WEBVTT 00:00:02.040 --> 00:00:09.100 Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:12.740 StarTalk begins right now. 00:00:20.300 --> 00:00:20.760 This is it. 00:00:21.140 --> 00:00:27.620 And today we're going to do a Cosmic Queries, Cosmic Queries with Mary Roach. 00:00:27.640 --> 00:00:30.420 If you don't know about her, you will by the end of this broadcast. 00:00:30.440 --> 00:00:31.520 I'll tell you that right now. 00:00:31.720 --> 00:00:36.680 But first, let me introduce my guest co-host for this episode, Paul Mecurio. 00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:38.480 Paul, always good to have you back, dude. 00:00:38.940 --> 00:00:40.260 It's always great to be back. 00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:40.980 Great to see you. 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:47.600 So you're an Emmy and Peabody Award winner for your work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. 00:00:48.260 --> 00:00:49.280 Yes, yes. 00:00:49.300 --> 00:00:55.660 You've got comedy chops that are like authentic and bona fide and with street cred. 00:00:56.380 --> 00:00:58.140 Well, they're his awards. 00:00:58.160 --> 00:01:00.580 I took them from his office, but they're mine. 00:01:00.660 --> 00:01:01.680 They're mine now. 00:01:01.700 --> 00:01:03.180 He had plenty of others. 00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:05.020 He won't miss it. 00:01:05.080 --> 00:01:07.060 Yeah, he's a tiny man. 00:01:07.080 --> 00:01:08.840 I wrestled them to the ground and took them from him. 00:01:09.480 --> 00:01:17.700 Yeah, no, we got some awards for a bunch of kooky young guys just kind of messing around. 00:01:17.720 --> 00:01:19.920 And yeah, it was crazy. 00:01:19.940 --> 00:01:20.780 Congratulations. 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:24.220 And thanks for sharing some of that sort of comedic wisdom and insight with us. 00:01:24.940 --> 00:01:25.720 Thank you, thanks. 00:01:26.260 --> 00:01:33.260 So as you know, Cosmic Queries, you're going to be bringing in questions to ask of our guest, Mary Roach. 00:01:33.340 --> 00:01:34.800 Mary, how the hell are you? 00:01:34.820 --> 00:01:35.540 It's been too long. 00:01:35.660 --> 00:01:36.260 I know. 00:01:36.280 --> 00:01:37.320 It's been way too long. 00:01:37.340 --> 00:01:38.020 I'm fine. 00:01:38.940 --> 00:01:40.200 I'm still alive. 00:01:40.220 --> 00:01:41.960 You've been on the show a couple of times. 00:01:42.580 --> 00:01:48.440 One time we talked about packing for Mars, getting ready for a Mars trip. 00:01:48.580 --> 00:01:49.360 But you're still here. 00:01:49.380 --> 00:01:51.280 So you didn't you didn't go on that one. 00:01:53.580 --> 00:01:55.200 I'm on a waiting list. 00:01:56.340 --> 00:01:58.560 Then one time we talked about dead people. 00:01:59.080 --> 00:02:01.360 And another one was about like sex. 00:02:01.960 --> 00:02:06.780 And then one on war and human. 00:02:06.800 --> 00:02:10.120 So just, plus you like these one word titles. 00:02:10.140 --> 00:02:13.320 So your latest one word title is Fuzz. 00:02:14.040 --> 00:02:15.560 And I have no idea what that means. 00:02:15.580 --> 00:02:16.920 Fuzz was my original title. 00:02:16.940 --> 00:02:20.440 Because fuzz, police, fuzz, fuzzy animals, get it? 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:26.140 Okay. 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:29.140 I love the titles of your chapters, too. 00:02:29.160 --> 00:02:29.920 They're very clever. 00:02:30.340 --> 00:02:33.880 Like On The Road Again and Killing With Kindness. 00:02:34.140 --> 00:02:34.460 Yeah. 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:37.960 Here's one that I bet nobody got. 00:02:37.980 --> 00:02:43.440 Well, mall cops, hopefully people got M-A-U-L, mall cops. 00:02:43.460 --> 00:02:43.740 Get it? 00:02:43.760 --> 00:02:44.060 Yeah. 00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:44.200 Yeah. 00:02:44.220 --> 00:02:44.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:02:45.640 --> 00:02:51.000 And there was one about, we were counting cougars out in the boonies in California. 00:02:51.520 --> 00:02:55.880 So I called it Mercurial Cougars, because they're stealthy and hard to see. 00:02:55.960 --> 00:03:00.920 But that, I'm relying on people knowing that there was a car, the Mercury Cougar. 00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:02.480 Okay, how many people? 00:03:02.620 --> 00:03:03.800 Oh, I didn't get that part. 00:03:03.820 --> 00:03:05.040 You didn't get that. 00:03:05.060 --> 00:03:07.640 I'm such a narcissist, I thought it was a play on my name. 00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:12.480 I'm like, whoa, she's like, am I getting any royalties on this book? 00:03:12.820 --> 00:03:13.980 So what you've done here, Mary. 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:14.060 Great. 00:03:14.600 --> 00:03:26.460 It tells me that you've taken laws of civilization, as we know it, and then apply them to animals to see which animals in nature would break laws. 00:03:26.720 --> 00:03:29.240 Were they doing that in our civilization? 00:03:29.260 --> 00:03:30.840 Is that a fair characterization of your book? 00:03:31.020 --> 00:03:31.620 Yeah. 00:03:31.640 --> 00:03:37.720 Because animals are, I mean, they're basically just being animals. 00:03:37.740 --> 00:03:42.280 They got to eat, they got to crap, and they got to find a place to live. 00:03:43.100 --> 00:03:51.720 And so they're not really, to them, it's not criminal behavior, but they're doing it by breaking and entering, by trespassing, and sometimes by killing people. 00:03:52.160 --> 00:03:59.600 So you got murder, manslaughter, home invasion with bears, you got trespassing, you got littering, vandal, jaywalking. 00:03:59.880 --> 00:04:07.080 I got a chapter on jaywalking deer and moose, which kill a lot more people than bears or lions put together, that is mountain lions. 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:14.720 Wait, wait, wait, wait, you mean deer don't wait for the green light to cross the street? 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:20.100 Do you remember, there's this woman named Donna who calls, she called some Midwest radio show. 00:04:20.360 --> 00:04:22.120 She goes, I've got something to talk about. 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:23.660 I'm really annoyed. 00:04:23.960 --> 00:04:35.280 I've been in two or three incidents where I've hit or nearly hit deer and people are putting the deer crossing signs in these places where there's a lot of traffic. 00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:38.760 I'm like, why would they encourage the deer to cross in this dangerous place? 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:51.760 And they think, hostess, there's this like silence, he's like, it sounds like you're thinking the signs are telling the deer where to cross. 00:04:51.780 --> 00:04:57.320 Well, everybody knows that deer can't read, but they can decipher symbols. 00:04:57.340 --> 00:04:58.660 Everybody knows that. 00:04:59.040 --> 00:04:59.700 Exactly. 00:04:59.740 --> 00:05:04.840 And they have the image of the deer, so they recognize that and they're like, oh, cross here. 00:05:04.860 --> 00:05:15.620 Well, in your jaywalking chapter, you talk about deer and you talk about how swerving from deers have caused as many or more deaths as actually hitting the deer. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:23.400 Unless it's like, we were going through Wyoming, my wife and another couple, and we were in a huge Lincoln town car that we rented. 00:05:23.420 --> 00:05:28.760 I don't know why we hit a deer and we didn't, it was a big deer and it hit the windshield and flipped over. 00:05:28.780 --> 00:05:32.640 And you mentioned that these moose especially will go through the windshield. 00:05:32.660 --> 00:05:35.020 And that's when things really get dicey for people. 00:05:35.140 --> 00:05:40.280 Yeah, the tall animals like a moose or an elk or what's the other one? 00:05:40.300 --> 00:05:41.220 I'm thinking camel. 00:05:41.720 --> 00:05:44.420 Serious issues in Saudi Arabia with camels. 00:05:45.160 --> 00:05:52.540 Because what happens, you hit you, the driver, you hit the animal in the legs rather than, you know, if it's a shorter animal, you hit the torso. 00:05:52.560 --> 00:05:55.220 So the legs go out from under and they cartwheel over. 00:05:55.500 --> 00:06:03.220 And if it's a tall enough animal, like this moose with the antler in there that comes through the windshield, it lands on your head. 00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:09.380 And so there's like some crazy amount of paralysis or death from hitting a tall animal. 00:06:09.380 --> 00:06:12.240 Wait, wait. 00:06:12.580 --> 00:06:17.560 I can't picture camels hiding in the bushes and then running out unannounced. 00:06:17.860 --> 00:06:24.780 This is the terrain is not the same where you have deer, where you don't even know the deer is there. 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:26.020 How are you going to miss a camel? 00:06:27.840 --> 00:06:30.320 I mean, I've seen them in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 00:06:30.340 --> 00:06:31.220 They just jump out. 00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:35.560 They just hide behind like, yeah, they hide behind a mailbox, boom, there's a camel. 00:06:36.620 --> 00:06:37.840 Well, there was an issue. 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.620 That's a very good point that you make, Neil, Neil deGrasse Tyson. 00:06:41.640 --> 00:06:42.340 Very good point. 00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:50.520 How do I don't know that I can tell you, though, that people going on those roads through the desert because there's no curves and there's nothing they do. 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:52.380 People speed like a mother. 00:06:52.400 --> 00:06:53.240 They're going fast. 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:57.900 So the camel just takes a left turn when you're not expecting it. 00:06:58.140 --> 00:06:59.820 And suddenly it's in the roadway, I guess. 00:07:00.140 --> 00:07:17.840 But I will say there was in Saudi Arabia, they had a law whereby if a person hits a camel and kills it, the driver, even though the driver is probably now paralyzed in a wheelchair, the driver has to pay the camel owner for the loss of the camel. 00:07:21.280 --> 00:07:26.640 And so some of the camel owners would encourage the camels on to the road so as to get the money. 00:07:27.520 --> 00:07:28.660 That was a whole thing. 00:07:28.780 --> 00:07:35.100 And in a journal article like the Saudi Journal of Medicine, or I forget what, look in the back of my... 00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:39.140 So if you're a camel and you're getting older, you better look over your shoulder because your owner is going to be... 00:07:40.240 --> 00:07:42.280 Somebody pushing you out into the street. 00:07:42.300 --> 00:07:42.640 Exactly. 00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:56.440 I don't want to get off the track too much, but if you don't mind, before we get to the queries, in that same chapter, you talk about how technology, evolution of the animals can't keep up with technology. 00:07:56.460 --> 00:08:03.780 That's why speeding cars, they can't get out of the way, but they have this innate ability, which is FID is the... 00:08:04.280 --> 00:08:09.380 Yes, exactly, FID, which I was saying FID and I got corrected. 00:08:11.180 --> 00:08:21.540 But yeah, so yeah, animals evolved this ability to look up from what they're doing, like say, eating a carcass or whatever they're doing and to look at... 00:08:21.940 --> 00:08:32.000 They see a predator and they're like, uh-oh, but they're able to calculate at what point do I need to flee, like how close can the predator come before I need to flee? 00:08:32.100 --> 00:08:38.000 Wait, wait, Mary, Mary, how many animals eating a carcass are being chased by a predator? 00:08:38.020 --> 00:08:42.000 All right, you got your vultures, you got your birds. 00:08:42.020 --> 00:08:43.280 Yeah, but who's chasing a vulture? 00:08:43.400 --> 00:08:44.040 Like nobody. 00:08:45.620 --> 00:08:51.640 Okay, I'm just thinking you have an animal eating berries and then a predator comes. 00:08:51.660 --> 00:08:53.780 That's what I'm thinking. 00:08:53.980 --> 00:08:59.320 If I'm mowing a carcass, there's probably very little out there I'm worried about. 00:09:00.160 --> 00:09:00.940 Right, exactly. 00:09:01.020 --> 00:09:02.280 I'm not going to mess with that guy. 00:09:02.300 --> 00:09:03.200 He's eating a carcass. 00:09:08.160 --> 00:09:09.320 All right, who eats berries? 00:09:09.340 --> 00:09:10.380 A bear eats berries. 00:09:10.660 --> 00:09:11.600 Okay, carcasses. 00:09:11.620 --> 00:09:14.080 See, a carcass is like that's easy meat. 00:09:14.100 --> 00:09:15.800 You didn't even have to go and... 00:09:15.820 --> 00:09:19.480 Oh, so it's not a carcass that you were responsible for? 00:09:20.160 --> 00:09:20.640 Okay, fine. 00:09:20.660 --> 00:09:38.300 But you make it relatable to the city because you mentioned that was why you can never hit a car in a city with a pigeon, but you hit a pigeon with a car because the pigeon instinctively knows how close that car is going to get and then takes off, which is why I've been flooring it at these pigeons my whole life and I haven't been able to kill one. 00:09:38.320 --> 00:09:38.820 Oh, can I... 00:09:38.840 --> 00:09:39.940 Wait, I got a fast story. 00:09:39.960 --> 00:09:40.680 Can I tell the story? 00:09:40.700 --> 00:09:41.440 Can I tell the story? 00:09:43.860 --> 00:09:48.760 So, Paul, I've been doing the same thing to great amazement, okay? 00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:55.160 I was completely amazed that pigeons are street savvy, okay? 00:09:55.160 --> 00:09:55.480 Yeah. 00:09:55.540 --> 00:09:55.880 Okay. 00:09:56.200 --> 00:09:57.000 So now watch. 00:09:58.200 --> 00:10:01.600 Now, all pigeons, they're like gray, okay? 00:10:01.920 --> 00:10:03.300 They're the same color as the pavement. 00:10:03.420 --> 00:10:04.240 They're gray pigeons. 00:10:04.660 --> 00:10:14.840 I was driving north on Broadway up near Columbia in Manhattan, and there was a white pigeon in the street. 00:10:15.420 --> 00:10:18.920 I had never seen a white pigeon, okay, with other pigeons, but there was a white one. 00:10:19.460 --> 00:10:25.940 And I said, let me see if it can get out of the way if I speed up, like every other pigeon I've ever approached. 00:10:26.340 --> 00:10:32.180 So I sped up, and all the pigeons flew away, and I didn't see the white pigeon. 00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:33.560 It wasn't anywhere. 00:10:33.660 --> 00:10:38.460 And I looked back, I flattened the white pigeon, and I thought, oh my gosh, I killed the pigeon. 00:10:38.480 --> 00:10:41.820 And then I thought, that's why there are no white pigeons. 00:10:41.840 --> 00:10:48.180 I am an evolutionary force on the pigeons. 00:10:50.180 --> 00:10:51.820 All the white ones got smashed. 00:10:52.760 --> 00:10:53.200 What is it? 00:10:54.200 --> 00:10:58.400 Why couldn't they, why don't they have the same FID capability? 00:10:58.420 --> 00:10:58.860 I don't know. 00:10:58.900 --> 00:11:04.380 I said, my one data point, and I looked back, it was just completely, it was a fast death for it. 00:11:04.680 --> 00:11:06.300 But then I felt bad. 00:11:06.780 --> 00:11:09.280 So anyway, and Mary, I hand you that story, okay? 00:11:09.960 --> 00:11:10.700 Here's, okay. 00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:12.980 So here's what you sped up. 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:14.280 This is the key element here. 00:11:14.480 --> 00:11:20.960 You sped up and you surpassed the species' evolved ability to calculate the FID. 00:11:20.980 --> 00:11:22.960 That's for damn sure I did on that one. 00:11:23.540 --> 00:11:28.060 And it happened, it happened to be the white one and it was just a coincidence. 00:11:28.200 --> 00:11:29.140 And that's what happened. 00:11:29.180 --> 00:11:32.980 I don't know, because I don't see, they didn't know what white pigeons in Manhattan. 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:36.740 No, that white pigeon was known as the dumb pigeon in the group. 00:11:38.220 --> 00:11:39.600 White pigeon can't jump. 00:11:39.620 --> 00:11:41.420 Whatever I did something. 00:11:44.220 --> 00:11:46.200 Yeah, but that's exactly right. 00:11:46.220 --> 00:11:56.160 And that's the point of that chapter is that there's this, was it the, they did a test at 204 miles per hour, 200.4 miles per hour. 00:11:57.620 --> 00:12:02.780 So like, you know, up to, you know, however fast a predator can run, they're like, I got it. 00:12:02.980 --> 00:12:03.580 He's coming. 00:12:03.760 --> 00:12:04.540 Now I got to go. 00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:09.140 But they didn't evolve to, you know, they look at a car as a predator, okay. 00:12:09.160 --> 00:12:10.760 And they're like, no, I can judge that. 00:12:10.780 --> 00:12:12.680 But the car's like 60 miles an hour. 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:14.380 And they're like, whoops, it's flat. 00:12:14.780 --> 00:12:17.200 Their processor is like a Tandy computer. 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:23.120 A Tandy computer, a Commodore 64 would have worked. 00:12:23.140 --> 00:12:23.480 Exactly. 00:12:23.500 --> 00:12:25.340 Maybe that would have worked. 00:12:25.540 --> 00:12:28.980 That's what that white pigeon had, the Commodore 64 processor. 00:12:29.420 --> 00:12:34.520 You don't have a chance against Neil Tyson on Broadway, my little chickadee friend. 00:12:34.960 --> 00:12:36.960 So we are at the end of this segment. 00:12:36.980 --> 00:12:38.920 We will jump to a little break here. 00:12:38.940 --> 00:12:40.120 No, let's slip in one. 00:12:40.140 --> 00:12:41.020 Let's get a question in. 00:12:41.040 --> 00:12:41.640 The slip in one? 00:12:41.640 --> 00:12:42.040 Okay. 00:12:42.060 --> 00:12:42.940 To wet the appetite. 00:12:42.960 --> 00:12:43.260 Go ahead. 00:12:43.400 --> 00:12:43.720 Okay. 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:45.280 This is from Chester Lipschel's. 00:12:45.520 --> 00:12:46.760 Dear Science Brains. 00:12:46.840 --> 00:12:49.360 You don't have to compliment me like that, seriously. 00:12:50.180 --> 00:13:00.040 Dear Science Brains, is it possible that different species will be or have been driven to a point of unnatural alliances for their own survival in their human surroundings? 00:13:00.460 --> 00:13:07.460 Could we have created strange bedfellows that would otherwise not have happened if not for our dominance in the natural world? 00:13:10.740 --> 00:13:16.940 Mary, why wouldn't that be like rats and mice and other things that we've cohabitated with ever since we… 00:13:16.960 --> 00:13:18.560 What was the question in there? 00:13:18.580 --> 00:13:20.800 There's two parts. 00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:30.540 Is it possible that different species will be or have been driven to a point of unnatural alliances for their own survival in the human surroundings? 00:13:31.400 --> 00:13:33.200 Unnatural alliances in the… 00:13:34.760 --> 00:13:36.440 Well, there's coexistence, right? 00:13:37.040 --> 00:13:43.720 So, Mary, presumably, rats and mice predate humans, let's say, or some version of those rodents. 00:13:44.100 --> 00:13:49.440 But now, rats are perfectly happy living among us as are mice. 00:13:49.460 --> 00:13:50.500 They're commensal. 00:13:50.780 --> 00:13:52.940 That's the science brain word. 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:54.120 They're commensal. 00:13:54.140 --> 00:13:54.700 They live with us. 00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:55.400 Right. 00:13:55.420 --> 00:13:55.660 Right. 00:13:55.800 --> 00:14:01.200 And the mice, they love your barn, you know, and they love living in your basement. 00:14:01.220 --> 00:14:03.000 And so, isn't that cohabitating? 00:14:03.020 --> 00:14:06.800 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure that's what he was asking. 00:14:06.920 --> 00:14:07.800 But for sure. 00:14:07.820 --> 00:14:19.880 I mean, the animals that we find annoying, that we call nuisance animals, are the ones that were smart enough to figure out, we got the food, we got the warm place to live, we're going to help them survive. 00:14:20.580 --> 00:14:31.520 I think this person is asking essentially, because the second part of it is, could we have created strange bedfellows that otherwise would not have happened if it weren't for our dominance in the natural world? 00:14:31.940 --> 00:14:36.420 You know, obviously, we've encroached on, you know, lands. 00:14:36.440 --> 00:14:45.100 We now, you know, we've got ski resorts, so we've gone into bear territory, you know, where there's, you know, there's lots of food for bears, and this is where they hang out. 00:14:45.120 --> 00:15:02.340 But now we're like, there's a restaurant with a dumpster with all kinds of amazing like sustainably farmed Cucunas salmon, and we're going to go down there at 3am because it's much better than a bunch of choke cherries and crab apples on it. 00:15:02.360 --> 00:15:07.340 Paul, I can imagine two bears and they're eating the leftover salmon, it wasn't, don't eat that, that wasn't free range. 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:09.780 That was farmed. 00:15:11.460 --> 00:15:12.500 You're an animal. 00:15:19.360 --> 00:15:21.320 Alright, we're going to wrap up this segment. 00:15:21.340 --> 00:15:27.520 We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, more StarTalk Custom Queries with friend of StarTalk, Mary Roach. 00:15:44.381 --> 00:15:47.061 I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery. 00:15:47.601 --> 00:15:51.001 You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. 00:15:51.241 --> 00:15:54.681 Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. 00:15:55.321 --> 00:15:57.321 And I support StarTalk on Patreon. 00:15:57.801 --> 00:16:00.001 This is Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. 00:16:17.416 --> 00:16:27.416 We got Mary Roach, whose, her publisher just let her out of the cave, one more time, for her next book, When Nature Breaks The Law. 00:16:27.436 --> 00:16:28.816 I got Paul Mecurio with me. 00:16:29.096 --> 00:16:32.096 Paul, how do we find you on social media? 00:16:32.136 --> 00:16:37.396 At Paul Mecurio, all across the board, just real simple. 00:16:38.396 --> 00:16:41.736 And my podcast, The Paul Mecurio Show, you can check me out there too, which you can. 00:16:41.976 --> 00:16:45.176 Yeah, and who came up with that as a title for your podcast? 00:16:45.656 --> 00:16:47.736 Well, we spent a lot of time. 00:16:47.876 --> 00:16:50.056 I hired a research, a marketing firm. 00:16:51.576 --> 00:16:55.336 I brought in Donnie Deutsch from MSNBC and he worked the numbers and said. 00:16:56.616 --> 00:16:58.236 And you focused on what you said? 00:16:58.256 --> 00:16:59.576 I know, I don't like the name. 00:16:59.596 --> 00:17:00.876 I can't come up with a good name. 00:17:00.896 --> 00:17:03.076 I'll help you, we'll work on it together, all right? 00:17:03.096 --> 00:17:05.976 Mary, you're very good with play on words. 00:17:05.996 --> 00:17:07.396 Mary, yeah, talk to Mary. 00:17:07.476 --> 00:17:08.196 Talk to Mary. 00:17:09.276 --> 00:17:11.836 Mary, Mary's got the titles nobody understands. 00:17:11.996 --> 00:17:13.776 I got a book, Bonk. 00:17:14.016 --> 00:17:15.916 I had so many people go, you know what? 00:17:15.936 --> 00:17:17.856 I think it's boink, not bonk. 00:17:17.876 --> 00:17:19.836 Like I have a typo in my own title. 00:17:20.156 --> 00:17:29.456 So many people that I would do book, I do book talks and I had a little peel and stick, letter I, I'd be like, if you want it to be bonk, here you go, make it bonk. 00:17:29.476 --> 00:17:31.576 The bonk was all about sex, if I remember correctly. 00:17:31.596 --> 00:17:32.776 Yeah, yeah, bonking, right? 00:17:32.796 --> 00:17:33.276 Bonking. 00:17:34.436 --> 00:17:35.356 No, it's bonking. 00:17:36.836 --> 00:17:46.376 So when we left off, someone asked about sort of the symbiosis that might unfold with animals encroaching on our turf or we encroaching on theirs. 00:17:46.956 --> 00:17:52.796 And because I told my pigeon story earlier, but I thought a lot about pigeons and I looked them up in the book and everything. 00:17:53.596 --> 00:17:55.896 And they have an actual name, they're called rock doves. 00:17:56.576 --> 00:18:04.536 And that species lives in canyons, where they swoop down and up against the rock walls that surround them. 00:18:04.936 --> 00:18:08.336 And that's exactly what tall buildings are in New York City, in Manhattan. 00:18:08.576 --> 00:18:10.016 They're the rock canyons. 00:18:10.036 --> 00:18:17.056 And so they adapted beautifully to it, except for when they fly head on into the glass. 00:18:19.476 --> 00:18:20.116 Yeah. 00:18:20.136 --> 00:18:22.576 I don't mean to laugh, but yeah, that doesn't work. 00:18:22.596 --> 00:18:24.456 No, look, pigeons don't have eye care plans. 00:18:24.456 --> 00:18:26.396 So they can't afford glasses. 00:18:26.416 --> 00:18:27.556 They don't know where they're going. 00:18:27.576 --> 00:18:28.876 You know what Bert always does? 00:18:28.876 --> 00:18:30.316 It's the cedar wax wings. 00:18:30.656 --> 00:18:35.356 Every single year they go and there's these berries in somebody's property in the next house over. 00:18:35.756 --> 00:18:36.796 And they eat the berries. 00:18:36.796 --> 00:18:40.716 And this is what I'm told, that they get drunk and they're flying in a group. 00:18:41.536 --> 00:18:47.736 Either they're getting drunk or it's like the Blue Angels where you got the main person and they're all just following the main guy. 00:18:47.756 --> 00:18:49.276 So the ones on the edge are like, funk. 00:18:50.116 --> 00:18:51.636 So it's one of those two things. 00:18:53.536 --> 00:18:55.696 Drunk and following the leader, that's not a way to live. 00:18:55.716 --> 00:18:58.856 But you know what, pigeons? 00:18:58.956 --> 00:19:00.916 You want to be drunk and follow no one, right? 00:19:00.936 --> 00:19:03.236 Exactly. 00:19:03.756 --> 00:19:07.176 Just wander into your... 00:19:07.176 --> 00:19:12.836 Pigeons, I have to say, I just read some, because I had blurbed this book about pigeons by Joe Mancuso or something. 00:19:13.256 --> 00:19:17.216 So pigeons are actually, they were domesticated and they escaped. 00:19:17.236 --> 00:19:23.056 So these are basically feral animals that they evolved in the presence of humans. 00:19:23.276 --> 00:19:25.916 So they hang around with us because they always hung around with us. 00:19:25.976 --> 00:19:27.756 So that's why we can never get rid of pigeons. 00:19:27.776 --> 00:19:30.416 Oh, the specific variety I see that we have. 00:19:30.436 --> 00:19:36.816 If there weren't the scraps of food in a city like New York, for example, would the pigeons be as plentiful? 00:19:36.836 --> 00:19:37.936 Would there be as many pigeons? 00:19:37.956 --> 00:19:39.016 I mean, there's just... 00:19:39.116 --> 00:19:39.716 No, no, no. 00:19:39.716 --> 00:19:40.076 Yeah. 00:19:40.096 --> 00:19:41.276 They go where the food is. 00:19:41.376 --> 00:19:45.596 But they go where the food is and they're not as afraid of people. 00:19:45.616 --> 00:19:46.596 You know who loves pigeons? 00:19:46.616 --> 00:19:47.216 It's falcons. 00:19:47.236 --> 00:19:48.096 They're short-fit. 00:19:48.596 --> 00:19:50.236 They introduce falcons into Manhattan? 00:19:54.616 --> 00:19:56.056 When I was getting my Ph.D. 00:19:56.076 --> 00:19:59.856 at Columbia, they put the astronomers at the top floors of the building. 00:20:00.096 --> 00:20:03.196 So the roof was like, you know, six feet above my window. 00:20:03.216 --> 00:20:07.076 And there were these feathers just dropping off the side of the building. 00:20:07.896 --> 00:20:10.076 And I looked at them. 00:20:10.356 --> 00:20:13.556 And there's this falcon just ripping apart a pigeon. 00:20:13.776 --> 00:20:15.056 And it's like, this is lunch. 00:20:15.416 --> 00:20:25.356 And I thought to myself, my gosh, if you're a falcon and you move to New York, your fat lunches are just sitting there for the taking all in the park. 00:20:26.036 --> 00:20:27.756 And you don't even have to work for it. 00:20:27.776 --> 00:20:29.596 The falcons are like, I can't go back to New York. 00:20:29.616 --> 00:20:33.336 Every time I go to that city, I put on like 20 pounds. 00:20:33.956 --> 00:20:35.736 I got to work out for like six months. 00:20:35.756 --> 00:20:37.636 I am not going back to that city. 00:20:37.636 --> 00:20:38.816 20 pounds of pigeons. 00:20:39.436 --> 00:20:40.036 Exactly. 00:20:40.176 --> 00:20:41.856 Plus I got to compete with Neil Tyson. 00:20:41.876 --> 00:20:42.776 He's killing pigeons. 00:20:42.776 --> 00:20:43.736 I'm killing pigeons. 00:20:45.776 --> 00:20:46.796 Paul, give me more questions. 00:20:47.416 --> 00:20:47.736 Sure. 00:20:47.916 --> 00:20:51.716 This is Nicholas Godlove, which is an awesome last name. 00:20:52.216 --> 00:21:02.236 My passion alongside my dream of being a marine biologist, a scientist, is to educate the public on the importance of apex predators and our respectful relationship with them. 00:21:02.636 --> 00:21:06.436 Why is it that certain humans demolish and hunt these species? 00:21:07.896 --> 00:21:09.236 I'll stop there. 00:21:09.256 --> 00:21:11.176 There's more to this question, but let's take it in parts. 00:21:11.196 --> 00:21:12.576 What do we have against apex predators? 00:21:12.796 --> 00:21:13.216 Mary? 00:21:14.636 --> 00:21:21.676 Well, the apex predators are the ones that are very good at, you know, let's take mountain lion. 00:21:21.696 --> 00:21:23.516 They're very effective killers. 00:21:23.536 --> 00:21:34.316 They love to kill deer, but they'll also kill, you know, small cows and sheep and other things that you might be keeping and using for your livelihood. 00:21:34.316 --> 00:21:51.316 So anytime you mess with somebody's livelihood, you know, say if you're a sheep herder or you're a rancher, or even if you're somebody who keeps chickens in your backyard, and most of the people requesting kill permits in California are people with just a few chickens or goats in their backyard. 00:21:51.336 --> 00:21:52.596 They're not big ranches. 00:21:52.616 --> 00:21:53.476 We don't have a lot of that. 00:21:54.596 --> 00:21:55.916 I guess the mountain lions eat the goats. 00:21:56.836 --> 00:22:00.956 Yeah, mountain lions eat the goats or chickens or pets, too. 00:22:01.316 --> 00:22:05.976 So people have an emotional attachment to their own animals. 00:22:05.996 --> 00:22:10.316 They're sort of an extension of themselves and their family, and they get very upset. 00:22:10.336 --> 00:22:28.216 And they instead of taking action, like building a better nighttime enclosure or trimming back the brush, so there's not a place for the mountain lion to kind of sneak up, which it needs to do when it's hunting, they just call someone and say, get rid of it, or they shoot it themselves. 00:22:30.456 --> 00:22:33.016 There's a murka, yeah, and we were founded on... 00:22:33.036 --> 00:22:37.316 If shooting it can solve the problem, you do that first. 00:22:37.336 --> 00:22:37.976 Exactly. 00:22:38.116 --> 00:22:39.736 These animals are varmints. 00:22:39.956 --> 00:22:41.076 They're varmints. 00:22:41.636 --> 00:22:45.276 You don't box them in, you don't put a perimeter, you shoot it. 00:22:45.796 --> 00:22:47.676 You shoot it and walk away and have lunch. 00:22:47.696 --> 00:22:50.696 It's easy and simple. 00:22:50.716 --> 00:22:55.696 In your book, you have this chapter, A Spot of Trouble, which this question sort of reminds me of that. 00:22:56.416 --> 00:22:58.976 You're really great in the book of doing these causal connections. 00:22:59.876 --> 00:23:10.336 And in that case, in the Middle Himalayas, after the 1918 pandemic, and there were all these corpses and they couldn't cremate so many of them, they were throwing the bodies basically down the hill. 00:23:11.136 --> 00:23:13.036 Toward the Ganges, yes. 00:23:13.356 --> 00:23:20.176 And the leopards got used to human meat and made them more aggressive towards humans, which I thought was utterly fascinating. 00:23:20.596 --> 00:23:22.416 That is the theory. 00:23:23.256 --> 00:23:25.516 Sort of Jim Corbett brings that there. 00:23:25.536 --> 00:23:28.836 So it's sort of like, there's this, why are we attacking these animals? 00:23:28.856 --> 00:23:30.596 Well, we made them more comfortable. 00:23:31.376 --> 00:23:35.716 It's just part of us have to own the fact that we created this problem, right? 00:23:35.736 --> 00:23:36.016 Yeah. 00:23:36.036 --> 00:23:40.996 The other thing going on there is so many people have left the villages up in the middle of Himalaya. 00:23:41.316 --> 00:23:43.656 They used to farm, they used to terrace and farm. 00:23:43.696 --> 00:23:48.416 That's a really hard way to farm, you know, to get water there, and you got like carve out the mountainside. 00:23:48.436 --> 00:23:50.236 And a lot of people have left for the cities. 00:23:50.536 --> 00:23:53.556 So a lot of the, they call it rewilding. 00:23:53.576 --> 00:23:55.396 The brush has grown back. 00:23:55.616 --> 00:23:57.436 There's not as many people tending the livestock. 00:23:57.596 --> 00:24:00.896 If you leave your livestock out there, you know, the leopards are going to come in. 00:24:00.916 --> 00:24:02.776 So, you know, they've got fewer people. 00:24:03.036 --> 00:24:11.576 Often children are tending to things, and most of the, you know, 41% of the kills by these leopards are kids. 00:24:12.156 --> 00:24:18.196 So we've presented opportunity, good hunting opportunities for these leopards, yeah. 00:24:18.616 --> 00:24:18.996 I see. 00:24:19.016 --> 00:24:22.756 So it's, I will shoot them because otherwise they will eat me. 00:24:22.776 --> 00:24:24.536 I mean, that's the rationale, I guess. 00:24:25.196 --> 00:24:33.356 Yeah, that is, you know, their family members are getting killed, and they don't wait for the government to do something about it. 00:24:33.376 --> 00:24:37.796 They take, they trap them and kill them themselves sometimes, yeah. 00:24:39.096 --> 00:24:41.476 Actually, there's a query about rewilding. 00:24:41.496 --> 00:24:42.296 Can I jump to that? 00:24:42.316 --> 00:24:43.216 Oh, yeah, go for it, yeah. 00:24:43.236 --> 00:24:44.936 That's a new word for rewilding, I like that. 00:24:45.136 --> 00:24:46.856 Yeah, Carrie Manneberg. 00:24:47.696 --> 00:24:49.076 My question is about rewilding. 00:24:49.096 --> 00:24:56.816 Some people think that a parcel of disturbed land, either urban or rural, can be a beautiful natural forest if we just simply leave it alone. 00:24:56.936 --> 00:25:04.136 I take the position that the land must be heavily managed by conservationists and friends in order to ensure a successful project. 00:25:04.436 --> 00:25:06.196 We must develop long-range plans. 00:25:06.816 --> 00:25:08.476 Which do you think is the best approach? 00:25:10.136 --> 00:25:12.716 Do you leave it alone or do you sort of be pro-active? 00:25:12.736 --> 00:25:13.996 Is this an urban area? 00:25:14.016 --> 00:25:15.516 I don't know. 00:25:15.636 --> 00:25:24.116 I mean, you know, your scenario that you talk about in the book are on these sort of plateaus on the hill where it got so difficult to find people, the abandoned plateaus. 00:25:24.136 --> 00:25:34.096 But I guess sort of in a general sense, the question is, do you let it sort of reestablish itself naturally or are you pro-active in some conservation? 00:25:34.116 --> 00:25:40.796 Like, I'm not sure how you admit, like, introducing animals or culling animals that are in there. 00:25:42.376 --> 00:25:46.776