Stuff You Should Know - How Charismatic Megafauna Work

Episode Date: May 11, 2017

Charismatic Megafauna is not just a great band name. It's really just a fancy word for the cutest and most personality plus animals at the zoo. We're talking pandas, elephants and anything else you might see on a poster. Their mission? To help raise awareness and drive donations. But not everyone is on board. Learn all about these cuddly beasts in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland.

I've been stuck for a shit night. My vocal cords are about to split wide open. Are they? Sure. You don't sound weird. Oh, really? No, you sound very Josh-like. Brrrrbrrrrr.

Brrrrrrrrrbrrrrr. Hahaha. Hahaha. What is that? Izzy. I think that's how you pronounce it. Sparkling Black Bear. Is-uh.

Um, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, you know, like when you just Talk too much. Have you been talking too much? I guess. Are you stressed?

I wasn't at the impression that aside from these two hours you just sort of sit in silence. And you and you meet pantomime. Right. Everything. We do interpretive dance. Yeah. You got to save my vocal cords, babe.

Yeah. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. You sound normal. Well, I'm glad I sound normal because I don't feel like I do. But if I sound normal, who cares about how I feel? No, come on. Everyone cares.

No. This podcast, by the way, has perhaps the best band name ever. Right there in its title. I think it's overdone. Charismatic Megafauna? Yeah. What do you mean?

Like, there's so many bands named that? Or you just think the name is too much? Yeah. The latter of those two. I think it's pretty good. No? Charismatic Megafauna. I mean, maybe for your second band.

Oh, your side gig? No, no, no. Like the second before, you know, your third, fourth, or fifth one where you finally hit it. Gotcha. I'm still waiting on that. Are you? No.

El Chippos. The first to the last. But a hobby. The alpha and the omega. And nothing in between. How do you like my Latin? Or is that Greek? No, this is off to a terrible start.

No, this is great. So I saw a teacher the other day. I should give credit where credit is due. You and me saw a teacher the other day and showed it to me. It was pretty awesome. You know, it was a World Wildlife Fund logo. Because you were just walking around kicking rocks.

Right. Not looking up. Look up everyone. Look up. She pantomime, look up. Right. No, I pantomime back. Great.

It was a World Wildlife Fund logo with the panda. But there was another panda coming up behind it with a folding chair, which is a play on the WWF. Yeah, I've seen that before. Great, great t-shirt. It is good. But the fact that the panda is the front man for the World Wildlife Foundation.

The lead singer. It's one of the biggest conservation organizations in the entire world. Is actually a pretty good example of the use of a charismatic megafauna. Yeah, which is also called a flagship species. And it's a term that came around in the 80s. I tried to find, track it back to the person

who thought of it. Couldn't either. Couldn't do it. Let's go with Jack Hannah. All right. Possible. Yeah, it is possible. But basically, it's very simple.

This is a koala or a panda. Right. No, but sort of, yes. It's an animal that is like the poster child in advertising for zoos and conservation groups because they're so stinking cute and charismatic that people open their wallets to give money toward conservation efforts.

You just make it rain on them. Yeah, like look at that panda. I can't, my wallet is out all of a sudden and I'm just pulling Benjamins out and dropping them along this pandas trail. That is charismatic megafauna. It is, it's as simple as that. And along the way, since it was kind of picked up

and coined and started to take seriously by conservationists, it's become much bigger and debated and everything, but it really helps to understand it and bring it down to size when you realize that it's actually, it's a conservation idea, but it's actually a marketing term. That's what the whole thing is. It has nothing to do with the importance

of the species to its ecosystem. Not necessarily. It doesn't even necessarily have to do with how endangered the species is. Yeah. It really has to do with how cute and relatable humans find the species so that it will generate the most financial contributions possible toward conservation.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. And this, we did an episode, I think a pretty good one on zoos quite a while back, and the controversy around zoos and if we should even have zoos. And I think I remember us both sort of agreeing like some zoos are terrible. And then most zoos, I don't know about most,

but many zoos these days do such great work. They are now necessary to conservation efforts or go a long way toward conservation efforts. But we still like, it's a little creepy sometimes when you see an elephant that should roam for thousands of miles in a relatively small area. It makes you think better off dead. Who knows?

Yeah, but then, man, it's just that thing was zoos again. Then you also see like a child get inspired to grow up to be a zoologist because they fell in love with the elephant in the zoo. Yeah. And then they lead conservation efforts. So there's captive breeding programs that bring animals back from the verge of extinction.

Right, all this is supposed to happen, but how often does it actually happen is my thing. I think the conservation efforts are constantly happening at most zoos. You mean specifically bringing an animal back? Yeah, or how many zoologists are actually inspired by going to a zoo as a child? I mean, is there a better way to do it?

I'm sure we got into this in the zoos episode. Since then, I don't think I've been to a zoo. I think I've been to a zoo once and I was like, I can't go to zoos anymore. Well, I went to the San Diego Zoo when we did our show there. And now I'm a member of the Atlanta Zoo because I have a small child. And it's a great thing to do with a small kid

because it introduces them to animals which they love. It's really neat for them to be able to see these things in person and it quite frankly wears her out. Which is kind of the one thing you're trying to do as a parent is to make your child exhausted. Look at how crazy that chimpanzee is from being locked up its whole life. I was like, I bet you can't run

from one animal exhibiting zucosis to the next as fast as you can. So anyway, I've been to the Atlanta Zoo here a few times recently because of that and still have mixed feelings, you know? Sure. But it's hard to not see like your 20 month old delight at seeing, I mean, one of these visits,

we caught a full on ape show. Oh really? Yeah, like, you know, sometimes you go to the zoo and everyone's hiding. You're like, oh, well, that's neat. There's a tiger behind that rock somewhere. But we had a good day where this family of apes was just playing like crazy.

And like this huge, was it a gorilla? I can never remember which, or monkeys, which are apes. I think a gorilla's a great ape. Well, this big daddy gorilla, I mean, just to see the strength of this dude moving around and jumping around was amazing. And he would jump off of a rock and clap his hands and the little kids were playing, little baby gorillas.

And everyone was just like literally in awe of what they were witnessing. Yeah, but. It was like they pumped them full of steroids. Right, so. Or cocaine, so maybe they did. Right then, that gorilla family was showing off their charisma.

Yeah. They have natural inherent charisma as far as being a charismatic species goes because they're so relatable by humans. Well, yeah, I mean, that's one of the things like, hey, this thing kind of looks like you. Right. Don't you like it more than other animals?

Don't you want to give us some money to protect them in the wild? Yeah. And that's the point of the charismatic megafauna usage. Yeah, we're talking gorillas, pandas, koalas, tigers. Dolphins. Sure. Killer whales.

Oh, yeah. Thanks to Free Willy. They include lions in here. And I guess so because they're magnificent but lions don't do a lot. Most of the big cats just sort of lay around. Sure. They're not running around like the gorillas.

You got to throw your beer can at them to get them going. They had an elephant paint a picture. They did this little, like. That's a zoo? Did they? Yeah, they put a paint brush in its mouth and would hold up a canvas and the elephant would like, you know.

Someone else would smack away the riding crop until it did what you wanted. No, it wasn't like that. But that's actually, you can buy paintings by elephants but apparently they're not very well treated. Yeah, I don't think that's, I think at the Atlanta Zoo, they treat their animals very nicely.

Sure, sure. I'm not saying that, but I mean, on the internet you can buy paintings by elephants and if you actually look into how the elephants are treated, you probably wouldn't want the painting. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be super activist person. No, I don't mind.

It's a, you know, it's a controversy. And you know what? There was a tiger there that was clearly exhibiting Zuccosis. He was pacing back and forth. And all I could do was think about how much that sucks. Yeah. For that tiger to be there.

Well, it goes to that solitary confinement thing, the episode that we did. It's virtually the same thing. I think you even brought up Zuccosis in that episode too, you know? Man, that's quite a long-winded sort of intro, huh? I guess so. Should we take a break already?

Yeah, I'm a little worked out. Get it back on the tracks? Yeah. Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast

or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. All right. I shot Josh with a sedative from an elephant gun. Now you're drifting off. I'm a little feeling pretty good. Got a pretty good bus. All right.

So we were talking about, well, a lot of things. but let's get back to characteristic charismatic. What's wrong with me today? So I read this article on charismatic megafauna and it was a survey of other journal, like scholarly articles. And I think they read like 70 of them because they were basically trying to figure out

what a charismatic megafauna definition was. Right. Apparently it was just all over the place. It's extremely non-scientific, I think is part of the problem. Because it's a marketing tool. Man, these people were trying to like whip it into shape. The best definition they found,

or the best explanation of what makes an animal charismatic was from a paper called Non-Human Charisma by a J. Lorimer, written in 2007. There were I think four points. One was detectability and distinctiveness. Okay. Anybody can look at a pan and be like, that's panda.

Oh yeah. I love pandas. Look, there's one right there. There's a panda. Well, and I think in the interview to a couple of zoologists and one of them even said, you might even know a few facts about this as just a regular non-zoo enthusiast.

Right. Like pandas eat, whatever the heck pandas eat. Bamboo. Well, I was gonna say that but then I thought that was a koala. And I was gonna- Koala's eat eucalyptus. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, pandas eat bamboo.

Yeah. By the bushel. Mm-hmm. But you can point out a panda. You're not like, I can't tell if that's a camel rat or a humpback rat, you know? Yeah. Or it's just the same as everything else.

It has to be its own thing. Yeah. That is really, that stands out. Another one is socioeconomic biases. So basically how a society feels about the animal. Sure. Right, so. Like do I wanna kill the rat?

Right. Or hug the panda. Exactly. That's exactly right. Aesthetics is another one. Like is it cute? Is it cuddly? Is it beautiful?

Is it majestic? Does it look like, you know, I don't know, a fat dude? Right? You know, does it kind of look like it should be wearing a hard hat and carrying like a lunch pail, that kind of thing? Yeah.

Is it relatable? Yeah, that panda. It looks like Kevin James with wearing a black Lone Ranger mask. Exactly. And he doesn't love Kevin James. Right. He's wearing a black Lone Ranger mask.

And then the last one is the potential to generate satisfaction, right? So let's say that you see a panda and you're like, I wanna know what that is. I wanna know all about pandas. Yeah. And you find out pandas are really boring. There's not a lot to them.

There's not a lot to be said. They don't do anything. It's not gonna generate much satisfaction intellectually. So if you have an animal that checks all these boxes, it's relatable, your society feels good about it, it's cute, it's cuddly, it stands out on its own, and it has a lot to offer intellectually, you've got a charismatic animal.

Yeah. There you go. Wow. I like that. Well, tell Jay Lorimer that you like it. Jay Lorimer, if you're out there, that was wonderful work. So we're gonna cover sort of the good points

and bad points about this characterization. But when it works is when the care, I keep saying characteristic, what is wrong with me? Charismatic megafauna functions as what's known as an umbrella species, which is to say, because people are giving money to some sort of conservation effort toward this animal, it's helping to protect and serve other animals

within that ecosystem. To cop. Yeah. Yeah, and by the way that that. Which makes sense. It does, it does, you have to kind of step back and think about it though, you know, like how does protecting say like a wolf help

the rest of the ecosystem? Well, a wolf feeds on smaller animals. Let's say small children. Right, under the right circumstances, unfortunately. Yeah. They typically they'll feed on smaller animals, which say feed on insects, which say feed on plants. So that means that if a wolf is happy and healthy

in its normal ecosystem, that means that all these other species that make up the food web that the wolf is a part of must be happy and healthy too. Right. So in that sense. It's an umbrella species, like you said, where if you take care of the wolf, you're inadvertently taking care of the rest of them.

So that's fine. Yeah, and in one of the interviews in here, who was this person, Braccini? Was that from the Atlanta Zoo? Yeah, Dr. Stephanie Braccini. She says, and this is to me kind of says it all, it would be nice if endangered species status was correlated to a charismatic variable,

but that's not necessarily or often the case. And she brings up the point of muscles, spinglers, freshwater muscle is critically endangered, but has no charisma. So, you know, there's no correlation there. In the case of the panda, there is, because they were endangered. And I think now they're just threatened.

Right. But there's not always that correlation. She's like, it'd be kind of great if this was, you know, this was always the case. Yeah, I think the point underlying the use of charismatic megafauna is just knowing that something is on the verge of going extinct has been proven not to be enough to get humans to act,

to do anything about it. I know, isn't that sad? It has to be cute too. Yeah. And so what conservationists are saying, after, gosh, you're so stupid, they say, okay, we can work with this, see this cute little animal, save this animal, give us your money,

and then they take it and actually use it for the whole ecosystem rather than just the animal. Yeah, and that's such a human thing, like the same can and has been said about like kidnap children or the sex trade, like it takes some, you know, cute little blonde girl to make the news. Right. You know?

Right. And that's kind of always been the case. Yeah. Sadly. Well, and it's not just social either. It's not just society. Although society definitely values attractiveness. There have been plenty of studies

about people with facial differences, right? Which is like the people used to call them disfigured people. Now it's called facial differences. I think that's a great improvement, right? Sure. But there've been studies with babies and they prefer people who don't have facial differences, who follow more like a typical facial profiler feature,

right? Right. Compared to people who have facial differences. And that suggests that it's hard-wired. So babies pick up on this? Yeah. Yeah. And the idea that you're basically born to prefer,

say, facial symmetry or something like that, it really kind of falls in line with this too. It's almost like you can't help but say, yes, I care about this cute little baby panda or whatever because it's cute. Whereas this other thing that is way more endangered and deserves our attention way more because it's actually a Keystone species,

which we'll talk about. It's not cute, so I can't really care about it. I'm not hard-wired to do that. Yeah, it's kind of like that thing we've talked about before. And I think recently where you prefer things that look like you because evolutionarily anything else back in tuk-tuk stays might have been a threat. Exactly, yeah.

Yeah. So it's easy to be hard on people, but when you kind of look at the evolutionary aspect of it, like, you know, it's easy to understand as well. Right, yeah. That whole in-group-out-group thing. Yeah. If we can get past that, it seems like we've evolved socially

faster than we've evolved biologically. I think you're right. And that it just hasn't kept up. If we could just get past that whole in-group-out-group thing, who knows what kind of world we'd be living in. High school would be so great. Yeah, everybody'd be like, I love high school. So you talked about Keystone species.

That is a species that actually performs like a really vital role in their ecosystem. Yeah, where like if you took them out, the ecosystem would be so altered, so drastically altered, it probably wouldn't resemble itself any longer. It may just go away all together. Like a honeybee. Or like coral.

Yeah. You know, where like if it's gone, you're in trouble. The thing is, is a lot of charismatic megafauna aren't Keystone species. It actually doesn't really matter as far as the ecosystems concerned if the panda is there. So there's some other species in that ecosystem that will play the same role that the panda will.

There's pandas right now listening that said, did you just hear that guy? Let's go get them. You ever seen a panda attack and kill a podcaster? Yes, once. It's very distressing. Pandas are supposed to be super vicious. Are they?

Oh, yeah. I thought that was a koala. Koalas as well? They're all vicious, aren't they? Did you see the giraffe give birth? No, I heard a lot of people talking about sitting around and watching it forever and ever, but I didn't check it out. It was hilariously sponsored.

The webcam was sponsored by Toys R Us. Oh. You know, Jeffrey Giraffe and his family? Well, there you go. Interesting. No, it's no accident, right? I don't think so. There is also something called an indicator species.

And this is like, if you want to know how an ecosystem is going, like, let's say, how's the bayou doing? Let's go look at the crayfish, because that will be a good indicator of how everything else is doing. If the crayfish numbers are down, that means something's going on. Right. Or if the canaries are dying off in the coal mine,

you've got gas. Right. But in the same way, though, an umbrella species can also be an indicator species in that, like, if the wolf can't survive, that means that all the other parts of the food web are messed up, too. And they can also be an indicator species. Yeah.

I don't think that's how indicator species is used every time, but it's an argument in favor of using charismatic megafauna for conservation. So we've been talking a lot about, you know, people want to give the things that look like them and that are cute. This has been proven out with studies. We're not just bloviating.

Well, I guess we are, but in addition to bloviating, we're not making stuff up, because University of Arizona go Wildcats, right? Yes. They did a study and did find that people support preservation efforts. Oh, wait. No, that's the Sun Devils.

No. That's Arizona State. OK, yeah, Wildcats. People did support efforts for animals that are attractive and that do look more human. And they even found that women support scary animals, even less than men. Right.

You know, preservation for a snake population or maybe an insect or something. Yeah. So this is like a Bernesean approach to conservation. Yeah. Promoting conservation. For sure. Also, if you are using a charismatic megafauna

for conservation, it actually can have beneficial results, right? It's not just like theoretically this should help. Like elephants, everybody loves elephants. There's not a person alive who doesn't like elephants in the West, I should say. Right. And who knows why?

They're very cute. They're very sweet. They grieve over their dead. They do all sorts of interesting stuff, right? And they've used elephants to basically as poster species for poaching campaigns. A lot more than just elephants are poached. Everything from whale sharks to rhinos to, well,

elephants are poached. But the idea of giving money to Andy poaching campaigns, because you feel like I want to help that elephant, here's a check, it's actually going and helping all these other species as well. There's supposedly, there's like 35,000 species that are subject to poaching. Yeah, and the other example they give in this article

is the American bald eagle, which in the 60s and 70s, there was a big movement. They were like, this is America's bird. Yeah. Dang it. You know, Ben Franklin wanted the turkey. I think I did know that. Yeah.

Very interesting. Not that you're ducking. No. That would have been even better. That would have been something. But yeah, in the 1670s, people were like, this is America's bird. We have to save the American bald eagle.

And it worked there. I think it's not even endangered any longer, right? I don't think so. My in-laws just saw one in Florida. Yeah. Pretty neat. Yeah. Kind of just associate them with Alaska and the Pacific

Northwest, but they're all along the Gulf. Yeah, there's like a whole group in the Gulf, and there's a whole group up in the Great White Way. Yeah. Well, above that. That's the Great White Way. I think that's Broadway, isn't it? I don't know.

I've never heard that term. It's either Broadway or Canada. I think it's Broadway, but I thought it was Canada because I heard Scott Thompson from the kids in the hall call Broadway that. So I was like, I guess he's talking about Canada. And then I found out it was Broadway. I think it's Broadway.

That was way more complex than I thought. And the Panda, we mentioned their comeback. They have a 17% wild population increase over the past 10 or so years largely because people love pandas. Sure. And they'll open up the wallet. And again, I mean, not necessarily specifically with pandas, but with some species,

if you can say their population is coming back in the wild, then it also indicates that their ecosystem is getting better or healthy again as well. So that's all well and good. It's good that it's made some money, right? Sure. But there's also plenty of criticisms to using charismatic megafauna.

And let's take a break and we'll talk about it right after this. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. So Chuck. Yes? What's the problem with using a cute panda or an elephant

or something like that to get money for conservation? How could there be anything wrong with it? Well, another word for this is the Bambi effect, like when you care only about the cute thing, and they interviewed for our own article. It's interesting, the Atlanta Zoo zoologist was like, this is kind of great, it's working. And then they interviewed Christina Simmons of the San Diego Zoo Global, and she was a little more like, you know, this is an 80s thing, and we have moved past that here in San Diego.

Ignore that panda on the brochure, but we've moved past it. Yeah, I thought that was funny, the article pointed out that they had plenty of charismatic species on their website, even though they supposedly moved past it. So apparently in their projects, they stopped focusing on charismatic megafauna is what she was saying, right? Yeah, she said that they, what they're trying to do is focus on an environment more than like, it's not like they don't focus on animals, but they try to look at it from an, I guess, from an ecosystem point of view, is that right?

I think so. Or they're looking more at animals that have a bigger impact on their ecosystem than charismatic megafauna might, right? Yeah, and I don't think it was, or maybe it was her, they kind of put it in an interesting way that I hadn't thought of it, sort of creates a class struggle a bit between, quote, wealthy animal, in quote, and a poor animal as far as their richness being determined by their study. Yeah.

And I mean, it's as simple as that. And it's not just public awareness of, you know, these species being endangered, whereas there's plenty of other species that aren't charismatic that are way more in trouble and in danger of being extinct. It's scientific money too, like scientists need funding to do their studies. And if there's plenty of funding around to focus on pandas, but not say those muscles that went extinct, well, there's going to be a lot more scientific study directed toward pandas and saving pandas than saving those muscles, even though those muscles probably

keep their aquatic ecosystem clean, whereas pandas just poop everywhere. And they don't do anything to clean up their ecosystem. I wonder what the scientific ethics are. Maybe a researcher can tell us about where funding goes. Like if, you know, if they're like, well, let's divert some of that to this other species, whereas the individual who donated might be like, no, just pandas. Well, that was actually brought up in the, uh, in this larger article that survey of like the 70 other articles about charismatic megafauna.

And they said that that could be an issue. Some donors want to know that their money is going toward what they donated it for. And if you think you donated it to save pandas and these guys are being like, yeah, yeah, we're helping pandas, but we're also helping these snakes, but you hate snakes. You might be unhappy that your money's helping snakes, even though the snakes really need the help. Yeah. One thing I have noticed with donation sites is a lot of times they'll have that.

And then let's say, would you also like to donate $5 to the general fund stuff, you know, so you can help the snake. Yeah. And there's not one that says the general fund and no, but no snakes. Right. No, there's not an option. You're donating the snakes with the general fund, you know, there's also the issue of it being a totally unscientific idea.

Right. It's completely subjective. Like even here in the West, people are like, well, lions are beautiful and majestic. But if you talk to school kids in Tanzania, they'll say, actually, lions are quite fearsome because we live near them and I have a friend whose uncle was killed by a lion. So I hate them. Right. But you can't even agree on what animals have charisma even.

Even, you know, it seems like a foregone conclusion to us. The people who are carrying out these conservation efforts and who are donating the conservation dollars aren't the ones who have to actually live with these animals as well, right? Yeah. So if you're an organization who's getting conservation dollars from these people to save these animals that the locals actually hate, you're going to have a problem here. So what are some of the solutions to these? What can you do as a conservationist if you're facing this issue where you need money but

you also need to be realistic? I have a feeling you have an answer in weight. Well, one of the great suggestions that I've run across is you can talk about these species that people like but just talk about them in realistic terms. And don't say how cute they are and all that stuff. Yeah. Or don't make it sound like they're the most important animal on the planet. Right.

Like put it in its relative context, right? Or this one is even better. Take an actual keystone species from an ecosystem that's in real danger of becoming extinct and then put your marketing people to work on creating charisma for that animal. Yeah. Because you know what? They could do that in most cases. Right.

Unless it's a Komodo dragon. No. It's actually a really great example of them doing that. Well, the reason I mentioned that is because that was one of my favorite animals at the Atlanta Zoo was I could sit around and watch that Komodo dragon for days. Yeah. He was so cool looking. Right.

But a lot of people might not think so. So apparently, like Sharon Stone's ex-husband. Apparently there was a... What? Sharon Stone's ex-husband was bitten by a Komodo dragon very famously. Was he hurt? Yeah. Did he die?

No. Oh. That's not why he's an ex. Did he lose a toe? Well, I should say he's an ex because he got bitten by the Komodo dragon, but just because she was embarrassed by it. So she divorced him. No.

Okay. She's like, oh my God. I can't even go out in public now. Right. See you later. You've mortified me. Yeah. I figured you would have known about that.

It was a very... No. I mean, not funny for him, but... Funny for everybody. Everyone else. No, but apparently there was a big local push to save Komodo dragons. They were not well-liked, but they put some top marketing people on it and gave the Komodo dragon charisma.

Like just pointing to a panda bear and being like, pretty cute, huh? This doesn't take any marketing skill. No. It takes real marketing skill to take a hated and reviled animal that needs human help and make it charming. You know who could solve all of this? God. Disney.

Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah. All you got to do is make a movie about a Komodo dragon as the hero. Sure. And literally that would change everything. Somebody needs to throw out Walt Disney. Thaw him out?

Yeah. Walt Disney frozen? I don't know if that's true or an urban legend or not. We should get Holly from stuff you miss in history class in here. Well, we did an episode on cryogenics, so I'm sure we covered it, but that was a long time ago. Holly, for all I know, might have Walt Disney frozen in her house. She might.

You know? And being held captive. So should we talk a little bit about biodiversity? I think we should. And why that's important? Because that's kind of what we're talking about here in a roundabout way is a healthy ecosystem depends on biodiversity, and that doesn't just mean what's known as species diversity or species richness, which is, you know, a lot of different animals.

That's what most people think of when they think of biodiversity. Yeah. It's a lot more complex than that. Yeah. So there's species diversity, like you said. There's also genetic diversity, which is the combined number of genes that's available to species worldwide, and the more genetic diversity of species have them, the easier it can withstand things like disease.

Yeah. Yeah, some individuals are going to die, but overall, the species should be able to survive it because there's probably a gene in there somewhere that can combat this disease or is immune to this disease, and they'll develop an immunity to it, and the species will go on. So species diversity is a very important type of biodiversity, too. Yeah. Like Bald Eagle, again.

A genetic diversity. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Bald Eagle, a good example because they are spread out all over, well, not all over, but in those certain places in North America, gives them good genetic diversity, thus they were able to come back. The cheetah, not so much back in the day. There was only one species, I think, around 10,000 years ago.

Yeah. I didn't see what happened to the cheetah, did you? What, all the other species? Yeah. I don't know. That's pretty bizarre. I think one survived. Yeah.

The asinonix, I think that's right, in Africa, and that was a problem because when you just have one species, you're inbreeding a lot, and your genetic diversity goes way down, and all of a sudden, one thing could come along and wipe you out. Exactly. One disease or something. Right. And then there's also ecosystem diversity, which is the number of different types of ecosystems around the world, and the more you have those, the better off you are.

It's kind of like biodiversity is a really good example of not having all of your eggs in one basket. Yeah. You want to diversify. It's the same thing with stocks and bonds. That's right. You know? And as humans, biodiversity is a big deal because of medicine that we use that comes

from plants, let's say. What else? Clothes that we wear from plants and animal fibers? Sure. What we eat? That's another big one, too. Can't forget that. Yeah.

And the point is, it's all linked. Like you talked about earlier, the wolf population will have a, or the honeybee population will have an effect on down the line because it's all one big linked puzzle, and something like colony collapse disorder can fall it up to the point where just because the honeybee are the crop production as a whole in the United States is in trouble. Right. Right. And it seems kind of remedial to go over it, but it's important to point out like what's

at stake here when you're talking about extinction, right? It's not like, oh, we don't have honey anymore. Right. No. So sad. The entire ecosystems can fail, and when entire ecosystems fail, the world gets a little less biodiverse, and when that happens, it's a little more fragile, and it just keeps getting set up more and more and more for some sort of larger collapse.

That's more than just, say, a honeybee collapse. Right. And apparently, the big one, the big daddy as far as reduction of biodiversity goes, well, there's two of them. One is invasive species. Yeah. I didn't know. We should do a show on, we were going to do one on Kudzu at one point.

Yeah. I don't know if that's two separate shows or not. I don't know. But I didn't realize that invasive species caused that much damage. Yeah. It's like half of all of the extinction, special extinctions, since the 1600s, they attribute to invasive species. That's crazy.

Where it's just, you know, you've got a species that's introduced into a new ecosystem, doesn't have any predator, so it preys on other things and reproduces unchecked and just totally throws off the ecosystem. Right? Yeah. Half of extinction comes from invasive species, and then another 36% apparently comes from deforestation. Right?

Yeah. I mean, the other two big ones are over hunting like we were talking about with like the rhino and elephants and stuff like that. And back in our pigeons episode, literally caused the extinction of the passenger pigeon. And then climate changes the fourth, which sort of just getting started on that one. So I would, that's an increasingly becoming a problem with animals forced from their habitats. Yeah. But deforestation is the big daddy.

Yeah, and apparently one of the big issues with deforestation, although there has been a lot of headway made with slowing deforestation, but the rainforest is particularly vulnerable because it covers about 7% of Earth's landmass, but it houses about half of Earth's species. That's crazy. Right? So there's that problem with a lot of eggs in one basket. Yeah. If you mess with that basket, you're in big trouble.

I think that's how the saying goes, right? So, one of the problems with deforestation is that if you are developing economy and you've got a lot of economic activity that can be gained by cutting down rainforest, it's kind of tough to fault that economy to say, what are you doing? We as humanity need that. That's nature's pharmacy, right? There's also apparently a lot of issue with indigenous peoples in rainforest as well, that a lot of them are like, well, they're indigenous people.

They know what they're doing. Well, they're also like deforesting the rainforest themselves as well. So there's a lot of programs that have been put into place to reduce deforestation. And like I said, they're having an effect. Apparently within the last couple of years, deforestation has fallen like 49% year over year. In Brazil, yeah. In Brazil, which is where a lot of it was happening.

So the idea of deforestation not happening in Brazil or happening less, that's a big deal. Yeah. And they have found a direct correlation between the local economy being less reliant on the rainforest and having like a healthy economy that doesn't depend on the rainforest and deforestation decreasing. So it's not rocket science. Thanks to Don Henley, it's all getting better.

Yeah. And Al Gore and Tom Petty. All Don Henley does is help the rainforest and be a jerk and sue people. Who does he sue? Dude, Don Henley sues everybody. Sue everybody. Did he sue Sharon Stone's husband, ex-husband? I think so.

No, he's sort of a notorious jerk as far as like, oh, you use this eagle song when you weren't supposed to and taking you to court. And now I'll cut you, man. He like one of my favorite bands and then I'll cut you. That's not a peaceful, easy feeling at all. No. Um, Ockerville River, one of my favorite bands, they kind of reworked a Don Henley song as a homage and a tribute and didn't even like, I think they just put it on the web.

They weren't like trying to make money off of it. And they're like, man, we love this song. We kind of reworked it and like, here it is. And he was like, shut it down. Get it off the internet. I'm suing you little indie band. Really? Yeah.

And Will Sheff, their lead singer and songwriter, he was just sort of like, man, really? Thanks a lot. Yeah. I'm going to have my eagles tattoo grated off. No more, no more homages to you, sir. All right. It was the end of Will Sheff's innocence about Don Henley. Uh, I'm going to see Joe Walsh tomorrow night.

And Tom Petty. He's opening up. Wow. Which I'm pretty excited about. Wow. Usually openers at those big shows are, I don't know, they don't do a good job pairing them sometimes. Oh yeah?

Yeah. Like I saw Elton John once and he had these two cello players. Yo, yo, ma. Yeah. And his brother. No, it was, I mean, it was kind of neat. That's the only cello player I know. They were, I can't remember their names and I'm sure there are tons of people that are

fans of these guys because they play like, uh, like ACDC songs on the cello and it's really sort of, I mean, it was cool, but I don't know, like, I just wanted to see Joe Walsh open up for everybody. So, um, you and me and I went and saw Cindy Lauper a couple of years ago and Dr. John opened for, yeah, that's not a good pairing. It was, it was an amazing show. Both of them were, but, um, it was like the Dr. John show happened and then everyone left and then everyone came in for Cindy Lauper.

It was a very weird pairing. I think Cindy Lauper is just like a Dr. John fan and wanted to make sure he got some money that year or something. Right? Yeah. But it was like two different shows, like an early show and a late show as far as the audience was concerned. Yeah.

I saw Josh Groban open up for Iron Maiden. I thought that was strange too. Well, Bruce Dickinson is a well-known operatic singer. Oh, well, that's true. So I can't pilot. See that. Yeah. Tattooed millionaire pilot.

Man. That's not what a great ending. Oh, are we done? But did you have anything else? Nope. All right. If you want to know more about Iron Maiden, biodiversity, Josh Groban, Yo-Yo Ma, all that jazz, type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and press your luck.

Since I said press your luck, it's time for Listener Mail. All that jazz, none of which was jazz. No. All right. Um, I wonder where that term came from. Just. I think it's from the Great White Way. All right.

I mean, there was a show called All That Jazz, but they invent that. I think so. Okay. That solves it. Uh, this is from, I'm going to call this from our old buddy, uh, Sarah Law, who's remember our oldest, um, I always say oldest, like she's 90. Longest, longest lasting, longest running. Longstanding.

Yeah. Longstanding listeners, uh, from Canada. Uh, hey guys, uh, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. Can you still not spell Jerry right, Sarah? After all these years? How'd you spell it? Gary? With a G.

Yeah. Gary. J-E-R-I, everybody. Um, I know you guys love animals, so I thought it'd be great if you could share this, uh, stuffy snow army story. Friend needed to give up his cat for adoption because he's moving out of the United States. Uh, due to health issues of the cat, shelters would not take her. He was going to have to put her down, which I can't believe that's the solution.

Yeah. Without a move, I'll just put you down. That aside, um, I put out a ninth hour call. I think it's 11th hour in the United States, apparently in Canada it's the ninth hour. Uh, I put out a ninth hour call to this, uh, stuffy snow army and a nice person named, uh, Kevin Lyman asked everyone he knew if they could take her. And I'm happy to say that Kevin's coworker, Cat, with a K, picked Ava up, and Ava is the cat, from the vet appointment to save her life.

And then took her to be put down. No. I saw a picture of this cat. It was adorable. Yeah. Uh, never underestimate the power of the stuff you should know army. And I think she shared this on Facebook and it, you know, kind of happened that way. Yeah, that's great.

Uh, love the show. Thank you for enriching our lives in so many ways. Your Canadian friend, Sarah OXO. I think it's a lot. Sarah, that was a great story. Yeah. How appropriate for this. I told Sarah that, oh yeah.

I didn't think about that. Cats are charismatic mini fauna. Uh, I told Sarah, we, uh, an all likelihood are going to be coming up to the great white way. I hope that's what it is. For some shows this year, we're going to be hitting Canada. I think. Yeah.

Yeah. At least one, right? Yeah. We've been teasing these shows, but we're kind of nailing it all down. So listen up all eight of you who still listen this deep into the show. Sure. We might be coming to a town near you. Yeah.

Let everybody else know. Yes. Uh, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of

the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you listen to podcasts.