It's Maria's MutS and Stuff. What a great idea. On iHeartRadio, Welcome to Maria's Mutts and Stuff. And with me is naturalist and adventurer Charles Hood with his new beautiful book Nature at Night, Discover the hidden world that comes alive after dark. So, Charles, thank you for taking some time out. Thank you for writing this amazing book. I love it.
Well, I'm so happy to be with you today. And I appreciate those kind words. And I'll just alert your listeners if I sound distracted. My dogs may hear my voice. He sounds like there's somebody in the room to see. Yeah, someone, What does he bring over? Friends? Do they have to write?
Oh? I love that. Oh that's good. And if they bark in the background, that's even better. I don't mind that at all. It's very dog right now.
Okay, so I'm hoping they'll leave me.
Oh my goodness, that's so cute. What are your dog's names?
I have two rescue dogs, and one is Fo she's a a sort of a Siberian husky kind of thing. And then we have sam Wise, who is a Shepherd husky mix. And they have different personalities, but they both are interested in, you know, if they hear my voice sound together, animated, like, what's going on?
What's going on? We want to be part of it. Of course, what's Dad doing? I get it exactly, I get it. I get it. Ah, I love it. That's so cool. I know it's funny too, because in your bio that comes in your book. I love that it says that you're the proud caretaker of two dogs, two kayaks, and two mountain bikes. I love it. It's our unique description. But it's perfect.
Well, and you mentioned there's also five thousand books mentioned in there.
Oh, I forgot about that part. That part, Yeah, that's.
The bibe these others.
Yes, it's true, the five thousand books. So okay. So I just have to tell you. You know, way back when when I first started radio, and I did an overnight show, and I did overnights for years, and there's a whole nother world out there in the middle of the night, and your book just supports that, right, things come out only at night. And so tell me, so, why did you write this book?
You know, for those of us who are sort of outdoorsy or kind of nature affiliated, we're trained by society to mistrust the night. This is true for most people. I suppose, like you have to have security security lights and a ring camera and when you open your car door, all the lights go on, and that's just you know, that's that's a false shouldn't be a scared afraid of
the dark. But of course if you like nature, then nature didn't turn itself off on nature, right, and so twenty four hours of nature would include understanding, appreciating, celebrating what's happening after dark.
Sure, and I mean there's a whole another world at night when it comes to nature, which I think probably many people don't realize, or not that they don't care about it, but they don't realize because they're probably sleeping or I think it's what you said, it's almost like that fear. You know, I'm not going to go out at night. But if you do go out night, go out at night. I mean, I love the fact your big four words is have fun, be safe. Let's talk
about that. Why is that a good good advice for people who go out and explore nature at night.
Well, it's important for us to protect our night vision. And actually as humans, we actually anybody can see fine at night if we couldn't see at night, our ancestors would have never walked home from the farm or you know, just gathered in the crops. But where we lose our night vision when the headlights go on and the porch light goes on. So if we're going to go out at night, when I say be safe, not really thinking about bad people assaulting us so much as protect your
night vision. Have a backup flashlight. Everyone's lost their keys or dropped something, and so what if you've got at night, have a second flashlight in case you break the first one. And so that's also tied into the idea of it's fun, it's easy, but take normal precautions right right, you go, if you're going to go on your first night hike, maybe go during the day, kind of learn the routine a little bit, and then come back after dark.
Right yeah, which is just kind of common sense advice which I think sometimes a lot of people don't have anymore.
Well, I don't know if it's just because I grew up in an older generation, but that's sort of idea that you're responsible for yourself, you know, So it's not like I, you know, I'm so old, I don't have a cell phone in my childhood, you know, so right, no, right, be responsible, ride your bike, don't get it stolen, don't get you know, don't.
Get arrested, right exactly. Yeah, it's true. That's the stuff I grew up with too. I didn't have a cell phone growing up as well. So yeah, it's a it's a whole nother world. It's true. It's actually just very simple common sense. So let's talk about a little bit about what happens at night. Like I love the fact that you talk about that animals, like, how do they know what time it is? So let's talk a little bit about that.
We know from various scientific studies that there are circadian rhythms. I mean, all of all of your listeners know that for themselves, and they so you know that our that our pets in our house, household, you know know what time it is. That my wife has fish and they know what time it is. Of course we didn't have life on the tank. They would know what morning is
because it's time to get fed. Those circadium rhythms apply across the entire spectrum of animals and some you know, including plants, and you know why else they should say in the natural world. But for some things, they realize I can exploit the world in a more efficient way
if I just switch my orientation. So if we think about the typical flower, it's used to kind of in our minds, we're picturing something yellow or red and the sun is shining and the pollinators like hummingbirds, are buzzing around. But everybody else is a red flower all around us, or a yellow flower whatever. So some flowers thought, you know what, what if we switch over, it will be the nighttime flowers. And yeah, we're gonna have maths instead of butterflies. So we don't care, you know what the
name is as long as of things. So these are often white flowers or in the case of like suarrow
cacti in the desert southwest, they like bats. So this cacti that are that have these big, showy white flowers, tubular, they're producing nectar, same as anything that would attract a hummingbird, but they're attracting these long nosed bats in the desert southwest and in northern Mexico, same thing pollinating tequila plants, by the way, to call it yegatti for tequila, and so they're getting pollinated, but they are able to get
a really great pollinator because bats are big long distance flyers, and so you can get your genetic material way the heck out the one hundreds of miles away. The bats can do that in part because they're digesting the nectar, but they can also digest pollen a hummingbird can't do. Hummingbirds actually have to catch insects to round out their diet. You know, they're not just drinking from our hummingbird feeders exclusively.
But bats can actually make do the you know, the pollinating bats can make do just simply off of nectar and pollen, and that's a satisfactory diet for them. So they've focused on that instead of doing things that other bats are doing, catching frogs or catching mosquitoes.
Right, yeah, yeah, so and it's funny too because people are scared of bats. Bats come out at night. So it goes full circle to what you said at the beginning, which you know, human nature just being odd, being weird, or just the way they're we're wired.
Well, of course we want to be cautious. If I'm at night and I see something on the trail, is it a snake or is it a stick? That's a very healthy response way to respond to the world, but it's been made about a thousand times worse by this sort of cultural idea that the darkness is inherently menacing.
That's where the horror films are, that where wolves are, and almost I don't want to get political, but it almost extends kind of our racial profiling of you know, darker things in general should be are the menacing things, and the whiter, more brightly lit things are kind of this. You know, Heaven is brightly, that hell is dark. Right if we think about these sort of extensions, and that's just robbing us of our heritage. We have every reason
to be happy all the long. First of all, exactly no reason not to enjoy the nocturnal moth, right, No.
No, I mean it's funny. I just had this conversation with somebody about black dog syndrome. Black dogs black cats are scary. Why they're not scary at all, but people think they are because the movies. You know, the mean dog is always the black dog, which is a Rottweiler or a Doberman. Black cats, Oh, it's bad luck, not true, so I think it goes. It's all it's all with the same theme. You know what I mean, it goes along with what you just said.
You are so right about that. And in terms of like you know, I mentioned I have two dogs, and the husky happens to be what they call sable. I just call it the white dog. And then my shepherd mix is pure black. And even when people come over to my house and they trust me and they know I'm not going to stick the dog off them, they like the white dog. You know, the husky is somehow known or friendly or perceived to be a better product.
Isn't that crazy? It's just so bizarre to me. I mean, it's just crazy. I just had this conversation and that we're having it as well. It's just so crazy. But I think it's also it's gotten drummed into people's heads from what they see on TV, in the movies, you know, fantasy stuff, but you know, with a whole like black dog, black cat syndrome and that. And you're right. And I was just having this conversation and the person said, yeah, people are more afraid of black animals than they are
and I was like, but it doesn't make sense. But like you just said, yeah.
I love what you're bringing up because I never thought about this, but now every were wolf I've ever seen is always dark brown or black like, even though real wolves can be pure white nature, right, lots of wolves are sort of gray with even a tan undercoat. So black wolves are the rare ones, but were wolves are not never can never variegated, right, and I mean not having their wolf imaginations broad It's true.
Well, it's true. I mean, and think about it. That were really going off tangent because I want to get back to your book, but it's just funny, not off off off the subject. But I'm just that you just popped in my head talking about wolves. I'm thinking of member Game of Thrones and the you know, John Snow's wolves were pure white wolves and they were like the friendly helper wolves, right right, Yes, you know.
And that goes into you know, racial relations and how people even from Southern Europe were devalued historically in North America compared to Northern Europeans. Yeah, you know, it's all interconnected. And I don't try to make a big deal out of this in the book because that gets into sort of some messy politics. Of course, that is the reality that we're just as scared of that we're praying to be afraid of the dark more than.
Is reasonable, right, which is true.
So we don't want our listeners to go out stepping on snakes, bad for the snake, for.
You, bad for you, right exactly.
But use your flashlights your.
Flash light, yes, and go out and actually to get you exactly.
The animals that didn't have with the night or not, you know, the bats or not. They don't want to get in your hair. They're not going to give you rabies.
They're not going to bother you. They just want to be themselves, right, And that's why your book is so perfect, discover the hidden world that comes alive after dark. How long did it take you to put all the research together for the book? Like, how long did it take you to write it?
Once I get my notes together, I can usually work quickly. I'm kind of different than some of the other writers, So it might only be a year. So those those of our listeners who don't earn in the trade, then it's another two years of production, you know, they have we have to go through all the photo editing and copy editing, and then the production. The books are on you know, on boats coming from China, and you know,
sure and that's good to a warehouse. So I was working on this years ago, plural, but my writing is relatively swift.
Mm hmmm. Oh that's pretty good actually. And what number book is this for you to have written?
You've written a lot of books I have, I think, depending how we count a lot of the poetry publications, this will be a round book. Twenty two ish.
Yeah, that's a lot.
Yeah, that's yeah. It's like anything in life. If you do it all your life, it'll your resume will accumulate by the end of your life.
Well that's true, that's true. And you are not at the end of your life, so you have plenty more books in you. I know, when you were doing of putting this book together, doing the research, was there anything that you learn that surprised you, something that you didn't realize?
You know? And again, I'm used to the daytime, I'm used to listen to the land, and I hadn't appreciated the largest migration on Earth is actually in the ocean. So it's not the caribou in Alaska, and it's not the serengetti will the beast, but trillions and trillions and trillions of organisms are rising up out of the depths during the night time to come up to the surface where the phytoplankton are the little planty things that need sunlight or a surface. But that's where the predators are.
So during the day, the lesser animals, the zol plankton and other things, they're down there a thousand feet to house feet buol the surface and a nice safe darkness. The light kind of ends around three hundred feet roughly speaking, and they make a vertical migration to come up to the surface to feed. Well, that stand means things are following them, so like squid are coming up to the surface, and that then means the dolphins are feeding at night.
When we go on a whale watching trip and we see the happy, splashy dolphins, they're happy and they're splashy, probably because they've already fad. They're feeding all night long because they have like a location they don't need daylight to eat a fish, sure catch a squid, and so they're up as a surface during the daytime socializing because that's there. That's their day off, so to speak. Right, I didn't really appreciate the scale of this is global
in scale, and you know, it's not even seasonal. It is depending on where we are. Obviously the artic is a little bit different. But everything is moving up and down vertically every day of the year. I just found that fascinating.
It is no, it is. It's like it's like the food chain is happening, but it's happening at night because the blanks about it.
I have a picture of a dolphin during the day and it's got these little rosettes of whiteness on its flanks. This was in Indonesia, and I realized, oh, those are scars from cookie cutter sharks. So as the animals are going up and down, there's some sharks hanging around, pretty small, like a foot and a half long. They've got a circular, round mouth and they latch onto things quickly, do a little spin, take a little divid of skin out, and
peel away. These are called cookie cutter sharks, right, And you can see the scars on dolphins and whales. And I happened to see a dolphin that was breaching out of the water and I got a picture like, what of that? What's this long series of white circles on this poor animal's flanks? Right? And that's when I realized oh at night, it's been it's been predated itself as it was chasing the squid by these sharks.
Wow, and that's fascinating because most people wouldn't know that, right, How would we know that? They didn't teach us that in school.
Yeah, I got a pretty good picture, you know, for those of those of you who like to learn through imagery, which includes me, you know, I like pretty pictures. So there's actually a pretty good picture of that in the book. One of the two and forty pictures is of this leaping dolphin that shows very clearly the shark bites along its flank.
The pictures in your book are stunning.
Just so you know, well, you're very kind. I appreciate that. I'll hear I hold a copy up to the microphone so that your reader's compete a little bit better.
Well, you know, when I when I make this live, I will post some of the phone from it because it's really I really the photos are just they really are stunning. I mean, I'm right now, I'm looking at the owl and it starts owls and night jars, Moonlight's mystery birds. So let's let's talk a little bit. Why are owls there? The mystery birds at night with the moonlight especially.
Yeah, and again there's a long cultural history, particularly in North America. You know, the idea if you see an owl, then someone's going to die, and that sort of thing. And you know what, can we say, Folklore can give us great wisdom but also a lot of boulder dash.
Yeah, that's a great word, by the way, boulder dash. I haven't heard that in a long time. I love it.
Well, we're trying to we keep this show g rated. We want everybody to feel.
Coming, right, that's true, but we don't have to trail. Yes, if you find a word you want, you can just say it. It's okay, but yes, so I'm sorry to mean to interrupt you. I just love that word, but go ahead.
So you know, there are hundreds of species of owls all the way down to the elf owl that lives in woodpecker holes and smirow cacti up to the eagle owls, and they are finding lots and lots of ways to exploit their environment or fit into their environment. And I just thought it'd be interesting to show those but also to have photography that wasn't deer in the headlights. If
we know that express expression. Tell your listeners there ain't a single deer in a single headlight in that book, simply because I refuse to allow that kind of photography to happen. It harasses the animals and it makes a
very garish, lured kind of photograph. So on average, the flash or the flash units we're using or turned to a very low setting and often diffused with fashion fashion model lighting, if that makes sense to do a fashion shoot, they have these diffusers they use so that wraps the light around the model. And we brought those same lights into the rainforest in Nicaragua, for example, and in Peru in order to photograph owls and bats in a more i'll say encouraging way or a more welcoming way to
make them seem less fearsome. And that's just a matter of you know, how do we want to manipulate the image and try to move the camera around and maybe move the lighting and say, hey, here's a flattering angle. This is actually a nice portrait.
I just found everything amazing, and in fact I just found the photo on page two fifty, two hundred and fifty of the rough tooth Dolphin. Yeah, well there you go, there you go. Yeah, and you can see all the marks on it. It's it's pretty incredible.
And that's the tropical species that normally we wouldn't see in North America. There are a few records for southern California. But yeah, that picture was in Indonesia on a boat. Gosh darn it. I had to go to the flight of Bali and get on a boat. Oh, oh my goodness. Started this book was so much.
It was Oh my goodness, you poor thing. Had to go to Bali. Oh my god.
I go to Bali and they upgraded my room and I had to have to stay in a private suite with my own swimming pool.
Oh my no, poor poor things.
They kept bringing them to me. It was dreadful being a naturalists. I just can't believe it.
Oh my god, that's so funny. So yeah, So obviously this book took you all around the world, right, and I I mean, I assume you've already been all around the world, because this is book number twenty two. Was there any place that you went to for this book that was the first time.
Sure, Metagascar. Oh my goodness. I've been waiting to go to Madagascar all my life and I hadn't really appreciated. You know, we see the daytime lemurs if you've been to a zoo, if you ringtail lemurs or something, but most lemurs are actually nocturnal. Many are quite small and quite cute.
Uh huh, yeah, so I hadn't really.
Again, you know, there's oh now I think we're up to is our eighty species of but there been le's. They call it splitting. They've been taking one and making it into two units. So taxonomically it's very diverse now. But I didn't appreciate how many lemurs are just only out at night.
M Yeah, I never knew that until your book.
For your listeners, there's a picture of me in Madagascar, me myself, the author. Because I saw animal number one thousand in terms of mammals, I'm actually that trip and so.
Yeah, I'm actually flipping to that page so I can also tell my listeners where they are with that. There you are one thousand, page two twenty seven, holding number one thousand. That's great.
Yeah, I thought it might happen. So we made a sign up in America before we got in the airplane to fly to Madagascar, and my assistant and I Crossley's dwarf from Memur and there's a we got a picture of it. Uh, you know, I don't know what to say, Like, it was just fun to do, you know, it's like birdwatching anything else. Lists are fun.
Yeah.
Fun to have a big number.
Yeah, and that Lemur is very adorable, by the way. That's that's the one that's next to you with the one thousand you got, no very Yeah. So for my listeners who are like, I'm fascinated, I have to see these photos. I have to see this book Nature at Night? Where can they get it?
I really want to support our local bookstores. If you have anything that's independent and local, please order it through them. They need your business, yes, but it's where you live. The only thing that services you is Amazon. I have an Amazon account too. I will not look down on you, right or the publisher itself. Timber has its own website and you can get the book through Timber as well.
Okay, all right, and what is on what's on the agenda next for you?
Well, I'm working on a book about acorns, which it can turn out to be culturally relevant, but also there's hundreds and hundreds of species of oaks on the way that you know, a given oak tree is actually supporting many, many, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of insects besides the birds and the fung guy and the other kind of things you'd be associated with. It turns out as a much richer topic than I expected.
Wow, so that will be your next book? And is it going to be another fast one? You think?
Well? God willing right?
All right, well you Charleshood, thank you so much. Thanks for chatting about your book Nature at Night, and I look forward to talking to you again, because now I'm looking forward to and I'm intrigued by your next book about you know, about the acorns. I think it's probably going to be just as fascinating. So thank you, thank.
You, so happy to talk to you. Thank you, Bye bye