he would signed into existence five national parks, 18 national monuments, 55 national bird sanctuaries and wildlife refuge is and 150 national forests. camping with the president was a remarkable experience, muir later said, i fairly fell in love with him. the two of them together, i think, did a lot of good. >> that's, great that's a great place to end. thank you, dean. >> thank, you appreciate it. [applause] >> american history tv, saturdays on c-span two, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. three pm, eastern watch the second part of the calvin coolidge centennial conference marking the centennial of the 30th presidents essential to the white house. and at 9:15 pm, eastern on the presidency, pete hughes, a former white house stenographer for presidents ronald reagan and barack obama, talked about

the day-to-day workings of the presidency. including the history making moments he witnessed. exploring the american story, watch american history tv saturdays on c-span two. and find a full schedule on yo program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. >> healthy democracy doesn't just look like this. it looks like this. where americans can see democracy at work, and citizens are truly informed. a republic thrives. get informed, straight from the source, as he's been. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. from the nation's capital to wherever you are. nga you get the opinion that batters the move, oh. this is what democracy looks like. c-span, powered by cable. go>> good, evening everybody. look at the north carolina museum of natural sciences. thank you so much for coming out to tonight's program. thank you for tuning in if

you're watching with us live online. a very special program for you tonight. we've just a whole stage full of brilliant people. not including myself, of course. my name is chris smith, for the museum of natural sciences as a coordinator for current science programs. that jumped adam inside the pleasure and privilege of welcoming everybody into the museum. that's music to me really interesting people who are doing interesting work out there in the realms of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or does it relates to science, education and even more. so is a thrill to be here in the museum talking about science or nature or conservation or any of those great, fabulous topics that make this museum such a great resource and such a great place to be. to my left, you can see these are the brilliant people that i've been joined by tonight. first, i want to introduce dr. michael cove, closest to me.

yay. yeah, we can clap for dr. cove. like serves as a research crater for mammalogy here at the museum of natural sciences. it's an expert on wraps, i guess a particular type of rat. actually, you know, what i'm great is that he knows a lot about a whole lot of mammals. we had an event not too long ago near the museum in the audience was peppering dr. cove here with questions about all that to different animals from all regions of the planet. and right at the top of his mind, incredible answers to great questions. from rats living in the appalachian mountains took bears and south america. it's a, great great top. thanks for being, here like. >> thank you for having me. i'm excited to talk about pests. >> cross the way, we have doctor roland kays. roland serves as a head of the biodiversity research lab here at the museum. it's glass walled mr. slip this

over the research center, also a professor at north carolina state university teaching zoology and an expert zoologist. but dr. cases particular skilled in home of animal tracks. maybe not so much sniffing animal tracks in the forest and knowing which way they went, although i would believe that you're very good at that as well. >> if there is, now i can do it. >> that's perfect. it also using more technology and modern techniques of animal tracking. particularly things like camera tracks and gps tracking. >> great, happy to be here. >> thanks, roland. and then of, course the reason that all three of us are here at the museum tonight is to hear about the new book, pests, how humans create animal villains. tonight, we have a very special guest, doctor bethany brookshire. [applause] bethany is a science journalist, you can read bethany's work in the washington post, new york

times, slate, the atlantic and of course places like science american, science news. as a former staff writer for science news for students, which i screwed through the air kind of and there's so many things i need to learn about it in the archive there. i'm going to go be a student at science news for students. and we're very excited that we have experts in animals that some people consider pests here at the museum and, bethany, that you could be here to talk about your new book and share some of the cool science and stories that you investigated. so, let's get to it. if you could, i'm going to take a seat. thank you for letting me join tonight's conversation as well. karen, let's get started. the place to start is, bethany, tell us about the book. what is the sales pitch for pests? >> i start researching this

book all the way back in 2016, when the idea first happened. but i have become obsessed with pests. because what is a past, right? when you think heard about, it a past is an animal that makes you mad, you off. that means that the past has nothing to do with what the animal is, where it's going, what it's doing. it has everything to do with you and what you think your environment should be like. and we should be in it, who belongs near you with your stuff, et cetera. i just became fascinated by this concept of past. so realize that almost everyone who you talk to about pests, everyone has a story. in the stories which was featured in the book involves, can i cuss here? i don't know.

>> you're the bus. >> c-span, can i cuss? that looks like a thumbs up. >> i think three of us work for the state of north carolina and you do not. >> i do not, true. this grill as time, but his name is kevin. we calm kevin for short and because it's their old lives next door, a great and school, otherwise known as -- kevin lives in my yard and i hate him so much. this kevin, this is squirrel, we now call all squirrels kevin in my house. this squirrel was the reason that i have not had a tomato from my garden in five years. every time i go out, i plant tomatoes, i'm super excited. the tomatoes pro, they swell up, they are green, they're hopeful. and kevin, kevin comes into my garden, grabbed a nice, green tomato and he takes a big bite. and then kevin recalls that he does not in fact like tomatoes.

he leaves it with is too smart accident, right where i could see it on my porch. because he is a jerk. within the next day, he does it again and again and again. this squirrel has taken a bite out of every single to meet my burden for the last five years and i've tried many things to get rid of him. putting bird netting, metal netting, cayenne pepper. stray cats. i did in fact try stray cats. to keep inside and we now have pets, but kevin aid can't food. >> maybe need to bring kevin inside. >> let's not. i started to realize, i hated this animal. about bringing up to my friend and they would be like, oh, you can't hurt him, he's a squirrel. he's perfect, he's sweet. they would take pictures of the squirrel.

people feed disclosed deliberately, people set up obstacle courses that go viral on youtube for these animals. i realized that every animal could be a past to someone. it just mattered in what ways. so, i wrote this book. >> i've never had a problem with squirrels, literally. they have never been a pest. until this morning. when your kevin's girlfriend showed up in my attic. never until today. i'm like getting dressed to come here for this event with bethany and there is literally a squirrel that has broken into my attic and quad to some stuff, and giant nest, leaves and crap all over the place. this literally never happened in my life until today. >> i'm so proud. >> i feel like you're cursed. >> we did have one that got in my roof in one of the places that i rented.

we named her big birth of because she was so big, the squirrel. a mix of thump noise every time. the guy who caught her said she was the biggest girl he had ever seen. i think he told me he took her to a farm update. >> yeah, right. >> mike, i hope this means you have a good squirrel story? are you going to at least say like squirrels? >> this is really interesting, because i've been thinking about this a lot. i will have a little further outside of raleigh and my wife, my lovely wife, has pet goats. and she had some sunflower seeds for the goats and they stayed in the trunk in her car for the long weekend. by the end of the weekend, the squirrels had chewed up through the underside of the bumper into the trunk and what would

all be the sunflower seeds for the goats. that bump ruth held together with directives for a substantial amount of time. so, i've never actually thought of them as pests, per se, but it's interesting you mentioned to meet a thing. this is an idea that i've had for a while. which just grows actually consume garbage or our soft fleshy fruits and resources? they mostly eat acorns and stuff. that is usually not a shortage of the oaks. we live in the city of oaks, right? it's interesting to hear that they are eating other things. >> birdseed, eating a lot of birdseed. >> that's true. i just think of them as eating hard things are not soft things. >> that's why didn't finish your tomatoes. >> they're, like i thought this is a green nut and i was wrong. what i found fascinating is

that the squirrels always figured out -- when you as, like you know what? nuclear option, i planted no tomatoes, hoping your papers instead. i was, like oh yeah, i had this vision of the squirrel running away with tears streaming beyond its free cheek. squirrels cannot weave but i can dream. anyway, he did not eat them. he never touched that jalapeño pepper, not a single one. every single time i've grown hot peppers, he knows. this segment takes a bite out of it. >> this is more of your book, right? sometimes humans need to change their behaviors instead of the animals. he'd become a helping your farm instead of a tomato farmer. >> actually what i did was i figured, i learned things about the special memory of squirrels. and they have incredibly high and accurate facial memories and we have to do is that every tomato. cage over here tomatoes before the tomatoes emerged. if you wait until the tomatoes and marriage, which i tried, when the tomatoes emerged i bought a large gardeners cajun

spent all morning setting up. a feeling really, guided me to my friends house and got this text from my husband, can you please come home? i'm like, why? she says, those two schools that have gotten into the garters cage and are bouncing around like free ping-pong balls because they can't get out. he had to let them out 20 minutes later they are back in. he let them out again. and it turned into an anti-squirrel fortress involving chicken wire and the gardeners cage and bricks. but this year, the governor's cajun is to go partly because, if squirrels do not taste the thing, they do not know it is there and they will not come and get it. the moral of the story is to learn about your squirrel behavior instead of your garden in cage. >> sounded part of the criteria for the crater being deemed a past at least is they have to be able to outsmart us regularly.

at least the whole squirrel thing is they consistently get around whatever it is that we set up to stop them. they consistently frustrated us because they can do those two things. we get angry, we try to stop them. if they just able to get around us at every turn. does that hold true for stuff that's not squirrels or just for squirrels? >> and integrating a lot about this in a section in which roland is cited several times. so much of what we call pests is about power and vulnerability. it's about animals that make us feel powerless, and make us feel scared. and it's a animals, once they make us feel powerless and scared, her fear turns to anger and our anger turns to hate. we turn to the dark side. it's all downhill from there. one of those animals that

really exemplified that is actually the coyote. which ended up talking to roland about. coyotes have been spreading east for sometime. they are causing people issues. i would like to hear your take on why cadiz are spreading where they are and why they're coming into more suburban environments on the east coast in particular. >> sure. cadiz wherever julie a western, species they lived in grassland, desert, open habitats in the western united states and mexico it up into canada. and then around the early 1900s, 1910, 1920, they started moving and expanding in all directions. if you think about the, environment to the north, they moved it a great northern forests of canada and up to alaska. to the, south they moved south into the rainforest. a fragment the forest, that is more farm fields, the command a little bit of forest. they move now all the way to panama. on the verge of entering south

america, they haven't entered yet as far as we know but the right on the edge. we have camera traps that have gotten them in the aryan rainforest. and the east coast was this great bit of force that they never used to live in. that's, fragmented there's more fields and forests and the coyotes all over the place. as they move, east they colonized the better habitats for them, which would've been more fields and little bit of forests. eventually they moved into the deep forest and eventually they filled that up and they started moving into cities. he is a young coyote grows up. and if he goes into the 90s or and into the neighborhood, maybe you can scream better living there. they've been slowly colonizing across the east coast cities more and more. thank you here in raleigh, they should've in the county in the 90s. and into more cities only recently, in the developed areas of raleigh.

they are just the ultimate in adaptability. they will cabbage road kill. they lead to some garbage but usually not a, lot sometimes a little bit. the and certainly you cat food, if you put a catheter coyote will be quite attracted to that. they come in and in some ways it is probably because we got rid of the wolves. wolves were considered a pest a couple hundred years ago. we killed almost all of them and that kind of opened up the space for the coyote to expand. and a cadiz have become a pest all over the place, but in some places not. it's interesting to see, in a lot of places, they're filling in for the wolf ecologically. definitely not completely. but whether they're a pest, sometimes they use the word invasive species.

they are exotic in that they're a didn't used to be here. they're not introduced, we use the word introduced. they weren't introduced and they got her on their own, could see their spread. with their invasive, whether they're pest is sort of, are they causing harm to humans? human society? or sort of other invasive -- native species causing conservation problems? there's some places where they do that and there's a lot of places where they don't. on, average they're not that big of a, passed i think. where they, are past their one of the bigger, security or pests out there. >> it's fascinating to me how many of the people i interviewed for the book who had had personal interactions with pests. you guys hear this. oh my, goodness i had a, rat it was the size of a cat. no it was. i'm, sorry it was not. there's been no recorded wild brown norway rat that has been over two pounds. i know a guy, bobby corrigan,

he carries around a check in as well. he showed it to me for $500 for the first person who can inhibit two-pound rat and he is never used that check. okay? you tell me that rat is the size of a cat, that's a kitten. >> mike, is there anything in the research collection we can make $500 off of? >> probably not. >> different species. >> a pouch to rat. >> those are big. >> substantial. >> it's really interesting when we have an attraction that makes us feel powerless and makes us feel scared. all, the sudden the animal grows in our minds and it becomes huge. right? the raccoon becomes the size of a large dog. the coyote is the sides of a wolf. it's not. >> cadiz to look big, right? they, are in truth, very lean. people's compare them with their dogs. people know how much their dogs way and many people have a 50

pen dog. i've a 50 pound dog. they see a coyote in their, like it was the size of my dog, it was 50 pounds. understand, that i have a 50 pound organize he cadiz and i would approximate their weight to be about the size of my dog. but the truth, is coyotes very rarely can get to 50 pounds. on average, in the east coast, they're like 35 pounds. on the west coast, it is smaller, like 25 pounds. a west coast on average, they're like half the size. it's just there is a lenient fluffy and lanky. the other thing, if you hear them how, its outlook huge pack. there must have been ten or 15 of them. there's a paper on this where they published, experimentally paid people different embers of tires howling. people consistently always overestimated. it's almost like the coyote, part of that evolution of their howell. they want their holidays and like a bigger group.

the way they do it makes it sound like a bigger group and people fall for it all the time. >> i did know that, that's amazing. how did i miss this paper? >> part two. >> it's very funny when i was reporting on communities in california. when my sources was super happy, it is like, and i'm gonna show you the cadiz inculcate part right now. not, golden gate hollywood. i'm going to show you them, it's great. where there and the cadiz command i'm, like that's it? he's, like excuse me? i'm like, there's a small. our coyotes are much bigger than that. he got all mad at me. but i actually saw a road killed tightly outside of washington, d.c. the other day and i'm so excited almost pulled over. this is who you become. >> a reason that eastern coyotes are larger is, before, as they're moving east, they hybridized with the wolf. -- fails a hybridized odds. there's some dog jeans.

on average, the eastern coyote is still 80 to 90% wolf -- 80 to 90% coyote. as 80% of doctors and five to 10% of all genes. it's a great experiment in evolution because, if those jeans help and survive, and they're going to survive better and passes jeans on. we've actually shown that some of the wolf jeans that were pre-issue we don't know exactly what they do but from the direction and we have a pretty decent idea that they're associated with growth and bone growth and muscle growth. those jeans are surviving better and helping coyote survive better being passed on. that's part of why eastern kennedys are sort of 35 to 45 pounds for his western countries early 25. >> i love the idea of imagining in expanding coyotes tinder profile. it's, like i can match with anybody. hello, poodle, labradoodle, german shepherd. , final take the poodle.

>> that's how we think it happens, actually. the first piety that got into north carolina, springtime came along, he had no one else to breed. with no other cadiz where there because she was the first one. it is a pretty dedicated breeders so they have to take the next best thing they can get. >> i'm just waiting for the coyote dachshund hybrid. can we? >> what would you call that? >> -- >> when do cadiz become pets? when they become mondays having cause problems? the situation is attacking dogs. we are surveying, i'm a global news alert for any time cadiz make the news. which is pretty much every single day. a lot of times, it's because they attack dogs. they're almost always small dogs. it's often someone lets their dog out and to go to the bathroom at, night doesn't come back. but sometimes, there is a video the other day of, i felt

terrible, for an old lady in l.a. walking her chihuahua on the leash. kyrie comes up and yanks it off the leash. it's not breeding with it. we think it might be aggressive, i don't think it needs him, i don't know. the small dogs and coyotes are not a good thing. >> i've taken to calling chihuahua's walking coyote snickers. >> snickers? >> snickers. >> they're hungry. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> or alligators considered pests? >> certainly floridians do not enjoy them. i personally maintain, that if the alligator is eating you, you are moving too slow. have you considered moving faster? but alligators routinely killed people and dogs. it's interesting how we are sometimes more tolerant of that

when it's happening in places that we deemed to be wilderness. happening somewhere like the everglades. that's the wilderness. brown bears, for example, kill about 1 to 2 people a year. they are big, very big. if they don't want you to be, they're a find a way to make you leave by whatever means necessary. and we are kind of okay with, that right? a charismatic megafauna, right? went out there in the wilderness and they don't realize. people don't realize and they think that there is no such thing as wilderness, there's no such thing as a police that has no people in, it a place that is for animals in a place that is for humans. right? every place we live, we form own ecology. some of these animals are going to take advantage of that ecology. >> the mention of florida puts me in nine of animals like pythons and florida. there are, apparently, a lot in

florida. we could talk about -- a lot of animals that are considered passed, perhaps. gaiters, maybe. but there are non native species like pythons. -- but daegu. i don't even know what that is. >> it is an argentinian lizard. >> not to mention the giant how far can land snail. >> the. >> capybaras. >> florida, florida has invasive species, exotic introduce pcs, reliving, than anywhere else i thank. >> florida, i think, is the australia of the united states. >> are all of me is -- if we take, sort of, the definitions you've been using for pasts, are the in florida passed? or, are they non nato? if they can survive there but you mention are they doing harm? what harm are they doing and what is so special for the

python or the tegu? >> i think some of the species are fairly benign, you know? smog echoes, things like that. it is unclear if they play a role other than pray for bigger things but when you are dealing with the tegu, for me's python there are breeding populations of both constructors, anaconda's, nile monitors. there are not many things as we see from the work with the burmese python. they're gigantic snakes. yet their cryptic enough that somehow they are masked populating the everglades before anyone noticed for a couple of decades. >> we had no choice. >> i think that their impact is unequivocal. there are basically no more

mammals left to even study in parts of the everglades because the high thought have, literally, consumed them all. they can sit there. the beauty of being a python as you have such a slow metabolism that you can last 500 days without eating. you have your fat reserves. they can just sit and wait for new prey to, eventually, migrate in. move in, or repopulate. they are also shifting their diets, right? where i were in the florida keys, key largo, it is an endangered island ecosystem. now we are studying their impact on the endangered rodents there. the endemic yolanda wood rat and cottonmouth. we compare the everglades, we are only just now seeing the prevalence of the pythons increasing. effectively at the front end of that invasion curve. the population is growing.

we are hoping to be able to manage it. contain it and prevent that extinction event are these endangered rhoden's. we are lucky that we observed it early enough in this case. that is an easy system to work in, because it is contained. i think the northern invasion front of the pythons, there is not really anything stopping them. cars, right? they get hit by cars. the state of florida house python roundup's. but the round of snow removing a couple hundred pythons a year. contractors are looking for them. the folks out there are throwing everything that they possibly can at not removing pythons, but figuring out a way to find the pythons in order to remove them.

that northern invasion front is slowly expanding northward. if you look at the climate models of the suitable niche space in the climate, what they can withstand, they could make it all the way up into north carolina. that is without any warming. >> keep your eyes open! >> it is a slow, steady, slithering front there. but we need to be monitoring in managing that front. part of my work in the keys that we talk about in the book was trying to, you know, mitigate these things at the southern evasion front. hopefully, we are learning something for that northern front. >> i actually wanted to follow up on that. interestingly, burmese pythons are threatened in their native range. they are from southeast asia. they are threatened by habitat loss in particular in their own

range. why are we pleased? they're actually doing well in florida. they came to florida. shouldn't we be happy? you know? not happy but, content? i can see that there are other species that if they made any where we would be absolutely cheering, right? we are not. what i found really fascinating is your own work with burmese pythons is to save a rat and a mouse. which -- don't get me wrong >> a very special rat in mouth! >> they are extremely cute. it's not their fault. >> we are trading one pass for another. >> it is interesting because those are animals that you otherwise consider, some people might consider, past, right? a snake that is threatened in his home range which is succeeding elsewhere. >> right. >> this is an interesting moral, ethical, question. teetering on that edge.

where -- it is really unfortunate that burmese pythons are threatened, endangered, in their native range. in a perfect world we could start collecting them in florida and shipping them back and reintroducing. >> i did ask a scientist why we couldn't try that. >> they have been breeding in the everglades. presumably adapting, hyper specifically, to that environment. shifting to a largely aquatic ecosystem. largely aquatic diet. they have shifted their diet. who knows what their genetic potential is. it is unclear that they were founded by small population of released pats. who knows what kind of other things they've been exposed to in their invasive range.

but they could, potentially, bring back and potentially wipe out the native range for something like that. i think that this, you know? we have, whatever, plenty of other species that are more common in their invasive ranges. camels in the outback, right? they, basically, don't exist anymore in the wild. but they are -- i don't know that they are abundant but they exist throughout the outback. >> they are pretty abundant. >> pablo escobar's hippos? how about those? >> hippos, camels, horses. all of the wild mustang's of the planes are not wild. pigeons! they are succeeding wildly. there is only one known colony of wild pigeons left in the world, off of the coast of israel. there is another connie it is

debatable in the north coast of scotland. i don't believe it. sorry. what is the right connection to the pythons? he said there were parts of the everglades where there were just no mammals. i know that he studied specific species of ransom gloria. is there some connection between the fieldwork you've been doing in the rest of the study? >> the caper chin and the cats. >> right. the connection with cats. >> working in south florida has its charms and i effectively work in interconnected web of pests i studied these endangered rhoden's, which are not passed their ecosystem engineer. they are doing all sorts of

important seed dispersal. they are great. they live in the forest. they are not coming out into people's homes. they are doing their thing. >> they build giant, cool, next. they are great. >> we have the non native black rats. we have had a long running history with feral and free roaming cats, domestic cats. an issue consuming these endangered rodents. now we have the pythons. we have coyotes, to. it is all of the past -- >> recently invading coyotes. >> they go over miles of bridges and berms to come into the everglades. >> we talked about the. you actually, successfully, manage the cat population of key largo. >> i didn't do it. >> you persuaded people. >> i documented some of it and

followed along. it has been fun working there. i've been working there for ten years now, a decade. feels like it might be time to move on. >> everybody loves florida, come on. >> the fish and wildlife service have been working in the community there to mitigate the impact of tehran free roaming cats. live trapping them and working in the community to remind people that responsible pet ownership is, ultimately, the way to mitigate these issues. >> right. but what is the one factor that led to more responsible pet ownership than anything else? >> coyotes and burmese pythons. >> right. the common enemy. all of a sudden, they're helping the biologist. >> how exactly are they doing that? >> how are they helping the biologists? >> oh, well, you know? we get support from the community because they're interested in this common

enemy. the burmese python. >> so before the pylons the coyotes were eating the cats. >> pythons are absolutely consuming cats. they consume any mammal. but anecdotally, a little bit of scientific gossip here, we find a lot more fat reserves in the pylons that we find around where the urban edges. where there are more cats in the environment. presumably the raccoons and oh possums also have higher fat reserves in places where they are feeding cats. they could be accumulating that through multiple pathways. >> cats are the mcdonald's of -- i love that so much. >> if you put out cat food, he said it out. of course you're gonna be attracting the cats there. the raccoons and the coyotes and the possums and the skunk. >> and the rats! >> right. so you are basically making

this giant concentration of mammal bio mass. when a cold blooded animal comes around sticking in some out, trying to find where the warm blooded mammals are, they are going to go there. >> you just gotta sit and wait. >> that is one of the things i found really fascinating with writing this book. how many people want to feed things. they want to feed animals. specifically, i call it the disney princess mama. the bird landing on your hand. you now? they want to have the deer eat out of your hands. they dawn -- the feed birds. they want to feed cats. whatever. it they put out additional food, they honestly believe that only the one species maymont is going to eat it. and it's like, if you leave a box of cookies out on the counter and you have a family, do you honestly expect that box

of oreos to be untouched when you come back? no. a course not! he may have intended it for you but your dog had other ideas. >> i think it is super interesting how generally the smaller the critter, the less past like they are -- birds. feed the birds. hummingbirds! what could be more, sort of -- >> pure. scenic. feeding a hummingbird. the smallest of the critters. right? then other birds, that's fine. someone starts feeding the raccoons, you should do that. boxes. someone feeding the coyotes. hey, wait a second. don't feed the coyotes. . and as you get bigger, all of a sudden it's like, why is it okay to feed the hummingbirds but not the black bears? it's because of the potential for them to be a pest. and a serious pest.

has a hummingbird ever been a pest? >> not that i know. of i'm sure, given time. they are small but mighty. my reporting in massachusetts i was working with a bear biologist. he had a huge issue. there was a guy in western massachusetts who insisted on feeding the bears. he had been platform set up in his backyard. >> a youtube channel? >> probably tiktok, to be honest. the bears were come every day. he would put up crazy amounts of food. he would not stop feeding the bears. even though the bear biologist came to him and said, hey. in an effort to get to your food, they are buried getting killed on the highway outside of this neighborhood. because they are trying to get to where you are feeding them. he was like that, none of my business. i just want to feed the bears. >> i also think it is habituation and external resources are creating the pests.

individual mismanagement of resources in terms of intentional food supplementation. there is other things, like securing tourette. another things like that to prevent animals from getting into the messes if they can create. putting the stuff there or is not what drives that. it is the situation and the acceptance until, all of a sudden, it is no longer acceptable. >> and everyone wants photos until the animal is, all of a sudden, to close! absolutely. it's photos until it's too much. that is one of the things i've been looking into. the fact that humans, we have this idea. we, and by we, i mean western, mostly white. groups have this idea that we dominate the environment. we deserve to have only the animals that we want to be

there. right? we refused to change our own behavior when those animals cause problems. if the animal is getting into our trash, it is not we should look up the trash. it is we should poison the animal. there is actually another solution to this. it is really interesting because i found that this is a very western view. not everyone thinks this way there are other groups will say, okay. we need to change our own behavior. we need to recognize that these animals are here and that we live with them. we need to live with them responsibly. i thought this was something we could all learn from, honestly. in other news, please lock up your trash. >> i think it's interesting how in your book you talk about situations where just a few people can create a past. pigeons are one example. there are pigeon feeders.

feeding the pigeons. the whole population of city might be dependent on a couple that are doing it for their own personal reasons. i see the same thing with cat sometimes. >> absolutely. >> a hoarder. like an animal hoarder kind of situation. >> that was really interesting because one of the things i found about pests they can be a problem of social justice. many of the people who i talk to who studied the social science and pigeon feeding, there are people in the world who studied this. god bless academia. there is a guy from nyu who wrote a whole book on. it i loved. it was fantastic. a plus research. very good. >> should unknown. >> he talked to people who fed pigeons. he looked at why they did it. they were lonely. many of these people were elderly. they were alone. they had no friends. what else are they gonna do?

it is a harmless thing to feed the birds. the birds are grateful. the birds are friendly. birds new york city are so tame you can literally reach down pick one up. i have done it. you do you understand why. but then you also understand, this is a social justice issue, right? we could help people who are elderly and socially isolated be less socially isolated. we could give them a community. people who feed cats are often very socially isolated. we could take care of that. people who live with rats do so because they have no choice. they're living in poverty. and homes that are not impervious to rodents. we could fix the problems, right? animals that become pasts are also becoming that because our social contract has failed. i think that is really important thing to keep in mind. we look at an animal on the like, gross. >> absolutely. >> that is quite powerful. >> thanks.

to put it together, just before we got to the social contract par, there was some threshold that we eventually get to with an animal. and then it becomes a pests. we go from here inherited to then vilifying. it being okay and then blaming that thing. we can look at ourselves. it's not our fault. it has to be something else is fall. that extends to our neighbors, as well, sometimes. all of a sudden the problem, it's not our problem. we are going to blame some other person another type of person. some other behavior. >> absolutely. that happens. especially with rats. some of the reporting i did was actually in homeless encampments. people are living with concentrations of rats that were excessive. it was a lot.

they did not want that. first of all, they don't want to be homeless. we will start there. they also really don't want to live with rats. it did not want to live in an environment that was dirty. you could see places where they were organizing and keeping spaces clean. they were doing their basked. it was the social contract that had failed them. a society that had decided that they did not deserve clean housing. to be free of living with animals. i think that is a really important thing to think about. >> stephanie, thank you. >> sorry. i didn't mean to get dark. >> no, i think that is a fantastic place to see if there was anyone here with us that has any thoughts or questions that they may like to share. wave at me. i will come and bring you a microphone. i think that is a great spot to

leave it as a reflection. that is a good moment. >> while you run down there, can mike tell the story of the python in his pants. >> oh my gosh. >> please! [laughs] >> you're supposed to leave that for the secret -- we'll have to read chapter two of pests. >> it's such a good story! >> december, 2007, i think. in a former life before territorial duties here at the museum of natural scientists, i would see zookeeper at the palm beach zoo in 2007. i went backcountry camping in the everglades by myself. it was right after hurricane wilma. a lot of the trails had been cleared. i needed a permit to go backcountry camping, or whatever.

i went so. there was an 11 to 12 mile hike. i was 67 miles in. i found this burmese python. this beautiful snake. i looked at it and admired it along the trail. wow, that was wild! enough? it doesn't belong here. >> this is before it was well known. 2007 was really early on in -- before they really knew a lot about them. >> you knew you had to catch it? >> i kept going started walking. i thought, wait a second! i gotta catch this thing. i turned back, i didn't really have a plan. i just grabbed it by the tail, you know? i grew up in the era of the steve erwin days. oh, okay! i had no actual plan. i had it by the tail. i took my shirt off, i threw my shirt over the head. the simple fact is that you

cover and animals eyes, they are easier to capture. i grabbed by the had. then it's body wrapped all around me, right? i was hopped up on adrenaline at that point. okay! not what? you know. i don't know. i'm sure the coyotes and everything, probably 13 feet, the snake. i think i thought it was small in the book. >> now, you said it was 13 feet. you looked up the email evidence. it was eight. >> anyway! >> probably felt like it. >> the strength of a 13 foot burmese python. anyway, long story short. i'm an evolution out. i'm resourceful. i took my pants off, my jeans. >> one handed. >> i tied the legs of each of them with my teeth. and i slowly unraveled the snake and stuffed it into my

pants. i put a bungee cord through the belt loop incense to shut. i threw the snake, in my pants, in my background. i slept with it in my tent that night. on the way out the next morning i saw three additional burmese by funds. i was like, holy smokes! this must be a way bigger deal than anyone realizes. when i got back to check out from a backcountry permit, i said, hey, you know? >> locked up in your underwear? >> yeah! i walked up and said, you know? are people finding burmese pythons in the everglades? the woman at the checkout with a park ranger seasons, i have a better question. , where are your pants! i said, they're right over there on the sidewalk. there is a python in them. anyway -- >> i'm so proud of you! [laughs] >> it was before the days of

camera phones and everything. i have zero documentation of that. other than the national park service came, collect that snake. this was early on in the research. they put a transmitter in it and re-released it as part of their initial study studying the behavior of burmese pythons. >> he sent an email to a friend in which he described the encounter. and then he sent it to me! because of fact checking. >> the snake grows every year, since 2007. thank you, thank you. >> now i'm back in the florida keys studying pythons. can't escape the pests. >> i'm glad we got that story. i'm gonna have you tell that story a lot. >> stephanie, looking at the cover of your book i see -- i was trying to understand the range. the pests that are the biggest pests in my life are insects.

the mammals, including what looks like a squirrel -- perhaps your squirrel. we have talked about reptiles, birds. is that? how did you decide what to cover and not cover as pests? >> the book is only vertebrates. anytime you talk about pests, i have a list is long as my arm, even of vertebrates, who did not make. it there are so many. crews, wild hogs. tegu, giant land snail. there are so many. i actually ended up focusing on vertebrates for a reason. this is about the subjective nature of pests. even if it is a bum pest on an agricultural crop that we value, that is still a subjective judgment. you cannot really get people to make an emotional connection to an aphid, or roach. it is hard!

snakes are hard enough. so, i ended up focusing on vertebrates because i really wanted people to feel the tension. to feel the subjectiveness of the definition. to realize that these are definitions that we imposed on the animal. they do not have anything to do with the animals themselves. no animal, invertebrate, insect, or otherwise is deliberately causing trouble. they are merely taking advantage of opportunities that we provide. so i k so, i know with insects, i don't know if is a true vertebrates, but if an insight to classified as a pest, then it changes the way it is regulated. legal things around. is that true also with vertebrates? how does any pest get

classified as a pest. in that regard, in terms of how it's going to be dealt with and its public policy or regulatory kind of way? >> i'm gonna throw that one to roland. do you know that? >> jeanne, i was gonna throw that to you. >> i only know it in australia. thinking about the rabbits in australia. >> yeah! generally, with the vertebrates, what you are allowed to do to an animal is dependent on the gaming agency. they regulate when you cannot do your, what the seasons are. the way that you can have time. they are gonna have classified, different, species according to that. that becomes most interesting in some of the areas when it comes to feral hogs. sometimes they will classify them as a game species. that is different than if they classify them as more of a pest. if they are a pest, they will open up any open season, no bag limit, you know? more liberal in terms of what methods you can use to harvest

them. generally speaking, with vertebrates, invasive species are usually -- you can just do whatever you want. they are invasive. open season. it is not quite the same with agriculture. most of the vertebrates do not get classified the same way that invertebrates do. we do have, often, something like a deer that has become an agricultural past. then you have to follow the rules of hunting. or, do you get special passed rules? they do get special past rules. you need to apply until the state with the problem is. it's usually pretty easy to get permission for farmer to go shoe deer out of season as much as they want if they are causing problems. maybe mike one elaborate on that. >> i think that is what i had in mind. i think that there is no legal

classification and pests as vertebrates as i understand. i'm not sure about that but in terms of feral hogs in the state of north carolina there is no heart is very legion. that is an open season. i think that the important thing is there are rules and regulations about how humane the death has to be. obviously, you can't just throw bombs at them or landline or anything like that. or poison, you have to watch every poison. poison that can harm other species. >> also like traps ensnare traps are devinney regulated for sure. depending on the species and everything. >> what is actually interesting and line with that is that part of my work in the florida keys started that as a follow-up to their integrated pest management plan. and pest management plan includes removing all invasive

species, including things like feral cats. you know, that is where a lot of controversy stems from because people have a hard time accepting that animals that can be our pets, whether they are cast or feral dogs or burmese pythons, also be invasive, deadly destructive predators in an ecosystem. what i find most fascinating about that is as part of the work i've been doing with pythons, we were tracking them and finding pythons because they were consuming some of the prey animals in our research, most recently, so i've been feeling a lot of emails from people -- >> like me. >> yes, but suggesting, you, not folks from the general public -- they have all kinds of ideas about poison pills on the colors of these, raccoons and

possums, or little detonators, as soon as the python consumes dump a blowup. or spikes that just expand out as soon as they hit the stomach acid of a python. and it's fascinating because people celebrate the killing of pythons. mike, everyone is excited about these python derbies. like, kill all the python. there is some cody derbies to in places. and yet, a lot of other species, feral and free moseying cats, they are just as destructive in the environment, they are kind of -- it's like we look past that because their kid or because we affiliate them with being our pets and not invasive predators. so i think there is a lot of humanization and that the gradient that pests fall on,

you know, probably correlates with the humanization of them broadly with the public, how much we kind of aligned with them. >> anthropomorphize. >> yeah. >> i think that's something that i've been thinking about a lot. we really -- we will do a great deal to protect the animals we value, to the point that we will do awful things to the animals we don't because we value another animal more. i think about this a lot, with regards to island ecosystems. you will have rats -- usually because of us. and there's a population there. it's like this last population of this 100 beavers or whatever. and people will drop millions of tons of poison on those islands get rid of the rafts. they totally will, and they will celebrate.

at the end, they're like, yes we did it, we got rid of the. rats they do it to cats, all of the sudden -- >> or even rabbits. >> yes. have you considered re-homing it? have you considered taking it somewhere and adopting it? what is the difference? and it also made me ask the question, i don't know if as we get into, this i talked to many -- none of them agree as his traditional, when but i've asked them, like, what is the right decision? and why are some of these animals more valuable? . the reality is, rats or kill-able because their pasts, to kill-able because they're common. but why is it bad to be more common? why did we privilege the rare? why is biodiversity considered an inherent good? it's not to say don't think, that because i do think that, biodiversity is great.

but it is also a judgment that we've made. it's one week have to live with the consequences of. >> anyway, and australia, you can shoot a cat whenever you walk, by the way. because they are pests. or rabbit. bring your own shotgun. i don't know if you have an answer to this, one i kind of what -- all of this python talk has made me realize there's an elephant on your book and no one in the united states whatever considered an elephant on -- as a past. but i can clearly imagine a situation in other places where they are. what i have personal experience with his living in austin, texas. we are a very large colony of bats lives in a man-made structure in the heart of the city. and, you know, go south to mexico for the winter but i was comes back. are they considered i -- mean, the population, people would gather around and watch them come out at sunset.

and -- >> by the way, it's a tourist attraction, that city. and interesting fact is the actor who played any munster lived in austin, texas, also. and weirdly -- are bats is one of those flying things on your book. >> no, i was actually avoiding that in part because of covid. it was a little sensitive at the time. because some species of bats -- that's a really interesting. keep an eye on this space, regarding bats, that's a really interesting -- but they're very interesting in that most of the time people don't go out to trap and poisoned bats if they are killed, there killed in retaliation for things like disease outbreak. so no, bats are, not but elephants are, yes. i got to study elephants in

kenya. i studied african elements. i met some up close, they are beautiful. they are so smart and or sweet. they killed 200 people a year in east africa and cause millions of dollars in crop damage. >> i was thinking earlier, as we were talking about squirrels, they are sort of the funny pest. it's like, lots of people have relationships with. them lots of people are annoyed with them as a pest, but it's like, oh yay are tomatoes, that's, funny you can call him a funny name. but then there is the elephants. and you know, some of the other species in your book. they have -- like, well, a little bit more consequential past. i feel like we need another critic shun of past. we need to different words like mine are passed, funny pest, and not so funny pest. if you look at the work of philippe -- he published an interesting article about the topic in 2016. he actually classified animals

into eight cubes of human judgment. which i adore. basically it's a three dimensional cube situation. where your x axis is how common the encounter is. your y axis is how severe the encounter is. and the middle access is how positive or negative it is. so he could be different access, hard to remember three dimensions, i don't manipulate objects in my head very well. but it's very interesting because there are -- we think of animals where consequences are rare, very severe, and negative, those are predators. so like a brown bear, shark, things like that. very rare, very negative. that does not turn out well. but then you have encounters that go on a gradation where you have encounters but are less severe and more comment. most of the time when people have negative encounters of

elephants, because they're eating their entire crop, it's not because they are killing them. if they kill it's by accident. usually. there have been a couple of cases that are not by accident, elephants are smart. and mostly animals we think of as pests, mice, rats, pigeons, geese, canada geese. yeah, the interactions are extremely common, extremely mild, and only slightly negative. like, people really hate goose. but it's fascinating because every group of canada geese you see on like a golf course or lawn, we brought them there because we thought they were a picturesque. and a state. and now are bad. i love that for us. it makes me happy. >> let's give our guest one more round of applause.

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