Special Episode: Mary Roach & Fuzz

then chat with the authors of those books. We've gotten to talk about why we saw COVID coming yet we're not able to stop it, whether sweat could be used as evidence in a criminal investigation, what the public image makeover of Neanderthals has to do with race science, and how uterus pancakes can help us communicate more clearly about menstruation. It's been so much fun so far, and I hope you all are enjoying these as much as I am.

And it just keeps getting better because this episode I'll be chatting with one of the best and inarguably the funniest science writers out there, the one and only Mary Roach.

Whether she's covering what happens to cadavers after they get donated to science in her book Stiff, The Science of Sex in Bonk, how space travel affects all aspects of human life and packing from Mars, or any of the other topics covered in her other best soefe and award winning books, Roach strikes that delicate balance between engaging and educational, all while being human and gut bustingly hilarious. Seriously, if you haven't read any of her books before, you should

go get them all. You'll thank me later. In today's episode, though, Roach Joins made a chat not about cadavers or the alimentary canal, but about her latest book, fuzz When Nature

Breaks the Law, published in twenty twenty one. Human wildlife conflict can come in all shapes and sizes, from charismatic megafauna doing uncharismatic things like elephants destroying property or leopards attacking people, to less flashy incidents like goals destroying flowers quote unquote danger trees exploding well dangerously, or that deer in your headlights. You may have even been involved in

human wildlife conflict at some point yourself. I, for one, have been attacked by dive bombing birds while on a run with forehead scratches. To prove it, I've had to dash back to the truck when a herd of elephants made a sudden appearance during tick sampling. And I've been rushed by Canada geese on a walk around the park to this day, the sight of a goose on the path in front of me sends my heart racing. And those are just the vertebrate examples I can think of.

Don't get me started on wasps and acacia ants and cockroaches. The way we often frame these adverse encounters with wildlife is by placing ourselves humans in the role of victim and the animal in the role of aggressor. I just did it in the examples I gave, and I did it without even thinking. But is that really the case? Was I attacked by a dive bombing bird or did I get unknowingly too close to the bird's nest, prompting it to defend itself. Do bears break into dumpsters and

wreak havoc? Or did humans destroy what used to be bare habitat and place dumpsters there as an unintentionally reliable food source. The bottom line is that these animals are breaking laws that they don't know exist, and since we humans created those laws, we also have the responsibility to find a way to enforce them or adjust them in ways that minimize harm to both humans and wildlife as

much as possible. Part of this involves changing the narrative around human wildlife conflict, maybe reconsidering the roles of wildlife as perpetrator and human as victim, or at the very least acknowledging the part that we play in creating this conflict, and part of it is, from a practical standpoint, how to limit the conflict in the first place, which includes encouraging humans to change a notoriously difficult task, and how

to humanly diffuse a situation. In fuzz Mary Roach takes readers on a why wild ride through the incredibly varied field of human wildlife conflict, with stopovers in Reno, Nevada, where a wildlife attack crime scene forensics conference is held. Downtown Aspen, Colorado, where breaking and entering bears are a common occurrence. Delhi, India, where a roach herself has a close encounter with one of the many macaques in the city.

Vancouver Island, where danger trees live up to their name, the Vatican, where bird scaring is taken incredibly seriously, New Zealand, where the humaneness of different rodent traps is considered, and so many other places, because human wildlife conflict is of course found wherever there are humans, and it has existed as long as humans have been around. Over time, our methods of dealing with conflict have changed substantially, as have

our attitudes towards the troublesome wildlife. In fuzz, Roach takes her READI through space and time, exploring a bit of the history of the field of human wildlife conflict, and touring the globally diverse mitigation methods and mindsets towards these encounters. On the surface, fuzz is about the many creative ways humans have tried to deal with wildlife eating their crops

or destroying their property or flying into airplane engines. But underneath the humorous and bizarre stories of bird repellent lasers at the Vatican or choosy bears cruising the fridge in the house they broke into are philosophical musings about what makes a pest a pest, the changing nature of conservation, what peaceful coexistence could look like, and whether it could ever be achieved or sustained. Mary Roach is one of my heroes of science communication, and I am so excited

to get to chat with her today. So we'll take a quick break here and then get right into the interview. Mary, thank you so so much for joining me today. I am beyond excited. Your books are lining my shelves. You are one of my favorite writers of all time. You're hilarious, You're incredibly informative, Like I don't know how you do it, but this is a dream come true.

never heard of before I arrived at human wildlife conflict. Indirectly, I thought I was maybe going to do something on the forensics a wildlife forensics, but not the forensics of an attack scene, which I do cover in the book, but the forensics of like when somebody discovers contraband like it's it's a pelt or it's like a horn and what is you know, that sort of forensics. And I got interested in that because I've came upon this paper

called how to tell Real versus Counterfeit Tiger Penis. This is like a paper that's used as a handbook for these people who work in the Wildlife Forensics Laboratory up in Ashland, Oregon. There's the woman there and she's really good, and so am I now at identifying real versus counterfeit tiger penis, which is something you need to do because the organ of the tiger is sometimes used to make

traditional medicine as a cure for virility or impotence. This is traditional medicine that doesn't, as far far as I know, have any actual virility properties, but it's something that does get made into a soup. So it's important for her for somebody to know when they find a box of what appeared to be penises, you know, are they from an endangered species or are they not? And it's actually you'll be happy to know it is almost always counterfeit.

It's usually deer or horse or cow, because first of all, they're easier to come by and second of all, they're big, and they're inspiring, and the tiger has a pretty surprisingly small penis. I feel like it's rude to say that about tigers, but they've got pretty small penises anyway. So that led me up to this lab and I thought, well, this is kind of interesting, maybe there's a book here. But as it turns out, I would wouldn't be allowed to tag along on an actual investigation, and I wanted

to be able to taggle. I like to be there and to be reporting in the moment. And I had this, as you know, I was envisioning a sting operation where myself and the the officer would be like breaking into this you know, back alley, dimly lit room where people would be bending over and making tiger you know, fake tiger penis, which they do they they somebody does that because they have to notch them because cats have barbed penis. To see, this is not a tidy origin story erin I love it.

But around that time I came upon a book from nineteen oh six called The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals and it's I whish I thought initially was a hoax, because it's this book about bears being excommunicated from the church and pigs being put on trial, caterpillars being assigned legal representation when they were vandalizing and stealing

from farmers. So it was some combination of all of this made me think, oh, what what about if we turn it inside out and the animals or the perpetrators, not the victims like this? So that led me to human wildlife conflict, a branch of science I had no idea existed, had never heard of. There are conferences and textbooks and experts and careers, and I was like.

be there. So really, if it wasn't fun, funny, surprising, it didn't make the cut. It's also there's places that appealed to me more than others. I was always curious as a lapsed Catholic. I was always curious about the Vatican. So I came across some misbehaving goals in Vatican City and I thought, let's go see what the Vatican has to say about about misbehaving wildlife. And yes, they had. They were having some problems with vandalizing gals, gulls, vandalizing

the floral displays at the Easter. This massive floral display at the Easter Sunday Mass and Saint Peter's, so you know that's that's going to be in there. I mean, you know, it wasn't so much the goals or the crime in that case, it was just the juxtaposition of wildlife conflict and Vatican City.

collecting evidence. They're removing the body for so that they can take it to the lab and look at examine the bitemarks and the injuries, which tell you a lot about who committed this quote unquote crime. Who did this? You know, they're so they're they know everything about how these different animals kill. So it's pretty easy for them to figure out what species it was. Was it a man, was it a cougar, was it a wolf? Was it what you know? Was it a bear? What kind of

bear was it? So they can and then they take it farther and they're trying to figure out specifically which individual they may have an animal and custody, and they're going to be get gathering DNA off of the victim or the victim's clothes, and they're going to get a match and if and if the suspect I'm using air quotes, if the suspect is found to be not the actual criminal, again air quotes, they're released. So that and I had no idea that anybody does that. So we had this

conference where we learned all these techniques. We had fake attack scenes, and we had mannequins, these soft touch mannequins that on them. The actual injuries, which were some of them quite gruesome, had been had been crafted on these bodies so that we had these you know, simulated victims that we then were doing our forensics on, like you know, looking at the bite marks and you know, looking at the you know, is this the hallmark of a cougar

versus a bear? And we're in this big room and right next to us there's a large bingo game going on in the people from the bingo game was sometimes like walk down to the bathrooms and sort of look in and like, you know, there's these naked, bloodied, full sized human forms and they're like, what's going on in the Ponderosa room. So that one, you know, that's just

for me pure gold to write up. It's so interesting and it's funny in its way, and so I think that one, I think that one stands out as a lot of fun and just interesting.

are you so funny? So instead maybe I'll ask what role you think humor plays in the way you communicate science humor?

that way. So much of the humor, though, really has to do with the research. You know, what do I decide to put in the book and what do I decide to leave out? You know, I mean there's so many different all over the world, so many different human wildlife conflicts, and so many different species that people struggle with, so many different solutions. But you know, I was looking for things that might have some fun, you know, some humor. Yeah, so,

so humor is important to me. It's the way that I make the book a fun read, or I hope that I hope that I make it a fun read.

agricultures threat. It's a threat to their bottom line. They're they're economics. So so that's typically you know where you find animals in the category of nuisance. If you look at the they're listing it that that's what's there. But then you know there's also scenarios where if animals are string Like a good case I think in point is the coyote in this country. The populations have it seems

if either the populations have gone up. I didn't cover coyotes in the book, but there's been a lot of urban coyotes that are getting close to people in a way that has been perceived as a threat to children because the coyotes not going to go after a full grown adult, but a small child is you know, around the size of something that a coyote would pray on. And they've been some cases where they're coming closer or and or I think biting children. And so now that

that's happening, there's a lot more focus on coyotes. What do we do about coyotes? You know, when they're just kind of in the background running around, you see you know, you see them, You're like, whatever they get into trash sometimes, but they're kind of cool. And but now now that people feel that their kids are in danger, now, now that's that's put them in the crosshairs. Mm.

behavior that's targeted more than the human's behavior. Why is that? Is it just impossible to get a human to change their ways? So, yeah, do you why do you think it is more the animal behavior that's targeted.

that animal. You can't reason with them, you can't find them, you can't read them the Riot Act. You can try to haze them, but if the if what they're after is really enticing, like a big dumpster behind a restaurant, you can you know, you can shoot Robert Broletts at them and they'll be like, ow okay, but I'm still going to go after it. You know you can. So hazing doesn't work that well. The things that you can

do don't work that well. It's much much easier, but also still hard to get people to change their behavior, either by finding them or educating them or both. So we ought to look you know that that should just be what's done. It is done more and more, I mean, because over the years, the solutions that have tried to change the behavior of animals or just you know, kill lots and lots of them have been shown not to work. So people and their behavior is really the place to keep your focus.

who didn't take action, can be liable. Similarly, if you do take action and you relocate that bear, and now it goes to the community closest to that forest where you've relocated it, and it gets into the same kind of behavior and somebody's harmed there, again, you would be liable. And there have been pretty big lawsuits with pretty big payouts, so that is also a factor. Yeah, so yeah, there's no easy answers unfortunately.

But up there these attacks do happen. It's a misnomed to call it a man because in reality, at least in the scenario that I reported on up there while I was working on the book, it's almost entirely children and women because they're out working in the fields. They're out with the livestock, and they are the ones and also old people. But you know, it's easier prey. So men, big stripping men like Jim Corbett are not going to

get attacked. So man eater is kind of a Also it's a bit of a like like this was a career choice of the leopard, like, you know what, I'm going to be a man eater, none of these deered hell that I'm going to I'm going for the men, you know. And it's really it's a situation where I was at least, where a lot of people have out migrated to cities and so a lot of villages are very sparsely populated. So the people who are left, who are working the fields and tending livestock, they're few and

far between. They tend to be on their own. Also, the brush is grown in around these fields and leopards need to have a need to conceal themselves till they get pretty close and then they sprint up an attack. So this out migration has created a scenario that's easier for leopards to prey on something different. And there there's also the you know, the the prey that they normally feed on because of deforestation is dwindling, so they're you know, they're kind of forced to find other things to eat.

And that happens, you know, in California when you have if you have a situation where the a cougar is injured and or sickly, it starts coming, you know, into a human community. Normally you wouldn't you wouldn't see a cougar coming in that close to to a human settlement except on your doorbell camera late at night. So it's usually something something's gone wrong, you know, it's not just a personality quirk like I'm going to be a man eater, Like how that sounds.

take care of it. There's and then you have California where a ballot measure was put forth to put cougars back on mountain lions back on the endangered list, even though in some counties there are they are doing fine in other counties, so not it shouldn't be off statewide. It should be sort of county by county because there's a lot of different So it's very much cultural in in states where people are raised in a hunting culture,

they're more likely to support killing the animals. Our history is tame the wilderness, go west, make it your own, do what you have to do, and wildlife. Wild animals, big mammals in particular were viewed as either competition. They were you know, they were taking deer that people wanted to hunt, or they were taking livestock, or they were just varmints. They were you know, better off dead. So

that's kind of our history in India. Though Hinduism has a number of gods that represent are represented as animals, and two of those are big nuisance animals, monkeys and elephants. But because of the you know, the Wildlife Protection Act, and because people have kind of a reverence and a fondness for animals, because of this association, they're much more conservative and they don't like, they don't even like attempts to come up with birth control for monkeys. They don't

want anybody messing They want the problem fixed. They don't want these animals, you know, coming into their apartments and trashing things and throwing things around, and they don't want that. They want them to go away, but they don't want them messed with in any way. And it's very difficult for the people in the government to deal with that, to figure out something that will seem humane but also

solve the problem. So it's it's very culture specific, and I think that is that is what determines what happens in this country at state by state, and I imagine in India as well. But and that's true any anywhere you go in the world people have, people have culture specific feelings about animals. Mm hmm.

very interesting. It was not scary. It was just over so fast. And I was impressive because there were two of them, you know. One of them kind of popped up from behind a rock and stepped in my path and I'm focused on that monkey, and this other one dashes out from behind me and grabs the bag and I was like, slick.

the outdoors, it has definite perks. But on the other hand, when an animal has crossed the line in the eyes of the agency, it's it's you who has to kill the animal. And I've been I've talked with people who have to do that and it's so hard and they get they feel horrible about it. It's an awful thing to have to do. Play they get a lot of hate, hate mail and threats from people who don't feel that that animal should have been killed. So that's a tough one.

But there's other ways to be involved in it. You could there are people who have founded nonprofits that promote coexistence. For example, the wolf situation is quite a contentious one in certain parts of this country. There are folks who try to bring together people on both sides of the divide.

The people who are speaking for the wolves and don't want the wolves harmed, and then the people ranchers often who are not only suffering economic fallout from wolves eating livestock, but also it's just, you know, it is an emotional thing you've got, you know, your life is sheep or whatever goats and that keep getting killed. So bringing those people together to have a conversation and try to not just talk but listen and try to understand where the

other person is coming from. And there are people this is again not a job I want, but there are people are really good at moderating, who are good at facilitating conversations between people with very different viewpoints and trying to come to some kind of compromise. And some compromise based solutions that everybody could be happy with. So there's a number of those groups out there that do really

good work. What else you could be somebody who tries to design effective deterrence, like the person who's was working in India on using something you would use for early earthquake detection, using that to know when elephants are coming your way toward your village about to raide your crops, so because you know, you want to herd them off before they get there, and people who are you know, you don't want people sort of running out trying to

scare off seventeen elise because that doesn't go well for the people. Uh So, I mean, which I thought that was creative? You could you know, there's this creativity and engineering that can be applied to it. I think if I had to do anything, I would want to be one of those people who, even though it's kind of grizzly, the attack forensics, the person who shows up on the scene, you know, like puts you know, puts up the yellow

tape and collects the evidence and does that work. I think sound that sounds most interesting to me.

good food right here. I did, like, I learned a lot about effigies, which are bizarre, like if you it works pretty it works very well with vultures, certain birds, a little bit with roosting gulls if you're trying to clear a place where they're all hanging out, and effigy is a if you were to take a dead version of that bird, hang it by its feet, I mean again not a lovely thing, but and just sort of hang it there by its feet with the wings spread out.

No other no other birds of that species are going to come anywhere near for quite a while. I mean, nothing is permanent, but it was. I forget how long it was months and months that vultures were kept away when this was done and they was figured out accidentally. We don't have to go into the story. But you can now purchase effigies, or you can just buy a styrofoam body and stick the wing because the feathers seemed

to be important in the tail and the wings. But you can buy a body because the body's you know, rot quickly with all the viscerous. You can you know, fashion your own and hang it up there. It's effective. But the thing is it creeps people out. They had a down in the Everglades. There's this place where people pull up there, you know, with their boats and launch their boats. And in the parking lot there were a lot of vultures ripping up people's windshield wiper blades or

they're the calking around the sun roof. This is something vultures do. We go into that in the book. We don't have to kind of do that now, but they do this and it's annoying for people. So the park people hung up some effigies and it was effective. But then they spent all day talking to people about why there are these creepy dead birds strung up in the parking lot. Somebody strung up a dead vulture in the parking lot, what's going on? And then they'd have to

explain the whole thing. So eventually they just put a bunch of tarps out and said, hey, vultures attack your cars, put a tarp over it, which works very well. Yeah.

the rat is not as charismatic. It's not, I mean the charismatic animals are typically cute, typically big rodents, and a lot of people don't like birds. I'm a bird lover, but yeah, my friend Anne's like, I hate birds, Like wait a minute, all birds. Yeah, She's like, I don't know, she thinks they're dirty or she's like I hate birds. So yeah, that that term past I don't. I don't like it because it just gets gives people just people

don't have to really think about it. They can just call up somebody to set a trap or put poison out they can, they can very easily just have somebody deal with it. But it's not an it. I mean, it's an it, I guess, but it's a it's a it's an animal like like like a cougar, you know, like an elephant. It's just smaller and maybe more annoying to you at the moment.

the smart farmers decided to grow something else because it's a you know, well, we don't have to get into the trials and tribulations of bird seed farmers. And by the way, actually the main thing they do with sunflower seeds is make oil. It's a small percentage of sunflower seeds that go into bird seed, but nonetheless the irony is.

to shoot, to do all of that. You know, fast forward to the nineteen sixties and the dawn of the conservation you know, the environmental movement and also animal welfare groups. That has changed the perspective and that has made a huge, huge difference to the point where these populations have recovered enough that now they're starting to really get up in

people's business again. So it's kind of you know, there's been this embracing of wildlife and protecting wildlife and encouraging wildlife, and now that they populations have recovered, and also you know, we are expanding into their territory, so it's all combining to kind of erode people's patients and keenness to have these animals around. So it's almost because of the scale of the change from back then till now that we are starting to see more conflict.

a unique set of flora and fauna. Fauna in particular we're talking about they've got flightless birds and a lot of also a lot of reptiles, but it's the flightless birds that are particularly vulnerable to these animals stoats and weasels and ferrets, feral cats, these creatures that are all invasive. The country has sort of as a nation agreed to eliminate stoats, rats, and possums because if they don't, they're heading into a situation where they aren't going to have

any unique animals and birds left. But it's kind of heartbreaking because they themselves, going back to the early nineteen hundreds, they themselves imported these creatures, the stoats, and the they imported the stoats to kill the rabbits that they'd earlier imported that populated the landscape far further than they wanted

them to. So they brought in the stoats. The stoats got there, looked around and said, yeah, there's some rabbits, but you know what, these flightless birds are much more appealing and so easy to get, so they just did. They were decimated these bird species. Also some also reptiles. But that's a lot of animals to wipe out. It's called predator free New Zealand twenty fifty. There. The hope is to wipe out stoats, rats and possums by twenty fifty.

And not everybody's on board with that. And you can, like you were mentioning, you know, you're bringing it back to a point in time, but things have already changed from there. I mean anyway, yeah, how do you how do you freeze time? I mean, these things are always evolving. But that said, it's you know, I could certainly understand how if you lived in New Zealand, you wouldn't want to lose all of those those birds and reptiles that are going extinct. So yeah, how how it's the invasive

species that's a tough one. Whole books are written on that one.

to control rats? I think it was. But the one species is nocturnal and one's diurnal, so never the twain met. And that's that seems like maybe somebody should have somebody should have thought of that in the beginning. And again I didn't report on that, so I may be oversimplifying how that all unfolded, but it didn't go well, let's just say.

Or how is it bugging me? But just wow, how lucky are we to have these incredibly beautiful things on the planet with us So and again, of course there's you know, there's that is not a universal opinion year in the US, but we have come along way, and I feel that if you look at some of the organizations that are charged with monitoring this and making the

rules and deciding what happens. The National Wildlife Research Center and the USDA who runs that center have been of late hiring non lethal experts, not people, not just to kind of pay lip service to Oh, you know, if you were to build a pin for your chickens a nighttime a safe, well made nighttime enclosure, they won't get nabbed. Or if you were to trim this brushback or change the way you graize these sheep, I think it would

help a lot. So there's they're they're hiring these people, and that's come out of some dialogues between the National Wildlife Research Center SLASH USDA and the NRDC Natural Resources Defense Committee is it or council. So there's been again those sort of coexistence meetings, people from kind of agencies that usually clash who are now sitting down and trying to work together. And I see that as a hugely

positive development. Maybe I'm pollyannish, but I think, I mean, that's the best development, the most hopeful development I've seen. And you know, I forget the number of states in the amount of money budgeted, but it seemed significant, and it seemed that the mindset within the agency that is the USDA is shifting a bit, you know, there's some of the newer hires and the younger people are less inclined to carry on the tradition of shoot, trap and poison I hope.

it's just too good. If you all enjoyed this as much as I did and want to learn more, check out our website this podcast will Kill You dot com, where I'll post a link to where you can find fuzz when Nature Breaks the Law, as well as Mary's other books and don't forget You can check out our website for all sorts of other cool things, including but not limited to, transcripts Quarantini and Placy Berita recipes, show notes and references for all of our episodes, links to

merch our bookshop dot Org, affiliate account, our Goodreads list, a first hand account, and music by Bloodmobile, Speaking of which, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes. Thank you to Leana Squalacci for our audio mixing, and thanks to you listeners for listening. I hope you liked this bonus episode and our loving being part of the TPWKY book Club. A special thank you, as always to our fantastic patrons. We

appreciate your support so very much. Well, until next time, keep washing those hands