Radiolab - Stranger in Paradise

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

Back in 1911, a box with a dead raccoon in it showed up in Washington D.C., at the office of Gerrit S. Miller. After pulling it out and inspecting it, he realized this raccoon was from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, and unlike anything he’d ever seen before.  He christened it Procyon minor and in doing so changed the history of Guadeloupe forever.   Today we travel from the storage rooms of the Smithsonian to the sandy beaches of Guadeloupe, chasing the tale of this trash can tipping critter. All the while trying to uncover what it means to be special.  Produced and reported by Simon Adler. Special thanks to Sally Stainier and Allie Pinel for all their help translating in Guadeloupe and New York respectively.  Thanks to Bernie Beelmeon, Paola Dvihally, Hervé Magnin, Guillaume Aricique, Laurence Baptiste-Salomon, David Xavier-Albert, Florian Kirchner, Matt Chew, and everyone at the ONCFS.    Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. That lime doesn't cut it very much. It's really powerful. It's basically straight rum. This is a very traditional Guadalupean drink called teeponch. As in punch. As in punch. As in punch.

Rod. I'm Robert Crulwich. This is Radio Lab. Today we're going to go off to an island. Yeah, a small little corner of the globe. Which, in its very surprising way, is trying to figure out how to understand itself. Buffett itself? And protect itself.

Against the whims of the wider world. Yeah, exactly. Comes to us from our reporter, Simon Adler. So I went to Guadalupe a couple weeks back. Which is this French overseas department. basically a territory of France. Guadalupe. Guadalupe is this series of islands in the Caribbean,

bit east of Puerto Rico and 400 miles north of Venezuela, more or less. Okay, so just landed. The runway we landed on here was just bordered on both sides by these super lush green walls of flora. I have no idea what they were. And the story I want to tell actually starts on a watermelon farm. It's okay if I park here? It's okay if I park here?

Okay. Owned by this couple, Sully and Lois. Thank you so much for being willing to do this. They look to be in their late 40s. Not a problem. So how many... Sully had on a pair of glasses, T-shirt and cut off blue jeans. I'm just introduced you to my wife.

And Lois... Hello. Nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you. How are you? Was wearing one of those floppy hats and big rubber boots. Okay, good. So...

You were born here in Guadaloo? Yeah, I was born in Guadeloupe, yes. In what parts of Guadalupe? I was born in Pointeapid. So after growing up in Guadalupe and graduating, Sully decided to get off the island for a bit, went overseas for work. In Guyana, the ex-British Guyana,

met Lois and fell in love. It's true, anyway. Then I came back to Guadalupe 20 years ago to establish myself in the farming area. Did you buy this farm right here? Actually, I didn't buy it. The land I was in the family for a lot. long time, okay. So I decided just to give them a hand, and then we ended up staying, so, you know.

So it wasn't planned that you would be... It wasn't planned at all. Another toll. And eventually, they kind of fell in love with farming. We enjoy it. It's a new, a different way of living, you know. They've got like 60 acres of land, these rolling hills bordered by the ocean filled with their crops. Tomatoes, sweet peppers, pumpkins, and watermelon. Watermelons are a main coop. So Sully and Lois took me out to their actual farm. So this is the, oops, these are what we have to harvest still.

And there, in this field, I was surrounded by just hundreds and hundreds of these enormous watermelon. These are huge, like... Yes, they weigh about 20 to 25 pounds. And this was actually why I was there, because these watermelon in this field, for the past 15 years, have been under attack. This one, this one is... Yes. Another one that was punctured and... This one is fresh.

Oh man, okay. They've been here recently? Yes, like last night. Still red, it's still fresh. And there's this golf ball-sized hole board into the side of it. It has a diameter of maybe two inches. And the watermelon itself had just been emptied out.

It's incredible. It's like they... A deflated ball. And you walk on and it's the same thing and the same thing and the same thing. This field was just littered with hollow water. This day. This is the worst attack we've had in about three years.

As I said, they did it, especially because you were coming. I like to ask this, because I think it's time. Who or what is doing all this? Raccoons. It's raccoons. Raccoons. Of course, raccoons. Yes, those masked bandits with those little tiny hands.

And the adorable sort of roundness? No, not adorable at all. I think they're kind of cute. No, no, and no. But even if you think they're horrible, You have to give them that they are clever. They were sneaking into Sully and Lois's field at night, finding the biggest, ripest watermelon in the patch,

boring a tiny hole into it, scraping out the juicy innards. They just scoop it out. And chowing down. It's a fiesta. And for Sully and Lois, this was a huge problem. You pissed off. Anyway, on a quarter of an acre,

you are able to lose a third of it. A third of the watermelon crop would just be easy. Yes. Meaning... It could go up to... 20% of your venue, yeah, sure. Thousands of dollars. So we couldn't stand this losses too much, you know?

We had to do something. We had to fight. So what do they do? Well, so 15 years ago, Sully and Lois declare war. Meaning what? Well, to start with, we put an electric fence around our field.

Zap them, keep them away. Okay. But pretty quick. They know to put a branch and walk on the branch and get into your field anyway. They built a sort of bridge. What do you mean they would walk over?

Over the bridges? Yeah. Oh, wow. So then they've got to try something new. This time, they're like... We have to be there at night, chasing them. We'll blast music at them. We'll run around.

With lights, with sound, with music. At one point, Sully even stooped to just throwing rocks at the raccoons. He picked up a rock and he just... I'm a good... Peltre. But you can stay in the field all night long. So next thing they decide to try is, okay, let's put some traps out in the field. We try to trap some.

but they're very smart. These big metal sort of tripwire cages. But one day, there was no trap. We found the trap in the woods, and it was all bent up. They run away with the trap, yes. The raccoons were actually destroying them. Sometimes we just started them, see, oh, shocks. So for their final attempt, they decided, okay,

we had to try the dogs. Guard dogs, put guard dogs in the field. But the next day when we came, it was... It was... It was a garbage. It was... It's a massacre.

The raccoons killed one of your dogs. Exactly. All of his intestines wore outside, so it was a jewel to the death. Oh, yeah, really. So, you know what kind of animal you're dealing with? This confirms every feeling I have about raccoons. They are not just clever. They are fierce and immoral animals.

They're as good and bad in everyone, and these were obviously not very nice raccoons. And if I were in Lois and Sully's position, of course. I would shoot these raccoons. Is that what they did? Well, or poison them. Something. Well, yeah, I thought that if anybody would be on board with some sort of eradication campaign, it would be Zully and Lois. Right.

But when I floated this idea by them, if I was you, I would want to kill those raccoons. They just kind of looked at me funny. Killing them is a little harsh. But they're attacking your livelihood. Yes, yes. I just, it's hard. I'm trying to understand how you... I know it sounds strange, eh?

Because I myself, putting myself, in your position, I would find it strange, too. It's just maybe a sentimental feeling, you know? Wait, what, why... Sentimental feelings. What does that mean? Well, here's the thing. The people of Guadalupe, they acknowledge that these raccoons are super destructive. They know that they are attacking not only watermelon farms, but goat farms.

and chicken farms, that they're going and tipping over trash cans in downtown Pontapit. But yet simultaneously, they adore them. Raccoon is a raccoon just very lovely, so lovely. Of course we love the raccoon. They put them on their postcards. We just think it's so cute. Driving down their main highways, you see billboards where people's logos for their advertisements for their entire company is a raccoon.

Like, it's everywhere. There is a statue of a raccoon. At the zoo, Benvenu, Zoo de Guarnu. They're the number one exhibit. Here they are. The first thing you see when you walk in.

We have many in the trees there. Oh, wow. A couple up there like monkeys. And on the way out of the zoo, Can we follow you? Yeah. Okay. When you walk into the gift shop,

got a coffee cup with a raccoon on it, a snow globe with a raccoon in it. Key chains. Might have to get one of those. People love the raccoon. People are raccoon crazy. raccoon crazy on this island. Why? Well, it's really

complicated. It has to do with their history of the island. It has to do with who came to the island when and who gets to say what happens on the island. It has to do with power. Like who... You're talking about a raccoon here? That's still... Yeah. All of these problems and ideas are inside the

raccoon's tail, in fact. In its tail. The tale of the raccoon and the tale about the raccoon. Yeah. You got out of practice for us. Explain this a little better. Well, the trouble all started... In 1911. With this guy, Garrett Miller.

He was a scientist working at the National Museum in D.C. This, by the way, is Blanin Guillemont. The police of the Environment... She works for the wildlife. Police spoke to my interpreter, Sally Stannier and I. And she told us one day Miller was just hanging out in his office when a box showed up from Guadalupe. And he opened it up and found... Raccoon moch? A very much dead raccoon.

Yeah, a sort of misshapen skin and like an accompanying skull. This is Christopher Helgen. Curator of mammals at the National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Actually, has the same job that Miller had back in 1911. Anyway, this raccoon that Miller had in front of him. Looked a lot like the North American raccoon, but it was small and different in quite subtle ways.

And so... After some inspection, Miller, baptized the Guadalupian raccoon are a distinct species. Scientific name. Procyon minor. The Racoon Guadalupean Raccoon. Putting a name on it and recognizing it as a new species implied a deep history of the presence of raccoons in Guadalupe.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. And over these millennia, these raccoons had evolved into their own distinct species. Found nowhere else on the planet. So is that when the Guadalupean, began to love raccoons when they realized they had their own, you know, one and only? Yeah, but, well, it took a while to catch on. I mean, this discovery was initially only being talked about in these arcane academic scientific journals. It's not like this discovery was on the front page of the Guadalupean Times or anything.

But then in the 1980s, you know, conservation really came into its own. Scientists started worrying about species disappearing from the planet. In particular, they started worrying about this raccoon. These raccoons were being recognized as potentially endangered. Thought being they're only on these islands, there probably aren't that many of them. Like, we've got to protect these things. And so... Since Guadalupe is an overseas French department, France decided to do just that.

February 17, 1989... Legislation was created to protect the raccoon. And shortly after the passage of this law... Guadalupe and the raccoon And the raccoon became the mascot, the symbol of the national park.

And as the mascot of this new national park, symbol of these species It really became that symbol of protective species. It was celebrated. People were like, okay, nice. We love the raccoon. And more than just a symbol

of the. importance of protecting the natural environment of Guadalupe, over time the raccoon became, in a way, a symbol of Guadalupe itself. It's really that symbol for people. You can definitely see it as the world evil in the U.S. Aside from raccoons, you didn't really have hardly any other mammals that are native to these islands apart from bats. And so if the raccoon is the one furry critter running around, that it is a little. everyone can point to and say this is something special. You know, this is not the same as a raccoon you'll find anywhere else. That is an exciting thing. It's a powerful thing and a point of pride, I mean, we're not late in this time zone. Okay. Okay.

Hello. Na, it's N-A. N-A. Very good to meet you. How are you? You know, age doesn't help things. This is Namari Joseph. And you were born here in Guadalupe? Yes, yes indeed. She's an older woman, maybe in her 70s, wearing this pink floral dress.

Her house was right on the highway with a field in the back. And that, she says, is where the raccoons would hang out. There was a whole bunch of them just, like, chilling in the area because all this behind the house was sugar cane. They actually came and fed on the sugar cane. You know, we'll put a pleasure. I loved seeing them.

I mean, there was always some time of pleasure and excitement, like seeing those raccoons out there. And at some point, there was one that we really became acquainted with. At that point, she scoched her chair over and picked up this black and white photo that was sitting on her dining room table and inspected it. Can I see the photo that you have here? Basically, what's on the picture is Sophie, and I'm feeling her. Basically, what's on the picture is Sophie, and I'm feeding her.

bread that I did into milk. Sophie was a pet raccoon that Nagh had back in the late 80s. And she talked about Sophie as if she were her child. Bebe, baby, I make co-gryfer also.

You're making the gesture of like cradling a baby. He's like, like a baby. Sophie, come to me to watch. When I get a couple of Sophie, Sophie, he went, and come.

He would run around and like, Every time I called her name and everything, she would just, like, come running. There was a little bit of him. I was really close to him, and, like, when other people came to visit, they could see that I had this rare wild animal with me. And at one point, she got really quiet.

And grasped the photo very tightly. Sophie. You're holding it to your heart. Some words. When he died, I cried. I cried his name. It was a really, really painful time for me. It's important sometimes to have something of your own.

I almost got the sense that having this raccoon as its national animal was a way for Guadalupe to distinguish itself from France. What do you mean? So Guadalupe has always been pushing against. France trying to declare some sort of cultural or national independence. In fact, just a couple of years before this law was passed.

A group called the Guadalupe Liberation Army This group that was fighting for independence from France blew up a section of Guadalupe's airport, a studio in the government-owned TV station, even a Chanel fashion perfume store in central Paris. The explosion tore out windows and doors and left racks of high-fashioned clothing and shreds. And it felt to me, like in some small way, the raccoon had become a way for the Guadalupeans to say to France, this is ours, not yours.

And because of that, it also became a point of tension between France and Guadalu. Yeah, what do you mean by that? Well, the morning after I met up with Nah, I went to this police station. Bonjour. Hello. Good to see you. to talk to these police officers. Do you mind saying your name for me?

David, David, Grolo, Anthony, Anthony, Jean-Simore-Amdine, Simon, as well as a couple others. All of them but one were white and French. They were stationed here in Guadalupe. And they took us up into this sort of war room, which was the second story of this bungalow-type building out in the middle of the jungle.

Everybody was sitting around this makeshift boardroom table, and pretty quick after the meeting started, they booted up this PowerPoint. So I've got a PowerPoint up with a picture of a raccoon displayed up against the wall here. This image of a raccoon crouched down in this chicken wire cage. Wait, so what's going, what is going on here? Well, they're planning a raid to liberate this raccoon. In fact, they had the location where it was. the location where it was being held, mapped out, with entry points designated. They even had the license plate number of the man believed to be holding the raccoon.

And why exactly are they doing this? Well, because as Anthony Groyo, the leader of this whole operation explained to me, the law passed in France back in 1989 declaring the raccoon as a protected species. It specifically outlawed killing raccoons, transporting raccoons, and even... Having raccoon for pleasure, you can't raise a raccoon as your own pet. The infant of the family... Sometimes we're taking away a child of the family, literally. Fere applica de laws, all simply.

But in France, the law says they can't be held as pets. So, as a police officer, in here, I'm speaking as a police officer, I have to be here to enforce the law. Period. No questions asked. And so... Once the briefing was over, they headed outside, strapped their pistols to their belts, threw the rest of their gear in the back of these SUVs,

and took off. Everyone is rolling out. We're in three vehicles. And 20 minutes later, we arrive at the top of this hill peering down into this lush, dense jungle. We're walking down this forest. We get halfway down the hill, and uh...

Someone here? Yeah, apparently someone is weird. In this clearing, we spot this man. He doesn't see us. There's a guy in a red shirt with a camouflage hat on. He's got his hand behind his back. The cops tell us it's too dangerous. You guys can't go any further.

And so Sally and I ducked behind some trees. And then Simone and Anthony, wearing a wireless microphone, rush into the clearing to confront him. Antony's started grilling him a bit. Asked him if he knew about the law. He said he did. And even though I was like 30 yards away,

I could see that the guy just seemed confused. And pretty harmless. They're all good here. He's cooperating. Right away. Please. He told them where the raccoon was. There he is, in this chicken wire cage behind this giant tree.

Cute little guy. This rough-looking raccoon. They pull out a toolbox, wire cutters. Raccoon is grabbing the wire cutter. Like it thought it was playtime or dinner time. They cut open the cage, reached into it with these thick leather gloves. And then they grabbed it by the neck and threw it into this kind of dog carrier box thing. And the mission is a success.

It went as swimmingly as, you know, you could get. I got to say this whole thing sounds a little, I don't know. A little much for this? For just releasing a pet? Yeah, no, agreed. But we're going to go on foot, basically. Okay. Later that morning, we went on this second raid.

What are we expecting from this scenario? And the seriousness clicked into place for me. It's really a different setting. We walked into this courtyard surrounded by maybe ten houses, many of them made of sheet metal. And do we know where the raccoon is supposed to be? It's right there under those trees. He pointed at this pile of trash

surrounding this enormous white cage, and there inside was this golden-looking raccoon. So the dirt houses all around, so we need to see who is really in charge of this raccoon. But before the officers could do anything to free it, a crowd started together. No, no, no, no, no, no, there's just arrived. Basically, what's going on?

Three or four people showed up, heads started poking out of windows. And Sally overheard one of them saying, that someone snitched and said that there was a raccoon in the area. She said someone snitched? Yes. And I suddenly realized that all of the officers were very on edge. We're just going to live. Why can't we just take the raccoon?

Just for safety reasons, they don't want to stay here too long. And we got out of there. So tell me what was going on in that second situation, because a lot of it was over my head. I mean, it's really understanding the context, the setting. I mean, this is not just the police. I mean, it's white police forces coming into an overwhelmingly black and poor neighborhood that has a lot of, you know, significance in this context.

In fact, when I was talking to NAH about this the night before, she said that if police officers had ever come to try to take Sophie, I mean, they would have had to take me in as well. I would have taken my husband's gun and I would have shot. When we come back from break, the tail thickens. We'll be right back. This is Timothy Franzenzic calling from Stillwater, Minnesota. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,

enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.s.s.org. I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Krollwitch. This is Radio Lab, and we're back with reporter Simon Adler. telling us the story of the Guadalupean raccoon, which, as we just heard, for the people of Guadalupe, is both a point of pride and a point of tension. We are in the back rooms here.

We are beyond the public areas, exactly. And to understand what happens next, we're going up to the sixth floor of the museum. We have to go to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History here in the U.S. with mammologist Christopher Helget. Where we are now is what's called the type collection, the world's largest library. essentially of dead mammals. I have to say for such a grand place, it's a little visually underwhelming. Basically just a bunch of locked white cabinets.

But that said, the behind the scenes area where the real treasures are stored. Can we take a quick detour so I can explain what he means by that? Sure. Okay, so scientists, taxonomists, their job is to name and differentiate species, right? So how do they do that? Well, let's talk about sharks, because sharks are kind of cool animals.

Right? Imagine there's this shark species. It's swimming around. It's having a great time. And at some point, half of the sharks in this shark population decide to leave to go somewhere else. I don't know.

They go to deeper waters or to a different ocean. They get cut off from their previous shark family. They don't see them for a long time. And over thousands or maybe a million years, they actually start evolving on their own as sort of a new type of shark. They become different enough

that they've become a new species. That's what the scientists come in and try to figure out. Now, how do they make that determination? Well, so basically it's a comparison game. They compare them to the old sharks. Do they look the same? Are they dorsal fins taller or shorter? They'll look at how they behave in the water,

how they move through the world. Is that different? Nowadays, they'll even just do genetic work. And if they decide it is a new species of shark, at that point they do this sort of wacky thing that I had no idea about. Once they've decided that this shark is a new species, scientists will go and kill one of these sharks.

They will stuff it, put it in a box, and then they will store it in a locked cabinet in a natural history museum somewhere. Because ever after for hundreds of years, that specimen becomes kind of a gold standard, the definition of that species. There's a different key for types than others. Every kind of moth or...

or mite or mollusk or mammal, you know, every oak tree, every kind of zebra somewhere in the world, there is a museum cabinet where locked down there is a physical specimen of that organism.

So it's like, it literally is like the natural museum histories of the world are like the library, the card catalog of life. Yeah. And the room that Helgen

took me into in the sixth floor of the Smithsonian, it was just cabinet after cabinet, after cabinet, filled with these type specimens, including... The Guadalupe Raccoon type specimen.

The very specimen Miller inspected back in 1911. So here we go. Helgen bent down and opened this one particular cabinet. I'm pulling out a big metal drawer. And inside... Here it is.

This is it right here. Here it is right in front of you. This sort of ratty-looking taxid raccoon. It's maybe not the most pretty sight. You know, the ears are a little bit broken and bitten off. Some of the stuffing was coming out of the belly. But that's probably how it arrived.

Now, Helgen first saw this raccoon back in 2000. And one of the first things he did was... Turned it over and looked at it, and it's small. Maybe like an 18 inches long... Just like Miller had reported. But then he popped open this little white box that had the skull in it. And take a look. What do you see here? He pointed at these fine white lines crisscrossing the dome.

They're open sutures, which show that the skull is still growing. In other words, it's not an adult. Which to Helgin was a big deal. Because ever since being a kid, he was suspicious of the Guatemalupian raccoon. It didn't add up to me. I just had a suspicion of, you know, these Caribbean raccoons didn't make sense. He said, if you look at islands, they usually don't have just one native mammal species walking around. This made Guadalupe an outlier.

And so... I'm going to put it on this tray. The fact that this thing was a kid meant that there was nothing special, at least about its size. And by the time I laid my hands on this one and looked at the skin and skull, I'd seen so many raccoons in museum collections that I knew their skulls and teeth really well. And so when I saw this, and one of the first things I noticed is that there was just nothing that looked any different to me from the common raccoon, the North American raccoon. And so Helgen decided to do some genetic work.

He compared the DNA of these Guadalupean raccoon. against North American ones. We did the math, we made the comparisons, and our clear answer came through. Not only are these not very different, they are just simply North American raccoons. You mean Guadalupean raccoons are the same ones that come in torment my garbage cans?

The exact same raccoon. You know, common, literally garden variety raccoon that we have in our own backyard. Now, for scientists and conservationists, it is a real turnabout, you know. It goes from being a... being distinct, special, endemic, found nowhere else to just the opposite. Invasive species.

So when Helgkin started publishing papers on the raccoon in 2002, conservationists were excited. Because raccoons, they can have real impacts. They will do things like eat sea turtles, birds nests, bird eggs, including of some that are potentially endangered. They'll eat that. Wait, so they were hurting actual endangered species. Yeah.

And so now that they have proof, now that they are certain that this raccoon doesn't belong here, then they feel finally we're going to be able to go out and start doing something about this. Protect the actually special ones. Get rid of this one sort of faker. But putting conservation aside, what you've got is this native to the island national icon animal that has suddenly become an interloper. brought there within the last 200 years, probably just on a boat. Well, given everything that you've told us about the colonial history, how did the Guadalupeans react to this? Well, we went down in 2004, Helgin and his mentor, to Guadalupe. And we talked to some people associated with the zoo and with the government management of the park.

And it was just a very brief conversation. He made sure that they had heard the news. Guys, this raccoon that's found only in your country, it's not what you thought it was and it doesn't belong here. And I remember that the message that came back to us was essentially, thank you very much, but we're going to hold on to our raccoon. Meaning, according to Blondeen Kimmel. There was no major communication campaign held to make sure that the population

knew that there was a change in status. The government never really told anyone. And when someone did say something, like Gerard Berry here, he's a native Guadalupian long-time conservationist. You know, a few years back, I was interviewed by a reporter and I told him what I knew for a fact.

And everyone had wanted me cut my head. And everyone was just saying, you know, off with his head. Some of my friends were like, how could you possibly say this? You know, you should not have said this. This is bad. And so for over a decade now, nothing has changed. The laws haven't been amended.

And because the government's kept this so hush-hush, many people on these islands still don't know the truth. Well, so my understanding of the story is for many, many years. In fact, I accidentally broke the news to NAA. Very recently, it was discovered that no, in fact, it's the same species that lives in the United States. Does that change your feelings about Sophie

or about the Guatemalupian raccoon in general? I think it was a Guadalupe only that there were. Is it changed? Yeah, the same species. You can find it in the United States? But wait, so, is it possible that maybe it was brought to the United States? The scientists say that it was brought here from the United States. I mean, I always thought that the raccoon was really endemic to Guadalupe.

It is kind of sad for me to know that it's not endemic to Guadalupe. It is kind of sad for me to know that it's not endemic to Guadlupe. I mean, I wish it would have been so, to be honest. And then I had the even less enviable task of informing NAA that just this past July... ...inphasia exotten... ...the EU passed this regulation. We recognize that we cannot act on all the thousands... ...bas a blacklist of invasive species.

whose negative impacts concern the European Union. The thing is, particularly in Germany, the raccoon is terribly invasive. These raccoons have actually been called Nazi raccoons as they spread from Germany throughout the continent. And so, the raccoon made the list. And that means that member states like France and thus very likely overseas agencies like Guadalupe will have to start managing, or even,

eradicating them. From the folks I've spoken with, there's a good possibility that in the next year, the raccoon is going to change from being a protected species to being a species that can be hunted, trapped, and killed. What he would say that it could be a species that can attack. No, no, no, no, it's not.

To protect the bathe, eh. But it's been a bad, it's all to have, that. It kills me. It kills me the thought that, you know, people could start hunting raccoons. Like, we have to protect them. Ah, no, no, no, no, no, no. Ah, no, oh, la, no. Ah, you Sophie.

It's not a specific species? Yeah, okay, got it? I just don't care. Angelique Charlotte, owner of the Guadalupe suit. Wait, you don't care. No, I don't care. It's just the raccoon of Guadalupe. But it's kind of an imposter, isn't it?

It kind of tricked everyone, didn't it? He's not responsible of the person saying it was another species. People make an error. He didn't do anything. You must respect the animal, you know. Even Sully and Lois, the watermelon farmers from the beginning of this story, said at the end of the day, if, let's say, they say, okay, as of this date, the raccoons are no longer, whatever, I don't see myself taking a rifle running to the field and just lying in wait to shoot them now.

It's just that we have a few type of wildlife, you know, no snake, no thing, so, you know, is the bigger one, the biggest one. So people adopted it as a national animal. That's it. It's one of those, if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with type situation. Could be. That's a good one. So as a pragmatic person, I know it's an invasive species today. I know it.

But I know also, I think he's cute, and I think I like it. So what is the best balance to find? You see? I don't know. It's kind of interesting that we in America love the bald eagle, a kind of wretched bird that steals other people's nests

and is generally a vulgar animal, actually. But we never think of it that way because we've given it majesty and we give it, you know, In its talons, there you see both, you know, peace and war. It has been, we have dressed it up. It has been given America. I think every time a nation chooses to identify with some wild thing, it's mostly really about the people identifying, not about the animal.

Yeah, I totally agree. But I see it like this, like, you have this fact, right? There is a fact here that the raccoons didn't show up a million years ago or whatever. Right. It was probably more like 200 years. That's most probably a fact. Yeah. But then there's a stuff on top of that, which is like, are they natural?

Are they invasive? Do they belong here? Those don't feel like facts. Those feel like judgments. And like who gets to make those judgments? The scientist? I don't know. I certainly didn't realize the extent that this was a deep-seated cultural battle in which I was, you know, entering.

You have inserted yourself, yes, strongly. Again, Christopher Helga. It's just the same information, you know, different responses. And I think that one of the deep points. questions of that of this story lives in that which is like you you came to a scientific truth and the question becomes should that scientific truth win the day I mean as a scientist you know I would say yes as a conservation biologist I would say yes that's important it shows us that taxonomy really matters this animal didn't belong and you know really perhaps

it should be removed from the island. But at the same time, it's really a question for Guadalupe. This is their island. These are their animals running around on it. And it can be very challenging for scientists like myself to come to terms with. But that's how the world works. One more thought before we go. Is that all right?

Yeah. Before Helgen officially sank or dethrone, this Guadalupean raccoon, there's actually another guy with a similar hunch, this Parisian momologist named J.M. Pons. And in one of his papers, he wrote that even if it can be proven that the Guadalupean raccoon is no different from the North American raccoon, that the best answer might not be its reclassification or eradication, but instead, it's isolation. He wrote that it's, quote, Insular distribution prevents gene exchange with the mainland and is likely to warrant different selective pressures

that should favor short-term genetic differentiation that may lead to a long-term speciation process. Wait, what does that mean? Meaning if they were able to keep these North American raccoons on Guadalupe isolated long enough, maybe someday they could be reclassified yet again this time as real Guadalupean race. What's your response to that?

I forgot the Pons said that. But, you know, I like it. But I have to say you're going to be waiting a long time. That's going to take over. You want to give super, super thanks to Sally Stagnier, who was our translator and got Simon everywhere he needed to go and made sure that it all worked out. And to Ali Pinell here in New York,

who helped us make sense of the whole thing before we left. So we all have a huge debt. Thanks also to Ervé Mannion, David Xavier Albert, Lawrence Baptiste Salamon, and Florian Kirchner. That's Bernie Belmion. And most especially, thanks to Simon Adler, who reported and produced the whole story. Yeah.

I want to read you guys this one paragraph real quick. Can we before we go sign off? About what? Because you know how we were arguing about whether the raccoon is a good creature or an immoral creature? And I was looking for ammunition on the Internet to read to you guys. Oh, that would be probative. I found this thing. It's in a blog called The Truth about raccoons.

Oh boy. And it contains this paragraph, which I'm pretty sure is not true. It goes, and I quote, raccoons are one of the only land mammals who can also walk on the bottom of riverbeds, holding their breath for up to an hour. What? They eat both live prey and carry on and consume up to 20 pounds of raw meat at a time, then go without food for a week. Their skeletal structure is found in no other animal, and that, combined with their ferocity and complete lack of moral fiber make them perhaps our most dangerous enemy. I rest my case.

That was no case. That was just propagated. That was hate speech. Message 1. Hi, my name is Sally Sainier from Love Loo, interpreter. So I'm reading the staff credits right now. Radio Lab is produced by Jada M. Rats. Bill and Keith is our director of sound design.

Byrne Willery's senior editor, Jamie York is our senior producer. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Renna Farrell, David Jebel, Matt Cilty, Robert Coolwich, Annie McEulan, Alaskin, Alaskinacinacin, Malie Wester, with help from Tracy Hunt,

Valentina Bohanini, Nagar Fatali, Stevie Wank, and Katie Ferguson. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris. All right, that's it. Thank you. Bye-bye. End this message.