Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. It's Seth, the producer of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. I'm here in March to just pop on
Speaker 1: a quick note into this episode saying, hey, it's March,
Speaker 1: and you know what that means. We're all recording from
Speaker 1: our own homes, all separate, and all social distancing, so
Speaker 1: that means the sound quality of this one is a
Speaker 1: little strange. But just to let you know, each time
Speaker 1: we've been doing these home recordings, they've been getting better
Speaker 1: and better and better. So I can guarantee you the
Speaker 1: next one's going to sound a little better than this,
Speaker 1: and the next one and after that's going to sound
Speaker 1: a little bit better than that one, etcetera, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: just so you know, this is all temporary and we'll
Speaker 1: get back to our regular episodes as soon as we can,
Speaker 1: sound quality wise. Thank you very much and enjoy the show.
Speaker 1: Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind, production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey a, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back. We're still social distancing. Now. There must have
Speaker 1: been a weird back and forth here because Thursday of
Speaker 1: last week's episode we were broadcasting from our closet in
Speaker 1: our laundry room, right, But then Tuesday of this week's episode,
Speaker 1: I think that was recorded in the studio before we
Speaker 1: came home for the great retreat, that's right. And also
Speaker 1: we record our vault episode intros about a month out,
Speaker 1: so people might have noticed that as well. But this episode,
Speaker 1: part two of our Look at the Moa Twilight of
Speaker 1: the Moa we're calling it. This episode is recorded from
Speaker 1: our respective closets in our homes. You're actually in a
Speaker 1: closet now, as opposed to your your laundry room. Is
Speaker 1: that correct? That's true. I decided to become a monster
Speaker 1: in the closet. Uh, And I've got so I've got
Speaker 1: the same talisman's that I had last time in order
Speaker 1: to bring me good luck and watch over me while
Speaker 1: making this recording. I've got tom Atkins from Night at
Speaker 1: the Creeps. I've got my thor Christ. But this time
Speaker 1: I also brought in an extremely tasteful novelty mug that
Speaker 1: my wife found an East Tennessee thrift store, which is
Speaker 1: great because I cannot bring this mug to the office.
Speaker 1: I am sure I would get in trouble for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the home office brings with it certain advantages, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: For For me, I looked around the house. I would
Speaker 1: have loved to have had a toy of a moa,
Speaker 1: like a little plastic like Schleck moa, But sadly we
Speaker 1: do not have one, and it would be irresponsible for
Speaker 1: me to even try and mail order one at the moment.
Speaker 1: So you have a plastic Shrek, No I have. I
Speaker 1: do have a plastic terror bird. So it's not accurate,
Speaker 1: but it's it is still an extinct flightless bird. Uh
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna set it right here next to my
Speaker 1: microphone and it will it will serve as my mascot.
Speaker 1: Well mayor pocket sized titles watch over us. So, so
Speaker 1: where do we leave off last time? All right? So
Speaker 1: in our last episode, and if you didn't listen to it,
Speaker 1: do go back and listen to that episode before this one.
Speaker 1: In it, we discussed the evolution of flightless birds and
Speaker 1: the eyes of the moa, nine species of large flightless
Speaker 1: birds that evolved as the dominant vertebrates on the isolated
Speaker 1: islands of what He's currently known as New Zealand. But
Speaker 1: the rule of the moa did not last forever because
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens arrived, and this episode will deal with the
Speaker 1: subsequent extinction of the moa because you know what they say,
Speaker 1: more humans moa problems. I wondered how you were going
Speaker 1: to work that in, saying, you know, I had to
Speaker 1: get to it eventually. Yeah, yeah, that's true for i'd
Speaker 1: say every organism except us, right, except maybe like hathogens
Speaker 1: that that prey upon us. Right. Yeah, it's certainly when
Speaker 1: we're dealing with with megafauna um creatures of that nature.
Speaker 1: There's this is a tale of doom whenever humans enter
Speaker 1: the equation, and we'll we'll point out some other examples
Speaker 1: of that as we'd move along. No, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of some more exceptions. We got rats too,
Speaker 1: I mean rats were great for them. Rat will come up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so, yeah, a few exceptions there. But you don't
Speaker 1: want to be a moa when humans show up, right,
Speaker 1: So the rule of the moa was lengthy. They evolved
Speaker 1: into the into these dominant positions in New Zealand, but
Speaker 1: as we discussed on the show before, it can be
Speaker 1: precarious at the top, certainly for apex predators, but also
Speaker 1: from massive dominant herbivores, especially when something changes. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we also talked about this in our episode. I believe
Speaker 1: it was on the Leviattan or the Leviathan genus of
Speaker 1: like the the ancient predatory sperm whale. That's right, yes,
Speaker 1: where it's easy to look at a creature like that
Speaker 1: or a creature like hosts eagle, which we discussed in
Speaker 1: the last episode, to look at these creatures and think,
Speaker 1: well that there's no taking that down. That's that's that's
Speaker 1: a dominant organism. But it is, uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: is the ruler, but it is it is it's thrown
Speaker 1: rest upon a precarious pyramid of bones. Yeah, heavy lies
Speaker 1: the crown exactly. So yeah, when something changes, it can
Speaker 1: topple everything over. And in the thirteenth century c. I've
Speaker 1: seen twelve a d c. As a potential date, a
Speaker 1: major change arrived on the shores of New Zealand. And
Speaker 1: that change came in the form of Homo sapiens. Uh.
Speaker 1: The long world changing wave of human migration had finally
Speaker 1: made its way to you know, near the bottom of
Speaker 1: the world, to this nation of the birds. And this
Speaker 1: would have been what would come to be known as
Speaker 1: the Mallory. Uh. These were uh, these settlers were a
Speaker 1: Polynesian people who arrived in several waves uh in what
Speaker 1: is now New Zealand. This is one of the later
Speaker 1: regions of planet Earth to be settled by humans. Absolutely
Speaker 1: like these were some of the last in true pioneers
Speaker 1: heading into parts of the world, not not only parts
Speaker 1: of the world that they had not been to before,
Speaker 1: but where no human had gone before. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the European colonists and explorers would only come in the
Speaker 1: wake of these true pioneers. Now, Polynesian culture itself is
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinating and I'd love to come back and deal
Speaker 1: with some of the related topics on the show, such
Speaker 1: as their amazing navigational abilities or the use of aquaculture
Speaker 1: in the in the Hawaiian Islands. But essentially we're talking
Speaker 1: about a long curving leg of human expansion that extends
Speaker 1: from China through the Philippines, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Tahiti,
Speaker 1: uh Hawaii, Easter Island, and other islands in this broad
Speaker 1: stretch of the ocean. Again, they were the Polynesians were
Speaker 1: the last true pioneers of human expansion, and Polynesian expansion
Speaker 1: took place over the course of thousands of years as well,
Speaker 1: and the culture evolved along the way it took takes
Speaker 1: on ends up taking on different forms in the locations
Speaker 1: where they land, often due to resulting isolation. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: because these are in many cases very far flung islands,
Speaker 1: and and and sometimes we're talking about, you know, centuries
Speaker 1: and centuries between people making it to one island versus another.
Speaker 1: So New Zealand was discovered and colonized very late in
Speaker 1: human expansion, and when the archaic Mallory arrived, they encountered
Speaker 1: the moa. Following this encounter, the nine species of moa
Speaker 1: would scarcely last more than another century, and they were
Speaker 1: extinct by fourtet. So let's get into what we're mainly
Speaker 1: going to discuss in this episode, this this collision between
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens and moa. And probably the best place to
Speaker 1: start there is by talking about just the word moa.
Speaker 1: Where does it come from? I was reading in Prodigious Birds,
Speaker 1: MOA's and Moa Hunting in New Zealand by Athol Anderson,
Speaker 1: and the author shares that the earliest recorded use of
Speaker 1: the word moa comes via Cornish missionary William Colenso who
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty eight heard that some Mallory described the
Speaker 1: moa as a large bird, others as a large bird
Speaker 1: with a face like that of a man who lived
Speaker 1: in a mountain cavern that was guarded by two giant lizards. Wow.
Speaker 1: This in other tales described the residents of Mount uh
Speaker 1: Taranaki or Mount Egmonts described the very strange residents that
Speaker 1: lived there, often taking the form of abnormal birds or lizards,
Speaker 1: sometimes with human qualities. And this really lines up with
Speaker 1: what we've talked about on the show before about sacred
Speaker 1: mountains and holy mountains and the various myths that people
Speaker 1: accumulate regarding the sorts of things you would find there,
Speaker 1: in the sorts of creatures that would populate those uh,
Speaker 1: those mysterious cliffs up there. Yeah, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of ways of looking at that. In our episode on
Speaker 1: the Sacred Mountains, I guess we did two of those episodes.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing is we talked about the idea
Speaker 1: that if you get really really high up there, there's
Speaker 1: some evidence that people sometimes start, you know, experiencing psychosis
Speaker 1: or llucinations. Um, so, like that could be a source
Speaker 1: of some supernatural beliefs in some cases. But but I'd
Speaker 1: say probably the more prevalent issue is just that the
Speaker 1: top of the mountain is inaccessible, so it is naturally
Speaker 1: a place to put your mythical creatures at home in
Speaker 1: You know that that is where they hide. Absolutely. Now
Speaker 1: I know what some people are probably wondering here is
Speaker 1: eight That sounds kind of late for the earliest recorded
Speaker 1: use of the word moa. Yeah, so how long would
Speaker 1: the species have been extinct before the word appears in writing? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. It seems a little confusing at first, right,
Speaker 1: because first contact between Europeans and Maori occurred December eighteen,
Speaker 1: sixteen forty two, with Able Tasman's Dutch East India Company expedition. Now, specifically,
Speaker 1: Europeans had been asking the Maori about other giant creatures
Speaker 1: recorded in their traditions since the seventeen seventies. In the
Speaker 1: near two centuries at there was certainly communication and exchange
Speaker 1: between Europeans and Maori, in addition to, of course colonial subjucation. UH.
Speaker 1: Anderson discusses this uh in his book, and it points
Speaker 1: out that earlier references to the moa might either have
Speaker 1: not been recognized or not associated with the term moa. Itself,
Speaker 1: so you know, descriptions of the animal might not have
Speaker 1: been immediately tied with moa. For instance, there were accounts
Speaker 1: of spirits covered in hair in the form of birds,
Speaker 1: and there was talk of how a giant kiwi lived
Speaker 1: in the mountains. Uh. And will again remind everyone that
Speaker 1: the kiwi and the moa are not actually all that related.
Speaker 1: But this, uh, this sort of discovery would have stemmed
Speaker 1: from Earth, from general European interests in the extent kiwi.
Speaker 1: So you know, they might have been asking about the kiwi,
Speaker 1: and they would have been heard about myths of giant
Speaker 1: birds that are in some way like a kiwi. That
Speaker 1: is interesting. Yeah, the idea that that the concept could
Speaker 1: persist over time, especially if you have like something that's
Speaker 1: morphologically very similar but just like much smaller to refer to, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in all of this again we're just we're discussing
Speaker 1: like European knowledge all of the moa, which is ultimately
Speaker 1: tied to European knowledge and understanding of the mallory, which
Speaker 1: of course is is a strained relationship, you know, to
Speaker 1: say the least, because again you're talking about the the
Speaker 1: indigenous people, the Mallory and you're talking about the the
Speaker 1: colonial power that then arrives on their shore in the
Speaker 1: form of the Europeans. Anderson also points out that a
Speaker 1: major factor might be that the Mallory conceptionalize the moa
Speaker 1: as not being true birds but is just being is
Speaker 1: being bird like, which Nights had a little confusing. But
Speaker 1: then I think back to just some of the weird
Speaker 1: things about the moa, you know, like that they the
Speaker 1: thing that that the fact that they had no wings,
Speaker 1: not even vestigial wings. They were just two limbed organisms. Um,
Speaker 1: you can see why it might defy easy categorization. Likewise,
Speaker 1: they're just the size of the larger species. Well sure,
Speaker 1: I mean when we use the term bird now, I
Speaker 1: think like you and I are going to be referring
Speaker 1: to an evolutionary clade, uh that is defined by evolutionary relationships.
Speaker 1: But if you're just categorizing animals that you see in
Speaker 1: the world, what are the bases on which you form
Speaker 1: your categories? Like a bird might well be understood as
Speaker 1: something that flies. So if there's something that, look, this
Speaker 1: is kind of like a bird, and that it has
Speaker 1: a beak and all that, but it doesn't fly, it
Speaker 1: doesn't meet your necessary criteria for what makes something a
Speaker 1: bird exactly. Yeah, and so the bones of the moa
Speaker 1: were apparently not described by the Mallory as bird bones,
Speaker 1: but they were described as moa bones. So here's a
Speaker 1: here's a quote from from Anderson and all of this quote.
Speaker 1: It is very difficult to document this point, but the
Speaker 1: separation of dangerous mythological moa from large birds used as
Speaker 1: food and easily hunted to extinction in Pollock's description, and
Speaker 1: the lack of any comparable prosaic tradition about MOA's in
Speaker 1: most of the moa stories collected by missionaries seems suggestive. Certainly,
Speaker 1: it was the very lack of an unequivocal association between
Speaker 1: the term moa and any straightforward account of large birds
Speaker 1: hunted and eaten by maories which formed the main flaw
Speaker 1: exploited throughout the long debate about what, if anything Maloris
Speaker 1: had known about the dinner rithoforms. Oh, and the dinner eiforms.
Speaker 1: That refers to the group to which the moa belong. Right, Yes, so,
Speaker 1: well we'll ponder this dangerous versus easy to drive to
Speaker 1: extinction question as we perceive, because I'm not entirely convinced
Speaker 1: this species can't be both of these things, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly when humans and the humans in question have tools, tactics,
Speaker 1: and invasive species on their side. Oh sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of the most dangerous creatures in a one on
Speaker 1: in context are also some of the easiest to drive extinct.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you just wanted to drive an animal extinct,
Speaker 1: what would be like the easiest ones to do, Probably
Speaker 1: like large carnivores, because there's already so few of them.
Speaker 1: Of course, the moa were not carnivores like this, but yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, like large animals generally being fewer in number
Speaker 1: because of their energy requirements within the environment, would seem
Speaker 1: to be easier to drive to extinction than if you
Speaker 1: were trying to exterminate something that's very easy to kill,
Speaker 1: like rats. Yeah, and again I think they the evidence
Speaker 1: seems to indicate they would have been dangerous creatures because
Speaker 1: these were big animals. Even the little bush moa was
Speaker 1: four and a half feet tall. Now that's smaller than
Speaker 1: an adult southern castlewary, which is generally five to six
Speaker 1: ft taller one and a half to one point eight meters.
Speaker 1: But if you see one, you would not mess with it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're fierce creatures. So it seems like the larger
Speaker 1: species of Moa especially would certainly be in a position
Speaker 1: to put the hurt on an aggressor and do so
Speaker 1: in a way that's in keeping with what we see
Speaker 1: in in extant rattite species. But does that mean they
Speaker 1: were a match for the humans that arrived on their shores. No,
Speaker 1: because the archaic now we were a very skilled and
Speaker 1: advanced people. They arrived in waves from Hawaiiki, this is
Speaker 1: a mythical land that is usually identified as Tahiti by historians,
Speaker 1: and they were of course skilled sailors that arrived on
Speaker 1: wooden vessels capable of traversing great distances at sea. For instance,
Speaker 1: the distance between Tahiti and New Zealand is two thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred and fifty miles or four thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: forty seven kilometers. I mean, that's a long way to go,
Speaker 1: even if you know exactly where you're going. But here
Speaker 1: we're talking about like the settlement of a new, previously
Speaker 1: unknown island, right, So yeah, I just I just really
Speaker 1: want to drive home like the skilled nature of these
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens that arrived um and what's more, they brought
Speaker 1: with them both human cunning and human tool use. They
Speaker 1: are masters of the club and the spear especially. They
Speaker 1: also brought with them other animals, including a breed of
Speaker 1: domesticated Polynesian dog known as the curry, which, as with
Speaker 1: other Polynesian dogs, did not bark, but apparently howl. They
Speaker 1: also brought with them, quite by accident, the kiori, the
Speaker 1: Polynesian rat um. Now the kori is still a pest
Speaker 1: species in New Zealand because, as we know, once rats
Speaker 1: become established anywhere, they're very difficult to get rid of.
Speaker 1: The curry dog, on the other hand, has been extinct
Speaker 1: since the arrival of Europeans, and we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that species in a minute. And they also brought with
Speaker 1: them um plants as well, such as the sweet potato.
Speaker 1: Well way, is there any thinking that the sweet potato
Speaker 1: could be involved in driving them oa extinct or I
Speaker 1: am not. I have not read anything to suggest that,
Speaker 1: but but I mean that kind of that sort of
Speaker 1: thing is certainly possible. Right generally speaking, when you have
Speaker 1: humans from a distant land show up and introduce into
Speaker 1: the ecosystem not only their destructive selves, but also invasive organisms. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's you know, you're just really upending the croc pie.
Speaker 1: You know, you're really changing the chemistry of the whole
Speaker 1: ecosystem around potentially. Oh yeah, well, actually, now that I
Speaker 1: think about it, I could totally see how I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this is the case here, but I could totally
Speaker 1: see how something like the sweet potato could drive a
Speaker 1: native species extinct. Because humans come, they bring with them
Speaker 1: their crop staples. In order to plant those crops, they
Speaker 1: have to uh to establish agricultural zones that destroy natural ecosystem.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I could see it. Again, not saying we
Speaker 1: know that that happened here. All right, On that note,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will continue to discuss the collision between Homo sapiens
Speaker 1: and the MOA. Than alright, we're back. So what do
Speaker 1: you need as fresh colonists in a world like New Zealand. Well,
Speaker 1: let's see classic hierarchy of needs. I'd say, first you
Speaker 1: need you need fresh water, food, and shelter, probably right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, Am I on the right track here? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: But another need that I I didn't instantly think of,
Speaker 1: And part of this is probably because I've never been
Speaker 1: to New Zealand myself, so I don't have like the
Speaker 1: bodily experience of this. But New Zealand can be quite cold,
Speaker 1: so you know you're you're arriving in a new land,
Speaker 1: but also a land where the temperatures dipped down a
Speaker 1: bit more. Uh So the the Archaic Mallory, uh they
Speaker 1: were fortunate and that they did bring within the coury dogs,
Speaker 1: which helps solve some of these issues because the creatures
Speaker 1: had many utalitarian uses. They could be eaten, their pelt
Speaker 1: could be made into clothing, and other parts of its
Speaker 1: body could be used for bits of clothing and tool
Speaker 1: use and so forth. But beyond that, you know, when
Speaker 1: they started exploring this new world, they very quickly would
Speaker 1: have discovered the Moa, and the Moa would be just
Speaker 1: a gift of resources to these people. Now here's a
Speaker 1: question that researchers and historians have have pondered over the years.
Speaker 1: So what sore of Moa population did the Archaic Mallory encounter.
Speaker 1: It's long been widely accepted that, you know, the newly
Speaker 1: arrived humans at least played a role in the extinction
Speaker 1: of the Moa. But there there there's been some disagreement
Speaker 1: in the past over to what extent. For example, did
Speaker 1: the archaic Mallory encounter thriving populations of moa across much
Speaker 1: of the islands, or did they encounter dwindling populations of
Speaker 1: moa that were restricted to certain areas, or did they
Speaker 1: find moa populations that were already in severe decline. And
Speaker 1: of course, depending on the answer, it paints a different
Speaker 1: picture of the extent of Maori moa hunting and the
Speaker 1: impact of their arrival. You know, some could argue that well,
Speaker 1: in perhaps climate change, volcanic eruptions and or disease had
Speaker 1: already impacted moa populations and humans were just the final straw.
Speaker 1: So the moa certainly went extinct over the next century
Speaker 1: or so. You know, there's no moa hiding in the
Speaker 1: wilds of New Zealand, sadly, no matter what anybody might
Speaker 1: try and tell you. And it wasn't until the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century that Europeans discovered evidence of the great birds, consisting
Speaker 1: of charred skeletons, gizzard stones and egg shells. They certainly
Speaker 1: told the tale of their demise. DNA evidence, however, does
Speaker 1: shine light on the question of pre Maori moa populations
Speaker 1: as Rachel Newer wrote in The New York Times back
Speaker 1: in quote Morton Eric Allentoft, a researcher of the University
Speaker 1: of Copenhagen, and colleagues analyzed DNA from two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty one moas collected from museums and new excavations and
Speaker 1: estimated the age of these specimens using radio carbon dating.
Speaker 1: They found that in the millenniums before humans arrived in
Speaker 1: New Zealand, the MOA displayed none of the genetic bottlenecking
Speaker 1: indicative of a declining population. So there's no genetic evidence
Speaker 1: of a of a decline in the MOA during the
Speaker 1: five thousand years prior to their rapid extinction. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: via the human arrival. Okay, So what does that tell us?
Speaker 1: What that leaves us with this version of the story,
Speaker 1: The archaic Mallory arrived on the shores of a new
Speaker 1: land where strange, often gigantic birds were roaming around, and
Speaker 1: through the use of spears and snares and hunting dogs
Speaker 1: and the human cunning, they were able to bring the
Speaker 1: birds down and process their kills with the same sort
Speaker 1: of efficiency we see, you know, with the coury dogs.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that the moa had no natural fear
Speaker 1: of humans as well, which would have just made them
Speaker 1: even more susceptible to this kind of harvesting. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd imagine that's possible, especially without um, without large mammalian
Speaker 1: predators on the island of New Zealand, Like they're only
Speaker 1: real predator would have been the hostile eagle, right, which
Speaker 1: they're adapted to a landscape in which the only thing
Speaker 1: to worry about comes down at you from above. Uh.
Speaker 1: Who knows what they would have done if, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a bipedal hominid walks up to them in a group. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And and plus their extinction didn't just come via the hunting.
Speaker 1: Have grown adult MOA's because they're they're large, eggs were
Speaker 1: certainly sought after foods as well. We see that from
Speaker 1: some of the you know, the evidence of you know,
Speaker 1: the finding egg shells and evidence of the eggs having
Speaker 1: been consumed. And since the moa produced just one or
Speaker 1: two eggs, the harvesting of their eggs would have further
Speaker 1: spelled doom for the nine species of moa. For example,
Speaker 1: the I believe this is a k Cora egg, the
Speaker 1: largest moa egg ever uncovered would have weighed nine pounds
Speaker 1: when fresh. Wow. To put that in perspective, an ostrich
Speaker 1: egg typically weighs one point four kilograms or three point
Speaker 1: one pounds, which is more than twenty times the weight
Speaker 1: of a chicken egg. So we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: two two people, uh that have arrived on these islands,
Speaker 1: you know, struggling for existence like that. That's huge bounty
Speaker 1: of resources in that egg. Do you ever see anybody
Speaker 1: eat an ostrich egg? I feel like I have before
Speaker 1: in the past, but I haven't. It's not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing I've seen on the menu recently. It did
Speaker 1: not come highly recommended to me. Apparently, in addition to
Speaker 1: being very large, it's got a it's got a tough shell.
Speaker 1: I guess, as you might imagine. You know, it can't
Speaker 1: just have like an egg shell thick like a chicken
Speaker 1: egg shell thickness shell that's a little bit difficult to
Speaker 1: get into. But then once you do get into it,
Speaker 1: tremendous nutritional resources. Yeah, I mean that that that that's
Speaker 1: a one egg omelet for you. Yeah. So basically the
Speaker 1: situation is the Mauori ended up hunting and harvesting the
Speaker 1: moa faster than the moa could reproduce, and as the
Speaker 1: bounty of moa flesh and bone dwindled, the moa hunting
Speaker 1: Maori diversified and came to depend on fishing, fouling, uh
Speaker 1: in the gathering of mollusks, et cetera. And this led
Speaker 1: to the establishment of more permanent and semi permanent settlements.
Speaker 1: So then it looks like it really was us. It
Speaker 1: was people that drove the moa extinct. Oh yes, I
Speaker 1: I think at this point, especially with the genetic evidence,
Speaker 1: that's that's with without question now. Is reported in Why
Speaker 1: did New Zealand's Moas Go Extinct? By Virginia Morrell Morton Allentoft,
Speaker 1: who mentioned earlier evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen
Speaker 1: remarked in that the idea may run counter to some
Speaker 1: ideas that we tend to have about indigenous people. We
Speaker 1: often think of them, uh you know, living in equilibrium
Speaker 1: with nature, but the mallory end up killing and eating
Speaker 1: the moa at every stage of the creature's life. So
Speaker 1: alan Toft contends that this sort of harmony with nature
Speaker 1: that we sometimes envisioned ultimately rarely exists within human beings,
Speaker 1: and that any arriving humans would have extinguished the moa
Speaker 1: the same way. And certainly we see other such extinctions, um,
Speaker 1: you know, including the distinctions of large flightless birds due
Speaker 1: to the arrival of humans. So again, don't think less
Speaker 1: of the Maori for the extinction of the moa. Uh.
Speaker 1: These great birds were always on a collision course with humans,
Speaker 1: and if by some miracle the Polynesians had never found
Speaker 1: New Zealand, the Europeans would have eradicated the moa on
Speaker 1: their own. So again, it's an old story. Humans arrive somewhere,
Speaker 1: mega fauna is hunted into extinction. We see that with
Speaker 1: the mammoths, we see that with cave bears, giant kangaroos, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it seems like a ubiquitous picture
Speaker 1: of human development and geographical spread, Like it is absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing unique about whatever individual culture reached this mega fauna first. Now,
Speaker 1: I think one of the really fascinating questions in all
Speaker 1: of this is beyond the questions of like Europeans figuring
Speaker 1: out what the Mallory thought about the moa, is just
Speaker 1: a question of like, what how does that impact a people?
Speaker 1: You know, to to have come to this, to come
Speaker 1: to New Zealand to be essentially become the mallory. And
Speaker 1: in the process of becoming the mallory, you go through
Speaker 1: this period of Moa hunting mallory in which you have
Speaker 1: this you know, this bounty of these these creatures to
Speaker 1: to to hunt and feed on, and then they're gone.
Speaker 1: Then you have to diversify and change the way you live,
Speaker 1: like what is the memory of that like in a people.
Speaker 1: I found a fascinating article about this published on The Conversation.
Speaker 1: It's by conservation biologist Priscilla Way, University of Waikato, Associate
Speaker 1: Professor him A Wanga and Professor of computational biology Murray Cox.
Speaker 1: It was published in two thousand and eighteen and it's
Speaker 1: titled Dead as the Moa Oral traditions show that early
Speaker 1: Maori recognized extinction interesting. So the team of researchers here,
Speaker 1: which includes a conservation biologist, a linguist, a bioinformationist, and
Speaker 1: experts in Maori culture. They stressed that tracing the centuries
Speaker 1: old extinctions is difficult, but that through the collaborative analysis
Speaker 1: of ancestral sayings traditional ancestral sayings in Maori culture, they
Speaker 1: found that early Maori certainly paid attention to the stay
Speaker 1: to flora and fauna in their environment, and that they
Speaker 1: recognized the extinction of the moa. But despite knowing roughly
Speaker 1: when and who you know regarding the mo extinction, and
Speaker 1: we don't really know a lot about how the Malory
Speaker 1: felt about and how they processed this event, which again
Speaker 1: would have been a major event in their lives. This
Speaker 1: was the destruction of an important food source as well
Speaker 1: as a source of various tools and parts. Uh, some
Speaker 1: of this remains in the Malory oral traditions, specifically in
Speaker 1: these various ancestral sayings. So the researchers here they point out,
Speaker 1: uh that of these ancestral sayings, uh, the ones that
Speaker 1: refer to birds anyway, a disproportionate number of them refer
Speaker 1: to the moa, to their appearance, to their into their nature,
Speaker 1: and their uses to humans. All right, so what would
Speaker 1: these things go like in translation? Well, yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna share their translations. So they do. They include the
Speaker 1: original Maori versions in this article, so and encourage anyone
Speaker 1: to that it's interested to check that out. But like
Speaker 1: one of them is law lost, as the moa was lost.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like an expression like dead as
Speaker 1: a doornail, like yeah, yeah, or hidden as the moa hit.
Speaker 1: And then here's another one, the people will disappear like
Speaker 1: the moa. And this this one's really haunting because they
Speaker 1: point out that as the Europeans arrived, the Maori compared
Speaker 1: their plight to that of the Moa. So here's a
Speaker 1: quote Mauori recalled the moa. After Europeans arrived, two Mauory
Speaker 1: were suffering badly from diseases and deprivation. In the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. It was as though the Maori world was
Speaker 1: being felled along with the forests. There was a very
Speaker 1: real fear among both Maori and Europeans that Maori people
Speaker 1: and culture would also disappear, just like the Moa. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is haunting. Yeah, I'm still thinking about these expressions.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a point of comparison.
Speaker 1: Of course, one is h is like gone the way
Speaker 1: of the dinosaurs h An EXPI in English. Though, of course,
Speaker 1: our knowledge of where the dinosaurs went does not come
Speaker 1: from cultural memory. It comes from like something we learned
Speaker 1: through science. I guess you could maybe say gone the
Speaker 1: way of the dodos. Some people say that that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: though I guess when people say that they tend, they
Speaker 1: tend not to do it with any accepted role in
Speaker 1: the in the extinction. You know, like I feel like
Speaker 1: that's one of the aspects here worth pondering, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the Mallory would have have realized that their
Speaker 1: ancestors played this role in the extinction. Now that's not
Speaker 1: to say that, you know, did it on purpose. Obviously
Speaker 1: there's a there's a huge difference between you know, a
Speaker 1: setting out to cause an extinction and I don't. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously they wouldn't want to have to have done that,
Speaker 1: because these creatures were a source of of of of
Speaker 1: vast resources to them. But you know, they were you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately it was it was not something that were capable
Speaker 1: of exerting control over, you know, I mean, like it's
Speaker 1: it's really has always been a human struggle to figure
Speaker 1: out to what extent we can exploit the natural world
Speaker 1: without damaging it beyond control. And clearly, like that is
Speaker 1: something that is still a major stumbling block to human beings.
Speaker 1: We still mishandle that same equation on a on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. All Right, we're gonna take one more break,
Speaker 1: but when we come back you know we're gonna move
Speaker 1: beyond the extinction of the moa and ponder the question, well,
Speaker 1: could we bring the moa back? All right, we're back
Speaker 1: a dinosaur story. Is that a movie? We're back a
Speaker 1: dinosaur Story? You don't know that movie? I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I do. Oh man, I think I rented that when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Let's see when did that come out? Based?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I rented that one when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: That was that was a Turtles video. Find that I
Speaker 1: brought home, cavenge that from the from the Bone Heap.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it was good. Mean, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it since I was a child. It does not
Speaker 1: seem like one of the animated dinosaur movies that would
Speaker 1: hold up best. I don't know. I'm looking it up.
Speaker 1: And this voicecast. You got John Goodman, you got Jay
Speaker 1: Leno cron Kite. I think Walter Cronkite plays like a
Speaker 1: mad scientist who brings dinosaurs through a tieme portal or
Speaker 1: something and puts him into New York in the in
Speaker 1: the nineties. And Julia Child is in this really yeah,
Speaker 1: does she play one of the dinosaurs? No, Sadly, she
Speaker 1: plays a worker at the Museum of Natural History. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe that would be uh interesting to
Speaker 1: go back and excavate at some point, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks great. It has four directors, always a good mark
Speaker 1: of quality. Okay, so we're talking about the possible resurrection
Speaker 1: of the moa. Now, there was a pretty good article
Speaker 1: I was reading about this on stat by the science
Speaker 1: writer Sharon Begley from February seven, uh, and it concerned
Speaker 1: the possible d extinction and of one species of moa.
Speaker 1: Of course, if you're not familiar with the concept of
Speaker 1: d extinction, it has come up on the show before,
Speaker 1: but you can probably figure it out from the name, right.
Speaker 1: It's also known as a resurrection biology. It refers to
Speaker 1: the process of bringing an extinct species back to life.
Speaker 1: The pop culture example that everybody knows is Jurassic Park. Now,
Speaker 1: what did they do in Jurassic Park? They found ancient
Speaker 1: deposits of amber or fossilized tree sap in which dinosaur
Speaker 1: era mosquitoes had been trapped when the sap was still soft,
Speaker 1: and then the sap hardened over time and then fossilized
Speaker 1: in the ground. Presumably the the mosquitoes in the sap
Speaker 1: were trapped with their bellies full of dinosaur blood that
Speaker 1: they had just feasted on. And so the scientists in
Speaker 1: the book, in the movie Jurassic Park, they extract the
Speaker 1: preserved dinosaur blood, they sequence it out, they get mr
Speaker 1: DNA from the from the insect bellies, and then they
Speaker 1: use that blood and the DNA sequenced from it to
Speaker 1: clone dinosaurs. It was, of course, I would say, y
Speaker 1: ingenious plot device, but unfortunately it looks like it probably
Speaker 1: would not work in reality. What if? What if? The
Speaker 1: reason it didn't work, though, was that it turns out
Speaker 1: the mosquitoes had not consumed the blood of dinosaurs, but
Speaker 1: it consumed the blood of the time travelers from Ray
Speaker 1: Bradbury Sound of thunder Man. What what were the chances
Speaker 1: that would be a very good closed time travel loop? What?
Speaker 1: What do you like better the time travel movies where
Speaker 1: you go back and actually changed the past, or the
Speaker 1: ones where you go back and it proves to be
Speaker 1: a closed loop where you just cause whatever present already happened.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you have to go back and forth between
Speaker 1: the two. You know, I feel like that's the only
Speaker 1: way it really works. You know, It's like it's the
Speaker 1: sour in the suite with your time travel. But let's
Speaker 1: bring things back to Jurassic Park. Why didn't it work? Okay,
Speaker 1: So basically there are several reasons, but they all come
Speaker 1: down to time. Now. One of the reasons is not
Speaker 1: in fact that you couldn't discover a mosquito with prehistoric
Speaker 1: blood and its guts that uh. But believe it or not,
Speaker 1: paleontologists actually have discovered preserved insects full of the remains
Speaker 1: of not not intact, but the remains of prehistoric blood
Speaker 1: in fossil beds. Uh. And this is a slight tangent.
Speaker 1: But I didn't already know this, and I was amazed
Speaker 1: by what I was reading here. So there's one prominent
Speaker 1: example I could find. I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: still the only major example known today, but it was
Speaker 1: described in a research article published in p N A
Speaker 1: s in called Hema Globin derived Porphyrion's preserved in a
Speaker 1: Middle Eocene blood engorged mosquito. And it was by Dale E.
Speaker 1: Greenwal To, Julia S. Garreva, Sandra M. Celia Strom, Tim Rose,
Speaker 1: and Ralph E. Harback. And the discovery was also written
Speaker 1: up by ed Young in a short news item for
Speaker 1: the journal Nature on October four. So, the researchers here
Speaker 1: were examining a total of thirty six mosquito specimens from
Speaker 1: a shape old deposit known as the Coal Creek member
Speaker 1: of the kischen In formation in northwestern Montana, and the
Speaker 1: layer from which they were recovered is estimated to be
Speaker 1: about forty six million years old. So this collection of
Speaker 1: fossilized mosquitoes included two previously unknown species of the genus Cooliseda.
Speaker 1: One was cool Asseda kischen in and one was cool
Speaker 1: Asseda lemniscata. But one of the mosquitoes from the bonyard
Speaker 1: was truly special and you can look up images if
Speaker 1: you want on the internet. In the words of the researchers,
Speaker 1: the image of this specimen was quote obviously that of
Speaker 1: a female blood engorged mosquito with non plumos antennae and
Speaker 1: a very dark red black distended abdomen compared with the
Speaker 1: non hematophagus male. Uh so there's a new word for
Speaker 1: your vampire fiction. By the way, him at a phagus
Speaker 1: means eats blood or drinks blood. Non hematophagus would mean
Speaker 1: does not blood like the male mosquitoes. The male mosquito
Speaker 1: doesn't drink blood. Obviously, if your gut is busting with
Speaker 1: blood like this, uh, this female mosquito here, you are
Speaker 1: him out of vegas. But but ed Young writes in
Speaker 1: his summary that prior to this discovery, paleontologists had found
Speaker 1: fossils of blood sucking insects, but we always had to
Speaker 1: guess what these insects were feeding on through kind of
Speaker 1: indirect cues, like preserved evidence of blood borne parasites contained
Speaker 1: in their digestive systems. This fossil find was totally different
Speaker 1: because it contained direct molecular evidence of blood feeding within
Speaker 1: the insects gut, specifically lots of iron and organic compounds
Speaker 1: called porphyrans, which are constituents of hemoglobin that's the protein
Speaker 1: responsible for transporting oxygen in blood. Uh. And the find
Speaker 1: was also extremely unlikely. In the words of the lead author,
Speaker 1: Dale Greenwalt quote, the abdomen of a blood engorged mosquito
Speaker 1: is like a balloon ready to burst. It is very fragile.
Speaker 1: The chances that it wouldn't have disintegrated prior to fossilization
Speaker 1: were infinitesimally small. And it's amazing because that's on top
Speaker 1: of the already minuscule chances of any animal being fossilized
Speaker 1: in the first place. I mean, remember, the fossil lottery
Speaker 1: has few winners. Almost all organisms that ever live just
Speaker 1: decomposed and disappear without leaving a trace. But unfortunately, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of reasons you cannot use this mosquito
Speaker 1: or a mosquito like it to extract dino d n
Speaker 1: a Bengal dino. Both of these reasons have to do
Speaker 1: with time. So the first is that the fossil mosquito
Speaker 1: is only forty six million years old. So the last
Speaker 1: of the non avian dinosaurs we know died out in
Speaker 1: the KPg extinction that was about sixty six million years ago.
Speaker 1: This mosquito would have been from the Middle Eocene. H
Speaker 1: So if it were possible to clone anything based on
Speaker 1: what was in the mosquitoes guts, it would have to
Speaker 1: be something that lived in North America around that period.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, hell, I'll look up a candidate,
Speaker 1: and I found a pretty cool one that the coolest
Speaker 1: candidate I could come up with was named Miss Sonics,
Speaker 1: whose name means middle claw and who was part of
Speaker 1: a now extinct, larger group of carnivorous ungulates. Carnivorous ungulates.
Speaker 1: Remember the unguluts are the hoofed mammals. Uh. So examples
Speaker 1: would be dear you know, bo vines, uh, horses, but these,
Speaker 1: of course are carnivorous. You can't think of unguluts like
Speaker 1: that today. There were once predatory carnivorous hoofed mammals roaming
Speaker 1: the continents. Uh. You know, try to think of a
Speaker 1: donkey that could eat you. Yeah, and this is a
Speaker 1: really cool one to look up paleo art for because
Speaker 1: it seems like it's just a very hard creature to
Speaker 1: try and envision in your head. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the illustrations end up just looking like this weird
Speaker 1: kind of like long snouted, almost almost like a cross
Speaker 1: between a rodent and a lion. Uh. You get a
Speaker 1: really really weird sense of category confusion when you look
Speaker 1: at these images. I mean, a lot of uh descriptions
Speaker 1: say it would have been in some ways superficially like
Speaker 1: a wolf, but of course it was not of the
Speaker 1: order of the dogs. It was not like a big cat.
Speaker 1: It's not like a wolf. It's not any of that
Speaker 1: in terms of evolutionary relationships. It's more like a deer
Speaker 1: or a cow or a horse or something, but it
Speaker 1: is a carnivore that would you know, might bite your
Speaker 1: leg off. So anyway, I'm all for cloning a ton
Speaker 1: of those if we could. But again I want to
Speaker 1: stress that, uh, there was not clonable material within that
Speaker 1: mosquito's abdomen, and in fact, based on what we know,
Speaker 1: there couldn't be because the other reason you couldn't clone
Speaker 1: dinosaurs from the gut contents of any mosquito is that
Speaker 1: DNA is extremely fragile. It breaks down very quickly, and
Speaker 1: it starts breaking down within hours of the death of
Speaker 1: an organism. After forty six million years, DNA would degrade
Speaker 1: to the point where a genome can longer be recovered,
Speaker 1: all the more at anything older than sixty six million years.
Speaker 1: So you can't get to a dinosaur. Uh So then
Speaker 1: you might wonder, well, how long can DNA last in
Speaker 1: in preserved animal remains. What's the farthest back that we
Speaker 1: could go to sequence the genome of an extinct creature,
Speaker 1: extract all that information, and then maybe even clone it
Speaker 1: back to life if possible. Well, the MOA has a
Speaker 1: part to play in the answer to this question. I
Speaker 1: found this out by total serendipity. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: this when I started looking into this subject. Uh So,
Speaker 1: to determine the period within which you could reasonably expect
Speaker 1: to extract usable DNA from a sample, you need to
Speaker 1: know the rate of molecular decay for DNA as a molecule.
Speaker 1: And there was a study in that looked into this question.
Speaker 1: It was by our friend Morton E. Allentoft that you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, but also by Matthew Collins, David Harker, James Highly,
Speaker 1: Charlotte L. Oscome, Marie L. Hale, Paula F. Campos uh oh,
Speaker 1: and apparently at others. I guess it had a lot
Speaker 1: of authors. Sorry, but it was called the Half Life
Speaker 1: of DNA and Bone Measuring Decay Kinetics in a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty eight dated Fossils published in the Proceedings of
Speaker 1: the Royal Society b So. The authors here examined mitochondrial
Speaker 1: DNA from a hundred and fifty eight radio carbon dated
Speaker 1: bones of the extinct New Zealand MOA, all from between
Speaker 1: six hundred and eight thousand years ago, and all preserved
Speaker 1: in roughly equivalent environmental conditions. And that's very important because
Speaker 1: it gives us a point of reference. If like the
Speaker 1: conditions under which the bones are preserved or roughly the same,
Speaker 1: then you can start to get a good idea between
Speaker 1: them what the average rate of decay is. It's not
Speaker 1: going to vary as much due to differing environmental factors.
Speaker 1: Um So they estimated from this sample that the average
Speaker 1: half life of DNA was about five hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: one years. So you start with an original sample of
Speaker 1: DNA and a bone, and after five dred twenty one years,
Speaker 1: half of it gone. Then after another five and twenty
Speaker 1: one years, half of what remains is broken down, So
Speaker 1: now you're down to a quarter of the original concentration.
Speaker 1: So the the decay adds up fast. Uh. Now, of
Speaker 1: course the decay rate of DNA will not be the
Speaker 1: same in all cases. It's going to depend on factors
Speaker 1: about in what conditions it's preserved. But even in ideal conditions,
Speaker 1: there does appear to be a ceiling on how long
Speaker 1: DNA lasts or or how long you could expect to
Speaker 1: get any usable information out of it under the absolute
Speaker 1: best conditions. This means basically, every molecular bond between the
Speaker 1: nucleotides of the DNA would be broken down after about
Speaker 1: six point eight million years, but long before that, even
Speaker 1: if some bonds are still intact, the DNA would be
Speaker 1: so broken up that would be unreadable. The maximum recoverability
Speaker 1: threshold for meaningful genetic information might be something like one
Speaker 1: point five million years or so. So it seems to
Speaker 1: have been the scientific consensus for for several years now
Speaker 1: that DNA is way too short lived for us to
Speaker 1: ever clone dinosaurs. Except I did come across a really
Speaker 1: recent study just from this month March. Uh Now, it
Speaker 1: doesn't disprove that this, but it is a still controversial
Speaker 1: reported finding that would seem to challenge this if it's correct,
Speaker 1: and so it was published in National Science Review in
Speaker 1: March by Alita im Baliol at All and uh so
Speaker 1: the the author's right here quote a histological ground section
Speaker 1: from a duck bill dinosaur nestling in the species is
Speaker 1: uh Hippacrosaurus Stebben Jerry revealed micro structures morphologically consistent with
Speaker 1: nuclei and chromosomes in cells within calcified cartilage. We hypothesize
Speaker 1: that this exceptional cellular preservation extended to the molecular level
Speaker 1: and had molecular features in common with extant A V cartilage.
Speaker 1: So this is a duck build dinosaur. It's another Montana
Speaker 1: special discovered in the nineteen eighties. It would have been
Speaker 1: a nest of young duck build herbivores that all died
Speaker 1: sometime around seventy five million years ago, and the paleontologists
Speaker 1: here were examining skull shards from these juveniles, and the
Speaker 1: shards would have been made out of cartilage rather than
Speaker 1: out of bone. But when examining these cartilage skull shards
Speaker 1: are the remains of them? Uh. The researchers believe that
Speaker 1: they discovered signs of intact cell nuclei and DNA within
Speaker 1: these fragments, But then again, I want to say a
Speaker 1: lot of paleontologists are skeptical about this supposed find. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's the theoretical limitation on how long DNA would last,
Speaker 1: or at least disbelieved to last on a molecular basis.
Speaker 1: But I was also reading a piece by a University
Speaker 1: of Bristol vertebrate paleontologist named Michael Benton, who thinks it's
Speaker 1: more likely that if there is any actual DNA in
Speaker 1: this sample, it came from recent external contamination, not from
Speaker 1: a dinosaur. So I guess we'll have to wait and
Speaker 1: see what happens there with follow up research. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's interesting and he gives us some hope, right,
Speaker 1: But I've got to bring it back to the moa. So,
Speaker 1: whatever the truth about DNA from millions of years ago,
Speaker 1: as unlikely as that seems, the MOA has existed much
Speaker 1: more recently, and for that reason, the idea of recovering
Speaker 1: the genome of the moa and bringing a species of
Speaker 1: moa back from extinction is much more plausible by orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude. So back to that Sharon Begley article from
Speaker 1: she writes about how there's a team of researchers based
Speaker 1: out of Harvard University that we're able to assemble an
Speaker 1: almost complete genome for our old friend we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode, and I think earlier in this one,
Speaker 1: the little bush moa or a nomal opterics did aform us.
Speaker 1: So these again would not be the biggest ones. These
Speaker 1: are not the towering moa. These would be the smaller variety.
Speaker 1: But I would not be surprised if they could still
Speaker 1: kick your throat out. You know, there probably were some
Speaker 1: tough little customers as we were talking about earlier, the
Speaker 1: little bush moa when extinct in the thirteenth century. Now,
Speaker 1: this work was dependent on DNA extracted from the tow
Speaker 1: bone of a moa that was housed in the Royal
Speaker 1: Ontario Museum in Toronto. And this kind of reconstruction is
Speaker 1: not easy at all, because, well, you can extract a
Speaker 1: lot of genetic information the physical genome, like the chromosomes
Speaker 1: are often kind of shattered, so you have to figure
Speaker 1: out how all the pieces of information that you've extracted
Speaker 1: fit together into a broader chromosomal structure. And as with
Speaker 1: other assemblies of this kind, the researchers here looked into
Speaker 1: the genomes of living relatives for clues, basing the reconstruction
Speaker 1: of the pieces on the reference template of an emu,
Speaker 1: kind of like how mammoth reconstruction would be based on
Speaker 1: the genome of of living elephants and things like that. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time of Begley's article, there were several experts
Speaker 1: in the field who praised the work. A Morton Allen Toft,
Speaker 1: who we were talking about several times, uh he called
Speaker 1: it a significant step forward. Also, the evolutionary molecular biologist
Speaker 1: Beth Shapiro of you see Santa Cruz praise the research,
Speaker 1: there was one concerning feature. So this paper was published
Speaker 1: on bio archive, which is a non peer reviewed preprint server.
Speaker 1: It's so it's like, nothing wrong with something going up
Speaker 1: on there. It's a place to post research for public
Speaker 1: access and review before it gets published in a journal.
Speaker 1: But I was unable to find evidence of this paper
Speaker 1: appearing in an actual journal since then, So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what that means. Uh, maybe it doesn't mean anything,
Speaker 1: or maybe it means something about this genome assembly didn't
Speaker 1: hold up to scrutiny. I guess. I guess we'll have
Speaker 1: to wait and see. But either way, the recent disappearance
Speaker 1: of the MOI I think absolutely makes them a potential
Speaker 1: candidate for de extinction, and this research helps move things
Speaker 1: in that direction. Now. Of course, just because we could
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that we should. I I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have a position on the
Speaker 1: ethics of the extinction overall, but uh, obviously that's a
Speaker 1: question that should be considered before we bring the things
Speaker 1: back and just set them loose at Disney World. But
Speaker 1: what an attraction that would be at Disney World right,
Speaker 1: you go up to the mickey, you get your picture
Speaker 1: taken with the mickey. Then you go up to the moa,
Speaker 1: you try to get your picture taken. You see if
Speaker 1: it cooperates. Yeah, danger zone for sure. But it's like
Speaker 1: what if what if Jnald Duck could kick? What if
Speaker 1: you the Mighty Glotto? Yeah? I mean there's so many
Speaker 1: factors to consider and potentially reintroducing a creature like this,
Speaker 1: you know, even if it's feasible to to bring them back,
Speaker 1: because again, you're you're, to a certain extent doing what
Speaker 1: all these different waves of interference have done in the past.
Speaker 1: You're taking the environment and you're shaking it up again.
Speaker 1: You're you're adding something to it, even if it's something
Speaker 1: that used to be there in some form. Um. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's a difficult equation. And then I imagine also there's
Speaker 1: the argument of is this the best use of our
Speaker 1: our energy towards Should we instead be focusing on creatures
Speaker 1: that are still with us, that can be um that
Speaker 1: can be saved, or creatures that are saying extinct in
Speaker 1: the wild but can still be reintroduced. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of those are you know, entirely separate battles, so
Speaker 1: that you know that you know, certainly involved genetics. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's a complex situation. It's not just
Speaker 1: a matter of oh, well we can bring it back,
Speaker 1: let's do it. MOA's everywhere. I'm just saying, if we
Speaker 1: were going to make a park with de extinctive animals,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe extinct giant birds rather than dinosaurs. Since you
Speaker 1: can't do the non Abean dinosaurs, why not terror birds
Speaker 1: in MOA's. Without a doubt, I would. I would love
Speaker 1: to see one of these creatures in real life. They
Speaker 1: just sound amazing. It's you know, to see these these
Speaker 1: two legged organisms handling about, uh munchtioned on twigs and branches. Uh.
Speaker 1: It would be beautiful, provided you know there was there
Speaker 1: was the space for it. Um So, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It would be interesting to see what happens with this.
Speaker 1: I know it's been it's been brought up before sometimes
Speaker 1: I think by politicians even um and it's been kind
Speaker 1: of controversial. There's a New Zealand politician who for some
Speaker 1: reason has been very in favor of bringing back the moa.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why. By the way, I just looked
Speaker 1: it up Unfortunately, the terror birds appeared to be just
Speaker 1: out of range. Given the figures we were citing earlier,
Speaker 1: I think they went extinct probably around one point eight
Speaker 1: million years ago. Ah, well, there you go, the moas
Speaker 1: it is then MOA's elephant birds. Anything else you know
Speaker 1: within within reach that would have to those would have
Speaker 1: to be the main attractions at our park. Give me
Speaker 1: a host eagle baby, Oh yeah, for for sure. All right,
Speaker 1: So there you have it are two part look at
Speaker 1: the Moa, The Rise of the Moa, the Twilight of
Speaker 1: the Moa. I found this to be just a really
Speaker 1: engrossing UH project to work on because it ends up,
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with so many things you're dealing with,
Speaker 1: uh with biology, evolution of of organisms, you're dealing with
Speaker 1: you know, the history of human migration, uh, colonial disruption,
Speaker 1: and then the possibility of of bringing an extinct creature
Speaker 1: back to life through genetic science. Uh. It really has
Speaker 1: everything spared no expense. Yeah all right, So obviously we
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. I also know
Speaker 1: that we have you know, we have plenty of listeners
Speaker 1: who live in New Zealand and who have traveled to
Speaker 1: New Zealand or have some sort of roots or connection
Speaker 1: to New Zealand. We would love to hear from you
Speaker 1: about this topic. What are your thoughts about the moa
Speaker 1: uh and what you have to add to our discussion here.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts about being called Kiwi's? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. I would love to hear from actual uh
Speaker 1: New Zealand residents on the matter. Would they rather be
Speaker 1: called MOA's Mm hmm, Sorry, I mean both of the
Speaker 1: names of birds, so I don't know. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, you know where to find them
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: Make sure you rate, review and subscribe. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, who's
Speaker 1: doing a heroic job of helping us cope with recording
Speaker 1: from home, so so big shout out to Seth. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hi, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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