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Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of I Heart Radio. I'm

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Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology

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Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and I like to explore the biology

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Speaker 1: of animals, humans and everyone in between. Today on the show,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about animals who are back from the dead.

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Speaker 1: Animals who were previously thought to be gone from the

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Speaker 1: face of the earth get rediscovered. Reports of these animals

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Speaker 1: extinction have been greatly exaggerated. I'm joined today by a

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Speaker 1: very special guest who has traveled the world looking for

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Speaker 1: quote unquote extinct creatures. Then we'll talk about some animals

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Speaker 1: who truly are extinct, we think, and other creatures who

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Speaker 1: we hope to bring back through mad science. Discover this

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Speaker 1: and more as we answer the angel question, is that

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Speaker 1: a giant tooth in your face? Patrick? Are you just

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Speaker 1: happy to see me? How do we know when an

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Speaker 1: animal goes extinct? The truth is we don't. Obviously, we'd

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Speaker 1: probably notice if a giant ground floth was hiding out

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Speaker 1: in the Hollywood Hills. But sometimes animals can be more

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Speaker 1: elusive in dense forests, remote wilderness, deep in the oceans.

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Speaker 1: Lurk animals we thought were long dead but may still

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Speaker 1: be kicking. Take for instance, the wonder Why tree kangaroo

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Speaker 1: of Indonesia who hadn't been sighted for ninety years and

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Speaker 1: was presumed extinct. Naturalist Michael Smith, who was looking for

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Speaker 1: rare flowers, happened upon this find and snapped a photo

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Speaker 1: of the reddish, brown, dog sized tree dwelling marsupial with

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Speaker 1: a cute quaw like nose in a thick fluffy tail.

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Speaker 1: Because this adorable critter is believed to be restricted to

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Speaker 1: a small remote area of montane forests in New Guinea

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Speaker 1: and may have a small population, it's no wonder it

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Speaker 1: has gotten unnoticed for so long. Stumbling upon the rarest

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Speaker 1: thought to be extinct creatures of the world may be

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Speaker 1: an incredible, happy accident. But how do you become a

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Speaker 1: biodiversity private detective tracking down ghosts of species path Joining

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Speaker 1: me to answer that question is outdoor adventure biologist and

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Speaker 1: post of the Animal Planet show Extinct or Alive for

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Speaker 1: us Galante. Welcome, Thank you, thanks for having me. I

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Speaker 1: am incredibly excited to have you on good I'm excited

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Speaker 1: to be here. So first I just want to give

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Speaker 1: people an understanding of what you do. What's your show

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Speaker 1: about what's your mission as you travel the world getting

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Speaker 1: into all sorts of interesting situations. Yeah. Sure things. So,

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Speaker 1: first of all, I'm not a typical TV person by

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Speaker 1: any means. In fact, I'm very little interest in TV.

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Speaker 1: I am a wildlife biologist and a tracker. Um. I

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Speaker 1: grew up in the southern African bush of Zimbabwe. I

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Speaker 1: spent my childhood working with rare and endangered wildlife, then

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Speaker 1: went to school for that, and then continued to pursue

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Speaker 1: that until I landed in the job of it now,

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Speaker 1: which is traveling the world searching for animals that have

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Speaker 1: been deemed extinct. I believe wrongfully, and we've had some

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Speaker 1: major successes and we have incredible adventures all along the way.

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Speaker 1: So what started your interest in biology and biodiversity. I

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Speaker 1: know you had a really interesting childhood. I did. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I was the son of safari business owners in Zimbabwe, Africa. UM.

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Speaker 1: I grew up barefoot on the land in the bush.

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Speaker 1: Um you know, to this day, I remember my first

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Speaker 1: time putting on a pair of shoes, which I don't

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Speaker 1: know how many kids can say that. I was about

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Speaker 1: six um and so yeah, I've just always been surrounded

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Speaker 1: by wildlife, and you know, you know that feeling when

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Speaker 1: you're a little kid and you flip over a log

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Speaker 1: and you see an earthworm. You're like, oh my god,

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Speaker 1: look at that earthworm. It's so cool, it's so interesting.

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Speaker 1: It's slimy and slithery. Well, most people grow out of that.

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Speaker 1: I grew worse. I grew into it, you know where.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to know everything about that earthworm? What makes

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Speaker 1: a tick? Where does it go once it disappears from

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Speaker 1: under the log? Who's eating it? Who's it eating? You know,

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Speaker 1: so on and so forth, and so I just decided

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Speaker 1: at a very young age that I would always pursue wildlife.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know it would land me in the career

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Speaker 1: i'm in now, or have the specialty that it does.

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Speaker 1: But I just always been fascinated by wild animals. So

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Speaker 1: why did you decide to look into to animals who

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Speaker 1: are thought to be extinct or are near extinct. That's

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Speaker 1: a great question. I mean, you know, growing up where

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Speaker 1: I grew up in Zimbabwe, because the country went through

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Speaker 1: such terrible political turmoil, I first handedly saw animals disappearing

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Speaker 1: from the bush that I had loved, and I knew

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Speaker 1: how horrific It was um on a on a mass scale,

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Speaker 1: you know, seeing them disappear, and I also saw how

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Speaker 1: elusive and clever they could be. Where I grew up

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Speaker 1: on our farm, we used to have a leopard that

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Speaker 1: would come and frequent and actually steal some of our livestock.

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Speaker 1: But everyone in our immediate area said leopards hadn't been

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Speaker 1: in that part of Zimbabwe for for thirty years. However,

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Speaker 1: I caught multiple glimpses of this leopard, so I knew

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Speaker 1: beyond any doubt that this animal was, you know, the

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Speaker 1: world champ of Hide and Seek, you know, a master

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Speaker 1: of cryptic camouflage, and that there was a leopard there.

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Speaker 1: And I think little instances like that have always driven

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Speaker 1: this fascination. But I think on a bigger scale, you know,

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Speaker 1: it the world's a big place and there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of places to hide, and just because one scientist or

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Speaker 1: group of scientists haven't seen something in a long time

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Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean it's extinct. Yeah, when you think about

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Speaker 1: the scale of our earth, especially when you look at

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Speaker 1: the forests and oceans, it's there's a lot of places

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Speaker 1: that we haven't gotten our grubby little hands on yet. Definitely, thankfully.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is a less impressive anecdote, but I

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Speaker 1: have a fish tank from my childhood. I've always loved

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Speaker 1: taking care of fish. And my mom was pretty sure

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Speaker 1: since the last time I had bought any fish was

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Speaker 1: when I was in high school, that all the fish

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Speaker 1: were dead. And she's like, well, we've got this empty

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Speaker 1: fish tank, just full of gross water. I think we're

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Speaker 1: going to get rid of it. I said, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: empty it out. I'll take the fish tank to my

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Speaker 1: new place and I'll restart up the fish tank it.

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Speaker 1: So she did that and I took it and the

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Speaker 1: bottom was kind of it wasn't completely drives a little murky,

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Speaker 1: and I started emptying out some of the rocks to

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Speaker 1: clean it out, and there are these two coolie loaches,

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Speaker 1: which is a type of fish, just still in in.

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Speaker 1: It's like these must be ancient, first of all, like

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Speaker 1: over a decade old, and they survived for I think

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Speaker 1: a month without any food and with about two inches

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Speaker 1: of water, maybe one inch of water. It's so it's

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Speaker 1: I believe it. I believe if a coolie loach can

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Speaker 1: do it, I think most animals can do it. And

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Speaker 1: think of that scale, you know, you're talking about a

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Speaker 1: two foot long fish tank. Yeah, in in plain site.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so uh yeah. Just imagine I don't know,

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Speaker 1: twenty billion of those fish tanks, and that's about the

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Speaker 1: Earth maybe. And I think, you know, the thing is

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Speaker 1: what we do, and I say we because I have

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Speaker 1: to credit my team as well and myself, is it's

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Speaker 1: more than just about the animals. Certainly, nobody wants to

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Speaker 1: downplay the severity of extinction. It's incredibly topical, and it's

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Speaker 1: incredibly important, and it's sad, but it's a It's more

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Speaker 1: than just about those two loaches in the bottom of

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Speaker 1: the town bank, or about the tree kangaroo that you mentioned,

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Speaker 1: or some of the animals that we work on. It's

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Speaker 1: about showing the world and the reason I love the

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Speaker 1: media of television that I get to work in. It's

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Speaker 1: about showing the world these incredible ecosystems and habitats that

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Speaker 1: do still exist and all of the animals that occupy

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Speaker 1: them currently and why they're worth saving. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: really enjoyed that I watched the show, and I love,

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Speaker 1: first of all, I love the scene where your camp

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Speaker 1: gets invaded by bees. I'm sure you didn't. I'm sure

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Speaker 1: you didn't enjoy it at the time. I'm sorry for

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Speaker 1: enjoying your suffering, but it is pretty astounding. I love

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Speaker 1: that they decided to make a home out of one

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Speaker 1: of your crew members shirts. Just overnight, they they had

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Speaker 1: almost completely colonized that shirt. Uh. It's it's incredible because

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Speaker 1: it's nature sometimes moves so quickly. They just felt right

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Speaker 1: at home. As you guys were sleeping, obviously a bit

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Speaker 1: of a problem for you. You got stung up quite

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Speaker 1: a bit. Uh. And also just as you were, you

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Speaker 1: were looking for the Dracula monkey. Uh. That's also called

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Speaker 1: the Miller's Grizzled Linger. Correct, and you just happened upon

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Speaker 1: that incredible snake. What was that called the mangrove cat snake. Yes,

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Speaker 1: this huge snake, beautiful bright yellow and black stripes. Uh. Venomous,

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Speaker 1: but not really that doesn't necessarily correc re fang so

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Speaker 1: hard to inject the venom, but still not something you

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Speaker 1: want to do, something you want to like tease pretty

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Speaker 1: much exactly right. But yeah, so you're you're just like, well,

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Speaker 1: here's the snake. Well, you know, I'm I'm like a

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Speaker 1: kid in some regards. And what I mean by that

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Speaker 1: is I just helped myself. Um, even though I'm out

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Speaker 1: there searching for a Miller's grizzled Langer and seeing, you know,

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Speaker 1: an eight nine ft long mangrove cat snake has nothing

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Speaker 1: to do with finding the monkey. That's a species. And

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of these species that I've wanted to

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Speaker 1: encounter in the wild my entire life. I've seen them

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Speaker 1: in the pet trade, I've read about them in books.

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Speaker 1: You know, I'm very familiar with them, and so to

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Speaker 1: be able to see one and work with it and

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Speaker 1: feel it and encounter in its natural habitat, it's just

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Speaker 1: I lose all concepts of everything else going on, and

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Speaker 1: I'm so smitten by this gorgeous creature in front of

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Speaker 1: me that I kind of forget why I'm even there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can relate, although I'm not going around holding snakes,

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Speaker 1: But I do love to torture my friends by I

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Speaker 1: find a cool insect and I pick it up, and

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Speaker 1: it's like, look at this huge insect, and please go away,

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Speaker 1: stop putting that in my face. Well, my friends are

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Speaker 1: the opposite. They're like, oh yeah, let me see it

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Speaker 1: next put it in my face. So what's been You're like,

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Speaker 1: You're probably pretty used to seeing. I mean not I'm

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Speaker 1: sure you don't get tired of it, but you're you've

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Speaker 1: grown accustomed to seeing pretty incredible sites. But what's something

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Speaker 1: that has really caught you off guard on your adventures,

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Speaker 1: like your most jaw dropping h sighting or adventure. Good question,

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Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot, and I think it depends

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Speaker 1: on what uh what capacity you're speaking to. Uh some

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Speaker 1: of we. I've seen horrific things that have shocked me

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Speaker 1: to my core, such as witnessing the grind where they

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Speaker 1: slaughter whales in the Faroe Islands. And at the same time,

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Speaker 1: the Faroe Islands is one of the most strikingly beautiful

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Speaker 1: scenic places. It's beyond anything in Avatar or Star Wars

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Speaker 1: or anything that our imagination can even make up. It

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Speaker 1: is so incredibly beautiful. And that's in one location. I

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Speaker 1: had both of those experiences, and and that's just, you know,

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Speaker 1: that's a micro example of what happens regularly. I go

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Speaker 1: to these amazing places, and sometimes I see just the

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Speaker 1: worst habitat destruction or wildlife cruelty, and yet they're just

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Speaker 1: such there's such beauty within them. Still, so it's it's

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Speaker 1: hard to really define one. I mean, there are there

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Speaker 1: are many places that are you know, not that beautiful,

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Speaker 1: not that great, and then some of them that are

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Speaker 1: just so striking. I think that's a big theme that

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Speaker 1: we keep touching on on this show, which is we

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Speaker 1: often escape into these fantasy worlds like Star Wars and

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Speaker 1: uh An Avatar, and I think it's important to remember

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Speaker 1: that we actually do of in a planet that has

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Speaker 1: things that are just as if not more spectacular as

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Speaker 1: the you know, million dollars c g I that is

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Speaker 1: on your screen. And so one of my favorite moments

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Speaker 1: actually was it just loved the creativity of how you

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Speaker 1: put you nailed a dog brush to a treaty to

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Speaker 1: capture uh fur, and I just that came across as

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Speaker 1: something which it wouldn't have ever occurred to me, like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean that's a that's a simple kind of little

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Speaker 1: fur trap to get get some genetic material. Uh. Are

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Speaker 1: there any examples of like when you've had to get

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Speaker 1: really creative or kind of improv a bit to be

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Speaker 1: able to find an animal or yes, Oh my goodness,

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Speaker 1: I don't even know where to begin. So one of

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Speaker 1: the fun things about what we do is there is

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Speaker 1: no formula for it, right if you there's no handbook

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Speaker 1: on how to find extinct animals because until I started

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Speaker 1: doing and it wasn't a thing, right. Um, And so

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Speaker 1: you know, we have the luxury of yes, we follow

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Speaker 1: scientific protocols, but we also incorporate hunting technologies, military grade

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Speaker 1: thermal optics and drones, our own imagination, creativity, things like

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Speaker 1: the dog brushes from Peco, which I've been carrying around

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Speaker 1: in that pelican for about three years, knowing that at

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Speaker 1: some point I'm gonna need him for a fur trap.

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Speaker 1: And then it all clicked in Borneo. But um, you know,

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Speaker 1: a great, a great example of something that that worked,

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Speaker 1: that was totally a concoction of our imagination, but you know,

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Speaker 1: grounded in scientific merit was the meat tree. Okay, and

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Speaker 1: let me explain the meat tree. So we're in Zanzibar,

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Speaker 1: off the eastern coast of Africa looking for a leopard

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Speaker 1: deemed extinct twenty five years prior, and this creature hasn't

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Speaker 1: been seen. However, locals are reporting that it could still

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Speaker 1: be there. In fact, they're even saying the witch doctors

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Speaker 1: used them to do evil bidding. There's a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of lore and culture associated and we're striking out left

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Speaker 1: and right. You know, sometimes I get little clues that

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Speaker 1: this animal could still be here because you know, this

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Speaker 1: thing is happening or that thing's happening. But in this instance,

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Speaker 1: we're literally just kiking out. We're not getting anything. So,

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Speaker 1: because Zandy Bar is such a densely populated island, for

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Speaker 1: a change, we weren't just staying intense in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the bush the whole time. We were actually going

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Speaker 1: to a hotel at night. So my producer and I

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Speaker 1: are sitting in our hotel room feeling super deflated. We

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Speaker 1: haven't had any successes with regards to finding this cat whatsoever.

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Speaker 1: And he's telling me the story about how his cat

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Speaker 1: is just obsessed with this like little toy tree that

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Speaker 1: he has right where. He's got all these toys dangling

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Speaker 1: from a piece of driftwood or something like those cat

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Speaker 1: trees exactly to run around and scratch, and they have

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Speaker 1: a little dangly balls and things exactly. So I think

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Speaker 1: he's describing this to me, and all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: I turned him and I go, Patrick met tree. He says,

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Speaker 1: what tells a meat tree for us? And I go,

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Speaker 1: So let's make a giant cat toy out of meat.

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Speaker 1: You know, we know that leopards and old cats for

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Speaker 1: that matter, love these dangly toys. Right. We know they

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Speaker 1: have a decent sense of smell, not the best but good.

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Speaker 1: They have great visual responses. Let's go to the Let's

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Speaker 1: go to the market tomorrow morning. Let's buy two hundred

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Speaker 1: pounds of goat beef, you know, any meat that we

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Speaker 1: can get, and go back into Josanni, the national forest

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Speaker 1: where we've been working and make a make a giant

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Speaker 1: cat toy. And we did this right, and it's it's

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Speaker 1: the most ridiculous. If I told my advisors going you know,

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Speaker 1: my old academic advisors going into the field, that I

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Speaker 1: was going to make a meat tree to find an

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Speaker 1: extinct leopard, they I think they'd kick me out of school.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, we go and we buy this meat, and

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Speaker 1: we go back into Josanni and we start hanging all

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Speaker 1: these dangly bits of goat head and foot and meat

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Speaker 1: and everything on this fallen over tree. And sure enough,

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Speaker 1: two days later we checked trail cameras and we uncovered

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Speaker 1: footage of a leopard that hasn't been seen in twenty

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Speaker 1: five years. It's amazing. Now, I do want to caution

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Speaker 1: our listeners not to go to www Dot meat tree

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Speaker 1: dot com. That's not going to be what you're hoping.

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Speaker 1: It's not going to be a leopard playing. Um, but

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Speaker 1: that is that is incredible. I love how big cats are.

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Speaker 1: Basically they are literally just big cats exactly right, uh

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Speaker 1: quote unquote, domesticated cats. The only reason they don't kill

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Speaker 1: us is they're small, and they are the same behavior

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Speaker 1: as they They love to play, and it's it's pretty incredible.

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Speaker 1: So I want to talk about a couple of the

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Speaker 1: animals that were thought to be extinct that you've rediscovered.

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Speaker 1: So first, did you want to talk about the Fernandina

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Speaker 1: tortoise that I think you found under a pile of leaves?

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Speaker 1: Pretty much? Yeah? Pretty much? Um, yeah, with pleasure. You

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Speaker 1: want me to just tell the story, Yeah, yeah sure.

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Speaker 1: So you know when we, as I said, what we

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Speaker 1: do is travel the world looking for evidence that animals

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Speaker 1: believed extinct may still be out there. The reason that

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Speaker 1: we do this, the overall arcing reason is for conservation.

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Speaker 1: Of course, once an animals declared extinct, all funding drives

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Speaker 1: up for it. Right, who's going to pay to preserve

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Speaker 1: something that doesn't exist any longer. So we do this

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Speaker 1: in the hopes that if we find something, we can

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Speaker 1: preserve not just the species and bring it back from

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Speaker 1: the brink, but also the habitat in which it exists.

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Speaker 1: So that's my that's my little spiel pitch on what

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Speaker 1: we do. But I say all that because when it

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Speaker 1: came to the Fernandina Island tortoise, we had an animal

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Speaker 1: that wasn't necessarily checking all of our boxes. And what

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Speaker 1: I mean by that is we have a we have

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Speaker 1: a very we have a checklist of variables. Right, who's

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Speaker 1: seeing the animal, when was it declared extinct? How many

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Speaker 1: were there, who's reporting it? Is there sufficient habitat? And

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Speaker 1: a lot of these questions were coming up with nose.

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Speaker 1: You know, this is an animal that lives on the

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Speaker 1: second most active volcano in the world. Only one other

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Speaker 1: single individual of this species has ever been found a

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Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen years ago. Uh. You know, people live

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Speaker 1: in the Galapagos and there's there. They have literally the

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Speaker 1: world's best tortoise scientists. They're like, there's no reason that

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Speaker 1: they shouldn't be able to find this animal. So it

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Speaker 1: wasn't checking all of the boxes that lead us to

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Speaker 1: go on an expedition. But that being said, I had

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Speaker 1: a colleague at the Turtle Conservancy and he told me

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Speaker 1: he'd seen bite marks in a cactus. And basically what

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Speaker 1: I'm getting at is my gut instinct, which goes against

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Speaker 1: scientific protocol, said to go look for this animal. This

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Speaker 1: for an Indiana Island tortoise. And it was hell It

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Speaker 1: was absolutely hellish. I mean, the island was boiling hot.

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Speaker 1: There was heat radiating up from under the ground. Because

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Speaker 1: it's an active volcano. It's literally on the equator. The

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Speaker 1: average daytime temperatures were around degrees. It's a little by,

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Speaker 1: little bomby. Yeah. The terrain was five foot tall shards

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Speaker 1: of glass, so to speak, from lava rock. You know.

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Speaker 1: We went through three pairs of boots like in a

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Speaker 1: couple of days each um. It was boiling hot. There

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Speaker 1: was no vegetation nowhere to hide anyway. Long story short,

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Speaker 1: We get to this island, middle of nowhere, Galapagos, the

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Speaker 1: most remote island in the Glapa Goes. We climb up

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Speaker 1: said volcano and in the far far distance we see

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Speaker 1: a single isolated green patch that looks like if there's

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Speaker 1: anywhere that life could be on this island. It's in

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Speaker 1: this green patch that doesn't look like the rest of

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Speaker 1: the Moonscape, that is this boiling hot island. And we

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Speaker 1: travel over Lava Rock for seven hours or so, and

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Speaker 1: we finally get to the green patch, killing ourselves. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you see the episode, I'm bright red, I'm so sunburned.

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Speaker 1: Everybody's got heat and sunstroke. Uh, it's boiling you know,

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Speaker 1: we're running out of water, you name it. I feel

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Speaker 1: like an island that's made out of boiling glass is

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Speaker 1: like not super friendly to people now, and no one

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Speaker 1: goes there of that reason, and of course the Glapacos

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Speaker 1: has very strict rules. But um, anyway, we get to

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Speaker 1: this little pocket of green vegetation, and after days on

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Speaker 1: this island, after a hundred and fourteen years since anyone's

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Speaker 1: found a specimen of the species, we find the first

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Speaker 1: piece of evidence, which is towardois scat, a ga tortoise poop.

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Speaker 1: And the only other animal large animal on the island

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Speaker 1: are iguanas, and their scot looks very different. There long

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Speaker 1: and narrow, and this is round and towards. The happiest

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Speaker 1: you've ever been to sea poop, Yes, hands down, and

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Speaker 1: in the episode, I pick it up, and I'm like,

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Speaker 1: I'm like, have this ridiculous smile on my face, and

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Speaker 1: I'm like elated and like shouting about how happy I

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Speaker 1: am at this poop in my hand. Um. But you know,

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Speaker 1: less an hour later we find what looks like an

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Speaker 1: active betting site where an animals actually dug into the

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Speaker 1: sand to try and cool down a little bit. And

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Speaker 1: five minutes after that, hiding under one of the few

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Speaker 1: bushes on the entire island. Uh, is this absolutely incredible

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Speaker 1: large old female Glapacos towartoise. That's incredible. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: I think that really points to one of the big

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Speaker 1: reasons that there are a lot of animals we think

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Speaker 1: are extinct but may still be alive, is just how

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Speaker 1: inaccessible they are. You have to hike across burning glass,

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Speaker 1: get heat stroke. Uh, and then you finally like find

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Speaker 1: an oasis of poop and then a turtle. And you

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Speaker 1: know you mentioned the wonder white tree kangaroo earlier. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know the gentleman who discovered that he spent two

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Speaker 1: or three weeks hacking through bamboo forest to get up

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Speaker 1: into that habitat. Again talking about how impenetrable it is,

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Speaker 1: it took them two weeks just to get into the

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Speaker 1: correct habitat, and he wasn't even looking. He was looking

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Speaker 1: for for rare plants or plants that plants exactly right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but he knew when he saw it, like that's not

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Speaker 1: supposed to be here, exactly right. I want to talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about a few animals who were thought

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Speaker 1: to be extinct or or near extinct and then they

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Speaker 1: were rediscovered and they're really incredible. So uh, First is

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Speaker 1: the pinocchio lizard, uh, which is one of my favorite lizards.

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Speaker 1: They're also known as the Pinocchio annul or Annula's proboscis um.

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Speaker 1: And I'm betting people are going to guess why they're called. So.

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Speaker 1: They're from the mountainous forests of Ecuador near Mindoh. This

394
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Speaker 1: is within the Tombez Choco Magdalena Biodiversity Hotspot. That's like

395
00:20:21,480 --> 00:20:25,960
Speaker 1: it's such very rich, very similar similar in biodiversity to

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Speaker 1: the Amazon, and it's got a huge range of habitats

397
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Speaker 1: as well. There's dry wet moist forests, forests of like

398
00:20:33,960 --> 00:20:37,879
Speaker 1: varying degrees of moisture um and it's was thought to

399
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Speaker 1: be extinct since nineteen fifty three. And they're a small

400
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Speaker 1: lizard there, about two to three inches long, and there's

401
00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:48,800
Speaker 1: a lot of animals that because they're small and they

402
00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:51,280
Speaker 1: blend into their environment, well, it's easy to think that

403
00:20:51,320 --> 00:20:54,199
Speaker 1: they're extinct because you know, they look they're about the

404
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:57,840
Speaker 1: size of a leaf, so they're really beautiful. They're green

405
00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:03,280
Speaker 1: and orange. They have these enormously long, orange pointy proboscis

406
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:06,320
Speaker 1: is sprouting from the tip of its nose. It looks

407
00:21:06,359 --> 00:21:08,680
Speaker 1: like it looks like a hard horn, like it would

408
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Speaker 1: be a rhino horn, but' sexually really squishy, it'shah yeah.

409
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Speaker 1: And so originally it was thought that it was like

410
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Speaker 1: for sword fighting between males, but it's too it seems

411
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Speaker 1: like it's probably too squishy to actually be a weapon

412
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Speaker 1: of any kind. Correct. The generally accepted theory now is

413
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Speaker 1: that it's like a peacock's tail. Yes, sexual selection, Yeah, like,

414
00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:34,320
Speaker 1: look look at my giant nose horn exactly. How sexy

415
00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:38,960
Speaker 1: is that? It's like it's like a squishy unicorn basically. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's since its discovery in three very few if

417
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Speaker 1: any sightings have occurred. Um And it was thought to

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Speaker 1: be extinct for over forty years, and then it was

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Speaker 1: rediscovered in two thousand and five by a group of

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Speaker 1: bird watchers, So again another group, who in a way

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Speaker 1: does that? Like, may you really annoyed when people, uh

422
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Speaker 1: just accidentally happen upon a thought to be extinct creature

423
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Speaker 1: when you're like chucking through boiling glass to find that's

424
00:22:10,760 --> 00:22:12,840
Speaker 1: a good question that the short answer is no. The

425
00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:15,960
Speaker 1: more that people can discover and promote conservation, the better.

426
00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:17,480
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be me. I don't care who

427
00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:20,159
Speaker 1: does it, um, you know, I think that's a perfect

428
00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:22,639
Speaker 1: example of knowledge is power. Right, Here's a group of

429
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:25,359
Speaker 1: bird watchers and I'm guessing one of them either snapped

430
00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:27,320
Speaker 1: I don't know the story of the actual discovery or

431
00:22:27,320 --> 00:22:29,399
Speaker 1: at least the details of it, but I'm guessing one

432
00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:30,840
Speaker 1: of them either snapped a photo or one of them

433
00:22:30,840 --> 00:22:34,040
Speaker 1: had some herpetological knowledge and was like, wow, look at

434
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:36,400
Speaker 1: what this is. This is insane, right, And that led

435
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:39,560
Speaker 1: to this massive discovery, which to me is just phenomenal.

436
00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:43,159
Speaker 1: Like I'll tell you why that doesn't upset me because

437
00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 1: now I don't have to go to Ecuadore and climb

438
00:22:46,119 --> 00:22:49,080
Speaker 1: up the mountain forest to look for this lizard. And

439
00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know, you know, about it, and and

440
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 1: it's it's now global news. So it's great. I don't

441
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:55,879
Speaker 1: care who finds them as long as we're finding them

442
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:58,920
Speaker 1: and protecting exactly. No. I figured that was the case,

443
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:02,399
Speaker 1: but it is. It is. It's like really just happened

444
00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:05,399
Speaker 1: upon the sty There's a guy who was climbing Lord

445
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:08,680
Speaker 1: Howie Island and found this giant stick insect the same way.

446
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:10,000
Speaker 1: He was just a climber and he's like, that's a

447
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:12,160
Speaker 1: cool rocket. And it's like he's like trying to hold

448
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,000
Speaker 1: onto a twig and it's like, whoa, this is exactly right,

449
00:23:15,080 --> 00:23:18,639
Speaker 1: exactly right. Um. They obviously thought it was notable, so

450
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: they took a photo sent it to herpetologist, and the

451
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:26,720
Speaker 1: herpetologists probably like freaked out, freaked out um uh. Team

452
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:30,120
Speaker 1: of researchers surveyed the area to find the lizards, and

453
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 1: they're really difficult to spot during the day, so they

454
00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:37,360
Speaker 1: waited until night and they kind of, like a lot

455
00:23:37,400 --> 00:23:42,080
Speaker 1: of amphibians and reptiles, their skin kind of changes, uh uh,

456
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:46,480
Speaker 1: following like diurnal patterns, and so they kind of turned

457
00:23:46,480 --> 00:23:50,359
Speaker 1: this pale ish, ghostly color and as they shone their

458
00:23:50,480 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 1: lights up into the trees, they saw these pale, little

459
00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: ghostly lizards hanging out at the tips of the branches

460
00:23:57,920 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 1: and and literally hanging out. I don't know if you

461
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: know this, but knolls when they sleep at night, they

462
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:04,679
Speaker 1: actually go to the very end of a blade of

463
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:09,080
Speaker 1: grass or a leaf and hang can can basically climb

464
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:10,639
Speaker 1: out and reach them, right like if a snake is

465
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:13,080
Speaker 1: trying to come out and reach them, it'll fall because

466
00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:16,679
Speaker 1: it's right at the very end of a thin piece down, Yeah, exactly,

467
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: and so literally hanging like stillag tights might's wait, which

468
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 1: are the ones that come down? Tights gotta be tight

469
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: on the ceiling or maybe stalagmite's got to be mighty.

470
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:33,440
Speaker 1: It's a useless but regardless, you get my point. They're

471
00:24:33,440 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 1: all they're hanging out of these trees. And that's you

472
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:37,679
Speaker 1: know I've done. I've done Cuban and null work and

473
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: some other null work. And that's how you find them.

474
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 1: You find them at night hanging and in this case,

475
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 1: this ghostly glistening white. I mean, imagine that discovery. It

476
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:48,639
Speaker 1: sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it. Yeah. They were

477
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:51,639
Speaker 1: obviously very excited and so to find out what they

478
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: did during the day, like scientists often are, creepy. They

479
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,639
Speaker 1: stocked them. That's what we do. And so they found

480
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 1: that the lizards like to hang high in the canopy

481
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: during the day and they move extremely slowly. And it

482
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:07,840
Speaker 1: makes sense that we didn't realize they were still around

483
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:12,719
Speaker 1: because they are extremely well camouflaged. They're basically moving like

484
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 1: a sloth in a way. They're kind of similar to

485
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: chameleons in terms of how they managed to remain unseen,

486
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,040
Speaker 1: where they're very slow moving. They have those that very

487
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:27,440
Speaker 1: ponderous kind of movement uh. And they blend in really well.

488
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: It's their only defense. Being cryptic is their only defense exactly. Uh.

489
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 1: And so another really cool horny thought to be extinct

490
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 1: animal that was found in Ecuador is the horned marsupial frog,

491
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 1: which is a nocturnal amphibian beautiful, strange looking frog uh

492
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: and it's got a certain uh behavior that is even

493
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:54,879
Speaker 1: more freaky than its appearance. Uh. It's also found in

494
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:58,399
Speaker 1: the Tomb Bays Choco Magdalena Biodiversity Hotspot. This is a

495
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 1: great area for red discovering thought to be extinct animals

496
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:06,440
Speaker 1: uh in western Ecuador. It's in a tropical rainforest habitat.

497
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 1: It's a little frog about like two to three inches.

498
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:13,399
Speaker 1: Would you say it has spiky horns above each eye flap,

499
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 1: kind of like a weird mascarrow or like clown makeup

500
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: where it's like two little triangles, just like yes, yes,

501
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:24,439
Speaker 1: maybe it's mable line. Maybe it's uh, the marsupial frog.

502
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: And they have these beautiful gold eyes. H they're very

503
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 1: they're gorgeous looking. Um it has it's like it hadn't

504
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:37,400
Speaker 1: been seen for over a decade and it had been

505
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 1: thought to be extinct or in your extinction. And then

506
00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:43,760
Speaker 1: biologists were trekking through the forest I think again on

507
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:47,400
Speaker 1: kind of an unrelated exploration. Um, but I think these

508
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 1: were herpetologists, uh, and they heard an unfamiliar frog call,

509
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:54,679
Speaker 1: which is said to kind of sound like a champagne

510
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 1: cork being pulled out, so I haven't, yeah, like a

511
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: sort of chirping like you know, like that squeaking sand

512
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 1: as you pulled out. And they looked up and they

513
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: saw a horn frog just sitting on a palm leaf

514
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: and they started jumping around and screaming. I know. So

515
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 1: they actually found as they explored more, they found a

516
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:22,400
Speaker 1: few individuals, including a pregnant female, which was really exciting

517
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: because that indicates they have it at least somewhat stable population. Yes,

518
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:30,960
Speaker 1: speaking of pregnant females, this is one of the most

519
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 1: incredible things about this is their method of pregnancy. So

520
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:39,679
Speaker 1: a lot of frogs have really interesting reproduction strategies in

521
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:43,480
Speaker 1: terms of protecting the tadpoles and the froglets. Uh. And

522
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:48,119
Speaker 1: these frogs have a pouch on their back like a kangaroo,

523
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: like a backwards frog kangaroo, and that's why they're called

524
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: the marsupial frog despite not even being in the mammal family.

525
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 1: These eggs are inside a flap of skin on their

526
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 1: back and they will pop out of the pouch as

527
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 1: froglets rather than tadpoles, so they look like little, tiny,

528
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: fully formed frogs. Um. They look when you look at

529
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 1: a pregnant female, it looks like a pea pod almost

530
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: like you know, the lumps, or like it's got a

531
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 1: really dread Yes, yes, it's pretty. It's a little creepy actually. Um.

532
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:27,960
Speaker 1: And inside the pouch, the embryos have these mushroom like

533
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:32,960
Speaker 1: external gills that breathe through gas exchange on the pouch wall,

534
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: which sounds very science fiction e um. As many amphibian

535
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 1: larvage small salam androids. They have that the very feathery,

536
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: interesting gill structure, and so it's it's it's it's interesting

537
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:52,040
Speaker 1: because axlttles are a permanent juvenile stage of that that

538
00:28:52,280 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 1: salman and so, but we don't get to see it's

539
00:28:57,400 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: cool to see the ax lottle because we often don't

540
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:04,080
Speaker 1: get to see the sort of um these interesting developmental

541
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: stages for long in these animals, and especially at that size.

542
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we can find, like even here where

543
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: we live in California, you can go into some of

544
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: our streams and find the rough skin newt larva and

545
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: they look just like a perfect xlotl but there you

546
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: have to look a micro scales. Once they pop out,

547
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: there just these little, tiny cute frogs and they sometimes

548
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: hang out for a little bit on their mother's back

549
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 1: right after being born. So you'll see this uh mother

550
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: maybe with a slightly loose skin on our back and

551
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: then a bunch of these little frog let's just hanging out.

552
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of body horror with the lumpy back,

553
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:43,800
Speaker 1: but the product is adorable, absolutely, And you know what's

554
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: so wonderful about that discovery, Katie is uh amphibians worldwide

555
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: are facing a huge threat with kittred fungus um to

556
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: the point that they're likely the the group of animals

557
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: most at risk of mass extinction. And so you know,

558
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 1: to hear oh a frog species has gone extinct, it's

559
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: almost an expectation now, and it's not necessarily it is

560
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 1: at the hands of man, but it's it's due to

561
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: this kittured fungus. And so to find that an animal

562
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: like that marcipial horn frog is still in existence and

563
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: either resistant to kittured fungus or hasn't been exposed to it,

564
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: when either way we assume it's one or the other,

565
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 1: we assume it has either been exposed or or is

566
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 1: obviously not um able to tolerate the kittened fungus is

567
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: a fantastic thing because it helps with our amphibian diversity

568
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: which is so struggling currently. Yeah, and as we'll talk about,

569
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the gastric brooding frog in

570
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: a little bit, and that is another victim of a

571
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: pathogenic fungus, and especially in this area, the Tombays Choco

572
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 1: Magdalena ecoregion is suffering a lot of biodiversity loss um, there,

573
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: it's a lot of it. There is obviously man made problems,

574
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 1: so like deforestation, climate change is all really affecting it,

575
00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:00,120
Speaker 1: and it I think it's not as I mean, we

576
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: know and it's a good thing that we know about

577
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: the Amazon and the importance of the Amazon, but I

578
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: think this region isn't as discussed as being like here's

579
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 1: another huge tract of rainforests that is incredibly important, holds

580
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 1: a lot of really incredible animals, and it's disappearing really quickly.

581
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: Uh So, I think it's great that we have, like

582
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: when you have on the show showing people these areas,

583
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 1: and I think it's also good to give people hope

584
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: that we're not too far gone like things. Even though

585
00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 1: we are in danger of losing a lot of animals something,

586
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not a hopeless cause, like we can

587
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: we can do things now. Yeah. I I hate ecophobia,

588
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: which is a term, you know, coined for the thing

589
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:47,200
Speaker 1: that we basically see every day, which is where we

590
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: wake up and see the headline this has gone extinct

591
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 1: or you know, we're all going to die because of

592
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: global warming, or the sea surface levels are rising and

593
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 1: the Maldives are going underwater. You know, we we see

594
00:31:56,560 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: all these things every day, and that's ecophobia. And first

595
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 1: of all, no one wants to listen or read that,

596
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: you know, listen to it. Nobody wants to hear how

597
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: the world is coming to an end. It's it's miserable,

598
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: and we've become callous to it as well. We've heard

599
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 1: it so much that we just brush it off. You know,

600
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 1: who cares of the rhinos are going extinct? I read

601
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: that three days ago, you know, so I personally, and

602
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:18,240
Speaker 1: there's a number of scientists that fall in this vein

603
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 1: of thought. Cannot stand that ecophobia thing. So we just

604
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: throw it out all all together. It's not that it's

605
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: not warranted, it's it's important and significant, and there is

606
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 1: major problems. But let's show the good side of conservation.

607
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 1: Let's show the winds. Let's show the animals we're discussing,

608
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 1: you know, the Lazarus tax on that have literally come

609
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 1: back from the dead. And if these creatures are capable

610
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 1: of hanging on by a thread, you know how much

611
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: inspiration and hope does that give for the planet. Yeah,

612
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: I think pointing out the winds, pointing out the things

613
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: that people are doing that are helping is really important

614
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: because I do get this sense that people think, oh,

615
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:55,239
Speaker 1: we're doomed anyways. I mean, there's there's a lot of

616
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 1: cynicism to it, to where it's like, well, if we're

617
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: doomed anyways, why even bother trying? Yeah, why care? Why?

618
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: And it's really not black and white. It's not going

619
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: to be like an apocalyptic event like oh, we'll all

620
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: be wiped out in like a week or something and

621
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:11,320
Speaker 1: then that'll be it'll be over. It's got it's a

622
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: it's a what we decide to do now as a

623
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: species is going to affect quality of life on sort

624
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 1: of a sliding scale of good or bad, And it's

625
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: all it depends on what we decide to do now.

626
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 1: And I think so that's why I think it's like

627
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: it's so important to like say like, no, we're not

628
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: we're not doomed. In fact, things that we thought were

629
00:33:29,840 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: doomed may not be. There's a chance. We just have

630
00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:35,720
Speaker 1: to really uh care about it at this point. And

631
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: as you said, it's it's it's a decision that needs

632
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: to be made on a species level by us human beings.

633
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:44,880
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's not about one person doing conservation

634
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 1: perfectly or doing sustainability perfectly. It's about everybody doing it imperfectly. Yeah.

635
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: We talked about that on our our Amazon episode where

636
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: I think that people can get fatigued if you feel like, well,

637
00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: I can't be you know, I still use plastic as

638
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: will do this thing. But you know, I try to

639
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,600
Speaker 1: be vegetarian, but sometimes I drink milk or something and

640
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you don't have to be perfect. Just

641
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 1: do what you can do. And if everyone does that,

642
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,800
Speaker 1: we're in great shape. And you limit yourself, you know,

643
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 1: think about it this way. If you're not going to

644
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:15,800
Speaker 1: drive to work and it work is where you save

645
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 1: the planet. Who's going to do it right? You know

646
00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 1: what I mean, You've got to get there, like you know,

647
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: there's it's it's everybody has to do a little bit imperfectly.

648
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 1: Is the way to make the che if if a

649
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: frog can give birth out of its back, you can

650
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:31,759
Speaker 1: do something to help the environment and you don't have

651
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: to I mean, look, these frogs give birth out of

652
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:36,879
Speaker 1: their backs, but they don't kill themselves doing it. I'm

653
00:34:36,920 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 1: trying to make a stretched metaphor about the marsupial frog,

654
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: and I feel like it's working. It's working. Once we've

655
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 1: found the surviving members of a species on the brink

656
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: of extinction, is there a way to bring them back?

657
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 1: There have been a handful of successful conservation stories. Take

658
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: for instance, the Noble West Indian manatee. These beautiful, buoyant creatures,

659
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,799
Speaker 1: once thought to be mermaids by screwby riddled mariners, had

660
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:04,400
Speaker 1: decreased in number to only a few hundred off the

661
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 1: coast of Florida and more endangered worldwide, but conservation efforts,

662
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: coupled with improvements made to their environment brought them back.

663
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 1: They have now been upgraded to merely threatened, and there

664
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: are over thirteen thousand mermaids or manatees worldwide. And one

665
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 1: of my favorite animals, the California condor, was almost a

666
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 1: victim of an anthropogenic human caused extinction. New to poaching,

667
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: lead poisoning, pesticide poisoning, and habitat destruction. The California condor

668
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:35,319
Speaker 1: is a large vulture with a wingspan of up to

669
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 1: nine feet, the largest wingspan of any bird in North America.

670
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:41,879
Speaker 1: They have a fluffy black body and a bright pink

671
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 1: naked head, all the better to dive into carrion without

672
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 1: getting messy. They have long life spans almost comparable to

673
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 1: a human, and they're highly social, even engaging in play behavior.

674
00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 1: They're very devoted in particular parents. They only raise a

675
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:00,280
Speaker 1: single chick at a time, making them especially vulnerable bolts

676
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 1: of depopulation. California condors were once on the brink of extinction.

677
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: There were only twenty two individual condors remaining, so the

678
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 1: California Condor captive breeding program began. These individuals were captured

679
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 1: and bred in order to increase the rate of breeding.

680
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 1: They took advantage of the condora laying two eggs at once.

681
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: Typically only one chick will be raised to maturity. Conservationist

682
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 1: retrieved the other egg and raised the chick with a

683
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 1: realistic condor puppet so they wouldn't think that humans are

684
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:34,160
Speaker 1: their mommy's. Then, slowly, as their numbers grew, they were

685
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: released back into the wild. There are now hundreds of

686
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:40,840
Speaker 1: California condors, with over two hundred flying free in the wild.

687
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:43,759
Speaker 1: When we return, we'll talk about some animals who are

688
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: most definitely, assuredly probably extinct. For now, we'll be right back.

689
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 1: Traveling is stressful, and the worst part for me is

690
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: having to look around a big cluky suitcase through an airport,

691
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: so I was beyond excited when Away Suitcases sent me

692
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 1: their carry on suitcase. My old suitcase only than one direction,

693
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: so I would wipe out while trying to bank a

694
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: corner to get to the gate before all the seats

695
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 1: next to power sockets were taken so I could charge

696
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: my day phone. Away suitcases are designed much more thoughtfully.

697
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: They have four wheels that's been in three hundred sixty degrees,

698
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:15,799
Speaker 1: allowing me to easily glide my suitcase behind me. It's

699
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,240
Speaker 1: got a lightweight and durable outer shell, like a helpful

700
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 1: armadillo that's full of all my clothes. I got my

701
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 1: carry on with the ejectable battery so I can recharge

702
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 1: my phone. Anyways. I'm in love with my new suitcase.

703
00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: It's easy to tote around, it's designed to last a lifetime,

704
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: and it's cute. I think I'm going to name them Casey.

705
00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:33,280
Speaker 1: He makes my traveling a lot less of a headache.

706
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: He's easy to pack all my baggage in, and yeah,

707
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: I think I'm best friends with my luggage. For listeners

708
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 1: of Creature, feature, Way is offering twenty dollars off your

709
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:43,320
Speaker 1: suitcase for twenty dollars off of suitcase. Visit away travel

710
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:46,240
Speaker 1: dot com Slash creature and use promo code creature during checkout.

711
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 1: That's a way, Travel dot Com Slash creature and use

712
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: promo code creature during checkout. Some animals who went extinct

713
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: long ago were terrifying and well pretty metal. The puris

714
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: or Us was a genus of South American crocodile that

715
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:06,279
Speaker 1: included many species of giant crocs, the largest of which

716
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:09,680
Speaker 1: being Sarkas sUAS that lived around one hundred million years ago.

717
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: This big boy waited at four tons and reached up

718
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 1: to thirty feet in length. These are the stretched limas

719
00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: of crocodiles. Speaking of lank, the titana boa, an extinct

720
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: species of snakes that slithered upon the earth about sixty

721
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,719
Speaker 1: million years ago, grew up to forty two ft long,

722
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,839
Speaker 1: so they could fit about seven average sized adult men

723
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: in their stomachs. You may be grateful that these giant

724
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 1: monsters have gone extinct, or I don't know, maybe you

725
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:37,239
Speaker 1: want to fill a park up with them and allow

726
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:41,280
Speaker 1: children to roam around unsupervised. Either way, in today's world,

727
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:45,320
Speaker 1: the animals who go extinct are typically no threat to humans, instead,

728
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:48,239
Speaker 1: they're far from it. They're priceless wanders and could in

729
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 1: fact have helped mankind. So before I get into some

730
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 1: of the more contemporary extinct animals, I do want to

731
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: talk about Thyla Cosmolus atrox, the extinct saber tooth marsupial. Yeah,

732
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:08,439
Speaker 1: the it's a metallarian saber tooth cat. I think, yeah,

733
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: it's marsupial lion is Yeah, and there it's like a

734
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: it's like a sister sort of group to actually true marsupials.

735
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 1: The metallarian saber tooth cat really sounds like a Star

736
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:24,359
Speaker 1: Wars name true um. So it's more closely related to

737
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 1: marsupials like kangaroos and koalas than it is to placentals,

738
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,080
Speaker 1: which is the rest of us basically um, except for

739
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:36,880
Speaker 1: monotreams like kidnas and um. But it is not actually

740
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: a feline, because a feline is a placental um. It

741
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 1: is a uh sparso danta, which is Greek meaning tearing teeth,

742
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: which is great. I love I love it when they

743
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: just go all in for the super metal, gritty names.

744
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 1: So the resemblance to it does look like a saber

745
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 1: tooth tiger at and that's where the name comes from exactly.

746
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:01,880
Speaker 1: But this is an example of conver rgent evolution. Um.

747
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:05,080
Speaker 1: So they were about the size of a jaguar. They

748
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:09,080
Speaker 1: had really big heads relative to their body, which I

749
00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 1: suppose in some frame of mind is scary, but it's

750
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: also really do feel like it's kind of like a

751
00:40:14,719 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: big bubble head. Um. And maybe the dou fiest part

752
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:21,239
Speaker 1: of all, which was huge fing pockets on their lower jaw.

753
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,439
Speaker 1: So they basically got kind of a j Leno look going.

754
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 1: They got this giant jaw. They had these huge two

755
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: front canines, so very similar to this sabertooth tiger like

756
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:37,840
Speaker 1: huge blade like looked like mouth sides coming down. Um.

757
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: And but they had a sheath on the lower jaw

758
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 1: is this bony protrusion called the symphysical flange um. And

759
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 1: this was uh, it would like it was a job

760
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 1: part that was between the two teeth, so the teeth

761
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:57,719
Speaker 1: would come down. Um. Like imagine you had like two

762
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:01,440
Speaker 1: huge vampire teeth and a long job in between them

763
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:04,200
Speaker 1: to support them, but your lips didn't close over them.

764
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 1: You look about as doofy as the thilacaus millis. Their

765
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:12,960
Speaker 1: things would self sharpened by rubbing against the lower canines

766
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: shuch as a handy feature. Um. And my favorite part

767
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: about them is, uh, it's sort of speculated that they

768
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:25,759
Speaker 1: probably didn't have a really crushing jaw strength. So jaguars

769
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:28,120
Speaker 1: and a lot of big cats today have really powerful

770
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: jaws and they can almost like they can strangle an

771
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: animal with their jaws. They can crush a skull with

772
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: their jaws. Um. But with this guy, they think that

773
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:40,760
Speaker 1: maybe he would come up behind the prey, ambush predator

774
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: and then like executioner style, stab them. They had really

775
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 1: powerful strong next to support that huge head and just

776
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: kind of like an like an executioner's axe. They have

777
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:53,880
Speaker 1: this huge ax like head and which is like chopped

778
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 1: down onto the animal's neck. They look, they're they're fantastic.

779
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:00,840
Speaker 1: I think, like you said, it's a perfect example of

780
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: convergent evolution. You know, Australia is completely isolated with all

781
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:06,839
Speaker 1: of the marsupials that it has there, and so it's

782
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 1: developed creatures that we we tie parallels to, such as

783
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 1: the wolf. You're right, we have the thyls scene, the

784
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:16,399
Speaker 1: marsupial wolf, and this this big cat which is really

785
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:18,239
Speaker 1: not a cat at all. It's another marsupial, but it

786
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 1: looks like what we know as a cat, and that's

787
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,719
Speaker 1: how these creatures get named. Even though they have and

788
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,319
Speaker 1: they do have similar morphological variations, you know, in the

789
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: way they move, in the size of their feet and

790
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 1: their tails for balance and things like that, but they

791
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: have absolutely no relationship to cats and wolves as we

792
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:37,840
Speaker 1: know it. Yeah, which I think is it's spooky and

793
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 1: inspiring that nature was just so determined to have a

794
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:47,840
Speaker 1: big cat like animal with giant executioner jaws that it

795
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 1: happened exactly multiple times in different places around the world

796
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 1: without them ever connecting. Yeah. So, speaking of this, uh,

797
00:42:56,440 --> 00:42:59,799
Speaker 1: this really interesting extinct animal, Uh, would you like to

798
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:02,919
Speaker 1: tie a little bit about the Thighla scene, the Tasmanian

799
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 1: tiger that you've been hunting for not literally yes, yes,

800
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: if you found one, you would not kill it. Yeah.

801
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:15,839
Speaker 1: So the thila scene, you know, known as the Tasmanian

802
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:19,359
Speaker 1: tiger or in some cases the marsupial wolf. Again, it's

803
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: an animal that we've drawn parallels to h two animals

804
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 1: that we know of, but it's really none of those things.

805
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:26,960
Speaker 1: It's much more closely related to a kangaroo. It is

806
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:30,040
Speaker 1: a true marsupial had a had a pouch. It's not

807
00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: a placental mammal, and it's an incredible looking creature. It

808
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: had a canine like head um, large jaws that could

809
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:39,919
Speaker 1: open very very wide, similar to a snake's um, had

810
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:42,200
Speaker 1: stripes a bit like a tiger on its back, which

811
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 1: is where it gets the name from, and used its

812
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:46,759
Speaker 1: tail like a rudder the same way a kangaroo does

813
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 1: for balance. So just you know, we were talking earlier

814
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 1: about Star Wars type creatures, this is a perfect example

815
00:43:53,560 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 1: of you are like a Doctor Seuss animal totally. I

816
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:59,919
Speaker 1: remember seeing these pictures as a kid as an exam

817
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,839
Speaker 1: ample of how sad extinction is, and probably a lot

818
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 1: of listeners have seen it too. It looks it's like

819
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:09,160
Speaker 1: a long it looks like a long dog, almost like

820
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:11,960
Speaker 1: a cross between a weasel and a dog and a tiger.

821
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:14,799
Speaker 1: And it's quite it's bigger than a dog. It's ah,

822
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 1: what would you say, it's about the size of a wolf.

823
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:23,000
Speaker 1: It's maybe like chiot Okay, yeah, and they are they're

824
00:44:23,080 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: really fabulous looking. They look like you kind of took

825
00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:29,720
Speaker 1: a bunch of animals, scrambled their genetics up and popped

826
00:44:29,719 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 1: out this really interesting, guys, So exactly, and so you're

827
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:37,799
Speaker 1: you're you're hoping maybe that they're not completely gone. Yeah,

828
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: So look, the animal was deemed extinct in six The

829
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 1: last one died in a zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. Did

830
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 1: this animal is very interesting and I'll explain why they're

831
00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: kind of the poster child for um. They're the poster

832
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 1: child for Lazarus taxon. What a Lazarus taxon is an

833
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:56,279
Speaker 1: animal coming back from the dead, even though they've never

834
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:58,839
Speaker 1: been proven to come back from the dead. And so

835
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:01,279
Speaker 1: the Thilat scene had an immense range all the way

836
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: from Papua New Guinea all the way down to Tasmania.

837
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 1: Now they were driven to extinction in as far as

838
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: we know anyway, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Avenge first,

839
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:14,879
Speaker 1: and the reason being when humans settled those regions, they

840
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: brought with them dingoes dogs, and the dingoes out competed

841
00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:21,560
Speaker 1: the thi La scene and wipe them out. They were stronger, better,

842
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: more adaptable predators for the habitat. But dingos never made

843
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:28,160
Speaker 1: it to Tasmania, so they lasted in Tasmania up into

844
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: the thirties. Like I said, which is where Westerners were,

845
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 1: you know, settling and cattle ranching and and seeing them regularly,

846
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: so much so that they were placed a bounty on

847
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: the thi La scene's head um to exterminate them so

848
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: they would stop killing sheep. Now, this is very confed,

849
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: extremely ruined, extremely sad, and extremely controversial because they've actually

850
00:45:48,239 --> 00:45:50,279
Speaker 1: never been proven that the Thila scene actually even took

851
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:55,239
Speaker 1: down any Yeah, it was mostly it was mostly understood

852
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:57,279
Speaker 1: and we only figured this out later that it was

853
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 1: packs of feral dogs running around at night killing people

854
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: sheep that belonged to the ranchers, and then the falsely

855
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: accused of taking down sheep and this wasn't Was this

856
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:11,799
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds or early nine hundred hundreds. Yeah,

857
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,319
Speaker 1: here's this strange animal. We've never seen it before. Better

858
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: killer and so um. To get to your question, this

859
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:22,800
Speaker 1: is funny really because I've been on I've probably spent

860
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:25,759
Speaker 1: a total of three and a half four months in

861
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:28,880
Speaker 1: the bush of northern Australia where sightings have been reported

862
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:31,839
Speaker 1: and Tasmania where sightings have been reported, and I've never

863
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:34,959
Speaker 1: had any conclusive evidence that the animal is still there.

864
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: And yet I'm completely convinced that it is in very

865
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:42,359
Speaker 1: small numbers, likely functionally extinct, meaning might still be there,

866
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:44,280
Speaker 1: but is on its way out because of the numbers,

867
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:48,920
Speaker 1: and less intervention takes place. Um, And I'm just completely convinced.

868
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:50,839
Speaker 1: So I've spent a lot of time there. I've been

869
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: in Tasmania. It's a very wild place with a low population.

870
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:56,719
Speaker 1: I've been in Northern Australia, very wild place with a

871
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: low population density, however very heavily impacted by a base

872
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:02,719
Speaker 1: of species, which is a bit of a problem. And

873
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:05,759
Speaker 1: my next expedition to look for this exact species will

874
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: take me to Papua New Guinea. Wow, Wow, excellent. I

875
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:12,960
Speaker 1: mean your gut has proven you correct before, so I wouldn't.

876
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:15,520
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you're optimistic about it. I think

877
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: that's important because otherwise we would just never look anymore

878
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: for these animals. I think it's you've got to keep

879
00:47:22,600 --> 00:47:24,799
Speaker 1: You've got to keep a certain amount of faith to uh,

880
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: to keep looking. Yeah. Yeah, it's in a sense, it's

881
00:47:28,200 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 1: like playing the lottery, right, Like you don't you kind

882
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 1: of expect to win because your odds are one in

883
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:37,560
Speaker 1: a zillion, But you still have to play. And you

884
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 1: know what's interesting about the thil scene, and this is

885
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: where kind of the cycle is self perpetuating, So you

886
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:47,360
Speaker 1: have to be careful and with these feedback loops. But

887
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:54,160
Speaker 1: there are so many disconnected similarities coming being reported from people.

888
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:56,080
Speaker 1: Oh I saw it at this time at night. It

889
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 1: looked like this, it moved like this, it did this,

890
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:00,759
Speaker 1: and these people don't know each other that reporting it.

891
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: That keep popping up over and over again, even so

892
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: much so that the Australian government just released, i think

893
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, released a whole list of of sightings

894
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 1: that they had been keeping confidential that you just kind

895
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: of have to believe. But it is a feedback loop, right,

896
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: because it's just like the black panther in the southeastern

897
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: United States or or Bigfoot up in Oregon. Once people

898
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:24,359
Speaker 1: start hearing about and imagining it, of course, then it

899
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:27,919
Speaker 1: creates more likelihood for someone to think that they've seen

900
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:30,320
Speaker 1: that creature and report it. So it's a very delicate

901
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: balance that you have to play, and you have to

902
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: take all of those anecdotal observations with a grain of salt. Well,

903
00:48:35,719 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 1: what's interesting about that is human observation is not infallible,

904
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:44,399
Speaker 1: so we do a lot our brains do a lot

905
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:47,759
Speaker 1: of interpretation. We think our eyes are sort of impartial

906
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:50,720
Speaker 1: judges of the world around us. Not true. Our brains

907
00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: has to go through our brains, which can often be

908
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 1: dumb or at least prejudiced. So what's interesting to me

909
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: is a lot of sort of supernatural attings like say

910
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,840
Speaker 1: um UFOs and stuff is or interpretation of say, sleep

911
00:49:05,880 --> 00:49:11,040
Speaker 1: paralysis is very culturally dependent. So and one culture with

912
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis will think it's UFOs and that happens after

913
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 1: War of the worlds, and we have this influence from

914
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,839
Speaker 1: our culture and another culture it's ghosts, like saying like

915
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:23,160
Speaker 1: Victorian England, sleep paralysis may have been. And so sleep

916
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:25,919
Speaker 1: paralysis for those who don't know, it's like when you're

917
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 1: sleeping your sleep cycle is disturbed. I actually get it.

918
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 1: Occasionally it's fun um but and so you kind of

919
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: half wake up, so some of your sensory information is

920
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:37,839
Speaker 1: getting in. Maybe you can see the room, maybe you're

921
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:41,240
Speaker 1: kind of hallucinating, but your body can't move. And often

922
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,920
Speaker 1: a characteristic as you feel this menacing presence and something

923
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 1: sitting on your chest, which is what I get. So

924
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: I think like for me, as someone who listens to

925
00:49:50,239 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: true crime. I think a serial killer is sitting on

926
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:57,879
Speaker 1: right exactly. But depending on your cultural environment, you're going

927
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:01,120
Speaker 1: to interpret it as maybe aliens, maybe as demons, maybe

928
00:50:01,160 --> 00:50:04,799
Speaker 1: as a witch, maybe as ghosts. So it is a

929
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:10,279
Speaker 1: tricky thing with citing say an animal where uh we

930
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 1: we had an episode where we talked about moth Man,

931
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 1: where we think maybe it was a sandhill crane, maybe

932
00:50:15,719 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 1: it was an owl. But people see these things and

933
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,920
Speaker 1: now they think they're moth man because that's the mythos

934
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:24,480
Speaker 1: of the area. So but then when it comes to

935
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 1: actual real animals like the Tasmanian tiger, maybe the cultural

936
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:32,800
Speaker 1: influence of oh maybe this exists, so maybe you see

937
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 1: an animal who's similar, and then you kind of interpreted

938
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 1: as was like, oh, is that a stripe? Is it?

939
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:42,720
Speaker 1: Not undeniably right, but exactly a dingo with a limb,

940
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 1: you know anything. And I don't want to get too

941
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,719
Speaker 1: off topic, but so much so that that it's so

942
00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: culturally significant and impacts our observational ideas of what we're

943
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: seeing that I think a lot of people don't realize

944
00:50:55,160 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 1: and I'll probably get angry people from listening to this,

945
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:00,400
Speaker 1: that the black panther that we you know, make movies

946
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: about have this high school mascots. Doesn't exist in the

947
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 1: United States, it's never been proven to in the Southeast.

948
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 1: If you go to Florida and talk to people that

949
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:10,399
Speaker 1: hang out in the swamps, they'll tell you there's black

950
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:12,879
Speaker 1: panthers around. They've never been proven to exist. We've never

951
00:51:12,920 --> 00:51:15,279
Speaker 1: seen a melanistic mountain lion, which is the species of

952
00:51:15,360 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: panther running around the Southeast. It's never been proven to exist. Right,

953
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: And black panthers are not it's not a distinct species.

954
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:26,280
Speaker 1: It's a it's a melanistic version of like of a panther,

955
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:28,640
Speaker 1: but exactly right. Yeah, and and depending on where you are,

956
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,120
Speaker 1: because there are black leopards, there are black jaguars, but

957
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: what we have natively in the United States is the

958
00:51:33,120 --> 00:51:36,120
Speaker 1: mountain lion. And there's never been a black mountain lion, right,

959
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:38,400
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is. It's it's got to be a

960
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: real complication for trying to find out where an animal

961
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 1: is based on scattered sidings. But on the other hand,

962
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 1: a lot of times if scientists don't actually listen to

963
00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:52,799
Speaker 1: locals or local legends or what's considered to be a mythos,

964
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 1: you'll miss out on important information. That actually can lead

965
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,319
Speaker 1: you to a discovery. Well, and everything's grounded in something right.

966
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is even if one

967
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:06,120
Speaker 1: out of a thousand reported Thilocene sightings is accurate, that

968
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: means one is accurate. Right. And so you know on

969
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:12,640
Speaker 1: my work, I two gentlemen that I've worked with. One

970
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 1: um in Tasmania was a wildlife scientist. So this isn't

971
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 1: you know, some crackpot hillbilly. This is a guy whose

972
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 1: entire career, like mine, is based off of observing wild

973
00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:29,480
Speaker 1: animals and identifying them correctly. He told me, looked me

974
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:31,399
Speaker 1: dead in the eye and said, I'm telling you ten

975
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, I forget the timeline. I saw a

976
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:36,239
Speaker 1: thighla scene. Right. I know every single animal that lives

977
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:38,760
Speaker 1: in Tasmania. I've worked on them for twenty five years.

978
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 1: This is what I saw. I don't have proof, but

979
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:45,320
Speaker 1: I saw it. You have to take that observational report

980
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 1: a little bit more seriously than the guy was like, yeah,

981
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:49,880
Speaker 1: you know, I left the pub at three am when

982
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: I was driving driving down this windy road and I

983
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: saw one's butt go into the bushes. And another instance

984
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:59,320
Speaker 1: up in Northern Australia was a gentleman who was a

985
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:02,840
Speaker 1: a eco tourism guide, so literally same thing. All he

986
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:05,880
Speaker 1: did for a career was take people to see wildlife

987
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 1: in northern Australia. And he told me, you know, clear

988
00:53:08,520 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 1: his day, twenty five yards away, I watched my dog

989
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 1: play with three of them. Literally, my dog got up,

990
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:15,480
Speaker 1: he growled, the hair on his neck stood up. I

991
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:17,160
Speaker 1: saw these sets of eyes and was like, what on

992
00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:19,399
Speaker 1: earth is that? Shawn My light and my dog ran

993
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:21,759
Speaker 1: over there and was running amongst them, playing with them,

994
00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:23,759
Speaker 1: and then they moved off. He's like, I couldn't get

995
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 1: the camera out in time, blah blah. This was five

996
00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:30,120
Speaker 1: years ago. You know, both these sightings, both these people

997
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 1: were the opposite of what you'd expect. They were extremely

998
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:37,560
Speaker 1: reluctant to tell me this information at risk of being

999
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:40,880
Speaker 1: called coops. Yeah, they didn't want to be considered crack exactly.

1000
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 1: And and and that to me holds so much more

1001
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:45,960
Speaker 1: weight than the guy that's jumping up and down going

1002
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:47,680
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you about my sighting. I gotta tell

1003
00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 1: you about my sighting. You know, that's someone who wants

1004
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 1: recognition or fame, or or has an ulterior motive. These

1005
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: guys were hiding that they had seen these animals at

1006
00:53:55,040 --> 00:53:58,360
Speaker 1: fear of being called crazy, and they themselves could barely

1007
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,120
Speaker 1: believe that they'd seen it. It's good to be skeptical.

1008
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:05,080
Speaker 1: It's good not to be completely credulous and believe everything

1009
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: you hear. But I think it's also good to not

1010
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:13,280
Speaker 1: always dismiss information that's unexpected. So you know, if you're thinking, Okay,

1011
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: this seems like it shouldn't be around anymore, we know

1012
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:20,239
Speaker 1: we do have evidence that animals who we have thought

1013
00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:23,920
Speaker 1: to be extinct, and even larger animals like the like

1014
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: the waterway like is pretty it's you know, it's comparably

1015
00:54:28,640 --> 00:54:31,720
Speaker 1: sized animal um. So it's not just the little tiny

1016
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:34,319
Speaker 1: insects that of course, those pop in and out of

1017
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 1: existence all the time, but yeah, it is. It's possible.

1018
00:54:37,880 --> 00:54:44,040
Speaker 1: So the tourists we found the animal um. And you know,

1019
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:46,560
Speaker 1: what's what what my team and I do, and for

1020
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:50,160
Speaker 1: anybody that's listening that has any interesting information, we take

1021
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 1: every single piece of it and compile it. You know,

1022
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 1: we have spreadsheet upon spreadsheet and we put every bit

1023
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:57,960
Speaker 1: of data in and whether you're you know, the person

1024
00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: reaching out to me seems credible or not, we still

1025
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:03,040
Speaker 1: take it into account and we place it on a

1026
00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 1: map where we at least the closest near area that

1027
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:08,080
Speaker 1: we believe the sighting came from was regardless of what

1028
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: the extinct species is. So that when you know, say,

1029
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:12,600
Speaker 1: the next time comes around for me to go search

1030
00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:14,960
Speaker 1: for the thilo scene in Tasmania. Well, it turns out

1031
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:17,520
Speaker 1: since that first episode of me searching for the Tasmanian

1032
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:19,000
Speaker 1: tiger and I don't know what it was, a two

1033
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:22,360
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen aired, I've now received seven hundred new reports

1034
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:24,279
Speaker 1: of them. Well it turns out, you know, six d

1035
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:26,440
Speaker 1: and fifty of them are in a completely new area

1036
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:29,320
Speaker 1: and they're densely clustered in one zone. Well that tells

1037
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 1: me where to at least begin my search. Yeah. That

1038
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 1: reminds me of like you might know about the the

1039
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:41,279
Speaker 1: naturalist movement, where it's getting just regular people, citizen scientists.

1040
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:45,359
Speaker 1: I do not live in anywhere near nature basically lived

1041
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 1: dead in the city. I saw an alligator lizard mating

1042
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 1: on my walk, took a photo of a put it online. Yeah. Yeah,

1043
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:57,239
Speaker 1: so it's it's something that I think is especially with

1044
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 1: these rare animals, you know. Um. I talked to Dr

1045
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:03,520
Speaker 1: Greg Paully, he's one of the herpetologists at the museum,

1046
00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: and he got a report of this lizard that is

1047
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:10,239
Speaker 1: not indigenous, that like someone just took a photo of

1048
00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:12,360
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be sort of a briefly

1049
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 1: invasive species that didn't it didn't actually I think that

1050
00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:18,600
Speaker 1: they didn't find any more specimens, but it's like a

1051
00:56:18,640 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 1: little pocket of these lizards that reproduced and lived for

1052
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 1: a little while in this one little neighborhood. So it's

1053
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 1: you never know what you're gonna find, and I think

1054
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:29,640
Speaker 1: that it's great that. Yeah, of course, some people are

1055
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 1: going to be pounded back white close and going like yeah,

1056
00:56:32,040 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 1: I saw I saw a big foot, But you know,

1057
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:38,640
Speaker 1: often it's it's interesting information. And by the way, that's

1058
00:56:38,640 --> 00:56:41,680
Speaker 1: how that, uh you said you watched our expedition to

1059
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:45,480
Speaker 1: Borneo where we uncovered the evidence of the Miller's Grizzled Langer. Um,

1060
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:48,080
Speaker 1: that's how that came about. And what I mean by

1061
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:50,879
Speaker 1: that is there was a research group working in this

1062
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 1: region of Borneo where the Miller's Grizzled Langer had never

1063
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:56,880
Speaker 1: historically been reported to be and one of the I

1064
00:56:56,880 --> 00:56:58,200
Speaker 1: think he was a grad student, maybe he was an

1065
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:00,960
Speaker 1: undergraduate student took a photo of a monkey that he's like,

1066
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: that's a cool, weird looking monkey and showed it to

1067
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:07,319
Speaker 1: his primatologist professor my friend Stephanie's heart and Stephanie goes,

1068
00:57:07,320 --> 00:57:11,080
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's a screaming and exactly, and back

1069
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,160
Speaker 1: to the cycle of crazy biologist jumping around getting excited,

1070
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, yeah, I just I think it's and

1071
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:22,040
Speaker 1: I think that kind of ties into people feeling optimistic

1072
00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:25,440
Speaker 1: and empowered about nature rather than feeling paralyzed by oh,

1073
00:57:25,440 --> 00:57:28,600
Speaker 1: everything's going extinct. Like no, you can help too, by

1074
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:31,640
Speaker 1: like keeping your eyes open. So now I want to

1075
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:35,720
Speaker 1: talk about a species that has gone extinct more recently.

1076
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:39,880
Speaker 1: Um it is the gastric brooding frog. And it is

1077
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:43,200
Speaker 1: this is really sad. I this is again one of

1078
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:46,880
Speaker 1: my favorite animals. Um. So these were a little frog

1079
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:50,600
Speaker 1: with they had like the marsupial frog. They had an

1080
00:57:50,600 --> 00:57:53,840
Speaker 1: amazing breeding strategy, one of the most incredible ones I

1081
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:58,720
Speaker 1: think in the world. They lived in the mountains of Queensland, Australia. Um.

1082
00:57:58,720 --> 00:58:02,760
Speaker 1: There were two species. They were southern and northern, very similar. Um.

1083
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 1: The southern was about it it was a little smaller,

1084
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 1: it was like about two inches long. In the northern

1085
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 1: was maybe three inches long. And they're very tiny, cute,

1086
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 1: adorable frogs, like I'm a big I think most frogs

1087
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 1: are adorable. These are some of the most adorable. They

1088
00:58:16,520 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: just have these big bug eyes. They're really cute. Their

1089
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: calls were described as sounding like m It's like it's

1090
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:27,960
Speaker 1: the cutest sounding thing, like they say. It had an

1091
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:35,160
Speaker 1: uptick at the end, like I just want yeah, um,

1092
00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:38,680
Speaker 1: I don't it's just spelled phonetically, so I'm just literally

1093
00:58:38,720 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 1: really um. So it kept its eggs in its stomach uh,

1094
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 1: and they would sort of like the most stupial frog,

1095
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:52,600
Speaker 1: they would develop into froglets, and she, the female, would

1096
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:57,280
Speaker 1: give live birth essentially because they would vomit up shook

1097
00:58:57,400 --> 00:59:00,000
Speaker 1: up their babies, which were now fully developed a little

1098
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:04,920
Speaker 1: froglets up to twenty five at a time, which is insane,

1099
00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:08,240
Speaker 1: it's incredible. So they lay eggs um and then it

1100
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:11,400
Speaker 1: would swallow its eggs and then that would keep them

1101
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:15,240
Speaker 1: safe as they're developing. So in order to prevent getting digested,

1102
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 1: the eggs were covered in prostaglandin, which is a chemical

1103
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: that would signal the mom to stop producing gastric acid

1104
00:59:24,280 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 1: in her stomach and then once they developed into the tadpoles,

1105
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: they'd hatch and just continue developing in her stomach. Yeah,

1106
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 1: and uh, their gills were covered in mucus that would

1107
00:59:36,160 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 1: protect them from stomach acid. But to be frank, we

1108
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:42,320
Speaker 1: don't know everything about how this worked. We didn't get

1109
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:44,600
Speaker 1: a chance to study them as long as would have

1110
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:47,640
Speaker 1: been helpful. And it's a new biological process that we're on.

1111
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:51,720
Speaker 1: We really don't understand, not just on this species level,

1112
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: but on any level, how exactly that it works, right exactly. Uh.

1113
00:59:56,720 --> 01:00:01,840
Speaker 1: And so the gastric brooding frog mom would stop eating

1114
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: we don't know how um, and her stomach would expand,

1115
01:00:08,160 --> 01:00:11,439
Speaker 1: so her lungs would collapse under the pressure of all

1116
01:00:11,480 --> 01:00:14,400
Speaker 1: of these babies. And then she would breathe through her skin,

1117
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:18,360
Speaker 1: which is a trick that amphibians can do. But uh,

1118
01:00:18,440 --> 01:00:22,280
Speaker 1: then she would exorcist style vomit up her babies through

1119
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 1: what's called propulsive vomiting, which is the cutest and yet

1120
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:31,360
Speaker 1: more most horrifying like Russian nesting doll frog situation. As

1121
01:00:31,360 --> 01:00:34,880
Speaker 1: you can imagine, this is an incredible way to give birth. Uh.

1122
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 1: And very sadly they went extinct about thirty years ago.

1123
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:43,560
Speaker 1: So I don't think we know exactly the single cause

1124
01:00:43,600 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 1: for why they went extinct. We do know that human

1125
01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:51,280
Speaker 1: encroachment into their habitat probably didn't help. So like logging, uh,

1126
01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:55,800
Speaker 1: feral pigs, uh weeds, and water flow problems were all

1127
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:58,360
Speaker 1: thought to have contributed to their extinction, but also the

1128
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:02,760
Speaker 1: pathogenic fungus, which is responsible for the deaths of many

1129
01:01:02,800 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 1: many adorable amphibians. I it makes me sad because I think,

1130
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:11,320
Speaker 1: I mean, as someone who's stomach is not always great

1131
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:15,680
Speaker 1: at functioning, so like getting stomach aches. It's like, hey,

1132
01:01:15,720 --> 01:01:20,160
Speaker 1: if even if their story isn't doesn't capture your affection,

1133
01:01:20,480 --> 01:01:22,560
Speaker 1: which I think it should, and you don't want them

1134
01:01:22,560 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: back just because they're amazing, it's we could have learned

1135
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 1: a lot from them for human medicine, so um, stomach cancer, um,

1136
01:01:32,360 --> 01:01:37,080
Speaker 1: you know, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, all these things that

1137
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:41,720
Speaker 1: have to do with the hormone causing like overproduction of

1138
01:01:41,760 --> 01:01:44,680
Speaker 1: stomach acid, all these we could have learned so much

1139
01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:48,720
Speaker 1: from them undeniably. And I you know, I think I

1140
01:01:48,720 --> 01:01:50,439
Speaker 1: don't want to get two grandiose, but I think there's

1141
01:01:50,440 --> 01:01:52,760
Speaker 1: something we can still learn from them, and that is

1142
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:56,000
Speaker 1: that you know, we made that mistake in a time

1143
01:01:56,040 --> 01:01:58,600
Speaker 1: and place where perhaps we didn't realize we were making it.

1144
01:01:58,680 --> 01:02:00,160
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think we knew that they were

1145
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:03,040
Speaker 1: going extinct when they went extinct thirty years ago, but

1146
01:02:03,160 --> 01:02:05,680
Speaker 1: we do know that now about some of the species

1147
01:02:05,680 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: that we are driving towards extinction, and we can correct

1148
01:02:08,680 --> 01:02:10,800
Speaker 1: before it's too late. You know, Let's learn from this

1149
01:02:10,960 --> 01:02:13,760
Speaker 1: exact species and our mistake that we made, you know,

1150
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:15,680
Speaker 1: the fact that we've missed out on what could be

1151
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:19,680
Speaker 1: a world changing discovery being you know, the gastric brooding

1152
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:23,320
Speaker 1: frog stomach anatomy. Let's learn from that and realize that

1153
01:02:23,320 --> 01:02:24,800
Speaker 1: there's a lot we don't know and that things are

1154
01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:27,000
Speaker 1: worth saving because you never know what can come of it.

1155
01:02:29,160 --> 01:02:32,000
Speaker 1: You know how Gretted Tunberg says we're entering a mass

1156
01:02:32,040 --> 01:02:36,120
Speaker 1: extinction event, Well she's not wrong. A scientific analysis published

1157
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:39,280
Speaker 1: in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found

1158
01:02:39,280 --> 01:02:41,920
Speaker 1: that in recent decades there has been a global massive

1159
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:46,479
Speaker 1: loss of wildlife that they call quote a biological annihilation. Well,

1160
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:49,680
Speaker 1: not to scare you too much, so not only are

1161
01:02:49,800 --> 01:02:53,440
Speaker 1: animals going extinct at faster rates, but even animals not

1162
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:58,080
Speaker 1: yet considered endangered are losing their populations at much faster rates.

1163
01:02:58,120 --> 01:03:01,080
Speaker 1: So this sounds kind of psychop hathic to ask. But

1164
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:04,720
Speaker 1: why should we care? Obviously, if you listen to the show,

1165
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:08,000
Speaker 1: you probably care just for the sake of animals, bio diversity,

1166
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:11,200
Speaker 1: and the protection of the planet. But say, hypothetically there

1167
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: are people out there who don't care about the environment,

1168
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:17,640
Speaker 1: who would be like that. I don't know, But honestly,

1169
01:03:17,680 --> 01:03:20,200
Speaker 1: the more selfish you are, the more alarms you should

1170
01:03:20,200 --> 01:03:23,720
Speaker 1: be about the current crisis. When humans go extinct, it's

1171
01:03:23,880 --> 01:03:28,200
Speaker 1: very likely that life on Earth will continue. Life finds

1172
01:03:28,200 --> 01:03:31,560
Speaker 1: a way even in the wake of devastating natural disasters.

1173
01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:34,320
Speaker 1: Will it be the same kind of life we have now?

1174
01:03:34,480 --> 01:03:36,800
Speaker 1: Probably not. I mean, look at what happened after the

1175
01:03:36,840 --> 01:03:40,120
Speaker 1: mass extinction of dinosaurs. Of course, if we unique the

1176
01:03:40,240 --> 01:03:42,280
Speaker 1: entire planet, the only kind of life that might come

1177
01:03:42,280 --> 01:03:45,800
Speaker 1: back for a while maybe creepy crawley extremophiles in bacteria,

1178
01:03:45,960 --> 01:03:49,280
Speaker 1: but life in some form will probably march on. It's

1179
01:03:49,320 --> 01:03:51,760
Speaker 1: just that it's up to us to decide whether we

1180
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:54,600
Speaker 1: humans want to continue on or if we're happy to

1181
01:03:54,680 --> 01:03:57,920
Speaker 1: drive ourselves to extinction while dragging plenty of other animals

1182
01:03:57,960 --> 01:04:00,840
Speaker 1: down with this. But like we've talked out before, we

1183
01:04:00,920 --> 01:04:03,280
Speaker 1: actually have a choice in whether we want to do this.

1184
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:07,880
Speaker 1: We're not helpless victims of our circumstance. When we return,

1185
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:11,200
Speaker 1: we'll talk about bringing animals back from the dead using

1186
01:04:11,280 --> 01:04:14,200
Speaker 1: mad science. Is this a good thing or is this

1187
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:17,680
Speaker 1: a quote? Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or

1188
01:04:17,680 --> 01:04:20,000
Speaker 1: not they could they didn't stop to think if they should.

1189
01:04:20,080 --> 01:04:28,800
Speaker 1: Situation so clones, let's talk about cloning. Even if we

1190
01:04:28,920 --> 01:04:31,720
Speaker 1: drive animals to extinction, can't we just bring them back

1191
01:04:31,720 --> 01:04:34,840
Speaker 1: through the miracle of science. Well, as you probably know

1192
01:04:34,960 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 1: from the acclaimed documentary Jurassic Park, the answer is a

1193
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:42,520
Speaker 1: bit more complicated. First, the science of bringing species back

1194
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 1: from the dead is complex. You need a viable DNA

1195
01:04:45,880 --> 01:04:49,120
Speaker 1: sample from a specimen, and you need a related, compatible

1196
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:52,720
Speaker 1: surrogate species egg in which to implant the DNA. But

1197
01:04:52,840 --> 01:04:55,600
Speaker 1: even if you have all the ingredients necessary, it's still

1198
01:04:55,640 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 1: difficult to create a viable embryo. Gene splicing is another

1199
01:04:59,520 --> 01:05:04,080
Speaker 1: technique with similar challenges, and reverse engineering an extinct animal

1200
01:05:04,160 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 1: from their closest living relatives through selective breeding is possible,

1201
01:05:08,040 --> 01:05:10,960
Speaker 1: though it won't really quote bring the original species back

1202
01:05:10,960 --> 01:05:13,920
Speaker 1: to life, but create a sort of effect simile. Even

1203
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:16,600
Speaker 1: once we reach the point where we can bring species

1204
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:20,520
Speaker 1: back from preserved specimens or mosquitoes trapped in amber, should

1205
01:05:20,520 --> 01:05:24,600
Speaker 1: we is dead sometimes better? Well, there are arguments for

1206
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:28,960
Speaker 1: and against the extinction. Proponents site the importance many extinct

1207
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:33,960
Speaker 1: species have environmentally and for biodiversity. Skeptics warns that this

1208
01:05:34,080 --> 01:05:37,960
Speaker 1: may have unintended consequences. Loss of habitat and changes in

1209
01:05:37,960 --> 01:05:41,960
Speaker 1: the environment make reintroduction of dead species a challenge and

1210
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:46,640
Speaker 1: could potentially lead to unforeseen negative interactions with other living species.

1211
01:05:47,160 --> 01:05:50,040
Speaker 1: We could also, I don't know, accidentally bring back dangerous

1212
01:05:50,040 --> 01:05:54,400
Speaker 1: retroviruses hiding in extinct animal genomes. There's also the argument

1213
01:05:54,440 --> 01:05:58,200
Speaker 1: that spending money to resurrect extinct creatures means less money

1214
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:01,080
Speaker 1: to help save animals that are not white yet extinct,

1215
01:06:01,160 --> 01:06:03,560
Speaker 1: but soon could be. So let's take a look at

1216
01:06:03,600 --> 01:06:05,600
Speaker 1: some of this weird science, and then we'll talk to

1217
01:06:05,680 --> 01:06:09,880
Speaker 1: Forest about his non laboratory approach to finding nearly extinct creatures.

1218
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:13,720
Speaker 1: So I gotta kind of make a just a catch

1219
01:06:13,720 --> 01:06:17,600
Speaker 1: all statement. I'm not an expert on this, so I

1220
01:06:17,640 --> 01:06:20,440
Speaker 1: can only make a judgment on whether it's good or not.

1221
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:23,080
Speaker 1: To bring back species based on my opinion, which is

1222
01:06:23,200 --> 01:06:25,520
Speaker 1: take it for what it's worth. And it's a really

1223
01:06:25,840 --> 01:06:30,480
Speaker 1: complicated moral and ethical issue that I think is I

1224
01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:33,479
Speaker 1: don't know if there's one really distinct answer of whether

1225
01:06:33,560 --> 01:06:37,760
Speaker 1: it's good or bad. I think it's very contextual, but

1226
01:06:37,880 --> 01:06:41,200
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not like, oh, obviously it's good to

1227
01:06:41,200 --> 01:06:44,320
Speaker 1: to use science to bring something back, because there could

1228
01:06:44,320 --> 01:06:47,439
Speaker 1: be as any time when we try to do things

1229
01:06:47,440 --> 01:06:49,960
Speaker 1: as humans, we try to kind of maybe play god

1230
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:52,760
Speaker 1: a little bit, sometimes we can do go really wrong.

1231
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:57,040
Speaker 1: Um So remember our friend the gastric rooting frog. How

1232
01:06:57,080 --> 01:07:01,080
Speaker 1: could you forget? A team of researchers at University of

1233
01:07:01,240 --> 01:07:04,200
Speaker 1: New South Wales is trying to bring it back from extinction.

1234
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:08,120
Speaker 1: So they've inserted the DNA of the southern gastric brooding

1235
01:07:08,120 --> 01:07:10,520
Speaker 1: frog into the egg of a barred frog, which is

1236
01:07:10,560 --> 01:07:14,160
Speaker 1: a very close relative. They were able to successfully grow

1237
01:07:14,160 --> 01:07:17,560
Speaker 1: it into an embryo, but then it's self terminated so

1238
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:21,160
Speaker 1: they weren't able to develop it further. It's uh. This

1239
01:07:21,240 --> 01:07:25,720
Speaker 1: is called, as we mentioned, de extinction or resurrection biology,

1240
01:07:25,720 --> 01:07:28,960
Speaker 1: which sounds a lot more magical, which is, you know,

1241
01:07:29,160 --> 01:07:33,040
Speaker 1: literally bringing an animal back from the dead. I think

1242
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:36,400
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting is I kind of fall sort

1243
01:07:36,440 --> 01:07:40,560
Speaker 1: of uh somewhere on the edge of like, I don't

1244
01:07:40,560 --> 01:07:42,960
Speaker 1: know if like, just bringing back a mammoth is such

1245
01:07:42,960 --> 01:07:46,400
Speaker 1: a good idea because the world has changed so drastically.

1246
01:07:46,760 --> 01:07:49,240
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's even fair to the mammoth

1247
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:52,800
Speaker 1: because where would you put them? He As we know,

1248
01:07:52,960 --> 01:07:57,400
Speaker 1: elephants are highly social, highly intelligent. Would a mammoth be

1249
01:07:57,480 --> 01:08:00,520
Speaker 1: able to have a family with elephant or would it

1250
01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:04,280
Speaker 1: feel weird and lonely because it's the only hairy eleve

1251
01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:07,880
Speaker 1: in our hown? Um. But you know, I have heard

1252
01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:13,160
Speaker 1: interestingly compelling arguments about like, say, the passenger pigeon, which

1253
01:08:13,240 --> 01:08:17,360
Speaker 1: is a somewhat recently extinct bird that UM had a

1254
01:08:17,439 --> 01:08:21,280
Speaker 1: lot of impact on the environment UM and is a

1255
01:08:21,439 --> 01:08:24,720
Speaker 1: candidate for it because we do have living relatives and

1256
01:08:24,800 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 1: we have so many specimens of it, there's plenty of DNA.

1257
01:08:29,439 --> 01:08:34,400
Speaker 1: The passenger pigeon went extinct in nineteen fourteen. About UM,

1258
01:08:34,520 --> 01:08:39,320
Speaker 1: it's called an anthropogenic extinction. So that's when we we

1259
01:08:39,520 --> 01:08:43,200
Speaker 1: screwed it up. Basically, humans humans were the jerks who

1260
01:08:43,200 --> 01:08:47,000
Speaker 1: did it. The pigeons look a little bit like mourning doves,

1261
01:08:47,080 --> 01:08:50,639
Speaker 1: though they're not related at all. Um the males had

1262
01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:55,320
Speaker 1: a reddish orangey pink chest and blue gray backs. Um

1263
01:08:55,479 --> 01:09:00,280
Speaker 1: they so Revive and Restore is a conservation organization whose

1264
01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:05,360
Speaker 1: mission statement is to quote apply biotechnology to bio diversity challenges.

1265
01:09:05,840 --> 01:09:08,759
Speaker 1: They say that the passenger pigeons are a good candidate,

1266
01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:12,639
Speaker 1: as we have plenty of specimens, we've got its closest relative,

1267
01:09:13,080 --> 01:09:16,519
Speaker 1: and that they would be useful to bring back. They

1268
01:09:16,560 --> 01:09:20,360
Speaker 1: say it would help conserve Eastern America's woodlands. And to

1269
01:09:20,479 --> 01:09:22,920
Speaker 1: kind of see what their side of the argument is,

1270
01:09:23,120 --> 01:09:24,960
Speaker 1: we kind of have to look at the history of

1271
01:09:25,000 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 1: passenger pigeons and what they are. So passenger pigeons used

1272
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:31,960
Speaker 1: to be so numerous in Eastern US that they would

1273
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:35,320
Speaker 1: completely black out the sky. And if you can't imagine,

1274
01:09:35,840 --> 01:09:38,960
Speaker 1: you can imagine bird flocks and with the murmurations which

1275
01:09:39,040 --> 01:09:41,160
Speaker 1: is where they kind of shift direction, and you see

1276
01:09:41,160 --> 01:09:43,960
Speaker 1: this sort of like weird strobing effect of the birds.

1277
01:09:44,360 --> 01:09:48,040
Speaker 1: It must have been really spectacular to see unless you

1278
01:09:48,080 --> 01:09:52,400
Speaker 1: were you know, like a like an eighteenth century nineteenth

1279
01:09:52,479 --> 01:09:57,759
Speaker 1: century guy who's like, oh, these these birds are pests, which, yeah,

1280
01:09:57,840 --> 01:10:01,320
Speaker 1: so they were considered agricult trill pests because a flock

1281
01:10:01,360 --> 01:10:03,599
Speaker 1: of them could. To be fair, they were good at

1282
01:10:03,640 --> 01:10:06,280
Speaker 1: destroying crops because there were so many of them, but

1283
01:10:06,400 --> 01:10:09,760
Speaker 1: I mean they kind of came first, so we hunt them,

1284
01:10:09,960 --> 01:10:13,920
Speaker 1: we did. We hunt the numbered in the billions can

1285
01:10:13,960 --> 01:10:18,679
Speaker 1: be wiped out so quickly, exactly. So they were highly social,

1286
01:10:18,760 --> 01:10:21,760
Speaker 1: so that's why they had such enormous flocks, and they

1287
01:10:21,800 --> 01:10:25,360
Speaker 1: were had kind of a pigeony utopia because they wouldn't

1288
01:10:25,360 --> 01:10:28,360
Speaker 1: really fight with each other. There was maybe some arguments,

1289
01:10:28,439 --> 01:10:32,280
Speaker 1: but there was very little violence. They were very pro social,

1290
01:10:32,479 --> 01:10:34,639
Speaker 1: kind of like there's a lot of bat species now

1291
01:10:34,680 --> 01:10:38,479
Speaker 1: that have these huge flocks, big big colonies, even with

1292
01:10:38,520 --> 01:10:40,800
Speaker 1: like different kind of species all hanging out, and they're

1293
01:10:41,120 --> 01:10:44,840
Speaker 1: pretty chill. It's kind of amazing. Uh. This is part

1294
01:10:44,840 --> 01:10:46,599
Speaker 1: of the reason they may have been so big, as

1295
01:10:46,640 --> 01:10:50,599
Speaker 1: a survival technique called predator saturation, and that's where there's

1296
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:53,280
Speaker 1: just too many of too many to pick from. Your

1297
01:10:53,360 --> 01:10:55,720
Speaker 1: chance of being one out of like a flock of

1298
01:10:55,880 --> 01:11:02,240
Speaker 1: ten thousand is pretty pretty small, exactly. So they were

1299
01:11:02,320 --> 01:11:07,240
Speaker 1: doing really well until humans, specifically European settlers, because for

1300
01:11:07,680 --> 01:11:10,800
Speaker 1: twenty thousand years their population was stable in the US,

1301
01:11:10,880 --> 01:11:13,839
Speaker 1: which included the time that Native Americans lived and hunted

1302
01:11:13,880 --> 01:11:16,240
Speaker 1: the pigeons, but they just didn't hunt them in the

1303
01:11:16,320 --> 01:11:20,200
Speaker 1: volume that European settlers did well. And European settlers began

1304
01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:23,600
Speaker 1: hunting them as commercial food. Yes, yes, especially once the

1305
01:11:23,720 --> 01:11:26,960
Speaker 1: railroads came in and we could ship huge amounts of

1306
01:11:27,000 --> 01:11:32,160
Speaker 1: dead birds. So, uh, they were very easy targets because

1307
01:11:32,160 --> 01:11:34,519
Speaker 1: they were not used to being shot at with guns,

1308
01:11:34,720 --> 01:11:37,960
Speaker 1: and they their whole strategy was just like, there's lots

1309
01:11:38,000 --> 01:11:40,839
Speaker 1: of us and we're pretty chill. You know, you cannot

1310
01:11:40,880 --> 01:11:44,439
Speaker 1: possibly kill all of us. And then uh, in America

1311
01:11:44,600 --> 01:11:48,840
Speaker 1: we were like, in America, we can do anything. I mean,

1312
01:11:48,840 --> 01:11:51,679
Speaker 1: it's sad. They were almost not even considered game foul

1313
01:11:51,800 --> 01:11:54,719
Speaker 1: because they were so easy to shoot, so easy to catch,

1314
01:11:54,760 --> 01:11:57,759
Speaker 1: these poor little sweeties. They could be caught in vast

1315
01:11:57,840 --> 01:12:01,240
Speaker 1: numbers with large nets just draped cross a few trees

1316
01:12:01,320 --> 01:12:03,360
Speaker 1: and they would just fly right in and you'd get

1317
01:12:03,400 --> 01:12:06,759
Speaker 1: like several hundred of them at a time. Stool pigeons.

1318
01:12:06,760 --> 01:12:11,040
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting etymology lesson. So stool pigeons

1319
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:14,080
Speaker 1: were pigeons who had their eyes sown shut, so they

1320
01:12:14,120 --> 01:12:17,240
Speaker 1: were blind. Really nice thing to do. Um. And then

1321
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:20,320
Speaker 1: when a flock of these pigeons would fly by, they

1322
01:12:20,320 --> 01:12:23,000
Speaker 1: were shoved off the stool, so it looked like they

1323
01:12:23,040 --> 01:12:26,479
Speaker 1: were they found some food on the ground, right exactly,

1324
01:12:26,920 --> 01:12:29,000
Speaker 1: and that was used as bait because the other the

1325
01:12:29,080 --> 01:12:32,040
Speaker 1: other pigeons, being highly social, look at the queue of

1326
01:12:32,080 --> 01:12:34,800
Speaker 1: this pigeon, They're like, oh, there must be food there, um,

1327
01:12:34,840 --> 01:12:37,599
Speaker 1: And then they flocked down and then we kill all

1328
01:12:37,600 --> 01:12:39,880
Speaker 1: of them. And so that's where the term stool pigeon

1329
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:41,960
Speaker 1: comes from, as being sort of like someone who's going

1330
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:44,759
Speaker 1: to lead you to the rest of the flock. Hunters

1331
01:12:44,800 --> 01:12:48,599
Speaker 1: would even use alcohol soaked grain to drug the birds.

1332
01:12:48,880 --> 01:12:53,960
Speaker 1: Real real nice nice move there. And in the nineteenth century,

1333
01:12:54,040 --> 01:12:57,680
Speaker 1: the passenger pigeon hunting reached a fever pitch as railroads

1334
01:12:57,720 --> 01:13:01,960
Speaker 1: allowed for mass commercial transportation of dead pigeons. Just cars

1335
01:13:01,960 --> 01:13:05,719
Speaker 1: and cars of trains chock full of dead pigeons. Yeah.

1336
01:13:05,880 --> 01:13:09,160
Speaker 1: One hunter actually was alleged to have shipped three million

1337
01:13:09,200 --> 01:13:12,439
Speaker 1: dead birds to the city like on his own, which

1338
01:13:12,520 --> 01:13:18,400
Speaker 1: is insane. The just the just like, yep, this seems

1339
01:13:18,520 --> 01:13:22,959
Speaker 1: like an okay thing to do. The mass pigeons slaughter, um,

1340
01:13:23,000 --> 01:13:26,160
Speaker 1: people weren't too concerned about it. They thought they were pests.

1341
01:13:26,240 --> 01:13:29,200
Speaker 1: They thought it was impossible to kill them all, but yeah,

1342
01:13:29,280 --> 01:13:34,280
Speaker 1: we did it. Interestingly enough, there's actually evidence to support

1343
01:13:34,320 --> 01:13:37,479
Speaker 1: that the passenger pigeon was around. The last pair was

1344
01:13:37,520 --> 01:13:40,679
Speaker 1: around about twenty years after they're declared extinctions. The way, Yeah,

1345
01:13:41,720 --> 01:13:44,840
Speaker 1: it's interesting. By the way, let me preface this by saying,

1346
01:13:44,880 --> 01:13:47,080
Speaker 1: I'm no expert of the extinction either. You know, I'm

1347
01:13:47,120 --> 01:13:49,679
Speaker 1: a tracker and a wild life biologist. I'm a field guy. Yeah,

1348
01:13:49,680 --> 01:13:53,040
Speaker 1: what you do is very fundamentally different. Exactly that being said,

1349
01:13:53,080 --> 01:13:56,360
Speaker 1: I certainly have a stance on it, and I think

1350
01:13:56,400 --> 01:13:59,160
Speaker 1: it's a stunts. I think it's a very clear middle

1351
01:13:59,200 --> 01:14:02,160
Speaker 1: ground stance that I imagine most people would take. And

1352
01:14:02,280 --> 01:14:04,320
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what it is. Do I think that

1353
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:06,599
Speaker 1: we should be creating Jurassic Park and bringing back mammoths

1354
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:10,160
Speaker 1: and dinosaurs. Absolutely not that it was as cool and

1355
01:14:10,200 --> 01:14:13,400
Speaker 1: interesting as it would be. That's a waste of resource

1356
01:14:13,439 --> 01:14:16,559
Speaker 1: dollars that could go towards viable conservation. Do I think

1357
01:14:16,560 --> 01:14:19,120
Speaker 1: that we should right our wrongs that humanity have committed,

1358
01:14:19,160 --> 01:14:22,120
Speaker 1: such as bringing back the passenger pigeon, replacing the thile

1359
01:14:22,200 --> 01:14:25,639
Speaker 1: scene in an environment that's absolutely overrun by meso predators

1360
01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:28,160
Speaker 1: and smaller marsupials to the point that disease is becoming

1361
01:14:28,200 --> 01:14:31,000
Speaker 1: a massive problem. And the list goes on and on

1362
01:14:31,080 --> 01:14:33,280
Speaker 1: and on and on and on and on and on. Yes,

1363
01:14:33,400 --> 01:14:36,360
Speaker 1: I do now. I think one thing that we haven't

1364
01:14:36,360 --> 01:14:39,120
Speaker 1: mentioned today in our discussion is that this technology does

1365
01:14:39,160 --> 01:14:42,559
Speaker 1: not exist yet. It's great in theory. There are people

1366
01:14:42,640 --> 01:14:44,720
Speaker 1: working on it, and I'm very grateful that they are

1367
01:14:44,760 --> 01:14:46,559
Speaker 1: because I'd love to see the Thile scene back. I'd

1368
01:14:46,560 --> 01:14:49,080
Speaker 1: love to see the Carolina parakeet, the passenger pigeon. And again,

1369
01:14:49,160 --> 01:14:52,040
Speaker 1: the list goes on. But this technology, it doesn't actually exist.

1370
01:14:52,080 --> 01:14:54,479
Speaker 1: I mean, the closest we've gotten so far has been

1371
01:14:54,520 --> 01:14:57,840
Speaker 1: that gastric brooding frog experiment where they just started to

1372
01:14:57,880 --> 01:15:01,080
Speaker 1: get an embryo and then it's self terminate heartbeat right now,

1373
01:15:01,120 --> 01:15:04,080
Speaker 1: heartbeat didn't didn't last very long. But it's it's an

1374
01:15:04,240 --> 01:15:06,960
Speaker 1: encouraging step. That's not to demean what they're doing. It's

1375
01:15:07,120 --> 01:15:10,320
Speaker 1: very impressive. But yeah, like you said, it is not

1376
01:15:10,520 --> 01:15:13,639
Speaker 1: we can't just like, like, you know, take a dead

1377
01:15:13,680 --> 01:15:17,080
Speaker 1: passenger pigeon, like get a syringeful of genetic material and

1378
01:15:17,120 --> 01:15:20,760
Speaker 1: plug it into their closest living relative, you know. But

1379
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:24,680
Speaker 1: it's it is possible. It's just I think it is

1380
01:15:25,040 --> 01:15:28,120
Speaker 1: important to stress that we cannot like it's it is

1381
01:15:28,160 --> 01:15:31,080
Speaker 1: still a huge deal when an animal goes extinct, because

1382
01:15:31,080 --> 01:15:32,960
Speaker 1: we cannot just snap our fingers and be like, oh,

1383
01:15:33,200 --> 01:15:35,759
Speaker 1: we'll use science to bring it back to life, because

1384
01:15:35,760 --> 01:15:40,240
Speaker 1: there's a lot of complications even once we get the technology.

1385
01:15:40,320 --> 01:15:44,240
Speaker 1: Reintroducing an animal, especially when is highly social as a

1386
01:15:44,280 --> 01:15:47,599
Speaker 1: passenger pigeon, is really complicated because they may not know

1387
01:15:47,680 --> 01:15:51,720
Speaker 1: even how to act because uh, animals, they do. They

1388
01:15:51,720 --> 01:15:54,120
Speaker 1: are often born with a lot of instincts, that's true,

1389
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:57,000
Speaker 1: but they also learn, Like birds are very social, they learn.

1390
01:15:57,400 --> 01:16:00,000
Speaker 1: That's how bird's song has learned. They have a Chris

1391
01:16:00,000 --> 01:16:03,040
Speaker 1: stilization period as juveniles where they learned songs and they

1392
01:16:03,160 --> 01:16:06,599
Speaker 1: incorporated into their lexicon. You know, if you it, it's

1393
01:16:06,600 --> 01:16:09,120
Speaker 1: sort of be like if you if humans went extinct

1394
01:16:09,320 --> 01:16:11,240
Speaker 1: and you just dropped off a bunch of babies and

1395
01:16:11,280 --> 01:16:15,120
Speaker 1: be like, well, you got your fig um. And not

1396
01:16:15,160 --> 01:16:17,280
Speaker 1: only that, but my understanding and this could be wrong

1397
01:16:17,280 --> 01:16:19,559
Speaker 1: because again I'm not an actual expert in the genetics

1398
01:16:19,600 --> 01:16:22,880
Speaker 1: of the extinction, is that you know, all of these

1399
01:16:22,920 --> 01:16:26,760
Speaker 1: double helix, all the DNA degrade over time, so when

1400
01:16:26,760 --> 01:16:28,720
Speaker 1: we're trying to bring an animal back. Say it's the

1401
01:16:28,720 --> 01:16:31,240
Speaker 1: passenger pigeon, right, we look at our double helix and

1402
01:16:31,240 --> 01:16:34,120
Speaker 1: there's these little pieces missing from it. So in order

1403
01:16:34,160 --> 01:16:36,920
Speaker 1: to create this animal, we have to pull those little

1404
01:16:36,960 --> 01:16:39,439
Speaker 1: pieces from its closest living relative and plug it into

1405
01:16:39,479 --> 01:16:42,800
Speaker 1: that DNA sequence, right into that double helix. And then

1406
01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:45,960
Speaker 1: the offspring. Although this is the case in nature because

1407
01:16:46,000 --> 01:16:49,200
Speaker 1: nothing is ever the same, right, No two organisms are identical.

1408
01:16:49,479 --> 01:16:52,800
Speaker 1: The offspring isn't a true passenger pigeon, nor is it

1409
01:16:52,920 --> 01:16:55,720
Speaker 1: you know, it's closest living relative. It is a slightly

1410
01:16:55,840 --> 01:16:59,080
Speaker 1: warped version similar. Yeah, it's a fact similar of the

1411
01:16:59,120 --> 01:17:03,080
Speaker 1: passenger pigeon. It's very very close. It might be physically identical,

1412
01:17:03,200 --> 01:17:05,840
Speaker 1: but it's it will never be the truest form of

1413
01:17:05,880 --> 01:17:08,240
Speaker 1: what the animal wants was. And then we have sort

1414
01:17:08,280 --> 01:17:10,800
Speaker 1: of the problem of genetic bottleneck, where once we bring

1415
01:17:10,880 --> 01:17:14,160
Speaker 1: back one, what next? How do we how do we

1416
01:17:14,200 --> 01:17:18,920
Speaker 1: get a thriving population from one sort of embryo and

1417
01:17:18,960 --> 01:17:22,280
Speaker 1: then like create enough genetic diversity that it isn't just

1418
01:17:22,360 --> 01:17:24,920
Speaker 1: wiped out by a virus as soon as we get

1419
01:17:24,920 --> 01:17:27,280
Speaker 1: like ten individuals going, and we see that, you know,

1420
01:17:27,280 --> 01:17:29,679
Speaker 1: we see that genetic bottlenecking as an issue in wildlife

1421
01:17:29,680 --> 01:17:31,960
Speaker 1: sciences today, like before, trying to bring it back from

1422
01:17:32,000 --> 01:17:35,280
Speaker 1: one species that we're cloning. So um, it is a problem.

1423
01:17:35,560 --> 01:17:37,400
Speaker 1: Uh you know that being said, if we get to

1424
01:17:37,400 --> 01:17:39,799
Speaker 1: the point where the technology allows us to bring species

1425
01:17:39,840 --> 01:17:42,360
Speaker 1: back from the dead, we can probably tweak them enough

1426
01:17:42,479 --> 01:17:45,200
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of them and a lot of Yeah,

1427
01:17:45,280 --> 01:17:49,040
Speaker 1: I think, who knows it's got there's gotta be some

1428
01:17:49,120 --> 01:17:53,200
Speaker 1: way we can figure out how to overcome that those problems.

1429
01:17:53,240 --> 01:17:56,559
Speaker 1: But again it's it's not it seems like we're really close.

1430
01:17:56,640 --> 01:17:58,679
Speaker 1: But the more you think about all of the problems,

1431
01:17:58,680 --> 01:18:01,840
Speaker 1: the more you kind to realize how much technology has

1432
01:18:01,880 --> 01:18:04,200
Speaker 1: to advance for us to get there. And one of

1433
01:18:04,360 --> 01:18:07,760
Speaker 1: the reason the passenger pigeon may be important to bring

1434
01:18:07,800 --> 01:18:12,240
Speaker 1: back is that they are engineers of the environment. So

1435
01:18:12,640 --> 01:18:17,000
Speaker 1: by pooping, eating seeds and breaking branches by mass roosting,

1436
01:18:17,080 --> 01:18:21,320
Speaker 1: they actually are sort of gardeners of these these American forests.

1437
01:18:21,400 --> 01:18:25,080
Speaker 1: So um, there they kind of it's like a wildfire

1438
01:18:25,240 --> 01:18:28,160
Speaker 1: or a storm where you you know, it's it's a

1439
01:18:28,200 --> 01:18:30,720
Speaker 1: little counterintuitive maybe, but you have there has to be

1440
01:18:30,760 --> 01:18:35,320
Speaker 1: some destruction of vegetation and of force in order for

1441
01:18:35,360 --> 01:18:39,200
Speaker 1: it to keep growing. It's called the intermediate disturbance hypothesis.

1442
01:18:39,240 --> 01:18:42,040
Speaker 1: And what that means is a place that stays exactly

1443
01:18:42,120 --> 01:18:45,839
Speaker 1: static has very low diversity. Right. Take tide pools for instance.

1444
01:18:45,880 --> 01:18:47,800
Speaker 1: If you're a tide pool in an area where no

1445
01:18:47,880 --> 01:18:50,320
Speaker 1: waves ever hit it, one type of algae takes over

1446
01:18:50,320 --> 01:18:52,640
Speaker 1: the whole tide pool, one species. If you're in a

1447
01:18:52,680 --> 01:18:55,120
Speaker 1: tide pool area an inner title zone where the waves

1448
01:18:55,120 --> 01:18:58,360
Speaker 1: are pounding it all day every day, nothing can live there, right,

1449
01:18:58,360 --> 01:19:00,479
Speaker 1: it's too much disturbance. But if you're in the middle

1450
01:19:00,520 --> 01:19:03,000
Speaker 1: there where sometimes you have a great tide pool and

1451
01:19:03,120 --> 01:19:05,920
Speaker 1: sometimes it gets a little hammered by waves, but new

1452
01:19:05,960 --> 01:19:08,759
Speaker 1: species can come in and colonize it and change the environment.

1453
01:19:08,800 --> 01:19:12,320
Speaker 1: You have massive, rich diversion species diversity. And that's yeah,

1454
01:19:12,360 --> 01:19:14,800
Speaker 1: that's the intermediate disperse That's a great metaphor for how

1455
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:17,120
Speaker 1: I interact with my own anxiety, where a little bit

1456
01:19:17,200 --> 01:19:19,720
Speaker 1: is great, keeps me motivated too much and I just

1457
01:19:19,800 --> 01:19:23,920
Speaker 1: lie on my bed. Yeah. So these pigeons are basically

1458
01:19:24,320 --> 01:19:29,000
Speaker 1: you know, poopin roost in gardeners of the forest. Also,

1459
01:19:29,040 --> 01:19:32,519
Speaker 1: they're massive piles of guano, which is bird poop. Um

1460
01:19:32,560 --> 01:19:38,000
Speaker 1: as fertilizer creates these little microbiomes for decomposers. Uh, they

1461
01:19:38,080 --> 01:19:40,799
Speaker 1: provided a lot of meat for predators. They have provided

1462
01:19:40,840 --> 01:19:43,280
Speaker 1: meat for humans as well, And I mean we coexisted

1463
01:19:43,320 --> 01:19:46,439
Speaker 1: with them for twenty thou years. And before we get

1464
01:19:46,479 --> 01:19:48,120
Speaker 1: into that, I mean, I think you know you you

1465
01:19:48,160 --> 01:19:50,679
Speaker 1: said earlier, at some point during our discussion, you said,

1466
01:19:50,680 --> 01:19:53,720
Speaker 1: why care? Right, it's a cynical look, But why care? Well?

1467
01:19:53,720 --> 01:19:55,679
Speaker 1: I think this is the fundamental thing that a lot

1468
01:19:55,720 --> 01:20:00,040
Speaker 1: of people don't digest and absorb is everything has a

1469
01:20:00,080 --> 01:20:03,760
Speaker 1: place in the ecosystem. Nothing evolves for no purpose. Right,

1470
01:20:03,800 --> 01:20:08,280
Speaker 1: it doesn't come into the sphere this environment without a purpose,

1471
01:20:08,360 --> 01:20:11,240
Speaker 1: and everything is balanced within that. The passenger pigeon, as

1472
01:20:11,240 --> 01:20:13,880
Speaker 1: you're explaining, is a perfect example. But when it was here,

1473
01:20:14,200 --> 01:20:17,320
Speaker 1: things were better because it was here, because of its presence,

1474
01:20:17,360 --> 01:20:19,640
Speaker 1: because of its being a docent of the forest, so

1475
01:20:19,720 --> 01:20:22,000
Speaker 1: to speak, and it's fertilizer that it created, and it's

1476
01:20:22,040 --> 01:20:25,479
Speaker 1: breaking the branches and it's intermediate disturbance. It created a healthier,

1477
01:20:25,520 --> 01:20:28,439
Speaker 1: better ecosystem. So why should we care? Why should we care?

1478
01:20:28,479 --> 01:20:31,200
Speaker 1: If the thylo scenes gone from Tasmania, if the passenger

1479
01:20:31,200 --> 01:20:33,320
Speaker 1: pigeons gone from North America, and the list goes on,

1480
01:20:33,640 --> 01:20:36,519
Speaker 1: because these creatures are meant to be here for the

1481
01:20:36,520 --> 01:20:40,000
Speaker 1: health of our environment, and that that goes, you know,

1482
01:20:40,160 --> 01:20:42,920
Speaker 1: it goes much further than we even understand. There's a

1483
01:20:42,960 --> 01:20:45,760
Speaker 1: reason the gastric brooding frog was here, you know, more

1484
01:20:45,800 --> 01:20:49,479
Speaker 1: so than us discovering it's it's possible cure for stomach cancer.

1485
01:20:50,000 --> 01:20:52,760
Speaker 1: It may have played an incredibly vital role in its

1486
01:20:52,760 --> 01:20:56,080
Speaker 1: ecosystem that we don't even know about yet that could

1487
01:20:56,160 --> 01:20:59,120
Speaker 1: be leading or at least contributing to collapse. I mean,

1488
01:20:59,160 --> 01:21:01,479
Speaker 1: one of the sad things as there's there are animals

1489
01:21:01,520 --> 01:21:05,360
Speaker 1: who will probably go extinct that we don't even know existed,

1490
01:21:05,760 --> 01:21:09,320
Speaker 1: who go extinct that we have no idea what they were,

1491
01:21:09,360 --> 01:21:11,320
Speaker 1: what they did, and then we may there may be

1492
01:21:11,400 --> 01:21:13,840
Speaker 1: some ramification that we're like, why is this happening, and

1493
01:21:13,840 --> 01:21:20,120
Speaker 1: we'll have no idea it's too late. Yeah. Uh. And well,

1494
01:21:20,160 --> 01:21:23,559
Speaker 1: one of the direct things that may possibly have resulted

1495
01:21:23,560 --> 01:21:27,519
Speaker 1: from the passenger pigeon going extinct is the prevalence of

1496
01:21:27,600 --> 01:21:31,240
Speaker 1: lime disease because they I mean, this is a counterintuitive

1497
01:21:31,240 --> 01:21:35,280
Speaker 1: thing again, because their existence um decreased the white footed

1498
01:21:35,320 --> 01:21:38,400
Speaker 1: mouse's population, not because they were predators, but because they

1499
01:21:38,439 --> 01:21:42,519
Speaker 1: were competitors, they kept the white footed mouse population in check.

1500
01:21:42,960 --> 01:21:45,960
Speaker 1: And so after the passenger pigeons when extinct, the white

1501
01:21:45,960 --> 01:21:49,800
Speaker 1: footed mouse population kind of exploded, and then they are

1502
01:21:50,080 --> 01:21:54,840
Speaker 1: carriers of lime riddled ticks. And now lime disease is

1503
01:21:54,840 --> 01:21:58,280
Speaker 1: a much, yes, much more prevalent, much bigger problem in lyme.

1504
01:21:58,320 --> 01:22:01,759
Speaker 1: Disease is awful for he is awful for animals as well.

1505
01:22:01,800 --> 01:22:05,920
Speaker 1: But that's a I mean, and that's just the extremely direct,

1506
01:22:06,080 --> 01:22:10,479
Speaker 1: easily identifiable problem that happens, and there are so many

1507
01:22:10,520 --> 01:22:13,599
Speaker 1: other It's like a Jenga tower made out of animals

1508
01:22:13,600 --> 01:22:15,360
Speaker 1: where you take one block out and like it looks

1509
01:22:15,400 --> 01:22:17,800
Speaker 1: like the tower is fine. You're like, it's fine, I mean,

1510
01:22:17,840 --> 01:22:19,960
Speaker 1: it's still standing. But the more you take out and

1511
01:22:19,960 --> 01:22:22,240
Speaker 1: then suddenly it's just like this class That is a

1512
01:22:22,280 --> 01:22:24,719
Speaker 1: wonderful analogy. I'm going to steal that. I've never thought

1513
01:22:24,720 --> 01:22:27,120
Speaker 1: of it as a Jenga tower. That's so clever, and

1514
01:22:27,160 --> 01:22:29,240
Speaker 1: I've tried to explain this to so many people how

1515
01:22:29,280 --> 01:22:32,479
Speaker 1: important each pieces, and the Jenga tower is the perfect analogy.

1516
01:22:32,520 --> 01:22:35,479
Speaker 1: It's a It's great because from my childhood of never

1517
01:22:35,520 --> 01:22:40,080
Speaker 1: winning Jenga is has inspired me to be educate people

1518
01:22:40,240 --> 01:22:44,080
Speaker 1: via the metaphor of Jenga. That's great. So I want

1519
01:22:44,120 --> 01:22:47,240
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about some of the animals

1520
01:22:47,280 --> 01:22:51,360
Speaker 1: that you're trying to rediscover. One of them is okay,

1521
01:22:51,439 --> 01:22:53,880
Speaker 1: So a lot of these I don't actually know that

1522
01:22:53,960 --> 01:22:56,759
Speaker 1: much about some something you can tell me. The dwarf

1523
01:22:56,840 --> 01:23:00,799
Speaker 1: hippo is the one. I mean, I've seen chures of them.

1524
01:23:00,840 --> 01:23:03,479
Speaker 1: They're cute. So you've seen pictures of the pigmy hipp

1525
01:23:03,520 --> 01:23:08,920
Speaker 1: the pigmy hippo, hippo, different species, right, where is this

1526
01:23:08,920 --> 01:23:12,400
Speaker 1: this little hippo found? So the pigmy hippo is a

1527
01:23:12,479 --> 01:23:15,759
Speaker 1: very tiny species of hippo that's kind of hybrid between

1528
01:23:15,760 --> 01:23:18,040
Speaker 1: a pig and a hippo that occurred in Central Africa.

1529
01:23:18,640 --> 01:23:20,800
Speaker 1: The I say pig and a hippo because of the

1530
01:23:20,840 --> 01:23:23,160
Speaker 1: size and behavior still looked like a hippo. And you said,

1531
01:23:23,200 --> 01:23:25,439
Speaker 1: as you said, you've seen pictures. It's not an actual

1532
01:23:25,760 --> 01:23:28,880
Speaker 1: like it's not an actual cross breeding with no. No, no, no, no, yeah, sorry,

1533
01:23:28,960 --> 01:23:31,000
Speaker 1: let me be clear. No, no, it behaves a bit

1534
01:23:31,000 --> 01:23:33,000
Speaker 1: more the way that a pig would, but it's just

1535
01:23:33,040 --> 01:23:35,920
Speaker 1: a tiny hippo. Now, the Southern African hippo, the hippo

1536
01:23:35,960 --> 01:23:38,439
Speaker 1: that we all know and think of as hungry hungry hippos.

1537
01:23:39,080 --> 01:23:42,000
Speaker 1: They had an offshoot of their species, the same way

1538
01:23:42,080 --> 01:23:44,640
Speaker 1: many many animals had offshoots of their species on the

1539
01:23:44,720 --> 01:23:48,160
Speaker 1: island of Madagascar. And this was the pig, sorry, the

1540
01:23:48,240 --> 01:23:52,280
Speaker 1: dwarf hippo. And that was literally a dwarfed African hippo.

1541
01:23:52,360 --> 01:23:54,479
Speaker 1: So imagine your African hippo, the one that we all

1542
01:23:54,520 --> 01:23:58,080
Speaker 1: know that just got shrunken down through insular dwarfism. Now,

1543
01:23:58,120 --> 01:24:00,840
Speaker 1: insular dwarf is um is a ace where animals get

1544
01:24:00,840 --> 01:24:02,920
Speaker 1: stuck on an island. There's not enough resources for them

1545
01:24:02,960 --> 01:24:05,120
Speaker 1: to be the size that they've historically been, so over

1546
01:24:05,160 --> 01:24:09,599
Speaker 1: generations of you know, restricted diets and small habitats, they've

1547
01:24:09,600 --> 01:24:11,639
Speaker 1: got smaller and smaller and smaller. The opposite of deep

1548
01:24:11,680 --> 01:24:15,360
Speaker 1: sea gigantism, exactly, that's exactly right. It is the opposite

1549
01:24:15,400 --> 01:24:19,000
Speaker 1: of deep sea gigantism insular dwarfism. There's also insular gigantism,

1550
01:24:19,040 --> 01:24:22,479
Speaker 1: but we won't talk about that right um anyway. So yeah,

1551
01:24:22,520 --> 01:24:25,599
Speaker 1: So on the island of Madagascar, the theory is that,

1552
01:24:25,840 --> 01:24:28,519
Speaker 1: you know, many many years ago, when sea levels were lower,

1553
01:24:29,200 --> 01:24:31,479
Speaker 1: a couple of hippos made the long swim across the

1554
01:24:31,520 --> 01:24:36,040
Speaker 1: channel from Mozambique to Madagascar, got stuck there. Um started reproducing.

1555
01:24:36,120 --> 01:24:38,000
Speaker 1: Found out, Hey, this isn't a really great place to

1556
01:24:38,000 --> 01:24:40,120
Speaker 1: be a hippo, and I'm pretty hungry. So I'm getting

1557
01:24:40,120 --> 01:24:42,639
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller and getting more and more terrestrial, staying

1558
01:24:42,640 --> 01:24:44,960
Speaker 1: out of the water, especially because the western coast of

1559
01:24:44,960 --> 01:24:47,840
Speaker 1: Madagascar where they first populated, was very dry. There wasn't

1560
01:24:47,840 --> 01:24:50,040
Speaker 1: a lot of rivers and streams. Anyway, this is a

1561
01:24:50,040 --> 01:24:52,560
Speaker 1: long winded way of explaining how they got to Madagascar.

1562
01:24:52,960 --> 01:24:55,080
Speaker 1: I got to Madagascar and a big shiny metal bird

1563
01:24:55,120 --> 01:24:58,720
Speaker 1: called airplane to go and search for them. And uh,

1564
01:24:58,960 --> 01:25:00,759
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna say whether we were successful

1565
01:25:00,840 --> 01:25:02,960
Speaker 1: or not or not. Gonna have to watch the show.

1566
01:25:03,040 --> 01:25:05,920
Speaker 1: You guys, You're gonna have to watch. It's a it's

1567
01:25:05,920 --> 01:25:10,280
Speaker 1: a very difficult expedition in a very remote, very harsh region. Um.

1568
01:25:10,320 --> 01:25:13,519
Speaker 1: We have some close calls, and we do uncover some

1569
01:25:13,600 --> 01:25:16,639
Speaker 1: very interesting science. Yes, I mean this. I'm I'm very

1570
01:25:16,640 --> 01:25:19,280
Speaker 1: excited about your new season because there are so many

1571
01:25:19,400 --> 01:25:22,320
Speaker 1: really interesting animals that you guys are looking at. Um.

1572
01:25:22,360 --> 01:25:25,599
Speaker 1: Of course, I know the outcome of the Fernandina tortoise

1573
01:25:25,600 --> 01:25:28,400
Speaker 1: and the Dracula monkey. But there's so many you're looking

1574
01:25:28,439 --> 01:25:34,599
Speaker 1: for cape lions, the Caribbean monk, seal, the ivory build woodpecker. Uh.

1575
01:25:34,680 --> 01:25:38,439
Speaker 1: So there's and species I've never heard of, like the

1576
01:25:38,560 --> 01:25:42,640
Speaker 1: southern rocky mountain wolf. Uh, the selo, which is some

1577
01:25:43,160 --> 01:25:45,880
Speaker 1: we love cute deer on this show cut deer like

1578
01:25:46,000 --> 01:25:48,360
Speaker 1: or or any kind of cute tiny ungulate. We we

1579
01:25:48,439 --> 01:25:50,639
Speaker 1: have a running thing where it's like we like dick

1580
01:25:50,680 --> 01:25:54,840
Speaker 1: Dick pick picks here. Um, So I really I'm I'm

1581
01:25:54,840 --> 01:25:58,120
Speaker 1: wishing the best of luck to you to find Yeah,

1582
01:25:58,600 --> 01:26:01,519
Speaker 1: thank you. And I'm just I'm just curious because of

1583
01:26:01,560 --> 01:26:04,559
Speaker 1: what you've been through with getting stung by bees and

1584
01:26:05,040 --> 01:26:07,920
Speaker 1: climbing up trees in a gilly suit for hours. Uh,

1585
01:26:08,840 --> 01:26:11,840
Speaker 1: what's like the most danger you've been in during your

1586
01:26:11,960 --> 01:26:17,680
Speaker 1: explorations of the world, Like my goodness, heat stroke when

1587
01:26:17,680 --> 01:26:20,840
Speaker 1: you're on Glass Island. No, I mean that sucks, but

1588
01:26:20,880 --> 01:26:22,680
Speaker 1: I never thought we were going to die. You know

1589
01:26:22,760 --> 01:26:24,720
Speaker 1: the scar right here that's from a shark by the

1590
01:26:24,760 --> 01:26:27,320
Speaker 1: show this year. Um, you know. But the thing that

1591
01:26:27,360 --> 01:26:30,479
Speaker 1: I tell people, and keep in mind, I've been in

1592
01:26:30,520 --> 01:26:32,920
Speaker 1: two plane crashes, I've been bitten by a shark, stung

1593
01:26:32,960 --> 01:26:36,400
Speaker 1: by man of war, jellyfish, stung by a stingray. Uh.

1594
01:26:36,439 --> 01:26:38,320
Speaker 1: You know, the list goes on, and on Mobbi line,

1595
01:26:38,320 --> 01:26:40,040
Speaker 1: the list goes on. I've had a lot of these

1596
01:26:40,120 --> 01:26:42,800
Speaker 1: run ins. But the thing that I try and tell

1597
01:26:42,840 --> 01:26:45,639
Speaker 1: people is the wildlife fest of all is never to blame.

1598
01:26:45,800 --> 01:26:49,000
Speaker 1: But secondly, is not the dangerous thing. The dangerous element

1599
01:26:49,080 --> 01:26:50,680
Speaker 1: is the people in some of these places. And a

1600
01:26:50,720 --> 01:26:54,760
Speaker 1: perfect example of that is Uh. In April of this year,

1601
01:26:55,040 --> 01:26:58,439
Speaker 1: we charted a to World War two d C three

1602
01:26:58,640 --> 01:27:02,280
Speaker 1: cargo plane to lie into a private cocaine dealer's airstrip

1603
01:27:02,320 --> 01:27:05,400
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Colombian Amazon, interesting to hide

1604
01:27:05,479 --> 01:27:08,120
Speaker 1: from the FARC rebels who are fighting the Colombian government,

1605
01:27:08,280 --> 01:27:11,880
Speaker 1: to search for an extinct crocodilian. So you know, am

1606
01:27:11,880 --> 01:27:14,960
Speaker 1: I worried about the anacondas we encountered, or the Cayman

1607
01:27:15,040 --> 01:27:17,679
Speaker 1: species that we were targeting that that have not taurus

1608
01:27:18,040 --> 01:27:20,479
Speaker 1: or have historically, and people not even a little bit.

1609
01:27:20,800 --> 01:27:23,000
Speaker 1: My mind was on the FARC rebels that grow and

1610
01:27:23,200 --> 01:27:26,000
Speaker 1: and smuggle cocaine out of the jungle, and how they

1611
01:27:26,040 --> 01:27:29,040
Speaker 1: have made a lot of their money on kidnapping and

1612
01:27:29,080 --> 01:27:31,559
Speaker 1: the last expedition of Westerners to go into their thirty

1613
01:27:31,640 --> 01:27:34,439
Speaker 1: years ago all got kidnapped. So to me, the dangers

1614
01:27:34,479 --> 01:27:36,519
Speaker 1: come from the human element, not from the wild element.

1615
01:27:36,600 --> 01:27:39,479
Speaker 1: In a way, animals I think are a little more

1616
01:27:38,920 --> 01:27:43,720
Speaker 1: predictable than humans. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad, glad, you're

1617
01:27:43,760 --> 01:27:48,280
Speaker 1: all right. I think that people think about animals as

1618
01:27:48,360 --> 01:27:52,400
Speaker 1: being scary, like a shark being terrifying. But I mean

1619
01:27:53,120 --> 01:27:56,519
Speaker 1: I that Scar, it's it's pretty cool, Scar, But you're fine.

1620
01:27:56,560 --> 01:27:59,640
Speaker 1: But you're fine. And I think that it's you know,

1621
01:27:59,760 --> 01:28:03,000
Speaker 1: we're not only more of a threat to each other,

1622
01:28:03,120 --> 01:28:05,320
Speaker 1: we're much more of a threat to the animals than

1623
01:28:05,360 --> 01:28:09,040
Speaker 1: they ever are to us, million times over. So what's uh,

1624
01:28:09,280 --> 01:28:12,439
Speaker 1: Just as we conclude here, what's an animal that you

1625
01:28:12,479 --> 01:28:14,840
Speaker 1: wish more people knew about that you want to tell

1626
01:28:14,840 --> 01:28:18,640
Speaker 1: my listeners about. Well, you mentioned the sala. This is

1627
01:28:18,680 --> 01:28:21,639
Speaker 1: a fascinating species, so let's do it. Because they love

1628
01:28:21,680 --> 01:28:24,120
Speaker 1: they love cute deer, We love cute deer. Let's get

1629
01:28:24,120 --> 01:28:27,679
Speaker 1: a mental pick pick of this non dick dick um. So, okay,

1630
01:28:27,720 --> 01:28:31,240
Speaker 1: the sala is a fascinating animal. It's the most recently

1631
01:28:31,280 --> 01:28:36,840
Speaker 1: discovered large animal. It was only discovered in double check that.

1632
01:28:37,240 --> 01:28:40,680
Speaker 1: But it is known as the Asian unicorn. And the

1633
01:28:40,760 --> 01:28:43,120
Speaker 1: reason it's no the Asian unicorn is it has such

1634
01:28:43,120 --> 01:28:47,880
Speaker 1: a striking symmetrical profile. Then when looking at it sideways,

1635
01:28:48,280 --> 01:28:51,360
Speaker 1: the horns visually merge into one to look like it

1636
01:28:51,400 --> 01:28:54,160
Speaker 1: has a single horn like a unicorn. This is an

1637
01:28:54,200 --> 01:28:57,080
Speaker 1: incredible animal. It's abovid, meaning a family member of the

1638
01:28:57,160 --> 01:29:01,040
Speaker 1: cattle family, only, like I said, recently discovered in in

1639
01:29:01,320 --> 01:29:04,480
Speaker 1: Laos and Vietnam in the Ammonite mountains, which is incredibly

1640
01:29:04,560 --> 01:29:06,800
Speaker 1: rich biodiverse. Ere a huge animal, you know, talking about

1641
01:29:06,840 --> 01:29:10,600
Speaker 1: a hundred plus pound creature, and it's got a fascinating

1642
01:29:10,640 --> 01:29:13,640
Speaker 1: story about the only one that was ever captured. It

1643
01:29:13,680 --> 01:29:16,200
Speaker 1: was captured alive for a Leo is crazy wealthy la

1644
01:29:16,320 --> 01:29:18,880
Speaker 1: Ocean king who was a collector of wild animals, and

1645
01:29:18,880 --> 01:29:20,960
Speaker 1: when it died they ate it. They didn't even preserve

1646
01:29:21,040 --> 01:29:25,439
Speaker 1: the specimen. I mean, just the story is it's mind blowing.

1647
01:29:25,520 --> 01:29:28,480
Speaker 1: Where it lives is insane. And I think more importantly,

1648
01:29:29,160 --> 01:29:32,559
Speaker 1: aside from it being an incredibly beautiful, unique creature, it's

1649
01:29:32,560 --> 01:29:35,000
Speaker 1: its own genus, meaning it doesn't even really have any

1650
01:29:35,080 --> 01:29:38,400
Speaker 1: close relatives except for the cattle. The bovid family, has

1651
01:29:38,439 --> 01:29:40,719
Speaker 1: sink glands on its face that it rubs on the trees.

1652
01:29:40,760 --> 01:29:44,400
Speaker 1: I mean, just such a unique creature. But it it

1653
01:29:44,479 --> 01:29:48,360
Speaker 1: lives in an area that is desperate for conservation and

1654
01:29:48,439 --> 01:29:50,880
Speaker 1: the ala Osian Mountains on the border of Vietnam, where

1655
01:29:50,920 --> 01:29:53,400
Speaker 1: everything's on the menu for human beings, and it's been

1656
01:29:53,439 --> 01:29:56,160
Speaker 1: war torn for a number of years, and it's it's

1657
01:29:56,160 --> 01:29:58,120
Speaker 1: just not only is it a beautiful animal, not only

1658
01:29:58,160 --> 01:30:01,559
Speaker 1: is it recently discovered it could be extinct. I don't

1659
01:30:01,560 --> 01:30:04,400
Speaker 1: believe that it is, but it's an animal that lives

1660
01:30:04,400 --> 01:30:07,479
Speaker 1: in an area that needs attention and exposure. Yeah, it's

1661
01:30:07,680 --> 01:30:12,120
Speaker 1: it's a really beautiful animal. It looks I only speak

1662
01:30:12,160 --> 01:30:14,599
Speaker 1: in terms of the vocabulary of animals that I know,

1663
01:30:14,720 --> 01:30:17,720
Speaker 1: so it looks like a mix between like an ibex

1664
01:30:18,160 --> 01:30:22,080
Speaker 1: uh cow and a deer that's pretty accurate with with

1665
01:30:22,160 --> 01:30:25,479
Speaker 1: painted markings that don't resemble anything, with white spots on

1666
01:30:25,520 --> 01:30:28,479
Speaker 1: its face, which are curious. I wonder what those are for.

1667
01:30:28,640 --> 01:30:31,720
Speaker 1: I'm sure we don't exactly not do um. But yeah,

1668
01:30:31,720 --> 01:30:36,479
Speaker 1: and then they're beautiful kind of mahogany color. They're gorgeous. Um. Yeah,

1669
01:30:36,520 --> 01:30:38,920
Speaker 1: please please do look up pictures of these. It's the

1670
01:30:39,120 --> 01:30:43,680
Speaker 1: soula salula sala um and they are They're gorgeous, so

1671
01:30:43,760 --> 01:30:46,639
Speaker 1: that's another They're not a deer, but they are an ungulate.

1672
01:30:47,000 --> 01:30:49,639
Speaker 1: They are a cute ungulate to uh, to include into

1673
01:30:49,680 --> 01:30:57,120
Speaker 1: our library of cute ungulates that we love on this show. Well,

1674
01:30:57,160 --> 01:30:59,400
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. This has

1675
01:30:59,439 --> 01:31:04,040
Speaker 1: been in ubibly illuminating. I am just so I love

1676
01:31:04,080 --> 01:31:07,040
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Uh, and guys, please do

1677
01:31:07,200 --> 01:31:09,519
Speaker 1: check out the show. It's called Extinct or Alive? Right,

1678
01:31:09,560 --> 01:31:11,920
Speaker 1: and where where can they catch that? Extinct or Alive?

1679
01:31:12,080 --> 01:31:15,599
Speaker 1: Currently airing on Wednesdays on Animal Planet at nine pm,

1680
01:31:15,680 --> 01:31:18,920
Speaker 1: Super family friendly. You know, there's nothing bad in it.

1681
01:31:18,920 --> 01:31:21,920
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's very adventure driven. It follows me on

1682
01:31:22,040 --> 01:31:24,879
Speaker 1: these journeys as I get stung by bees, bitten by sharks,

1683
01:31:24,880 --> 01:31:27,840
Speaker 1: flying in World War two planes to look for these

1684
01:31:27,880 --> 01:31:31,200
Speaker 1: animals that I believe have been wrongfully deemed extinct. Yeah,

1685
01:31:31,200 --> 01:31:34,599
Speaker 1: that's that's fascinating and it is really it's it's really

1686
01:31:34,640 --> 01:31:37,599
Speaker 1: intense because I love watching you as you're like going

1687
01:31:37,640 --> 01:31:40,559
Speaker 1: through all of your forest cams looking for and you're

1688
01:31:40,600 --> 01:31:42,720
Speaker 1: just on the edge of your seat hoping that that

1689
01:31:42,840 --> 01:31:45,519
Speaker 1: you get that get that siding can people find you

1690
01:31:45,560 --> 01:31:48,280
Speaker 1: online or yeah, yeah, I have you know, all the

1691
01:31:48,320 --> 01:31:51,360
Speaker 1: regular social channels. My name Forest Galante its force with

1692
01:31:51,400 --> 01:31:53,640
Speaker 1: two rs g A l A N t E. I

1693
01:31:53,680 --> 01:31:57,280
Speaker 1: have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and and I you know, I

1694
01:31:57,320 --> 01:32:00,000
Speaker 1: see everybody's messages. I really do. I look at every

1695
01:32:00,120 --> 01:32:03,679
Speaker 1: things people are sending me instances of rare animal sighting.

1696
01:32:03,760 --> 01:32:06,000
Speaker 1: So by all means, please follow me, hang out. I'd

1697
01:32:06,000 --> 01:32:08,000
Speaker 1: love to chat with you about wildlife. Yeah, if you

1698
01:32:08,080 --> 01:32:13,280
Speaker 1: if you see something, say something especially to Forest here. Um. Yeah,

1699
01:32:13,320 --> 01:32:16,880
Speaker 1: you can find us as always on the internet, uh

1700
01:32:17,320 --> 01:32:20,839
Speaker 1: www dot Now I'm not going to do Creature feature

1701
01:32:20,920 --> 01:32:24,120
Speaker 1: pod dot com, Creature feature Pod on Instagram where you

1702
01:32:24,120 --> 01:32:28,200
Speaker 1: can mostly see pictures of my dog, Creature feet pod

1703
01:32:28,320 --> 01:32:30,400
Speaker 1: on Twitter, that's f e A T f e E

1704
01:32:30,479 --> 01:32:33,439
Speaker 1: T is something very different. You can find me at

1705
01:32:33,560 --> 01:32:36,280
Speaker 1: Katie Golden on Twitter, and I am also at pro

1706
01:32:36,400 --> 01:32:39,320
Speaker 1: bird Rites, where I advanced the cause of birds throughout

1707
01:32:39,479 --> 01:32:44,320
Speaker 1: the Greater United States. Uh and mostly advocate poor Avian

1708
01:32:44,640 --> 01:32:47,960
Speaker 1: complete control of the world. But anyways, yeah, yeah, it's

1709
01:32:48,200 --> 01:32:52,000
Speaker 1: a it's a good good activism. Burn Overlord, burn over

1710
01:32:52,040 --> 01:32:56,000
Speaker 1: all arts. I mean, I for one, welcome them. Thanks

1711
01:32:56,040 --> 01:32:59,160
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics. For their totally tubular tune. X

1712
01:32:59,200 --> 01:33:02,519
Speaker 1: Alumina Creature features a production of I heart Radio's How

1713
01:33:02,560 --> 01:33:05,920
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit

1714
01:33:05,960 --> 01:33:08,640
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1715
01:33:08,760 --> 01:33:12,240
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday, m