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Transcript

Good News! We Found New Species! · Wildly Curious

• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hey everybody.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is what season 15.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we are what are we calling this mini-series anyway?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the mini episode.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: At first I thought good nature news, but it's more the nature.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like science.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Good science.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just good news.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Good news.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just good news.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because we all need a little bit right now because the world is in chaos.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so you guys know if you've listened to previous seasons, we have a long episode, then short episodes, and long, and then short.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so the ones that we're doing for this season, the short episodes, are little tidbits of good news to add some sort of positive atmosphere in a world that doesn't feel like there's much positivity around some days.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So especially like sometimes science.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like sometimes in science you should get real bogged down.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because it can be a real downer.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's getting hit left and right with stripping of the laws and everything.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just it can be a real Debbie Downer.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so we don't want to do that.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna go ahead and give some good news for the news.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Alrighty.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I shall take it away.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, first good news new species.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay, okay.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited because I have I've seen some of these.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, two.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna cover two new species that we have discovered this year.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: The first one that I wanted to talk about is the Southeastern Gentoo penguin.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, at first I was like, oh, another penguin, but it looks exactly the same.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's this one is because of DNA mostly in Genesis.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was just gonna say, freaking birds, dude.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: They just split again.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the great egret into something now.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's no more the great egret.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because the great e the birding codes for great egret is Greg.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's like, not Greg, because Greg no longer exists, because they've split it into two now.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So they're constantly doing they did that with the Nasca booby and the brown booby.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so as soon as scientists actually start studying the birds, there's always so many splits.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: So many splits.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's well, like tax taxonomy nowadays is just extra complicated.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So some Gen 2 penguins were thought to be one species, but genetics.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So now the Gen 2 penguins are have been split into four species, one of which was unknown to science.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this was a major like not just now, there's two.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, now there's four.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Four, yeah.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the the other three were considered subspecies, but not anymore.
• 3:09
  unknown: Okay.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um so, like I said, the one is now was considered unknown to science.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: The other three were subspecies.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about the one that was unknown to science.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this one lives on Kergoolin, the Kergoulin Islands in the Indian Ocean, also known as desolation islands.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh because they're so far really from land.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're 280 miles from land, but 2,000 miles from any permanently inhabited places.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So far, far, far away.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: They pretty much just look like all the other gentoo penguins.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're just a little bit smaller and they have slightly different vocalizations and then their genetics.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so gentoo gentoo penguins are generalists when it comes to food, which is a huge advantage, as we've talked about in other episodes.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: They'll eat anything that's living in the water.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And normally it at least this I thought was kind of interesting because a lot of times when we talk about animals that are like specialists, like bats, yeah.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: This being a specialist causes the genetics to diverge.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually the opposite case.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're generalists and they eat anything, they're perfectly happy to stay put.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas and so they become isolated by staying put.
• 4:30
  unknown: Yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're homebodies.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I was just gonna say.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I can appreciate it.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: All the other Gentoo penguins or all the other penguins species that are like they were saying, like the Adeli penguins, they are moving all around, different breeding colonies.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: These guys just stand there and that's caused them to become different species.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that combined with that there's this thing called the Antarctic Polar Front, which is a temperature and salinity ocean barrier that like kind of prevents migrating animals.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the dis I I found, you know, all this talk about taxonomy.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I found this really good article that was talking about what even is a species and how that is it changes all the time.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's literally a constant debate between evolutionary biologists.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's this, there's this thing called the general lineage concept, which just says that is separately evolving.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's traditional, that's like the traditional criteria for species.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but under some other ways of putting it, it's literally just anytime that there's a brand, it's it's more about the genetic branching than it is about traditional species stuff.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I mean, we have to think, okay, like penguins, birds, whatever.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, first of all, I I've said this before that people often think of birds as the same as dogs, where you have different breeds of dogs.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, birds are completely different, like different from one to the other.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think people forget that we've only done taxonomy, you know, the last what very short amount of time compared to millions of.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, Linnaeus was in like late 1700s, I think.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so you figure we're like slowly seeing transitions, and we don't well because you know what I mean?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like we don't see and just like genetic.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, then you bring in the genetics, exactly.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like a new frontier.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like we literally didn't even know that stuff before.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more, it's a much more complex issue than just, oh, this guy lives on this island.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, it turned out that way.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: But there are many ways that we could consider species versus subspecies, and it's really a blend of like where they are, what's their genetics, do they act differently?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's a lot of things.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Scientists who woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day, like you feel like sometimes it's just like throwing darts at a board, and they're like, today's the day, let's separate them sometimes.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the well, and then the other species that I was the most excited about, because it's me, was the Tolkeo cat.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I knew you were gonna just.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, good nature new is a cat.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So this one is a little bit more clear-cut.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: The last one was we knew these penguins existed, we just didn't know they were different species.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they pretty much went freaking exactly the same, like gentle penguin to gentoo penguin.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why before they were basically just subspecies.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Tilkeo cat is cool because we haven't found a new species, so like completely unknown to science in more than a hundred years, so it's a big deal.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it looks, although again, like one gente penguin to another, one wild cat to another, all the little cats that live in Central and South America kind of look the same, in that they're small, rounded ears, light brown fur that's covered in large, irregular-shaped rosettes.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when I say small, this little kitty is only three to four pounds when it's growing up.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So tiny.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was found in the youngest region of western Bolivia.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's right along the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you got like crazy high Andes mountains, and then on this side, it starts to turn into rainforest.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But right here on all these slopes, it's a cloud forest with really, really deep gorges and sharp ridges.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's like hard to get to.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's there.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: How that this can't be shocking that there are animals there that we haven't seen.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because who's just you know, gallivant through the the cloud?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I just love the way, though, this was actually found because found is a pretty legit term for this.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because this little the one that they were specific, like kind of got this whole ball rolling, was literally picked up by a man on a road in 2016.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Some man was driving down a forested road.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: For real.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: This one guaranteed us an entirely new species.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, he was in a forested road around La Paz when he saw a small cat.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: He stopped, picked it up, and took it home since he thought it was just a domestic kitten.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he called the little cat Tigr Tigrino.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, after one year goes by, he's like, maybe this isn't a normal cat because it's not getting any bigger.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is like people with coyotes, you know what I mean?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or bobcats.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That happens actually around here with bobcats.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, it's a kitten.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's a bobcat.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so because then he's like, oh, this is actually not a domestic cat.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: He did the right thing and he took it to a wildlife sanctuary sanctuary.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which kudos, dude.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So once at the sanctuary, they thought it was probably an uh an oncilla, which actually think we might have talked about on the podcast before, but it didn't look quite right.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they did some genetic testing and bingo, new species.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least new to science, though not to locals.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: They've literally always called this the topeo cat.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's like, uh yeah, this cat's always been around.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: That happens.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: We've also talked about that happening before.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think, remember when we were talking about, was it a fish or something that's in Asia?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about it, I'm pretty sure.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like this fish the locals have been fishing out forever.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, oh, it's actually like it was new to science.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but they knew all about it.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: The locals knew about it.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is just oh yeah, the Tolkeo cat.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they just nobody had ever.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So almost nothing is oh, and and the name of it, it's called the Tolkeo cat, but that name, like Tolkeo, the origins are unknown.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not indigenous, it's not an indigenous word.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Collectively, though, they've all named this thing.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody has been like, huh.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder why I've never seen it in a book before.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or like scientists again, like once again, like the like of science being like, oh, the locals.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like geez.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, almost nothing is known about these little cats.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Only two live individuals have ever been found.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you're not gonna find them though in that region.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's just I mean, it's like snow leopards and stuff in in Kazakhstan and everything.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're only so like they were just lucky with two.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: They found a female, I think even before this little guy, and so they had the genetic data, but she was either already released, it was like a it was a passing thing.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Tegrino still lives at the sanctuary, so he's an ongoing thing.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: But they have found scat from these cats, which indicates that they seem to eat rodents, which is like, duh, it's a cat.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but they also have camera traps out, which have picked up a few and shows that they might be nocturnal, but I mean, again, we've talked about I talked about a cat before in the show that is depends on if there's people or not, if it's nocturnal or diagonal.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, like who knows?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Scientists officially named and released the discovery last month in September, so it's fresh.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so both species, the Gen 2 and this little cat, need to have their populations evaluated.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're too new.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: There really is not that much known about them, but likely both are threatened or endangered because they have very small ranges.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: One lives on an island, the other lives on in like this big of a cloud forest.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a very centralized location.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, and both of those areas are under threat.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: The cloud forests are under threat from habitat loss and the island from climate change.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were doing a thing that they're like, that island literally won't be above water in 30 years if things don't Gemini Christmas.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, good nature news, we found new species.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to end on a downer.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to end on a downer.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But so, what I'm gonna say is that I'm hoping that finding these new charismatic species, like a penguin and a cat, both are like, okay, people like penguins and cats, that will hopefully help people to connect to these species and these areas and want to conserve them.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right, guys, so that ends the first mini episode, yeah, of season 15.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Next week, we're gonna do a long episode, and next week's episode should be very exciting for us because we have a crazy cool and special guest.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure you guys listen to and tune into that episode.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And between now and then, please go check us out on Patreon and support us if you can.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yay, bye.