1
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,760
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:12,920 --> 00:00:15,520
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is.

3
00:00:15,480 --> 00:00:18,560
Speaker 3: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff

4
00:00:18,560 --> 00:00:20,640
Speaker 3: to Blow Your Mind, we're going to be beginning a

5
00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:22,640
Speaker 3: series on the prairie.

6
00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:26,640
Speaker 2: That's right, I'm excited for this one. Before we get

7
00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:29,080
Speaker 2: into it, I want to read a quick line from

8
00:00:29,080 --> 00:00:31,680
Speaker 2: a poem. This is from the poem The Prairies by

9
00:00:31,680 --> 00:00:35,560
Speaker 2: William Cullen Bryant. You can find this in full at

10
00:00:35,800 --> 00:00:39,240
Speaker 2: Poetry Foundation dot org. But just one sweet line here.

11
00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:43,920
Speaker 2: These are the gardens of the desert. These the unshorn fields,

12
00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:47,800
Speaker 2: boundless and beautiful, for which the speech of England has

13
00:00:47,880 --> 00:00:51,560
Speaker 2: no name. The prairies beautiful.

14
00:00:52,479 --> 00:00:56,440
Speaker 3: And you know what, I am trying to trying to

15
00:00:56,520 --> 00:01:00,520
Speaker 3: discipline myself to appreciate what's beautiful about the pre too,

16
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:04,360
Speaker 3: because in think, in preparing for this episode, I was

17
00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:08,160
Speaker 3: really thinking about the fact that I have something in

18
00:01:08,200 --> 00:01:10,840
Speaker 3: myself I truly do not admire. But it is a

19
00:01:10,880 --> 00:01:15,680
Speaker 3: tree bias, or maybe I might expand it beyond trees.

20
00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:22,240
Speaker 3: I would say a a variation in vertical topography bias.

21
00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:29,160
Speaker 3: Like I get a little uncomfortable in landscapes where you

22
00:01:29,200 --> 00:01:31,800
Speaker 3: can just where it's relatively flat and you can just

23
00:01:31,880 --> 00:01:35,360
Speaker 3: see really far in all directions. For some reason, my

24
00:01:35,480 --> 00:01:38,240
Speaker 3: body doesn't like that. It kind of disturbs me. It

25
00:01:38,319 --> 00:01:41,360
Speaker 3: kind of makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I am

26
00:01:41,440 --> 00:01:45,640
Speaker 3: comforted by the presence of tall things around me, things

27
00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:49,920
Speaker 3: that could provide shade, things that I could conceivably like

28
00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:52,640
Speaker 3: go around or hide behind. I guess if like a

29
00:01:52,720 --> 00:01:56,520
Speaker 3: big animal was approaching me or climb. Yeah, or climb.

30
00:01:57,320 --> 00:02:01,160
Speaker 3: And so I recognize within myself have a bias four

31
00:02:01,480 --> 00:02:05,400
Speaker 3: forested or tree covered landscapes or landscapes that have I

32
00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:07,840
Speaker 3: don't know, you have big tall rocks and variations in

33
00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:11,600
Speaker 3: topography or at least buildings or something like that. And

34
00:02:11,680 --> 00:02:13,680
Speaker 3: I want to change this about myself. I want to

35
00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:18,000
Speaker 3: be able to fully and deeply appreciate what's beautiful and

36
00:02:18,040 --> 00:02:23,120
Speaker 3: fascinating about the vast, relatively flat landscapes that don't have

37
00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:24,239
Speaker 3: tall trees in them.

38
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:26,920
Speaker 2: This is a great point. I mean, you like me,

39
00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:29,680
Speaker 2: You spent a lot of time in Tennessee and in

40
00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:33,560
Speaker 2: Georgia very much. You know, wooded lands for the most part,

41
00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:37,080
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's a weird experience when then you go

42
00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:39,960
Speaker 2: out to the desert or to the prairie or some

43
00:02:40,040 --> 00:02:42,800
Speaker 2: of their landscape like this, and yeah, the trees are

44
00:02:42,840 --> 00:02:47,960
Speaker 2: not around you. Is It's fascinating though. My relatives who

45
00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:52,400
Speaker 2: live in Arizona have like the opposite feeling when they

46
00:02:52,440 --> 00:02:55,920
Speaker 2: come out to Georgia or the Carolina's or somewhere there

47
00:02:55,919 --> 00:02:58,160
Speaker 2: are a lot of trees, Like they feel cramped by the trees.

48
00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:01,359
Speaker 2: They feel like there are too many of them. They're

49
00:03:01,400 --> 00:03:03,840
Speaker 2: going to fall on me, They're gonna be they're crowding

50
00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:07,120
Speaker 2: me in. So they have they have a very similar feeling,

51
00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:08,800
Speaker 2: but in the reverse direction.

52
00:03:09,480 --> 00:03:12,560
Speaker 3: That is really interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, I've had a

53
00:03:12,600 --> 00:03:16,840
Speaker 3: complicated personal emotional esthetic relationship with the prairie that I

54
00:03:16,880 --> 00:03:19,760
Speaker 3: want to remove the negativity from.

55
00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:22,280
Speaker 2: No. No, I can relate to this on a number

56
00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:26,080
Speaker 2: of levels. In comparing the desert to the prairie. I

57
00:03:26,080 --> 00:03:29,720
Speaker 2: think the desert has a way of revealing itself and

58
00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:35,680
Speaker 2: in multiple ways in concerning just like observing the flora

59
00:03:35,680 --> 00:03:39,360
Speaker 2: and fauna of the desert, but also the desert kind

60
00:03:39,400 --> 00:03:42,560
Speaker 2: of like speaks and resonates with us more easily in

61
00:03:42,600 --> 00:03:45,000
Speaker 2: a number of other ways. You know, it takes on

62
00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:47,880
Speaker 2: all of these symbolic meanings, and not to say the

63
00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:51,000
Speaker 2: prairie doesn't, but I don't know the prairie, and my

64
00:03:51,080 --> 00:03:54,440
Speaker 2: experience speaks a slightly different language, and maybe you have

65
00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:57,520
Speaker 2: to lean in a little bit to hear it. But

66
00:03:57,800 --> 00:04:02,000
Speaker 2: I readily admit that, like growing up again, growing up

67
00:04:02,040 --> 00:04:04,600
Speaker 2: most of my time surrounded by trees, I had this

68
00:04:04,760 --> 00:04:09,280
Speaker 2: romantic idea about the desert and I did not feel

69
00:04:09,320 --> 00:04:11,760
Speaker 2: the same way about the prairies. And at the same time,

70
00:04:11,960 --> 00:04:15,360
Speaker 2: for most of my life had no experience of the

71
00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:17,719
Speaker 2: desert or the prairie. So it was just based on

72
00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:21,440
Speaker 2: things that I observed in film and TV and nature

73
00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:23,680
Speaker 2: specials as well. You know, it wasn't all fantasy, but

74
00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:27,520
Speaker 2: certainly I don't, at least in the original trilogy. I

75
00:04:27,560 --> 00:04:31,000
Speaker 2: don't remember any characters in Star Wars showing up on

76
00:04:31,040 --> 00:04:33,159
Speaker 2: a prairie planet. They show up on a desert planet.

77
00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:37,400
Speaker 2: That's where the excitement is interesting. Meanwhile, we had things

78
00:04:37,520 --> 00:04:40,760
Speaker 2: like Little House on the Prairie on TV, which you know,

79
00:04:41,240 --> 00:04:44,760
Speaker 2: was fine. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't

80
00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:47,280
Speaker 2: have a strong interest in it, and I think there

81
00:04:47,320 --> 00:04:49,560
Speaker 2: was something about that, like Little House on the Prairie

82
00:04:49,720 --> 00:04:54,080
Speaker 2: kind of despite its, you know, its obvious quality from

83
00:04:54,080 --> 00:04:57,640
Speaker 2: a literary sense, or certainly the TV adaptation had its

84
00:04:57,720 --> 00:04:59,960
Speaker 2: charms as well, and a lot of people hold uspect

85
00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:02,159
Speaker 2: place in their heart for it, but I did not.

86
00:05:02,279 --> 00:05:04,960
Speaker 2: It seemed kind of boring, you know again, Star Wars

87
00:05:05,080 --> 00:05:07,320
Speaker 2: characters were not there. It did not seem to have

88
00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:10,039
Speaker 2: some sort of like a larger meaning to me. And

89
00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:14,160
Speaker 2: so I think, based in part on that, I absild

90
00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:17,800
Speaker 2: mindedly kind of thought of prairies as just grassy, just

91
00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:22,520
Speaker 2: flat stuff that's between the more interesting ecosystems of forest,

92
00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:25,680
Speaker 2: tree or mountains or desert. And I thought this without

93
00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:30,839
Speaker 2: ever meaningfully traveling through any of it. I think maybe

94
00:05:30,839 --> 00:05:34,160
Speaker 2: the one exception was that I remember the VHS box

95
00:05:34,320 --> 00:05:38,239
Speaker 2: art for a nineteen nineties horror anthology film called Grim

96
00:05:38,320 --> 00:05:41,280
Speaker 2: Prairie Tales, and I never actually saw it, but I

97
00:05:41,320 --> 00:05:43,720
Speaker 2: would see the box with this kind of like demonic

98
00:05:43,839 --> 00:05:48,359
Speaker 2: laughing James Earl Jones head and weirdly cac dies.

99
00:05:48,360 --> 00:05:50,920
Speaker 3: So I don't know, those are soarros. Yeah, so the

100
00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:52,080
Speaker 3: Sonoran Desert it.

101
00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:54,840
Speaker 2: Looks like it should be Grim Desert Tales, but again

102
00:05:54,880 --> 00:05:57,040
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it, but it had prairie on the title,

103
00:05:57,080 --> 00:05:58,800
Speaker 2: so that one gave me help like, Okay, maybe there

104
00:05:58,839 --> 00:06:01,279
Speaker 2: is something kind of spooky and cool about the prairie.

105
00:06:01,839 --> 00:06:04,800
Speaker 2: So this, luckily, a lot of this changed for me

106
00:06:05,200 --> 00:06:07,159
Speaker 2: over the summer. At the beginning of the summer, when

107
00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:11,279
Speaker 2: my family and I visited Denver, Colorado, a city that

108
00:06:11,360 --> 00:06:15,120
Speaker 2: I'd always associated with high elevations and the mountains, of course,

109
00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:19,360
Speaker 2: but this is a city that is in large part

110
00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:22,880
Speaker 2: built upon the prairie where the high plains meet the

111
00:06:22,960 --> 00:06:25,880
Speaker 2: Rocky Mountains, and while visiting I had the chance to

112
00:06:25,960 --> 00:06:29,920
Speaker 2: explore some of these surrounding grasslands. We ended up actually

113
00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:31,400
Speaker 2: we went up into the mountains a little bit, but

114
00:06:31,440 --> 00:06:35,520
Speaker 2: we went out onto the prairie lands at least half

115
00:06:35,560 --> 00:06:38,680
Speaker 2: as much and maybe a little bit more. And this

116
00:06:38,760 --> 00:06:41,920
Speaker 2: really gave me a new appreciation for their complexity, and

117
00:06:42,160 --> 00:06:45,080
Speaker 2: it stirred my interest in the prairies as a topic

118
00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:48,599
Speaker 2: for our show. For instance, I highly recommend for anyone

119
00:06:48,600 --> 00:06:51,719
Speaker 2: out there if you're visiting Denver or just flying into

120
00:06:51,760 --> 00:06:54,400
Speaker 2: Denver and then planning to do something else. The Rocky

121
00:06:54,400 --> 00:06:59,279
Speaker 2: Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is real close to the airport,

122
00:06:59,400 --> 00:07:03,080
Speaker 2: real handy, and very fascinating to visit. It's actually it

123
00:07:03,120 --> 00:07:05,200
Speaker 2: was actually established on the grounds of what was once

124
00:07:05,240 --> 00:07:08,039
Speaker 2: a major US chemical weapons production facility.

125
00:07:08,320 --> 00:07:08,599
Speaker 3: Cool.

126
00:07:08,640 --> 00:07:13,280
Speaker 2: So I'm talking mustard gas, chlorine gas, serin, and then

127
00:07:13,320 --> 00:07:16,360
Speaker 2: also stuff like napalm and white phosphorus. So just the

128
00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:20,280
Speaker 2: worst things ever, just a temple of death. But now

129
00:07:20,360 --> 00:07:23,480
Speaker 2: it's been given over to the grasslands. It's a hotbed

130
00:07:23,560 --> 00:07:27,240
Speaker 2: of bison conservation as well as conservation for species like

131
00:07:27,240 --> 00:07:30,680
Speaker 2: the blackfooted ferret, and it's just a real calm, nice place.

132
00:07:30,920 --> 00:07:34,520
Speaker 2: You can see bison with like the skyscrapers of Denver

133
00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:36,160
Speaker 2: in the background. It's it's pretty cool.

134
00:07:36,280 --> 00:07:39,920
Speaker 3: Oh that is cool. Just when I saw your note

135
00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:41,840
Speaker 3: about this in the outline and you just had the

136
00:07:41,840 --> 00:07:45,160
Speaker 3: word Arsenal there, I was like, how is this connected

137
00:07:45,200 --> 00:07:46,600
Speaker 3: to the football club?

138
00:07:47,680 --> 00:07:49,960
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I mean there's a lot of flat

139
00:07:50,040 --> 00:07:52,440
Speaker 2: flat land out there. I guess you could play football.

140
00:07:52,200 --> 00:07:55,000
Speaker 3: There, I guess. So don't want to give the impression

141
00:07:55,000 --> 00:07:57,640
Speaker 3: that I know anything about soccer slash football. I got

142
00:07:58,120 --> 00:08:00,760
Speaker 3: a good family friend who's like an obsessive Arsenal fan.

143
00:08:01,200 --> 00:08:01,640
Speaker 3: That's why.

144
00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:05,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know they're a favorite of various, fearless various

145
00:08:05,560 --> 00:08:08,920
Speaker 2: football fans. So let's I guess let's get to brass

146
00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:11,800
Speaker 2: tacks here, get down to brass tax What exactly is

147
00:08:11,840 --> 00:08:14,280
Speaker 2: a prairie again, if you're not if you were like

148
00:08:14,320 --> 00:08:16,040
Speaker 2: me and you're not that interested in it's easy to

149
00:08:16,080 --> 00:08:17,760
Speaker 2: just sort of count it, you know, think you know

150
00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:19,880
Speaker 2: what it is without even really thinking about what it is.

151
00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:24,840
Speaker 2: A prairie is a vast, flat, temperate North American grassland,

152
00:08:25,480 --> 00:08:28,200
Speaker 2: and they began to emerge, began to appear in the

153
00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:32,040
Speaker 2: middle of the continent some eight to ten thousand years ago,

154
00:08:32,160 --> 00:08:36,480
Speaker 2: and at their peak covered nearly one third of North America,

155
00:08:36,520 --> 00:08:40,000
Speaker 2: from the Rocky Mountains to east of the Mississippi River

156
00:08:40,160 --> 00:08:43,640
Speaker 2: and from as far north as Saskatchewan and Canada down

157
00:08:43,679 --> 00:08:49,480
Speaker 2: into Texas. Now, prairies are similar to grasslands that you'll

158
00:08:49,559 --> 00:08:53,200
Speaker 2: encounter on other continents, So they're similar to the pompous

159
00:08:53,520 --> 00:08:58,000
Speaker 2: grasslands of South America, the African velds, and the Eurasian steppe.

160
00:08:58,679 --> 00:09:01,840
Speaker 2: Yet they are distinct unto themselves. So you know, you

161
00:09:01,880 --> 00:09:04,480
Speaker 2: can say, I mean, the main comparison I think would be,

162
00:09:04,559 --> 00:09:07,560
Speaker 2: you know, the step and the prairies. Yeah, they're similar,

163
00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:10,760
Speaker 2: but they are different. And while it is very easy

164
00:09:10,800 --> 00:09:13,920
Speaker 2: to think of them as just grass just flat. Like

165
00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:17,960
Speaker 2: I was saying, these are still incredibly complex environments and

166
00:09:18,040 --> 00:09:22,040
Speaker 2: have historically been home to a rich variety of fauna.

167
00:09:23,080 --> 00:09:26,400
Speaker 2: I've even seen the American prairie compared, at least in

168
00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:30,479
Speaker 2: its more pristine form, as a kind of American serengetti,

169
00:09:30,960 --> 00:09:34,400
Speaker 2: as a place that is just rich and diverse from

170
00:09:34,400 --> 00:09:37,200
Speaker 2: top to bottom, from the little things you never see

171
00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:41,800
Speaker 2: because they're living amidst the tall grasses, to the larger creatures,

172
00:09:41,800 --> 00:09:45,040
Speaker 2: the megafauna that are visible because they tower above the

173
00:09:45,080 --> 00:09:49,240
Speaker 2: tall grasses. Now, I think it is still somewhat correct

174
00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:52,280
Speaker 2: to think of a prairie as a place in between.

175
00:09:53,040 --> 00:09:56,360
Speaker 2: These are in sort of broad strokes, still lands that

176
00:09:56,440 --> 00:09:58,720
Speaker 2: are maybe too moist to be desert and yet too

177
00:09:58,880 --> 00:10:01,280
Speaker 2: dry to support far rus. We're going to put a

178
00:10:01,280 --> 00:10:03,400
Speaker 2: little asterisk next to that because we're going to get

179
00:10:03,400 --> 00:10:06,240
Speaker 2: more into the wino trees question here in a bit.

180
00:10:06,760 --> 00:10:10,040
Speaker 2: But yeah, they're unique. They survive both high heat and

181
00:10:10,120 --> 00:10:13,760
Speaker 2: drought during the summer, they survive winter chills. And they

182
00:10:13,760 --> 00:10:18,439
Speaker 2: are primarily three types of prairie. And these divisions are

183
00:10:18,440 --> 00:10:20,079
Speaker 2: based on height and climbate.

184
00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:22,280
Speaker 3: When you say height, you mean grass height.

185
00:10:22,200 --> 00:10:24,760
Speaker 2: Grass heighth, Yes, yes, your own personal height has no

186
00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:28,120
Speaker 2: no influence. It's about how high the grass glove grows

187
00:10:28,240 --> 00:10:30,760
Speaker 2: and then what the climate happens to be. So I'm

188
00:10:30,760 --> 00:10:32,640
Speaker 2: going to just roll through these quickly so we'll have

189
00:10:32,720 --> 00:10:36,200
Speaker 2: these definitions in place. So, first of all, there's the

190
00:10:36,280 --> 00:10:39,920
Speaker 2: tall grass prairie. These are found in humid eastern regions

191
00:10:40,160 --> 00:10:43,920
Speaker 2: that benefit from more rainfall, and they're typified by some

192
00:10:44,040 --> 00:10:48,080
Speaker 2: really tall grasses, like a big blue stem reaching like

193
00:10:48,160 --> 00:10:51,560
Speaker 2: eight feet in heighth and they once covered a staggering

194
00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:54,840
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy million acres of North America. But

195
00:10:54,960 --> 00:10:58,240
Speaker 2: as these are also the most fertile of the prairie lands,

196
00:10:58,400 --> 00:11:01,800
Speaker 2: they also made ideal farmland, and thus within a mere

197
00:11:01,880 --> 00:11:05,880
Speaker 2: generation's time, most of this was transformed into towns, into cities,

198
00:11:06,160 --> 00:11:09,480
Speaker 2: and of course into farms. Less than four percent of

199
00:11:09,520 --> 00:11:10,160
Speaker 2: it remains.

200
00:11:10,480 --> 00:11:13,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know how those percentages are calculated. I

201
00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:16,560
Speaker 3: was looking at estimates that like less than one percent

202
00:11:16,640 --> 00:11:20,880
Speaker 3: of the original tall grass prairie area is actually still

203
00:11:20,880 --> 00:11:23,520
Speaker 3: in its natural state. Almost all of it has been

204
00:11:23,559 --> 00:11:25,440
Speaker 3: converted into cropland.

205
00:11:25,160 --> 00:11:27,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, the numbers are going to beary depending on your sources.

206
00:11:27,280 --> 00:11:30,200
Speaker 2: But like the real take home is most of it

207
00:11:30,240 --> 00:11:33,120
Speaker 2: is gone because it was very desirable land.

208
00:11:33,480 --> 00:11:37,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as we will get into in a minute here,

209
00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:40,440
Speaker 3: it is not just the direct conversion of grassland into

210
00:11:40,440 --> 00:11:44,520
Speaker 3: crop land or the building and development on the land

211
00:11:45,120 --> 00:11:48,240
Speaker 3: that changes it from its natural state. Another thing that

212
00:11:48,280 --> 00:11:53,360
Speaker 3: can happen to prairies is changing of the changing of

213
00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:58,480
Speaker 3: the surrounding landscape, disrupting the upstream conditions that allow a

214
00:11:58,520 --> 00:12:00,640
Speaker 3: prairie to survive as a.

215
00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:05,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, all right. So that is the tall

216
00:12:05,679 --> 00:12:07,599
Speaker 2: grass prairie. But if you have tall you've got to

217
00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:10,080
Speaker 2: have short So we also have the short grass prairie.

218
00:12:10,360 --> 00:12:14,160
Speaker 2: And this is the arid western prairie, expanses near the

219
00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:18,200
Speaker 2: Rocky mountains and mostly falling within its rain shadows, so

220
00:12:18,240 --> 00:12:21,000
Speaker 2: the dry area on the leeward side of the mountains.

221
00:12:21,720 --> 00:12:25,760
Speaker 2: These prairie lands receive roughly twelve inches of rain yearly

222
00:12:25,840 --> 00:12:28,840
Speaker 2: I was reading and are dominated by drought tolerance species.

223
00:12:30,240 --> 00:12:32,960
Speaker 2: And then between these two extremes you have the mixed

224
00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:37,000
Speaker 2: grass prairie. These prairie lands occupy the space between tall

225
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:39,840
Speaker 2: grass and short grass, a transitional zone that's home to

226
00:12:39,880 --> 00:12:43,160
Speaker 2: a lot of mid height grass and short grass. This

227
00:12:43,320 --> 00:12:46,920
Speaker 2: is also the prairie zone that survives the most, so

228
00:12:46,960 --> 00:12:50,120
Speaker 2: it's the most intact compared to what it was historically,

229
00:12:50,400 --> 00:12:53,960
Speaker 2: but still generally no more than thirty percent of it remains,

230
00:12:53,960 --> 00:12:57,840
Speaker 2: so it's still been greatly reduced and greatly impacted. It's

231
00:12:57,920 --> 00:13:08,920
Speaker 2: just proven a little more resilient to change.

232
00:13:10,480 --> 00:13:14,880
Speaker 3: So as you describe draw prairies are temperate grasslands, and

233
00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:17,960
Speaker 3: you can think also of you know, there are tropical

234
00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:21,560
Speaker 3: grasslands as well. You know, those have slightly different conditions.

235
00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:26,000
Speaker 3: You can think about the tropical grasslands are often called savannahs,

236
00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:31,240
Speaker 3: and they might have slightly different yearly weather rainfall conditions.

237
00:13:31,280 --> 00:13:34,760
Speaker 3: Like tropical grasslands tend to be warmer year round and

238
00:13:34,840 --> 00:13:37,439
Speaker 3: tend to have more seasonal rainfall patterns, like a distinct

239
00:13:37,559 --> 00:13:42,359
Speaker 3: wet summer, dry winter pattern. But the prairies are temperate grasslands,

240
00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:45,720
Speaker 3: and they're characterized, as we said, by usually flat or

241
00:13:45,840 --> 00:13:51,319
Speaker 3: rolling landscapes, so flat expanses or relatively low hills, dominated

242
00:13:51,640 --> 00:13:56,720
Speaker 3: not by trees but by grasses and herbaceous flowering plants

243
00:13:56,760 --> 00:14:02,240
Speaker 3: called forbes. So one of the defining features of prairie

244
00:14:02,280 --> 00:14:06,520
Speaker 3: ecology is what kind of plants are there. The land

245
00:14:06,600 --> 00:14:09,520
Speaker 3: is going to be covered by grasses and forbes rather

246
00:14:09,679 --> 00:14:13,480
Speaker 3: than woody stemmed plants like trees and shrubs. So the

247
00:14:13,559 --> 00:14:18,199
Speaker 3: question I had is what keeps the trees out? Why

248
00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:21,120
Speaker 3: does a prairie not just become covered in trees.

249
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:24,440
Speaker 2: This is a great question because again, it kind of

250
00:14:24,440 --> 00:14:26,320
Speaker 2: comes to you just you know what a prairie is,

251
00:14:26,360 --> 00:14:28,920
Speaker 2: and it's easy to just not ask this basic question

252
00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:30,840
Speaker 2: and be like, oh, it's the prairie, like, no trees allowed,

253
00:14:30,880 --> 00:14:32,400
Speaker 2: that's the rule. Trees know it.

254
00:14:33,320 --> 00:14:35,920
Speaker 3: So this is one of those questions. I initially I

255
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:38,520
Speaker 3: just kind of googled this thinking I would find a

256
00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:41,920
Speaker 3: you know something with a clear, clearly established answer like

257
00:14:42,120 --> 00:14:45,600
Speaker 3: amount of rainfall is the reason, and it turned out

258
00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:49,760
Speaker 3: to be more complicated than that. The climate and rainfall

259
00:14:49,800 --> 00:14:52,960
Speaker 3: component does appear to be one part of the answer.

260
00:14:53,640 --> 00:14:58,200
Speaker 3: Prairie regions tend to be relatively dry compared to forested regions,

261
00:14:58,280 --> 00:15:01,080
Speaker 3: or at least go through a dry season, and this

262
00:15:01,240 --> 00:15:04,600
Speaker 3: can be harder on woody plants like trees and shrubs,

263
00:15:04,680 --> 00:15:09,680
Speaker 3: especially in their seedling and sapling stage, which they require

264
00:15:09,760 --> 00:15:15,280
Speaker 3: more water to sustain their larger above ground masses grasses

265
00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:19,400
Speaker 3: and forbes. I'm sorry, I'm tripped up. Saying masses and grasses.

266
00:15:20,040 --> 00:15:23,880
Speaker 3: Grasses and forbes, on the other hand, are better adapted

267
00:15:23,920 --> 00:15:26,800
Speaker 3: to survive drought, in part because so much of their

268
00:15:26,840 --> 00:15:29,640
Speaker 3: mass in some cases up to around eighty percent of

269
00:15:29,680 --> 00:15:33,680
Speaker 3: their mass is below ground root structure. So grasses and

270
00:15:33,720 --> 00:15:38,640
Speaker 3: forbes can typically survive their above ground portions drying out

271
00:15:38,720 --> 00:15:40,880
Speaker 3: or even suffering worse fates, which we'll get to in

272
00:15:40,920 --> 00:15:44,560
Speaker 3: a minute, and they can come back from this. But

273
00:15:44,680 --> 00:15:48,360
Speaker 3: climate and rainfall are not the full picture. I was

274
00:15:48,400 --> 00:15:51,600
Speaker 3: actually reading about this in a post on the Prairie

275
00:15:51,720 --> 00:15:56,280
Speaker 3: Ecologist blog by an ecologist named Chris Helzer who is

276
00:15:56,360 --> 00:15:59,800
Speaker 3: director of Science and Stewardship in Nebraska for the Nature

277
00:15:59,800 --> 00:16:03,760
Speaker 3: Can Servancy, And this post is from twenty ten. It's

278
00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:06,160
Speaker 3: called why is it so hard to keep trees out

279
00:16:06,200 --> 00:16:09,280
Speaker 3: of prairies? Question mark? And why is it getting harder?

280
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:13,680
Speaker 3: Helser begins by mentioning a few factors. So you've got

281
00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:16,760
Speaker 3: frequent droughts. This is the climate consideration we were just

282
00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:22,160
Speaker 3: talking about. You've got the presence of large animals, large

283
00:16:22,520 --> 00:16:27,120
Speaker 3: browsers and mixed feeders like elk and pronghorn. These animals

284
00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:30,880
Speaker 3: can eat leafy tree and shrub saplings and limit their

285
00:16:30,920 --> 00:16:33,680
Speaker 3: growth by other mechanisms as well, not just eating, like

286
00:16:34,160 --> 00:16:38,480
Speaker 3: trampling can also play a role. But Helser says that

287
00:16:38,680 --> 00:16:43,520
Speaker 3: the most common and dominant explanation for why the American

288
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:47,800
Speaker 3: prairie has so few trees, and especially why it historically

289
00:16:47,880 --> 00:16:53,800
Speaker 3: had so few trees, was fires, lots of fires, and

290
00:16:54,040 --> 00:16:56,360
Speaker 3: from what I've been reading, this is still a major

291
00:16:56,520 --> 00:17:00,560
Speaker 3: part of the explanation. Lots of sources say that without

292
00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:06,240
Speaker 3: frequent prairie fires, trees actually would colonize much of the prairie,

293
00:17:06,359 --> 00:17:11,160
Speaker 3: especially the eastern part of the prairie. So on prairie fires,

294
00:17:12,080 --> 00:17:16,640
Speaker 3: when I imagine a wildfire, I naturally think immediately of

295
00:17:16,880 --> 00:17:19,879
Speaker 3: a forest fire. Maybe this just is another way that

296
00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:24,399
Speaker 3: my tree bias is showing up. But somebody says wildfire,

297
00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:27,000
Speaker 3: and I picture somewhere out in the mountains in the west,

298
00:17:27,680 --> 00:17:32,160
Speaker 3: you know, dry pine trees crackling and burning up. But actually,

299
00:17:32,560 --> 00:17:37,760
Speaker 3: prairie ecosystems experience much more frequent fires than most temperate

300
00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:42,600
Speaker 3: forest ecosystems. So if you are picking a wildfire at random,

301
00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:45,240
Speaker 3: it is more likely that it's a prairie fire than

302
00:17:45,320 --> 00:17:49,600
Speaker 3: that it's a forest fire. Fires happen more often on

303
00:17:49,680 --> 00:17:52,480
Speaker 3: the prairie than in the forest, and they spread more

304
00:17:52,560 --> 00:17:56,200
Speaker 3: quickly when they do happen. Prairie grasses tend to make

305
00:17:56,359 --> 00:17:59,800
Speaker 3: excellent fuel beds for a spreading fire, much more so

306
00:17:59,840 --> 00:18:03,680
Speaker 3: than trees. For a number of reasons. Trees are harder

307
00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:06,600
Speaker 3: to burn. They're harder, it's harder for them to catch fire.

308
00:18:06,640 --> 00:18:09,439
Speaker 3: They For one thing, they retain a lot more water

309
00:18:09,640 --> 00:18:13,240
Speaker 3: than grasses, even under dry conditions. You know, in that

310
00:18:13,400 --> 00:18:17,160
Speaker 3: water it has to be heated up before the tree

311
00:18:17,160 --> 00:18:20,600
Speaker 3: can actually catch fire, and that takes a lot of energy.

312
00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:24,360
Speaker 3: So trees are harder fuel to ignite grasses and forbes

313
00:18:24,440 --> 00:18:28,280
Speaker 3: because they're thinner, dry out more completely, and they have

314
00:18:28,359 --> 00:18:31,680
Speaker 3: a greater surface area volume ratio, so more of them

315
00:18:31,920 --> 00:18:36,600
Speaker 3: is surface area that's exposed to oxygen. Finer fuels, as

316
00:18:36,640 --> 00:18:38,879
Speaker 3: you know from if you've ever tried to build a bonfire,

317
00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,800
Speaker 3: finer fuels are easier to ignite. You know, the smaller,

318
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:47,119
Speaker 3: thinner twigs and stems catch fire more easily. And also

319
00:18:47,560 --> 00:18:51,439
Speaker 3: trees are spaced further apart. Grasses are very crowded together,

320
00:18:51,480 --> 00:18:54,200
Speaker 3: making a continuous bed of fuel so that the fire

321
00:18:54,240 --> 00:18:58,119
Speaker 3: can spread easily. So a dry prairie is an ideal

322
00:18:58,160 --> 00:19:02,120
Speaker 3: place for a fire to spread. Much like forest fires,

323
00:19:02,280 --> 00:19:05,560
Speaker 3: these grass fires can be ignited by lightning or they

324
00:19:05,640 --> 00:19:08,440
Speaker 3: can be started by humans, and both types of fire

325
00:19:08,560 --> 00:19:12,280
Speaker 3: have historically been important in shaping the American prairie. There

326
00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:17,040
Speaker 3: was historically a hunting practice used by multiple Native American

327
00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:21,280
Speaker 3: planes tribes and somewhat also by European settlers afterwards, that

328
00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:26,360
Speaker 3: used fire on the prairie as a hunting method. Basically,

329
00:19:26,400 --> 00:19:29,159
Speaker 3: by creating sort of a ring of fire in the

330
00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:31,880
Speaker 3: dry grasses around a herd of prey animals, you could

331
00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:35,240
Speaker 3: funnel them toward a kill site, toward a pre selected

332
00:19:35,280 --> 00:19:38,480
Speaker 3: exit point that could be a kill site where the

333
00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:41,320
Speaker 3: animals would be killed actively, or maybe funneling them toward

334
00:19:41,400 --> 00:19:45,879
Speaker 3: like a precipice like a cliff. And so yeah, this

335
00:19:46,080 --> 00:19:48,080
Speaker 3: was a good method for hunting, and it was used

336
00:19:48,080 --> 00:19:50,760
Speaker 3: for a long time as one reason fires would be

337
00:19:50,760 --> 00:19:54,760
Speaker 3: started on the prairie by humans. So if you see

338
00:19:54,800 --> 00:19:58,240
Speaker 3: a prairie fire just racing over the face of a

339
00:19:58,280 --> 00:20:02,280
Speaker 3: grassland and leaving this, it doesn't look nice in its wake.

340
00:20:02,359 --> 00:20:05,280
Speaker 3: You know, it leaves this smoking black you know, plateau

341
00:20:05,400 --> 00:20:09,520
Speaker 3: of mordor behind. It's very natural to see this as

342
00:20:09,520 --> 00:20:16,040
Speaker 3: a purely destructive force, but we have learned that historically

343
00:20:16,400 --> 00:20:22,960
Speaker 3: these fires actually counterintuitively protect prairie ecosystems from being colonized

344
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:27,080
Speaker 3: by woody stemmed plants like trees and shrubs. Grasses and

345
00:20:27,160 --> 00:20:33,000
Speaker 3: forbes are actually much better equipped to survive grassland fires

346
00:20:33,080 --> 00:20:37,000
Speaker 3: because again, so much of their mass is below the ground.

347
00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:40,520
Speaker 3: If the top side portion dries out in a drought

348
00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:43,880
Speaker 3: or burns up in a fire, the plant can regenerate

349
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:48,280
Speaker 3: from its robust root and below ground structure. Woody plants

350
00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:51,760
Speaker 3: tend to invest more in their above ground structures, and

351
00:20:51,840 --> 00:20:55,000
Speaker 3: it's harder for a woody plant, a young woody plant

352
00:20:55,040 --> 00:20:58,280
Speaker 3: like a woody plant sapling or seedling, to recover and

353
00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:01,679
Speaker 3: survive if that above ground unstructure is burned, especially if

354
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:06,520
Speaker 3: it's burned over and over, which can happen in prairie ecosystems.

355
00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:11,159
Speaker 3: Once a tree becomes mature, it is more resistant to fire,

356
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:14,200
Speaker 3: But repeated fires on a plane will tend to kill

357
00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:18,160
Speaker 3: tree saplings and seedlings that have taken root, while allowing

358
00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:21,000
Speaker 3: the grasses and forbes to bounce back. And this is

359
00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:23,520
Speaker 3: a key thing to understand. It's not so much that

360
00:21:24,760 --> 00:21:30,600
Speaker 3: fire limits trees in grasslands by killing adult trees, It's

361
00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:34,760
Speaker 3: that it limits recruitment. It limits the ability of young

362
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:39,200
Speaker 3: trees that are sprouting to mature and survive and makes them,

363
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:41,320
Speaker 3: you know, they tend to be out competed by the

364
00:21:41,359 --> 00:21:45,560
Speaker 3: grasses around them. But anyway, as a result of all this,

365
00:21:45,920 --> 00:21:51,000
Speaker 3: now that prairie ecosystems have been so modified by human development,

366
00:21:51,440 --> 00:21:55,239
Speaker 3: and this includes the conversion of grasslands into croplands, It

367
00:21:55,280 --> 00:21:59,720
Speaker 3: includes artificial barriers like roads, and you know, the planting

368
00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 3: of native trees things like that. Because of all these changes,

369
00:22:04,040 --> 00:22:08,159
Speaker 3: fires cannot spread naturally as they once would have on

370
00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 3: much of the American prairie, and as a result, many

371
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:16,240
Speaker 3: prairies are now subjected to intentional prescribed burns to protect

372
00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:19,760
Speaker 3: them as an ecosystem. We actually have to intentionally set

373
00:22:19,800 --> 00:22:23,200
Speaker 3: fire to them in order to help these ecosystems survive.

374
00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:27,119
Speaker 3: But coming back to so all that was just on

375
00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:29,399
Speaker 3: prairie fires, But I want to come back now to

376
00:22:29,800 --> 00:22:33,000
Speaker 3: that post on the blog post by Chris Helser. He

377
00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:37,080
Speaker 3: comes to question the idea that fire is the main

378
00:22:37,520 --> 00:22:41,560
Speaker 3: limiting factor on tree growth, and he phrases it like

379
00:22:41,600 --> 00:22:46,680
Speaker 3: this quote. However, if that explanation is true, Why are

380
00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:51,480
Speaker 3: there so many prairies managed with frequent fire being invaded

381
00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:54,840
Speaker 3: by native and non native trees alike, for which the

382
00:22:54,960 --> 00:23:00,880
Speaker 3: only feasible control method seems to be herbicide treatment posits

383
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:04,880
Speaker 3: several ideas several things that could be partial explanations here.

384
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:07,880
Speaker 3: One is that the relevant parts of the North American

385
00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 3: interior seem to be in a relatively wet climatic cycle

386
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:16,919
Speaker 3: that is favorable to the recruitment of trees. Remember we

387
00:23:17,119 --> 00:23:21,600
Speaker 3: talked about climate and amount of rainfall or moisture as

388
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:25,800
Speaker 3: a limiting factor on the spread of trees into prairie areas. Historically,

389
00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:28,399
Speaker 3: the prairies have been drier than they are today, or

390
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 3: at least much of them. Somewhat varies by region, but

391
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:35,479
Speaker 3: they are somewhat, at least in parts, getting wetter, and

392
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:40,159
Speaker 3: that may be helping trees colonize them more easily. Another

393
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:43,800
Speaker 3: thing Helser writes is quote second, we're still missing those

394
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:47,119
Speaker 3: elk and pronghorn, although you'd think white tail deer and

395
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 3: cottontails would make up for that. So I don't know,

396
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:52,880
Speaker 3: kind of a shrug on this one. Not sure how

397
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:57,080
Speaker 3: the herbivory is playing a role. He mentions that some

398
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 3: non native tree species like the Siberian elm and the

399
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 3: autumn olive may not be subject to the natural control

400
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:09,159
Speaker 3: pressures that help keep native North American trees out of

401
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 3: the prairie. And then he offers a final hypothesis which

402
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:15,240
Speaker 3: he seems to kind of favor, and this is that

403
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 3: it could be that in the American tall grass and

404
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:24,439
Speaker 3: mixed grass prairies there are more trees in the surrounding

405
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:26,920
Speaker 3: landscape than there used to be. And this is from

406
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:31,000
Speaker 3: multiple things. It's from, of course, intentional human planting of trees,

407
00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:35,560
Speaker 3: but also from human disruption of the natural checks on

408
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:39,920
Speaker 3: tree colonization, so like limiting the spread of prairie fires

409
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 3: and eliminating browsing animals. So because we've already got more

410
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 3: trees established in the area, Hellser wonders if the presence

411
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 3: of all those trees just produces so much seed rain

412
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 3: that quote it overrides any natural controls prairies have for

413
00:24:57,119 --> 00:25:00,960
Speaker 3: out competing them. So under this hypo athesis, even if

414
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,399
Speaker 3: the odds are still against woody plants in these environments,

415
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 3: now the woody plants are rolling the dice so often

416
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:08,960
Speaker 3: that they're overcoming the odds.

417
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:13,360
Speaker 2: That's a great point. You know, this is another experience

418
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 2: I had when I was out there in the Denver

419
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 2: area and in the grasslands, is that you would have

420
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 2: you would be exploring an area that you know, part

421
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:25,919
Speaker 2: of you know, State State Park for example, and there

422
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 2: would be some trees, and people like me from mostly

423
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:32,880
Speaker 2: treed areas, you don't think twice about it, but then

424
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 2: you read a sign and the sign is explaining where

425
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:37,640
Speaker 2: these trees came from, like they were they were planted

426
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:39,880
Speaker 2: here by some farm that used to you know that

427
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 2: that's set up here, you know, you know, maybe a

428
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 2: century ago, that sort of thing, and that's why they

429
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 2: started being trees in this particular spot. Yeah. So I

430
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:52,399
Speaker 2: think this point about, uh, the introduction of these trees

431
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:56,399
Speaker 2: and allowing trees in the area to just establish that foothold,

432
00:25:56,800 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 2: and then you know, they're just doing better on the

433
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:00,680
Speaker 2: dice roll as you say.

434
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,199
Speaker 3: Yeah, and once the trees are mature again, they are

435
00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:06,280
Speaker 3: more resistant to fires. At that point, you know, the

436
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 3: fire mainly works to protect the prairie by suppressing the

437
00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:12,879
Speaker 3: growth and recruitment of new young trees. Yeah.

438
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:15,480
Speaker 2: And of course the humans that planted them, they're planning

439
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:17,160
Speaker 2: them for a different reasons. They wanted to wind break,

440
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:21,359
Speaker 2: or they just wanted the familiarity of having trees around,

441
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, but it ends up having this impact.

442
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:27,640
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, I thought this blog post was interesting

443
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:30,640
Speaker 3: because it highlights something that I gathered from reading other

444
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 3: sources about this. There is not a simple answer for

445
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 3: why trees were historically kept out of the North American Prairie,

446
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 3: especially the wetter More eastern half. It seems to come

447
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:47,919
Speaker 3: down to a complicated interplay of different forces, including, but

448
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 3: possibly not limited to, climate and levels of rainfall, herbivy,

449
00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 3: and fire patterns, all of which have now been somewhat

450
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:01,880
Speaker 3: disrupted from the historical norm. So that's an important thing

451
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 3: to think about when we're talking about the prairie as

452
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 3: an endangered type of ecosystem or landscape. It is not

453
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:13,200
Speaker 3: just the direct conversion of grassland into farmland that makes

454
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 3: the prairie endangered. It's also the human alteration of circumstances

455
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:22,880
Speaker 3: which may have been upstream of the prairie's natural plant balance.

456
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:28,480
Speaker 3: Changing those circumstances related to herbivory, fire, and climate sort

457
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 3: of opens the door to possibilities of forests unknown.

458
00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:37,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is fascinating. I want to come back to

459
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 2: something because I know you have some notes on this.

460
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,719
Speaker 2: That original line from the poem by William Cullen Bryant

461
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 2: that I read at the top of the episode about

462
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 2: the prairies for which the speech of England has no name.

463
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 2: I know you have a note about this. Oh, I

464
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:55,800
Speaker 2: wanted to touch on this.

465
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:58,280
Speaker 3: Well, it's just the word prairie. I was wondering where

466
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 3: that comes from. It comes from the French, so it

467
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 3: comes from a French term originally meaning meadow basically, you know,

468
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 3: so like a grassy area. That doesn't you know, meadow

469
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 3: and prairie are not exactly the same thing. I think

470
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:15,120
Speaker 3: they both refer to grassy areas. But you might think

471
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 3: of a small meadow in a clearing in a forest,

472
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 3: you know, a meadow place of grasses or flowers, whereas

473
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 3: with a prairie we're thinking of a much vaster ecoregion.

474
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 3: And as you noted, there are other regional terms around

475
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:32,560
Speaker 3: the world that kind of mean the same thing as prairie.

476
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:34,960
Speaker 3: I mean, of course, you know, on different continents there

477
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 3: are differences between these types of regions, but there are

478
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 3: similar landscapes in Europe and Asia most often called like

479
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 3: the steppe, and you know the pampa in South America.

480
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 3: So the prairie is not totally unique, but there are

481
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 3: unique things about each continental prairie type region.

482
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I love this idea. That's like the

483
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:56,720
Speaker 2: English where like we have no word for this. What

484
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 2: would the French call it? Let's start at the French

485
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 2: on this one. They would never all right, moving on here,

486
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:16,239
Speaker 2: I wanna, I wanna, I'm want to zoom in on

487
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:21,400
Speaker 2: a topic here related to the historic American prairie that

488
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 2: is fascinating because it touches on what prairies used to be,

489
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 2: especially before the arrival of Europeans, and also has something

490
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:32,400
Speaker 2: to say about where they are now and how the

491
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 2: related organisms fit into our current world and our attitudes

492
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 2: towards them. So the prairies are, to be clear, still

493
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 2: a home to a diverse, thriving population of flora and fauna.

494
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:48,200
Speaker 2: I mean the uh, you know, again, greatly reduced, but

495
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 2: when you really begin to look, you see that there's

496
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 2: a great deal of diversity here. But during the height

497
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 2: of the prairie, again, before the arrival of Europeans, the

498
00:29:57,040 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 2: prairies were home to even more examples of various organisms,

499
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 2: including megafauna and the apex predators that depended on them.

500
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 2: So this would have included on the megafauna front elk, mule, deer, pronghorn,

501
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 2: but especially the American bison being a prime example here,

502
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 2: a towering example of North American megafauna that once roamed

503
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 2: the continent in numbers estimated to be between like thirty

504
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,920
Speaker 2: and sixty million before the coming of Europeans and their

505
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 2: subsequent mass slaughter, particularly in the eighteen seventies. This was

506
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 2: when we had a government sanctioned mass elimination of bison

507
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 2: that was intended to undermine and control planes Native American tribes.

508
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:47,040
Speaker 2: We may come back to talk about the bison more

509
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 2: specifically because they are fascinating creatures and their story is

510
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 2: one of tragedy and wonder. But the prairie again used

511
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:59,960
Speaker 2: to be home to other organisms, and one in particular

512
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 2: that we've come to associate more with mountainous regions in

513
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 2: today's world, and that is the grizzly bear.

514
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 3: That is interesting. I do not associate the grizzly bear

515
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:15,280
Speaker 3: at all with prairie landscapes. I think of them as

516
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 3: dwelling in the forests and the mountains, and I guess

517
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 3: maybe in the I don't know, in the like the

518
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 3: valleys of Alaska, that kind of thing.

519
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I had the same thing. Like I set out,

520
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 2: I did not expect to be researching and writing and

521
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 2: podcasting about grizzly bears because I kind of have an

522
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 2: aversion to grizzly bears. Not to say they are not

523
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 2: fascinating organisms, but I find them, like deeply viscerally to

524
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 2: be disturbing to me. I would say I am somewhat

525
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 2: in fear of them. I am generally not in areas

526
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 2: where they are, so's it's, you know, a distant fear.

527
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 2: But I can look at an image of a grizzly

528
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 2: bear or I can see one in a zoo and

529
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 2: like it's going to affect me on a deep level

530
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 2: where I'm like, I don't like what I'm looking at.

531
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 2: This is this is this is this is this is

532
00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 2: impacting me in a very primal way, and it is

533
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 2: electing fear.

534
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, there's a thing I always want to

535
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:14,040
Speaker 3: balance on our show. It's kind of difficult to do,

536
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 3: which is being careful never to demonize animals and like

537
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 3: you know, talk about like you know, sharks or bears

538
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 3: or anything is just bloodthirsty killers and monsters that are

539
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 3: out to destroy you. But also we should acknowledge like

540
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 3: that they can mess you up. I remember being disturbed

541
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 3: reading that actually quite funny chapter in Mary Roach's book

542
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 3: Fuzz where she takes the class on how to analyze

543
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 3: sort of animal crime scenes and determine what sort of

544
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 3: predator or animal likely attacked a person based on the

545
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 3: wounds and reading about how you know, ooh, with grizzly bears,

546
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 3: very often you see wounds to the face. Uh yeah,

547
00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 3: I mean I think it depends on like the circumstances

548
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 3: of the attack, like is it an attempt at predation

549
00:33:02,120 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 3: or is it more like a territorial defense or something.

550
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 3: But yeah, anyway, grizzly bears are incredibly powerful, amazing, awe

551
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 3: inspiring creatures and you don't want to fight one, right right.

552
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 2: And to be clear, we're not going to really talk

553
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 2: about about bears killing people so much in this episode.

554
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 2: We're probably going to talk more about the reverse of that.

555
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, on a very basic level, when

556
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 2: you have a large organism like this, it clearly eats

557
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 2: meat and is capable of taking a human down. I

558
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 2: think it's only natural to have a certain reaction to them.

559
00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 2: And you know, our survival reaction to something like this

560
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 2: is going to air on the side of assuming it

561
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 2: might hurt us. Yeah, that's just the way we're wired.

562
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a fear bias, just like I have

563
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,480
Speaker 3: a tree bias. Actually, and you know what, I would

564
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 3: say that the context of imagining a grizzly bear within

565
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 3: the planes, within a region where there aren't really trees around,

566
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 3: anything to hide behind, Yeah, that I find especially frightening.

567
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:11,360
Speaker 3: There's something different there if you're an in a landscape

568
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 3: with a grizzly bear and it's not a forest, there's

569
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 3: not anything to hide behind or big tall things. It's

570
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 3: just it's just flat land and you and this animal.

571
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a great point, and that is also

572
00:34:23,120 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 2: going to be a key point to understanding especially historic

573
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 2: encounters between European descendants and the grizzly bears of the Prairies.

574
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:34,959
Speaker 2: I should also point out that, you know, we often

575
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,800
Speaker 2: also also associate black bears with mountainous regions these days,

576
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 2: whereas the historic range of the black bear was a

577
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 2: bit more diverse as well, including a wide range of

578
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 2: forest lands. But also swamps. You know, thinking particularly about

579
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 2: the black bears that once were found throughout the New

580
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 2: Orleans area, or rather the Louisiana area, but also into

581
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 2: the area that is now in New Orleans, and you know,

582
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,319
Speaker 2: for the most part they're not there anymore. But with

583
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:03,719
Speaker 2: the grizzly, I do think, yeah, the difference is more

584
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 2: pronounced here because again, this would have been an apex

585
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,879
Speaker 2: predator of the Great North American Prairie, and it would

586
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:12,719
Speaker 2: have and it would have depended upon the bison to

587
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 2: a large extent. So we're gonna get I want to

588
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 2: give the warning here that we are going to come

589
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 2: back and sort of and look at everything with like

590
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:27,879
Speaker 2: a modern biology and conservation viewpoint. But I actually want

591
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 2: to begin here by looking at some of the journals

592
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 2: from Lewis and Clark when they explored North America's interior

593
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 2: from eighteen oh four through eighteen oh six. This was

594
00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 2: the first US military expedition to explore the newly acquired

595
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 2: Louisiana territory. And you can find all these journals online.

596
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:50,200
Speaker 2: There are they're easy to access via the University of

597
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:53,799
Speaker 2: Nebraska Lincoln at Lewis and Clark Journals dot UNL dot

598
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 2: edu and you can go in there. You can search

599
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,920
Speaker 2: by day, you can search by like organism name and

600
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 2: so forth, and really they drill into their various encounters

601
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 2: and experiences, especially if you really want a lot of

602
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:10,879
Speaker 2: discussion of bear testicles or just the testicles of any

603
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 2: organisms they were running into. They're just giving like a

604
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 2: you know, a fairly clinical description of everything. But there

605
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 2: is also some bias in there, especially when they start

606
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 2: describing the monstrous white bears the grizzly bears, but they

607
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 2: do indeed refer to them as the white bear.

608
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 3: I would also say, beyond their historical interests, these journals

609
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 3: are worth checking out just if you want to see

610
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:37,799
Speaker 3: some really hilarious spelling choices. I can't stop thinking about

611
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 3: the way that Lewis decides to spell the word animal.

612
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 3: It's so good for me.

613
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:45,760
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I started putting some of this into our notes,

614
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 2: at first I was correcting the archaic spellings and changing

615
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 2: them over to our spellings. But after a while I

616
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 2: was like, no, no, these are great. I should leave

617
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 2: them as his as long as they don't interfere with

618
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 2: my ability to read them aloud for the podcast.

619
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 3: With respect to this, enamel I love it.

620
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:09,200
Speaker 2: So, yeah, they encountered the white bear. They encountered grizzly

621
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 2: bears in what is now Montana and Nebraska on prairie lands,

622
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:16,920
Speaker 2: and again, like you were saying, a terrifying open ground

623
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 2: on which to potentially have an encounter with such an

624
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 2: enormous and potentially dangerous organism to couch this, you know, again,

625
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 2: this was you know, they did not know what we

626
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:31,800
Speaker 2: know now about bears, and early on in their travels

627
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 2: they'd heard indigenous tales of the white bear in its ferocity,

628
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 2: tales which considered the bear with you know, at the

629
00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 2: very least respect. So not everyone necessarily hunted them, and

630
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:45,279
Speaker 2: if they did hunt them at all, there was like

631
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:47,800
Speaker 2: an understanding you had to have like a certain number

632
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 2: of men to go out and hunt them, and then

633
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 2: there was also no small amount of fear bound up

634
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:56,840
Speaker 2: in that respect. But for their own part, they mostly

635
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 2: knew the far milder black bears of the east, and

636
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:04,600
Speaker 2: they didn't expect much out of the white bear. It's

637
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 2: also been pointed out that they were people of the trees,

638
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 2: and so even when they were thinking about having encounters

639
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 2: with bears, they were thinking about a landscape broken up

640
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:18,440
Speaker 2: by trees, and trees that could potentially climb. You know,

641
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 2: there's a big caveat there about how helpful climbing a

642
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:24,920
Speaker 2: tree can or would be with certain bear species. But

643
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:27,239
Speaker 2: still it was very much in their mind. And then

644
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 2: suddenly they're in an area where there are no trees,

645
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 2: there's just these grasses and rolling hills, and then a

646
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 2: creature of enormous size.

647
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 3: It starts to make me wonder, actually, how much it

648
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:41,760
Speaker 3: could potentially shape your psychology and your views of the world.

649
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 3: To just the difference between all of their conditions being

650
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:48,839
Speaker 3: equal growing up in a place that has trees all

651
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 3: around versus growing up in a place that's open, open

652
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 3: landscape all around. It seems like it would have powerful

653
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 3: shaping power.

654
00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, we talked a little about this

655
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:00,920
Speaker 2: in the past, I think when we're discussing some writings

656
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 2: about indigenous peoples of the Far North. I forget the

657
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 2: exact reference, but it was like something about being able

658
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 2: to see into tomorrow. Because the distances that you could

659
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 2: see were so vast, you could see a place that

660
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 2: you were traveling to in the future, and so in

661
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:19,840
Speaker 2: a way it was like seeing into the future in

662
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 2: a way that just is not going to clock with

663
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 2: someone who's used to being surrounded by trees where you know,

664
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:27,439
Speaker 2: I can't even see into this afternoon, that sort of thing.

665
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 3: I mean, on one hand, that seems plausible. On the

666
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 3: other hand, I would be careful because that seems like

667
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 3: exactly the kind of thing that could give way to,

668
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,719
Speaker 3: you know, pseudoscientific generalizations about people, which you know you

669
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,600
Speaker 3: got to be careful about. Yeah, but it does seem

670
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:44,960
Speaker 3: like it could be a significant factor in shaping how

671
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 3: you grow up and how you see the.

672
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well let's get into some of

673
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 2: these accounts from the the journals of Lewis and Clark,

674
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 2: beginning with April twenty ninth, eighteen oh five. So this

675
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 2: is this is what is generally depicted as their first

676
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 2: encounter the white bear with the grizzly bear. And you

677
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:05,760
Speaker 2: see a mixture here of both appreciation for the size

678
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:08,759
Speaker 2: of the creature, but also this kind of idea that like,

679
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 2: I don't think we're going to have much of a

680
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 2: problem with grizzly bears. So, just reading a bit here

681
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 2: from it, it was a male not fully grown. We

682
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:19,919
Speaker 2: estimated his weight at three hundred pounds. These are all

683
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 2: the particulars in which this animal appeared to me to

684
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 2: differ from the black bear. It is a much more

685
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:28,320
Speaker 2: furious and formidable animal, and will frequently pursue the hunter

686
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:31,759
Speaker 2: when wounded. It is astonishing to see the wounds they

687
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 2: will bear before they can be put to death. The

688
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:37,479
Speaker 2: Indians may well fear this animal, equipped as they generally are,

689
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:41,400
Speaker 2: with their bows and arrows or indifferent fuses, but in

690
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 2: the hands of skillful riflemen, there are by no means

691
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 2: as they are, by no means as formidable or dangerous

692
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:49,440
Speaker 2: as they have been represented.

693
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 3: Wow, that sounds like some classic arrogance.

694
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 2: That's just like, yeah, they're like, we're not gonna have

695
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 2: a problem with these. You know, we're well armed, we

696
00:40:57,040 --> 00:40:59,760
Speaker 2: have good riflemen, nothing to worry about. That was April

697
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:03,720
Speaker 2: twenty ninth, and then on May fifth, this encounter occurs.

698
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:06,760
Speaker 2: I'm going to read another just a bit from the journal.

699
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 2: Captain Clark and Drewer killed the largest brown bear this

700
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 2: evening which we have yet seen. It was a most

701
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:18,560
Speaker 2: tremendous looking animal and extremely hard to kill, notwithstanding he

702
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 2: had five balls through his lungs and five others in

703
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 2: various parts. He swam more than half the distance across

704
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:28,120
Speaker 2: the river to a sandbar, and it was at least

705
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,360
Speaker 2: twenty minutes before he died. He did not attempt to attack,

706
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 2: but fled and made the most tremendous roaring from the

707
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 2: moment he was shot. We had no means of weighing

708
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:40,960
Speaker 2: this monster. Captain Clark thought he would weigh five hundred pounds.

709
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 2: For my own part, I think the estimate too small

710
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 2: by one hundred pounds. He measured eight feet seven and

711
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 2: a half inches from the nose to the extremity of

712
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,120
Speaker 2: the hind feet, five feet ten and a half inches

713
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 2: around the breast around and then there's some other figures here,

714
00:41:56,560 --> 00:41:59,360
Speaker 2: and then he says his talons were five in number

715
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:02,720
Speaker 2: on each and we're four and three eighth inches in length.

716
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 3: I just had to check this because I thought that

717
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 3: was the case. But this monster they're talking about is

718
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 3: not even at the upper end of the range of

719
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 3: like normal adult grizzly size. I think I just googled,

720
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 3: But like adult male grizzlies can get up to like

721
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:19,240
Speaker 3: seven hundred pounds, and even the you know, bigger ones

722
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:21,440
Speaker 3: like in Alaska, like the Kodiak Bears, of course, are

723
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 3: can be even bigger. But yeah, so they're like marveling

724
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 3: at this that's not even as big as they can get.

725
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 2: Right, right, And the balls that they're talking about these

726
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 2: are of course musket balls. And yeah, it's a frequent

727
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:37,799
Speaker 2: detail of this is like how many shots it takes

728
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 2: to bring down one of these animals. So this encounter occurred,

729
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:45,279
Speaker 2: and then the next day Lewis reflects on it more.

730
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 2: He says, solid brown bear swim the river above us.

731
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:51,719
Speaker 2: He disappeared before we can get in reach of him.

732
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,720
Speaker 2: I find that the curiosity of our party is pretty

733
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 2: well satisfied with respect to this animal. The formidable appearance

734
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:01,160
Speaker 2: of the male bear killed on the added to the

735
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 2: difficulty with which they die when even shot through the

736
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 2: vital parts, has staggered the resolution several that have staggered

737
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 2: the resolution of several of them. Others, however, seem keen

738
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 2: for action with the bear. I expect these gentlemen will

739
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,879
Speaker 2: give us some amusement shortly, as they will as they

740
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:20,759
Speaker 2: soon begin now to copulate. So he's talking about the

741
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:27,360
Speaker 2: bear scopulating, not the men. Sort of, most people writing

742
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:30,359
Speaker 2: about this particular bit from the journal basically the sort

743
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 2: of translation seems to be. We'll see how. We'll see

744
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 2: how bold and and eager for bear encounters everyone in

745
00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 2: the party truly is, as the male bears get it

746
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 2: more and more into the mating season and are more

747
00:43:43,960 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 2: and more aggressive. Now there are two other encounters of

748
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 2: note I want to read. One is from May fourteenth,

749
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 2: eighteen oh five, in which a wounded bear refuses to

750
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:57,480
Speaker 2: die and chases the men. I'm going to read at

751
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:00,480
Speaker 2: least part of this one. One of the parts wounded

752
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 2: a brown bear very badly, but being alone, did not

753
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:05,799
Speaker 2: think proper to pursue him. In the evening, the men

754
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 2: in two of the rear canoes discovered a large brown

755
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 2: bear lying in the open grounds about three hundred paces

756
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 2: from the river, and six of them went out to

757
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 2: attack him. All good hunters, they took advantage of a

758
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 2: small imminence which concealed them, and got within forty paces

759
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 2: of him unperceived. Two of them reserved their fires as

760
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:28,879
Speaker 2: had been previously concerted. The four others fired nearly at

761
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:31,799
Speaker 2: the same time and put each his bullet through him.

762
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 2: Two of the balls passed through the bulk of both

763
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 2: lobes of his lungs in an instant the monster randed

764
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:40,480
Speaker 2: them with open mouth. The two who had reserved their

765
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 2: fires discharged their pieces at him as he came towards them.

766
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:47,680
Speaker 2: Both of them struck him, only one slightly, and the

767
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 2: other fortunately broke his shoulder. This, however, only retarded his

768
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 2: motion for a moment. Only The men, unable to reload

769
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 2: their guns, took to flight. The bear pursued and had

770
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:00,839
Speaker 2: very nearly overtaken them before the they reached the river.

771
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 2: Two of the party betook themselves to a canoe, and

772
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 2: the others separated and concealed themselves among the willows, reloaded

773
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,439
Speaker 2: their pieces. Each discharged his peace at him as they

774
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:14,799
Speaker 2: had an opportunity. They struck him several times, but the

775
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 2: guns served only to direct the bear toward them. In

776
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:21,360
Speaker 2: this manner, he pursued two of them separately, so close

777
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:24,080
Speaker 2: that they were obliged to throw aside their guns and

778
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:27,920
Speaker 2: pouches and throw themselves into the river, Although the bank

779
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:32,240
Speaker 2: was nearly twenty feet perpendicular. So enraged was this animal

780
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 2: that he plunged into the river only a few feet

781
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 2: behind the second man he had compelled take refuge in

782
00:45:38,080 --> 00:45:40,279
Speaker 2: the water. When one of those who still remained on

783
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,960
Speaker 2: shore shot him through the head and finally killed him.

784
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:43,760
Speaker 3: Wow.

785
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 2: So yeah, a harrowing encounter here for the men involved,

786
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 2: as this thing just stubbornly refuses to die and is

787
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 2: taking after them, so you know, they barely survive with

788
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 2: their lives here. And then on June fourteenth, eighteen oh five,

789
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 2: this is the final encounter I'm going to read, but

790
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:08,799
Speaker 2: it's also maybe one of the more mysterious ones as

791
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 2: we'll get into, and this involves Lewis himself alone being

792
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 2: attacked by a bear, so I'll read it here. I

793
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 2: selected a fat buffalo and shot him very well through

794
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:27,240
Speaker 2: the lungs. While I was gazing attentively on the poor animal,

795
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 2: discharging blood in streams from his mouth and nostrils, expecting

796
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 2: him to fall every instant, and having entirely forgotten to

797
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 2: reload my rifle, a large white or rather brown bear

798
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 2: had perceived and crept on me within twenty steps before

799
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 2: I discovered him. In the first moment, I drew up

800
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:48,919
Speaker 2: my gun to shoot, but at the same instant recollected

801
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 2: that she was not loaded and that he was too

802
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 2: near for me to hope to perform this operation before

803
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:58,319
Speaker 2: he reached me. As he was then briskly advancing on me.

804
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:02,240
Speaker 2: It was an open level plane, not a bush within miles,

805
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:04,759
Speaker 2: nor a tree within less than three hundred yards of me.

806
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:08,319
Speaker 2: The river bank was sloping and not more than three

807
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:11,239
Speaker 2: feet above the level of the water. In short, there

808
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:13,720
Speaker 2: was no place by means of which I could conceal

809
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:16,800
Speaker 2: myself from this monster until I could charge my rifle.

810
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 2: In the situation, I thought of retreating in a brisk

811
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:22,239
Speaker 2: walk as fast as he was advancing, until I could

812
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 2: reach a tree about three hundred yards below me. But

813
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 2: I had no sooner turned myself about, but he pitched

814
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:31,959
Speaker 2: at me, open mouthed, in full speed. I ran about

815
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 2: eighty yards and found he gained on me fast. I

816
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 2: then run ran into the water. The idea struck me

817
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:41,319
Speaker 2: to get into the water to such depth that I

818
00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 2: could stand, and he would be obliged to swim, and

819
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 2: that he could in that situation, and then I could,

820
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:51,799
Speaker 2: in that situation defend myself with my espitom So this

821
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 2: is a European pole arm, or like a spear axe combination.

822
00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 2: If you look up pictures of Lewis and Clark expedition,

823
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 2: see examples of people standing with these. I'm to understand

824
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:07,319
Speaker 2: these were mostly used as walking sticks, and also is

825
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:08,799
Speaker 2: like a way of like sort of like, you know,

826
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 2: poking around in the grass to see if there's a

827
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:14,520
Speaker 2: snake there, that sort of thing, and then he continues Accordingly,

828
00:48:14,560 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 2: I ran hastily into the water about waist deep and

829
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:20,960
Speaker 2: faced about and presented the point of my espitoon. At

830
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:23,240
Speaker 2: this instant he arrived at the edge of the water

831
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,359
Speaker 2: within about twenty feet of me. The moment I put

832
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 2: myself in this attitude of defense, he suddenly wheeled about

833
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 2: as if frightened, declined the combat on such unequal grounds,

834
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 2: and retreated with quite as great precipitation as he had

835
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:38,360
Speaker 2: just before pursued me.

836
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Okay, so I would say, realistically, we think

837
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:49,840
Speaker 3: if this animal actually did decide to attack Lewis, Lewis

838
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 3: has basically no chance really here. But for some reason,

839
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 3: this animal comes to the edge of the water and

840
00:48:56,800 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 3: then changes its mind runs away.

841
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Lewis goes un to reflect on the mystery

842
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:06,840
Speaker 2: here of the bear suddenly giving up chase, because initially

843
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:08,239
Speaker 2: the way it sounds, he's kind of like, oh, the

844
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 2: bear realized that he had a bit out more than

845
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 2: he could chew. I had a spear, and he ran

846
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:16,319
Speaker 2: away and ran like three miles away, like really runs off,

847
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 2: really quite spooked. But he does reflect on the mystery

848
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 2: and saying like, I can't really explain why this bear

849
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,520
Speaker 2: decided to decline the combat, but I am very thankful

850
00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:30,440
Speaker 2: that he did, you know, you know, and we know

851
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:32,359
Speaker 2: of course that and they would have. He knew as

852
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 2: well that the bears were good swimmers. There was no

853
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 2: drop off in the water here, and there was nothing,

854
00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:41,279
Speaker 2: nothing known to have scared it off. So it's not

855
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 2: like there was like a cinematic moment where suddenly the

856
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:46,120
Speaker 2: rest of the party shows up or somebody I don't

857
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:49,399
Speaker 2: know arrives on a tank or anything like that. It's

858
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 2: just the bear changed his mind and got spooked and

859
00:49:52,480 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 2: ran away. Okay, so there's a lot there, and I

860
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:11,160
Speaker 2: want to now turn to some modern and contemporary analysis

861
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,080
Speaker 2: of what was going on here. So I turned for

862
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:16,319
Speaker 2: more reflection all of this, on all of this in

863
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:19,560
Speaker 2: the book Lewis and Clark Among the Grizzlies, Legend and

864
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:23,840
Speaker 2: Legacy in the American West by Paul Schulery. This is

865
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,640
Speaker 2: from two thousand and two. So Shuley is a great

866
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:32,319
Speaker 2: writer and explores in great depth exactly you know, what

867
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:35,960
Speaker 2: these encounters consisted of, and how we can make sense

868
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 2: of them, knowing what we know now about the bear,

869
00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:41,680
Speaker 2: knowing what we know about the people that were engaging

870
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:46,480
Speaker 2: in these encounters and Shoeleery writes that we have to

871
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:51,480
Speaker 2: exercise caution in interpreting these accounts. Something in this is key,

872
00:50:51,520 --> 00:50:55,560
Speaker 2: something that later historians absolutely did not do. As they

873
00:50:55,920 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 2: retold these harrowing tales. Embellished these tales, made them even

874
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:04,000
Speaker 2: more monstrous and terrifying. You know, I'm thinking very much

875
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:08,320
Speaker 2: about sort of the manly adventure magazines of the old days,

876
00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 2: you know, where it's some dude with his his shirt

877
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:13,720
Speaker 2: ripped and there's a bear and there's you know, maybe

878
00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 2: saving a woman from the bear, that sort of thing.

879
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,840
Speaker 2: But that kind of vibe like like, take what is

880
00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:21,400
Speaker 2: being laid out here in the journals of Lewis and

881
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:23,880
Speaker 2: Clark and then just really heighten the drama.

882
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're already poppy, get a good upper cut

883
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:27,920
Speaker 3: in on there.

884
00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, like let's add more punches and fewer descriptions

885
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:35,880
Speaker 2: of bear desticles. So yeah, he points out that, yeah,

886
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 2: that this is something that historians that that later historians

887
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 2: absolutely did not do They did not go in with caution.

888
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:45,479
Speaker 2: They embellished these stories, and in doing so they helped

889
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:49,799
Speaker 2: to cement cement an altogether negative American impression of the

890
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:53,839
Speaker 2: grizzly bear, to position it as a monster, as a

891
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 2: man killer, and something that is just it's out there

892
00:51:57,200 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 2: in the wilderness and it's out to get you. Demonization

893
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:03,799
Speaker 2: of wildlife something we see with, you know, certainly with

894
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 2: other organisms of North America, like the wolf. So Shulery

895
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 2: points out, as others have that while Lewis and the

896
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark accounts are considered truthful and they are

897
00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 2: written in a mostly straightforward manner, you know, some editorializing

898
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:20,920
Speaker 2: about the monstrous nature of the bears aside, many of

899
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:24,600
Speaker 2: their encounters with the bears were encounters with bears that

900
00:52:24,640 --> 00:52:27,480
Speaker 2: had been shot at, wounded, or in some way interfered with.

901
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 2: So Schuleery writes, quote, Lewis and Clark were rarely attacked

902
00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 2: and only occasionally even approached by grizzly bears unless the

903
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:36,840
Speaker 2: bears were shot first.

904
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:39,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so it is certainly not the case

905
00:52:40,120 --> 00:52:43,080
Speaker 3: that you are that bears will never mess with you

906
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:45,279
Speaker 3: and you unless you mess with them. First, I mean,

907
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:47,759
Speaker 3: in some cases they will people have been attacked and

908
00:52:47,800 --> 00:52:51,880
Speaker 3: prayed on by bears in the wild without initiating the

909
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 3: encounter with violence. But in a lot of these cases

910
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 3: that Lewis and Clark talk about, the humans started it

911
00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:01,640
Speaker 3: like they were acting aggressively. First. They just start shooting

912
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:03,400
Speaker 3: at a bear that they see.

913
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,720
Speaker 2: Right, right, And you know, not to really demonize Lewis

914
00:53:06,719 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 2: and Clark and their party for engaging with wildlife in

915
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:11,839
Speaker 2: this manner, like you know, part of it was just

916
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 2: the times that they were living in their expectations of

917
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 2: and then impression of the wildlife, and they did not

918
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:23,280
Speaker 2: know the things we know now about grizzly bear behavior

919
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:26,239
Speaker 2: in particular. But yeah, also I don't want to err

920
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 2: on the other side of saying that these are not

921
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 2: potentially dangerous creatures.

922
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:34,040
Speaker 3: Right, so you don't start fights with them, but also

923
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 3: just try to avoid them. You don't want to be

924
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 3: in their zone.

925
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:39,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I respect the grizzly bear, but I do

926
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 2: not want to be where the grizzly bear is for

927
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 2: my part. So Jewelry has some really interesting things to

928
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 2: say though about that solo encounter that Lewis has and

929
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:54,760
Speaker 2: that mysterious behavior at the bear, and he provides some possibilities,

930
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 2: some possible explanations for why it goes down the way

931
00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:00,719
Speaker 2: it does, and he stresses some keep points here, and

932
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:03,319
Speaker 2: this one's really interesting, Sece. First of all, if the

933
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:07,840
Speaker 2: bear was actually aggressively intent on killing Lewis, if it

934
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 2: saw this human out there, you know, near this wounded bison,

935
00:54:12,360 --> 00:54:14,759
Speaker 2: and was like that looks delicious. I'm going to go

936
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:20,160
Speaker 2: eat him, Lewis would never have stood a chance. Jewelry writes. Quote,

937
00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:24,240
Speaker 2: even with a fifty foot head start, Lewis almost certainly

938
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,480
Speaker 2: could not have outrun this bear for eighty yards if

939
00:54:27,520 --> 00:54:30,480
Speaker 2: it really wanted to catch him. And so he stresses that,

940
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:33,280
Speaker 2: you know, while at this point Lewis had observed fast

941
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:39,200
Speaker 2: moving grizzlies. A motivated grizzly can move amazingly fast, Like

942
00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:41,600
Speaker 2: I look this up and we're talking thirty five to

943
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 2: forty mile per hour sprints. So that's not sustained, but

944
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:50,120
Speaker 2: that's a sprint. So compare that to peak human performance

945
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 2: of like twenty seven miles per hour. Like, if you're

946
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:56,439
Speaker 2: in a foot short foot race with a grizzly bear,

947
00:54:56,840 --> 00:55:00,759
Speaker 2: you have no chance because that grizzly bear running at

948
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 2: racehorse speeds at least in a burst.

949
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:06,880
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also that speed for humans is not like

950
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 3: something the average human that's like peak athletics, like the

951
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:14,239
Speaker 3: fastest human runner for a moment. Yeah, exactly.

952
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 2: And and I think this is also really interesting to

953
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:19,360
Speaker 2: think about when coming back to the fact that we

954
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 2: talked about earlier about the grizzly bear being a bison hunter,

955
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:26,680
Speaker 2: and to be you know, I think it's it's largely

956
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:29,840
Speaker 2: considered that it would these would have these prairie grizzlies

957
00:55:29,840 --> 00:55:34,680
Speaker 2: would have depended on you know, your typical prey. You know,

958
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 2: it would have been the young and the old and

959
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:39,239
Speaker 2: the wounded. Those would be the easiest targets, So those

960
00:55:39,239 --> 00:55:41,760
Speaker 2: are the ones the bears would go for. But even

961
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:44,000
Speaker 2: with that in mind, like the bear would have to

962
00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:47,239
Speaker 2: be able to move pretty quickly in the short term

963
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:51,560
Speaker 2: in order to make the most of these opportunities. Okay,

964
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 2: so Chelry points out Lewis would not have known any

965
00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:57,200
Speaker 2: of this, of course, because the study of bear behavior

966
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 2: has come a long way and in a lot way

967
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 2: in the last century. But a bear rushing towards someone

968
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:08,400
Speaker 2: or something might just be because the bear wants to

969
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:11,680
Speaker 2: get a better look at it. So that's interesting to

970
00:56:11,680 --> 00:56:17,719
Speaker 2: think about again from a human perspective, also horrifying. I'm

971
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:22,440
Speaker 2: imagining a grizzly bear coming towards me. I don't know

972
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:24,359
Speaker 2: if I'm going to be too comforted by the fact, Oh,

973
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:26,080
Speaker 2: he just wants a better look at you know. I mean,

974
00:56:26,120 --> 00:56:28,720
Speaker 2: I understand you're going to be absolutely terrified. I would

975
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:32,360
Speaker 2: be as well. I would like die six times before

976
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 2: the bear reached me. But yeah, that's one possibility. So

977
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 2: the bear wasn't actually charging to get him and therefore

978
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:43,320
Speaker 2: not moving at attack speed, but just wanted a closer look.

979
00:56:43,880 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 2: It's possible that the bear had never seen a human before.

980
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:51,239
Speaker 2: It's also possible that the bear had experiences with a

981
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:53,440
Speaker 2: human before he was humans before. We just don't know.

982
00:56:54,960 --> 00:56:57,480
Speaker 2: Another thing to take into account here, And this is

983
00:56:57,520 --> 00:57:01,000
Speaker 2: something we know now about bear behavior? Is it? False

984
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:06,000
Speaker 2: charges and bluff charges are an important part of bear behavior,

985
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 2: especially when they're startled, when they're dealing with something they

986
00:57:10,080 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 2: think might be a thread or it's the unknown, and

987
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:14,800
Speaker 2: it is a form of communication.

988
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:18,560
Speaker 3: And for the bear, what is the primary purpose of

989
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,640
Speaker 3: communication with false charges or bluff charges? Is it to

990
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:24,720
Speaker 3: gather information about what the other animal is going to

991
00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 3: do in reaction.

992
00:57:26,200 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 2: That's my understanding. Yeah, that it's you know, it's about

993
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:31,600
Speaker 2: it's almost like making your body larger, you know, in

994
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 2: some of these sort of like basic communications about fitness

995
00:57:35,280 --> 00:57:40,160
Speaker 2: and ability to engage in combat, particularly with another bear.

996
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:44,840
Speaker 2: That's important here because these kind of like nuanced conversations

997
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 2: are going to be most successful when both organisms speak

998
00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:51,840
Speaker 2: the same language. A grizzly bear does a bluff charge

999
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:54,440
Speaker 2: at a human being who does not know much about

1000
00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:57,840
Speaker 2: bear communication, they're only going to interpret that one way,

1001
00:57:58,080 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 2: like this bear wants to kill me and eat.

1002
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:03,320
Speaker 3: But these types of false charges might play more effective

1003
00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 3: a role at communication between bears themselves. And that's actually

1004
00:58:08,040 --> 00:58:11,920
Speaker 3: something I've read about that in some cases where bears

1005
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:15,800
Speaker 3: interact with humans, sometimes they're treating us like a prey animal.

1006
00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 3: Other times they seem to be treating us more like

1007
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:20,040
Speaker 3: they might treat another bear.

1008
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:25,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is again still terrifying. And Shulary points

1009
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,840
Speaker 2: out that running in this scenario with a bluff charge

1010
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 2: would absolutely be the wrong answer, and of course this

1011
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:35,880
Speaker 2: is what Lewis does, but it is the wrong answer

1012
00:58:35,920 --> 00:58:39,160
Speaker 2: because it running in this case can trigger the chase

1013
00:58:39,200 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 2: response on the part of the bear, and so that

1014
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:44,640
Speaker 2: means like the bear could potentially be approaching you with

1015
00:58:44,640 --> 00:58:48,320
Speaker 2: a bluff charge or with you just to get a

1016
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 2: closer look at you. But once you start running from it,

1017
00:58:51,360 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 2: you kind of make up the bear's mind where the

1018
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 2: bear might be like, I don't know what this is

1019
00:58:55,320 --> 00:58:58,120
Speaker 2: and then like, oh, it's running, it's potentially prey. Better

1020
00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 2: go investigate more. And the further investigation could prove fatal

1021
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 2: for the human or of course for the bear. That

1022
00:59:06,120 --> 00:59:08,760
Speaker 2: of course bear human interactions, especially in the modern sense,

1023
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 2: when you factor in modern firearms, which are going to

1024
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 2: be on the whole better at killing bears than the

1025
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 2: weapons that Lewis and Clark had, Like you know, you

1026
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:23,320
Speaker 2: end up with deaths on both sides of the scenario

1027
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 2: where you would.

1028
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:25,400
Speaker 3: Prefer there it be zero.

1029
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, so on that, but it's also he also points

1030
00:59:30,640 --> 00:59:35,480
Speaker 2: out standing your ground is also equally unadvisable. So Lewis

1031
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 2: did the best he could with what very little he

1032
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 2: knew about bear behavior on a deeper level, and it

1033
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 2: luckily worked.

1034
00:59:41,080 --> 00:59:43,320
Speaker 3: Out for him. Yeah sounds like he got lucky.

1035
00:59:43,600 --> 00:59:46,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And he did realize that he got very lucky.

1036
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:51,760
Speaker 2: Shuleery writes, quote, bears are curiosity personified as omnivores. It

1037
00:59:51,840 --> 00:59:55,240
Speaker 2: is to their advantage to check things out, poking around,

1038
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:59,439
Speaker 2: nosing this and that, lopping over to get a better

1039
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:03,080
Speaker 2: look at some unfamiliar These are essential attributes of an

1040
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:06,600
Speaker 2: animal that lives by investigation as much as the bear does.

1041
01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:10,840
Speaker 2: They are inveterate detectives and experimenters.

1042
01:00:11,280 --> 01:00:14,280
Speaker 3: That's yeah, they're scientists. They're just trying to gather information.

1043
01:00:14,560 --> 01:00:17,520
Speaker 2: Yeah again, I mean I don't want to be their experience. Yeah,

1044
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 2: and I don't think any of us do.

1045
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:19,760
Speaker 3: But that is part of it.

1046
01:00:19,840 --> 01:00:22,360
Speaker 2: So it's possible. Again, it's possible the bear had never

1047
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:25,760
Speaker 2: seen a human before and was coming closer. It's possible.

1048
01:00:26,120 --> 01:00:29,400
Speaker 2: Shuleerry points out that it might have associated humans with

1049
01:00:29,480 --> 01:00:30,320
Speaker 2: bison carrion.

1050
01:00:30,720 --> 01:00:34,760
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, from humans hunting bison before. So humans are around,

1051
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:36,360
Speaker 3: maybe they've got good bison me.

1052
01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:38,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And in this case, like that would have

1053
01:00:38,520 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 2: been a proper connection because he had just shot a bison,

1054
01:00:42,520 --> 01:00:44,560
Speaker 2: so yeah, you know, coming in to see what's up.

1055
01:00:44,600 --> 01:00:48,680
Speaker 2: I see the signs of a potential meal here. And

1056
01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:53,080
Speaker 2: as for why the bear fled, Jewlry Rights something suddenly

1057
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:55,560
Speaker 2: spooked this bear and it ran off. It could have

1058
01:00:55,640 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 2: been visual, perhaps to do with Lewis's stance or his

1059
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:02,000
Speaker 2: silhouette against the low horizon, or it could have been

1060
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 2: something in the bear's own mental wiring. It's fun to

1061
01:01:05,160 --> 01:01:09,720
Speaker 2: wonder about it, but again we do not know. So

1062
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 2: we're told that the bear ran for like three miles,

1063
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:16,240
Speaker 2: so if this is accurate, it was seemingly really spooked.

1064
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:19,840
Speaker 2: Could it have been spooked by just the realization that

1065
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:24,360
Speaker 2: Lewis was a human possibly apparently especially that had experienced

1066
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:27,760
Speaker 2: a bad encounter with a human being before, But other

1067
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:29,920
Speaker 2: accounts from Lewis and Clark seem to indicate that the

1068
01:01:29,920 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 2: mere presence of a human was not a deterrent to

1069
01:01:32,040 --> 01:01:33,040
Speaker 2: these bears on the whole.

1070
01:01:33,640 --> 01:01:34,360
Speaker 3: So I don't know.

1071
01:01:34,440 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 2: Again, we just don't know. Yeah, but mistellings and tellings,

1072
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:43,440
Speaker 2: exaggerations even of this encounter and others it helped to

1073
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:47,040
Speaker 2: cement the idea that these bears were aggressive threats that

1074
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:49,720
Speaker 2: you not only needed to be avoided, but needed to

1075
01:01:49,720 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 2: be weeded out. Lewis and Clark first described the bear

1076
01:01:53,560 --> 01:01:59,840
Speaker 2: as grizzly, and the bear's scientific name Ursus arctos horrivolous.

1077
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 2: This is credited to naturalist George Ord in eighteen fifteen,

1078
01:02:04,200 --> 01:02:09,640
Speaker 2: but it of course means horrible brown bear. And so

1079
01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:13,000
Speaker 2: by the early nineteen hundreds, grizzly bears had been largely

1080
01:02:13,040 --> 01:02:16,200
Speaker 2: pushed out of the prairies and a big part of

1081
01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:20,880
Speaker 2: this was widespread government sponsored eradication programs during the eighteen

1082
01:02:20,960 --> 01:02:25,480
Speaker 2: hundreds and after nineteen hundred, the species could really only

1083
01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 2: be found as far as the prairies go. It could

1084
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:30,120
Speaker 2: only be found in small populations on the Canadian prairies,

1085
01:02:30,520 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 2: and for the most part, we're seeing the scenario that

1086
01:02:32,560 --> 01:02:35,280
Speaker 2: is reflected in their modern habitats, where they are pushed

1087
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:39,320
Speaker 2: into a lot of mountainous regions, deeply wooded areas, places

1088
01:02:39,360 --> 01:02:41,880
Speaker 2: pretty far from what we think of as the prairie today.

1089
01:02:42,360 --> 01:02:44,360
Speaker 2: And it also should be pointed out that in recent

1090
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:47,200
Speaker 2: years there have in some cases we have in some

1091
01:02:47,280 --> 01:02:51,280
Speaker 2: cases seen grizzlies partially return to some of these landscapes,

1092
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:55,840
Speaker 2: these prairie landscapes. So this is complex and it gets controversial,

1093
01:02:55,920 --> 01:02:58,320
Speaker 2: it runs there, you end up running into political issues

1094
01:02:58,360 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 2: as well.

1095
01:03:00,680 --> 01:03:00,880
Speaker 3: You know.

1096
01:03:01,160 --> 01:03:04,440
Speaker 2: The landscapes, it's also worth pointing out, are not the

1097
01:03:04,480 --> 01:03:07,000
Speaker 2: same as they once were, so you could have you

1098
01:03:07,040 --> 01:03:09,920
Speaker 2: can have grizzly bears potentially beginning to return to a

1099
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:13,080
Speaker 2: prairie environment. But what does it mean if the bison

1100
01:03:13,120 --> 01:03:15,920
Speaker 2: and elk that historically supported them in those environments are

1101
01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:18,080
Speaker 2: no longer there or no longer there in the numbers

1102
01:03:18,120 --> 01:03:18,880
Speaker 2: that sustained them.

1103
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:21,920
Speaker 3: I don't know for sure, but I would tend to

1104
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:25,200
Speaker 3: assume that might sort of funnel those grizzlies toward human

1105
01:03:25,320 --> 01:03:28,560
Speaker 3: populated areas that have, you know, food that the bears

1106
01:03:28,560 --> 01:03:31,240
Speaker 3: could get into, which we don't want you you want

1107
01:03:31,280 --> 01:03:33,720
Speaker 3: to minimize contact between bears and humans.

1108
01:03:34,120 --> 01:03:36,000
Speaker 2: That's one thing that I've seen pointed out about the

1109
01:03:36,360 --> 01:03:38,000
Speaker 2: you know, you look at the California flag and you

1110
01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:40,280
Speaker 2: have the brown bear on the flag. That's the only

1111
01:03:40,280 --> 01:03:43,000
Speaker 2: place you'll find a Californian brown bear because they were

1112
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:46,080
Speaker 2: forced out, and you know, it has been brought up,

1113
01:03:46,280 --> 01:03:49,640
Speaker 2: what can we reintroduce this animal? Can we reintroduce brown

1114
01:03:49,640 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 2: bears into the parts of California that they once called home?

1115
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:56,720
Speaker 2: And the problem is, of course, the potential big problem

1116
01:03:56,880 --> 01:03:59,040
Speaker 2: is that those are the areas that humans now call home.

1117
01:03:59,080 --> 01:04:01,440
Speaker 2: And you're going up with you know a lot of

1118
01:04:01,480 --> 01:04:05,360
Speaker 2: crossover between these populations, which is not to say, you know,

1119
01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:08,760
Speaker 2: it's a complete no, but this just underlines the complexity

1120
01:04:09,120 --> 01:04:12,000
Speaker 2: of trying to bring animals back into habitats that no

1121
01:04:12,080 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 2: longer fully exist in the way they once did. Now

1122
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:19,520
Speaker 2: here's another interesting side note about prairie bison hunting grizzlies.

1123
01:04:21,160 --> 01:04:25,120
Speaker 2: They had access to higher protein meals than their modern relatives,

1124
01:04:25,560 --> 01:04:27,760
Speaker 2: and so they're thought to have on the whole been

1125
01:04:27,840 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 2: much larger than today's mountain bound grizzlies. So not really

1126
01:04:31,600 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 2: comparing them to like kodiaks and so forth, but in

1127
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:37,840
Speaker 2: terms of some of the mountain bound grizzlies today, the

1128
01:04:37,840 --> 01:04:40,439
Speaker 2: ones who would have lived on the prairie would have been,

1129
01:04:40,680 --> 01:04:44,200
Speaker 2: on the whole larger, and so that also we can

1130
01:04:44,200 --> 01:04:46,960
Speaker 2: compare that to some of these stats that Lewis and

1131
01:04:46,960 --> 01:04:50,840
Speaker 2: Clark roll out here. Those stats are are even less

1132
01:04:50,840 --> 01:04:53,320
Speaker 2: impressive when we consider that they were probably much larger

1133
01:04:53,360 --> 01:04:58,560
Speaker 2: grizzlies out there. Yeah, and this is has in part

1134
01:04:58,800 --> 01:05:02,360
Speaker 2: led to a little bit of of cryptozoology. I didn't

1135
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:05,320
Speaker 2: really expect to get into this, but there's a purely

1136
01:05:05,400 --> 01:05:11,200
Speaker 2: cryptozoological notion that some of these grizzlies that were encountered

1137
01:05:11,240 --> 01:05:14,320
Speaker 2: and written about and remembered from the from the prairies

1138
01:05:14,960 --> 01:05:18,360
Speaker 2: might not have been grizzlies at all, but surviving short

1139
01:05:18,400 --> 01:05:22,960
Speaker 2: faced bears. So short face bears, to be clear, have

1140
01:05:23,120 --> 01:05:27,440
Speaker 2: definitely been extinct for more than ten thousand years. Humans

1141
01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:30,920
Speaker 2: certainly lived alongside them in North America in some of

1142
01:05:30,920 --> 01:05:35,920
Speaker 2: these same areas, but they definitely went extinct. But you can,

1143
01:05:36,640 --> 01:05:37,960
Speaker 2: and you could, but you could then you could say

1144
01:05:37,960 --> 01:05:42,240
Speaker 2: that they overlapped both the prehistoric grasslands and the modern

1145
01:05:42,280 --> 01:05:47,240
Speaker 2: prairie that emerged out of those prehistoric grasslands. But yeah,

1146
01:05:47,240 --> 01:05:51,760
Speaker 2: there's this purely cryptozoological idea that what if the bears

1147
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:55,800
Speaker 2: that were encountered were larger and more aggressive because they

1148
01:05:55,880 --> 01:06:00,680
Speaker 2: weren't grizzlies, they were this older, different of variety of

1149
01:06:00,720 --> 01:06:05,440
Speaker 2: prehistoric bear. And again that's also leaning on this idea

1150
01:06:05,640 --> 01:06:08,720
Speaker 2: that the bears were more aggressive, and as we already said,

1151
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:11,640
Speaker 2: there's a lot to suggest that they weren't actually any

1152
01:06:11,640 --> 01:06:14,400
Speaker 2: more aggressive than grizzlies are today. You just have to

1153
01:06:14,440 --> 01:06:18,720
Speaker 2: factor in these other aspects of the encounters, like being

1154
01:06:18,720 --> 01:06:20,040
Speaker 2: shot at first and so forth.

1155
01:06:20,560 --> 01:06:23,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it sounds like this hypothesis, like a whole

1156
01:06:23,480 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 3: lot of cryptozoology thought is getting a lot of its

1157
01:06:27,000 --> 01:06:28,840
Speaker 3: power from wouldn't it be cool if?

1158
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:32,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, wouldn't it be cool if this type of

1159
01:06:32,800 --> 01:06:36,520
Speaker 2: encounter was actually because you know, there was actually a survivor,

1160
01:06:36,560 --> 01:06:42,120
Speaker 2: the surviving bear species, whereas in reality they are definitely extinct,

1161
01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:46,439
Speaker 2: and they're not even super closely related to the grizzly bear.

1162
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:50,439
Speaker 2: They're more closely related to the South American spectacled bear

1163
01:06:51,000 --> 01:06:53,840
Speaker 2: that's the only living relative of the short faced bear.

1164
01:06:54,680 --> 01:06:57,840
Speaker 2: But the short face bears were big there on the whole,

1165
01:06:58,360 --> 01:07:01,120
Speaker 2: considered larger than the modern grizzly bear, even larger than

1166
01:07:01,120 --> 01:07:04,880
Speaker 2: modern polar bears, and they had a They did, unless

1167
01:07:04,920 --> 01:07:08,280
Speaker 2: the name implies, have a shorter face, like a shorter snout.

1168
01:07:09,080 --> 01:07:10,600
Speaker 2: You can see this in some of the like the

1169
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:14,240
Speaker 2: skeletons that are presented of them. And I'm to understand

1170
01:07:14,320 --> 01:07:17,880
Speaker 2: that the short face bear was also partial inspiration for

1171
01:07:17,960 --> 01:07:21,919
Speaker 2: the way that the spirit bear Tumbach appears in the

1172
01:07:22,440 --> 01:07:27,440
Speaker 2: television adaptation of The Terror from twenty eighteen. I think

1173
01:07:27,480 --> 01:07:31,200
Speaker 2: they also added some slight human touches to that face

1174
01:07:31,520 --> 01:07:33,800
Speaker 2: as well to make it look extra creepy, but I

1175
01:07:33,840 --> 01:07:35,680
Speaker 2: think the short face is also part of it.

1176
01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:38,040
Speaker 3: I haven't seen that, but I've got the picture you

1177
01:07:38,120 --> 01:07:40,240
Speaker 3: have in the outline here yet kind of human looking

1178
01:07:40,280 --> 01:07:43,120
Speaker 3: mouth disturbing in the way that like a parrotfish's mouth

1179
01:07:43,240 --> 01:07:47,840
Speaker 3: might be. Yeah, wait a minute, thinking parrotfish. Yeaheah, so

1180
01:07:48,040 --> 01:07:49,440
Speaker 3: the kind of human looking teeth.

1181
01:07:49,680 --> 01:07:54,160
Speaker 2: M m, yeah, yeah, Tombach. I highly recommend The Terror

1182
01:07:54,480 --> 01:07:57,360
Speaker 2: as an AMC mini series. They ended up expanding it,

1183
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:00,640
Speaker 2: but that first season of The Terror is an adaptation

1184
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:04,600
Speaker 2: of the Dan Simon's novel and is quite excellent. Excellent cast,

1185
01:08:04,800 --> 01:08:11,880
Speaker 2: very well done. Amazing monster. There's the Tombach bear. By

1186
01:08:11,920 --> 01:08:13,960
Speaker 2: the way, we have a polar bear ornament that we

1187
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:16,400
Speaker 2: put on our Christmas tree every year, and I think

1188
01:08:16,439 --> 01:08:18,799
Speaker 2: quite by accident, it has kind of a short looking

1189
01:08:18,840 --> 01:08:20,559
Speaker 2: snout and so we refer.

1190
01:08:20,400 --> 01:08:21,240
Speaker 3: To it as toumbuch.

1191
01:08:21,280 --> 01:08:23,519
Speaker 2: It's the Toumbuk Christmas ornament.

1192
01:08:23,800 --> 01:08:24,960
Speaker 3: Nice.

1193
01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:28,360
Speaker 2: So anyway, I'm getting further away from the grizzly bear.

1194
01:08:28,439 --> 01:08:31,000
Speaker 2: But yeah, I just found it really fascinated. It was

1195
01:08:31,040 --> 01:08:34,679
Speaker 2: not expecting to read research and talk about grizzly bears

1196
01:08:34,720 --> 01:08:38,479
Speaker 2: today in this episode, but like, they are a part

1197
01:08:38,520 --> 01:08:41,120
Speaker 2: of the history of the prairie, and they are a

1198
01:08:41,160 --> 01:08:43,879
Speaker 2: part of the prairie that we have, you know, vastly

1199
01:08:44,000 --> 01:08:47,639
Speaker 2: changed via our interference, and so I think they're important

1200
01:08:47,640 --> 01:08:48,240
Speaker 2: to talk about.

1201
01:08:49,120 --> 01:08:51,640
Speaker 3: Well, I guess that's another part of what I was

1202
01:08:51,680 --> 01:08:55,120
Speaker 3: talking about earlier, this complex interplay of different factors that

1203
01:08:55,320 --> 01:08:59,200
Speaker 3: make the prairies endangered and open them up to being

1204
01:08:59,240 --> 01:09:04,799
Speaker 3: overtaken by trees. One of those factors is herbivy, of course,

1205
01:09:05,240 --> 01:09:10,040
Speaker 3: and herbivy, of course is impacted by the presence or

1206
01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:13,080
Speaker 3: lack thereof, of predators. And so it's like, I don't know,

1207
01:09:13,400 --> 01:09:16,240
Speaker 3: there are just so many factors that are all linked

1208
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:18,839
Speaker 3: in one way or another to a greater and lesser degree,

1209
01:09:19,240 --> 01:09:22,439
Speaker 3: and we've meddled with all of them. We've changed like

1210
01:09:22,520 --> 01:09:24,360
Speaker 3: all of these factors up and down the line.

1211
01:09:24,800 --> 01:09:28,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right, Well, I think we're going to

1212
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:31,760
Speaker 2: go ahead and close out this episode. But prairie dwellers

1213
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:34,519
Speaker 2: out there, people who are more familiar with the prairie,

1214
01:09:34,520 --> 01:09:36,840
Speaker 2: who have grown up on the prairie, perhaps in a

1215
01:09:36,880 --> 01:09:39,439
Speaker 2: little house, maybe a big house, we would love to

1216
01:09:39,439 --> 01:09:41,519
Speaker 2: hear from you if you have added thoughts on any

1217
01:09:41,560 --> 01:09:45,160
Speaker 2: of this. Anything we've discussed here is fair game as well.

1218
01:09:45,320 --> 01:09:47,799
Speaker 2: You want to talk about bears or the absence of trees,

1219
01:09:48,160 --> 01:09:50,759
Speaker 2: a fear of trees, or a fear of the absence

1220
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:53,600
Speaker 2: of trees, all of that is fair game. We're going

1221
01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:57,639
Speaker 2: to be back with some more discussion of prairies, and

1222
01:09:57,720 --> 01:09:59,320
Speaker 2: at this point I'm not sure exactly what we'll get

1223
01:09:59,320 --> 01:10:01,360
Speaker 2: into it. There's a lot to consider, you know, again,

1224
01:10:01,640 --> 01:10:05,920
Speaker 2: diverse ecosystem, all sorts of interesting flora and fauna, as

1225
01:10:05,920 --> 01:10:09,200
Speaker 2: well as history, cultural traditions and so forth.

1226
01:10:09,560 --> 01:10:11,400
Speaker 3: Totally, so join us again for part two.

1227
01:10:11,960 --> 01:10:13,840
Speaker 2: Just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to

1228
01:10:13,880 --> 01:10:16,200
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,

1229
01:10:16,200 --> 01:10:18,759
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode

1230
01:10:18,800 --> 01:10:22,320
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, and Weird House Cinema on Fridays. That's when

1231
01:10:22,360 --> 01:10:24,439
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

1232
01:10:24,439 --> 01:10:26,920
Speaker 2: a weird movie. You can get us wherever you get

1233
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:29,960
Speaker 2: your audio podcasts, and we have years and years of

1234
01:10:30,160 --> 01:10:33,759
Speaker 2: past episodes to explore there. And if you were on Netflix,

1235
01:10:33,800 --> 01:10:36,080
Speaker 2: you can check out the video component of our show.

1236
01:10:36,520 --> 01:10:40,000
Speaker 2: You get the audio video on Netflix. And if you're

1237
01:10:40,040 --> 01:10:43,280
Speaker 2: on Netflix watching us and or listening to us there,

1238
01:10:43,800 --> 01:10:45,400
Speaker 2: just make sure that you give us a couple of

1239
01:10:45,400 --> 01:10:47,679
Speaker 2: thumbs up and ask to be reminded about new episodes,

1240
01:10:47,720 --> 01:10:51,360
Speaker 2: and if you're just getting the audio version elsewhere, rate review, subscribe.

1241
01:10:51,479 --> 01:10:52,280
Speaker 2: We thank you very.

1242
01:10:52,200 --> 01:10:55,599
Speaker 3: Much, huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer

1243
01:10:55,720 --> 01:10:58,200
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch

1244
01:10:58,240 --> 01:11:00,479
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode the other, to

1245
01:11:00,560 --> 01:11:02,960
Speaker 3: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1246
01:11:03,400 --> 01:11:06,040
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1247
01:11:06,080 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1248
01:11:14,280 --> 01:11:17,240
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1249
01:11:17,320 --> 01:11:20,120
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1250
01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:37,240
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.