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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I've got a I've got a quiz question for you.

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Speaker 1: All right, quiz what do you think is the animal

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Speaker 1: out there in the world that humans are the most like?

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Speaker 1: M hmm, Well, I mean we're we're so unlike all

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Speaker 1: the creatures, but I mean one obviously turns to the

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Speaker 1: primates for our closest evolutionary relatives. Yeah, I would say physiologically,

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Speaker 1: if you look at comparative anatomy, and of course genetically,

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Speaker 1: we are the most similar to primates like chimpanzees and binobo's,

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Speaker 1: and they actually are known to be our closest relatives

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Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom. But I think if you look

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Speaker 1: at humankind in a different light, if you don't just

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Speaker 1: look at the individual body plans and compare one individual

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Speaker 1: to another individual, but if you compare the entire species

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Speaker 1: ecological and trophic profile as a whole population, you can

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Speaker 1: make a very different case. We're the most like ants,

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Speaker 1: and we became more like ants starting around ten thousand

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Speaker 1: and maybe thirteen thousand years ago. Before this time, I

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Speaker 1: would say, there's really no way to compare us to

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Speaker 1: ants at all. We just weren't very antlike, except maybe

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Speaker 1: that you could say we were a social species. But

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe ten thousand to thirteen thousand years ago

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Speaker 1: humans first started practicing plant and animal agriculture, and over

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Speaker 1: the years more people began to transition from a nomadic

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Speaker 1: hunting and gathering way of life to a settled agricultural

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Speaker 1: way of life. And of course the introduction of farming,

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Speaker 1: we know the story. It changed everything. It allowed for

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Speaker 1: surpluses of food resources, specialization of skills, education, writing, construction, invention,

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Speaker 1: and so on. And because all of these processes were

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Speaker 1: made possible by keeping people and resources close together with

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Speaker 1: continuous interconnected access to one another, this meant the birth

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Speaker 1: of cities. And I would say ever since then, the

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Speaker 1: construct of the city, the idea of the city as

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Speaker 1: a technological thing and as a social organizing principle, has

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Speaker 1: been one of the biggest influences that has changed the

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Speaker 1: way human beings relate to the earth. Now, we're all

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Speaker 1: pretty familiar with this story of of urbanization from a

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Speaker 1: human point of view, but from a biological or ecological

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Speaker 1: point of view, It is an extremely strange and interesting

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Speaker 1: thing for us to do. And it's also extremely similar

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Speaker 1: to what ants do when they form colonies and build

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Speaker 1: ant hills. It is yeah, when you when you start

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Speaker 1: thinking about it, this this artificial habitat that they can

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Speaker 1: they construct to live in and in, you know, in

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Speaker 1: in in in some cases, grow their food in, cultivate

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Speaker 1: their own crops. Yeah, almost all creatures on Earth adapt

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Speaker 1: to their environment. The environment is one way, and the

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Speaker 1: animal over time evolves to be a best fit to

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Speaker 1: the environment around them. But humans and ants and some

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Speaker 1: other creatures you could argue, like bees and some other

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Speaker 1: use social insects, termites to some extent, don't adapt to

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Speaker 1: their ecosystem as much as they build an ecosystem for themselves.

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Speaker 1: They engineer their own environments in their own ecosystems, and

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Speaker 1: of course, in both cases ant hills and human cities,

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Speaker 1: these ecosystems are not hermetically sealed off from the rest

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Speaker 1: of the world. They're poorous and connected to the rest

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Speaker 1: of the world. And what this means for ants, of course,

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Speaker 1: is that they have entire classes of organisms that have

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Speaker 1: specifically evolved to thrive within the ecosystems created by the ants,

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Speaker 1: the same way that a fox or wolf, spider or

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Speaker 1: any other creature would thrive within its natural environment. There

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Speaker 1: are organisms that that have evolved to thrive within the

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Speaker 1: ant engineered environments, and these organisms are called myrmica files. Yeah. There.

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Speaker 1: Then there are a number of different species that the

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Speaker 1: one could spend time with. Here, Uh, a couple that

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Speaker 1: that came up from me though, Uh, there's one. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is an example of research before the p Favieri deetle.

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Speaker 1: So it uses a complex dance of both chemical and

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Speaker 1: auditory mimicry to convince the ant population that it's one

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Speaker 1: of them, even as it crawls in into their abode

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Speaker 1: and feeds on their larva and benefits from the colony's protection.

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Speaker 1: But as Carl Zimmer highlights in his New York Times

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Speaker 1: piece on a study concerning these beetles, the deceptive beetle

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Speaker 1: may even mimic the queen from time to time in

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Speaker 1: order to receive royal treatment, but it otherwise knows to

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Speaker 1: leave the queen unharmed. It doesn't seek to decimate its

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Speaker 1: host colony, but rather to thrive within it through perfect mimicry.

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Speaker 1: Uh and uh. I explored this, by the way, originally

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Speaker 1: because I was interested the Monster from John Carpenter's The Thing,

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Speaker 1: because one of the ideas that is explored in the film,

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Speaker 1: and I think also in like a comic book sequel,

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Speaker 1: is that if this thing gets gets out, if it

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Speaker 1: escapes from this frigid base, it's going to just decimate

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Speaker 1: the world in no time. Right, it will mimic all

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Speaker 1: life forms and just take over the entire planet. Right.

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Speaker 1: But would it necessarily do that? Right? I mean, I mean,

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Speaker 1: you can certainly make a case that it's an alien contamination,

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Speaker 1: So who knows what it would do to to to

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Speaker 1: what is to it an alien ecosystem. But I think

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Speaker 1: if we look to examples like this from our natural world,

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Speaker 1: we can we can see that, well, maybe it wouldn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily overrun the planet because it needs to live at

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Speaker 1: harmony within the host ecosystem. Yeah, it needs an ecosystem

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Speaker 1: to survive off off of. It can't become the whole

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Speaker 1: ecosystem itself. Yeah, So it's they're going to be essentially

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Speaker 1: self imposed limits on what it will take over and destroy. Now,

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Speaker 1: that's far from the only example of mermai else that

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Speaker 1: have evolved specifically to survive and thrive within the environments

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Speaker 1: created and maintained by ants. There are thousands more, right,

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Speaker 1: One that I ran across that was interesting is the

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Speaker 1: oak blue butterfly. So these don't reside really within the

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Speaker 1: colony so much, but the butterfly larvae may chemically mimic

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Speaker 1: or camouflage themselves and be accepted by the what are

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Speaker 1: sometimes called the plant ants on their host plant, the

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Speaker 1: ant plant, or macaranga as it's called. So essentially what's

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Speaker 1: happening here is the chromato gaster ants. They nest in

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Speaker 1: the plants hollow stems and then attack anything that climbs

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Speaker 1: or lights upon their domain, except for the oak blue larvae.

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Speaker 1: And this is presumably because it has an evolved a

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Speaker 1: defense that tricks the ants into thinking it's okay for

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Speaker 1: it to be there. Yeah, so there's protection within the

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Speaker 1: ants domain, even if ultimately there's no more dangerous place

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Speaker 1: to be than within an antstone. Right, there's protection if

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Speaker 1: you have some kind of evolved defense to sneak through

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Speaker 1: the city walls and say, okay, I'm part of this colony.

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Speaker 1: Now nobody noticed that I'm not an Aunt. Yes, hello,

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Speaker 1: fellow ants. Now, Aunts have been engineering their own ecosystems

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Speaker 1: for millions of years, right, so there has been a

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Speaker 1: lot of time for these mermica files and these creatures

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Speaker 1: that infest ant colonies and other AUNT controlled environments to

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Speaker 1: very tightly hone their their evolved traits, right that, There's

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Speaker 1: been a lot of time for them to do this. Humans,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, have only been engineering their own

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Speaker 1: environments for much much less time, just thousands of years.

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Speaker 1: But nevertheless, our human ant hills seem to be in

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Speaker 1: the early stages of developing Mermica files of our own,

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Speaker 1: except they wouldn't be Mermica files, they would be creatures

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Speaker 1: of the city. As we continue to engineer environments around

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Speaker 1: the concept of the city, more and more forms of wildlife,

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Speaker 1: we're beginning to show marked adaptations and eventually heritable evolved

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Speaker 1: traits for specifically surviving in human urban landscapes. This is

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Speaker 1: urban evolution, and this is gonna be our topic for today.

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Speaker 1: This is actually going to be the first part of

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Speaker 1: a multipart episode that we will continue to explore just

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Speaker 1: because there's so much interesting stuff to talk about, but

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Speaker 1: it's going to be focused on wild organisms evolving to

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Speaker 1: survive and even thrive within the ecosystems that humans have

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Speaker 1: engineered for themselves. And we should go ahead and mention

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Speaker 1: that we've been wanting to do this episode for a while,

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Speaker 1: but recently a book came out on this topic and

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Speaker 1: this became one of our major sources for this episode.

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Speaker 1: It's a book but the Dutch evolutionary biologist Minnow Skill Tausend,

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Speaker 1: who is a researcher at the Naturalist Biodiversity Center, which

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Speaker 1: is a museum in Leiden, Netherlands, and the book is

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Speaker 1: called Darwin Comes to Town. It was just published by

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Speaker 1: Pikador just recently. Yeah, I'll include a link to this

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Speaker 1: book on the landing page for this episode of Stuff

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Speaker 1: to your Mind dot Com. I want to note that

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Speaker 1: the cover illustration is fabulous because you have this this

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Speaker 1: drawing of various animals scaling a zigaratte that it's formed

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Speaker 1: of all these buildings and skyscrapers. Yeah, it's it really

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Speaker 1: captures the spirit of the book. I appreciate a good

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Speaker 1: cover illustration because so many books have bad cover art. Now, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it seems to be a dying art form. Here's my

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Speaker 1: cry out there. If you're a publisher of science fiction

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Speaker 1: or fantasy or something like that. Stop going with the

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Speaker 1: stop going with the stock art. Get those original illustrated

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Speaker 1: covers back. Those were great. Yes, And I do not

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Speaker 1: want to see another minimalist like mock up of a

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Speaker 1: movie poster or a book cover. I'm done with that.

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Speaker 1: I want I want to a full visual experience. No.

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Speaker 1: Back to the subject. Okay, So Skill Tolls and actually

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Speaker 1: himself makes this comparison between human cities and ant colonies,

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Speaker 1: and the subsequent comparison between mermenicaphiles and the organisms that

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Speaker 1: have come to thrive in our cities. And I think

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Speaker 1: it's a really good comparison, except one difference is that

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Speaker 1: our cities are actually and much more vast and varied

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Speaker 1: landscapes than the complex environments that ants create. Right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean you look at something like say New York City,

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Speaker 1: right You have the sort of concrete jungle regions of

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Speaker 1: the city. You have an artificial um wilderness in its center.

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Speaker 1: You have essentially mountains made out of steel and glass

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Speaker 1: that alter the flow of air, that alter the weather itself.

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Speaker 1: You just have so many different elements going on to

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Speaker 1: warp the natural world into a new form. I tried

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Speaker 1: to make a short list of just some of the

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Speaker 1: ways that cities are fundamental departures from what the natural

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Speaker 1: landscapes around them are like. And I know I didn't

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Speaker 1: capture everything here, but here just the things that occurred

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Speaker 1: to me in our research. One of them is habitation surfaces. Right,

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Speaker 1: not many complex organisms can live on flat concrete without

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Speaker 1: soil or vegetation. That that's not an environment that occur

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Speaker 1: is all that much on Earth. And when environments kind

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Speaker 1: of like that do occur, there aren't a whole lot

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Speaker 1: of organisms that inhabit them. So much of the plant

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Speaker 1: and animal life in cities is isolated to or based

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Speaker 1: in urban islands of vegetation. So they're gonna be things

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Speaker 1: like parks or small undeveloped areas, or urban trees or

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Speaker 1: yards or gardens or grassy street medians. We look at

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Speaker 1: these spaces in our urban areas as kind of blank, right,

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Speaker 1: Maybe not parks, but a lot of these other things,

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Speaker 1: like the grassy median between two sides of a highway. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we think we might think of that as a place

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Speaker 1: that is empty, but really, like that's the only place

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Speaker 1: in your field of vision where there is non human

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Speaker 1: life taking place at any like real degree. We look

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Speaker 1: at those places sort of like the margins of of

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Speaker 1: a page, like that's where nothing's going on. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is in fact like a hot spot. It's a

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Speaker 1: hotbed of life and activity that is surrounded by these

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Speaker 1: dead rivers of asphalt, so many feral cats just whooping

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Speaker 1: it up in there. But there is so much more

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Speaker 1: than that. So okay, that's the obvious habitation surfaces. But

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Speaker 1: then there is climate. Actually, the climate of a city

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Speaker 1: is generally different than the climate of the surrounding area.

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Speaker 1: We've talked before on the podcast about the idea of

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Speaker 1: the urban heat island effect and urban rain. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: the material properties of cities in the way they absorb

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Speaker 1: and reflect light and retain heat actually affects the temperature

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Speaker 1: and the weather within the city, usually leading to these

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Speaker 1: situations where in the middle of a city it's a

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Speaker 1: lot hotter than the surrounding countryside is on the same day.

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Speaker 1: An obviously huge factor that makes a city different than

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Speaker 1: the surrounding environment is what types of food resources are available,

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Speaker 1: because it's going to be completely different nutritional profiles. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: outside of the city, a bird has to you know,

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Speaker 1: hunt around for its h its food, but inside the

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Speaker 1: city it can just fly into at home depot and

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Speaker 1: just aisle upon aisle of food awaits it. Now, I

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Speaker 1: wonder if for birds, home depot eventually becomes a sub

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Speaker 1: city within a city, where birds will evolve their own

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Speaker 1: populations within the home depot over that's kind of frightening.

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Speaker 1: I imagine like large prehistoric carnivorous birds roaming the home

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Speaker 1: depot picking off humans that are a little too little

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Speaker 1: too picky in which soil they're going to purchase for

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Speaker 1: their home garden. Here's another one. You've got very different

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Speaker 1: kinds of threats in human created environments than you do

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Speaker 1: have an unspoiled natural landscapes. You have environmental threats, human threats,

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Speaker 1: and machine threats. I mean, think about try to put

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Speaker 1: yourself in the mind space of like a fox or

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Speaker 1: a coyote or raccoon or something, and you're living in

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Speaker 1: a place where there are these giant mechanical predators constantly

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Speaker 1: plowing through the city back and forth at high speeds,

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Speaker 1: and they will kill you. But also they don't really

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Speaker 1: seem to chase you, and so it's it's you're not

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Speaker 1: evolved at all to deal with this kind of situation. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Frogger game, that is life for an animal in

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Speaker 1: the city. Yeah, cars as predators. It's a thing that's

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Speaker 1: hard to direct wrap your mind around. If you're a fox,

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Speaker 1: then of course there's a totally different chemical environment than

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Speaker 1: there is in in unspoiled nature. So you've got pollutants.

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Speaker 1: Of course, you've got the byproducts of industry and all that.

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Speaker 1: But then you've got things that people wouldn't even often

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Speaker 1: tend to think of, Like, how about if you're in

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Speaker 1: a northern city, what chemically you might you do to

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Speaker 1: alter the surfaces of the city during the winter. I'm

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Speaker 1: thinking about spilled hot chocolate for starters. I guess that's

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Speaker 1: a good one. But how about salting the roads? Oh

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Speaker 1: my goodness, I mean, yeah, millions of pounds of salt.

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Speaker 1: You turn it into basically a big salt lick of

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Speaker 1: death exactly. Yeah, so you're you're fundamentally altering the chemical

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Speaker 1: profile of the surfaces that these animals dwell upon, and

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Speaker 1: suddenly all this runoff water that would normally be fresh

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Speaker 1: water become salt water. And yeah, it's totally strange. Here's

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Speaker 1: another one. The darkness regime, completely different in cities than

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Speaker 1: it is in a place that hasn't been colonized by

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Speaker 1: human beings. That that's a that's a great one. I

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Speaker 1: mean that in roads are situation like light pollution, and

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Speaker 1: in roads, of course are everywhere. The roads crisscross human

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Speaker 1: habitats wherever they occur, and and you know, invite death

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Speaker 1: for anything that dares to cross it. And then of

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Speaker 1: course we we've all heard accounts of how dangerous artificial

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Speaker 1: lighting can be uh into various natural habitats, including beach

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Speaker 1: habitats for turtles that are returning from the ocean to

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Speaker 1: lay their eggs. Yeah, and of course a big one

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Speaker 1: being for insects. The way light affects insects is crazy.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's this thing that's the vacuum cleaner effect

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Speaker 1: that Skill tous And talks about in his book, where

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Speaker 1: you put say a service station out by a dark

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Speaker 1: highway in the middle of nowhere, and it's got lights

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Speaker 1: on at night. And what this is going to do

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Speaker 1: is act like a vacuum that just sucks in insectual

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Speaker 1: life from the hire surrounding countryside for a period of

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Speaker 1: time until it's killed so many millions of insects that

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Speaker 1: Eventually the density around it just kind of drops off,

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Speaker 1: and then it stops happening for a while, and then

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Speaker 1: you have the city which just has that going on

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Speaker 1: all the time. It's just a center of artificial light

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Speaker 1: all night. Now, that's by no means all of the

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Speaker 1: ways that cities change the environment from the natural environment,

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Speaker 1: but that that's a handful of them to get you

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Speaker 1: thinking about the ways that these techno beasts that we

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Speaker 1: inhabit that feel very natural and normal to us are

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Speaker 1: are aliens sci fi environments for animals that are designed

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Speaker 1: to live in a meadow or live in the forest

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Speaker 1: or something like that. And yet at the same time

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Speaker 1: we know for me and Malcolm that life, uh finds

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Speaker 1: a way that's right and find a way it does.

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Speaker 1: And that is what we're going to be focusing on

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Speaker 1: for the rest of the episode today is many of

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Speaker 1: the fascinating ways that urban life affects wildlife and that

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Speaker 1: wildlife apps to it or fails to adapt to it.

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Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when

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Speaker 1: we come back, we will dive right into the topic.

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Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. You know, Joe, we live in Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: and certainly especially the portion of Atlanta we reside in

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Speaker 1: is is far from a like stereotypical concrete jungle. We

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Speaker 1: have a lot of green trees around, a lot of

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Speaker 1: these little noman zones of of of of built up

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Speaker 1: weeds and vegetation for things to live in. What are

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Speaker 1: some of your your favorite wild animals that you've encountered. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Landa actually is sometimes known as the city of Trees,

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Speaker 1: and I like that about it. I mean, it can

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Speaker 1: be a problem if a tree falls on your house

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Speaker 1: or something, but otherwise it's very nice to have all

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Speaker 1: this urban greenery that we do have. But yeah, as

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Speaker 1: far as urban wildlife goes, I don't know. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot just in my backyard. Like our our

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Speaker 1: dog Charlie, he loves to chase the squirrels in the backyard.

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Speaker 1: And there was one night not too long ago, when

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Speaker 1: he's not a barker, he'dn't bar much, but we let

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Speaker 1: him out in the backyard one night and suddenly he

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Speaker 1: started barking, and we're like, what's going on? And we

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Speaker 1: went out to get him and we realized he was

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Speaker 1: in a standoff with an opossum. It's perched up on

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Speaker 1: the fence and not moving. It just was frozen and

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Speaker 1: staring at him and making the face. And so we

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Speaker 1: got him inside and the possum never moved. We looked

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Speaker 1: back out the window like a while later, and it

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Speaker 1: was still in the exact same place, hadn't moved from

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Speaker 1: the spot. And I think about adaptations when I see

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Speaker 1: stuff like that. So, Okay, you've got an urban opossum

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Speaker 1: and that maybe is getting some tasty trash morsels living

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Speaker 1: in the city like this, but it's also got a

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Speaker 1: deal with dogs and backyards and people and animal catchers

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Speaker 1: and cars and all this stuff that threatens it. And

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Speaker 1: for some reason, it's it's evolved response to this is

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Speaker 1: freeze and make the scary face. Why does it do

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Speaker 1: that and does that usually work or what? What was

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Speaker 1: that traite evolved as a solution to. You know, the

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Speaker 1: backyard division of things is really interesting because it does

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Speaker 1: create these these little sequestered zones where that are protected,

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Speaker 1: but each one also may contain its own localized predator

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Speaker 1: in the form of a dog or even you know, cats,

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Speaker 1: which I guess are gonna be less restricted by the

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Speaker 1: fences little enclosures with monsters in them. Yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: very recently It was just last week actually that I

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Speaker 1: heard this rucus bird rucus in the backyard, and I

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Speaker 1: went to check it out because I'm thinking about what's

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Speaker 1: happening in cat that there's a maybe a feral cat

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Speaker 1: back there messing with some birds. I look back there

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Speaker 1: the birds were agitated because a wild turkey was in

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Speaker 1: my backyard. Yeah, so good, I know. It's it's really

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Speaker 1: kind of a holy experienced to see a creature that's

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Speaker 1: ultimately so large. If you've not seen one there, it's

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Speaker 1: a far different animal than the like the Thanksgiving turkey,

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Speaker 1: but it is it is still a big critter and

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Speaker 1: seeing it hop up there on the fence and then

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Speaker 1: uh disappeared into the next yard was pretty pretty awe

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Speaker 1: inspiring for me. Yeah, my parents actually in Tennessee sometimes

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Speaker 1: get turkeys in their yard. Well, you know, I don't

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Speaker 1: know about everyone else, but one animal that instantly came

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Speaker 1: to mind from me when thinking of of creatures that

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Speaker 1: thrive in an urban environment is the noble trash panda.

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Speaker 1: The raccoons. Raccoons, Yeah, they've you know, it makes sense

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Speaker 1: because raccoons, they've thrived in North America for at least

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Speaker 1: two point five million years or at least we know

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Speaker 1: that it's Procyon genus was well established here by that point,

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Speaker 1: with its ancestry reaching back a good through thirty seven

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Speaker 1: million years. But their success is due largely to their flexibility.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's sort of a jack of all. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they they have They have teeth for both the shearing

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Speaker 1: of meat and also expanded molars for crushing. They also

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Speaker 1: have these incredibly sensitive hands which can be used to

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Speaker 1: manipulate objects and feel without loss of sensitivity for food

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Speaker 1: and chilly stream beds. You know, that makes me wonder

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Speaker 1: Sometimes our listeners have asked this fun question before. It

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Speaker 1: was like, if humans disappeared, what would be the next

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Speaker 1: creature on Earth to like assume the sort of intelligent

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Speaker 1: civilization mantlepiece. And of course you want to say, well,

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Speaker 1: probably great apes or something. Uh. Some people want to

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Speaker 1: say dolphins or whatever. But you could say, well, I

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Speaker 1: wonder about raccoons. They've got hands that are really kind

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Speaker 1: of a hand alike. They can manipulate objects. That seems significant. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I was when I dived a little deeper into this,

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Speaker 1: I was really impressed by just how sensitive their hands are.

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Speaker 1: So I want to read a tidbit here. This is

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Speaker 1: from Northern Woodlands magazine. Quote. There's a myth that raccoons

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Speaker 1: wash their food, but what they're doing when they wet

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Speaker 1: and rubn object is seeing it. It's thought that water

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Speaker 1: contact increases a raccoon's tactile ability. When a raccoon wets

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Speaker 1: and handles a crayfish, stone worm, or clam, he's gathering information.

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Speaker 1: Nearly two thirds of the sensory data that he's processed

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Speaker 1: comes from cells that interpret various types of touch sensation.

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Speaker 1: In other words, touches as important a sense as hearing, smell,

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Speaker 1: and sight. I had no idea. That's fascinating, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's it's it's I think it's especially hard for

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Speaker 1: you know, any of us with with healthy um sight

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Speaker 1: to really think about that, to think about that sense

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Speaker 1: of touch as being one of the most important ways

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Speaker 1: that you interact with your surroundings. Well, there's that, but

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Speaker 1: there's also the peripheral sort of mentality that comes along

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Speaker 1: with that, right, the the animal personality that is correlated

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Speaker 1: with the feeling of touch as an exploratory mechanism, because

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Speaker 1: it makes you think that this is a creature that's

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Speaker 1: likely to sample objects in its environment at a high rate. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's not enough just to peer at it from

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Speaker 1: the shrubs. It's got to get up there. It's got

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Speaker 1: to handle it and see what's what. So you know

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Speaker 1: what happens when an adaptive creature with marvelous little hands

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Speaker 1: like this ventures into the city, Well, it thrives. And

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Speaker 1: raccoons have been of interest to science for over a century.

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Speaker 1: Because of this, they flourish in human environments. In nineteen seven,

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Speaker 1: psychologist Lawrence W. Cole and Clark University graduate student Herbert

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Speaker 1: Burnham Davis both independently studied raccoon intelligence in light of this,

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Speaker 1: and they concluded that they were smarter than cats and

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Speaker 1: dogs and were more in the cognitive realm of monkeys.

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Speaker 1: Now not everyone agrees with that. I should note now,

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Speaker 1: whatever the baseline level of raccoon intelligence, as far as

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Speaker 1: object manipulation and all that goes, there is one thing

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Speaker 1: that has become clear, which is that there's a pretty

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Speaker 1: large variation in the difference between different populations of raccoons

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Speaker 1: and their intelligence at say, uh spatial problem solving, right,

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Speaker 1: the distinction being that of city raccoons and country raccoons,

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Speaker 1: rural and urban raccoons. Right, it seems like one of

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Speaker 1: those populations has more incentive to get smart about how

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Speaker 1: to mess with objects. That's right. So Susan mcdonne, old

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Speaker 1: comparative psychologist at York University in Toronto. She compared the

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Speaker 1: problem solving abilities of urban and rural raccoons and found

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Speaker 1: that urban raccoons win in both intelligence and ability. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was reading about one of these studies, and apparently

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Speaker 1: it required the raccoon to figure out how to get

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Speaker 1: into a food baited trash can that had its lid

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Speaker 1: held shut with a bungee cord. And apparently in the

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Speaker 1: study I was reading about, none of the rural raccoons

428
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:29,879
Speaker 1: could get into the trash can, but about eighty percent

429
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 1: of the city raccoons did. Yeah. And in a two

430
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen Nautilus article titled the Intelligent Life of

431
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:41,240
Speaker 1: the City Raccoon, Jude Isabella points out the following uh

432
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:45,080
Speaker 1: in this regarding the study quote. For the past few summers,

433
00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 1: she videotaped rural and urban raccoons toying with containers baited

434
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:52,120
Speaker 1: with cat food. While both rural and city raccoons readily

435
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 1: approached familiar containers, they dealt differently with unfamiliar ones. Where

436
00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 1: rural raccoons took a long time to approach novel conta

437
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: aner's city raccoons would attack them the moment she turned

438
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,399
Speaker 1: her back. I like that opportunism, and that's great. Yeah,

439
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 1: so I got one of the ideas here is city raccoons.

440
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:12,359
Speaker 1: They're they're fast to get in there, they're fearless and

441
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:15,520
Speaker 1: approaching a problem. But they also that there they stick

442
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:18,120
Speaker 1: with the problem that they're trying to figure out. They'll

443
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 1: work at it for an hour or more, trying to

444
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: figure out how do I get into this, how do

445
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:25,440
Speaker 1: I how do I defeat this problem? That just shows

446
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 1: perseverance pays off. Yeah, and then this also brings us

447
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:31,639
Speaker 1: back just to the idea of a city, like what

448
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 1: does the artificial environment of a city do well? Isabella

449
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: cites the work of Harvard economist Edward Glacier Uh, the

450
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 1: author of Triumph of the City uh and Uh. Glacier

451
00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:47,800
Speaker 1: argues that cities themselves are machines for learning uh and

452
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 1: if raccoons are innately bold and curious uh, then they

453
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:55,879
Speaker 1: engage with these puzzles more readily. What's more increasingly complex,

454
00:25:55,960 --> 00:26:00,439
Speaker 1: latches and and UH and other devices they may be encountering. Quote,

455
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 1: may actually be training raccoons to open them. So the

456
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: city itself, as we change it, trains the raccoons and

457
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 1: sort of changes them. Now, an important thing to consider

458
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 1: is that this might be happening at multiple levels of

459
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,439
Speaker 1: honing the skills of raccoons. Right, you can imagine on

460
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:21,400
Speaker 1: in one sense, raccoons are just getting better at solving

461
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: puzzles within their lives, right, they may to some extent

462
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:28,439
Speaker 1: be learning how to adapt to this. But in another extent,

463
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: they may be getting better at solving puzzles across generations. Right.

464
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:35,879
Speaker 1: The ones that solve more of these puzzles tend to

465
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,720
Speaker 1: get more food and thus have more offspring. And thus

466
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 1: it's possible we're literally seeing an evolution of the city

467
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: raccoon into a baseline smarter animal, or at least an

468
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,199
Speaker 1: animal that's better at manipulating these kinds of traps and

469
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: foreign objects. Yeah, in a way, it's like the city

470
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 1: raccoons are in more of an arms race with their environment,

471
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: whereas the rural raccoons there's their environment is a bit

472
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: more static. Now at the same time, I mean, we've

473
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: already touched on the growing city and uh and one

474
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 1: of the ramifications of that is that it diminishes the

475
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,399
Speaker 1: the rural environments, and that is very evident when it

476
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:20,600
Speaker 1: comes to foxes, especially the foxes of Britain. According to

477
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: the two thousand seventeen article and The Guardian, Foxes Surge

478
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 1: into England's towns and Cities by Charlie cuff Um, the

479
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: overall number of UK foxes is in decline, but the

480
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:35,160
Speaker 1: number of urban foxes has quadrupled over the past twenty years.

481
00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:39,600
Speaker 1: One study estimates that a hundred and fifty thousand foxes

482
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 1: thrive in England one for every three hundred city dwellers.

483
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 1: That's up from thirty three thousand in the nineties. Essentially,

484
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 1: what's happening here is that the foxes are losing their

485
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 1: rural habitats and they're just finding a lot more food,

486
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,439
Speaker 1: including garden worms and all those rats and mice, as

487
00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 1: well as suitable habitats in the urban environment. Skill tous

488
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:04,439
Speaker 1: And talks about this in his book, mentioning that some

489
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: of what drives animals into the city is not just

490
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 1: what's available in the city or the fact that the

491
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: city now exists where their home used to be. But

492
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:17,120
Speaker 1: the depletion of the habitability of the surrounding landscape. This

493
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 1: is happening all over the place. Even though cities are

494
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 1: these extremely weird, alien places for animals to try to

495
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:27,919
Speaker 1: survive in, they tend to be more habitable environments than

496
00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 1: the waste lands created just outside of cities. I'm reminded

497
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 1: of the witches gingerbread house in the woods. You know,

498
00:28:36,760 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: for a couple of kids who are lost in the woods,

499
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 1: there's no more dangerous place than going into that gingerbread house.

500
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the woods are terrifying and

501
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:49,960
Speaker 1: full of inedible things and berries that will poison you

502
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:52,400
Speaker 1: if you try and eat them, whereas the witches houses

503
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: made out of candy. How can you work out a

504
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 1: deal with this witch? That's the challenge. But what if

505
00:28:57,480 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: the candy is just all of the trash that the

506
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: wit threw away because she didn't want to eat herself. Well,

507
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: so we are on the subject of trash life. Of course,

508
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 1: much of what we're talking about with the raccoons is

509
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: how they are affected by by urban trash and what's

510
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: trash to us maybe delicious morsels for many scavenging animals,

511
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: especially if they're not super picky, and they're smart at

512
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: manipulating containers and things like that. But I thought we

513
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: should explore some of the more of the ways that

514
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: the pervasive presence and endless forms of human garbage, and

515
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: I mean the garbage produced by humans, not people who

516
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 1: are garbage, how that shaped urban animal life. So I've

517
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: got one, Robert, Do you remember the mcflury hedgehog? I

518
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:42,239
Speaker 1: do not remember the mcflury hedgehog. Have you ever had

519
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: mcflury in in the past. I believe I did have

520
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: the mcflury or two. Yes, I'm not trying to be

521
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: a snob. I can say I've never had one of

522
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: these things, so I can't speak from experience, but maybe

523
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: you can help guide me on the mcflury ology. Here.

524
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: The only thing I remember is that they had a

525
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: weird top. Yeah, that's that's the thing. So back in

526
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, McDonald's fast food restaurant introduced the mcflury,

527
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: which is it's some kind of ice cream thing, right,

528
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:09,040
Speaker 1: God knows what it's like, hamburger flavored ice cream. So

529
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 1: now you're now you're just trash talking to mcflury. It

530
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 1: was at least it was sweet. It was sweet flavor

531
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: does have big MAC sauce in it, No, but it's

532
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: it's all I remember, is just an overpowering sweetness. Well,

533
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: so this sweet stuff that was in the mcflurry, it

534
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 1: was served out of containers with these weird lids you're

535
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: talking about that essentially functioned as a hedgehog trap. So

536
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 1: the way it seemed to work is that you'd be

537
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: eating your mcflurry and then you'd throw the container down

538
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk or the parking lot, and then later

539
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:41,320
Speaker 1: a hedgehog would come along and want some of that

540
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 1: delicious reeking sugar stuff inside the cup. But the aperture

541
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:48,720
Speaker 1: in the lid, which would I guess made for spoon access,

542
00:30:48,760 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 1: so you could use a spoon. It was just big

543
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:55,080
Speaker 1: enough for hedgehogs and some skunks to stick their heads

544
00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 1: inside and slurp up some mcmlty. But then, of course

545
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:02,840
Speaker 1: hedgehogs have bines, and the spines are generally oriented to

546
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: fold backward from the head, so once the hedgehog's head

547
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:08,360
Speaker 1: is in the hole, it might not be able to

548
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: get itself back out of the mcflurry cup. So, on

549
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:15,160
Speaker 1: the one hand, this is funny. I've included an image

550
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: for you to look at. It is funny and very

551
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: cute and lead too much laughter about little creatures running

552
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 1: around with their heads stuck in cups. But there's a

553
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 1: dark side, right, which is that if nobody helped these

554
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: creatures out, nobody saw them, they would probably die right

555
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:31,920
Speaker 1: possibly of starvation, or they might wander into traffic, or

556
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: they might wander into a body of water and drown.

557
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that is terrifying. It At first it's cute,

558
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: and then when it it's explained to you, then then

559
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:43,480
Speaker 1: it is a very sad affair. But fortunately there was

560
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: a good end to it. After years of complaints from

561
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 1: organizations like the British Hedgehog Preservation Society in two thousand six,

562
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: McDonald's eventually changed the design of their lids to make

563
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 1: them too small for hedgehogs to get their heads through

564
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,360
Speaker 1: in the first place. So fortunately that had a good resolution.

565
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: But that's just one exam ample of the thousands of

566
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: ways we can't even predict about how the shape or

567
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: chemistry or nutritional profile or whatever of human refuse will

568
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 1: exploit some fatal flaw in another organism. And also you

569
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: always have to wonder how if McDonald's had never intervened.

570
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 1: This might have shaped the evolution of city dwelling hedgehogs, right,

571
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: would this cause a selection pressure for hedgehogs that were

572
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,040
Speaker 1: better at getting their heads out of small holes, or

573
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: for hedgehogs with big heads that would never get through

574
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,400
Speaker 1: the hole to begin with, or for hedgehogs that didn't

575
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:34,959
Speaker 1: like the smell of dairy products and wouldn't be interested

576
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: in ice cream. So let's dig through more trash, Robert,

577
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: you're ready to dig through more to do it? What

578
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: else is in there that's that's worth eaten? How about

579
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: beatles and bottles? Have you ever read this story before, Robert,

580
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: I've read Fox in Socks where there's a much discussion

581
00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: of of beatle battles inside of a bottle. No, no, no,

582
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: this is beatle. This is not a battle. This is

583
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: a beatle something else outside of a bottle. So I

584
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 1: want to take you to Australia to meet the Julo

585
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: Dimorpha bake Welly, which is the Australian jewel beetle. It's

586
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 1: a type of beetle from the boot breasted family found

587
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 1: throughout a lot of parts of Australia, and so in

588
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, there were a couple of biologists named

589
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 1: Darryl Quinn and David Rince, and they published some interesting

590
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: findings about human trash and its local effects on wildlife

591
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 1: in the Journal of austral Entomology. So here's the story.

592
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: Earlier that year, in nineteen eighty three, the authors were

593
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: wandering out beside a highway near a town called Donra

594
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: in Western Australia, and they noticed something weird. A male

595
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: jewel beetle perched on top of a piece of litter,

596
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 1: which was a discarded brown beer bottle. Okay, well, that

597
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: in and in and of itself is not that strange. Uh.

598
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 1: Then they got closer and they looked see what's going

599
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 1: on here, and they realized the beetle was trying to

600
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,680
Speaker 1: mate with the beer bottle. The authors looked around and

601
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 1: they found two more beer bottles of the same type,

602
00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 1: both of which had male bake wellies trying to mate

603
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: with them, and the males were either on the side

604
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: of the bottle or quote mounted on top with quote

605
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:08,359
Speaker 1: averted genitalia. And I've got a picture here of what

606
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 1: the beetles look like with averted genitalia. Okay, I'm seeing

607
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 1: it now. I don't know if you have any comments

608
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: on that, um I do. It does convey the sense

609
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:20,960
Speaker 1: that this, uh, this insect is trying to mate with

610
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 1: the bottle. That's quite averted, So what's going on here? Well,

611
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 1: The authors noted that bake Welly is a species in

612
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 1: which males can fly and the females are ground dwelling,

613
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:35,319
Speaker 1: and the color and texture of these beer bottles in

614
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: many ways resembled a giant female of this beetle species.

615
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: The author's right quote the shiny brown color of the

616
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: glass is similar to the shiny yellow brown electra of J.

617
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 1: Bake Welly and quote rows of regularly spaced small tubercles

618
00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 1: around the base of the bottles reflect light in a

619
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: similar way to the punctations on the electra of the beetle.

620
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 1: So the brown beer bottles referred to as stubbies in

621
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:05,400
Speaker 1: Australia at the time. We're proving very efficient at setting

622
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 1: off mating behaviors in male beetles, and almost alarmingly so,

623
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: because when the author's picked up the bottles, the beatles

624
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:16,160
Speaker 1: would not leave them unless physically removed. And then the

625
00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:19,879
Speaker 1: authors also performed an informal experiment where they placed four

626
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: stubbies these beer bottles on the ground and watched to

627
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: see what happened, and within thirty minutes, two of the

628
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:29,399
Speaker 1: four bottles had male beetles trying to mate with them.

629
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 1: And it gets worse. I want to read a quote

630
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:34,560
Speaker 1: from their paper. Quote. In one of the observations, a

631
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 1: male at the side of the bottle was being attacked

632
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:39,400
Speaker 1: by a number of ants which were biting at the

633
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: soft portions of his averted genitalia. A dead male covered

634
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 1: in ants was located a few centimeters away from this

635
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: same bottle. So these things are literally dying to mate

636
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: with glass bottles because just going off of their genetic

637
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 1: programming like this is their purpose. I have come here

638
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:01,920
Speaker 1: to mate with this. This is glorious and large of females,

639
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:05,319
Speaker 1: and I must do so even as answer tearing me

640
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 1: apart exactly right, ants maybe chewing off my genitals, But

641
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,360
Speaker 1: it is worth it because this bottle sets off all

642
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:15,400
Speaker 1: of my internal signals for amazing attractiveness in a female

643
00:36:15,400 --> 00:36:19,279
Speaker 1: of my species. So there is another fortunate ending from

644
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 1: the human perspective. I reade a report on NPR that

645
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 1: the bottle designers became aware of this and eventually they

646
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: changed the bottle design to remove the small bumps on

647
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: the glass. After they did that, the male beetles stopped

648
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,040
Speaker 1: caring about them. Oh that's good. But once again, you

649
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: can imagine what would have happened if nobody noticed this

650
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:39,200
Speaker 1: and the bottle makers never changed their methods. Will never know,

651
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: but one possibility is these beetles could have become endangered

652
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: or gone extinct, with all the healthy males refusing to

653
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:49,239
Speaker 1: mate with actual females because they preferred glass bottles. These

654
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: bottles were better looking than the real members of the species.

655
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:55,800
Speaker 1: But in other possibilities, the species would have evolved to

656
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: favor different sexual preference genes and males. Right that males

657
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: would be not attracted to whatever features set off the

658
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 1: extreme bottle desire, but to something else, maybe sent or

659
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 1: something like that. And I mean again, just the crazy

660
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: thing about this is that it's not like they were

661
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:12,720
Speaker 1: setting around trying to come up with a bottle design

662
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 1: that would throw off beetle mating in the immediate area.

663
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:18,799
Speaker 1: This was just pure accident, but it could have had

664
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,920
Speaker 1: disastrous consequences for the species. All this stuff is pure accident.

665
00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: Now I want to explore an accident that went a

666
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:28,960
Speaker 1: different way where animals have been found to be adapting

667
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:31,959
Speaker 1: in a positive way to harmful trash being thrown into

668
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:34,800
Speaker 1: their environment. Uh. Do you ever have that friend Robert

669
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,000
Speaker 1: who thought it was cool to flick cigarette butts out

670
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: into the world when they're done smoking. You know, they're

671
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 1: like the system man, they finished there and just flicked

672
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,959
Speaker 1: the butt. I have not, but I will still occasionally

673
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: see somebody at like a stoplight that's doing that, and

674
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:52,399
Speaker 1: I judged them rather harshly. Yeah, it's not cool to do.

675
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 1: Don't don't litter the world with your cigarette butts. But

676
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:58,799
Speaker 1: it actually that was not a pun, by the way. Uh,

677
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: there's an interest follow up to this. So. Montserrat Suarez

678
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: Rodriguez is an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of

679
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:10,800
Speaker 1: Mexico in Mexico City, and she and her colleagues Isabel

680
00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 1: Lopez Rule and Constantino Marcius Garcia published some fascinating research

681
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 1: in Biology Letters in and they started by pointing out

682
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:23,840
Speaker 1: something really interesting about the birds of Mexico City. The

683
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: birds were putting discarded cigarette butts in their nests. Okay,

684
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:31,760
Speaker 1: well that that in and on itself doesn't sound crazy,

685
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: because if they're if there are a lot of these around.

686
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:37,359
Speaker 1: If cigarette butts are more forthcoming than twigs, then why

687
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: not put them in your nest? Right? Yeah, they're fiber, right,

688
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: So if the cities are full of littered cigarette butts,

689
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 1: maybe the urban birds will just use whatever kind of

690
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: fiber is around to be part of the nest that.

691
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: You know, there's some cellulose here, I'll put it in

692
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: the structure of the nest. But these researchers performed experiments

693
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:56,799
Speaker 1: and they found something pretty amazing. They looked at the

694
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 1: nests of house sparrows, which are passer domestica us and

695
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,680
Speaker 1: house finches, which are Carpodacus and mexicanus, and they found

696
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 1: that the more cigarette butts a nest contained, the fewer

697
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,560
Speaker 1: parasitic mites could be found in the nest. Now why

698
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: would that be, Well, cigarette butts contain a cellulose filter

699
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 1: through which the smoke passes when you smoke a cigarette, right,

700
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,800
Speaker 1: and this filter traps all kinds of compounds from the smoke,

701
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: including nicotine, the stimulant drug in the tobacco products. So

702
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:31,440
Speaker 1: why do tobacco plants contain nicotine in the first place.

703
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:35,839
Speaker 1: It's because it is a poison designed to deter herbivorous

704
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: animals from eating the plants, including insects, and it's even

705
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:44,319
Speaker 1: been used by humans directly as an insecticide. Oh, so

706
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 1: this is a for the birds and naturally occurring insecticide

707
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:53,279
Speaker 1: in their artificial city environment. Exactly, the birds have parasitic

708
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 1: arthropods that attack them in their nests, but if they

709
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:59,919
Speaker 1: line their nests with insecticide traps found among the trap

710
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: shin gutters of the city, they can repel these parasites.

711
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: And the researchers confirmed this by setting up traps to

712
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 1: attract parasites lined with two types of cigarette butts. They

713
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: had smoked butts and unsmoked butts, and the parasites were

714
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 1: much more deterred from the nest that had the smoked

715
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: butts in them. Now, why would that be. The smoked

716
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: butts contained the nicotine because the smoke had come through them,

717
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 1: while the unsmoked butts didn't contain any they were just

718
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: the cellulose. So the researchers determined it was not just

719
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 1: the fiber, really was the nicotine. And now, at the

720
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: same time, that's an ingenious adaptation to the available materials

721
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 1: of a city. But we also shouldn't conclude that this

722
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:38,440
Speaker 1: is always going to be good for the birds, because exposure,

723
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 1: of course, could have negative side effects that haven't been

724
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: identified yet. We all know what some of the negative

725
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: side effects of exposure to tobacco products can be. But

726
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: still they've they've essentially made a protective chemical weapon out

727
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:52,240
Speaker 1: of these discarded cigarette butts. Now here's another thing about

728
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 1: the physical environment of cities that most of us probably

729
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,880
Speaker 1: wouldn't even stop to think about. But there is an

730
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: extremely simple diff friends in the kinds of physical surfaces

731
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,839
Speaker 1: one encounters more often in the city versus the country. Right,

732
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: what kind of animal is actually evolved to live on hard, flat,

733
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:13,800
Speaker 1: relatively smooth surfaces with no vegetation cover that you can't

734
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: dig down into? And that sounds like a nightmare? Right, Yeah? Like,

735
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:21,640
Speaker 1: what kind of creatures do would you typically find scurrying

736
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: about on rocks and other flat surfaces? I mean not

737
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:27,799
Speaker 1: that many. I mean you some live on rocks, but

738
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,919
Speaker 1: at least then you'd have vegetation nearby, or you could

739
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,240
Speaker 1: retreat down into cracks between the rocks. The sort of flat,

740
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: unbreakable surfaces of the city are, and especially the smooth

741
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 1: ones are just not great for many animals, but nevertheless,

742
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 1: animals adapt, life finds a way. So another study I

743
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: want to mention is that a team led by Kristen

744
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: Winchell of the University of Massachusetts, Boston examined males of

745
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,239
Speaker 1: the animal lizard which is Enolis christ to tell Us

746
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:57,320
Speaker 1: from a couple of cities in Puerto Rico and compared

747
00:41:57,360 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 1: them to males of the same species from adjacent four

748
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: wrists And was there any biological difference? You bet. They

749
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:07,720
Speaker 1: actually published their results in the journal Evolution in sixteen,

750
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: and what they reported was that the city lizards had

751
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: both longer legs and they had more lamela, which are

752
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 1: these structures on the toes on the undersides of the

753
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:21,799
Speaker 1: feet that helped the toes stick to surfaces, especially smooth surfaces.

754
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:26,359
Speaker 1: So these traits were probably helping the lizards, helping these

755
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:30,400
Speaker 1: animal lizards evolved to be able to climb smooth walls

756
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,840
Speaker 1: and stay attached to these smooth, slippery surfaces, even vertically

757
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:37,840
Speaker 1: aligned ones. Yeah, these these kind of like essentially like

758
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 1: hyper surfaces. Is that you're not going to find something

759
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: that is that is that flat, uh and in featureless

760
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: that that vertical in the natural environment. Yeah, and so

761
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:50,319
Speaker 1: to test whether this was an actual inherited trait, they

762
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:53,479
Speaker 1: also raised lizards from stock captured in the city and

763
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 1: from stock captured in the forest, and they raised them

764
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 1: both in the lab just to make sure it was

765
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 1: a true genetic difference and not some weird way the

766
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: lizards were able to change their bodies during life, and

767
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 1: it turned out it was a true heritable difference. The

768
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:08,960
Speaker 1: city lizards hatched wall climbers with these more lamlay and

769
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 1: the longer legs, and the forest lizards did not. And

770
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 1: you can imagine that so many city species are evolving

771
00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 1: along these lines with small changes in their body just

772
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 1: to get a better grip on the surfaces of human

773
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 1: made environments. Right, Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Like this

774
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 1: is the this is the geography you're presented with. Now,

775
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 1: while we're on the subject of crawling reptiles, I want

776
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 1: to know something about city dwelling animals. Is it true

777
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 1: that there are colonies of alligators living in the New

778
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 1: York sewers? Ah, Now, this is a fun, fun topic.

779
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:45,640
Speaker 1: Sometimes they are they're they're reported to be blind like

780
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 1: albino alligators living Yeah, in like thick packs in the

781
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:53,319
Speaker 1: depths of say the New York sewer system. Is this

782
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: ever addressed in one of the Blade movies. I don't

783
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: think so. Maybe unless they made passing reference to it.

784
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: I'd know it shows up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

785
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: So it would have been a great set piece to have,

786
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: like Blade Battle, like an albino crocodile vampire that lives

787
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: in the sewers. Well, we have at least one film.

788
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:13,319
Speaker 1: There's a nineteen eighties alligator. Do you remember this one?

789
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: I've never seen it. I should have. I don't know

790
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:17,000
Speaker 1: why I haven't seen it. Oh man, I saw it

791
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: as a kid. It was It was a lot of fun.

792
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: It started Robert Forster, and it takes place in Chicago,

793
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: though not in New York City, which is a shame

794
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:31,239
Speaker 1: considering what I'm about to lay on everybody, Well, tell me,

795
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: is it real? Okay? It? Well, it's not real. I

796
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: think if you were near a New York sewer right now,

797
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:43,200
Speaker 1: do not worry about the blind alligators climbing up after you.

798
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: I looked at a nineteen seventy nine paper, Alligators in

799
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:50,920
Speaker 1: the Sewers, A journalistic origin by Lauren Coleman, published in

800
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: the Journal of American folklore, and um, she this is interesting.

801
00:44:55,160 --> 00:44:58,840
Speaker 1: She points to Thomas Pension, uh, the famed American author

802
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:02,919
Speaker 1: of Gravity's Rainbow, as someone who did not He did

803
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:06,960
Speaker 1: not originate the tale, but he helped to propagate it,

804
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:12,440
Speaker 1: and propel it through his debut nine novel V in

805
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 1: which there's this, uh, this this brief discussion of you know,

806
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,319
Speaker 1: the classic trope baby alligators that are acquired at a

807
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:23,839
Speaker 1: carnivore fair or on a trip to Florida. You come

808
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:26,320
Speaker 1: back to New York, they start getting bigger. So what happens?

809
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:28,520
Speaker 1: They get flushed down the toilet or thrown out and

810
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:30,239
Speaker 1: then they wind up in the sewer. That sounds like

811
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:32,840
Speaker 1: a cruel thing to do to a baby alligator, I agree,

812
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 1: But it it's this, you know, this idea that, oh, well,

813
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:38,760
Speaker 1: they wind up here by accident, and then they wind

814
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:42,200
Speaker 1: up down there, and then they thrive quote down there.

815
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:45,440
Speaker 1: God knew how many there were. Some had turned cannibal

816
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: because in their neighborhood the rats had all been eaten

817
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 1: or had fled in terror, thanks Thomas Pension. But Coleman

818
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: digs deeper than than this. So various authors and even

819
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 1: herpetologist she found, referred to the urban legend, but they

820
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: cited it as such. They were not saying this is true.

821
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: They were saying, hey, this is crazy story some people

822
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:09,799
Speaker 1: tell um claiming, you know, they grow fat on New

823
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:13,040
Speaker 1: York sewer rats, they and or they grow pale and

824
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 1: blind in the depths. But then she explored more than

825
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 1: seventy reports of just alligator sightings in general in Northern

826
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:24,480
Speaker 1: American climates, such as an eight account of a frozen

827
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: gator that's supposedly watched up on the banks of the

828
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:31,040
Speaker 1: Rock River in Wisconsin. But she found just one single

829
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:34,240
Speaker 1: account of a sewer gator that was at the time

830
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 1: actually reported as fact. And she admits that this may

831
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:40,560
Speaker 1: have never taken place. It could be, you know, a

832
00:46:40,600 --> 00:46:43,600
Speaker 1: fraudulent story, but the matter of fact reporting style and

833
00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: the fact that this was a very established paper may

834
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: have caused the story to simply explode. Wait what paper

835
00:46:50,160 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: was it? The New York Times, February five. You can

836
00:46:56,200 --> 00:47:00,879
Speaker 1: find this full um this full article online either uh

837
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: in the New York Times are archives which I believe

838
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: you need a membership to access. But then other people

839
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:09,399
Speaker 1: have have have reproduced it elsewhere on the web. This

840
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: is the title alligator found an uptown sewer youth shoveling

841
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: snow and man hoole see the animal churning and the

842
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 1: icy waters snare it and drag it out reptile, slain

843
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 1: by rescuers when it gets vicious. Whence it came is mystery,

844
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna let everyone else go read this on

845
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:30,880
Speaker 1: their own. I'll include a link to it on the

846
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:32,640
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode of Stuff Toblow your Mind

847
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: dot Com. But essentially the idea is, uh, the they

848
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:40,759
Speaker 1: discover this sewer gator and they're frightened by it, and

849
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: then they drag it up and onto the onto the snow,

850
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: and then beat it to death with snow shovels. Yea, why,

851
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:50,720
Speaker 1: it's just what you do, I guess when you're frightened

852
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:52,959
Speaker 1: of a of a large creature. But then it But again,

853
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:56,319
Speaker 1: I want to stress this doesn't mean this actually happened. Yes,

854
00:47:56,360 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: it made it into the New York Times, but when

855
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 1: you start looking at the evidence that you still have

856
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: to doubt that this really occurred. Okay, Well, what about

857
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 1: sewer gators in general? I mean, is there any evidence

858
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:13,520
Speaker 1: that there might be gators living in the sewers underneath

859
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:16,719
Speaker 1: some cities? Well, I looked into this a little bit.

860
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: So for one question that immediately came to mind is, Okay,

861
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,760
Speaker 1: New York is u is a bit too far north

862
00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:26,040
Speaker 1: for alligators to really have a chance. But are alligators

863
00:48:26,080 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 1: living in sewers in say Florida? And uh and yeah,

864
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 1: you you do see reports of gators winding up in

865
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,960
Speaker 1: Florida storm drains or sewers and many of and this

866
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: is because many of these waste outlets back out into

867
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: the swamps. But New York sewers not really outside of

868
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:46,839
Speaker 1: just pure you know, urban legend. This one story and

869
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: also an account from two thousand ten in which a

870
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,360
Speaker 1: baby gator was found in a Chinatown sewer, there's not

871
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:55,240
Speaker 1: a lot to go on. And with that baby gator,

872
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 1: it's I'm it seems like it was probably just a

873
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:00,640
Speaker 1: case of somebody through this this creature out into the

874
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:02,640
Speaker 1: sewer and then it was found. This is not the

875
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 1: same as say, adult sewer born alligators popping up in

876
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: Times Square. And then I should also mentioned that snopes

877
00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: dot com has an article on this, and they point

878
00:49:13,719 --> 00:49:17,240
Speaker 1: to the writings of nature writer Diane Ackerman. She points

879
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:19,840
Speaker 1: out that the gators would only be able to survive

880
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:23,280
Speaker 1: for a few months at the most. In New York sewers,

881
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 1: I would guess this would probably be the summer months, right, right,

882
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 1: because the big thing is the temperature. They're gonna need

883
00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:32,960
Speaker 1: temperatures between eighty seven and ninety degrees fahrenheit. And we're

884
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:37,439
Speaker 1: talking about them living in the sewer. Uh, They're they're

885
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 1: gonna be surrounded by Salmonella E coli, shigela, other sewer

886
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: microbes that they're just not going to be able to

887
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:47,279
Speaker 1: live with those. They're going to die in there. A

888
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:51,759
Speaker 1: sewer is just not a suitable habitat for an alligator. Yeah,

889
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:53,640
Speaker 1: And I think this does draw attention to the fact

890
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:58,120
Speaker 1: that while we do see many animals uh coming up

891
00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: with fascinating adaptations and even evolving to be better fits

892
00:50:01,680 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: for city life, not all animals are good candidates for this,

893
00:50:05,560 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: and certainly not all animals are good candidates for this

894
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 1: in all cities. Yeah, because with the alligator, for instance,

895
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:15,600
Speaker 1: in in Florida, Yes, during the colder months, a storm

896
00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: drain environment can be actually an excellent place for a

897
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: gator to hold up. All right, on that note, we're

898
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: going to take another quick break and then we'll be

899
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: right back all right, We're back all right. Now we've

900
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,680
Speaker 1: been talking about the myth of the New York sewer gators,

901
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: which does not turn out to be true, and this

902
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 1: has highlighted some of the ways in which not all

903
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:37,480
Speaker 1: animals are well suited to all city environments. Some are

904
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:40,120
Speaker 1: much more suited to it than others. One animal that

905
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 1: has proven extremely well suited to city environments that is

906
00:50:44,080 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 1: a larger predator, kind of like an alligator, but very

907
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,879
Speaker 1: different type, is the coyote. Yeah. And I've always found

908
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:53,840
Speaker 1: this interesting because when I've lived in very rural environments

909
00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:56,680
Speaker 1: and when I've i've lived in urban environments, they're all

910
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 1: essentially all I encounter are mostly tales of the coyote.

911
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,560
Speaker 1: It's such a secretive and stealthy animal that it's more

912
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:06,799
Speaker 1: of a It's it's almost supernatural, this this beast that

913
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:09,919
Speaker 1: is there, but you're only aware of it through its

914
00:51:10,040 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: childlike noises from the kud zoo under dark, just you know,

915
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:17,760
Speaker 1: reaching out after you. Yeah, I mean, it's it's haunting.

916
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:21,040
Speaker 1: That's this beautiful image. I don't usually think of coyotes

917
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 1: that way. I guess they're so common in cities. Now

918
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: we've started they've started to lose some of their wildlife magic,

919
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:28,239
Speaker 1: and we start to think of them as like, oh,

920
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: that's like a city rat or something, you know. But no,

921
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 1: it's a It's a coyote. This is a large, candid predator.

922
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:35,640
Speaker 1: I mean, this is an interesting thing, the fact that

923
00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 1: they're colonizing our cities so much so. I found an

924
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 1: interesting Ohio State University news report on the work of

925
00:51:42,480 --> 00:51:45,759
Speaker 1: the os U wildlife ecologist stand Girt, who has been

926
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:50,799
Speaker 1: studying urban coyotes, and some interesting facts and observations from

927
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: Girt's research. One is that coyotes have colonized pretty much

928
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:58,359
Speaker 1: every big city in the United States. In somebody even

929
00:51:58,360 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 1: snapped a picture of a coyote standing on the roof

930
00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: of a bar in Queens. Wow, how did it get there?

931
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: I don't know they I think they think maybe it

932
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:11,759
Speaker 1: got out from a window of a building nearby or

933
00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: something like that. In Queens, there's a coyote on the

934
00:52:15,280 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: roof of a bar. And this actually just isn't all

935
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 1: that weird as weird as it seems, because coyotes are

936
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: everywhere in our cities. Gert has observed coyotes adapting to

937
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: city traffic, literally pausing at the edge of the street,

938
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:31,800
Speaker 1: looking at the direction that traffic comes from, and checking

939
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 1: for oncoming traffic. Because in an urban environment we've already

940
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:39,240
Speaker 1: talked about the idea of cars as predators. The number

941
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: one cause for death for a coyote in a city

942
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: is getting hit by a car. But those risks are

943
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:46,719
Speaker 1: paired with big rewards because Girt's research has found that

944
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 1: an average litter size for an urban coyote is nine pups,

945
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:53,360
Speaker 1: which is bigger than the average litter size in rural areas.

946
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: And this means city coyotes are fattening up on abundant resources.

947
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:00,080
Speaker 1: And this is possible because coyotes can make you of

948
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:03,600
Speaker 1: all kinds of resources their omnivores. They'll lead almost anything,

949
00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 1: and these are the kinds of organisms that tend to

950
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:08,720
Speaker 1: do well in cities. Now, on the other hand, people

951
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:11,440
Speaker 1: have started to see them very much as an urban nuisance.

952
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: I even found a New York Times article about the

953
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 1: trend of urban hunters culling city coyote populations. Have you

954
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: read about I have not heard about this. I've heard about,

955
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:23,799
Speaker 1: you know, rat hunters, obviously, but this is the first

956
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:26,799
Speaker 1: effort about the coyote hunters. Yeah, so because of this

957
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:29,000
Speaker 1: kind of action and the fact that we will never

958
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:31,279
Speaker 1: seem to get rid of all of them, I wonder

959
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 1: if we may actually be driving a selection regime to

960
00:53:35,080 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 1: evolve urban coyotes that are guess what, good at hiding

961
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:42,439
Speaker 1: from humans. And there's a cool example of this that's

962
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:46,440
Speaker 1: actually already been reported in places like National Geographic so uh,

963
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:49,400
Speaker 1: to quote from that GEO article on it, quote in

964
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: downtown Chicago, one GPS collared coyote pair raised a litter

965
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: of five healthy pups inside a secret concrete den in

966
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:02,400
Speaker 1: the parking lot of Soldier Field Stadium, home of the

967
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 1: Chicago bears a high traffic environment, but the signals to

968
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: me the emergence of of invisibility traits in these creatures.

969
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:14,080
Speaker 1: You know, they find those places where no one will

970
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: look for them. Okay, one last animal to look at.

971
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:20,000
Speaker 1: There are millions of ways we could look at mice,

972
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:22,920
Speaker 1: but there is one way that I think is going

973
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 1: to be particularly interesting. So one of the ways we

974
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 1: don't often think about the effects of the techno ecosystem

975
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:33,000
Speaker 1: of the city is that it creates urban islands. And

976
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:35,920
Speaker 1: this could be counterintuitive to us, because to us, a

977
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: city is actually one of the easiest places in the

978
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 1: world to get around. Right, there's no rocky terrain, there's

979
00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 1: no forest blocking the way of getting through things. A

980
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:47,759
Speaker 1: city is the place where you can go to somewhere, right, Yeah,

981
00:54:47,800 --> 00:54:49,399
Speaker 1: I mean you hear about Oh, this is a very

982
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:52,640
Speaker 1: walkable city. You can just get out and walk wherever

983
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 1: you want. You don't have to cross a river, scale

984
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:57,400
Speaker 1: a mountain. It's just all there. But for many animals,

985
00:54:57,440 --> 00:55:00,640
Speaker 1: a city is exactly the opposite. So his book Skill

986
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:04,080
Speaker 1: Tousand points out many ways that cities start to recreate

987
00:55:04,120 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 1: the principles of island biogeography by allowing small patches of

988
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:12,239
Speaker 1: habitable environment that are separated from one another by all

989
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:17,360
Speaker 1: kinds of virtually impassable barriers, freeways or even small roads.

990
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:21,080
Speaker 1: For some animals, breaks and vegetation cover. There are all

991
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: kinds of barriers we wouldn't even think of. So Skill

992
00:55:24,640 --> 00:55:27,520
Speaker 1: Tousand mentions a case of something kind of like island

993
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:30,840
Speaker 1: evolution from within New York City, specifically the work of

994
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:35,520
Speaker 1: a zoologist named Jason Munshi south of for Fordham University,

995
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 1: who studies the way that different isolated populations of mice

996
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:43,359
Speaker 1: have evolved for specializations for different parks of New York

997
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:46,760
Speaker 1: City now Munchie South. Research is focused on the white

998
00:55:46,760 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 1: footed mouse or Paramiscus leucopus, and this mouse inhabited the meadows, swamps,

999
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,120
Speaker 1: and forests to the New York City area long before

1000
00:55:54,160 --> 00:55:56,520
Speaker 1: humans ever settled there, so it's not the kind of

1001
00:55:56,560 --> 00:56:00,200
Speaker 1: mouse that follows human settlements everywhere. It's a local has

1002
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:04,279
Speaker 1: clung onto survival in the city that rose up around it,

1003
00:56:04,800 --> 00:56:08,040
Speaker 1: and so originally this population of white footed mice would

1004
00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 1: have been a single combined population with continuous interbreeding throughout.

1005
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: But the populations that have survived up until now in

1006
00:56:15,680 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: New York are isolated from one another on the islands

1007
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:22,880
Speaker 1: of New York's parks. So there's a population in Central

1008
00:56:22,920 --> 00:56:26,440
Speaker 1: Park and one in Prospect Park, and more in smaller

1009
00:56:26,480 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 1: parks around the city. And the mice can do pretty

1010
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:31,640
Speaker 1: well in these parks because most of the park's actually

1011
00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:35,320
Speaker 1: aren't big enough to support natural predators like owls or foxes.

1012
00:56:35,840 --> 00:56:39,799
Speaker 1: But the different park populations don't tend to interbreed with

1013
00:56:39,840 --> 00:56:42,720
Speaker 1: one another very much, which means they're free to evolve

1014
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 1: independently in different directions, whether through local natural selection or

1015
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 1: just through genetic drift. Yeah, because how's a mouse going

1016
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:52,399
Speaker 1: to get from say, Washington Square Park all the way

1017
00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:55,080
Speaker 1: to Central Park. Are they're gonna They're gonna take the train. Now,

1018
00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:58,520
Speaker 1: I mean some some rodents will be better at traversing

1019
00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 1: the city in that way than others. These mice are

1020
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:03,440
Speaker 1: very shy. They want vegetation cover. They don't want to

1021
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 1: come out from under the plants they live beneath. So

1022
00:57:06,239 --> 00:57:09,520
Speaker 1: unless there was like a land bridge of parks between

1023
00:57:09,560 --> 00:57:11,879
Speaker 1: the two, right, yeah, they're probably not going to leave

1024
00:57:11,920 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 1: their island. Now. It's not that mixing never happens, but

1025
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: it's very rare, and rare enough that these populations do

1026
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:22,760
Speaker 1: have evolved to become genetically distinct. Munchie South and colleagues have.

1027
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:26,120
Speaker 1: They've been tracking the evolution of these different park populations

1028
00:57:26,440 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 1: by trapping mice from each of the parks and performing

1029
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:33,640
Speaker 1: cross reference to DNA tests. Now, gene pool fragmentation like

1030
00:57:33,720 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 1: this is generally considered bad for the health of a

1031
00:57:36,240 --> 00:57:37,800
Speaker 1: species in a long run. This is one of the

1032
00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 1: reasons you see these wildlife corridors, you know, that are

1033
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:45,040
Speaker 1: so important. It's because they help creatures from one side

1034
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:47,600
Speaker 1: of a freeway come to the other side so they

1035
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:51,720
Speaker 1: can mate and increase the gene flow across the two populations.

1036
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:55,360
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, the fragmented populations of white footed mice seem

1037
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:57,560
Speaker 1: to be doing pretty well, and they've adapted more and

1038
00:57:57,600 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: more to their local conditions in the parks where they live. Now,

1039
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:04,040
Speaker 1: you might think, how could the adaptation pressures of one

1040
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:06,400
Speaker 1: city park be all that different from the pressures of

1041
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: another park or another place. I mean, there's some interesting results.

1042
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 1: So here here are some adaptations they found that were

1043
00:58:13,200 --> 00:58:16,840
Speaker 1: specific to Central Park mice. The Central Park mice had

1044
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:20,200
Speaker 1: a variation in the a k R seven gene, which

1045
00:58:20,240 --> 00:58:23,800
Speaker 1: is involved in neutralizing a flat toxin, which is a

1046
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:27,920
Speaker 1: toxic compound produced by some molds, as Skill tells and

1047
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:32,440
Speaker 1: points out molds that grow on seeds and nuts. Interesting.

1048
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:35,400
Speaker 1: So the obvious implication is that the Central Park mice

1049
00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:38,120
Speaker 1: are more exposed to this kind of toxin, probably in

1050
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 1: the foods that they eat. Another one involved in diet

1051
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:43,960
Speaker 1: a variation on the f A d S one gene,

1052
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:49,040
Speaker 1: which is involved in the metabolism of high fat diets.

1053
00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:51,840
Speaker 1: This is probably a trash situation, yeah, kind of not

1054
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:54,240
Speaker 1: not hard to see what's going on there. But then

1055
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:56,479
Speaker 1: there are other mutations found in the city park mice

1056
00:58:56,720 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 1: having to do with diet, metabolism, exposure to pollutants, and

1057
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 1: importantly immune function because, as Munchie South says, quote, very

1058
00:59:04,720 --> 00:59:08,840
Speaker 1: easy to spread disease when you're in a small population. Interesting.

1059
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:11,160
Speaker 1: I love this they are since they're evolving to live

1060
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:14,560
Speaker 1: on a diet of one dollar pizza slices. Right, Yes,

1061
00:59:14,840 --> 00:59:17,000
Speaker 1: as are many New Yorkers, And so, I mean fair

1062
00:59:17,040 --> 00:59:20,320
Speaker 1: is fair, But New Yorkers at least you know, they've

1063
00:59:20,360 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 1: got more ways to get around, right. These mice live

1064
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 1: on an island, even in the middle of a city.

1065
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: It is an island to them. They really can't leave,

1066
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:32,800
Speaker 1: so they deal with what imports arrive. That this is

1067
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:34,840
Speaker 1: going to be going to think about the next time

1068
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:38,040
Speaker 1: you're walking through a city park. Yeah, I mean, it's

1069
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: kind of crazy to imagine that the types of trash

1070
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 1: usually littered in one park versus the types of trash

1071
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 1: usually littered in another park. If they're different enough types

1072
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:51,760
Speaker 1: of trash, this could literally be shaping the evolution of

1073
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:54,240
Speaker 1: the creatures that live in those parks. Oh wow, so

1074
00:59:54,680 --> 00:59:57,240
Speaker 1: is the human population like that? The details of a

1075
00:59:57,280 --> 01:00:00,680
Speaker 1: human population change around a certain park, it could have

1076
01:00:00,800 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: a drafting even disastrous effect on the mice that reside there. Yes,

1077
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:09,640
Speaker 1: food trends come and go a nearby restaurants and stuff

1078
01:00:09,680 --> 01:00:11,960
Speaker 1: like that. It's crazy. Yeah, they depend on the avocado

1079
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:15,760
Speaker 1: toast and then what happens when that goes away? Right?

1080
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:18,280
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we we we went all in on evolving

1081
01:00:18,280 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 1: to be avocado toast eaters and now you're into what

1082
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:25,360
Speaker 1: grapefruit rice? And I don't want that. Well, I think

1083
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 1: we should wrap up today's episode with just one final

1084
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:31,320
Speaker 1: look at some general trends in urban evolution that have

1085
01:00:31,360 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 1: been observed across many studies and and of course be

1086
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:36,600
Speaker 1: reminded that we're going to come back and explore more

1087
01:00:36,680 --> 01:00:40,880
Speaker 1: examples of urban evolution and adaptation in the next episode here.

1088
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:44,400
Speaker 1: But to sum up today, uh, actually, Jason Munchie South,

1089
01:00:44,400 --> 01:00:46,200
Speaker 1: who were we were just talking about, is one of

1090
01:00:46,240 --> 01:00:48,520
Speaker 1: the authors of a paper we're about to look at.

1091
01:00:48,600 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 1: The other author was Mark T. J. Johnson, and this

1092
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:53,760
Speaker 1: was a paper called Evolution of Life in Urban Environments

1093
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 1: published in Science in and this is a huge review

1094
01:00:57,920 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: of research on urban evolution, observed general trends and what's

1095
01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 1: been discovered in the literature so far. To discuss one example, uh,

1096
01:01:05,880 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: the general trend they've identified as quote, cities elevate the

1097
01:01:09,920 --> 01:01:14,760
Speaker 1: strength of random genetic drift meaning stochastic or random changes

1098
01:01:14,800 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 1: in alleal frequencies, and restrict gene flow meaning the movement

1099
01:01:19,320 --> 01:01:23,560
Speaker 1: of alleles between populations due to dispersal and mating. And

1100
01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 1: so this leads to a loss in genetic diversity within

1101
01:01:26,800 --> 01:01:30,800
Speaker 1: populations and increasing difference between populations, just like we were

1102
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:34,200
Speaker 1: talking about with the mice, right. Smaller number of studies

1103
01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:38,400
Speaker 1: they found indicate that urban pollution can increase mutation rates

1104
01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:41,760
Speaker 1: in urban dwelling animals, which might actually speed up evolution, right,

1105
01:01:41,920 --> 01:01:45,040
Speaker 1: if you've got more mutations going on. But then also

1106
01:01:45,240 --> 01:01:48,720
Speaker 1: when it comes to natural selection, cities tend to present

1107
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:53,680
Speaker 1: different selection pressures the natural environments, and so they say, quote,

1108
01:01:53,680 --> 01:01:59,120
Speaker 1: adaptations typically evolve in response to pesticide use, pollution, local climate,

1109
01:01:59,480 --> 01:02:02,160
Speaker 1: or the physic coal structure of cities. And that's not

1110
01:02:02,240 --> 01:02:05,960
Speaker 1: even counting um canisers of mutagen that are thrown into

1111
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:09,320
Speaker 1: the sewer affect the local turtle population. I mean, you

1112
01:02:09,360 --> 01:02:12,880
Speaker 1: can't even factor that in. That's just anomally. But one

1113
01:02:12,920 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: more trade I think would be worth mentioning is something

1114
01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 1: that Skill to House and mentions in his book as

1115
01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:20,320
Speaker 1: adaptive to many species in cities, and it's what would

1116
01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:24,400
Speaker 1: be known as neophilia, or an attraction to strange or

1117
01:02:24,400 --> 01:02:29,240
Speaker 1: familiar or unfamiliar objects. Like if you're an animal, neophilia

1118
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:32,640
Speaker 1: obviously cuts both ways. It's a gamble. If you approach

1119
01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: a strange, unfamiliar object, it could turn out to yield

1120
01:02:35,920 --> 01:02:39,000
Speaker 1: big rewards for you might have some good tasty morsels

1121
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:41,480
Speaker 1: in there, or it could turn out to injure or

1122
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 1: kill you. Nature probably pays many animals to be conservative

1123
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 1: and avoid strange stimuli, better not to risk it. Right,

1124
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:51,920
Speaker 1: But in the city animals can get big rewards by

1125
01:02:51,920 --> 01:02:55,120
Speaker 1: approaching a KFC bucket or an ice cream carton or

1126
01:02:55,160 --> 01:02:57,640
Speaker 1: other objects that would not they would not have natural

1127
01:02:57,680 --> 01:03:02,280
Speaker 1: instincts for or any previous experience with. So there could

1128
01:03:02,280 --> 01:03:06,320
Speaker 1: be cases in the cities where neophilia is positively selected

1129
01:03:06,360 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 1: for in a strong way, maybe breeding more bold, more

1130
01:03:10,440 --> 01:03:14,640
Speaker 1: curious animals. Well, I this brings me back to the raccoons.

1131
01:03:14,760 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that the raccoon is bold in

1132
01:03:17,800 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 1: its uh, it's experimentation with some sort of a puzzle

1133
01:03:22,720 --> 01:03:26,600
Speaker 1: before it, you know, such as a KFC bucket. I

1134
01:03:26,640 --> 01:03:28,880
Speaker 1: mean a KFC buckets probably nothing to a raccoon. I'm

1135
01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:32,920
Speaker 1: sure they're well, they are well acquainted with the with

1136
01:03:33,040 --> 01:03:36,240
Speaker 1: the bucket of KFC at this point. Excuse me, Mr Lamb,

1137
01:03:36,280 --> 01:03:41,439
Speaker 1: we know about those. Um yeah, well, I guess maybe

1138
01:03:41,440 --> 01:03:43,200
Speaker 1: that should be it for today, right, and then we

1139
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:45,240
Speaker 1: can explore more when we come back. We haven't even

1140
01:03:45,240 --> 01:03:48,400
Speaker 1: gotten deep into one of the most fascinating areas of

1141
01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:52,160
Speaker 1: urban evolution, which is birds. Yes, and then there's the

1142
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:54,800
Speaker 1: whole we we talked a little bit about light earlier,

1143
01:03:54,880 --> 01:03:58,000
Speaker 1: but light pollution is another area with some very surprising

1144
01:03:58,520 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 1: adaptations that are occurring. We will explore all of those

1145
01:04:01,760 --> 01:04:05,520
Speaker 1: fascinating avenues the next time. And uh hey, while you're

1146
01:04:05,520 --> 01:04:08,400
Speaker 1: waiting for those, uh those new explorations, head on over

1147
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:10,360
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is

1148
01:04:10,400 --> 01:04:13,960
Speaker 1: the mothership. That's where you'll find this episode, all other episodes,

1149
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:18,000
Speaker 1: including our episode on the London Underground mosquito, which is

1150
01:04:18,040 --> 01:04:22,080
Speaker 1: a fascinating look at a particular species that has adapted

1151
01:04:22,440 --> 01:04:27,400
Speaker 1: to an artificial human environment, that of the London Underground

1152
01:04:27,440 --> 01:04:30,400
Speaker 1: train system. Also at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com,

1153
01:04:30,400 --> 01:04:32,640
Speaker 1: you'll find links out to our various social media accounts

1154
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:36,040
Speaker 1: such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. Thanks so much,

1155
01:04:36,080 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 1: as always to our wonderful audio producers, Alex Williams and

1156
01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:41,560
Speaker 1: Tarry Harrison. If you would like to get in touch

1157
01:04:41,600 --> 01:04:43,680
Speaker 1: with us directly to let us know feedback on this

1158
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 1: episode or any other episode, to suggest a future topic,

1159
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:49,120
Speaker 1: or just to say hi as always, you can email

1160
01:04:49,240 --> 01:04:51,959
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot

1161
01:04:52,000 --> 01:05:04,200
Speaker 1: com For more on this and thousands of other topics.

1162
01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:28,600
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com