Transcript

7.30.26 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
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Speaker 1: Kelly Taylor, and I'll have some stories on the topics
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Speaker 1: of science and nature. But first a reminder. RADIOI is
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Speaker 1: a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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Speaker 1: have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Speaker 1: Our first article is going to come from USA Today
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Speaker 1: day to July the twenty fifth, and the headline is
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Speaker 1: mind blowing. That's in quotes. El Nino stuns scientists. Why
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Speaker 1: are they so concerned? The world's most influential climate pattern
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Speaker 1: is bearing its teeth in the Pacific. The strengthening El Nino,
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Speaker 1: a natural warming of seawater that influences weather around the planet,
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Speaker 1: is setting daily warm water records. It's not only quote
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Speaker 1: very likely to be the strongest event since reliable records
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Speaker 1: have began, it may end up the strongest by a
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Speaker 1: truly mind blowing margin, said Zeke Housefather, a research scientist
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Speaker 1: at Berkeley Earth. It remains to be seen what this
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Speaker 1: will mean for the world's weather over the next twelve
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Speaker 1: to eighteen months, but climate scientists say El Nino's effects
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Speaker 1: on global temperatures will increase the chances that twenty twenty
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Speaker 1: six could be the warmest year on record and make
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Speaker 1: it likely that twenty twenty seven will be the warmest. Meanwhile,
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Speaker 1: world leaders have expressed concern about the prospect of droughts,
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Speaker 1: heavy rainfall events, and heat waves. It's worth noting, however,
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Speaker 1: that not all Al Nino effects are sinister. The climate
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Speaker 1: pattern is widely expected to tame the twenty twenty six
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Speaker 1: Atlantic hurricane season. Alnino impacts are already being felt in
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Speaker 1: the United States, suppressing Atlantic hurricane activity and bringing unusual
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Speaker 1: heat and humidity to parts of California, one of the
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Speaker 1: states most vulnerable to El Nino's in sea surface temperatures
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Speaker 1: already have crossed the threshold that typically marks a very
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Speaker 1: strong event. House Father and Robert Roadi, his colleague at
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Speaker 1: Berkeley Earth, wrote in a monthly climate briefing on July
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Speaker 1: twenty third, the warming trajectory of sea surface temperatures in
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Speaker 1: the Alnino region along the Equator has been quote remarkable
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Speaker 1: in quote developing faster than the nineteen ninety seven ninety
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Speaker 1: eight Alninho Noah data shows water temperatures in the region
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Speaker 1: have never run this hot in July in the modern record.
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Speaker 1: While Ilino is a naturally occurring pattern. Concerns are growing
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Speaker 1: about its amplified impacts when combined with the climate change
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Speaker 1: fueled warmer than normal temperatures around the globe. The world
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Speaker 1: is looking at quote an unprecedented combination in quote between
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Speaker 1: the strong Alnino and the elevated warmth from climate change,
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Speaker 1: said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of
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Speaker 1: California Agricultural and Natural Resources. That will influence what Alninho
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Speaker 1: actually means on the ground in the US and across
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Speaker 1: the world. Swain said, previous al Nino events temporarily raised
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Speaker 1: global temperatures about zero point five degrees fahrenheit. He said,
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Speaker 1: now the globe will have the effects of long term
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Speaker 1: human caused warming, with additional warming on top of that. Quote,
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Speaker 1: a potentially record breaking Alnino on top of record breaking
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Speaker 1: global temperatures to begin with, is a pretty big deal,
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Speaker 1: he said. Quote. The odds of either this year or
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Speaker 1: next year, or both setting a new record warm average
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Speaker 1: global temperature are high. Swain said. If we don't get
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Speaker 1: there this year, we almost certainly will next year. In quote.
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Speaker 1: Sea surface temperatures in the Alnino region of the Pacific
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Speaker 1: are up to six degrees warmer than normal for the date,
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Speaker 1: a phenomenon that is several times more likely because of
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Speaker 1: climate change. According to Climate Central, a nonprofit climate science
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Speaker 1: and communications organization, quote, what is most striking is how
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Speaker 1: strong this event is forecast to become, wrote house Father
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Speaker 1: and Rode in their briefing. The vast majority of computer
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Speaker 1: models predict in al nino that exceeds the twenty fifteen
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Speaker 1: to sixteen record event. Even taking into account the background
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Speaker 1: ocean warming, It's more likely than not to be the
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Speaker 1: strongest Alninho ever observed. A very strong Alnino can influence
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Speaker 1: weather worldwide. Elninho will give an extra boost to global temperatures,
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Speaker 1: stated Alvarro Silva, a World meteorological organization. Scientists, we know
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Speaker 1: that during al Nino years, the global temperatures normally reach
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Speaker 1: record levels. In the United States, a strong Alnino means
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Speaker 1: a pretty robust increase in the jet stream, Swain said,
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Speaker 1: result in more intense and more frequent winter storms in California,
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Speaker 1: the interior, Southwest, and the southern tier of States. Some
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Speaker 1: of California's wettest winters have occurred during some of the
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Speaker 1: strongest al nino's. Alnino can heighten hurricane activity in the
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Speaker 1: Eastern Pacific and suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic. Because
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Speaker 1: of its influence on hydrologic cycles, Alnino can bring catastrophic
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Speaker 1: floods to some regions, but severe drought and wildfires to others.
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Speaker 1: It can also disrupt fisheries and food production and bring
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Speaker 1: about trillions of dollars in economic losses. The current forecasts
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Speaker 1: imply this could be the costliest costliest El Nino on record,
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Speaker 1: said Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth Geography Associate professor who studies
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Speaker 1: Alino's economic impacts. Specifically, there are likely to be drier
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Speaker 1: than average conditions in Central America and the Caribbean, along
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Speaker 1: with North and South America. The United Nations said. Drier
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Speaker 1: weather patterns are also forecast in parts of Indonesia and
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Speaker 1: Southeast Asia during the monsoon season, but wetter conditions are
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Speaker 1: anticipated during the rainy season from September to December in
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Speaker 1: East Africa. Even though the signals and models point to
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Speaker 1: a strong allinio, that doesn't mean it will definitely be
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Speaker 1: the strongest on record when it's expected to peak later
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Speaker 1: this year, said climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the
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Speaker 1: Penn Center for science, sustainability and the media at the
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Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania. It's clear we are headed towards an
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Speaker 1: historically strong event, Man said, but there's still a variety
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Speaker 1: of scenarios we could see. Alnino is intrinsically a chaotic
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Speaker 1: event in a climate system that doesn't always respond in
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Speaker 1: simple proportional ways. Man explained its greatest impacts come from
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Speaker 1: its connections to the larger atmosphere, such as the trade
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Speaker 1: winds and upper atmospheric winds, but those teleconnections can be
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Speaker 1: hard to predict. Small differences in conditions such as ocean
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Speaker 1: temperatures or the trade winds can alter what happens later.
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Speaker 1: For example, El Nino's ultimate impacts depend on factors such
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Speaker 1: as where the maximum heating takes place in the Equatorial
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Speaker 1: Pacific in the fall and early winter. Part of the
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Speaker 1: uncertainty rests with the fact that the models are in
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Speaker 1: uncharted waters. House Father wrote, the models have never been
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Speaker 1: verified in this territory. It's unusual to see this kind
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Speaker 1: of agreement among the strongest predictive models, but what that
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Speaker 1: will mean remains to be seen. Swain said, every event
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Speaker 1: has a different flavor, and this will undoubtedly have a
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Speaker 1: different flavor than we've ever seen before will turn down
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Speaker 1: of BBC Wildlife. The headline is its harpoon proof sings
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Speaker 1: jazz music and lives up to two hundred years. Meet
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Speaker 1: a record breaking giant of the animal world. This is
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Speaker 1: from July twenty second. The animal in question is a
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Speaker 1: record breaking goliath of its species. It has the thickest blubber,
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Speaker 1: thickest skin, longest life span, lowest core body temperature, longest bayleen, proportionally,
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Speaker 1: the largest mouth and head, and vocal repertoire, rivaled only
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Speaker 1: by a few species of songbirds. That's impressive. While it
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Speaker 1: seems almost too spectacular to be true, these mammals are
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Speaker 1: in fact bowhead whales. Danny Groves from Whale and Dolphin
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Speaker 1: Conservation explains their weird and wonderful qualities. Bowhead whales were
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Speaker 1: named by Linnaeus in seventeen fifty eight. At that time,
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Speaker 1: it was thought to be identical to its relatives, known
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Speaker 1: collectively as riich whales. Following the work of John Edward
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Speaker 1: Gray in eighteen twenty one, bowheads were proposed as a
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Speaker 1: separate genus to right whales. Bowhead whales are endemic to
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Speaker 1: Arctic and Subarctic waters and are adapted to life in
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Speaker 1: icy water. They have a very thick layer of blubber
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Speaker 1: insulation to enable them to survive in the coldest waters
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Speaker 1: and some of the harshest conditions in the world. Bowhead
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Speaker 1: whales live only in the polar Arctic waters of the
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Speaker 1: northern Hemisphere, in mostly shallow coastal water less than two
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Speaker 1: hundred meters deep and in close association with ice floes.
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Speaker 1: Bowhead movement patterns in the Arctic are mainly influenced by
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Speaker 1: the melting and freezing of the ice, venturing further north
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Speaker 1: during the summer months as the sea ice melts and retreats.
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Speaker 1: The bowhead whale is named after their unique steeply arched
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Speaker 1: upper jaw and mouth, which are shaped like an archer's bow.
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Speaker 1: They are also sometimes known as Arctic right whales, Arctic whales,
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Speaker 1: greenland right whales, and the who whale. The maximum length
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Speaker 1: of a male whale is approximately sixteen meters and a
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Speaker 1: female whale is approximately eighteen meters. A calf is around
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Speaker 1: four meters. The maximum weight of a bowhead whale is
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Speaker 1: around eighty tons. A calf weighs approximately one thousand kilograms
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Speaker 1: at birth. They have two blowholes and a distinctive V
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Speaker 1: shaped blow Unusually, bowhead whales don't have a dorsal fin,
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Speaker 1: or even a ridge or hump, as they spend so
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Speaker 1: much of their time swimming around under sea ice, a
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Speaker 1: dorsal fin of being awkward inconvenience. Instead, scientists use white
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Speaker 1: scars for baking ice or encounters of killer whales and
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Speaker 1: fishing gear on their bodies as identifying features. These long
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Speaker 1: are large, rather row tunned whales have wide, smooth black
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Speaker 1: backs and paddle shaped flippers with a distinctive white chin patch.
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Speaker 1: Bowheads also have bellies peppered with white spots and a
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Speaker 1: gray band just in front of their tails. Their immense
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Speaker 1: heads and powerful skulls enable bowhead whales to break through
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Speaker 1: sea ice sixty centimeters thick. Bowheads have no teeth and
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Speaker 1: are clasped. As balen whale, they use balen plates, thick
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Speaker 1: hair like structures like the teeth of a comb to
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Speaker 1: filter their food from huge volumes of seawater. In fact,
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Speaker 1: bowheads have the largest balene structures of any whale, growing
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Speaker 1: up to four meters in length. Bowhead's favorite meals are
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Speaker 1: krill and copepods, but they can also eat a range
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Speaker 1: of other small invertebrates and fish. Filter feeders, they swim
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Speaker 1: along with their mouths partly open, gulping in huge volumes
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Speaker 1: of water and food that they filter through their baleen.
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Speaker 1: Bowheads sometimes speed in coordinated echelon formation, staggered side by side.
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Speaker 1: While bowhead whales are sociable, they tend to travel solo
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Speaker 1: or in small groups of two or three individuals rather
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Speaker 1: than large pods. Bowhead whales are faced with a number
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Speaker 1: of challenges, including limited visibility and huge layers of ice
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Speaker 1: that build up on the sea's surface, restricting their access
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Speaker 1: to the surface and precious oxygen. Fortunately, bowheads have developed
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Speaker 1: ways of getting around these problems. Using their strong, thick
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Speaker 1: scald heads, they can break through sea ice up to
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Speaker 1: half a meter thick to breathe. The whales typically spend
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Speaker 1: nine to eighteen minutes under water before coming to the
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Speaker 1: surface to breathe, although other smaller whale species will put
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Speaker 1: on a show when it comes to breaching. However, they
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Speaker 1: may stay under the water for forty to sixty minutes
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Speaker 1: and can dive to several hundred meters deep. Bowheads are
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Speaker 1: thought to have the longest life span of any whale
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Speaker 1: and can live up to two hundred years. This was
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Speaker 1: discovered in two thousand and seven when a team of
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Speaker 1: Native Alaskan whalers found a harpoon tip in the neck
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Speaker 1: of a bowhead whale that they had harvested. The harpoon
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Speaker 1: was dated from the eighteen hundreds, meaning the whale had
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Speaker 1: lived a further century with the detonated harpoons stuck in
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Speaker 1: the blubber around its neck. Scientists think that living in
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Speaker 1: the harsh sharktic environment is the reason for the bowhead's
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Speaker 1: slow growth rate, reaching sexual maturity later and longer life.
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Speaker 1: It's also thought that bowhead whales have unusually effective DNA
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Speaker 1: repair processes, which can reduce the likelihood of developing cancer.
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Speaker 1: For example, bowheads are relatively slow swimmers, with an average
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Speaker 1: speed of two to five kilometers an hour, although they
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Speaker 1: can swim faster round ten kilometers per hour for short periods.
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Speaker 1: In fact, they don't do anything particularly quickly. Understandably, they
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Speaker 1: try to conserve their energy because of the extreme environment
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Speaker 1: around them. Bowhead whales are highly vocal, producing a wide
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Speaker 1: variety of vocalizations, including moans and complex songs. Complex distinct
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Speaker 1: musical phrases that or learned. This is rare among mammals,
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Speaker 1: although it's been discovered that humpback whales can learn new
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Speaker 1: songs from other populations. A study undertaken east of Greenland
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Speaker 1: found that bowheads had a new set of songs each season,
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Speaker 1: which led them to be described as quote jazz singers
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Speaker 1: of the deep end quote. Unlike humpback whale song, which
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Speaker 1: is likened to classical music, bowhead whale song is much
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Speaker 1: more free form and unrepetitive. It's thought that songs may
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Speaker 1: be used to navigate fine food and communicate, but it's
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Speaker 1: unclear why they have so many different song types and
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Speaker 1: why the songs change each year. They breastfeed in the
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Speaker 1: same way as other whales and dolphins. The calf inserts
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Speaker 1: its tongue into the mammary slit of the mother, and
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Speaker 1: the nipples, which are normally inverted, echect milk into the
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Speaker 1: baby's mouth, making sure they stay well nourished in their
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Speaker 1: arctic homes. Baby bowheads stay with their mothers for about
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Speaker 1: a year, drinking plenty of milk while they grow. What
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Speaker 1: happens to dead whales, how their humongous carcasses create a
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Speaker 1: whole new ecosystem that will last for decades. Bowheads may
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Speaker 1: follow migratory patterns that reduce exposure to predators. Mothers with
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Speaker 1: young may use the ice, loes and leads to try
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Speaker 1: to avoid attacks. Human threats include entanglement and fishing gear
15:21
Speaker 1: and ship strikes, and disturbance from underwater noise that's related
15:26
Speaker 1: to expansion of oil and gas exploration, shipping, and fishing
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Speaker 1: in the Arctic. Melting ice in the Arctic poses ongoing
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Speaker 1: challenges for bowhead whales as they depend on sea ice
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Speaker 1: for their habitat. Pollution, chemicals, heavy metals, plastics, and oil
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Speaker 1: spills can harm their health and their ability to have young.
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Speaker 1: Bowhead whales are subject to aboriginal subsistence hunts in the
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Speaker 1: United States, Russia, Greenland, and Canada. Today, the hunts are
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Speaker 1: protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and hunting is
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Speaker 1: allowed for registered members of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.
16:05
Speaker 1: A quota for the number of whales harvested is determined
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Speaker 1: by the International Whaling Commission. The hunts in Canada are
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Speaker 1: regulated by its government in collaboration with indigenous groups. Bowhead
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Speaker 1: whale populations were severely reduced due to extensive commercial whaling
16:23
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as they were highly
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Speaker 1: valued for their blubber, baling and oil. Protection from commercial
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Speaker 1: whaling in recent times has meant that there are an
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Speaker 1: estimated twenty five thousand bowhead whales and globally they're listed
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Speaker 1: as least concern by the IUCN. However, three sub populations
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Speaker 1: of bowhead whales are less numerous. Both both the East
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Speaker 1: Greenland Stalbarre Barren Sea sub population and the Okotsk Sea
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Speaker 1: subpopulation are classified as endangered by the IUCN and then
17:01
Speaker 1: from USA. Today, Burmese pythons have new foothold outside Everglades
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Speaker 1: and who won the twenty twenty five hunt. Burmese pythons,
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Speaker 1: destructive and invasive snakes with few natural predators in Florida,
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Speaker 1: have developed a new foothold outside the Everglades. A population
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Speaker 1: of the pythons is quote established in South Florida, historically
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Speaker 1: centered within Everglades National Park in Miami Dade County, according
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Speaker 1: to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Additionally, Burmese
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Speaker 1: pythons are considered established from just south of Lake Okeechobee
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Speaker 1: to Key Largo and from western Broward County west to
17:42
Speaker 1: Collier County. Pythons are usually cryptic, so it can take
17:45
Speaker 1: some time to collect enough evidence to confirm new areas
17:49
Speaker 1: of establishment. According to the website still, A spokesperson told
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Speaker 1: ABC News that new satellite population has taken hold in
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Speaker 1: a western part of Charlotte County to the north of
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Speaker 1: Naples and Fort Myers. Adult burmese pythons have few predators
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Speaker 1: and frequently prey upon native species, including those that are
18:10
Speaker 1: threatened or endangered. Burmese pythons can also threaten the safety
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Speaker 1: human beings, although they ultimately pose the biggest danger to
18:18
Speaker 1: the ecosystems they become established in. They can also prey
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Speaker 1: on household pets, such as cats and dogs. They can
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Speaker 1: consume meals equivalent to one hundred percent of their body mass.
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Speaker 1: The burmese pythons can grow to over twenty feet in length.
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Speaker 1: Those captured in Florida are usually between six and ten
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Speaker 1: feet long. In adulthood, they're no larger or They are
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Speaker 1: larger than almost all native snakes and are usually tan
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Speaker 1: with dark blotches along their backs and sides. Additionally, the
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Speaker 1: dark patches along their bodies usually fit together like puzzle
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Speaker 1: pieces and can look similar to the patterns on giraffes.
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Speaker 1: They also have dark wedges along the tops and bottom
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Speaker 1: of their heads, as well as behind their eyes. Florida's
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty six Python Challenge loosed a wave of Burmese
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Speaker 1: python hunters onto the Everglades, all looking to kill as
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Speaker 1: many of the state's most invasive snakes as possible. A
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Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars reward was promised to first place. More
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Speaker 1: than two hundred of the invasive pythons were removed from
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Speaker 1: South Florida during last year's hunt. In twenty twenty six,
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Speaker 1: the agency is again incentivizing participants with cash. There are
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Speaker 1: separate categories for novices and professionals, each with their own prizes.
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Speaker 1: This year, the hunt lasted from July tenth to July nineteenth.
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Speaker 1: No winner has been announced yet. Taylor Stanbury is a
19:41
Speaker 1: professional python hunter from Naples. She caught a total of
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Speaker 1: sixty pythons during the twenty twenty five challenge, securing the
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Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars grand prize during her first year participating.
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Speaker 1: According to National Geographic Stanbury used the money to turn
19:55
Speaker 1: her backyard into a full fledged sanctuary. The while Stanbury's Sanctuary,
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Speaker 1: a Naples based nonprofit. Over nine hundred participants worked together
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Speaker 1: to remove two hundred and ninety four pythons from the
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Speaker 1: Everglades ecosystem during the competition. Stanbury was the first woman
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Speaker 1: to win the challenge since he began in twenty thirteen.
20:20
Speaker 1: Now we'll turn to the Atlantic and the article is
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Speaker 1: headlined the return of the Monarch. After years of decline,
20:28
Speaker 1: butterfly populations are rising for now. July twenty eighth, My
20:34
Speaker 1: guide Silvestri, pointed upward, as if I wasn't already walking
20:38
Speaker 1: with my neck crane. As far back as it could go.
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Speaker 1: The sky was alive, with millions of fluttering shapes, congregating
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Speaker 1: into clouds at random, occasionally turning into ribbons that wound
20:50
Speaker 1: through the trees. So many butterfly wings beat the air
20:54
Speaker 1: that their vibrations were audible, like a waterfall rushing in
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Speaker 1: the distance. Should for the first time the immensity of
21:02
Speaker 1: the event I'd come to see. I was in the
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Speaker 1: center of El Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary, part of Mexico's Monarch
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Speaker 1: Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Unaccustomed to the thin air at nearly
21:15
Speaker 1: eleven thousand feet above sea level. I'd ridden Peluca, a
21:19
Speaker 1: rust colored mare, to the heights of the reserve. About
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Speaker 1: half way up, the orange and black butterflies had begun
21:25
Speaker 1: appearing in groups, alighting on flowers or gathering to sip
21:29
Speaker 1: water from puddles. Coupled pears mated everywhere, and their constant
21:35
Speaker 1: entanglements on the path made it difficult to avoid stepping
21:37
Speaker 1: on them. Peluca happily crunched more than a few underfoot.
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Speaker 1: I dismounted at the top of the trail and followed
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Speaker 1: Silvestri as he ducked under a rope that kept tourists
21:48
Speaker 1: from accessing the most sensitive areas of the reserve. It
21:52
Speaker 1: was February, and the Monarchs, northerners that had wintered in Mexico,
21:56
Speaker 1: were preparing for their final journey, which doubled as the
21:59
Speaker 1: first leg of a multi generational relay race north. Their
22:03
Speaker 1: delicateness belies a life cycle that more resembles long haul
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Speaker 1: trucking than anything you might read in a children's book.
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Speaker 1: Each of the butterflies above me had already braved many
22:14
Speaker 1: grueling trials. In the following week or so, the majority
22:17
Speaker 1: would be on their way. Monarch migration is a wonder
22:20
Speaker 1: of the natural world, one of the longest annual cycles
22:24
Speaker 1: of movement undertaken by any creature on Earth, spanning thousands
22:28
Speaker 1: of miles. Over the past half century, the lands that
22:31
Speaker 1: the monarchs traverse had become more hostile to them, a
22:35
Speaker 1: result of development in herbicides, global warming, and organized crime,
22:40
Speaker 1: all of which have put the future of that migration
22:42
Speaker 1: in doubt. And yet the story I'd come to write,
22:45
Speaker 1: my reason for interloping in this and other sanctuaries, was
22:48
Speaker 1: not just a narrative of beauty being diminished by human
22:51
Speaker 1: trampling and greed. Recently, there's been good news. Population estimates,
22:56
Speaker 1: after a long march downward, have been increasing for the
22:59
Speaker 1: past two years. This stabilization appears to be connected, at
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Speaker 1: least in part to efforts to save butterfly habitats in Mexico,
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Speaker 1: the United States, and Canada. Those developments are reason to
23:11
Speaker 1: hope that there may still be a pathway left for
23:14
Speaker 1: saving the Monarchs and their migration. The Monarch persists partly
23:20
Speaker 1: because of the dogged work from its human partners, because
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Speaker 1: the people who have given their life in every sense
23:25
Speaker 1: of the phrase, to preserve nature. But mostly the Monarch
23:30
Speaker 1: persists because life's job is to live, Because within those
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Speaker 1: thimble sized bodies hides a dynamo of survival that puts
23:38
Speaker 1: our most incredible machines to shame. The more we learn
23:41
Speaker 1: about the butterflies, the more we understand how extraordinary it
23:44
Speaker 1: is that they have so far beaten the odds we
23:47
Speaker 1: have stacked against them, and how forbidding those odds remain.
23:53
Speaker 1: We've known just how epic the monarch's migration is for
23:57
Speaker 1: only about half a century. In the nineteen seventy, using
24:00
Speaker 1: paper tags placed on butterfly wings, the Canadian butterfly researchers
24:05
Speaker 1: Fred and Nora ir Quart completed a lifelong mission to
24:10
Speaker 1: uncover the mystery of where all the monarchs born in
24:13
Speaker 1: Ontario went in the fall. To their surprise, the sojourners
24:17
Speaker 1: they followed made it all the way down the length
24:19
Speaker 1: of the US and onto the mountain forests of Michel Khan, Mexico.
24:25
Speaker 1: There they roosted, packed tightly into just a handful of colonies.
24:28
Speaker 1: They collectively cover no more than a few city blocks,
24:32
Speaker 1: yet hold nearly all of the continent's monarchs in winter.
24:36
Speaker 1: The Irquarts first visited these colonies in nineteen seventy six,
24:41
Speaker 1: and National Geographic published a cover story on their breakthrough.
24:45
Speaker 1: For centuries, indigenous people in Mexico's highlands have witnessed the
24:48
Speaker 1: monarch's annual return during harvest season, though for most of
24:53
Speaker 1: that time they didn't know where they came from. The
24:55
Speaker 1: butterflies have been making this migration for as long as
24:58
Speaker 1: twenty millennia, once finding paths to and from the fields
25:03
Speaker 1: gouged out by glaciers retreating with the spring during the
25:07
Speaker 1: last ice age. Now their roosting grounds sit within a
25:11
Speaker 1: handful of sanctuaries that I visited at Sierra Chinkua, a
25:15
Speaker 1: few miles north of El Rosario, I stood on a
25:18
Speaker 1: cliff overlooking the slender trunks of oyamel fir trees. I
25:23
Speaker 1: watched living streams of monarchs fly in different directions, sometimes
25:27
Speaker 1: winding about one another like a gigantic knot, forever being
25:31
Speaker 1: tied and looked in vain for three monarchs that I
25:34
Speaker 1: knew were in the fray. Each had been given a
25:38
Speaker 1: designation in a spreadsheet c h I O one six,
25:44
Speaker 1: c h IO one three, and c h I one.
25:49
Speaker 1: But those were all very boring names for butterflies, so
25:51
Speaker 1: I'd ask my six year old daughter to give them
25:54
Speaker 1: better ones. She came up with Cinderella, Eric and Carl,
26:00
Speaker 1: you know the very hungry caterpillar by heart. Nothing about
26:04
Speaker 1: the trio was unusual save for the gear they wore.
26:06
Speaker 1: Affixed to each butterflies thorax, like a tiny backpack, was
26:10
Speaker 1: a transmitter the size of a grain of rice. These transmitters,
26:14
Speaker 1: called Blue Mofo trags tags, had been developed by a
26:19
Speaker 1: company called Cellular Tracking Technologies, and Cinderella, Eric and Carl
26:23
Speaker 1: were part of the first generation of monarchs to wear them.
26:27
Speaker 1: Before my visit to the Sanctuaries, i'd spoken with David Lapuma,
26:30
Speaker 1: an executive at CTT in one of the brains behind
26:34
Speaker 1: the Blue Morpho. The company had initially focused on developing
26:38
Speaker 1: tech for tracking eagles, but Lapuma had previously worked in
26:41
Speaker 1: monarch conservation and carried his interest in the butterflies with him.
26:46
Speaker 1: Tracking a monarch is different from tracking an eagle. US
26:49
Speaker 1: monarchs each way less than a dollar bill. Any transmitter
26:52
Speaker 1: attached to one would made no more than a few
26:55
Speaker 1: grains of sand. No battery could be made that small
26:59
Speaker 1: and still provide hour over months of flying, and the
27:02
Speaker 1: solar panels that CTT used for eagle trackers were much
27:06
Speaker 1: too heavy, but the team figured out a solution, taking
27:09
Speaker 1: the ultra thin solar squares that lined the wings of
27:11
Speaker 1: satellites and carefully chopping them up into tinying bespoke cells.
27:17
Speaker 1: An early version of the tracker, applied to butterflies with
27:20
Speaker 1: dabs of eyelash glue, was linked with a cell phone
27:23
Speaker 1: app a sort of POKEMONO for monarchs, Lapuma said, and
27:29
Speaker 1: record their locations in somewhat haphazard fashion. The newest version
27:33
Speaker 1: works more like Google Maps, providing far more complete data
27:37
Speaker 1: on the butterfly's locations to anyone, almost in real time. Cinderella,
27:44
Speaker 1: Eric and Carl had all been tagged in Sierra Chinkua,
27:47
Speaker 1: which meant that I could deduce certain facts about their lives.
27:50
Speaker 1: They were already bona fide world class wanderers, having flown
27:54
Speaker 1: all the way from Canada and the Fall, a three
27:56
Speaker 1: month trip. Along the way, they dodged birds, windmills, and cars,
28:01
Speaker 1: eventually reaching the same patch of forests that their great
28:04
Speaker 1: grandparents had roosted in for much of the winter. They
28:08
Speaker 1: had not eaten and had barely moved, jamming themselves so
28:11
Speaker 1: tightly against their fellow travelers that from a distance had
28:14
Speaker 1: looked like scales armoring the sides of the trees. Now
28:18
Speaker 1: they had awakened, stretching their wings and warming up. Well,
28:22
Speaker 1: that's all for today's Diary of Science and Nature. We
28:25
Speaker 1: won't be able to finish that article, but stay tuned
28:27
Speaker 1: for more programming on RADIOI