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How Rainforests Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house storks
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh, and the little dinosaur
0:18
Speaker 1: friend of yours. Yeah, he's kind of become a fixture.
0:20
Speaker 1: Where what's this? Yeah, it looks like a she what's
0:24
Speaker 1: his her name? Oh? Dinah? That was sharp, Thank you.
0:32
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Not as sharp, however, unfortunately, as the
0:37
Speaker 1: blade of the cattleman's chainsaw cutting down their traffical rainforests
0:43
Speaker 1: like crazy or burning it. Yeah. Crazy, Well, that's what
0:48
Speaker 1: they used to do, supposedly. I don't know if you
0:50
Speaker 1: know this or not, but I read a couple of
0:52
Speaker 1: books by a guy named Charles C. Mann. One other
0:58
Speaker 1: calls fourteen, the other is called four and Um. In it,
1:03
Speaker 1: he talks about how there's a lot of evidence that
1:05
Speaker 1: the Amazon Basin was a completely human managed creation, that
1:11
Speaker 1: it's not like some virgin tropical rainforest in its natural state,
1:15
Speaker 1: that it was like creative planted it and managed it.
1:21
Speaker 1: And um, I think he says, like, if that's the case,
1:25
Speaker 1: then it's like the largest public works project ever undertaken
1:28
Speaker 1: in the history community. But one of the pieces of
1:31
Speaker 1: evidence is this like slash and char agriculture, where it's
1:36
Speaker 1: like you set the forest on fire, um, but you
1:39
Speaker 1: don't let it burn all the way down in the ash.
1:41
Speaker 1: You like, you know, put it out and it leaves
1:44
Speaker 1: these stumps of charcoal which actually make the ground more fertile,
1:48
Speaker 1: which it turns out. It is a surprising factor if
1:52
Speaker 1: you ask me, a surprising fact of the podcast that
1:56
Speaker 1: the ground, the soil in this incredibly lust Amazon rainforce
2:01
Speaker 1: or any rainforest, tropical rainforescet is really not very fertile
2:07
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, at least deep down. That's a good point,
2:11
Speaker 1: and that is in this article. And I thought that
2:13
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting too. I thought this article was jam
2:16
Speaker 1: packed and stuff, and then it just takes a really
2:18
Speaker 1: depressing turn at the end. Yeah, because everyone knows what's
2:21
Speaker 1: going on with the rainforest. And we're gonna read a
2:25
Speaker 1: plug later. But our old friend Joanne Um who nominated
2:31
Speaker 1: us for an Emmy nomination. Of course, we learned quickly
2:35
Speaker 1: that spoken word albums you don't have a shot. Well, no,
2:39
Speaker 1: it's kind of a rip off because all the spoken
2:42
Speaker 1: word Emmy's, I'm sorry, Grammy's to say Emmy, all the
2:45
Speaker 1: spoken word. Grammys are people reading their autobiographies who know everybody.
2:50
Speaker 1: It's just such a rip off. It really hard working
2:53
Speaker 1: folks like you and I can't be nominated for a
2:55
Speaker 1: Grammy because Tina fe read her book out loud inm
2:58
Speaker 1: of a microphone and look, it's so funny, got like
3:00
Speaker 1: a man's forearms. It's hilarious. I love Tina Fey. But anyway,
3:04
Speaker 1: Joanne uh stand aloneus and I think I'm pronouncing that
3:08
Speaker 1: right works for the Amazon Institute and she's one who
3:13
Speaker 1: kind of um got me thinking about this today, and
3:18
Speaker 1: we're gonna plug her organization later. You can adopt a sloth.
3:22
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's great, pretty neat. So having said that,
3:26
Speaker 1: thank you, Joanne. You don't make a problem with those
3:29
Speaker 1: programs is you don't actually get to take the sloth
3:31
Speaker 1: or the kid or whoever home with its adoption. I
3:35
Speaker 1: think it's just like giving money to somebody, is pretty much.
3:39
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that's a good thing to plug. Chuckers,
3:42
Speaker 1: chuck um. I want you to know something. The tropical
3:46
Speaker 1: rainforests on Earth cover six to seven of the dry
3:52
Speaker 1: land on the planet. Yeah, not counting the oceans, right,
3:57
Speaker 1: but they may they are home to about out of
4:02
Speaker 1: the species on the whole planet. Yeah, mind boggling. I'm
4:07
Speaker 1: just gonna go ahead and say this whole podcast, you
4:10
Speaker 1: will be blown away by the numbers, the sheer numbers
4:13
Speaker 1: of diversity going on and sadly six percent now it
4:18
Speaker 1: used to. Yeah, it's going away at an alarming rate.
4:24
Speaker 1: There's a statistic given at the end um of this
4:27
Speaker 1: article that I've heard many times with some of these
4:30
Speaker 1: like kind of hippie um ecology statistics, you have to
4:35
Speaker 1: kind of go back and look, you know, um a
4:38
Speaker 1: lot of them, like they're just so staggering and it's
4:42
Speaker 1: very important stuff that some sensational ones kind of slipped
4:46
Speaker 1: through the cracks and like it reported over and over
4:49
Speaker 1: and over again. But the forty Like, okay, so there
4:53
Speaker 1: there's a statistic that at the current rate of deforestation,
4:56
Speaker 1: there will be no tropical rainforests left on Earth and
5:00
Speaker 1: forty years. And I looked it up and um, apparently
5:04
Speaker 1: that's fairly close to accurate. So at the rate that
5:07
Speaker 1: it's being deforested today, which is about fifty thousand acres
5:11
Speaker 1: a day's one point three acres a second or something
5:14
Speaker 1: like that, one point five acres a second. Okay, every second. Yeah,
5:18
Speaker 1: that is depressing. Yeah, so fifty tho acres a day. Um. So,
5:22
Speaker 1: if you take the total acreage of rainforest left on
5:26
Speaker 1: Earth and divide it by fifty acres lost a day,
5:29
Speaker 1: If you do that constantly, twenty four hours a day,
5:32
Speaker 1: every day in forty years, there's no rainforest left at
5:35
Speaker 1: this right. You want to hear something else, scary, h
5:40
Speaker 1: Five years ago there were ten million Indians living in
5:44
Speaker 1: the Amazonian rainforest. Ten million today, less than two thousand. Yeah,
5:50
Speaker 1: that's that's the Amazon alone, right, Yeah, Amazonian rainforest. Well,
5:54
Speaker 1: the Amazon is by far the largest rainforest. It's the
5:56
Speaker 1: Amazon makes up of the tropic rainforest left on Earth.
6:02
Speaker 1: Of all the tropical rainforests, Yeah, but all all in,
6:05
Speaker 1: I think there are more than eighty countries through Africa, Australia, Asia,
6:09
Speaker 1: Central and South America that um and we're talking tropical.
6:13
Speaker 1: We're not talking about you in Seattle and you and Oregon.
6:17
Speaker 1: Those are rainforests. They're beautiful, they're not tropical rainforest. But
6:21
Speaker 1: you try to find a sloth in there, you can't
6:23
Speaker 1: do it. No slut, not that I know. I don't
6:27
Speaker 1: think so. Uh So I guess let's talk about weather,
6:33
Speaker 1: lots of rain and rainforest. Yeah, they don't call it
6:36
Speaker 1: that for nothing. Now, did you convert these inches defeat
6:38
Speaker 1: because it's startling when you do. No. Um, I'll give
6:43
Speaker 1: you inches first, and if you have that conversion, that's great.
6:46
Speaker 1: A hundred and sixty to four hundred inches of rain
6:48
Speaker 1: per year, thirteen to thirty three ft of rain of
6:52
Speaker 1: rain every year, and we can get rains in Georgia, right. Yeah, No,
6:56
Speaker 1: it makes Georgia look like the Sahara Desert. Yeah, maybe
6:59
Speaker 1: even the go Be Yeah. Uh. For those of you
7:02
Speaker 1: living outside of the United States and what other country
7:05
Speaker 1: was it? But he's the Imperial system Liberia. Um. That's
7:10
Speaker 1: we're talking four d and six point four to one thousand,
7:14
Speaker 1: sixteen centimeters centimes a lot of meters. Uh. There is
7:18
Speaker 1: no dry season, yeah, like you have in some places,
7:22
Speaker 1: like where you have like Monsousi monsoon season, try season. Uh.
7:25
Speaker 1: It's wet all year round, spread out pretty evenly. Temperature
7:29
Speaker 1: remains pretty constant, hot and muggy below sixty. That's because
7:34
Speaker 1: tropical rainforests form a band around the equator between the
7:38
Speaker 1: two Meridians the tropics. Things don't change a lot there, right,
7:41
Speaker 1: because the what is it? The procession of the earth
7:45
Speaker 1: doesn't create seasons like it does elsewhere in the northern
7:48
Speaker 1: nor southern hemisphere. Sure, we get a little further away
7:50
Speaker 1: from the sun gets a little cooler, right, So what
7:53
Speaker 1: you have hot, wet and um green? Yes? And the
8:01
Speaker 1: reason like monster green, monster green? Like? Uh, I guess
8:04
Speaker 1: we should start at the top with a canopy. Um
8:07
Speaker 1: I drew also, Chuck, if you need any help, I
8:10
Speaker 1: drew a little diagram, did you it's a text to picture.
8:16
Speaker 1: You need to put a little happy face on your sunshine.
8:19
Speaker 1: I didn't even bring a pen. We can add that later.
8:22
Speaker 1: But if you need this, this is here. Appreciate that. Uh,
8:25
Speaker 1: the canopy. We're talking giant trees six fifty ft um tall,
8:31
Speaker 1: forming the thick canopy such that only like one person
8:35
Speaker 1: of light will eventually hit the floor of the jungle,
8:38
Speaker 1: and then above that. Sometimes you're gonna have these and
8:40
Speaker 1: I see you drew them the little what if they
8:44
Speaker 1: called emergence. Emergence, These trees that are so uh stubborn
8:50
Speaker 1: and intent on getting sunlight. They're like, you know what,
8:52
Speaker 1: I'm gonna grow even higher than the canopy and steal
8:55
Speaker 1: all that sunlight for myself. Crooked trees. Basically, there's a
9:00
Speaker 1: lot of cooks that we're gonna get doing this. Yeah,
9:02
Speaker 1: it's kind of okay. So one thing that I learned
9:04
Speaker 1: from reading this is the tropical rainforest is a real
9:08
Speaker 1: like dog eat dog um ecosum. Maybe we should just
9:12
Speaker 1: get rid of it all. I don't think. I mean,
9:14
Speaker 1: it's brutal plants like sucking the life out of other plants.
9:20
Speaker 1: That's just how it goes. That's what it's like in
9:22
Speaker 1: the jungle. Josh, So you've got the canopy level, got
9:24
Speaker 1: the canopies, and you said another fact of the podcast
9:27
Speaker 1: to me, um, only one percent the sunlight that hits
9:31
Speaker 1: that canopy makes it down to the forest floor. Yeah.
9:35
Speaker 1: And another cool thing that was pointed out a little
9:36
Speaker 1: later is that, um if if like one of these
9:39
Speaker 1: trees dies and there's a hole in the canopy and
9:41
Speaker 1: little sunlight gets through, it's like everyone and everything goes berserker.
9:46
Speaker 1: Plants and animals like sun. You gotta get to it.
9:49
Speaker 1: That's our life, and they like scramble towards these little sunspots.
9:53
Speaker 1: It's like, um that rush song the trees. Yeah, that's
9:57
Speaker 1: a good one. Uh, that wasn't They were like way
10:03
Speaker 1: proggy early phase. They then I like prog rock because
10:06
Speaker 1: I like Rush. Yeah. Well, apparently their new album is
10:09
Speaker 1: pretty good. Everything they did was good. No, I mean
10:11
Speaker 1: they had name one album of theirs that wasn't good. Well,
10:16
Speaker 1: I mean anything since the late eighties to me, no, man,
10:19
Speaker 1: I'm telling you still. Well, they're getting high marks where
10:22
Speaker 1: their do. One for being like sort of a throwback
10:24
Speaker 1: to their old sound. That's great. I actually don't like
10:27
Speaker 1: their earliest stuff, like twelve, not that big one. All right, boy,
10:32
Speaker 1: that's a dude conversation. You ever been to a Rush
10:35
Speaker 1: show the five girls there, Yeah, it's true, and they're
10:39
Speaker 1: looking around like, yeah, exactly, and the guys don't even
10:42
Speaker 1: notice them because Getty leaves on stage and I'm wearing
10:45
Speaker 1: a wizard's hat. Alright. So the forest floor, where it's
10:49
Speaker 1: nice and dark and dank, um, you're gonna find what
10:52
Speaker 1: you would probably expect, which is a lot of moss
10:53
Speaker 1: and fungus. No grass. Now, you'd be hard pressed to
10:57
Speaker 1: grow any grass on the forest floor of a tropical
11:00
Speaker 1: rain because there's not much light, Like we're talking about
11:04
Speaker 1: one percent of available light. Yeah, they're on the jungle floor.
11:12
Speaker 1: Uh so, like you said, let's say a tree dies
11:15
Speaker 1: there's an opening. It's kind of like, um, a rent
11:18
Speaker 1: control apartment, right, everybody's scrambling for it. This this happens
11:23
Speaker 1: probably more than you would think. And it's not even
11:25
Speaker 1: necessarily a tree dying. A tree could just fall over,
11:27
Speaker 1: as we'll see later. Um. But uh, when when that's
11:32
Speaker 1: not the case? In an area where their seedlings trying
11:34
Speaker 1: to grow, most of them die because you have to
11:37
Speaker 1: make it sixceed to a hundred feet to the top
11:40
Speaker 1: of the canopy to start growing branches, and takes a
11:45
Speaker 1: lot of light to generate or to undertake the process
11:49
Speaker 1: of photos instance, to get that tall to ensure your
11:53
Speaker 1: survival anyway, Um, and if you are one of those
11:57
Speaker 1: lucky one percent ceilings, oh wait, I just confuse two
12:01
Speaker 1: different statistics. If you are one of those lucky ceilings
12:04
Speaker 1: that happens to have an opening in the canopy and
12:06
Speaker 1: makes it all the way up there and starts growing,
12:09
Speaker 1: makes a nice life for yourself. Um, you are probably
12:12
Speaker 1: going to be subject to basically what are parasitic plants. Yeah,
12:16
Speaker 1: not carnivorous plants, even parasitic plants. Yeah. The epiphytes actually
12:21
Speaker 1: grow onto giant trees that use that as their ladder
12:27
Speaker 1: to get to the top. Well, they form the understory too,
12:30
Speaker 1: so you have the canopy and then just under that
12:32
Speaker 1: where there's still some light coming here but nothing like
12:35
Speaker 1: above the canopy, you have those epiphytes, and those are
12:38
Speaker 1: like ferns and um and orchids, which are very beautiful
12:42
Speaker 1: air plants. Yeah, because the roots turn in the ground
12:45
Speaker 1: there on the side of the tree. Yeah, they're like
12:48
Speaker 1: the succubus, and they can eventually kill this tree if
12:51
Speaker 1: they get to the top and they're doing fine up
12:54
Speaker 1: there and then their roots spread out and choke the
12:57
Speaker 1: tree to death. Then that tree can actually decompose, but
13:01
Speaker 1: the lattice framework is still there. So the uh, epiphyt
13:06
Speaker 1: is just like great, thanks for the ride. Sorry, sorry
13:09
Speaker 1: I killed you. Thanks for the ride, lady, exactly. Uh. Yeah,
13:13
Speaker 1: So an epiphyt can turn into a strangler. It's basically
13:16
Speaker 1: an epiphyt that's gone bad. Well, like you said, it's
13:19
Speaker 1: doggy dog. Everyone's trying to get up to the top.
13:21
Speaker 1: I know. But if you're an epiphyt oral Leanna, which
13:26
Speaker 1: is a h I think that's how you pronounce it,
13:30
Speaker 1: which is basically a vine that can grow all the
13:32
Speaker 1: way up and then starts to spread. It's like kudzoo um.
13:36
Speaker 1: You're not doing anything really on your own. You're depending
13:40
Speaker 1: on some other organism, whereas if you're a tree, you're
13:44
Speaker 1: doing your own thing, but then you're dependent on the sun. Well, yeah,
13:50
Speaker 1: I can hardly be faulted for that. Everyone's mooching off
13:52
Speaker 1: of somebody, except I guess the sun, so the one
13:57
Speaker 1: that's providing it for everybody. All right, So you were
14:01
Speaker 1: talking about the infertile soil um. It rains so much
14:05
Speaker 1: that the nutrients get washed away really easily, and they
14:08
Speaker 1: didn't never get to like penetrate deep into the earth.
14:11
Speaker 1: So uh, Jerry laughed at that and it wasn't unsettling
14:16
Speaker 1: off putting. And so what happens is you get a
14:19
Speaker 1: very thin layer of fertile soil. So what you get
14:23
Speaker 1: there is very thin um, not very deep roots, and
14:27
Speaker 1: in the end you get trees that fall down pretty easily.
14:31
Speaker 1: Like in here in Atlanta when we go through a
14:33
Speaker 1: heavy drought, you'll also often see like trees falling down
14:36
Speaker 1: during windstorms because their roots never like got super low. Yeah,
14:40
Speaker 1: this is exactly the same thing, exactly. Uh. But some
14:45
Speaker 1: trees have adapted a way around this called buttresses, which
14:48
Speaker 1: is basically like a trunk coming off of the trunk
14:52
Speaker 1: and just going down to stabilize it. Yeah, if you did,
14:54
Speaker 1: you look those up. I've seen this before. It's pretty cool.
14:57
Speaker 1: I mean it's like a stand almost surrounding in the
15:00
Speaker 1: base of the tree. It's kind of neat. That's a buttress. Yeah. Well,
15:04
Speaker 1: a buttress of any kind is a support system. Um,
15:08
Speaker 1: you're one of my buttresses. Appreciate that. Uh So I
15:13
Speaker 1: think that is worth saying again. Like, the reason that
15:15
Speaker 1: the tree roots are shallow is because nutrients are scarce. Um.
15:19
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because it rains
15:22
Speaker 1: so much. Right. Um. But even still, like these these
15:29
Speaker 1: plants species and animal species as we'll see are um,
15:33
Speaker 1: they've just adapted for life, and that's really high up.
15:36
Speaker 1: Like everything everything that sustains life is basically up there
15:41
Speaker 1: for the most part, um, and all of these these
15:44
Speaker 1: plants and animals have made these awesome adaptations to live
15:49
Speaker 1: high up in the air, um, in a place where
15:52
Speaker 1: nutrients are really hard to come by and there's a
15:55
Speaker 1: lot of competition for everything, a lot of competition. I
15:58
Speaker 1: think it's fast like a buttress. It's like, oh, well,
16:00
Speaker 1: I'll fall over if I don't grow another trunk, so
16:02
Speaker 1: I'll grow another trunk well or the uh. The hippophytes
16:06
Speaker 1: can get to the top and then leap from tree
16:08
Speaker 1: to tree and further seal in the canopy, which is
16:12
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Um, So we should talk about bacteria
16:17
Speaker 1: for a minute. Plays an important part in any ecosystem,
16:22
Speaker 1: but especially in the rainforest. Um. You know, trees breakdown
16:26
Speaker 1: bacteria with food. Uh or I'm sorry, provide bacteria FOODA.
16:33
Speaker 1: I agree with that. Trees breakdown bacteriaus food and then
16:36
Speaker 1: the bacteria poop that out and feed the trees, right,
16:39
Speaker 1: and they're just like it's a great little relationship symbiotic.
16:42
Speaker 1: Everybody gets what they want. It's like those little birds
16:44
Speaker 1: that pick bugs off of the back of what a hippo.
16:48
Speaker 1: A hippo that does that? I don't know I've seen
16:50
Speaker 1: that though, Or there's no there's one that there's a
16:51
Speaker 1: bird that picks food out of like the mouth of
16:54
Speaker 1: a hippo. It's really dangerous to be that bird. But
16:57
Speaker 1: like the hippos are like, thank you, that's cute. Uh.
17:03
Speaker 1: And here's another mind blowing stat If we want to
17:04
Speaker 1: talk about diversity. Let's say you live in uh, northwest Oregon,
17:09
Speaker 1: and you're like, dude, we've got like a dozen tree
17:12
Speaker 1: species here in this forest. It's like so diverse. Hit
17:17
Speaker 1: the hacky sack again, let's get out of here. Three
17:20
Speaker 1: hundred different distinct tree species in the in the in
17:24
Speaker 1: the rainforest. Yeah, buts just trees. They're really really spread out. Yeah.
17:29
Speaker 1: So like in an acre you might find just like
17:31
Speaker 1: a few of that species. So there's a bunch of
17:34
Speaker 1: different species packed into one acre. Yeah, I mean it's crazy. Um.
17:40
Speaker 1: Ten million animal species. Unfortunately, Uh, they're being destroyed at
17:49
Speaker 1: the rate of fifty species per year. Experts say that
17:53
Speaker 1: we're losing a hundred and thirty seven plant, animal, and
17:56
Speaker 1: insects species every single day deforestation seven specs. Not just
18:01
Speaker 1: like oh that bug died, it's like all of that
18:05
Speaker 1: bug died today on Monday, and we guess what will
18:09
Speaker 1: happen tomorrow, All of another insect will die and thirty
18:13
Speaker 1: seven of them. It's great. It's just like it's the
18:15
Speaker 1: saddest thing ever. Um. And it's not just said too,
18:18
Speaker 1: I mean we'll see in a second. Like what the
18:20
Speaker 1: problem is when that happens. You know, biodiversity is important,
18:25
Speaker 1: and if you're talking about the cradle of biodiversity, then
18:28
Speaker 1: it becomes even more important because it's like the cool
18:33
Speaker 1: part of town and then the suburbs. As far as
18:37
Speaker 1: Planet Earth goes and the excerpts, we can't even talk
18:41
Speaker 1: about that all right, But out of these ten million,
18:45
Speaker 1: of course, insects are going to be the most abundant.
18:47
Speaker 1: And then out of all of those, ants are the
18:50
Speaker 1: most abundant thing in the rainforest. So I found somewhere
18:53
Speaker 1: that they make up of the biomass of the tropical
18:56
Speaker 1: rainforest from what I understand, Like, that's like the entire biomass,
19:02
Speaker 1: the trees and all that stuff. The ants make up that. Man, Yeah,
19:07
Speaker 1: I bet they're not fun to deal with, yes, and
19:10
Speaker 1: something like so half of that is fire ants. Wow,
19:17
Speaker 1: can you imagine? Have you seen this incredible movie It's
19:19
Speaker 1: called um Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's an Indiana
19:23
Speaker 1: Jones movie. There's these fire ants and there's just crazy
19:27
Speaker 1: what they can do to a man. It's such an abomination. Um,
19:31
Speaker 1: did you see the South Park about that? It's great,
19:35
Speaker 1: It was great. It was also probably the most disturbing
19:40
Speaker 1: you've ever seen that what happened least to see it.
19:42
Speaker 1: We can't say it. On the other no, I can't
19:44
Speaker 1: even I shouldn't even be endorsing that episode. UM. So
19:49
Speaker 1: these insects also have a very symbiotic relationship with the
19:53
Speaker 1: forest because they, along with birds, helped spread the seeds
19:58
Speaker 1: around because there's not a a wind going on. Yeah,
20:02
Speaker 1: so seeds aren't gonna propagate by flowing through the air
20:05
Speaker 1: like they do elsewhere. So you got these little insects
20:08
Speaker 1: eating them and then carrying them off tim twenty feet away,
20:11
Speaker 1: or birds carrying them miles and miles away, pooping them out,
20:14
Speaker 1: pooping them out, and then you're spreading seed, which is
20:18
Speaker 1: probably another reason why each acre has like so many
20:21
Speaker 1: different kinds of uh plant life going on, right, Yeah, yeah,
20:24
Speaker 1: well I think that's definitely why. UM. The birds also,
20:28
Speaker 1: especially like say hummingbirds, which there's an abundance in the
20:31
Speaker 1: tropical rainforest. Um, they will get pollen all over themselves
20:35
Speaker 1: as they go from like orchid to orchid, so that
20:38
Speaker 1: helps propagate um orchids or epiphytes, which typically can't really
20:43
Speaker 1: get from tree to tree, you know, so when you
20:48
Speaker 1: when you have an orchid that's evolved specifically for a hummingbird,
20:52
Speaker 1: it's going to attract those hummingbirds with your delicious nectar
20:54
Speaker 1: and help generate new orchids elsewhere. I associate humming were
21:00
Speaker 1: with the sun for some reason. Yeah, probably because where
21:03
Speaker 1: I live. Yeah, but it's hard to imagine them in
21:05
Speaker 1: like in the dark jungle. Well, I think in the understory,
21:08
Speaker 1: which is where the epiphytes are. It's it's not that dark,
21:11
Speaker 1: it's like where it's like you can't really see um
21:17
Speaker 1: reptiles obviously, tons of reptiles and amphibians. If you if
21:20
Speaker 1: you want to avoid snakes, then the Amazon rainforce is
21:24
Speaker 1: probably not where you want to go. Um. But a
21:26
Speaker 1: lot of these are being smuggled out. Evidently live animals
21:29
Speaker 1: are the fourth largest smuggling commodity. Smuggling out these live
21:34
Speaker 1: animals for resale. Is it for bush met just for pet?
21:37
Speaker 1: No pet like black market pets. This is a documentary
21:40
Speaker 1: that I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, I was kind
21:42
Speaker 1: of surprised. Behind drugs, diamonds and weapons. See that's such
21:46
Speaker 1: a b s. They always say that, like it's always
21:48
Speaker 1: like those and then whatever you want to put behind it.
21:52
Speaker 1: I've seen counterfeit materials for being smuggling for fourth year,
21:59
Speaker 1: for like black Mark stuff. It's like whatever whatever you're
22:02
Speaker 1: talking about four after those drugs, diamonds, weapons and knight. Uh.
22:11
Speaker 1: You might be right, Josh, I think, but I'm going
22:14
Speaker 1: with it. But you did talk about earlier about the
22:17
Speaker 1: different types of adaptations for the animals, like um, little
22:21
Speaker 1: webs of skin like on a flying squirrel and other
22:24
Speaker 1: animals to allowut to like soar between trees. It's creepy,
22:28
Speaker 1: pretty neat. Prehensile tails. I love a prehensible town, which
22:31
Speaker 1: is just like an extra hand, especially for grasping hand.
22:35
Speaker 1: Basically is what it is, Not like a card playing hand,
22:38
Speaker 1: more like a branch grabbing hand, like I'm gonna hang
22:41
Speaker 1: on to this with and like carrying my body weight
22:44
Speaker 1: with my tail so I can use both hands. Watch
22:46
Speaker 1: me show off exactly. I'm a Howler monkey. Can you
22:48
Speaker 1: do a Howler monkey impression? Can you know? I don't
22:52
Speaker 1: know anyone who I bet that guy from Police Academy
22:57
Speaker 1: kuld Oh, yeah, Michael, it's Michael. Do you remember it,
23:03
Speaker 1: Michael winter Bottom? No, I don't know. He was good though.
23:09
Speaker 1: You know, we're gonna get some emails about it. Yeah,
23:11
Speaker 1: it was Michael so and so. Lots of bats and
23:15
Speaker 1: then thus lots of bats. Cat, dude, there is a
23:19
Speaker 1: there's a park in Zambia, um called Konsaka Konsenka Kassanka
23:28
Speaker 1: National Reserve, and it's home to the largest bat migration
23:33
Speaker 1: in the world. Every October, ten million bats come to
23:37
Speaker 1: roost and eat these mangoes that are ripening nearby. And um,
23:42
Speaker 1: they cover everything and apparently when they when they take
23:48
Speaker 1: off at dusk, they blot out the sky for like
23:51
Speaker 1: twenty minutes in every direction. Sy, I'm sure they just
23:56
Speaker 1: want the mangoes. Yeah, they don't care about you. But man, man,
24:00
Speaker 1: I even like bats, and I'm creeped out by that. Austin,
24:04
Speaker 1: Texas has nothing on those. Oh yeah they had that,
24:08
Speaker 1: yeah the overpass moever. Yeah, um, guerrillas, great apes orangutangs, pigs,
24:14
Speaker 1: big cats and batscat. By the way, another thing I
24:18
Speaker 1: found in like that was a huge, huge industry bats.
24:24
Speaker 1: But like back guano mining because they used it for
24:27
Speaker 1: like fertilizer for so long that like people made like fortunes,
24:32
Speaker 1: like oil fortunes off of these things, and it was
24:34
Speaker 1: all like in in these tropical areas. They were like
24:38
Speaker 1: quarries of that they were digging out back quano from Yeah.
24:43
Speaker 1: And who were the big names there that got rich? Oh,
24:45
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I would imagine they were mostly in Brazil.
24:49
Speaker 1: It's not like the getties or the standards. I don't
24:52
Speaker 1: think so the standard standard oil. I knew a standard
24:59
Speaker 1: really sure, h Um. People like we talked about indigenous tribes,
25:05
Speaker 1: uh like, are being basically shoved out at an alarming rate.
25:11
Speaker 1: And these people it's really sad because they have like uh,
25:15
Speaker 1: these medicine men who have a great deal of knowledge,
25:18
Speaker 1: who are very old and if they're not in one
25:21
Speaker 1: of the little hippie websites I went too said, if
25:24
Speaker 1: you know, one of these medicine men dies, then it's
25:26
Speaker 1: like burning down a library, like unless they passed on
25:29
Speaker 1: their knowledge, then it just dies with them, just like
25:33
Speaker 1: some native languages do. It's really sad. And that's why
25:37
Speaker 1: the movie Medicine Man was was said in the Amazon,
25:41
Speaker 1: just because like people think, if there is a cure
25:43
Speaker 1: for cancer and aids, it lies in the jungles. So
25:47
Speaker 1: that's one which I believe, by the way, well they
25:49
Speaker 1: called rainforest the pharmacy of the world. Yeah, but I
25:52
Speaker 1: just have a personal theory that there is no disease
25:55
Speaker 1: wherein there is not a cure here on earth. Yeah.
25:58
Speaker 1: I think it's it's the biblical of you. No, it's
26:02
Speaker 1: nothing to do with that, you don't think so now.
26:04
Speaker 1: I just think it's the yin and yang of mother Nature,
26:06
Speaker 1: like there cannot be one without the other. Does that
26:09
Speaker 1: make sense. It's pretty interesting. I don't have anything to
26:12
Speaker 1: back that up. It's just my personal thought. Well, let's
26:15
Speaker 1: stick around, you know. And uh yeah, um, So apparently
26:21
Speaker 1: a quarter of all the medicines we used today have
26:23
Speaker 1: their origins from plants in the rainforest. That's a that's
26:26
Speaker 1: pretty significant backing for what you're saying. Well, yeah, which
26:29
Speaker 1: always cracks me up when we get uh crap for
26:32
Speaker 1: talking about like Eastern and Western medicine, people like you
26:36
Speaker 1: should just call it real medicine or not real medicine.
26:39
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of these people realize how
26:41
Speaker 1: much of their pharmaceuticals are based on plants that some
26:45
Speaker 1: shaman discovered. You know, we have a lot of angry listeners,
26:49
Speaker 1: don't we sometimes, Um, but just one percent of the
26:53
Speaker 1: plants in the Amazon rainforest has been um analyzed by
26:58
Speaker 1: Western Western hemists. I guess yeah, isn't it crazy? Yeah,
27:02
Speaker 1: remember we did an ethnobotany episode that was pretty good.
27:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right. Um. But even still even with
27:08
Speaker 1: just that one percent um of our Western medicine from
27:13
Speaker 1: that one percent of all of our medicines came from
27:17
Speaker 1: that that one percent analysis. Yeah, A hundred and twenty
27:20
Speaker 1: one prescription drugs are plant derived. That's amazing. Um. We
27:26
Speaker 1: get a lot of food. Apparently there's something like two
27:30
Speaker 1: thousand um types of usable fruit three thousand, three thousand total.
27:37
Speaker 1: Indigenous tribes throughout the rainforests use about two thousands estimated,
27:42
Speaker 1: and then we in the West have used like two
27:44
Speaker 1: hundred and that nuts. They were like literally eighteen hundred
27:48
Speaker 1: types of fruit that we just don't eat over here.
27:51
Speaker 1: And you got to these farmers markets and you see
27:53
Speaker 1: something like, wow, I've never seen this whatever it is,
27:56
Speaker 1: like imagine eighteen hundred different things that you've never before, right, um. Yeah,
28:01
Speaker 1: and that's like a farmer's marketing. I'm still like blown
28:04
Speaker 1: away by jackfruit, which one is that it's they're huge
28:07
Speaker 1: and they have like spine, um, like Um, you know
28:12
Speaker 1: what I mean? Into that stuff? Now, exotic fruits he
28:15
Speaker 1: should go to like, um, he goes to the Bufford
28:18
Speaker 1: Highway Farmers. Okay. Um, And speaking of good eating, the Amazon, well,
28:24
Speaker 1: not the Amazon, I always want to see the Amazon,
28:26
Speaker 1: but the tropical rainforests of the world are home to
28:28
Speaker 1: one quarter of the bird population parrots to cans. Yeah,
28:34
Speaker 1: you can't eat it too, can you need fruit loops?
28:39
Speaker 1: A lot of the things that we take for granted
28:41
Speaker 1: over here came from the rainforests, like potatoes, rice, black pepper,
28:45
Speaker 1: my favorite spice, cinnamon, cloves, avocado, pineapples, corn, chocolate, coffee, tomatoes,
28:51
Speaker 1: like everything you love, almost potatoes the food we eat.
28:56
Speaker 1: I don't think potatoes were from the rainforests. I think
28:58
Speaker 1: they were from the mountains something. And why did I
29:01
Speaker 1: say that in here? Then it is wrong, it's possible. Well,
29:05
Speaker 1: roughly eight of the food we eat originally came from
29:08
Speaker 1: tropical rainforest. So that's a pretty amazing statue. Um. Also,
29:11
Speaker 1: yet we're just tearing them down willy nilly. Um. Yeah,
29:16
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a problem. So we're losing the pharmacy,
29:19
Speaker 1: We're losing tons of um delicious fruit and delicious birds. Um,
29:24
Speaker 1: losing people a lot of people ten million to two
29:28
Speaker 1: thousands from pre Columbian Yeah, I mean it's been a while,
29:32
Speaker 1: but still that's a drastic reduction. You also hear that
29:35
Speaker 1: the we're losing the world's lungs, but apparently that's not
29:38
Speaker 1: necessarily true. Yeah, they used to call it's funny it
29:42
Speaker 1: goes they go by the lungs of the world. Is
29:44
Speaker 1: the Amazon the pharmacy of the world. And then someone
29:48
Speaker 1: else sitting here calls it the air conditioner over the world.
29:50
Speaker 1: Why can't it just be the jungle. Well, I think
29:53
Speaker 1: we're trying to drive at home to like fat lazy
29:55
Speaker 1: Westerners who are like, I need that stuff right right,
29:59
Speaker 1: I don't want to be hot. Yeah. They used to
30:02
Speaker 1: think that the rainforest was super important for providing oxygen,
30:07
Speaker 1: but um, apparently recent evidence shows that it doesn't have
30:10
Speaker 1: that much of an effect on the oxygen supply, not
30:12
Speaker 1: a net effect. Not a net it does it still
30:15
Speaker 1: produces like of the world's oxygen, which was the stat
30:19
Speaker 1: that was bandied about for a long time. But it
30:22
Speaker 1: requires about that much to decompose everything on the floor.
30:28
Speaker 1: But it is the air conditioner of the world. In
30:30
Speaker 1: a way. So, well, the dark depths of the rainforest
30:35
Speaker 1: are gonna absorb a lot of heat, and if you
30:37
Speaker 1: mow these things down, there's gonna be a lot more
30:40
Speaker 1: sun reflected back up in the atmosphere, which is going
30:44
Speaker 1: to increase the overall temperature of the planet. So let's
30:46
Speaker 1: talk about why why would anybody mow this down? If
30:49
Speaker 1: these things are like the nature's pharmacy or the world's pharmacy,
30:52
Speaker 1: the world's air condition or the world's along as the
30:54
Speaker 1: world's the world strip club. Yeah, everything right, So like,
30:58
Speaker 1: why would anybody cut stuffed down? Uh? Shortsightedness of huge
31:04
Speaker 1: corporations is my answer? Even more directly, like what are
31:07
Speaker 1: they after though, clearing land for like lumber, paper products, uh,
31:16
Speaker 1: making pastures for cows, which is not a very smart
31:20
Speaker 1: way to go about things. No, it really isn't, Like,
31:22
Speaker 1: let's cut down old growth rainforest for these cows so
31:25
Speaker 1: they can have a you know, barren landscape. Well, that's
31:28
Speaker 1: part of the problem, is um, because these soils are
31:32
Speaker 1: so nutrient poor. Apparently when you clear cut the rainforest chuckers,
31:37
Speaker 1: you have like usable land, arable land for a year
31:40
Speaker 1: or two um. So part of it's because this nutrient
31:45
Speaker 1: turnover from all the rainfall, but also all of a sudden,
31:48
Speaker 1: the soil that's used to almost no sunlight whatsoever is
31:51
Speaker 1: suddenly subject to light and heat of immense proportions were
31:57
Speaker 1: at the equator, and so it bay and cracks and
32:01
Speaker 1: loses its nutrients even faster through runoff, so causes flooding.
32:06
Speaker 1: It's really a terrible, terrible use of this land using
32:10
Speaker 1: it for crops and livestock. Yeah, I've got a stat
32:12
Speaker 1: for you to um. I mean, it doesn't pay off
32:15
Speaker 1: either in the long run. Um. This one statistic is
32:18
Speaker 1: that land converted to cattle operation yields the land owner
32:24
Speaker 1: sixty dollars per acre. If they harvest it for timber,
32:27
Speaker 1: it's gonna be worth four dollars per acre. But if
32:30
Speaker 1: you uh use renewable and sustainable practices when you're harvesting
32:36
Speaker 1: your land is gonna yield breaker in the long run.
32:39
Speaker 1: So it's it's short sighted us. And it's not these
32:41
Speaker 1: like it's not these indigenous people that like, we need crops,
32:45
Speaker 1: so we're gonna cut down the rainforest. It's Mitsubishi and
32:48
Speaker 1: uh who else, Texaco, Georgia, Pacific. Oh, what's the huge
32:55
Speaker 1: like the huge corporations are going in the unical What
33:00
Speaker 1: do you think, I said, un don't know what that is.
33:03
Speaker 1: It's this clothing company out of Japan. Well they hate
33:08
Speaker 1: the rain, right, they don't even have any steak in it.
33:11
Speaker 1: They just go cut it down. Yeah, uh, we're laughing,
33:14
Speaker 1: but that's really sad. Well. Also, um indigenous tribes who
33:18
Speaker 1: are protected are frequently murdered by UM mercenaries who are
33:22
Speaker 1: hired by these mega corporations that you know, want this
33:26
Speaker 1: land and drive these people off of their protected land. Um.
33:31
Speaker 1: I believe there was like a little girl who was
33:33
Speaker 1: found dead, an indigenous tribe member who has found dead
33:36
Speaker 1: like chain to a tree and like just killed by
33:40
Speaker 1: loggers who wanted that land. It's really bad down there.
33:44
Speaker 1: That was Brazil, I think. Well, plus the mudslides and
33:48
Speaker 1: flooding and everything else that happens when you disrupt an
33:51
Speaker 1: ecosystem so drastically. Yeah, it's like the hunting whale sharks.
33:57
Speaker 1: That's what I was reminded of when you were saying,
33:59
Speaker 1: like the economic impa act of preserving it is way
34:01
Speaker 1: better than just using it up right then? Yeah, short sightedness,
34:05
Speaker 1: short sighted that's very sad uh. Yeah, the company is
34:08
Speaker 1: still like that. There's not a body that can say like,
34:12
Speaker 1: we gotta stop this now, Like there's tons of people
34:15
Speaker 1: like Joanna doing this great work, Don Henley Sting, these
34:19
Speaker 1: people that have been on it for years, but it
34:21
Speaker 1: just keeps happening. Well, why don't you plug him? Are
34:24
Speaker 1: we done? I don't have anything else any search bar. Well, no,
34:30
Speaker 1: we should tell everybody about something very special and dear
34:33
Speaker 1: to our hearts. New York said, that's right. We are
34:36
Speaker 1: going to Comic Con and we will be doing a
34:38
Speaker 1: live podcast on Friday, October twelve at Comic Con at
34:43
Speaker 1: the Jabbitt Center. It's like our new thing. We did
34:45
Speaker 1: San Diego, now we're doing New York. That's right next
34:47
Speaker 1: up Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic Con,
34:49
Speaker 1: you should come back and see that. But after Comic Con,
34:53
Speaker 1: we have one of our famous that's famous to us,
34:57
Speaker 1: All Star Tribua Nights. Um. Where is it gonna be
35:00
Speaker 1: the cutting room? It is at the grand reopening of
35:03
Speaker 1: the Cutting Room in the Flat Iron District, which is
35:06
Speaker 1: what's the address? It is forty four East thirty second
35:10
Speaker 1: Street in New York and uh, it's in the Flat iron,
35:13
Speaker 1: you said, And the doors open at seven thirty. Trivia
35:16
Speaker 1: goes down at eight thirty. And what's first come, first serve? Right, free, free, free,
35:20
Speaker 1: first come, first serve. We will have a bar there
35:23
Speaker 1: that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us
35:25
Speaker 1: drink that's right. We're gonna basically be having a really
35:28
Speaker 1: good time if you if you're not familiar with our
35:30
Speaker 1: trivia nights, like, just come out and check it out.
35:32
Speaker 1: It'll be worth your while absolutely, and stay tuned for
35:35
Speaker 1: info on Facebook and Twitter about the makeup of the
35:39
Speaker 1: All Star team. We're filling that out as we speak.
35:41
Speaker 1: But we will have some special guests that you will
35:43
Speaker 1: want to meet. Yeah, and at the very least you
35:44
Speaker 1: can come take on me and chuck right yeah, yeah, okay,
35:47
Speaker 1: it's just fun. So what is that? That's Friday, October twelfth, right, yep,
35:51
Speaker 1: the panels that went. The panel is at at least six, okay,
35:56
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna be at the cutting room starting
35:58
Speaker 1: at eight thirty. Tribute Star said, eight thirty. Doors at
36:01
Speaker 1: seven thirty, be there, be square. You're good at this,
36:03
Speaker 1: thank you? So okay. If you want to learn more
36:09
Speaker 1: about rainforest, type that word in r A I N
36:12
Speaker 1: F O R E, S T S U into the
36:15
Speaker 1: handy search bar how stuff works dot com and it
36:17
Speaker 1: will bring this up. And I said, handy searchbar, So
36:19
Speaker 1: it's time for plugging the Amazon Institute. That's right. Um,
36:24
Speaker 1: things are, They're making some headway over there, but um.
36:27
Speaker 1: She basically points out that the bounty that Amazon is
36:31
Speaker 1: great provides h a lot of fish, fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants,
36:37
Speaker 1: pretty plenty of fresh clean water. I saw stat I
36:40
Speaker 1: can't remember it that we didn't mention. It's something about
36:43
Speaker 1: a percentage of the world's clean fresh water is in
36:46
Speaker 1: the rainforests, like a lot. I can't remember how much
36:49
Speaker 1: it was. We've got the ice caps in milking well. However,
36:54
Speaker 1: due to a lack of nutritional education, uh, they hunt
36:57
Speaker 1: monkeys and sloths to eat there. I'm telling these animals
37:00
Speaker 1: do not provide any nutritional value, though there are bones
37:03
Speaker 1: and attendons and tastes good either weird. They just fill
37:08
Speaker 1: space in a hungry stomach. So you can participate and
37:12
Speaker 1: the adopt a sloth program. Your money buys food and protection,
37:16
Speaker 1: basically two kilos each of beans, rice, coffee, sugar, and
37:20
Speaker 1: flour soap, milk and eggs are given in exchange for
37:25
Speaker 1: a sloth or a monkey that was scheduled to be
37:27
Speaker 1: skinned and grilled. That's how they put it. UM. So
37:32
Speaker 1: if you donate seventy five bucks, you can adopt a sloth,
37:37
Speaker 1: You get a certificate of ownership with the name you've
37:40
Speaker 1: chosen for your slow. Do you own that slow? And
37:43
Speaker 1: you get a CD of rainforest sounds, and students can
37:47
Speaker 1: actually adopt a slot for a class, and they have
37:49
Speaker 1: curriculum that they provide teachers K through twelve UM. They
37:53
Speaker 1: provide teachers with an educator's packet of lesson plans. If
37:56
Speaker 1: you email with your class size and curricular structure, they
38:00
Speaker 1: will give you like customized materially three classroom. So it's
38:03
Speaker 1: kind of cool. So you can read all about this
38:05
Speaker 1: at Amazon Institute dot com and they're well worth supporting.
38:09
Speaker 1: That's a good going, Chuck, Yeah, take going to Yeah, Yes,
38:13
Speaker 1: thank you very much for everything for nominating us for
38:16
Speaker 1: an Emmy Grammy Grammy. What's wrong with us today? Well,
38:20
Speaker 1: we're heading to TV. We're like Emmy's UM. If you
38:25
Speaker 1: have a really good UM nonprofit that's helping things people,
38:31
Speaker 1: lets you adopt something. We're always down for that, especially
38:34
Speaker 1: if you're willing to nominate us for an award too.
38:38
Speaker 1: That definitely greases greases the wheels um. You can tweet
38:42
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K Podcast, You can
38:45
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
38:50
Speaker 1: or you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast
38:52
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
39:01
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. Mhm
39:11
Speaker 1: hm