Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology. Today on the show, I am interviewing wildlife expert, biologist and filmmaker Forrest Galante. Welcome.
Hey, how's it Gallan. Good to see U.
I'm very excited to talk to you because you deal with a lot of personal interaction with wildlife, which is way more bold than I've ever been willing to be with. I'm sort of a I'm a binoculars type person. I like to observe from a distance, I would say, but you are very drawn to getting right in there. So first, just describe a bit for people what you do in terms of your videos and your work in wildlife education in biology.
Yeah. Sure, so, I'm a wildlife biologist who primarily focuses on critically endangered edge of extinction species. I work with a plethora of wild animals, from those that most people have never heard of to things like elephants and lions, and you know, we do a lot of different stuff from basically the ultimate game of hide and seek, which is figuring out whether or not some of these animals are actually extinct and or if they've just you know,
been overlooked for a number of years. To a lot of human wildlife conflict mitigation, which is something that I've worked on a lot, where we translocate animals that are in human wildlife conflict zones, come up with creative solutions
like basically any non lethal mitigation methods. And then you know, another field that I work on is invasive species figuring out eradication efforts, how to calmbat invasive species areas in which invasive species are harming native flora and fauna and ecosystems, And you know, it's a lengthy combination of stuff, and a lot of that stuff can be seen on Discovery
channel Animal Planet. I recently launched a YouTube channel that is growing like Gangbusters, which is a lot of fun where I get to do sort of more intimate, less polished, more just kind of fun stuff that I want to do in the vein of those three categories. And you know, anything with wildlife is what I like doing and communicating.
One of the things that is so difficult in terms of human interactions with wildlife is the there's when you have an ecosystem, you have like this very delicate balance.
In the past maybe fifty one hundred years, we've just kind of come to understand like how much our behavior has impacted wildlife, including things like, hey, maybe we should stop taking mongy's and throwing them at snakes to make them kill the snakes, because that actually has a negative impact on the environ I mean, we've done so many things that has been you know, unintentionally harmful, sometimes intentionally harmful where we're just like, hey, we want to wipe
out these animals because we're annoyed by them. And so do you think nowadays, do people really in general have like an understanding of how their behavior impacts animal species or is it's still sort of sometimes a struggle to communicate to communities like hey, like we actually, yes, this is just like a tiny fish that maybe is not very charismatic, but we do need to protect it.
I think the general understanding, the general perception has certainly shifted substantially from where it used to be. You know, the idea of introducing cane toads to eat beetles and mongeese to quell rat populations and things like that, that's a thing of the past. We now understand the massive ramifications negative ramifications that human induced introductions like that have, and I think, you know, generally public perception has changed.
I think it's become a little pendulous where it's probably swung too far in the wrong direction a little bit, and then it will end up getting back to neutrality.
And what I mean by that is, you know, now if you open up Instagram, you go on I kind of go on my Instagram without seeing a gorgeous gallon of bikini swimming next to a great white shark, which is probably also not something we should be encouraging, right Like, it's sort of it's swung a little bit too far, and they're all you know, the same thing with people from PTA that go out and get your grocery store lobster and dump them into the wrong ocean because they
think they're doing good for the world. You know that they're not. They're actually harming the world. So I think the pendulum went from two extreme in one direction to probably too extreme in the other, and now it's starting to backshift to a place of better understanding, more neutrality. And that's exactly what we need, you know, we don't need people out there just destroying and consuming and throwing
out invasive species for the heck of it. We also don't need people that are eco terrorists in the sense of robbing grocery stores to inter deduce main lobster into southern California, you know, because yeah's good for the individual lobster. We need we need a nice like everything in life, we need something in the middle where we go, Okay, we have a good understanding of this. Here are the good things to do, here are the bad things to do, and here's how we can manage it, and we're okay.
We're in a We're in a time and place in human history, and I don't foresee that changing, certainly not in our lifetime, where pretty much all wildlife and ecosystems have to be managed. At this point, there are so many people on the planet, there's so much development construction. We don't have the luxury of just being like, leave it alone, let it be like that. That that's the thing of the past. For the majority of wild spaces
in the planet. Most of it has to be managed today by human beings, and so we need to be good dosins of that.
Yeah, I I of the uh releasing lobsters into their non native habitats. I've seen videos of people buying goldfish from pet stores and then releasing them into their like local pond. Don't absolutely do not do that. The goldfish does not yearn for freedom. The goldfish is not going to be a native species of carp to whatever local water system you have, and it's could devastate the local
species there. The best thing you can do for a pet store goldfish, if you feel sorry for it, is to get it a nice, big tank and not overfeed it. But I think people like they'll see something like that, like a pet store goldfish, and think like this, this poor thing is sad, and so I need to do something. And I think there's also like a lot of with social media, there's sometimes this like reward that you get, like if you do some stunt like that and you get a lot of views, and so people want to
do that. It's like if I've seen these horrible videos where it's like clear that someone set up some situation where they're like quote unquote saving an animal, but they're not. But they're not a wildlife expert, they're not a veterinarian, they don't know what they're doing, but they've created this scenario where it's like, well, I'm now holding this like wild animal, and then you get all this attention on
social media. But on the other hand, I think there are a lot of people who genuinely desire to have positive, safe interactions with wildlife in a non destructive way. Do you have any advice for people who may see your videos or something and like they recognize like, well, I'm not an expert and I don't want to harm the environment at all, but I also really want to have
this like personal relationship with wildlife. I want to get in there and go on hikes or go on excursions and like get as close to wildlife as I can without hurting it. Like what advice would you have for people?
Yeah? Do it. I mean I think that the best way to learn is hands on learning, you know. But I'm not saying go out and pick up a rattlesnake because you saw someone on YouTube. Do it. Everything you do in life. It's just like driving a car. Right.
Just because you see somebody in a movie on the fast and furious jumping a car off a skyscraper and landing in a helicopter doesn't mean you should take your ninety three Toyota, Tacoma, and go try jumping off a skyscraper, right, Like, you need to learn about driving and get a driver's license.
Write that down just to remember that for the future.
But yes, go on, you need to, you know, learn what driving is, study it. Go and get a driver's license, you know, go slowly and then before you go on the freeway. You know. It's the same thing with wildlife and every and basically anything in life you do. And the point of what I'm saying is education is key. Right.
The only reason that I'm able to actively do the wildlife work that I do and share that on social media is because I have a long standing background in an education in it, and I'm never just harassing wildlife for the sake of harassing it. You know, if you're like, oh, I want to go out there and mess with animals, it's like, well, you shouldn't do that. But if you're like, oh, I really want to work with animals, great, go and
get a job or volunteer. There's a bazillion citizen science programs that would love your help, you know, pulling babyca turtles out of the eggs and hatching them and letting them go onto the beach, or collecting snakes for counts, or the list goes on and on and on invasive species, blah blah blah blah blah. So do it. I think people should absolutely do it. But you cannot just go out there because somebody saw something on YouTube or because you just think it's the right thing to do and
just start messing with animals. Quite frankly, you're gonna end up getting hurt. So the animals, of course, are going to have a bad time, but you're gonna end up getting hurt. You know. If you're an amateur and you just decide to go start messing with venomous snakes or trying to trap stuff or catch it, you're gonna get hurt. There's no point to it.
Yeah, And I mean, I think the citizen science aspect is really exciting because if you know, people might think like, well, you know, I really want to go out there and like really come face to face with these wild animals. But I don't have like a whole backgrounded and I
don't see any entry point for it. But like, there are a lot of citizens science programs where you don't necessarily have to be a trained biologist, but you go and you volunteer and they will train you and then you can do surveys, you can do work like I used to do bird watching that actually would contribute to a census of the local birds. So it was one of my favorite things bird watching. Plus I got to
help out. So it's like being able to be out in nature and you know, there are a lot of these these things where it's like, hey, you can like actually go and try to catalog these from anything from fish to small mammals to megafauna anything. And you know, you don't have to be an expert, but if you look at where they need volunteers, they can teach you like what to do on these surveys and you can actually help and have that really awesome experience.
You purpose, which is a nice thing. You know. I hate hiking, Katie. Most people wouldn't believe it because if you watch me, I'll basically always have a backpackage.
Yeah, it's hard for me to hard for me to kind of understand that, given that it seems like most of what you do is hiking.
Well, I hate it though. I've never understood people that hike for the sake of hiking. I just don't understand I don't see the enjoyment in it. But if I'm out on a bird survey, if I'm looking for her, if I know that at the end of that long hike there's an incredible lake with an endemic species of fish or turtle, I'll hike for weeks. Like that's a motivator that has purpose to it. But hiking just to hike,
I've never personally understood. And while not everybody has to share that sentiment, I think that people that do find purpose in their wildlife work will find it far more rewarding than just being like a lookie lou. Basically, I mean like, oh, that's cool, look at that. If you're if you're doing the LOOKI loo with purpose, it really adds a lot of value to what you're doing and you feel good about it.
Yeah. Absolutely, I've found that to be the case, especially with like taking photographs of species, Like you can upload photos that you've taken to like eye naturalists, to these citizen science programs, like even from like you don't even have to be out in the wilderness. You can be in your own backyard and you take a photo of something interesting and you send it into these these organizations.
Sometimes you can even catch like an invasive species and say like, oh, I found this in my backyard at this time, at this date, in this location, and that's really helpful, and it feels like almost like you're catching pokemon, but for the sake of the local ecology exactly, exactly right. So I am really interested in the topic of invasive species. And so why is it so important to keep track of invasive species? Since like they are you know, they're
generally animals or their plants too. So why is it important for us to care whether there is some animal that you know isn't native to the area who seems to be doing really well. For instance, like if you have a species of fish, say that is now becoming more populous, that was actually not from the area that was introduced somehow, why is that of importance?
Uh? Yeah, I mean mostly because of the habitat destructed because of not habitat, but the destruction that they cause. I mean, for the most part, when you introduce and this is not always the case. Some some invasive species are pretty benign. They don't do a whole lot of damage. But most of the time, I'd say, you know, don't quote me on this ninety percent or greater of the time.
An animal that is displaced and released into a new ecosystem that successfully reproduces is a big problem for a native animal because if that little species of fish is put into a new pond where it's never been before and all of a sudden is pre and thriving, that means that it's out competing with the existing species that
are there for resources. That resource can be food, that resource can be space, and ultimately what that means is the native inhabitants of that ecosystem will be edging closer and closer to extinction. Because if you take let's just say, a largemouth bass and you throw it in a pond that historically has only had you know, California roaches in it, which is a native fish we have here in California, Well, those largemouth bass are going to out compete it for space.
They're going to start eating up all the roaches, and over time there will be no roaches left, and there'll be a bunch of really big fat bass. But guess what, eventually, when the bass have eaten all the roaches and there's nothing but big fat bass left, all the bass are then going to die because there's no food left for them,
there's nothing else left for them to survive. This is an oversimplified version of what happens, but if you think about it like that, ultimately those largemouth bass will collapse and you'll have a big dead zone where a hell, the population and an ecosystem used to thrive. So that's why we have to monitor it. We can't just let species go run rampant all over and chuck stuff everywhere we want it to be. And a perfect example of that is Florida. Right, Florida is just a mess. Like everything,
there are invasive species everywhere. Everything survives and thrives there. You've got really really irresponsible people doing things like chameleon ranching, which is letting go chameleons. You've got all these green iguanas that are eating all the native plants and vegetation. You've got burmese python that have reduced the meso predator population of things like raccoons and apossums and native species like that down by ninety percent in some areas. You know,
it's just it's a mess. And so if you allow things like that to continue, you'll have a lot of die off you'll lose a lot of species diversity, and species diversity is the key to a healthy planet.
So are a lot of invasive species from the exotic pet trade? Do you think?
Depends where you go, certainly not the majority, Definitely the minority. In Florida, I'd say it's the majority, but globally it's
definitely the minority. Most invasive species have been brought there by man, either through you know, agricultural trafficking or you know, just aboard something they didn't realize, like the zebra muscle, for instance, is a perfect example that you know, that's a tiny little muscle that grips onto the hulls of boats, and the second you put your boat into a new body of water, they spawn, and all of a sudden you have a new ecosystem that is flooded by zebra muscles,
which does all kinds of damage. They take up all the space on the bottom and everything else. And that has nothing to do with pet trade or food or anything else. It's just an invasive species that sticks to boats. So you know, the majority are not from the pet trade, but there are some very very bad ones like the Burmese pythons, the green iguanas, a whole lot of species of fish like the plecostumus armored catfish that are from the pet trade that have caused a lot of damage.
Yeah, yeah, never never if you have exotic pets, which can be tricky and of in itself, like, never release them. Never release any Like if you have a fish tank full of fish and you have to move, never, just like release them into your local pond, local lake, whatever. Most likely they'll just die. But if they on the off chance that they don't like, that could be an
even bigger problem. It's hard, I think, in general to realize that, like they're a tiny animal, like a little zebra muscle or a little fish, could do much harm if it like gets out even a I mean, actually, what can be really bad is like invasive plants. So like you have an aquarium plant and like you you know, flush it down or you it gets down a drain and then it gets into the local sort of water
system and that plant can just start taking over. So it's like, you know, animals and plants are so have so much of a keen desire to survive that a fairly innocuous action like cleaning out your fish tank and rinsing these some of these plants like down the sink or something could lead to some really bad consequences.
I would hope that people just sort of know that and think that if they're getting into the pet trade but you know, or not pet trade but pet hobby. But you know, you never know. People are people can be pretty dumb.
It's education, right, Like you if there's a pet store that's just like, hey, here's some fish and here's some plants, and they don't really tell you anything about about them, how to take care of them, or like any of the perils of like do not make sure that this stuff doesn't get down like a storm drain. You know, people may it may just never occur to them that like a tiny little plant from a fish tank could
cause any harm should it be released. So I think it's just so important for people to you understand that. And I think like most people who are like experienced, you know, aquarists or animal owners do appreciate that or understand that. But yeah, for sure, I mean, it's it's something where it's just a domino effect that it is hard. It's hard to conceive of that you could have such a great impact, but just through kind of an accident, but it definitely can happen. So do you ever find
an animal that is outside of its range? Like you'll find something that is like not what you're expecting to find there, but it is not actually an invasive species.
Uh oh yeah, I mean that's I mean, that's a big part of what I've made my career doing is finding lost animals. But more so than finding lost animals, like new distributions. I mean I had to run in with a hammerhead four hundred miles outside of its own range when I was just a teenager. I redefined the species distribution of Mastakophas lateralis, which is the uh I think it's what's the common name, the pink coach whip, stripe coach whip. I'm not sure lateral coach whip would
be lined coach whip. I don't know. Yeah, the species distribution and range distribution for them. Yeah, I mean we find animals outside of their known range all the time. I mean I put up a video on that YouTube channel I was mentioning where we found the first ever record of a leopard epaulet shark in two feet Papua New Guinea, which everybody had historically said there are no leopard epaulets in two Fee because of the bathometric barriers.
It's too deep, the canyons are too severe. These shallow water species wouldn't go here. And I got there and started talking to the local fishermen and they're like, oh, yeah, they're all over here. And I was like, no way, do you think you can find one? Yeah, we'll find you some tonight. And they went out and found one in like half an hour.
Yow.
And you know, we redefined that species distribution as it was known to science by four hundred miles, you know, like just like that, and all the Nati, not all, but many of the native people knew about it, but science was on aware of it because science dictated that due to these certain barriers and the fact that there had been no records, there's no way that this animal could be here. However, the native people don't pay attention to that, and they're like, yeah, animals right here. Yeah, Yeah,
we encounter that all the time. So yeah, that's that's a very common thing that we deal with while doing surveys in the field.
Yeah, that's an interesting thing to me because I think that there is this sometimes it happens where you'll have, you know, a population of people who are familiar with
the area that have some knowledge of animals. That's either you know, current knowledge because they fish there and they interact with see life all the time, or it's something that's passed along culturally through generations, and that's like it's kind of placed in like this separate category as sometimes it's placed in a separate category as science because it's like, well, these are observations by you know, non professionals, and they're not really they're not cataloged in the same way that
scientific observations are, but they seem really valuable. Like does that play a part a lot in terms of like finding animals in new ranges or finding animals that were thought to be extinct or not exist in a certain area.
You mean just just native or just amateur records of them.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I mean, of.
Course, especially from native people, you know. I think that's the most significant is working with local hunters, fishermen, things like that, people that are out the best scientists. I've always said this, and I get a lot of criticism from academics for it, but I really don't care because it's in my opinion, the truth the best scientists, observational scientists, are people that are interacting with the wildlife every single day.
They're not people sitting in an office that have written papers. Sure, there's two different facets to that, right. The people that are the academics, they might be able to tell you the specifics of the scale structure and the jaw morphology and this and that that the local hunter would never know because when he finds it, he walps its head
off and eats it. But they don't know the first thing about tracking it, finding it, understanding its its role in the environment, and how it behaves around other animals. Whereas that local who might even know the name of the animal we're talking about, he can actually understand that species because he spends a lot of time observing it.
He's out there hunting it, fishing for it, chasing it around, chasing around animals that compete with it, so on and so forth, and so yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be anywhere near the success rate that I've had if it wasn't for all of the tremendous help from local native people in every region, every location, everything that I that I've worked in, Because we need their help. I mean that's the only way that I get the information that
we get. And me just going in there blindly and being like I know how to find stuff, I'd never find anything. So yeah, you have to work with local, local people, and you know, you have to take a lot of it with a grain of salt, because in many of these nations there is lore and mystery and tradition that aren't grounded in science. You know, like religion that isn't ground in science, things like that, but you still have to observe and take in the tidbits of it that are useful.
And yeah, yeah, it's something where it's like you can use both the kind of more analytical, quantifiable aspect of science with the just immense amount of experience and time that people who actually live there and live daily life
interacting with the local environs might have. Of these animals, it seems like they're very they're very complementary things to each other, like both respecting that, like, hey, if they say they've seen this or it's part of their folklore that this animal is in this region, then like maybe there's something to it, and then you know, respecting that and combining expertises seems really important.
Exactly right, exactly right.
Have you ever been like truly extremely surprised, Like, like, what was the most surprising find for you in terms of finding an animal that was either thought not to exist in the region or thought to have been extinct.
The most surprising find. I mean, we found eight species previously thought to be extinct, so each one of those is pretty surprising. You know, when when something is deemed extinct, it's it doesn't mean it's hiding in a bush or
around around a corner. It means it's gone. I think the one that was probably the most spine chilling, or well, the first one was big the Zanzibar leopard, but holding the Fernandina Island tortoise in my hand, holding an extinct animal that you know, had the mythicalness of big Bigfoot because only one in history had ever been seen one hundred and fourteen years prior, and me diving into a bush and picking up the second one that was that was a pretty big shock. I mean, you know, it's
finding a tortoise on an island. That's not like finding something out in a giant jungle. You know, it's it's like a finite area even because the big area. And yeah, that was pretty surprising. So you know, all of these stories made major news headlines and made a pretty big splash globally. So I think not the reason I say that is I don't think I was the only one surprised. Yeah, I think the world was pretty surprised when we found some of these animals.
So, yeah, are there are there discoveries that are maybe less like sensational, Maybe an animal that's less charismatic that you wish people knew more about or appreciated more like an animal that doesn't maybe win the popularity contest, but something that is either endangered or that you have found that you think it's really interesting, really exciting, but it's just not something that gets as much love or attention.
No, I really don't believe in that at all. I believe that it's much more about how it's communicated. And one of the sad things about the world we live in is the conservation organizations that are doing such wonderful work. And I won't name any or throw them under the bus, but they do such great work. They're so terrible at their messaging and public facing. And you know, if you know the field that we're discussing, you know who I'm
talking about. But some of their finds are tremendous. You know, they rediscover incredible things or they redefine things that are unbelievable. And these are some of larger conservation organizations, and the messaging and the public interfacing and the way that the information is disseminated is so poor that people don't get excited about it, and some of them could be so grand.
And I think that's one of the differences between perhaps what I do and what some of these very large conservation organizations do, is like I can find a tiny little blind snake, which is a new species we rediscovered just about two years ago now in literally a kitchen dumpster in the back of a desert lodge in Peru, and get millions of people excited about it and to watch it because I am genuinely so passionate and excited about it and so thrilled to find this thing, Whereas
some of these organizations can find an incredibly gorgeous, charming, beautiful bird that's been lost for hundreds of years and rediscover it and you know, a couple thousand people see it,
and that's it. And it's because of the way the messaging is done and the public interfacing is done around the species rediscovery, and it's it's really unfortunate because many times I've tried to offer my services and try to I always try and promote the work that these organizations are doing, and it's at no fault of their own. I always try and promote it. I always share these
rediscoveries on my social media. But when you have somebody that just publishes a paper, or you know, they make like a really dry video with a bunch of still images about the animal, it doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't do anything. That's a sad thing about academic papers. When's the last I'm Katie and I are both interested in this field. When's the last time you read an academic paper?
I mean I read them a lot, so I probably, yeah.
That's good. I do a few days ago, Okay, I mean.
I don't read it. I don't read it from start to end. I usually go through kind of skim through, and then read the sections that irrelevant. Like the last time I've actually sat down read every single page of an academic paper has got to be like I don't know, many many months yeah.
I mean I'm the same. I have to read them from my work obviously, and I skim the abstract and look at a couple sections, go cool, that was interesting. But you know, that's it. And the majority of people, which is what we need, by the way, we're talking about, you know, public perception and making a difference. We need the majority of people to care. The majority of people don't even click on an academic paper. They don't open it, they don't read the abstract, they just don't you know.
They're on TikTok, they're on Twitter, whatever. And I think there's obviously room in this world for both. But some of those phenomenal finds on some of these lost species, new species, redefined species whatever, they should be on TikTok. And I hate TikTok by the way, Like I think it's just an awful medium, But it should be, you know, because you should get five million kids to watch it and go, oh my god, that's so cool, and they're not so anyway, it's a very long winded way of
answering your question. But I don't think it's about the species and the charismaticness. I think it's about the way the information is presented on these animals, because every animal's cool. You can make an earthworm tremendously cool. If you learn about earthworms and how neat they are and what they do, they're incredibly cool. Every animal is cool. It's just about the way the information is shared.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I think that I get a lot of really strong reactions to animals on this show that I mean, I really love and are maybe gross and small and seemingly not very charismatic, but then when once people hear about them, and here why you know I love them and why I think they're like something little like the velvet warm, And if you look at like an actual picture of it, like up close, and you describe all these amazing characteristics of it, then
other people really love it, Like I think that it's it is like, it is not hard to convince people to love these animals as long as the information is
really clearly communicated. I think with with academic papers, I think that one of the main barriers is is that they are very They can be very difficult to read unless you have specific training in that area, like like or if you you you sometimes even need to completely understand like statistical analysis to understand an academic paper, which is just it's not that's not easy for people to do.
You can't just like you know, you know, like read the Wikipedia on statistical analysis or how to interpret the scientific paper and then be able to do it. It's it's genuinely difficult sometimes to understand these papers. And then there's also the problem of like converting a scientific paper into like a news article, and sometimes there's a disconnect between the paper and the article, and not just in
terms of like the proper information. The article may be completely accurate, but then like missing some of the key things in the scientific paper that are so interesting and fascinating that just kind of get glossed over because it's it's there's just like a little bit of a disconnect. Like I'll read a news article and then read the
paper it was based on it. It's like they've missed some of the most exciting things that the study has talked about, or something that's really funny or interesting, just like like the kind of like reading like the methodology of like some of these these research papers about insects or or chimpanzees or whatever, and then you find something really funny about the study design and it really humanizes it of like, hey, this is what they had to
do to like understand this animal. Like I just read a paper on chimpanzee facial well not facial recognition, rear end recognition, and they had to like in the study, like the idea is that the primates will often like be able to do the same kind of facial recognition we do with faces on rear ends, and so they had to al curate this collection of primate rear ends and then also like human rear ends and faces and then show them to primates and humans. And it's just
such a funny. I think it's a funny study. And you know, I thought the news articles were pretty good of the study, but they were like like when you really get into some of the details of the methodology, which sounds like something boring, like, oh, people aren't going to be interested in the methodology, But then when you really get into it, I think people would find it really funny and really fun and then of course it's
also really important research. And so I think breaking down this idea of like what people would actually find boring or not, Like, don't I don't think that science is boring at all. I think that when people feel like pushed out of it, like, well, this isn't for me. I'm not going to be able to understand this. It's going to be beyond me. That's when it's not interesting
is when it's not accessible. But once you've made it accessible and say like like this is actually straightforward and you are perfectly capable of understanding this, I just have to be good at communicating it to you, that's when people will be interested in it.
There's multiple problems, and if the network ever hears this, they'll call and be yell at me, which is fine, but you know what, the first part is the elitism behind academia, which is sort of what you just just touched on, and the sort of the snobbery in the
way that a lot of things are written. The second part is and there's so many more problems in this, but in my opinion, another big part of it in that messaging as far as digestibility, is everybody catering to the lowest common denominator, and I think there's a really that's why I say the network will get mad. The reason Animal Planet's no longer right, It's like they kept chasing like a lower and lower view and I personally experience that because they come to me and be like, Oh,
this isn't exciting enough, this isn't interesting enough. People don't care about this, people don't care about that, and I just don't agree, you know. I'm like, I don't agree, and here's why. And I think I'm living proof of that because I've managed to create thriving media channels outside of Animal Planet where I communicate things that I think
are fascinating and people do as well. And that's the nice thing about the day and age of the Internet is, you know, you can jump on YouTube for free and get to learn and see about a lot of these things, versus sit through a TV show on you know, hunting for Bigfoots, which is all just nonsense anyway, you know, because that's the kind of thing that they think people want to watch as opposed to like genuinely communicating interesting stuff.
So anyway, that's a whole nother podcast. We can talk about for hours as to as to how that information is shared and why Chase not. I don't want to get myself in trouble, but why sharing information that you think is best for everybody because you're catering to the lowest common denominator is not it's insulting to the viewer.
Yeah, no, I mean I agree. I think that the it's kind of a snowball effect too, because it's like, well, this is all we show, this is the only kind of content that we have, and this is all that people watch, and therefore this is what people like to watch. It's like, well, but if you have different types of shows on your channel that are more you know. I mean, it's kind it's like sort of the same issue in the film industry, right where it's like it like, well,
people only want to watch Marvel movies. It's like, well, but you're only serving them Marvel movies to a certain extent, and like like other movies that everybody's yeah yeah, and like movies that aren't Marvel movies are Marvel movies because they're copying the Marvel movie format. I'm not saying I don't have a problem with Marvel movies. I think they're fun, but like, you know, the idea that like, well, people don't want this because all we're doing is serving this.
It's like, well, but you're only giving them this, so how do you know that they don't want it? And then when when they go outside of that format, like you know, like the Barbie Movie, it's like people really loved it and and so you know, I think basically I'm saying that, you know, weird animals, weird, uncharismatic, ugly animals are the Barbie Movie of the animal world. People
will love them. One thing I wanted to talk about is it's a topic that I've brought up a few times before because I find it really interesting and it's a de extinction and it's something that can be It's it's a very controversial topic because it's something where it's that it's I mean, maybe you probably understand it better than I do, so I'll just ask you, like, what exactly is the extinction? Like what is the concept behind it?
Is it some kind of like far off science fiction thing or is it something we can actually do.
It's certainly something we can do. I mean, Colossal Biosciences is you know, it's actively doing it, and it's it's a company that's valued to billions of dollars now because of the work they're doing in it, and it's it's happening. You know. I don't want to I don't want to give anything away, but I'd say everybody should stay very closely tuned at the end of this year for a very large announcement. And yeah, I certainly can't say more than that. But you know, look, what is the extinction
it's bringing back? I mean, the extinct is exactly what it sounds like. It's bringing back extinct animals. You know, this is not Jurassic Park. This is bringing back animals that humans have had a hand in driving to extinction. And by bringing back those animals and putting them back
into ecosystems, it's repairing ecosystems. And you know, a good example I try and give to people is because a lot of a lot of the criticism that you read about the extinction is people being like the ecosystem is healthy, it's fine, like we don't need these animals back, which it's clownish. It's the same as you know, imagine if you're an alien you land on Earth and you go and find a population of people and they all have jaundice. Well, then you go, well, people are yellow, right, that's what
people look like. Human beings are yellow. They're they're fine, They're just yellow over there, and they die at a young age.
Hey, man, The Simpsons was a good show, all right.
But you know that's wrong, Like people shouldn't be yellow and they shouldn't die at a young age. And that's how we look at a lot of these ecosystems. The arctics a perfect example, like it's not healthy, you know, it's it's relatively healthy, like it's getting by, but it would be a lot more healthy if we put mammos back into a part of the tundra. You know, Tasmania would be a far, far more thriving ecosystem if it had an apex predator back like the Thylocene. And the
list goes on and on and on. And that's what the extinction, at least with the companies that I work with Colossal, specifically aimed to do. They aim to repair the ecosystem through this radical conservation method, which is the extinction, which is genetic work to bring back animals that human beings have actively had a hand in eradicating. And it's a very exciting, very important, somewhat scary proposition that we should all be excited and interested in, because this is
not putting frickin' mongeese in Hawaii. You know, this is a much much more noble cause and a much it may be. I'll be candid here and without trying to offend your listeners or anybody else, it may be the first thing that human beings have done right in conservation in a very long time. Because there are lots of triumph stories of conservation, there really are, but they're very, very small, and on a whole, we're losing a conservation.
Conservation has only been around for one hundred years, and we lose more and more species, more and more habitat and everything else every single year. This the extinction could be this radical effort that actually turns the table where we start winning the war of conservation.
It's it's a very interesting concept because it's i mean, like, like you kind of mentioned earlier, I think when people, well maybe not everyone, but you know, the extinction has this kind of like, oh, we're doing a Jurassic Park thing where like we're playing god, we're doing something we're not supposed to be doing. But it's you know, I mean, it's very different from can.
I touch that quick? Yes, I don't mean interrupt you, but no, that's sort of it's sort of grinds my gears a little when I hear that we're playing God. We're playing God every single time we wipe out a species. We're playing God every single time we create a medicine, We're playing God every time we get a step foot in a car. Because none of these are natural processes. Okay, the extinction, all the extinction is trying to do at this point in time. This could certainly change, we could
have some mad scientist movie crap happen. But at this point in time, all the extinction is trying to do is repair things that we've broken. I don't think that's playing God. I think that's fixing things. And we've we've done so much to destroy it. We've played so much God already with ecosystems and environments by dumping species and changing them and manipulating them that it's like the argument of the playing God thing to me is I mean, it's it's a laughable argument.
I mean, it's interesting because even in those movies, I don't think the problem was that they were playing God. I think the problem was that they let children loose with an apex predator on an island.
But right, but no one's doing that.
You know what we're not We're not letting children loose with passenger pigeons that we've cloned.
Exactly, I mean exactly exactly.
I think it is like I think that the the concern. I understand the concern about it because it's like often when we've tried to interfere with nature, it has gone wrong because we didn't understand what we were doing, like when we like the cane toad situation. Anytime, like we introduce a species because we want it to do a certain thing. Now, in this case, of course, with a lot of these the introductions, like the cane toad, it was not because we were trying to protect the environment.
It was because we were trying to protect crops, so we're trying to protect profit. It was not it was not an attempt to like be good to the environment. And then of course that one's spectacularly bad and it's still bad today. The cane toad population is still a problem. Ever, Yeah, and so's it's something where I think that we have this you know, well earned skittishness about like, well, but
if we do this, it could cause problems. And I mean I think more or less it's true, like if we any conservation we do, it could like there could be unintended consequences, but like you said, we're doing things all the time that have unintended consequences that are really bad, and those things aren't even directed towards trying to you know,
undo these things. But like, what would so because it's interesting to me, one of the arguments is like, well, it's kind of too late for a lot of these species, Like we certainly could bring them back. But then you know these say, like the forests in the US that were like the native habitat for say passenger pigeons, well they buy and large no longer exists. So what would these passenger pigeons do, like they would you know, could they really bring back these habitats or is it too late?
And then would we just have sort of a bunch of passenger pigeons then trying to become urban adapters because they don't have any of their natural environment. Like do you think that do you think it's not too late for a lot of these species to bring back these habitats or do you think sometimes it truly is just kind of too late.
I mean, there's no blanket answer. That's the part of the thing about conservation. It's part of The thing about the extinction, It's part of the thing about anything dealing with wildlife is it's on a case by case basis. With the case of the passenger pigeon, I certainly not too late. I mean there are decent size, not large, swaths of forests that are still protected and in national forests,
national parks and things. So would you have the billions of passenger pigeons that were said to black out the sky in the early eighteen hundreds, No, well, that that will not be a possibility. Again, could you have large flocks that live, you know, generally within protected national forests? Absolutely, and they should be there. You know, we we're the ones who hunted them to extinction. Some animals. I think it is too late for I'm I'm blanking on a
specific example at this point. But you know, if you if you can think of a creature that, well, like to be vague and generic here dinosaurs. Too late for dinosaurs, right, their habitats change, the planets change. Nobody to bring back a t rex. You know, it's a great movie premise, it's not a great conservation premise. It also is impossible. We cannot code for DNA. That's fragmented six million years ago,
you know, it's just not a thing. But in the case of a passenger pigeon where we shot it to extinction, a great auc where we've plucked them out of the off off of the planet for feathers and oil, a mammoth, a thylacine. The list goes on and on and on. Yeah, we should bring them back. We should repair what we've done. The dodos. We wiped out the dodos for fun, because we'd like bopped them on the head. Popping them on the head. They weren't even good to eat, you know,
and that's been shown time and time again. Like, of course doodos should come back. We should feel very guilty as a species that we ever did that, you know, and not pretend we didn't do it and hide from it, but learn from it and try not to do it again in the future.
The other the other thing I think is interesting is the process of the extinction, which is there are like it's very difficult, say you wanted to bring back the Dodo to just like clone a Dodo from some kind
of specimen. It's not necessarily as straightforward as like taking some DNA creating like a perfect clone, Like sometimes the extinction involves like taking like for maybe the passenger pigeon would involve taking a currently a live species and then either modifying its DNA or using it as a surrogate
for the the passenger pigeon clone DNA. And so there would be some these aren't gonna necessarily be perfect replicas of the animals they once were, Like even if they're perfect genetic replicas, they would you know, some element of an animal species, of course, is instinctive, but there's also some learning, like with birds, like there's a lot of capacity to learn. Passenger pigeons aren't songbirds, but they're social birds.
So like, if we bring these back, they're not going to come prepackaged with everything that the animal once was, especially for an intelligent species like a mammoth. I mean, so much of elephant behavior is learned. They're highly intelligent,
highly sort of like social animals that learn generationally. So how I don't necessarily think this means like it's a lost cause, but like how it seems like that is a huge challenge to like, if we bring back something like a dodo or a mammoth, like, how would we try to create a situation such that even if it's not a perfect replica of what this animal was, it at least has a chance and to like start to reintroduce it in a way where it's being given sort
of some of what would be missing, like that that social learning with because like you can't there's no existing kind of mammoth groups to put like a cloned baby mammoth with to know what to do.
Well, yes and no, I mean you know, the an elephant is ninety nine point six percent related to the wooly mammoth. Right, so if you may, if you make a replica of you, Katie, and it comes out as me, it's also not a perfect replica, right, but I can still learn from you. You can still be my mother or my mentor my teacher, whatever you want to call it. And uh, you know, I'm not a replica of you, but I'm also a human being, right, You're a human. I'm a human. And that's that's sort of the foundation
of this. Right. If you bring back a mammoth, uh, it's it's it's just a big hairy elephant, and as long as it learns how to be an elephant, it can be a big hairy elephant up in the Arctic, right, And that's that's the simplified way of looking at it. And the same thing can be said about Dodo, Thilocene, anything else. It's you know, instinct will always be there. Nature will drive it over nurture. But of course nurture
will be a factor. And in a lot of these cases, if you're putting a thilacene back in Tasmania, if you're putting a mammoth up in the Arctic, it's going to have a very easy time because the ecosystem has been without that gone force, that keystone species for such a long time that the animal basically has this giant playground to learn how to be an animal again, including and that is the nurture factor from both human beings, conservationist
people like myself who are on the conservation advisory board of a lot of these species, as well as you know the targets.
Well, I I think that's very that makes me feel very hopeful. I would love, uh, I would love to live in a world that is able to bring back some of these species.
Well what I'm very confident we will be, So stay tuned because I think, you know, in the next few years it's all going to be happening.
Well if I will keep my eyeballs peeled for that news Forrest, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people find you?
Uh? You know, my favorite thing. I have all the social channels, you know, all the regulars and my new thing, My new favorite thing is this this YouTube thing that I mentioned. We just launched it. It's pretty exciting. There's a whole lot of fun content on there. Extinct animals, rare speech, sheees, finding new stuff, invasive species and it's
just my name for us blante on YouTube. And you know, I think that's where people could check it out because I'm directing a lot of the stuff we're doing onto there now so that people can enjoy it.
That's excellent. Yes, I will never say no to more animal content. Thank you guys. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating a review. That absolutely helps. I read all the reviews, I print them all out, I put them in, bind them into a book, and then I read it as a bedtime story every night. And thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song XO. Lumina. Creature features
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