Evolution and the City: The Birds

It should have been the episode right before this one, and that would have been the one where we discussed how animals are adapting to the ecosystems engineered directly by humans. That's right. We talked about everything from coyotes and raccoons to the to the urban myth of the alligators that

thrive in New York City's sewer system. Yeah, we discussed how animals react to the trash we produce, how that affects them for good and ill, and how it potentially drives evolution, how they adapt to the surfaces of urban landscapes, how cities create these fragmented islands of biodiversity within them, and of course the question of the mutant alligators. That's

the one on everybody's mind. But so many of the most interesting examples of urban evolution in the animal kingdom actually occur among our old friends, the avians, the modern dinosaurs. That's right. A number of the the cool stories of urban wildlife do relate to to birds. And you know it makes sense, right. They are the ones that are able to fly from park to park. They are the ones that don't have to worry about they don't have to worry as much about crossing the street in many

of the situations. Yeah, they do seem quite able to penetrate our urban ecosystems and often establish new niches. They're ones that might be parallel to the niches that they have out in nature, say the parallel between a bird that naturally dwells among the rocks of a cliff face becoming a bird that dwells among the rocks of a cliff face that is actually the side of a building. Right now, in this episode, because we wanted to talk about birds, we thought it would be great to talk

to a local Atlanta bird expert. So we are going to be talking to a bird educator named Jason Ward today, a guy who we got to the pleasure to meet in the studio the other day who is a little bit obsessed with the birds of the city. That's right. This is a fabulous chat we got to have because it was a lot more local than most of our conversations. For starters, he was in the studio with us and UH.

And then also we're talking about Atlanta. We're talking about this strange city we live in that is UH, that is situated within a forest, and all the birds that make their home here as well. Right, So before we get into our conversation with Jason, just a little bit in the way of introduction. Jason Ward is an educator for Zoo Atlanta. He's a writer for the National Laudubon

Society and a science communicator who specializes in birds. Now he actually leads bird walks here in the metro Atlanta area. He's guest lectured at Emory University, and he partic It's in a lot of projects and studies pertaining to birds in Atlanta, including something called Projects Safe Flight, which studies bird collisions with buildings. Also westernile virus studies, breeding bird surveys,

migratory bird surveys, and all kinds of stuff. So I guess we will get right into our interview with Jason Ward. So Jason Ward. We really appreciate you joining us today. So I think first we'd just like you to tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do. Well. Hello everyone, my name is Jason Ward. UM. I'm an educator. I work for Zoo Atlanta and also the Atlanta Audubon Society. Those are the bird nerds of Atlanta. UM. I am also a writer for the National Autumn Society

as well. I lead field trips here in Atlanta at Piedmont Park. UM. My field trips are the first Saturday every single month at eight o'clock. If you live in the metro Atlanta area, feel free to come by. It is a great time. So Jason, how did you first get interested in birds? That's a great question. So my infatuation or obsession with birds started at a very very young age. UM. I grew up in the Bronx, New York, which isn't really the first town or environment people think

of as it pertains to wildlife in general. UM, but I grew up there as a kid had an infatuation with dinosaurs, as I'm sure a lot of kids go through that phase. Since I couldn't walk outside and actually see these dinosaurs, that I was in love with so much. My infatuation then turned to a variety of different wildlife, with birds eventually being the front runners, which is kind of ironic. It kind of comes full circle because birds are modern day dinosaurs. So that is how my love

of birds began. Didn't really grow up with a lot of money in the bronx um, so my form of entertainment was going to the library and I guess just packing a desk full of as many bird books as possible. And that love then, uh cultured, and it grew and here I am today and I am I guess a huge bird nerd now due to that infatuation as a child of feathered dinosaurs. Do you have a favorite feathered dinosaur here in the Atlanta area? I certainly do. Um So I started his hashtag on Twitter to show my

love for my favorite feathered dinosaur. The hashtag is sky Lamborghini. Um. The reason that I have that hashtag is because this particular species of bird is extremely fast. It is in fact the fastest animal in the world. This animal is the peregrine falcon um. This animal can be found all over the world, all on its continents excluding um antarcticle of course. But um, the reason I call this bird the sky Lamborghini is because it has been clocked at

speeds at approximately two forty miles per hour in a dive. Um, this is a bird that you can see regardless of if you live on a coastal city, if you live in a big, bustling city like we do here in Atlanta. They can be found besting on skyscrapers. So they use those skyscrapers to their advantage. And it's exhilarating to just sit there and watch them what we call a stoop and they'll dive down incredibly fast to catch their prey.

It's exciting what is their prey? Usually, So if you're stooping at an incredibly high speed, it wouldn't be beneficial for you to chase prey on the ground, right you Probably you probably won't last long employing that kind of strategy. So they are what we call avivors, So they hunt feathered prey as well. So they hunt airborne birds in the sky, and they have a really ingenious method to how they attack their prey. Um since their praise airborne

at the time. They'll start from approximately a mile overhead and then they'll start their dive and then they'll allow their momentum to do the work. They'll take their talents and kind of knuckle them um and make like a little a bird fist, if you will, and they'll stun their prey in mid air with a fly by punch. Wow, I've never heard that. And and then of course as the prey is tumbling in the air, they'll circle back around.

They're very acrobatic birds. They'll circle back around and catch the prey mid air and then um take care of it. From that point. Now, we've been talking about how a lot of scientists do all just around the world have been observing the ways birds have changed the way they make a living in cities as opposed to their natural, real wild habitats. When you just take the example of the peregrine falcon, do you see any difference about how the falcon hunts or behaves in a city versus in

a rural area. That is a great question. The answer state is yes. So in their natural habitat there nesting in uh mountainous areas and also cliff sides as well. They use those high vantage points to survey their landscape well cities kind of offer them that same perspective. They're able to stand or sit on uh skyscrapers and survey their landscape there. Now there's a different, I guess perspective that that living in the city gives these particular species

of bird. During migration, a lot of these birds are passing through these cities, and as we know, with light pollution, it's a little difficult for these birds to manage migrating through these cities. What these birds will then do is they'll change their behavior and during nighttime, instead of resting and sleeping through the night, they'll actually be a little bit more active at nighttime, using the light pollution to their advantage and hunting prey at nighttime as the birds

fly by these buildings. Wow. So that's one case where light pollution is going to be working out in specifically in favor of predators and against prey exactly exactly. So, if you are towards the bottom of the food chain, light pollution is not your friend um for a number of reasons. There are predators who will use that extra light to their advantage. And also if you're trying to pass through a city to get to your breeding grounds, that light pollution is not going to be a friend.

A lot of birds become disoriented and unfortunately fly into those windows. And as part of projects Safe Flight here in Atlanta, we unfortunately find a lot of those birds in uh certain areas of the city. Now, I was chatting with you before we started the interview. You you work with Zootlanta and UH and I frequently visit to Atlanta with my my son his five, who is really into dinosaurs as well. So one of our favorite birds at Zoo Atlanta is Cecil, the cast wary. Uh and

you get to work with Cecil. What what is it like to help care for a castlewary? It is incredibly fun to care for a castlewary. It's also incredibly dangerous at the same time. I guess that's what That's what adds to the fun part of it. You have to be extremely careful with a bird who is approximately four ft tall and has a talent on each foot that is about five inches long. You have to exercise extreme

caution in a situation like that. Despite his menacing appearance, he is a frugivore, so his diet consists of apples, bananas, um so he's not looking to eat me. Um, if he were to harm someone, which he wouldn't, but if he would, it would be purely out of defense. UM. So knowing that, and he's a relatively old bird as well, so he is a lot calmer in his in his years, so it's extremely rewarding to work with a bird like him. Now, you mentioned that Cecil's um uh fecal matter is is

particularly noxious. However, yes, absolutely so. Um. Big birds produce big poop. I guess that's the best way to say that. Um. And you have to be very very cautious as you're walking around the enclosure, not to step in any just to let everyone know I was extra cautious today. I haven't tracked any in here with me, so you're fine. We would understand if you did, and if I did, you would also know by now because despite the fact that he eats fruits, um, his his poop is incredibly uh.

I guess the scientific term would be stinky. Does it? Does it smell different than mammal poop? Yes? I don't know how to describe the difference, though it does smell different. Um, this is going to sound so odd. It's a little bit more fragrant than than mammal poop is um and and I would, despite the fact that I do sound like I'm complaining about it, I would much rather be

cleaning up after bird than a mammal. You know, this touches on something that we we discussed in a recent episode that we recorded on the topic of of farts in general and flat Plus, I was really not aware prior of this research that birds do not fart. Yes, I just hadn't thought about this before the difference in the microbio. There's actually a really good book. I'm not sure if you spoke about this in in that episode, but there's a book out there called does It Fart? Yes?

Guess what inspired us exactly, written by some of my friends on Twitter, and they cover that exact topic. So it is actually in wherever you can find books now, So I would encourage people to rush out and get It's surprising what you would learn about which animals fart and which ones do not. Oh yeah, that's that's a great little book, especially how you can just you can just pick it up and just see where you land and just learn about particular creatures farting ability or lack

of farting ability, and and topics such as flatulence. UM. It's important to talk about things like that because there's a lot of people who view wildlife and they have these irrational fears about the animals that live around them. So being able to bridge that gap in a playful manner can kind of spark curiosity and people, especially younger ones, and get them to want to pursue a career and and and conservation. So they're doing a great thing by

putting out a book like that. UM. Hopefully we can do a part two about birds. We'll see how that goes in the future. Jason, on that subject, do you feel like you have good insights into strategies about how to get people to see the wildlife in their city, especially birds as sort of neighbors, as opposed to pests or you know, things that people don't like. Yes, Um, people tend to fear what they don't understand. UM. At

least that's my experience with it. UM. If individuals would just go out there with an open mind, of course, and explore, Atlanta is a really good city to start something like that. UM. It is said that we are this city in the forest, um, and that holds true. There's a lot of old growth forest here in the city.

So just merely stepping out to your neighborhood park, especially during a time like this, which is springtime, UH, stepping out early in the morning and just listening to the sounds around you, you'll hear a chorus of so many different species. The more you know about them, the more you'll realize we need these animals around. They're not here to destroy our gardens or to peck at the sides of our homes, um making us highly annoyed when we're

trying to get sleep in the morning. They are They're here for a reason, and each and every organism here has a relationship with the next one. It's extremely important that we learn more about these species. So I would suggest individuals if they have a particular species of animals that they're interested in. For example, with me, it was birds.

Of course, what I decided to do approximately five years ago was just go on the Internet and search for organizations in the Atlanta area that we're involved with birds. That is how it was introduced to the Atlanta Audubon Society. UM. I also went to their calendar and found out that they had field trips that they would lead, and I said to myself, Okay, this is a perfect opportunity for me to find out more about the species in the

city that I live in. I purchased my first pair of binoculars and the rest of his history from that point on. Now, speaking of birds that live in the city, I'm I'm continually amazed when I encounter a wild turkey in the Atlanta area. Can you can you speak to the I mean, are they thriving in Atlanta? Are they they? Are? They are? Um? There has been wild turkey sightings right in the middle of downtown. UM. It seems as if they're waiting for the crosswalk that the light on, the

traffic lights across the street at times. UM. They're surprisingly big birds you see them in person. They are really good at going unnoticed until they're just in the middle of a street corner. UM. Oddly enough, I have not seen a wild turkey in Fulton County. UM. And I've been, you know, studying birds in Atlanta area for about five years now. I've seen them in Cobb, but I haven't seen them in Fulton County, which is the main county

here in Atlanta. But they're here. They're definitely here and up over the course of a year with migration coming and going. There's approximately three d and fifty different species of birds that can be found in the metro Atlanta area. Now, we have done in the past an episode, actually a couple episodes where this came out, but one full dedicated episode on the striking ways that birds in many ways

are a lot smarter than people realize. We did one on a vi and intelligence, and I wonder, what are some of the cleverest things you've seen birds doing in the city, or that you're aware of birds doing in the city, Like do you see corvids hacking Atlanta and

the way they hack so many other situations. I certainly do first and foremost, before we dive into that, I want to encourage everyone to go back a couple of episodes and listen to when Joe and I think it was at the eight minute mark, he said that birds were well according to him, he said that prior to doing the research that he did for that episode, he thought that birds weren't really smart. Well, we have corvids here in Atlanta, we have American crows, and we have

fish crows as well. They will do things such as they'll grab a nut that is incredibly hard for them to crack. They'll go to a busy street and they'll stand or sit on top of a street light, drop the nut down to the ground, and as the cars roll by, they'll roll over the nuts, crack the nut, and then when that light turns red, they know to fly down and collect their treat. Um. We have other species like the brown headed nuthatch that uses tools as well.

You all talked about tool youse in that episode as well, So this particular species can use bark to pry open uh pieces of a tree to look for a little tasty insects inside of that tree as well. So, yeah, there's a lot of different tactics used by birds here in the city. One of my favorite strategies that birds use is brood parasitism, and that is done by the brown headed cowbird, a species that a lot of people

dislike because of that behavior. Um. So, what this bird does is it's natural behavior was to follow around bison herds, and they lived a very nomadic lifestyle. They would follow around bison herds and and feed off of the insects that bit these buffalo. Now, when European settlers came in, they cleared a lot of forest, which opened up a lot more habitat for them, so they started to expand.

Now this bird is um laying. What it does is during the breeding season, sisted lives a very nomadic lifestyle. It lays its egg in another bird's nest um. It doesn't raise his own chicks, So then that unsuspecting parent has has to raise this chick that is about five times as large as it is now. To a lot of people, that's very, very cruel, And it gets even crueler because that parent keeps a watchful eye on that relationship between its egg, its chick, and it's now host parent.

If that host parent decides to kick that egg out of its nest, what that cowbird will then do is returned back to that nest and destroy it, or they'll return back to that nest, kick all of the other eggs out, and relay an egg. It's pretty much like a mafia mentality. And that is why I love these birds so much. That's also why a lot of people dislike them so much. They'll be okay, though, that's fascinating. It's like if I can't have it, no one can

pretty much. Or it's like you're going to raise this chick one way or another. One of the studies that we looked at already that I thought was really interesting was about birds making adaptive use of trash and litter in the city is There was a study from I think it was some zoologists from Mexico City who found that finches and sparrows in Mexico City were lining their nests with cigarette butts, which were functioning as natural insecticides to keep parasites out of the nest because of the

nicotine that was in the littered cigarette butts. Have you seen other ways that birds are making adaptive use of trash and litter in the cities I have, UM, so it's really really weird. Uh, it's an unknown fact with birders. If you go to one of our landfills here in the in the metro area, it's a really really cool place to see certain species of bird, which is um a place you would never think to go watch birds. UM, specifically gulls. Gulls love land fills, UM vultures. You can

find vultures there as well. So there's a there's a ton of different reasons that you can find birds using trash. You can find them using it to attract particular food items. Um, you can find gulls there because insects like to visit landfills, of course, so you can find them dining on those guys. But see, now there is a complicated relationship there because sure you'll find certain species of finches and sparrows using

items to act as an insect repellent. But then you'll also have instances in which birds will choose the wrong trash item um, which is why I cringe whenever I see someone released balloons in the city. Um. Balloons are

extremely harmful for a number of species, particularly birds. Birds would commonly bring little pieces of either balloon or balloon string back to their nest and that can either be swallowed by the chick or the string from the balloon can either get entangled and hurt that baby bird as well. So there's kind of a love hate relationship in a in a in a sense with birds and trash there. Well, what about the impact of this chemical pollution in an

urban environment? Chemical pollution actually was responsible for the decline and a lot of species that I find dear um, the raptors um all across America. There was use of pesticides that wound up hurting species like the bald eagle or like the sky Lamborghini ei the peregrine falcon. We started to see trends in uh eggs being the shells and the eggs being very very thin, which led to a decline in the species over a certain period of time.

So I'm glad that this species has now made a turn for the better and they're doing a lot uh. Their numbers are rising over the years. But yes, chemical pollution can definitely harm certain species, definitely. All right, we are about to take a quick break and when we come back there will be more of our conversation with

Jason Mordan. What about mating. Have you seen ways that urban landscapes or any human created environments change the ways that birds find mates, produce great problems, or produce interesting workarounds or adaptations. Yes, um, so, as we know, living in the city is tough, or at least it's tougher than living in a rural area because it's louder. It's louder in a city. You got a lot of cars passing by, a lot of just noise in general, whether

it's construction or just random city noise. Birds that live in urban environments have learned to single louder due to the fact that they have to compensate for the noise pollution around them. So it's been found recently that urban birds sing louder than their rural counterparts. Um, because they have to. That is their way of advertising to the ladies in the area that hey, I am big and strong,

you need to mate with me. It's a little tougher in the city because there's music blasting and there's jack hammers going off. So those birds need to spend a little bit extra time working on their singing notes. And yes, they do a very very good job at it. So we've talked a little bit about garbage already, but how do birds adapt to the different food sources that are going to be available within an urban environment? Living in the city. Um. Coming from a city like New York,

we are known for a lot of things. We're known for pizza, we're known for taxis, and we're known for a certain rodent problem. Um. Now that's not when we're proud of it. Birds have adapted to that lifestyle. UM. Redtail hawks are extremely prevalent in urban landscapes because there's tons of rodents for them. To eat um. They are opportunistic generalists. They have a large variety of food that

is can be found in their diet. They'll eat birds in certain parts of the country, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, if it walks or flies, they'll eat it um, which is why they can be found in cities thriving. There are tons of food for them to eat in cities. So they have definitely taken advantage of the fact that we've expanded and grown in these cities. Now, what about birds

that eat some of the human foods of cities. We've definitely read studies about mice in New York City adapting to like they're they're getting different gene prevalences to favor higher fat diets. I wonder do we see any like that in birds. Yeah, So there are a couple of species that are unfortunately invasive species, particularly the how sparrow

and the European starling um. How sparrows are sometimes referred to as burger king sparrows because you can find them in any fast food parking lot dining on French fries, which I don't know how they do because I'm not the hugest fan of their French fries, but they seem to love it. Um, yeah, they've taken advantage. Birds are opportunistic in general, so if there's some kind of food around, they'll make the best of it. And um we see

that with European starlings and how sparrows. Now, this isn't quite a full blown urban environment, but Joe, I think I chatted with you a little bit about this already, but uh, my family recently visited, uh the island of Kauai in Hawaii, and I was I was really blown away by how successful chickens are there. They're like chickens just just everywhere you look in in the parking, lots

of fast food restaurants, along the roadside, like in the forest. Uh. It was kind of a testament to just how how successful a creature like that can be when it it finds an unexploited niche That is extremely true. There's one reason why those particular birds are so successful there. That is a very isolated place there. They definitely have predators there. But when you live on the mainland and in a in a high populated area like we do here, there

are curveballs thrown at you. If there were a large population of chickens here in the in this urban environment, they would have to contend with a very, very menacing animal. UM. This animal is said to be responsible for the demise of between one to four billion birds in the United States alone every year, and that is our fluffy, wonderful housecats. UM.

Chickens are ground dwelling birds. UM. They don't spend a lot of time in trees, and that is horrible as a horrible strategy when contending with one of the best domestic hunters around. House Cats are extraordinarily good at stalking and catching prey, and chickens are relatively easy for them to wrangle and take down. I'm not sure how well that particular island is doing with their housecat population, but I do not think chickens would do that well here

because of that issue. So we were talking about ways to sort of be neighborly towards the birds in our environment. Would would you contend that one of one of the ways to do that would be to do what you can to help efforts to curb They're all populations. There's no doubt about that. UM. Ferro cat populations are responsible for the demise of not only birds, but small reptiles, um, some of our harmless species of snakes, even the animals that a lot of people find cute in general, like

chipmunks as well. Um. I have a pretty bad stray cat issue in my neighborhood that I live in, and occasionally you'll find them with a chipmunk in their mouth, despite the fact that the neighbors are feeding them. So a lot of people think that, you know what, if I feed these cats, they won't kill as much or

they won't feel the need to kill as much. Well that's not the case, because these cats are doing it out of fun um and they're not really consuming the prey that they eat most of the time, they're killing it and leaving it there. So I would say that I mean a number of ways to help to be neighborly to the birds that live in your area is please bring your cat inside. On top of that, plant native plants as well, And if you want to put out a bird feeder or a bird bath, please feel

obligated to do so. Just realize that when you do put out a feeder, you're not only feeding the sparrows and finches, but you also are feeding those hawks as well, so you've mentioned that you've been interested in birds in multiple cities, and I wonder if you see city specific or location specific adaptations among even the same species of birds. Do New York birds do anything different than Atlanta birds

do or is it pretty much the same across urban environments. Um, It's largely the same, but you do see different uh minor changes with certain species. For example, the red tailed hawk, which is the most widespread hawk in North America. They have adapted to the fact that not only is New York City known for their large rodent population, but they have tons of pigeons in New York as well. Red tailed hawks UM are more likely to take down avian prey than they are here in Atlanta. Um. The hawks

that I've seen here in Atlanta usually hunt squirrels. That is their main food source here uh small mammals. So you do see that. You do see different trends in different parts of the country based on what food is available for them. So here's a weird question where I'll

ask you to speculate if you're comfortable. I want you to imagine human cities like Atlanta were to continue existing pretty much as they are for a million years, and that the birds that live in those cities that live there now continue to evolve to better fit their habitats. What would you expect those birds to be like in you know, a long time distant from now. How how would birds change if they just keep adapting to be better and better or city dwellers. Have you ever seen

UM Planet of the Apes? No, but you'd find UM a lot of what you're seeing now. You'd find birds more finely tuned to live in their environments. I've always wondered how far into the future we can go and continue to see the startling numbers that we see with window collisions with birds. UM, you think that after a while, certain birds would avoid UH cities on their migratory roots and uh those birds would obviously be able to pass their genes onto the next generation and their offspring would

be also a little bit more likely to avoid large cities. Now, that isn't a great outlook for people who love viewing these animals because we enjoy the fact that they stop over at our ease for a couple of weeks at a time. So I think if we looked into the future, you'd find birds with what one could describe as superpowers. UM. These birds already have superpowers as it is. Basically so, owls have this amazing sense of hearing. They can hear uh a mouse's heartbeat. That is how in tune their

hearing is. So if you think about an animal like that, over the course of thousands and thousands of years having to deal with noise pollution at a city level, you'd imagine that particular species um developed an even more acute sense of hearing based on the fact that he has to contend with his environment around him. So one could only imagine what kind of adaptations city birds would start

to develop. You'd also imagine that these birds would eventually be split off from the air world counterparts and become subspecies. That is something that I can imagine happening as well. Now, coming back to the bird population of Zoo Atlanta, what are some other bird specimens you're particularly fond off there? My absolute favorite bird there is Sequoia. He is our bald eagle UM. He is a non releasable bird UM here he's had an accent that caused a permanent wing injury.

But he's full of charisma UM, and he has grown comfortable with people walking right up to his enclosure. He used to start a very easily and retreat to the back of the enclosure, but now he'll sit really, really proudly on one of his perches, and occasionally you'll hear him emit this very wimpy kind of sound, which a lot of people are startled by and surprised by because they think that when a bald eagle opens his mouth, this incredible uh screeches going to come out, But in reality,

it's this kind of squeaky sound that they made. Can you do an impression? I cannot, You know, I would only be doing a disservice to all bald eagles everywhere if I tried to do that. But I do remember when when to Atlanta first obtained him, he was behind some some blinders, essentially just to keep I guess people from spooking him. Yeah, he used he used to be a very um he used to be very easy to spook him. And since he came to us with that wing injury, the last thing we would want is for

him to injury it even further. So um But luckily for us, he has gotten a lot more calm over the years and he's doing a lot better. Um. So his name is Sekoya. That is definitely one of my favorite animals. Also, we have the we have a pair of milky eagle owls. Um. They are the third largest species of owl in the world, the absolute largest in Africa. They have a really cool nickname. I want you to try to figure out how they got this nickname. Okay,

so in Africa they are called monkey eating owls. Well, well one would assume it's from it's from eating the monkeys. You are a genius, yes, um, yes, So they are strong enough to pluck small monkeys right off the tops of trees. They have incredible grip strength with their talents. Um. If for one day that owl decided to fly down and grasp my forearm, the force that he would be

able to emit would be equal to a rottweiler's bite. Um. And this is all coming from a bird who is on average about five pounds, so not a very heavy bird, but one that is extremely strong. Yeah. You notice, like anybody who's ever come across an angry flock of geese is like surprised by how strong birds can be. Yeah, gee, geese especially Um. There are tons of videos around the world where geese just stand up to everything. I always give them a wide berth whenever I passed them. Um,

they are formidable animals. Um what I've seen clips of geese going after bears. So yeah, just avoid geese everyone when you see them, especially if they have babies around there they become dinosaurs. Now, speaking of large birds, did you work with the ostriches any at Zoo Atlanta or is that kind of a separate department. That's actually a separate department. So ostriches since they share the same enclosure

with our giraffes and our zebra. They are part of the hoofstock part of the zoo, so they are unfortunately not under our care in the bird department. Of course, when we think, when we think about these large birds like the ostrich I don't know about you, but I can't help but think back to my my childhood prehistoric animal books and some of the large birds of the past. Did you or do you have a particular favorite prehistoric bird? Yes? Um, leave you all spoke about this bird once as well,

the terror bird. That is a bird that I would love to see these days from a safe distance. Of course. Um, just a bird of that size with features the kind of features that it had. I would love to see that um brought to life. Now, that is not an endorsement for someone to try to do an experiment, try

to bring it back to life. But every every time I see a trailer for a new Jurassic Park movie, I'm thinking, there are all these uh, prehistoric mammals and prehistoric birds you could be including in your terrifying tourist attraction. Why not bring those guys back? Why I bring back the Moa. The Moa was when I was always impressed by. In addition to that, not only could you be bringing back some of these ancient birds, you can put feathers on some of these dinosaurs that we know had feathers.

We know that therapods such as velociraptor and such as my favorite dina Nikus, which is actually the ones that are portrayed as velociraptors. But that's a different tangent call in itself. Um, we know that these birds, I mean, these dinosaurs now had feathers, so it would be wonderful to see them portrayed as such in these Jurassic Park movies.

Oh yeah, I mean especially since uh, I mean, for so many kids, like Jurassic Park is an early way of building up your excitement about dinosaurs, and they I feel like they kind of have a responsibility to get some of the the educational aspects of the product right. Well, you'd think by association it would also make kids respect birds more, right if the dinosaurs had feathers. Yeah, I think they found a loophole in the last movie that they put out. They are in the plot it's said

that these dinosaurs on exhibit are genetically modified. I'd to I guess, resemble what people I think how people think they would look. So I guess they get around the loophole of trying to be as accurate as possible, because, for example, that large creature that jumps out of the water at the end of the movie, the mosasaurus, it was not that large. So I think they can take certain liberties with that loophole there. But still I'd like

to see feathers. That sounds kind of cheap. Jason, I think this is always a good thing to ask people. Do you have a favorite book on birds, something that you wish everybody would read. So I do have a favorite book on birds. Um, it's not for everyone. I'll start by saying that because it's not your typical book. Um. My favorite book on birds is actually Sibley's. It is what we used to identify birds. Um. It is identification book. Um.

It is packed full of different features that each species has. Now, it's not a book that you're going to dive into and read at a nice stand by yourself. Actually, I take that back because a friend of mine on Twitter, known as the Birdiest, he had a child recently and he posted a photo of him reading that book to his child as like a bedtime story. So I think that we should all aspire to do things like that. Even though it's not the most entertaining read, No, I

think it can be. I remember when I was a kid, one of my favorite books to read was just I think it was. It might have been Audubon Society or somebody's Guide to Reptiles, and it was just an identification book that had great color photos in it and descriptions of like the habitat and behavior and characteristics of all that. It wasn't very literary, it didn't really have a plot, but for some reason you couldn't get it out of my hands. Well, I think kids in general are drawn

too just encyclopedic volumes of anything. You know, it's if it's alphabetized and have some some colors and some stats in there, they're gonna they're gonna go for it. Those are some of the very very first books that were piled on top of my desk at the library, those books with tons of photos in them and fun facts. That is how you decide to lose yourself and dive deep into this world, um of wildlife that lives around you, and to bring it back completely. Bird. Do you keep

any birds as pets? I do not. In my opinion, I don't have space big enough to house them. Um. I don't think I would in the first place. UM. I am more than content observing them in their natural habitat. UM. It's tougher because sometimes you spend hours waiting for one little song that you hear over hundred feet away. Um. But that is more than enough to bring a smile through my face to know that this tiny little bird that spent its winter in South America is now passing

through Atlanta on the way to Canada. Um. It is magical almost. That is really cool. It makes you feel so connected with the world before we let you go. Is there anything else you wanted to talk to us about today, anything really really burning that's on your mind. I think that people should get out and enjoy the

world around them. That is most important to me. Whether it's you're taking a vacation to a national wildlife refuge somewhere in the United States, or whether it's just taken a couple of minutes and stepping out to your backyard without any electronic devices to bother you. Um, just step out and enjoy the world around you. And yes, I'm going to be biased here. Look up, look into the trees. You never know what you may find in those trees. There are tiny dinosaurs that are flying around you at

all times. So let's take a step back and look up. Well, Jason, I just want to say thanks so much again for joining us today. This has been really great. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having all Right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, Robert and I will discuss some follow up from our conversation with Jason. Thank you, thank you. Okay, we're back now. We wanted to follow up on some of the things that came

up in our conversation with Jason. So one of the things that he mentioned was the ways that artificial light in cities can affect bird populations. He was specifically focusing on the ways that it favored visual hunting strategies of a vivors like the peregrine falcon. And I wanted to mention some interesting parallels to UH to that, some other light anomalies within urban environments and how it affects birds.

So here's a pretty weird one. The National September eleven Memorial and Museum in New York runs this annual event called the Tribute in Light. Have you ever seen this, Robert? It is, if you haven't seen it, as you might guess, a memorial to all the people who died in the September eleventh terrorist attacks. And the form the memorial takes is that it pulls together eighty eight search lights and arranges them into two enormous beams of light shooting into

the sky. I guess to suggest the Twin Towers, and some of the literature refers to these beams as the Towers of Light or the Phantom Towers. But this event has a creepy and mysterious side involving birds, especially some years. So I want to quote a section from Brandon Come writing an article about what happened at the ninth the

Anniversary ceremony. UH. In an article for Wired in two thousand ten, quote illuminated in the beams where thousands of small white objects sparkling and spiraling, unlike anything seen on other nights. Some viewers wondered if they were scraps of paper or plastic caught in updrafts from the spotlight's heat from beneath. It was at times like gazing into a snowstorm. It was hard not to think of souls. But what were they? They were birds spiraling around in the spotlights.

Now we all know birds, of course, that lots of bird species are seasonal migrants. Have read that roughly a quarter of Earth's birds or seasonal migrants uh. And in the northern hemisphere, what that means is that they fly south to warmer weather in the winter, and in September, a lot of birds are going to be migrating south. And New York City actually lies right along a major migration corridor. Now, normally, flying at night makes a lot of sense for birds because birds use less energy then

and they're more hidden from predators. Cover of darkness is very nice if you're a prey species. This sort of goes back to what Jason was talking about with the predation, right, But of course it also comes with costs, like how do you know which way you're supposed to go if it's dark out. But birds, fortunately, they've got these navigational strategies. They have a sort of internal compass that can help

orient them in their north south migrations. And it turns out this compass is calibrated somehow with respect to lights of various kinds, maybe sunlight, starlight, moonlight. So large sources of urban light along migratory paths have the ability to interfere with nighttime flight if the circumstances line up in just the wrong way. And those circumstances would be things like the timing of the migration phase of the moon

and the weather conditions and so forth. And at the time of this this two thousand ten event, when all these birds were spiraling in the spotlights, John Rowden, a citizen science director at the New York chapter of the Audubon Society, estimated that about ten thousand birds got trapped

in this light cage. And of course, what happens to a lot of these birds is you know, they're on an intensely restricted energy budget, right, and just wasting tons of inner g spiraling up and down in a beam of light because you're confused and you don't know where to go. That can actually prove fatal. So, like birds were falling to the ground exhausted or dead, or even if they eventually made it out, they had severely wasted a lot of energy that was necessary for them to survive.

And I think one of the important things to drive home about this is, I mean, for starters, just artificial light in general, the likes of which you would encounter typically in New York City, is a spectacle that did not exist for the vast majority m of the of

of the evolutionary time on Earth. Yeah, and another thing to keep in mind, people might not even think of this because you think, okay, well, people have at least been lighting fires for thousands of years, right, But the intensity and not just the intensity, but the frequency spectrum of light has changed a lot over time. So not only are lights brighter than they used to be, we're producing different frequencies of light because of the light sources.

Fire produces a very different kind of light than say a fluorescent l it or an LED does. Yeah, like a a an extremely like the Las Vegas strip is a totally different light spectacle than say a forest fire, even though they are both impressive in their own right, exactly right, And many animals that we code all of that is light is just something we see by many animals actually do respond differently to different spectra of light, and so that kind of thing can have a biological difference.

But with these phantom towers, were again talking about a concentration, then that is a that is a magnitude above what is even typical in say New York City, right, and even the natural not natural, but the normal artificial light generated by New York City at night can be enough to cause some problems. This anomaly, you know, this sort of like one night a year anomally is this huge problem.

So these ten thousand birds get trapped, you know roughly that's just the estimate at this one event, and they spiral and spiral, and so eventually what happened this year was that the people running the running it were convinced to turn the light saw for twenty minutes and then the birds were able to get away. But then when

they turned the lights back on, it happened again. So they just kept repeating this cycle of they'd have the lights on, birds would become trapped in this spiraling light cage, and then they'd have to turn it off for a few for a few minutes and let the birds escape. But it's also crazy to think of how this light accident we talked about. I think in the last episode we mentioned the vacuum cleaner effect, the way it just

sucks in birds from from all around. And again we do see an example of I mean, who would have expected this? Yeah, well, I mean some people would have expected, but certainly this is probably not something that was on anybody's mind planning this memorial, right, I mean some bird experts probably would have expected, yet not normally people they just saying, oh yeah, we're just having some lights. I mean,

there's lights all the time. What's the big deal. So a more comprehensive study of this was actually published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in seventeen by Van Doren at All and the It was a team of ornithologists who did a study to track the tribute in lights effects on birds. So this one specific annual event, tracking it over seven years, and they estimated that over that period of seven years, the event disoriented about one

point one million migrating birds. So when the lights were on, quote bird density is near the installation exceeded magnitudes twenty times greater than surrounding baseline densities during each year's observation. So it is working like this vacuum cleaner. It's sucking in all these birds that are migrating from the surrounding countryside. But as we mentioned, other things that are bright lights

at night can also disoriented can also disorient birds. So skyscrapers, tall buildings, sports stadiums, oil rigs, and there's a pretty easy way to make a difference here. Turn off the lights during migration. Uh. And so there are these things known as lights out campaigns that can help. And this would be like where a building manager would agree to turn off the lights in the skyscraper during a period

when birds are expected to be passing through. I like the idea of putting night vision goggles on all of the players in a football or soccer game. I think that was great. That would really add us. It would be like you know, a Tom Clancy rainbow six kind of take on the sport. You'd have to put them on the spectators too, though, wouldn't you. Oh yeah, yeah, it would be um, it would be a Buffalo bill

esque sporting spectacular for everybody involved. I like the idea also that the announcers would have to be whispering, as if they were doing a covert mission. Yeah. Now, of course, as you would expect, the effects of artificial lights on birds and cities don't stop there, not by any means. So I want to mention just one more study I found.

It was in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London b and Biological Sciences from by Dominoni, Ketting and Partechie And this was a study that looked at the effects of nighttime artificial light on European blackbirds or tortoise marula. And they said that quote, birds exposed to light at night develop up their reproductive system up to one month

earlier and also molted earlier than birds kept under dark nights. Furthermore, city birds responded differently than forest individuals to the light at night treatment, suggesting that urbanization can alter the physiological phenotype of songbirds. Now, why did this happen? It's kind of hard to say for sure, but they're probably going to be a lot of pressures at play here, plus just some of the normal ways that light can affect

hormonal frequencies. I mean, we've even heard this about the way light affects our own hormones are artificial light effect. If you're like looking at bright lights right before you go to bed, this can cause problems with the hormones that you normally need to have to get to sleep, such as that bright little screen that we all have such a difficulty detaching ourselves from. Yeah, even I have

this problem. And I just want to say also that in the last episode, we were talking a lot about this book by Minnow Skill Tous and the Dutch researcher who wrote this book, Darwin Comes to Town, that was all about the evolution of animals for urban settings, and he has a whole chapter on the evolution of blackbirds in urban settings, and he's essentially advancing a case based on multiple studies that the urban blackbird is in the

middle of becoming a distinct species separate from forest blackbirds because of all the changes that the city dwelling populations are undergoing. That's right, Yeah, and he The Skilled Skilled Housing has one chapter where he talks just about pigeons the darkness. Pigeons, the pigeons of darkness, if you will um because he talks not only in this book about a physical and you know, systematic changes in the city, but also about chemical challenges such as you know, pollution,

basic chemical pollution. And he points to several examples of organisms as at large that have adapted to survive and polluted environments, such as the widespread fish known as the mummy chog, which is just a great name for a species, but this is an example of a creature that that you can find thriving in very polluted areas, uh, with

the individuals exhibiting enhanced tolerance for the pollutants. So, you know, I can't help but be reminded in all of this of another doctor SEH's story, one that you've probably you're probably familiar with this one Joe the Lorax. He speaks for the trees. Yeah, he speaks for the trees. And and in the book we we see fish, birds and of course the some bears. They are forced to flee

the industrial waste. But one of the points that The Skilled Housing makes is that nature can find a way even in a once slur poisoned landscape, at least to some level. And he discusses a really interesting Avian example of this with our our most celebrated or reviled urban bird,

and that is, of course, the pigeon. He writes that between two thousand and two thousand four Russian geneticists in you a book of a travel throughout Europe to catalog the physical features of nine thousand city pigeons, and he noted specifically whether they were pale or quote dark sooty gray, which is a genetic distinction in pigeons. And he found that the darker birds were more common in big cities

than in less urbanized areas. So he wondered if this was due to quote genetic mingling with pigeon fanciers birds, or as something else was at work here. Now, normally, when you see coloration patterns changing in in wild animal populations, you might think this has something to do with like

either sexual signaling or maybe with predator prey relationships. Right, you would expect maybe it's camouflage, right that you automatically think of the evolutionary example of the peppered moth, which famously, there's there's this moth in England that naturalists said, Okay, the pigmentation on its wings is changing because of the sooty landscape from pollution. It needs to better blend in with darkened surfaces. Yeah, that was my first thought when

I started reading this. I'm like, oh, it's gonna be a camouflage issue. So those pigeons can evade, uh some of the New york As who wish to eat them, um or I presume want to eat them. Have I told you about the box man in New York? I don't think so. I was. I was up there for World Science Festival one year, and it was one of it was It was not a major park. It was one of these sort of carefully manicured areas between two

large skyscrapers that had a little green space. A lot of business people coming out there to, uh, you know, just to check their phone, maybe eat lunch, and then disappear again. And uh, I was doing much the same thing. I was stopping for rest, checking my messages before moving on to something else. And there was this guy out there feeding the pigeons, and he had next to him like a like a beer box, you know, like a

cardboard beer crate. Uh, you know, it's just some dude feeding some pigeons, No big deal, pigeons coming closer and closer. He was feeding it, and then all of a sudden, he scoots, stoops down, grabs the pigeons, stuffs it into the box, and then walks away. What. Yeah, And I've spent I spent years wondering what he had in store for that pigeon. Maybe he was a researcher and he was going to do some experiments. Maybe he It did not seem like it was his his first pigeon kidnapping. Uh,

this seemed like he had a system down. So I don't know if he's eating these things or if it is uh some sort of legitimate or semi legitimate scientific experiment he's up to or something and grotesque and horrifying. Um, I don't know if he speaks for the pigeons. So many questions, Yeah, I have them all. The mystery is consuming me already. Yeah. And I and honestly, I don't know to what extent camouflage would have helped that poor pigeon.

But this particular case, the case of the gray pigeons and the pale pigeons it it turns out it doesn't have anything to do with camouflage or mate selection, etcetera. It's all about the poison offloading power of darker feather pigmentation. He points out that evolutionary ecologist Marian shatter Lane provides some answers via her study of Parisian pigeons. So, as it turns out zinc and lead both bind with melanin.

Oh okay, so the presence of heavy metals in the surrounding environment could have a role in selecting for different types of pigmentation, just as a way of processing the metals. Right, So you end up with the zinc and lead in your system. Right. As a bird living in a urban environment, the darker the feather, the more of this stuff you can offload into the feathers because it's binding with the melanin, which is the pigment. So darker birds are better able

to purge their bodies of heavy metal pollutants. The researcher here shadow line. She found that chicks and parents exposed to lead exhibited darker plumage than one's raised in lead free environments. Paler juveniles died young, indicating that quote there is a real evolutionary advantage to having darker feathers in a polluted environment. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what those feathers look like. It's just the chemical properties of what's in them, right. Yeah, So I was

I was really floored by that. It's just not something I would have would have thought of because we think of coloration, we do, like we said, you think of camouflage, you think of mating displays, uh, that sort of thing. But just the like the physical properties of that pigmentation. Uh, you know that that was not something I had really considered fascinating. Oh, by the way, a couple of things I wanted to get back to from our interview with

Jason Ward. We talked a little bit about wild turkeys in the urban environment, and I realized after the fact that that many of our listeners may not know much about the North American wild turkey. So these are America's largest ground nesting bird, standing four feet high or one point two meters and weighing twenty to thirty pounds. That's that means up to thirteen point six kilograms. So you know, these are the they're standing there and they're the size

of a child and again there's they're slender. So whatever images you've seen of plump Thanksgiving turkey, this is a different creature altogether. They don't come like pre saline injected right. Uh. The they have a top running speed of twenty five miles per hour or forty point two kilometers per hour. And to put that in perspective, the human running speed record is twenty seven point seventy eight miles per hour

or forty four point seven kilometers per hour. So if you're an Olympic sprinter, you have a chance at at out running a wild turkey. They're capable of short flight. Um, so we're talking sixty mile per hour or nine point five kilometer per hour bursts of speed in the air, and they boast a two inch bony spurs on their legs for defense. So they're they're Dionicus in a way. Yeah, there are. They're they're distant shades and shadows of Denonicus.

Now you have a different encounts of encounters with wild turkeys, and they range from the sort of silent awe that I experienced in my backyard to a mad dash to escape their pursuit. If you look around on YouTube, you'll definitely find examples of both, and they can be destructive to human constructions, as you know, as you might imagine digging around with their with their claws. I've seen accounts of them scraping up automobiles. Uh, and certainly they might

frighten you. But while they were once found throughout North America, they were pushed to the brink of extinction in the twentieth century and they've since bounced back. They've been pushed into urban areas by population pressures, and once they find their way into a predator free location with readily available food,

well then that's that's what they go wild for. And so in some areas they have become a bit of a problem, a bit of a nuisance, And usually what is prescribed there is is just do not approach them, do not feed them, because as with any wild animal like, that's where problems occur. Now, another one of the awesome birds that came up in our conversation with Jason was

the cassowary. Yes, and while the cassowary is a rainforest bird that as far as I can tell, is is not an herb a nuisance anywhere, um, it is still a very impressive animal. So I just wanted to add a few details here. So we're talking several species of large flightless birds that are found in New Guinea nearby islands and in Australia, and they reach heights of five feet tall or one point five meters and there they

are just impressive animals with this bright blue coloration. They have this bony cask on the top of their head, which it reminds one of the like a dinosaurs bony cast, you know, like something you might see on Paris Harlfus or something. Yeah, and the my my understanding is that one of the predominant theories about it is that they use it when they are running through the underbrush as a way to sort of cut through and push your

branches out of the way. And they could considerably need it because they're running speed top running speedies about thirty one miles per hour or fifty kilometers per hour. And uh, when it comes to clause we have Jason mentioned that they are dangerous animals. To have an enclosure, you have to be extra careful with them and extra um, you know, cautious around them. And that's because they have an inner claw that reaches five inches in length there on five millimeters,

So we're talking an impressive dagger. They're just stored away for defensive purposes. So you wouldn't want to go start in fights with a cast wary. No, But but and there there are historical accounts, especially from World War two, understand where American service uh men would encounter cassawaries. And there are some some tales here and there of violence perpetrated by castauaries against human or canine aggressors. But you know, they they are large, wild animals and if they are threatened,

they are going to respond. But otherwise I would say that the castuaria is just a holy, blameless creature. They've got the pope had to prove it, Yeah, they do. They have the bony pope hat right there on top of their head. Now we've already talked about light pollution,

but what about noise pollution? Yeah? This is another thing Jason mentioned was that when we asked him about mating for birds in cities, what kind of pressures existed, And he mentioned that a major problem for bird mating in cities is that lots of birds have courtship rituals that involve song. But if a male bird's mate calling song can't be heard over all the traffic and jackhammers and so forth. How can the birds reproduce? How can they survive?

This sounds like a question from a Harry Nielsen song for some reason. You know, how can the birds stamp copyright? Don't steal my intellectual property? That song is gonna be a top ten So actually, also in his book Skill tousand has a whole chapter on this, just on bird song within cities. And one key study here that's pretty interesting is won by Hans slab Acorn and Margarette Pete from two thousand three published in Nature called Ecology birds

sing at a higher pitch in urban noise. Pretty straightforward findings. They found that male great tits or parsis major quote at noisy locations sing with a higher minimum frequency, thereby preventing their songs from being masked to some extent by the predominantly low frequency noise. So if you are singing at the same frequency as the traffic, it's gonna be hard to hear you, even if you sing very loud.

But if you sing it higher frequencies than the traffic, then you have a better chance of being picked out from the background noise. So this is showing a pressure for urban dwelling great tits, or birds generally that that sing to attract mates to sing it higher frequencies to be picked out more easily from all of the industrial machinery and jackhammers and construction and cars and busses and

everything you would normally hear in the city. But of course, other general findings are that great tits aren't the only birds that do this, And one of the big questions is does this happen by ever luction, meaning that over generations, genes for higher pitch songs are becoming more common over time, or does this happen by plasticity, meaning our birds actively adjusting the pitch and reaction to the environment. And it looks like there's some cases of both, right, Sometimes it's

genetic and sometimes it's just plasticity. Sometimes a bird put into a higher noise environment will actually sing at a higher pitch to adjust. But skill Tousm points out that this is in competition with some other pressures, for example, some bird species. In some some of these species, research shows that in natural settings, females generally prefer males with lower voices. A deep voice is more attractive to them. Because it seems to better signal fitness. Thus, there's a

sexual selection advantage for lower frequency songs. But in cities those preferable lower frequency songs can't be heard, So there's an environmental pressure going opposite of the sexual selection pressure. Because ultimately, it doesn't matter how much of like an avian berry why you are. If you can't be heard, it's not gonna make an impact. Right, they can't get any of your love. Better to be a little Richard

or one of the beaches. Right. If that's the only way to be heard, that's the only way to be heard. One more interesting study of how human noise affects birds skilled House and mentions this one in his book as well is associated with a University of Colorado researcher named Clinton Francis who studied the effects of industrial noise on

bird populations in the desert of New Mexico. Because that was actually an interesting place because what you've got in the desert New Mexico is it's full of oil and gas wells, and some oil and gas wells have these noisy compressors and others don't, and they're pretty quiet, and this allows you to isolate pretty much just the variable of noise, because the surrounding environment is otherwise the same and so the only thing that's different is whether industrial

noise is present. And in studying the differences between these noisy versus quiet oil and gas wells, he and his team found that birds with a lower frequency call or songs such as morning the morning dove, were absent from the noisy well locations, probably because they couldn't be heard. Meanwhile, birds with high pitch voices, like the chipping sparrow were all around them, and some birds he found even preferred the noisy areas, presumably because the noise drove away predators.

So if you're a bird that gets preyed on by one of these low voiced predators that doesn't like the noisy areas, then you might do well to put up nests right beside this humming compressor. Now, we asked Jason in our interview about the the idea of future evolution

in a city. What kinds of spectacular or or lackluster forms will we see in the future, Uh, you know, things like we'll rat raccoons drive cars, or how the cars as it as it were, I mean, what what kind of future evolution might place in a human urban environment. Do raccoons not drive cars? Now, there's gotta be some YouTube videos. I think they're so skilled and they're so secretive.

The coyotes are probably driving cars. We just don't see them, right. Uh. Of course, we were gonna have carnivorous predatory rats that attack large prey by swarming. What is the classic movie about what Food of the Gods? Is that about urban rats? I'd swarming over everybody? You know, I am way behind on rats warm movies. I've gotta I've got to catch

up on that. No. Actually, I mean, in addition to all of the stuff we have already talked about, I mean, I think we should not be surprised if many years down the road we see lots of the wildlife dwelling within cities, having adaptations like adaptations to climb and dwell on smooth, rocky surfaces like buildings and stuff, and adapted resistance against poisons and pollutants and traps and obvious stuff

you would expect. But another thing that I think might be an interesting general trend among all kinds of animals is a selection driving towards animals that are more neophilic, meaning attracted to unusual objects. We talked a little bit about this in the last episode about how often in nature it pays to be conservative and to not go near things that are unusual because they could be dangerous. But in cities a lot of times things that are

unusual are going to be rewarding. Yeah. Yeah, we talked about the raccoon, and it's especially the urban raccoon, and it's it's it's it's proclivity to just jump in there and try something, just to start filling with it and see what its secrets are. Yeah. So, animals that are more and more willing to investigate and figure out unusual objects and situations I think are gonna generally have some

some things working out in their favor. In cities, they're going to be getting more nutrition coming across more and more delicious garbage of various kinds that we we can't even imagine the garbage of tomorrow. And uh so you're gonna have this selection pressure towards neophilia, which also I think will mean more of a pressure towards animals that are comfortable with humans around. Right now, this only works if the humans don't exert a counter pressure by attacking

the animals when they come around. Right, So here's my my two pronged prediction. Animals with neophilia more likely to come around weird novel situations and objects and to approach humans, but also animals that are at the same time cuter and cuter. Ah. Well, and this we get into that the classic rivalry between the possum and the raccoon. Yeah, because the raccoon, the adult raccoon is cute, and the

babies of course are super adorable. But with the possum, the babies are adorable, but the the adults are a little ghastly in appearance. But imagine the possum of the future that like, it's too cute to call the pest control on. You know, oh so maybe yeah, I see there being an evolutionary advantage in being a cute possum, and therefore, uh, Nature's up selecting four cute possums. So basically I'm predicting a future with cities full of humans

and e walks. Uh, you know, very curious problem solving teddy bears that are so cuddly looking. But of course the other side did this. I can't help but think, and I imagine you probably thought about this too as a dog owner, is that it's it's one thing to be able to get along with the humans, but you're ultimately going to have to get along with their dogs

as well. That's because if you were seen as a threat to somebody's fur baby, uh, then that's gonna be a reason for the humans to rise up against you as well. Yeah, I mean, so there's there's always gonna be things intention right. You know, some animals are going to be selected for because they they're scrappers and their fighters and they can survive tough competition environments, and other things are going to be selected for because they're perceived

as harmless and they get along. Well. I guess I'm not ultimately sure which pressure will win out though, I don't know. I mean, if you've got humans, a city full of humans, and humans have all these pest control tactics in their arsenal, it does seem like urban dwelling animals would do well to do everything they can not

to be perceived as pests. Now, one other issue that comes to mind on this is just that it's easy to think of the human city is something fixed and unchanging, you know, it is this artificial environment that we have made, and we push the elements of change out of the picture. But of course cities undergo constant evolution of their own.

Sort of course technology changes, uh, environmental policies change. Uh. People realize, oh, we need more plants around, we need more parks, or you look at some of these more gosh, I haven't really looked at any of the some of these recently, but you've seen these plans for the future cities where everything's covered in green. It's it's like the

hanging gardens of Babylon all over again. And and you can imagine how an initiative like that, if it were really carried out to its full potential, how that would alter some of the factors that we've set up here. Well, at the end of his book, Skill touse And actually lays out a plan for designing good green spaces within cities that would be favorable toward the evolution of urban organisms.

You know, so like the the animals and plants living within cities, they could we could design green spaces and cities that help them out, or green spaces and cities that destroy them. And so he's got this whole plan for how best to do that, and one of his

key points. He's got several points, I think four of them, but one of his key points is that while normally you don't want to favor like normally, if you were creating a garden or something like that, it would be great to favor native species species that are local to the area where this garden is. But in urban environments, there's an indication that urban environments are essentially a fundamentally

different kind of environment now than the surrounding landscape. So there is a case to be made, and he sort of makes this case that maybe what you should do is select the types of plants that are already thriving within the city, as opposed to trying to favor what's local to the surrounding countryside. Because the surrounding country side is dead in the city the city, you're not gonna be able to bring it back to that level in

most cases. Um And and there are other changes one has to take into account too, I mean, for starters, is just the realization that humans are never shy about taking a step or even a massive step backwards UH in their UH, in their their their policy making, and

their attention to UH to to their environment. So one has to consider that all you can't you can't just count on progress, right and uh and then or you know, in a way, it's like like taking the step back comes with progress because you take that one step forward and you're like, hey, well we did this, We maybe we can not worry as much about this other area of of of urban environmental development. Also just the fact

that they have something. Something were to happen to the human species, our cities would not continue on cared for by robot caretakers just yet. They would fall into ruin and decay. They would become a drastically different artificial environment as they cascaded back to something resembling the original ecosystem

of the area. And in some cases too, we have to look at, say, our our coastal cities and how rising seawaters are going to affect those locations, portions of those cities potentially being underwater and becoming an aquatic marine habitat.

And of course we've seen that for thousands of years with the cities that have sunken into the sea due to say seismic activity, where they ceased to be a human habitat and an artificial uh uh ecosystem for land dwelling creatures, and now they are a habitat for the marine species that live in the vicinity. Can you imagine in thousands of years the atlantis like myths that people will tell about the fabled land of Miami or of New York City that used to be this once great

city that has sunken into the ocean. Yeah, I mean, Miami is a great example of a city that we're talking about. Like the idea of a city is a fixed and unchanging thing, like Miami was built with with that kind of notion in mind. Let's let's build this fixed thing in an area that is not fixed, in an area that is highly susceptible to h to alteration because of the sea. But then one of the take comes here is that animals, birds, these other species we've

talked about, Like, that is how life works. That is how real life works. It adapts, it rolls with change. Humans are the ones that are entirely resistant to that sort of change. Yeah, well, the wildlife adapts to the environment, but the environment is changed by the wildlife, and the environment changes for reasons of its own. I mean, obviously it doesn't do this on purpose. But the environment is also always changing. The only constant is change at every

level of everything. Yeah, and of course that just brings us back to our eaching episode from a few weeks back. So if you want to hear more about about the nature of change and uh IN in the human experience, then then that's a great episode to return to. And of course you'll find that episode and all other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind at our website Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com that as at all, as well as a blog post and links out to

our various social media accounts. Of course, you can also get the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and we just urge you to support the show uh by leaving us a review if they're If there are stars available, throw us throws five star, throws in stars however many, whatever the maximum is, that would be great. Maybe a nice review as well. That's right now. Big thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.

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