Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and welcome back. This is going to be
Speaker 1: part two of a two part episode on the urban
Speaker 1: evolution of wildlife. Now, if you haven't heard part one yet,
Speaker 1: we recommend you go back listen to that one first.
Speaker 1: It should have been the episode right before this one,
Speaker 1: and that would have been the one where we discussed
Speaker 1: how animals are adapting to the ecosystems engineered directly by humans.
Speaker 1: That's right. We talked about everything from coyotes and raccoons
Speaker 1: to the to the urban myth of the alligators that
Speaker 1: thrive in New York City's sewer system. Yeah, we discussed
Speaker 1: how animals react to the trash we produce, how that
Speaker 1: affects them for good and ill, and how it potentially
Speaker 1: drives evolution, how they adapt to the surfaces of urban landscapes,
Speaker 1: how cities create these fragmented islands of biodiversity within them,
Speaker 1: and of course the question of the mutant alligators. That's
Speaker 1: the one on everybody's mind. But so many of the
Speaker 1: most interesting examples of urban evolution in the animal kingdom
Speaker 1: actually occur among our old friends, the avians, the modern dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: That's right. A number of the the cool stories of
Speaker 1: urban wildlife do relate to to birds. And you know
Speaker 1: it makes sense, right. They are the ones that are
Speaker 1: able to fly from park to park. They are the
Speaker 1: ones that don't have to worry about they don't have
Speaker 1: to worry as much about crossing the street in many
Speaker 1: of the situations. Yeah, they do seem quite able to
Speaker 1: penetrate our urban ecosystems and often establish new niches. They're
Speaker 1: ones that might be parallel to the niches that they
Speaker 1: have out in nature, say the parallel between a bird
Speaker 1: that naturally dwells among the rocks of a cliff face
Speaker 1: becoming a bird that dwells among the rocks of a
Speaker 1: cliff face that is actually the side of a building.
Speaker 1: Right now, in this episode, because we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about birds, we thought it would be great to talk
Speaker 1: to a local Atlanta bird expert. So we are going
Speaker 1: to be talking to a bird educator named Jason Ward today,
Speaker 1: a guy who we got to the pleasure to meet
Speaker 1: in the studio the other day who is a little
Speaker 1: bit obsessed with the birds of the city. That's right.
Speaker 1: This is a fabulous chat we got to have because
Speaker 1: it was a lot more local than most of our conversations.
Speaker 1: For starters, he was in the studio with us and UH.
Speaker 1: And then also we're talking about Atlanta. We're talking about
Speaker 1: this strange city we live in that is UH, that
Speaker 1: is situated within a forest, and all the birds that
Speaker 1: make their home here as well. Right, So before we
Speaker 1: get into our conversation with Jason, just a little bit
Speaker 1: in the way of introduction. Jason Ward is an educator
Speaker 1: for Zoo Atlanta. He's a writer for the National Laudubon
Speaker 1: Society and a science communicator who specializes in birds. Now
Speaker 1: he actually leads bird walks here in the metro Atlanta area.
Speaker 1: He's guest lectured at Emory University, and he partic It's
Speaker 1: in a lot of projects and studies pertaining to birds
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, including something called Projects Safe Flight, which studies
Speaker 1: bird collisions with buildings. Also westernile virus studies, breeding bird surveys,
Speaker 1: migratory bird surveys, and all kinds of stuff. So I
Speaker 1: guess we will get right into our interview with Jason Ward.
Speaker 1: So Jason Ward. We really appreciate you joining us today.
Speaker 1: So I think first we'd just like you to tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit about who you are and
Speaker 1: what you do. Well. Hello everyone, my name is Jason Ward. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm an educator. I work for Zoo Atlanta and also
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Audubon Society. Those are the bird nerds of Atlanta. UM.
Speaker 1: I am also a writer for the National Autumn Society
Speaker 1: as well. I lead field trips here in Atlanta at
Speaker 1: Piedmont Park. UM. My field trips are the first Saturday
Speaker 1: every single month at eight o'clock. If you live in
Speaker 1: the metro Atlanta area, feel free to come by. It
Speaker 1: is a great time. So Jason, how did you first
Speaker 1: get interested in birds? That's a great question. So my
Speaker 1: infatuation or obsession with birds started at a very very
Speaker 1: young age. UM. I grew up in the Bronx, New York,
Speaker 1: which isn't really the first town or environment people think
Speaker 1: of as it pertains to wildlife in general. UM, but
Speaker 1: I grew up there as a kid had an infatuation
Speaker 1: with dinosaurs, as I'm sure a lot of kids go
Speaker 1: through that phase. Since I couldn't walk outside and actually
Speaker 1: see these dinosaurs, that I was in love with so much.
Speaker 1: My infatuation then turned to a variety of different wildlife,
Speaker 1: with birds eventually being the front runners, which is kind
Speaker 1: of ironic. It kind of comes full circle because birds
Speaker 1: are modern day dinosaurs. So that is how my love
Speaker 1: of birds began. Didn't really grow up with a lot
Speaker 1: of money in the bronx um, so my form of
Speaker 1: entertainment was going to the library and I guess just
Speaker 1: packing a desk full of as many bird books as possible.
Speaker 1: And that love then, uh cultured, and it grew and
Speaker 1: here I am today and I am I guess a
Speaker 1: huge bird nerd now due to that infatuation as a
Speaker 1: child of feathered dinosaurs. Do you have a favorite feathered
Speaker 1: dinosaur here in the Atlanta area? I certainly do. Um
Speaker 1: So I started his hashtag on Twitter to show my
Speaker 1: love for my favorite feathered dinosaur. The hashtag is sky Lamborghini. Um.
Speaker 1: The reason that I have that hashtag is because this
Speaker 1: particular species of bird is extremely fast. It is in
Speaker 1: fact the fastest animal in the world. This animal is
Speaker 1: the peregrine falcon um. This animal can be found all
Speaker 1: over the world, all on its continents excluding um antarcticle
Speaker 1: of course. But um, the reason I call this bird
Speaker 1: the sky Lamborghini is because it has been clocked at
Speaker 1: speeds at approximately two forty miles per hour in a dive. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a bird that you can see regardless of
Speaker 1: if you live on a coastal city, if you live
Speaker 1: in a big, bustling city like we do here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: They can be found besting on skyscrapers. So they use
Speaker 1: those skyscrapers to their advantage. And it's exhilarating to just
Speaker 1: sit there and watch them what we call a stoop
Speaker 1: and they'll dive down incredibly fast to catch their prey.
Speaker 1: It's exciting what is their prey? Usually, So if you're
Speaker 1: stooping at an incredibly high speed, it wouldn't be beneficial
Speaker 1: for you to chase prey on the ground, right you
Speaker 1: Probably you probably won't last long employing that kind of strategy.
Speaker 1: So they are what we call avivors, So they hunt
Speaker 1: feathered prey as well. So they hunt airborne birds in
Speaker 1: the sky, and they have a really ingenious method to
Speaker 1: how they attack their prey. Um since their praise airborne
Speaker 1: at the time. They'll start from approximately a mile overhead
Speaker 1: and then they'll start their dive and then they'll allow
Speaker 1: their momentum to do the work. They'll take their talents
Speaker 1: and kind of knuckle them um and make like a
Speaker 1: little a bird fist, if you will, and they'll stun
Speaker 1: their prey in mid air with a fly by punch. Wow,
Speaker 1: I've never heard that. And and then of course as
Speaker 1: the prey is tumbling in the air, they'll circle back around.
Speaker 1: They're very acrobatic birds. They'll circle back around and catch
Speaker 1: the prey mid air and then um take care of it.
Speaker 1: From that point. Now, we've been talking about how a
Speaker 1: lot of scientists do all just around the world have
Speaker 1: been observing the ways birds have changed the way they
Speaker 1: make a living in cities as opposed to their natural,
Speaker 1: real wild habitats. When you just take the example of
Speaker 1: the peregrine falcon, do you see any difference about how
Speaker 1: the falcon hunts or behaves in a city versus in
Speaker 1: a rural area. That is a great question. The answer
Speaker 1: state is yes. So in their natural habitat there nesting
Speaker 1: in uh mountainous areas and also cliff sides as well.
Speaker 1: They use those high vantage points to survey their landscape
Speaker 1: well cities kind of offer them that same perspective. They're
Speaker 1: able to stand or sit on uh skyscrapers and survey
Speaker 1: their landscape there. Now there's a different, I guess perspective
Speaker 1: that that living in the city gives these particular species
Speaker 1: of bird. During migration, a lot of these birds are
Speaker 1: passing through these cities, and as we know, with light pollution,
Speaker 1: it's a little difficult for these birds to manage migrating
Speaker 1: through these cities. What these birds will then do is
Speaker 1: they'll change their behavior and during nighttime, instead of resting
Speaker 1: and sleeping through the night, they'll actually be a little
Speaker 1: bit more active at nighttime, using the light pollution to
Speaker 1: their advantage and hunting prey at nighttime as the birds
Speaker 1: fly by these buildings. Wow. So that's one case where
Speaker 1: light pollution is going to be working out in specifically
Speaker 1: in favor of predators and against prey exactly exactly. So,
Speaker 1: if you are towards the bottom of the food chain,
Speaker 1: light pollution is not your friend um for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. There are predators who will use that extra
Speaker 1: light to their advantage. And also if you're trying to
Speaker 1: pass through a city to get to your breeding grounds,
Speaker 1: that light pollution is not going to be a friend.
Speaker 1: A lot of birds become disoriented and unfortunately fly into
Speaker 1: those windows. And as part of projects Safe Flight here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, we unfortunately find a lot of those birds
Speaker 1: in uh certain areas of the city. Now, I was
Speaker 1: chatting with you before we started the interview. You you
Speaker 1: work with Zootlanta and UH and I frequently visit to
Speaker 1: Atlanta with my my son his five, who is really
Speaker 1: into dinosaurs as well. So one of our favorite birds
Speaker 1: at Zoo Atlanta is Cecil, the cast wary. Uh and
Speaker 1: you get to work with Cecil. What what is it
Speaker 1: like to help care for a castlewary? It is incredibly
Speaker 1: fun to care for a castlewary. It's also incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: at the same time. I guess that's what That's what
Speaker 1: adds to the fun part of it. You have to
Speaker 1: be extremely careful with a bird who is approximately four
Speaker 1: ft tall and has a talent on each foot that
Speaker 1: is about five inches long. You have to exercise extreme
Speaker 1: caution in a situation like that. Despite his menacing appearance,
Speaker 1: he is a frugivore, so his diet consists of apples, bananas,
Speaker 1: um so he's not looking to eat me. Um, if
Speaker 1: he were to harm someone, which he wouldn't, but if
Speaker 1: he would, it would be purely out of defense. UM.
Speaker 1: So knowing that, and he's a relatively old bird as well,
Speaker 1: so he is a lot calmer in his in his years,
Speaker 1: so it's extremely rewarding to work with a bird like him. Now,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that Cecil's um uh fecal matter is is
Speaker 1: particularly noxious. However, yes, absolutely so. Um. Big birds produce
Speaker 1: big poop. I guess that's the best way to say that. Um.
Speaker 1: And you have to be very very cautious as you're
Speaker 1: walking around the enclosure, not to step in any just
Speaker 1: to let everyone know I was extra cautious today. I
Speaker 1: haven't tracked any in here with me, so you're fine.
Speaker 1: We would understand if you did, and if I did,
Speaker 1: you would also know by now because despite the fact
Speaker 1: that he eats fruits, um, his his poop is incredibly uh.
Speaker 1: I guess the scientific term would be stinky. Does it?
Speaker 1: Does it smell different than mammal poop? Yes? I don't
Speaker 1: know how to describe the difference, though it does smell different. Um,
Speaker 1: this is going to sound so odd. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit more fragrant than than mammal poop is um and
Speaker 1: and I would, despite the fact that I do sound
Speaker 1: like I'm complaining about it, I would much rather be
Speaker 1: cleaning up after bird than a mammal. You know, this
Speaker 1: touches on something that we we discussed in a recent
Speaker 1: episode that we recorded on the topic of of farts
Speaker 1: in general and flat Plus, I was really not aware
Speaker 1: prior of this research that birds do not fart. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just hadn't thought about this before the difference in
Speaker 1: the microbio. There's actually a really good book. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you spoke about this in in that episode,
Speaker 1: but there's a book out there called does It Fart? Yes?
Speaker 1: Guess what inspired us exactly, written by some of my
Speaker 1: friends on Twitter, and they cover that exact topic. So
Speaker 1: it is actually in wherever you can find books now,
Speaker 1: So I would encourage people to rush out and get
Speaker 1: It's surprising what you would learn about which animals fart
Speaker 1: and which ones do not. Oh yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: great little book, especially how you can just you can
Speaker 1: just pick it up and just see where you land
Speaker 1: and just learn about particular creatures farting ability or lack
Speaker 1: of farting ability, and and topics such as flatulence. UM.
Speaker 1: It's important to talk about things like that because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who view wildlife and they have
Speaker 1: these irrational fears about the animals that live around them.
Speaker 1: So being able to bridge that gap in a playful
Speaker 1: manner can kind of spark curiosity and people, especially younger ones,
Speaker 1: and get them to want to pursue a career and
Speaker 1: and and conservation. So they're doing a great thing by
Speaker 1: putting out a book like that. UM. Hopefully we can
Speaker 1: do a part two about birds. We'll see how that
Speaker 1: goes in the future. Jason, on that subject, do you
Speaker 1: feel like you have good insights into strategies about how
Speaker 1: to get people to see the wildlife in their city,
Speaker 1: especially birds as sort of neighbors, as opposed to pests
Speaker 1: or you know, things that people don't like. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: people tend to fear what they don't understand. UM. At
Speaker 1: least that's my experience with it. UM. If individuals would
Speaker 1: just go out there with an open mind, of course,
Speaker 1: and explore, Atlanta is a really good city to start
Speaker 1: something like that. UM. It is said that we are
Speaker 1: this city in the forest, um, and that holds true.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of old growth forest here in the city.
Speaker 1: So just merely stepping out to your neighborhood park, especially
Speaker 1: during a time like this, which is springtime, UH, stepping
Speaker 1: out early in the morning and just listening to the
Speaker 1: sounds around you, you'll hear a chorus of so many
Speaker 1: different species. The more you know about them, the more
Speaker 1: you'll realize we need these animals around. They're not here
Speaker 1: to destroy our gardens or to peck at the sides
Speaker 1: of our homes, um making us highly annoyed when we're
Speaker 1: trying to get sleep in the morning. They are They're
Speaker 1: here for a reason, and each and every organism here
Speaker 1: has a relationship with the next one. It's extremely important
Speaker 1: that we learn more about these species. So I would
Speaker 1: suggest individuals if they have a particular species of animals
Speaker 1: that they're interested in. For example, with me, it was birds.
Speaker 1: Of course, what I decided to do approximately five years
Speaker 1: ago was just go on the Internet and search for
Speaker 1: organizations in the Atlanta area that we're involved with birds.
Speaker 1: That is how it was introduced to the Atlanta Audubon Society. UM.
Speaker 1: I also went to their calendar and found out that
Speaker 1: they had field trips that they would lead, and I
Speaker 1: said to myself, Okay, this is a perfect opportunity for
Speaker 1: me to find out more about the species in the
Speaker 1: city that I live in. I purchased my first pair
Speaker 1: of binoculars and the rest of his history from that
Speaker 1: point on. Now, speaking of birds that live in the city,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm continually amazed when I encounter a wild turkey
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area. Can you can you speak to
Speaker 1: the I mean, are they thriving in Atlanta? Are they they? Are?
Speaker 1: They are? Um? There has been wild turkey sightings right
Speaker 1: in the middle of downtown. UM. It seems as if
Speaker 1: they're waiting for the crosswalk that the light on, the
Speaker 1: traffic lights across the street at times. UM. They're surprisingly
Speaker 1: big birds you see them in person. They are really
Speaker 1: good at going unnoticed until they're just in the middle
Speaker 1: of a street corner. UM. Oddly enough, I have not
Speaker 1: seen a wild turkey in Fulton County. UM. And I've been,
Speaker 1: you know, studying birds in Atlanta area for about five
Speaker 1: years now. I've seen them in Cobb, but I haven't
Speaker 1: seen them in Fulton County, which is the main county
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. But they're here. They're definitely here and
Speaker 1: up over the course of a year with migration coming
Speaker 1: and going. There's approximately three d and fifty different species
Speaker 1: of birds that can be found in the metro Atlanta area. Now,
Speaker 1: we have done in the past an episode, actually a
Speaker 1: couple episodes where this came out, but one full dedicated
Speaker 1: episode on the striking ways that birds in many ways
Speaker 1: are a lot smarter than people realize. We did one
Speaker 1: on a vi and intelligence, and I wonder, what are
Speaker 1: some of the cleverest things you've seen birds doing in
Speaker 1: the city, or that you're aware of birds doing in
Speaker 1: the city, Like do you see corvids hacking Atlanta and
Speaker 1: the way they hack so many other situations. I certainly
Speaker 1: do first and foremost, before we dive into that, I
Speaker 1: want to encourage everyone to go back a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes and listen to when Joe and I think it
Speaker 1: was at the eight minute mark, he said that birds
Speaker 1: were well according to him, he said that prior to
Speaker 1: doing the research that he did for that episode, he
Speaker 1: thought that birds weren't really smart. Well, we have corvids
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, we have American crows, and we have
Speaker 1: fish crows as well. They will do things such as
Speaker 1: they'll grab a nut that is incredibly hard for them
Speaker 1: to crack. They'll go to a busy street and they'll
Speaker 1: stand or sit on top of a street light, drop
Speaker 1: the nut down to the ground, and as the cars
Speaker 1: roll by, they'll roll over the nuts, crack the nut,
Speaker 1: and then when that light turns red, they know to
Speaker 1: fly down and collect their treat. Um. We have other
Speaker 1: species like the brown headed nuthatch that uses tools as well.
Speaker 1: You all talked about tool youse in that episode as well,
Speaker 1: So this particular species can use bark to pry open
Speaker 1: uh pieces of a tree to look for a little
Speaker 1: tasty insects inside of that tree as well. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different tactics used by birds here
Speaker 1: in the city. One of my favorite strategies that birds
Speaker 1: use is brood parasitism, and that is done by the
Speaker 1: brown headed cowbird, a species that a lot of people
Speaker 1: dislike because of that behavior. Um. So, what this bird
Speaker 1: does is it's natural behavior was to follow around bison herds,
Speaker 1: and they lived a very nomadic lifestyle. They would follow
Speaker 1: around bison herds and and feed off of the insects
Speaker 1: that bit these buffalo. Now, when European settlers came in,
Speaker 1: they cleared a lot of forest, which opened up a
Speaker 1: lot more habitat for them, so they started to expand.
Speaker 1: Now this bird is um laying. What it does is
Speaker 1: during the breeding season, sisted lives a very nomadic lifestyle.
Speaker 1: It lays its egg in another bird's nest um. It
Speaker 1: doesn't raise his own chicks, So then that unsuspecting parent
Speaker 1: has has to raise this chick that is about five
Speaker 1: times as large as it is now. To a lot
Speaker 1: of people, that's very, very cruel, And it gets even
Speaker 1: crueler because that parent keeps a watchful eye on that
Speaker 1: relationship between its egg, its chick, and it's now host parent.
Speaker 1: If that host parent decides to kick that egg out
Speaker 1: of its nest, what that cowbird will then do is
Speaker 1: returned back to that nest and destroy it, or they'll
Speaker 1: return back to that nest, kick all of the other
Speaker 1: eggs out, and relay an egg. It's pretty much like
Speaker 1: a mafia mentality. And that is why I love these
Speaker 1: birds so much. That's also why a lot of people
Speaker 1: dislike them so much. They'll be okay, though, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's like if I can't have it, no one can
Speaker 1: pretty much. Or it's like you're going to raise this
Speaker 1: chick one way or another. One of the studies that
Speaker 1: we looked at already that I thought was really interesting
Speaker 1: was about birds making adaptive use of trash and litter
Speaker 1: in the city is There was a study from I
Speaker 1: think it was some zoologists from Mexico City who found
Speaker 1: that finches and sparrows in Mexico City were lining their
Speaker 1: nests with cigarette butts, which were functioning as natural insecticides
Speaker 1: to keep parasites out of the nest because of the
Speaker 1: nicotine that was in the littered cigarette butts. Have you
Speaker 1: seen other ways that birds are making adaptive use of
Speaker 1: trash and litter in the cities I have, UM, so
Speaker 1: it's really really weird. Uh, it's an unknown fact with birders.
Speaker 1: If you go to one of our landfills here in
Speaker 1: the in the metro area, it's a really really cool
Speaker 1: place to see certain species of bird, which is um
Speaker 1: a place you would never think to go watch birds. UM,
Speaker 1: specifically gulls. Gulls love land fills, UM vultures. You can
Speaker 1: find vultures there as well. So there's a there's a
Speaker 1: ton of different reasons that you can find birds using trash.
Speaker 1: You can find them using it to attract particular food items. Um,
Speaker 1: you can find gulls there because insects like to visit landfills,
Speaker 1: of course, so you can find them dining on those guys.
Speaker 1: But see, now there is a complicated relationship there because
Speaker 1: sure you'll find certain species of finches and sparrows using
Speaker 1: items to act as an insect repellent. But then you'll
Speaker 1: also have instances in which birds will choose the wrong
Speaker 1: trash item um, which is why I cringe whenever I
Speaker 1: see someone released balloons in the city. Um. Balloons are
Speaker 1: extremely harmful for a number of species, particularly birds. Birds
Speaker 1: would commonly bring little pieces of either balloon or balloon
Speaker 1: string back to their nest and that can either be
Speaker 1: swallowed by the chick or the string from the balloon
Speaker 1: can either get entangled and hurt that baby bird as well.
Speaker 1: So there's kind of a love hate relationship in a
Speaker 1: in a in a sense with birds and trash there. Well,
Speaker 1: what about the impact of this chemical pollution in an
Speaker 1: urban environment? Chemical pollution actually was responsible for the decline
Speaker 1: and a lot of species that I find dear um,
Speaker 1: the raptors um all across America. There was use of
Speaker 1: pesticides that wound up hurting species like the bald eagle
Speaker 1: or like the sky Lamborghini ei the peregrine falcon. We
Speaker 1: started to see trends in uh eggs being the shells
Speaker 1: and the eggs being very very thin, which led to
Speaker 1: a decline in the species over a certain period of time.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad that this species has now made a
Speaker 1: turn for the better and they're doing a lot uh.
Speaker 1: Their numbers are rising over the years. But yes, chemical
Speaker 1: pollution can definitely harm certain species, definitely. All right, we
Speaker 1: are about to take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: come back there will be more of our conversation with
Speaker 1: Jason Mordan. What about mating. Have you seen ways that
Speaker 1: urban landscapes or any human created environments change the ways
Speaker 1: that birds find mates, produce great problems, or produce interesting
Speaker 1: workarounds or adaptations. Yes, um, so, as we know, living
Speaker 1: in the city is tough, or at least it's tougher
Speaker 1: than living in a rural area because it's louder. It's
Speaker 1: louder in a city. You got a lot of cars
Speaker 1: passing by, a lot of just noise in general, whether
Speaker 1: it's construction or just random city noise. Birds that live
Speaker 1: in urban environments have learned to single louder due to
Speaker 1: the fact that they have to compensate for the noise
Speaker 1: pollution around them. So it's been found recently that urban
Speaker 1: birds sing louder than their rural counterparts. Um, because they
Speaker 1: have to. That is their way of advertising to the
Speaker 1: ladies in the area that hey, I am big and strong,
Speaker 1: you need to mate with me. It's a little tougher
Speaker 1: in the city because there's music blasting and there's jack
Speaker 1: hammers going off. So those birds need to spend a
Speaker 1: little bit extra time working on their singing notes. And yes,
Speaker 1: they do a very very good job at it. So
Speaker 1: we've talked a little bit about garbage already, but how
Speaker 1: do birds adapt to the different food sources that are
Speaker 1: going to be available within an urban environment? Living in
Speaker 1: the city. Um. Coming from a city like New York,
Speaker 1: we are known for a lot of things. We're known
Speaker 1: for pizza, we're known for taxis, and we're known for
Speaker 1: a certain rodent problem. Um. Now that's not when we're
Speaker 1: proud of it. Birds have adapted to that lifestyle. UM.
Speaker 1: Redtail hawks are extremely prevalent in urban landscapes because there's
Speaker 1: tons of rodents for them. To eat um. They are
Speaker 1: opportunistic generalists. They have a large variety of food that
Speaker 1: is can be found in their diet. They'll eat birds
Speaker 1: in certain parts of the country, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, if
Speaker 1: it walks or flies, they'll eat it um, which is
Speaker 1: why they can be found in cities thriving. There are
Speaker 1: tons of food for them to eat in cities. So
Speaker 1: they have definitely taken advantage of the fact that we've
Speaker 1: expanded and grown in these cities. Now, what about birds
Speaker 1: that eat some of the human foods of cities. We've
Speaker 1: definitely read studies about mice in New York City adapting
Speaker 1: to like they're they're getting different gene prevalences to favor
Speaker 1: higher fat diets. I wonder do we see any like
Speaker 1: that in birds. Yeah, So there are a couple of
Speaker 1: species that are unfortunately invasive species, particularly the how sparrow
Speaker 1: and the European starling um. How sparrows are sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as burger king sparrows because you can find them
Speaker 1: in any fast food parking lot dining on French fries,
Speaker 1: which I don't know how they do because I'm not
Speaker 1: the hugest fan of their French fries, but they seem
Speaker 1: to love it. Um, yeah, they've taken advantage. Birds are
Speaker 1: opportunistic in general, so if there's some kind of food around,
Speaker 1: they'll make the best of it. And um we see
Speaker 1: that with European starlings and how sparrows. Now, this isn't
Speaker 1: quite a full blown urban environment, but Joe, I think
Speaker 1: I chatted with you a little bit about this already,
Speaker 1: but uh, my family recently visited, uh the island of
Speaker 1: Kauai in Hawaii, and I was I was really blown
Speaker 1: away by how successful chickens are there. They're like chickens
Speaker 1: just just everywhere you look in in the parking, lots
Speaker 1: of fast food restaurants, along the roadside, like in the forest. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a testament to just how how
Speaker 1: successful a creature like that can be when it it
Speaker 1: finds an unexploited niche That is extremely true. There's one
Speaker 1: reason why those particular birds are so successful there. That
Speaker 1: is a very isolated place there. They definitely have predators there.
Speaker 1: But when you live on the mainland and in a
Speaker 1: in a high populated area like we do here, there
Speaker 1: are curveballs thrown at you. If there were a large
Speaker 1: population of chickens here in the in this urban environment,
Speaker 1: they would have to contend with a very, very menacing animal. UM.
Speaker 1: This animal is said to be responsible for the demise
Speaker 1: of between one to four billion birds in the United
Speaker 1: States alone every year, and that is our fluffy, wonderful housecats. UM.
Speaker 1: Chickens are ground dwelling birds. UM. They don't spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time in trees, and that is horrible as
Speaker 1: a horrible strategy when contending with one of the best
Speaker 1: domestic hunters around. House Cats are extraordinarily good at stalking
Speaker 1: and catching prey, and chickens are relatively easy for them
Speaker 1: to wrangle and take down. I'm not sure how well
Speaker 1: that particular island is doing with their housecat population, but
Speaker 1: I do not think chickens would do that well here
Speaker 1: because of that issue. So we were talking about ways
Speaker 1: to sort of be neighborly towards the birds in our environment.
Speaker 1: Would would you contend that one of one of the
Speaker 1: ways to do that would be to do what you
Speaker 1: can to help efforts to curb They're all populations. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. UM. Ferro cat populations are responsible
Speaker 1: for the demise of not only birds, but small reptiles, um,
Speaker 1: some of our harmless species of snakes, even the animals
Speaker 1: that a lot of people find cute in general, like
Speaker 1: chipmunks as well. Um. I have a pretty bad stray
Speaker 1: cat issue in my neighborhood that I live in, and
Speaker 1: occasionally you'll find them with a chipmunk in their mouth,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the neighbors are feeding them. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people think that, you know what, if
Speaker 1: I feed these cats, they won't kill as much or
Speaker 1: they won't feel the need to kill as much. Well
Speaker 1: that's not the case, because these cats are doing it
Speaker 1: out of fun um and they're not really consuming the
Speaker 1: prey that they eat most of the time, they're killing
Speaker 1: it and leaving it there. So I would say that
Speaker 1: I mean a number of ways to help to be
Speaker 1: neighborly to the birds that live in your area is
Speaker 1: please bring your cat inside. On top of that, plant
Speaker 1: native plants as well, And if you want to put
Speaker 1: out a bird feeder or a bird bath, please feel
Speaker 1: obligated to do so. Just realize that when you do
Speaker 1: put out a feeder, you're not only feeding the sparrows
Speaker 1: and finches, but you also are feeding those hawks as well,
Speaker 1: so you've mentioned that you've been interested in birds in
Speaker 1: multiple cities, and I wonder if you see city specific
Speaker 1: or location specific adaptations among even the same species of birds.
Speaker 1: Do New York birds do anything different than Atlanta birds
Speaker 1: do or is it pretty much the same across urban environments. Um,
Speaker 1: It's largely the same, but you do see different uh
Speaker 1: minor changes with certain species. For example, the red tailed hawk,
Speaker 1: which is the most widespread hawk in North America. They
Speaker 1: have adapted to the fact that not only is New
Speaker 1: York City known for their large rodent population, but they
Speaker 1: have tons of pigeons in New York as well. Red
Speaker 1: tailed hawks UM are more likely to take down avian
Speaker 1: prey than they are here in Atlanta. Um. The hawks
Speaker 1: that I've seen here in Atlanta usually hunt squirrels. That
Speaker 1: is their main food source here uh small mammals. So
Speaker 1: you do see that. You do see different trends in
Speaker 1: different parts of the country based on what food is
Speaker 1: available for them. So here's a weird question where I'll
Speaker 1: ask you to speculate if you're comfortable. I want you
Speaker 1: to imagine human cities like Atlanta were to continue existing
Speaker 1: pretty much as they are for a million years, and
Speaker 1: that the birds that live in those cities that live
Speaker 1: there now continue to evolve to better fit their habitats.
Speaker 1: What would you expect those birds to be like in
Speaker 1: you know, a long time distant from now. How how
Speaker 1: would birds change if they just keep adapting to be
Speaker 1: better and better or city dwellers. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: UM Planet of the Apes? No, but you'd find UM
Speaker 1: a lot of what you're seeing now. You'd find birds
Speaker 1: more finely tuned to live in their environments. I've always
Speaker 1: wondered how far into the future we can go and
Speaker 1: continue to see the startling numbers that we see with
Speaker 1: window collisions with birds. UM, you think that after a while,
Speaker 1: certain birds would avoid UH cities on their migratory roots
Speaker 1: and uh those birds would obviously be able to pass
Speaker 1: their genes onto the next generation and their offspring would
Speaker 1: be also a little bit more likely to avoid large cities. Now,
Speaker 1: that isn't a great outlook for people who love viewing
Speaker 1: these animals because we enjoy the fact that they stop
Speaker 1: over at our ease for a couple of weeks at
Speaker 1: a time. So I think if we looked into the future,
Speaker 1: you'd find birds with what one could describe as superpowers. UM.
Speaker 1: These birds already have superpowers as it is. Basically so,
Speaker 1: owls have this amazing sense of hearing. They can hear
Speaker 1: uh a mouse's heartbeat. That is how in tune their
Speaker 1: hearing is. So if you think about an animal like that,
Speaker 1: over the course of thousands and thousands of years having
Speaker 1: to deal with noise pollution at a city level, you'd
Speaker 1: imagine that particular species um developed an even more acute
Speaker 1: sense of hearing based on the fact that he has
Speaker 1: to contend with his environment around him. So one could
Speaker 1: only imagine what kind of adaptations city birds would start
Speaker 1: to develop. You'd also imagine that these birds would eventually
Speaker 1: be split off from the air world counterparts and become subspecies.
Speaker 1: That is something that I can imagine happening as well. Now,
Speaker 1: coming back to the bird population of Zoo Atlanta, what
Speaker 1: are some other bird specimens you're particularly fond off there?
Speaker 1: My absolute favorite bird there is Sequoia. He is our
Speaker 1: bald eagle UM. He is a non releasable bird UM
Speaker 1: here he's had an accent that caused a permanent wing injury.
Speaker 1: But he's full of charisma UM, and he has grown
Speaker 1: comfortable with people walking right up to his enclosure. He
Speaker 1: used to start a very easily and retreat to the
Speaker 1: back of the enclosure, but now he'll sit really, really
Speaker 1: proudly on one of his perches, and occasionally you'll hear
Speaker 1: him emit this very wimpy kind of sound, which a
Speaker 1: lot of people are startled by and surprised by because
Speaker 1: they think that when a bald eagle opens his mouth,
Speaker 1: this incredible uh screeches going to come out, But in reality,
Speaker 1: it's this kind of squeaky sound that they made. Can
Speaker 1: you do an impression? I cannot, You know, I would
Speaker 1: only be doing a disservice to all bald eagles everywhere
Speaker 1: if I tried to do that. But I do remember
Speaker 1: when when to Atlanta first obtained him, he was behind
Speaker 1: some some blinders, essentially just to keep I guess people
Speaker 1: from spooking him. Yeah, he used he used to be
Speaker 1: a very um he used to be very easy to
Speaker 1: spook him. And since he came to us with that
Speaker 1: wing injury, the last thing we would want is for
Speaker 1: him to injury it even further. So um But luckily
Speaker 1: for us, he has gotten a lot more calm over
Speaker 1: the years and he's doing a lot better. Um. So
Speaker 1: his name is Sekoya. That is definitely one of my
Speaker 1: favorite animals. Also, we have the we have a pair
Speaker 1: of milky eagle owls. Um. They are the third largest
Speaker 1: species of owl in the world, the absolute largest in Africa.
Speaker 1: They have a really cool nickname. I want you to
Speaker 1: try to figure out how they got this nickname. Okay,
Speaker 1: so in Africa they are called monkey eating owls. Well,
Speaker 1: well one would assume it's from it's from eating the monkeys.
Speaker 1: You are a genius, yes, um, yes, So they are
Speaker 1: strong enough to pluck small monkeys right off the tops
Speaker 1: of trees. They have incredible grip strength with their talents. Um.
Speaker 1: If for one day that owl decided to fly down
Speaker 1: and grasp my forearm, the force that he would be
Speaker 1: able to emit would be equal to a rottweiler's bite. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is all coming from a bird who is
Speaker 1: on average about five pounds, so not a very heavy bird,
Speaker 1: but one that is extremely strong. Yeah. You notice, like
Speaker 1: anybody who's ever come across an angry flock of geese
Speaker 1: is like surprised by how strong birds can be. Yeah, gee,
Speaker 1: geese especially Um. There are tons of videos around the
Speaker 1: world where geese just stand up to everything. I always
Speaker 1: give them a wide berth whenever I passed them. Um,
Speaker 1: they are formidable animals. Um what I've seen clips of
Speaker 1: geese going after bears. So yeah, just avoid geese everyone
Speaker 1: when you see them, especially if they have babies around
Speaker 1: there they become dinosaurs. Now, speaking of large birds, did
Speaker 1: you work with the ostriches any at Zoo Atlanta or
Speaker 1: is that kind of a separate department. That's actually a
Speaker 1: separate department. So ostriches since they share the same enclosure
Speaker 1: with our giraffes and our zebra. They are part of
Speaker 1: the hoofstock part of the zoo, so they are unfortunately
Speaker 1: not under our care in the bird department. Of course,
Speaker 1: when we think, when we think about these large birds
Speaker 1: like the ostrich I don't know about you, but I
Speaker 1: can't help but think back to my my childhood prehistoric
Speaker 1: animal books and some of the large birds of the past.
Speaker 1: Did you or do you have a particular favorite prehistoric bird? Yes? Um,
Speaker 1: leave you all spoke about this bird once as well,
Speaker 1: the terror bird. That is a bird that I would
Speaker 1: love to see these days from a safe distance. Of course. Um,
Speaker 1: just a bird of that size with features the kind
Speaker 1: of features that it had. I would love to see
Speaker 1: that um brought to life. Now, that is not an
Speaker 1: endorsement for someone to try to do an experiment, try
Speaker 1: to bring it back to life. But every every time
Speaker 1: I see a trailer for a new Jurassic Park movie,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, there are all these uh, prehistoric mammals and
Speaker 1: prehistoric birds you could be including in your terrifying tourist attraction.
Speaker 1: Why not bring those guys back? Why I bring back
Speaker 1: the Moa. The Moa was when I was always impressed by.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, not only could you be bringing
Speaker 1: back some of these ancient birds, you can put feathers
Speaker 1: on some of these dinosaurs that we know had feathers.
Speaker 1: We know that therapods such as velociraptor and such as
Speaker 1: my favorite dina Nikus, which is actually the ones that
Speaker 1: are portrayed as velociraptors. But that's a different tangent call
Speaker 1: in itself. Um, we know that these birds, I mean,
Speaker 1: these dinosaurs now had feathers, so it would be wonderful
Speaker 1: to see them portrayed as such in these Jurassic Park movies.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean especially since uh, I mean, for
Speaker 1: so many kids, like Jurassic Park is an early way
Speaker 1: of building up your excitement about dinosaurs, and they I
Speaker 1: feel like they kind of have a responsibility to get
Speaker 1: some of the the educational aspects of the product right. Well,
Speaker 1: you'd think by association it would also make kids respect
Speaker 1: birds more, right if the dinosaurs had feathers. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think they found a loophole in the last movie that
Speaker 1: they put out. They are in the plot it's said
Speaker 1: that these dinosaurs on exhibit are genetically modified. I'd to
Speaker 1: I guess, resemble what people I think how people think
Speaker 1: they would look. So I guess they get around the
Speaker 1: loophole of trying to be as accurate as possible, because,
Speaker 1: for example, that large creature that jumps out of the
Speaker 1: water at the end of the movie, the mosasaurus, it
Speaker 1: was not that large. So I think they can take
Speaker 1: certain liberties with that loophole there. But still I'd like
Speaker 1: to see feathers. That sounds kind of cheap. Jason, I
Speaker 1: think this is always a good thing to ask people.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite book on birds, something that
Speaker 1: you wish everybody would read. So I do have a
Speaker 1: favorite book on birds. Um, it's not for everyone. I'll
Speaker 1: start by saying that because it's not your typical book. Um.
Speaker 1: My favorite book on birds is actually Sibley's. It is
Speaker 1: what we used to identify birds. Um. It is identification book. Um.
Speaker 1: It is packed full of different features that each species has. Now,
Speaker 1: it's not a book that you're going to dive into
Speaker 1: and read at a nice stand by yourself. Actually, I
Speaker 1: take that back because a friend of mine on Twitter,
Speaker 1: known as the Birdiest, he had a child recently and
Speaker 1: he posted a photo of him reading that book to
Speaker 1: his child as like a bedtime story. So I think
Speaker 1: that we should all aspire to do things like that.
Speaker 1: Even though it's not the most entertaining read, No, I
Speaker 1: think it can be. I remember when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite books to read was just I
Speaker 1: think it was. It might have been Audubon Society or
Speaker 1: somebody's Guide to Reptiles, and it was just an identification
Speaker 1: book that had great color photos in it and descriptions
Speaker 1: of like the habitat and behavior and characteristics of all that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't very literary, it didn't really have a plot,
Speaker 1: but for some reason you couldn't get it out of
Speaker 1: my hands. Well, I think kids in general are drawn
Speaker 1: too just encyclopedic volumes of anything. You know, it's if
Speaker 1: it's alphabetized and have some some colors and some stats
Speaker 1: in there, they're gonna they're gonna go for it. Those
Speaker 1: are some of the very very first books that were
Speaker 1: piled on top of my desk at the library, those
Speaker 1: books with tons of photos in them and fun facts.
Speaker 1: That is how you decide to lose yourself and dive
Speaker 1: deep into this world, um of wildlife that lives around you,
Speaker 1: and to bring it back completely. Bird. Do you keep
Speaker 1: any birds as pets? I do not. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: I don't have space big enough to house them. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think I would in the first place. UM.
Speaker 1: I am more than content observing them in their natural habitat. UM.
Speaker 1: It's tougher because sometimes you spend hours waiting for one
Speaker 1: little song that you hear over hundred feet away. Um.
Speaker 1: But that is more than enough to bring a smile
Speaker 1: through my face to know that this tiny little bird
Speaker 1: that spent its winter in South America is now passing
Speaker 1: through Atlanta on the way to Canada. Um. It is
Speaker 1: magical almost. That is really cool. It makes you feel
Speaker 1: so connected with the world before we let you go.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you wanted to talk to us
Speaker 1: about today, anything really really burning that's on your mind.
Speaker 1: I think that people should get out and enjoy the
Speaker 1: world around them. That is most important to me. Whether
Speaker 1: it's you're taking a vacation to a national wildlife refuge
Speaker 1: somewhere in the United States, or whether it's just taken
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes and stepping out to your backyard
Speaker 1: without any electronic devices to bother you. Um, just step
Speaker 1: out and enjoy the world around you. And yes, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be biased here. Look up, look into the trees.
Speaker 1: You never know what you may find in those trees.
Speaker 1: There are tiny dinosaurs that are flying around you at
Speaker 1: all times. So let's take a step back and look up. Well, Jason,
Speaker 1: I just want to say thanks so much again for
Speaker 1: joining us today. This has been really great. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having all Right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we come back, Robert and I
Speaker 1: will discuss some follow up from our conversation with Jason.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Okay, we're back now. We wanted
Speaker 1: to follow up on some of the things that came
Speaker 1: up in our conversation with Jason. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that he mentioned was the ways that artificial light
Speaker 1: in cities can affect bird populations. He was specifically focusing
Speaker 1: on the ways that it favored visual hunting strategies of
Speaker 1: a vivors like the peregrine falcon. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention some interesting parallels to UH to that, some other
Speaker 1: light anomalies within urban environments and how it affects birds.
Speaker 1: So here's a pretty weird one. The National September eleven
Speaker 1: Memorial and Museum in New York runs this annual event
Speaker 1: called the Tribute in Light. Have you ever seen this, Robert?
Speaker 1: It is, if you haven't seen it, as you might guess,
Speaker 1: a memorial to all the people who died in the
Speaker 1: September eleventh terrorist attacks. And the form the memorial takes
Speaker 1: is that it pulls together eighty eight search lights and
Speaker 1: arranges them into two enormous beams of light shooting into
Speaker 1: the sky. I guess to suggest the Twin Towers, and
Speaker 1: some of the literature refers to these beams as the
Speaker 1: Towers of Light or the Phantom Towers. But this event
Speaker 1: has a creepy and mysterious side involving birds, especially some years.
Speaker 1: So I want to quote a section from Brandon Come
Speaker 1: writing an article about what happened at the ninth the
Speaker 1: Anniversary ceremony. UH. In an article for Wired in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, quote illuminated in the beams where thousands of
Speaker 1: small white objects sparkling and spiraling, unlike anything seen on
Speaker 1: other nights. Some viewers wondered if they were scraps of
Speaker 1: paper or plastic caught in updrafts from the spotlight's heat
Speaker 1: from beneath. It was at times like gazing into a snowstorm.
Speaker 1: It was hard not to think of souls. But what
Speaker 1: were they? They were birds spiraling around in the spotlights.
Speaker 1: Now we all know birds, of course, that lots of
Speaker 1: bird species are seasonal migrants. Have read that roughly a
Speaker 1: quarter of Earth's birds or seasonal migrants uh. And in
Speaker 1: the northern hemisphere, what that means is that they fly
Speaker 1: south to warmer weather in the winter, and in September,
Speaker 1: a lot of birds are going to be migrating south.
Speaker 1: And New York City actually lies right along a major
Speaker 1: migration corridor. Now, normally, flying at night makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense for birds because birds use less energy then
Speaker 1: and they're more hidden from predators. Cover of darkness is
Speaker 1: very nice if you're a prey species. This sort of
Speaker 1: goes back to what Jason was talking about with the predation, right,
Speaker 1: But of course it also comes with costs, like how
Speaker 1: do you know which way you're supposed to go if
Speaker 1: it's dark out. But birds, fortunately, they've got these navigational strategies.
Speaker 1: They have a sort of internal compass that can help
Speaker 1: orient them in their north south migrations. And it turns
Speaker 1: out this compass is calibrated somehow with respect to lights
Speaker 1: of various kinds, maybe sunlight, starlight, moonlight. So large sources
Speaker 1: of urban light along migratory paths have the ability to
Speaker 1: interfere with nighttime flight if the circumstances line up in
Speaker 1: just the wrong way. And those circumstances would be things
Speaker 1: like the timing of the migration phase of the moon
Speaker 1: and the weather conditions and so forth. And at the
Speaker 1: time of this this two thousand ten event, when all
Speaker 1: these birds were spiraling in the spotlights, John Rowden, a
Speaker 1: citizen science director at the New York chapter of the
Speaker 1: Audubon Society, estimated that about ten thousand birds got trapped
Speaker 1: in this light cage. And of course, what happens to
Speaker 1: a lot of these birds is you know, they're on
Speaker 1: an intensely restricted energy budget, right, and just wasting tons
Speaker 1: of inner g spiraling up and down in a beam
Speaker 1: of light because you're confused and you don't know where
Speaker 1: to go. That can actually prove fatal. So, like birds
Speaker 1: were falling to the ground exhausted or dead, or even
Speaker 1: if they eventually made it out, they had severely wasted
Speaker 1: a lot of energy that was necessary for them to survive.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the important things to drive
Speaker 1: home about this is, I mean, for starters, just artificial
Speaker 1: light in general, the likes of which you would encounter
Speaker 1: typically in New York City, is a spectacle that did
Speaker 1: not exist for the vast majority m of the of
Speaker 1: of the evolutionary time on Earth. Yeah, and another thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind, people might not even think of
Speaker 1: this because you think, okay, well, people have at least
Speaker 1: been lighting fires for thousands of years, right, But the
Speaker 1: intensity and not just the intensity, but the frequency spectrum
Speaker 1: of light has changed a lot over time. So not
Speaker 1: only are lights brighter than they used to be, we're
Speaker 1: producing different frequencies of light because of the light sources.
Speaker 1: Fire produces a very different kind of light than say
Speaker 1: a fluorescent l it or an LED does. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a a an extremely like the Las Vegas strip is
Speaker 1: a totally different light spectacle than say a forest fire,
Speaker 1: even though they are both impressive in their own right,
Speaker 1: exactly right, And many animals that we code all of
Speaker 1: that is light is just something we see by many
Speaker 1: animals actually do respond differently to different spectra of light,
Speaker 1: and so that kind of thing can have a biological difference.
Speaker 1: But with these phantom towers, were again talking about a concentration,
Speaker 1: then that is a that is a magnitude above what
Speaker 1: is even typical in say New York City, right, and
Speaker 1: even the natural not natural, but the normal artificial light
Speaker 1: generated by New York City at night can be enough
Speaker 1: to cause some problems. This anomaly, you know, this sort
Speaker 1: of like one night a year anomally is this huge problem.
Speaker 1: So these ten thousand birds get trapped, you know roughly
Speaker 1: that's just the estimate at this one event, and they
Speaker 1: spiral and spiral, and so eventually what happened this year
Speaker 1: was that the people running the running it were convinced
Speaker 1: to turn the light saw for twenty minutes and then
Speaker 1: the birds were able to get away. But then when
Speaker 1: they turned the lights back on, it happened again. So
Speaker 1: they just kept repeating this cycle of they'd have the
Speaker 1: lights on, birds would become trapped in this spiraling light cage,
Speaker 1: and then they'd have to turn it off for a
Speaker 1: few for a few minutes and let the birds escape.
Speaker 1: But it's also crazy to think of how this light
Speaker 1: accident we talked about. I think in the last episode
Speaker 1: we mentioned the vacuum cleaner effect, the way it just
Speaker 1: sucks in birds from from all around. And again we
Speaker 1: do see an example of I mean, who would have
Speaker 1: expected this? Yeah, well, I mean some people would have expected,
Speaker 1: but certainly this is probably not something that was on
Speaker 1: anybody's mind planning this memorial, right, I mean some bird
Speaker 1: experts probably would have expected, yet not normally people they
Speaker 1: just saying, oh yeah, we're just having some lights. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's lights all the time. What's the big deal. So
Speaker 1: a more comprehensive study of this was actually published in
Speaker 1: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in seventeen by
Speaker 1: Van Doren at All and the It was a team
Speaker 1: of ornithologists who did a study to track the tribute
Speaker 1: in lights effects on birds. So this one specific annual event,
Speaker 1: tracking it over seven years, and they estimated that over
Speaker 1: that period of seven years, the event disoriented about one
Speaker 1: point one million migrating birds. So when the lights were on,
Speaker 1: quote bird density is near the installation exceeded magnitudes twenty
Speaker 1: times greater than surrounding baseline densities during each year's observation.
Speaker 1: So it is working like this vacuum cleaner. It's sucking
Speaker 1: in all these birds that are migrating from the surrounding countryside.
Speaker 1: But as we mentioned, other things that are bright lights
Speaker 1: at night can also disoriented can also disorient birds. So skyscrapers,
Speaker 1: tall buildings, sports stadiums, oil rigs, and there's a pretty
Speaker 1: easy way to make a difference here. Turn off the
Speaker 1: lights during migration. Uh. And so there are these things
Speaker 1: known as lights out campaigns that can help. And this
Speaker 1: would be like where a building manager would agree to
Speaker 1: turn off the lights in the skyscraper during a period
Speaker 1: when birds are expected to be passing through. I like
Speaker 1: the idea of putting night vision goggles on all of
Speaker 1: the players in a football or soccer game. I think
Speaker 1: that was great. That would really add us. It would
Speaker 1: be like you know, a Tom Clancy rainbow six kind
Speaker 1: of take on the sport. You'd have to put them
Speaker 1: on the spectators too, though, wouldn't you. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be um, it would be a Buffalo bill
Speaker 1: esque sporting spectacular for everybody involved. I like the idea
Speaker 1: also that the announcers would have to be whispering, as
Speaker 1: if they were doing a covert mission. Yeah. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: as you would expect, the effects of artificial lights on
Speaker 1: birds and cities don't stop there, not by any means.
Speaker 1: So I want to mention just one more study I found.
Speaker 1: It was in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London
Speaker 1: b and Biological Sciences from by Dominoni, Ketting and Partechie
Speaker 1: And this was a study that looked at the effects
Speaker 1: of nighttime artificial light on European blackbirds or tortoise marula.
Speaker 1: And they said that quote, birds exposed to light at
Speaker 1: night develop up their reproductive system up to one month
Speaker 1: earlier and also molted earlier than birds kept under dark nights. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: city birds responded differently than forest individuals to the light
Speaker 1: at night treatment, suggesting that urbanization can alter the physiological
Speaker 1: phenotype of songbirds. Now, why did this happen? It's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to say for sure, but they're probably going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of pressures at play here, plus
Speaker 1: just some of the normal ways that light can affect
Speaker 1: hormonal frequencies. I mean, we've even heard this about the
Speaker 1: way light affects our own hormones are artificial light effect.
Speaker 1: If you're like looking at bright lights right before you
Speaker 1: go to bed, this can cause problems with the hormones
Speaker 1: that you normally need to have to get to sleep,
Speaker 1: such as that bright little screen that we all have
Speaker 1: such a difficulty detaching ourselves from. Yeah, even I have
Speaker 1: this problem. And I just want to say also that
Speaker 1: in the last episode, we were talking a lot about
Speaker 1: this book by Minnow Skill Tous and the Dutch researcher
Speaker 1: who wrote this book, Darwin Comes to Town, that was
Speaker 1: all about the evolution of animals for urban settings, and
Speaker 1: he has a whole chapter on the evolution of blackbirds
Speaker 1: in urban settings, and he's essentially advancing a case based
Speaker 1: on multiple studies that the urban blackbird is in the
Speaker 1: middle of becoming a distinct species separate from forest blackbirds
Speaker 1: because of all the changes that the city dwelling populations
Speaker 1: are undergoing. That's right, Yeah, and he The Skilled Skilled
Speaker 1: Housing has one chapter where he talks just about pigeons
Speaker 1: the darkness. Pigeons, the pigeons of darkness, if you will
Speaker 1: um because he talks not only in this book about
Speaker 1: a physical and you know, systematic changes in the city,
Speaker 1: but also about chemical challenges such as you know, pollution,
Speaker 1: basic chemical pollution. And he points to several examples of
Speaker 1: organisms as at large that have adapted to survive and
Speaker 1: polluted environments, such as the widespread fish known as the
Speaker 1: mummy chog, which is just a great name for a species,
Speaker 1: but this is an example of a creature that that
Speaker 1: you can find thriving in very polluted areas, uh, with
Speaker 1: the individuals exhibiting enhanced tolerance for the pollutants. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't help but be reminded in all of this
Speaker 1: of another doctor SEH's story, one that you've probably you're
Speaker 1: probably familiar with this one Joe the Lorax. He speaks
Speaker 1: for the trees. Yeah, he speaks for the trees. And
Speaker 1: and in the book we we see fish, birds and
Speaker 1: of course the some bears. They are forced to flee
Speaker 1: the industrial waste. But one of the points that The
Speaker 1: Skilled Housing makes is that nature can find a way
Speaker 1: even in a once slur poisoned landscape, at least to
Speaker 1: some level. And he discusses a really interesting Avian example
Speaker 1: of this with our our most celebrated or reviled urban bird,
Speaker 1: and that is, of course, the pigeon. He writes that
Speaker 1: between two thousand and two thousand four Russian geneticists in
Speaker 1: you a book of a travel throughout Europe to catalog
Speaker 1: the physical features of nine thousand city pigeons, and he
Speaker 1: noted specifically whether they were pale or quote dark sooty gray,
Speaker 1: which is a genetic distinction in pigeons. And he found
Speaker 1: that the darker birds were more common in big cities
Speaker 1: than in less urbanized areas. So he wondered if this
Speaker 1: was due to quote genetic mingling with pigeon fanciers birds,
Speaker 1: or as something else was at work here. Now, normally,
Speaker 1: when you see coloration patterns changing in in wild animal populations,
Speaker 1: you might think this has something to do with like
Speaker 1: either sexual signaling or maybe with predator prey relationships. Right,
Speaker 1: you would expect maybe it's camouflage, right that you automatically
Speaker 1: think of the evolutionary example of the peppered moth, which famously,
Speaker 1: there's there's this moth in England that naturalists said, Okay,
Speaker 1: the pigmentation on its wings is changing because of the
Speaker 1: sooty landscape from pollution. It needs to better blend in
Speaker 1: with darkened surfaces. Yeah, that was my first thought when
Speaker 1: I started reading this. I'm like, oh, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a camouflage issue. So those pigeons can evade, uh some
Speaker 1: of the New york As who wish to eat them,
Speaker 1: um or I presume want to eat them. Have I
Speaker 1: told you about the box man in New York? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I was. I was up there for
Speaker 1: World Science Festival one year, and it was one of
Speaker 1: it was It was not a major park. It was
Speaker 1: one of these sort of carefully manicured areas between two
Speaker 1: large skyscrapers that had a little green space. A lot
Speaker 1: of business people coming out there to, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just to check their phone, maybe eat lunch, and then
Speaker 1: disappear again. And uh, I was doing much the same thing.
Speaker 1: I was stopping for rest, checking my messages before moving
Speaker 1: on to something else. And there was this guy out
Speaker 1: there feeding the pigeons, and he had next to him
Speaker 1: like a like a beer box, you know, like a
Speaker 1: cardboard beer crate. Uh, you know, it's just some dude
Speaker 1: feeding some pigeons, No big deal, pigeons coming closer and closer.
Speaker 1: He was feeding it, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he scoots, stoops down, grabs the pigeons, stuffs it into
Speaker 1: the box, and then walks away. What. Yeah, And I've
Speaker 1: spent I spent years wondering what he had in store
Speaker 1: for that pigeon. Maybe he was a researcher and he
Speaker 1: was going to do some experiments. Maybe he It did
Speaker 1: not seem like it was his his first pigeon kidnapping. Uh,
Speaker 1: this seemed like he had a system down. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's eating these things or if it
Speaker 1: is uh some sort of legitimate or semi legitimate scientific
Speaker 1: experiment he's up to or something and grotesque and horrifying. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he speaks for the pigeons. So
Speaker 1: many questions, Yeah, I have them all. The mystery is
Speaker 1: consuming me already. Yeah. And I and honestly, I don't
Speaker 1: know to what extent camouflage would have helped that poor pigeon.
Speaker 1: But this particular case, the case of the gray pigeons
Speaker 1: and the pale pigeons it it turns out it doesn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with camouflage or mate selection, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's all about the poison offloading power of darker feather pigmentation.
Speaker 1: He points out that evolutionary ecologist Marian shatter Lane provides
Speaker 1: some answers via her study of Parisian pigeons. So, as
Speaker 1: it turns out zinc and lead both bind with melanin.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so the presence of heavy metals in the
Speaker 1: surrounding environment could have a role in selecting for different
Speaker 1: types of pigmentation, just as a way of processing the metals. Right,
Speaker 1: So you end up with the zinc and lead in
Speaker 1: your system. Right. As a bird living in a urban environment,
Speaker 1: the darker the feather, the more of this stuff you
Speaker 1: can offload into the feathers because it's binding with the melanin,
Speaker 1: which is the pigment. So darker birds are better able
Speaker 1: to purge their bodies of heavy metal pollutants. The researcher
Speaker 1: here shadow line. She found that chicks and parents exposed
Speaker 1: to lead exhibited darker plumage than one's raised in lead
Speaker 1: free environments. Paler juveniles died young, indicating that quote there
Speaker 1: is a real evolutionary advantage to having darker feathers in
Speaker 1: a polluted environment. And it has absolutely nothing to do
Speaker 1: with what those feathers look like. It's just the chemical
Speaker 1: properties of what's in them, right. Yeah, So I was
Speaker 1: I was really floored by that. It's just not something
Speaker 1: I would have would have thought of because we think
Speaker 1: of coloration, we do, like we said, you think of camouflage,
Speaker 1: you think of mating displays, uh, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But just the like the physical properties of that pigmentation. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know that that was not something I had really
Speaker 1: considered fascinating. Oh, by the way, a couple of things
Speaker 1: I wanted to get back to from our interview with
Speaker 1: Jason Ward. We talked a little bit about wild turkeys
Speaker 1: in the urban environment, and I realized after the fact
Speaker 1: that that many of our listeners may not know much
Speaker 1: about the North American wild turkey. So these are America's
Speaker 1: largest ground nesting bird, standing four feet high or one
Speaker 1: point two meters and weighing twenty to thirty pounds. That's
Speaker 1: that means up to thirteen point six kilograms. So you know,
Speaker 1: these are the they're standing there and they're the size
Speaker 1: of a child and again there's they're slender. So whatever
Speaker 1: images you've seen of plump Thanksgiving turkey, this is a
Speaker 1: different creature altogether. They don't come like pre saline injected right. Uh.
Speaker 1: The they have a top running speed of twenty five
Speaker 1: miles per hour or forty point two kilometers per hour.
Speaker 1: And to put that in perspective, the human running speed
Speaker 1: record is twenty seven point seventy eight miles per hour
Speaker 1: or forty four point seven kilometers per hour. So if
Speaker 1: you're an Olympic sprinter, you have a chance at at
Speaker 1: out running a wild turkey. They're capable of short flight. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're talking sixty mile per hour or nine point
Speaker 1: five kilometer per hour bursts of speed in the air,
Speaker 1: and they boast a two inch bony spurs on their
Speaker 1: legs for defense. So they're they're Dionicus in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are. They're they're distant shades and shadows of Denonicus.
Speaker 1: Now you have a different encounts of encounters with wild turkeys,
Speaker 1: and they range from the sort of silent awe that
Speaker 1: I experienced in my backyard to a mad dash to
Speaker 1: escape their pursuit. If you look around on YouTube, you'll
Speaker 1: definitely find examples of both, and they can be destructive
Speaker 1: to human constructions, as you know, as you might imagine
Speaker 1: digging around with their with their claws. I've seen accounts
Speaker 1: of them scraping up automobiles. Uh, and certainly they might
Speaker 1: frighten you. But while they were once found throughout North America,
Speaker 1: they were pushed to the brink of extinction in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century and they've since bounced back. They've been pushed
Speaker 1: into urban areas by population pressures, and once they find
Speaker 1: their way into a predator free location with readily available food,
Speaker 1: well then that's that's what they go wild for. And
Speaker 1: so in some areas they have become a bit of
Speaker 1: a problem, a bit of a nuisance, And usually what
Speaker 1: is prescribed there is is just do not approach them,
Speaker 1: do not feed them, because as with any wild animal like,
Speaker 1: that's where problems occur. Now, another one of the awesome
Speaker 1: birds that came up in our conversation with Jason was
Speaker 1: the cassowary. Yes, and while the cassowary is a rainforest
Speaker 1: bird that as far as I can tell, is is
Speaker 1: not an herb a nuisance anywhere, um, it is still
Speaker 1: a very impressive animal. So I just wanted to add
Speaker 1: a few details here. So we're talking several species of
Speaker 1: large flightless birds that are found in New Guinea nearby
Speaker 1: islands and in Australia, and they reach heights of five
Speaker 1: feet tall or one point five meters and there they
Speaker 1: are just impressive animals with this bright blue coloration. They
Speaker 1: have this bony cask on the top of their head,
Speaker 1: which it reminds one of the like a dinosaurs bony cast,
Speaker 1: you know, like something you might see on Paris Harlfus
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, and the my my understanding is that
Speaker 1: one of the predominant theories about it is that they
Speaker 1: use it when they are running through the underbrush as
Speaker 1: a way to sort of cut through and push your
Speaker 1: branches out of the way. And they could considerably need
Speaker 1: it because they're running speed top running speedies about thirty
Speaker 1: one miles per hour or fifty kilometers per hour. And uh,
Speaker 1: when it comes to clause we have Jason mentioned that
Speaker 1: they are dangerous animals. To have an enclosure, you have
Speaker 1: to be extra careful with them and extra um, you know,
Speaker 1: cautious around them. And that's because they have an inner
Speaker 1: claw that reaches five inches in length there on five millimeters,
Speaker 1: So we're talking an impressive dagger. They're just stored away
Speaker 1: for defensive purposes. So you wouldn't want to go start
Speaker 1: in fights with a cast wary. No, But but and
Speaker 1: there there are historical accounts, especially from World War two,
Speaker 1: understand where American service uh men would encounter cassawaries. And
Speaker 1: there are some some tales here and there of violence
Speaker 1: perpetrated by castauaries against human or canine aggressors. But you know,
Speaker 1: they they are large, wild animals and if they are threatened,
Speaker 1: they are going to respond. But otherwise I would say
Speaker 1: that the castuaria is just a holy, blameless creature. They've
Speaker 1: got the pope had to prove it, Yeah, they do.
Speaker 1: They have the bony pope hat right there on top
Speaker 1: of their head. Now we've already talked about light pollution,
Speaker 1: but what about noise pollution? Yeah? This is another thing
Speaker 1: Jason mentioned was that when we asked him about mating
Speaker 1: for birds in cities, what kind of pressures existed, And
Speaker 1: he mentioned that a major problem for bird mating in
Speaker 1: cities is that lots of birds have courtship rituals that
Speaker 1: involve song. But if a male bird's mate calling song
Speaker 1: can't be heard over all the traffic and jackhammers and
Speaker 1: so forth. How can the birds reproduce? How can they survive?
Speaker 1: This sounds like a question from a Harry Nielsen song
Speaker 1: for some reason. You know, how can the birds stamp copyright?
Speaker 1: Don't steal my intellectual property? That song is gonna be
Speaker 1: a top ten So actually, also in his book Skill
Speaker 1: tousand has a whole chapter on this, just on bird
Speaker 1: song within cities. And one key study here that's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting is won by Hans slab Acorn and Margarette Pete
Speaker 1: from two thousand three published in Nature called Ecology birds
Speaker 1: sing at a higher pitch in urban noise. Pretty straightforward findings.
Speaker 1: They found that male great tits or parsis major quote
Speaker 1: at noisy locations sing with a higher minimum frequency, thereby
Speaker 1: preventing their songs from being masked to some extent by
Speaker 1: the predominantly low frequency noise. So if you are singing
Speaker 1: at the same frequency as the traffic, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: hard to hear you, even if you sing very loud.
Speaker 1: But if you sing it higher frequencies than the traffic,
Speaker 1: then you have a better chance of being picked out
Speaker 1: from the background noise. So this is showing a pressure
Speaker 1: for urban dwelling great tits, or birds generally that that
Speaker 1: sing to attract mates to sing it higher frequencies to
Speaker 1: be picked out more easily from all of the industrial
Speaker 1: machinery and jackhammers and construction and cars and busses and
Speaker 1: everything you would normally hear in the city. But of course,
Speaker 1: other general findings are that great tits aren't the only
Speaker 1: birds that do this, And one of the big questions
Speaker 1: is does this happen by ever luction, meaning that over generations,
Speaker 1: genes for higher pitch songs are becoming more common over time,
Speaker 1: or does this happen by plasticity, meaning our birds actively
Speaker 1: adjusting the pitch and reaction to the environment. And it
Speaker 1: looks like there's some cases of both, right, Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: genetic and sometimes it's just plasticity. Sometimes a bird put
Speaker 1: into a higher noise environment will actually sing at a
Speaker 1: higher pitch to adjust. But skill Tousm points out that
Speaker 1: this is in competition with some other pressures, for example,
Speaker 1: some bird species. In some some of these species, research
Speaker 1: shows that in natural settings, females generally prefer males with
Speaker 1: lower voices. A deep voice is more attractive to them.
Speaker 1: Because it seems to better signal fitness. Thus, there's a
Speaker 1: sexual selection advantage for lower frequency songs. But in cities
Speaker 1: those preferable lower frequency songs can't be heard, So there's
Speaker 1: an environmental pressure going opposite of the sexual selection pressure.
Speaker 1: Because ultimately, it doesn't matter how much of like an
Speaker 1: avian berry why you are. If you can't be heard,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna make an impact. Right, they can't get
Speaker 1: any of your love. Better to be a little Richard
Speaker 1: or one of the beaches. Right. If that's the only
Speaker 1: way to be heard, that's the only way to be heard.
Speaker 1: One more interesting study of how human noise affects birds
Speaker 1: skilled House and mentions this one in his book as
Speaker 1: well is associated with a University of Colorado researcher named
Speaker 1: Clinton Francis who studied the effects of industrial noise on
Speaker 1: bird populations in the desert of New Mexico. Because that
Speaker 1: was actually an interesting place because what you've got in
Speaker 1: the desert New Mexico is it's full of oil and
Speaker 1: gas wells, and some oil and gas wells have these
Speaker 1: noisy compressors and others don't, and they're pretty quiet, and
Speaker 1: this allows you to isolate pretty much just the variable
Speaker 1: of noise, because the surrounding environment is otherwise the same
Speaker 1: and so the only thing that's different is whether industrial
Speaker 1: noise is present. And in studying the differences between these
Speaker 1: noisy versus quiet oil and gas wells, he and his
Speaker 1: team found that birds with a lower frequency call or
Speaker 1: songs such as morning the morning dove, were absent from
Speaker 1: the noisy well locations, probably because they couldn't be heard. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: birds with high pitch voices, like the chipping sparrow were
Speaker 1: all around them, and some birds he found even preferred
Speaker 1: the noisy areas, presumably because the noise drove away predators.
Speaker 1: So if you're a bird that gets preyed on by
Speaker 1: one of these low voiced predators that doesn't like the
Speaker 1: noisy areas, then you might do well to put up
Speaker 1: nests right beside this humming compressor. Now, we asked Jason
Speaker 1: in our interview about the the idea of future evolution
Speaker 1: in a city. What kinds of spectacular or or lackluster
Speaker 1: forms will we see in the future, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: things like we'll rat raccoons drive cars, or how the
Speaker 1: cars as it as it were, I mean, what what
Speaker 1: kind of future evolution might place in a human urban environment.
Speaker 1: Do raccoons not drive cars? Now, there's gotta be some
Speaker 1: YouTube videos. I think they're so skilled and they're so secretive.
Speaker 1: The coyotes are probably driving cars. We just don't see them, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course, we were gonna have carnivorous predatory rats that
Speaker 1: attack large prey by swarming. What is the classic movie
Speaker 1: about what Food of the Gods? Is that about urban rats?
Speaker 1: I'd swarming over everybody? You know, I am way behind
Speaker 1: on rats warm movies. I've gotta I've got to catch
Speaker 1: up on that. No. Actually, I mean, in addition to
Speaker 1: all of the stuff we have already talked about, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we should not be surprised if many years
Speaker 1: down the road we see lots of the wildlife dwelling
Speaker 1: within cities, having adaptations like adaptations to climb and dwell
Speaker 1: on smooth, rocky surfaces like buildings and stuff, and adapted
Speaker 1: resistance against poisons and pollutants and traps and obvious stuff
Speaker 1: you would expect. But another thing that I think might
Speaker 1: be an interesting general trend among all kinds of animals
Speaker 1: is a selection driving towards animals that are more neophilic,
Speaker 1: meaning attracted to unusual objects. We talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about this in the last episode about how often in
Speaker 1: nature it pays to be conservative and to not go
Speaker 1: near things that are unusual because they could be dangerous.
Speaker 1: But in cities a lot of times things that are
Speaker 1: unusual are going to be rewarding. Yeah. Yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: about the raccoon, and it's especially the urban raccoon, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's proclivity to just jump in there
Speaker 1: and try something, just to start filling with it and
Speaker 1: see what its secrets are. Yeah. So, animals that are
Speaker 1: more and more willing to investigate and figure out unusual
Speaker 1: objects and situations I think are gonna generally have some
Speaker 1: some things working out in their favor. In cities, they're
Speaker 1: going to be getting more nutrition coming across more and
Speaker 1: more delicious garbage of various kinds that we we can't
Speaker 1: even imagine the garbage of tomorrow. And uh so you're
Speaker 1: gonna have this selection pressure towards neophilia, which also I
Speaker 1: think will mean more of a pressure towards animals that
Speaker 1: are comfortable with humans around. Right now, this only works
Speaker 1: if the humans don't exert a counter pressure by attacking
Speaker 1: the animals when they come around. Right, So here's my
Speaker 1: my two pronged prediction. Animals with neophilia more likely to
Speaker 1: come around weird novel situations and objects and to approach humans,
Speaker 1: but also animals that are at the same time cuter
Speaker 1: and cuter. Ah. Well, and this we get into that
Speaker 1: the classic rivalry between the possum and the raccoon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the raccoon, the adult raccoon is cute, and the
Speaker 1: babies of course are super adorable. But with the possum,
Speaker 1: the babies are adorable, but the the adults are a
Speaker 1: little ghastly in appearance. But imagine the possum of the
Speaker 1: future that like, it's too cute to call the pest
Speaker 1: control on. You know, oh so maybe yeah, I see
Speaker 1: there being an evolutionary advantage in being a cute possum,
Speaker 1: and therefore, uh, Nature's up selecting four cute possums. So
Speaker 1: basically I'm predicting a future with cities full of humans
Speaker 1: and e walks. Uh, you know, very curious problem solving
Speaker 1: teddy bears that are so cuddly looking. But of course
Speaker 1: the other side did this. I can't help but think,
Speaker 1: and I imagine you probably thought about this too as
Speaker 1: a dog owner, is that it's it's one thing to
Speaker 1: be able to get along with the humans, but you're
Speaker 1: ultimately going to have to get along with their dogs
Speaker 1: as well. That's because if you were seen as a
Speaker 1: threat to somebody's fur baby, uh, then that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a reason for the humans to rise up against you
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I mean, so there's there's always gonna
Speaker 1: be things intention right. You know, some animals are going
Speaker 1: to be selected for because they they're scrappers and their
Speaker 1: fighters and they can survive tough competition environments, and other
Speaker 1: things are going to be selected for because they're perceived
Speaker 1: as harmless and they get along. Well. I guess I'm
Speaker 1: not ultimately sure which pressure will win out though, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, if you've got humans, a city
Speaker 1: full of humans, and humans have all these pest control
Speaker 1: tactics in their arsenal, it does seem like urban dwelling
Speaker 1: animals would do well to do everything they can not
Speaker 1: to be perceived as pests. Now, one other issue that
Speaker 1: comes to mind on this is just that it's easy
Speaker 1: to think of the human city is something fixed and unchanging,
Speaker 1: you know, it is this artificial environment that we have made,
Speaker 1: and we push the elements of change out of the picture.
Speaker 1: But of course cities undergo constant evolution of their own.
Speaker 1: Sort of course technology changes, uh, environmental policies change. Uh.
Speaker 1: People realize, oh, we need more plants around, we need
Speaker 1: more parks, or you look at some of these more gosh,
Speaker 1: I haven't really looked at any of the some of
Speaker 1: these recently, but you've seen these plans for the future
Speaker 1: cities where everything's covered in green. It's it's like the
Speaker 1: hanging gardens of Babylon all over again. And and you
Speaker 1: can imagine how an initiative like that, if it were
Speaker 1: really carried out to its full potential, how that would
Speaker 1: alter some of the factors that we've set up here. Well,
Speaker 1: at the end of his book, Skill touse And actually
Speaker 1: lays out a plan for designing good green spaces within
Speaker 1: cities that would be favorable toward the evolution of urban organisms.
Speaker 1: You know, so like the the animals and plants living
Speaker 1: within cities, they could we could design green spaces and
Speaker 1: cities that help them out, or green spaces and cities
Speaker 1: that destroy them. And so he's got this whole plan
Speaker 1: for how best to do that, and one of his
Speaker 1: key points. He's got several points, I think four of them,
Speaker 1: but one of his key points is that while normally
Speaker 1: you don't want to favor like normally, if you were
Speaker 1: creating a garden or something like that, it would be
Speaker 1: great to favor native species species that are local to
Speaker 1: the area where this garden is. But in urban environments,
Speaker 1: there's an indication that urban environments are essentially a fundamentally
Speaker 1: different kind of environment now than the surrounding landscape. So
Speaker 1: there is a case to be made, and he sort
Speaker 1: of makes this case that maybe what you should do
Speaker 1: is select the types of plants that are already thriving
Speaker 1: within the city, as opposed to trying to favor what's
Speaker 1: local to the surrounding countryside. Because the surrounding country side
Speaker 1: is dead in the city the city, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to bring it back to that level in
Speaker 1: most cases. Um And and there are other changes one
Speaker 1: has to take into account too, I mean, for starters,
Speaker 1: is just the realization that humans are never shy about
Speaker 1: taking a step or even a massive step backwards UH
Speaker 1: in their UH, in their their their policy making, and
Speaker 1: their attention to UH to to their environment. So one
Speaker 1: has to consider that all you can't you can't just
Speaker 1: count on progress, right and uh and then or you know,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's like like taking the step back
Speaker 1: comes with progress because you take that one step forward
Speaker 1: and you're like, hey, well we did this, We maybe
Speaker 1: we can not worry as much about this other area
Speaker 1: of of of urban environmental development. Also just the fact
Speaker 1: that they have something. Something were to happen to the
Speaker 1: human species, our cities would not continue on cared for
Speaker 1: by robot caretakers just yet. They would fall into ruin
Speaker 1: and decay. They would become a drastically different artificial environment
Speaker 1: as they cascaded back to something resembling the original ecosystem
Speaker 1: of the area. And in some cases too, we have
Speaker 1: to look at, say, our our coastal cities and how
Speaker 1: rising seawaters are going to affect those locations, portions of
Speaker 1: those cities potentially being underwater and becoming an aquatic marine habitat.
Speaker 1: And of course we've seen that for thousands of years
Speaker 1: with the cities that have sunken into the sea due
Speaker 1: to say seismic activity, where they ceased to be a
Speaker 1: human habitat and an artificial uh uh ecosystem for land
Speaker 1: dwelling creatures, and now they are a habitat for the
Speaker 1: marine species that live in the vicinity. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: in thousands of years the atlantis like myths that people
Speaker 1: will tell about the fabled land of Miami or of
Speaker 1: New York City that used to be this once great
Speaker 1: city that has sunken into the ocean. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: Miami is a great example of a city that we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Like the idea of a city is a
Speaker 1: fixed and unchanging thing, like Miami was built with with
Speaker 1: that kind of notion in mind. Let's let's build this
Speaker 1: fixed thing in an area that is not fixed, in
Speaker 1: an area that is highly susceptible to h to alteration
Speaker 1: because of the sea. But then one of the take
Speaker 1: comes here is that animals, birds, these other species we've
Speaker 1: talked about, Like, that is how life works. That is
Speaker 1: how real life works. It adapts, it rolls with change.
Speaker 1: Humans are the ones that are entirely resistant to that
Speaker 1: sort of change. Yeah, well, the wildlife adapts to the environment,
Speaker 1: but the environment is changed by the wildlife, and the
Speaker 1: environment changes for reasons of its own. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: it doesn't do this on purpose. But the environment is
Speaker 1: also always changing. The only constant is change at every
Speaker 1: level of everything. Yeah, and of course that just brings
Speaker 1: us back to our eaching episode from a few weeks back.
Speaker 1: So if you want to hear more about about the
Speaker 1: nature of change and uh IN in the human experience,
Speaker 1: then then that's a great episode to return to. And
Speaker 1: of course you'll find that episode and all other episodes
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