Speaker 1: Get value.
Speaker 2: You can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club
Speaker 2: card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal
Speaker 2: deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert
Speaker 2: for only sixteen euro like succulent board, be approved Virus
Speaker 2: Shining the strip Loin Steaks with pepper corn butter or
Speaker 2: delicious firous chicken Parmesana served with creamy potato grotame and
Speaker 2: our mix of rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy Goozillionaire or
Speaker 2: Soldier caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop in store
Speaker 2: or online Tesco. Every little helps available the most stores,
Speaker 2: prices very inn express.
Speaker 3: Mum, why did they call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 4: It's cottage cheese, honey. And I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Did dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think so. When when we get there, well, we've
Speaker 4: got to fix the car first, but there's someone coming
Speaker 4: to help us.
Speaker 3: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 4: Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh there's a van now.
Speaker 6: For car insurance with breakdown rescue. It takes a Viva
Speaker 6: visit Aviva? Do I eat to say fifteen percent acceptance criteria.
Speaker 7: Terms and conditions apply. Minimum premium of three hundred and
Speaker 7: ten yuro o fifteen percent discant applies to new policies
Speaker 7: bought online. See Aviva dotta E for details. Car insurance
Speaker 7: is underwritten by Aviva Insurance Arland DOC Aviva Direct Arlund
Speaker 7: Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's yesterday's medication in your genes pocket. Oops,
Speaker 1: Ali Ward. Let's stab ourselves with information from a porcupines
Speaker 1: business end. We have a good one. What a chat.
Speaker 1: I remember getting off this interview and being like, this
Speaker 1: is this is why I make the show. You're in
Speaker 1: for a treat.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 1: So we've got an associate professor from San Luis Obispo's
Speaker 1: California Polytechnic State University cal POLY who teaches courses like
Speaker 1: Introduction to Wildlife, Conservation and Administration. They studied ecology, evolution,
Speaker 1: and environmental biology at Columbia University. They headed a UC
Speaker 1: Berkeley for a master's and PhD in Environmental Science, Policy
Speaker 1: and Management. Bonus. They specialize in rodents. What does it
Speaker 1: have to do with porcupines? Everything? Porcupines are rodents? What yep?
Speaker 1: Big beautiful barbed rat like creatures and we love them.
Speaker 1: Thank you also to Sarah Listener Berman to listener Sarah
Speaker 1: Berman who suggested this ologist singing their praises of their
Speaker 1: porcupine enthusiasm. So we're going to get to it in
Speaker 1: a sect, But first, thank you so much to everyone
Speaker 1: who's sends me questions audio ones as well. You can
Speaker 1: submit them at patreon dot com, slash ologies, thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com. And thanks
Speaker 1: to everyone who leaves reviews for the show, which helps
Speaker 1: us so much, like this one from NJ Roadrunner, who wrote,
Speaker 1: if science could embody itself as a warm hug, this
Speaker 1: show would be it. Also want to shout out Snake's Rule,
Speaker 1: who left the review. I'm eleven years old and I
Speaker 1: love this podcast. No, I'm not kidding. No, I do
Speaker 1: not listen to Smologies. No I do not listen to
Speaker 1: the bleeped ones. Yes, I actually understand it. You keep
Speaker 1: doing you, Ali, Snake's Rule, I'm a fan of you
Speaker 1: and of snakes. Okay, for those who are looking though
Speaker 1: for kids safe episodes, just a reminder that we have Smologies.
Speaker 1: It's available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. It's a spinoff show.
Speaker 1: You can look for the green cover art. Okay, porcupines.
Speaker 1: So porcupines news to me get their name from the
Speaker 1: Latin for thorn pig. But theology for this let's just
Speaker 1: say a rhyth risenology, which comes from the Greek for irritating.
Speaker 1: There's two major groups of porcupines. We're going to include
Speaker 1: both in this episode, but mostly we're focusing on the
Speaker 1: genus eryth Cool. Okay, great, So get suited up for
Speaker 1: a thrilling array of weird stories involving barbs, grounds, squeaks,
Speaker 1: cartoonish noses, romantic gestures that will leave you wanting to
Speaker 1: bleach your brain, counting quills, male models, flim flam about
Speaker 1: quill removal, how to spot a porcupine in the wild,
Speaker 1: and so much more with professor ecologist and a erythrosonologist.
Speaker 5: Doctor Tim Bean, Tim Bean, he him.
Speaker 1: Do you get called Jim Bean a lot?
Speaker 8: Jim Beam? Yeah, and then sometimes like Kim for some
Speaker 8: reason for to go orders confusing.
Speaker 1: Tim Kim Jim Beam.
Speaker 8: Yeah, as long as it's not mister Bean, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: Do people ever call you doctor Porcupine?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a really good Marvel character just
Speaker 1: like shooting quills out of your wrist to people.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well we'll get to that right, like what they Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, Actually porcupines, I feel like underneath their quills, they
Speaker 1: got to be the cuddliest little babies.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I think that's what makes them so compelling, is
Speaker 8: like they are dopey and lovable and sweet and almost
Speaker 8: apologetic about the fact that they're unhuggable.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to be in some sort of close
Speaker 1: relationship with them, I feel like they would have avoidant
Speaker 1: attachment issues.
Speaker 8: When I started this research there, I was like literally
Speaker 8: to the point where I was googling how do you
Speaker 8: pick up a porcupine? And there's a self help book
Speaker 8: called how to Hug a Porcupine Easy Ways to Love
Speaker 8: the Difficult People in your life.
Speaker 1: So is there an easy way to handle a porcupine?
Speaker 1: If you're a porcubine researcher, what kind of gloves are
Speaker 1: you working with?
Speaker 8: Yeah, a welding gloves, like thick, heavy leather gloves is
Speaker 8: generally the recommendation. There's a spot under their tail that
Speaker 8: doesn't have any quills, and their tail is super strong.
Speaker 8: It's almost like a fifth appendage that they use to
Speaker 8: help climb, and so that's generally how people try to
Speaker 8: pick them up, is like get your hand under the
Speaker 8: tail and grab them there and then you can kind
Speaker 8: of pick them up. But at that point, like you
Speaker 8: got to anesthetize them if you're really going to handle
Speaker 8: them and measure them and put a collar on and
Speaker 8: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: By under the tail, is that they're junk necessarily or
Speaker 1: is that in a different spot.
Speaker 8: Though they're junk is hidden away most of the time,
Speaker 8: so it's actually like retracted in to the body, which
Speaker 8: makes it easier to climb right, Like they're right up
Speaker 8: against the tree when they're climbing.
Speaker 1: Must I remind us of the twenty twenty four Paris
Speaker 1: pol malter, whose victory was thwarted by his own generous nethers,
Speaker 1: a self betrayal of Olympic proportions. But Tim says that
Speaker 1: a porcupine's tail, which is about the size of a mitten,
Speaker 1: is covered in quills on the top, but on the
Speaker 1: flip side just a haven of only guard hairs, and
Speaker 1: in the colder months some soft fuzzy fur are quills
Speaker 1: types of hairs or are they modified scales? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get right into it because I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the buck is going on?
Speaker 8: Yeah, they are. They're modified hairs, so they're made of keratin.
Speaker 8: And you sort of look at the evolutionary lineage of
Speaker 8: porcupines and there's like these species called spiny rats that
Speaker 8: have spines that are closely related, and then you can
Speaker 8: kind of see like other porcupines have less evolved quills,
Speaker 8: and then you've got the North American porcupines that have
Speaker 8: these really highly modified quills that are really awful if
Speaker 8: you get.
Speaker 5: Them in you really what are they like?
Speaker 8: So North American porcupine quills have backwards facing barbs. The
Speaker 8: quill itself is sharp, it gets in you, and then
Speaker 8: there are these backward facing barbs that make it very
Speaker 8: difficult and painful to pull back out. And then they
Speaker 8: also the backward facing barb means that if you don't
Speaker 8: pull it out, the quills start to work its way
Speaker 8: into you further and further or your dog, and then
Speaker 8: that becomes a real problem if it actually gets in
Speaker 8: your body and you got to go in and get
Speaker 8: it out.
Speaker 1: So with the very tip of an erythozantid eye or
Speaker 1: North American porcupines quills are hundreds upon hundreds of tiny barbs,
Speaker 1: and for more on those, if you must, you can
Speaker 1: see the twenty twelve paper micro Structured barbs on the
Speaker 1: North American porcupine quill enable easy tissue penetration and difficult removal.
Speaker 1: There you go. Now the genus Historics or African porcupines
Speaker 1: sometimes called Old World porcupines. No barbs in case you
Speaker 1: have a choice of which type of porcupine can shank you. Oof. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've mentioned other porcupines, and you mentioned North American porcupines.
Speaker 1: I know you study North American ones, but are there
Speaker 1: Eurasian porcupines? Are there? South American porcupines? Are there? African porcupines?
Speaker 8: Yeah? All of those? And it's really confusing. So there's
Speaker 8: two families capital f of porcupines. There's the Historycaday, which
Speaker 8: are the African Eurasian porcupines, and there's like eleven species
Speaker 8: of those, and then totally separately is the family of
Speaker 8: North and South American porcupines rith izont today, where there's
Speaker 8: about twenty species of those. And it's man, I've been
Speaker 8: like looking the past week or two because I always
Speaker 8: tell people that those two families, they like African and
Speaker 8: Eurasian porcupines and the North and South Americans evolved separately,
Speaker 8: and that they evolved quills independently from each other, and
Speaker 8: like nobody seems to want to really go on record
Speaker 8: and say whether that's true or not, or whether they'll like,
Speaker 8: you know, so they separated like ten to twenty million
Speaker 8: years ago, and I think we just don't really know
Speaker 8: whether that ancient rodent ancestor of the two groups had
Speaker 8: some form of quill and then they split and they
Speaker 8: continue to have quills, or if they evolved independently. But yeah,
Speaker 8: so around the world there's like thirty species of porcupines,
Speaker 8: but they're very different. The family of African and Eurasian
Speaker 8: porcupines are much bigger, they're ground dwelling, the quills are
Speaker 8: way longer, they're like a foot long, and I think
Speaker 8: they're more aggressive, like a lot of the videos of
Speaker 8: you know, porcupine like attacking leopard. Those are generally African
Speaker 8: porcupines Eurasian porcupines, and then the North and South American
Speaker 8: porcupines are more arboreal. They spend a lot of time
Speaker 8: in trees eating leaves, much shorter quills.
Speaker 1: So we got about thirty species of porcupine, and the
Speaker 1: African and North American ones are distantly related, and then
Speaker 1: we got the South American ones with a big, bulbous,
Speaker 1: pink nose and a tail like a monkey. African porcupines
Speaker 1: can weigh up to sixty six pounds or thirty kilos,
Speaker 1: and they're mostly veggie eaters who dig for roots and bulbs,
Speaker 1: and they eat people's tuber crops, or they forage for
Speaker 1: fruits or bark. Sometimes an African porcupine will eat a
Speaker 1: dead body if it finds one, like roadkill, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they hoard a bunch of bones to chew on in
Speaker 1: their den if they need minerals. What's more, goth thousands
Speaker 1: of spikes striking fear into the hearts of your foes
Speaker 1: and gnawing on bones in your underground cave. Not even
Speaker 1: bats can compete with that. I did not know they
Speaker 1: went so hard. I didn't know there were so many
Speaker 1: branches of porcupine. Speaking of branches, do you think that
Speaker 1: the adaptations needed to be a ground dweller versus a
Speaker 1: tree dweller are different in terms of if you're in
Speaker 1: the ground, more things are going to come and try
Speaker 1: eat you. But if you're in the trees, you're gonna
Speaker 1: encounter fewer jackals and stuff.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's possible. Definitely is possible. Right, Like the defense
Speaker 8: stuff is much more important if you're on the ground
Speaker 8: and you're out, you know, digging around for roots and stuff.
Speaker 8: The other part of it is, at least for North
Speaker 8: American porcupines, they fall out of trees a lot, so
Speaker 8: they're not super coordinated and they'll quill themselves and so
Speaker 8: the yeah, and so I think there's probably some benefit
Speaker 8: to having shorter quills in that case, Like it's breaking
Speaker 8: a bunch off when you fall on the ground. Like
Speaker 8: having shorter ones that are at least somewhat protected by
Speaker 8: the outer guard hairs is probably better.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so embarrassing.
Speaker 8: It's sad. I mean, So there's this incredible book by
Speaker 8: Oldest Rose Uldsroze called The North American Porcupine. He's a
Speaker 8: professor in New York City, and he talks about like
Speaker 8: he examined porcupine skeletons and museums, and he was saying,
Speaker 8: like a third of them have broken bones, which has
Speaker 8: got to be from falling out of trees.
Speaker 1: Oh, my poor babies. Do they have like hollow bird bones,
Speaker 1: or they're just not that good at balance.
Speaker 8: They're just not that good a balance.
Speaker 1: Imagine wearing a head piece that is like a fan
Speaker 1: made of barbed spears, and it is your burden in
Speaker 1: life to bear just trying to slink between branches to
Speaker 1: try to eat a salad made out of trees. You're
Speaker 1: like weaving through an agility course, dressed like Rihanna at
Speaker 1: the met Gala. But if diamonds were needles.
Speaker 8: The like best morsels are probably out at the end
Speaker 8: of the branches, and so I think they're probably taking
Speaker 8: some risks going out on some thin limbs that they
Speaker 8: probably shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: I'm never complaining again. Ever, when the quills come out
Speaker 1: in a predator, I've always wondered, do they just kind
Speaker 1: of pop out easily like a lego snapping off, or
Speaker 1: is it like painful, like getting getting your mustache waxed.
Speaker 8: For the porcupine, they have this special mechanism where like
Speaker 8: they're not just going to come out day to day.
Speaker 8: You actually have to push into the skin, so like
Speaker 8: something pushes on the top of the quill and then
Speaker 8: that like releases the muscle that's holding it in and
Speaker 8: then they come out Oh, so it is sort of
Speaker 8: like waxing your mustache or legs or whatever. If you
Speaker 8: just pull the quill out, that would probably be super painful.
Speaker 8: But if they take their tail and like swack a
Speaker 8: dog's face, that like engages this release mechanism that I
Speaker 8: think probably does not hurt the porcupines.
Speaker 1: At least the dog would like to have a word.
Speaker 1: Oh God, how did you get into porcupines? Of all things?
Speaker 1: I know that you work on a few different animals, kangaroo, rats,
Speaker 1: but how did your path lead you down this spiny road?
Speaker 8: Yeah? So the practical answer is when I was applying
Speaker 8: for my first faculty job at Humboldt State, everybody's asking
Speaker 8: me like, what are you going to study when you
Speaker 8: get up here? And I'm giving all these like lame,
Speaker 8: half assed answers because I just don't ever want to
Speaker 8: think about research again. And then finally the final night,
Speaker 8: second night, we go out to dinner with like all
Speaker 8: the other faculty in the department, and they ask again, like,
Speaker 8: what are you going to study if you get up here?
Speaker 8: And I just it popped into my head. I had
Speaker 8: seen this talk a couple of years ago by this
Speaker 8: guy Rick Switzer, who does a lot of conservation work
Speaker 8: in the Sierras and had done his graduate work on
Speaker 8: porcupines in Nevada, and he was saying, we don't see
Speaker 8: porcupines anymore, like they're not where they used to be
Speaker 8: in the Sierras, and so I just blurted out like,
Speaker 8: I don't know, maybe porcupines, and that clicked. Like everyone
Speaker 8: around the table was like, Oh, that's such a great idea,
Speaker 8: Like porcupines would be amazing, Like the students could go out,
Speaker 8: they can do these behavioral observations. It's such a cool species.
Speaker 8: And all the tribes in the area, like the Hoopa
Speaker 8: and Uruk and the Karuk, have all been asking like
Speaker 8: where are the porcupines. We used to have porcupines here
Speaker 8: and we can't find them anymore. So that was sort
Speaker 8: of I don't know if it got me the job,
Speaker 8: but it was just sort of this like light bulb moment,
Speaker 8: and so yeah, started research up there when I got
Speaker 8: the job.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there was something in you that
Speaker 1: made you say it, because everyone knows that porcupines are cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, yeah, they are. They're super cool, and
Speaker 8: they're sort of they're kind of like, you know, we
Speaker 8: talked about like a comics comic or a writer's writer.
Speaker 8: Like I think porcupines are kind of I think the
Speaker 8: species that a lot of ecologists really like, but they're
Speaker 8: sort of underappreciated and understudied. You know, everybody loves porcupines.
Speaker 1: And also the thrill of the unapproachability of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so porcupines are your favorite ecologist's favorite ecology. And I
Speaker 1: have seen many photos and videos of porcupines willingly because
Speaker 1: they live in my heart. And some of them have
Speaker 1: faces like a Japanese cartoon with a tiny nose that's
Speaker 1: sometimes brown and fuzzy. They got little tenC fidgeting hands.
Speaker 1: Other porcupines have a nose that looks like an oversized
Speaker 1: pink marshmallow. What's going on with their nose? Why so
Speaker 1: big and cute?
Speaker 8: So they need to be able to smell really well.
Speaker 8: And some of the noses of like porcupine accounts on
Speaker 8: social media, I think some of those are our South
Speaker 8: American species where they have this like big bald nose
Speaker 8: that's kind of sticking out. North American porcupines also have
Speaker 8: really big noses, but they're furred. But they just need
Speaker 8: to have a really good sense of smell. I mean
Speaker 8: they're full of ores. Most of what they eat is leaves,
Speaker 8: and so they need to be able to smell where
Speaker 8: the good leaves are and where the other porcupines are. So, yeah,
Speaker 8: highly evolved nose to for scent.
Speaker 1: Is it soft? It looks like a big pencil eraser.
Speaker 1: I want to touch it.
Speaker 8: That's exactly what it feels like.
Speaker 5: Really, yeah, I want to touch it.
Speaker 1: I want to touch the marshmallow. Nosy, what in your
Speaker 1: job necessitates getting too common word boop? But get to
Speaker 1: touch the nose of a pork? Like are they a
Speaker 1: nestetized and you have to make sure their nose is
Speaker 1: a certain temperature or is it purely just a perk
Speaker 1: of the job.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the second one. So a lot of the research
Speaker 8: we were doing was like studying their ecology in this
Speaker 8: coastal dune forest in northern California. And the best way
Speaker 8: to do that is to track them. So we would
Speaker 8: catch them and esthetize them and get a radio collar
Speaker 8: on them and kind of, you know, just measure them
Speaker 8: for sex and reproductive status and weigh and ectoparasites and
Speaker 8: stuff like that, and while they're sleeping, you know, you
Speaker 8: get to look at them and feel their nose and
Speaker 8: see what the bottom of their feet look like and
Speaker 8: stuff like that.
Speaker 1: How big we talk in when it comes to porcupines
Speaker 1: in general.
Speaker 8: North American porcupines are like is really variable. It's interesting.
Speaker 8: Like Northeastern like New England porcupines I think, are a
Speaker 8: little bit smaller. Alaskan porcupines can get up to about
Speaker 8: twenty or thirty pounds.
Speaker 1: Twenty to thirty pounds is like the size of a quirky,
Speaker 1: but a quorki that's been bred with a.
Speaker 8: Sea urchin, they're pretty big, I mean, And it's like
Speaker 8: the ones that we have in northern California, Like it
Speaker 8: definitely takes two arms to lift a large adult porcupine.
Speaker 1: And two gloved arms.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you know, fleece and jacket and anything else
Speaker 8: that you can use to protect yourself.
Speaker 1: How many times do you think you've been barbed?
Speaker 8: Not that many. So it turns out dogs are just
Speaker 8: really stupid. It's really hard to get quilled, especially when
Speaker 8: they're anesthetiz Like I said, you do have to like
Speaker 8: push it in to engage the release, and so when
Speaker 8: you're handling them and turning them over to examine the
Speaker 8: underside and stuff like, you'll definitely get quills that kind
Speaker 8: of just come out and stick in your shirt. But
Speaker 8: to get truly quilled it happened a few times to
Speaker 8: my students. I never got like one really deeply embedded
Speaker 8: in my skin.
Speaker 1: I did watch one YouTube video of Aldous Rose, another
Speaker 1: porcupine legend, and his capture method is to cover them
Speaker 1: with an old red aglue beer cooler which slides shut,
Speaker 1: and then from there he can sed datum and then
Speaker 1: take them out and take measurements for like twenty or
Speaker 1: so minutes and then release them on their merry way. Now,
Speaker 1: what if you get porcupined and you are a porcupine?
Speaker 1: They have little pause that are good at grasping, and
Speaker 1: they just got to do their best to reach the
Speaker 1: ones embedded by their enemies. It's a risky life, but
Speaker 1: they are armed. What kind of students do you have
Speaker 1: that are drawn to this field all kinds?
Speaker 8: That's a really interesting question. I think the stereotype of
Speaker 8: wildlife ecologists is generally people who would rather be around
Speaker 8: animals than other people, and so I guess that goes
Speaker 8: sort of doubly for people who want to be around
Speaker 8: a quelled animal. But yeah, all that. You know, it's
Speaker 8: a mix of undergraduates and master's students, and they've all
Speaker 8: been just incredible. I mean, like so excited to work
Speaker 8: with the species and so curious, and the porcupines we
Speaker 8: were studying just seem to elicit this like really incredible
Speaker 8: curiosity about the species and the place they were living.
Speaker 8: You know. I would go and visit and go up
Speaker 8: like during the summer when we were doing the research,
Speaker 8: and they would be back at the field house and
Speaker 8: like they would just not stop talking about porcupines like dinner,
Speaker 8: like talk about this porcupine we saw today, like after dinner, like,
Speaker 8: let's think about this other thing that we haven't talked about.
Speaker 8: It is, like, you guys need to take a break
Speaker 8: from thinking about porcupines. I can't stop.
Speaker 1: Do you know that I just realized right now that
Speaker 1: a porcupine actually inspired this entire podcast to exist, and
Speaker 1: I have not thought about it until right now.
Speaker 8: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Yes? There's a guest named Phil Trurus who's amazing and
Speaker 1: he's on now. He's on Expedition Unknown on Discovery, but
Speaker 1: he studied butterflies in the jungle. But he was a
Speaker 1: friend before I started this podcast, and he once told
Speaker 1: the story about how he was studying butterflies in the
Speaker 1: jungles of Peru and he's also hunky to the point
Speaker 1: where it's comical. And he's married to like a absolutely
Speaker 1: beautiful Norwegian model and they're also incredibly nice, which is
Speaker 1: infuriating maddening because they're good people. But to make his
Speaker 1: way through Cornell, he modeled for Abercrommie. You're just like
Speaker 1: fucking oh well, and we love him anyway. He was
Speaker 1: talking about once he was in the jungles of Peru
Speaker 1: and he had to chase a porcupine out of his
Speaker 1: hut with his acoustic guitar. You were like like gently
Speaker 1: nudged out. But I was like, if these are the
Speaker 1: type of stories that field biologists have, I need to
Speaker 1: hear more of them because the idea of like a
Speaker 1: shirtless Abercrombie model he just scooted a porcupine out of
Speaker 1: a hut with an acoustic guitar, was like, those are
Speaker 1: the stories that need to be heard.
Speaker 8: That was like to follow up on that like that
Speaker 8: also for me, it was when I was like twenty,
Speaker 8: I was camping with my sister and some friends on
Speaker 8: the Appalachian Trail. We were sleeping in this lean to
Speaker 8: and all night there was this bizarre sound coming from
Speaker 8: uneath the lead too, Like nobody slept. We were afraid
Speaker 8: to look to see what it was, and we just
Speaker 8: could not figure out what it was. And then like
Speaker 8: years later, she called me and she was like, I
Speaker 8: was just watching this nature documentary and it was porcupines
Speaker 8: having sex. That's the noise that we heard all night long.
Speaker 8: So yeah, I think like that's another appeal of porcupines
Speaker 8: is like I just think everybody, especially a cologists who
Speaker 8: have been in the field for a long time, just
Speaker 8: have this sort of like they have a story or
Speaker 8: curiosity or a question that they maybe never got around
Speaker 8: to researching. But yeah, everybody's got one.
Speaker 1: Well all night long? Was it like their anniversary or
Speaker 1: was there an orgy?
Speaker 8: Their reproductive system is weird, so I can walk you
Speaker 8: through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So female porcupines are either pregnant or lactating eleven months
Speaker 8: out of the year. They have, like for their body size,
Speaker 8: one of the longest pregnancy periods of any mammal. So
Speaker 8: they're pregnant for about seven months and then lactating for
Speaker 8: four months. And then they have a month off and
Speaker 8: then do it all over again.
Speaker 1: Eleven months out of the year preggers are nursing, they
Speaker 1: get one month off. Give these ladies a break, mother nature.
Speaker 5: Why do you hate them?
Speaker 1: Now? An elderly porcupine would be like ten years old,
Speaker 1: but usually they only live to around five in the wild. Now,
Speaker 1: the upside of that short life is you start early
Speaker 1: your horny, you're ready to reproduce it eighteen months old.
Speaker 1: But those uber maternal lady porcupine.
Speaker 8: So but they're only an estress for like twelve hours
Speaker 8: every year.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 8: So what happens is they send out some pheromones in
Speaker 8: there or some kind of olfactory signal in their urine
Speaker 8: to say I'm about to go into estress, like if
Speaker 8: there's any males around. And so that again is where
Speaker 8: the big nose comes in, as I think males who
Speaker 8: are a couple miles away can smell that, hello, ladies.
Speaker 8: So the males start coming brigading, and then there's a
Speaker 8: period of competition where you know, generally like the largest
Speaker 8: I think like one of the older males generally dominates
Speaker 8: and wins access to the female. Other males you know,
Speaker 8: go away and then the male who wins peas on
Speaker 8: the female. Oh, which is documented in Marty Stealford's Wild
Speaker 8: America episode The Prickly Porcupine. You can see it for
Speaker 8: yourself if you really want to.
Speaker 9: The young male catches the scinth given off by a female.
Speaker 9: The aroma of her vaginal mucus mixed with urine tells
Speaker 9: him that she's an estress for his grand finale. The
Speaker 9: male anoints is intended in a shower of urine. Witnesses
Speaker 9: to this bizarre ritual claim that powerful bursts may travel
Speaker 9: over six.
Speaker 8: Feet, which is thought to like stimulate estress, like to
Speaker 8: actually have. And then copulation takes about one to five minutes,
Speaker 8: and then they're doing it for about eight hours and
Speaker 8: then they go their separate ways for another year.
Speaker 1: Wait, if copulation takes one to five minutes and they're
Speaker 1: doing it for eight hours, is there a refractory period?
Speaker 8: I imagine? So yeah, so they'll do it and then
Speaker 8: take a couple of minutes off for an hour off,
Speaker 8: and then get back to it.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Usually the same dominant male and then all the other
Speaker 1: ones who made the commute are just like, well, I guess.
Speaker 8: By yeah, better luck next year.
Speaker 1: What about their locomotion, Because if they have a twelve
Speaker 1: hour window to make it a couple miles to maybe
Speaker 1: get a chance with a lady, are they just booking?
Speaker 5: Ask? How are they getting the Well?
Speaker 8: I think that's what the peeing on the female does,
Speaker 8: is like is she goes into this sort of pre
Speaker 8: estrous period that's like, I'm almost ready, and then it's
Speaker 8: going to take a while for the males to get
Speaker 8: over here. They are pretty slow. They yeah, they're slow.
Speaker 8: So it's going to take them a while to get
Speaker 8: there and figure out who's going to be the one
Speaker 8: with access. So I think that's sort of the function
Speaker 8: of the peeing on the female is like, once all
Speaker 8: that's sorted out, now it's time to trigger the actual
Speaker 8: astress period.
Speaker 1: So she like sends out a text, She sends out
Speaker 1: a group text or tweet, and then she waits for
Speaker 1: them to uber their little asses over anybody up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well is it? How do they with all of the quills?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are they just missionary style? How are they doing that?
Speaker 8: It's the rose delicately puts it the typical mammal position,
Speaker 8: So I like the way dogs do it. So she
Speaker 8: lifts her tail which again the bottom of it doesn't
Speaker 8: have any quills on it. And then the male gets
Speaker 8: behind her and the bottom of their stomach doesn't have
Speaker 8: quills on it either, so it's sort of like quillis
Speaker 8: area to quillis area and then he yep enters from behind.
Speaker 1: So remember the bottom of her tail is like a
Speaker 1: soft quill liss landing strip that she lays down on
Speaker 1: her own back for his little tender, quillless belly, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't get quilled.
Speaker 8: You know, I'm sure it happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awkward, But for the most part, the muscles
Speaker 1: that would sort of like booing them are not going
Speaker 1: to be activated, right exactly. Okay, that makes sense evolutionarily, right,
Speaker 1: because that would really be a conflict of interest.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and that's probably partly why they don't have quills
Speaker 8: on the base of their tail on their stomach as well.
Speaker 8: The other interesting evolutionary thing about the quills is they're
Speaker 8: antibiotic and antibacterial, so, like, you know, you would sort
Speaker 8: of think that from a defense perspective, it would be
Speaker 8: great if they infected you know, a mountain lion or
Speaker 8: a fissure or something that's trying to attack them. But
Speaker 8: because they quill themselves so much. The thinking as they
Speaker 8: evolved these antibacterial properties so that they wouldn't infect themselves
Speaker 8: or they're mate.
Speaker 1: It's like Edwards is her hands, but Edward syringe fingers
Speaker 1: and each one comes loaded with a little doxy cycling.
Speaker 1: No copeyh what a bummer for them? How long are
Speaker 1: they alive?
Speaker 8: They can be pretty long lived. So Rose documented one
Speaker 8: that was like twenty years old, and they can live
Speaker 8: to twenty or twenty five years in captivity.
Speaker 1: Now, usually we save our patron audio questions for the
Speaker 1: second half. Who cares, nothing matters. We're going to break
Speaker 1: the rules. Let's lose our minds. My mind's already lost.
Speaker 1: Let's get unhinged, let's get rebellious with a Patreon question early.
Speaker 10: Hi, this is Aaron Ryan from Vancouver and I grew
Speaker 10: up in a porcupine area and I just want to
Speaker 10: know why I've never seen one and if that seems
Speaker 10: unfair to you?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Yeah, Aaron, it does. I hate that for you.
Speaker 5: Now, how do you.
Speaker 1: Not go to a zoo to see one? How hard
Speaker 1: is it to see a porcupine? Are they just up
Speaker 1: in the trees? And good luck?
Speaker 8: If you live in a snowy area, that's kind of
Speaker 8: the best time to see them because their tracks are
Speaker 8: so clear, and so finding tracks is a great way
Speaker 8: to find one. Otherwise, they create these nip twigs, so
Speaker 8: they'll sit, you know, sit in a tree and eat
Speaker 8: leaves all night, and they'll like, you know, break a
Speaker 8: branch off, eat all the leaves, and then drop the
Speaker 8: branch to the ground. So if you know what you're
Speaker 8: looking for, like a tree with a bunch of branches
Speaker 8: with leaves stripped off of them, that's probably a good
Speaker 8: place to look up. Otherwise, yeah, or just like wait
Speaker 8: for your stupid dog to find one.
Speaker 1: Does your dog know how to like go sniff them out?
Speaker 1: Why are dogs getting porcupined so much?
Speaker 8: I just saw a paper that said that it was
Speaker 8: pretty breed specific, like, oh, no, German shepherds and Rottweilers,
Speaker 8: those are ones that are more you know, somebody went
Speaker 8: through old vet records and said, oh, these are the
Speaker 8: breeds that are more likely to do it. They stink.
Speaker 8: So porcupines have this really unique warning odor that smells
Speaker 8: like nothing I've ever smelled before, really, and so I
Speaker 8: think dogs are definitely responding to that well.
Speaker 1: Editing this episode, I spotted a note transcript left by
Speaker 1: lead editor Mercedes Maitland. She just wanted to tell me
Speaker 1: that her quote now departed family dog, a standard Poodle
Speaker 1: named Bentley, got quilled by the same dead porcupine three times,
Speaker 1: she continues. We lived in the country, and he would
Speaker 1: go off and find it in the woods. My parents
Speaker 1: eventually had to comb the woods, she says, for the
Speaker 1: carcass so they could dump it somewhere, far far away.
Speaker 1: Bentley was otherwise a very smart dog, but I guess
Speaker 1: that porcupine smell was just too hard to resist. He
Speaker 1: also got skunked a few times in his six years,
Speaker 1: she said, so I guess he was not smart when
Speaker 1: it came to his nose. Mercedes wanted to tell me that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you that, Mercedes, that's insane and
Speaker 1: I love it. Also, if you're just now realizing that
Speaker 1: you have a special interest in the musk of large rodents,
Speaker 1: you can enjoy our recent castrology episode on beavers, in
Speaker 1: which we discuss at length how their internal scent sacks
Speaker 1: made it into your ice cream Way back then. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's return to that thorn pig stink when you say
Speaker 1: nothing I've ever smelled before. I understand that. Then that
Speaker 1: means that none of us can possibly understand. But would
Speaker 1: you say it's closer to the skunk, closer to the
Speaker 1: fragrance of a rose fruity musky.
Speaker 8: Yeah. The chemical composition supposedly has like components of walnuts
Speaker 8: and pineapple or coconut or something. But like you got
Speaker 8: to take that and like ferment it in a dead
Speaker 8: rat for a while to really get it. The it's
Speaker 8: like sweet and musky.
Speaker 1: As a field ecologist who is looking for porcupines, if
Speaker 1: you start to smell that on the wind, are you excited?
Speaker 8: I guess to the point where it's like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 8: getting a signal. There's a porcupine hidden in the tree
Speaker 8: above me somewhere I think I can smell it. Yeah. Great.
Speaker 1: I looked around to find some other old factory analogs
Speaker 1: to porcupine essence, and I saw it suggests a strong
Speaker 1: cheese mixed with weed and barnyard animals. But the most
Speaker 1: compelling comparison I read was from a wildlife rehabber on Reddit,
Speaker 1: who described it as just like human body odor and ripe,
Speaker 1: so a squeaky, grunting gym bag that can pierce your face.
Speaker 1: It's thrilling. What is that like when it's spotted, when
Speaker 1: someone's like, there, it is there it is. Is that
Speaker 1: like a kind of routine or does that make your
Speaker 1: whole day?
Speaker 8: It's definitely makes your day. It's great. I mean, you know,
Speaker 8: it's like you're walking around in the middle of summer
Speaker 8: at night in this beautiful dune forest, Like that's good
Speaker 8: enough on its own, but you don't really know when
Speaker 8: you're going to find the next one, and you're kind
Speaker 8: of struggling to get as many callers out as quickly
Speaker 8: as possible. So seating one is awesome. I mean that's like,
Speaker 8: you know, that's true for any wildlife. I think whenever
Speaker 8: you're hiking and you're like, oh my god, there's a
Speaker 8: bobcat on the trail. You're out there by yourself, and
Speaker 8: then suddenly you're with a porcupine. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: You're like our past just one. Well, you mentioned summer nights.
Speaker 1: Do they tend to hibernate in the winter? Are they nocturnal?
Speaker 1: Why is that a good time?
Speaker 8: They don't hibernate? I mean some are just for practical reasons,
Speaker 8: Like that's when students and I are not in class.
Speaker 8: But generally they're nocturnal and then they sleep in the day,
Speaker 8: but they're out year round. They'll congregate in dens in
Speaker 8: colder areas to keep warm, but they're still out in
Speaker 8: the middle of winter trying to get food.
Speaker 1: What do you think of Teddy the porcupine.
Speaker 2: This is Teddy Bear, your favorite university porcupine.
Speaker 8: We know Teddy Bear likes corn, but I thought we'd
Speaker 8: see if Teddy liked.
Speaker 1: Pumpkins today. What is that?
Speaker 8: Dad? What is that?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 8: Yeah, Teddy's the best, I mean, what a great ambassador
Speaker 8: and such as sweetie. And of course we were all like,
Speaker 8: when are we going to hear these noises? I know,
Speaker 8: forget the smell if I can be out here like
Speaker 8: listening for the smacks and the chomps and everything.
Speaker 1: I was so worried you were going to say Teddy
Speaker 1: is and then like a long pause, complicated, like finding
Speaker 1: out Teddy was like racist, or was like illegally poached
Speaker 1: or something. Just a quick side note. Teddy Bear the
Speaker 1: porcupine is a rescue critter taken in by Idaho's Earth
Speaker 1: Fire Institute, and they say he's a robust, sometimes moody
Speaker 1: animal who accepts fresh willow branches and spruce logs, but
Speaker 1: he likes other treats. And his caretakers note that Teddy
Speaker 1: was once called Piney until via an animal communicator, he
Speaker 1: voiced that he wanted to be called something softer and cuddlier,
Speaker 1: as he quote didn't feel his essence was prickly at all,
Speaker 1: and the sanctuary notes that as most people don't know
Speaker 1: the porcupines are sweet and gentle, changing Piney's name to
Speaker 1: Teddy Bear will be a good opportunity for education. And
Speaker 1: now Teddy is famous on the internet. When Teddy eats
Speaker 1: a pumpkin, say yeah, and our brains get flooded with serotonin.
Speaker 1: Do most porcupines make that noise if they're munchhow on something?
Speaker 1: Or is Teddy just particularly like a bombivon?
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's a real esthe. I think what's happening is
Speaker 8: those are the noises that a baby porcupine called a
Speaker 8: porcupet makes when it's nursing porcupet.
Speaker 1: This one word is the thin string holding up my
Speaker 1: sanity in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 8: I think that what's happening is those noises are stimulating
Speaker 8: milk let down in the mom which means like they're
Speaker 8: stimulating the exact chemicals you're talking about, like serotonin, oxytocin,
Speaker 8: And so I think what's happening with Teddy is like
Speaker 8: delayed adult whatever, Like he just never lost that function
Speaker 8: from being a baby to being an adult, and he
Speaker 8: still makes those noises, but we generally don't hear them
Speaker 8: in fully grown, wild adult porcupines much as we would
Speaker 8: like to.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you approximately a thousand questions from listeners.
Speaker 8: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Okay. Stephanie Rosso wants to know are
Speaker 1: there any predators that are undeterred by their quills?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 1: What are porcupine predators? Curtis Takahas She says, it seems
Speaker 1: like they'd be a very painful prize. Mouse Paxton, Anastesia Doherty,
Speaker 1: Jillene Tangan, John Wallace, and Olivia Lester all asked. Olivia
Speaker 1: asked what animals don't care about eating the spines? And
Speaker 1: we'll get to the answer of that question in just
Speaker 1: one moment, but first, let's eject some money into a
Speaker 1: tender cause. And this week it's the Native American Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Society and the NAFWS is a national tribal
Speaker 1: organization seeking to expand the exchange of information and management
Speaker 1: techniques related to self determined tribal fish and wildlife management. Also,
Speaker 1: Tim told me that one so box he'd like to
Speaker 1: get on is that Congress passed the nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act to appropriate some money to research species
Speaker 1: of special concern. However, Tim told me federally recognized tribes
Speaker 1: are not eligible to apply for these funding sources. They
Speaker 1: have a separate and much smaller pot of money that's
Speaker 1: dedicated to tribal management of wildlife and it amounts to
Speaker 1: about one sixth of the money per acre, which sucks,
Speaker 1: and Tim wanted you to know about that, and also
Speaker 1: that the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society is a
Speaker 1: worthy cause. So thank you to Tim for the heads up,
Speaker 1: and to the NAFWS for their work and everyone who
Speaker 1: cares about land stewardship and ecology. And that donation was
Speaker 1: made possible by our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Mom, why did I call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 4: It's cottage cheese, honey. And I'm not sure did.
Speaker 3: The dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think so.
Speaker 3: Well, when we get there.
Speaker 4: Well, we've got to fix the car first, but there's
Speaker 4: someone coming to help us.
Speaker 3: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 4: Not Geneva, he's from Aviva. Oh, there's a van now.
Speaker 6: For car insurance with breakdown rescue, it takes a Viva
Speaker 6: visit Aviva dot A E to say fifteen percent.
Speaker 7: Except criteria terms and conditions apply minimum premium of three
Speaker 7: hundred and ten year Oh, fifteen percent discant applies to
Speaker 7: new policies BottomLine. See Aviva dot I E for details.
Speaker 7: Car insurance is underwritten by a Viva Insurance Ireland DOC.
Speaker 7: Aviva Direct Arland Limited is regulated by the Central Bank
Speaker 7: of Ireland.
Speaker 11: Love m ands quality and value you can trust. At
Speaker 11: MNS you can update your home, your wardrobe and theirs
Speaker 11: with quality you can count on. There's the ultimate twelve
Speaker 11: euro les bras, the softest ever kid sweats from six
Speaker 11: euro fifty, luxurious Egyptian cotton towels from eight euro twenty five,
Speaker 11: and so much more value you can trust only at MNS,
Speaker 11: shop in store or at Marks and Spencer Dote.
Speaker 1: Okay, back to that question, who dares to eat a
Speaker 1: porcupine for lunch? Your dog obviously sucks at it, but
Speaker 1: some critter must be able to conquer them, right.
Speaker 8: It's mostly a doubt avoiding them. So I don't think
Speaker 8: there are any animals that are at least for North
Speaker 8: American porcuments. I think there are any predators that are
Speaker 8: good at dealing with the spines, but mostly we talk
Speaker 8: about mountain lions and fissures mountain lions. It's like a
Speaker 8: cultural thing, so the mom will teach her children how
Speaker 8: to eat porcupines. If they're going to do it, you
Speaker 8: have to learn how to do it. And I think
Speaker 8: mountain lions will flip the porcupine over and then go
Speaker 8: at the stomach where there are no quills. I mean,
Speaker 8: mountain lions are like meticulous cats, so they'll also scrape
Speaker 8: off all the quills once the porcupine's dead and consume it.
Speaker 1: So kind of like how your mom or your guardian
Speaker 1: might teach you to peel a banana or cut a pineapple,
Speaker 1: or watch your drink at a bar.
Speaker 8: Fissures are a big weasel and they attack the face,
Speaker 8: which also doesn't have any quills, til it's dead, and
Speaker 8: then they'll eat through the stomach. There's some cool papers
Speaker 8: from Wisconsin that suggest that martins. The smaller weasel will
Speaker 8: eat baby porcupines by coming up under the snow, like
Speaker 8: they'll tunnel through the snow and somehow here the porcupine,
Speaker 8: or like see a porcupine and then tunnel under and
Speaker 8: then come up and get at the stomach that way
Speaker 8: nice and like other stuff, like coyotes have been shown
Speaker 8: to learn how to catch porcupines, and I think some
Speaker 8: other species as well, like maybe owls.
Speaker 1: So fishers eat the face, martins eat babies through snow tunnels,
Speaker 1: Mountain lions go over the guts first, and Tim says
Speaker 1: that coyotes and bobcats are also able to get a
Speaker 1: bite of them here and there. And owls, how are
Speaker 1: owls even attempting this? They're like small chickens well through
Speaker 1: surprise attacks to the face. Sometimes it works out well
Speaker 1: for them, but wildlife rehabbers tell tales of demoralized owls
Speaker 1: whose failure has to be plucked out of their flesh
Speaker 1: one by one. Now, as for the South American porcupines,
Speaker 1: this twenty twenty article in the journal Food webs titled
Speaker 1: predation of a Brazilian porcupine by an ocelot and a
Speaker 1: mineral lick in the Peruvian Amazon explains that when a
Speaker 1: patch of salt becomes kind of like a local pub
Speaker 1: for porcupines, they are vulnerable to the bravest of predators,
Speaker 1: including the ocelot. Now the African porcupines, they got to
Speaker 1: watch out for hyenas and lions and leopards. But how
Speaker 1: scary are porcupines like using numbers? Is it mostly an
Speaker 1: entry through the face?
Speaker 8: I think it's mostly the belly, except for fishers, who
Speaker 8: are just mean like every other weasel.
Speaker 9: Yikes.
Speaker 1: Olivia Kallis, Alexander von fritzy Bitt and his mom Isa
Speaker 1: Brillard and eating dog hair for a living. Want to
Speaker 1: ask Alexander asks how many quills do they have? Is
Speaker 1: there an average number? Is it like four thousand or
Speaker 1: does it totally vary by species.
Speaker 8: I'm sure it varies by species. I don't know that
Speaker 8: there are a lot of studies for every species. For
Speaker 8: North American porcupines, there's thirty thousand quills. That's the number
Speaker 8: that everybody uses, and I have been desperate trying to
Speaker 8: find There's two separate papers where people have counted quills
Speaker 8: on North American porcupines, and they both came up with
Speaker 8: about thirty thousand, both of them. The introduction reads like
Speaker 8: somebody's getting punished, like they did something wrong, and their
Speaker 8: advisor was like, just go count quills.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask, like, how do you get that.
Speaker 8: In terms of average? As far as I know, only
Speaker 8: two people have ever counted all thirty thousand, so hard
Speaker 8: to come up with a comparison.
Speaker 1: Oh, man, I think that if you were really feeling like,
Speaker 1: not super social, it would be nice to just be like,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to dip in the back and just
Speaker 1: count some quills for a while. Yeah, nobody's talked to me.
Speaker 1: Everywhere you google, every old yellowed mammalogy book you scour,
Speaker 1: you will find that thirty thousand quills quote. And I
Speaker 1: kept digging further and further for the true source, and
Speaker 1: it led me to a nineteen seventy two paper that
Speaker 1: then quoted er Hall's Mammals of Nevada, which is a
Speaker 1: famed and well respected nineteen forty six book which had
Speaker 1: no sided source. But every other paper I found cited
Speaker 1: the nineteen forty six book or each other. I was
Speaker 1: on this research loop. It felt like driving in a roundabout.
Speaker 1: But finally I located a more recent twenty seventeen paper
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Dairy and Veterinary Sciences by a
Speaker 1: researcher out of the University of Calgary, and it was
Speaker 1: titled getting to the point how many quills does a
Speaker 1: North American porcupine have? And the methodology section read the
Speaker 1: dorsal surface or back was denuded and the quills sorted.
Speaker 1: Quills were then counted by the number of sharp pointed ends.
Speaker 1: The results the author counted forty four thousand and six quills,
Speaker 1: which they note is forty six point seven percent greater
Speaker 1: than the original claim of thirty thousand quills made by E. R.
Speaker 1: Hall in nineteen forty six. Now this information means nothing
Speaker 1: to you, probably, but I needed to find out to
Speaker 1: get a little bit of closure in my life. Also,
Speaker 1: counting up to forty four thousand sounds tedious, but it
Speaker 1: has been done for science. People wanted to know when
Speaker 1: do they get the quills? Ruby Gordon, Issa Brillard, Olivia Lester,
Speaker 1: Gretchen Schroeder, Katie b. Already, Cheryl Butner, Brittany Corrigan, Nicole Kleinman,
Speaker 1: Sammy and Atleasta Young, Alexa Roth and Jonathan asked, is
Speaker 1: it painful for a mama porcupine to give birth. Julia
Speaker 1: Bingham wanted to know are they born spiky? When do
Speaker 1: their pricks become properly prickly? Chris Liss said, I pet
Speaker 1: a baby porcupine once right on his soft little snoop.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he didn't have sharp quills yet, So yeah,
Speaker 1: when do they start to grow those?
Speaker 8: And I cannot emphasize enough how cute porkupets are. It's
Speaker 8: like I can't and photographs do not capture the like,
Speaker 8: oh my god, They're so small and like so cute
Speaker 8: and just have no idea how painful they could be.
Speaker 8: But they are born with quills, but the quills haven't
Speaker 8: like hardened yet, so the quills are soft and they're
Speaker 8: born I think head first, so that you know, the
Speaker 8: quills are sort of pointing backwards in North American porcupines,
Speaker 8: so they're coming out not against the grain. And then
Speaker 8: within a couple of hours the quills will harden.
Speaker 1: Oh within a few hours. Yeah, And you said they're
Speaker 1: made of keratin. Is that kind of like having a
Speaker 1: soggy fingernail that dries out?
Speaker 8: That's a great question. I'm guessing it's like having a
Speaker 8: wet fingernail.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Interesting. This next one was asked by Charlotte Parkinson, Lyvia Callis,
Speaker 1: Lisa Gorman, Jennifer Lemon, Anthony Richards, Caitlin Morrison, Carol Catherine Vella,
Speaker 1: Emily Tatero, and Aurora Collin and Zed Shiragane wanted to know,
Speaker 1: in Zed's words, do they regrow the spines that they
Speaker 1: lose during altercations or is it just a one and
Speaker 1: done deal, Like do they shed them and regrow them
Speaker 1: like we do hair?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh so they just come and go.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that you might find porcupine quills just
Speaker 1: in the leaf litter in the forest.
Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely. I mean I think that you could. I
Speaker 8: think it's the proverbial needle in a haystack, trying to
Speaker 8: find a single quill in the leaf litter. But if
Speaker 8: they're fighting, like if the males are fighting, or you know,
Speaker 8: in some circumstances the females are more territorial and they
Speaker 8: will fight over territories, then they will quill each other.
Speaker 8: Or if a porcupine falls, then a bunch of quills
Speaker 8: come out. Like that's I think a more likely scenario
Speaker 8: where you might just find them in nature, where they've
Speaker 8: come out in sort of a pile rather than just
Speaker 8: a lone quill mouse.
Speaker 1: Paxson, Chris Curious, den Ice Sprouse, and Lisa Vers wanted
Speaker 1: to know what is the best way to remove quills
Speaker 1: from a pet if they go after a porcupine mouse
Speaker 1: asks Dana Sprouse Asks said they suck to yank out
Speaker 1: of a dog's nose. So, Deny, I'm sorry about your dog.
Speaker 1: How do vets get them out?
Speaker 8: I am not a vet. I think that they if
Speaker 8: there's a lot of them, I think they'll anesthetize them
Speaker 8: first and then just pull them out. I was reading
Speaker 8: that there's you know, so people talk about cutting them,
Speaker 8: like clipping them ahead of time to let air out
Speaker 8: or pressure out or something, and I think that might
Speaker 8: be sort of an old wives tale, and you got
Speaker 8: to just kind of go through with pliers and pull
Speaker 8: them out one by one and as soon as possible,
Speaker 8: otherwise they'll start migrating into the body and causing real problems.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I dip deeper into this topic and I
Speaker 1: found an article written by doctor Seth Bidam, a veterinarian
Speaker 1: and also presumably a hunter, as it was published in
Speaker 1: the magazine Gun dog. But he says that as long
Speaker 1: as the pop is safely restrained, you can use pliers
Speaker 1: or like a leatherman to grip them one by one
Speaker 1: at the base of the quill, and he writes, employ
Speaker 1: a firm and purposeful grip and pull with the same enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: But it might hurt a little, and so go slow
Speaker 1: and don't get greedy, his advice, or you risk breaking
Speaker 1: the quills off if you try to remove them, like
Speaker 1: several at a time. And when you're removing them, he says,
Speaker 1: put them all in one place, or like in a
Speaker 1: dish of water, so they don't roll around or get
Speaker 1: lost underfoot and then stab you doubly. Now, if the
Speaker 1: victim has a bunch around the eyes or in the mouth,
Speaker 1: Seth says, a vet visit is in order because there
Speaker 1: are nooks and crannies that quills can burrow into, like
Speaker 1: in the gums or the eye, and left undiscovered, that
Speaker 1: can lead to a lot of pain, obviously, and infection.
Speaker 1: And the vet also can sedate here poor dog, which
Speaker 1: if it were me, I'd be like, hell yeah, give
Speaker 1: me that sweet sweet nectar and render me numb. I'm
Speaker 1: out now. This article also digby the favor of busting
Speaker 1: flim flam, and that cutting quills does not make them
Speaker 1: easier to remove. It just wastes time while the tissue
Speaker 1: gets more inflamed and the quills kind of deepen their grip.
Speaker 1: And also, while if you love it lubit is generally
Speaker 1: good life advice, it does not apply to this situation,
Speaker 1: as Seth writes that it just results in little more
Speaker 1: than a slippery dog and tools that can't get their grip.
Speaker 1: And yeah, when in doubt see a vet veterinarians. We
Speaker 1: love you. Your work is hard. You're worth every penny.
Speaker 1: If my hairy daughter Gremy ever got needle blasted, I
Speaker 1: would be ubering a metavac. Emily Kreeker Benjamin Chante first,
Speaker 1: some question asker Charlie Eisman, Lindsay, Malone, and Issa wanted
Speaker 1: to know about their personality. Emily asked, do they have
Speaker 1: a vibe nervous, irritable, curious, chill? Chante said, I feel
Speaker 1: like porcupines always look so chill and calm. Do the
Speaker 1: quills mean that most predators leave them alone? Charlie Eisman says,
Speaker 1: are they as oblivious as they seem? Judgmental, but a
Speaker 1: good question what are they like?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean I think like every species has sort
Speaker 8: of a root personality, right, I mean, and I think
Speaker 8: it's okay to answer promorphize in that sense, like weasels
Speaker 8: are different from horses, are different from cows, and porcupines
Speaker 8: definitely have a type. They're kind of slow, they're pretty
Speaker 8: sweat they seem pretty chill. But then within that, I mean,
Speaker 8: like every other species, like dogs or cats or humans,
Speaker 8: like individuals have total personalities, like the angrier ones and
Speaker 8: the sweeter ones and the dopier ones, and so there's
Speaker 8: real variation that you can tell between.
Speaker 1: Them him through a beautiful comparison that will live with
Speaker 1: me forever.
Speaker 8: One Sorry, I meant to add like they're basically sloths, right,
Speaker 8: Like sloths are also full of oars, which means that
Speaker 8: they get very little energy from their diet and that's
Speaker 8: why they're so slow, And the only way to avoid
Speaker 8: predators for sloss is to like be up in the
Speaker 8: tree and camouflage as much as possible. North American porcupines
Speaker 8: are like just sort of another evolutionary solution to getting
Speaker 8: food from leaves as your main diet source. Is Like,
Speaker 8: they also are pretty low energy and not super smart,
Speaker 8: but rather than camouflage, they evolved this incredible defense mechanism.
Speaker 1: Porcupines, hell razor sloths forever Now? Are they well liked
Speaker 1: in nature? Are they lonely for other forest companions? Asked
Speaker 1: Cinnamon Wind, Costantini, Isa Brillard, Alexander Kid, Average Pie Colin Roboto,
Speaker 1: markty An, Alista Young Paba thirty four, and Emily Oh.
Speaker 1: A bunch of people did ask about social structure. Ewen
Speaker 1: Munroe wanted to know are they friends with any other
Speaker 1: woodland creatures? And a Yasmin Alu said, I saw a
Speaker 1: porcupine and an aquarium that was almost always curled up
Speaker 1: in a corner on its stick. Are they social creatures
Speaker 1: or was it depressed? They want to know should I
Speaker 1: contact the aquarium? But like, are they solitary creatures?
Speaker 8: Well, they're nocturnal, so I think that's like an issue
Speaker 8: with zeus in general for porcupines is they're probably just sleepy.
Speaker 1: Imagine it's the middle of the night in your bedroom
Speaker 1: and a steady stream of screaming, sticky children are just
Speaker 1: parading through being like, I don't know, her energy seems
Speaker 1: kind of off. You're like be gone off with you?
Speaker 1: But porcupines.
Speaker 8: Do they party, Yeah, it's sort of a mix. I
Speaker 8: have not seen them socializing with other forest creatures, but
Speaker 8: you know, I mean the mom is with her porcupet
Speaker 8: four plus months and they are you know, she's teaching them,
Speaker 8: like here's how you climb a tree, and these are
Speaker 8: the preferred foods that we like to eat. And then
Speaker 8: there are certain situations where they will hang out together,
Speaker 8: whether it's in places like California where they're sharing those
Speaker 8: those willow patches, or in places where it's snowy and
Speaker 8: cold and they'll share a den with each other. But
Speaker 8: they seem I think, I would say, generally kind of
Speaker 8: indifferent to one another. If they're not aggressively defending a territory, how.
Speaker 1: Are they getting these dents? Because some the Eurasian African
Speaker 1: an expert once told me that they burrow. The expert
Speaker 1: is you, and it was a few minutes ago. But
Speaker 1: when the argoreal ones, are they able to dig it
Speaker 1: den or do they find like an old badger haunt
Speaker 1: or they find like a rock cave.
Speaker 8: I think most places it's like rock piles or downed trees,
Speaker 8: or like hollow living trees or standing dead hollow trees,
Speaker 8: and so that's a really important part of porcupine ecology
Speaker 8: is in places in winter where they need a den
Speaker 8: like that could be a really limiting factor for porcupines
Speaker 8: is not having enough dens or enough shelter. In California,
Speaker 8: in this dune system, they were in like these burrows
Speaker 8: in the dunes, and it really we didn't witness it,
Speaker 8: but it really seemed like they were the ones that
Speaker 8: were digging out these burrows in the sand and maintaining
Speaker 8: them themselves.
Speaker 1: You know, a few people asked about nutrients. Verena run
Speaker 1: Stadler and Felipe Jimenez wanted to know why they like salt.
Speaker 1: Felipe said, I heard that porcupines have a surprising craving
Speaker 1: for salt and will even not on sweaty tools or
Speaker 1: clothes to get it. Does that have a physiological reason
Speaker 1: or is it just taste?
Speaker 8: And all this rose again, I just keep coming back
Speaker 8: to his book is so wonderful. But he was talking
Speaker 8: to us some camp owner, and the summer camp owner
Speaker 8: was like, why do only the boys cabins have porcupine
Speaker 8: damage on them?
Speaker 5: Oh my god?
Speaker 8: And all this rose is like because boys are peeing
Speaker 8: on their cabin. Wow, they so all vertebrates need to
Speaker 8: maintain a one to one ratio of potassium to sodium.
Speaker 8: It's like critical, Like potassium and sodium ions are used
Speaker 8: in nerve and muscle cell function, and a lot of
Speaker 8: herbivores plants tend to be really high in potassium, and
Speaker 8: so herbivores almost universally face this problem of how do
Speaker 8: you get enough sodium to balance the like huge amounts
Speaker 8: of potassium that you get through your diet. So, yeah,
Speaker 8: porcupines are one of those, and they will seek out
Speaker 8: salt sodium wherever they can find it.
Speaker 1: I watched a video of porcupine legend all this rose
Speaker 1: and a little shed in the woods that he uses
Speaker 1: to attract porcupines and.
Speaker 8: Rows, and like a bunch of other people use salt
Speaker 8: blocks to attract porcuby pines so they could catch them.
Speaker 1: Oh that's got to be such a fine for a porcupine.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean he and he was saying, like you know,
Speaker 8: it was like a shed outside of his cabin that
Speaker 8: he would just put these salt sticks out, and porcupines
Speaker 8: from kilometers around, once they learned about it, would come
Speaker 8: in to take advantage.
Speaker 1: Katie b, Matt Thompson, and Mallory Avery wanted to know
Speaker 1: about cars. Mallory says, my dad has a story of
Speaker 1: a porcupine eating the wires on the underside of his
Speaker 1: truck when parked in the woods. But up in the
Speaker 1: mountains in British Columbia, Kate b says, a lot of
Speaker 1: the trailheads have chicken wire that you can borrow to
Speaker 1: wrap around the base of your vehicle. Maybe they chew
Speaker 1: your brake lines. Is this flim flam? Have you heard
Speaker 1: of that much?
Speaker 8: Yeah, No, it's totally real. And for rodents in general,
Speaker 8: like we deal with that with jack rabbits, like they're
Speaker 8: always chewing on various lines and stuff. And I'm not
Speaker 8: totally sure on the chemical composition for the underside of
Speaker 8: a car in general, but for porcupines, especially the further
Speaker 8: north you go, you know cars are going to be
Speaker 8: covered in salt. So like we distribute a lot of
Speaker 8: sodium on the roads, which is a problem for porcupines
Speaker 8: who are assault driven in early spring and they results
Speaker 8: in a lot of roadkills. But I think that probably
Speaker 8: also is an ATTRACTI like, if you're driving around and
Speaker 8: you get a bunch of sodium splashed up to the
Speaker 8: underside of your car. That's probably also attracting them.
Speaker 1: If only we had like a whole episode about roadkill.
Speaker 1: Look at that boy, howdy we do? It's linked in
Speaker 1: the show notes roadkill Ecology. It's a banger Also, patrons
Speaker 1: Benjamin Susan, Osborne Magzaroni, and Shuley Rank. First time question
Speaker 1: asker asked about their numbers. Let's talk numbers. Well, you
Speaker 1: mentioned that cars can be they're, you know, an ultimate
Speaker 1: predator for them, essentially on accident. But how are populations doing?
Speaker 1: You mentioned that indigenous populations are asking where they went?
Speaker 1: But overall, what do you find in there?
Speaker 8: We don't really know, and there's just not like a
Speaker 8: really great funding source to study this at scale. There's
Speaker 8: a lot of of anecdotal evidence from western North America
Speaker 8: that they seem to be declining. There was a graduate
Speaker 8: student in Montana who set out to do her thesis
Speaker 8: on porcupines and then couldn't find any, and so her
Speaker 8: these has kind of shifted gears there, like there just
Speaker 8: seems to be a bunch of people everywhere are noticing
Speaker 8: there aren't as many porcupines as we used to see,
Speaker 8: and in New York they've gone through a couple of
Speaker 8: scabies outbreaks, which is really horrible and awful for them
Speaker 8: and pretty devastating for the populations.
Speaker 1: So there are a few theories about porcupine booms and busts,
Speaker 1: and tim says that one researcher, Richards Weitshirt's work shows
Speaker 1: that one single mountain lion can really reduce porcupine numbers
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. And another factor is a timber industry. And
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest and northern California, there used to
Speaker 1: be these old growth douglas for redwood stands, but porcupines
Speaker 1: do not love to eat them. Now, once the lumber
Speaker 1: industry mowed down all those older trees, what grew in
Speaker 1: their place were different plants sources that they loved like
Speaker 1: a stoner loves fourth meal. So their populations exploded, and
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, researchers predicted the natural decline from
Speaker 1: that baby porcupet boom, partly because timber companies could say, look,
Speaker 1: they're doing fine, but that was temporary. Now, speaking of
Speaker 1: a porcupine menu, so okay, they stripped the tree, they
Speaker 1: stripped the bark off the trees. Are they eating it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So in summer when there's leaves on the trees,
Speaker 8: they eat the leaves and then like fruit like apples
Speaker 8: and stuff like that. And then in winter there's no
Speaker 8: leaves left, and so they have to scrape the outer
Speaker 8: bark off and then they consume the inner bark, which
Speaker 8: is like a terrible nutritional strategy. They lose like twenty
Speaker 8: five percent of their body weight.
Speaker 1: Tim emailed me after this interview to say he wanted
Speaker 1: to shout out a couple of researchers, Kara Appel and
Speaker 1: Paris of Bellamark, who found that porcupines have more foresight
Speaker 1: than me, and they seem to scout out winter habitat
Speaker 1: during the summer, so ahead of times in the dunes
Speaker 1: where they worked, in the middle of summer, they would
Speaker 1: go out to their winter homes in the fordunes to
Speaker 1: look for the best shelters and then they just go
Speaker 1: back to those places that were most protected from the
Speaker 1: wind and the rain the following winter, so they remembered
Speaker 1: where to go. Also in terms of like moving to
Speaker 1: a new town for porcupines, Tim mentioned that oldest Rose
Speaker 1: hypothesized that they eat each other's poop and they rely
Speaker 1: on others' gut bacteria to digest the local plants. So
Speaker 1: Rose postulates that when a porcupine moves to a new
Speaker 1: area and gets the runs for meeting new kind of leaves,
Speaker 1: the best way to get the local bacteria is by
Speaker 1: eating another porcupines poop. Tummy's all better. But yes, porcupine
Speaker 1: decline is of course impacted by human interest, but.
Speaker 8: By damaging tree is they've become pests for timber operators,
Speaker 8: and so both like the FEDS and private timber companies
Speaker 8: spent the entire twentieth century like hunting and killing porcupines
Speaker 8: all over the Place's the reason why they're declining. But
Speaker 8: like the benefit is you get all of these dead
Speaker 8: and decad and trees and trees that are falling down,
Speaker 8: and trees that are exposed to fungus and stuff that
Speaker 8: almost surely like contributes to diversity, Like bugs are getting
Speaker 8: access to the inner bark that's drawing in woodpeckers. Woodpeckers
Speaker 8: are then like creating cavities in the trees. That's providing
Speaker 8: holes and dens and stuff for other mammals.
Speaker 1: And so we're timber industries in conjunction of the government
Speaker 1: putting like a hit, like a price on their heads,
Speaker 1: kind of like wolves.
Speaker 8: Yeah, up through the fifties, I mean, I think Vermont's
Speaker 8: killed like one hundred thousand porcupines per year, you know,
Speaker 8: just in one state every year, with a small bounty
Speaker 8: on their skins. And I think or hope that, you know,
Speaker 8: this next generation of like ecological foresters are beginning to
Speaker 8: appreciate the fact that some of these species that damage
Speaker 8: trees are contributing to overall diversity and maybe there's like
Speaker 8: a balance between cutting every tree down and killing every
Speaker 8: porcupine and like maybe leaving some so that they will
Speaker 8: help increase the health of the forest. And you know,
Speaker 8: mountain lions are doing fairly well in northern California and
Speaker 8: other parts of the Northwest. Cannabis growing uses a lot
Speaker 8: of rodenticide because porcupines come you know, not just porcupines,
Speaker 8: but rodents in general common gnaw on their water lines
Speaker 8: and probably eat their crops, and so that's you know,
Speaker 8: a huge issue for a lot of species now is
Speaker 8: the widespread application of rodenticide on both public and private lands,
Speaker 8: and it goes up the food chain.
Speaker 1: Do you think with the cannabis farms, are they just
Speaker 1: getting cooked. Are they just so baked?
Speaker 8: Yeah? Sure, yeah. I think a lot of animals probably
Speaker 8: are taking advantage of that. Yep.
Speaker 1: Interesting, they're like, listen, you be born with quills. You
Speaker 1: break your bones falling out of a tree. I need
Speaker 1: to unwined.
Speaker 8: It seems really hard for porcupines because I had this
Speaker 8: student where we put this accelerometer on that porcupine and
Speaker 8: it was like, the accelerometer is not recording anything, like
Speaker 8: it could be sleeping or walking or eating, and like
Speaker 8: the eccelero oters not moving at all. Like there's so
Speaker 8: chill to begin with that I can't even imagine what
Speaker 8: it would be like to be high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, rodents can get high from eating the ganja. Maybe
Speaker 1: not as high as your roommate who simmered it in ghee,
Speaker 1: but you know, like not not high. Are there populations
Speaker 1: doing okay? Or should we put save the porcupines like
Speaker 1: on our to do lists?
Speaker 8: That is on the to do list? So California I
Speaker 8: think lists it as a species of Special Concern, which
Speaker 8: is like the first step before getting on the endangered
Speaker 8: species list, which means that it's now eligible for like
Speaker 8: additional funding. And that's sort of where we're at. Is
Speaker 8: like there's a bunch of researchers across the western US
Speaker 8: who are noticing this problem and starting to think about, Okay,
Speaker 8: how do we actually count porcupines, and how do we
Speaker 8: get enough data longitudinally, like through time to see that
Speaker 8: they really have declined and not just from this sort
Speaker 8: of elevated baseline that we saw in the sixties and
Speaker 8: seventies after all these clear cuts, but like truly are
Speaker 8: disappearing from large parts of their range where they really
Speaker 8: should be. There's still lots of places, there are still
Speaker 8: lots of porcupines. It's not like a hair on fire situation,
Speaker 8: but it's if I had more time and money, that
Speaker 8: would definitely be a priority. Would be like just documenting
Speaker 8: and knowing how they're doing.
Speaker 1: I love that if you won Powerball, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: I'd be out there looking for porcupines.
Speaker 8: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I've been thinking about your life and you
Speaker 1: don't mind. And you have to have a vase full
Speaker 1: of quills somewhere, like you must have a collection of
Speaker 1: quills in a jar in a penholder. Where are they?
Speaker 1: How many do you have?
Speaker 8: I brought some to put on video so I can
Speaker 8: show you so and it's a combination of like, yeah,
Speaker 8: quills the North America porcupine quills that I've collected, and
Speaker 8: then also people just give me quills right like I
Speaker 8: found this one and are like, I'm friends a zoo
Speaker 8: keeper and had these extra like African crust of porcupine quills.
Speaker 8: Here have some. We actually ended up with the research
Speaker 8: we were doing, my grad students, Kara Apple and Parsa
Speaker 8: Bellamarch organized like giving most of the quills that we
Speaker 8: got to the tribes that we were working with, because
Speaker 8: like again, you know, they used to go out and
Speaker 8: get the quills by hand and then nowadays they have
Speaker 8: to mail order them. So I was like, we got
Speaker 8: a bunch of extra quills, like you guys should have these.
Speaker 1: You know, a few people Daisy Moser, who's up in Alaska, said,
Speaker 1: I know people appear in Alaska who throw blankets on
Speaker 1: them to collect the quills for making traditional jewelry. Daisy says,
Speaker 1: seems better than the alternative way of getting them, which
Speaker 1: is I imagine getting clubbed in the face with a tail.
Speaker 1: But is that traditionally how indigenous folks are getting them?
Speaker 1: And also a few people Lwink wanted to know as
Speaker 1: a craft or porcupine pills are useful as tools and
Speaker 1: part of kraft material. What's the best legal way to
Speaker 1: get them? And Olivia Lester wanted to know how do
Speaker 1: humans use them, like for webinry or tools or writing.
Speaker 1: What are the ways that porcupine quills are obtained by
Speaker 1: humans and what uses have you seen kind of like
Speaker 1: throughout history.
Speaker 8: So obtaining quills in modern times. A person that I
Speaker 8: talked to and Humble, who was like, I can't find
Speaker 8: porcupines on my normal route. She was like, you know,
Speaker 8: I just drive around and there were these roads where
Speaker 8: I would know at night I could go find a porcupine,
Speaker 8: see a porcupine, park the car, grab my. She used
Speaker 8: a towel rather than a blanket, you know, thwap the
Speaker 8: porcupine on the back, take the quills, and then you
Speaker 8: know you got a renewable, sustainable source of quills. So yeah,
Speaker 8: towel versus blanket method, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't hurt them the porcupine to eject them.
Speaker 8: I think, you know, I think probably like when you
Speaker 8: get to the point where you've got full coverage on
Speaker 8: the body, I'm guessing that not all of the quill
Speaker 8: has got pushed down and released and you are pulling
Speaker 8: some out, but I think it's probably a temporary and
Speaker 8: again better than you know, killing them, and definitely quills
Speaker 8: that way. Yeah. Uses like there's documentation of all kinds
Speaker 8: of things, and the quill work for decoration is the
Speaker 8: most beautiful I think, and widespread, and people dyed them
Speaker 8: like all kinds of incredible colors, like European colonizers would
Speaker 8: write about like they're using colors that we can't access,
Speaker 8: like yellows and purples and reds and blacks, and just
Speaker 8: really incredible weaving of the quills together and into other
Speaker 8: materials like deer skin, leather, rawhide for decoration on all
Speaker 8: kinds of clothing and bags and stuff like that. The
Speaker 8: bristles on the tail were used for hair combs and brushes.
Speaker 8: And then there's a couple of papers that claimed that
Speaker 8: in sugar maple country people would modify the quills to
Speaker 8: tap the maple syrup.
Speaker 1: So as a tool for decor for a bunch of uses.
Speaker 1: I mean to have that kind of characterize things, it's
Speaker 1: got to be valuable. What about flim flam? What's the
Speaker 1: most annoying misconception about porcupines that they.
Speaker 8: Shoot their quills. That's number one. Yeah, so they don't
Speaker 8: shoot quills. Yeah, nope, porcupines shoot their quills. You have
Speaker 8: to be pretty aggressive to get quilled, So that settles that.
Speaker 1: David Phillifranco, Alia Myers, PAPCA thirty four, Aaron White, Kurtz
Speaker 1: Wants and Blair see Kayla Meyers, Charlotte Short, Tina's and
Speaker 1: first time question askers Darien and Emily's mom and Don
Speaker 1: Ray Olivia, who bravely admitted to spending most of their
Speaker 1: life ahem for decades, they say, believing that porcupines shot
Speaker 1: their quills. Sonic the hedgehog style hearsay, heresy horsepucky fla flam,
Speaker 1: Now we know.
Speaker 8: And then number two I guess I would say, is
Speaker 8: the confusion over hedgehogs versus porcupines. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 8: hedgehogs are not even rodents and so totally evolved independently
Speaker 8: and same physical structure. They're also keratinized, but yeah, totally
Speaker 8: different species.
Speaker 1: I guess. Speaking of hardening carotinized the stuff, Deny Sprouse
Speaker 1: Zilekapevic wanted to know, in Deny's words, do they have
Speaker 1: red teeth. Do they have that orange teeth like we
Speaker 1: just did a beaver episode. Is there enamel that kind
Speaker 1: of like super hard on one side and then soft
Speaker 1: on the other, Yeah.
Speaker 8: Exactly, and then that creates the sort of chisel shape
Speaker 8: that they use to scrape bark off. And they're continually
Speaker 8: growing and just on the incisors right the front of
Speaker 8: the big incisors in the front are yeah. Orange. Oh.
Speaker 1: Last listener question, Potato Puffer wanted to know. Are their
Speaker 1: bellies soft?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, I guess compared to the dorsal side, there's.
Speaker 8: No quills on them. They've got the fur their belly
Speaker 8: is so yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, had to know. Last questions I always ask,
Speaker 1: and I know we've been talking about quills, we've been
Speaker 1: talking about leather gloves. Is getting killed the worst part
Speaker 1: of the job, or is it like meetings, like our
Speaker 1: meetings worse than getting quilled?
Speaker 8: The worst part of the job, honestly is I won't
Speaker 8: give you my bummer answer. The worst part of the job.
Speaker 1: Give me your bummer answer.
Speaker 8: When an animal dies. That's absolutely like the few times
Speaker 8: I've thought about quitting and doing something else. Is like
Speaker 8: you know, I mean and not just with porcupines but
Speaker 8: animals in general. Like if you're in the field and
Speaker 8: something goes wrong and you know that you like contributed
Speaker 8: to their death, that's pretty much the worst feeling in
Speaker 8: the world. The practical answer is like just the funding
Speaker 8: and trying to find ways to fund research that are
Speaker 8: that's in sort of this gray area where it's like
Speaker 8: it's hard to find the right funder who wants to
Speaker 8: pay for the stuff that you want to do and
Speaker 8: keep it going for a really long time.
Speaker 1: You need some sort of directory of Powerball winners. Yeah, benefactor, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need a benefactor in the renaissance, you need a
Speaker 1: pet patron of some guy. I hope someone listens to
Speaker 1: this and is like, as a billionaire, I've been looking
Speaker 1: for a pet cause and.
Speaker 8: It turns out, let's save the porcupines. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Teddy's doing a lot of work too for the brand image.
Speaker 1: You know, Teddy's getting paid handsomely and pumpkins and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, which just good. Like as an influencer, he's
Speaker 1: got like the Lamborghinian, what about the best?
Speaker 8: I have so many And like you know, on the
Speaker 8: teaching side, I get paid to learn and ask questions
Speaker 8: about stuff that I'm interested in and then share that
Speaker 8: information with other people and that's awesome. And then being
Speaker 8: able to find money to pay early career scientists to
Speaker 8: go into the field and like spend a summer out
Speaker 8: in the world studying animals that they're interested in is
Speaker 8: also like incredible just knowing that I've had the opportunity
Speaker 8: to support like you know, spending that much time with
Speaker 8: focused attention, like learning about some landscape is just an
Speaker 8: incredible thing that we've set up as a society to
Speaker 8: make happen.
Speaker 1: As the porcupine guy, Tim is just a beacon of knowledge,
Speaker 1: even for not smart questions.
Speaker 8: People text me all the not all the time, but like,
Speaker 8: you know, I know a true friend when they're like
Speaker 8: I saw a porcupine, here's a photo of it, or
Speaker 8: like my dog just quit got quilled, Like here's a
Speaker 8: photo of that. Those are you know, brightened my day
Speaker 8: when that happens. The best part of studying porcupines in
Speaker 8: the wild, though, was and it was a total surprise.
Speaker 8: The scale of the study area was pretty small, Like
Speaker 8: you could walk north south probably three hours and maybe
Speaker 8: an hour east west. Like from the minute that we
Speaker 8: got out there and started looking for porcupines. We just
Speaker 8: started naming things without even talking about it. It was
Speaker 8: just like, Oh, there's this location that this thing happened,
Speaker 8: we're going to call it that. And there's this really
Speaker 8: popular like willow stand that a bunch of different porcupines,
Speaker 8: We're going to call it this. And started naming the
Speaker 8: porcupines like it just felt very instinctive, like something that
Speaker 8: humans have been doing for a million years. Is Like
Speaker 8: walking around as a group and a team looking for
Speaker 8: animals and learning about the landscape that we're walking through
Speaker 8: was just really joyful. And seeing it that landscape through
Speaker 8: the porcupine's eyes and going to places that I would
Speaker 8: never go before, and like thinking about how they were
Speaker 8: using the landscape was just yeah, incredible.
Speaker 1: Do they have good eyes, by the way, I don't
Speaker 1: think so.
Speaker 8: I think it's mostly the nose, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So seeing the landscape through even better than the porcupines.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and not smelling whatever they're smelling.
Speaker 1: I hope to one day see one in the wild
Speaker 1: who knows at least I know what to look for.
Speaker 1: But thank you so much for letting me get to
Speaker 1: know porcupines. And my wish for you is it someone
Speaker 1: incredibly wealthy listens to this.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much, it's a pleasure. Thank you so
Speaker 8: much for your interest in porcupines.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't have an interest in porcupine exactly? Get real?
Speaker 8: Thanks everyone for your universal love of the best mammal
Speaker 8: on earth.
Speaker 1: So ask ecological people illogical questions because they are much
Speaker 1: less prickly than you'd fear. Thank you so so much
Speaker 1: to doctor Pan for such a lively discussion of these
Speaker 1: creatures who are so huggable, at least in our hearts.
Speaker 1: Now you can find out more about Tim's work and
Speaker 1: the Native Maryora Fish and Wildlife Society the links in
Speaker 1: our show notes and on our website, which is also
Speaker 1: linked in the show notes. Thank you to everyone supporting
Speaker 1: and submitting questions at patreon dot com, slash Ologies, which
Speaker 1: you can join for one hot dollar Ologies, merch is
Speaker 1: at ologiesmorch dot com. Also side note, we have a
Speaker 1: kid friendly and classroom safe spin off show called Smologies,
Speaker 1: which you can find anywhere you get podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: look for the new green artwork by Portland based muralist
Speaker 1: Bonnie Dutch. You can spread the word on Smologies. We
Speaker 1: are at Ologies on Instagram a blue sky I'm at
Speaker 1: Ali Ward. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for admitting the
Speaker 1: Ologies podcast Facebook group. Avelene Malik makes our professional transcripts.
Speaker 1: Kelly ar dwyed as website. Noel Dilworth is our lovely
Speaker 1: scheduling producer whose ceiling collapsed during our recent la rains.
Speaker 1: Not a big deal at least doing great. We're doing
Speaker 1: great here. Susan Hale is our managing director who keeps
Speaker 1: this guy from falling. Jake Chafee is our capable and
Speaker 1: very boopable assistant editor, and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio
Speaker 1: is our lead editor and a Canadian who is thankfully
Speaker 1: still friends with US Americans. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme
Speaker 1: music and if you still around to the end of
Speaker 1: the episode, I tell you a secret, And this week
Speaker 1: it's that. Last week I read a review that began
Speaker 1: thanks Handsome, and I just thought this was a reference
Speaker 1: to me being like your internet father and also just
Speaker 1: generally I guess, dapper and appealing, and it made me
Speaker 1: feel really good. But it turns out that Thanks Handsome
Speaker 1: was actually in reference to the podcast Handsome, which had
Speaker 1: just shouted out Ologies. So thank you to the Handsome's
Speaker 1: over at Handsome I'm embarrassed. Also, please keep speaking out
Speaker 1: about our park service employees, our federal workers, our scientists, researchers,
Speaker 1: public servants, all the people who work so passionately and
Speaker 1: diligently to make the United States I live in, and
Speaker 1: everyone on the globes, present and futures better read the news.
Speaker 1: Call Congress. People, keep shouting, keep learning, keep telling ologists
Speaker 1: how much we love them. Okay, DoD word over and
Speaker 1: out till next week. B'rebye, pacadermist College, mombology, cryptozoology, lithology, yeology, meteorology, theology, technology, seriology, semology.
Speaker 6: Don't stoll me, porcupine, caim me, give me, give me
Speaker 6: hug get value.
Speaker 2: You can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club
Speaker 2: card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal
Speaker 2: deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert
Speaker 2: for only sixteen euro like succulent board, be approved virus
Speaker 2: shang the strip loin steaks with pepper corn butter or
Speaker 2: delicious firous chicken Parmeshana served with creamy potato gratam and
Speaker 2: her mix of rainbow root vegetables and enjoy Goozillionaire or
Speaker 2: soldier caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop in store
Speaker 2: or online Tesco. Every little helps available the most stores.
Speaker 2: Prices very and express.