Radiolab - Raising Crane

Episode Date: December 4, 2012

In this short, costumed scientists create a carefully choreographed childhood for a flock of whooping cranes to save them from extinction. It's the ultimate feel-good story, but it also raises some troubling questions about what it takes to get a species back to being wild.

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And today on the podcast, sort of kind of following in the footsteps of our inheritance show. Mm-hmm. We have, uh, it's a feel-good story. that you may not know how to feel about? It was like a bad feel-good story? It's, I don't know. Okay, I'm willing to be confused in my feelings if that's what it's going to take.

Yes, let me get things rolling and introduce reporter Andrea Seabrook. Hello. Hey, how's it going? She'll be telling us this next story. Good, how are you? I'm excited to hear what it is you've discovered on your adventures.

I have discovered many things, young grasshopper. I'm ready. Okay, so... So I went to this place. Follow entry road into Patuxent. Which I sort of knew existed, but I thought it was just like a little place north of Washington. U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. There's a guardhouse.

You drive into this place, and it's like driving, seriously, it's like driving out of the Beltway and into Jurassic Park. They're just tall, old-growth trees. It's suddenly sort of lush and meadows. and verdant. It's like a hidden, magical forest. It really gives you a sense of what this place must have been like before we came in and sort of asphalted everything. Just to set things up a bit.

Scientists in this place are basically trying to go backwards. They're trying to essentially re-evolve a species of bird that has lost its history. Which bird is that? whooping cranes. Whooping cranes. Yes. Whooping cranes.

Oh, yeah. I know about that. Yeah, this place has been written out a lot. There have been movies made about it. It's sort of the famous example of conservation. But when Andrea went to check it out, she discovered this mystery or this question that I never knew about. That's right at the center of what these scientists are doing. So I met this guy.

Hello. Andrea? Yes, hi. I'm a name John French. I'm good to meet you. Come on in. He's got kind of a walrus, like, mustache and straw hat. I don't know if that tells you anything else about it.

Yeah, that does paint a picture. I think we need to get you a little ad here. This guy has been working with these cranes for, like, three decades. Well, we're here at the Hooping Crane Observatory. And the first thing he does is take me to a duck blind. What's a duck blind? It's like a tiny little house up on stilts. It's raised off the ground that we're walking up steps, steep steps, almost like

ladder and you get inside this tiny little place with shutters that they can carefully and quietly open and then look down on the looping crane pens these birds this crane right in the corner of the pen there is the male female is sitting on a nest over there they're unbelievably beautiful and tall these are huge three four feet tall with fluffy downy white bodies perched on top of these two long legs. Come on, buddy. Stretch your wings here for us. Their wing spread is about eight, sometimes nine feet.

And then from the front of the body, this almost swan-like neck curves and rises up to a head that it's white all the way up, Then it's got this bright blaze of red across the top of the head. The red cap, that's actually bare skin. And that skin, when they come into a breeding condition, the thing swells up, it fills with blood, gets brighter. I have never in my life seen anything like this. And here's why. By the 1930s, humans had destroyed enough of their territory

and in fact just shot and eaten enough cranes that there were, they believe, 16 left in the wild. One six? One six. Wow. And you know how many breeding females were in that population? Four. So they were right on the brink.

They were right on the brink of the brink. At that point, most biologists sort of say it's extinct. Well, if you're that close to the end, then how do you bring an animal back from something like that? Here's what they do. In one building, they have two cranes who just, Lay a bunch of eggs. We can get, you know, three, four, or five, sometimes even six or seven eggs from a single pair.

And the scientists gather those eggs. Walking into the hatchery now. And they put them in these giant incubators. You can see the trays of eggs, they tilt back and forth to allow the eggs to rotate. When they are about to hatch, and they can tell because they start hearing these little, like, you know, sounds like, knock, knock. When, you know, a little hole appears, we take it across the rum into the hatch of They take these eggs, put them in a room.

And these eggs hatch, and the baby comes out, and it thinks, who's my mother? And then one of the walls of this room is plexiglass. And on the other side of the wall is an adult whooping crane. Like a mother whooping crane? Yeah. We call this an imprint model. And so the baby can see a mother. on the other side of the plexiglass,

and in fact, the whooping crane on the other side of the plexiglass will make these sounds, these sort of hur-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-sounds, that say, come here, baby, you know, cute baby. And so the baby hears this sound and runs towards that sound

and, you know, bonk, runs into the plexiglass because, of course, that is there. Oh, so they're not letting the baby get to the mom? No. Why not? Because they don't have enough captive cranes to raise the number of eggs that they produce. And if a baby crane were to imprint on a mother crane that we're going to stay, then it wouldn't migrate.

They don't want the baby chick to inherit the traits that that mom has now that it's been raised by humans. But they still somehow need the baby to see what a mom looks like? Yes. We want to make sure that those young chicks. No, what they're supposed to be when they grow up. So the chick hears that sound. Bunk. So it looks around its pen, and in the corner is a fake whooping crane that the scientists have put there.

We use stuffed carcasses from mute swans. But they put a whooping crane head on the top. That's kind of grim. It's totally weird. And the way they've taxidermy these whooping grains is to have the wings kind of... out a little bit so the chicks can snuggle up under there and kind of get brooded by the, we have a heat lamp that is directed down, so it's warmer in there. So the chick snuzzles up next to her as fake mom.

And the very next thing that happens is the humans walk into this environment. I'm Sharon Perigo, and I'm a technician here. Wearing these big giant crane suits. Big white costume, and is it made of a sheet? Just white fabric. We try to use that to conceal the human form. And here's a key part. They hold a crane puppet head in one of their hands.

We use a puppet to point at things like the adults would point out food on the ground or guide them and walk with them. I mean, they have to be taught everything. How to eat, how to swallow water. They have to be taught how to drink? She showed me how she takes the puppet head and dips it into water and then tips the head back. The parents teach them. them how to do that. So we have to use the puppets instead. And in these giant bird suits and with the

puppet heads, they lead each little chick outside for the first time. They're very curious and they get very excited about going on walks and seeing butterflies and looking at bugs and see a pond for the first time and, you know, look at the frogs and try to catch the fish and that's the fun part to see them act like cranes. And then they have to teach them something else that's really important, but completely unnatural. In the wild, a hoop and crane paralys usually two eggs. One or both will hatch, and if two hatch, one of the babies will be stronger than the other, and the mother will start to ignore the weaker one, and that one will die. One of those chicks dies. The family is never more than three in the wild. Really? But these scientists, they raise a whole flock of them at once. And often the

first time we walk two chicks together. They fight. There's a little bit of aggression. Pack and run. Oh, because I guess if you're a baby, you've evolved instincts to mistrust the other babies. At least in the beginning of your life. And so the trainers have to teach these baby chicks to tolerate each other. We then gather them together in a rather large group.

Then the scientists take them and put them on a track. A little track, exactly. Almost like a running track? Hmm. And they teach the baby chicks to go around and around and around the track, chasing a little propeller plane. They chase a plane? It's like a hang glider with a big fan on the back. And then they get imprinted on the aircraft and the costumed handler that's driving the aircraft.

So they kind of think of this as mom or dad, right? And so when they learn to fly, they fly behind the ultralight aircraft. That's very exciting. That's very... Oh, you get all choked up. You know, it's just, it's, we're doing, we've done what we're supposed to do, and they're doing what they're supposed to do, and it's very rewarding, and you get all choked up about it, and they're just beautiful birds. They really are. So they practice flying during the summer up in Wisconsin, they get stronger, their wings get bigger, and they're bigger, and they're going longer flights. And then when time for migration comes in late September or early October, the ultralight takes off, heads down toward Florida, and the birds fly.

follow them. So we fly them down there to a couple of refuges in western Florida on the Gulf Coast, and then we release them there. And once the cranes have taken that journey once, they never have to be shown it again. So they'll get it. And they form breeding pairs. Wow. Down in the wild. Now, just to break in, think about how crazy this is. These birds were hatched in an incubator, cuddled by stuffed swans, raised by humans in bird costumes, then taught to eat and drink by puppets, now they're flying behind an ultralight plane on a migration route that never existed in nature. And it seems to be working. There used to be 16 birds now. About 500, give or take, depending on when we're counting and all that kind of stuff.

Wow. It's a huge accomplishment. It's a huge accomplishment for this program, for ecological biology, and for humanity that we could even figure out how to do something like this. You know, there have been all these documentaries that show this unbelievable, inspiring pictures of this light plane followed by these baby cranes. And it's so beautiful. And it's like, oh, you know, humans are doing what they should do. You know, there are people who care so much that we're finally putting all of this into, you know, getting these cranes back and we're going to recover something.

Yeah. But here's what happens next. French says that in most cases, the breeding pairs that are formed in the wild will lay eggs. They will sit on the eggs and do all the things that wild cranes are supposed to do. And then one day they get up and walk away. Without the baby? Without the egg ever hatching. These birds seem to abandon their eggs.

bags before hatching for some reason. It's puzzling. They just leap? They just walk away. They just get up and walk away. Yeah, right, right. That's why. Well, we have a couple theories.

John French says there are three big reasons it might be. One is that these birds are bothered by black flies. Flies? Black flies. Black flies. These are not house flies. They're not house flies. They're biting flies. They burrow down under the feathers and bite and take a little blood meal. These flies are infesting the places where they nest? Yeah. We have pictures of just the head of a crane just completely covered with black flies. We have done some experimentation, though, to try and figure out if that is a cause. And the data looked pretty good.

Like, yeah, when you knock down the blackfly populations, the nesting success seemed to go up a little bit. but last year the data were quite a bit less clear cut. So they're not sure if it's the flies. Exactly. That's one idea. The second idea is that maybe they aren't getting enough to eat. Do they have enough food and the right kinds of food to get them through the incubation period? There's some kind of suggestive evidence that that might be a problem for them. So they might be leaving their nests because they're just starving?

Yeah. maybe because we've changed the landscape so much. But John French thinks the third possibility is really the most likely one. Which is what? The rather odd upbringing that these birds have in captivity. He thinks they have so much baggage from such a screwy childhood. They're raised by the animal caretakers in these funky costumes. They're in a very small pen that has a stuffed swan.

This is not a normal, a normal childhood for a crane. So he thinks it's something that they're doing or not doing. Exactly. So what exactly in that upbringing do you suspect might be the thing that is causing problems later when they're trying to be? Yeah, the real answer is, I have no idea. So you don't even know what you're not teaching the chair. Absolutely right.

Right. This is perhaps the most difficult problem. There are so many variables. It could be that the birds aren't being kept warm enough or they're being kept too warm. Maybe they didn't have a role model for how long they get parented and so they just walk away. Oh, so it could be a timing thing? Yeah. A mother needs to say, you need to sit on your egg for six days, not five.

No, just don't walk away. You know, don't do that. But they always walk away. Actually, no, there are two or three. After 11 years, there are two to three adult birds in the migratory flock. Who were hatched in the wild. Who were hatched in the wild from captive redbirds. The rest of them were born here that are in that flock now.

Does that mean that countless little babies have died because their mothers have abandoned them? Yes. Oh, that's tragic. And get this. every single one of those birds, once they release them and get them down there, is worth about $100,000. Really? Yeah. In terms of the money that's been put in for training and all that?

Yeah. Oh, my God. So not as a collectible, but in terms of investment. You are a sick man. No, no, because if you're a really rare animal, like a crane, just being rare makes you valuable in some market or other. In this case, it's sort of like your child. is worth, you know, by the time they go to college, you've spent $900,000 on them. Well, by the time these birds go to college, their human parents have spent $100,000 on them. Yeah. But I,

here's something you're not thinking of, and I haven't said. Okay. And that is, these are very long live to birds. They can live to be 40. And right now, we're just seeing the first results of just the, you know, the success that they've had. And so now they're just getting to this part, really, in the story. I see. So the three birds, the three little babies who have hatched out there put against a 40-year lifespan means, well, maybe in a few years they'll get better. How do you know we're having a real crisis as opposed to a learning curve crisis? We don't.

That's interesting. He thinks, and you can hear it in his voice, he thinks they should have gotten better at it by now. Yeah, I mean, there's something more that we need to do to help that population. become self-sustaining. There's something else wrong. So it feels to him in a very gut sort of way that they're not behaving quite right. Yeah.

Not because they haven't learned how, it's just they may never learn how. It may be something broken in them. It really bothers him to. So given all of this, it's just massively complicated, why do we do it? Why do we humans do?

Why are we doing this? Well, it's the right thing to do. And, well, what else are you going to do? I mean, we're not going to give up. We're going to find a way to make it work a little better. And then go have a couple beers. I mean, I went into this thinking, this is like the coolest thing ever and how noble.

And I came out of it really ambivalent, actually, which is totally counter my type. it is an important undertaking for it itself, but reestablishing a fully independent flock, I think may be a goal that is too hard. But what about a flock that's not fully independent? I mean, if you abandon the usual idea of conservation, which is that you're trying to go back

to the way things were before we screwed everything up, and you just say, this is a new species, and maybe they need humans as parents. That's just the way it's going to work. Yeah. I find that sad. It's funny because in a sense, when they fail reproductively, you fail reproductively.

Well, I don't know about that. Well, you know what? Reproductively. Yeah, possibly. I still have a couple daughters, and they're going to be there, whether the cranes are there or not, I hope. But I guess with these cranes,

whatever happens, we're not going to know for a while. Yeah. It's going to take a heck of a long time. So, you know, dozens and dozens. of yours. Okay, let's get in the car. It's freezing out here. A very sincere thanks to Andrea Seabrook for lending us for amazing talents.

Andrea spent more than a decade covering Congress for NPR, and she just left to start a new podcast, which she kick started and is now kicking ass. I would encourage everyone listening to check it out. It's at decodec.com. Decodec.com. Thanks also to Nadia Wilson for production help and to the folks at the Patuxan Wildlife Research Center for being so generous with access.

Thank you, Operation Migration People. Thank you, cranes. Ciccah, cao! Hey there, my name is Greg Fitzpatrick, and I'm sitting next to a campfire under a canopy of stars deep in the heart of Texas. Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation

and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www. www.sloan.org. Thanks.