not the other. But the fact is, we don't know. 1:54:37.760 --> 1:54:39.920 I did a quick search on the literature. We know 1:54:40.120 --> 1:54:43.800 a lot about the mechanisms sort of how they do it, 1:54:43.920 --> 1:54:46.680 so I could say, oh, they shed their antlers because 1:54:46.760 --> 1:54:49.000 these animals are queuing into photo period and the hormones 1:54:49.000 --> 1:54:51.440 are changing, and when the steroid hormones levels dropped, the 1:54:51.480 --> 1:54:54.880 cells sinasse and it all falls fine. We know a 1:54:54.880 --> 1:54:57.040 lot about the cellular machinery. There was a beautiful new 1:54:57.080 --> 1:54:59.480 paper that just came out in Science like last week 1:55:00.160 --> 1:55:03.120 where they sequence the genomes of like twenty servant species 1:55:03.160 --> 1:55:05.280 and they're able to look and a bunch of antelope 1:55:05.280 --> 1:55:07.480 and bovid species, and they're able to look at the 1:55:07.560 --> 1:55:10.760 cellular level of how these horns grow and figure out 1:55:10.800 --> 1:55:13.440 the genes and the pathways. A beautiful set of studies. 1:55:13.680 --> 1:55:17.400 So we know a lot about how antlers grow and 1:55:17.440 --> 1:55:21.200 about how they fall off and start regrowing again, but 1:55:21.360 --> 1:55:24.720 nobody has a clue sort of for the adaptive significance 1:55:24.800 --> 1:55:28.040 or ultimate evolutionary explanation why at some point in the 1:55:28.080 --> 1:55:31.400 past and the ancestor of the servits some idiot that 1:55:31.520 --> 1:55:33.320 shed its antlers and had to go through the whole 1:55:33.320 --> 1:55:36.840 process and grow it back again. Why those individuals did 1:55:36.880 --> 1:55:41.400 better and persisted when the other individuals don't. We don't know. Well, 1:55:41.480 --> 1:55:42.680 let me tell you how what the people are right 1:55:42.680 --> 1:55:44.840 into us like to throw out there because this comes 1:55:44.880 --> 1:55:46.160 up all I will take a step, but let me 1:55:46.160 --> 1:55:48.720 hear what they say. Um, and again you don't know, 1:55:49.080 --> 1:55:51.640 like we don't know the answer. But people like to say, like, well, 1:55:51.680 --> 1:55:55.720 I could you know imagine this right? So one is uh, 1:55:55.920 --> 1:55:59.000 you could imagine this isn't the cause of what happened. 1:55:59.000 --> 1:56:03.240 You could imagine that. It's more it's a constantly changing, 1:56:03.840 --> 1:56:07.840 in much more responsive marker of your fitness. That is 1:56:07.880 --> 1:56:10.720 a great answer. So whoever you call that one and 1:56:10.880 --> 1:56:12.400 is on the money, that's a good one. Because we 1:56:12.480 --> 1:56:16.640 talked about honest signals. So in the Beatles, I told 1:56:16.640 --> 1:56:18.520 you it's like a suit of armor. Once he emerges 1:56:18.520 --> 1:56:21.800 an adult, you're stuck. So the horn size is a 1:56:21.880 --> 1:56:24.480 really good signal of what kind of a stud you 1:56:24.520 --> 1:56:26.760 are as a grub, as a larva. But once you 1:56:26.800 --> 1:56:28.760 go through metamorphosis and you're an adult and you've got 1:56:28.800 --> 1:56:31.400 your suit of armor, that's it how you're doing right now. 1:56:31.440 --> 1:56:34.480 And so I could come out out of you know, development, 1:56:34.520 --> 1:56:36.400 with a huge horn because I'm a stud, and another 1:56:36.440 --> 1:56:38.520 guy has a little horn because he's a whimp. But 1:56:38.920 --> 1:56:41.880 two months, three months later, I could have been fighting, fighting, 1:56:41.880 --> 1:56:43.959 fighting and not eating at all. I could be starved, 1:56:43.960 --> 1:56:46.040 I could be a shell. I could be riddled with disease. 1:56:46.040 --> 1:56:48.720 I've still got a huge horn. You know, you can't tell. 1:56:48.880 --> 1:56:51.400 So over time it becomes uncoupled with the sort of 1:56:51.440 --> 1:56:54.520 instantaneous condition and dominance and status of the mail, and 1:56:54.560 --> 1:56:56.960 so redoing it each year makes a lot of sense. 1:56:57.000 --> 1:56:58.680 There's a way to keep the signal honest. The other 1:56:58.720 --> 1:57:01.200 thing is they're expensive to carry round, so you look 1:57:01.240 --> 1:57:04.040 at birds with bright colors, they get rid of them 1:57:04.040 --> 1:57:06.080 as soon as as soon as the breeding season is done, 1:57:06.120 --> 1:57:09.320 they molt all those bright feathers out. They go drab. 1:57:09.560 --> 1:57:11.800 Why stand out like a sore thought and carry all 1:57:11.920 --> 1:57:14.160 is crap around behind you when you don't have to. 1:57:14.600 --> 1:57:17.960 So the other possible argument is you only need it, 1:57:18.120 --> 1:57:19.560 you only produce it when you need it, and then 1:57:19.560 --> 1:57:21.960 you get rid of it. Oh, you know, during the 1:57:22.040 --> 1:57:23.600 rut you've got it, then you throw it away and 1:57:23.600 --> 1:57:25.840 you don't have to carry it around and going into 1:57:25.920 --> 1:57:28.680 winter when it's hard to carry it around. Yep. And 1:57:28.680 --> 1:57:30.640 and a twist on that that would be consistent with 1:57:30.680 --> 1:57:32.600 that is a study that that I got to be 1:57:32.640 --> 1:57:34.920 a peripheral part of that. Mark Heba White was also 1:57:35.000 --> 1:57:38.240 part of and and one of his students beautiful study 1:57:38.240 --> 1:57:42.520 that came out looking at the Yellowstone elk and wolf 1:57:42.640 --> 1:57:47.520 population dynamics. And they showed that the elk actually keep 1:57:47.520 --> 1:57:50.120 their antlers longer than most of the other servants. So 1:57:50.120 --> 1:57:52.120 they're not getting rid of them and being hornless or 1:57:52.160 --> 1:57:54.400 antler less all winter. They're holding onto them all the 1:57:54.440 --> 1:57:56.920 way through until March. You know, people who collect sheds 1:57:56.920 --> 1:57:59.000 know this until the end of March early April. That's 1:57:59.000 --> 1:58:02.280 when the elk shed. So then what, right, why are 1:58:02.280 --> 1:58:04.040 you carrying this thing around all winter? If you can 1:58:04.080 --> 1:58:05.720 get rid of it, why not get rid of it 1:58:05.760 --> 1:58:07.680 as soon as you're done with it? In this case, 1:58:07.800 --> 1:58:10.320 the secondary benefit of having the antlers is that it 1:58:10.320 --> 1:58:12.800 protects these bulls from wolves. And so they have a 1:58:12.800 --> 1:58:16.560 beautiful study showing that the bulls that dropped their antlers early, 1:58:16.600 --> 1:58:19.160 even just a couple of days earlier than other bulls 1:58:19.160 --> 1:58:22.160 in the population get targeted and hammered by the wolves 1:58:22.160 --> 1:58:25.400 because they can't defend themselves the same way. And so 1:58:25.400 --> 1:58:27.920 so again it comes back to costs and benefits. But 1:58:28.080 --> 1:58:31.240 here's this expensive thing, and you actually keep it all 1:58:31.240 --> 1:58:33.200 winter if you're an elk, because it helps protect you 1:58:33.200 --> 1:58:35.040 against wolves, and then you got to turn around and 1:58:35.120 --> 1:58:37.640 use it during the rut. So now we're stuck with 1:58:37.680 --> 1:58:39.280 that question of why get rid of it and grow 1:58:39.320 --> 1:58:42.240 the whole thing again? And that may be alegacy. It 1:58:42.320 --> 1:58:44.000 might have been early on that it made a lot 1:58:44.000 --> 1:58:45.880 of sense, and early on they were getting rid of 1:58:45.880 --> 1:58:48.200 the cost, and then they were regrowing it and keeping 1:58:48.240 --> 1:58:51.320 the signal honest, and then only sort of secondarily in 1:58:51.360 --> 1:58:54.120 places where the major predators with things like wolves did. 1:58:54.160 --> 1:58:58.080 Some lineages like elk secondarily essentially hold onto it for 1:58:58.160 --> 1:59:00.320 longer and longer, in which case they're stuck. It would 1:59:00.320 --> 1:59:02.200 make more sense if you could design an elk from 1:59:02.200 --> 1:59:04.880 scratch to have them hold onto the antlers like a 1:59:04.880 --> 1:59:07.440 big horn sheep would. But we're you know, that's part 1:59:07.440 --> 1:59:09.440 of evolution is you get the legacy, you get to 1:59:09.480 --> 1:59:11.920 carry over the baggage that comes with you in your genome. 1:59:12.320 --> 1:59:14.640 They're carrying with them a legacy of having to throw 1:59:14.680 --> 1:59:16.600 it away and regrow it each year. So they put 1:59:16.600 --> 1:59:18.480 it off, put it off, put it off, ditch it, 1:59:18.520 --> 1:59:21.000 turn around, and regrow it fast. And that's the best 1:59:21.000 --> 1:59:23.160 they can do. I don't know. Good questions A couple 1:59:23.200 --> 1:59:27.920 other guys through this one out where they're talking about, um, 1:59:28.000 --> 1:59:31.640 you know, they break and so it allows you to 1:59:31.680 --> 1:59:34.440 regenerate all the time instead of snapping it off and 1:59:34.480 --> 1:59:38.400 being screwed for the rest of these breaks his horn 1:59:38.440 --> 1:59:43.840 and it's gone shark teeth. Yeah, constantly, Because we're talking 1:59:43.840 --> 1:59:45.480 about like, how come nothing else We're trying to think 1:59:45.520 --> 1:59:50.280 of other stuff besides servids. Right, the develop a weapon 1:59:51.360 --> 1:59:53.080 and lose the weapon and someone's like, well, you can 1:59:53.160 --> 1:59:56.440 kind of look at just the constant replacing of teeth 1:59:56.440 --> 1:59:58.640 in a shark. Yeah, you get the same thing in insects, 1:59:58.640 --> 2:00:01.800 so nimful stage grass oppers are chewing away on leaves 2:00:01.800 --> 2:00:04.000 and the leaves are often like sandpaper, and it grinds 2:00:04.040 --> 2:00:05.920 down the edges on their mouth parts. But then they 2:00:05.960 --> 2:00:08.040 mold and they throw away the old they start with 2:00:08.080 --> 2:00:09.640 a new clean set and then they can choo choo 2:00:09.680 --> 2:00:11.520 choo choo, and there's sort of this race for time. 2:00:11.920 --> 2:00:13.960 If the plants get more and more sand in their 2:00:14.000 --> 2:00:16.120 in their leaf tissues, then they can grind down the 2:00:16.160 --> 2:00:18.320 mouth parts. And if they can grind down the grasshopper 2:00:18.360 --> 2:00:21.360 mouth parts fast enough, they starve to death before they 2:00:21.360 --> 2:00:24.080 make it to the next mold. So it's like this race. 2:00:24.480 --> 2:00:25.760 But if they make it to the mold, they got 2:00:25.800 --> 2:00:28.040 a clean set, new set of anibal sharp blades. They're 2:00:28.080 --> 2:00:30.320 at it again. So yeah, that would be an insect 2:00:30.320 --> 2:00:35.200 analogy to the shark's teeth. That's fun. That's it. Hey, 2:00:35.240 --> 2:00:37.880 this is fun. It's hot in here, but this is great. Yeah, 2:00:37.880 --> 2:00:40.400 thank you very much. And you got like so animal 2:00:40.440 --> 2:00:43.280 wait wait wait I get to plug it, don't I'm plug. 2:00:43.480 --> 2:00:45.560 I'm gonna plug this to t you up, all right, 2:00:45.600 --> 2:00:48.640 so you can plug your next one. Go for it, time, 2:00:50.160 --> 2:00:53.480 author of Animal Weapons. The Evolution of Battle is a 2:00:53.520 --> 2:00:56.080 subtitle for the book, and you got a new version? 2:00:56.560 --> 2:00:59.200 I do. I have a version of it. That's the backstory. 2:00:59.400 --> 2:01:02.960 That's sort of the adventures doing research on animal weapons 2:01:03.560 --> 2:01:05.920 and how did somebody who starts out with muddy beats 2:01:05.960 --> 2:01:09.440 boots biology and reinforced on dung beetles end up visiting 2:01:09.480 --> 2:01:12.000 an aircraft carrier or given a talk in Washington, d C. 2:01:12.240 --> 2:01:15.000 Two top brass from the military. It's sort of a 2:01:15.000 --> 2:01:18.920 why basic science is relevant and surprising ways kind of story, 2:01:19.040 --> 2:01:21.840 and it's aimed at teenagers, sort of ten to twelve, 2:01:21.960 --> 2:01:25.600 twelve to fourteen year old kids, and so it's narrative nonfiction. 2:01:25.680 --> 2:01:30.320 Is called Beatle Battles One Scientist Journey of Adventure and Discovery, 2:01:30.320 --> 2:01:33.400 and it comes out in December. Beetle Battles, beat Battles, 2:01:33.520 --> 2:01:36.000 You got kids, look for it. I think it's orange 2:01:36.000 --> 2:01:40.000 on the cover, and you love it. You love the color. 2:01:40.440 --> 2:01:42.080 I don't love the color, but I love the book. 2:01:42.200 --> 2:01:44.640 I had a literally good time getting to unpack that story, 2:01:44.680 --> 2:01:46.400 and I had a really good editor to work with me. 2:01:46.480 --> 2:01:50.480 It's fun. It's really fun telling that story. Okay, thanks 2:01:50.480 --> 2:01:55.960 you guys. Yeah, we got a couple of quick things. Ready, 2:01:56.240 --> 2:02:00.400 I'm ready. Um, do us a favor. We bring you 2:02:00.440 --> 2:02:05.120 all this free stuff the show, right, get to listen. Um, 2:02:05.160 --> 2:02:08.480 you gotta do us favorite and go subscribe to our newsletter. 2:02:09.520 --> 2:02:15.720 You need to go to www dot The Meat Eater 2:02:16.160 --> 2:02:18.280 dot com and then you'll be you'll you'll see how 2:02:18.320 --> 2:02:20.280 to sign up for the newsletter. That's really important for us. 2:02:20.280 --> 2:02:21.960 Then you can kind of track everything that's going on 2:02:22.560 --> 2:02:26.440 with articles, podcasts, recipes, all kinds of stuff like that. Yeah. 2:02:26.600 --> 2:02:29.280 Then once a week you get a newsletter. And how often, Sam, 2:02:29.360 --> 2:02:32.440 would they get to read something that you wrote about 2:02:32.480 --> 2:02:37.520 every two weeks? Yeah, we we spent a lot of 2:02:37.520 --> 2:02:40.360 time on those newsletters. Man, it's not just slapped together. 2:02:40.480 --> 2:02:43.440 That's we're trying to bring really good, high quality stuff 2:02:43.600 --> 2:02:46.240 to to everybody, and we're tinkering with it all the 2:02:46.240 --> 2:02:48.320 time to make it even better. And I think, uh, 2:02:48.480 --> 2:02:50.920 most folks you follow it really enjoy it. Yeah, So 2:02:51.120 --> 2:02:54.080 get the newsletter and that's like everything that goes on um, 2:02:54.200 --> 2:02:56.640 new products, everything that goes on our space and also 2:02:56.680 --> 2:02:59.000 we haven't asked for a long time. Do us favorite too, 2:02:59.000 --> 2:03:03.360 and go go on iTunes and click the right most 2:03:03.360 --> 2:03:05.320 star it give us a five star review. You need that, 2:03:05.360 --> 2:03:07.520 and then you can follow us on social media. Can 2:03:07.520 --> 2:03:11.520 find me um on Instagram at Stephen Ranella. You can 2:03:11.520 --> 2:03:14.040 find Yanni on there. He used to be the Latvian 2:03:14.120 --> 2:03:18.560 hunter on Instagram and now I was just ready a Yanni. Yeah. 2:03:18.600 --> 2:03:24.120 I didn't want to make it confusing to Janice Poodless 2:03:24.840 --> 2:03:27.840 and there's an underscoing there. Really, why do you confuse it? 2:03:28.160 --> 2:03:31.800 Because it was early in Instagram, I guess when I 2:03:31.800 --> 2:03:33.640 started messing around and I saw a lot of other 2:03:33.680 --> 2:03:36.200 people that seemed to like have to have that underscored 2:03:36.280 --> 2:03:39.040 for a space in their name, like yours is just 2:03:39.080 --> 2:03:41.280 all straight through right, no spaces at all, because I 2:03:41.720 --> 2:03:43.560 didn't have mine up early. But it probably happens you 2:03:43.600 --> 2:03:46.400 went to get Janis Poodless and had been taken No, 2:03:47.400 --> 2:03:48.760 so you had to do the real. That's when you 2:03:48.840 --> 2:03:54.200 do the real, Yeah, authentic go So that didn't happen 2:03:54.200 --> 2:03:55.800 to you. You just didn't underscore for the hell of it. 2:03:56.720 --> 2:03:59.600 I thought that's what you did. Yeah, Oh wait, man, 2:04:00.040 --> 2:04:04.480 try to look saying how do they find you on Instagram? 2:04:04.760 --> 2:04:09.600 Sam Longer Media, no underscores, no nothing, Doug, you mess 2:04:09.600 --> 2:04:14.520 around social media too business. I don't care. I think 2:04:14.560 --> 2:04:17.360 better of you. If you don't, I don't. I like 2:04:17.440 --> 2:04:20.440 you more. Now I have an offer, but I don't 2:04:20.480 --> 2:04:25.520 do much with it, all right, Professor Emlyn, University of Montana, 2:04:25.600 --> 2:04:29.480 my home the matter. Uh yeah, Sam suo, thank you 2:04:29.560 --> 2:04:45.520 very much for joining us. My pleasure. Okay, everyone, thanks 2:04:45.560 --> 2:04:47.600 for listening. Again. And if I said it once, I 2:04:47.640 --> 2:04:50.760 said a thousand times. Please go check out our feature 2:04:50.880 --> 2:04:55.800 length documentary about hunting in America today called Stars in 2:04:55.840 --> 2:04:58.360 the Sky. You can find it at Stars in the 2:04:58.400 --> 2:05:03.720 Sky film dot colm. It is available for streaming and download. Again, 2:05:03.920 --> 2:05:06.320 do us yourself a good turn, do us a good 2:05:06.320 --> 2:05:10.080 turn Stars in the Sky. Find it at Stars in 2:05:10.120 --> 2:05:13.440 the Sky film dot com. You can stream it, you 2:05:13.440 --> 2:05:16.720 can download it, and you can watch it again and again. 2:05:17.040 --> 2:05:17.400 Thank you,