City Slickers

domesticate dogs or did dogs domesticate us? And we're definitely not sick of these mother heckan dogs on this mother heck and train. We'll discuss this and more as we answer the age old question how much trash can you fit inside a seagull? Spoiler A lot? And later I'll be talking to Dr Greg Paully, a real life researcher and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Joining me today is Katie Willard, actor, writer, producer, cat

owner and snail superhero. Hello, quickly, explain why I call you a snail superhero. This is very cute because ever since I was a kid um seeing snail smushed on the sidewalk made me so sad and so ever since I was a kid. If I see a snail on the sidewalk, obviously going in a line, I pick them up and take them to the other side off the sidewalk so they don't get crushed. I like to imagine they've just kind of created a whole religion around you,

as like this being that's like the savior. I mean, that's the ultimate goal is made to be the head of some of a of a religion, some kind of snail religion. Yeah, it's great because like I don't have to. I won't go to jail because I'm a cull latter. One of the most defining characteristics of humans is our ability to form society, get enough of us together and well from entire cities bustling with connections. But what happens

when you have a phobia of cities themselves. One group of anthropophobia patients coped with their phobia groups by forming a club. It sounds like someone with arachnophobia jumping into a bathtub full of spiders, but it's actually one of the most logical ways to treat their phobia of society. In nine seventy a group of anthropophobic men were discharged from a private therapeutic institute in Tokyo. They started meeting

at coffee shops to discuss their fear of socializing. It may sound oxymoronic, but it makes sense when you think about it. They all shared a common fear, so they could bond and discuss the fear in a way that felt more like therapy than socializing, tricking their brains into allowing them to form what a mounted to a social club they wittingly are not also treated themselves with exposure therapy. Remember how I joked about jumping in a bath with

the spiders. That's actually not a bad way to treat arachnophobia or any other phobia. When you expose yourself to your fear repeatedly and find you survive it, the fear will go away. Maybe I should jump in a bathful of the concept of death. Anyways, this club for clinical misanthropes was actually a genius way to hack their brains and cope with their peers. But how do animals cope

with human cities. Society is not made for them and in fact, is often completely antithetical to their survival as well. Discuss some animals can't hack it in the big city, but others, like the anthropophobic men who formed a club, have found incredible loopholes that allows them to exploit a hostile, human dominated world and thrive. Anyways, Katie, uh, what would be your response to robots slowly taking over society? And they wouldn't be like the cool robots who are like

as Katie willert is to snails. Robots are not to us. They don't like pick us up and like put us on a little soft patch of grass. They are big robots who just really don't give a care about us. I guess I would probably go off into the nature where there is no far away from where they are and just continued to live a no matic existence. I think it's less of a like fleeing scared thing and more of just like, oh, it's time to move again, It's time to go just start using rocks is toilets again.

Let's just get out of the get out of dodge, Let's go to you know what. Bakersfield was the first place in Pine count My mom grew up in Bakersfield. And it's like when they rerouted the highway so it didn't go through there, it's just like it's like, well, it's still nineteen sixty. Yeah. I ever now I went

to the Current County Oil Museum. One. Yeah, because Rolling Road Show, which does like screenings of movies in their locations, did there will be blood at Current County Oil Museum because that was where Paul Thomas Anderson did a lot of his like research for it. Interesting. Um, but yeah, it seems like just there's just not a lot. It's just not a lot going on. It's going to be the sixties forever. And you know that's that's line. That's fine,

it works. Other than the racism, that's okay, you know, just a little bubble um. I feel like if for me, I would feel like it's inevitable that the robots are going to find me in the woods or in Bakersfield, So like I would, uh, I think that I would try to ingrace sheet myself as like a pet, like like you can comb my hair and give me treats. Oh, and I snuggle and I snuggle. Yeah. I will wear ridiculous clothing at your behest. I will put on a cape.

I will poop on command. Take me outside, I'll poop anyway. Yeah, I don't I guess isn't that the path of all animal, you know, all eventually domesticating animals, run, run, run, and then then oh you'll feed me, you know, Okay, I'll hang outs and you give me enough corn and I'll just lie down on my back. Well, like you think

of it, just a ferrel. I mean I have plenty of friends who have ferrell who now have feral cats that live in their house, like cats that would not be anywhere near them, and then we eat a little food, yeah, and then get a little kind of like squatting. I feel like cats are squatters. Yeah, they can pretty much just be anywhere. But so it's interesting. What I'm getting at here with my robots thing is that there are different ways that animals respond to urbanizations. So human cities

encroaching on their habitat. There's um avoiders, which is what you would be if you was animals, if I was all those animals, and so they are not able to adapt to human environments, and so they avoid urbanized areas, they avoid contact with humans, and they really only make appearances in the city if they're migrating or fleeing their shrinking habitat. And they're usually unable to adapt due to very specialized survival reproductive or feeding strategy, or like they

come into conflict with humans. And then there's a few other ways that animals respond to urbanization. There's adapters and exploiters, and they respond by changing their behavior or physiology to better fit their new human altered environments. So they try to use human cities as best as they can. What I see in my head is just that gift of the raccoon going up on the porch to the cat food and getting a hand scoop of the cat and

then running away on the tiny legs. But I love about raccoons, and as we'll talk about in a little bit of seagulls, is that when they do the stealing they do a burglary, they have that little jaunty runaway where they're like, gotta go go, gotta go out of here. Well, yeah, raccoons are that. What I think is funny about raccoons do is like most of the time it's like, Okay, I gotta grab the trash, get out of here, like

we gotta go. But then there are some that are just like I mean, my mom and I once almost got trapped in our subterranean parking garage because there were two raccoons on the stairs that were the under the stairs, that were the size of golden retriever, Like they were really big and like, I don't think I've ever been worried about like a raccoon because most of the time they scurry right like when you get near there, like oh no, no, not worth it, like abort mission, let's

go away. Um. We walked up saw them and they just stood there and she stared at us like, Um, a raccoons stands up and is bold is just kind of scary. But that's not that's not good news because it doesn't go in my head. Was like, oh, the animals are just afraid of us, Like they're more afraid of you than you are. A bold raccoon is one

to be feared. My favorite bold raccoon story is one of my mom's best friends, Donna Marie, was sleeping one night and she heard noise in her backyard and she was like, so she turned on the back of the lights to the backyard and looked out over her balcony to her pool and there was a family of five raccoons swimming in her pool, just having a family, just chilling doing swimming in the swimming pool and she just turned off the light and went back to bed. I mean,

no one else is using it time. I know it's offsets raccoon swim. Yeah. Uh so that would be an urban adapter for sure. That is the most adaptive adaptation. Kids, Let's go to the pool we're going to. It's just like it's like a doofy Dad and like like a Marge like mom, where it's like, well, well we'll just use their pool them and then the kids are like me when Kim Apple or whatever. Just the raccoon family. God, that's going to be a cartoon, I'm sure. But let's

talk about some of the unfortunate urban avoiders. And there's one that's uh native to Los Angeles, the mountain lion. Yeah. And have you ever seen a mountain lion in person? I have not. I've seen tracks. And I've also heard like, oh they just saw what, Like if I was in Griffith or whatever, it'd be like, oh, they saw one like yesterday, it was like when you were out there. Yeah, but it's I mean, I've never seen one in person either. Uh. And it's I think it's just so rare because they'll

avoid the city. They don't want no part of it. And like I said, it's because I mean they will come into conflict with humans and they just they're too specialized of an animal to really be able to adapt like a raccoon can. So I want to tell you the story about Griffith Park's lonely single mail metal Um. He's seeking hot cougars in his area, but there aren't any.

He's the only one. So the National Park Service named him P twenty two UM, which is I wish it stood for something cool like predator twenty two, but I think it's just like like how many ladies whose bang Like he's really super handsome. He's like He's like it is hottest cougar ever. Um. But now it's just like the like sequence in which they market Yeah. UM. So he traveled from the Santa Monica Mountains to try to find his own territory, and in the wild they require

a really large toys. I'm Elmer Fudd all of a sudden, um over two hundred square miles uh is for like one male and his current range in Griffith Park is nine square miles. It's tiny. It's like trying to live in San Francisco. I'm all right, it's hard. It's hard to get by these days. It's hard. It's very high expensive, expensive, it's hard to date. Hard in this city. I feel like twenty two is just like the millennial experience just in Mountain Lion from Can I ask you a question?

So because there were cubs recently born, I think in the Mounta Lion cubs because there used to be female there was like was it right? Wasn't there? I don't know if it was in Grip Parkrint, San would be probably the San Monica Mountains, Yeah, okay, because yeah, something had happened during the fires. I think where they were like really nervous that the cups had been killed. Yeah, I think that was the Santa Monica Mountains Griffith Park. The issue with that why he's so isolated is he

surrounded by freeway. There's no way to get and he actually had traveled with a few of his companions but then they got killed by vehicles, so he was like the only one to survive. He's got a tragic Disney back story. Um, and so yeah, there's no mate for him,

and he's able to survive by eating the raccoon coyote. Uh. And also dear, And it's interesting because the reason dear can drive is that we have these big cemeteries and golf courses, which is like, as you may know, like the only green parts in Los Angeles is either rich

people golf courses or dead people cemeteries. Um. But it's actually there's like a few creepy stories of people like they'll give the flowers to their their dead loved ones in the cemeteries, deers will come to eat them, and then the mountains p. Twenty two will just like like just like metal cup and there and like just just wait,

like I imagine like you're grieving. You're like, oh man, look it's maybe it's Grandpa's spirit come in the form of a deer and he's eating the flowers and you're like, look, Grandpa's visiting us. And then this mountains just like guts everywhere and it's like, I don't look, children, Grandpa's dying again. And yeah, the spirit there's time is souls dead. Now.

My my best friend Sheet puts flowers on Mama Cass's grave at Fort Lawn and at the flower Place, they have like a specific they they have flowers that you don't put in like offerings for grave sites because of deer like flowers that if deer eight their plants of deer eate them, it would poison the deer. Oh yeah, that's a good differ, yeah, because there are like certain flowers that are inedible, and like literally that would suck

even worse. Like you're visiting your grandma's grave and like a deer comes up and it's like, oh, it's so lovely the circle of life and just starts vomiting like a frat bro just like before you leave the flowers, and then you come back a week later and there's just a dead deer you just sacrifice on your grandmother's grave. So actually, also speaking of being poisoned. P. Twenty two has faced some troubles because he eats you know, rodents

and stuffy. They're pretty opportunistic. They'll eat any meat they can get their hands on. But he was found with rodenticide in his bloodstream a few times when like the conservationists will capture him and check up on his health and um and like in high enough doses, like the rodenticide can kill mountain lions. But actually, like just for him, it caused him to have match right, right, because it compromises their immune systems UM, and then like it makes

it harder for them to fight maange. But he is actually I think so as of now, I think he's made a full recovery and he's doing pretty well. Two is scrappy. He is scrappy, and it's I feel so bad firm because like he's doing all these things, crapping on by but there's just like he is never going

to find I made. Is it a situation where it's too detrimental to the ecosystem to introduce Yeah, I think that they don't really want to miss, Like they don't want to transport a female line who's doing well and like the Santa Monica Mountains because Griffith Park is not really a good zone. And it's also like I think if they took him and put him in the Santa Monica Mountains, he in another male mountain line might just like kill each other. He moved for a reason, right,

So that's an avoid er. UM. So now let's talk about adapters and exploiters because this is really interesting. Adapters are a little less aggressively successful than UH exploiters, but they can manage in urban areas. So an example would be bobcats. You know, they live on the periphery of urban areas. They are smaller. There's not really conflict with

humans as much because they're not big. Humans aren't like, oh, you know a bobcat, gotta kill it um and like, uh, they feed on rodents and small mammals, and rodents are exploiters. They do super well in cities. Yeah, pizza at Pizza for that little what was it a chinchilla? It was some rodent in Australia that got into the bakery and made all the pastries until it couldn't mean yes, that was actually an Australian opossum. Yeah, yeah, and it was

in like a box of jelly doughnuts. And Australian opossums are way cuter than American possums, Like American possums are just such like their nightmare the grunge versions of like the cute, fluffy Australian opossums. I just think there's so misunderstanding. People are so mean. They just they're trying their best. They do. They are really scary though, the way they just come back to life and just like yeah, but they are they are great there. I do like them too,

so you know the bugcats do. Okay, they still face some threats from urbanization. Like we talked about the highway system and freeways and roads really screw up with animals

because like what happens is it's called habitat fragmentations. So you know, they try to cross the highway, they could get killed, and so it creates these genetic islands basically where they have these kind of this genetic bottleneck where they can't really cross the freeways, so they just have this smaller community where it's not as much genetic diversity and they can be taken out more quickly essentially by genetic or whatever, right right, and or just come out weird,

you know, with like six fingers off like a lazy eye. I well, I think as in Norway or the Netherlands or somewhere I can't remember where, but they have those animal crossing high like overpasses that go from one side of a territory to another so that animals are able to cross over without risk of being hit by cars. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's also sort of like in Japan they're the snow monkeys who um, they use telephone wires to cross like when it's snowy because they just don

won't get there. It's too cold. You're going to telephone wires. I mean, there's a really funny video you could just if you look like snow monkeys Japan, Like, you'll find a video of them hours of joy. Well, and and they're they like, I'll go in a little a neat, little line on these telephone wires. It's just like you can just hear that. It's really cute. So here's an urban exploiter that everyone knows and loves. The seagull. It is just a trash compactor of an animal. It is

so opportunistic. It'll eat fish, human food, garbage, cat food in small rodents, eggs, doritos, small reptiles, smaller birds, sandwiches, vats of tiki masala, hotdogs, pigeons, potato chips, tinfoil coins, socks, human fingers, small babies, cookies, and Claire's house keys, their own babies, flying rats. I'm from San Diego, so like I grew up in a beach community and seagulls are

just yeah, they are. They're so aggressive too. If you go to the beach and you have any food, they will swarm you and they're they're very so it's interesting because they're highly social animals, and this is what kind of is distinctive about them versus like a mountain lion.

They're small, highly mobile, very socially intelligent, and they have this mobbing behavior where you know, like they just like in the hitchcock birds, they'll surround you, they'll bully other birds out of their territory, and so it like really helps them in a city because they can just kind of bully their way into these niche feeding areas. And they also will eat literally anything. The tiki masala thing mentioned,

that's not a joke. There was there's a picture of the seagull who landed in a vat of tiki masala and he's like bright orange. It's a pretty cute. Probably put that on Twitter or something. What a piece of garbage? Can you imagine if you like got some tika masala and you're like, tastes a little tastes like bird, tastes like birds. This tastes like bird. So they're very inquisitive.

They'll boldly investigate their environment and they'll go to landfills and just cram themselves full of garbage and trash like they've opened up seagulls that have been eating at landfills and there's just like tinfoil plastic like pieces of metals POGs. Probably, Yeah, I think about with seagulls. Like I grew up in La Joya and San Diego, and my high school is primarily outdoors. There's a lot of southern California schools are because the weather is nice, so you can want for

building a building. It's not a huge deal. And we a huge odd where you'd eat lunch, and I think lunch was like at noon, and so around one they would start to circle because they knew that lunch would be over and then they could descend. And then once that bell rang, they started to descend, and so we'd all you'd have to like run go with your your binder on your head because they start shitting. Yeah, that's the funny part about him is the uncontrollable crap just everywhere,

just raining down seagulls. They don't have the cute little tin like bird duke. You know, it's like big water with it's like toothpasted, like brown, big glob of stinky toothpaste. But then on days where we had um, like half days for whatever reason. Uh, and we'd get out, they'd still on the dot at one start to circle even though no one was at school anymore. We should break legs. Yeah, they are. They are mobs. They will form literal mobs

and they will attack other birds. And they're actually really intelligent. So like, you got to respect the seagull because they um, they can understand each other's warning vocalizations, and they even learn each other's personalities. So if you have like a kind of twitchy seagull who's like always doing false alarms, they learned to ignore them, like like the seagull who cried um, and they'll listen more to the ones that are like the trustworthy seagulls. Like we were like, m hmm,

this is a situation in which I should go. I think about being on um. There's a bad Liberating did a series of Star Wars songs, and one of them is called Seagulls. But now that I just listened to because it's a good song about the yodo one like where everyone listened to it. It's fabulous. But my mom really got into the song, and so we were listening to in the car and we were driving south on Fairfax almost to will Shure, and then there's just a seagull above our car, and I'm like, what are you

doing here? Why are you at Fairfax and Wilsher. You are far away from God seagle and he sent you his profit sign. I was like almost looked at like the animal meaning of seagull. It's like, you are garbage. We're listening to seagulls and there's a seagull. I feel like there's a meaning just some ass backwards done seagull. This fucking type. Dude, bro bro bro this It was so great. Sick. You just gotta pay attention to the world around good tune in, dude. So also a cute thing.

Here's one cute thing about seagulls. The only cute thing about them. Mated pears will utter soft murmurs to each other as they seek out a nesting area for their eggs. They're very particular about where they nest their good parents, but other wise they're good parents. And their murmurs are vocalizations indicating where they think the nest should be put, and they kind of work together to reach a consensus, like here's where little leg nursery will be. It's like

what about here? What do you think about this? It's like like it's like the husband seagulls like, what about over here? And then the wife is like, that's like literally on the edge of a rock. You like, at least try so. Some of the less intuitive effects of urbanization is seen in birds, who are not exploiters, they're actually avoiders. Um. And that is bird divorce. Bird divorced divorce legally binding in the state of Californias, the saddest

thing out into American society today. Bird divorce. Come on, you know, yeah, it's just the degradation of society of morals and the bird family and the bird family. Um. So in humans, people are more likely to divorce in cities versus suburbs. Um. And you know, there's like a variety of causes, but one potential causes like difference and income.

So people in suburbs are typically more financially stable. So it turns out, you know, having money and resources to like go to couples therapy or like money makes quality of life better. It turns out, um, but you know, we don't know what the exact causes. But in birds, the contrast is uh, in suburbs are real bad news for birds. They will get divorced a lot due to suburban crawl into their territory because suburbs usually it's like

around you know the nice leaf line streets. Well, the reason it's lined with leaves is you're like kind of near like wooded areas. Um. So uh, there's a study um done in Seattle, Washington of these urban avoiders songbirds. Um. They looked at the Swainson's thrush and Pacific Rends, who are both urban avoiders, and they will divorce each other in response to the trauma of the suburbs invading their habitat.

So they abandon their nests and then they just like stop seeing each other and they get with new new mates. And this is like similar to the human patterns of divorce, where like environmental and economic stress may factor into splitting up. That's like when you move you have your college boyfriend and then you decide to like after you out of college, like go moving together, but then everything is different. I don't know. This was a terrible idea only worked in college.

Must It must have been the chicken nuggets and the tater taught the chicken nugget hates These tater tots held a relationship together. Dude, bro, it's a glue that kept us together. Is literally like some kind of industrial glue, some starchy cement, some starchy cement that held their love together. That's really upsetting, I know, because songbirds are so lovely. Yeah, they're supposed to be sort of like the doves that

you release on your way, which you shouldn't. Don't do that, murdering doves monsters really seriously, like if you have like captive doves and you release them, they're like, uh yeah, okay, Like what now, dude, Yeah, where do I go? You've remin me from everything? I know? What? What? What? What is this open sky? I mean, like congratulations and everything.

But also I'm woefully underprepared for this. Yeah, it's just like they will they will die, but also they will may be divorced too, because birds are just you know, there's nothing sacred. Birds are as messed up as we are. I just mentioned little bird feet signing a little piece of paper bird attorneys, Like, I guess, I guess this is it just going like and you will get half of the millet and some sticks. That's my favorite stick,

you know, that's my favorite stick. Oh upsetting, so sad, But I mean if they're happier in the long run, I guess it's better. Yeah, I mean until all of their territories by suburbs and stuff. The world sucks. Not all birds are as shy as our divorcee songbirds. There's a type of bird who looks innocent enough but is actually a vicious invader, and it's all Shakespeare's fault. Starlings are small blackbirds with white dots, named such because they

look like a star speckled sky. They're highly intelligent, able to open the tops off of milk jugs, and like parrots, they're able to learn and mimic human words. So what's the problem, Well, there are over two hundred million European starlings in North America, with flocks big enough to sometimes darken the sky, looking like a large cloud, strobing in

what is known as murmurations as they change directions. But they're non native, in a big problem for North American birds, including bluebirds, flickers, and woodpeckers only two of which sounds like a slang for wieners. Starlings will kick them out of their nests, making it difficult for these indigenous species to breathe successfully, they can be a nuisance for humans

as well. Large flocks can demolish entire crops of wheat their vectors for disease, and their nests are even known to cultivate a spooky fungus called Pistoplasma capsulatum, whose fungal spores can cause pistoplasmosis and humans, which can cause fever, chills, coughing up blood, and if left untreated, will attack your whole body, including the central nervous system, adrenal glands, and liver,

causing blindness and a vicilly death. So how did these little harbingers of doom get to North America the cause of most of our problems? An overenthusiastic fanboy in Night, Eugene Chfel in New York pharmaceutical manufacturer, had an evil nerdy plan. He wanted to introduce every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and poems to North America. Other birds he had tried, such as nightingales and skylarks, had failed to thrive and died off. Unfortunately, Shakespeare had faithfully made mention

of one other bird in Henry the Fourth, the Starling. Remember, starlings can be taught human words so Shakespeare wrote this line, Nay, I'll have a starling shall be brought to speak nothing but Mortimer, and give it to him to keep his anger still in motion. So basically, as Starling was taught to say, a name that annoyed the king is a sort of old timey prank. Uh. So Shakespeare dork Sheffilin imported sixties starlings from Europe and released these winged demons

into New York Central Park. Today there are hundreds of millions of these feathered bullets, as the U. S. Department of Agriculture likes to call them. So there's a bunch of birds outside our window staring a menacingly. We're gonna take a quick break to adjust the situation. So our dogs parasites? A newspaper column once answered this with a controversial yes. The San Diego Union Tribune, my hometown, by the way, ran a column titled, let's be honest, America,

dogs are parasites, not Man's best friend. Twitter responded, let's say, tepidly, telling the newspaper to go funk itself, amongst other strongly worded complaints. But is there any truth to the claim that dogs are parasites? The article's main assertion is that dogs are master manipulators. All the pampering, stroller rides, grooming, expensive care, these are all signs that dogs have gained

the system and asserted themselves as our furry overlords. The author sites in article called the Truth about Dogs, which explains that rather than us humans domesticating dogs, dogs may have exploited human empathy in order to live with us, in a way domesticating themselves so the less aggressive, more human friendly proto dogs would be favored by our human ancestors, and they'd earn the enviable position of man's best friend. This,

I think is a pretty strong and compelling theory. But to then call dogs parasites is not only cynical but scientifically inaccurate. The definition of parasites are organisms that benefit at the cost to a host. Dogs are at worst commence alistic symbiots of fancy way of saying, an animal who benefits from a host at no cost or harm to the host. But in my opinion, they are mutualistic, meaning we gain as much from them as they gain from us, be it in the work they do for us,

hurting sheep and eating rats. The emotional benefits we receive and all the Instagram likes we'd get when we post pictures of them in cute shirts. Seriously, look me in the eye and tell me that a dog who tolerates being costooned with bows, hats, and booties isn't paying for his meals. Some dogs, however, have figured out a way to leach off of human society without having to pay with their dignity, and we have to go to Russia to find them. Katie, Yes, you like dogs? I do

you like dogs? I love dogs. They are good papas. They're good papa. They are heck and sweet, and I want us motionales. Would you want dogs to be able to talk? No? I know right, I feel like it would just make things weird. Like it's fine the way it is. You know, they express through their behavior how they're feeling. That's all I need, DoD. You'd imagine like like an updog, like like you know, the dog from up going like you know, I'm sweet and lovable because

I love you. Yeah, But in reality they'd be like Mia, Mia, Yeah, I mean I'm gonna poop everywhere? What is that? What is that? I feel like it'd be a lot of yelling, just like, oh my god, someone needs a block away and you'd just be like I can't, like you already bark like I know what you are saying. Someone is away, like close to our door. The Maleman is here. Yeah, I do, I have a I mean, I love cats

and I love dogs, and I have a cat. Just well I love cats, but also it's just easier for me right now, and I can't live in a place where I have a dog, but like I do just want like just like a sweet boy. It's like a swoo boy dog, just as like a dope, big doofy dog. But they're I mean, like I got a dog. And my impression as a former cat owner is like dogs are all these sort of doofy lovable dogs, but a lot of them just are extremely emotionally needy, like neurotically neurotic.

Like just like my dog who every time the printer goes off or something beeps or my phone gets a HEXT message, she like gets on my shoulders and like it's like her face is in my face and she's like, what is that? What is that? What is that? What does that sound? At least my cat, my cat is neurotic, but my cat is also a loof right, so it's kind of just like I'm gonna just deal with my my stuff like over here, whereas dogs are like, I'm having problems and you need to dress them here, you

need to fix it. Yeah, you need to fix this or right now. And so there's a good reason that they're like that. Dogs have been domesticated for around fifteen

thousand years. Um, so they've basically co evolved with us over a really long period of time, which, um, you know, it's created this situation where we can kind of communicate with them in a way, we can train them, and they also are sort of like they're very good at getting us to pay attention to them, those big puppy dogs, and like just like the wines they make, we we feel the need to to help them, and they also

help us. So um. But what it's crazy is so you would think that most dogs in the world are pet dogs, but of dogs are unrestrained, so that means they're either feral, they're stray, or their village free range dogs. There's nine hundred million dogs in the world, two hundred million are strays, and in Moscow alone there are thirty five thousand stray dogs. That's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of that's a lot. But I can't I apologize.

I cannot help it when I talk about dog kind of to to put that in perspective, the number of wolves in all of Russia is around fifty thou Yeah, um so there's a small group of intrepid stray dogs in Moscow who have learned to navigate the subway system. Yes, yeah, they're they're great videos online of these dogs where they just like they're like in the subway. Uh, They're they're

at like the subway station. They're just like waiting around with all the other commuters, and they're like kind of go to work, kind of go to work than the trade doors. And they're like they're like excuse me, pardon me, ma'am. Just me and dog going to work. Um so. They were studied by Russian biologists Andre Poyarkov and animal expert

Andre neronov Um. So poiarkov Um observed stray dogs becoming more wolf like with greater intelligence, pack structure, and they were losing domesticated dog behaviors such as tail wagging and physical traits such as spotted coats. So the more feral, they became the more wolf like um. And then these more feral wolf like dogs were also exploiting the subway system. Um. So there are three types of dog commuters. There are dogs who live in the subway, but they don't travel.

They just lived there because it's warm. Lots of people in Russia it's snow it's snowy. And it's also just like you know, commuters bumping up, dropping their pretzels and stuff. They're borsh, that's not really right. It's trash and polish. Maybe it's polish, but also like who's walk around with a big old bottom? I don't know. I'm like a couple of generations removed Russians, so I don't actually knowsh

it around. I just don't actually um so uh. And then the second type of subway dogs are those who

use the subway to travel instead of walking there. They're just like, you know, I need to get from point A to point B. I know the subway will take me there, and so I just hop right on there, you know, open up a good newspaper and eat that newspaper because on top of it, um and it's really cute too, because like sometimes they travel and like pairs or groups, and like when one dog is like, it's our stop now, they'll like inform the other dog like, hey, hey, barfie,

just our stop. Oh my god, we gotta go. Um. The third type is my favorite. It's dogs who use the subway to commute to location for busking purposes. So they will uh live in areas that are good for sleeping, so like suburban areas. Um. And then like they will go into the urban areas, like into the city to go beg for food. It's like people who work in in Manhattan but commune from there, Like it's easier to buy a house out there, and you know, we like

the wide open space. Dog, I can't afford rent. I shouldn't rent. No, I'd rather just live in Jersey, live in a drain pipe, and I gotta commute to work. I mean, it's just like my workout a talk start up. Yeah, you live in like out in in uh in my own dookey. I just like. But my favorite thing about that is there's the first dog, Like the first dog who accidentally like got on the subway and realize what happened and then was like he's like, oh, we gotta

I gotta tell every about it a good portal. Rich wizards were like, oh man, I've been here before, but it took me way longer to get here before, like the thought process that had to go, yeah, like, oh, this is something we gotta keep doing because my legs are small. Have you heard of train It's the hot new trend. They're like Ted's drunk again, someone taken away from him? Take the borched away from the dog. Another fun thing that straight dogs will do that's really like intelligent,

the big limpse. Oh my god, I love it. Yeah. Yeah, they'll like they'll like drag one leg on the ground and be like, oh no, whoe is me. I'm just a poor dog and it's our board. I am just a good boy. And then as soon as they get that sausage there, like got you suck it, and then they hop away giving you they run away giving you

the middle finger. Um. Pet dogs also do this. So sometimes my dog will shiver as if she's scared, and it's like usually after so like there will be a thunderstorm and she's shivering out of true fear and she gets a lot of attention, and then the next day there's freaking nothing going on. She starts shivering. I'm like, you want hugs and treats, and she's like yuh huh, And then I also give it to her, though I

do give in. She played like a fit. You're technically not supposed to You're not like supposed to coddle them because they learned that to do the fear response in order to get the coddling. But I just I caught

I'm a coddler. Why can I say? Yeah, it's like with kids when they learned that if they freak out, like at Walmart or I don't know why that was like a target, they have a melting to take the kids to Walmart and they throw a tantrum, then you buy him a fit if you buy the thing to make them quiet, And then anytime you go anywhere, they started tying. I hope if and when I become a parent, I don't treat my children like a treatment we would have.

It's like, I hope I would have better better boundaries. I think so um so, just me with a thousand miles stare of like, damn it, dog raising is hard, parenting, oh geez. So the idea that they can kind of like tap into our human empathy and exploit. It does tie into that theory of dog evolution that wolves with certain affable temperaments could exploit human kindness, and so they

were kind of responsible for domesticating themselves. Maybe. Well, I think it's interesting that it's like domesticated going up in a bell curve and then as they became feral again, losing some of the behaviors again. But yeah, yeah, it's like you can't unknow what you know because they're I don't think they're vicious. They're not necessarily friendly dogs, but yeah, they and they are more or they have that pack structure. I think they like their ears get stiffer to they

lose the spotted coats. Because what's interesting is that all domesticated animals share certain genetic markers, like the the weak cartilage in the ears that causes like floppiness, sloppy ears like pigs, cows, dogs, um. Notably cats don't don't know, cats are not really as domestic. They're very close to their wild counterparts. They're very genetically similar to the wildcats.

And then like other things like spotted coats, you see that in cows, dogs, pigs, rabbits, you know, um, constructors, um. But yeah, Like I don't know if reptiles actually counting this, but like, yeah, most domesticated mammals share these genetic markers. As dogs become more feral, they kind of lose some of those some of those traits. It is the ears thing that like, Okay, when they're stiff, they're better, they're

eat they can hear, and they're more like aware. And then as they been domesticated, it's like the chiller lazier dogs that get bread to be like pets, and so then they're just all their skill, they're just so relaxed, they're like or that they're like spotted coats. I don't I'm like, I don't think so. I think it's just sort of arbitrarily attached to certain behavioral traits, so like more um, you know, the chiller behavior is it's just like,

for whatever reason, be less less aggressive. Also, maybe less of certain hormones are attached to like cartilage productions. So these things just like that just happened to be biologically linked. But I don't think there's any like actual structural purpose of like the ears flopping down kept Sometimes my dog has one ear that sticks up and the other one.

I just oh, just I'll buy, but you don't. You love it when cats get their ear turned inside out and they're just like going around like my always book, I'm just like, you look like such a picking because Lila likes to look cool and smart all the time, and when she looks dumb, I'm like, you're an idiot. Like they go from being like British Bond villain of like yes, feed me la tuna, to like, oh you pokey, mommy,

mommy fixs me. You always spoke in. My favorite is when Lola rolls off the bed accidentally and then like hits the deck and looks around like like tries to act like nothing just happened. I was like, you fell. Your dog sometimes miscalculates to jump on the bed and just like wipes out. She kind of just like looks around like what what just happened? Who did that? Who was responsible? The couch was responsible for this. No one moved the couch. Nobody moved the couch. You're just stupid,

Yeah you. So we talked briefly about how dogs may have domesticated themselves, but they may not be the only ones. There's a theory that humans are self domesticated, that the reason we conform societies and civilizations is our ability to be docile and cooperative, a trait we may have self selected for. The theory is that humans depended on group dynamics to survive or not the strongest, fastest, or large

tooth eist of them all. But we are smart and we can work together, so groups of our pre Homo sapien ancestors would weed out those who were overly anti social. So say there's that one asshole auster Lepithecus, an early human ancestor, though we'll call Lucy. Lucy is a general asshole to other austro Lepithecai, especially one name, let's say,

Charlie Grog. And whenever they're playing kick the oblong rock, she pretends as if she's holding it for Charlie Grog, but then she lifts it up at the last second, causing his kick to send him flying onto his back. Then she smashes Charlie Grog's head in with the rock and eats the soft brain tissue. Lucy would quickly be excommunicated from the group of Australopithecus and left to die.

Her homicidal asshole genes meaning a quick ant Recently, genetic studies have shown this theory may have some solid scientific merit. Researchers compared the genomes of humans with that of domesticated animals, finding similar genetic markers that all domesticated animals share. So there you go, we probably domesticated ourselves. I am now going to scoop my butt across the carpet because science says I can. So I'm about to have an interview

with Dr Greg Pauley. But first, Katie, you got anything you want to plug? Oh? You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at k A w I L L e r T. That's at k A Willard. Nice. Our names are the same, I know, and it's spelled the same, and I'd be happy. We're doing a D and D campaign to have it do. Yeah, yeah, it's the best. Stay stay there, good yo. We'll be right back after these messages and we're joining me. Is Dr Greg Paully, researcher and herpetology curator at the Natural History Museum of

Los Angeles County. He studies things like conservation, genetics, the effects of urbanization, and he's a herpetologist. Great, can you explain what that means to our audience. Yeah, so herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians. And then the curator part of what I do is at the Natural

History z M, I do a combination of research. We're working on exhibits in that region, and maybe the most important part of my job is actually taking care of this research collection, which is we have a hundred ninety thousand research specimens that are opped out to researchers all around the country, um for their own research needs. Now, are these are these specimens alive or preserved in some way? These are all one ninety of those are preserved animals.

So they are animals that we either received dead or some researcher in the past used for their research and then it's still had research you know, potential, and so it was preserved and it's still now available for scientists to use. And so how do you maintain preserved a bunch of preserved reptiles? Yeah, so it'll depend on what

kind of collection you're thinking about. For a collection like reptiles amphibians, we have what are called wet specimens, So we preserve all of our animals first and formulae and then transfer them over to alcohol and then they will stay in a jar of alcohol for literally decades, you know, really centuries to come. Yeah, I've seen like, uh, specimens that are like hundreds of years old and they look

pretty good. Yeah, it's amazing. So we that method of form of preserving and formulat and then switching to alcohol. That method has only been around since about nineteen o five six. And if you look at a specimen that was preserved that way, say in five, and you look at one that was preserved in nine, you can't tell the difference. If I show you one that I preserved last year and I show you one that was preserved thirty years ago, yeah there's a little bit of a difference.

But we estimate that these specimens have cared for properly, will be useful for researchers for a minimum of three years. But there are specimens that were preserved in all sorts of bizarre ways, usually like in some sort of alcohol e spirit from the late sixteen hundreds, that are still in European museums and still available for research use. That's amazing.

So like, uh, does research ever take one of those really old specimens and do genetic testing on them or so It's funny like, once you preserve something in formula, it makes it really hard to get DNA out of. So actually those older specimens that were never exposed to formula oftentimes are better at DNA then, say something that's from the nineteen thirties, and then what we do today is before we expose it to formula and we take a tissue sam. I see, so you have the d

N a kind of lot. Yeah, so I I curate the what collection. We also have a skeletal collection, and on top of that, we have a tissue collection which is in a negative a d degree Celsius freezer, and so we have all these tissue samples, and so when researchers just want to look at a tissue, they can request that tissue stample and we might then ship that off to them for them. That's some Jurassic Park stuff situation. We hope that nobody's cloning, you know, trying to bring back,

you know, something that hasn't been approved. Yeah, we're not too worried about that. Yeah, no, that that's awesome. So I wanted to talk to you a bit about the Citizens Science Initiative that you and the Natural History Museum are doing so, you're recruiting l A residents to help with documenting animal populations and behaviors. Can you talk a little bit about what citizen science is in how it helps with your research. Yes, a citizen science, I mean

the basic idea of citizen sciences. It's crowdsourcing. It's basically asking members of the public to help answer to work with a professional scientist to help answer some research question. And as a museum curator, I have this amazing time machine where I can go into the collections and I can find all these specimens that tell me for a place like l A. You know this absolutely amazing huge cities, one of one of the biggest cities in the world.

We have the specimens that tell us where species were found at a particular place at a particular time. So we know like the distributions of species in the past, But how do you learn where some of those species are found today? When everything is private property? Like, that's not places that I can easily as a scientist go do research. You can't take your team of grad students into someone's lawn up not ly usually so in order to avoid being shot or you know, getting getting trespassing

tickets all the time. Um, we use this crowd sourcing approach. We use citizen science. So we basically just asked people to pull out their smartphones and their digital cameras and take photographs of what they see and upload it to this amazing website, this this online community of science or citizen science platform called by naturalists. So by doing that, I can learn where things are found today, compare that to the historical records in the museums, and see how

ranges are shifting over the course of urbanization. So it has these massive conservation benefits and you can use that information for landscape and urban planning. But these photographs that people are taking aren't just like, oh, here's an animal and it shows you where it is. Yes, that's all true, But sometimes they're photographing really interesting ecological or behavioral phenomena

as well. I know this because so you had asked for photos of alligator lizards, which is a totally normal thing to ask for, right, Yeah, And I wass thinking like, oh, that'd be cool if I could could find them. But I didn't have much hope because I live in a very sort of uh like a bunch of apartments and streets and I thought there's no way they would want

to be here. But there's a pair of them right in the middle of the sidewalk, um doing their weird mating ritual where the male bites down on the female head and they just like stay there. And so like there's all this foot traffic and like I'm on like kneel down onto the sidewalk with my phone and like do close ups. And people are kind of laughing because it's like, you know, a little different is the weirdo and the yoga pants taking photos of of lizards getting

it on. Um, But yeah, that is it's really fun to kind of be feel like you're contributing to science without having to do any of the other hard work. So this is and this is such a great example. So what you have seen, you've now seen to southern alligator lizards mating. I've lived within the range of the southern alligator lizard for thirty six years of thirty four years of my life, I've never seen this. Um, you have now seen something that I've never seen. And yet

I study this. And the reason that we rely on citizen science is for exactly that it's just random chance that you're going to happen upon them. And so if enough people know about it, they'll be able to And everyone has smartphones now, like you have your camera on you at all times, and so I mean here you have the situation where an observation that's rarely observed by any one person, but by crowdsourcing it, we can generate

this amazing data set. So as of this morning, over five years of doing this on citizen Science, we've generated a data set of roughly three hundred and fifty observation. Well I shouldn't say rough actually did the math this morning, so it's actually like three d and fifty two observations this morning, and five years of promoting this on citizen science, I myself has still never seen this in the entirety

of the pure view scientific literature. There are three reported dates of when alligator lizards have been observed mating, and so you can't do anything. You can't do anything with three observations, like you can infer like how do how does the timing of breeding whether from year to year? The sample size as too small, you can't you can't do any statistics on it. You can infer any general putnis.

But with three observations. So I'm pretty sure. I'm still like a little hesitant to say this, but I'm pretty sure that the data set we've generate it is the largest data set of like of matings for any lizard species ever, which is, I mean pretty amazing. And I still haven't even seen this. And I know there's like some some listeners are like, yeah, but like what can

you do with that? Like right, But the reality is that for the entire field of animal behavior, a huge chunk of research is all about mating behaviors because that's sort of the necessary step to population growth. And yeah, I mean it's kind of critical to keeping your species going. And so it's you know, it's really common that people and it's there's so many amazing sort of evolutionary stories within that field of like making behaviors and behavior. So

it's this amazing thing to be able to study. But for most species, you're never going to be able to generate enough observations. But you can solve that problem by crowdsourcing too. I remember, I think you guys you released a really funny Valentine's Day called action or it is, like do you remember that. Well, we've done this so This was not I wish this is my good idea,

but it was not. It was somebody in our marketing group said, if you're you know, if they ead in the spring, why are you announcing this in early March. Why don't you just announce it on Valentine's Yeah, And so we absolutely just started making you know, we have this, we have this nature and l a blog and it's a way to reach out to a broad audience to get people excited about you know, nature events that are happening across across the region. And so yeah, we just

started producing it on Valentine's Day. And I forget all the titles that we've used, because we've done we've done a handful of these now. But it's basically, you know, just trying to you know, get the word out. In Valentine's Day is a great day to do that because it's when when humans are thinking about sort of romance, and we've got alligator litles thinking about romance and pair those things toge and also other odors related to us alligator.

There's all sorts of great stuff going on. Um, what's have you ever gotten a really weird or exciting submission like a submitted photo of something that's just like blew your mind. I mean, it's so hard for me to whittle it down to one because we get these amazing photographs I mean all the time, Like I feel like I could give you a different answer to this almost

every other week. So I mean, I think some of the neatest photos that we've received are things like I mean, sometimes there's a single photo that literally does tell a thousand words, and so that single photograph. UM. For some of the cases that we've had recently have been things like somebody took a photograph of some lizard species, for example, that had never before been documented in California. So a great example of this is this guy by the name

of Glenn Yoshida. I hope Glenn doesn't mind me using his name. UM. And I never met Glenn when this story actually happened. But Glenn was walking into his house one day after work, and I think he even had like, you know, groceries in one hand, and there's a gecko hanging out right above his front door. And he took a photo of this gecko and he emailed it to the to the Natural History Museum where I work, and so he didn't actually just upload a tin Naturalists. He

wasn't a Ninaturalist user at the time. He just he just sent it right to us until I got this email from Glenn, and I was like, whoa, I don't I basically, I mean, I knew it was a house gecko of some kind, so I knew the genius, but I didn't know what species it was. And so I actually emailed back to Glenn and I said, oh, hey, this is a really interesting find. Um, would could I could you send me your phone number? I'd like to chat with you about this, And so he sent me

send me his phone number. So I called him up. This is like two hours later, It's like at nine o'clock on a Wednesday night or something. So I called up Glenn and I said, hey, you know, I know it's one of two species. I don't know which one. Neither has ever been documented as established in California. UM, do you have have you seen multiple individuals? He goes like yeah, I have seen multiple individuals for a couple

of years. And I said, okay, well, like, can I just come to your house tomorrow at around a p m. And then we'll just wander around your neighborhood and see if we can. Yeah, just hanging out looking for geckos. And he's like, yeah, you seem like a totally normal human. Sure. Um, so yeah. The next night I showed up at Glenn's house. We wandered around his house and we did find some more geckos, and once I had one in hand, I knew what it was. It's a thing called the Indo

Pacific gecko. And it's an Yeah, it's not it's yeah, I mean it's from the Indo Pacific region, so in their native range. I mean it's thousands of miles away from here and so, but they are in Hawaii and they get moved around in the nursery plant trade. There also some populations on a plant exactly so, and it's an all female species. So one individual shows up, she lays eggs, her daughter's hatch out, and then they grew up to lay eggs as well. It's it's like parthen

exactly so. This is an a sexual species of parthenagenetic species. So it just takes one individual to start a new population. And we see this a lot a lot of these non native species, particularly in reptiles. A lot of the non native species that show up, are these a sexual lineages because it only takes you don't need to individuals. Yeah, and you get all these crazy thing time me. So like literally a lot of my field work is doing

things like wandering around neighborhoods and Torrents. Were wandering around neighborhoods and Orange or you know, all across southern California. I'm just out looking for geckos and so. But that one photograph and that triggered us doing this field work. I never would have found this on my own. It turns out they were only on basically Glenn's house. He doesn't know how about how happened. They actually died out

after about five years, so they're not there anymore. But we have since then found actually two months after Glenn's discovery, we found them down in Um in Orange County as well, in the Lake Forest neighborhood. Again, a single photograph started that, and so Glenn and the gentleman down in Um in Lake Forest and Orange County he made this discovery. His name is Bob. Were all so Glenn and Bob and I actually the three of us together wrote up a little paper on this, published it, and so Glenn and

Bob started out as you know, people taking photographs. He being these sort of citizen scientists participating in this project. Then they went all the way through the scientific process, all the way to publishing in the peer reviewed scientific literature,

which and that all starts with one photo. That's amazing, so you can, like, you can become peer reviewed if you have your phone and you take some if you get if you end up happening to take a photograph, that is somehow you know, extra Sit and Glenn and Bob's case. You know, these are the first documented established populations of these geckos in the state of California, so first state record and then first county record and a and first county record in origin. So it was really significant.

You know, most of the observations aren't something that's quite that significant, but are still really important for thinking about, you know, how species are responding to urbanization. And of course, you know this whole effort, this sort of citizen science effort, sort of using these photographs that are put up on naturalists.

This has been going on for ten years. Well, yeah, that's a good amount of time to get it's great, but what about the scientists that are here two hundred years from now, three years from now, you think about the digital legacy of biodiversity data that we're leaving these future scientists. I mean, it's amazing to think that like any person out there can actually create this absolutely amazing research potentially of conservation value for for scientists of the future.

So we can think about leaving this like digital biodiversity data. It's really kind of and it plays into this whole idea of like now that it's everyone's responsibility what's happening to our planet? And um, I think you know, most people think about it in terms of like recycling and and being you know, a good conservationist, and that's all good, but I think that they're these un lesser known things that you can do and really take an active role

in helping conservation efforts. And that's a great way to think about it. Yeah, and it's it truly is this absolutely amazing resource. And so if we just think about like a place like Los Angeles a hundred years ago or even fifty years ago, and you think about the species that we're common here, and in fact, one of the species it was really common here was the horn lizard,

which is species that you're super excited about. So, that was the most common backyard lizard in UM, some of the foothill communities in the San Gabriel Valley up until the nineteen fifties, and they're now gone, completely gone. And so in this relatively short period of time, we've seen this massive change in the fauna. Well, the data that we're generating today, we might even it might even be for common species, but it's the thing that we think

is common now. Maybe fifty years from now it won't be called yeah, and we'll we'll have a much more sort of like UM, subtle we'll see be able to track subtle changes much better with larger data exactly. So. UM. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County recently released a new book called Wild l A, exploring the amazing nature in and around Los Angeles. UM. So I got

a sneak peek, and it's really beautiful. It's got these amazing photos, and it's also really exciting for l A residents in understanding native species in our own backyards and being able to see like, oh, here's this cool photo and then know exactly like where the species kind of is found. Um, what are some of the unique things that people could learn from this book. So yeah, so I mean this is this was a really fun project

to be a part of UM. One of the four authors UM, and it's it's really written for people who live in Los Angeles or even or people who are visiting Los Angeles because it's the book is really in

three parts. It's sort of like ten introductory chapters, and as you said, tons of photos, tons of factoids, like lots of these little call out and then they're is a hundred one species accounts and it's native and non native species and every and a lot of it are the common species that people are going to see on a daily basis, but there's also aspirational species like bighorn sheep and and mountain lions. You know, things that are unlikely to see but like you, you might see them

if you get lucky. And then it ends with twenty five UM recommended excursions all across the Los Angeles region. And so for people who are coming in from out of town, it's like we sort of hope that this is like one stop shopping, Like grab the book. You can quickly plan out a couple of hikes. You can identify some of the stuff that you see, and you can learn a lot about sort of nature and Los

Angeles and why it's interesting. Um I think that when people think about l A, they think like Hollywood, the Hollywood star Walk of Fame, but there really is some pretty made, amazing habitats. So that's that's the single most that's the single biggest message we have in this book, which is that l A is absolutely amazing place for nature. And so I have a couple of factoids that I

always like try to share with people. Um so, and I think this is something that like Angelina should be bragging about, and it's something that people should be coming to l A to experience. So um quick quick, first factory. This is actually one of my favorite things about Los Angeles. So California is always bragged that you can ski and surf in the same day, which is true, but l A naturalists can also brag as well because you can see wild bighorn sheep and green sea turtles in the

same day. And this is totally doable, like we could actually how how would you go about doing that? So

it's actually not that hard. So first of all, the sea turtle part is almost guaranteed because The northernmost resident population of sea turtles is in the lower San Gabriel River in Long Beach, and as long as it isn't as long as it hasn't been a day with recent rain so that the river is up and maybe it's kind of murky and and it sometimes it's easy to mistake, you know, some chunk of trash for maybe a turtle

that just quickly hops its head up and disappears. But if you go on like a regular day where it hasn't had it like a recent flood of it, you're almost guaranteed to see a green sea turtle. And the crazy thing is that the platform above the river that you can stand on to look at these green tea journals, at times these turtles pop up and they're like eight feet away from you, like a green, a wild green

sea turtle. That's incredible. So that alone, like you don't have to go out like scuba diving to no, you just you can like be sitting there in your flip flops and t shirt, sunglasses and hat and you're just like, there's a sea turtle. My day is made. Head back, go grabbing margarita somewhere. And then after the Margharita, you

go see a big horn sheep. Yeah, so the big horn is not quite as guaranteed, but also you have a good shot at And the way to go see a big horn sheep is you drive up into the sand Gabriel Mountains up towards Mount Baldy and there's a couple of good spots. We recommend a few of them in the book. There's a couple of good spots where

you can stop and check them out. And actually, one of the funny things that happened us is as we were doing research for the book, we went up to Mount Baldy up to the ski area, and you know, it's only like an hour and twenty minute drive or something like that from downtown Towline. So we just zipped up there and got out of the car, walked like six steps and I look over and there's these two rams just on the hillside, right across from the parking lot.

I mean, we couldn't have planned it better. And it was like, okay, well, like we're done, you know, let's at a few photos and go home. And then the funny thing that that happened is that in our photographer, who is also one of the writers Charles Hood was there and we were trying to get some photos of

these of these rams. And what we didn't know at the time but we quickly learned, is that um, during certain times of the year, the rams have all of these dominance behaviors, and so they basically engage in lots of sort of homosexual behaviors and do things like mounting each other, you know, standard sort of dominance displays. Not at all female hyenas. Lots of canids do it, so like, not at all uncommon. But we couldn't necessarily use a photograph of two very you know, very clearly rams like

you know, big curving horns. We couldn't use photos of those, like if we only have one photo of big horn sheep in the book. We didn't think that the probably the best photo to have sort of this photo that's got this complex sort of behaviors behind it, not not in today's society. Maybe soon, maybe soon, hopefully, so it would have taken a longer caption like but it is such a I mean, so we actually, you know, we

we literally could have done that. If we turned around that day and went straight back down, we could have seen big horn cheap and green sea turtles, and that's like pretty much the only place in the world that you could sort of do that, and what an amazing thing to be able to do, you know, and you're in both of those cases, you're like never more than like probably thirty thirty five miles as the crow flies

from downtown and almost completely opposite sort of like biomas. Yeah, very very different, very different, and each of them has their own Like this is one of the things that we really try to focus on in Los Angeles is like we've had so much change, you know, because of urbanization and you know, the modification of the l A River and the same Gabriel River and also the things that have happened that every single species you see has this absolutely amazing story. Like green sea turtles have an

amazing story. Big horn sheep and how they're managing to make it in the same Gabriel's you know, is a really interesting story. But you know how the eastern fox squirrel that we can almost certainly see, you know, right on the block outside of the studio, they have an amazing story as to how they got here. You know, every species here has an amazing story, and we tell as many of those as we can in this book.

That's fantastic, I think as I mean, even if you're just coming to visit as a tourist, I feel like the Hollywood Walk of Fame is a little bit overrated, super crowded, kind of annoying. It's it's basically a sidewalk and people dressed as avatar blue avatars screaming at you, um and like seventy jack sparrows. It's not that cool. I think going and visiting some of the really incredible

natural habitats around l A is a lot cooler. I mean, I think you know, when people say, oh, there's not much nature in l A, my my response is always, there are twelve million people who can get onto public transit and can be guaranteed to see a midsized carnivore by the end of the day. And it's easy to do that. All you have to do is show up at Griffith Park right around sunset and hang out around

the picnic tables. Right with the picnic table grounds, meet the edges of the of the sort of coastal stage group there, the Chaparale there, and at dusk every single night, coyotes wander through this Like, what do you mean there's no nature? I guarantee you I can. I can twelve million people and go see a coyote on any given night. Like that's incredible. Yeah, and it should be celebrated, like this is an amazing place to see nature. It really is.

Uh So, we've been talking today about urban avoids, exploiters and adapters. Do you have a favorite story of urban exploitation or adaptation? I mean, I think that the Eastern fox squirrel is a pretty amazing I mean there's so many stories of like amazing stories, but here in Los Angeles, I think especially the Eastern fox world. And this has actually played out over many cities. The Eastern fox squirrel has been introduced to a huge numbers of cities in

the western YUS. The closest that s PCs should get to hear is like central Texas. But um, here in the Los Angeles region, what happened is that we have the Sautel Veterans However, what used to be called the Sautel Veterans zone. It's actually quite close to U C l A. It's just it's just west of the four oh five um in sort of the west all A region and so in the in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, the people who are living that the

Sawtel veterans homes were mostly Civil War soldiers. And so we had people there who might have grown up in Kentucky or Tennessee or elsewhere in the Eastern US. And it's not totally clear whether they were pets or whether they were being raised for food, but they had a bunch of Eastern fox squirrels like in pins. And what they would do is they would take scraps from the commissaria or from the cafeteria there, and they would give

the scraps to the squirrels. And eventually some you know, administrators said, hey, that's a waste of government funded you know food, and so you have to get rid of those squirrels. And so the story is that the squirrels were then released. But at that point you have, you know, l a sort of building up. You've got you know, telephone lines and power lines running all across the place, and so instead of having to run around down low where all these cars are, these squirrels are just running

around on all these powers. So, yeah, exactly, and so um in fact, we actually you're asking about interesting naturalist observations. I just saw a photo two weeks ago of an Eastern fox squirrel that had been electrocuted, you know, and it's like, well, that's horrible, But it's also like an it's an interesting aspect of sort of urban nation. Like there are these unusual sort of aspects of the urban environment.

The burning squirrel. If yeah, it smells good just for like the first few minutes, and then once it once it hits well done, smells good, it's too well done. Um, you gotta take it off distant time and so um, you know, they have this amazing story of how this is this non native squirrel that is now spread all across the landscape and it's totally doing well here because it just happens to do really well in urban places. It doesn't need a high density of trees. Are native

Western gray squirrel needs high densities of trees. Just squirrel. It's like, yeah, I've got some you know, I've got some lawn, I've got occasional tree, I've got some cat food to eat, I've got some fruit. So they just do really well in urban places. So it's a species is doing incredibly well as an urban exploitter. That's amazing. Um, So do you have any calls to action that you

can give people or anything else to plug? So I think I mean the biggest called action I would suggest to folks is, um, get involved in a citizen science project. How do you How would you do that? So? I think it's really easy. Um. Most people are already walking around with smartphones, and that smartphone for reasons that are not clear, mostly historical artifact, we still call it a phone. No, we use it for dozens of other things. You know

that that smartphone has a GPS and camera. It's a lizard sex can You can take all sorts of great lizard sex shots and so yeah, people can just pull out their cameras and start taking photos. And the best thing to do is to download this app called I Naturalist. Um, there's a web platform for I naturalists and there's an app. You can download this app. You take the photos through the Naturalist app, it uploads them to our naturalists. You

can see your photos online. You can participate in literally one of hundreds of projects on a naturalists on that platform. Here in southern California, I always promote our projects at the natural History Museum. So my my research is on is this project called rough Tiles and Amphibians, and Southern California we have another and the acronym for that as rascals, we haven't really like acronyms. UM. We have a snail and Slug project, which is snails and slugs living in

metropolitan environments. That's called slime again because UM. And then we also have the Southern California Squirrel Survey, which which sadly we did not come up with a great acronym for UM. But those are all projects that people here in Southern California can participate in. But no matter where people are, there are there are observations up on our naturalists from every continent, you know, from all around the world.

And so no matter where people are, they can start doing this and making observations that you know, researchers today and researchers into the future might might be then using that's great. So like like whenever people take photos of a squirrel and try to send it to all their friends and your friends not necessarily going to care, but I naturalist is that's exactly somebody actually does care about that squirrel photo. Yeah. Yeah, It's like I've found a

really fat squirrel. Friends don't care, naturalists, scientists to the rescue. Well, thank you so much for sitting down and letting me grillly over these these reptile stories and aways happy to chat about citizen science. Um. You can find us on Twitter at Creature Feet Pod. That's not feat as in stinky beat, it's fat as in f E A T.

And you can find me at Katie Golden. Golden is spelled wrong, by the way, It's g O L d I N. And you can also, you know, follow me on my bird Twitter at pro bird Writes, where I'm a bird and you know that's what I am on Twitter, little bird. And thanks to the Space Colssics for their awesome song ex Alumina