StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Animal Outlaws with Mary Roach

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

What happens when nature commits a crime? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Paul Mecurio discuss law-breaking animals with Mary Roach and her new book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks The Law. Can we hack nature?NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-animal-outlaws-with-mary-roach/Thanks to our Patrons Hunter Cutone, Roman Cain, Yoshi Wiklund, Tec MySelf, Jonathan Harries, Net Identification, and William Davis for supporting us this week.Photo Credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/http://www.micro2macro.net The making of this document was supported by Wikimedia CH. For all the files concerned, please see the category Supported by Wikimedia (GFDL 1.2 - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html or FAL), via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. I'm Gildergrass Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today we're going to do a Cosmic Queries. Cosmic Queries with Mary Roach. If you don't know about her, you will by the end of this broadcast. I'll tell you that right now. But first, let me introduce my guest co-host for this episode, Paul Mercurio. Paul,

always good to have you back, dude. It's always great to be back. Great to see you. So you're an Emmy and Peabody Award winner for your work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Yes, yes. You've got comedy chops that are like authentic and bona fide and with street cred. Well, they're not. They're his awards.

I took them from his office. But they're mine. They're mine now. He had plenty of others. He won't miss it. Yeah, he's a tiny man. I wrestled him to the ground and took him from him. Yeah, no, we, yeah, we got some awards for a bunch of kooky young guys just kind of messing around. And they, yeah, it was crazy.

Just congratulations. And thanks for sharing some of that sort of comedic wisdom and insight with us on StarTalk. Thanks. So, as you know, Cosmic Queries, you're going to be bringing in questions to ask of our guest, Mary Roach. Mary, how the hell are you? It's been too long. I know. It's been way too long.

I'm fine. I'm good. I'm still alive. You've been on the show a couple of times. You've been on the show a couple of times. One time we talked about packing for Mars, getting ready for a Mars trip, but you're still here, so you didn't go on that one. I was worried. I'm on a waiting list.

Waiting list. Then one time we talked about dead people, and another one was about, like, sex, and then one on war and human. And so just, plus you like these one word titles. So your latest one word title is Fuzz. And I have no idea what that means. Fuzz was my original title. Because fuzz, police, fuzz, fuzzy animals, get it?

Oh, no, yeah, I didn't get it. Oh, all right. I completely didn't get that. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I love the titles that. Oh, all right. I completely didn't get that. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I love the titles of your chapters, too. They're very clever. Like On the Road Again and Killing with Kindness.

Yeah, here's one that I bet nobody got. Well, Mall Cops. Hopefully people got M-A-L, Mall Cops. Get it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was, okay okay there was one about that we were counting cougars out in the boonies in california so i called it mercurial cougars because they're you know stealthy and hard to see but that i'm relying on people knowing that there was a car the mercury cougar okay how many Oh, I didn't get that part. You didn't get that. I'm such a

narcissist. I thought it was a play on my name. I'm like, whoa. Am I getting any royalties on this book? So what you've done here, Mary, it tells me that you've taken laws of civilization as we know it and then applied them to animals to see which animals in nature would break laws. Were they doing that in our civilization? Is that a fair characterization of your book? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because animals are, I mean, they're basically just being animals. You know, they got to eat, they got to crap, and they got to find a place to live.

So they're not really, to them, it's not criminal behavior, but they're doing it by breaking and entering, by trespassing, and sometimes by killing people. So you got murder, manslaughter, home invasion with bears, you got trespassing, you got littering, jaywalking. I got a chapter on jaywalking deer and moose, which kill a lot more people than bears or lions put together. That is mountain lions. So, yeah, yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

You mean deer don't wait for the green light to cross the street? Is that really? Do you remember? Do you remember there's this woman named Donna who calls? She called some Midwest radio show. She goes, I've got something to talk about. I'm really annoyed. I've been in two or three incidents where I've hit or nearly hit deer.

And people are putting the deer crossing signs in these places where there's a lot of traffic. Why would they encourage the deer to cross in this dangerous place? And the host is there. There's this like silence. He's like, it sounds like you're thinking the signs are telling the deer where to go. Well, everybody knows that deer can't read, but they can decipher symbols. Everybody knows that. Exactly. And they have the image of the deer, so they recognize that.

And they're like, oh, cross here. And they have the image of the deer, so they recognize that. And they're like, oh, cross here. Well, in your jaywalking chapter, you talk about deer, and you talk about how swerving from deers have caused as many or more deaths as actually hitting the deer. Yeah. Unless it's like, we were going through Wyoming, my wife and another couple, and we were in a huge Lincoln town car that we rented. I don't know why.

We hit a deer and we didn't it was a big deer and it hit the windshield and flipped over and you mentioned that these law and moose especially will go through the windshield and that's when things really get dicey for people yeah the the uh the tall animals like a moose or an elk or um what's the other one i'm thinking camel serious issues in saudi arabia with camels uh because what happens you hit you the driver you hit the animal in the legs rather than you know if it's a shorter animal you'd hit the torso so the legs go out from under and they cartwheel over and if it's a tall enough animal like this moose with the antler and there that comes through the windshield hit you know

lands on your head and so there's like some crazy amount of paralysis or death from hitting a tall animal. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't do it. Camels, I can't picture camels hiding in the bushes and then running out unannounced. This is, the terrain is not the same where you have deer, where you don't even know the deer is there. How are you going to miss a camel? How's that going to be? I mean, I've seen them in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They just jump out.

They hide behind like, yeah, they hide behind a mailbox. Boom, there's a camel. Well, there was an issue. That's a very good point that you make, Neil. Neil deGrasse Tyson, very good point. How do, I don't know. I can tell you, though, that people going on those roads through the desert, because there's no curves and there's nothing to hit,

people speed like a mother, they're going fast. So the camel, you know, it just takes a left turn when you're not expecting it. And suddenly it's in the roadway, I guess. But I will say there was in Saudi Arabia, they had a law whereby if a person hits a camel and kills it, the driver, even though the driver's probably now paralyzed in a wheelchair, the driver has to pay the camel owner for the loss of the camel. And so some of the camel owners would encourage the camels onto the road so as to get the money. That was a whole thing.

In a journal article, like the Saudi Journal of Medicine, or I forget what, look in my back of my... So if you're a camel and you're getting older, you better look over your shoulder because your owner's going to be... Somebody pushing you out into the street. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. I don't want to get off the track too much, but if you don't mind, before we get to the queries, in that same chapter, you talk about how technology, evolution of the animals can't keep up with technology. That's why speeding cars, they can't get out of the way, but they have this innate ability, which is FID. Yes, exactly. FID, which I was saying FID and I got corrected.

But yeah, so yeah, animals evolved this ability to look up from what they're doing, like say, eating a carcass or whatever they're doing and to look at, they see a predator and they're like uh-oh but they're able to calculate um at what point do i need to flee like how close can the predator come before i need to flee well wait mary mary yeah how many animals eating a carcass are being chased by a predator all right you got your your vultures you got. Yeah, but who's chasing a vulture? Like, nobody. Uh, fox. Okay, I'm just thinking, you have an animal eating berries and then a predator comes. That's what

I'm thinking. If I'm mauling a carcass, there's probably very little out there I'm worried about. That's what I'm saying. Right, exactly. I'm not going to mess with that guy. He's eating a carcass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright, who eats to mess with that guy. He's eating a carcass. He's eating a carcass. All right, who eats berries? You eat berries?

A bear eats berries. Okay, carcasses. See, a carcass is like, that's easy meat. You didn't even have to go and- Oh, so it's not a carcass that you were responsible for. Okay, fine. But you make it relatable to the city because you mentioned that was why you can never hit a car in a city with a pigeon, but hit a pigeon with a car because the pigeon instinctively knows how close that car is going to get and then takes off,

which is why I've been flooring it at these pigeons my whole life, and I haven't been able to kill one. Oh, wait, I got a fast story. Can I tell a story? Can I tell a story? Okay. So, Paul, I've been doing the same thing to great amazement. Okay. I was completely amazed that pigeons are street savvy.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So now watch. Okay. Now, all pigeons, they're like gray. Okay. They're the same color as the pavement.

They're gray pigeons. They're like gray, okay? They're the same color as the pavement. They're gray pigeons. I was driving north on Broadway up near Columbia in Manhattan, and there was a white pigeon in the street. I'd never seen a white pigeon, okay, with other pigeons, but there was a white one.

And I said, let me see if it can get out of the way if I speed up like every other pigeon I've ever approached so I sped up and all the pigeons flew away and I didn't see the white pigeon it wasn't anywhere and I looked back I flattened the white pigeon and I thought oh my gosh I killed a pigeon and then I thought that's why there are no white pigeons. I am an evolutionary force on the pigeons. All the white ones got smashed. What is it? Oh, my God. Why couldn't they?

Why don't they have the same FID capability? I don't know. I said my one data point. And I look back and it was just completely, it was a fast death for it. But then I felt bad so anyway mary i hand you that story okay all right here's okay so here's what you sped up this is the key element here you sped up and you surpassed the species evolved ability to calculate the fin that's for damn sure i did on that one yes you did and it happened it happened to be

the white one and it was just a coincidence and that's what happened i don't know because i don't see they know what white pigeons in manhattan no that white pigeon was known as the dumb pigeon in the group white pigeon can't jump whatever i did something yeah but that's exactly right and that's the point of that chapter is that I did something. Yeah. But that's exactly right. And that's the point of that chapter is that there's this, was it the, they did a test at 204 miles per hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, you know, up to, you know, however fast a predator can run, they're like, I got it.

He's coming. Now I got to go. But they didn't evolve to, they look at a car as a predator can run, they're like, I got it. He's coming. Now I got to go. But they didn't evolve to they look at a car as a predator, okay, and they're like, yeah, I can judge that, but the car's going 60 miles an hour, and they're like, whoops, it's flat. Their processor is like a Tandy computer.

The Commodore 64 would have, maybe that would have worked. That's what that white pigeon had, the Commodore 64 would have... Exactly. Maybe that would have worked. That's what that white pigeon had. It had the Commodore 64 processor. You don't have a chance against Neil Tyson on Broadway, my little chickadee friend. So we are at the end of this segment. We'll jump to a little break here.

No, let's slip in one. Let's get a question in. Let's slip in one? Okay. To wet the appetite. Go ahead. Okay. This is from Chester Lipschulz.

Dear Science Brains, you don't have to compliment me like that. Seriously. Dear Science Brains, is it possible that different species will be or have been driven to a point of unnatural alliances for their own survival

in their human surroundings? Could we have created strange bedfellows that would otherwise not have happened if not for our dominance in the natural world? Mary, why wouldn't that be like rats and mice and other things that we've cohabitated with ever since? What was the question in there? It's two parts. It's two parts.

Is it possible that different species will be or have been driven to a point of unnatural alliances for their own survival in the human surroundings? Unnatural alliances in the... Well, there's coexistence, right? I mean... So, Mary, presumably... Whoa, whoa, whoa. Presumably rats and mice predate humans, let's say, or some version of those rodents. But now rats are perfectly happy living among us they're commensal that's the that's the science brain word they're commensal

they live with us right right and and the mice that they love your barn you know and and they love living in your basement and so isn't that cohabitating? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure that's what he was asking, but for sure. I mean, the animals that we find annoying, that we call nuisance animals, are the ones that were smart enough to figure out, we got the food, we got the warm place to live, we're going to help them survive. I think this person is asking essentially, because the second part of it is, could we have created strange bedfellows that we otherwise would not have had that otherwise would not have happened if it weren't for our dominance in the natural world? You know, obviously, we've encroached on. Sure.

You know, we now you know, we've got ski resorts. So we've gone into bear territory, you know, where there's you know, there's lots of food for bears. And this is where they hang out. But now we're like, there's a restaurant with a dumpster with all kinds of amazing, like sustainably farmed sakuna salmon. And like, they're so they're like, we're going to go down there at 3am because it's much better than a bunch of choke cherries and crab. Wait, wait, Paul, Paul, I I imagine two bears and they're eating the leftover salmon. It wasn't, don't eat that. That wasn't free range.

That was far. That was far. Eat this one. You're an animal. One bear goes to you, you're an animal. You're not going to eat that. Yes, I am an animal

and I am going to eat this. I just happen to be an animal. All right, we're going to wrap up this segment. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, more StarTalk Cosmic Queries with friend of StarTalk Cosmic Queries with friend of StarTalk Mary Roach I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery.

You can see my pottery on my website, CosmicMugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. we're back star talk cosmic query we got mary roach who's her publisher just let her out of the cave one more time for her next book, When Nature Breaks the Law. I got Paul Mercurio with me. Paul, how do we find you on social media?

At Paul Mercurio all across the board, just real simple. Okay. And my podcast, The Paul Mercurio Show. You can check me out there too, which you've been on. Yeah. And who came up with that as a title for your podcast? Well, we spent a lot of time. I hired a research, a marketing firm.

I brought in Donnie Deutsch from MSNBC, and he worked the numbers and said. And you focused on him? I know, it's a tie. No, I don't like the name. I can't come up with a good name. I'll help you. We'll work on it together, all right?

All right, Mary, you're very good with play on words. Mary, yeah talk to mary talk to mary yeah talk to mary mary's got the titles nobody understands i got a book bonk i had so many people go you know what i think it's boink not bonk like i have a typo in my own title so many people that i would do book i do book talks and i had a little peel and stick letter i'd be like, if you want it to be boink, here you go. That's hilarious. Make it boink. The bonk was all about sex, if I remember correctly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bonking, right? Bonking. Right, right. No, it's boinking. So when we left off, someone asked about sort of the symbiosis that might unfold with animals encroaching on our turf or we encroaching on theirs. And because I told my pigeon story earlier, but I thought a lot about pigeons. And I looked them up in the book and everything.

And they have an actual name. They're called rock doves. And that species lives in canyons where they swoop down and up against the rock walls that surround them. And that's exactly what tall buildings are in New York City and Manhattan. They're the rock canyons. And so they adapted beautifully

to it. Except for when they fly head-on into the glass. Yeah, yeah. That don't make me laugh, but yeah, that doesn't work. Look, pigeons don't have eye care plans. So they can't afford glasses. They don't know where they're going.

You know what bird always does that? It's the cedar waxwings. Every single year they go and there's these berries in somebody's property in the next house over and they eat the berries. And this is what I'm told, that they get drunk and they're flying in a group and either they're getting drunk

or it's like the blue angels where you got the main person and they're all just following the main guy. So the ones on the edge are like, so it's one of those two things. Drunk and following the leader. That's not a way to live. But you know what, pigeons. You want to be drunk and follow no one, right? Just wander into your... no one, right? Just don't. Just wander into your... Pigeons, I have to say, I just read, because I had a blurb

this book about pigeons by Joe Mancuso or something. So pigeons are actually, they were domesticated and they escaped. So these are basically feral animals that they evolved in the presence of humans. So they hang around with us because they always hung around with us.

So that's why we can never get rid of pigeons. The specific variety, I'd say, that we have. If there weren't the scraps of food in a city like New York, for example, would the pigeons be as plentiful? Would there be as many pigeons? I mean, there's just... No, no, no. Yeah, they go where the food is.

But they go where the food is, and they're not as afraid of people. You know who loves pigeons? It's falcons. They're a short-fid. They introduced falcons into Manhattan? Oh, my gosh. I was, when I was getting my PhD at Columbia, they put the astronomers at the top floors of the building.

So the roof was like, you know, six feet above my window. And there were these feathers just dropping off the side of the building. And I looked out and I looked up and there's this falcon just ripping apart a pigeon. And it's like, it's his lunch. And I thought to myself, my gosh, if you're a falcon and you move to New York, your fat lunches are just sitting there for the taking all in the park. And you don't even have to work for it. The Falcons are like, I can't go back to New York.

Every time I go to that city, I put on like 20 pounds. I got to work out for like six months. I am not going back to that city. 20 pounds of pigeon. Exactly. Plus I got to compete with Neil Tyson. He's killing pigeons. I'm killing pigeons.

Paul, three more questions. What do you have? Sure. This is Nicholas Godlove, which is an awesome last name. My passion alongside my dream of being a marine biologist, a scientist, is to educate the public on the importance of apex predators and our respectful relationship with them. Why is it that certain humans demolish and hunt these species?

I'll stop there. There's more to this question, but let's take it in part. What do we have against apex predators, Mary? Well, the apex predators are the ones that are very good at, you know, let's take a mountain lion. They're very effective killers. They love to kill deer, but they'll also kill small cows and sheep

and other things that you might be keeping and using for your livelihood. So anytime you mess with somebody's livelihood, say if you're a sheep herder or you're a rancher, or even if you're somebody who keeps chickens in your backyard, and most of the people requesting kill permits in California are people with just a few chickens or goats in their backyard. They're not big ranches.

We don't have a lot of that. But who eats the goats? I guess the mountain lions eat the goats. No, mountain lions eat the goats or chickens or pets, too. So people have an emotional attachment to their own animals. They're sort of an extension of themselves and their family and they get very upset and they

instead of taking action like building a better nighttime enclosure or trimming back the brush so there's not a place for the mountain lion to kind of sneak up, which it needs to do when it's hunting. They just call someone and say, get rid of it. Or they shoot it themselves.

Well, that's because it's a murker. There's a murker, yeah. And we were founded on. If shooting it can solve the problem, you do that first. Exactly. These animals are varmints. They're varmints. Yeah, you don't box them in.

You don't put a perimeter. You shoot it. You shoot it. You shoot it and walk away and have lunch. It's easy and simple, right? This is just the American way. In your book, you have this chapter, A Spot of Trouble, which this question sort of reminds me of that. You're really great in the book of doing these causal connections.

And in that case, in the Middle Himalayas, after the 1918 pandemic and there were all these corpses and they couldn't cremate so many of them, they were throwing the bodies basically down the hill. Toward the Ganges, yes. And the leopards got used to human meat and made them more aggressive towards humans, which I thought was utterly fascinating. That is the theory, yep. Right, sort of Jim Corbett brings that there. So it's sort of like there's this, why are we attacking these animals? Well, we made them more comfortable.

It's just part of us have to own the fact that we created this problem, right? Yeah, the other thing going on there is so many people have left the villages up in the middle of Himalaya. They used to farm, they used to terrace and farm. That's a really hard way to farm, you know, to get farm. That's a really hard way to farm,

to get water there and you gotta carve out the mountainside. And a lot of people have left for the cities. So a lot of the, they call it rewilding, there's the brush has grown back. There's not as many people tending the livestock. If you leave your livestock out there, the leopards are gonna come in. So they've got fewer people.

Often children are tending to things. And most of the, you know, 41% of the kills by these leopards are kids. So we've presented opportunity, good hunting opportunities for these leopards. Yeah. I see. So it's, I will shoot them because otherwise they will eat me. I mean, that's the rationale, I guess. Yeah, that is, that is, you know, their family members are getting killed and they don't wait for the government to do something about it. They trap them and kill them themselves sometimes, yeah. Actually, there's a query about rewilding. Can I jump to that?

Oh, yeah, go for it, yeah. That's a new word for rewilding. I like that. Yeah. Carrie Manaberg. My question is about rewilding. Can I jump to that? Oh, yeah, go for it. That's a new word for rewilding. I like that. Yeah. Carrie Manaberg. My question is about rewilding. Some people think that a parcel of disturbed land, either urban or rural,

can be a beautiful natural forest if we just simply leave it alone. I take the position that the land must be heavily managed by conservationists and friends in order to ensure a successful project. We must develop long-range plans. Which do you think is the best approach? Do you leave it alone or do you sort of be proactive?

Is it in an urban area? I don't know. I mean, you know, your scenario that you talk about in the book are on these sort of plateaus on the hill where it got so difficult to find people, you abandoned plateaus. But I guess sort of in a general sense the question is do you let it sort of reestablish itself naturally

or are you proactive in some conservation I'm not sure how you would introducing animals or culling animals that are in there I'd vote just let it do whatever nature wants to do with it,

and it'll figure something out. It'll, you know, life finds a way. Yeah, I'm not sure if the concern is that it's going to attract a kind of animal that you don't want in an urban setting, whether you're going to have too many rodents or you're – I don't know because I'm not a land management, wildlife management, urban area person at all. So, again, I don't...

I would say if you look at forests and other heavily vegetated areas that require no help from humans, I think if nature wants to grow something in your empty lot, it's going to do it. And have you driven by sort of abandoned old diners or something,

and there's grass growing through the cracks of the parking lot and on the steps, and, you know, give it another couple of years, and you're not even going to see the diner. See the diner. It's going to be a giant shrub. Right, right. It's just going to be a shrub. And that's after just a couple of years.

And you realize that when you see something that's highly manicured, somebody's working on that sucker every day, beating back the weeds and trimming the grass. Well, you have that. I did talk about New Zealand in the book. In New Zealand, if you think of New Zealand as a really, really big vacant lot, which for the purposes of this question. You have a situation where the wildlife didn't have natural land, the birds there, and it didn't have natural land predators.

So they're flightless. A lot of them are flightless, not all of them. So now comes a bunch of rabbits were brought in, rabbits overpopulated. People thought, hey, let's bring in ferrets and stoats to kill the rabbits. Well, the stoats are like, you know what? The rabbits are not bad, but I'm really digging these eggs and these little chickeny things. These are really good. So the populated, like all these bird species and reptile species are now gone because the stoats and the ferrets and the feral cats that were also

introduced to kind of like control the rabbits, they've all gone out of control. So now New Zealand is like, hey, we're headed towards a point where all we have is rats, which are from ships, feral cats, stoats, and possums, and that's going to be it. We're losing hundreds of our own really cool species. So, you know, that's a land management conservation issue where, yeah, somebody early on should have gone, let's think this through, this whole stoat thing. Yeah, people hardly ever think things through as much as they need to. You know, you raise a good point in the book about that because that face, you talk about sort of, it's hard, you say it's hard to know where to draw the lines, what to save and at what cost, because then they started wiping out the stoats and the feral cats. And you're like, well, OK, who are we to decide what species to eliminate, what species to save?

And so there's this it's an unanswerable dilemma. Right. Right. And also you're talking about where do you, I mean, the landscape is always evolving. Like the guy that was talking about, there's people who, because deer were also introduced for the hunters to hunt and the deer are, they're complaining the deer are browsing the understory in the forest. So people are like, get rid of the deer. But his point was, you know what? We used to have moas, these giant flightless birds that ate the understory. So you're talking about the pre-moa, you know,

this version of New Zealand that is, you know, one period in time. And idealizing this one snapshot of evolution and species interaction. So anyway, it's a tough call to make. One thing I've noticed from the evolution of species on Earth is that nothing is ever constant. And we want to think of it, you know, from a conservationist standpoint, we think to ourselves, oh, let us stabilize the environment so that yet if you look through the history of things,

it has never been stable, ever. And things are, what we think of as balance, it might be over a short period of time, but over a long enough period of things, it has never been stable, ever. And things are, what we think of as balance, it might be over a short period of time, but over a long enough period of time, nothing's in balance. Continental drifts, you strand species, the climate changes, not as quickly as we're currently changing the climate,

but it has happened in the past. So, yeah. The only thing that's constant is change. Yeah, yeah. Love that sentence. It's constant is change. Yeah, yeah. Love that sentence. It's not spoken enough. Paul, we might have time for one more. Okay.

This is Taylor Prim. Hey, Neil, here's a question about hacking nature. Have there been ways humans have hacked nature so that both humans and our neighboring wildlife individuals benefit too? Wow. Mary, did you come across any examples of that? Yeah, there's, okay, here's an example that's kind of cool. This is, I have a chapter on danger trees, which is a term that kind of cracks me up.

Danger trees. It's kind of like danger mitten. It's like, it's a tree. No, the danger trees are in the Wizard of Oz where they throw apples. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, we've got to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to learn from Mary Roach about killer trees. I don't know.

On StarTalk, I'm Kaz McQuarris. សូវាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប� We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. So we left off with, Mary, you were describing killer trees. No, bad trees. Or what was it? Danger. Danger trees. Danger trees. This is an official term. This is terminology.

Scientific terminology. Okay. So danger trees. Okay. Danger tree is a tree that's a big tree that's very old. It's diseased. It's leaning. You can tell it's going to come down relatively soon with trees relatively soon. It could be 10 years, 20 years. But anyway, so it's scary enough that somebody has to come in and deal with it. And when it's a really big tree, one of those giant redwoods or Douglas firs, what they do is they don't cut it down. They blast the top, they climb up, they insert dynamite and they blow off the

top. So now it's more stable, but it's such a big tree that it's still sort of beautiful. And people go, well, look at the giant, beautiful tree. But here's the thing. This is the hack that I'm getting to here, because this is a question about hacks. So when you blow off the top, now you create this situation where water can collect there and you get top-down decay. So there's cavities formed that animals can go into and live in. So biologists love these trees that have been blown, the top's been blown off because it creates habitats for other animals. So we blow stuff up and the biologists like it?

Wow. In this case, yes, they do. They do. They love it because a dying, decaying tree creates lots of real estate for different species. And the raptors like it because they're just bare branches. There's no leaves and foliage. So does it count? On Long Island, there are many places where they just, people have built this perch with a big sort of flat surface at the top.

And many of them have bald eagles in these huge eagle nests. And so I'm thinking, doesn't the eagle know that like we did that? And don't they have any dignity? They're sitting there going to each other, look at these idiots. They think we're buying into that. It looks like a tree. That's a perfectly formed two by four

from True Value Hardware. That is not a tree. But they do have sight lines because we tend to put them out in the middle and they like seeing what's coming. Not that eagles have predators, mind you, but nonetheless. So I'm just wondering,

I guess that would be the eagles convincing us that we should build their homes. That's what that is. That's like people bringing in, you know, nest boxes for owls so that the owls would kill the rodents. You know, that's a, you know, biological pest control kind of deal. I'm not sure if that's the hack that the person is getting at here. Tell people in this chapter, but it's this chapter when the woods come down and tell people about like, I didn't realize that there was pine cones like this, the coulter pines and the durian trees and what they produce. And I'm afraid to walk in the woods now because of you explain what these things are freaking drops bowling balls on people these are these are giant heavy pine cones and they'll put there are these signs they go falling pine cone proceed with caution you know like's going to actually see that and go, oh, my God, don't walk under that tree.

But then, like, people have been. And durian fruits, similarly. Bowling ball kind of deal. Big football size, but dense, heavy. Plus, spikes. There you go. Neil. Imagine you're taking a walk, nice walk in the day, and you get hit in the head with a spiked fruit, and that's how you die.

Imagine that. That's's how you die? That's not how you want to buy it. And there's like photographs in the Indonesian newspapers every couple of years, like a guy lying there with a bloody fruit next to his head. It's kind of tragic. Yeah, if I die, I don't want to be because of a fruit assassin. I just don't know. A target of a fruit. a fruit assassin.

I just, no. A target of a fruit. But you also say, Mary, that we're irrational in our species-specific devotions, right? In talking about, we'll protect these trees, but these trees are killer trees. And it's all sort of relative, right?

The same thing with the octopus. Somebody said that they don't want to kill an octopus because it's intelligent, but they'll eat pig and rats, which are also very intelligent. Yeah. I don't know if they're eating the rats, but they're definitely eating the pig. We don't know what kind of friends you have. With the right barbecue sauce, Mary.

Probably is pretty tasty. Exactly. Paul, give me some more. Jeff Johnson, with all the wildfires around the world, how much is that impacting wildlife and what cascade effect does this have on the environment as a whole? Yeah. Mary, does wildlife just kill the animals or do the animals escape it and then they end up living somewhere else? Apparently, they're pretty,

I was talking to the guys doing the mountain lion project here in California, where he's doing a census of the whole state mountain lions. He said they're pretty good at getting out of the way. And it's not like they're getting burned up. I know there's been bears that have been burned because they're doing some sort of thing where they're using tilapia skin. They're putting fish skin on the ferns on some bears. I remember reading about that. So at least one bear didn't get out of the way. But the thing, I mean, here's a, you know, there was this,

I was out with this person who's doing a census of the mountain lions in the state. We were up in Modoc, which is a huge swath of burned wilderness. And I'm like, they're looking for mountain lions here. Are you crazy? It's just like a hellscape of charred sticks, you know? And he's like, actually look more closely. All these green shoots are coming up. The green shoots are what the deer love because they're tender, yummy. You know, they eat the, that's what they do in your yard. You know know they eat the tender green shoots so uh stuff springs back to life the deer come in the mountain lions are like hell deer yeah this is great so it looks you know it looks like a dead zone but uh in fact it comes back fast and uh you

have this um you know kind of rush to take advantage of decades it comes back in years right yeah yeah yeah this was this was quick this was quick so uh that's. It's not decades. It comes back in years, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was quick. This was quick. So that's just... So it's not nature's first rodeo when stuff burns. Yeah, exactly. It's a process.

It's a process. All right, Paul, give me more. Chaz Gencarelli. I just read that around cities with... That's the best way to pronounce the man's Italian name. Chaz Gencarelli. Thank you.

Yes. When we're done with this, we're going to have a meatball parmesan, and you're going to like it with a little side of spiked fruit. Okay, now you're getting racist, but okay. No, wait. I'm Italian. I can do it. Oh, you can do it.

I can do it all day. I just read that around cities and dense populations where high-calorie human scraps are more widely available and predators are fewer, it was discovered that most of the mammal species studied, such as coyotes and raccoons, appear to be growing in size. What repercussions could we see from this? Hmm. Well, they that's yeah, absolutely. The more the more food animals get that even though there's something called compensatory reproduction, whereas there's like lots of food available. The nature kind of takes advantage of that by bigger broods like the litters are bigger and the gestation period shortens. So with some animals, you just you know, they're like, hey, plenty of food. Let's have more.

Let's take advantage of this. And so you see this population boom. And the extreme of that is in Australia with those massive mouse plagues. Just, I mean, you've seen there's video from 100 years ago. The floor is roiling with mice. Yes. Yes, I've seen those videos. Yes, they're like dropping from the ceiling.

I mean, they're intense. So nature's opportunistic. So I read a book, and forgive me if I don't remember the name. It was something like After Humans on Earth, so what happens. And so the— Oh, yeah, by Alan—yeah, The World Without Us? It might be. There's been several in that genre.

It's amazing that it's even a genre. I'm impressed that that's a genre. Like, people are really trying to get ready for when we're not here. And who's going to read the book when that happens? That's right. Who buys the book, then? So the question is, how come rats aren't bigger than they are? Because they're the right size to still escape from you in the pipes that we have for our sewage.

If they're so big that their ass can't fit back through the thing, they die. Okay, so there's no evolutionary pressure to have big rats because they wouldn't be able to hide from us. But if we're not here, then they're not limited by the size of their ass relative to the pipe they want to crawl into. And they would just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And we know that mammals have hardly anything constraining their size. I mean, the biggest animal there ever was is alive today, and it's a whale, okay? The blue whale. And the biggest animal on earth, okay, is the African elephant. Now, I guess, you know, some dinosaurs are bigger in the past, but mammals have no trouble getting big in the evolutionary tree. So maybe it is our existence that's tamping down the size of rats.

I never thought about the importance of the size of the ass of a rat. I never contemplated this. Okay, sorry. Whatever is their widest part. Actually, I think they have narrow asses. I'm talking about their midsection, perhaps. No, whenever I see a rat, I'm like, could you turn around? I just want to see. Wow, you need to go to the gym. That's usually what I say when I say a rat.

Does this make my ass look big? Does this pipe make my ass look big? Does the city's infrastructure make my ass look big? Does the city's infrastructure make my ass look big? But, you know, the other thing you say in the book is that sort of like pretty animals, we tend to fight harder for like the mountain lion, the cougar, right? The California mountain lion, right? Sort of like it's sort of the pretty one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It doesn't necessarily need to be fought for, but because it's kind of cuter and prettier. Isn't it just whether they have a furry tail? Doesn't it all come down to that? Yeah, because you look at a roof rat and you, right, face on so you can't

see the tail. A squirrel and a roof rat, you cannot tell the difference. They're both really cute. And then you see the hairless tail and then you don't like it immediately.

Exactly. What does that say about you, Neil, that you would judge the rat based on its look? I don't know. I'm talking about other people who do that. He's got a rat-ass That rat has inner value, man. It has an inner sense of itself. Some people say they don't see

color. I don't see species. I just see big asses on rats and small asses on rats. Should we do another one? Yeah, no, keep coming. A couple more. All right, okay. This is Quentin.

We all know that humans destroy nature to build cities and other infrastructure, but humans themselves are part of nature. Do you think it's even possible for an advanced civilization of at least our human capabilities to sustain a better balance between wildlife and the civilization itself. Oh yeah, I think we can do a lot better. Starting where? It's just starting with, you know, look at something like rats and raccoons. I mean, they're a problem when you've got something in your building or your attic or your garage that they want, a place to nest or something to eat.

So get rid of that. Figure out a way to. Raccoons have those creepy hands, you know. Yes. They're like, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that guy that never can find his wallet at dinner, you know. The hands never go deep, like the little, yeah.

It's like, yeah. But, you know, you never go deep like the little like yeah it's like yeah it's but you know you're right about that we had something in our it went in our chimney and down and it sounded it was a scratching scratching scratching and it was like oh my god there's a rat in the thing what did I do I went and I got I got a baseball bat and I was ready to you know beat it it turned out to be a bird but still it freaked me out and my instinct wasn't to be civil about it at all. And here's my house, which encroached on its environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I crushed it, though, with a bat.

What a home run I hit. No, I'm just kidding. A little birdie. You killed a little birdie. Yeah, so we are quite, I think the word is speciesist, where we prefer some species than others. But like I said, I don't see species. So that's a wokeness that I'm still waiting for the world to catch up to me.

You are so ahead on that wokeness. I looked at the endangered. There's hundreds of endangered or threatened fish. There's hundreds of endangered or threatened fish. They're like these species of sardine and sprat and like gill fish and lung fish. But it's like nobody raises money for them. The fish, the endangered, because they're not very attractive and cute. And what gets me is, you know, they fish for tuna with nets and they accidentally grab a dolphin. Those people trying to say save the dolphins only catch tuna with a line caught.

And I'm thinking, what about the tuna? Is anybody worried about the tuna? They just netted hundreds of tuna and you're worried about the one dolphin. I mean, so that's. That's exactly. That's what the dolphins are saying they're like why what is it what did we do to them what did we do to them yeah but the dolphins got that you know permanent smile on its face but there could be like a bad evil dolphin that

totally needs to be you know it's like it's all up front you know like a really not that happy like flipper dolphin well okay eating a okay eating a turkey sandwich, a chicken sandwich, a beef sandwich, a pork sandwich, but if someone served dolphin sandwich, oh no! Oh no. Oh my god. That's because it was in a TV show. You need a TV show. It's all about TV.

If you can get your own TV show, animal, human, vegetable, no one's going to mess with you. You are set. Just before we wrap up, you know, you have an interesting thing you say in the book. 2,000 species in 200 countries create acts that put them at odds with man. That's a pretty big number. I didn't realize that. Yeah, you know what?

I kind of just pulled that out of my ass, that number. Yeah, it seemed that way. Or did you pull it out of a big ass of a rat? I pulled it out of a rat's ass because I was stuck in a pipe. That's a sign that we need to end this program. Mary, it's a delight to have you. So Mary, try to put fewer years between your books

so we can have you on more often. I'll do my best. Your books are all fun, and I have so many of them on my shelf. And they are, you know, not many science writers decide to just sort of have fun with the intersection of humans and science. It's you and me, Neil. You and me. And still learn something for having written it.

And this is what you're doing. And so you, as far as I'm concerned, occupy a unique niche in the science writing landscape. So thank you for existing. Okay, now go back to work. Go back to your cave. Mary, always great to have you. And thanks for being such a friend of our show. Oh, I love you guys.

You come to my office multiple times and you've you a wonderful guest. And we look forward to this book and which just came out and, and who's your publisher. Just so people are published. W W Norton. I did not know that.

Cause they have six of my books. I Paul, always good to have you back on. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. A lot of fun. Enjoy the book, Mary.

Thank you, Paul. Thank you so much. All right. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition, all about Mary Roach's latest book on the encroachment of animals into civilization and vice versa. Neil deGrasse Tyson here for StarTalk, as always.ご視聴ありがとうございました