WEBVTT - Selects: What is an invasive species? 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:04.520 Hi everyone. We semi recently recorded an episode about cats 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:07.560 being an invasive species. Oh boy, and we're gonna hear 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:09.760 it for that one. But I thought we'd go back 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:14.320 to the o G episode on invasive species from January? 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:23.880 What is an invasive species? Listen? Now, welcome to Stuff 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:32.960 You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.120 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Child's 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.479 of you, Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Do Do Do Do 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:40.599 do do do do do this stuff you should Know 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:47.440 Action Edition. I gotta laugh out of Jerry. At least 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:52.520 Google I got a a derisive snort. How about that? 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:56.520 That's what it was. How you doing? I'm great. Well, 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:00.880 I'm concerned about the Earth. You're concerned about the Earth? Yes? 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:07.360 More than usual? Yes? Because of this podcast? Yes? Okay? Yeah. Man. 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:13.560 So before we get started, you've heard of the Anthropocene, right? Uh? 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.039 I know you have? You definitely have. We've certainly mentioned 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:19.800 it before on the episode or on the podcast. So 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.840 there's this debate right now over whether we've entered a 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:35.320 new geological age from uh, the one to the Anthropocene. Right. Um? 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.560 I really wish I could remember what the current one is, 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:40.080 because people are going to write it and be like, 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:44.600 it's this a million times over, which thank you everybody 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.040 for writing out I mean to sound ungrateful. Um. But 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.880 the the idea is that we've entered this period. Some 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.960 people place it starting at the Industrial Revolution. A lot 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.560 of people place it more at when there was apparently 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:05.560 a huge spike in the presence of humanity from radioactivity, plastics, 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:08.720 all this stuff in the environment as a whole. So 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:15.000 where our presence has so muddied the geological record that 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:19.400 we've effectively come up with a new age, a new 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:24.400 geological age, the anthroposyne, the age of of humans. Right. 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:28.200 So one of the things, one of the factors that 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:33.120 people point to that suggests that we're we're changing the 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:42.200 natural geological record, Thank you, Charles so. Um. The the 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:47.320 idea that we we are altering what the natural course 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:49.640 of the Holocene, the of course it would have taken 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.600 had humans never been around. One of the ways we're 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:58.360 doing that is by shuffling species from one environment to another, 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:01.239 from one ecosystem to another where they've never been before, 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.440 probably never would have ended up, at least not in 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:08.960 any of our lifetimes. Um, and that they are altering 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.800 those ecosystems in radical new ways such that when those 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:17.200 things fossilized, those ecosystems become fossilized and can be studied, 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:20.360 you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Hence, 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.919 archaeologists would be pretty puzzled by what they were finding. 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:28.240 And that's the basis of the idea that we should 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:32.360 be calling this the anthroposy. Now I'm scared. That was 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:36.000 my goal. Well done, thank you all right. So what 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:40.560 we're talking about is invasive species UM. And I'm surprised 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:43.240 we hadn't done this one. I was too. I went 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.800 back and double checked and to think we did, I don't, 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.360 And I remembered what episode. I remember it was the 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:54.560 Beagle Brigade. Oh, we talked a lot about invasive species 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:56.880 in the Beagle brigadim and we may have even said 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.640 we should do one on that. So if so fulfilled. 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.800 So what we're talking about is invasive species. This is um. 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.800 This can be any type of It is not necessarily 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.880 a plant or just an animal. It could be seeds, 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.720 it could be eggs, it could be it can even 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:21.520 be a disease, right or yeah, pathogen a past predator 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.719 and a plant just it could be anything, Yeah, any 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:29.000 kind of any kind of living organism that's not native 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.280 to a singular or a particular ecosystem. Right. But and 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:36.720 the House of Works article kind of leaves it at that. 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:42.159 But the National Wildlife Federation article that you found, I 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.720 think really kind of drives home that there's like an 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:49.440 extra couple factors involved, right, Yeah, because you can have 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.960 a non native species that we actually kind of like 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.920 like European honey bees. There are non native species here 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.479 in the United States, but we're crazy for the pollinating 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:03.159 they do. It doesn't know its right, and the honey 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.320 that they make. Rice is not a native um crop 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.160 here in the United States, but people people love rice, 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:14.159 So there are just being non native isn't enough. It 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:18.680 has to actually harm the ecosystem that it's not native 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.640 to and has been introduced to in some way, shape 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.480 or form. So it's it's a non native species that's 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.960 causing harm either directly or indirectly or both to this 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:33.599 new ecosystem it's it's been introduced to. That's an invasive species, right, 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:35.960 And it's not just do we grow rice in the 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:39.920 United States? Sure? Okay? Uh? And it doesn't have to 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:41.880 be from another country. It can. Like we said, it's 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:46.320 an ecosystem, so it could be something from one area 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.880 of the United States to another area of the United States, 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:54.400 or from Mexico to the United States. Right, Like trout 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.800 from the Great Lakes, that's their natural habitats, so they're fine. 0:05:57.800 --> 0:05:59.520 But you take that same trout and put it in 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.880 I think the example given was the Yellowstone River, and 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.720 they're now competing for habitat and food with the local trout. 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:12.080 That's an invasive species, right. They come in all shapes 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:16.000 and sizes. As our very own article says, uh, they're 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:20.440 different names for him. God loves them all. Like some 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:25.240 people might say exotic pests or a non indigenous species, 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:29.520 alien species, stuff like that, but invasive species is kind 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.039 of I think that's the go to these days. Sure, 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.720 that's the one you you here starting in the nineties. Actually, 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:40.280 that's It's funny, like all of the eco stuff that 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.480 we know about, from recycling to invasive species, that all 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:45.560 was like born in the nineties, you know what I mean. 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:48.320 Bill Clinton, Uh, I think he don't think he invented 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.560 that name, but he went h I think he gave it, 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.479 gave him, he gave it the stamp. What did he say, though, 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:58.320 I think he said nailed it. Yeah. He could have 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:00.960 been talking about any number of things or people right there, 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.880 but in that case he was talking specifically about Executive 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:11.160 Order one three one one two, where the term invasive 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.680 species was first defined by the United States government. And 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.760 the reason that they did this, the reason that they 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:21.880 were defining invasive species because around about that time, the 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.200 world was really waking up to the fact that if 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:30.320 you take a species of plant, animal, bacteria, pathogen, whatever, 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.400 and you put it into a place, a new ecosystem 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.240 where it has no predators, it's going to create havoc 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:41.200 for the the the the ecosystem as it was before. Yeah. 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:42.760 I mean that's kind of one of the keys here 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:47.720 is that, um, generally they will cause a lot of harm, 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:52.240 maybe to the environment, maybe to the economy, maybe two people, 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:55.880 maybe one, two or all three of those. Uh. And 0:07:56.080 --> 0:08:00.520 another key aspect of the invasive species is that it's 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:05.920 pretty hard, if not impossible, sometimes to contain an eradicate. Yeah. 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:09.280 I think I get this impression from researching this Chuck 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:13.400 that like the second wave of waking up to invasive 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.200 species realizing like they're never going to go away. Now 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:18.560 they're done. It's done. Like the first wave, you don't 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.080 notice it's already happening, right, Yeah. By the time we 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.200 do notice, it's too late. And then now we're realizing like, okay, 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:27.280 well we can we can handle this. It might be tough, 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:30.480 and now I think we're finding now we like it. Well, 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:33.559 now you can handle it. You just can't eradicate them. 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:35.600 One of the big problems is is like if you 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:39.439 if you say, develop a poison that kills some you know, 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:45.520 non some invasive fish that was introduced, right, say carp um, 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.520 you're going to kill the other fish in the area too, 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:50.720 or some of the other sea life or something like that. 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.280 So there's just not really any way you can target 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:58.200 these things short of shooting each one of them. And 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.360 you're gonna shoot a plant. They'll think you're crazy, they'll 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:03.439 lock you up for that. So don't even try it. 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:06.240 And here's the deal is this. This is not a 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.840 new phenomenon. This nature has been doing this for years 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:15.240 on its own in various ways, whether it's uh leaping 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:20.840 over the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand or 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:24.680 over a a channel of water, like or over a 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.720 mountain range, it happens. But generally bodies of water and 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.440 mountain ranges and deserts and all these other geological features 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:36.920 helped to stop this stuff. It's really humans that are 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:39.400 doing most of this, uh, not necessarily on purpose, but 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:43.679 sometimes on purpose um as we will see. But sometimes 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.760 it's just like it's in the ballast water of a ship, 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:51.200 or it's in uh there's an insect in the wood 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.559 of uh, or it's in packing material, it's in the 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:57.760 wood of the what are those things called the crates 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.040 the pallets, Yeah, palettes, shipping pallet, and all of a 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:03.080 sudden it leaps out on the other side of the 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:06.560 world and you have an issue to the tune of 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:12.800 fifty thousand estimated non native species in the United States alone. Yeah, 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:15.240 I was looking that up. That's pretty That's one of 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.360 those things we always like give um, you know, evidence 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:23.079 or not evidence, um advice if you see something all 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.680 over the place, like double check it. You know, no, 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.520 I think it is a real number. Is from so 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:32.960 there's no telling is we're probably at fifty thousand and 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.079 like five hundred now. But it was from a guy 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:42.640 named Pim Intell who is a world famous ecologist. No, 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:46.400 pim Intell. He's from Cornell. I don't know if he's 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.520 still at Cornell. But the thing that this leaves out 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:53.920 though it's fifty thousand non native species, but that same 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:57.679 study from ninety nine found that um, about forty three 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:00.640 hundred of them could be considered invasive. Okay, that that's 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:01.880 what I was. One of the other ones are like 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:05.720 the honeybee, where we're like sweet sure or rice don't 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:09.320 don't freak a rice? Uh? And like I said, sometimes 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.120 in the water of a ship's hule. Sometimes uh in 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:14.920 this would and sometimes on purpose like we said, like 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:19.320 when the Burmese python found its way to Florida, Dude, 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:22.400 that was no accident. Where you have you looked up 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:29.040 Burmese python everglades recently? Dude? They get so big down there. 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:31.960 And did you see the one that had burst itself 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.120 to death eating an alligator? What? No, But I did 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:40.000 see the alligator and the python fighting on a golf course. 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.920 That's amazing. That is amazing. That makes me glad to 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.200 be alive to see something like that. You know. Well, 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.400 here's the deal. While we're on that um earlier, that well, 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:54.160 all right, more than two thousand of these pythons have 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:59.000 been removed. Two thousand have been removed since two thousand 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:05.080 two would it was just I guess recreational activity. But 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:11.160 starting in March of last year, Florida started sanctioning python 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:16.440 hunters and a thousand dudes applied. They accepted twenty five 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:20.160 So we'll pay you minimum wage, will literally pay you 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.120 eight bucks an hour or I think that was a 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.000 minimum wage at the time to hunt pythons. And they're 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:29.800 all like done right, and they started hunting pythons. They've 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:33.360 caught seven hundred and forty three since March of two 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:38.280 thousand seventeen, and uh earlier this year or I'm sorry, 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:42.560 uh late last year in December, the dude Jason Leon, 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:45.560 did you see that one that he caught No. Seven 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:53.800 sevent ft long a hundred and thirty three pound Burmese pythons? Uh. 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:56.320 And the reason why these are a big deal just, 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:01.880 you know, aside from just sheer terror, uh, is there 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.960 eating furry creatures, A lot of them. I saw that 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:12.880 some populations down in the Everglades of types of deer, rabbits, um. 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:16.080 A lot of creatures that you know and love have 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:21.520 gone down by up to in some areas because of 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.000 the python University of Florida. And I won't say what 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.839 everyone wants me to say. Good for you, man, Yeah, 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.079 that's like, how how can you be you know, possibly 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:36.680 the national champs and and throw shade at anybody below you? 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:39.320 You know. So the obviously Florida and Gainesville did a 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.400 project they released this makes me so sad. They released 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:47.680 ninety five rabbits uh into the Everglades and they these 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.240 were all tracked. And it's not like when these rabbits 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:51.880 didn't turn up a year later and there we can't 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:54.720 find them. I guess snakes eate them. They know that 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:59.240 snakes ate them, So snakes did. A year later, seventy 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:05.600 seven percent these rabbits were eaten and dead from these pythons. Wow. 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:08.800 So it's a problem. That is a sad study. It is. 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.360 Can you imagine like opening that was crates and being like, 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:17.360 all right, free go you live your new life. It's 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:21.680 an adventure. Oh man, it's so sad. So that's just 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:25.440 one example of the most horrific uh. And that's not 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:30.880 one that's like costing two billion dollars in damage a year, 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:34.680 but that is an estimate from professor at Cornell. That's 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.880 the same one pimentel. Yeah, okay, um, that's the estimate 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.400 from him that it's costing the United States between a 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.720 hundred and two hundred billion dollars a year in damage 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.760 from all these invasive species problems. Yeah, that's a lot 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:52.760 of dough, it really is. And the Burmese python is 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:56.000 is a good example also of people just releasing like 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.080 a pet that you don't want anymore. That's probably how 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.280 they re establish That's absolutely how it was established. There's 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.680 other there's another there's a lizard called the tagu which 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:08.320 is a big problem in all of Florida apparently as well. 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:13.120 Um they're just a huge lizard that were originally pets 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.920 and we're released and now they've established a feral population 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.160 in Florida and they apparently will eat your cat. They've 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:23.680 been known to do that. They'll um storm your house, 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:27.680 they'll come into your house. It's just a bad jam right. 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.640 There's also the Neutria swamp rats, which were originally grown 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:37.040 for their fur in in the in Louisiana. So they 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:40.960 use rat for apparently in Louisiana or to keep warm 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:45.160 and um that when the rat for industry went under 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.480 in the thirties. I think they released these things into 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.320 the swamps. And then last most recently, feral hogs were 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:56.040 imported so that they could hunt them. And there's a 0:15:56.120 --> 0:16:00.240 huge population that's wrecking their the ecosystems they've been introduced too. 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:03.360 So a lot of times humans are lunkheads when it 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:08.120 comes to shuffling animals into ecosystems where they're they're not native. 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:13.040 That snakes too big, Put it behind the house, right loose. 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:16.400 Then let a bunch of rabbits loose and see what happens. 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:21.480 We see who wins? Snake wins, snake wins. Should we 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.000 take a break? Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. Well, 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.680 actually quickly, before we take a break, I talked about 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.520 how much it was costing the U. S. Department of Interior, 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.560 spending about a hundred million bucks or more a year 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:40.120 trying to fight this in various ways, all to very 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:43.040 little success. All right, So now with that stat we 0:16:43.080 --> 0:17:19.080 will we will take a break. So, Chuck, we talked 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:23.760 about people releasing um animals purposefully, and you mentioned some 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.520 other ways, but one of the things that gets me 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:30.680 is ballast water, Like, how is this allowed to go 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.640 on where a ship will take on water to balance 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:37.439 out its cargo load because you know, different cargo is 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.360 going away different, It's going to be laid out differently, 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:44.240 so you need new ballasts every time to to balance 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.560 it out, which makes sense, But surely there can be 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:51.959 some other technology because you're you're like in Eastern Europe 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.560 picking up a bunch of water to balance your your 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:59.200 ship out, and that that cargo is bound for Detroit. 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:03.440 So you enter the Great Lakes and you're like, oh, well, waters, water, 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:06.399 I'll just release it here once I unload my cargo. 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.320 And whatever animals you picked up in Eastern Europe now 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:12.520 live in the Great Lakes. And this actually happened with 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:16.879 the zebra muscle which is a huge, huge problem in 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:20.080 the Great Lakes. Now, Yeah, the zebra muscle and the 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:26.040 quagga muscle, Yeah, which apparently are almost the same thing. Uh, 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:29.320 And how they act there from Eastern Europe and they're small, 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:32.080 and that's exactly how they ended up in the Great Lakes, 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.880 like you said, and they boy talk about spreading are there, 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.240 Like how many are these? Like a trillion? A trillion 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.280 at least the reason why it is like a quagga 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:46.520 will live or quagga zebra muscle will live about five years, 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:51.040 and the female in that time will produce five million eggs. 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:55.240 There's ten trillion of them, A hundred that's so many muscles, 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:58.560 a hundred thousand of those that of those eggs will 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.959 reach adulthood. And so the offspring of one single muscle 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.200 will produce about half a billion adult offspring. So yeah, 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:10.719 ten trillion is a pretty reasonable number. And they just 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.520 entered the Great Lakes in the I think the nineteen eighties, 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:19.280 so just within what forty years? God, can you believe 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:21.600 the eighties were like forty years ago were coming up 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:25.959 on it? Um? It doesn't seem that long ago to me, 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.920 but man, that's crazy. Well, and the problem with these 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.479 is you're like, wait, wait, I'm reminiscing stiff. All right, 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.120 I'm done. The problem with these is like, big deal. 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:37.919 That are these tiny little muscles, but they are blanketing 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.560 the bottom of the Great Lakes. Uh. And they're eating 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.200 plankton because they love to eat plankton, which makes the 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.119 water nice and clear. Everyone's like, look, how shimmery like 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.159 Michigan is. Have you seen pictures of like Michigan recently? 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:54.680 It looks like the Caribbean, really white sand, beautiful sea 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.439 through like turquoise water. That's good people, gorgeous. No, it 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.800 looks really amazing, But ultimately, no, it's not healthy because, 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:04.920 like you were saying, they eat all the plankton that's 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.280 supposed to be on top and on the bottom two 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:11.600 and the the sunlight can penetrate all the way to 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:17.399 the bottom, causing algae blooms, deadly algae blooms. I just 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:21.080 just happened to run across an article yesterday, Chuck, and 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:24.359 I understood why I was seeing what I was seeing. 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.879 But the article was about how the like Michigan has 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:31.439 become so clear that you can see shipwrecks on the 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.199 bottom of the lake from the air. If you're flying 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.600 over it, you can clearly see shipwrecks. And the reason 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:41.200 why is because the zebra muscles have doubled the clarity 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.960 of the water since the nineties. Well, and not only 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:47.159 is it just the plankton, but they're eating the plankton. 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:52.439 Is is causing salmon to go hungry whitefish. Um, So 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.520 if you you know, it's just it's wrecking the ecosystem 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:59.120 down there, right, Thank you, intern Europe. That's say yeah, well, 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:02.400 thank you ship captain who took on that water as ballast. 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:07.439 Another ballast story I ran across too, was, um, uh, 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:11.480 fire ants the worst thing in humanity? Right, that's pretty bad. 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:16.040 Fire Ants are native to South America, and they think 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:20.040 that they stowed away on dirt that was scooped up 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:24.520 as ship's ballast and released in New Orleans. Really yeah, 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:27.720 and like the thirties or forties, but that's where the 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.960 fire ants came from. They shouldn't be here. Didn't that 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:37.320 make them even worse? Hate those things? So, um, here's 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:39.920 another one. You wanna talk about the Asian carpet. Sure. 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:44.080 So in the nineteen seventies, and I think, like in Arkansas, 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:47.919 there were some u some farmers, fish farmers that is, 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:52.960 who said, uh, let's get some of these Asian carpon 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:57.840 here to filter the water. And they did. That sounded 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.560 identical what the researchers from the University of Florida sounded 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:03.399 like in my head, right, And they all sounded like 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:09.760 Bill Clinton, who was from Arkansas. Right. So, Asian carp 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:12.359 were introduced. I guess they did a pretty good job 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:14.600 of filtering the pond water, but then they started spreading 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.640 and that's the deal is is you know, like with 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:21.560 the the zebra muscle. You know, they get in these 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:24.399 waterways like in Chicago, these man made waterways that they 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:29.240 said basically like expressways where they get in the Mississippi 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.280 River and it just it's like all right here, here 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:36.359 we go rest of the country. Yeah. And so Asian 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:39.439 carp Uh, it's a it's sort of a catch all 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.439 name for a bunch of species of carp from Southeast Asia. 0:22:42.440 --> 0:22:45.240 But here's their problem is they're very dense. They consume 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:49.280 about of their body weight each day in plankton. They 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:53.600 can be as big as a hundred pounds, which is 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:57.480 very large for a for a fish, if you haven't noticed. 0:22:59.160 --> 0:23:01.600 And uh, they're all over the place now. They went 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:05.240 up the Illinois River. They are almost or maybe even 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:07.520 are invading the Great Lakes now. Is that they didn't 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:10.000 have enough problems. And there are another one. They lay 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:13.160 about a half a million eggs each time they spawn, right, 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.160 and they eat a lot of plankton. And there's this 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:19.800 guy um that they're a good example because they're they're 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:24.600 so thoroughly crowd out um the rest of the ecosystem, 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:26.720 for the rest of the animals, in the ecosystem that 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:30.680 it actually like kind of recks the whole ecosystem. They're 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:35.399 they're an example of like a UM grade three or 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:38.960 level three, I think you call it level level three 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:44.760 invasive species. Right, there's this dude. He was he is 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:48.360 a marine biologist. And I don't know if you could 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:50.560 tell or not, but I'm stalling while I look for 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:56.040 his name. Is it coming across everybody? Um? So I 0:23:56.119 --> 0:24:01.960 cannot find the dude's name. Anyway, you don't have it either. Well, 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:06.359 he came up with Okay, doctor doctor Javago came up 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:11.199 with these basically four levels of of impact that an 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:14.920 invasive species can have on bio diversity in an ecosystem. 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:17.399 And the first level is basically like they're just a 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:21.120 new species. They're not doing anything. You could even make 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:23.520 a case that it's it's a good thing that they're 0:24:23.560 --> 0:24:26.960 there now because they've improved or increased the bio diversity 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:31.320 of the habitat, right. So level one is they're just there, 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:35.360 nothing bad has happened yet. Level two is when they 0:24:35.400 --> 0:24:39.760 start to have a an effect on the on the 0:24:39.840 --> 0:24:44.120 ecosystem in some very specific way. And doctor Javago gives 0:24:44.160 --> 0:24:48.400 this really great example of the eastern North American gray squirrel, 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:53.320 which was inexplicably introduced in eighteen seventy six to England 0:24:54.280 --> 0:24:57.919 and since then it is basically out competed the native 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:02.920 red squirrel there um, But it's just the native red 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:05.639 squirrel that's been affected. The rest of the ecosystem is 0:25:06.560 --> 0:25:09.560 basically the same as if the North American squirrel had 0:25:09.560 --> 0:25:11.920 never showed up. It's just the red squirrel who are 0:25:11.960 --> 0:25:14.359 trying to go around and tell everybody like, doesn't it suck? 0:25:14.440 --> 0:25:16.520 The North American squirrels are here and it's like, oh, 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:18.640 it's fine with me, I don't care, And the red 0:25:18.640 --> 0:25:20.639 squirrel just can't get any kind of ally on this. 0:25:21.000 --> 0:25:26.240 That's leveled two. Shall I continue? Please? Level three is 0:25:26.280 --> 0:25:31.160 where the species become so dominant, spreads so fast, so wide, 0:25:31.480 --> 0:25:35.600 reproduces so quickly and so massively that they begin to 0:25:35.640 --> 0:25:39.760 impact the entire ecosystem as a whole. Right, we'll talk 0:25:39.800 --> 0:25:42.399 about that in a second. And then the fourth level 0:25:42.440 --> 0:25:46.480 is where they have upset the ecosystem that they are 0:25:46.520 --> 0:25:49.920 not native to, but have established themselves in so thoroughly 0:25:50.320 --> 0:25:54.320 that it now impacts other ecosystems, either nearby or that 0:25:54.359 --> 0:25:57.560 are somehow connected to that ecosystem. And then level five 0:25:57.680 --> 0:26:01.760 is when you wake up covered in a thunderd squirrels, Right, 0:26:02.520 --> 0:26:06.639 I'll just quietly staring at you. Can you imagine? No, 0:26:07.280 --> 0:26:09.800 have you ever seen those black squirrels in Brooklyn? Yes, 0:26:10.200 --> 0:26:13.760