Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's childs of You Bryant, There's Jerry Do Do Do
Speaker 1: Do Do Do do do this Stuff You Should Know
Speaker 1: Action Edition. I gotta laugh out of Jerry, at least giggle.
Speaker 1: I got a a derisive snort. How about that. That's
Speaker 1: what it was. How you doing, I'm great. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: concerned about the Earth. You're concerned about the Earth. Yes,
Speaker 1: more than usual? Yes, because of this podcast? Yes, okay, yeah. Man.
Speaker 1: So before we get started, you've heard of the anthroposcene, right, Uh?
Speaker 1: I know you have. You definitely have. We've certainly mentioned
Speaker 1: it before on the episode or on the podcast. So
Speaker 1: there's this eight right now over whether we've entered a
Speaker 1: new geological age from uh, the one to the Anthropocene? Right. Um.
Speaker 1: I really wish I could remember what the current one
Speaker 1: is because people are going to write it and be like,
Speaker 1: it's this a million times over, which thank you everybody
Speaker 1: for writing out. I mean to sound ungrateful, um, But
Speaker 1: the the idea is that we've entered this period. Some
Speaker 1: people place it starting at the Industrial Revolution, a lot
Speaker 1: of people place it more at nine fifty, when there
Speaker 1: was apparently a huge spike in the presence of humanity
Speaker 1: from radioactivity, plastics, all this stuff in the environment as
Speaker 1: a whole. So where our presence has so muddied the
Speaker 1: geological record that we've effectively come up with a new age,
Speaker 1: a new geological age, the Anthropocene, the age of of humans. Right.
Speaker 1: So one of the things, one of the factors that
Speaker 1: people point to that suggests that we're we're changing the
Speaker 1: natural geological record, thank you, Charles so Um. The the
Speaker 1: idea that we we are altering what the natural course
Speaker 1: of the Holocene, the of course it would have taken
Speaker 1: had humans never been around. One of the ways we're
Speaker 1: doing that is by shuffling species from one environment to another,
Speaker 1: from one ecosystem to another where they've never been before,
Speaker 1: probably never would have ended up, at least not in
Speaker 1: any of our lifetimes. Um. And that they are altering
Speaker 1: those ecosystems in radical new ways such that when those
Speaker 1: things fossilized, those ecosystems become fossilized and can be studied,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Hence
Speaker 1: archaeologists would be pretty puzzled by what they were finding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the basis of the idea that we should
Speaker 1: be calling this the anthropasy. Now I'm scared. That was
Speaker 1: my goal. Well done, thank you all right. So what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is invasive species UM. And I'm surprised
Speaker 1: we hadn't done this one. I was too. I went
Speaker 1: back and double checked and me to I don't And
Speaker 1: I remembered what episode. I remember it was the Beagle Brigade. Oh,
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about invasive species and the Beagle
Speaker 1: Brigade IM and we may have even said we should
Speaker 1: do one on that. So if so, wish fulfilled. Uh So,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is invasive species. This is um.
Speaker 1: This can be any type of It is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a plant or just an animal. It could be seeds,
Speaker 1: it could be eggs, it could be it can even
Speaker 1: be a disease, right or yeah, pathogen, a past uh
Speaker 1: predator or a plant just it could be anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any kind of any kind of living organism that's not
Speaker 1: native to a singular or a particular ecosystem. Right. But
Speaker 1: and the house to Works article kind of leaves it
Speaker 1: at that. But the UM National Wildlife Federation article that
Speaker 1: you found, I think really kind of drives home that
Speaker 1: there's like an extra couple factors involved, right, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you can have a non native species that we actually
Speaker 1: kind of like like European honey bees. There are non
Speaker 1: native species here in the United States, but we're crazy
Speaker 1: for the pollinating they do, right, and the honey that
Speaker 1: they make. Rice is not a native um crop here
Speaker 1: in the United States, but people people love rice, so
Speaker 1: there are just being non native isn't enough. It has
Speaker 1: to actually harm the ecosystem that it's not native to
Speaker 1: and has been introduced to in some ways, shape or form.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a non native species that's causing harm
Speaker 1: either directly or indirectly or both to this new ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It's it's been introduced to. That's an invasive species, right.
Speaker 1: And it's not just do we grow rice in the
Speaker 1: United States? Sure, okay uh. And it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be from another country. It can. Like we said, it's
Speaker 1: an ecosystem, so it could be something from one area
Speaker 1: of the United States to another area of the United States,
Speaker 1: or from Mexico to the United States. Right, Like trout
Speaker 1: from the Great Lakes, that's their natural habitats, so they're fine,
Speaker 1: but you take that same trout and put it in
Speaker 1: I think the example given was the Yellowstone River, and
Speaker 1: they're now competing for habitat and food with the local trout.
Speaker 1: That's an invasive species, right. They come in all shapes
Speaker 1: and sizes. As our very own article says, uh, they're
Speaker 1: different names for him. God loves them all. Like some
Speaker 1: people might say exotic pests or a non indigenous species,
Speaker 1: alien species, stuff like that, but invasive species is kind
Speaker 1: of I think that's the go to these days. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's the one you you here starting in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Actually that's It's funny, like all of the eco stuff
Speaker 1: that we know about, from recycling to invasive species, that
Speaker 1: all was like born in the nineties, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Bill Clinton, Uh, I think he wanted to
Speaker 1: think he invented that name, but he went h. I
Speaker 1: think he gave it. Gave him, he gave it the stamp.
Speaker 1: What did he say though, I think he said nailed it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He could have been talking about any number of things
Speaker 1: or people right there, but in that case he was
Speaker 1: talking specifically about Executive Order one three one one two,
Speaker 1: where the term invasive species was first defined by the
Speaker 1: United States government. And the reason that they did this,
Speaker 1: the reason that they were defining invasive species because around
Speaker 1: about that time, the world was really waking up to
Speaker 1: the fact that if you take as species of plant, animal, bacteria, pathogen, whatever,
Speaker 1: and you put it into a place, a new ecosystem
Speaker 1: where it has no predators, it's going to create havoc
Speaker 1: for the the the ecosystem as it was before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of one of the keys here
Speaker 1: is that, um, generally they will cause a lot of harm,
Speaker 1: maybe to the environment, maybe to the economy, maybe two people,
Speaker 1: maybe one, two or all three of those. Uh. And
Speaker 1: another key aspect of the invasive species is that it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard, if not impossible, sometimes to contain an eradicate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I get this impression from researching this Chuck
Speaker 1: that like the second wave of waking up to invasive
Speaker 1: species realizing like they're never going to go away. Now
Speaker 1: they're done. It's done. Like the first wave, you don't
Speaker 1: notice it's already happening. Right by the time we do notice,
Speaker 1: it's too late. And then now we're realizing like, okay,
Speaker 1: well we can we can handle this. It might be
Speaker 1: tough and now I think we're finding now we like it. Well,
Speaker 1: now you can handle it. You just can't eradicate them.
Speaker 1: One of the big problems is like if you if
Speaker 1: you say, develop a poison that kills some you know,
Speaker 1: non some invasive fish that was introduced, right, say carp um,
Speaker 1: you're going to kill the other fish in the area too,
Speaker 1: or some of the other sea life or something like that.
Speaker 1: So there's just not really any way you can target
Speaker 1: these things short of shooting each one of them. And
Speaker 1: you're gonna shoot a plant because they'll think you're crazy,
Speaker 1: they'll lock you up for that, So don't even try it.
Speaker 1: And here's the deal is this. This is not a
Speaker 1: new phenomenon. This nature has been doing this for years
Speaker 1: on its own in various ways. Whether it's uh leaping
Speaker 1: over the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand, or
Speaker 1: over a channel of water like or over a mountain range.
Speaker 1: It happens. But generally bodies of water and mountain ranges
Speaker 1: and deserts and all these other geological features helped to
Speaker 1: stop this stuff. It's really humans that are doing most
Speaker 1: of this, uh, not necessarily on purpose, but sometimes on purpose.
Speaker 1: Um as we will see. But sometimes it's just like
Speaker 1: it's in the ballast water of a ship, or it's
Speaker 1: in uh there's an insect in the wood of UH,
Speaker 1: or it's impacking material, it's in the wood of the
Speaker 1: what are those things called the crates the palettes, Yeah, palettes,
Speaker 1: shipping pallets, and all of a sudden it leaps out
Speaker 1: on the other side of the world and you have
Speaker 1: an issue to the tune of fifty thousand estimated non
Speaker 1: native species in the United States alone. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: looking that up. That's pretty That's one of those things
Speaker 1: we always like give UM, you know, evidence or not evidence,
Speaker 1: UM advice if you see something all over the place,
Speaker 1: like double check it. You know, no, I think it
Speaker 1: is a real number is from so there's no telling
Speaker 1: is we're probably at fifty thousand and like five hundred now,
Speaker 1: But it was from a guy named pim Intell, who
Speaker 1: is a world famous ecologist. No, pim Intell, he's from Cornell.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's still at Cornell. But the
Speaker 1: thing that this leaves out, though it's fifty thousand non
Speaker 1: native species, but that same study from ninety nine found
Speaker 1: that UM about forty three hundred of them could be
Speaker 1: considered invasive. Okay, that that's what was. One of the
Speaker 1: other ones are like the honeybe where we're like sweet
Speaker 1: sure or rice don't don't forget rice? Uh? And like
Speaker 1: I said, sometimes in the water, but ships hull sometimes
Speaker 1: uh in this would and sometimes on purpose, like we said,
Speaker 1: like when the Burmese python found its way to Florida. Dude,
Speaker 1: that was no accident. Are you have you looked up
Speaker 1: Burmese python Everglades recently? Yes? Did they get so big
Speaker 1: down there? And did you see the one that had
Speaker 1: burst itself to death eating an alligator? What? No? But
Speaker 1: I did see the alligator and the python fighting on
Speaker 1: a golf course. That's amazing. That is amazing. That makes
Speaker 1: me glad to be alive to see something like that.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, here's the deal. While we're on that
Speaker 1: um earlier that well, all right, more than two thousand
Speaker 1: of these pythons have been removed. Two thousand have been
Speaker 1: removed since two thousand two, when it was just I guess,
Speaker 1: recreational activity. But starting in March of last year, Florida
Speaker 1: started sanctioning python hunters, and a thousand dudes applied. They accepted,
Speaker 1: So we'll pay you minimum wage, will literally pay you
Speaker 1: eight bucks an hour or I think that was a
Speaker 1: minimum wage at the time to hunt pythons. And they're
Speaker 1: all like done right, and they started hunting pythons. They've
Speaker 1: caught seven hundred and forty three since March of two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen and uh earlier this year or I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: uh late last year in December. The dude Jason Leon
Speaker 1: did you see that one that he caught now seventeen
Speaker 1: ft long, a hundred and thirty three pound Burmese python. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the reason why these are a big deal just,
Speaker 1: you know, aside from just sheer terror. Uh, is there
Speaker 1: eating furry creatures? A lot of them. I saw that
Speaker 1: some populations down in the Everglades of Um types of deer, rabbits, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of creatures that you know and love, have
Speaker 1: gone down by up to nine in some areas because
Speaker 1: of the Python University of Florida. And I won't say
Speaker 1: what everyone wants me to say. Good for you man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like, how how can you be you know, possibly
Speaker 1: the national champs and and throw shade at anybody below you?
Speaker 1: You know, So the Ovius in Florida and gains Well
Speaker 1: did a project they released this makes me so sad.
Speaker 1: They released ninety five rabbits uh into the Everglades and
Speaker 1: they these were all tracked. And it's not like when
Speaker 1: these rabbits didn't turn up a year later and there
Speaker 1: we can't find them. I guess snakes eate them. They
Speaker 1: know that snakes eate them, so snakes did. A year later,
Speaker 1: seventy seven percent of these rabbits were eaten and dead
Speaker 1: from these pythons. Wow, that's a problem. That is a
Speaker 1: sad study. It is. Can you imagine like opening that
Speaker 1: was crates and being like all right, free, you live
Speaker 1: your new life. It's an adventure. Oh man, it's so sad.
Speaker 1: So that's just one example of the most horrific uh.
Speaker 1: And that's not one that's like costing two hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars in damage a year. But that is an estimate
Speaker 1: from professor at Cornell. That's the same one Pimentel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: okay um, that's the estimate from him that it's costing
Speaker 1: the United States between a hundred and two hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year in damage from all these invasive species problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of dough. It really is. And the
Speaker 1: Burmese python is is a good example also of people
Speaker 1: just releasing like a pet that you don't want anymore.
Speaker 1: That's probably how they are established. That's absolutely how it
Speaker 1: was established. There's other there's another there's a lizard called
Speaker 1: the tagu which is a big problem in all of
Speaker 1: Florida apparently as well. Um they're just a huge lizard
Speaker 1: that were originally pets and we're released and now leave
Speaker 1: established a feral population in Florida. And they apparently will
Speaker 1: eat your cat, they've been known to do that. Will
Speaker 1: um storm your house, They'll come into your house. It's
Speaker 1: just a bad jam right. There's also the Neutria swamp rats,
Speaker 1: which were originally grown for their fur in in the
Speaker 1: in Louisiana. They use rat fur apparently in Louisiana or
Speaker 1: to keep warm, and um that when the rat fur
Speaker 1: industry went under in the thirties, I think they released
Speaker 1: these things into the swamps. And then last most recently,
Speaker 1: feral hogs were imported so that they could hunt them
Speaker 1: and there's a huge population that's wrecking there. The ecosystems
Speaker 1: they've been introduced to. So a lot of times humans
Speaker 1: are lunkheads when it comes to shuffling animals and ecosystems
Speaker 1: where they're they're not native. That snakes too big, put
Speaker 1: it behind the house, right right, then let a bunch
Speaker 1: of rabbits loose and see what happens. He wins, snake winds.
Speaker 1: Snake winds. To take a break. Yeah, I was gonna
Speaker 1: say the same thing. Well, actually quickly before we take
Speaker 1: a break, I talked about how much it was costing
Speaker 1: the U. S. Department of Interior spending about a hundred
Speaker 1: million bucks or more a year trying to fight this
Speaker 1: in various ways, all to very little success. All right,
Speaker 1: so now with that stat we will we will take
Speaker 1: a break. So, Chuck, we talked about people releasing um
Speaker 1: animals purposefully, and you mentioned some other ways. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that that gets me is ballast water, Like,
Speaker 1: how is this allowed to go on where a ship
Speaker 1: will take on water to balance out its cargo load,
Speaker 1: because you know, different cargo is going away different, It's
Speaker 1: gonna be laid out differently, so you need new ballasts
Speaker 1: every time to to balance it out, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: But surely there can be some other technology because you're
Speaker 1: you're like in Eastern Europe picking up a bunch of
Speaker 1: water to balance your your ship out and that that
Speaker 1: cargo is bound for Detroit. So you enter the Great
Speaker 1: Lakes and you're like, oh, well, waters, water, I'll just
Speaker 1: release it here once I unload my cargo. And whatever
Speaker 1: animals you picked up in Eastern Europe now live in
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes. And this actually happened with the zebra muscle,
Speaker 1: which is a huge, huge problem in the Great Lakes now,
Speaker 1: the zebra muscle and the quagga muscle, Yeah, which apparently
Speaker 1: are almost the same thing. Uh, and how they act
Speaker 1: there from Eastern Europe and they're small, and that's exactly
Speaker 1: how they ended up in the Great Lakes, like you said,
Speaker 1: and they boy talked about spreading are there, Like how
Speaker 1: many are these? Like a trillion? A trillion at least.
Speaker 1: The reason why it is like a quagga will live
Speaker 1: or quagga or zebra muscle will live about five years
Speaker 1: and the female in that time will produce five million eggs.
Speaker 1: There's ten trillion of them, a hundred that's so many muscles,
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand of those that of those eggs will
Speaker 1: reach adulthood, and so the offspring of one single muscle
Speaker 1: will produce about half a billion adult offspring, So yeah,
Speaker 1: ten trillion is a pretty reasonable number. And they just
Speaker 1: entered the Great Lakes in the I think the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: so just within what forty years gosh, can you believe
Speaker 1: the eighties or like forty years ago were coming up
Speaker 1: on it? Um? It doesn't seem that long ago to me,
Speaker 1: but man, that's crazy. Well, and the problem with these
Speaker 1: is you're like, wait, wait, I'm reminiscing stuff. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm done. The problem with these is like, big deal.
Speaker 1: There are these tiny little muscles, but they are blanketing
Speaker 1: the bottom of the Great Lakes. Uh. And they're eating
Speaker 1: plankton because they love to eat plankton, which makes the
Speaker 1: water nice and clear. Everyone's like, look, how shimmery like
Speaker 1: Michigan is. Have you seen pictures of like Michigan recently?
Speaker 1: It looks like the Caribbean, really white sand, beautiful sea
Speaker 1: through like turquoise water. It's good, people, gorgeous. No, it
Speaker 1: looks really amazing. But ultimately, no, it's not healthy because,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, they eat all the plankton that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be on top and on the bottom two
Speaker 1: and the the sunlight can penetrate all the way to
Speaker 1: the bottom, causing algae blooms, deadly algae blooms. I I
Speaker 1: just just happened to run across an article yesterday, Chuck,
Speaker 1: and I und stood why I was seeing what I
Speaker 1: was seeing. But the article was about how the Lake
Speaker 1: Michigan has become so clear that you can see shipwrecks
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the lake from the air. If
Speaker 1: you're flying over it, you can clearly see shipwrecks. And
Speaker 1: the reason why is because the zebra muscles have doubled
Speaker 1: the clarity of the water since the nineteen eighties. Well,
Speaker 1: and not only is it just the plankton, but they're
Speaker 1: eating the plankton. Is is causing salmon to go hungry whitefish. Um, so,
Speaker 1: if you you know, it's just it's wrecking the ecosystem
Speaker 1: down there, right, thank you. In Europe that's say, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you ship captain who took on that water as ballast.
Speaker 1: Another ballast story I ran across too was um uh,
Speaker 1: fire ants the worst thing in humanity, right, that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Fire Ants are native to South America, and they think
Speaker 1: that they stowed away on dirt that was scooped up
Speaker 1: as ship's ballast and released in New Orleans. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: and like the thirties or forties, but that's where the
Speaker 1: fire ends came from. They shouldn't be here. Didn't that
Speaker 1: make them even worse? Hate those things? So, um, here's
Speaker 1: another one. You want to talk about the Asian carp Sure,
Speaker 1: So in the nineties seventies, and I think like in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: there were some u some farmers, fish farmers that is,
Speaker 1: who said, uh, let's get some of these Asian carp
Speaker 1: in here to filter the water. And they did. It
Speaker 1: sounded identical what the researchers from University of Florida sounded
Speaker 1: like in my hat, right, and they all sounded like
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, right, who was from Arkansas. Right. So Asian
Speaker 1: carp were introduced. I guess they did a pretty good
Speaker 1: job of filtering the pond water. But then they started spreading.
Speaker 1: And that's the deal is is you know, like with
Speaker 1: the the zebra muscle, you know, they get in these
Speaker 1: waterways like in Chicago, these man made waterways that that
Speaker 1: said basically like expressways where they get in the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River and it just it's like all right, here, here
Speaker 1: we go. Rest of the country. Yeah, and so Asian carp. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a it's sort of a catch all name for
Speaker 1: a bunch of species of carp from Southeast Asia. But
Speaker 1: here's their problem is they're very dense. They consume about
Speaker 1: of their body weight each day in plankton. They can
Speaker 1: be as big as a hundred pounds, which is very
Speaker 1: large for a for a fish, if you haven't noticed.
Speaker 1: And uh, they're all over the place now. They went
Speaker 1: up the Illinois River. Uh, they are almost or maybe
Speaker 1: even are invading the Great Lakes now. Is that they
Speaker 1: didn't have enough problems. And there are another one. They
Speaker 1: lay about a half a million eggs each time they spawn,
Speaker 1: and they eat a lot of plankton. And there's this
Speaker 1: guy um that they're a good example because they're they're
Speaker 1: so thoroughly crowd out um the rest of the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: for the rest of the animals in the ecosystem that
Speaker 1: it actually like kind of recks the whole ecosystem. They're
Speaker 1: they're an example of like a UM grade three or
Speaker 1: level three I think you call it level level three
Speaker 1: invasive species. Right, there's this dude, he is he is
Speaker 1: a marine biologist, and I don't know if you could
Speaker 1: tell or not. But I'm stalling while I look for
Speaker 1: his name. Is it coming across everybody? Um, so I
Speaker 1: cannot find the dude's name. Anyway, you don't have it either.
Speaker 1: Well he came up with Okay, doctor doctor Jivago came
Speaker 1: up with these basically four levels of of impact that
Speaker 1: an invasive species can have on bio diversity in an ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And the first level is basically like, they're just a
Speaker 1: new species. They're not doing anything. You could even make
Speaker 1: a case that it's it's a good thing that they're
Speaker 1: there now because they've improved or increased the bio diversity
Speaker 1: of the habitat right. So level one is they're just
Speaker 1: they're nothing bad has happened yet. Level two is when
Speaker 1: they start to have a an effect on the on
Speaker 1: the ecosystem in some very specific way. And doctors Javago
Speaker 1: gives this really great example of the eastern North American
Speaker 1: gray squirrel, which was inexplicably introduced in eighteen seventy six
Speaker 1: to England and since then it is basically out competed
Speaker 1: the native red squirrel there um. But it's just the
Speaker 1: native red squirrel that's been affected. The rest of the
Speaker 1: ecosystem is basically the same as if the North American
Speaker 1: squirrel had never showed up. It's just the red squirrel
Speaker 1: who are trying to go around and tell everybody like,
Speaker 1: doesn't it suck? The North American squirrels are here, and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, it's fine with me, I don't care.
Speaker 1: And the red squirrel just can't get any kind of
Speaker 1: ally in this. That's leve two. Shall I continue? Please?
Speaker 1: Level three is where the species become so dominant, spreads
Speaker 1: so fast, so wide, reproduces so quickly and so massively
Speaker 1: that they begin to impact the entire ecosystem as a whole. Right,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a second. And then the
Speaker 1: fourth level is where they have upset the ecosystem that
Speaker 1: they are not native to, but have established themselves in
Speaker 1: so thoroughly that it now impacts other ecosystems, either nearby
Speaker 1: or that are somehow connected to that ecosystem. And then
Speaker 1: level five is when you wake up covered in a
Speaker 1: thundred squirrels. Right, I'll just quietly staring at you. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine, No, have you ever seen those black squirrels
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn? Yes, I've seen them in like Toronto. Usually DC. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty cool. They're tough guys too. They'll like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll like, they'll charge you. They don't take any
Speaker 1: guff No. But see, if you brought some to Georgia,
Speaker 1: it could be bad for the squirrels here because it's
Speaker 1: a non native species, even though it's in the same country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but man, we've got so many squirrels in Atlanta. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't mind seeing a few of those go. And I
Speaker 1: love all furry things. Well, you know how I feel
Speaker 1: about squirrels. Well, that's why it's gonna haunt your dreams,
Speaker 1: waking up being covered by a hundred squirrels. It'd be more.
Speaker 1: It would be worse if I had a dream where
Speaker 1: a hundred squirrels covered my bird feeder. That's worse to me.
Speaker 1: I'd rather them cover me, cover me instead leave my
Speaker 1: bird feeder alone. They would be so happy to chow
Speaker 1: down on you. The other little tails would be all flitty.
Speaker 1: They would be so excited. They'd say, this is a
Speaker 1: long time coming. Josh. It'd stores some of you for
Speaker 1: the winter and their haunches. But then they'd forget except
Speaker 1: for about a third of me. Where they put it
Speaker 1: exactly stupid squirrels. Uh so those are the four levels.
Speaker 1: We're kidding about the fifth. And I feel bad for
Speaker 1: Dr Chivago because what that dude listens and he's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: they're gonna say my name, yeah, doctor Chivago, or maybe
Speaker 1: he's gonna start going by that maybe, So we just
Speaker 1: changed that dude his life. Alright. So, uh, we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about how some of these can affect
Speaker 1: things like eating plankton um. What are some of the
Speaker 1: other uh deleterious effects deletrious So there's well, I mean
Speaker 1: you can basically categorize the effects that these things have
Speaker 1: in two categories. There's direct and indirect ones. Right. So
Speaker 1: direct would be like, if you like, let's say those
Speaker 1: Asian carp eat um, the eggs of the other fish
Speaker 1: that's competing with that would be a direct impact that
Speaker 1: would make the other fish very unhappy, right. Um. They
Speaker 1: could also be a bug that carries a disease that
Speaker 1: hills trees like um, I can't remember what bug carries,
Speaker 1: like Dutch elm disease, but there's there's bugs that carry
Speaker 1: diseases that kill treats that's directly impacting the trees in
Speaker 1: the ecosystem. Then there's like indirect ones too, right, So
Speaker 1: like let's say you have like a grass that grows
Speaker 1: really well and its new habitat and non native grass
Speaker 1: so much so that it outcompetes the other grasses. Well,
Speaker 1: this new grass is really good at growing in this ecosystem,
Speaker 1: but it's terrible as far as like nutrient density is concerned,
Speaker 1: and it's choked. The rest of the grass is out,
Speaker 1: which means that the sweet little deer and the rabbits
Speaker 1: that are about to be eaten by snakes don't have
Speaker 1: those grasses to eat anymore, and they can't eat the
Speaker 1: new grass. That's an indirect impact. So suddenly the populations
Speaker 1: of these higher animals are going to thin out, either
Speaker 1: because they're gonna die off, they don't reproduce as fast,
Speaker 1: or they just move um. So that's an indirect impact
Speaker 1: act of of an ecosystem. Or like that cocoon grass, uh,
Speaker 1: which is the one here in the southeast, it's the
Speaker 1: Asian plant. Like that one does the one thing you're
Speaker 1: talking about no food value for the wildlife, but it
Speaker 1: also burns really hot and fast, more so than native grasses.
Speaker 1: So it's like it has this dormant danger of being
Speaker 1: a wildfire hazard. Right, yeah, it's it's another one called
Speaker 1: cheatweed has the same thing, and it's it's altered the
Speaker 1: wildfire cycle. I think in the Southwest where it's growing
Speaker 1: from like um, fifty to seventy years to something like
Speaker 1: three to five years now, they have like massive wildfires.
Speaker 1: It's because it burns so fast and it's so dense.
Speaker 1: It's just such a great fuel that um. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's another way that they can indirectly affect an
Speaker 1: ecosystem to um. A lot of plants that are non
Speaker 1: native come in and alter the composition of the soil.
Speaker 1: They either change the on the nutrients they are available,
Speaker 1: they change the pH they just alter the soil chemistry.
Speaker 1: And I mean like the soil that's like the building
Speaker 1: block of an ecosystem. You start altering that, everything from
Speaker 1: the soil up is affected and impacted in some way
Speaker 1: or another. Well, and then that soil can then be
Speaker 1: transported to another ecosystem you know, right, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: the stuff spreads. Yeah, that's actually one of the tips
Speaker 1: for something you can do is not move soil very
Speaker 1: long far distances that can cut down an invasive species
Speaker 1: transferred to you. All right, Well, let's take another break,
Speaker 1: and then we will talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: two ways to try and manage this, yes, and what
Speaker 1: you can do, and the story of Katz, which is
Speaker 1: probably not quite what you think. Yeah, all right. So
Speaker 1: as far as management UM, there are a couple of
Speaker 1: main ways that we're trying to control invasive species. Proactive
Speaker 1: management and reactive proactive. If you go to California and
Speaker 1: you have to stop at the California border and they
Speaker 1: say do you have any fruits or vegetables from outside
Speaker 1: the state, that would be an example of proactive management.
Speaker 1: UM is trying to keep it from happening to begin
Speaker 1: with by not allowing stuff and that shouldn't be in Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. Apparently in this how Stuff Works article the
Speaker 1: author talks about how they quarantine fire would sail up
Speaker 1: in Connecticut Emerald ash board from making their way through
Speaker 1: the state. Um or Guam. Guam has this huge brown
Speaker 1: tree snake problem. We must have talked about this in
Speaker 1: the in the Beagle Brigade, but they've like basically killed
Speaker 1: off the population of every other animal on the island.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's not
Speaker 1: too far. They've really had a huge impact on it,
Speaker 1: and they they they trained dogs to to sniff them off.
Speaker 1: The case from any cargo plane or ship that leaves
Speaker 1: Guam has to be inspected by these things, by these
Speaker 1: dogs to find the snakes because they are taking it
Speaker 1: that seriously because they've had such a terrible impact on Guam.
Speaker 1: Proactive management. Another thing that they do, aside from like
Speaker 1: border inspections and stuff like that, is basically just trying
Speaker 1: to destroy it. And I guess in that first phase
Speaker 1: doctor Javago's first phase. By the way, doctor Javago's name is,
Speaker 1: I found it. Are you ready for this? I think
Speaker 1: we should get a drum roll, Jerry, Doctor Alexander mean
Speaker 1: M E I N E. S Z Marine biologists. But
Speaker 1: he says, you can call me al or just call
Speaker 1: me Dr Z like Paul Simon. Yeah sure, um all right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, eradicating them in the early stages. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this has happened before in California specifically they beat down
Speaker 1: an invasive weed brought in from the tropics, so it
Speaker 1: can work. But I get the feeling that in researching
Speaker 1: this stuff, like once you're past that first stage, you
Speaker 1: maybe s o L. Well, yeah, I have that same
Speaker 1: and just cross your fingers that is not one that
Speaker 1: will wreck the ecosystem. So that's proactive. There's also reactive
Speaker 1: management to write, and there's the age old well, just
Speaker 1: get your hands on whatever it's natural predator is and
Speaker 1: then introduced that into the eco system or that. That's
Speaker 1: like from that classic Simpsons episode, you remember that where
Speaker 1: Bart has a tree lizard that eats birds. So they
Speaker 1: release some tree snakes and then they release some geility
Speaker 1: the tree snakes, and they say that a cold snap
Speaker 1: will cause all the grills to freeze to death, so
Speaker 1: that will be that. That's like, that's basically what they're
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Like, there's this this um bug called
Speaker 1: brown marmorated stink bugs, which are actually they're they're stink
Speaker 1: bugs and they'll swarm in your house, so they're a pest.
Speaker 1: But they're also really bad for fruit crops and vegetable
Speaker 1: crops um, and they don't have a natural predator here.
Speaker 1: Over in Asia where they're from, they are predated by
Speaker 1: a parasitic wasp. So they're thinking of bringing parasitic wasps
Speaker 1: over and it's like, oh yeah, sure, nothing could go wrong,
Speaker 1: if you bring parasitic wasps into an ecosystem. Man, those
Speaker 1: stink bugs, they we'll scare the Bejesus out of you
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. Yeah, because they'll swarm. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I've I've never seen more than one at
Speaker 1: a time. But I'm just talking about waking up because
Speaker 1: one of them is crawling over your cheek. Well, supposedly,
Speaker 1: the brown marmorated stink bugs are different from the southern
Speaker 1: stink bugs that were used to Yeah, and they warm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't tell the difference. I've never smelled the stink either.
Speaker 1: I haven't either. I saw somebody say that they smell
Speaker 1: like cilantro. I'm like, that's fine, that's great. Put some
Speaker 1: of them on your tacos. It's weird. They're all over
Speaker 1: the place. So I see him in my bathroom, especially
Speaker 1: in the winter. Yeah, because they come inside to stay warm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but supposedly they swarm. The brown marmarated one swarm, So
Speaker 1: they come inside your house, hang out and then just
Speaker 1: cover your face and you fall down the stairs and
Speaker 1: then the squirrels gate you. That's invasive species in a nutshell?
Speaker 1: What else we got here? You want to talk about
Speaker 1: a couple more of these. Yeah, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about my favorite of all time. Are you ready for this? Yes,
Speaker 1: The Startling, The European Starling. Yeah. And you know what,
Speaker 1: this is a great time to shout out, uh one
Speaker 1: of our new brother podcasts here on the network Omnibus
Speaker 1: with Ken Jennings of Jeopardies Fame and John Roderick of
Speaker 1: the indie band Long Winters. They have a new show
Speaker 1: called Omnibus that is about sort of obscure history and
Speaker 1: uh they did an entire episode on the European Starling.
Speaker 1: Oh they did. Yeah, well then this ties into that.
Speaker 1: It does, so go listen to that show, subscribe and
Speaker 1: here that is in a nutshell. Ohh okay. So back
Speaker 1: in ninety there's this guy who was a German immigrant
Speaker 1: to the US. His name was Eugene Shifflin. Did I
Speaker 1: pronounce it right? I think so. Eugene Schifflin was a
Speaker 1: Shakespeare enthusiast, right to say the least, he had this
Speaker 1: idea that it would be really cool and US eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety they had no idea about invasive species at the
Speaker 1: very least you wouldn't think a bird would be but
Speaker 1: he decided that it would be really cool to release
Speaker 1: all of the birds mentioned by Shakespeare into North America,
Speaker 1: and he would start with the European starling. So in
Speaker 1: winter of eighteen ninety and then again like a month
Speaker 1: or so later in he released a total of one
Speaker 1: hundred European Starlings in Central Park d make note of
Speaker 1: that number one were released in eighteen ninety and now
Speaker 1: there are more than two hundred million European Starlings in
Speaker 1: the United States. And they are jerkbirds. Yeah. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: swarm like a brown marmordd stink bug. They'll swarm, but
Speaker 1: they swarm on cattle to scare them away from their
Speaker 1: food so that the starlings can eat their food. So
Speaker 1: these birds are capable of air and cattle off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big one. They'll also crash your plane. They will,
Speaker 1: they will. They will swarm your airplane. Uh, it has
Speaker 1: happened before. There was one that took off from Logan. Uh.
Speaker 1: There in Boston the worst bath airport bathrooms in the world.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, it's pretty bad. I think I talked
Speaker 1: about the bathroom stalls there. There's like three inch gaps
Speaker 1: in between the doors. Yes, it's like literally you can
Speaker 1: just see each other pooping. You could fit like a
Speaker 1: whole and he's through there. Yeah, like you're gonna eat
Speaker 1: that bagel, just man, slide it through there. Well, she
Speaker 1: she makes pretzels, delicious pretzels. Um. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't
Speaker 1: saying she she made bagels. I was just trying to
Speaker 1: think of something fatter than a pretzel. Could you fit
Speaker 1: a bagel through the stall? Is it really that bad?
Speaker 1: You could fit a bagel flat man, like a bagel half. No,
Speaker 1: it's not quite that bad, but it's bad. Like I
Speaker 1: remember pooping it logan and making eye contact with the
Speaker 1: just an I con the very distressing. Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: birds crashed crashed a plane into Boston Harbor, killed sixty
Speaker 1: two people. Yeah, it's not good. And they are also
Speaker 1: very dense eaters apparently right like uh like the carpet. Yes,
Speaker 1: I believe. So they're definitely a huge problem from what
Speaker 1: I understand. But they were the idea that they were
Speaker 1: released in appreciation of Shakespeare I just find fascinating. Now
Speaker 1: they're a major problem. Um. There's one other one we
Speaker 1: got a shout out to Chuck is the cane toad,
Speaker 1: which was another um invasive species that was introduced using
Speaker 1: the Simpsons technique because there were some cane beetles that
Speaker 1: were harming Australia's sugar crop back in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and so they got the idea to import some cane
Speaker 1: toads uh to eat these beetles. And the cane toads,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, worked pretty well. But then their
Speaker 1: population boom from I think a hundreds seven initial ones
Speaker 1: to again two hundred million just in in less than
Speaker 1: a hundred years. Yeah, there's a great classic documentary on
Speaker 1: the kane toad and we talked about them before in
Speaker 1: an episode, didn't we Yeah, one of the ways Australia
Speaker 1: is delightfully weird. M. Yeah, we'll see you guys this fall.
Speaker 1: That's right, your spring. Oh yeah, that's true. They're all confused.
Speaker 1: Where are you mate? Right, although it's their summer, well no,
Speaker 1: it's their September will be their spring, but oh right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the deadest summer for them. Man. I can't wait
Speaker 1: for you can't wait to meet those people in person.
Speaker 1: So I know it's gonna be cool. Man. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get me a hat that has alligator teeth around the brim.
Speaker 1: Is local custom. So Chuck, let's talk kuds do you
Speaker 1: want to? Yeah, we'll finish up with kudzu. Um. This
Speaker 1: is a great story called the True Story of kad
Speaker 1: Zoo Comma the Vine that Never Truly ate the South
Speaker 1: by Bill Finch and Uh, everyone has probably heard of
Speaker 1: kad zoo. It has a very steeped mythology. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where people, um, especially outside
Speaker 1: of the South, uh, talk about, oh yeah, you got
Speaker 1: your cut. You know, kad zoos is. It's just everywhere
Speaker 1: you look, there's kud zoo in the South. And and
Speaker 1: if you go to any Southern town there will be
Speaker 1: a kad Zoo cafe or a kad Zoo antique. There's
Speaker 1: a Kadzoo Antiques right here, indicator. It's just one of
Speaker 1: those things. The South took it and ran with it.
Speaker 1: Um as far as just like a marketing thing. But
Speaker 1: here's the deal. Most people know it was introduced at
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventy six World's Fair Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: Was a vine from Asia, and the story goes that
Speaker 1: it just took over the South. But that's not quite right. Um.
Speaker 1: In ninety five, that was dust storms that damaged the prairies,
Speaker 1: and Congress said, you know what, erosion is a big problem,
Speaker 1: so let's use cud zoo. And they brought in seventy
Speaker 1: million seedlings to grow in nurseries as soil conservation. Right
Speaker 1: remember our episode on desertification. I think we talked about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they like, we're planting it on purpose. They were
Speaker 1: paying people as much as eight dollars an acre, which
Speaker 1: was pretty good money back then the nineteen to plant
Speaker 1: cud zoo. Uh. Flash forward a little bit. There was
Speaker 1: a radio host for the Atlantic Constitution, um one of
Speaker 1: our newspapers, Will announced a j c. Back then there
Speaker 1: were two newspapers, a journal in the Constitution. His name
Speaker 1: was a columnist named Channing Cope that became an evangelist
Speaker 1: for this stuff. And basically during these depression era, radio
Speaker 1: broadcast would say, you know, plant kud zoo. Uh, so
Speaker 1: the South can live again. Yeah, you know, to restore
Speaker 1: the soil back to its its original nature. And so
Speaker 1: these farmers were taken money from the government saying, okay,
Speaker 1: sure I got some land that I'm not using or
Speaker 1: that could use some fixing, So I'll plant this stuff
Speaker 1: for eight bucks an acre and they did, but the
Speaker 1: problem is that no one could ever figure out how
Speaker 1: to make money off of it. It wasn't a crop,
Speaker 1: it wasn't good for grazing because apparently when cattle and
Speaker 1: horses grazed on it, it died um and no one
Speaker 1: really wanted to buy it from a nursery, so there's
Speaker 1: no way to make money off of it. So when
Speaker 1: the soil conservation payment program ended, everybody just kind of
Speaker 1: tilled it into the soil and could do went the
Speaker 1: way of the dinosaur, or would have had it not
Speaker 1: been for the railroad industry and the highway construction industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the original goal was to plan about eight million
Speaker 1: acres of the stuff around the South, but by that
Speaker 1: was just about a million acres planted. But because of
Speaker 1: the fact that cattle don't graze by the highway generally
Speaker 1: or on the railroad, that's where it really took hold,
Speaker 1: uh and did envelop things like roadside signs and full
Speaker 1: trees and if you were and this is how it
Speaker 1: got their reputation, because people would be on the train
Speaker 1: or they'd be driving down the highway and they would
Speaker 1: that's where it was the worst, and they would see
Speaker 1: it and it got this reputation as this monster vine
Speaker 1: that was eating the South. Yeah, because it really is
Speaker 1: just concerning to see kudzoo growing up like a fifty
Speaker 1: ft tree and totally covering it like it's consuming it.
Speaker 1: It's it's very much. It evokes that same feeling like
Speaker 1: seeing a snake eat like a whole whole rabbit. Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's it evokes the same feeling. And um, the
Speaker 1: thing is is most Southerners from say like the fifties
Speaker 1: on when this was when this really started to take
Speaker 1: root on these roadsides, their connection to the land was
Speaker 1: no longer in for the farms or the forest. It
Speaker 1: was in the cities, and they traveled mostly in their
Speaker 1: car or on trains, which is where kad Zoo was
Speaker 1: most visible. Remember, So there was this idea, and it
Speaker 1: was a pretty understandable idea that Kadzoo had taken over
Speaker 1: the South or was in the process of taking over
Speaker 1: the South. And the whole thing was helped along, apparently
Speaker 1: by a garden club newsletter. Yeah. So the idea is
Speaker 1: that there were and this is a stat that you
Speaker 1: can an incorrect stat that you can still get that says,
Speaker 1: you know, up to nine million acres of the of
Speaker 1: the southern United States is covered in kad zoo. It
Speaker 1: all comes from these two books. A craft book and
Speaker 1: a Culinary and Healing Guide. Are these two books that
Speaker 1: are most frequently quoted as to that number. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Forest Service says, actually, it's about two d and twenty
Speaker 1: seven thousand acres of forest land, about the size of
Speaker 1: a small county in Georgia. Nowhere near what they're saying.
Speaker 1: It is uh uh. And while it's still when you
Speaker 1: drive along some of these southern highways it looks like
Speaker 1: it's eating a water tower and it and it is um.
Speaker 1: Once you step ten feet into the forest, it stops, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's terror grows terribly in shade um. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have a kudzoe problem, just get some horses
Speaker 1: or cows and there goes your kudzue problem. It's not
Speaker 1: a very hardy plant. It's just it has no no
Speaker 1: real predators or anything to hold it back on those
Speaker 1: roadsides or on those railroad embankments, which is why it
Speaker 1: grows so wild there. So those um, those that culinary
Speaker 1: book and the craft book they have to do with
Speaker 1: kudzus that seriously are the most widely cited sources, by
Speaker 1: academic journals, by by scientists, by the government. Everybody cites
Speaker 1: these these sources. Um, and apparently they just made it up.
Speaker 1: But they said that it was that it grows at
Speaker 1: a rate of a hundred and fifty thousand acres a year,
Speaker 1: And that same Forest Service report estimated it really grows
Speaker 1: it about acres a year, which is entirely manageable. Manageable.
Speaker 1: So this the but what's basically the poster child for
Speaker 1: invasive species in the United States, Kudzoo is actually not
Speaker 1: really much of a problem at all. So everybody, we
Speaker 1: we don't all drink cocola. Well that's actually not true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we all drink it. Actually I don't want to drink
Speaker 1: it that much. But yeah, there is not a kudzoo problem. Um,
Speaker 1: stop it and stop saying Hot Lanta. Yeah, nobody here
Speaker 1: says that. No, I remember that that again in the nineties,
Speaker 1: there is a little push for that recycling invasive species
Speaker 1: in hot Lanta. One of them didn't make it. That's right,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? No, I thought this is a
Speaker 1: good one. I thought so too. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about invasive species, there's tons of them that
Speaker 1: we didn't even cover. Um, So go look him up,
Speaker 1: educate yourself, and then go save the planet and tell
Speaker 1: him Josh and Chuck sent you. Huh. And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: very sweet orchids story a big hello to Josh, Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry. I'm writing in to say how much I
Speaker 1: love your orchids episode and also share a bitter, sweet
Speaker 1: and pretty amazing thing that happened to my family. My
Speaker 1: grandmother was an avid gardener who had a knack for
Speaker 1: coaxing her collection of orchids into bloom again and again.
Speaker 1: I think some of her orchids might have been a
Speaker 1: decade or more old. When she was diagnosed with cancer,
Speaker 1: she passed along her orchids to my stepmother, who has
Speaker 1: continued the tradition. One particularly beautiful orchid had refused to
Speaker 1: bloom after the move, until one day in August when
Speaker 1: it did bloom again. When my stepmother posted the picture
Speaker 1: to Facebook that morning, she didn't know that my grandmother
Speaker 1: was in the final process of passing away. Someone used
Speaker 1: their smartphone to show the photo to my grandmother at
Speaker 1: hospice and it was one of the very last things
Speaker 1: she saw once have brought her a lot of joy
Speaker 1: to know that her orchids in fact lived on. She
Speaker 1: attached a auto very beautiful orchid. She said, orchids will
Speaker 1: always have a special place in my heart. We're sensing
Speaker 1: my grandmother's last day with us, and each of those
Speaker 1: plants is a treasured family heirloom. I hope I'll be
Speaker 1: the next to inherit the matri ne Neal, Matrilineal, Matrilineal.
Speaker 1: I think so yeah, that's right. I hope I'll be
Speaker 1: the next to inherit the matrilineal Green thumb all the best, Maggie.
Speaker 1: That is a great, great orchids story. Yep, great listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's how you get on listener mail everybody. Yep, you
Speaker 1: just warm our hearts, okay, or insult us. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we don't actually read those. We just make grumbly references.
Speaker 1: That's right. If you want us to make a grumbly
Speaker 1: reference to something you wrote, well, then write us an
Speaker 1: insulting email. If you wanted to get red, then warm
Speaker 1: our hearts. You can tweet to us at s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast or josh um Clark. I also have
Speaker 1: a website, by the way, called are You Serious Clark
Speaker 1: dot com. You can join Chuck on Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash Charles be Chuck Bryant uh and you can also
Speaker 1: hit up the official Facebook page at Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know and what Else Chuck Emails. You can send us
Speaker 1: all an email, including Jerry, Noel, Matt Everybody to stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
Speaker 1: joined us at home on the web Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com. M