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My name is chris smith, for the museum of Natural Sciences as a coordinator for current science programs. That jumped adam inside the pleasure and privilege of welcoming everybody into the museum. Thats music to me really interesting people who are doing interesting work out there in the realms of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or does it relates to science, education and even more. So is a thrill to be here in the Museum Talking about science or nature or conservation or any of those great, fabulous topics that make this museum such a great resource and such a great place to be. To my left, you can see these are the brilliant people that ive been joined by tonight. First, i want to introduce dr. Michael cove, closest to me. Yay. Yeah, we can clap for dr. Cove. Like serves as a research crater for mammalogy here at the museum of Natural Sciences. Its an expert on wraps, i guess a particular type of rat. Actually, you know, what im great is that he knows a lot about a whole lot of mammals. We had an event not too long ago near the museum in the audience was peppering dr. Cove here with questions about all that to different animals from all regions of the planet. And right at the top of his mind, incredible answers to great questions. From rats living in the Appalachian Mountains took bears and south america. Its a, great great top. Thanks for being, here like. Thank you for having me. Im excited to talk about pests. Cross the way, we have doctor roland kays. Roland serves as a head of the Biodiversity Research lab here at the museum. Its glass walled mr. Slip this over the research center, also a professor at North CarolinaState University teaching zoology and an expert zoologist. But dr. Cases particular skilled in home of animal tracks. Maybe not so much sniffing animal tracks in the forest and knowing which way they went, although i would believe that youre very good at that as well. If there is, now i can do it. Thats perfect. It also using more technology and modern techniques of animal tracking. Particularly things like camera tracks and gps tracking. Great, happy to be here. Thanks, roland. And then of, course the reason that all three of us are here at the museum tonight is to hear about the new book, pests, how humans create animal villains. Tonight, we have a very special guest, doctor bethany brookshire. [applause] bethany is a science journalist, you can read bethanys work in the washington post, new york times, slate, the atlantic and of course places like science american, science news. As a former staff writer for science news for students, which i screwed through the air kind of and theres so many things i need to learn about it in the archive there. Im going to go be a student at science news for students. And were very excited that we have experts in animals that some people consider pests here at the museum and, bethany, that you could be here to talk about your new book and share some of the cool science and stories that you investigated. So, lets get to it. If you could, im going to take a seat. Thank you for letting me join tonights conversation as well. Karen, lets get started. The place to start is, bethany, tell us about the book. What is the sales pitch for pests . I start researching this book all the way back in 2016, when the idea first happened. But i have become obsessed with pests. Because what is a past, right . When you think heard about, it a past is an animal that makes you mad, you off. That means that the past has nothing to do with what the animal is, where its going, what its doing. It has everything to do with you and what you think your environment should be like. And we should be in it, who belongs near you with your stuff, et cetera. I just became fascinated by this concept of past. So realize that almost everyone who you talk to about pests, everyone has a story. In the stories which was featured in the book involves, can i cuss here . I dont know. Youre the bus. Cspan, can i cuss . That looks like a thumbs up. I think three of us work for the state of North Carolina and you do not. I do not, true. This grill as time, but his name is kevin. We calm kevin for short and because its their old lives next door, a great and school, otherwise known as kevin lives in my yard and i hate him so much. This kevin, this is squirrel, we now call all squirrels kevin in my house. This squirrel was the reason that i have not had a tomato from my garden in five years. Every time i go out, i plant tomatoes, im super excited. The tomatoes pro, they swell up, they are green, theyre hopeful. And kevin, kevin comes into my garden, grabbed 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 is too smart accident, right where i could see it on my porch. Because he is a jerk. Within the next day, he does it again and again and again. This squirrel has taken a bite out of every single to meet my burden for the last five years and ive tried many things to get rid of him. Putting bird netting, metal netting, cayenne pepper. Stray cats. I did in fact try stray cats. To keep inside and we now have pets, but kevin aid cant food. Maybe need to bring kevin inside. Lets not. I started to realize, i hated this animal. About bringing up to my friend and they would be like, oh, you cant hurt him, hes a squirrel. Hes perfect, hes sweet. They would take pictures of the squirrel. People feed disclosed deliberately, people set up obstacle courses that go viral on youtube for these animals. I realized that every animal could be a past to someone. It just mattered in what ways. So, i wrote this book. Ive never had a problem with squirrels, literally. They have never been a pest. Until this morning. When your kevins girlfriend showed up in my attic. Never until today. Im like getting dressed to come here for this event with bethany and there is literally a squirrel that has broken into my attic and quad to some stuff, and giant nest, leaves and crap all over the place. This literally never happened in my life until today. Im so proud. I feel like youre cursed. We did have one that got in my roof in one of the places that i rented. We named her big birth of because she was so big, the squirrel. A mix of thump noise every time. The guy who caught her said she was the biggest girl he had ever seen. I think he told me he took her to a farm update. Yeah, right. Mike, i hope this means you have a good squirrel story . Are you going to at least say like squirrels . This is really interesting, because ive been thinking about this a lot. I will have a little further outside of raleigh and my wife, my lovely wife, has pet goats. And she had some Sunflower Seeds for the goats and they stayed in the trunk in her car for the long weekend. By the end of the weekend, the squirrels had chewed up through the underside of the bumper into the trunk and what would all be the Sunflower Seeds for the goats. That bump ruth held together with directives for a substantial amount of time. So, ive never actually thought of them as pests, per se, but its interesting you mentioned to meet a thing. This is an idea that ive had for a while. Which just grows actually consume garbage or our soft fleshy fruits and resources . They mostly eat acorns and stuff. That is usually not a shortage of the oaks. We live in the city of oaks, right . Its interesting to hear that they are eating other things. Birdseed, eating a lot of birdseed. Thats true. I just think of them as eating hard things are not soft things. Thats why didnt finish your tomatoes. Theyre, like i thought this is a green nut and i was wrong. What i found fascinating is that the squirrels always figured out when you as, like you know what . Nuclear option, i planted no tomatoes, hoping your papers instead. I was, like oh yeah, i had this vision of the squirrel running away with tears streaming beyond its free cheek. Squirrels cannot weave 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 peppers, he knows. This segment takes a bite out of it. This is more of your book, right . Sometimes humans need to change their behaviors instead of the animals. Hed become a helping your farm instead of a tomato farmer. Actually what i did was i figured, i learned things about the special memory of squirrels. And they have incredibly high and accurate facial memories and we have to do is that every tomato. Cage over here tomatoes before the tomatoes emerged. If you wait until the tomatoes and marriage, which i tried, when the tomatoes emerged i bought a large gardeners cajun spent all morning setting up. A feeling really, guided me to my friends house and got this text from my husband, can you please come home . Im like, why . She says, those two schools that have gotten into the garters cage and are bouncing around like free pingpong balls because they cant get out. He had to let them out 20 minutes later they are back in. He let them out again. And it turned into an antisquirrel fortress involving chicken wire and the gardeners cage and bricks. But this year, the governors cajun is to go partly because, if squirrels do not taste the thing, they do not know it is there and they will not come and get it. The moral of the story is to learn about your squirrel behavior instead of your garden in cage. Sounded part of the criteria for the crater being deemed a past at least is they have to be able to outsmart us regularly. At least the whole squirrel thing is they consistently get around whatever it is that we set up to stop them. They consistently frustrated us because they can do those two things. We get angry, we try to stop them. If they just able to get around us at every turn. Does that hold true for stuff thats not squirrels or just for squirrels . And integrating a lot about this in a section in which roland is cited several times. So much of what we call pests is about power and vulnerability. Its about animals that make us feel powerless, and make us feel scared. And its a animals, once they make us feel powerless and scared, her fear turns to anger and our anger turns to hate. We turn to the dark side. Its all downhill from there. One of those animals that really exemplified that is actually the coyote. Which ended up talking to sure. Cadiz wherever julie a western, species they lived in grassland, desert, open habitats in the western United States and mexico it up into canada. And then around the early 1900s, 1910, 1920, they started moving and expanding in all directions. If you think about the, environment to the north, they moved it a Great Northern forests of canada and up to alaska. To the, south they moved south into the rainforest. A fragment the forest, that is more farm fields, the command a little bit of forest. They move now all the way to panama. On the verge of entering south america, they havent entered yet as far as we know but the right on the edge. We have camera traps that have gotten them in the aryan rainforest. And the east coast was this great bit of force that they never used to live in. Thats, fragmented theres more fields and forests and the coyotes all over the place. As they move, east they colonized the better habitats for them, which wouldve been more fields and little bit of forests. Eventually they moved into the deep forest and eventually they filled that up and they started moving into cities. He is a young coyote grows up. And if he goes into the 90s or and into the neighborhood, maybe you can scream Better Living there. Theyve been slowly colonizing across the east coast cities more and more. Thank you here in raleigh, they shouldve in the county in the 90s. And into more cities only recently, in the developed areas of raleigh. They are just the ultimate in adaptability. They will cabbage road kill. They lead to some garbage but usually not a, lot sometimes a little bit. The and certainly you cat food, if you put a catheter coyote will be quite attracted to that. They come in and in some ways it is probably because we got rid of the wolves. Wolves were considered a pest a couple hundred years ago. We killed almost all of them and that kind of opened up the space for the coyote to expand. And a cadiz have become a pest all over the place, but in some places not. Its interesting to see, in a lot of places, theyre filling in for the wolf ecologically. Definitely not completely. But whether theyre a pest, sometimes they use the word Invasive Species. They are exotic in that theyre a didnt used to be here. Theyre not introduced, we use the word introduced. They werent introduced and they got her on their own, could see their spread. With their invasive, whether theyre pest is sort of, are they causing harm to humans . Human society . Or sort of other invasive native species causing conservation problems . Theres some places where they do that and theres a lot of places where they dont. On, average theyre not that big of a, passed i think. Where they, are past their one of the bigger, security or pests out there. Its fascinating to me how many of the people i interviewed for the book who had had personal interactions with pests. You guys hear this. Oh my, goodness i had a, rat it was the size of a cat. No it was. Im, sorry it was not. Theres been no recorded wild brown norway rat that has been over two pounds. I know a guy, bobby corrigan, he carries around a check in as well. He showed it to me for 500 for the first person who can inhibit twopound rat and he is never used that check. Okay . You tell me that rat is the size of a cat, thats a kitten. Mike, is there anything in the Research Collection we can make 500 off of . Probably not. Different species. A pouch to rat. Those are big. Substantial. Its really interesting when we have an attraction that makes us feel powerless and makes us feel scared. All, the sudden the animal grows in our minds and it becomes huge. Right . The raccoon becomes the size of a large dog. The coyote is the sides of a wolf. Its not. Cadiz to look big, right . They, are in truth, very lean. Peoples compare them with their dogs. People know how much their dogs way and many people have a 50 pen dog. Ive a 50 pound dog. They see a coyote in their, like it was the size of my dog, it was 50 pounds. Understand, that i have a 50 pound organize he cadiz and i would approximate their weight to be about the size of my dog. But the truth, is coyotes very rarely can get to 50 pounds. On average, in the east coast, theyre like 35 pounds. On the west coast, it is smaller, like 25 pounds. A west coast on average, theyre like half the size. Its just there is a lenient fluffy and lanky. The other thing, if you hear them how, its outlook huge pack. There must have been ten or 15 of them. Theres a paper on this where they published, experimentally paid people different embers of tires howling. People consistently always overestimated. Its almost like the coyote, part of that evolution of their howell. They want their holidays and like a bigger group. The way they do it makes it sound like a bigger group and people fall for it all the time. I did know that, thats amazing. How did i miss this paper . Part two. Its very funny when i was reporting on communities in california. When my sources was super happy, it is like, and im gonna show you the cadiz inculcate part right now. Not, golden gate hollywood. Im going to show you them, its great. Where there and the cadiz command im, like thats it . Hes, like excuse me . Im like, theres a small. Our coyotes are much bigger than that. He got all mad at me. But i actually saw a road killed tightly outside of washington, d. C. The other day and im so excited almost pulled over. This is who you become. A reason that eastern coyotes are larger is, before, as theyre moving east, they hybridized with the wolf. Fails a hybridized odds. Theres some dog. On average, the eastern coyote is still 80 to 90 wolf 80 to 90 coyote. As 80 of doctors and five to 10 of all genes. Its a great experiment in evolution because, if those genes help and survive, and theyre going to survive better and passes jeans on. Weve actually shown that some of the wolf jeans that were preissue we dont know exactly what they do but from the direction and we have a pretty decent idea that theyre associated with growth and bone growth and muscle growth. Those genes are surviving better and helping coyote survive better being passed on. Thats part of why eastern kennedys are sort of 35 to 45 pounds for his western countries early 25. I love the idea of imagining in expanding coyotes tinder profile. Its, like i can match with anybody. Hello, poodle, labradoodle, german shepherd, fine ill take the poodle. Thats how we think it happens, actually. The first coyote that got into North Carolina, springtime came along, he had no one else to breed. With no other coyotes were there because she was the first one. It is a pretty dedicated breeders so they have to take the next best thing they can get. Im just waiting for the coyote dachshund hybrid. Can we . What would you call that . When do coyotes become pets . When they become invasive having cause problems . The situation is attacking dogs. We are surveying, im a global news alert for any time coyotes make the news. Which is pretty much every single day. A lot of times, its because they attack dogs. Theyre almost always small dogs. Its often someone lets their dog out and to go to the bathroom at night, it doesnt come back. But sometimes, there is a video the other day of, i felt terrible, for an old lady in l. A. Walking her chihuahua on the leash. Coyote come