Ologies with Alie Ward - Cervidology Part 2 (DEER) with Rhiannons Jakopak & Kirton

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

The spirited, laughy chatter with a duo of deer scientists named Rhiannon continues in the thrilling conclusion with Part 2. Buckle up for listener questions addressing everything from social structure to hunting to Chronic Wasting Disease to how *not* to hit a deer with your car. Also the weirdest animal fact Alie has ever learned in the history of Ologies. Soul-rattling. And if you missed Part 1, circle back and catch up to learn all about ungulates and deer and moose and elk and fawns and … some Stevie Nicks trivia and Welsh mythology for good measure. These episodes may change the way you look at our furry backyard friends forever. Rhiannon Kirton: https://twitter.com/rhiannon_kirton https://www.instagram.com/rhi_kirton/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/rhiannon-kirton/ Rhiannon Jakopak: https://twitter.com/rhiacoon https://www.instagram.com/rhiacoon/ Jakopakresearch.wordpress.com September 14-19: Black Mammalogists Week: https://blackmammalogists.com/ September 20: Free Atlatl Making Workshop by Angelo Robledo: 9/20, 10am-1pm Pacific Time: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdqLMRT1PPLslrJyG5srbokkWrof3XFujIDEC2RzzrRaQ4LJA/viewform A donation went to: The American Society of Mammalogists -- Sponsored Membership Fund: https://asm.wildapricot.org/Donate For more links: alieward.com/ologies/cervidology “Howdy, I’m John Ware!” kids’ book: https://redbarnbooks.ca/products/john-ware Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and uh...bikinis? Hi. Yes. Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's still the third automatic soap dispenser who finally recognizes that your hand exists. Thank you for coming back to me on your second trip to the bathroom. Remember, wash your hands, milk the thumbs. This is Alli Ward, back for part two of Servidology with the Rehanon's Curtain and Jekyllpac. Now if you are tuning in only to part two and you're like, wait, who, what is a Rehanon, what does it have to do with scarves and Welsh mythology, head back to part one and listen to it first for a primer on what a deer even is.

And there's ungulate gossip, there's fond talk, there's much more. You're also going to learn that Rehanon Jekyllpac has an American accent. This is Rehanon Jekyllpac. And Rehanon Curtain has a mildly British Aussie American accent. I'm Rehanon Curtain. And says Dia and hoofs, both of them are great. Now in this episode, part two, we answer all of your questions. You're burning irrepressible questions.

You're servid curiosities you've held in your heart and you've let explode forth via Patreon where you can join for literally 25 cents an episode, a dollar a month, which is about a quarter of the rate of a parking meter minutes wise. So thank you patrons for making the show possible. Thanks to everyone who supports by wearing items from AllergiesMerch.com and who keeps allergies up among the top science giants in the charts by making sure that you're subscribed and by rating and reviewing that stuff really matters. Also just to show and prove that it matters to me, I pour through the reviews and I pick

a fresh one like this one from Allengeite Penelope who says, I'm the dad they never had and that they downloaded the Apple podcast app specifically to leave a review. And now they don't know what to say, but thanks for creating something that feels like a warm educational hug would I need it the most Penelope get on over here. Okay, so let's get to this wonderful follow up episode where you're going to learn how to not hit a deer with your car and the ethics and the culture of hunting. We talk about chronic wasting disease, deer farts, elf spotting, antler finding. We discuss deer who use crosswalks, deer who are more goth than any of us will ever be.

And honestly, one of the weirdest animal facts I have ever learned in the history of Allergies, I cannot, cannot, cannot believe it's true. It is soul rattling. Oh boy, I envy you that you're about to listen to this interview for the first time. Prepare. Okay, so once again, dear listeners, buckle up for scientists, Riannans and servidologists, Riann and Curtin and Riann and Jacob Pack. Can I ask y'all Patreon questions?

Yes. Is that okay? I'm so nervous, but yes. Okay. Will Pliwa and Samantha Heinecke both wanted to know if they chew their cud and they do they burp methane? Is it kind of like cows? My advisor is a nutritional ecologist, like this is his jam and so they are ruminants,

so they do have like a similar digestive system to cows, whereas things like horses are hindgut fermenters, so they have like a different system. So deer have all of the rumin, they have the like chamber that has all the microbes and that sort of thing, as well as cows. I guess there's like carbon budgets or like a balance, right? That's not just what you put out through farts or whatever. And so I don't know if you can really compare it to cows other than like they might fart methane, because the actual balance of like how much goes in and how much goes out would

be different, because cows are usually fed like soy, which is a crop, which we farm and then you use like fossil fuels for your tractor, especially super complicated, I'm not a food scientist. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Quick side down. No one's really measuring deer farts, are they? They are.

Now one New Zealand study I found titled comparative methane emissions from cattle, red deer and sheep, red, total daily methane production from cattle is 140 grams per day, which was greater than red deer, which are elk, at 31 grams per day, which was greater than sheep at 18.3 grams a day, because you figure they've got smaller buttholes anyway. Now because methane is 20 to 30 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping in heat and poaching the planet, a lot of eyes are looking at cow butts, a lot of fingers pointing toward cow butts, and actually by volume more their burpee faces as a way to cut our methane addiction.

So one company in Texas called Bazor Labs has developed probiotics that can cut bovine belches by up to 50%, which is a measure which could reduce livestock's impact on climate change. But right now, the meat and dairy industries are right up there with transportation in terms of changing our earth's temperature for the not better. So if you're eating a cheeseburger on a private jet right now, maybe just try to do one of those things instead of both. Ashley Tunney, first time question asker, wants to know, is it true that deer's antlers

can give people diseases? Is that a thing? The antlers specifically? Yeah. Is there anything disease wise that you can get from a deer antler? I don't think you, like, I don't think no. Okay. Good.

Yeah. I also think no. Like if you're talking about picking up, like, deersheds, then I don't think so, but also you should always find out from your local wildlife management unit whether you're allowed to pick up deersheds. Oh, because you sometimes can't? I don't know if it's allowed in all places. I'm just a big advocate of, like, ring someone or Google that before you do it somewhere.

Right. Yeah. So actually this is something that's been kind of a hot topic in Wyoming recently and I think is getting to be a bigger topic across the western U.S. at least is when and where you're allowed to pick up antlers, it's called shed hunting. And so a lot of people will go out early on in the winter, like right after they drop their sheds, if they, if given the option, they would go and pick up the sheds right away and that, like, sheds are cool, antlers are really cool, but they're also a really

good way to make easy money. If you can find them, you can sell them for a ton of money right now. But if you are out on these animals winter ranges in the winter, it's really hard on those critters. So, like, say you're driving around or you're walking around and you scare some deer, those deer then have to, like, run through the snow, which is really energetically costly. And they are surviving on, like, sagebrush and the reserves from the summer, so they, like, don't have that much to work off of.

So each time you bump them, it can be problematic. In Canada, or at least in Ontario, where I live, you are not allowed to remove anything from parks, be it, like, a feather or a branch or anything. So it definitely depends on where you are, but also it has larger consequences. So two out of two re-anon servidologists agree to check with your local wildlife management before shed hunting and think about it every time you're about to scare a deer. You just took a few bills out of their winter energy budget. Come on, man.

Kylie Abbott, first-time question asker, wants to know, what does deer social structure look like? We have a few moms and babies and bucks that pass through our yard. Do they interact with each other? Like are they friends? Do they hang out? What's their deal? Yes.

Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited. Yes. Okay. Cool. So most of my research is on, like, the ramifications of deer social structure. So I'm very excited to talk about this question. So in whitetail deer, and we think also in mule deer, though it's been studied less extensively,

there's this idea of the rose petal hypothesis, it's the spatial arrangement of animals. So like one mom will have her little home range and then she gives birth to a daughter. That daughter lives, and then that daughter sets up a home range really close to her mom. These home ranges kind of slightly overlap a little bit, so these home ranges start to look like the petals of a rose with an entire family group being like a single rose. And so normally that family group is what we would call a matriline. So it's a group of female family members. And then evolutionarily, the males should disperse to prevent inbreeding.

Go on, now get. Okay. So imagine a rose with overlapping regions, and it's just like a bunch of aunts and sisters and daughters all kicking it, steel magnolia style, just chitter-chattering. And then, you know, some unrelated dudes come into town like, hey ladies. But the social structure of deer kind of ebbs and flows throughout the year. So when a mom is going to give birth, she will like kick off her last year's offspring sometimes like super, super violently, so I have seen this before.

And a graduate student at the University of Wyoming, Ashley Ray, is looking into this, but basically a deer can like kick with their two front feet and like go away, get away from my new fawn. Wow. And so they will like super isolate themselves from everyone else. But then over time, like a month or two, those family groups will kind of come back together. And it's normally females, sometimes last year's male offspring are tolerated. And then the bucks are off kind of doing their own thing in what are called bachelor groups.

And then one question that hasn't been evaluated a ton, but I think is going to hopefully be quite examined soon, is do they migrate together? Are they in big old social groups? Is it just everybody's going in the same direction, so you just kind of like it's like traffic and you just get funneled together? Who knows? Yeah, their social structure can change throughout the year, but perhaps this listener has like a family group in their yard.

And then if it's okay to like, or like go into my research a little bit, but this notion of like family groups and being connected to your family is really important potentially for how animals learn how to migrate. And so migration is really important behavior for a lot of ungulates in the Western United States, for example, because the areas that are at high elevations are super lush in the summer and like make for really good fat gain, which is a really important thing for a deer. But they are completely inhospitable during the winter because of snow, like super deep snow.

So those deer got to get out of there. And so they go down to their lower elevation winter ranges. But those winter ranges, like they're great for the winter, but they are definitely not ideal. They're mostly just sagebrush, which is fine, it will get you through, but it's not what you want to be eating, especially when you're raising fawns. But we are thinking that moms actually teach their offspring how to migrate and where to go.

And so we are tracking mule deer fawns from the day that they are born and throughout their entire lives until they die, basically, trying to understand like how do they learn these migratory routes? Are they adopting the migratory routes of their mom? Are they not? Are they doing their own thing? So they don't have a GPS. They don't have phones with GPS is what you're saying.

Correct. They definitely don't have a way. So these deer do the same thing year after year, for the most part, and there are some animals that deviate, but like most of them do the same thing year after year. This story is wild. I can't stop thinking about it and there needs to be a road trip movie about it, okay. And then there was this one animal that we were studying that we had had a collar on her from the day that she was born.

So we knew like all of her movements throughout her entire life. We also had her mom collared. So we knew where her mom had been. And this deer was born on summer range. She migrated down to winter range with her mom hung out on winter range with her mom migrated back to summer range with her mom. Like that's exactly what we expect deer to do. This was like the typical a student of a deer, but then this deer just like decided to for

some reason just peace out and she just went on a walk about like we thought that she was going to be dispersing. She went like 60 miles up and over mountain ridges. She gained and lost like 24,000 feet in elevation. The highest mountain in Wyoming is Gannett Peak and it is just under 13,000 feet. So this deer like climbed Gannett Peak like twice basically. So she just like did this walk about and then she was gone or she did that for a little while and then truly on a Monday morning, she was just like, oh, I'm good now.

I'm going to go home. I'm pretty tired. I think I'll go home now. And she just like turned around and but she took exactly the same route back. Whoa. And like we knew exactly where she had been like we had her collared. So we know that she had never been there before. We knew where her mom was.

So we knew that her mom had not like shown her this route, but she took that exact same route back. Yeah. So up and over all these mountain ranges, whatever. Keep in mind that I like I get lost all the time and I have a GPS like I have a GPS in my hand in these mountains and I am like two kilometers from the truck and sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, where am I? I get lost in the grocery store.

I'm like, where's the where's the bakery? That's amazing. Right. And like these are these animals that sometimes that we think are like not super smart or like maybe we know everything because we've been studying them for so long, but like these animals are way smarter than we think. Super smart. They're super smart and they have the ability to like gain a ton of spatial information and

use it and store it and then potentially for years. And so they only have to be able to be exposed to a thing like one time and then they can just be like, okay, cool. This is what I'm going to do. Okay. So they also studies deer in space, but not like astro deer or cosmos, but like deer and just where they're at physically. I mean, I study spatial interactions between hunters and deer.

Deer learn like the hunting season usually coincides with the rut, which is the breeding season. So how Rhiannon was talking about groups of deer, sometimes the bucks live in bachelor groups, but in the breeding season, they're like competing with each other for females. So they'll split up and be solitary so that they can get the most females. But as part of that, we also have hunting season at the same time in most places. And some deer have learned about hunters, I guess. And there's some studies that suggest that during the hunting season, deer actually become

more nocturnal. So they are more active at night time to avoid hunters because in most places you're not allowed to hunt. Okay. I don't know what I'm saying in most places. Hunting in the dark is generally not allowed for very obvious like safety reasons in most places. No, everywhere.

So deer have learned, I guess, about the threat of hunters and unlike other mammalian predators like wolves and stuff, like people hunt deer the same time every year. And it's always in the daytime. And deer know that. So they'll become more active at night time during the hunting season to avoid people. And where I worked in Montana, I worked right next to the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge. And there was an area called Slippery Inn. And it's like, so you can hunt in the wildlife refuge.

And then in Slippery Inn, it's this area within the wildlife refuge, like a parcel of land where you're not allowed to hunt. Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, lots of the elk like to hang out there during the rut. So if you ever find yourself in Eastern Montana and you go to Slippery Inn during the rut, which is also the hunting season, you're like almost guaranteed to see elk. We went down there and saw a bunch of elk and it was really cool. And there's like an elk report.

I think there's like a line and you can bring it and they tell you how many elk are there. In case you want to put this in your speed dial, the Slippery Inn elk viewing conditions hotline is 406-535-6904. Nice. So let's get them on the horn. Let's get them on the antler. Let's see what they say. Big money, big money.

No, Emmys. Thank you for calling the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge Slippery Inn elk viewing area hotline. Today's date is September 1st, 2020. There are currently 200 to 250 elk in the viewing area. Yes. Please remember the elk viewing area is close to all public entries beyond the road's edge. Okay.

Being too close or disturbing animals can be unsafe for you and very stressful to wildlife. Use binoculars, spotting scopes, or telephoto camera lenses to get closer. The elk viewing area hotline will be updated in the beginning of each week or as numbers change. Thank you so much and have a great day. But there's definitely some studies and lots of anecdotal evidence that deer learn these things and will behave accordingly to avoid people and being shot, which is really cool. When I lived in British Columbia, we used to see a lot more deer in town during the hunting

season, which of course is just anecdotal, but it fits in with this idea that deer are very good at learning things about people. They're so smart. Yeah. So smart. That's what I was going to ask. I'm so surprised that they are that smart because I think that they have such a reputation for like, oh, I'm in a road.

This is why I shouldn't go up close to them because they're watching you. They know what you're up to and they're not about it. Okay. So my dad on the family group chat always loves to get critter pictures. And right before I did this interview, he mentioned when my sister sent a deer picture that deer go into town in hunting season and I was like, really? And he was like, well, no, that's just what hunters say when they don't come home with any venison.

But it turns out, grand pod, there's some truth to it. The bucks are like, yeah, bye. I'm heading into town, suckers. Well, Shirley Dark had this question a patron asked, do deer develop street smarts in suburban areas? I live in Montana and have the cool dudes in my yard all the time. They love my crab apple tree, but it's not unusual to see deer use crosswalks or to wait for traffic to pass before crossing the street.

They don't even seem bothered by people. Are they adapting to city life? And also, should we make sure that they social distance and wear masks also? They ask. I don't know about deer specifically, but there is some amount of talk about behavioral syndromes and selection, like in evolution, that the deer that are not particularly road smart or people smart will be killed and then they won't pass on their genes to their offspring. Whereas deer who don't get killed will pass on their genes to their offspring.

So there's probably something in that I don't know specifically about crosswalks, but there is a lot of info out there about how deer learn and also how we select for specific traits through the way that we interact with wildlife and deer. OK, side note, if you were to Google, do deer use crosswalks? Like I just did, you will find dozens of YouTube videos and morning news segments of deer just chilling at a light, waiting for it to change, just waiting for a break in traffic. Now, as a human person myself, who got mowed down jaywalking at the age of 12, I can confidently say that deer are smarter and more patient than alleyward.

OK, on that topic of city servids, a bunch of folks on Patreon such as Jason Enick, Tofer Hennis, Zach Strickland, Nathan Bronnick, my cousin, JV Hampton Vincent, Megan Walker, Kazio Winooski, Karen Blaisdell, all had questions about deer and vehicular interactions, as did Oryxbacia, who asked plainly, why do I hit them so much? And Hannah Black, who apologetically submitted the question, why do deer cross the road? Sorry. Now, deer, car collisions were also on the minds and apparently the bumpers of these first-time question askers, Laura Southerner, Amelia Page, 24, and Lauren Aaron-Holtz, who notes, growing up in rural Missouri, I've had deer hit me while driving. So,

let's ask two random servidologists how to take the bam out of Bambi in yet another first-time question asker, Monica Kuapwitz, words. What actually works for preventing hitting deer while driving? I've heard to flash your brights and they'll start moving instead of literally being a deer in the headlights, but why do they stop in headlights? If they were to see a predator would freezing help them? Is that why they do it or is that a myth? Evolutionarily, these critters are not used to things with big bright lights coming at them at 70 miles an hour. And so, every time I'm like, oh my god, deer, why are you in the road? Oh, they have not had to deal with this until the past 20 years. That's just not fast enough to produce some sort of change. And so,

I always try to remind myself that it takes a little bit of work, but there's been a good amount of research that is emerging, at least in Wyoming, and this is led by Carina Reginos. I think I'm saying her name right. I hope I'm saying her name right. But she has been trying all of these different treatments, so to reduce collisions with deer at night, one of them being something like having a reduced speed limit that doesn't really work because people don't really follow a speed limit even at night. But there was one kind of clever thing that was found just like accidentally by their research, so they were going to be doing this experiment that was looking at these little reflectors on the side of the road that when your car lights hit them, it alerts the deer like,

oh, hey, there's a thing, don't come here. And they were doing a treatment of those and then a control in another area. And so they left like the reflectors in one area normal, and then they put white canvas bags over the other ones. It was just a way to cover up those reflectors, but actually those white canvas bags deterred deer better than the reflectors potentially actually going back to the whitetail deer butt thing. But you know, maybe it was like a, it looked like a signal from another deer that was like, oh, alert, this is a white bag that looks like a deer butt, do not cross the road here. So there are like those, those, those different fixes that are trying to be experimentally sussed out and whether they work and to what extent they work, but

far and above the best way to reduce deer collisions or just wildlife collisions generally is over or under passes. And of course, those are super expensive and they're hard to implement and you have to maintain them, whatever, but they are like 80 to 90 percent or even higher than that effective at reducing collisions. So that's not something that an individual can do. You can't but you can support that legislation because it is safer for the wildlife and safer for you. Yeah. Yeah. Wildlife underpasses and overpasses are really great and they have done so much great work in Banff Park. There's tons and tons. If you've ever been to Banff, there's a bunch of wildlife overpasses and underpasses, which do amazing things for all the wildlife there.

I think part of the whole deer in the headlights thing is like the other Rhiannon is saying that they're not used to like that level of direct light in their face and it probably actually blinds them temporarily. You know, like when you go to the eye doctor and they put drops in your eyes to dilate your eyes, it's probably like that. So they literally just they're like blinded. Don't like try to avoid driving at dusk and dawn is the best advice if you're wanting to avoid a collision with deer. I must shout out to my friend Anna. She used to deer spot for me when we would do fieldwork at night time. We'd have to drive at dusk and she would sit in the passenger seat and be like, deer, a deer, a deer. Are they more active in those hours in dusk and dawn?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So they're what it's called corpuscular, which is a fun word to say and spell. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. So they're they're most active during the dusk. So definitely avoid those times of day if you can. Sophie Gilbert at the University of Idaho, she does excellent work about deer. And she wrote a paper about costs and benefits of like wildlife. And one of the things they looked at was like, how can you reduce the cost of deer in terms of wildlife vehicle collisions? And they were like, well, you know, if you had more mountain lions, then you would reduce the deer and then you'd have less deer vehicle collisions. Now, for more on this, see Dr. Sophie Gilbert's paper,

socio economic benefits of large carnivore recolonization through reduced wildlife vehicle collisions, which also includes, I'll be honest, I looked up two full color drawings of a deer getting unceremoniously yeeted by like a Ford Taurus. Oh, you poor deer. We're going to take a quick break. After it, you are going to hear the weirdest Patreon question and answer I have maybe ever heard. And it's been like over 150 episodes. This one got me so good. Okay, so stick around, it's worth it. But first, a few words about sponsors who make it possible for us to make a donation in the reandons name to a charity of their choosing, which is the Sponsored Membership Fund through the American Society of Memologists, which supports ASM membership for

Memologists in developing countries, making Memology accessible to as many people as possible. So which, again, that's made possible by sponsors whose discounts you're going to hear about now. Okay, get ready. Next Patreon question. Oh my god. My wonderful cousin, Nathan Bronnick. asks, what's up with some deers eating birds? And Charlotte Felcagard said, yep, this how big a part of their diet is actually carnivorous. Do they eat birds? Yeah, so like, yes, but not frequently. What? Yeah. Okay, why? We eat chicken, why not? It's probably like, well, I guess it's not accidental. I guess maybe it's opportunistic. Wow. They're not like seeking out birds. They're not like, hey, I'm gonna eat this

bird. I just didn't even know that they were even a little bit omnivorous. I thought they were like, absolutely like, vegan to vegan or die. Like I had no idea. Yeah, it's super rare. But I think people have caught it on like, on camera, if they're observing, like, bird nests or something like that, they'll be like, oh my gosh, a deer just ate these eggs or something. But even if only one deer only ate one bird, and it was like in 1972, I would still be freaking out right now. That's crazy. He's got a bird on the ground, Michael. He's got the bird in his mouth. Oh my goodness, he ate a bird. Michael, he ate a bird. He ate a bird. Did you see that? Oh, my word. Okay, so that is an excerpt from YouTuber Linda Lou's video, and it has over

three million plays because y'all ate a bird. But Linda and Michael, they're not alone. Ask YouTube to play you videos of deer eating birds, and you will find more than one. Yes, I will be eating a bird. Which is enough. I mean, like, what? Who knew? Deer. Deers knew. This is the dark underbelly of white-tummied doe-eyed liars. Okay, along that line, Gabrielle Friesen, first-time question asked her, wants to know, why are vampire deer like that? Are they vampire deer? There are. That's true. I'm like, I don't know how to answer that. They're not vampires like vampire bats. They don't suck blood. Their canine teeth are extra long, so they look like fangs. Oh my god. What do they eat with

them? Birds? Tons of birds? I don't think they eat birds. Okay, so these are water deer. They're native to China and Korea, and they're similar to a musk deer. In that news to me, they have giant fangs, like deer with Halloween vampire teeth, like a fuzzy, sweet-faced quaka cosplaying as Lestat. They look like a saber-toothed tiger, had an affair with a walrus. Now, several patrons, including Ashley Burdett, wrought first-time question asker, Mercedes-Maitland, and first-time question asker, Mercedes-Maitland, all wanted to know, as did Laini Wagner, who asked, why on earth did evolution make the Chinese water deer so metal, as well as Hermia Optea, a first-time question asker, wants to know, why do Chinese water deer have tusks? Okay, so there

you go. They use them to fight with, so they don't have antlers. Their tusks serve the same function as antlers, so they fight other deer with their teeth. Okay, so they're mouth weapons. Yeah, cool. Yeah, they're mouth weapons instead of head weapons. Right, that's what scientists call them. Devin Robertson wants to know, why do they make that upsetting noise that sounds like a sneeze scream? Have you ever heard this? Does he mean bugling? Is he talking about elk? I don't know. So I must also give a huge shout out to my friend Kat, because she is like your biggest fan. Oh, hey, Kat. But I went to Yellowstone, and I went camping by myself in November in Yellowstone. It's very cold. If you do that,

make sure you prepare accordingly. But I had never heard an elk bugle in person before, and I'm like sleeping in my friend's car by myself. Thank you to my friend for letting me borrow their car. And I heard this noise, and it's like pitch black, and I'm by myself, and I was like, what is that? Oh no. But it was the elk, because the elk like hang out in the campsite, and they make this like bugling noise, and it kind of does sound like a haunting sort of scream. And it's kind of eerie if you're by yourself camping in Yellowstone in the dark. Yeah, it is. So do they just have the spirit of song within them? Do they need to create art? Are they super pissed? So Rhiannon Kay says that the short and long of it is that male

elks bugle as a display of dominance. And if another elk bugles in the resident male's patch, he'll come and fight them. So it's kind of like two drunk broskies being like, you want to go, but voiced as a high pitched shriek whale. And you have weapons also jutting from your skull area, also your horny. Now, do deer display the gift of bugle? They don't really bugle, but they do just like kind of chatter. And so they can make little like that kind of noises. So the Wyoming Migration Initiative, which is an organization through the University of Wyoming has some really cool footage of a deer migrating. And the deer are just like talking at each other, like they're very chatty. So I don't know if that's quite

the example what this listener is asking. But anyway, so they do communicate, they're like way more vocal than I ever expected. Also, it's just super delightful to hear them talk. But then also fawns will kind of bleed if they're really stressed out. And that's more of like a meh. Also, have you considered that maybe they're just doing duck calls because they're hungry for birds? Not about that. Allie, this is something that we should be looking into. Thank you. I'll see you at the next conference. And Brooke Succi, another first time question asker. I love the way this is asked because so many people have the same question, but

I find this very charming. Not sure of the name for that crazy deer disease, but how safe is it to eat deer meat from what Google has told me? Every deer has the disease. So this is chronic wasting disease? Yes. There is nothing cute or charming about this disease, but other patrons such as Zach Strickland, Shirley Dark, Bonnie and first time question askers, Stephanie Freel, Sarah Brogier, Justin Andrew, Brittany and David Donnes also wanted to know about this prion disease, which means it's a transmissible neurodegenerative disease where one protein causes other proteins to fold abnormally, turning brains into kind of a collection of abnormal cootie catchers. So there are other prion diseases like mad cow disease and also

Kuru, which is a few eight brains you can get. Kuru, anyway, then sometimes in people, if you get a prion disease, you get croutes for Jacobs disease. And so I guess CWD is really a prevalent topic right now because of its impact on cervid populations and cervids are so valuable as game species and all sorts of other things. But I would say it's not every deer that has it. Part of the challenge with CWD eradication is that sometimes deer have it for a long time, and they don't show any symptoms. Side note, what are these symptoms? They're things like emaciation, wasting, stumbling, drooping ears, drooling and boldness around people that seems uncommon. So it is 100% fatal in cervids, but it can take years to develop any symptoms. And

it's transmitted through the environment, through poops and peas, and it's spreading quickly in the last decade or so, particularly in captive animals like on hunting ranches. Now in captive herds, up to 80% of deer have been found infected. And in the wild, in affected areas, maybe 1 in 10 have CWD and it's rising. So it's not like you can just go out and shoot the deer who have CWD because you don't always know which ones have it. And eventually they will get sick and die, but sometimes you can shoot one if you're hunting that doesn't have any symptoms, but it is CWD positive. So lots of places now will have programs where you can send off a sample of the deer that you harvest and they'll test it and then they'll send you back and say like yes

or no, and then you know whether it's safe to eat it or not. So I highly recommend if you're hunting deer to send it off to get tested before you eat it. We don't know whether it can be transmitted to humans yet, but precautionary principle would suggest that you do not eat it before you find out whether it's positive for a CWD. Yeah, it's a big concern and a big challenge in deer management and lots and lots of people are working on it. Lots of very smart people. Now until they find some kind of cure, epidemiologists can only rely on containment. Now is it transmissible to humans? The short answer is we don't know. Sorry. So there have been multiple studies and some show that primates don't get it and another study showed it is possible for monkeys to pick

it up from eating these folded proteins or prions in the infected meat even if it's cooked. So right now experts think up to 15,000 animals with CWD are eaten in the US every year and it may be up to 10 years before any symptoms show up in humans. So the CDC strongly urges that hunters do not shoot, handle or eat meat from deer and elk that look sick or are acting strangely or are found dead like roadkill. And if you're a hunter wear gloves to field dress, try not to handle the brain and spinal cord or other organs too much and don't use your kitchen knives out in the field. Also, look into testing kits if you're heading out for some fresh venison and don't eat any of it until you've gotten the green light back from the test. I'm sorry. I know it's a bummer. Let's just,

you know what? As long as we're here, let's stay sauntering down bummer lane as I ask the dark questions. What do they hate about being deer experts, aka servidologists? Is it deer ticks? Is it checking your crevices? Is it email? Is it what's the worst thing about it? I'm going to answer this as a graduate student, not as a servidologist. Okay. Graduate students have been found to have really high rates of anxiety and depression. Like some estimates have graduate students as experiencing anxiety and depression at six times the rate that the general population does. So it is this very big issue in graduate school. And I personally really struggled with that during my first year or two of graduate school. I think I'm a pretty energetic

and like go-getter kind of person. And then suddenly I was just like not even able to answer emails. And I was just laying on the bed not able to do anything. And I know that depression and anxiety look different for a lot of people, but that's how it looked for me. And thankfully I was able to go to therapy and get a lot of help. And I had a phenomenal team around me. So my advisor, Dr. Kevin Monteith, is a super great human being and advisor and was there with me through all of it. I have a super supportive lab and one person in particular, Taylor Lashar, who runs the project that I am also kind of working on. She was just like instrumental in my support through that. So I was very lucky to have all of these support systems, which was great. And I was able to work

through a lot of those issues. And with anxiety and depression, it's not really a thing that you're just like, okay, it's done now. But it's an ongoing thing. But I've been able to get to a much better spot. But even though so many graduate students are struggling with these things, there is not institutional level support for the amount of resources that graduate students need. Counseling centers and student health centers are great and integral parts of a campus. But when you have thousands of graduate students, like the University of Wyoming has, I think, 2000 graduate students, it gets really hard to have a counseling center that can support that many graduate students. So I think just there are issues within graduate school

that are very challenging. And there's not always good ways to ameliorate those. But yeah, like I said, thankfully, if you can surround yourself with really great people, which thankfully have been able to do that, hopefully you can get through that if you are also struggling with that sort of thing. Is there this is a huge question. But is there one like self care or mental health tip that you wish you had known earlier? Like, did you end up taking up like meditation or a different nighttime bedtime routine? I'm asking 100% for myself. Like anything that really helped to navigate some of that anxiety? Well, maybe two things. One is my dogs. Everyone should get dogs. So I mean, as long as you're a dog person, if you're not a dog person, don't kick a dog.

No, every single person, whether you're allergic or not, you should get a dog. They are so great. I don't know. Like, I have two dogs and they just make my life so much better. They make me like, even when I'm feeling really crappy and I don't want to go outside, they're like, no, I need a walk. You have to take me outside. Okay, fine. And then I go outside and there's birds around and then there's plants or there's like a squirrel to watch. There's so much cool stuff outside. And then you get to just like funnel all of your love into these beings and then they just love you unconditionally, no matter how dumb you sound in class or that you can't get your statistical analysis to run or that you don't understand that paper. So having that,

I think, has been really helpful. But then also, I have been trying to cultivate an art practice, and I'm not super good at making an actual practice, but I've been able to think through my scientific problems with art, which I think has been really helpful. And so having that different perspective and then I get to learn new skills that kind of put me out of my comfort zone and then like distract me. And like, they just kind of like disrupt that cycle of thinking you're not good enough enough to like put you in a new frame of mind. And you're like, oh, okay, yeah, like, let me learn this new thing. And thankfully, I have an advisor who is super supportive of that. Like there was one time where I told him that, like, I cannot work right now. I feel like

I can't work. I can't focus on anything. I stick at the computer and I just have no motivation, no energy, and no interest. And he's like, well, what are you interested in? And I say like, well, I'd like to draw right now. It's like, okay, just go and draw for a little bit. And then like, draw until you get back into it. And so I would do that, I would like switch my focus from something that was really stressful to this thing that brings me joy. And I was still thinking about science, but just in a very different way. And then I'd like bring it back to science. And then I'd, you know, be back to being able to read papers and think about analysis and that sort of thing. Oh my god, that's making me cry right now. That's amazing.

Graduate school is really hard. But I hope everyone can have like, a really good group around them. Like the, the relationship that you have with your advisor and with your lab mates is so, at least for me, it was so, so important. And it won't be the case for everybody, but it really was for me. And so I hope that everyone can find the advisor that like, they feel comfortable with telling, you know, what their needs are. And like an advisor that is receptive to that in a lab group that will be super supportive and wonderful and great. And I love all of them. And treat you like a human being instead of a machine. Yeah. Yeah. What a novel I do. Yeah. Can you believe it? Crazy. Crazy how that makes you feel better. I feel

bad for laughing. No, no, 100%. 100%. I'm literally laugh. I'm crying and laughing right now. So a novel approach for academia is treating human beings as if they were human beings. I like it. Now, what about Rhianna Kay? What does she hate? Not, that's a lie. Yes. There's some really, there's some really interesting discourse in the hunting community. I am not personally a hunter because in the UK hunting is not like it is in North America. North Americans are very lucky to be able to hunt like in the way that they do and to have access to public lands in the way that they do. Although I completely recognize that public lands have

a really troubling history with colonization and stealing land from indigenous people. Conservation has so many problems with colonization. I'd say specific to DEA, like, yeah, some parts of the hunting community can be very frustrating. What does that mean exactly? I would love to hunt. I think hunting's great. I think it's really a sustainable way to get your meat. I'm a vegetarian largely because I try to avoid like animal meat unless I can like, we have a local bison farm and sometimes I buy bison meat from them at the local market. I just find it such a challenge to find out where your meat comes from and how the animals were treated. So I fully, fully support like if you can buy your beef from a local

farmer, do it. Like it's a better deal for you. It's a better deal for the cow. It's a better deal for the farmer. They don't get screwed over by like grocery chains. Sometimes as a scientist, it's really frustrating the like lack of scientific literacy in the general population, especially regarding wildlife and like safety around wildlife and like what's actually dangerous. Like the way people perceive risk when it comes to wildlife is just wildly inaccurate. Like you're probably more likely to be killed driving your car than you are by a bear or like by the same count. People are like, oh, well, look at this cute little bambi over here. I'm just going to go touch it and then the DEA like beats them with it. So yeah, I think generally as a

scientist, that's the most frustrating thing for me. As a person who studies the intersection of hunting and deer, I read a hunting blog once. I can't remember which one. And it was like five things to know about hunting deer in North America. And the first one was like, we must hunt deer because they're so overabundant. So we have to keep their numbers down so they don't like damage stuff. And then two points later, it was like, we must kill predators so that they don't decimate deer populations. Didn't you just say that deer were overabundant? But it's part of a larger thing, I think, of the way that we in the Western world think about wildlife and wildlife management systems. I feel like I could go off on a tangent here,

so I'm going to stop myself. But there you go. That's so valid. That's super valid. The way that animals are politicized and activities are politicized is really sometimes nonsensical. It makes me want to throw my phone at people. I know. Just don't throw it at deer. Just don't throw it at deer. I would never do that. You would never do that. You would never do that. No, I know. It is. And it's really interesting, too, because I think that, especially in the US, we equate second amendment stuff with being very, very super politicized. And then there's also people who are conservationists and who are maybe more left leaning, who care about where their meat comes from and care about animals experience. And so I think that there's probably more of a

Venn diagram when it comes to hunting and conservation than is realized. But it's very much like, I'm this kind of person and you're this kind of person. Oh, for sure. Okay. Quick aside, my boyfriend, Jared, my very, very leftist right hand man friend, we've known each other for nine years now. And we met because he used to be a butcher. Our very first interaction was me walking into an artisanal nose to tail boutique meat shop called Lindy and Grundy. And there was this sparkly eyed hunk wearing a chainmail apron, who made a shameless pun about tools or something. And I was like, Oh, no, I'm doomed. Anyway, fast forward from the butcher shop. And we both tried to avoid meat now and factory farming in particular and really struggle with that. And Jared is

starting to lean toward the notion that if he's going to eat meat at all, he should know its origin and that the animal suffered minimally and that nothing will be wasted. So wait, so I would be dating like a hunter dude. Will he use like a bow and an arrow and atlattle or guns? Is he just start wearing camo hoodies? Can he be both a bleeding heart leftist and a hunter? I'm totally with him. Like my sister, she's in England. And she is my twin. Full disclosure, she is like the complete opposite as human being. She I was talking to her the other day about hunting. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, I wish I could hunt here, but I can't because I'm not a resident, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, Really? I thought you would not like hunting

because you're a vegetarian. And I was like, Yeah, but hunting is way more ethical than like buying cheap, gross beef that's like mass produced from the grocery store and the farmer gets a bad deal. And I was like, Yeah, I think these kind of conversations are so important because a lot of people just because it's so politicized would be like, if you hunt deer, you love things being dead and you like guns. And instead of being like, you hate, you know, factory farming and well, and that's something that I think is so important is to listen to perspectives that are like not yours and like reach across the aisle or whatever y'all call it down there. Now, what does Rhiannon Jay think

about hunting? Is she appalled by all of this? I have been a vegetarian for like almost all of high school and then a good chunk of my undergrad and then basically because I was lazy, I started eating meat again and then had like gone back and forth between vegetarian and not. But then last year, I hunted for the first time. So I went from like, never ever thinking of like, being able to kill an animal to like, I hunt like a pronghorn and a white tails deer in the fall. And it and right, like I am, I mean, if you see me, I have like my septum pierced. And I'm like, like wearing chakos and like, I drive a super, right? Like, I look super hippie dippy, like I normally haven't showered in a while. Right? Like, so I'm, I'm maybe not huge. And I'm like, I'm not a super

strong like guns rights advocate. But I think that like, at least in Wyoming, which is where I've spent a lot of my adult life, there's a really strong conservation ethic and just like an atmosphere hunting as like, an okay part, like an important part of the culture. And so that has been very interesting to experience. And I'm still like, honestly, trying to suss out all of my feelings about it. I'm not 100% okay with the notion of killing an animal. But I do enjoy having protein that is ethically produced and like, I know, and harvested and I know where it was. And like, I know what it took to kill that animal. I think there are a lot of really good organizations out there that if you are interested in hunting, you can check out Ali, if your boyfriend wants

to hunt, we're going to hunt this fall. He's totally welcome. And I totally mean that. Seriously, like, we're like bags packed, literally, we will come out there. Yeah, do it. So order it close. Yeah, that's great. We'll get rid of COVID and then in the fall. I think it's really important to, you know, like if hunting is something that you're interested in to have you know, like to think about it and to have these conversations because yeah, like if you told 15 year old Brianna and that she would kill two things and then eat them, she was like, yeah, there's no, there's no way. Like I say, I'm still struggling with it. But I think these are important conversations to have with yourself and with your friends and

whatever in the broader conservation and wildlife management community. So one, I think that also like, I'm from England, it's people, I don't want to say people don't hunt in England, but it's not common. And like really in Montana, everyone hunts. Like my friend's dad, he is like a Bernie Sanders supporter, and he hunts elk. Like that is just like, it's the way of life there, you know, it's not politically divided. It's just what everyone does. And I think sometimes when we live in urban settings, we like don't have exposure to that. I think that that's such an important duality to be able to hold is to understand that the nuances of that experience for the animal for sure. So it's complex. Now in England, for example,

a lot of open areas might be privately owned by barons and kings and stuff. But here in the US, we have these sprawling, gorgeous public lands on which to hunt. But those lands were stolen from indigenous folks who hunted as a traditional and practical and spiritual practice from which our modern ways of McNuggets are far removed, much to the environment's detriment. Now Americans probably have more overlapping interests than we realize, but our weird two party system is polarizing and stark, our elected representatives often exploit divisions and carve them even deeper. And in a few weeks, there's going to be an episode about the sociology of voting. I can't freaking wait. Anyway, I don't know. I don't have an answer for all this. Maybe it is hunting with

atlattles from the experimental archaeology episode, which by the way, if you would like to learn how to make some, the Angelo Robledo is holding a free three hour workshop just for fun on September 20th via Zoom. And I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes if you want to sign up. Okay, let's look at happier stuff. Oh, and then of course, favorite thing about deer or what you do, like favorite, I know it's going to be hard, but favorite thing about what you do. You can go first. I really, really love that we are still getting outsmarted by these animals that we think we know. And like, these are charismatic megafauna, they get a ton of funding for research, like we

care about them, they are in the news. And like, we've studied them for decades in depth. And there are still just these like, weird baffling things about them. Like, I really love that I can be talking with my lab mate, Taylor Lashar, who, yeah, again, runs that runs the project that I'm working on. And she'll like, show me a plot that she's just made. And it's like, Oh my gosh, like these deer are doing something that we had like, never would have thought of. And um, yeah, they just like continually surprise me. And I think that's really amazing. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I wouldn't have known exactly how cunning they are. I think that's so interesting. Or about the birds, somewhere out there, there is a deer crunching a bird in its

mouth, like a fried wonton, just loving it. Yeah, they're just like, it's so unexpectedly, like, smart, wonderful, and maybe unexpectedly isn't the right word. But, you know, we see them, they're just all over so you can kind of take them for granted sometimes. But like, they are truly remarkable critters. And Rhiannon K. Okay, I'm going to say two favorite things. One of my favorite things about deer, I guess, and hunting deer, I suppose, is that like, all of my friends who hunt seem to have like this real sense of community amongst themselves. So I think it's really great that like hunting can bring people together and like, people who wouldn't necessarily otherwise share interests, they can like learn from each other

and be outside in nature and that sort of thing. My other favorite thing is just like, how much we can learn about the world through deer. Like, it sounds like a really funny thing to say, but they're kind of this like central species or central group that have impacts on so many other parts of the system that they're in. But I guess one of the things I would love to see more of would be more black and minority hunters and anglers, because I think that hunting has this really white image. And I know that there is the brotherhood of hunters in the States and they're all black hunters. But I think it would be really amazing for black communities to be able to connect with the land in this way. And there's this idea that like, black communities exist in

urban spaces, which is not really true. I just learned a few weeks ago that there was historically like a lot of black families in the Canadian prairies, like way back when. And it's kind of just being this erasure of black people in rural spaces and also violence in the US in rural spaces for black people. But the first person to bring cattle to Alberta, which when you think about this today is like mind blowing, was a man called John Ware, and he was a black cowboy. So like, you think about Alberta and like what you think of when you think about Alberta. The whitest of the whitest whites. I feel like Alberta means what I just think. Yeah. And then like, you learn about John Ware and like Alberta like wouldn't even

be Alberta without this black man who started it all. But like, how many people could you go and ask about like who John Ware was and would they know? Like probably not. Side note, if you're like, I would like to know more about this badass cowboy, a formerly enslaved man who left the Carolinas to become a cattle driver through Montana and into what is now Calgary, establishing his own ranch and being a prominent Canadian businessman. Well, Cowboy Howdy, may I suggest the brand new 2020 Children's Book Release. Howdy, I'm John Ware, which is by Ayesha Clough with illustrations by Hugh Rookwood. Yes, there is a link in the show notes. It seems like a great book. Could it be more timely? No, it couldn't. And black people do have this connection to the

land and to farming and to ranching and all sorts of other things that's kind of been erased over time. So I really wish that we had that back and we could kind of rebuild that narrative and open these spaces to black people. Part of what the other Rhiannon was talking about, like being first generation or like being from a background that is not affluent, you often don't have the same access to these outdoor spaces and these outdoor activities as people who do come from more affluent backgrounds, which is not necessarily true of hunting. Like I know lots of people who are not affluent, who hunt, but I definitely think in terms of the media narrative about hunting, it's very white. And I would definitely like to see that change.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's funny because I feel like even when you see a certain kind of camouflage print, you associate it with a political party, which is like, it's so weird. So I completely agree. And I think it's such an interesting conversation. And I think you both are so the people to open up that conversation, open up people's minds to that. So ask smart Rhiannon's stupid questions because they're full of answers and they're wonderful and life is short and the world is beautiful and nature is complicated. Also get excited for Black Memologist Week starting September 13th. You can find out more about the programming for that at blackmemologist.com. And you can follow the Rhiannon's on Twitter and Instagram. There are links to their pages

in the show notes. More links will be up at alleywar.com slash oligies slash servidology. And there is a link to the sponsored membership fund through the American Society of Memologists, where we send a donation this week and last. Also follow oligies on Twitter and oligies on Instagram. We're at oligies. I myself am at alleyward on both. Definitely follow both accounts and Chakos because this week we're going to give away a free pair. Hell, yes. Chakos is not paying me to publicly stand on this hard, but I hope they pony up some sandals for both Rhiannons like they did for Pelicanologist Juida Martinez. Yes, Chakos? No pressure. Okay. If you want oligies merch, it's at oligiesmerch.com. Thank you, Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the Comedy

Podcast. You are that for managing merch. They're also hilarious and you can check out their podcast. Thank you, Aaron Talbert for being the best admin ever to the oligies podcast Facebook group. Thank you to professional transcriber Emily White and the gaggle of very generous oligites who get these free transcripts available for deaf and hard of hearing science lovers. Those transcripts are up for anyone at alleyward.com slash oligies-extras. There are also bleeped episodes done by Caleb Patton if you have kiddos. Thank you to Noel Dilworth who helps schedule the oligists and to Jared Sleeper, aka The Butcher in my phone for several years of mind jam media for editing these episodes alongside the dear, dear Stephen Ray Morris who just launched his back to school

series of paleo guests on his own podcast, See Jurassic Right. The theme music was written by Nick Thorburn and if you stick around to the end of the episode, you know, I tell you a secret. And if you watched an Instagram live video I did a few weeks ago, I unboxed gismologist Simone Yetch's everyday calendar and it's this sleek illuminated electronic board. It has these beautiful golden lights that you can press to turn on for every day of the year. And she made it because it helped her stay on track meditating. So she did a Kickstarter and I bought one and I came. I'm so excited and my aim with it is to use it as an incentive to go to bed every night with the lights off and like Invisalign in on purpose. And y'all, it's working and it's turning me into

a morning person. Last night I went to bed at 10 p.m. and I got up at 5.30, excited for the day. Like I sprung out of bed ready to kick ass. So having the accountability of having to press this light and also probably because it was made by a good friend of mine who has the best intentions of anyone I've ever met. I'm like, I gotta do it. I gotta press this button to make the light go on. So far it's working. Stay tuned. We'll see how it goes. But this is an important development in alleyward self care and energy management. I mean, seeing the sun come up with a coffee feels so much better than waking up on the couch with a bra. Who knew? Okay, take care of yourselves and each other. You're great. Okay. Bye bye.