Latest / NaturallyScott / E70 Jason Bittel – Grizzlies, Porcupines & the Animals You Thought You Knew 🐻🦔

Transcript

E70 Jason Bittel – Grizzlies, Porcupines & the Animals You Thought You Knew 🐻🦔 · NaturallyScott

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to this episode of Naturally Scott.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host Scott Harris, and as you regular listeners know or regular viewers know, we do every other show on an adventure of mine, and then every other show we have a human guest, and today we're going with a human guest, which is Jason Biddle.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm your host, Scott Harris, and I am excited to introduce you to Jason Biddle.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Jason, as I found out on his website, writes about animals for a living because that's a thing you can do, which I thought was really kind of cool, by the way.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: I like the way you'll put that.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're gonna get to your new book.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're definitely gonna talk about that today, so I I want to highlight that.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but let's talk about some other stuff.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um for the adult readers, you've written uh for Nat Geo, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: And um what was first of all, welcome.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Let me allow you to speak since I've been rambling for two minutes.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited about this, and I know you're busy, and we we uh took us some time to lock down a date, but I'm really glad that we've done that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so tell us a little bit about some of those stories that you've written.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, Nat Geo is you know, it's it's the it's the top of the pyramid for writers and photographers.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um no disrespect to the Post or the New York Times or anything else, but if you're involved in nature and you've done something in Nat Geo, that's that's kind of the New York Times bestsellers list.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us what you've written, tell and and what the motivation was for it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean, uh maybe we could start.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: I have a photograph here behind me of my first big story in National Geographic magazine, and it was about the low, you know, the very common European honeybee.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um a photographer named Ingo Arnt uh set up a camera inside of a an actual European honeybee hive, and it was the first time that anyone had ever been inside a natural hive, inside of um a tree trunk.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he, you know, for months documented what was happening, the comings and goings, all kinds of things no one had ever seen before in the wild, um, which I just thought was fascinating because, you know, especially, you know, here in the United States, we take honey bees for granted as a form of wildlife that lives here, even though you know they're not native to North America.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've just internalized them as one of our own.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you know, we also keep them like livestock.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, we have you can start a hive in your backyard if you want to.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And people have been doing this for thousands of years.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so we know so much about honeybees.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, you know, I can't remember exactly what year this story was, but pretty recently was the first time anyone had ever photographed, videotaped um activity inside of a wild natural hive.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so that just kind of blew my mind.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that theme is, you know, one of my favorite themes.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um learning stuff learning about a thing that we think we already know.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, I just National Geographic just republished uh part of my chapter from my new book about harvestmen, or as I grew up calling them, Daddy Longlegs.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we, you know, they are all around us.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I live in southwestern Pennsylvania, I grew up here, and they are so common, you know, I could go find one in five minutes if I needed to to show you.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And yet nobody knows anything about these creatures.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what I thought was really fascinating is that we grew up, um, the story that we were told and the story that we tell is that they are one of the most venomous or poisonous spiders on earth, um, but they don't have fangs big enough to pierce human flesh.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And what I learned whenever I talked to an actual expert is that this is wrong on so many levels.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um for starters, these daddy long legs, and the ones I'm talking about, are the ones with the big thick bodies and all the spindly legs coming off of the sides.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're not actually spiders.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: They are a spider cousin.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they are an arachnid, um, but they belong to a group known as the, and I'm probably mispronouncing it, mispronouncing this, but opial onis.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and their more official name is harvestmen or harvest people.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they look like spiders, so we call them spiders.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but if you look closely, they don't have what spiders have, and that is um two body parts.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh opial onis only have one.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: They're just that one little pod in the middle.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like uh like an advil with legs coming off of it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what's even you know more interesting is that not only are they not the most venomous or poisonous uh arachnid on earth, they don't have any venom.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh nor do they have fangs because they are scavengers, they're decomposers, they are eating leaf litter, uh maybe picking apart dead things, but they couldn't hurt you if they wanted to.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think I say in my book that you could drop into a you know a swimming pool full of daddy long legs, and other than being tickled to death, you know, you would come out of it just fine.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yet, you know, people Although there is a percent there is a percentage of the population that would just have a heart attack and die.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: From fear, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh totally irrational fear, but people are very scared of them.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so these are the sorts of stories that I've always loved throughout my career is you know, teaching people about the wildlife all around them, or you know, animals that they are they really know from uh nature media or you know, magazines like National Geographic, TV's uh channels like National Geographic.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um but there's so much we don't know about the natural world, and I think most people are born you know with that sort of inherent wonder about everything around us, and animals are a big part of that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we kind of go through life and we start to lose it as we decide, okay, I'm going to be a lawyer, I'm gonna be a sous-chef, I'm gonna be, you know, a teacher.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a real shame because you know, we still exist in this world, we're still part of nature, and we stop learning about it and stop having that wonder.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always try to invoke the wonder um and try to teach people about the things that are around them.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's sometimes that's telling them about things they didn't even know existed, uh, and sometimes it's teaching them things about the things they thought they already knew.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that has kept me busy for I think I wrote my first story for National Geographics website in 2014, um, and I've just been going ever since.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been uh I always tell people it's a dream job that I did not know existed when I was younger.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So whenever I talk to elementary schools or high schools or colleges, I try to sing the song of the science writer as a thing that you can do.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, you can write about animals for a living.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just as surprised as you are.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: So let's back up.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna we'll roll ahead to the book, to Grizzlies, but let's back up.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: What was the first story in 2014?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it was about fireflies, which uh for National Geographic it was about fireflies.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um my first story ever was about porcupines, and both of those animals are in my uh book.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um Porcupines was for Slate magazine.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was a um funny, silly piece about how porcupines mate very carefully.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it uh is again, you know, everybody knows what a porcupine is, but almost no one ever sees them, you know, out in the wild.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um most people who do live in in the country, uh, where I kind of where I grew up, but even there, you know, I don't know anyone, I'd never seen one growing up where I grew up.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so everybody also has seen the cartoons where a porcupine shoots its quills, you know, across a room or you know, as defense.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: They don't do that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have the capability to do that.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: But their quills are actually more interesting um than you would think, because if you just were to prick one, you know, in your arm and leave it there, you know, pretend you're an animal that doesn't have the wherewithal to use tweezers to get a quill out, just by your normal daily motions of going through life, drinking, eating, reproducing, you know, finding a place to live, that quill will actually work its way into your skin.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if it gets all the way in there, it can travel all throughout your body and wind up in the weirdest places.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there are actually two documented cases of uh, and this is back in the day, but there was a um a man, I believe they were both in New Hampshire or somewhere up in New England, but one uh ate a porcupine sandwich.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: He uh had eaten, he had killed a porcupine and made a sandwich out of it, and there was a piece of quill in there, and it went into his, it traveled, it migrated out of his stomach into his uh, I believe it was the wall of his intestines and caused a perforation, caused sepsis, and he actually died.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was another man who had killed a porcupine because he was uh collecting the scalp uh or collecting the the bounty.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: There a lot of states used to have bounties on porcupines, and he didn't make a sandwich out of it, but he did put his work gloves on the seat of uh his truck or wherever he was, and then put his sandwich on top of that, and somehow a piece of that quill got into his body.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a little bit later in time, and the the surgeons were able to um save him.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: But as they say in the the write-up in the medical journal, the source uh uh the course was stormy.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it was not a good, you know, look.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but so you know I think it's just an interesting thing that you know porcupines do have superpowers, just not the ones that we thought they did.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for sharing that.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I think what you've done now is screwed up my podcast.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I had a series of questions that I wanted to ask you, but I think we should just jump ahead to your book and talk about that.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And if I have the title right, it's Grizzled Love Letters to 50 of North America's least understood animals.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, as we talked about earlier, you know, we have roughly a half hour for this podcast, and we've quickly gone through close to half of it.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I will say this: I would like to have you back on another day to talk about your children's books and uh and the column that you did for children because I think that would be fantastic.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: But why don't you just go ahead and entertain the hell out of us with some of the stories from Grizzled?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us what motivated you to write it and what are two, three, four of your favorite stories in the book?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, probably like you.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was always that kid that was, you know, picking up rocks in a stream to see what lived underneath, poking dead things with a stick, just curious about the world around me.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I was growing up in the 80s and 90s and in a rural area, and I would check out the I was obsessed with sharks, and my you know, elementary school library had, as I remember it, two books on sharks.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd check one out, read it, take it back, check the other one out, read it, take it back, you know, on and on and on.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now when I go to my kids' schools, you know, their their libraries are so well stocked, you know, there's more science communication material than ever before.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but as I, you know, came up in this world of you know curiosity and writing, I realized that a lot of the stories that I wrote that most resonated were the ones about animals, not in some far-flung place, but all around us.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the ones that taught people about the things that, you know, again, they thought they knew.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I started to pitch my first book, I wanted to write about North American wildlife because it's all around us, and you know, yes, we appreciate some of it, um, but I didn't think we were appreciating it enough.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I I tell this little spiel that you know, if I were to ask you or, you know, if I grab someone off a street and ask them a question about penguins, I'll bet they would know what color they are, you know, maybe a couple different kinds, what kind of species there might be, where they are located, what they eat.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe because of March of the Penguins, they even know a little bit about how they reproduce.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: You probably, and everyone we know, has a neat little dossier of penguin knowledge stored in their weird little brain.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if I were to go and ask the same questions about bobcats or crayfish or you name it, opossums, the average person on the street will know nothing about those animals.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Even though we drive past them as roadkill in the morning, they get into our garbage at night, um, they're all around us, you know, daddy long legs, and we don't know anything about them.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to write a wildlife book that would be a non-traditional field guide that anybody could pick up and be entertained and uh walk away with you know conversational knowledge about ringtails.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, ringtails are a great example because that's an animal that lives in the American Southwest in Mexico.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it looks like it should be a stuffed animal.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, by all rights, this should be an animal that is in every child's bedroom, in every children's book.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't even know they exist.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a it's a cat-sized floof with a feather duster tail that's black and white striped like a ring-tailed lemur, it has big eyes, big foxed ears, uh, it climbs trees, it jumps through canyons.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's an incredible, gorgeous creature.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we don't even know it's there.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not in Madagascar, it's not in Antarctica, it's in Oregon, it's in California, uh, you know, Arizona, um, all the way out uh originally in Louisiana and Kansas, you know, like incredible.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um I wrote this book, and I think what's really cool about it is that it covers a vast array of wildlife, you know, 50 animals.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have a number of mammals, maybe about half the book is mammals, and then uh we have birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and then a ton of invertebrates.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe a third of the book is invertebrates.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that allows us to cover lightning bugs, but also jellyfish, um, crayfish, uh, daddy long legs.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: I have a chapter on yellow jackets, because again, another animal that everyone has had a bad experience with, and truly I think they're a misunderstood creature.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And just to sort of put my my money where my mouth is, I'm in this uh external shed.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is off of my house.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be a workshop.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I re uh retrofitted it to be an office, and so I'm writing this book about wildlife, and I'm writing, you know, a chapter on yellow jackets, and I got a yellow jacket infestation in my in my eaves, and yellow jackets were crawling out of the recessed lighting, dozens of them every day, and my office was swarming with yellow jackets.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I talked to my yellow jacket expert, um, Chris Allets, uh Chris Alice Kratzer, uh, and she informed me, you know, like if you can just wait it out, if you can make it to winter, here's what happens in the life cycle.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: The colony dies, the queen goes to ground, and she's the only thing that's left.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: She will overwinter um and start a new colony in the spring.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can just get there, you won't have to spray poison everywhere.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: You won't have to worry about, you know, being stung, going up in, like pulling out your lights and all this stuff.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I trusted and I waited.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the buzzing was the droning was what got to me.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had to wear earplugs.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was so loud in here because I couldn't even catch them and release them fast enough to get rid of them.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: There can be thousands of yellow jackets in a nest by the end of summer.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I didn't get stung once, despite living, you know, surrounded by yellow jackets.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, other than the droning, you know, I was completely unaffected.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And when winter came, they disappeared and they never came back because I had plugged up the holes.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I did practice what I preached.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't the best experience of my life, but it wasn't life-threatening either.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most people would not want to sit in a shed with dozens to hundreds of yellow jackets flying around because we think that they are out to get us.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's a perception that wasps, and this goes back to the days of, I believe it was Aristotle, um, wasps are evil little creatures, you know, of no service, no value, and bees are great because they make honey and they pollinate plants.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that perception, you know, is still the way that we view things.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter has been sung by yellow jackets several times now.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: She hates yellow jackets.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I wrote that chapter for her and everyone else.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not to say that we should be hugging yellow jackets uh by the end of the chapter, but if you understand a little bit about what they are and what they need and what they're about, then maybe you can reduce your conflict.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I try to inform people is that A, yellow jackets do serve a purpose.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: They pollinate all kinds of foods that we eat, but they also are pest control for your garden and your yard.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: They are out there every single day carving up almost everything that lives and hauling it back to their nest.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: They are feeding all of those little meatballs that they carve off to their young.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Their young eat protein and they eat solids, but they don't.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: They need nectar.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why they are in our face at the end of summer and in the fall is because almost all the flowers have dried up and gone to seed.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so their natural food source is gone.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you're standing there with a slice of watermelon, an open Coca-Cola, a popsicle, um, you are offering yellow jackets what they need, and that's that's the sugar water.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why they're in their in your face.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're they don't care about you, they need your sugar water.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, again, uh is everyone going to come out of this book loving every single animal in it?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have a chapter on grizzlies, um, and this just this year we've had four.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Before you get to grizzlies, I was out shooting yellow jackets yesterday.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: We have a number of fruit trees on the property, and my wife cannot pick and process the peaches fast enough, so there's rotting fruit underneath.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we've got honey bees, carpenter bees, and yellow jackets, along with house flies and green lantern flies that are all saying, hey, thanks so much for for lunch.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, but they're they're fun to shoot.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're gorgeous animals to shoot, you know, the black and the yellow.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's really it's a neat thing.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um on the grizzly.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: So let me ask you, and maybe the answer is the grizzly, of the 50 chapters, which one were you most surprised by?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the first I'm gonna say it was the first one I wrote, and it was intentional.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so again, I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, I live in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and to me, the whitetailed deer was about the most boring animal I could think of.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up hunting them, you know, and you know, my household was a hunting household, my neighborhood was, you know, everybody hunted.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and despite, you know, seeking that animal, you know, having it be like a resource, uh not a ton of people knew a whole lot about them.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And even me, as someone that was raised to hunt, I didn't really know much about their life cycle, um, and certainly not much about their biology.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I reasoned that if I could write a chapter about white-tailed deer that made deer interesting to me, then I could do that with any animal.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to prove to myself that every animal has this epic poem inside of it that you know is is waiting to be read.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did that with deer.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And what I learned was that, you know, deer, you know, again, are characterized as being sort of like background noise now.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're, you know, if you're in the suburbs, they're a nuisance animal because they eat your garden, they eat your you know, your flowers, pretty much everything you plant.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you're um, you know, if you've consumed any media in the last, you know, however many decades, you know, we see them as innocent, uh, you know, sort of like victim animals, their prey.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but what I learned was that this is a creature that has survived dire wolves and saber-toothed cats.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like it has colonized every habitat uh from the Arctic Circle to Argentina.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: You can find deer in almost everywhere, except for the ocean, uh, which uh Janine Fliegel, my uh expert for that chapter, uh told me.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even that's partially not true because if you go to the Florida Keys, we have the key deer that actually swim from island to island.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's an incredibly adaptive animal, and um, you know, it here in Pennsylvania and certainly in more northerly climates, you know, we go through a winter that has very little food for this animal that eats leaves and plant material.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so they actually change their microbiome to be able to endure, you know, months of hunger.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they survive on twigs and grit and little else.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just a fascinating creature that we sort of have characterized one way, but if you just shift your evolutionary lens a little bit, you know, it's a grizzled survivor of ancient fates, not you know, a helpless victim.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I came away from that chapter with an appreciation for this animal that, you know, if if we're sitting here for an hour, I'll probably see one walk across my backyard.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, they're so prominent now in Pennsylvania to be like a background noise animal that we don't appreciate, don't really consider, you know, as as wildlife.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's fascinating, you know, that we have that relationship with this animal that has you know multitudes contained within it.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And one of those is that, you know, this animal also almost disappeared at one point.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: They were so overhunted in the east that they, you know, were near extirpation.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we um, you know, people got together and said, Hey, we've depleted this resource, we need to bring it back.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have, arguably, you know, in many places, too many of them.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a conservation success story.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, that's just how many stories?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Two or three stories out of a million you could write.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another one is antler genus antlerogenesis.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we all know the deer have antlers.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, if you're if you're a little more well read, maybe you know that antlers are different than horns, and antlers are deciduous, which means they fall off each year.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think people fully accept or fully understand or appreciate what it means to grow an organ out of your forehead every year, an organ that requires so many nutrients that the deer actually will leach calcium and other nutrients out of.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Its skeleton to support the growth.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the season, when it's no longer necessary for the mating, they just lop them off and let them go.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's this huge investment that they then get rid of because it's a little bit of a liability as well to walk around with this headgear.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and scientists have done these incredibly fascinating studies on antlers because that sort of rapid growth, it can be up to you know an inch uh every few days, is they think there could be the key to regenerating nerves, uh regenerating limbs.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's almost magical what happens inside of an antler.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there are these studies from the 60s where they actually took the material from antler pedicles, which is that little pad that they grow out of, and they implanted it into uh the shin of a deer, and it grew in antler-like growth.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then they also took that material and they implanted it into the forehead of a mouse, and underneath the skin, the mouse started to grow a bulbous, bone-like material that was like an antler.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so it just makes you wonder, you know, like what is going on in this magical tissue that, you know, again, is wall waltzing through my backyard.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we just, you know, it's a miracle.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we don't fully understand it.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And to the extent that a lot of the uh professional sports leagues have banned the use of ground up antler as or ground-up velvet as a performance-enhancing drug.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know that it enhances performance, but there's enough question that they just decided we don't want people taking this, which is fascinating.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: When I mentioned you earlier when we were talking about my book, American Safaris, one of the chapters is on elk.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I chose Estes Park in Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park, and uh their antlers grow an inch a day on those elk, and they can weigh up to 70 or 80 pounds.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: The idea of carrying that around is just, it really is amazing.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: So you brought up Grizzlies, it's also the name of the book or the title of the book we've had on the show, and maybe you know him, Doug Peacock.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know Doug.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, if you get a chance, you're gonna want to read a book called Grizzly Years.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Nat Geo uh picked it as one of the top 100 um adventure books of all time.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And this gentleman, Doug Peacock, uh, spent uh more than two decades living with grizzly bears.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Came out of uh Vietnam, had PTSD, although they didn't know what it was at the time, but that's what he had.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And he wound up spending uh 20 or so consecutive winters living with these bears and has amazing stories to tell.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a it's a fascinating animal, as you know.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, what's what's your grizzly story?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to write a chapter about grizzlies because of all the American wildlife, I think they are, you know, at least top five as far as people know them.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um people are interested in them because they're so dangerous, and also people are afraid of them.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to write that chapter because we also have sort of this, you know, there are a lot more black bears than there are brown bears, in of which the grizzly is a um subspecies.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and yet we sort of conflate a lot of the information about both.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you don't go into the woods a lot, you just might think a bear is a bear is a bear.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to sort of, you know, talk about that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And what I learned is that, you know, even within the grizzlies themselves, they there's a wide range of sizes, uh, of diets, of behaviors, and I wanted to sort of dispel some of that that those fears, but also inform, you know, if you're going to be uh hiking in the national park this summer, you know, it would be good to have some knowledge because it doesn't take much, you know, you you can just walk into any national park, and if you didn't do your research, then you have no background information.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And these are dangerous animals, and so it's another one of those chapters, and I have a number of them.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have a chapter on rattlesnakes, um, jellyfish, gila monsters, you know, sharks.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: These are animals that can hurt you, and they do hurt people.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want to downplay any of that fear or um that threat, but I also wanted to contextualize it.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so the grizzly chapter, I think, tries to paint the grizzly as an animal suited for its environment, suited for its time.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you encounter a black bear, the general advice is that you want to be loud, be large, you know, try to show that black bear that you are a threat and that you aren't to be messed with, because black bears don't really see us as prey.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if they do, you need to disavow them of that notion.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's what most experts uh have said.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, uh there I've been in the presence of a black bear that was uh I was for a short spell, I worked for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was a student conservation association intern, uh a hog eradication intern in the Smokies, and we would trap and shoot an your uh invasive Eurasian wild boar.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And again, little kid grew up liking to poke dead things with a stick.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Once I would kill a pig, we were instructed to leave it, you know, away from where visitors would be, but leave it so that it could go back to the environment.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever would eat it would eat it.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a natural resource to be consumed within the park.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would like to go see, you know, how had it decomposed, had anything scavenged, yada yada.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was spring, like early spring, winter.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so bears weren't really out yet.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just walking along, checking on one of my cor uh carcasses, and a black bear was, you know, like 10 feet away from me with uh the hind leg of this pig in its mouth, and I was like, oh, uh like I was walking with my head down, somehow didn't see it.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I just popped up and there it was.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, clearly I need to back up.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first thing.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: But also, wow, how cool I get to watch this black bear, you know, do his thing.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I backed up, and apparently it wasn't enough.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so this black bear started pawing at the ground and chuffing and you know, clacking its uh jaws at me, and I was like, whoa, how cool, you know, clearly wants me to back up.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I backed up more.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that also was not enough.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And this black bear actually started, he dropped the pig and just ran right at me.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I didn't have any way to defend myself other than you know the advice that I had learned, and so I, you know, it didn't turn and run because that makes you look like prey, but I did quickly and and um sufficiently back up to a point where it stopped its charge, which was probably never meant to attack me, it was probably only meant to get me away so it could enjoy his pig.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: But um you would not want to do the same thing with a grizzly bear.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so grizzlies, you know, evolved in a different space.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: The brown bear evolved on treeless plains where there was nowhere for it to go.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if it was attacked by another grizzly or uh a cave bear or some other predator that was out there that was bigger and badder, the grizzly had no choice but to defend itself.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this was especially true for grizzly mothers with cubs.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so this bear has evolved to be the baddest thing on the landscape.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if it sees you or perceives you as a threat, it will destroy the threat.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so the the common, you know, understanding of how to react in these two situations is different.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so with a black bear, that's when you start to hear, you know, experts say, you know, lay down.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you can't, you know, hit it with bear spray, that's the number one thing, um, and there's no other way of legitimate escape, then you want to be on the ground, protecting your neck and your vitals, and you know, belly down and trying not to be a threat.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's diametrically opposed advice to a black bear.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's really interesting that we have these animals that people tend to think of as being the same, um, but uh, you know, couldn't be more different in many ways.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the flip side of that is that black bears evolved in areas with trees, and they are really good climbers.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Grizzly bears can also climb, but like a mother black bear knows that if push comes to shove, her babies and even her can scammer scamper up a tree, you know, faster than they can almost run away.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so she knows she doesn't have to defend her babies in every sort of circumstance.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't have to annihilate every threat.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's a completely different evolutionary trajectory, and it leads to our best you know current advice for how to handle these animals.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing is foolproof, all animals are different, and individuals exist, and situations can be different.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that those sort of general stories are really interesting.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so that was part of the story I wanted to tell with the with the grizzlies.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great story.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: We were my wife and I were up in uh Jasper National Park, Canadian National Park, um, a summer ago, and we were driving down a um fairly narrow dirt road, and off to the right, I saw a couple of uh black bear.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so I pulled off to the left.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: The road was maybe 15 feet wide.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: I pulled off to the left, so I was as far away from them as I could get.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: I got out of the car, walked around, and went over, and they were far enough back that I could snap some shots, right?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm snapping shots of these black bears, and we both seemed to be perfectly understanding of each other, and not a problem.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I turned around and started to walk back to my car, and there was a railing there on the side of the road, and on the other side of the railing, 12 feet away from me, was a full-size grizzly bear just staring at me.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, there is nothing I can do.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: This bear has my absolute future in its hands.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: If it decides to kill me, because you know how fast they can accelerate, I couldn't finish screaming before, and so I just stood there with the camera.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how I did it, but I wound up getting a picture of the bear.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually the bear just backed up and walked away because, to your point, you know, there it wasn't hungry or didn't perceive me as a threat or whatever it was.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll tell you what, it does encourage me to pay a little bit more attention and probably to start wearing adult diapers when I'm going out to places where there are grizzlies.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: We just got back from Alaska, so we got to see the non-grizzly uh brown bears, you know, along the uh along the shoreline, which was just amazing.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jason, I can't believe how fast this has blown by.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um give us uh give us the full name of your book and tell us where we can get it.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Grizzled Love Letters to 50 of North America's least understood animals is available everywhere books are sold.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's also an auto an audible version and an e-reader version.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have listened to some of the the audible version, and it's uh it's narrated by Matt Boren, and it's really fun to listen to.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a very easy read.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, anybody from any background, any education any excuse me, any educational background.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um one quick aside, when I sent the first email idea for this book, my oldest uh child was two.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever I received the author copies, he was 11.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he immediately opened it up and read through the Orca chapter uh because that was his favorite animal at the time.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so my 11-year-old read through you know a whole chapter and only had two questions about two scientific names.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's it's a book for everyone.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you hope everyone enjoys it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: I hope they do.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: I hope they take the time to read it.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna throw my email up here at Scott at naturally scott.com.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got questions for me about the show or about Jason, send them.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you've got questions for Jason, send them and I'll forward them on.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're watching us on YouTube, do me a favor and hit subscribe.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: Every time you do, YouTube pushes it out to more people.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the more people that hear these stories, I just think the better it is.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, just like Jason's book.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if we can get more people interested, if you've got a comment, drop one.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you happen to like the show, go ahead and hit like.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and Jason, I wrap up every show encouraging people to get outside.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and outside, I don't care if it's your front porch, your backyard, a state park, a national park, or you can travel international, just get outside.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: You are going to see something.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: And if it's in this country, you can read Jason's book and learn about it too.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: And when I send people out, I tell them the same thing every time, which is when you're out there, stay safe and stay curious.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Jason, thanks so much for being a part of this.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'll put the pressure on you to do this publicly.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to invite you to come back because I do want to talk about your children's books.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: And um, let's see if we can't get some interest going there.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, thank you, of course, to those of you watching and listening.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: I very much appreciate it.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Scott Harris, the host of Naturally Scott.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: This is Jason Biddle, tremendous author and a pleasant guest.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: Have a terrific day.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at naturally Scott Harris.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.