Mary Roach Discusses "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law"

Roach book, and I love it. It. I I feel ashamed now that I had never read one of her books before. Um, but she has such an infectious and enjoyable prose style that really gets in your head. Um. One of the things that I wanted to emphasize in the intro here because because I've just been thinking about it. In terms of subject matter, this book gets into a lot of kind of dark and grizzly sounding stuff. But it is but despite that, it is a really funny book.

It is like one of the most laugh out loud funny books I've read in a long time. Yeah, it's engaging, it's weird, it's fun. Um. I was telling my wife about the book and she's read Mary Roach before, and my wife was like, well, some of that sounds a little dark. I don't know, I want to read that right now. But but of course this has always been the way with Mary roach books. There. They do get into dark territory, but they are always fun and and humorous.

Um if you're not familiar out there. Her previous books include two thousand three Stiff, which is about cadaver's two thousand five Spook, which is about scientific inquiries, especially early scientific inquiries into the supernatural, two thousand eights Bunk, which is about sexuality, two thousand tens Packing for Mars, which is about the science scientific research into UH into into the Quest for Space, two thousand thirteens Gulp, which is

about human digestion uh and then two thousands sixteen book was Grunt, which is about military scientific investigations. I've read all of these, and I think this is the This is the fourth time Mary has actually been on stuff to blow your mind, as she previously dropped in to talk about Packing from Mars, Gulp, and Grunt. She's either our most featured guest at this point or she's tied for the honors. I can't remember either way. Friend of

the show's status is definitely in place. Mary Roach, thanks for joining us today. Could you introduce yourself? Of course, I'm Mary Roach. As you said, I have a nonfiction author, and my most recent book is called Fuzz Sometimes When Nature Breaks the Law. I have been so enjoying this book.

I love your dry, humorous prose style in it. And I thought, before we got any broader questions about about the book and what you've learned from writing it, I thought it would be good to kick off with an example of the kinds of speriences you cover in the book. And so I loved the story you cover in the very first chapter about the wildlife Human Attack Response training course you went through in Las Vegas. Could you tell us a bit about this conference and and what got

you there and what it was like? Sure? Sure, yeah. It's called uh Wildlife Human Attack Response Training UH or WART, which by its founders admission, is a terrible acronym. So WART is a five day course which I was lucky enough to be able to sit in on, and it's most almost entirely attended by people who deal with wildlife

attacks the aftermath of the attack. And it's basically, you know, you're setting up a crime scene and you're doing forensics as you might in the case of a human on human killing, uh, and you're trying to trying to take evidence, collect evidence, established linkage between the perpetrator and the victim. Um. And if they they caught an animal that they think might be the animal and the DNA doesn't match or they don't they're not able to establish that language, they'll

release the animals. So there's these bizarre parallels to the human the human criminal justice system. But for me, it was just a fascinating five days of hanging out and hearing a lot about predator attacks and the aftermath, which was both fascinating and often quite grizzly. G R. I. Yes, it's not easy. Um. So Yeah, it was utterly fascinating to me because I've you know, I've never encountered this world and did not know that these prime scenes were

processed that way and that this work was done. Yeah. So you include some details about like, uh, these sessions where you would be given a mannequin that had these wounds inflicted on it with saws and knives and things, and you'd have to establish what type of animal it was from the wounds on the mannequin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They had these soft touch mannequins. They're not like something you'd see in a store window. They were. They were

you know, they're fleshy, I'll say fleshy. And they were. The people who had created these wounds were people who've seen they I mean, they were based on actual bodies and the wounds on the victims of attacks. Some of them bear, some of them cougar or mountain lion. Um and uh quite uh quite realistic, I have to say. And and so they were, they were. We all had workstations, you know, they were about it. There were about I think eight or more, maybe a few more workstations each

group had, uh, mock victim. And the idea was, look at these wounds and what can you learn? And you can pretty quickly, uh make a distinction between first of all, human versus animal and then um uh mountain lion versus bag. They kill in very different ways. They have very different teeth and claws, and the marks on the body and the wounds will tell you, um, quite readily who the

perpetrator or what species the perpetrator was. Um. And then after that is established and you sort of you're moving down to more than nitty gritty of looking at saliva, you know, matching DNA between the victim and the animal. So you might be doing that with saliva on the victim's body or blood. You might be looking into the gums of the animal to see is their human tissue

there and does is that? Does that match the victim, So you'd be just like you might do on you know, C S I or one of those shows that I never watched, but those forensics shows so uh, super interesting stuff. One of the details from the section that really stuck with me was in warning to everyone, this is about

to get gruesome. The idea of since bears tend to when they do attack humans, which is rare, but when they do, they tend to bite repeatedly at the face that you might expect to say, find human facial features like lips or something, it's stuck in the bear's teeth

or the stomach. You would examine the bear's stomach contents and they're you know, they're they're not necessarily chewing all that thoroughly, and so you might find, you know, an entire i or in one case, a part of the scalp with a mohawk haircut and which in fact match the victim's hairstyle. So yeah, with bears, because bears when they attack each other, they use their teeth and go for the face. They go for each other's face because that's lightly furred and they can inflict more damage. And

that's the sets. They're kind of Achilles heel, which is in there their head, not their foot. Uh So they're that's kind of what they do and when that which makes for some pretty horrible injuries. Also, you see that also um with with cougars because they they're biting at the neck. But sometimes you know when um, I use the comparison and in rather grizzly, but when you think of biting into a very ripe plum, how when you

bite into it, the skin pulls away. So so what you sometimes have is kind of these scalpings as it work. Was that you know, if you if you try, if you're an animal and you're trying to get your jaw around a human head, you're hitting bone right away, and then you close your jaws and it pulls the skin away. So some of these um mannequins were really a little tough to tough to see and I can imagine coming

upon the real thing would be pretty disturbing. But one of the interesting things that is this is a takeaway from observing all these different kinds of wounds, is that almost all of them indicate that we are not really what this animal has evolved to use its jaws or claws on. And so like you described with the with the cougars biting the back of the head or bears attacking humans, the bites almost reveal the strangeness of this

encounter between the human and the animal. Write a bear bears eat, I mean they're they're mostly eating nuts, berries, fruit, um, if sometimes fish, grasses. So they have molars that they have a jaw that goes side to side, and they've got molars for crushing and grinding um. So there, So the bites on a human, it's a it's it's messy, is the way it was put. It's kind of a messy affair. Whereas uh, a mountain lion is does a

leaps attacks secures, the pride does a killing bite. So these puncture wounds, these triangular puncture wounds, it's a less messy death, if you will. So, yeah, you can really see how the animals equipped to gather its food and uh. And with mountain lions, yeah, they do tend to they pounce and kill. They are predators and true carnivores, but they're not true We're not on the menu they like deer or wild pigs or they're not They're not going

after humans. Very very rarely a whole decade, we'll go buy in California where we don't have a single mountain lion fatality. It's just a very unusual occurrence. Now, speaking of bears, I re really I really enjoyed the how, not only with the bear chapter, but you know, multiple chapters in the book. You you kind of you turn our pre existing notions of these animals kind of on their head, even if we think that our pre existing

notions are kind of you know, well informed. Uh, but with the with the bear in particular, when you're talking about the break ins that are perpetrated by bears and in these cases, how it seems like the bear is such a contradiction. Can you speak to like some of those some of those details about like how how reckless they can be, but then so how just almost hauntingly precise. Sure, Yeah, I spent some time in um Picken County, Colorado, on the outskirts of downtown Aspen, up in the hills. Um,

and this is a ski or as or town. We're up in the mountains. We are in bear territory. Uh and so uh the bears are in. The bears start to realize nuts and berries, these are great, grab apples, choke cherry, this is great. But these humans, these humans seem to have some really good stuff inside their homes. And a bear that kind of realizes that surprisingly adept

at popping a window or even turning. They call the bear handles their French door handles, which you just pushed down on and pushed the door and it opens quite easily. So bears are find it very easy to to get into two people's homes and people are sometimes surprised. It depends on the bear. But some bears like the break in that where I went to the aftermath of this break in, and the bear had gone through a downstairs, through a deck leading to a bedroom downstairs, and then

up to the kitchen. Didn't knock anything over. Uh, didn't even leave footprint sun bears. Um. The guy who the wildlife invested was Colorado Fish and Game and fish and wildlife that he was talking about, how they they will sometimes reach in like take out a carton of eggs and inside, or or take out things that they don't want to put them aside. One bear allegedly opened hers she's kiss open the foil her. She's kiss uh and and ate that. So there there, um, yeah, they there.

While they can create, you know, a god awful mess, whether it's on a body or in someone's kitchen, sometimes they're surprisingly um precise and laid back. It's it's interesting how different their person individual personalities are. Was it from uh, the person you were speaking with the Colorado Fish and Wildlife that you got that fact about, or at least the allegation that some of these bears apparently have brand preferences when it comes to ice cream, like they really

like Hogin does, but they don't like the store brand. Yes, it was. It was. It was a woman from the neighboring town is It's Snowmass. I think the it's a it's a again a mountain resort ski and mountain biking resort town, Tina White I believe her name was, And she said that the black bears in the area they prefer premium brands. They will not touch Western Family ice Cream, which I guess is like a low rent brand that they have in Colorado, and they're like, no, no, no,

thank you. I gotta say the parts of that chapter where you were talking about the bears getting into the trash, the unsecured trash outside of fancy restaurants, that was really making me hungry when you were listing all the foods they were stabbing their snouts into, so the rotten Barata cheese and the and the sustainable sicunas salon, and exactly if they were like, this is some good, thank you,

thank Let's see. Let's let's go a little broader for a second here and just talk about the book itself, which again is fuzz when when nature breaks the law. I was just wondering, how how long have you been planning this particular book, and is there is there anything in particular that you can point to as being like

the inspiration point that led you down this road. Oh, I wish I had a great origin story because people people often ask about that, and um I came to it this one and it's a really kind of circuitous roundabout not necessarily all that interesting. Half I had originally gotten interested in wildlife crime scene forensics, but not when the animals are the perpetrators, but when the animals are

the victims. So I was up at this forensics lab that the Fish and Wildlife Department has, talking to this woman who was an expert in how to tell counterfeit versus genuine dried tiger penis, because of course it's illegal to traffic and animal endangered animal parts. And uh, as it turns out, almost all as was being passed off as tiger penis is deer or horse or cow, partly because those are easier to come by, and they're bigger

and more impressive. And if you're trying to quote unquote cure erectile discilation or make yourself more virile, a little tiger penis doesn't. It doesn't have the right optics. Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying. I was up at this lab, the Vision Wildlife National Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, and I thought, well, this this could be an interesting area. But as it turns out, I was not going to

be able to follow any open investigations. I wasn't to be able to tag along with investigators and do the kind of thing I really have to do for my books to make it interesting for myself hopefully for the reader. So that was a dead end, and I kind of various other things happened. But I eventually thought, well, what if I turned it around, and what if the animals were the perpetrators and the people are the victims, and and you know what, what would what's to be done there?

And I learned that there's in fact a whole science this devoted to this, called human wildlife conflict and the science of human wildlife conflict, and there's conventions and scientists and researchers. So I thought that could be an interesting world to step into. So it was a circuitous path, it wasn't It wasn't. I have not been attacked, or not until the book, by any animal. That's right, you were. You were robbed by a monkey. I was mugged by

cac Yes, I was. So when I when I picked up the book and was getting into it, you know, I expected a lot of it, of course, to be happening in a contemporary setting and dealing with our modern world, thinking like, okay, this is where the legal system has led and this is where you know, the growth of human populations and expansion has led. So I was I was really surprised and interested when you mentioned a book from nineteen o six, The Criminal Prosecution and Punishment of Animals.

But I believe E. P. Evans, Can you talk a little bit about this? Sure, that's something I came upon very early on and also pushed me towards this topic. A bizarre book. This is a book detailing the things that human societies used to do to deal with animals and insects that were committing crimes against them. Crimes in the sense of following our laws, you know, stealing or or committing manslaughter. And what used to happen is that they were uh, criminally prosecuted. The example I given the

book is this case. It's from sixteen fifty nine in Northern Italy, a province in northern Italy, and um caterpillars were eating a lot of the crops, lettuces, whatever they were. And these caterpillars will do they're hungry, They've got, you know, bulk up for their little transition. And so the community that the um whoever the magistrate or the head person was posted summons legal summons on the trees in the area.

Requesting that the caterpillars appear in court on a set date, at which point the summons said they would be assigned legal representation and a trial would ensue. And of course the caterpillars did not appear in court, but by that time had pupated, weren't causing any problems anymore. But but that's this book. It's like four hundred pages of well documented situations and cases. There were, you know, livestock, some

of it pigs, pigs killing small children. Not don't care about that happening much today, but apparently used to happen with some frequency. The pigs being tried, executed, sometimes imprisoned. And I thought this, I almost thought this was a hoax because it was so so bizarre. But the bat be appendix as a number of these documents and um in some detail in Latin a lot of the times, sometimes French. Uh, And so it was. It was real, and it was not that there were just simple minded people.

It was the way, the way the author explained it. It was a way to um display the breadth of your powers as as a legal entity or as a leader, you know, even nature must follow my rules, and you will be punished so it's kind of a display, kind of ludicrous, but a display of dominion and power and I control all so. But but the the details were quite quite amazing. I mean people ritz w r I t rits of ejectment that were stucked into the burrows of rats like you must leave the must they get

the premises under penalty of law. Honestly, legal system not the best approach of the animals. They don't read, they don't care. They just want a place to have a nest or get something to eat, and we offer that and they take advantage of it. These are crimes of opportunity for the most part. Anyway that that book is a fascinating it thought particularly easy to get through, but a fascinating read. Nineteen o six when the book was published.

Do you think these kinds of legal actions were at all um based on a certain theological understanding of law. I don't recall any mention of this in the book, but you know, was there an idea that maybe if you issued a certain kind of legitimate uh sanctioned by the court, that somehow God would enforce it or something. Yeah, yes,

there there definitely was a religious element. There was this sense that this belief that these plagues and these um actions of these animals were being or a punishment on the people themselves, that that God was punishing us by sending these creatures. So, yeah, that was that was tied into it. There was a belief that we the community are being punished and so you know, we will I mean, I don't know that's exactly what you were asking, but that was that was definitely part of the part of

the belief. But that on the subject of theology and religion, you do and later the book get into that a bit, uh talking to individuals about like what is what is one's religious responsibility towards these animals that we may think

of as vermin. Well, yeah, I spent some time in India, which has quite a different attitude and relationship attitude toward animals and relationship with them, partly because a lot a lot of the deities and Hinduism are animals, where they're you know, they appear as animals, or the spouse is an animal, or they ride around on an animal, and they themselves like hant him on is you know, the monkey head and Gunnesh the elephant. Cows are considered sacred.

So it's a when when those animals start to cause problems, Um, people are not as quick to rush in to calling the authorities to exterminate them or call them. Uh, there's a there's a stigma attached to that, you know, a new Delhi, the tremendous problems of macaques troops and not just not just Deli. All over cities in northern India. Macaques cause a lot of problems. And uh, one of the things that's done in nadelis to catch them and transport them down to this large sanctuary in the southern

part of the city. It used to be a mine and now it's really wilded and is a place where the maccaques are let loose. And it's very very hard for the authorities to hire monkey catchers. I mean that is this just you would you would be looked at a scance if you were somebody who was trapping and man handling macaques. Because of the religious significance of these animals. The other thing going on while their pests and nuisances to people that people are also they gather at temples,

these monkeys because they know people will and offerings. They will not only inside the temple where you know the more conventional um offerings are made, but when they go outside, they see the monkey, and they will give them monkey, you know, fruit or little packets of soda or whatever they'll they'll, So they're they're both encouraging the animal and then also being harassed by it. So it's a sticky

problem there. The religious the religious elements make it more complicated when when it comes to finding some sort of solution. There are several examples in the book where you discuss animals that in some way interact or have conflict with, or live alongside humans, and how there might be a sort of emergent evolutionary pressure on animals that know how to exploit humans and just like just to the right extent without overstepping and then being being dealt with violently.

Like you talked about this in the chapter with the bears, which I thought was really interesting, how there there could be a kind of evolutionary advantage for what are called the fat Albert bears and bears that are you know, get in and get a lot of calories out of your fridge, but are less likely to have a scary conflict with a person or less likely to damage the house. Right, Yeah, the fat fat Albert was a bear that was quite

good at breaking into people's cabins and homes. This is again Colorado, but people would marvel afterwards, like came in here, didn't damage anything, and people were kind of impressed, you know, okay, rated the fridge, took some stuff, didn't break anything. So so not as likely to be angry or to perceive this creature as a threat and to call uh, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and and you know, request something be

done about the bear. So so then, you know, the more fat Alberts, the more these bears persist and survived to breeding age, the more you're gonna sort of see more hopefully more fat Alberts. Because the bears that are very aggressive, that are aggressive toward people or their pets, or that break in and cause a lot of damage. They to use the phrasing of the person I was talking to, they're gonna get whacked fast, like some people are going to be feel threatened. They're going to complain,

They're going to call the agency. Agency is going to come out seat a big colvert trap and that animal will be destroyed and so um, possibly, yes, possibly, you know, the fat Alberts will be seeing more and more of them and fewer and fewer of the aggressive ones, and that could be a good thing over time. Now, in your your section, in your in Fuzz dealing with animals on the highways, you discuss self driving car solutions to animal strikes. Uh, and I found this very fascinating as well.

How does it seem that self driving cars are likely to react to animals on the road in the future. Well, right now, there's something called a large animal detection system. So an animal that kind a long legged, tall animal. Uh, anything that comes into the path, the beam of the detector that fits that visual profile will cause the car to stop. That I mean that the brakes will be applied. H.

And the reason is a large animal detection system. What they're hoping to prevent is illusions with a moose and elk or an elk, because those animals are tall enough that if the car strikes them, it strikes them in the legs, and the entire torso and head and antler's cart whales back over the car. And these animals are tall enough that that that they come through the windfield and land on the driver and or the passenger. And um, the result is often a broken neck, death or or

or paralysis. So, um, it's quite different than just hitting a deer or the deers. I mean, there's gonna be a lot of damage to the car and to the deer, but often the person's the person survives without serious injury, unless, of course they swerved and hit a tree and went off the road. Um. So a self driving car, uh, the ones that I heard about I called, UM, I think I've talked to someone at Volvo. Volvo and sad

because there's they're sold a lot in northern regions. Have concerns about moose hitting moose because there's a lot of fatalit easy, but when it I got curious about small animals, like how does the car decide when it should just plow forward because it's safer to hit a pet than it is to swerve or how you know? How uh if you stop short for a small animal, then the car behind now smashes into you. How do you how

does a car make those decisions? You know? At what point is it's safer for the human for the driver to just go ahead and hit the raccoon? Um instead of serving to save the animal's life. How? And I tried to get an interview with someone at weimo UH and a couple of other places, and they don't They didn't want to talk about that. They don't want to

They didn't want to engage on the topic. Which leaves me to think they haven't quite worked out worked out what to do, because it's it's it's situation by situation, um. The worst thing to do in the case of a small animal on the road with you know, if there's trees and things on the side of the road, you know, to swerve sharply um and and put yourself at risk of going off the road and hitting a tree or a rock or a barrier. Um. That that's not what

you want to do. But but it's also to say, well, our cars will just go ahead and plow into your dog or cat or recoon to save your life. We will just be just plowing right on through without even breaking or even blinking an eye. So that you know that the optics of that are kind of awful too. So that's a question that I have that I that as far as I know, hasn't really been answered. I think that the priorities right now and they've got so many other things to figure out before they get down

to what do we do about someone's beagle? Yeah, I mean it reminds me of stuff I've read recently just related in general to self driving cars. They're just about all the things we do sometimes just nonsensical risks that we take. Be it, um, you know, a risky left hand turn, or the fact that yet that, like I'm driving to pick my kid up school, I might swerve around the chipmunk in the road, and it was in retrospect it was dangerous, but also in retrospect, I'm not

sure I would have done anything else, you know. And how do you translate or improve upon that that kind of decision making in the machine? Right? And how do you tell a small animal from a kid on a small bicycle? And how do you I mean, those those fine grain distinctions, how do you trust the car to

make those? It's it's really it is really tricky on um. Yeah, and even you know, I have a a new issue of a new edition of Stiff coming out and with an epilogue where I went back and I talked to me like what's new in these topics, And one of the things that came up was passenger safety in a self driving car if you you don't need to be at the steering wheel in a set position. If you can now sit sideways or or you know not, you're

not confined as you were as a driver. Well, now in an impact, how do you keep that person safe? Where do you put the air bags off? Somebody? People can kind of sit across from each other, and you know, you freed people up in the interior of the car. How do you keep them, how do you keep them safe? Where does the airbag go? How do you you know, how do you configure the seatbelt? So all of that has to be a rethought and probably you know, the small animal portion of it will be pretty far down

the list. Is there Is there a date for the new edition of Stiff? This? Yeah, this this week? I think that. I think August thirty one, the new edition with a snazzy new cover comes out. Yeah. This is of course your your your first big book that that kicked it a off. My first book, kind of Stiff, came out in three I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've read that. I've read I read all of your books that have come out. They're always always thank you, jeez,

I'd love to hear that. Thank so One thing I found interesting about UM the sections of the book involving humans and animals that come into violent conflict UM, is that, well, so you have a chapter about leopards in India that intentionally stalk humans as prey repeatedly they become habituated to this, and you got me wondering, what are some of the broad truths about the difference between animals that sort of stumble into hapless encounters with humans that might turn violent,

versus animals that deliberately stalk humans as prey. Yeah, the broad truth is that it's very uncommon for an animal that can easily attack and kill a human to do that. We are not really on the typically, we are not on the menu. Something has to to change. And in the Middle Himalaya where I was in India, a couple of things happened. One is the theory that Jim Corbett, who has brought into hunt down some of these kind

of famous man eaters as he called them. His theory was that during the pandemic of nineteen sevent there were so many people dying that the traditional ritual of you know, taking the body to the river and building a pyre, and you know that wasn't happening, and they would, Um it came up with a more expedient ritual, which is to put a hot coal in the mouth and send the body off sort of down the hill towards the river, not to actually make the track and do the whole ritual.

And so there were a lot of bodies that were now available, and leopard will scavenge. And the his belief was that they developed a taste for human meat that way, and that they then went on to incorporate human meat into their diet going forward. Um, that's a that's a theory that may well be true. Um. The theory of the researcher that I traveled with was it had to do with what's going on in that part of the world,

which is a lot of farming communities. Um, the men have given up farming and gone to look for work in the cities, and so there's a lot of rewilding land. It's it's occupied by people. There are a lot of you know, women and children left behind there. But there's cover now for and there's a lot of brush around homes and communities and which leopards need to hunt. They will sneak up and then you know, cover the last distance in a burst of speed and a pounds, so

they tend to need to have cover. Also, livestock there isn't being as well tended, so it's kind of be it's false prey to the leopards and the people, the people who are watching the livestock. Sometimes there kids and uht of the individuals killed by leopards in that region in this once this researcher study, we're kids underten. Uh So there's opportunities that weren't there for for animals that hunt and and and sadly a human or a child there or the or people's pets, they're they're easier to

catch than a deer or a wild pig. So part of it maybe leopards just realizing this is an easy dinner. It seems like a lot of these uh these stories in some way involve um rapid changes or modification to the landscape done by humans. Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah that the situation there with elephants again surprising to me anyway. Number of deaths five deaths a year caused by human deaths caused by elephants. Um. And what's happening there is

there's this elephant corridor as it's called. The elephants tend to move along this path looking for food. Um. It's across northern India to the border with Nepal, and these regions are seeing an influx of refugees and also Terry

has built several establishments. There's roads coming through and the elephants are getting this is the term pocketed, stuck in little pockets, and elephants eat a lot they travel and sizeable herds and they are turning to the farmer's crops for food because they don't have enough food and they're stuck. They can't keep moving on the way they used to. And so then that's when you have conflict because you have these um villagers who they're they're depending on this

food to survive. You know, it's it's um subsistence farming. And so you know, a troop of elephants that comes through, even if they don't eat what you're growing, they're gonna trample you know, you get the seven or eight elephants

are going to cause a tremendous amount of damage. So people see the elephants coming onto their land and they'll run out and they'll try you know, they're they're angry and they're upset, and they tend to they tend to be deaths from getting trampled or knocked over or I mean an elephant even if they're that's not the elephant's intent. It's a very big animal and it's just knocks you

with it's trunk. It can kill you. And um, so so yes, it's it's humans moving into the territory and and changing the landscape in ways that steiny's their their natural behaviors and there there their way of surviving and getting food. You see that also, you know highways, interstate highways in this country, sometimes they're put in without taking a look at, well what what animals migrate seasonally to get food, go to a different elevation to get food

or to breed, and are we cutting them off? You know? That's so that's um, that's a problem. And you can build an overpast, but that's an expensive thing to do and you know, much better to look at that beforehand, saying you know, what is the situation here in this this swath of land, what kind of wildlife do we have and how do they move each year seasonally? Is

there is this a bad idea? Correct me? If I'm wrong, but I think another example of that kind of thing about um modification of the landscape and and the problems that causes is like poor choices about the relationship between different types of plants or fruit bearing plants, especially and settled areas. Like I think you give the example of was it an aspen or somewhere else in Colorado that the city was planting crab apple trees within the city

even while they're trying to solve their bear problem. But then the other thing that stuck with me was I think you were talking about um cabins being like sited. Somebody buy a plot of land and build a cabin right in the middle of a bunch of natural berry trees, so that would be the place where like the bears would already be habituated to coming. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The crab apples and downtown aspen um I mean crab apple if you I mean, if you've seen a crab apple tree, it's they're tiny crab apples, but their own set, their clusters of them call like grapes, and the bears just sort of like opens its mouth, you know, and like pulls its mouth down the branch and gets these big mouthfuls. I mean, the crab apple trees just heaven't you know, if you're an animal looking to get a concentrated food source and lots of calories to put on

weight before you hibernate crab apple tree. Yeah. So the fact that those are planted in downtown, um, they're pretty when they blew. Yeah, that's true. They are lovely in the spring, but creating creating some issues there and and there was even efforts to get them the city to take them out and they resisted that, which this seems a little it was a little ill advised. But yeah, yeah, I mean here in the in the Bay area, a lot up in the hills in Berkeley and Oakland, a

lot of deer. So it really behooves you when you do your landscaping to plant plants that deer are not interested in. That is something any good landscape or here will do, is suggest plants that deer I don't like,

otherwise you won't have much landscaping very soon. And of course that this all leads to some people might might jump to the conclusion, well don't don't we need to kill more of these animals, And that's that's something you discuss quite a bit like this idea that if sometimes these just elaborate efforts to remove the animals that then just backfire for for reasons that you get into in

the book. Um And at one point you you refer to quote the inside out history of conservation in America, which which I think I love the way you put that there, because yeah, dealing with how conservation in America is often tied up in these also these eradication movements or in the hunting movement. Can you speak to some

of that that complexity there? Well, sure, concert conservation, wilderness conservation came out of a desire to set aside these large, pristine tracts of wilderness so that hunters would have a place to haunt. Essentially, they were they were hunted fish and they're still. I mean, to this day we have a lot of government land that is managed by wildlife agencies, and wildlife agencies are funded still by hunting licenses and taxes on equipment. So there's a there is this link.

I mean, on the one hand, it is fabulous that these these were set aside, that they didn't become agricultural land. I live in in California, and if you go out to the Central Valley. Um, there are these little pockets of California as it used to be, these wetlands with these tremendous diversity of bird life that you know, bird bird stopping over and during migration. You know, you have you know, ducks, gadwalls, geese, just dozens of species. It's

a birders paradise. But there's also a little hunting cabins for duck hunters who come and the land was set aside by and for hunting, but it's also something you know, for hikers and and birders, and it's a weird it is. You know, I, as a birdwatcher used to go out there. I never knew about the little hunters cabins. It's kind of like this sort of secret reality of that that

area and those wetlands. But it really struck me, you know, driving home, going from this really beautiful kind of verdant swath of California being that behind and going out into the more typical Central Valley California, which is just a big flat expanse of big agriculture, you know, of crops, and so you know, I felt very grateful towards the people who had set this land aside and you know, there is this sort of instance of hunters and birders now uh and uh, but it is it is strange

to think about the fact that some of our um park lands and wilderness areas were originally set aside for people who love to hunt. But of course there's still the funding issue here, right, And that's something you get into in the in the book that you have these conservation efforts that are still still funded by hunting, funded uh, by fishing, etcetera. And I guess you know, in a perfect world that would all balance out, But there are cases it seems like where it raises the question is

this the right approach? Should there not be you know, more federal funding for conservation? Yeah? I think that there tends to be mistrust. You know, if the money is coming from hunting and fishing, um, isn't there temptation on the agency's part to put the desires of those of their constituents first, you know, can we trust them to be unbiased and neutral saviors of the land? Um? So?

And there is there is there has been talk of of of separating, separating, making the funding for some of these conservation efforts federal funding, making it independent of hunting and fishing, you know, creating some sort of body or pool of money that would would be earmarked for conservation and and and just sort of creating some distance between the two. So so yeah, that is a concern, and and I think it would be great too for that

to happen. Thank you, thank you, thank so. Here's a question that might be a little odd, but I wonder if you have thoughts about it. How do you think about motive the concept of motive differently in a criminal justice context when the perpetrator of a crime is not human, because a big part of human criminal justice is about understanding and establishing motive, treating crimes differently based on what

the motive was or what the perpetrator's understanding was. Uh. The thing about the internal brain states that motivate the attacks of non human animals, it seems like you could think about them either as like less complex than their human equivalence, and thus may be easier to understand. Often an animal is just feeling threatened in some way, or might be hungry, or you could think about them is maybe more obscure because animals are more alien to our

experience and they can't explain their motives in language. Yeah, the question of motive. It's interesting in India that's factored in. UH, the cases are treated differently. UM if it's a if it's um a predatory attack versus a defensive attack. M So that's if there's if there's a series, there's kind of a you know, three strikes rule. You know, if this if the animal is coming in and praying on intentionally praying on livestock or people, you know, that's that's

different from a defensive attack. There with leopards, there are, as we've talked about before, there are predatory attacks where the animal is specifically and intentionally going after a human. But there are tremendous numbers of if you go further south into the tea growing regions, which I also spent some time in the in the tea on the tea plantations, lepers sometimes sleep under the tea plants because it's shadier and it's cooler, and the tea workers, the pluckers, people

plucking the leaves, will sometimes surprise an animal. The animal will like leap up. Sometimes there's an injury, rarely a fatality, but that's a that's a that's that's a defensive just an altercation that happened as the person surprised the animal and it felt threatened. So those are considered differently than

a predatory attack. So there is that distinction made. Um. You know, here in the US, when an animal harms a person, it's it's it's considered a public health threat, and it's it's typically that's that it has crust the line. Regardless of whether the bear was surprised and was defending itself, we tend to not make that same distinction. If it harms or if it kills a person, it will be destroyed.

Even if it was the person had a dog, The dog ran at the bear, the bear got upset, the person sort of tried to intervene, the bear turned and attacked the person. You know that there's no trial where we can we can set forth the reality of the situation and why the bear might have done it, and what the what the situation created and in a sense kind of come out a motive or lack of motive. Yeah, yeah, things.

So in the American context, Um, the way we react to conflict with animals is maybe less understanding of whether or not they might be justified, and it is more just kind of a pure utilitarian you know, if if an animal has harmed a human or or or a pet or something, it's just thereafter considered probably dangerous and thus usually is dealt with violently. Well, yeah, it's a it's a public safety issue. And when the public safety is threatened that you know that that's gonna the people

are gonna be the priority, not the animal. I mean, I did talk to this a bever, a bever researcher who had spent some time I believe it was in Nepal where they have Oh god, now I'm forgetting which species it is. I think there bears. There bears that come in and they raid the property and they they sometimes get into altercations where someone is injured. And he said, to the person in the community who responds to when these attacks happened, he said, if you saw a bear

on a person, would you shoot the bear? And the guy said, it's not up to me to decide which life is more important. Was it's a different you know, it's a it's a it's a very different mindset of you know, the value and the rights of animals versus humans. And you know, I'm not I mean, it doesn't surprise me that we in the United States have the rules that we do. I mean, it's public safety, you know,

the beats. If you if your family is being you know, is in harm's way, then that there's going to be agencies that will come in and try to mitigate that threat. That's what we do. So again, the book is is Fuzz When Nature Breaks the Law by by Mary Roach And I want to stress that we we didn't ask about anywhere close to all of the animals or scenarios or topics that you discuss in the book. It's just it's it's it's it's it's just so would like each chapter, Uh,

you know, impressed me. There's so much discussed in the book. It's an unsecured garbage can, overflowing trees. Oh, I love that. Can I use that as a blurb on the paperback? Yes, But but I thought, just just for anyone out there, like what if you were to summarize, like, what is the big take come you want people to have from reading Fuzz? Uh you know what what would that be? Well, first of all, I know, I want I want people

to know it's a fun read. It's not. I mean sometimes talking about these things it can seem like a bit of a downer. It's it's animals there sometimes ending up being destroyed. But now I try, I try to keep things entertaining and light, and there's lots of room

for that in this book. Um. But as a as a takeaway, um, you know, I just hope that people because people have a tendency to just especially since we use the words pest and nuisance, and I do use the word nuisance in the book as well, we have this tendency to immediately when we've got an animal coming onto our property doing something we don't want it to do. We want to just pick up the phone and call someone and make it go away. And there's the way,

there's there's things that prevent any further damage. There's there's you know, you can exclude the animal, you can call someone who actually has the welfare of the animal in mind. And the Humane Society of the United States is a great web page, species by species, here's some things to do to solve resolve the problem without harming or killing

the animals. So I just I just not not to be all on a soapbox running which just to just to try to calm down and think about think about what you might do before you call the wildlife control operator to set a trap and let it go in a park and which is not supposed to do, etcetera. Or set a trap and um or put out a glue trap. I can't believe they even sell those anymore. So that's not a very short takeaway, is it. But that's that's what I guess. I'd like people to just

to think before they act a little bit. Well, And I do want to concur that the book book is very fun and very funny. Uh like all your books that I've I laughed, but I also I also felt sad at times. It made me think about things in a new way. So I essentially I felt all the fields as the as the young people say fully concur Oh thanks, thank you, oh yeah, thank you. Thanks for taking time out of your data to come on the show and discuss the book. Totally. Thank you so much,

most welcome. Thank you all right, Well, thanks once more to Marry Roach for taking time out of her day to come on the show and chat with us. Her website if you want to learn more about her and her work, is Mary Roach dot net. And as mentioned in the episode, there's Also, this new edition of Stiff out now as well with new cover arts, so so look for that. If you've never read it, this will be a great Halloween season to pick it up or or Spook for that matter, Both of those I think

would make for tremendous Halloween seasonal reads. In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us wherever you get your podcast look for the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We have core science episodes on Tuesday and Thursday, Artifact episodes on Wednesday. Uh listener mail on Monday's. Friday is our time to cut loose and talk about a weird film with Weird House Cinema, and

then on the weekend you get a rerun. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I

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