Welcome to episode twenty seven of Get Out a Live, a podcast where me
your host Ashley every other week tells you a new animal attack story and me
your other anxiety written host Nick tries not to ruin the whole thing. In
some weeks he does, and it's fine. I think those are the best
episodes, the ones where it's just like, Okay, well Nick, you're
not in this one. We're cutting you out. It happens often. So
today we are talking about a species that was voted for by our patrons at
patreon dot com slash get Out a Live Podcast. You can also find the
button to our Patreon on our website get at a Live Podcast dot com.
And we have a fantastic guest with us today. I keep getting lucky that
such cool, smart people follow me and I follow on Twitter. I literally
just typed an elephant and she was like the first person that came up,
and I was like, this is a beautiful world that we live in.
I don't know how you find these people. I just told you, I
just searched like the animal on Twitter and then it just everything looks out.
Yeah, it's awesome. If I search beaver right now, will you pop
up? This exact moment. Yes, you were the most popular beaver poster
in the world at the moment. We won't go there, so people tell
the people what's happening. I want them to know what's happening in real time.
Okay, So my cousin owns a wild life rehab. Her rehab is
called a new House Wildlife Rescue, based out of Massachusetts. She recently got
in a very cute baby beaver, and I posted a picture of it on
Twitter and said, like, this is the beaver my cousin just got,
and like post a link to her rehab and whatever, and it hang on.
When we started recording our interview, which we just concluded with our wonderful
guest, it was at twenty two something that ticted to me two hours ago.
Is that eighteen thousand likes? So now it's at fifty three thousand.
That's ridiculous. This is insane, insane, it's going up as three thousand.
It's a pretty cute little beaver. I don't have Twitter, and I'm
gonna see it somehow, I guarantee you. I've lived in towns that are
like the population sixteen hundred people, so that's really weird to think about.
Yeah, this is many, many times that it's gonna be over our hometown
by the end of the day. Oh easy. I mean, it's a
really cute little beaver. Check it out. It's a really cute beaver.
Yeah. Yeah, what a great text on it, Like there's an awesome
catch. Yeah, I said. PSA, beavers are now officially the cutest
baby animal there is. And it's great because the comments are either people being
like yeah, or people being like, what about this cute little animal?
It's it's really nice. So I texted this earlier. If I ever decided
to start getting too social media again, it's just gonna be pictures of baby
animals nothing else. Yeah, that's a pretty good, pretty good plan.
So if you want to check it out, you can check out her rescue
at new House Wildlife Rescue dot org. Yeah, i'll post that in the
I'm pretty sure we've talked about her before, but yeah, I'll post the
link as well. Anyways, back to elephants. We're talking about African elephants
today, and specifically we are talking to Lynn von Hagen, who studies African
elephants, specifically Savannah African elephants. We'll get into it conflicts in Kenya,
and we're going to keep this relatively short and stop talking about baby animals because
the interview is so long. We had so many questions. Thank you,
thank you, Thank you to our patrons for asking questions. You all ask
awesome questions. We could not get to all of them, and some of
them just came up naturally, but we tried to shout out as many of
you as we could as it was happening. There's one thing I want to
cover before we get into the interview, and that's rangers. So we talk
a lot in this interview about rangers in Africa, and rangers like that means
different things everywhere that you are, Like even in the Northeast there's game more
Horton's rangers. They're different jobs but very similar. So in Africa there are
like anti poaching rangers, but there's also according to game ranger dot Org,
game rangers go by many different titles, so like game Warden, game ranger,
conservation officer, SAT park rangers in a national park exactly. Yeah,
but they all have the prime responsibility of ensuring the territorial and biological integrity of
the protected area under his slash her management it's pretty intense. Uh yeah,
we'll hear about it. It's they're so badass, and I will find as
many links as I can to teach to give you more info about them and
how you can support them. And with that, let's just get right into
our interview with Lynn. Hey, everybody, my name is Lyn von Hagen,
coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, where I've lived most of my
life. I am a final year a PhD candidate at Auburn University. Actually
have about six weeks before I defend my dissertation, So pretty excited. And
I have been very fortunate to work in Kenya with African elephants under some really
great mentors, doctor Bruce Schalty and doctor Chris Leipsick, through both my masters
and my PhD. My masters is at Western Kentucky, and as I said,
I'm now at albert University wrapping it up. Very cool. Congratulations going
to be doctors. That's awesome. Thank you. Six weeks till doctor Lynn,
that's amazing. Yeah. So what is your thesis like title? I
think that's the thing. Yes, So the title of my thesis is that
again, because it's not a thesis, it's a dissertation. The thesis is
Masters and a dissertation is PhD. But I still to know the fall back.
So the title of my dissertation is Drivers and Consequences of Human Wildlife Interactions
and a Transitioning Landscape of rule Kenya. Well this is perfect. Boy,
Do I have the podcast for you because they talk about this all the time.
So, like, have you always been into elephants or did the opportunity
you just kind of pop up and you were like, that'd be a great
thing to study. Well, yes, and yes, I've always loved elephants
since I was a little girl. I've always just been attracted to like their
intelligence and their complex social structures and their communication abilities. Elephants are a very
beloved species. So I'm certainly not alone in that. I'm actually a non
traditional student. So I started back to school about twenty years later than most
people, so it's never too late to go back. After I finished up
my bachelors, I was like, Okay, I love science. This is
where I need to be. And so my mentors from my undergrad were,
you know, looking around and said, hey, we know this professor in
Kentucky and he works with elephants, and so he had actually just gotten funding
for a project, so of course I was, you know, knocking on
his doorstep. That was doctor Schulti. He's worked with elephants for over twenty
years and worked all over the world, these amazing biologists and was the head
of the department there. So I applied and actually was lucky enough to get
positions. So then we were off to Kenya like six months later. Oh
that's so cool. Yeah, it's a dream job. It's really I bet
I still pinch myself a lot of time, seeing as you spent a lot
of time over there. How often are conflicts with humans and elephants and kind
of what do they look like when they happen during crop seed and daily it
can be you know, it depends on which area of Afterhurian. I'm specifically
in Kenya, the southeastern portion in East Africa and in Kenya where corperating is
a predominant form of conflict and it happens quite often whenever there's crops planted.
Elephants know they're they're ready to alter their foraging patterns and it's like putting candy
in front of a baby. They love corn, or maze as they call
it. There they're very sneaky about it too. They will wait until dark
when they know that there are less people about, and they will head into
the farms and eat everything they can and take back off. It's not the
only form of conflict. There's a lot of drag out in Kenya and other
places in Africa as well, of course, so they will sometimes great grain
stores. If all the water holes have dried up in the natural water sources,
they will go into communities and puncture tanks and not tanks over and just
try to get water and things like that, And a little bit about the
language of conflict, if that's something that in the last few years people have
been discussing a lot more, because most of the time the actual conflict is
between humans. It's human to human conflict, because it'll be people who are
frustrated that elephants are coming to their land and who are at odds with the
wildlife agencies that they feel are not you know, protecting them or the government
or you know, whoever is managing that area. So a lot of people
have moved to saying human wildlife or human elephant interactions, and of course those
can be indirect like cooperating. A lot of times farmers don't actually interact with
the elephants, or it can be direct. A lot of farmers will go
out and you know, engage elephants. In many parts of Africa, they
will chase them. They do it in our communities as well, and so
and then there's also a lot of indirect impacts, which is part of the
focus of my dissertation. Stay tuned for chapter three in a couple of months.
But there's a lot of cascading consequences. You know, the biggest thing
is this in our specific area and in a lot of places in Africa,
but in East Africa there is a lot of drought and farmers are really challenged
by climate change. You've got droughts, higher temperatures, other things that are
issues, such as diseases, poor soil quality, planting the same crops over
and over. So food security is the big issue, and a lot of
people are living in poverty and do not have the resources, not only to
you know, build a fence or something that would help deter the elephants,
but you know, they're struggling to feed their families, they're struggling to be
able to pay school fees, they're struggling to be able to, you know,
afford medical care if they need it, So the last thing they need
is an elephant. On top of that, and taking whatever they grow because
most are subsistence farmers, meaning they eat, but they grow and if there's
any leftover, they'll they'll sell it at local markets. So most do not
have electricity, running water, transportation, bare bones resources. So it's a
huge issue for people's livelihoods and their food security. That was a long answer.
I know, I love it because it was very thorough because yeah,
I mean, there's more than just one kind of conflict and there's a lot
of different factors. But I guess to go back, so when you and
I were talking over email, like getting ready for this, you mentioned that
there's more than just one kind of elephant in Africa. So what elephant are
we talking about? Are we talking about both? And is there different conflicts
between like that the two face with people. Well, there are actually three
species of elephant, and it was only last year that the third species was
finally recognized. After you know, any elephant scientist will tell you that for
quite a while we've known that there are three species of elephant, and probably
more than that actually in Asia, but Asian elephants of course, and then
African savannah elephants, which is what I study sometimes called bush elephants, and
then African forest elephants were just finally recognized as a separate species from savannah elephants.
So two African elephants, one savannah, one forest and forest elephants,
you know, are involved in conflicts, but forest elephants are a little bit
more reclusive and must have much smaller population numbers and kind of stick to the
forest a little bit more. So the conflict is predominantly with the savannah elephants.
Gotcha, So what kind of differences are there between the forest elephants savannah
elephants, Like why would they decide to make them entirely new species? Most
of it was genetics, you know that that evidence has been out there for
quite a while and people have been campaigning for them to be listed as a
separate species. But you can tell there's a big size difference. The tusks.
Forest elephants are a little bit different shaped and kind of point down instead
of out, and some other basic differences to like forest elephants actually have five
toenails on front and four in the back, which is the same as Asian
elephants as opposed to African elephants African savannah elephants which have four toenails on the
front and three on the back, so it's wild. So there's some other
there's some other differences too, but the main thing is where they where they
are, so forest forest elephants are in forced at habitats and there's nowhere near
as many of those. And actually, since the re classifications last year,
African savannah elephants have now been uplisted from threatened to endangered. Asian elephants have
been endangered for some time, and now African forest elephants are critically endangered because
they had a much smaller population to start with. So now we have a
question from one of our patrons. This is going to be from Amanda Taylor.
Do elephants really remember everything? And I think they're spent on this.
Do elephants remember people who may have harmed them or parassed them in some way?
Yes, that is an interesting question and probably what every you know kid
has always heard elephants never forget, So they probably do forget some things.
But there is a big evolutionary advantage to having a great memory being an elephant.
Elephants live a long time, and especially African savannah elephants have to find
their way to food and water. And to back up a little bit about
this, it's important to understand the social structure of elephants, and this is
the same pretty much across all three species. They live in matriarchal groups and
bachelor groups. So herd is usually ten to twelve fifteen. Sometimes if they
keep growing growing, they'll actually, you know, break off into smaller groups.
There's one female which is usually the oldest female, and she's the matriarch,
and she's going to be the one that leads the herd, makes the
decisions. Everybody follows her, and so her herd is usually composed of her
offspring. So you've got aunties, uncles, cousins all together. But when
the males get around fourteen years old, they disperse, which is really great
because you don't want breeding happening, and so the males will go live by
themselves or live in bachelor herds and just kind of do their male thing,
and so then you've got the matriarch leading that herd. The importance of the
matriarch having such a great memory, you know, It's a real evolutionary advantage
for such a long lived species as elephants is to remember where the food and
water is because a lot of elephants migrate really long distances. It varies from
location to location. Some elephants just locally migrate, don't really go far.
Some migrate thousands of miles. If you can remember how you got to that
water source or that the secondary water source, when that first and has dried
up, et cetera, et cetera, and where the food is, you're
going to live a lot longer. So yeah, So elephants have great memories,
mainly because food acquisitions stuff like that. They do recognize people, usually
from their extraordinary sense of smell as well, so they can remember people.
So I would think that they remember people who were kind and people who weren't
kind. So yeah, if they saw somebody more than once, they probably
could remember. But probably also if they got a good smell of them,
they would recognize the smell. Extraordinary sense of smell. Not such great eyesight,
not such great hearing. They don't have great hearing. Yes, I
never would have guessed that. Fine, but it's not it's not up there
in their repertoire of awesome traits because there's smell is so extraordinary. You know,
a little precursor when we talk about infrasonic communication and seismic communication, they
have those methods of communication and chemosensory communication. So I mean, we could
do a whole podcast folks on elephant communication. So like why I have great
eyesight and why have great you know, hearing if you've got five other things
that help you sense your environment. Definitely that's very fair. I want to
jump back to the memory thing real quick. You I know you said that
the matriarch is usually the one who's the oldest, But just like people,
I'm sure some elephants have better memories and others there. I ever seen that
a younger elf may become the matriarch just based off of her better memory and
knowing where to go and making better decisions, not that I'm aware of.
Most of the time, it is that oldest female because it's definitely a hierarchy.
She's in charge. Something happens to her and she passes away from old
age or than usually the next oldest female just kind of moves up in text
control. Very cool. I guess to go back to what you were saying
about how the herd is structured. Are you seeing or have you noticed more
negative interactions between lone male elephants or female led herds like which is more dangerous
to people. Well, that is very very contextual. Every elephant herd is
different, Every location is different. If you have an area where elephants have
been heavily poached, they do not forget that, and you will have skittish
elephants a lot more dangerous to be around. If you're in a transit transitory
area like where I worked in a wildlife corridor, you'll see they know they're
passing between areas of safety. They'll be a little bit more skittish, maybe
perhaps a little more aggressive. Because I could go over to the National Park
and all the elephants were chill, just walking around. You come to the
quarter, they're a little bit more antsy. There's people, there's traffic,
things like that. So it always depends. But you'll see with males especially,
there's a tricky thing called muss and that is a heightened sexual state,
and they will go into musts. Really kind of unpredictable when it's going to
happen. But it's kind of similar to like we didn't hear about the rut
and deer. So if they're in must you do not want to mess with
a male elephant. You should turn around and go the other way. And
I've seen it happen and elephants that have been really friendly, you know,
I drive by them every day and then all of a sudden they're blocking the
road and it's like you're in a bad mood today. But but you notice
does start to dribble urine and they'll just be soaked in it. You can
actually smell if you have the window down when they go into it, and
they will leak secretions from their temporal gland and they'll just generally be more agitated
and ready to pick a fight because that's when they're ready to go find a
mate and be able to you know, the testosterone levels just explode. That's
when they'll be fighting with other bulls, and yeah, we really don't want
to get in their way. But also when female groups have babies around,
no you don't even yep, especially small babies, they actually have this protective
behavior where if they feel threatened, all of the older females in the group
will put the babies in the middle and surround them, and I've seen it
happen is amazing. They'll just stick them in the middle and then they'll surround
them so that they can have a defensive posture. So the most dangerous are
males and musk and moms protecting babies. But also you have such a wide
variation in personality and elephants. You will have elephants that you know, are
pretty congenial, and you have really cranky elephants that just don't like to see
people. And again that goes back a lot to the kind of environment they've
been raised in. Like in Ambaselli, most of those elephants have been researched
for decades. So a lot of those, you know, you can drive
really close to and they'll not be alarmed. Gotcha. And I totally forgot
to mention that question was from our patron ness, who makes very cute little
animal figurine. She's the best, And I was trying to think of how
to word that question. She did it so much better than I could.
So yeah, So I guess would you say that it's not that one's more
dangerous than the other, it's just like context and timing. Ye, exactly
a year, Okay, yeah, cool, because you just and a lot
of times you're not going to know that. Yeah, if you're with it
a ranger and experienced, god, they will be like, oh that's x
y Z. He's kind of he's kind of cranky. Sometimes we don't and
that's all. She's really nice, you know. So I'm we're also huge
part of this. This podcast is obviously the negative in one kinder. So
I am curious how many people are injured by l elephants every year and maybe
not this isn't necessarily like they're in an attack in any way, but just
kind of accents mean they're huge animals. How many different things can go wrong
with them, you know. Yeah, and it's important to recognize that in
any kind of attacks or conflicts or anything like that, most of the time
it's because somebody was where they shouldn't be. You know, these are wild
animals. You should never ever approach any wild animal, especially elephants. So
a lot of times it's it's a situation. Especially there's usually more desks with
Asian elephants because people are living closer to them, you know, you've got
more congested areas and those sometimes there are kind of hard numbers to come up
with, but it's usually more prevalent in Asia. So for example, about
one hundred people a year in India are killed by elephants, in Kenya about
two hundred over like the last seven years. You know, estimates in Africa
continent wide are about five hundred a year or so. That is so much
more than I thought it was, honestly, well, and that's why there's
you know, so much for going into mitigating conflicts. Because elephants are losing
habitat, so there are some populations are recovering, such as the Soho ecosystem
where I work, the elephant population is actually growing, so they're coming in,
you know, they're moving back into areas where they've been you know,
poached out of, and they're encountering your people more, especially with habitat loss.
You know, human populations are growing, so it's all these things that
are exacerbating these potentials for them coming into contact with each other where they maybe
wouldn't have before. And most of the time, also with any wild animal,
we have to say, you know, this is the preaching of the
choir here, you know this, but like keep your distance, if you
leave them alone, if you don't harass them if you're far enough away and
just let them go about their business. Most wild animals, special elephants,
don't want anything to do with you. They're just going to go about their
merried way. So most of the people who are injured or killed it's because
they have not known an elephant was there, walked up on it and startled
it, or they've done something stupid and you know, are on safari and
get out of the vehicle, try to get a photo or something insane.
There's hardly ever any situations where elephants. Elephants would never go into a village
and start attacking people. That's just not what they do. They don't want
to be around humans, you know, unless, like I said, it's
a nice environment. So it's usually unfortunate encounters that end up meaning the cause
of injuries and deaths. Yeah, and I guess a good piggyback question that
would be what are some behaviors that an elephant might show you to exhibit the
fact that they're upset or uncomfortable with you being so close to them. Yeah,
there's lots of those, so most people can't say they didn't know.
But one thing that I have noticed Elephants do not like surprises. They want
to know you're there. They want to smell you. They can see you
from a distance and know you're that you're there. They're going to be fine.
They're going to move away, especially if you're in the vehicle and you're
approaching quicker. You should always be within a vehicle or with a trained guide
or ranger if you're out on foot, because they know what to do.
But that's the main thing is never surprise an elephant. But they do do
a lot of behavior, and if they're not in bust and they're not protecting
a young one, they will usually give you like a series of warnings.
One thing is they'll sometimes swing their foot, which is like a sign of
indecision, like I'm not gonna do here. They'll start throwing dust, they'll
do they'll curl up their trunks and they start getting more agitated. They'll actually
like flare out their ears, which makes them look bigger, so it's like
a threatening posture like hey, you don't want to mess with me. Then
the next stage would usually be like a head flap. It's kind of like
this, like they shake their head really hard and their ears flap around really
big, and then if they're feeling particularly that, they might do a mock
charge. And this happens a lot where elephants will just run up to something
and stop, don't want to be there. Yeah, I'm sure that's pretty
effective. Yeah, you don't want to be around that. And then sometimes
they'll break branches. I had a situation once where I was driving not that
close to an elephant and it was a mother with a new calf, and
she ran up to a big branch and just headbutted it and that branch smashed
and went flying everywhere, And that was just her showing like, yeah,
don't don't mess with my babies. And they also like aggressively eat. I've
had an elephant I found in Musk once who was normally a really cool elephant
I saw like a couple times a week, and he was in muss block
the road and then just decided to go and destroy a tree and eat it
right in front of us, just let us know, like, don't want
to mess with me. Of course, there's also like an actual charge,
and usually elephants don't warn before that. Like if an elephant has decided that
he's coming after you, he's gonna put his head down and come or she
there's not gonna be there's not gonna be warnings, they're not gonna mess around.
But again that is really not very common. Well it leads perfectly into
our next question. So from there, so from our patron Sophia, again,
if an elephant does decide that once you're dead and it's there with you,
like one on one, is there anything you can do? Is there
any way to survive that? Or you basically just gone. Your odds are
not good if you if you like again, you don't want to surprise an
elephant. But if you see an elephant in the distance, you have time
to very quietly and verily calmly back away, try not to make noise.
You don't run. It's kind of the same rule for a lot of species,
like, don't make a lot of noise. It's back away calmly,
don't freak out and run, don't throw anything at them, just just leave,
leave the scene. But if you're engaged, elephants are big and they're
heavy, and they're not super dexterous, like they have a hard time like
jump. They don't really jump over things. So one might think, well,
I could just bob and weave and outrun them. But elephants have a
really long stride, so you could run twenty steps and ellen elphant could take
one step. So if an elephant's after you, you probably can't outrun them.
You know. The best thing to do is just not put yourself in
that situation. You could climb a tree, they could knock the tree down,
but I mean, you're probably better off climbing a tree because maybe they're
going to give up and go away, but they could just knock the tree
down. So best thing is just I don't put yourself in that situation ever,
especially if you're on foot. If you're in a vehicle, now that's
a little bit different. You can survive that. Sadly, there was an
incident a couple of years ago, sorry last year, where an elephant attacked
a vehicle, flipped it and it was a jeep. So the people came
out of it. It was some rangers and they killed one of the rangers.
So if you're in a closed vehicle, that's better, but you move
to the center of the vehicle and try to stay away from tusks. Yeah,
and I guess to kind of go off of that. Have you noticed
like increasing conflicts or have you noticed maybe recently more rangers are kind of bearing
the brunt of these negative encounters with elephants or is it just like kind of
anybody, not just rangers specific Well, I think this is a great opportunity
to like give homage to the rangers across the world. You know, yeah,
Africa, but everywhere, because these men and women are protecting our natural
resources and are out there with wild animals every day in situations where we would
be terrified. And especially a shout out to our Rukinga Ranch rangers which are
in the cassac Out Wildlife Corridor Wildlife Works head quarters. Those guys and women
are amazing. They patrol on foot, they don't carry weapons. These folks
really know how to read an environment and read behaviors and things like that.
Big shoutout of that. But a lot of times in that situation, rangers,
if they're patrolling on foot or in the vehicle, are simply going to
be in contact with animals. More So, it's just a matter of you
know, how many encounters with an elephant are dangerous or deadly. If it's
one out of one hundred, well ninety percent of the time, it's going
to be somebody a type of ranger. But with croperating, you know those
and you know it's not just interactions with elephants, it's interactions with all wildlife.
You know, as all you know, habitats are disappearing, people are
moving into places and living near nowational parks or areas of safety for wildlife.
You know, these encounters are just increasing. Our next question from a patron
whose name is my favorite Gothic Sandwich, asked, do elephant herds ever attack
in unison? I think this means, like, you know, if an
elephant is charging you, is there ever cases of a whole herd coming at
you? Or is it just like more individualistic. It can be depends on
if you've encountered a low mail in the bush, but usually if it's a
matriarchal group, yeah, you're going to have to deal with all those mamas.
Oh my god, it's not going to be I mean, the matriarch's
going to lead it, her ladies are going to follow her. So yeah,
wow, no, thank you. And same thing with like if you
have a bachelor group of several males, it might be the same thing.
It just again just depends on the situation. Is that really common that if
they are part of a whole group that theylla come after you or is that
kind of more on the rare side of things. It's very rare, all
right, we're talking about you know, there's five hundred proximate desks from elephant
encounters over all of Africa in a year. So how many millions of times
have people had an interaction with an elephant, whether it's a tourist or a
farmer, or a wildlife agent or a ranger. So it's still really really
rare. Second question from Gothic Sandwich awesome, has an elephant ever used a
tool as a weapon, like a tree trunk or a rock? Now,
elephants are a tool users, one of the few species that are, so
that's fascinating in itself. As far as I know, there's never been anything
reported of their being used as a weapon. Of course I don't know all
the ligure, but I've never heard of that. But they don't really need
weapons because they have their trunks, and their trunks have about forty thousand bustles,
so what elephant's trunk is extremely dexterous, so they can just pick you
up. They don't have to hit you with anything they don't have, they
just pick you up. But they have used tools for other things. And
I've even seen it in my study is if they want to get over a
fence or an electric fence, they will pick up a large log, lay
it over the fence, and lock over the log. That must be so
frustrating if you put up that fence to watch that. Yeah, And that's
the challenging thing with mitigating these interactions with farmers and elephants is almost everything you
come up with, elephants are smart enough to figure out some kind of way
around it. Even really large electric fences. There's a population of elephants that
has figured out how to break the wires in the electric fences by inserting their
tusks and then pulling up and so those wires snap and they can just go
right. That's one of the old standard is if you can have a really
big, nice electric fence, but you know they can they can find ways
around that as well. Jeez, And I meant to ask this earlier.
I was talking to someone about like why are elephants so big? What could
possibly kill them? I was thinking, like, what are their natural predators
and are they only vulnerable to being killed, you know, when they're young,
and do they get to a certain point when they are adults where it's
like nothing is going to try to kill them pretty much. You know,
that's why they're so protective of the young calves because that's when they're most vulnerable.
But you know, an elephant calf is born in around two hundred pounds.
Lions and hyenas will try to take elephant calves if they're dumb, but
if an elephant calf is somehow separated from the herd, then you know it's
it's more of an easy mark, but it but a full herd of elephants.
You know, most species are not going to try that, but it's
fair. A full sized elephant can can kill a lion, can up and
throw it or pick it up, throw it, grab it and crush it
with its feet or impale it. So yeah, don't mess with elephants.
Yeah, but they are vulnerable when they're babies, but not so much.
I don't know what point the lions would be like, nope, not going
there today, but I'm sure there is you know, a size point where
they're like, yeah, we're just we're not gonna fair at least the smart
ones anyways, and I imagine it's not very long. I mean, if
you started two hundred, you got a pretty good leg up already, you
know. So there's already predators that wouldn't even be able to take down a
two hundred pound baby unless they just worked in perfect synchrony. So yeah,
so they have very few predators, and it's usually when they're when they're young.
Now, there are some situations where you may have an elephant that is
old or infirm and has left the herd to pass, and you might have
a situation where you have a pack of something or other that tries to take
advantage of that, like if it's sick or or something. But pretty much
they're they're at the top of the urban wars. Yeah, untouchable. That
makes sense. This next question, well, I guess we kind of got
two questions that are similar. So Ambria asked like, how easily can we
contract zoonotic diseases from elephants but more specifically sophia and asked, elephant rabies is
it a thing we should be worried about? Great question, honestly, elephant
rabies. No, there was a situation in India in twenty twenty where sixteen
elephants died from rabies. That was actually a question I had to think about.
Yeah, but that was a situation where you had to rab an animal
and it got into a park and it did something like that. But no,
very very rare elephant rabies not to worry about. It is possible any
mammal can pass rabies. But the biggest danger from the zoonotic disease from elephants
is tuberculosis. They can actually get tuberculosis from us, so therefore they can
pass it back to us if they have it. And I think the first
instance of that happening was in nineteen ninety six, and I actually did a
little research on tuberculosis and elephants. It's much more often in zoo animals and
in Asian animals. Really rare for an African elephant to have TV. You
know, as more cattle are out there and they interact with cattle more.
That may change in the future. So very few the diseases we know of
that you can contract from elephants, well, thank god, can't be rap
Well they can be rapid, but thank god they're not rabid. More often,
just like that's just another thing you don't need from elephants attacking the world.
Yeah, so how do the people that live around elephants every day feel
about them? This goes back to what we were talking earlier about. You
know, rural farmers, they're not too fond of them if they come in
and taking their crops. At least in my study area. Part of my
dissertation is working on surveys and seeing how how people do feel about elephants,
local and indigenous people that live in these complex social ecological systems where you know,
people are either dependent upon nature or you know, highly interactive with nature.
They really understand the importance of a complete ecosystem. So most people that
we surveyed knew how important elephants were for the ecosystem health, how important it
was for the economy, you know, through tourism, and you know,
they just they in general like elephants. They just don't want them eating their
crops. So people very much have respect for elephants, don't mind them,
but I think their frustration is like they want the government to fix the problem.
That's count is kind of in my steady area. But those types of
opinions also range depending on where you are. Where there's less instances of conflict
or interactions. People are probably really happy about elephants, and it's important to
understand that this is not equitably distributed. Because if you are a urban canyon
working in a city that has a National park next to it, and you
have a great job and a lodge, you can be like, I love
elephants, you know, But if you're a rural farmer and you're having to
lose sleep at night because you have to guard your crops, you're really not
going to like elephants. You know, a lot of times, the people
that benefit from elephants are the ones that are in the urban areas, and
the rural people are the ones that are having to do you know, especially
that live at the edge or near national parks, are the ones that are
having to deal with an issue there, and they don't reap those same benefits.
You know, they don't get the tist money. They're just trying to
survive and grow food and feed their families. God, that sounds so much
like the whole predator debate here in the States, like people with wolves,
because you have people in cities like in Colorado, the urban areas were like,
yeah, let's reintroduce wolves and the farmers are like, no, please,
my livestock. So yeah, I mean because we talk about that a
lot, Like there's different cultures. Like our first episode was on tigers and
Nepal, and they are even if tigers killed people, they were like,
oh, just set them to a zoo, Like we don't have to kill
them because they respected them so much. So it's interesting that it's more similar
to like predator ideals here. I mean, even Asian elephants, because I
for my limited understanding, isn't it like they respect Asian elephants spiritually. Yeah,
so they're less likely to be Yeah, yeah, they're like in like
in India, they're revered. Eight elephants are also working elephants in a lot
of Asian countries, so they have hoots, which can be a good thing
or a bad thing. You know, depends on theation. But you know,
they're well cared for and respected and things like that. So it really
depends on the region and everything like that. But I'm wolf us too.
Yeah, the ecological benefits from restoring whether it's a top orb or a top
predator, are astounding. We could do another podcast on the reintroduction of the
Yellowstone wolves and how it benefited the ecosystem. I would love to. But
that's also a really important thing about elephants is their ecosystem engineers, their keystone
specie. Losing elephants is going to cause really really rough cascading effects for other
species and for the ecosystem itself. When people say elephants are ecosystem engineers,
like, in what way are they adjusting the environment for the benefit of others?
You know, ecosystem engineer doesn't necessarily have to be someone that physically modifies
the environment. It can just have you know, real impacts. But in
the elephants case, they actually physically modify the environment because they're so big.
So they can like wallows for elephants and other large wars like buffalo, where
they wallow in the mud. They create these big kind of hollowed out places.
These can evenually turn into water holes and retain water. They will transform
forest into savannah by taking out a lot of the trees because they will rub
against them, they'll knock them down, they consume them. Sometimes sometimes they
knock down trees just because they're trying to show off, so they'll do that
as well. They will actually dig for water and minerals and things like that.
And part of what makes them a keystone species. Just one of the
things is their incredible seed dispersal. So elephant dung is this magic substance.
You know, think about how many kilometers an elephant might move in the day,
and they're hindgut from minners, so they don't actually digest most of what
they eat. So if they're eating seeds and they're walking around, they're dispersing
these seeds everywhere. Studies have shown that there are much more species of tree
in areas where there are elephants and other animals benefit from this dung too,
dung beetles, it's their house. Other things like hornbills rush apart recently deposited
dunk and eat the seeds out of it. And you know, if you
go kick apart some elephant dung's been sitting there for a couple days, you'll
see all these insects. You'll even start to see the seed sprouting, you
know. And same thing with forest elephants. They have that very similar effect
of being, you know, the mega gardeners of the forest. To quote
a paper, elephants are good for so many things. That's so funny because
so Jeremy Montoya, another patron of ours, ask, in a sense,
do elephants have mutualistic relationships with other animals? And it seems very much.
So yeah, I mean mutualistic just because the terms mutualistic meaning that they both
benefit. The biggest one there is birds is so birds will ride on elephants.
Sometimes you see those cool pictures of like there's just a crane riding around
an elephant, but they'll pick the bugs and the chicks off the elephants,
so the bird gets a meal, elephant gets parasite control. Now there are
some commensalistic to where elephants don't really benefit, but other animals do. And
that's what the dung beetles make in the houses, and like the birds get
in the seeds and things like that. And I guess to go back to
not so fun topics, but they're still important. So from what you have
experienced, has elephant poaching increased or have protective measures like rangers for example keeping
an eye on them made poaching less common? Boy, that's that's the million
dollar question, and that's why we've lost so many elephants, gone from millions
to right now there's about three hundred and fifty to four hundred thousand African savannah
elephants for mating. In Africa, for example, Kenya lost about ninety percent
of its elephants. You know, there used to be herds of thousands that
you know roam the savannahs and most of this was due to poaching. And
still about ten you know, estimates vary between ten and thirty thousand are approached
each year. That's about fifty to eighty a day. It's not a sustainable
number. It's why they're endangered. And it's really geographically specific. There are
some places that feel like they have too many elephants, and then there are
places where it's just right canyon. Then there are places is where you know,
poaching has almost decimated or has extrapated elephants from the population. So there
are places in Africa, many places where elephants just aren't there anymore because they've
just been poached completely out. Now in Kenya specifically, they have done a
great job of monitoring the population. As I mentioned earlier, the population is
actually slowly growing. Poaching has been greatly reduced there and yeah, so Kenya
has done a great job, but there's a lot of different initiatives that you
know, we're still trying to make a difference because right now, elephant ivory
is still worth more than gold on the black market, and that is due
to this demand for ivory from Asia. And the saddest thing is most of
that demand is for trinkets, and like ivory's a status symbol, so like
people will make carvings out of ivory and you know you've kind of made it
when you have your first ivory carving. The ivory trade overall has been banned
since nineteen ninety. It kind of peaked around twenty eleven, but China finally
banned sales in twenty seventeen, and there's been a big public awareness campaigns,
you know, really trying to move people away, you know, from realizing
that, you know, ivory has a cost. So it's still probably the
greatest threat to elephants, and there's a lot of focus on you know,
deploying rangers and all these different technologies to detect poachers and to deter poachers and
things like that. So yeah, it's still an ongoing battle. And then
probably after that as habitat loss and negative interactions, so lots of threats to
elephants yeah, i'd say, so I find the people who are the poachers.
I find it kind of crazy, Like, how do you even know
where to sell that? Like, I'm sure it's a whole market that exists
out there, but how do you get into something like that to start with
them? It's got to be pretty lucrative for him. I get really frustrated
when I see things online about poachers and they're just like those people should should
be hunted down to It's a very complex situation. It's not black and white.
Runs along the same lines of conflict. Most of us here in the
West think that what anybody that would hurt an elephant is evil, you know,
And it's just not that simple. What if an elephant killed your grandmother
last night because she went out in her yard at midnight, you know,
to go use her outhouse. You know what if your kids are starving and
elephants just ate the last of your grain stores. So it's it's not a
black and white issue. And it's the same with poaching because most of the
big, large scale poaching of African elephants, it's not small scale farmers.
It is syndicates, it is organized, it is the big guys it's people
coming in with you know, machine guns and helicopters and things like that.
Now there is some I'm not saying that you know, local people don't do
this, but finds for it. You know, like in life in prison,
millions of dollars or rand or shillings. You know, your your everyday
person is not going to undertake that. Same with a bush meat poaching.
Elephants are a lot of times that are left alone. It's just you know,
two much danger, very dangerous. You know who you're going to sell
that to if you don't have contacts. So, like I said, it's
mostly like really well organized. But for bush meet poaching, you know,
a lot of times people can go out and catch a deep deep which is
like one of the small antelopes, and they'll poach that because maybe they haven't
had meat in months, or maybe that one of their loved ones is sick
and they don't have the money to take them to the doctor. You know,
maybe their kids about to get cooked out of school because they can't pay
the school fees. So it's a real complex issue that has a lot of
drivers. So I just encourage everyone to not jump the gun. Like understand
the situation a little better. Again, we hear in the West have no
idea what it's like to live under the circumstances. Poaching is bad, but
there's a lot more behind it than just what's on the surface, right and
trying to combat it. I know they've started dying elfin tusks. Is that
the kind of the main way they try to go about preventing it or are
there other methods they used to I've heard about the dying of them, but
I think that's a really hard operation. You know, you're gonna have to
tranquilize an elephant. It's just it's not practical. I don't know, if
you know. People have been looking at other methods to like figure out how
to change the tusks without having to sedate elephants, but that's dangerous, it's
super expensive, which it's probably not very practical. So, I mean,
the main thing is to get people not to want ivory and to not make
it profitable. But there's so much activity around preventing poaching now and preventing ivory,
you know, that seems to be one of the best ways to try
to mitigate it. I'm glad we were having this conversation because it's something that
popped up. Even last week, there was a picture going around Twitter of
this white woman who was going over to Africa and was like boasting about killing
poachers and it's like, you have no idea, what's Yeah, it was
crazy like humans, yeah, posting it on the internet. Yeah, allegedly
it's Twitter. First of all, you're murdering people. Second, it's always
so frustrating to hear people say, oh, just kill the poachers, and
it's like, yeah, there's so much behind it and you could do so
much to help people, Like it's a systemic issue, not an issue necessarily
with that one person. So yeah, I'm glad we talked about it.
I've always said that wildlife conflicts and things like that is not really a wildlife
issue. It's a poverty issue. If your children haven't eaten in a few
weeks and you can go and kill a small antelope and figure out a way
to feed them, you would do it too. So I'm not saying it's
good that they're doing it by any means, Like it's bad. We want
to eliminate all poaching, all bush meat poaching, But there's a story behind
it that you have no idea you know, some of it's just pure evil.
Again, You've got these syndicates that are just trying to go and make
money. You could care less about the local people, could care less about
elephant lives, and those are the real bad guys. But before you blame
local people and you know, there's a bigger story there. Yeah. I've
seen like documentary some advice news before about the military defectors and everyone out in
Africa. These giant forces of people trying and take over countries and a big
part of how they fund their militaries is through the ivory trade. Wow,
you think like, oh, there's a soldier's frame for these guys. These
are people who are kidnapped as children and raised in this environment, who are
just told goalkilles elephants. They don't care, They have no connection to these
things. So it's just kind of it's crazy. You know, these people
don't really know what they're doing. Some governments, you know, there's been
some scandals where government officials have been involved in the ivory trades. Oh boy.
Yeah, let's end on a fun note and get back to Jeremy's question
about infrasonic communication with elephants. What is it? Why do they use it.
Okay, Yeah, this is probably my favorite topic. Well, I
mentioned the elephants communicate in lots of different ways, obviously vocally, then also
with chemosensory behavior. They will actually stream chemicals from their temporal glands called frontaline
and other elegant elephants can smell that chemical, so they might be you know,
depending on what's what the message is quotes. Message coming from that chemical
is oh, I'm happy and relaxed. You know, they smell and say,
oh I'm family, or oh I'm panicked, or you know, things
like that, or I'm an estress and ready to you know, ready to
find a mate. So that's just one way. Infrasonic is most interesting because
humans can hear at about twenty hurts and above. Now elephants can actually hear
below that. So elephants can be having conversations that we can't hear, and
they can produce sounds below that obviously, So think about when you hear or
or outside and like a plane goes over really close, you kind of feel
that in your chest, like you vibrate a little bit. That's what an
infrasonic signal was like. And if you're close enough to an elephant, which
just happened to me once and it was probably one of the coolest experiences ever.
You can actually feel that in your chest. And that is how they
discovered that elephants actually do that because the researcher who discovered it. Oh,
I've just forgotten her name. I'm sorry, but she was actually working with
captive elephants and she's like, I feel this vibration in my chest sometimes,
and then they started monitoring and they're like, oh, my gosh, this
is the thing so cool. So the reason they do it is, you
know, we talked about social structure and herds, but there are different groupings
of sizes of herds, so elephants. As herds grow and grow, sometimes
they'll break off. So you might have twenty elephants in one spot and twenty
elephants other and they're like distant cousins, but they know each other. They've
been together. Elephants also come together when times and times that resources are plentiful,
and these huge herds of sometimes over one hundred males and mix in there.
You might have elephants that are strangers, but you also have elephants that
are maybe distantly related. So one of the ways that they communicate is through
that, so they can kind of send this long distance signal infrasonically. I
kind of melded those two together. But elephants can detect seismic signals from several
kilometers away. One of the reasons they think that that evolved is because they
can hear thunder and when the rains come, so that they can actually kind
of start their migration. Because if elephants are picking up those distant rumbles in
their feet, hey, the rains of comets time to head home. Also,
they can pick up those sounds from different elephant groups. There's been some
research about elephants in one part of a park being attacked and then elephants in
another part of a park will show displays of fear and aggression because you know
they're getting that long distance signal. I mean, it's just really neat because
with the infrasonic they're just probably right next year having these low rumble conversations.
And then with the seismic, I mean that's why sometimes you see elephants come
up and stomp their feet. That's like another way for that size and the
signal to go. And it's really neat because these signals from the seismic they
are receiving them in their feet and they have these fat pads that are full
of pascenium corpuscles, and they're these these cells. I know, that's a
mouthful, These cells that are really good at sensing vibrations. It's similar to
like when you feel a fly land on your arm, you get that sense,
oh there's something on but like, imagine how tiny that fly is.
So kind of compare that to those same cells in their feet that they can
detect those signals from. So again, fascinating topic. They're probably one of
the world's best communicators and most diverse communicators. That's so cool. So how
far are they actually able to communicate? Then? Like, what do you
do? You know about a mile range or kilometer range. So with infrasound,
probably around ten kilometers or six miles or so, possibly more, and
with seismic signals it can be you know, a couple of miles or kilometers.
It's a great way to communicate with, you know, neighboring herds or
maybe maybe if part of your herd has gotten separated. Plus, you know,
when elephants are incomfortable, they can sometimes fan out in their herds.
They might be half a kilometer away just because you know, someone found something
really tasty over here, and somebody found so it's another good way too,
to like let everybody know, hey, we're moving, we're going cool,
very cool communication thing with It's just amazing. I've just barely scratched the surface.
So have you seen that maybe these meths are communicating or deteriorating as humans
are moving closer and now they're getting car vibrations to the ground. You're just
sounds from radios or anything like that, just in cities or neighborhoods. Yeah,
radios are not on the same frequency, so that doesn't bother them.
I've watched a couple of times. It's very interesting. An elephant can tell
when a car is coming from far away before you can. So I've actually
watched them like perk up and look around, and it's very very cool.
It appears that when elephants are, you know, listening with their feet,
they'll stop because elephants kind of have this thing where they're like constantly like moving,
like they sway or they're not very still creatures. But then when you
see all of them just all of a sudden stop in freeze, you're like,
Oh, they're listening to something. That's kind of a cool, cool
way to know that, Oh, something's coming. Oh wow, just real
quick. Do you think they're able to kind of distinguish when it is a
car and it's a human moving through Where do you just kind of think,
Okay, I don't know what that is and ignore it. I don't know
the answer to that question, but I would think that if they felt a
certain type of vibration and then they saw the result and that repeated it,
Phil, I would think that they would be able to learn that because they
can definitely learn different people, especially by smell. There's one study where they
could they can distinguish between the smell of a cloth that have been on a
group of people that are traditionally aggressive towards elephants, and then one that wasn't.
Wow, that's so cool. First and foremost, congratulations on you finishing
your dissertation. Thank you. What do you have any plans after this?
Where can people find you? I'm on social media. I've got my own
website. Let Lynnvonhagen dot com. You can keep up with me there.
See links to my papers as they come out and things like that. I'm
on Twitter, Lynn von Hagen is a very unusual name, so if you
just remember the name, you can pretty much find me. I'm on Twitter
and Instagram as well, and I like to post lots of pictures from my
adventures. And I am currently job searching, so if you need an awesome
scientist, you can get in touch with me. But I would love to
keep working with elephants, but you know, those kind of jobs are few
and far between, so I'm definitely looking to work for conservation, probably an
NGO or a government agency that works on things that are preserving biodiversity, addressing
climate change issues and like that. So I'm on the market. Oh yeah,
I mean all of those jobs are increasingly more necessary. Yes, unfortunately
they are. Yeah, Hi, I am right there. So that was
our interview with Lynn. It was amazing. I mean it went for a
really long time and we can't do to you too much here, but the
stuff I want to talk about, so we're doing a full OUTROI yeah,
what do you want? So I am really happy that we talked about the
poses of people too stuff. Yeah, that is something that I didn't think
about before we went into this, and it just kind of popped up.
Matching Yeah, these are just struggling people, which fucking sucks. Get they're
doing something that we all hate so much. It's fucking the world against them.
But I'm happy as she understood that and pointed that out, you know,
something that works in them all the time and loves them as what she
does. She's like, well, yeah, this is what they're doing to
survive. Of course. Yeah, And I feel like that's I mean,
the heart of what she's studying is like human elephant conflict and that's a really
big one and it's a hard conversation to have. And I understand the first
I mean when I was a little kid, I hated poachers and I was
like, I want them to die back. Yeah, but like it's not
that simple. I mean, organized crime to kill elephants is, it's pretty
fucking terrible. But the worst people are at the top. They're not the
ones killing the elephants, you know. Yeah. Can we get back to
the whole thing about the girl He said you saw online that went over there
to kill poachers. Yeah, so once again, that was just a thing
that was going around Twitter. I'm I think it has come up before,
and I don't know how recently it was but yeah, she was like this
white lady who claimed that she was going over there to like literally just kill
poachers. And you're a white woman going to Africa to murder black people.
There's there's a lot of issues with that. Yeah, just murder, but
like you're going in there, you don't know what the fuck you were going
to hunt people is what you're doing, and that makes you so much worse
than the people that you are trying to kill. Yeah, yeah, yep,
yeah, yeah. So I'm not even gonna I'm not even gonna look
into that story because it's just she's not fucking worth looking into. But uh,
I hope it's just internet bullshit. Yeah I hope so too. But
I hope she goes to jail forever and ever. Yeah, me too.
So one thing I want to touch on, well, I mean there's a
few things, but I think one quote that Lynn said that I was like,
I want to tattoo this on my forehead. I saw you scribble it
down really fast, like aggressively, do you your whole body went into the
notepad. Yeah, she said wildlife issues are poverty issues and I was like,
yes, yes, fist in the air, yes, Like that is
it? And I was thinking, like, you know, trying to think
of instances where I've had people call me and say that they're having issues with
animals, and like, of course there's rich people who are like, oh,
losing a pulse, mom, I don't know why? What the fuck?
Never, No, so dumb, we're keeping that. Of course we
are regrets. You have to listen to an extra fifty seconds of the stupid
podcast because actually, sorry, guys, no, but that's it's such a
real thing. And yeah, I do think it's important to point that that's
not everywhere though, Like the interactions we're seeing around in America, I don't
think that they're really poverty driven in the same extent out there makes total sense.
In Asia, I think it makes a ton of sense. Like that
is, yeah, right right on it. I think it depends. I
mean, here in New England, I feel like it's not super poverty driven.
I want to say it is all. I mean, how many of
your calls when you were at the the other place, the government place,
I don't know, Yeah, anyway, how many of those were people having
bears in their backyard of their house? I mean so many if they had
a house they're on poverty and maybe one compare it to people you know,
Okay, well yes, but if you're talking about poverty in America, think
about that for a second. I mean, there was a lot of people
who were in like multiple home like multiple family homes and didn't have the money
to like have a dumpster pickup service, so there's left their trash in the
porch until they could go to like the community dump and that that's a good
comparison of people like poverty driven wildlife issues. And if you are trying to,
like if you're a farmer here in New Hampshire and you're trying to grow
corn like barsil eat corn, yep, you might not have the money to
buy a fence to protect your stuff. But if I'm like a rich person
who's like I could keep some bees or chickens, like, of course I'm
gonna have them money to buy electric fence to save them, you know what
I mean. Yeah, So like just little things like that too. Yeah.
I love that wildlife issues are poverty issues. That's a bumper sticker.
And the fact that elephant ivory is more than gold, that's insane. Yeah,
insane. I didn't know that China allowed it at all, so,
I guess I'm happy to hear that, but the fact that it was only
twenty seventeen is a little all right, Like you should have known better by
then, China, Like if you can do so well by pandas you can
do better by elephants, that the ivory tree like topped out in twenty eleven,
I would have thought it shocking decades ago. Same I would I thought
the numbers are too low by then. I would have thought that we've had
would have had under controlled by then. Nope, it's crazy. Yeah,
that was really that was shocking too. The last thing I want to touch
on elephant feet big feet, they have big feet, yes, toenails.
Toenails came up. Yeah, that was crazy to me that. I mean,
obviously they're different species. When he starts talking like that, I'm like,
oh, yeah, this makes sense. Yeah, like I didn't know
that, like the elephants in Africa have different numbers of toes insane, but
like specifically in zoos, I think it's one to two hours a day if
you're an elephant keeper are dedicated to just keeping care of their feet really yeah,
like massaging them, scraping them of dirt, like washing them down because
their feet are so important and they're standing on them all day obviously, like
you really have to make sure their feet are okay because if not, like
it cause a lot of other health issues. And I've read somewhere that if
you are a large animal zoo keeper you get paid more because you're physically picking
up more poop during the day. Seriously, I swear did I read that
in the book Fuzz by Mary I feel like that's where I read it,
But it was literally like a poop like a poop braise, Like you get
more money there. I know. It's it's a really good book. You
can find it on our website marriage hit us up. Yeah, it's on
our website. We have a book club on our website, get a Live
podcast dot com, and you can check out the different books that we use
for reference materials or that were written by like guests that came on our podcast,
like for example, if you join us on Patreon, we have a
bonus episode with Joe Atkinson, who is a Golden Eagle falconer and wrote not
like a fantasy. He wrote like a fiction novel about a falconer trying to
survive with just his falcon sounded pretty sick. Yeah, anyways, is there
anything else you want to say about elphants before I finish this up? Just
that they're very cool and pretty scary if you pissed him off, so let's
try to avoid that. Yeah. Just the fact that she was like,
if they're coming for you, that's it. Well, not much you can
do. Yeah, Like I love that honesty. So you didn't acknowledged like
a handhand fight. She was like that, No, of course not.
So here's how you avoid it. The fact that she was saying, like,
you can climb a tree, but they could knock down a tree.
I was like, oh my god, the ultimate that's your best bet to
climb a tree. But like it's like running from a grit well, I
mean grizzlies or like, I don't know, even tigers. Like if you
go up a tree, they can go up the tree. They can swim.
Yeah, on every they can do all of it better than you.
Facts, facts, fax facts. Unless you're Michael Phelps, then maybe you
can out swim a bear. But they did that. Uh Michael Phelps swims
against like a fucking dolphin or something once, didn't they Oh, I don't
know, make pay attention to him. Anyways, thank you so much for
coming to this episode of Get It Alive. You can check out the episode
description below for more links. We're gonna link to all of Lynn's socials,
her website, my cousin's rehab, wildlife rehab. That is, everyone is
like drug rehab and they give up beavers. Yeah, that'd be so good
though, it'd be so cute. Oh my god, I know how we're
gonna make a difference in this world, Ashley. We're gonna give wild animals,
not prisoners. When I say prisoners, we're gonna give wild animals to
covering addicts. Yeah, we're not gonna do it. Yeah, it's just
you might not I Anyways, you can rate if you like this episode.
You can rate us on Apple Podcasts, Podchasers, Spotify, basically wherever you're
listening, except I think Google Podcasts. I don't know if they have a
rating thing. Let's have it to do it. Yeah, thanks. Join
us on Patreon. Like I've said, you get different benefits for the different
tiers. So we have three different tiers and at the top two you get
our bonus episodes, and we have quite a few. We're trying to do
like one a month. So it's just it's more Lucy Goosey, much more
Lucy goosey, which is saying something righting. Yeah. You can follow us
on Instagram at gett a live pod, follow us on Facebook at gett a
Live podcast. That's where I post most like, you know, recent attacks
in the news. And you can follow me on Twitter at the Angryologist for
more cute baby animal content. Nick uh. Unless I start posting baby animal
content, I will not be on social media fair. Also, our instagram
is full of like baby bear videos. It's very cute. I'm happy that
I follow with the account I do have that I don't go on because it's
all I do. I follow both. I followed the Kiln Bear Center and
I follow our podcast obviously, and I watch both stories. Yeah, I'm
so Yeah. It's the Kilm Bear Center located here in New Hampshire and he
rehabilitates baby bears and it's the most precious content you can ever imagine, just
best. Yes, yes, do you see the one today with the little
baby looking out in the scenery and everything? Of course I did. I
posted on our story and I was like, it looks like the beginning of
a movie like Brother Bear but live, actually so cute, it's so good.
Thank you to my good friend and second grade husband Josh wallsh From making
our intro music, and we'll be back in two wednesdays with a new animal
attack story. Thanks again, Lynn,