Science Friday - Tech To Watch, Pests. January 13, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Technology Trends to Watch in 2023 The start of a new year is often a time to contemplate the future and what might lie ahead on the horizon. This week, the magazine MIT Technology Review unveiled its annual list of 10 technologies to watch—innovations that it thinks are on the verge of rapid adoption or causing significant cultural changes, or already in the process of creating such a shift. This year’s list includes items from the amazing astronomy enabled by JWST, to the ‘inevitable’ electric vehicle, as well as technologies that are further down the road, such as the ability to grow replacement organs to order. Amy Nordrum, an executive editor at MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to talk about some of the innovations and the difficulties of narrowing a universe of possibilities into a list of 10 key technologies to watch. They also discuss some technologies highlighted in the past that went on to make a big difference—cloud computing, anyone?—as well as some projects the magazine highlighted in the past that did not turn out to be as significant as once thought.   Are Animal ‘Pests’ Really The Villains We Make Them Out To Be? Join us as we enter the rat’s nest. The snake pit. The mouse trap. What, precisely, is it that untangles an animal friend from foe? This week, we’re taking a close look at pests—critters with a notorious reputation for being destructive, annoying, and even villainous. We’re also going to get a little philosophical and ask: What do those opinions tell us about ourselves? Science journalist Bethany Brookshire is the author of Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She joins Ira to talk about her new book, challenge our perspectives on what makes a pest, and answer listener’s pest-y questions live. To read an excerpt of the book, visit sciencefriday.com.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. Later in the hour, we're going to talk about animal villains. I'm thinking about rats, pigeons, coyotes, and yes, even cats. How did they end up as pests? We'll get into it with Bethany Brookshire, author of a new book called Pests, and we want to hear what your thoughts are. Give us a call. Our number 844-724-8255. 844-724-8255. But first, the start of a new year. often means a time to think about the future, right? Well, this week, the magazine Technology Review unveiled their annual list of 10 technologies to watch, which covers things from the amazing astronomy coming from JWST to advances in computer chip design. Joining me to talk about some of their picks is Amy Nordrim, executive editor at Technology Review. Welcome back to Science Friday, Amy. Happy New Year.

Thank you, Ira. Happy New Year. It's great to be. here. Nice to have you. You have 10 technologies on this list. How do you, how do you choose them from all the possibilities, right? It's a pretty tough process. I'll be honest, but we basically have everybody on our team, all the reporters and editors who are following technology developments day in and day out, nominate technologies, either from their area of coverage or things that they just think are really poised to have a breakthrough moment. We had over 50 nominees this year and we talk it all over and we debate and discuss them. And then we get it down to 10 that we feel are truly the most important technologies to watch right now. Can we get into really good arguments, heated arguments about

what to include? Oh, yeah. There's lots of lively debate discussion. I mean, you know, getting three people to agree on anything is tough. We've got an extreme of almost 30 and there's, you know, plenty of disagreement and debate. But I think that process really helps us kind of sharpen our own ideas so that we feel, you know, good in the end about the list that we come up with and feel like it's a representation of technology and where it's headed. And how do you choose the time frame? I mean, five years, 10 years? What distance are you looking forward? Yeah, you know, it's different for each technology, but what we look for are technologies that are really at an important moment. That could be defined in a couple of different ways. It could mean there's a major scientific discovery that's now going

to make certain technology possible that wasn't possible before, or it could mean a technology is finally getting tested in the real world at a pilot facility or in a new treatment for someone. Or maybe it's just like some technical system that has successfully scaled up and is now commercially viable and about to be adopted in a big way. So we really in trying to identify things that are at this critical moment. Some of the technologies on our list have already had that breakthrough moment recently. And then others, we think are really poised to have in the next couple of years. Okay, so let's get through some of those technologies. One is CRISPR for high cholesterol. Tell me about that. Sure. So CRISPR, the gene editing tool that we've all heard of has been around for a while,

about a decade now. And there's a number of rare genetic conditions that it's being developed to treat. But, you know, most of us don't have one of those conditions. Now we're starting to see CRISPR inner trials for conditions that are much more common. And the one that we put on the list this year was CRISPR for high cholesterol. Lots of people have high cholesterol. It can lead to heart disease. And a woman in New Zealand recently became the first person to receive a CRISPR-based treatment in a trial that could potentially lower her cholesterol for the rest of her life. And that treatment uses a new kind of CRISPR. It's called base editing, what some people call CRISPR 2.0. And it's able to not just cut DNA and turn off specific genes, but it can actually swap base pairs. So it can switch like an A to a C or a T to a G.

There's CRISPR treatments being developed for other common conditions, too. And that's definitely a space to watch over the next couple of years. Put me on the list for that cholesterol one, okay? A lot of people would sign up for that, I think. We've all seen more and more electric vehicles on the road and in dealers, lots, but you're calling this the inevitable EV. What does that mean? Yeah, I mean, EVs have been around for a while, obviously, but we feel this year they really finally have reached an important inflection point. So that's why we're calling it the inevitable EV because we finally feel confident saying, and you know, it's more likely than not that moving forward these vehicles are going to be the default option for millions of people who are looking to purchase

new cars. And that's for a couple of different reasons. There's a lot of major automakers, including GM that have already said they're going to convert their entire production lines to all electric vehicles. These auto companies are no longer going to make vehicles with combustion engines. And there's been also some important policy changes and some new public investments in this space. Like California has the new rule that says starting in 2035, all new sales of gas powered vehicles are prohibited. It's only electric cars from that point forward. And the Inflation Reduction Act also had a big tax credit, a couple of tax credits that will have. help move electric vehicles forward. So altogether, we feel like these factors are really accelerating

the development and adoption of EVs in a big way that hasn't been true over the past decade or so. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing on your list that ties into EVs is battery recycling. You see that as a technology to watch. What do you mean by battery recycling from the cars? Exactly. And other things as well. I mean, with all these millions of more EVs on the roads, we're going to need a lot more batteries, but not just for EVs. There's lots of other reasons that we need them to. batteries can help us store clean energy on the grid for later use, and they can help convert all kinds of other stuff that's currently running on fossil fuels to run on clean energy. But the problem is they're really dirty to produce still.

They have a lot of rare and valuable chemicals in them. And if we're really going to scale up and start to use millions more all over the place, we have to start finding practical ways to recycle them. So one of our reporters, Casey Crownheart, visited a plant run by a company called Redwood Materials in Nevada, where this is starting to be done. And it's still in the early stages, but they do have a pilot facility there that's developed a process that lets them recycle batteries of all sorts. And she's written a story that'll be out next week about the challenges and the potential of that process. Yeah, and an important technology.

Speaking about important technologies, you're right about organs on demand. We can demand organs and they'll make them for us. Maybe so. Hopefully in the future, that'll be the case. This is one of my personal favorites on the list. What we're calling organs on demand here really describes a few different scientific efforts by different groups, different companies, and entrepreneurs to generate organs that could be transplanted into people who need them. So we're talking hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers. Those are some of the most common organs that people need. So scientists are working on a couple of ways to make that possible, including growing them in animals.

Last year, there was a man who had surgery at the University of Maryland to receive a heart grown in a pig that had been gene edited to make the pig. organs more compatible with a human body, and he lived for a couple of months with that pig heart beating inside of him. There's other methods. There's a person right here in Boston, where I am, who had severe liver disease and received an injection of liver cells into their lymph nodes from a donor. And the scientists who led that trial from a company called ligienesis are hoping that that will help that person generate what's called an organoid, which is basically a new miniature liver right inside their own body. And that's the first time that approach has been tested out in a human as well. So there's these different efforts underway and some are being tested out in humans for the first time.

So it's still early days. But if that works, it could really change medicine. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of things that could change, last month we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the invention of the transistor, which, as you know, is the basis for all computer chips. Are we going to be seeing new computer chip design in the future? Absolutely. That's another item on our list. We actually have recognized what's called Risk 5. This is an open standard for computer chip design. And what it is, I mean, you've probably heard of like open source software. Anybody can use it for free. This is that same kind of thing for computer chips. And it's important because that industry has long really required anybody who wants to make a chip to license a design from one of the big companies. But Risk 5, this open standard allows anybody to use. it for free to design a very simple chip that can kind of do whatever they need. And it has been around for a while, but in the last year, it's really started to get some traction. And it's got some support from Intel, which is actually one of the companies that has long licensed its own

chips. So that whole ecosystem is changing in a really significant and interesting way. Good to hear, because I'm going to head now into my basement and try to get in on that open source designing of computer chips. We'll see how well that works out. Yeah, you could use it. I could use it. Anybody can use it to make a chip and not have to not have to pay those fees. So yeah, go for it, Ira. Well, the only chips I'm making are potatoes, so I don't think that can work. Are there themes or trends that we're seeing emerge across a few of these technologies, something in common? Well, we really do try to identify technologies that are tackling, you know, big problems. So we want to have technologies on the list that are, you know,

not just going to help a niche or specialized area or field, but are actually going to be meaningful to, you know, many of us. So that's where you see these biotech technologies that could affect, you know, millions of people. That's where you see the climate change technologies. And I think there's, there's also a few technologies on the list, like you mentioned, the web telescope. They're really kind of get just the sense of wonder and are going to help us hopefully answer questions just fundamental to who we are and where we came from and like what else is out there. And so I think that that's also another big theme of a couple of items on the list this year. I mentioned that at the top, the frank exchange of views you all had in choosing what to include. Are there big things

that did not make the list of 10? Oh, sure. Yes. I'll tell you when I nominated that didn't make the list. So I nominated Next Generation Space Stations. This was my term. Ooh, I like that. Well, thank you. I thought it was pretty good. But, you know, I was getting this idea that the International Space Station is going to close in 2030. And NASA is not going to build another one. a writ space on a private space station. And there's plans in the works from a couple teams right now to develop one of those. And then China has its own space station now. And Russia has said it's going to launch one too. So I was thinking, you know, maybe we roll all that up and featured on the list. But, you know, through the discussion and debate, these plans are still pretty preliminary. And it's

not really clear yet what the new space stations will help us do, like what new science might emerge from those or what instruments might be on them. So collectively, at the end of the day, we felt like it was best to wait on that one. You know, I'm trying to figure out. You've been doing this for what? 20 years you've been making these lists, and you must track winners and losers, any big winners or big losers in your predictions? Yes, we don't always get it right.

That is absolutely true. We have certainly been successful at anticipating more than a few big technologies that have come down the road. So in 2010, we picked cloud programming in 2011. We had cloud streaming. And, you know, the growth of cloud computing has just taken off since then,

and we're all using it every single day for all kinds of things at work in our free time to stream movies, stream TV shows. So I think it's fair to say we got that one right. But there's definitely some that we got wrong. So in 2013, we had Baxter the Robot on the list. I don't know if you remember Baxter. Baxter the Robot.

Yeah, it's a cute name for a robot. I will say that. So this was a manufacturing robot. It was meant to sit on a manufacturing line working side by side with humans. It had these robotic arms that you could program to do all kinds of things. And the technology was really slick.

It seemed like it worked pretty well. It was designed by a famous roboticist, but it just didn't really find its commercial niche. It didn't end up being adopted in a big way. So the company that made it shut down five years after we named Baxter, the robot, to our list. And we also had project Loon on the list. That's one of the alphabet projects to deliver the internet by Balloon.

And that project was grounded a couple of years later as well. though. Loon by balloon. I get it. I get it now, Amy. Thank you, Amy. Thanks for taking time to be with us today. Thanks, Ira. So good to be here. Great picks. Amy Nordrim, executive editor at Technology Review. We have to take a break. And when we come back, we're going into the rat's nest, the snake pit, the mouse trap, as we try to untangle what makes a pest, a pest. You're going to be surprised at the answers here. Stay with us. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. For the rest of the hour, a group of animals that are, well, not everybody's favorite. I'm thinking of mice scurrying in your basement. Bears rummaging through your trash bins. The pigeons just a little too close for comfort. Yes, we're talking about pests, critters notorious for being destructive and annoying and even villainous. I'm thinking of you, squirrel. But we're going to get a little philosophical also.

so this hour and ask what makes a pest. A pest. The answer is not quite that easy. I mean, take the elephant. You wouldn't consider an elephant a pest. It's the fun animal we like to see in the zoo when we feed peanuts, too. That is unless you happen to live near elephants. Then they can ravage your crops. They can crush your home. In other words, turn into a life-changing pest. And even the lovable cat, which at the right time and in the right place can and has become, well, not so. welcome. We're going to get into that and a lot of other great stuff in a new book called Pests, How Humans Create Animal Villains. And joining me now is the author, Bethany Brookshire, a science journalist and the author of Pest. She's based in Chevroly, Maryland, and today she

joins us from WAMU in Washington, D.C. Hi, Bethany. Hi, thank you for having me. I'll try to keep my fan-girling to myself. Thank you. Well, what do you mean by the book title, How Humans create animal villains. What do you mean by that? Well, I kind of went into the book trying to figure out what makes an animal a pest. And the short answer to that is that humans do, right? It's humans that decide that an animal is causing us trouble. And so really, the thing that makes an animal a pest is what we think of it and what we believe about it and why we think it's causing us so much trouble. But there are animals that, and you talk about this in your book, that carry diseases. Did we make that animal a pest?

In some cases, yes, and in some cases, no. I mean, we carry diseases, too, as you may have noticed. Fair enough. But in a lot of cases, for example, animals that carry diseases and live in close association with us, we've brought to where they live today. We've brought pigeons to urban environments. We have created places where pigeons and rats love to live, right? We brought them there, and then we got mad when they did well. I want to bring our listeners in if you have questions for Bethany this hour. What's your take on pests?

Maybe you have your own view about it. Our number 844-724-8255-8-4-Sight-Talk, or you can tweet us at Cy-Fry. we share a common past because your book starts with a character named Kevin, actually a more descriptive name for him, effing Kevin. And Kevin is a squirrel, and I've had my own experiences with squirrels. Tell us about Kevin. You have your own Kevins. I'm so sorry.

Kevin, well, to be clear, there are at least six Kevins in my backyard. We just call them all Kevin. Wow. And Kevin has prevented me from growing any tomatoes in my garden for the past five years at least. He finds the tomatoes when they're green. He takes a nice big bite. And then every single time, he seems to remember that he doesn't actually like tomatoes. Right.

So he leaves the rest of it. Right. Always right there, just right on the porch where you can see it. I'm with you on this. Oh, it's a mockery. Not only that, but I remember because I had a tomato plant just like, you described. I planted a hot pepper plant right next to it, and my Kevin saw the plant, picked out the hottest pepper that Kevin could find, took it over to the window where I was

looking at Kevin, and ate it right in front of me, staring in my eyes, saying, oh, yeah, you think this is tough? Give me a toughie. Ooh, you've got a hardcore one. Your Kevin is metal. But I have to admit that they are sort of the most creative animals I've ever, seen. They're acrobatic. They can try their trapeze artists, their tightrope walkers. They're just amazing to watch. I have to give them credit for that. And they have phenomenal

spatial memories, which is part of why they recognize that they can keep coming back to your garden. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right that pests are a problem as old as ownership. What do you mean by that? Well, in order to have a pest, a pest, a pest is different

from a predator, right? Because a predator is something that attacks us. A pest is a little bit less than that. There's something that attacks our stuff, which means that you have to have stuff. You have to have an idea that you own something that you don't want other people to get. And so really, if you don't own things, you can't have pests. You can only have kind of competition, right? Once you start setting food aside, storing it, then you start to have pests. And that pretty sums up the origin of the house mics, right? It does. Yes, the house mouse dates back to between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago in the Natufean period in an area in the Middle East.

And yes, we've had house mice since we had houses. And that was before we even had agriculture. The instant we started storing food and staying in one place, house mice were there. And as you say, I think people see pests as cheaters in a way. I mean, that they're mooching off of humans. But you argue that they're really just winners because they're able to so skillfully do that. Right. I mean, when we take advantage of other species, are you going to call us mootes because we're good hunters? I've got a few people. I can go. You know, animals,

we create niches that allow animals to thrive, right? We create piles of garbage that allow rats and mice to get by. We create beautiful cities that offer wonderful perching spots for sparrows and pigeons. And then we get angry because they're doing so well when we've built the spaces that they inhabit. So we're creating the environment so that they can flourish into what they do. Right. And often we bring them to new places. So for example, it's our ships that bring rats and mice to islands or snakes to islands. It's us as colonists that bring cats to islands where they can often end up as invasive species eating animals that have never seen. a predator. Tell us that's a fascinating story in your book about cats. Tell us that story. Yeah, so I will say first, I am a cat lover. I have two cats. So this was hard. But yes,

cats are estimated to slaughter between one and four billion birds a year in the United States alone. The real problems are on island habitats. When people bring cats, the cats sometimes escape, they go feral. And, you know, if there are animals that have never seen a cat, before, you know, maybe there are birds that don't fly, right? Or, you know, small rodents that are native to the island that have never seen a cat. Cats can drive those species extinct. And it's now thought that they play a role in at least 63 extinctions around the world. No kidding. Wow. And another theme in the book is that people will rage war to get rid of pests. And that was a point about the Burmese pythons in the Everglades.

Another fascinating story. Yes, I had the good luck to go Burmese python hunting in the Everglades during one of the yearly Python challenges where they actually send hunters out on the levees in the Everglades to try and bring in the most pythons wins $10,000. And it's a fascinating example of just what people will do to try and get rid of an animal that they've called a pest. Let's go to Janet in Martha's Vineyard. Hi Janet. Welcome to Science Friday, your first stuff this hour.

Oh, good. You know, it's a very odd thing. I went to the library this afternoon. I live on Martha's Vineyard in West Chisbury. On the shelf was this book called Test. I don't remember ordering it. So I talked to Laura. She said, oh, I thought of you when I ordered this book. And in the back was the author with a white rat on her shoulder. So that made me very happy. I have a a pet, well, I rescued a baby rat. Now, I'm not afraid of rats or mice or anything like that. The poor thing was near the manure pile. I have a horse, and it was ice cold. I picked it up in my hand. It fit very, it was so small, it fit in the palm of my hand. So I thought, oh, God, why are you sending me this? Because he always does it. I brought him in the house and put him in an aquarium with some nice woolly things, which I warmed up in the dryer. And I thought, what am I going

to do. So I got him warm, and I had a eyedropper, which I keep for weird occasions like this, and I only had canned milk in the house. I did not have kidney milk replace for, which is what most vets want you to use for wildlife. And I thought, well, he's either going to die. The vets were all closed at this point, and he drank some milk. To make a long story short, he is still with me. He's about four and a half months old. He still drinks milk, but he likes lots of different foods. And he's very friendly with me. He makes eye contact.

I can actually put him in a trance when I turn him over and rub his stomach, because I guess rats like his stomach's rub. Well, do you say you don't consider him a pest or any rats are pasted? No, I don't. I mean, you know, I heard somewhere that rats have been alive since the dinosaurs. So they must have some kind of intelligence to stay. When the dinosaurs passed on, they did not. Well, Janet, thank you for that story.

Let me go to Bethany. There's something you must have heard of. Pet rats? Oh, yes. Yes, the rat on my shoulder in my photo for my book. Her name was Magrat. She was a rat of my friends, and she is missed. She passed away a little bit after that photo was taken.

But she was a wonderful rat, and she did not actually poop or pee on me during the entire photo session, which for a rat that poops or pees up to 80 times a day is really very impressive. This was a central casting rat, obviously. Oh, yes. She was a natural. Yes, new photo session when it saw it. Our number 844-724-8255. You know, I also find the villain origin story of pigeons remarkable, too.

We bred them to help us until we said, eh, not anymore. Tell us that story. Yeah, you know, I hate to say that I have a favorite pest because how can one choose the favorite of one's children? But they might be the pigeons. Don't tell the others. I love pigeons because they highlight, I guess you could say, our hypocrisy. For many, many years, pigeons were highly valued members of our society. We domesticated the pigeon about 5,000 years ago.

And we used them because pigeons are wonderful messengers. They have this amazing ability. They go out in the morning, they feed themselves, and they come right back to where they started. And they never lose their way. and they can do this for hundreds of miles. So they make wonderful messengers. They provide lots of pigeon poo, which makes great fertilizer. And they provide delicious pigeon, which if you've ever eaten pigeon,

it's actually really tasty. And so we brought the pigeon around the world with us because it was incredibly useful. People bred the pigeon for its looks. They bred them as messengers. Darwin devoted a large section of On the Origin of Species to the Pigeon. And then we developed the telephone and chemical fertilizer and chicken. And the pigeons stopped being useful to us and we let it go.

And it's been fascinating. You can actually look, one of my sources, Colin Jarlamek, actually looked at references in the New York Times to the pigeon over a 100-year span and watched the pigeon go from noble and innocent and loyal to a rat with wings. Yeah, that was... Over a single century. That was a rat with wings was coined not too long ago, was it? Yes, I believe it was 1967.

Yes. Yes. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with Bethany Brookshire, author of Pests. Have you gotten... What kind of reaction have you gotten about your book? Are people saying, you know, you got it all wrong or gee, you got to see the pests in my backyard. You know, you might change your tune about pests.

I will say I get some very interested, unsolicited photography. Really? Of animals in some in stages of death. Ooh. Which is odd but amusing, I suppose. So, yes, I've gotten some interesting photographs. I get a lot of stories. It's funny when you start writing about pests or telling people that you're going to write about pests.

Everyone has a story of an animal that just drives them bonkers. Right, right. And that's what's surprising and wonderful to read about in your book. How many of the animals you wrote about are pests, rabbits, sparrows, feral cats? I mean, where do we draw the line between a friend or foe here? Yeah, it really is a matter of perspective. You know, if an animal is where you want it to be, It's often a beloved pet.

It's often food. It's often beautiful wildlife. It's when that animal comes into a space that we've decided is ours, right? When it challenges our sense of power and our sense of control, then suddenly we aren't so happy to see them. And thinking of some of these animals as pests as sort of a Western value at times, is it not? It is in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's what I called and what other researchers. call a Dominion-associated mindset. And it's not universal. I was very lucky to be able to learn from

a bunch of indigenous peoples in various locations around the world. And for many of them, they don't actually like the word pest. They don't use it because they don't think of themselves as being in charge. And if you don't think of yourself as being in charge of your environment, it's really hard to think of other animals as being evil or bad or causing you problems. You don't own the place, so they belong there too. So you give them equal treatment. They're not passed. They just live here with us. I wouldn't call it equal necessarily. And certainly you don't always get along with your neighbors, but they are neighbors. They are other members of the society in which you live,

and you give them consideration as other organisms that have the right to live where you do. Let me see if I can get a quick call in before the break. Holly in Oklahoma City. Hi, Holly. Hi. Yeah, I'm so excited about this topic. I'll definitely check out that book immediately. And I wanted to make sure that's about the insect pests that get so disrespected.

Do you have some in particular? Yes. Which insects are pets? Yeah, I do. I do have some particular one. Tomato wormworm is one example. I have a lot of gardening friends. and they all talk about squishing those things the minute they find them.

And that it just makes me wince because tomato hormones become beautiful, fantastic hawk moss. And I have found that if I have a successful tomato crop in a given year, I can easily share with them, and there's room for everybody. There you can. And I don't have those gorgeous creatures. All right. Thank you. Another quick one, Holly, I got to go.

I do have another one. Snails. People try to kill snails in their yard, and they don't realize that snail larvae are one of the main foods of firefly larvae, which are, you know, we're running out. So I just want to point that one out. That's good. I'm going to look at them differently. Bethany? Snails?

There are actually no invertebrates in my book. I'm sorry to say. That's in part because there are other excellent books. There's an entire book on the mosquito, actually. But I thought that vertebrates kind of better highlighted our conflict with the animals in our midst. I agree. And it's a wonderful book. I'm going to come back and talk more about it.

Our number 844-8255. If you'd like to share your opinions about the pests or non-pests that you deal with us, stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. In case you're just joining us, we're talking with Bethany Brookshire, author of the book Pests, How Humans Create Animal Villains, and we want to hear your pesty questions for Bethany. Give us a call at 844-724-8255 or tweet us at Cy Fry.

You know, one of the more interesting, not that there was anything not interesting in your book, it's a wonderful book, Bethany, but what really hit home to me about how you classify pests is the story about elephants. Who can think of an elephant as a pest, unless you live by the Elephants, right? Live near them. Well, that's the thing. You live near them. Yeah, and this was kind of one of the themes that I wanted to highlight in the book is that so often what we call a pest is a matter of belief, right? It's what you believe about the animals. And a lot of us in kind of the global north believe that elephants in particular are wise and beautiful and clever and sweet.

and they are. They are all of those things. I have seen elephants in the wild and they are wonderful. But the people who live with them also deal with a lot of human wildlife conflict. And that's not just the human wildlife conflict we often think of, such as poaching, which does still happen. But now there is less and less poaching. And there is more conflict where you often have elephants trampling and eating people's crops. And now, for example, in West Africa, African elephants kill about 200 people per year and cause millions of dollars in crop damages. And so there are some people in Africa and in Asia who would say, yeah, elephants can be pests. You mentioned that if people store grain in their homes, the elephant will knock the house down to get in. Yes. I met a woman who lost her house. and her entire crop to an elephant.

And people have tried creative ways to keep the elephants away. You talk about them trying bees, which you have discovered elephants hate. Yes. And, you know, it's so funny because Pliny the elders spread this myth around that elephants hate mice, but it's not true. They hate bees instead. Yeah, and this was actually a scientist Lucy King, who developed kind of the elephants and bees project. And she found through study and also from learning from the indigenous people, the Maasai, who live with elephants, that elephants don't want to feed from trees that have bees in them because bee stings hurt. And so if you set up fences full of beehives around crops, you can actually prevent elephants from coming by. And so now they're spreading these beehive fences.

I think they've put them up in more than 20 countries at this point. And the farmers can't kill the elephants because it upsets Westerners. Well, it upsets their own government. And also, people who live with elephants do have respect for elephants. They don't want to kill these animals. They're often a very important part of their culture. They're an important part of their history. In some cases, they're an important part of their religion.

But most importantly, on the day-to-day basis, if someone in Kenya, for example, kills an elephant by accident or on purpose. They face millions of shillings, which is the Kenyan monetary system in fines and life in prison. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Let's move to a different topic. Andrea in Texas. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi there. This is Andrea. I'm in Texas, Central Texas, New Bronville. I just wanted to call and comment. I've always loved deer. We have a huge population here until I moved to a certain area where they are just, there's so many

of them. I have never, I hate them so much now. They've eaten so many of my, eating so many of my plants, I can't tell you how much money I've spent on replacing plants that they don't always eat, they take a bite of and pull them out and leave them there. Kind of like Kevin, I guess, just more of a

burden. But yeah, they're just there, there's so many here and their population has just gotten too big and you see too many of them dead on the side of the road get hit and people injured and car wrecks and everything so they're pretty much a pest in our area yeah andrew i don't mean to laugh because i know how pestful or pesty deer can be in my own backyard yes yeah very much so uh bethany what do you think about deer right i wrote an entire chapter on deer um it's really fascinating that deer have become a pest to so many people because we kind of created that problem by killing off another pest, the wolf, that we did not like. And that is part of what has allowed deer to proliferate so much.

And the other thing that has really allowed deer to proliferate is that we have allowed the growth of secondary forests. You know, we often think that, oh, well, we don't live in the forest. We have to go to the forest. Well, actually, if you live in a leafy suburb, you live in the woods. And that means you live in beautiful deer habitat. that. And we grow so many beautiful plants that we plant, both the decorative ones, hostas are pretty tasty, as well as the ones we grow in our gardens. We provide amazing food for deer. And then we don't

allow their predators to flourish. Yeah, I plead guilty to all of that. Yeah, they've eaten a lot of my flowers. I can tell whether a squirrel is eating it, whether a rabbit's eating it by where it eats it on the plant. RIP, your tulips, I'm sorry. You know, the lilies. They love to take the top of the lilies off. Oh, they do love lilies, yeah. I love lilies. I hardly ever see

my lilies. Let's go to John in Richland, Washington. Hi, John. Hello. Yep, I'm here. Hello. Thank you for the call. And Bethany, I really look forward to reading the book. It sounds amazing. It's right up my alley. I'm a lifelong birdwatcher.

and in my backyard this year I had a bird that's really quite rare called a Townson Solitaire and I was so excited about it and I was watching it and reading in the book its behavior and then watching its behavior and out my back door and we're watching my cat

for my daughter who's at college my cat is incompetent she's declawed she's not a fearsome predator and she got to one bird in my backyard she got to that Townsend Solitaire somehow and killed it. And now I have this annoying pet. My pet is my pest. So you can't look at lovingly at your cat anymore?

It really has altered my relationship in a significant manner. I just, I'm like really frustrated because I got so much joy out of having that bird in my backyard. And, you know, it's, I mean, it's not the cat's fault. I can't be mad at the cat. But still, it. Sorry to hear that. It is. It is very sad. I was so excited to hear about your sterling, and then it took a dark turn. Yes.

I'm sorry to bring that down on us. But, I mean, you know, it could have been a housebarrow, which, I mean, has adapted everywhere, as I'm sure you've, you know, like pigeons almost. But anyway. All right. Well, thank you for the call. Thank you for letting us know about you sharing your experiences with us. Thank you, John. Yeah, the cats, cats have been, can be pests, right?

I mean, there have been cat wars? Yes. Oh, yeah, there's in fact an entire book called Cat Wars. Yes, and it's also really fascinating how because of what we believe about cats and because we do see and love cats, it can be really hard for us to deal with them when they do cause problems to, you know, endangered species, for example. Because people really don't want to kill animals that they love. but sometimes in island situations there's very little else that can be done. You're right about cats wiping out the mouse population of a whole island. Yes, yes. Ile Stonke, I think.

Yeah, off Southern California in Mexico. Yeah. And I mean, they're most famous probably for wiping out the Stevens Island Wren. But certainly those two species are not alone. when cats are obligate carnivores, they love live prey. You know, they're doing what they do. And we have brought them to ecosystems where the animals just aren't capable of handling it. We gotcha.

Let's go to Rick and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Hi, Rick. Hi. I had a comment that I teach environmental science, and terminology is so important in science for defining things. things, but in environmental science, it's a little tough because we try and put boxes and definitions, and there's so many human-centric definitions when it comes to especially environmental science. And when we talk about pests, I reference a lot that we humans came up with that term,

and life doesn't care what we call it. And I thought it was interesting that deer brought up earlier because I teach my students every year that white-pilled deer that we consider huge pests in New England, you know, with eating eating flowers and car accidents and stuff, how they were endangered at one point in time. At the end of the 1800s, early 1900s, they were almost extinct. And they were a resource for us. And then once we stopped hunting them and we started buying produced meat from farms and stuff like that, their populations came back and also with the disappearance of wolves, now suddenly they're

pest for us. Oh, thank you for telling us about that. Well, and they're not the only species. You know, we did almost wipe out the white-tailed deer. We also almost wiped out the turkey, the wild turkey, and the black bear from the eastern United States. And now all of those species are thriving in the new habitats that we've created. And we're starting to be bothered by pretty much all of them. Yeah.

Thank you, Rick, for sharing that with us. Let's go to Elise in Ashland, Wisconsin. Hi. Welcome to Science Friday. Oh, hi. This is Elise. Can you hear me? I sure can.

go ahead. Excellent. Well, I just wanted to say a few words about the sea lamprey, which, as you probably know, is a really dangerous invasive species up in the Great Lakes because of, you know, its ability to adapt, you know, to travel as larva in bilge water or to just swim up rivers or canals that humans have dug. You know, they've been in the great, all the great lakes for, I think, going on 90 years now. and they're a really serious danger to the ecosystem.

And again, that's because they adapted to opportunities we gave them. But what's so striking to me is that they were the seafood of royalty across two and a half continents, near as I can tell, all across western and central Europe, northern Africa, in Japan, and parts of Eastern Asia, the lamprey, the sea lamprey, was the traditional food of nobles. It's supposed to taste like a mushroom I've heard. Of course, now it's very hard to do this safely because they've been exposed to so much, the ones we have here have been exposed to so much mercury pollution. But yeah, I like to think there's a metaphor there. You know, it's the seafood of kings, and just as the king is a parasite on the

people. So the food of kings is a parasite and other fish. And a final funny moment is that the, because they're doing it for King Charles's coronation, they're actually serving a lamprey pie. And I've heard that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources is going to get a royal stamp as the official providers of lamp rays that are to the king of England. That's a great story. That's a great story. I got to end it there because I've got to go. But thank you for sharing that. That's a great story. So, Bethany, you've given us a lot to think about what was the biggest lesson that you learned in writing this book? Oh, man, there are so many.

I would say the biggest lesson is, you know, it's all too easy at the end. You know, as one of the callers said, you know, a pest is what we call it. It's not what these animals do. And it's so very easy at the end to just say, oh, well, you know, the real pest here is the humans. We're a scourge upon the planet. We are so mean. But one of the things I learned is we don't have to live this way. We don't have to be this way.

We can be different. And there are different ways of coexisting with the animals in our environments. And so it was really fascinating to kind of realize that we can change our perspectives and we can change our practices. And we can achieve better coexistence without always having to go to war against the pest. And there's something I learned the hard way as a gardener in my backyard that you're not going to win this war. Have you tried a good gardener's cage? Yes. I have kept out my strawberry patch has a good gardener's cage in it, and you're right. But there are people that there are people, there are animals that burrow underground.

I've started noticing all kinds of different things of ways that animals will win this war, if you want to call it a war. So you have to coexist, right? I mean, we don't have to, but it's a choice that we can make, and it's one that I think would probably serve us and our environments better in the long run. Let me see if I can end with a question to you from someone who's been hanging on quite a while here. Brian in Southampton, New York, hi, Brian. Go for it. Yes, although my comment and question is about an invertebrate, I think that we can weave it into this story, because this past, I believe, has had a very strong. redemptive arc. This pest has a very good PR team, and I'm talking about the spider.

That in my lifetime, spiders have gone from eke, cream, squish, to, oh, the children in my life, don't kill it, don't kill it, and then put a cup over it and put it outside. So it feels like, at least in my experience, we've turned, some of us have turned a corner with the spider. That's a good way to end because, yes, people really hate spiders, don't they? I mean, some people do, but that's one of the things. The more you learn, the more knowledge you have about the animals that you live with, the more you begin to realize their value and learn to coexist a little bit. And so just chill out a little bit and try to learn how to live with these animals. Yeah, you know, knowledge is power. Yeah, well, where do you go from here? What's your next idea about pests? Are you writing anything else?

Oh, that's a lot of pressure. I'm still thinking about pests, honestly. There are so many animals that didn't make it into the book and that could have. And why didn't they make it into the book? I mostly tried to focus on animals where their stories highlighted kind of the five themes that I really saw as being kind of essential to the definition of pest. But many other animals could have stood in for the animals that I ended up focused. on.

Well, it's an excellent book, Bethany. Thank you for taking time to join us today. Thank you so much for having me. Bethany Berkshire is a science journalist, author of Pests, How Humans Create Animal Villains. She's based in Chevroly, Maryland. And you can read an excerpt from the book. Go to our website, ScienceFriiday.com slash pests. And a big thanks to our friends at WAMU for hosting Bethany.

Bethany, sorry. It's Friday. I want to thank everybody who's tuned in on our live show. on our live show today. I hope to do more of them in the future and have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato in New York.