This is techknow. A show about innovations that can change lives. The science of fighting a wildfire. Were going to explore the intersection of hardware and humanity, but were doing it in a unique way. This is a show about science. Oh oh my god by scientists. Techknow investigates the animal smugglers. Hey guys welcome to techknow im phil torres, joined by Marita Davison and dr. Crystal dilworth. Now to start off today were going to be talking about the illegal trade of animals. Now this is wildlife smuggling of both live animals, dead animals, it is huge around the world and especially here in the us. Some of the number involved here are just staggering, there are estimates of ten billion dollars a year for illegal trade. Yeah its a huge illegal industry, weve reported on the illegal trade in ivory but unfortunately its just the tip of the iceberg, were talking about hundreds of species here. In order to put this problem into focus, techknow investigated just how pervasive this really is, and whats being done to stop it. Lets take a look. This is bangkok thailand, here at the Worlds Largest flea market weekend shoppers can find almost anything. Including cage after cage of exotic pets. For the right price you can buy rare and even endangered species a south american maccaw. A monitor lizard and african tortoises, to just name a few. Techknow shot this video at the busy chatuchak market. With the camera off a shop owner offered to sell us what looked like a protected leaf monkey. This is why the World Wildlife fund now recognizes this market as a hot spot for the illegal animal trade. Its really disturbing actually, theres no telling what youre going to find, right. Joseph johns is chief prosecutor of environmental crimes at the Us Attorneys Office in los angeles. I showed him some of the video we shot at the market. Some of these animals come from south america, come from africa and go through thailand and then end up in the us. Because that market it allowed to thrive. You couldnt do this in la, you couldnt do this is san francisco, miami. You couldnt do this anywhere in the United States of america. The Thai Government is cracking down but the country is still considered a funnel for the 10 billion illegal wild life trade. Since the United States is one of the worlds biggest consumers of it theres a good chance some of what is sold there will find its way here. Because animals can easily be bought online and shipped, i visited the International Mail center in los angeles california. Here inspectors see a flood of endangered species coming through their doors. Between 1 million and 1 and a half million pieces of mail pass thru this facility every month. Each one has to be inspected by customs and Border Patrol officers and some of these pieces are more interesting to those officers than others. This day one of the hardest working inspectors is on duty. Get it, get it lockett, get it within the first hour of our arrival, lockett, a k9 inspector for u. S. Fish and wildlife service, finds something. Lockett is part of a Pilot Program and is this districts first k9 inspector. Shes trained to identify up to 20 scents and shes already proven her value. It would take me an entire day to look at 100 packages she can do 100 packages in 5 seconds. With her i clear 10 thousand packages easily each day. Thats some good work there, lockett. Yeah, shes got a pretty powerful nose. On this morning, locket found a python skin wallet. Across the world there are 25 different breeds of pythons hunted for their skins and several are endangered. So no python products can be imported into the u. S. Without special permits. The wallet is confiscated and added to an unbelievable stash of exotic animals and their parts seized at los angeles points of entry every single day. What is this room . This room right here is what we call our property room. When we seize items that are in violation of wildlife laws they are kept as evidence until the case is adjudicated and then we have some way of disposing of them. This room that seems more of a morgue serves as a valuable learning tool. Almost all types of wildlife are represented here. And behind every item is a tragic story. U. S. Fish and wildlife supervisor mike osborn knows most of them. A great deal of Media Attention is rightly focused on rhino poaching for horns and ivory from elephants. I see pangolins, sea turtles, monkey skull, ivory and then. This thing. What the heck is this . This is one of the hottest things on the market today. This . This is an air bladder from a fish called the totoaba. The totoaba is actually a sea bass, it is so critically endangered that it can only be found in one place in the entire world. The middle of the sea of cortez. It is now being illegally harvested for its bladders. Since theyre touted as an aphrodisiac in asian cultures, each bladder can sell for up to 15 thousand dollars on the black market. That promise of big profits from illegal wildlife sales motivates sellers to get creative. Ive had monkeys jump out of suitcases. Ive had birds fly out of toothpaste boxes. They get more and more intricate now a days. People do ask me whats the strangest animal youve ever seen . And ill tell em its man. Man will do some pretty strange things with endangered species to make a lot of money. The case of jereme james is a prime example. Jereme james is one of the more unusual smugglers that weve encountered here in los angeles. James was caught redhanded trying to sell endangered banded iguanas from fiji. There are less that 10,000 of these animals left in the wild and james had several of them. He actually stole from a wildlife preserve in fiji during his honeymoon. Hed actually built a secret compartment within his prosthetic leg and that is where he concealed the baby iguanas. In the prosthetic leg . Yes. The arrest affidavit claims james tried to sell the iguanas to an undercover fish and wildlife agentand also admitted to selling three others for 32 thousand dollars. But the case didnt result in jail time. This is one of james victims a female iguana now living at the san diego zoo. While being smuggled in james prosthetic leg, her own leg was so badly injured, it had to be amputated. Its pretty sad actually. 30 percent, at least, of all the animals that i bring in on a yearly basis are confiscated animals. We get a lot from fish and wildlife service. Kim lovich is curator of the reptile house at the san diego zoo. The zoo does have repopulation programs, but its virtually impossible to return seized animals to their original homes. You want to provide this animal with its opportunity to get back into the wild as quickly as possible, but if you dont know exactly where that animal is from you could be introducing viruses to a naive population. So many of the zoos seized animals will live out their lives as species ambassadors. Hopefully helping to educate the public so more dont end up in captivity far from their country of orgin, or even worse. A lot of it is the moral aspect. Isnt it a shame that we couldnt live with this animal. That we had to hunt it to the point of endangered. We had to hunt it to extinction. One of the common things i tell people is, the more of this stuff we buy, the more these animals are going to die until they do become endangered and they do become extinct. This is an endangered species. It doesnt belong in your living room, it belongs in the ocean. And ive got a bag here thats made from a west african dwarf crocodile, another endangered species. Clearly done in a somewhat garish design if you will. I mean its got little feet. And teeth. And teeth, yeah. I have to say there are a couple of reasons you shouldnt buy that. For one its pretty tacky, lets be honest, but also, these are endangered but how is anyone going to know that what theyre buying is an endangered species . And thats one of the challenges that they face, that you do see things like this in a lot of markets that you go to around the world. Sometimes you just think maybe they farmed it, and in some place they do farm, but theyre still farming an endangered species, you shouldnt be buying it, you shouldnt be bringing it into the us. I think theres a fair amount of Public Awareness that things like rhino horn things like elephant ivory, thats illegal you shouldnt be purchasing things like that. But we dont have as much of a knowledge or understanding of things like turtles, things like this, or even other species we just dont even really think about in the context of an illegal trade. The illegal wildlife trade is an example of mans interaction with nature at its worst, but coming up, well be seeing the bright side of mans interaction with nature in the magic of mead and why business is buzzing, after this. We want to hear what you think about these stories. Join the conversation by following us on twitter and at aljazeera. Com techknow. Hey, welcome back to techknow, now it may be the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man, but when i say the word mead or honey wine, what image comes to mind . Okay, so i think of a renaissance festival, or maybe game of thrones. Thats right, chaucer, aristotle, i mean mead is kind of the ultimate classic. Ive heard some people even refer to it as hipster honey. Now what i love about it is, yes its delicious but its also got some really interesting Science Behind it. Lets take a look. This isnt ancient greece. Its predominately alfalfa but there is a little bit of clover. Or medieval england. Its different than what i expected. Yeah. Want a little more splash in there . Yeah. This is how they do it in point reyes california. Known for its vanilla characteristics. Oh, this is good. And even though this is the heart of California Wine country, and this may be bubbly, this isnt champagne. This is mead. You can imagine the vikings. Its mead its so epic. So you gotta thank the bees i guess. To the bees thank the bees this is what mead is made from. Nice and steady. There you go. Bees and of course, honey. Archeologists and Scientists Say mead is mankinds oldest beverage. Traces have been found in ancient chinese and egyptian tombs. And now, after centuries out of style, mead is making a comeback. Jordon thompson is the horticulturist at heidrun meadery. Her job is to figure out which flowers bees like best. Because a happy bee is a productive bee. Should we get off and go check it out . Yeah, lets do it and this is where it all begins, in a garden fit for a king. Lots of flowers. Lots of flowers oh my gosh there they are. There they are. Doing what they do. So what kind of flower is this . This is uriginium, or sea holly. Bees they see the uv spectrum so blue is most attractive to them. Ah, i didnt know that. And thats probably why they are very attracted to this plant. Once the bees collect their pollen theyre going to head straight to their hive. And so are we. Im brad. Alright, phil. Brad albert has one of the most important jobs here. He is the meaderys bee keeper. Wow are you serious . So this is about the closest you will ever want to be to this many bees. But if you look inside, theres some honeylooks pretty good. Why do they even make honey in the first place . Its their food. So, honey is bee food . Honey is bee food and pollen is bee food. So honey is their carbohydrate, and pollen is their protein source. So when you remove honey from this does it effect the hive . They often times make a surplus and thats what we take. How do we get the honey into a jar . Its as easy as just scraping like this and there we go and then we just load that into the extractors. Do you want to do the honors . Lets do it. So this extractor basically spins these things so that the honey just flings off and hits the wall. Exactly. So the bees here do the farming . Thats right theyre doing the work for us. Gordon hull is the man behind the meadery. So, this is our honey inventory right here. This is all honey . Weve got macadamia nut honey from hawaii. This says montana. Right, montana. And then we have the smaller buckets here which represent our honey. So all this honey is from around the country and then this is the local flavor. Right, exactly. We have to take care of a slight problem we have. Wow. This honey is solid. Its super saturated sugar. So in order to take care of this we have to heat this up and we do that in there. So this is basically a giant Chemistry Lab where you get to make wine. Thats right. This is a honey heater. Oh my gosh, is this thing warm . Yep. Wow are you serious . This is that same honey so you heat it up to 105 degrees fahrenheit so that it will liquefy. Oh my gosh. That is a lot of honey at the bottom of this honey heater. Making mead can be a pretty messy business. Check out these outtakes and you get the idea. The way gordon and his team make mead is closer to the way traditional champagne is made. Thats where the science comes in. After the honey is diluted and purified, it goes into the fermenter. He adds the same yeast they use to make grapebased champagne. Probably the best thing i will ever drink out of a beaker. So why is it that theres just honey in here but im tasting these other things . Because honey contains the essence of the flowers from which it was composed. Really . So the bees are drinking the nectar of the flower and they actually take some of the essence with it. Absolutely right, and thats what makes honey such an amazing substance. Turn turn turn. The final step is pretty cool. Its called riddling where every turn of the bottle slowly sends the remainder of the yeast sediment to the top of the bottle. How was that . Perfect. Nice. Good . Yes. And the way i figure it, mead just might be the next big thing. With a very interesting backstory. All possible because of science. Of course. Why dont you do the honors . Very good. Well it took 4 months from honey bee to mead so cheers to the honey bees. Cheers to the honey bee. Phil, this story seems like an entomologists dream, i mean, talk about biodiversity, talk about bees, and theres a tasty drink at the end. I mean it doesnt get much better than that, and what i loved about it is their crop, when you go outside, it is those flowers and it wasnt just the bees there, the butterflies were there, the birds were there, it was the only crop ive seen that actually increases the biodiversity in an area, its almost unheard of. Yeah, i think when we normally think of an agricultural setting sadly now its very homogenous, these monocrops. But in this case its a very diverse system thats promoting a lot of biodiversity, a lot of ecological richness, which i think is fantastic. If theres anything i learned from this, its that science can happen anywhere, it can happen in wine country, it can happen in your own backyard or it can happen very far away. Crystal, where are you taking us next . Well of course, im taking you to mars. I spoke to the nasa scientist behind the movie the martian and will separate fact from Science Fiction when we come back. Hey welcome back to techknow, im phil torres joined by Marita Davison and dr. Crystal dilworth. You know ever since man landed on the moon in 1969, a lot of people have had their sights on that next big leap, going to mars. Yeah but Public Perception of what a trip like that might look like has largely been informed by Science Fiction and hollywood. And its true, but with the success of nasas Rover Missions we are starting to see more of what that reality would be like through Science Fiction stories like the movie the martian. And thats really exciting. We are getting closer to a human on mars we have robots on mars, next lets get some men and women on mars. Jubulent engineers at nasas jet Propulsion Lab witnessing the pathfinder Rover Landing on mars. Almost 20 years later, their invention is a key plot point in a big budget hollywood film, the martian. Where an astronaut becomes stranded on the red planet. But if i cant get in contact with nasa none of this matters anyway. Hollywood has long been fascinated with depicting humankind on mars dating back to a 1910 film by thomas edison. Abbott and costello added a comedic twist in their film abbott and costello go to mars. I hereby claim mars in the name of the United States of america. But its this 2015 hollywood depiction, with an assist from nasa, that is getting people once again excited about space travel. I think it was the really best movie ever made about what life would be like to explore another planet. The martian is hollywood filming at its finest but what are nasas real plans for a manned mission to mars. The team at jpl broke down the myths and realities about how close science truly is to putting a human on mars. Robert manning was the chief engineer of the real mars pathfinder which allows matt damons character to communicate back to earth. He consulted with hollywood designers on a prototype for the film. I think its very accurate. If nasa does get a person on mars in the 2030s, it will be in part because of jplers like manning and jennifer trosper. Shes the Mission Manager for the mars 2020 rover and well aware of the accomplishments needed to make it on mars. Our next mission is going to do 20 samples on mars instead of 4 or 5 that curiosity has done so we have to figure out how to make the rover faster and smarter and more operable on the surface to collect these samples. Nasa has proven it has the right stuff for sending robots to mars but theres a big leap needed before they send humans. Lift off the voyage could take up to 270 days. The International Space station is currently observing how space travelers deal with this sort of psychological deprivation. Were learning more about how isolated crews perform and interact and how the brain responds to the stresses of prolonged space flight. Once astronauts make it to mars, theyve got to be able to land. Manning and trosper are researching new parachutes high above earth to engineer soft landings on the red planet. So right now we can do about the size of a mini cooper . Yeah, we can do a small car and we need to land ten times that. Were investing in the technology and we can get there. The most pressing issue after landing is being able to breathe on mars. Its cold on mars. Theres hardly any atmosphere, theres only one percent, its not breathable, its carbon dioxide. We actually are developing an instrument called moxie which is going to take the carbon dioxide, pull apart the carbon from the oxygen and actually pump the oxygen into a Little Chamber as a demonstration to convince yourselves that we know how to create breathable oxygen on mars. This is really the First Mission mars 2020 where were really trying to bring in those new technologies and bridge the gap so that we can send people. Theres still the issue of hydration. Nasa just recently confirmed the existence of water on mars. Growing food is also another challenge, like matt damons character space farming potatoes in the martian. I am the greatest botanist on this planet. Would it be possible to grow something as complicated and Energy Intensive as potato . There may or may not have been the right ecological conditions for potatoes to grow. One of the things were still trying to figure out though is what are all the chemicals and minerals that are in the soil itself. Part of that process is taking place now on the International Space station where astronauts are successfully growing lettuce. I think we can get there. Thats the exciting part. Theres a path. Getting to mars has its challenges. Nasa has published a plan to get a human on mars in the 2030s. For manning, the biggest hurdle to make the deadline is funding. I think 2030 is a little early. Weve got a lot to do to go from a curiosity style landing to a set of missions where habitat models and multiple astronauts is a tall order, its really tall order. It depends on how much money people are willing to spend. Both trosper and manning do belive humans will be on mars in their lifetime. Wouldnt it be awesome to expand beyond the earth to understand bigger things. The hope is that a movie like the martian could capture the publics imagination and maybe engender a different kind of support for the next space race to mars. You know my only concern was i dont want the public to think that nasa has the kind of money to work with right now, because they dont. I think this is a call for if we want this to be our reality, and its a pretty awesome reality to send people to mars, were going to have to put the money where our mouth is. And it could be, i mean a lot of science in the movie as you saw are real programs. These are being developed right now. The ability to grow crops, to create a system like that, is so complex in a place where we understand the conditions on our own planet. Being able to do that on a place like mars is really mindboggling. Yeah i mean they did simplify some of the things in there. Of course. But it gets your imagination going. This episode really shows what can happen when you combine imagination and science and it can result in a pretty delicious drink in a field in sonoma or even potentially growing potatoes on mars. It was all great stuff. Thats it for this episode, well see you next time right here on techknow. Dive deep into these stories and go behind the scenes at aljazeera. Com techknow. Follow our expert contributors on twitter, facebook, instagram, google and more. Its the biggest question out there. Go inside the groundbreaking research. Are you ready to have your brain scanned . Ready to go challenging your deepest beliefs. Feeling the spirit is very subjective. I dont buy that. Techknows team of experts show you how the miracles of science. This is what innovation looks like. Can affect and surprise us. I feel like were making an impact. Lets do it. Techknow where Technology Meets humanity. Roughly the same number of people die every year in the United States in incidents involving automobiles and guns. Yet the two, widely owned and widely used and loved objects live in very different legal universes. Theres no right to drive enshrouded in the bill of rights, but its more complicated for that. While billions of dollars are spent researching and regulating automobiles, federal research for guns is blocked and bottled
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