Transcripts For CSPAN3 Bethany 20240704

Evening, everybody. Welcome to the North Carolina museum of Natural Sciences. Thank you so much for coming out to tonights thank you for tuning in. If youre watching with us live online, weve a very special program for you tonight. We have just a whole stage full of brilliant people not including myself, of course. My name is chris smith. I work here at the museum of Natural Sciences as the coordinator for current programs that job title means that i get the pleasure and privilege of welcoming everybody into the museum. It also means that i get to really interesting people who are doing interesting out there in the realms of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, art as it relates to science, education, and even more. And so its always thrill to be here in the Museum Talking about science, nature, conservation, any of those great and fabulous topics that make this museum such a great resource and such a great to be, to my left, you can see these are the brilliant people that ive been joined with. First, i want to dr. Michael cove closest to me. Oh, yeah, yeah. We could clap for dr. Co mike serves the Research Curator from mammalogy here at the museum of Natural Sciences. He is an expert on rats. But i a particular type of rat actually. You know what im going to say . He knows a whole lot about a whole lot of mammals. We had an event not too long ago here at the museum and the audience was peppering dr. Here with questions about all types of different animals from all regions of the planet. And he right the top of his mind. Incredible answers, Great Questions from, you know, rats live in the Appalachian Mountains to kathy barras in south america. It was a great, great talk. So thanks for being here, mike. Thank you for having me. And lets talk about pests pests. And then across the way, we have dr. Roland hayes. Roland serves, as the head of the Biodiversity Research lab here at the museum, his glass walled research is over in the Nature Research center. Hes also a professor at North Carolina State University teaching zoology and an expert zoologist. But dr. Kays is particularly skilled in the realms of animal tracking, maybe not so much as like, like sniffing animal tracks in forests and knowing which way they went. Although would believe that youre very good at that as well i mean, if theres snow, i can do it. Thats perfect. But also more technology, modern techniques of animal trapping, particular like things like camera traps and tracking. Great. Happy to be here. Thanks, rohan. And then course, the reason that all the three of us here and the reason here at the museum tonight is to hear about the new book, pests how humans create animal villains. And tonight we have a very special guest, dr. Bethany brookshire. Our bethanys a science journalist. You could read bethany his work in the washington post, New York Times slate, the and then of course, places like Scientific American science news was a former staff writer for science news for students which i actually scrolled through the archive and just like so many things that i need to learn about in the archive there. So im going to go be a student science history since i and were very excited that we have experts and animals that some people consider passe here at the museum. And bethany, that you could be with us to talk about your new book and share with us some of the cool science and stories you investigated. So lets get to if could. Im going to take a seat. Thank you for letting me join tonights conversation as well. Just testing that. So. So. Okay, lets get started. I guess the best place to start is bethany. Tell us about the book. Whats the whats the sales pitch for . Yeah. So i started i started researching this book all the way back in 16 when the idea first happened. But i have become obsessed with pests because what is a pest . Right. When you really think hard about it, a pest is an animal that makes you its an animal that you off. And that means that a pest has nothing to do with what the animal is, where its going, what its doing. And it has everything to do with you and what you think your environment should be like, who should be in it, who belongs near with your stuff etc. And. So i just became fascinated by concept of pests and i also that almost everyone you talk to when you talk to them about pests, everybody has pest story. So my pest story, which is featured in book involves can i cuss here. I dont know. Youre the boss. I think cspan i cuss. Can i get a. Okay . That looks like a thumbs up. All i think the three of us work for the state of North Carolina. You do not. I do not. Okay, good. The squirrel that i am talking about. His name is kevin. We call him kevin for short. And because a three year old lives next door. But kevin is an eastern gray, otherwise known as sirius. Carolyn insists. And kevin lives in my yard and i hate him so much this kevin, this squirrel we now call all squirrels kevin in house. So well just be Walking Around and be like kevin, this squirrel is the reason that i have not had a tomato from my garden in five years, because every time i go out i plant tomatoes. Im super excited. The tomatoes grow, they swell. They are green, they are hopeful. And kevin, kevin comes into my garden, he grabs a nice green tomato and he takes a big bite. And then kevin recalls that he does not, in fact, like tomatoes he leaves it with its tooth marks it right where i can see it on my porch because he is a jerk. Then the next day he does it again and again and again. This squirrel has taken a bite out of every single in my garden for the last five years, and ive tried many to get rid of him, including bird netting, metal netting, kind pepper, stray cats. I in fact try stray cats. One pest versus another. I know the two cats actually came inside. We now have pets, but kevin just ate cat food. Maybe you need to bring kevin inside. Lets not fight and. I began to realize i just hated this animal. But i would bring it up to my friends and would be like, oh, but you cant hurt. Him, hes a squirrel. Hes tougher, but hes sweet. And they would, you know, take pictures of the squirrel. People feed squirrels, deliver brightly, people set up obstacle courses, they go viral on youtube for these animals. And i realized that every animal could be a pest to someone. It just mattered in ways. And so wrote this book. So i had never had a problem with squirrels literally yet theyve never been a pest. No. Until this morning when youre kevins girlfriend showed up in my attic. Never. Today im like getting, dressed to come here for this event with bethany and is literally a squirrel that had had broken into my attic, had crawled had clawed through some stuff, had this giant nest, had leaves and all the place, and that literally never happened in my life until today. Im so proud to feel like im her. I think youre cursed. Its possible. We actually did have one that got in my roof in one of the places that i rented because. There were holes in the roof. There we go. We named big bertha because she was so big the squirrel when she like you think a squirrel would make a little thump noise . No, this was a every time she looks good. The guy who caught her said it was big a squirrel who everything. I think he told me he took her a farm upstate. I did not. Yeah right. Upstate mike at this point. Im hoping that you have a good squirrel story. Are you going to at least say that you like squirrel . No. This is really interesting because i have been thinking about this a lot. Well, i live a little further outside of raleigh. And my wife, my wife has pet goats and she had some Sunflower Seeds for the goats and they stayed in the trunk in her car for a long weekend and by the end of the weekend, squirrels had chewed up through to the underside of the bumper into the trunk and looted all of these whatever Sunflower Seeds for the goats. And so, yeah, that bumper was held together duct tape for a substantial amount time. So i but ive never actually thought of them as pests say. But it is that youre mentioning this tomato thing because this is an idea that had for a while is like how much do urban squirrels actually garbage or or our soft, fleshy fruits and resources because they mostly eat acorns and stuff and theres usually not a shortage of oaks. We live the city of oaks, right . So it is interesting to hear that theyre eating things than, you know. Theyre birdseed. Theyre eating a lot of birdseed. True. I just i just think of them as eating hard things and not soft things like well thats why they didnt finish your. Yeah, yeah. They were like, i thought this was a green nut and i was. What i found fascinating is that the always figured out. So one year i was like, all right, you know, Nuclear Option i planted no tomatoes, i planted halloween, no peppers instead. And i was like, oh yeah, i had this vision squirrel running away with tears streaming down furry cheeks, squirrels weep, but i can dream anyway. He did not eat them. He never touched that jalapeno pepper. Not a single one. Every single time ive grown hot, he knows not a single one is made out of it. But this is. This is kind of the more of your of your book, right . Its like sometimes needs to change their behaviors. And so the animal. So you need to become a healthier farmer instead of a tomato farmer. Actually, what i did was i figured out i learned things about the spatial memory of squirrels and i learned that they have incredibly in highly accurate spatial memories. And so what you do is, you have to set up your tomato cage over your tomatoes before the tomatoes emerge. If come if you wait until the tomatoes emerge edge which i tried this when the tomatoes emerged, i bought a large gardeners cage. I spent all setting it up. I was feeling really good about myself. I go off to my friends house and i get this text from my husband. Could you please come home . And im like, why . And he sends this video . There are two squirrels that have gotten into the gardeners cage and are now bouncing around like furry ping pong because they cant get out. And he had to let them. 20 minutes later they were back in. He let them out again and yeah, so then it turned into it made us anti squirrel fortress involving chicken wire and the gardeners cage bricks. But this year gardeners cage needs to go up early because if do not taste the thing, they do not know it is there and they will not come and get it. So the moral of the story is to learn about your squirrel behavior and set up your garden cage very early. So sounds like part of the criteria for some critter being deemed a pest, at least is they have to be able to outsmart us regularly if were at least as this the whole squirrels thing is like okay they consistently get around whatever it that we dont we set up to stop them also they consistently frustrate us because they can do those two things. And so its like we get angry, we try to stop them, but they are just able to get around us at every turn. Does that hold true for a set thats like not squirrels, or is it particular to. Yes, i actually ended up writing a lot about this in a section in roland is cited several times because so much of what we call pest is about power and. Its about vulnerability. Its about animals that make us feel powerless that make us feel scared. And these once they make us feel powerless and scared, our fear turns to anger. Our anger turns to hate. We turn to the dark side and its all downhill from there. And one of those animals that really exemplifies that is actually the coyote, which ended up talking to roland about and coyotes have been spreading for some time. And theyre causing people issues. And i would love to hear your take on why coyotes are spreading where they are and why theyre into more suburban environments. On the east coast in particular, youre so so coyotes were originally a western species. They lived in grassland deserts, open habitats in the western united in mexico and up into canada and then around the early 1900s, 1910, 1920, they started moving, expanding all directions. And so if you think about environment like to the north, they moved into the Great Northern forests canada and up to alaska, to the south they moved south into the rainforest. So they werent really forest before. But as we fragment the forest theres more farm fields can they can handle a little bit of forests. So they move now all the way to panama theyre on the verge of entering south america. They havent entered yet, as far as we know, but right at the edge, weve got some camera traps that have gotten them in the darien rainforest. And then the east coast was, this great bit of forest that they never used to in. Now its fragmented theres more fields as as forest and theres coyotes all over the place. And so as coyotes moved east, they colonized, you know, the better for them first, which would have been the more fields and a little bit of forest. But eventually they moved into the deep forest and eventually they fill that up and they started moving into cities because you know, a young coyote grows up and if he goes into the nice park, hes going to get beat up by the other coyotes. And if he goes into the neighborhood, well, maybe he can skin scrape out of living there. And so theyve been sort of slowly across the east coast cities, more and more, i think here in raleigh kind of showed up in the county in like the nineties and and in to the more cities only kind recently started into the developed areas of raleigh and so they are just ultimate in adaptability they can eat fruit they can eat they can catch small prey, they can do okay with big prey. Theyre not really that good. They more often will scavenge roadkill. Theyll eat some garbage, but usually not a lot, but sometimes little bit. Theyll eat, certainly cats even better. Cat if you put out cat food, kyra is going to be quite attracted to that. And so theyve theyve come in and in some ways its probably we got rid of the wolves, right . Wolves were considered a pest a couple hundred years ago. And so we killed almost all of them. And that kind of opened up the space for the coyote to expand and coyotes have become a pest, some people in some places, but a lot of places not. And so i think its interesting to see like a lot of places, theyre sort of filling in for the ecologically not totally, definitely, completely, but, you know, whether theyre a pest, sometimes we use the word invasive species, right. Like an invasive. So they are exotic in that theyre they didnt used to be here. Theyre not introduced. Sometimes we use the word introduced. They werent introduced. They got here on their own. We can see theyre spread. And whether theyre invasive whether theyre a pest is sort of are they harm to humans, human societies or sort of other invasive species, other native species are causing problems. And theres some places where they do that and theres a lot of places that they dont. On average, theyre not that big of a pest, i think. But where they are a theyre one of the bigger, sort of scary to pass out there. Its really fascinating to me how many of the people who i interviewed for the book who had had like personal interact with pests. Right, theyd facing you always hear this, oh my goodness, i had a rat. It was the size of a cat. No, it wasnt i am sorry. It was not. There has been no recorded wild brown norway rat that has been over £2. I know a guy. The rodents ologist bobby corrigan. He carries around a check in wallet. He showed it to me for 500 for the first person who can hand him a £2 rat. And he has never used check. Okay, you tell me that rat is the size of a cat. Thats a kitten. Like, is there in the research collection, we can make 500 off of him. Probably not different species. I got him pouched rat. Those are big. Those. Are big. Theres theres such a thing. But its just really interesting when we have an interaction that makes us feel powerless and that makes us feel scared. All of a the animal grows in our and it becomes huge, right . The raccoon becomes the size of a large dog. The coyote is the size of a wolf. Its not. Well, i mean, coyotes look big, right . They are are true. Theyre theyre very lean. And people compare it with their dogs because people know how much their dog weigh. Their dogs weigh. And many people have like a £50 dog. Im a £50 dog and they see a coyote. Theyre like it the size of my dog. It was £50. And and i understand that have a £50 dog and i think i reason i would approximate them approximate their to be about the size of my dog. But the truth is there are all the coyotes very rarely can get to £50, but on average in the east coast theyre like £35. And in the west coast are even smaller. Theyre like £25. So theyre, you know, on the west coast on average, theyre half the size of my dog. It is theyre so lean and fluffy and and lanky, tall, lanky. Yeah. And and other interesting thing is, has actually been if you hear them howl, it sounds like a huge pack. Oh there must have been ten or 15 of them. And people theres a paper on this where they published they experimentally played people different numbers of priorities howling and people consistently always overestimate it. Its almost like like the its probably part of the of the evolution of their howl. They want their house to sound like a bigger group. And so the way that they do it makes it sound like a bigger group. People fall for it all the time. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I did not know that. Thats amazing. How did i miss this paper . I had to be a spa to know. It was very funny. When i was reporting on coyotes in calif, one of my sources was super happy. He was like, im going to show you the coyotes and golden gate. Its going to be great. At golden gate, we were in hollywood. So hes im gonna show you that its going to be great and were there and were waiting. And the coyotes come out im like, thats it. Hes like, excuse me . Im like, well, theyre so our coyotes much bigger than that. He got all mad me, but i actually a road called coyote outside of washington, d. C. The other day i was so excited i almost pulled over like, this is who you become. Well, and so the reason that eastern priorities are larger is that before, as they were moving east, they actually hybridize with wolves. And theyve got some wolf genes mixed in and then they also hybridized dogs as they moved it so that some dog genes, it makes sense on average, this sort of eastern coyote, its still 80 to 90 . What coyotes are 89 coyote, but its got 5 to 8 of dog genes and 5 to 8 of wolf genes. And theyre all mixed in a great experiment. Evolution, right . If those genes help it survive. Then theyre going to survive better in their passes genes on. And weve actually shown that some of the wolf genes that were pretty sure we dont know exactly what they do but from the dog we have a pretty decent idea that theyre associated with growth and bone growth and muscle growth that those genes are surviving better and helping coyotes survive better and being passed on. And so thats part of why eastern coyotes are sort of 35 to £45, whereas western countries are 25 to £35. I just love the of imagining like an expanding tinder profile. So hes like i just matched with anybody. Its like, oh, poodle, poodle, labrador poodle golden shepherd, german shepherd. Fine, ill take the poodle. Well, thats how we think it happens actually. Is that right. The first coyote that got into North Carolina spring time came along. She had no one else to breed with. Other ideas were there because she was the first one. And, you know, theyre pretty dedicated breeders. And so i got to take the next best thing they can get. Oh man. Im just waiting for the dachshund, the coyote dachshund hybrid. Well, thats so thats actually were. Can we. Yes. What would you call that, a duck, jodi duck. A question. Well, this is part of where. So the when do coyotes become passed and do they become invasive and cause problems . What situations is attacking dogs . And weve been actually surveying, if you look in like i have a google news any time coyotes make the news which is pretty much every single day and a lot of times because they attack dogs and theyre almost always small dogs and often like someone lets their dog out and it doesnt need to go to the bathroom at night doesnt come back, but sometimes i mean, there was just a video the other day of this i felt felt terrible for us. Old lady in l. A. What . Her chihuahua on leash. A coyote comes up, yanks it off the leash, and its not breeding with it. Its its i think its i dont we think it might be aggressive. I dont think theyre eating them. I dont know. We dont really know. But the small dogs and coyotes. Not a good mate. Ive taken to calling chihuahuas, walking coyotes, snickers. Yep, yep. Coyotes snickers. Snickers. Um, yeah. Oh, my god. When theyre hangry. Yes, that is. Oh, yeah. Alligators considered pests. Certainly floridians do not enjoy them. I personally maintain that if the alligator is eating you, you are moving too slow. Have considered moving faster. But no i mean alligators routinely kill people and dogs, you know, and i think its interesting how we sometimes more tolerant of that when its happening in places that we deem to be wilderness. So its happening somewhere like the everglades. Well, thats the wilderness. You know, brown bears, for example, kill one or two people a year. I mean, theyre theyre big. Theyre very big. And if they dont want you to be there, they will find a way to make you leave by means necessary. And were kind of okay with. Right. Like thats what its a charismatic megafauna. Right. And they out there in the wilderness and they dont realize people dont realize i think that theres no such thing as wilderness. Theres no such as a place has should have no people in it a place that is for animals and a place that is for humans. Right . Every place that we live, we form our own ecology. And some of these animals are going to take advantage of that ecology. You know, the mention of florida puts me in mind of animals like pythons in florida like theres apparently a lot in florida that we could talk about, a lot animals that are considered pests, perhaps gators, maybe. But theres also nonnative species like pythons, tegus, tegus i dont even know what a tiger is it . Yeah, argentinean big lizard from not to mention the giant african land snail. Yeah. And the monkeys. The monkeys candy bars. Florida. Florida has more invasive species. Exotic introduced species, free living than anywhere else. I think florida. I think florida is the australia of the United States. Yeah. And so are all of these then if we if we take sort of the youve been giving for pests you know are the in florida a pest, are tegus a pest or are they nonnato if they can survive there, but theyre not like you mentioned and you know, are they doing harm or what harm are they doing . And whats the threshold for a python or a tail . You yeah. So think, you know, some of species are fairly benign, you know, tons of animals, small things like that. Its unclear if they played any kind of role other than prey for for bigger things. But when youre dealing with the tegus, the burmese python, there are breeding populations of boa constrictors, nile monitor ers, you know, theres not really very many you know, as we see from the work with the burmese pythons, burmese are gigantic snakes and, yet theyre cryptic enough that somehow now they were, you know mass populating the everglades before. Anyone noticed for a couple of decades we have no choice but to stay right. And so i that you know their impact unequivocal in terms of their no more mammals left im the mammal right theres no more mammals left even study in parts of the everglades because the pythons have literally consumed to the mall and they can just sit there the beauty of being a python is you have such a slow metabolism that you could last you could last 500 days without eating if youve got the fat reserves and so they could just sit wait for new prey to to eventually migrate in or move in or repopulate. But they are also shifting their diets right. So we see, you know, where i work in in the florida keys and in key largo is an endangered island ecosystem. And so now were studying their impacts, the endangered rodents. Theyre the endemic key largo would read key largo cottonmouth. And, you know, compared to the everglades. Were only just now the prevalence of the pythons and were effectively at the front end of that invasion curve where theyre the populations growing that were hoping to be able to manage it and and contain it and prevent that, you know, extinction events of endangered rodents. And were lucky we observed it early enough in in this case. But it it thats an easy system to work because its contained. But i i think that know the the northern invasion front of the pythons theres really anything stopping them cars right they get hit by cars and they and the the state of florida has python roundups. But if look at the data these roundups are removing, you know, a couple hundred pythons a year theyre contractors for them theres i mean were were you know the folks out there are throwing everything that they possibly can at at just not not removing pythons, just figuring out a way to find the pythons in order to remove them. But that that northern invasion front its you know slowly expanding northward. And if you look at the climate climate models of of like theyre suitable niche space in the climate what they can withstand they can it all the way up into North Carolina and thats without any kind of, you know, warming your eyes. Right. So, i mean, a slow, steady slithering front there, but we need to be and managing at that. And so part of my work in the keys that we talked about in the book was trying to, you know, mitigate these things at the southern invasion front and hopefully were learning something for that for that northern one. So i actually kind of wanted to follow up on that because interestingly, burmese pythons are threatened in their native range. Theyre from southeast asia. They are threatened habitat loss in particular in native range. Why arent we pleased that theyre actually doing well in florida like they came to florida and you know shouldnt we be happy you know there are other well not happy but content i mean, you know there are other species that they made it anywhere wed absolutely cheering right but were not and what i found really fascinating is, you know, your own work with pythons is to save a rat and a mouse, which dont give me rational rat and mouse. They are extremely cute. It is not their fault. Are we trading one pest for another . But just really interesting because those are animals that you would otherwise can some people might consider right . Sure. And snake that is threatened in its home range that is succeeding elsewhere. Right. Right. I think this is a this is an interesting kind of moral ethical question teetering on that edge where the. Yeah its really unfortunate that burmese pythons are threatened endangered in their native range. And you know in a Perfect World we could start collecting in florida and shipping them back, reintroducing them. Right. I did ask a scientist why we couldnt try that. Right. But theyre all theyre you know, theyre theyve breeding in the everglades and presumably adapting hyper specific lee to that environment and shifting a, you know, largely aquatic ecosystem, largely aquatic diet. Theyve shifted their diets you know, who knows what genetic potential is because. Its unclear they were they were, you know, founded a small population of of released pets and and then who knows kind of diseases that theyve been exposed to in their in their, you know, invasive range and that they could potentially bring back and, you know, basically out the the native range or Something Like that. I think this you know, we whatever plenty other species that are more common in their invasive ranges camels in the outback are are you know they basically dont exist anymore in the wild theyre but theyre pretty well i dont know that theyre abundant but theyre they exist throughout the outback pretty abundant. Right. Pablo escobars hippos. How about those hippos. Yeah. Hippos, camels, horses. Yeah. Horses. Yep. Yeah. All of the wild mustangs of the plains. Not wild . No pigeons. You know, theyre succeeding wildly. There is only one known colony, wild pigeons left in world off the coast of israel. Yeah, theres another colony. Thats debatable on the north coast of scotland. I dont believe it. Sorry. Well if hes watching. And so whats whats the rat connection to the. To the pythons . Like you said, are some parts of the everglades where theres just no mammals. I know that youve studied specific species of rats in florida. Is there connection between like the fieldwork youve been doing, the rats that you study . Yeah there is the cats. Oh, yes, its cats the connection to cats. Well, its its working in south florida. Has charms and i effectively work an interconnected web of pests because i study these endangered rodents the keylogger would track which are not which are not pests theyre eco system engineers theyre doing all kinds of important seed dispersal ecosystem functions. Theyre great they live in the forest. Theyre not coming out into peoples homes. Theyre doing their thing. They build giant cool nests. Yeah. You showed you some other great. Yeah. This high but then we have the nonnative rats, the invasive black rats. We have had a long running history with feral and roaming cats, domestic as an issue, consuming endangered rodents. And then now we have the pythons and actually we have coyotes, too. So its all its all the pest. Recently invading guys recently invading. They had to come over 18 miles of bridges and berms to get to the keys. Oh, please. Nights walk. They got this. But you actually we talked about this you actually successfully manage aged the cat population of key largo. Well i did i do it. You know, ive been aided people documented some of it and follow along and its its its fun working there. You know, ive been working there for ten years now, decade feels like its to move on to Something Else i guess. But Everybody Loves florida. Come on. No, but you know the fish and Wildlife Service has been working in the community to to mitigate the impacts of feral and free roaming cats live, trapping them and, you know, working in the community to remind people responsible pet ownership is ultimately the way to mitigate these issues. Right. But whats the one factor that led to more responsible pet ownership than anything else that coyotes and burmese pythons, the common entity, all of a sudden, all of a sudden wanted the help of the biologists and how exactly are they doing that . Whats how exactly how how are they helping the biologists . Oh well, you know, we get support from community because theyre interested in this common common enemy, the burmese pythons. Right. So its because the coyotes were eating the cats. Yeah. Pythons. Pythons, absolutely consuming cats. Theyre i mean, theyre they consume any mammals that they can find subjugate but anecdotally this is a little bit of scientific gossip here, but we find a lot more fat reserves in the pythons that we find around, you know, the urban areas. There are more cats and the environment. I mean, presumably the raccoons and opossums also have higher reserves in places where theyre feeding cats. So they could be accumulating in multiple pathways to get those sodium. Mcdonalds of. Yeah, i love this summer. Well i mean if youre putting out cat food right youre youre setting now of course youre going to be tracking the cats that are going to come there. And then the raccoons and the coyotes and the possums and the skunks and the rats. And the rats. Right so but youre basically making this giant concentration of mammal. And so when a cold blood animal comes around sticking his tongue out, trying to find where where the warm blooded mammals. Theyre going to go there. And you can just sit and wait. Yeah, thats one of the things i found really fascinating reporting book is how people want to feed things. They want to feed animals specifically. They want to have i call it the Disney Princess moment of the bird landing on your hand. You know, they want to have the deer eat out of your hand and they dont. They want to feed birds. They want to feed, you know, cats. They want and they only want that once they put out a dish of food. And they honestly believe only the one species they want is going to eat it when like if you leave a box of cookies out on the counter and you have a family, do you honestly expect that box of oreos to be when you come back . No, of course not. Like you may have intended it for you, but your dog had other ideas. And i think its super interesting how like its generally like the smaller the critter and less pests like they are. Right. So yeah. Feed the birds. Oh, the hummingbirds. What could be like more sort of pure pure, right . And you think you been feeding a hummingbird, the smallest of the right and and then. Okay, other birds, like, thats kind of fine, but, you know, if someone starts feeding the raccoon, youre like, oh, you probably shouldnt be. Yeah, foxes. Someones feeding the coyotes hey, wait a second. You should be fine. The coyotes so. Oh, i see that theres oh yeah. Oh wait a second. Like as you get bigger that, that like, like all of a sudden, like oh so why is it okay to feed the hummingbirds but not the black bears . And i think, its, you know, its because their potential to be a pest and to to be a serious pest, you know, like, has a hummingbird ever been a pest not that i know of, but im sure. Im sure. Give it time. I believe in them. They are small but mighty. No, i was thinking about this because in reporting i in massachusetts i was working with this bear biologist and. He had this huge issue. There was a dude, western massachusetts, who insisted on feeding the bears and he had a big old platform set up in his backyard and bear youtube channel, probably tik tok, to be honest. Yeah, but the bears would come every day and he put up this crazy amount of food and he would not stop feeding the bears. He would not stop even the bear biologist came to him and said hey, in an effort to get to your there are bears getting killed on the highway outside this neighborhood because they are trying to get to where youre them. And hes like, well, thats none of my business. Just want to feed the bears right . Okay yeah. Well, but i also think its this habituation and External Resources are creating the pests. Right. And so thats again, you know, mr. , you know, individual mismanage of resources in terms of, you know, intentional food supplementation, but theres plenty of other simple things like, securing trash and, and you know, other, other things like that to prevent animals from getting into messes that they can create. But the putting the stuff there is not, you know, what drives it. Its the habitual and the the acceptance until all of a sudden its no acceptable, right . Its like everybody wants to start and then all a sudden its too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, thats absolutely true. Everybody seems to want the photos until its too much. And thats one of the things i was kind of looking into, is the fact that humans have this idea we end by we i mean western mostly white, you know, kind of groups have this idea that we dominate the environment we deserve to have only the animals that we want be there right and we refuse to change our own behavior when those cause problems. Right. If the animal is into our trash, it is not we who should lock up the trash. It is we who should the animal. Theres actually another solution to this. And its really interesting because i found that this is a very western or a global north or you know and not everyone thinks this way. You know, there are other groups who will say, okay, we need to change our own behavior. We need recognize that these animals are here and we live them and we need to live with them. Response and i thought you thats something we could all probably learn from honestly. In other news, please lock up your trash. What i think its also interesting in your book how you talk about there are situations where just a few people can create pets and the pigeons the pigeons the one example where like if there are hitting feeders that are feeding the pigeons and and the whole population in the city might dependent on it. And a couple that are doing it for, you know, their own reasons. And i think we see the same thing cat sometimes. Well. Oh, absolutely. A hawker kind of animal horror kind of situation. And that was actually really interesting because one of the things that i found about pests that they can be a problem of social justice because many of the people who i who i talk to who studied actually the social science pigeon feeding. There are people in this world who this god bless academia love you that yes, his name is colin. Jarrod mackeys. Nyu wrote a whole book on it. Loved it. Fantastic. Aplus research. Very good. Anyway, should have known itd be in new york, of course, but he talked to people who fed pigeons and he actually looked at why they did. They were lonely. Many of these people were elderly. They were alone. They had they had no friends. What else are they going to do . It is a harmless thing to feed the birds and. The birds are grateful and the birds are birds in new york city are so tame. You can literally reach down and pick one up. I have done it. So its you do understand why . Then you also start to understand this is a social justice issue, right . Like we could help people who are elderly and socially isolated be less socially isolated. We could give them a community. People who feed cats, often very socially isolated. We could take care of that. People who live with do so because. They have no choice and they are living in poverty and with homes that are not impervious to rodents, we could fix those problems, right . Animals that become pests often becoming pests because our social contracts have failed them. And i think thats a really important to keep in mind when we look at an animal and be like this rat with wings. Yeah, absolutely. Thats quite powerful. Thanks. But or just like to put it together just before we got to the social contract, we were talking about how theres some threshold we eventually get to an animal and then it becomes a pest and go from being okay with it to then it to to being okay and then blaming that because we cant look at ourselves. Its not our fault. It has to be Something Elses fault and that that extends to our neighbors as well sometimes times that its all of a sudden the problem its not our anymore were going to blame some other some other type of person or some of some other behavior. Yeah, absolutely. That absolutely happens with rats and some of the reporting i did was actually in homeless encampments where people are living with of rats that were excessive. It was a lot and they did not want that. I mean, first of all, they dont want to be homeless. Well start there, but they also really dont want to live rats. They did not want to live in environment that was dirty. You could actually see we know places where they were like organized and keeping spaces clean. They were doing their best. It was the social contract that failed them of like it was a society that had decided they did not deserve clean housing and to be free of living with animals. I think thats a really important thing to think about. Now. Thank im sorry. I mean, to get dark. No, think thats a fantastic place to maybe see what some of the if theres anyone whos here in the theater us that has any thoughts questions theyd like to share can just wave at me. Ill actually im going to bring you a microphone but. I think its a great spot to leave it as a reflection. Right. Thats like a thats a good moment. Well, while you run down there, can mike tell the story of the python and pants . Oh, my gosh. Simply its you know, youre to youre supposed to leave that for a secret. Oh, youll have to read chapter two of pest. Everybody such a good. I. December 2007. I guess i was i in a former life before curatorial duties here at the North Carolina museum of Natural Sciences. I was a zookeeper at the palm beach zoo in 2007, and i backcountry camping in the everglades by myself and it was right after hurricane wilma a lot of the trails been cleared and i needed a permit to go you know backcountry camping whatever and i went i went solo and there was an 11 or 12 mile hike and i was i dont six or seven miles in and and i found this burmese python like this beautiful. And i looked at it and i admired it along the trail stuff. And its like, wow, thats why i hold you because it doesnt belong here. And this is before it was kind of well known. Yeah. 2007 was like really early in this you know before they really knew a lot about them. So you knew you had to catch it. I started walking. I started, i kept going and then i was like, wait a second, ive got to catch this thing. And so turned back and i, you know, didnt really have a plan. I just grabbed it by the tail. And, you know, i grew up in the era of the steve irwin days, right . I was like, oh, okay. And i had no actual i grabbed had it by the tail i threw my i took my shirt off. I threw my shirt over the head because, you know, a simple is that if you cover an animals, theyll be easy to capture and. So i grabbed it by the head and then and then its body and then its wrapped all around me right. And so then i, you know, i was hopped up on adrenaline at that point. And i was like, okay, now what . You know, and this was dont know. I, i, im sure like the coyotes and everything. Ill elaborate. It was probably 30 feet. This snake, i think i said it was smaller in the book. I, you said it was 13 feet and then you looked up the email evidence and it was eight anyway. Great. It was very probably 25 feet like the strength of a 13 foot four. If it was inch anyway, a long story short, im an eagle scout. I am resourceful. I took my pants off my jeans, one handed, one handed and i tied legs of each of them with my teeth. And then i slowly unravel the snake and stuffed it into my pants and put a bungee cord through the belt loop and cinched it, shut and threw the snake in my pants in my backpack and slept with it in my tent with me. That night. And then on the out the next morning i three additional burmese pythons. So i was like, holy smokes, must be a way bigger deal than anyone realizes. And when i got back to check out for my backcountry permit, i said, hey, you know this. You up in your underwear . Yeah. And i walked, i said, you know, are are people finding burmese pythons, the everglades and the woman that i had to check out with the permit or shes like, i got a better question where. Are your pants . And i said, and i said, theyre right over there on the sidewalk. Theres a python in. And anyway, thats kind of kind of proud of you. Yeah, it was before the days of, you know, camera and everything. I have zero document nation of that other than the National Park service came collected that snake was early on in the research and put a transmitter it and rereleased that as part of their initial study studying the behavior of burmese python you sent an email to a friend in which you described the encounter. Yeah. And then you sent it to me because of Fact Checking and then yeah, i was like, ive been the grows every year since 2007. So anyway thank you. And now im back in the florida keys studying pythons again. Cant escape the pests. Im glad we got that story. Im going to have you tell that story a lot. Bethany looking at the cover of your book. I see. I was trying understand the range like the pests that are the biggest pests in my life are insects and i didnt know what you live in i see at first i saw only mammals, including what looks like a squirrel, perhaps your squirrel. But now weve talked about reptiles and birds did you is that full . How did you decide what to or not cover as pests. Yeah. The book is actually only vertebrates. Certainly i time you talk about pest. I have a list. As long my arm even of vertebrates that did not make it. There are many seagulls crows wild hogs. Oh, pugs, tigers, giant snails. I mean, theres just so many i ended up actually focusing on vertebrates for a reason because this was about the subjective nature of pests, because reality is, even if its a pest on an aggregate cultural crop that we value, that is still a subjective judgment. But cant really get people to make an emotional connection to an aphid or a it just doesnt its hard. Snakes hard enough. So i ended up focusing on invertebrates because. I really wanted people to feel the tension and to feel the subject liveness of the definition and to kind realize that these are definitions that impose on the animals and dont have anything to do with the animals themselves. Right . No animal, invertebrate, insect or otherwise is is deliberately going out to cause trouble. Theyre merely taking advantage opportunities that we provide. Yeah. So i know that with insects and i dont know if this is also true with vertebrates that if an insect does it as a pest, then changes the way that its regulated and, you know, legal things are. I mean, is that true with vertebrates . And then so then how does a pest get classified as a pest in that regard in of like how its going to be dealt with in Public Policy or regulatory . Im throwing that one to roland. You know, that. Jeez, i was going to talk to you. Well, i only know that in australia. Yeah. So i was thinking about the rabbits in australia. Yes. So generally with, with with the vertebrate sort of what youre allowed to, to an animal is dependent on the sort of the game agency. Right. Theyre going to regulate. You can hunt deer what the seasons, what the ways that you can hunt them and theyre going to have classify different species according to that and so that gets most interesting i think, in some of these areas when it comes to what to feral hogs because sometimes if they classify them as a game thats different than if they classify them as a as more of a pest. And so if theyre a pest, then theyll open up more, you know, any time open season, no bag limit, you know, more liberal in terms of what types of methods you can use to harvest them. And so generally speaking with vertebrates, you know, invasive are usually sort of you can do whatever you want because theyre invasive, open but its not quite the same with agriculture because most of the vertebrates dont get classified the same way that invertebrates do. You do have often and when it gets a little is when you have Something Like a deer thats become a agricultural pest. Then do you have the test to follow the rules of the hunting or do you get special pest rules . And so they do have special pest rules. You need to sort of apply and tell the state what the problem is. But usually its pretty easy to get permission for a farmer to go shoot deer of season kind of as much as they want if theyre causing problems. And maybe mike wants to elaborate some on that. Yeah, no, i think kind of in line with what had in mind, i think that theres theres no like legal classification of pests as bird vertebrates. Pests as far as i understand. Yeah, im not sure about that but yeah. Terms of like feral hogs in the state of North Carolina, theres no harvest regulated an open season. I think important thing is that that there are rules and regulations about how humane the death has to be because, you know, theres not you cant just, you know, throw bombs at them or plant or anything like that or poisons youve to watch out with a poisonous poison that could harm lots other species also like hold traps and snare traps are differently regulated. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah for sure. Depending on the species and what what is actually interesting in line with that is that, you know, part of my work in the keys started as you know a follow up to their integrated Pest Management plan. And the Pest Management plan includes removing all invasive species, including things feral cats and, you know, that is where a lot controversy stems from because people have a hard time accepting that animals that can be our pets, whether theyre cats or feral dogs, burmese pythons. Ortegas can also be invasive, deadly predators in the ecosystems. But what i find most fascinating about that is, you know, as part of the work ive been doing with pythons we we were tracking them and finding pythons because they were consuming some of the prey animals in our research most recently. So ive been fielding a lot of emails from people so yeah but but suggesting you know folks from the general public they have all kinds of ideas about, you know, putting poison pills on the collars, these raccoons and possums or little detonators that as soon a python consumes them, they blow up or spikes that like expand out. As soon as they hit the the stomach acid of a python. And its fascinating because people the killing of python, you know, theyre like everyones excited like these python derbies kill all the pythons. There are some coyote derbies to in places. And but and yet a lot of other species feral and free roaming cats, you know that just as destructive in the environment are kind of, uh, you know, its like, look past that because theyre cute or because we affiliate them with associate with being our pets and not predators. And so i think that theres a lot of humanization and that, that the gradient that pests fall on, you know, probably correlate with that, you know, humanization of them like broadly with the public how much we kind of whats word im looking for align with them or anthropomorphize. Yeah. Anthropomorphize yeah yeah. Mean i think thats very thats that ive been thinking about a lot is that we really we will do a great deal to protect the animals we value to the point that we will do really awful things to the animals we dont because we value another animal more and i think about this a lot with regard to, for example island ecosystems, you will have rats or mice that end up on islands usually of us and theres like a population seabirds and its like this last population of these 100 seabirds or whatever and people will drop millions tons of poison on those islands to rid of those rats. They totally and they will celebrate at the end. Theyre like, yes we did it. We got rid of the rats. If it is a cat, all of a sudden or even rabbits or even rabbits, you cant have you considered rehoming it. Have you considered . You know, taking it somewhere and adopting it. Right. What is the difference. You know. And it also made me ask the question, i dont know if theres a good to this. Ive talked to many ethicists and none of them agree, as is traditional with ethicists. And ive asked them like, what is the right decision and why are some of these animals more valuable right . The reality is that the rats are killer more because are pests. They are killer because are common. But why is it bad to be common . Why do we privilege the rare mm you know why biodiversity considered an inherent thats not to say i dont think that because i do think that biodiversity is great but it is also a judgment that weve made and its kind of one that we have to live with the consequences with which is kind of sad. Anyway, in australia you can shoot cat whenever you want by the way, because theyre pests there or rabbit bio shotgun. I dont know if youll have an answer to this one. I kind of watched all this python talk has made me realize theres an elephant. Your book and no one in the United States would ever consider an elephant as a pest. But can clearly imagine a situation in other places where they are. But what i have personal experience with is living in austin, texas, where a very large colony of bats lives in a manmade structure in the heart of the city. And yeah go south to mexico for the winters, but always comes back and are consider i mean, the population is sort of we had our people gather around and watch them come at sunset and. I think that is a fraction that is that attracts a attraction. And so bat city and interesting fact the actor who played Eddie Munster in austin, texas, also and weirdly but yeah are are bats is one of those flying things on your book a bat are they or not. I actually ended up avoiding in part because covid, it was a sensitive at the time, you know, because some species of bats at bats are really keep an eye on the space regarding bats. Um, so thats a really interesting but theyre also very interesting in that most the time people dont go out to trap and poison bats right. If they are killed theyre killed in retaliation for things like disease outbreaks. So no, the bats are not, but the elephants are yeah, i got to study elephants in kenya i studied african elephants and i met some up close and theyre beautiful theyre so smart they so sweet they kill 200 people a year in east africa and caused millions of dollars in crop damage. I sort of was thinking earlier as we were talking about the squirrel example as a pest that theyre sort of the funny pest. Yeah. You know, its like lots of people have relationships with them. Lots of people are annoyed with them. In the past but its like, oh, he ate the tomatoes. Thats funny, you can call them a funny name, but then theres the elephants, you know, some of the other species in your book that that have like wolves will more right much more consequential pests. I feel like i dont know i feel like we need another gradation of pest. We need like two different words. Make minor pest, funny funny pest. And not so funny pest. If you look the work of filipe nyusi, he has published a interesting article on this topic in 2016 where he actually kind of classified animals into like eight cubes of human judgment, which i adore. So basically its a three dimensional kind of cube situation. Where in your exact this is how common . The encounter is your y axis is, like how severe the encounter is and. Like the middle axis is like how positive negative it is right . Those could be different axes. Its hard to remember a three dimensional. Yeah i dont manipulate objects in my head very well, but very interesting because there are we think of animals where consequences are rare, very severe and those are predators. So like brown bears, sharks, things like that, very rare, very negative. That doesnt turn out well. But then you have encounters that kind of goes on a great ocean where you have encounters that are less severe but more common. So most of the time when people have negative encounters with elephants, its because theyre eating their entire crop for the season, not because they are killing. If kill it is by accident, usually there have been a couple of cases that are not accident. Elephants are smart and then most of the that we think of as pests, you know, mice, rats, pigeons, geese canada geese. Yeah. The interactions are extremely common, extremely mild and only slightly negative. Right. Like people really hate goose poop. What i find really fascinating about that is like every group of canada geese. You see on like a golf course or a lawn. We brought them there because we thought were picturesque and stayed and now were i love that for its just it kind of makes me happy. Lets give our guests one more round of applause