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Speaker 1: At stop and stopping and stop to extant.

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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to episode three of Mapping Bigfoot,

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and tonight's guest is doctor Mark Meriwether Vorderbrugen, PhD. He's

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a very interesting guy that I just happened to come

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across on my Instagram feed and I could not get

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off of his account. Then I found his website and

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I could not get off of that, and then my

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wife called me to bed. So I had to have

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him on the podcast because I think he's going to

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share with us a lot of interesting tidbits, a lot

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of interesting insights, a lot of interesting facts about what

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sasquatch or Bigfoot might eat in the field and how

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that might affect the ecology of the area, etc. Etc.

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Let me run through his bio here because it's very impressive,

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just so you guys know a little bit about his background,

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and then I'll bring him on and we can get started.

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Doctor Mark Meriweather Voordebergen, PhD is often somewhat jokingly described

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as a scientist raised by wolves. Having a MS in

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medicinal chemistry and a PhD in physical organic chemistry, he

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brings science into the world of wild, edible and medicinal plants.

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On the science side, he has sixteen patents. I've never

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talked to anybody with sixteen patents by the way, ever,

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so I'm already out of my league. But this is

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really exciting. And numerous articles and research journals from his

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career as a chemist, but his true love is plants

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and the miracles they contain. Since two thousand and eight,

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his website Forgingtexas dot com has been one of the

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top wild edible slash medicinal plant sites on the Internet.

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He's written countless forging articles for a wide variety of magazines,

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taught hundreds of forging walkabouts, appeared on radio, TV, and

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podcast galore podcasts like this one or maybe like this one.

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I don't know how many bigfoot podcasts he's been on.

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We'll have to ask. Wrote the acclaimed books Idiot's Guide

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to four, an outdoor adventures guide for foraging, and was

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co creator of the Wazoo survival gear foraging Bandana. In

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twenty twenty, he made the biggest leap of his life

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to become the Medicine Man from Medicine Man Plant Company,

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where he can finally bring forth the ancient plants that

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can still help with modern issues. In addition to all this,

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in twenty twenty four, he started the Texas Village Healer

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Initiative with the goal of training an herbalist healer for

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every town, village, and neighborhood. And without further ado, let

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me bring him on to the stage here so he

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can say hello to everyone. Let's see add to stage. Well, welcome,

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doctor Meriweather. How are you today?

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Speaker 3: I am doing great. I'm really excited to be here.

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Speaker 2: Well, thank you, thank you for coming. That's a heck

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of an intro. When you first sent it to me,

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I was like, wow, Like it's very impressive. I'm very

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grateful to someone of your stature on the show. Thank you,

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Thank you for coming on my joke as.

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Speaker 3: I weaponized my AHD, you know, attention deficit disorder and

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turned it to a force of good.

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Speaker 2: Well, that makes two of us. I hope if you

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wouldn't mind tell us a little more in your own

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words about you know, foraging Texas and your initiative and

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your passion for all of the things you do. I

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don't even know where to start what to ask you

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about it. There's so much to talk about.

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Speaker 3: So actually I can help you there because I've done

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a few of these. I'm originally from Minnesota. That's where

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I was born and raised, and that's where I had

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my first knowledge of Bigfoot. Every summer, our boy Scout

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group would go to the Mini Point Scout camp up

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in northern Minnesota, and the Legends of the Bigfoot of

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the Sasquatch was there, and they actually in the lodge.

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They had a plaster cast of it. But that's also

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where I first started learning foraging. Both my parents were

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children of the Great Depression, and one of the ways

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people go through that terrible time was through their knowledge

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of wild edible plants. I have two brothers. My older

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brother is ten months older. My younger brother is thirteen

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months younger. My parents quickly figured out the only way

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they were going to survive the three of us is

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if they took us out into the woods every day.

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We figured out how to get home, but they kept trying.

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But while we were out there, they just taught us

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what they learned when they were growing up out in

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the wild. And so there was this bond from the

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absolute beginning of being out in the wild, and that

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has guided my entire career. I've always been fascinated. Here's

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the secret. I'm actually kind of lazy, and nature has

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solved so many problems already that in my career as

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a chemist, my specialty was basically stealing ideas from other

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nature and passing them off as mine. It worked really well,

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Like I said, sixteen patents, but biomimicry. So you know,

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nature is amazing, and hopefully by the end of the

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podcast you'll have even a better idea of of how

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amazing nature is and in particular how non human creatures

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acts us and utilize it.

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Speaker 2: I'm very excited to get into that, but first I've

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got to say we got a little bit in common.

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My parents also kicked us out. I'm one of three

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boys as well. I happen to be the oldest, so

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we have that in common. And they definitely kicked us out.

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We've grown up in upstate New York, and they were

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just like, get out, it's a nice day, get out

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of the house. So I know exactly what you mean

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when you say that, because we were pretty much wild

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animals ourselves. So if it was out there to forage

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in New York, blackberries and birch bar you know, the

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birch twigs that tastes like root beer and all those

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kinds of things. We learned very quickly what the tasty

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treats are out in out as you say that mother

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nature provides, So I guess that's a great segue into

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kind of the first part of the chat that I

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want to have is wilderness food sources. So what types

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of food sources are available in the wild that could

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sustain As you allude to a non human creature that's

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pretty large, like Bigfoot, I'd imagine there's a ton, but

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it could vary depending on what part of the country

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you're in, what kind of environment you're in, et cetera.

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Speaker 3: Okay, good question, and the best way to go about

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answering this is to talking a bit about the digestive tract,

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basically that of humans and then that of all the

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other primates. Really, because the assumption is Bigfoot is a primate,

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Humans have a very very interesting digestive system. Compared to

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all the primates, ours is significantly shorter. Our small intestines

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are significantly shorter than any other primate when you take

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overall body size. The reason for this is we figured

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out how to cook food. By cooking food, we're breaking

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it down, we're making it more digestible, so we are

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able to get more nutrients from it, so we didn't

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have to spend as much time and energy to gather

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up all this food. Now, if you say you look

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at a gorilla or chimpanzee and assume there hasn't been

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any indication that sasquatch had, I'm going to call it

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sasquatch because that's what I grew up. I go back

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and forth.

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Speaker 2: It depends on the conversation. So I think I go

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for it. Whatever you're most comfortable with everybody, and everybody

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will know, okay.

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Speaker 3: So assuming the sausquatch digestive system is more similar to

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say a gorilla, let's focus on that. Looking at a gorilla,

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they spend about fifty percent of their waking time eating.

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About forty seven percent of the food they're eating during

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that time is fruits, and the main reason for fruits

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is well, for one thing, gorillas don't normally go and

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drink from streams or puddles or anything. They actually get

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a majority of their water from their food rather than

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slurping up a pond water or something like that. So

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they are not limited to being around bodies of water.

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We can assume the same with subsquatch.

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Speaker 2: Can I ask a question there really quickly? I'm sorry

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to jump in, but no, it's something you sparked the

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curiosity there when you said the gorillas get most of

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their water from the food they eat. Is that also

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an evolutionary benefit to avoid parasites, for example, and things

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like that that may be lurking in that stagnant water

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that they would have to drink from.

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Speaker 3: Most definitely, I would say probably more the bacteria type

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like stuff like yeah, yeah, protozoa, things of that nature,

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because there's tapeworm and pinworms and everything else all over

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the ground too. Okay, So but it definitely it definitely helps.

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It makes life easier. You're not tied into a space.

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But again, looking at.

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Speaker 2: That, the.

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Speaker 3: Normal range of a gorilla is let's see, sorry, I

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have to look at my notes here, please, Okay, Yeah,

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the home the home range of a gorilla is about

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one to five miles. They spend their life in that

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area and they only move about one third of a

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mile per day. Okay, so they're not moving very far.

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And so if you don't have to go find water

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and so forth, that allows him to go in the

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deep jungle in the you know, the places where there

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may not be standing water all the time. But so

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they're going back, they're eating their food. Overall, they eat

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about forty pounds of plant material per day. Let me

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let me back that up, depending on the primate, but

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so like the gorilla, it's mainly forty pounds of plant material.

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Gorillas have also been known to eat some insects, snails,

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even a small lizard occasionally, and those are some of

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the protein sources, but it's mainly plant matter. And of

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that plant matter, about forty seven percent is fruit, and

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people think, okay, fruit high in sugar calories. That's where

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they're getting their calories. Because the basic gorilla five eleven

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five hundred pounds, the estimate is around eight thousand calories

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per day. That's a lot, even if you're eating I'm

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not going to do the math. Forty seven percent of okay,

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I'm going to do the math. It's around eighteen pounds

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of fruit that they're eating. And people like that, so

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that's where they're getting I'm.

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Speaker 2: Sorry, how do you like them? Apples?

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Speaker 3: I say, I'm a dad. I love puns, So yeah.

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Speaker 2: I'm a dad now too. So you're gonna I'm gonna

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sprinkle them in. Feel free by all means please.

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Speaker 3: Oh, excellent, excellent. But truly, where they get a lot

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of the calories is from the leaves and the pith

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of plants and what we normally consider to be the

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insoluble cellulosic fiber. Okay, but their digestive system and their

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teeth and their jaw as such, they spend a lot

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of time showing the stuff up, grinding the plant material

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up as small as they can get and they swallow it,

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and then their digestive system with this huge long trail,

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they can actually break the cellulose down into calories basically

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long chain fatty acids and other compounds of carbohydrates. So

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a lot of their calories are simply coming from leaves,

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from bark, from twigs, from plant pits. So they the

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fruit is great, But there's like chimpanzees on the savannah

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that basically eat grass and leaves. There's not a lot

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of food out there, right, So when it comes down

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to Sasquatch, it is believable that he spends a lot

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of time just eating leaves and you know, stationary grabbing

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what he can eat and shoving in his mouth. So

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I'm I was doing some math, because you know, I'm

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a scientists, and so forth, looking at you know, the gorillas,

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and then scaling it up to the gidenta gigantapithesis that

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the big.

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Speaker 2: Prehistoric epithecus.

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Speaker 3: There we go, I think identipithecus. And so ten people

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about one hundred and ten sorry one pounds, estimated calorie

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requirement in was about sixteen thousand calories.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 3: Wow. Now one of the interesting things about his teeth

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what they found. I love ah history and all this stuff,

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So I had to go down the rabbit hole of

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you know, what do we know about their teeth? Because

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the teeth tell you a lot about the diet. Giant molars,

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very strong jaws, very adept at grinding up the plant material,

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the leaves, the twigs, that sort of thing. But also

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there are some other interesting wear marks on them that

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indicated he was also hehy was also pulling up roots

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and tubers. There are signs that there was dirt attached

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to the food that the gigantopithesis was eating. And so

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if we throw roots and tubers in there, that actually

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increases the foodsers because a lot of roots and a

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lot of plants store calories down in the roots, so

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it makes it that much easier. Right. It also gives

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you a sign to look for of holes in the

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ground once you identify particular plants that produce a I'm

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not going to say edible tuber, just a tuber because

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and we say edible tuber, we're talking human not other creatures.

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And we know, you know, dogs can't take chocolate, you know,

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things like that. Just because the wing is not edible

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for us does not mean it wouldn't be edible for

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the ages.

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Speaker 2: I have a question for some of the listeners when

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you say tubers, what would be an example of a

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well known plant like a cattail, Right, is that a tuber?

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Speaker 3: That would be a rhizome.

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Speaker 2: But a potato okay.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so a potato is like a you know, a

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tuber is a lump of starch basically. Okay, so a potato,

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jerusalm arta choke. Those are out there that grow the

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elephant ear tao, Okay, those sort of things. One of them. Oh,

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it's edible, but you have to treat it in a

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special way otherwise it's like eating fiberglass.

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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, well we'll have to stand after the show

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for that one.

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Speaker 3: Okay, a rhizome a so cattail rise. You have a

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bunch of cattails and then they have a base with roots,

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and then they'll have another root that runs across, and

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then another set of cattails will run up, so you'll

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have this thick root that connects the different cattail clusters,

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and then that is an excellent sort of starch in

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calories too. Okay, So going back to this, you know,

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a one one one hundred pound creature needing sixteen thousand

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calories a day. That sounds like something that would just

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be you know, vacuuming up the ecosystem.

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Speaker 2: It's like the size of a cow, right, and that's

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that's a normal yeah, cattle.

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Speaker 3: Because to put things in perspective, because that helps everyone

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understand what we're talking about. A moose is bigger. Okay,

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Mooses are around one thousand, six hundred pounds. We know

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they eat seventy pounds of plants a day and they're

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calories is way up there. So a moose theoretical, well,

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a moose would very likely be eating more plant matter

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per day than the gigantipithos.

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Speaker 2: So I might I might title the episode uh, gigantopithecus.

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Speaker 3: There we go.

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Speaker 2: We might have to. That's so funny. So and.

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Speaker 3: My I don't want to say encounters my my secondary

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what would be close encounters of the second kind where

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you know, basically talking to people that supposedly had encountered

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and so forth. We're talking seven eight feet tall, maybe

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maybe six hundred pounds something like that. So not the

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giant gigantopithos GISs this this thing, So one could scale

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back the diet. So, Uh, you mentioned you're a hunter.

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I'm a hunter. I have not hunted moose. I've lived

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in places where there are moose upstate New York, Vermont

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and New Hampshire and all that sort of thing. In

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those areas where there's a lot of intermingling of animals

284
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and humans. Moose are everywhere Alaska. My brother lives up

285
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in Alaska, so he has a moose eating his jack

286
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lanterns every year.

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Speaker 2: Right like the tea when you go Montana, et cetera.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but when you go out into the wild, if

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you hunt elk or moose up in Saskatchewan or something

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like that, there's no guarantee you're gonna find one.

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Speaker 2: Oh, don't I know? It sadly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's very possible. Where this is all taking us,

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is that, yes, it would be very easy from a

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food point of view for the Sasquatch to live in Saskatchewan,

295
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the big thicket here in Texas, the big trackless wastelands

296
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of wonderful nature that we generally haven't invaded yet.

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Speaker 2: I think that's a really interesting point because one of

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the things I talked about. Being a G I. S guy,

299
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my background is spatial analysis, right, so I talk about

300
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you just touched on it, the big tractless wastelands quote unquote,

301
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the vast the big trackless areas. Sure, yeah, but there's

302
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the The landscape of North America alone is just so

303
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vast when you really fly over and look and really

304
00:19:47,079 --> 00:19:50,799
pay attention to areas like I just mentioned, for example, Wyoming,

305
00:19:51,039 --> 00:19:56,319
the Mountain States, even Canada to Canada especially is really

306
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sparsely populated and there's so much room for wildlife. And

307
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I think talking about all these different areas as well

308
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sparked another question for me. Like you said, there's a

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lot of food out there, and I think we perhaps

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were talking about it before the show started. But the Northeast,

311
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for example, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York versus Texas is

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a great example. Those foods that are available and the

313
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resources that are available. In my opinion, and I'm a

314
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lay person when it comes to really the detailed analysis

315
00:20:33,200 --> 00:20:35,640
of what's available. But in my opinion or my assumption,

316
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I should say that those two areas are going to

317
00:20:39,920 --> 00:20:42,839
be vastly different. So is that going to influence the

318
00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:47,400
foraging abilities of a creature like sasquatch? Is that going

319
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to influence their diet, their health, the condition of their teeth,

320
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all the above? Right? So what would be key differences

321
00:20:55,680 --> 00:20:59,480
for some some areas across North America? Perhaps, Like what

322
00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:03,920
would be your assumption that a creature like bigfootwood forage

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in the Northeast versus the Pacific Northwest versus Texas, et cetera.

324
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What are the key differences maybe that we could analyze

325
00:21:12,920 --> 00:21:15,680
and look at and maybe help predict their behavior in

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those areas.

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Speaker 3: Excellent question. And before I get into that, let's keep

328
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something in mind. The ecosystems that are there now, We're

329
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not there five hundred years ago, two thousand years ago,

330
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two hundred thousand years ago.

331
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Speaker 2: It's a very good point.

332
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Speaker 3: And so we've really altered, especially up in the New

333
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:42,160
England area and the upper North, like the Big Thicket

334
00:21:42,240 --> 00:21:44,839
down here in Texas that still goes back to pre

335
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Western invasion. So and same with a lot of the

336
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Pacific Northwest. So like any like humans, really any subsquats

337
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up there, had to adapt to these changes. Now, what

338
00:22:02,359 --> 00:22:05,759
were they eating? One of the big differences between up

339
00:22:05,920 --> 00:22:08,920
north and down here in Texas where we're located.

340
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Speaker 2: Winter you hit my next question. Yeah, changes.

341
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and so during the winter months there aren't all

342
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:25,319
the normal leaves there, aren't the maple leaves, aren't the

343
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sweet m leaves, aren't you know, the cattail rhizomes all

344
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that m Deer survive, moose survive, chipmunks, skunks, beavers, all

345
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that survived. Who's to say the susquatch is not spending

346
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part of its time gathering up storing the leaves or

347
00:22:46,559 --> 00:22:52,279
something Elsewhere are they rating beaver dams for? You know,

348
00:22:52,400 --> 00:22:55,079
the bark, because we that bark is one of the things,

349
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not just the other bark, but also the inner bark.

350
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If you've been in places with porcupine and deer in

351
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the winter, you'll see the trees as high up as

352
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the deer they're eating the bark on there. Just to

353
00:23:07,759 --> 00:23:10,240
go sideways for a second, pine trees. You got a

354
00:23:10,279 --> 00:23:12,960
lot of pine trees up there, the inner bark, the

355
00:23:13,079 --> 00:23:16,440
cambium layer, the living layer with the xylomin floam. The

356
00:23:17,559 --> 00:23:21,079
average calorie content of that is about four hundred to

357
00:23:21,240 --> 00:23:26,200
six hundred calories per pound of fresh wet bark. So

358
00:23:26,759 --> 00:23:32,200
there's bark, there's you know, the bark, there's the spruce tips,

359
00:23:32,279 --> 00:23:35,640
the pine needles. That's not a problem for them to

360
00:23:35,839 --> 00:23:40,720
eat one. I could assume, you know, any basically any

361
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sort of plant. And also if they're getting their plant,

362
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or if they're getting their calories from the breaking down

363
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:54,839
of the cellulose, the plant doesn't have to be fresh.

364
00:23:56,319 --> 00:24:01,039
The dried leaves are still it's mainly the it's not

365
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:04,240
going to be the healthiest time of a year. But

366
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definitely there's nothing to say with their digestive tract that

367
00:24:09,279 --> 00:24:11,720
there's no reason they can't be eating the dead leaves

368
00:24:11,759 --> 00:24:13,799
that they're finding or that they stored.

369
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think I think you touched on a

370
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:21,680
really interesting thought for me that I can't believe I

371
00:24:21,799 --> 00:24:26,200
never had. I'm actually embarrassed to say this, but perhaps

372
00:24:26,319 --> 00:24:28,640
this is a whatever. I don't even care. That's why

373
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we're having this podcast so we can have new thoughts

374
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and outside perspectives. And the when you said perhaps they're

375
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storing food, and I thought of squirrels, Right, they have innately,

376
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,319
they have that evolutionary behavior they're going to I mean,

377
00:24:43,319 --> 00:24:47,640
that's how they It's a symbiotic relationship, I guess, between

378
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:50,359
oak trees and squirrels, right, that's how the oak trees

379
00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:55,359
Germany and spread and squirrels survived the winter. And I've

380
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:59,119
just sat here picturing, you know, bigfoot picking up accorns,

381
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:02,559
you know, and putting them in a pot, hiding them

382
00:25:02,559 --> 00:25:04,960
in a stump somewhere or something and last in the winter.

383
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:08,920
And that was such an interesting point because you know,

384
00:25:09,079 --> 00:25:14,359
I've never read or talked to anybody in this like

385
00:25:14,559 --> 00:25:16,279
on this side of it, in the community where people

386
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:20,000
even suggest that. So those are already two things you've

387
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,599
already mentioned in the time we've been on the call

388
00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:26,920
signs to look for when they're digging for tubers or rhizomes.

389
00:25:27,039 --> 00:25:30,680
And also then perhaps they gather and store food to

390
00:25:30,759 --> 00:25:33,039
make it through the winter when food is scarce they

391
00:25:33,079 --> 00:25:36,200
need higher chloric intake. All those types of things that's

392
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,480
a really interesting thought. I'm I'm definitely going to carry

393
00:25:39,519 --> 00:25:44,240
that with me and perhaps make a map of trees

394
00:25:44,319 --> 00:25:48,680
that have nuts and fruits like that that are available

395
00:25:48,799 --> 00:25:51,240
throughout the winter and different you know, when food is scarce.

396
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:53,799
Really good thought. Thank you for sharing that.

397
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:57,839
Speaker 3: And just you mentioned squirrels. Squirrels aren't the only ones.

398
00:25:58,319 --> 00:26:05,519
The different mice and they store food. Rats store food, beavers, muskrats,

399
00:26:06,559 --> 00:26:10,359
things like that. They all gather stuff up for and

400
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:14,359
put it in their their hubble just to go sideways

401
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:19,119
for a second. Ye please, Jerusalem artichokes. It's a tuber

402
00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:24,480
firm from a specific type of sunflower. The particular pack

403
00:26:24,599 --> 00:26:27,519
rat would dig those up, store them and it's hollow

404
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,880
tree or its little nest, and then every soften the

405
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:33,799
Native Americans would come by and rate it and take

406
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:36,119
the troopers because they were food for them too, and

407
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:40,319
they would leave the mouse some tobacco as a gift

408
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:43,279
in exchange for the tubers. You took your food, but

409
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:47,559
have a smoke, kid, you know. So it's it's it's

410
00:26:48,079 --> 00:26:52,799
not an uncommon thing in nature to store food. We

411
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:55,599
don't think of them doing that. You mentioned the scrolls

412
00:26:55,599 --> 00:26:59,119
they bear, but take it another step. If you're out

413
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:00,799
in the woods and you see a pile of leaves,

414
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:03,599
are you going to think anything about this pile of leaves? No,

415
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:08,960
it's not even going to register moment. Yeah, and you

416
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,480
wouldn't happen to Wait, there's a mixture of leaves here,

417
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:15,200
you know, all kind of follow It's so something to

418
00:27:16,319 --> 00:27:20,599
add to the the signs of subsquatch. That's very big

419
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,759
piles of leaves, especially a mixture.

420
00:27:23,839 --> 00:27:30,079
Speaker 2: Mixture of leaves. Interesting, and I'm learning so much. This

421
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:34,880
is great. It's the fact that it's it's already a

422
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:42,519
common human behavior to raid stores from wildlife. That's I mean,

423
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:45,920
I'm sure that's doesn't a far it's not a far

424
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,240
leap for that to be perhaps a behavior that bigfoot

425
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:52,400
would have as well. So and other animals will also

426
00:27:52,599 --> 00:27:55,480
raid other animals stores all the time, right, So this

427
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:59,039
is just very very informative. And we haven't even gotten

428
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:00,000
through the first second.

429
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 3: And great, I'm thinking that the chimpanzees sticking the stick

430
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:08,720
into the tormat mound, but they're also going after honey.

431
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:13,279
A lot of primates understand honey, good stuff. Yeah, so yeah,

432
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,359
this is something that they have figured out. Other animals

433
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:18,079
may produce things that I want to eat.

434
00:28:19,079 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 2: You mentioned, honey, and this this is actually one of

435
00:28:21,759 --> 00:28:25,920
my next questions, and it's into the next category if

436
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:30,119
I can make the jump to medicinal plant use, because honey,

437
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:39,559
is I believe like nature's anti bacterial elixir? And one

438
00:28:39,599 --> 00:28:42,319
of my questions is I think this is great that

439
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:45,599
you brought up, Honey. Is it possible or likely that

440
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:49,880
Bigfoot would use medicinal plants to survive or learn knowledge

441
00:28:50,079 --> 00:28:53,599
about how plants you know, if it's sick, what plants

442
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,400
help it, or what plants keep, for example, eating certain

443
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:59,599
plants to keep maybe mosquitoes away or things like that. Right,

444
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:03,039
Is that likely or possible? Or do you know any

445
00:29:03,079 --> 00:29:06,079
examples of animals that do that? Oh? Yeah, So.

446
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:11,079
Speaker 3: In the wild, quite a few different types of animals

447
00:29:11,279 --> 00:29:16,079
have been noted as using plants in a medicinal way.

448
00:29:16,599 --> 00:29:18,680
The reason they feel it is being used in a

449
00:29:18,759 --> 00:29:22,559
medicinal way either the creature is using it in an

450
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:26,359
unusual way like rubbing it against its skin, okay, or

451
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:30,000
it's a plant that it wouldn't normally eat, but then

452
00:29:30,319 --> 00:29:33,039
when it does eat it, they notice a change in

453
00:29:33,119 --> 00:29:39,799
the health of the animal. So birds dogs, elephants, bears, weasels, monkeys, chimpanzees.

454
00:29:40,799 --> 00:29:47,480
Chimpanzees have been seen to use thirteen different plants medicinally, orangutangs, bumabos,

455
00:29:47,599 --> 00:29:51,359
and an assortment of monkeys. One of the really famous

456
00:29:52,039 --> 00:29:57,400
studies of plants are animals using plants involved a troop

457
00:29:57,480 --> 00:29:59,359
of monkeys. I want to say. It was down in

458
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:04,839
South America, yea. And for months the researchers track the

459
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:06,839
monkeys and one of the nice things about these monkeys

460
00:30:07,039 --> 00:30:09,480
is in the morning, when it'd wake up, it would defecate.

461
00:30:09,519 --> 00:30:11,440
It'd be up in the tree and it would defecate.

462
00:30:12,119 --> 00:30:16,960
And so the researchers were able to track each monkey.

463
00:30:17,279 --> 00:30:18,960
They you know, they had a number on each monkey,

464
00:30:19,039 --> 00:30:21,680
and they could track the feces from it, and they

465
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:23,880
would study it over the course of this year to

466
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:26,880
see what changes in what was going on there. They

467
00:30:27,319 --> 00:30:32,119
found a thing. As the content of worms increased in

468
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:36,319
the feces, there was a point where the monkey was

469
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:40,039
then seeing taking these certain leaves that it never ate otherwise.

470
00:30:40,519 --> 00:30:43,839
They were very rough, scratchy leaves, and they would make

471
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,400
stacks of them and roll them up into a thick

472
00:30:46,519 --> 00:30:51,599
tube and swallow it whole and then the next day

473
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:57,680
the feces would just be absolutely loaded with worms. And

474
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:00,559
so what the thing was doing is it was swallowing

475
00:31:00,599 --> 00:31:05,000
this thing and it basically scraped along the intestines dislodging

476
00:31:05,119 --> 00:31:10,000
the worms to reduce the worm load, which there's a

477
00:31:10,039 --> 00:31:11,519
lot of stress and organisms.

478
00:31:11,319 --> 00:31:14,759
Speaker 2: Like a pipe brush, right yeah, like yeah, wow.

479
00:31:14,759 --> 00:31:19,400
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, so that sort of thing. Yeah wow.

480
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 2: Okay, So if hypothetically, I'm gonna throw a hip hypothetical

481
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,680
at you, if we're both in Texas, and if I'm

482
00:31:28,799 --> 00:31:37,000
out in the Texas Prairie and i i I'm a

483
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:39,880
I'm a big foot or a sasquatch, and now I'm

484
00:31:40,079 --> 00:31:46,039
I've somehow become loaded with parasites. What plants here or

485
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:49,960
locally would would I be looking for if I were

486
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:52,759
sasquatch in in a in a bad spot, I'm not

487
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:55,920
feeling good? What could I do to make you? Know,

488
00:31:56,119 --> 00:31:57,000
to to recover?

489
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 3: Okay? So down here in actually all across North America,

490
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:06,920
we have a very good tree that actually contains anti

491
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:10,920
parasitic compounds, and that is the black walnut, Okay, and

492
00:32:11,079 --> 00:32:13,880
the leaves, the bark, the nut husks, and so forth.

493
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:18,920
There's a juggalone, which is very anti parasitic, so it's

494
00:32:19,119 --> 00:32:21,759
very likely they would go that way, or yarrow or

495
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:25,400
roue or some of the other things that have those

496
00:32:25,559 --> 00:32:28,960
anti parasitic rather than doing the scraping thing. But even

497
00:32:29,039 --> 00:32:32,880
with the scraping thing, the slippery elm and the American elms,

498
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:34,559
they have these big leaves or about the size of

499
00:32:34,599 --> 00:32:38,839
my hand, very rough. It's kind of interest because all

500
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:41,319
the hair is point in the same direction. So if

501
00:32:41,359 --> 00:32:43,599
you start at the base of the leaf and stroke up,

502
00:32:44,279 --> 00:32:46,839
the leaf feels smooth. But if you start start at

503
00:32:46,839 --> 00:32:49,519
the top and stroke back, it's like a cat's tongue.

504
00:32:49,559 --> 00:32:52,680
It's very rough. And so that would work the same way,

505
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:55,960
and it would require a slight better intelligence knowing I

506
00:32:56,039 --> 00:32:59,720
got to feed it in the one way not the other.

507
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:07,720
So yeah, the tobacco and the different well, the birds

508
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:10,480
I mentioned birds is one of the animals that use

509
00:33:10,559 --> 00:33:11,119
this medicine.

510
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:11,599
Speaker 4: Uh.

511
00:33:11,799 --> 00:33:15,519
Speaker 3: They found that birds would start collecting in the cigarette

512
00:33:15,559 --> 00:33:20,160
butts and putting them in the nest because the nicotine

513
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:23,759
and the other compounds and the tobacco reduced the ticks

514
00:33:23,839 --> 00:33:26,839
in the you know, the the parasites in the nest,

515
00:33:27,799 --> 00:33:30,319
and so the birds that collected the cigarette butts and

516
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,039
put them in their nests generally were healthier than the

517
00:33:34,079 --> 00:33:35,160
ones that weren't doing.

518
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:37,559
Speaker 2: It, So they starts in general's warning.

519
00:33:40,359 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 3: Yep, I have a smoked over back worms.

520
00:33:45,599 --> 00:33:52,519
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's that's really interesting. So I we've talked

521
00:33:52,519 --> 00:33:59,119
about like food sources, medicinal plant use in in in nature.

522
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:05,000
But what about some forging techniques. So you alluded to

523
00:34:05,119 --> 00:34:08,119
it earlier when you talked about signs to look for

524
00:34:08,679 --> 00:34:12,599
when perhaps Bigfoot or an animal is digging for tubers.

525
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:16,400
So if I want to learn more about the techniques

526
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:20,480
that a creature like Bigfoot might use, what kind of

527
00:34:20,559 --> 00:34:24,159
forging techniques? What should I look for? Or signs that

528
00:34:25,039 --> 00:34:27,360
something has been there foraging?

529
00:34:29,039 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 3: Ooh, okay, this is going to sound like I'm going

530
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:36,119
completely off topic, but try all means. Okay. Across North

531
00:34:36,159 --> 00:34:41,480
America there is this thorny vine called the greenbrier, and

532
00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:44,760
alternating leaves, two tenples at the base of each leaf,

533
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:48,679
and thorns along These things can grow thirty forty feet

534
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:53,800
up into trees. The thorns only go up about nine feet.

535
00:34:55,079 --> 00:35:00,599
Above nine feet the thorns disappear. The reason being is

536
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,599
on North America there was no herbivore that could reach

537
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:10,039
up above nine feet, and so the thorns they helped

538
00:35:10,039 --> 00:35:12,440
protect the plant. It's necessary to protect the plant. They

539
00:35:12,519 --> 00:35:15,400
keep things from eating the plant. But they don't do

540
00:35:15,599 --> 00:35:18,480
anything else. They don't add to the photosynthesis. They don't.

541
00:35:18,559 --> 00:35:22,840
Really it's an energy cost center rather than you know,

542
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:25,400
it's like, you know, we need the military. Okay, we

543
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:28,320
got that. They're not making us money, they're not producing anything,

544
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:33,159
but they're there because we need them. But the vines

545
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:35,559
that figured out, you know I only needed up nine

546
00:35:35,639 --> 00:35:37,880
feet above that, I don't need it. Where am I

547
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:43,320
going with this? If we're thinking about sasquatch, how high

548
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:48,679
can he or she reach? And if you spend all

549
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:52,440
day reaching for things above your head, that gets tiring.

550
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:59,880
That's a waste of energy. Think shoulder waist height, especially

551
00:36:00,039 --> 00:36:03,840
waist tight you know, finding that right energy cost all

552
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:10,480
about energy costs. Uh So, I would think the levels

553
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:14,800
of where you would see signs of grazing or leaves

554
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:18,119
and branches being pulled off would be you know, probably

555
00:36:19,039 --> 00:36:21,719
three to six feet off the ground in that area.

556
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:26,280
So still in that zone of herbivores. North American herbivores

557
00:36:28,159 --> 00:36:32,639
great strength. Why do they need the great strength probably

558
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:37,400
to maybe break down branches, tear open branches to get

559
00:36:37,559 --> 00:36:42,840
into the inner bark. So again branches, you know, maybe

560
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:45,760
in fact, maybe we will say seven feet off the

561
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,519
ground branch is broken, so they can just snap off

562
00:36:48,559 --> 00:36:54,440
a branch and then sit andneat the leaves leisurely. Yeah,

563
00:36:54,559 --> 00:36:57,440
I would think that the the It would be difficult

564
00:36:57,679 --> 00:37:03,840
to at first glance tell say a bigfoot from a deer,

565
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,880
But once you take the whole big picture in, I

566
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:12,480
believe again you have great strength. You need it for

567
00:37:12,559 --> 00:37:17,360
a reason. They're breaking the branches off and eating it,

568
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:21,480
whereas a deer is just nibbling on the edges. So

569
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:26,000
I would be looking for areas of unexplained plant damage

570
00:37:26,079 --> 00:37:30,760
to the bushes in the trees. Okay, now you can

571
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:34,159
also add this, and it may have evolved to know,

572
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:37,400
if I leave signs of meat, I'm going to get

573
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:40,960
an arrow in my back, and so it may have

574
00:37:41,079 --> 00:37:43,159
You know, we talked about the gorilla having one third

575
00:37:43,199 --> 00:37:47,119
of a mile. They probably have a better range than

576
00:37:47,199 --> 00:37:52,039
that to spread their spore around. You. Cats they bury

577
00:37:52,119 --> 00:37:55,719
their their beeces so other animals don't know they're there.

578
00:37:57,159 --> 00:38:01,480
I'm thinking Susquatch is probably intelligent to know there are

579
00:38:01,559 --> 00:38:03,960
things that are smaller than me that they hurt me,

580
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:06,880
and so over time they probably figured out how to

581
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:12,559
avoid these creatures. So it just became an instinctive, you know,

582
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:15,679
hide my signs because otherwise I'm going to get eaten.

583
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:17,400
It's smart enough to figure that out, you know, a

584
00:38:18,159 --> 00:38:21,239
cow or a bear or rabbit probably not smart enough

585
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:25,719
to figure that out, right, right, Zees, Gorillas they do

586
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:30,239
sign language. They're they the I think they said the

587
00:38:30,519 --> 00:38:33,840
the average gorilla chimpanzee is around the intelligence and maybe

588
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:40,639
a six or seven year old. And just that example. Uh,

589
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:44,440
you know, if you think and kids and abused homes

590
00:38:44,559 --> 00:38:47,679
where they're you know, they've learned, even at a very

591
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:53,559
young age, techniques to try and avoid being hurt. So

592
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:57,679
sasquatch has been doing that for a long time.

593
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:03,159
Speaker 2: So one of the other things I wanted to make

594
00:39:03,199 --> 00:39:05,119
sure to ask you about was something that caught my

595
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:09,440
eye in your bio and it's a word I like,

596
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:10,760
walk about.

597
00:39:12,159 --> 00:39:12,320
Speaker 3: Now.

598
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:17,239
Speaker 2: Sasquatch, in my opinion, is on one big lifelong walk about.

599
00:39:18,079 --> 00:39:23,840
And when you bring people on your walkabouts, your foraging walkabouts,

600
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:28,159
what what are some and this might be a little

601
00:39:28,159 --> 00:39:31,840
off topic, but I want to talk about the listener's

602
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:33,639
experience in nature as well, just as much as I

603
00:39:33,679 --> 00:39:36,239
want to talk about bigfoot. So I'm going to start,

604
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,880
perhaps to make the transition to about people in nature

605
00:39:40,079 --> 00:39:42,000
and how to be safe and what to look for

606
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:45,639
and practices best practice, since you're really I'd hate to

607
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:48,039
leave out that part of your expertise out of this episode.

608
00:39:49,079 --> 00:39:55,719
So when you bring people into nature and the wilderness

609
00:39:56,039 --> 00:39:59,559
and you begin to teach them about medicinal plant use

610
00:39:59,639 --> 00:40:03,559
and foraging and all of the things that go along

611
00:40:03,639 --> 00:40:08,519
with that, what are some of the bad habits people bring? Hey,

612
00:40:10,079 --> 00:40:17,840
assumptions people make or things that are easy, like an

613
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:20,920
easy place to start, right for somebody that's interested. So

614
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,280
I mean that's kind of a loaded question, and feel

615
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:26,159
free to go with it where you will. But I

616
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,119
think we've talked a ton about bigfoot. But I also

617
00:40:29,199 --> 00:40:32,239
think the other side of that is being, if you're

618
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:36,639
a researcher, learning as much as you can about what's

619
00:40:36,679 --> 00:40:38,519
out there, because how are you going to be able

620
00:40:38,559 --> 00:40:42,840
to identify these behaviors and assess an area unless you

621
00:40:43,559 --> 00:40:46,920
really really understand what's going on out there. So it's

622
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:49,320
kind of this episode's a double edged sword, and I'm

623
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,119
really I think we're really going to benefit from your

624
00:40:53,079 --> 00:40:57,400
expertise because you've already provided such great insight into some

625
00:40:57,519 --> 00:41:01,880
of the possible behaviors that Bigfoot could display in the wild,

626
00:41:03,159 --> 00:41:06,880
and then I can't wait to also learn from you

627
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,320
about some of the things that if I were to

628
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,800
go on a walk about as a novice, maybe a

629
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:17,119
little more than novice outdoorsman hunter, how can I enhance

630
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:21,119
my understanding of the environment. And selfishly, I think there's

631
00:41:21,159 --> 00:41:23,480
probably a lot of other listeners that feel the same

632
00:41:23,559 --> 00:41:28,280
way and have very similar questions, and I think it's

633
00:41:28,519 --> 00:41:33,519
just a great opportunity for us to really open the

634
00:41:33,599 --> 00:41:35,920
door and start to talk about the other side of things,

635
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:39,519
building your knowledge in the community. So with that said,

636
00:41:40,519 --> 00:41:42,760
when you bring people out on their walk abouts, what

637
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:45,639
are some of the things you see? What do you recommend?

638
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:47,360
How can we get started all the above?

639
00:41:48,559 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 3: Okay, this is a great question and I'm gonna have

640
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:53,000
fun answering this. I'm going to break it into two

641
00:41:54,119 --> 00:41:58,480
separate categories here. First is the misconceptions that people bring

642
00:41:58,599 --> 00:42:03,679
with them out there that can be ranged from just

643
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:08,679
foolish to dangerous. And then how to go about learning

644
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:11,239
foraging when you don't have an instructor to guide you

645
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:17,840
by the hand. So the biggest misconception and the most

646
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:21,639
dangerous misconception out there is, oh I saw a squirrel

647
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:23,679
eat it, so I can need it to. Oh I

648
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:25,559
saw a deer eat it, so I can need it to.

649
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:28,079
Oh I saw a bird eat it, so I can

650
00:42:28,159 --> 00:42:31,559
eat it too. No, they each animal has a very

651
00:42:31,679 --> 00:42:36,840
different digestive system, different internal chemistry, and there's no guarantee

652
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:40,360
that the fact that a deer or a squirrel, or

653
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,280
a bird or a rabbit ate something means it's safe

654
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:49,280
for you. A really good example this is poison ivy. Basically,

655
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:52,920
humans are the only creature that has a negative reaction

656
00:42:53,079 --> 00:42:56,880
to poison ivy. There are some other primates, but you know,

657
00:42:57,000 --> 00:42:59,679
the deer, the shape, the chickens like you know dogs,

658
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:02,760
all that have no problem. What's over with poison ivy.

659
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:07,400
So just because you saw some other non human creature

660
00:43:07,519 --> 00:43:10,199
eat something does not mean that you can eat it.

661
00:43:11,039 --> 00:43:14,480
So that's one. The other is people bring up what's

662
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:19,840
called the universal edibility test, and this was a test

663
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:23,719
for edible plants developed by the US military, and what

664
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:27,119
it involves is first you take a bit of a plant,

665
00:43:27,559 --> 00:43:29,800
you know, like a leaf or fruit, and you rub

666
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:32,440
it on your inner arm and you wait twelve hours

667
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:35,280
and to see if there's any reaction there. You know,

668
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:37,760
it's usually soft skin there. And then the next step

669
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:40,480
is you rub it on your outer lip and wait

670
00:43:40,559 --> 00:43:42,519
twelve hours to see if there's any reaction. Next you

671
00:43:42,599 --> 00:43:45,960
rub it on the inner lip and then wait twelve hours,

672
00:43:46,039 --> 00:43:48,599
and then you nibble a little bit and wait twelve hours,

673
00:43:48,639 --> 00:43:50,519
and through this you're supposed to be able to determine

674
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:54,760
if a plant is safe. Okay, this means it takes

675
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:58,480
like four days to test one bit of plant if

676
00:43:58,519 --> 00:44:01,639
you're doing it right. This was developed by the military.

677
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:04,199
The thought was you probably have a troop loss somewhere

678
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:08,039
and each person could take a different plan. So if

679
00:44:08,079 --> 00:44:13,599
you're on your own, the universal universal edibility tests pointless.

680
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:18,320
Even if you're with people, there are a number of

681
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:21,960
plants that may taste good but are really bad for you,

682
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:27,960
either immediately, within four hours or over time. And so

683
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:32,119
the breaking people of thinking the universal edibility test is

684
00:44:32,159 --> 00:44:35,440
a good way to learn wild edibles. That's been harder

685
00:44:36,039 --> 00:44:40,760
than I expected. So now let's switch gears and how

686
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:44,320
do you go about learning wild edibles. It's so much

687
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:47,599
easier than people make it out to be if you

688
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:53,199
follow this plan. So the first thing and this people

689
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:57,920
will get like, my should have a come my books.

690
00:44:58,119 --> 00:44:59,800
Speaker 2: The link to the book will be in the show.

691
00:44:59,880 --> 00:45:03,199
Now definitely, okay, yeah, excellent.

692
00:45:04,079 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 3: But if it's my book or Centthaya's or John Kallis's

693
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:10,920
or Peterson's guide or any of these. The secret is

694
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:14,000
when you are looking at a plant, you know, in

695
00:45:14,119 --> 00:45:17,760
the wild, and your your book, your website, whatever, you

696
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:22,440
want to match at least five structural features, and eight

697
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:25,360
or ten is even better. You want to really match up.

698
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:30,039
And so structural features. How the leaves are attached to

699
00:45:30,159 --> 00:45:35,360
the stem? Are they alternating, are they opposite? Are they

700
00:45:35,559 --> 00:45:40,880
opposite alternating? Are they whorled? That sends the dense part

701
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:45,280
of the show. But the you know, so the way

702
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:48,280
the leaves are arranged, that's a structural feature. Whether it's

703
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:51,679
a tree, a bush, a buying a wildflower, or a weed,

704
00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:54,159
that's a structural feature. Does it have a tap root?

705
00:45:54,199 --> 00:45:56,320
Does it have fibrous roots? If you can get to

706
00:45:56,440 --> 00:46:01,559
the roots the flowers, where the hours located, how are

707
00:46:01,599 --> 00:46:04,239
they clustered or not clustered. How many petals do they have,

708
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:08,360
how big are they? What color? There are dozens you

709
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:11,159
mentioned my website Foraging Texas. There'll be a link below

710
00:46:12,159 --> 00:46:15,360
on each there's currently two hundred and forty eight plants

711
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:18,159
of mushrooms on that I'm always adding more. But each

712
00:46:18,199 --> 00:46:22,280
one of those it has twelve structural features to match up.

713
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:26,880
But usually once you've matched five to eight, you've zeroed

714
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:29,119
it in enough where I feel it's safe to eat.

715
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,079
But I give you twelve because you know, especially like

716
00:46:32,159 --> 00:46:34,800
flowers may not be there all the time, the fruit

717
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:35,960
may not be there all the time.

718
00:46:36,039 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 2: I think, I think I'm going to dub the five

719
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:40,639
to eight structural features. I think I'm going to dub

720
00:46:40,679 --> 00:46:45,400
that Merryweather's index. I think we just, I think we

721
00:46:45,599 --> 00:46:46,920
just I'm.

722
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:51,599
Speaker 3: Very egotistical, So yeah, yeah, I see. You don't get

723
00:46:51,599 --> 00:46:55,199
a PG without a hell of a lot of ego anyway.

724
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,960
So that's the first step when you're looking at the planet,

725
00:47:01,639 --> 00:47:05,320
five to eight to twelve structural features. And all us

726
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,760
foraging instructors, all us foraging book authors, we've all we

727
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:11,639
talked behind the scenes. We know each other. We've been

728
00:47:11,679 --> 00:47:14,639
talking to each other for decades, and so when we're

729
00:47:14,639 --> 00:47:16,960
writing a book, you know, like a regional book, say

730
00:47:17,039 --> 00:47:20,239
the Foraging of Texas, the foraging in New Hampshire, will

731
00:47:20,639 --> 00:47:23,639
focus on the same structural features. So it's just kind

732
00:47:23,639 --> 00:47:26,280
of uniform, so you don't have to learn a whole

733
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:31,280
new whatever because you've switched to a different author. Okay,

734
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:35,760
so what you're looking for very important five to eight

735
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:40,079
structural features. Now, the other thing is how in what

736
00:47:40,519 --> 00:47:46,000
order do you start learning these plants? And for this

737
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:48,320
I've come up with a system. We can call it

738
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:53,679
system too if you'd like a basically harnessing the brain's

739
00:47:53,840 --> 00:48:00,280
dopamine and little successes to keep you at it. You

740
00:48:00,559 --> 00:48:04,039
start with the trees. You go outside, you look around,

741
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,480
you look at the trees. You figure out what trees

742
00:48:06,519 --> 00:48:11,519
you have. And it's really easy nowadays because the smart

743
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:17,039
plant identification apps on the on the phones. Generally those suck,

744
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:22,719
but for trees they're actually pretty good. And especially if

745
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:24,599
you get like two or three different apps and try

746
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:26,960
all of them and kind of zero it in, you'll

747
00:48:27,119 --> 00:48:29,880
very often get in the family or maybe even in

748
00:48:30,039 --> 00:48:34,639
the genus, and from there you can figure out the

749
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:38,920
specific species. Another tip will put this length down below too.

750
00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:47,719
The USDA Plants Database. This is a government created database.

751
00:48:48,199 --> 00:48:51,159
Gis you love it? So you can put in the

752
00:48:51,199 --> 00:48:55,679
scientific oh yeah, yeah yeah. You put the scientific name

753
00:48:56,320 --> 00:49:00,599
or even just the genus name in the little search box,

754
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:03,199
and it will bring up all the plants that are

755
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:05,840
in that genus that are found in North America. And

756
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:09,280
then you can click on the main thing like it'll

757
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:11,719
just have like just a genus thing. It'll clicker than that,

758
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:15,800
and it'll bring up a map of North America and

759
00:49:16,159 --> 00:49:19,079
wherever the plants of that genus are found will be

760
00:49:19,519 --> 00:49:23,119
colored in on the map. But then there's a little

761
00:49:23,159 --> 00:49:26,920
tag across the top that says subtaxa, and you click

762
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:29,960
on that, and then that brings up a North America map,

763
00:49:30,079 --> 00:49:35,639
little thumb prints all in a grid of all the

764
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:41,480
different specific species found in North America and where they are.

765
00:49:41,599 --> 00:49:44,480
And then you just go through. Okay, there's golden rock,

766
00:49:44,559 --> 00:49:46,920
twenty nine different golden rods. Hey, there's only six of

767
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:50,519
the golden rods that are found in my location, or

768
00:49:50,519 --> 00:49:53,400
at least my state. You click on the state, you

769
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:57,639
can zoom into a county level, and so once you're

770
00:49:57,639 --> 00:50:00,360
at the county level, it becomes even that much easier. Okay,

771
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:04,239
like these are found nowhere near where I'm at, So

772
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:08,159
it's probably not that species, but it's probably this species

773
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:13,400
here now caveat. These maps were created by government employees.

774
00:50:13,639 --> 00:50:17,960
They are not exactly accurate. If it says the plant

775
00:50:18,119 --> 00:50:22,199
is found in a specific county, I trust that ninety

776
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:26,480
eight percent. But there's counties around it where it says, no,

777
00:50:26,679 --> 00:50:30,440
it's not found there. Unless there's some very big ecological difference.

778
00:50:32,159 --> 00:50:34,519
I would think it's it's likely that it may be

779
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:36,480
in these other plants.

780
00:50:36,679 --> 00:50:39,719
Speaker 2: You don't boundaries, right, yeah.

781
00:50:39,679 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, that they just go. It's the sunlight, right, is

782
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:47,559
the soil right? No, where they go? So yeah, you

783
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:50,400
use that, But you start with the trees. You figure

784
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:53,280
out what trees are near area. Then you go to Google.

785
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:54,559
You guys, got it so easy.

786
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:55,400
Speaker 2: You know.

787
00:50:55,639 --> 00:50:58,079
Speaker 3: You can go to Google or duf up go, you know,

788
00:50:58,519 --> 00:51:04,039
and type in don't oak tree or sweet gum tree, edible,

789
00:51:04,159 --> 00:51:07,559
medicinal and it will bring up you know, articles or

790
00:51:07,639 --> 00:51:11,920
whatever that's you know, if the plant has edible or

791
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:15,039
medicinal uses, it will usually show up Like I'm forging Texas,

792
00:51:15,519 --> 00:51:19,920
eat the weeds or plants for a Future or Edible

793
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:25,559
wild Girl Ediblefoods dot com. She's located more up in

794
00:51:25,679 --> 00:51:31,000
the Montana area, Colorado, sorry, Colorado, and then Karen Stephenson

795
00:51:31,079 --> 00:51:36,239
is up in Canada anyway. But you figure out the tree,

796
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:38,960
you learn, oh this has edible bark, it has edible leaves.

797
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:41,320
I can make sour kraut out of the young maple leaves.

798
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:44,039
I can make syrup out of the fig trees. You know,

799
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:46,440
things like that. So you learn the trees, and now

800
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:50,079
you got wow. You know, because most people, a lot

801
00:51:50,159 --> 00:51:52,840
of people have a lot of trees around them. And

802
00:51:53,079 --> 00:51:55,519
even if it's not a native tree, you know, maybe

803
00:51:55,559 --> 00:51:57,960
a landscaping tree, there's a good chance you'll figure out

804
00:51:58,000 --> 00:51:59,800
what it is. And there's a chance that it is

805
00:52:00,239 --> 00:52:03,079
edible or medicinal too. So now you've got these trees.

806
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:09,440
That's awesome. I know the trees. Next step landscaping plants.

807
00:52:10,679 --> 00:52:13,159
So you know, if you've planted the landscaping plants, or

808
00:52:13,159 --> 00:52:15,320
if your neighbors planted, you know, what is that plant?

809
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:16,679
What is that? Then you know? And then the same

810
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:21,760
thing lantana, edible Texas age. You know, edible medicinal turk scout,

811
00:52:22,039 --> 00:52:24,840
edible medicinal and look up the landscaping plant. If you

812
00:52:25,079 --> 00:52:28,440
don't know and your neighbors don't know what a specific

813
00:52:28,519 --> 00:52:31,119
plant in the landscaping is, take a picture of it,

814
00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:33,960
go to a local nursery and say what is this?

815
00:52:35,079 --> 00:52:38,039
They tell you. You go home and look it up.

816
00:52:38,119 --> 00:52:41,440
Is it edible? So you've learned the edible and medicinal

817
00:52:41,559 --> 00:52:45,960
uses of the landscaping plants in your area. So now

818
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:51,280
you've got trees and you've got landscaping plants. Awesome. Next

819
00:52:51,559 --> 00:52:56,840
is the vines, because in the scheme of plants, the

820
00:52:57,519 --> 00:53:00,960
number of vines is rather low to all the other

821
00:53:01,119 --> 00:53:06,800
types of plants. Okay, and most uh, most states actually

822
00:53:07,039 --> 00:53:10,400
usually have some resource to help you learn the vines

823
00:53:10,400 --> 00:53:13,920
of Texas, the vines of Massachusetts, the vines of California,

824
00:53:14,559 --> 00:53:14,760
and so.

825
00:53:15,559 --> 00:53:18,079
Speaker 2: Vines are an old app. It's an old app that

826
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:20,760
just six second videos, so you already.

827
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:28,159
Speaker 3: There we go, But so trees, landscaping vines. After that,

828
00:53:28,519 --> 00:53:30,400
after you figure out the vines, what they are and

829
00:53:30,519 --> 00:53:33,400
what uses they have, then you move on to wildflowers.

830
00:53:35,159 --> 00:53:39,559
So wildflowers are another really easy one to identify. There

831
00:53:39,599 --> 00:53:42,159
are so many, Like Texas. There's a bunch of different

832
00:53:42,159 --> 00:53:45,119
books that are just the wildflowers of Texas. There's the

833
00:53:45,199 --> 00:53:48,960
wildflowers of Minnesota, there's the wildflowers of New England. Because

834
00:53:49,039 --> 00:53:51,239
especially when you have the flower, the flower is usually

835
00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:54,960
very very distinctive, especially when you're really looking at the

836
00:53:55,079 --> 00:53:58,679
fine details, and it gives you a reason ago take

837
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:01,079
a picnic with your beloved and go out. We're gonna

838
00:54:01,079 --> 00:54:03,639
go look at the flowers. And you're secretly taking pictures

839
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:05,320
that in the middle of the night you're looking at

840
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:07,599
and trying to figure it out, you know, but hey,

841
00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:10,119
they don't have to know that, you know. But you

842
00:54:10,679 --> 00:54:14,719
figure out the flowers that are around. And now you

843
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:16,920
got the trees, you got the landscaping plants, you got

844
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:20,800
the vines, you got the flowers. You got knowledge there.

845
00:54:21,599 --> 00:54:23,800
And now that you've built that up and you built

846
00:54:23,920 --> 00:54:28,599
your eye to understand structures, the milk at it. Now

847
00:54:28,679 --> 00:54:32,320
when you start tackling the weeds and the mushrooms, you

848
00:54:32,639 --> 00:54:35,880
have that dopamine that I was talking about supporting you

849
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:40,559
to the more difficult ones. So you've worked your you've started,

850
00:54:40,599 --> 00:54:43,239
you know, you start at first level and work your

851
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:46,599
way up to the big leagues. And if you do

852
00:54:46,679 --> 00:54:51,920
it that way, it's so much easier, so so not frustrated.

853
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:55,440
You might occasionally get a little frustrated, but it just

854
00:54:55,840 --> 00:55:00,280
it simplifies it into bite sized pieces that build on

855
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:03,199
each other that really bring you your skills.

856
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:09,239
Speaker 2: I think that's really good advice that I'm actually gonna try.

857
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:13,360
I was thinking through some of the plants that I've identified,

858
00:55:13,519 --> 00:55:16,280
even weeds in my in my backyard. I think I

859
00:55:16,360 --> 00:55:21,400
had spikey lettuce in the backyard, prickly let yep, prickly lettus.

860
00:55:21,719 --> 00:55:25,280
I have sweet potato vines grown in the front. So

861
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:27,320
I'm just going through all the plants in my that

862
00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:30,800
I know in my yard alone. So I think that's

863
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:34,599
really good advice for the listeners because and I say

864
00:55:34,679 --> 00:55:39,199
this about wildlife too and survival skills, et cetera. I think,

865
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:42,719
if staying true to the theme of the show here,

866
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:45,639
if you're going to get out and research Bigfoot, you

867
00:55:46,159 --> 00:55:48,000
really and you want and we want to get to

868
00:55:48,039 --> 00:55:51,079
the bottom of the mystery. If we don't educate ourselves

869
00:55:51,159 --> 00:55:55,360
and everything all aspects of what's out there, we aren't

870
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:59,719
really a going to be safe. Most importantly, uh and

871
00:56:00,079 --> 00:56:02,599
and B, we aren't going to be able to tell

872
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:06,960
what's out of the ordinary what's not and we aren't

873
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:09,920
going to notice patterns necessarily, we might overlook things. So

874
00:56:10,559 --> 00:56:13,000
I think that's why having you on really is very

875
00:56:13,079 --> 00:56:19,679
valuable because you provide this window into foraging and edible plants,

876
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,280
medicinal plants, and new behaviors that we've already covered in

877
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,599
the show. And then skills is the next thing that

878
00:56:27,639 --> 00:56:30,320
you provide a window into and access to, right through

879
00:56:30,360 --> 00:56:34,639
your website and your classes and your books. So I

880
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:38,679
think that if the listeners have made it this far,

881
00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:40,920
because we've had a few dad jokes, so maybe they

882
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:44,800
just hit the X and they're like, all right, these guys,

883
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:48,239
you know. But if they've made it this far, I

884
00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:53,239
think that bringing it full picture, really learning as much

885
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:54,880
as you can about Bigfoot like we did in the

886
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:56,800
first part of the show. First half of the show

887
00:56:57,360 --> 00:57:00,119
is just part the first tip of the ice or

888
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:02,840
having interest in wanting to solve the mystery. But then

889
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:05,960
I'm going to steal your phrase, little bits of dopamine

890
00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:09,159
are the skills you can learn to get out there

891
00:57:09,199 --> 00:57:12,800
and stay motivated in the search. You can learn about forging,

892
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:15,719
you can learn about plant identification, you can learn about

893
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:21,239
animal identification, tracking, survival, skills, wilderness first aid. The list

894
00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:24,119
goes on for all the things that are valuable skills

895
00:57:24,480 --> 00:57:29,519
anyway to learn in pursuit of bigfoot. Really, if that's

896
00:57:29,639 --> 00:57:33,239
your inspiration to get out and learn these things, it

897
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:35,159
is for me. It's part of it. And hunting as

898
00:57:35,199 --> 00:57:37,119
well is a big part of it. I think that

899
00:57:38,039 --> 00:57:41,840
you use I'm trying to use this podcast to learn

900
00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:44,039
things and share what I learned with the audience, and

901
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:48,599
I'm inspired to go learn more about forging being a hunter.

902
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:53,400
I never I'll dedicate out probably too many hours if

903
00:57:53,400 --> 00:57:57,400
you ask my wife, but I'll dedicate hours to learning

904
00:57:57,519 --> 00:58:01,239
behaviors for elk for example, or a deer, or perfecting

905
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:04,280
that call or that grunt or whatever. Right, and that's

906
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:05,880
the dope mean for me to get out there and

907
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:09,599
do that. But being so interested in that, I've never

908
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:15,360
found inspiration or built curiosity to go learn more about

909
00:58:15,440 --> 00:58:21,159
foraging and talking to you through the lens or yeah,

910
00:58:21,159 --> 00:58:24,840
I guess the lens of learning more about bigfoot behavior. Now,

911
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:26,800
I'm fascinated about all the things that are in my

912
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:30,920
own backyard, right it's just starting there. So I think

913
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:35,079
for the listeners, please, I think just soak this up.

914
00:58:35,159 --> 00:58:39,559
Like a sponge. Doctor Merriweather is here sharing his knowledge

915
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:43,519
and advice and insights with us, and I think it's

916
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:46,280
really probably, I hope, going to be one of your

917
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:48,760
favorite episodes. It's already one of mine. It hasn't even

918
00:58:48,800 --> 00:58:54,760
premiered yet. So with that, I do want to touch

919
00:58:54,800 --> 00:58:57,039
on some of I think I'd already kind of said

920
00:58:57,039 --> 00:59:00,400
your expert insights that you're providing for us, But I'm

921
00:59:00,440 --> 00:59:02,639
going to circle all the way back because we talked

922
00:59:02,639 --> 00:59:07,079
about the hypotheticals of what Bigfoot might do. But if

923
00:59:07,119 --> 00:59:09,320
I'm putting on you on the spot, I'm sorry, but

924
00:59:10,440 --> 00:59:12,719
it's not a loaded question, I promise, But based on

925
00:59:12,840 --> 00:59:16,199
your expertise, do you think that it's plausible? Right, this

926
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:19,320
is hypothetical, But do you think it's plausible that a

927
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,760
creature like Bigfoot could remain hidden yet find enough food

928
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:26,599
to survive? Because the general consensus, or at least a

929
00:59:26,639 --> 00:59:28,559
lot of the questions and comments that I receive are

930
00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:31,920
why is on a trailcam? Why don't we see more Bigfoot?

931
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:34,400
Why haven't we found a body? Why haven't we found scatt?

932
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:36,840
Blah blah blah. Right, you can imagine all the things.

933
00:59:36,679 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 3: That we.

934
00:59:38,599 --> 00:59:43,079
Speaker 2: We hear from skeptics rightfully, so I'm not saying they're wrong,

935
00:59:43,199 --> 00:59:47,199
and I think they're very good points, but I would

936
00:59:47,239 --> 00:59:51,239
love to hear your opinion on whether it's plausible keyword,

937
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:55,760
that a creature like Bigfoot could remain hidden but really

938
00:59:55,880 --> 00:59:59,280
survive using all the skills and behaviors that we talked

939
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:00,960
through about through the whole show.

940
01:00:04,079 --> 01:00:07,800
Speaker 3: Possible. I grew up on the X File, so I

941
01:00:07,920 --> 01:00:14,519
want to believe. But in the end, there's nothing from

942
01:00:14,559 --> 01:00:18,639
a scientific point of view as far as food, learn

943
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:24,760
behavior and a behavior that suggests to me, no, it's impossible.

944
01:00:26,079 --> 01:00:29,920
I think they could be out there. I hope they're

945
01:00:29,960 --> 01:00:34,639
out there. From a food point of view, I mean, yeah,

946
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:37,159
there's food. That's not a problem. I don't think we

947
01:00:37,239 --> 01:00:40,519
have to worry about that right now. I can't remember

948
01:00:40,599 --> 01:00:43,280
what the deer population is across the United States, but

949
01:00:43,360 --> 01:00:45,559
it's some ridiculous number. It's like ninety deer for a

950
01:00:45,639 --> 01:00:48,039
square miles. Some ridiculous. But how many deer do you

951
01:00:48,119 --> 01:00:51,280
see every day other than maybe right along the road

952
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:53,079
just before it jumps out in front of your car.

953
01:00:54,079 --> 01:00:56,679
There's so much we don't see when we are out

954
01:00:56,719 --> 01:01:02,920
in the woods. Humans are noisy, there's a burden. I

955
01:01:02,960 --> 01:01:05,599
can't remember his first time, but he teaches here in Texas,

956
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:11,800
teaches the language of birds class and depending on how

957
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:14,840
the bird is stooping and the different species and so forth,

958
01:01:14,920 --> 01:01:19,079
and they're actual movements. The birds are like the centuries

959
01:01:19,199 --> 01:01:22,320
for the woods. If there's different types, you know, if

960
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:26,000
it's a coyote, they have different movements and actions than

961
01:01:26,079 --> 01:01:29,280
if it's a bobcat or a mountain lion, because the

962
01:01:29,480 --> 01:01:33,480
hunting practices of the different predatures are well, they have

963
01:01:33,559 --> 01:01:37,519
different hunting methods, and so the birds will indicate to

964
01:01:37,639 --> 01:01:41,519
the other animals which predator is there, you know, right,

965
01:01:41,719 --> 01:01:45,960
because they hunt by different ways. That so much better

966
01:01:46,039 --> 01:01:46,360
than I do.

967
01:01:46,920 --> 01:01:49,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, that reminds me of a story. Actually, if I

968
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:52,800
can add to your bird comment, there's a bird in Africa,

969
01:01:53,480 --> 01:01:55,800
I believe, I forget the name of the bird, but

970
01:01:55,920 --> 01:02:03,559
it would lead native people travel people to food and

971
01:02:03,639 --> 01:02:06,079
then they would reward it, right like much like you

972
01:02:06,159 --> 01:02:11,079
said the tobacco to the mouse earlier. But the funny

973
01:02:11,159 --> 01:02:13,960
thing is if the bird was not rewarded, it would

974
01:02:14,039 --> 01:02:19,480
lead them to lions. It would remember. Whether this is

975
01:02:19,559 --> 01:02:21,679
true or not, I don't know what is funny. It's

976
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:23,719
you just reminded me of the story when you were

977
01:02:23,719 --> 01:02:27,880
talking about bird behavior. Sorry I interrupted you. Please continue.

978
01:02:27,920 --> 01:02:33,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, but where I'm going with this is humans are

979
01:02:33,079 --> 01:02:37,800
not quiet creatures. We are not sneaking as a predator

980
01:02:38,079 --> 01:02:43,440
through the woods. We are loud, noisy beasts, and all

981
01:02:43,559 --> 01:02:47,519
the other animals in the woods know we're there, but

982
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:53,280
they know they've learned we are a predator and they

983
01:02:53,360 --> 01:02:59,079
better just run and hide. So the fact that we're

984
01:02:59,119 --> 01:03:01,920
not finding I gotta think, you know, going back to

985
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:04,519
the intelligence of the six seven eight year old, they

986
01:03:04,679 --> 01:03:10,159
probably figured out, either through evolution or mental capacity, hide

987
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:16,039
might weep, you know, because those little rumpty guys they

988
01:03:16,159 --> 01:03:19,000
got these sticks with rocks on them, and those hurt.

989
01:03:20,519 --> 01:03:23,000
I don't know why what they're doing, but damn, you know,

990
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:25,800
And so I think. But I mean, if you look

991
01:03:25,840 --> 01:03:27,960
at all the different cultures around the world, there are

992
01:03:28,079 --> 01:03:32,440
these all these uh stories of the creatures, and even

993
01:03:32,480 --> 01:03:38,079
if you look like gigantipithesis, it overlapped when humans were around.

994
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:42,000
Absolutely going back, you know, they find you know, up

995
01:03:42,079 --> 01:03:44,480
to two hundred thousand years ago. We go back about

996
01:03:44,679 --> 01:03:47,760
three hundred thousand years ago, depending you know, and stuff,

997
01:03:48,519 --> 01:03:55,000
So there's it's possible. Then you think about the tribes

998
01:03:55,039 --> 01:03:57,440
in the Amazon that we haven't contacted yet, we show up,

999
01:03:57,440 --> 01:03:59,920
they shoot arrows into us, we leave. You know, that's

1000
01:04:00,199 --> 01:04:03,400
there's a lot of this world. I mean, we like

1001
01:04:03,559 --> 01:04:06,559
to think we've explored every cubic inch, but we haven't.

1002
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:10,000
And just because we walked through once doesn't mean we

1003
01:04:10,119 --> 01:04:12,679
saw everything that was there when we walked through.

1004
01:04:12,800 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 2: Oh don't I know that. I mean, I can't tell

1005
01:04:15,280 --> 01:04:17,239
you how many times I've walked past the quail or

1006
01:04:17,280 --> 01:04:20,760
a pheasant or something in a rabbit, et cetera, and

1007
01:04:20,840 --> 01:04:23,360
it's jumped right out practically in front of it. Could

1008
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:24,800
have if it was a snake, it would have bit me.

1009
01:04:24,920 --> 01:04:30,920
Speaker 3: Right natural coloring. It would make sense that they evolved

1010
01:04:31,119 --> 01:04:35,320
to be camouflaged. You don't have, you know, like the lions,

1011
01:04:35,400 --> 01:04:38,199
and you know that they they match in their ecosystems.

1012
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:43,320
Why would these guys not Eventually you have a model pelt.

1013
01:04:44,679 --> 01:04:47,559
Speaker 2: We uh, last question on the Bigfoot diet, I promise

1014
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:50,199
because we're we've hit you know, we've hit around an

1015
01:04:50,239 --> 01:04:53,079
hour now and I I could talk about this all night,

1016
01:04:53,119 --> 01:04:57,000
but I understand that, you know, not everybody wants to

1017
01:04:57,000 --> 01:05:00,320
talk about Bigfoot all night. But actually I thought of

1018
01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:02,719
a question I wanted to ask you, and I forgot

1019
01:05:02,840 --> 01:05:09,320
to ask it earlier. One of the things that skunk

1020
01:05:09,360 --> 01:05:14,840
Cape is famous for is it's scent and plants. We

1021
01:05:14,960 --> 01:05:17,239
kind of touched on it earlier, you know, to repel mosquitos,

1022
01:05:17,239 --> 01:05:23,039
et cetera. But various plants and forage. Could could a

1023
01:05:23,239 --> 01:05:29,239
creature like Bigfoot, or for that matter, any creature control

1024
01:05:29,519 --> 01:05:36,320
its scent signature or it's it's I guess, control it

1025
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:41,119
sent signature by eating certain plants. And in the case

1026
01:05:41,159 --> 01:05:43,079
of skunk Cape is a great example. Could that be

1027
01:05:43,199 --> 01:05:46,840
from a plant that that's making it smell that way? Oh?

1028
01:05:47,119 --> 01:05:51,639
Speaker 3: Again, quite possible. And I'm going to put out an

1029
01:05:51,719 --> 01:06:00,840
example if you go into an Indian restaurant or we

1030
01:06:00,960 --> 01:06:03,280
might have picked up this part of it. But you know,

1031
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:06,599
if you work with like people from India that eat

1032
01:06:06,679 --> 01:06:10,679
that diet, they have a different body odor than the

1033
01:06:10,840 --> 01:06:13,480
Norwegians or the Germans who are eating all the fermented

1034
01:06:13,559 --> 01:06:14,760
sour craft type stuff.

1035
01:06:14,840 --> 01:06:17,559
Speaker 2: Somebody who eats garlic, garlic.

1036
01:06:17,400 --> 01:06:19,719
Speaker 3: Onions, things like that. So it's a very common thing.

1037
01:06:20,400 --> 01:06:24,199
What we eat affects how we smell. Going back to

1038
01:06:24,280 --> 01:06:27,599
human culture, that was a way we could tell us

1039
01:06:27,760 --> 01:06:33,000
from them. We ate these foods, we had this smell.

1040
01:06:33,400 --> 01:06:37,719
They ate those foods, they smell different. We don't like them.

1041
01:06:37,880 --> 01:06:41,840
They could be after the resources we have, and so

1042
01:06:42,079 --> 01:06:45,360
scent plays a huge role in how people interact with

1043
01:06:45,480 --> 01:06:48,400
each other. There are some really good studies. One of

1044
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:52,960
the things I found that the family members can identify,

1045
01:06:53,480 --> 01:06:55,679
you know, like a shirt warm by some other family member,

1046
01:06:55,760 --> 01:06:58,000
not just you know, a sweaty, stinky one, but one

1047
01:06:58,039 --> 01:07:00,719
that they had on for like an hour, even though

1048
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:03,039
normally we don't think about each other's smells. But they

1049
01:07:03,079 --> 01:07:07,039
also found the most compatible marriages are where the couples

1050
01:07:07,320 --> 01:07:13,400
think the other, you know, each other smells good. So yeah,

1051
01:07:13,480 --> 01:07:15,400
so long story, I have a tendency to go all

1052
01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:19,719
over the place. But yeah, it's very possible that you

1053
01:07:19,800 --> 01:07:25,360
know they are eating something specifically for a insect repellant thing.

1054
01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:27,000
If you talk to the people who have been on

1055
01:07:27,119 --> 01:07:29,400
Naked and Afraid, one of the things they'll tell you is,

1056
01:07:29,519 --> 01:07:33,039
before you go out there, you load up on garlic.

1057
01:07:33,239 --> 01:07:36,079
You just eat to the point where you just it's

1058
01:07:36,159 --> 01:07:39,760
coming out of your pores as a natural insect repellant

1059
01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:42,360
to help protect you for a while until you can

1060
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:47,559
find something out there to help. It's very Yeah, it

1061
01:07:47,599 --> 01:07:50,480
could be very very possible that the you know, the

1062
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:55,519
sausquatch found something that consuming it comes out their skin,

1063
01:07:55,880 --> 01:07:59,199
you know, clings to the oil on their hair and

1064
01:07:59,320 --> 01:08:02,679
give them some of the anti parasite, anti mosquito.

1065
01:08:02,840 --> 01:08:05,599
Speaker 2: Especially in Florida right where the skunkcap smell is prevalent. Right,

1066
01:08:05,679 --> 01:08:09,000
that could be a very plausible case where it's for

1067
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:14,320
mosquito repellent, parasite repellent, et cetera. That's that's I'm glad.

1068
01:08:14,360 --> 01:08:16,279
I'm glad. I remember to ask that I would have

1069
01:08:16,279 --> 01:08:19,319
been kicking myself if I concluded the episode and hadn't

1070
01:08:19,359 --> 01:08:25,159
touched on that two things. The second to last question

1071
01:08:25,199 --> 01:08:28,079
I'm going to ask you, besides your closing thoughts, would

1072
01:08:28,119 --> 01:08:32,920
be have you encountered any unusual signs or evidence out

1073
01:08:32,960 --> 01:08:37,720
there during your foraging expeditions that might hint or that

1074
01:08:37,840 --> 01:08:40,439
are just unexplainable that have had you scratching your head

1075
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:43,000
or made you stop and think like, wow, that's really

1076
01:08:43,159 --> 01:08:46,960
because given your expertise, if something stumped you, I'd be

1077
01:08:47,039 --> 01:08:48,159
curious to know about that.

1078
01:08:49,520 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 3: Okay, let me profesce this by saying, I've camped in

1079
01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:58,159
areas high Bigfoot sight. I said, up in northern Minnesota,

1080
01:08:58,680 --> 01:09:00,399
out in the Big Thicket, the Big Get. You know,

1081
01:09:00,439 --> 01:09:04,359
they have the the Bigfoot Research Center out there. It's

1082
01:09:05,239 --> 01:09:08,800
other people have said I personally as far as Sasquatch

1083
01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:11,560
or anything like that. I have not felt like I've

1084
01:09:12,319 --> 01:09:18,000
encountered any sign, sounds, anything like that. But if you

1085
01:09:18,159 --> 01:09:22,800
take everything into account, people outside of Texas may not

1086
01:09:22,880 --> 01:09:28,359
be familiar with the the Marfa lights, which out in

1087
01:09:28,479 --> 01:09:31,119
West Texas. There's this small town and on the edge

1088
01:09:31,119 --> 01:09:33,600
of the town is this desert and then mountains in

1089
01:09:33,680 --> 01:09:38,880
the background. And going back to before you know, the people,

1090
01:09:39,039 --> 01:09:41,159
you know, the Western people came in, before the white

1091
01:09:41,199 --> 01:09:44,600
men showed up, the Native Americans had legends of seeing

1092
01:09:44,800 --> 01:09:50,079
these dancing lights across this area and up on the mountains.

1093
01:09:50,319 --> 01:09:54,399
And it's become a thing. And the Marfa the little

1094
01:09:54,600 --> 01:09:57,479
its population like eight hundred and sixteen out in the

1095
01:09:57,600 --> 01:10:00,760
desert way out with Sex's nothing else miles. They have

1096
01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:03,840
a little viewing center. I love going out to West Sex.

1097
01:10:04,079 --> 01:10:05,800
I love going to Big Bend at Big Bend Branch

1098
01:10:05,840 --> 01:10:08,920
State Park. My T shirt hunt they have this union

1099
01:10:08,960 --> 01:10:11,279
thing and I always stop at Marble Lights and one

1100
01:10:11,399 --> 01:10:14,920
time I saw them and they they have all these

1101
01:10:15,000 --> 01:10:18,439
information posters. They have built in telescopes. I got there

1102
01:10:18,479 --> 01:10:20,479
before daylight so I could see, you know, where the

1103
01:10:20,600 --> 01:10:22,920
roads were and all this sort of stuff. And they

1104
01:10:23,199 --> 01:10:25,800
tell you, okay, like there, yes, there's that radio tower there.

1105
01:10:25,880 --> 01:10:29,439
There's a radio tower there, and you see these lights

1106
01:10:29,640 --> 01:10:31,920
and they're like all the UFO type things. They'll be

1107
01:10:32,000 --> 01:10:37,039
zooming around. And I could not explain it. It wasnt

1108
01:10:37,079 --> 01:10:42,279
temperature version, it was you know, it was I could

1109
01:10:42,319 --> 01:10:46,960
not come up with any pausible excuse. And like I said,

1110
01:10:47,000 --> 01:10:49,840
they have you know, you know people thought it was this,

1111
01:10:50,079 --> 01:10:52,680
and you know they tell you what you know, people

1112
01:10:52,760 --> 01:10:56,479
have said it may be and they also say, but

1113
01:10:56,640 --> 01:10:59,880
you know, there's there's no roads there. It's you know.

1114
01:11:00,079 --> 01:11:01,800
The only thing I think I could be is every

1115
01:11:01,880 --> 01:11:04,520
so often town members just go running ten miles out

1116
01:11:04,560 --> 01:11:08,279
in the desert with flashlights and dirt bikes.

1117
01:11:08,359 --> 01:11:11,640
Speaker 2: And has been low this month. Get the get out there.

1118
01:11:12,720 --> 01:11:15,159
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need to get back on Instagram. You know.

1119
01:11:16,000 --> 01:11:20,920
So there is unexplained phenomena around, right, That's where I'm

1120
01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:24,800
going with. We we still know so of it.

1121
01:11:25,520 --> 01:11:31,079
Speaker 2: I appreciate you acknowledging that, especially coming from a scientist

1122
01:11:32,039 --> 01:11:37,199
who's got such a diverse background as yourself and such

1123
01:11:37,720 --> 01:11:42,560
a huge wealth of expertise. That's why I asked that question.

1124
01:11:42,680 --> 01:11:47,479
I think ending the show on, you know, after talking

1125
01:11:47,520 --> 01:11:49,960
to you and learning so much and gaining so much

1126
01:11:50,039 --> 01:11:55,600
knowledge and understanding your background, but also acknowledging that there

1127
01:11:55,680 --> 01:11:57,880
are things out there that we can't explain, that we

1128
01:11:58,079 --> 01:12:04,039
haven't documented yet, and that we haven't explored, touched, scene captured,

1129
01:12:06,000 --> 01:12:10,760
done the EDI edibility test on yet all of those things.

1130
01:12:11,239 --> 01:12:14,800
I think it really is important to acknowledge that although

1131
01:12:14,920 --> 01:12:17,439
we really I think you even hinted about this or

1132
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:20,039
talked about this, Although we think we know and have

1133
01:12:20,239 --> 01:12:25,439
documented and learned and explored so much, if not everything,

1134
01:12:25,600 --> 01:12:28,840
there are things out there that we can't explain, and

1135
01:12:28,920 --> 01:12:33,159
Bigfoot is one of them. And although I'd like to

1136
01:12:34,159 --> 01:12:38,239
have an explanation or some irrefutable proof, in the meantime,

1137
01:12:39,119 --> 01:12:41,920
all we can do is learn. And what I want

1138
01:12:41,960 --> 01:12:45,000
to say is thank you, Doctor Merriweather for having us

1139
01:12:45,039 --> 01:12:48,520
on being on the show, having us on the show.

1140
01:12:49,079 --> 01:12:51,399
I'm gonna have to cut that part, but thank you

1141
01:12:51,520 --> 01:12:54,239
for being on the show. It really means a lot

1142
01:12:54,279 --> 01:12:56,560
that you consider us on a cold call, just coming

1143
01:12:56,600 --> 01:12:59,680
on the show and sharing your expertise and going into

1144
01:12:59,720 --> 01:13:03,600
so much any interesting topics and rabbit trails. I think

1145
01:13:04,039 --> 01:13:06,239
our viewers are going to really enjoy this. I know

1146
01:13:06,399 --> 01:13:10,800
I have. And with that, I'm going to ask if

1147
01:13:10,840 --> 01:13:13,479
you have any closing thoughts or anything you'd like to promote,

1148
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:16,840
anything you have coming up books or anything like that. Please.

1149
01:13:18,159 --> 01:13:21,920
Speaker 3: Okay, First, let me if I was going to focus

1150
01:13:22,119 --> 01:13:26,960
my search around a specific plant, it would be the

1151
01:13:27,079 --> 01:13:31,880
tree known as the hackberry, and there's several across North America.

1152
01:13:32,439 --> 01:13:37,399
The reason being they formed these thousands of these little

1153
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:42,439
tiny berries that are just super nutrient dance, super calorie dance.

1154
01:13:44,439 --> 01:13:47,359
If you've ever heard of peking Man, peking Man was

1155
01:13:47,479 --> 01:13:50,920
homo erectus picanus and goes back about seven hundred thousand

1156
01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:54,479
years ago. One of our ancestors lived in Central China,

1157
01:13:55,000 --> 01:13:58,199
had clothing made duels, had control of fire, this sort

1158
01:13:58,199 --> 01:14:01,119
of thing. They were found with lots and lots and

1159
01:14:01,199 --> 01:14:05,039
lots of these hackberries because it's a real easy to

1160
01:14:05,279 --> 01:14:09,039
store food. The leaves are very nutritious, the bark is

1161
01:14:09,159 --> 01:14:12,000
very nutritious. It's a food tree. Most people consider it

1162
01:14:12,079 --> 01:14:15,840
to be a trash tree, but as far as wild

1163
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:22,119
food scale, it's spectacular. And it's following not just all

1164
01:14:22,159 --> 01:14:24,920
across North America but all around the world.

1165
01:14:25,520 --> 01:14:26,079
Speaker 2: Interesting.

1166
01:14:27,159 --> 01:14:32,399
Speaker 3: So, and it would be if I felt that the

1167
01:14:33,960 --> 01:14:37,720
the Sasquatch was had a particular favorite tree, I would

1168
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:41,399
guess that. And one of the things about the hackberry

1169
01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:42,840
is the wood is very brutal.

1170
01:14:43,720 --> 01:14:43,840
Speaker 4: Uh.

1171
01:14:44,079 --> 01:14:47,199
Speaker 3: Every time it wins, branches break off.

1172
01:14:49,279 --> 01:14:50,199
Speaker 2: Easy camouflage.

1173
01:14:53,359 --> 01:14:58,159
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just just planting that seed.

1174
01:14:58,279 --> 01:14:59,640
Speaker 2: I like where you're going with this. We might just

1175
01:14:59,680 --> 01:15:00,880
have to extend this episode.

1176
01:15:00,920 --> 01:15:01,039
Speaker 3: Now.

1177
01:15:02,159 --> 01:15:04,479
Speaker 2: Oh, the listeners I know are gonna love this. This

1178
01:15:04,600 --> 01:15:08,239
is great. Now. There's also I forget the name of

1179
01:15:08,319 --> 01:15:11,800
the plant, but there are nests in the Pacific Northwest

1180
01:15:12,039 --> 01:15:15,760
that people have found and it might be the hackberry,

1181
01:15:16,439 --> 01:15:18,960
but they claim that the nests are made out of

1182
01:15:19,000 --> 01:15:24,960
a specific tree or shrub that has vital properties for birthing.

1183
01:15:26,800 --> 01:15:29,239
That the that the Bigfoot uses this tree and the

1184
01:15:29,359 --> 01:15:32,760
Native Americans have used these plants for some qualities that

1185
01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:37,560
it has that help in birthing. Is there is there

1186
01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:39,720
any merit in your opinion or something you know of

1187
01:15:40,359 --> 01:15:46,279
too to that hypothesis would be the word I'm looking for.

1188
01:15:47,960 --> 01:15:49,720
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, there are a number of plants that were

1189
01:15:49,840 --> 01:15:56,199
given to to women in labor to either help relax

1190
01:15:56,239 --> 01:15:59,880
the muscles, some increase their ability to withstand the pain,

1191
01:16:01,000 --> 01:16:05,520
also reduce bleeding afterwards, because there's a lot of tearing. Now,

1192
01:16:06,520 --> 01:16:09,279
the tearring is kind of specific to the humans because

1193
01:16:09,319 --> 01:16:11,680
of our size of our head to the body. I

1194
01:16:11,920 --> 01:16:13,920
don't know. I haven't seen the self squatch give birth.

1195
01:16:13,960 --> 01:16:17,600
I don't know if we get tearing there, but at

1196
01:16:17,680 --> 01:16:21,680
the very least I could see some antibacterial properties being important,

1197
01:16:22,079 --> 01:16:25,239
some hemistatic you know, stopping the bleeding and sort of things,

1198
01:16:26,000 --> 01:16:31,880
muscle relax sense, calming agents. See. Now, now I'm intrigued.

1199
01:16:33,039 --> 01:16:35,359
I want to know how difficult it is for a

1200
01:16:35,439 --> 01:16:39,720
primate to give birth compared to a human because if

1201
01:16:39,760 --> 01:16:43,680
you think a lot of animals, you know, it's it's dessible,

1202
01:16:43,720 --> 01:16:46,520
but they're not howling in pain or anything like that.

1203
01:16:46,680 --> 01:16:49,399
You know, we ran the gavis, cows, goats, you know,

1204
01:16:49,479 --> 01:16:53,439
all that sort of thing, And I was like, you know,

1205
01:16:54,239 --> 01:16:55,760
is that the way it is with primates? That's a

1206
01:16:55,800 --> 01:16:56,199
good question.

1207
01:16:56,399 --> 01:16:59,079
Speaker 2: Good question. I really don't know. But I know people

1208
01:16:59,159 --> 01:17:02,159
who do, and that might have to be one of

1209
01:17:02,239 --> 01:17:03,000
the next episodes.

1210
01:17:04,520 --> 01:17:07,960
Speaker 3: But definitely asked them. But yeah, but lining the nest

1211
01:17:08,039 --> 01:17:10,199
with medica, like going back to the birds and then

1212
01:17:10,359 --> 01:17:13,920
stealing the cigarette butts to keep the parasites down. Yeah, yeah,

1213
01:17:14,159 --> 01:17:17,279
it would make sense that there's something that assists them.

1214
01:17:18,279 --> 01:17:21,840
You know, if it could be that the branches are

1215
01:17:21,960 --> 01:17:24,600
very easy to intertwine and get a good nest. You know,

1216
01:17:24,680 --> 01:17:32,479
there's medicinal properties, there's mechanical properties, there's different possibilities, but

1217
01:17:33,119 --> 01:17:36,800
medicinal can definitely be included in why are they using?

1218
01:17:39,359 --> 01:17:42,319
Speaker 2: Very And I wish I could remember the name. It

1219
01:17:42,439 --> 01:17:46,039
might be Hackberries that I think it starts from. Ah,

1220
01:17:46,119 --> 01:17:47,399
now I'm going to have to I'll add it to

1221
01:17:47,439 --> 01:17:49,479
the show notes when I remember, because I'm going to

1222
01:17:49,520 --> 01:17:52,079
try so hard to waste the rest fifteen minutes trying

1223
01:17:52,079 --> 01:17:53,560
to remember that, and then as soon as I forget,

1224
01:17:53,640 --> 01:17:55,119
I'll be in the shower later and I'm like, ah,

1225
01:17:55,159 --> 01:17:55,720
that's what it was.

1226
01:17:57,199 --> 01:17:57,439
Speaker 3: Cool.

1227
01:17:58,000 --> 01:18:01,760
Speaker 2: So since we're going down, let me just I guess

1228
01:18:01,800 --> 01:18:03,720
I'll take a second here and see if there's any

1229
01:18:03,880 --> 01:18:09,079
questions that I have. Just to utilize the last fifteen

1230
01:18:09,119 --> 01:18:12,840
minutes or so until late thirty that I might not

1231
01:18:13,000 --> 01:18:16,319
have asked that we uh that I scrolled past in

1232
01:18:16,399 --> 01:18:22,920
my outline here. I don't know that we didn't cover

1233
01:18:23,079 --> 01:18:23,760
I think we did.

1234
01:18:25,720 --> 01:18:27,600
Speaker 3: You did have the question about, you know, how does

1235
01:18:27,760 --> 01:18:30,600
understanding the local flora and fauna help you? Oh? Yes,

1236
01:18:31,359 --> 01:18:33,279
I mean you haven't touched upon that. If you know

1237
01:18:33,439 --> 01:18:36,960
the animal's food, that's one of the driving factors of their.

1238
01:18:36,960 --> 01:18:39,399
Speaker 2: Behavior, like deer right being a hunter.

1239
01:18:39,800 --> 01:18:42,680
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So if you're just walking the woods looking

1240
01:18:42,720 --> 01:18:46,119
for bigfoot without any knowledge of the plants and what

1241
01:18:46,399 --> 01:18:49,039
might be food and what might it's just blind luck

1242
01:18:49,079 --> 01:18:53,399
and most likely you're too loud and stinky that they're

1243
01:18:53,439 --> 01:18:55,680
going to find you and they're gonna, you know, pull

1244
01:18:55,760 --> 01:19:00,560
ass out of there. So finding a possible food and

1245
01:19:00,760 --> 01:19:05,239
hunkering down and just waiting, I think would be a

1246
01:19:05,439 --> 01:19:10,199
better plan than just randomly running through the woods or

1247
01:19:10,399 --> 01:19:16,279
setting your game cams up in specific areas. I would think.

1248
01:19:18,600 --> 01:19:20,760
One of the things I've learned in my studies of

1249
01:19:21,159 --> 01:19:27,439
human biochemistry is energy and what can we do to

1250
01:19:27,520 --> 01:19:33,079
conserve energy? Because that is energy calories that determines a

1251
01:19:33,159 --> 01:19:40,199
lot of our capabilities, And so looking at bigfoot, big creature.

1252
01:19:40,840 --> 01:19:43,880
I would suspect that they are using the game trails

1253
01:19:43,960 --> 01:19:48,199
created by other animals, because something that big busting through

1254
01:19:48,439 --> 01:19:52,279
the woods, it's tiring, it's going to require more calories.

1255
01:19:52,439 --> 01:19:57,880
It's more chance that they're going to be found. They also,

1256
01:19:58,079 --> 01:20:01,600
apes aren't designed for running for the most part, especially

1257
01:20:01,600 --> 01:20:03,159
the bigger and you know they do like the knuckle

1258
01:20:03,199 --> 01:20:06,239
walking and so forth. So I would not think that

1259
01:20:06,439 --> 01:20:10,079
the bigfoot is traveling very far per day. So I

1260
01:20:10,159 --> 01:20:12,880
think once you find an area rich and say hackberries,

1261
01:20:13,760 --> 01:20:17,600
that's why I would set up cameras because if it's

1262
01:20:17,640 --> 01:20:19,680
a place and then leave them there for you know,

1263
01:20:19,800 --> 01:20:24,399
a year, right basically, and and you know, hopefully during

1264
01:20:24,520 --> 01:20:29,079
that time they come in, I got to think they

1265
01:20:30,199 --> 01:20:34,279
know their territory pretty well. And so like any other

1266
01:20:34,560 --> 01:20:40,199
nomadic food gatherer, you know, like the animal, you know,

1267
01:20:40,279 --> 01:20:43,239
they have a trail that they do throughout the year

1268
01:20:44,119 --> 01:20:46,720
to find fresh food. Because if they're just sitting in

1269
01:20:46,800 --> 01:20:48,520
one area, and if you got to know five of

1270
01:20:48,600 --> 01:20:53,359
them eating fifty pounds of plant material a day, that

1271
01:20:53,520 --> 01:20:56,399
will strip an area pretty quickly, and that will science

1272
01:20:56,439 --> 01:21:01,479
that they're there. So I would think they have maybe

1273
01:21:01,560 --> 01:21:05,199
not a definite track, but kind of zones that they

1274
01:21:05,319 --> 01:21:09,960
travel through in their search for the food. I wouldn't

1275
01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:12,399
say search for them as they acquire the food. But

1276
01:21:12,520 --> 01:21:15,680
I also think, as we talked earlier, they can eat

1277
01:21:15,680 --> 01:21:17,479
a lot of stuff that we can't if they can

1278
01:21:17,520 --> 01:21:21,479
get the nutrients from the cellulose itself, which we can't.

1279
01:21:22,039 --> 01:21:25,920
Speaker 2: Right now, you touched on Actually I just thought of

1280
01:21:25,960 --> 01:21:31,079
another question. You touched on human impact on particularly in

1281
01:21:31,319 --> 01:21:37,439
like the Northeast. Another human impact I think is invasive species. Right,

1282
01:21:37,640 --> 01:21:42,840
So how in building off of your comment, you know,

1283
01:21:43,720 --> 01:21:46,560
humans weren't there two hundred, you know, two thousand years

1284
01:21:46,560 --> 01:21:48,840
ago in the Northeast. Just using that as an example,

1285
01:21:50,159 --> 01:21:53,000
we brought invasive species or they made it here somehow,

1286
01:21:54,560 --> 01:21:58,359
how do you think invasive plants in particular have impacted

1287
01:21:58,560 --> 01:22:02,720
not only I mean obviously big, but foraging animals that

1288
01:22:03,560 --> 01:22:07,920
are reliant on certain types of plants, things like that

1289
01:22:08,119 --> 01:22:13,800
that would modify behavior and or become more beneficial. Right

1290
01:22:14,479 --> 01:22:17,720
on both sides of the coin, What in your experience

1291
01:22:17,840 --> 01:22:21,720
and your opinion do you think what role do invasive

1292
01:22:21,880 --> 01:22:26,880
plants play? What impact do they have on local floor

1293
01:22:26,960 --> 01:22:30,800
inmph and obviously mostly negative most of the time. But

1294
01:22:31,960 --> 01:22:34,880
what's your opinion. You look like you're ready. You're rubbing

1295
01:22:34,880 --> 01:22:36,920
your fingers, wait to hear what you have to say.

1296
01:22:37,920 --> 01:22:42,880
Speaker 3: Okay, you touch on it benefits and negatives. So just

1297
01:22:43,000 --> 01:22:45,880
because a plant comes from somewhere else does not mean

1298
01:22:45,960 --> 01:22:50,560
it's going to become invasive. Usually the reason it's spreads

1299
01:22:50,680 --> 01:22:53,880
so rapidly, like down here the China berry, the Chinese

1300
01:22:53,960 --> 01:23:00,720
tallow trees, is because nothing in the native ecosystem eats

1301
01:23:00,840 --> 01:23:08,640
that plant. It's not under the pressure it's under in Asia, Australia, Europe,

1302
01:23:08,760 --> 01:23:13,039
you know, wherever where it's part of the ecosystem where

1303
01:23:13,199 --> 01:23:16,239
it's being eaten and something that is keeping it in control.

1304
01:23:18,279 --> 01:23:22,600
You talked about my Instagram Merriweather Forager. I recently posted

1305
01:23:22,760 --> 01:23:25,479
the mint that you get at the different like pad

1306
01:23:25,560 --> 01:23:29,479
Thai restaurants and some of the Asian restaurants that people have.

1307
01:23:29,840 --> 01:23:31,880
They love the mint. One of the things about mint

1308
01:23:32,399 --> 01:23:34,640
is it's very easy. You stick it in some water,

1309
01:23:34,840 --> 01:23:37,520
it produces roots, you plant it, you get mint and

1310
01:23:37,640 --> 01:23:41,319
it spreads vigorously. The sam Houston National Forest and even

1311
01:23:41,359 --> 01:23:43,800
here on the edge of Houston, the Spring Creek Greenway,

1312
01:23:44,359 --> 01:23:50,600
it is overrun with this delicious mint because none of

1313
01:23:50,680 --> 01:23:55,000
the insects eat it, none of the rabbits eat it.

1314
01:23:55,119 --> 01:23:57,800
There's nothing eating it, so it's just spreading and spreading

1315
01:23:57,880 --> 01:24:00,520
and spreading, which means then there're it's going to be

1316
01:24:00,760 --> 01:24:03,560
less food for the insects. If there's less foods for

1317
01:24:03,600 --> 01:24:06,159
the insects, we talked about gorillas, Grillas eat the insects,

1318
01:24:07,159 --> 01:24:10,720
so you're taking a protein source away, you're taking the

1319
01:24:10,800 --> 01:24:13,520
food away from the birds. If there's fewer birds because

1320
01:24:13,560 --> 01:24:18,079
they eat bugs, there's not bugs, they rely on seeds.

1321
01:24:19,800 --> 01:24:22,039
If they're the type of bird that eats both. If

1322
01:24:22,039 --> 01:24:24,039
they're a type of bird that just eats bugs, it's

1323
01:24:24,119 --> 01:24:27,479
kind of screwed. But if it eats bugs and seeds,

1324
01:24:27,520 --> 01:24:30,399
it has to eat more seeds, so it's spreading. You know,

1325
01:24:30,479 --> 01:24:32,520
the feces around the bird poop and there's going to

1326
01:24:32,560 --> 01:24:36,800
be seeds in that. Depending on the plant, that could

1327
01:24:36,840 --> 01:24:41,000
be spreading things. So long story short, if it is

1328
01:24:41,479 --> 01:24:46,399
spreading uncontrollably, that's an indication that there aren't enough things

1329
01:24:46,520 --> 01:24:53,279
in the ecosystem eating it, quite possibly including sausquatch, or

1330
01:24:53,680 --> 01:24:57,760
it is overrunning and outproducing the foods that the sasquatch

1331
01:24:57,960 --> 01:25:02,560
would normally eat. Accustomed to eating, likes eating, because that's

1332
01:25:02,600 --> 01:25:05,279
the thing, if you know, it's a reproductive strategy. If

1333
01:25:05,279 --> 01:25:10,079
you produce enough babies, the other plants can't compete with you,

1334
01:25:10,159 --> 01:25:12,960
and you end up with these huge patches of a monoculture.

1335
01:25:13,000 --> 01:25:16,840
And we basically invasive plants are basically like a giant

1336
01:25:16,920 --> 01:25:19,720
field of corn. It's just one plant, maybe a few

1337
01:25:19,800 --> 01:25:25,239
others sprinkled in, but it's predominantly one one plant. And

1338
01:25:25,560 --> 01:25:30,119
nature doesn't work that way. Nature doesn't like just one monoculture.

1339
01:25:31,960 --> 01:25:36,239
So by that, yeah, it's causing problems, but you also

1340
01:25:36,319 --> 01:25:39,520
touched upon. There may be other plants coming in that

1341
01:25:41,359 --> 01:25:45,039
are eaten by things. Dandelions are a great example dandulions.

1342
01:25:45,119 --> 01:25:47,720
The true danuline is non native. It came over from

1343
01:25:47,760 --> 01:25:52,199
Europe and it's spread and one of the things that

1344
01:25:52,239 --> 01:25:54,920
helps controlled the danulines not just things eating it, but

1345
01:25:55,000 --> 01:25:57,600
it is super nutritious. But the deer, the rabbits, all

1346
01:25:57,600 --> 01:26:01,680
those things they eat the danuline too. But the growth pattern,

1347
01:26:01,760 --> 01:26:03,319
and I'm kind of going off topic.

1348
01:26:03,159 --> 01:26:04,279
Speaker 2: Here, just bear with leaves.

1349
01:26:06,600 --> 01:26:09,079
Speaker 3: The dnulines. They bainly go in areas that have been

1350
01:26:09,119 --> 01:26:14,720
abused and just laid bare of other plants, and you

1351
01:26:14,880 --> 01:26:18,279
basically have maybe just grass, like you know out in

1352
01:26:18,319 --> 01:26:21,600
the yard, not my yard, but other people's yards, where

1353
01:26:21,640 --> 01:26:23,760
you have roots that maybe go down two inches, and

1354
01:26:23,800 --> 01:26:27,039
then every time it rains, the minerals in the soil

1355
01:26:27,079 --> 01:26:29,279
gets leached deeper and deeper and deeper, which is why

1356
01:26:29,359 --> 01:26:33,119
you kind of keep adding fertilizer to your yard if

1357
01:26:33,159 --> 01:26:37,159
you have grass, because the natural minerals are there. Danulines

1358
01:26:37,199 --> 01:26:41,880
come in, they'll send a taproot down twelve feet into

1359
01:26:41,960 --> 01:26:45,000
the soil, suck all these minerals, bring them back up

1360
01:26:45,039 --> 01:26:48,439
into their leaves. That makes them so super nutritious. And

1361
01:26:48,560 --> 01:26:51,359
then when the danilines die, the leaves are there on

1362
01:26:51,439 --> 01:26:54,439
the surface and the minerals get released into the surface. Again.

1363
01:26:55,000 --> 01:26:57,239
You also have a lot of hummoic acid and vulvc

1364
01:26:57,279 --> 01:27:01,920
acid and all the plant material, and you got twelve

1365
01:27:01,960 --> 01:27:04,239
feet of root mixed in the soil. So you've suddenly

1366
01:27:04,319 --> 01:27:09,039
turned really crappy soil into really organic rich soil. And

1367
01:27:09,159 --> 01:27:11,119
then the other plants move in and then they take

1368
01:27:11,199 --> 01:27:14,279
over and you get that progression you know, eventually leading

1369
01:27:14,279 --> 01:27:19,000
into a mature woods. Where I'm going with this, I

1370
01:27:19,079 --> 01:27:23,840
have no idea, give me a section, but the depending.

1371
01:27:24,199 --> 01:27:26,199
Basically it boils down to it. Just because the plant

1372
01:27:26,239 --> 01:27:29,640
is farm doesn't mean it can't end up playing in

1373
01:27:29,680 --> 01:27:31,840
a positive role in the ecosis.

1374
01:27:32,239 --> 01:27:35,640
Speaker 2: Right, That's what I was asking. Are there plants perhaps

1375
01:27:36,279 --> 01:27:40,239
that like you touched on, that are negative have a

1376
01:27:40,640 --> 01:27:43,520
negative impact on the environment or the species that live there?

1377
01:27:44,079 --> 01:27:46,840
But also are there plants like the dandelion, which I

1378
01:27:46,920 --> 01:27:51,079
did not know was technically a non native species, did

1379
01:27:51,199 --> 01:27:55,479
not know that they are delicious. My grandfather used to

1380
01:27:55,479 --> 01:28:03,359
make dandelion wine excellent. But those beneficial plants that do

1381
01:28:03,600 --> 01:28:08,920
come in I was wondering, you know what, how would

1382
01:28:09,119 --> 01:28:12,159
if they're not native, how would bigfoot or other species?

1383
01:28:13,039 --> 01:28:16,520
How would they gravitate towards consuming them? How do they know?

1384
01:28:18,359 --> 01:28:24,760
Speaker 3: Okay, let's lett you got got good questions. First, the

1385
01:28:24,920 --> 01:28:27,640
plants that were specifically brought over, they were brought over

1386
01:28:27,960 --> 01:28:30,000
for a purpose. They were brought over for food or

1387
01:28:30,119 --> 01:28:36,359
medicine or fiber. Generally food or medicine, and so humans

1388
01:28:36,439 --> 01:28:40,039
found them to be nutritious, and so, you know, we

1389
01:28:40,159 --> 01:28:43,680
talked about the differences between biochemistries and so forth. But

1390
01:28:43,920 --> 01:28:47,079
it's also likely that someone in the lake Daniel Lyons

1391
01:28:47,199 --> 01:28:55,720
Burdock things like that have a nutritional value to soft squatch,

1392
01:28:56,119 --> 01:28:58,560
and they figured out, oh maybe I can eat this.

1393
01:28:59,239 --> 01:29:02,720
Now I get to talk about one of my favorite subjects.

1394
01:29:04,159 --> 01:29:09,479
How did humans learn which plants are medicinal? And I'll

1395
01:29:09,600 --> 01:29:11,239
run your right through because most people think it was

1396
01:29:11,279 --> 01:29:15,479
like trial and error. No, because a person actually sat

1397
01:29:15,520 --> 01:29:18,279
down and calculated. If you look at all the different

1398
01:29:18,319 --> 01:29:21,760
possible plants, all the different possible maladies, all the plants

1399
01:29:21,840 --> 01:29:25,920
we know through trial and error, how long it would

1400
01:29:25,960 --> 01:29:29,039
take to figure it out. This works with a fever,

1401
01:29:29,199 --> 01:29:31,399
this works with the bacterial and function all this. It

1402
01:29:31,560 --> 01:29:34,920
was over a trillion years longer than the Earth has

1403
01:29:34,960 --> 01:29:42,000
been around. If you talk to the Aboriginal people, if

1404
01:29:42,039 --> 01:29:44,319
you talk to the indigenous tribes, if you talk to

1405
01:29:44,439 --> 01:29:49,439
the people who remember or have passed down the knowledge

1406
01:29:49,479 --> 01:29:53,960
of these plants, how did we learn which plants are medicinal?

1407
01:29:54,720 --> 01:29:58,239
Regardless of the culture around the world, The answer is

1408
01:29:58,479 --> 01:30:03,199
the plants told us m which to the westerner is sink.

1409
01:30:04,680 --> 01:30:05,760
Speaker 2: It's probably made the same fish.

1410
01:30:06,520 --> 01:30:08,199
Speaker 3: I'm a dandelion, Eat me if you want to go

1411
01:30:08,279 --> 01:30:10,600
pee a lot? You know. No, it's not like that.

1412
01:30:11,520 --> 01:30:14,880
So now to explain it, we have to get lost

1413
01:30:14,960 --> 01:30:15,479
at sea.

1414
01:30:16,279 --> 01:30:18,640
Speaker 2: Huh, trust me on this. I'm going so trust you.

1415
01:30:19,520 --> 01:30:22,520
Speaker 3: But we're in our life raft. Our ship has sunk.

1416
01:30:22,920 --> 01:30:26,000
We got a fishing kit. We're catching fish or eating

1417
01:30:26,039 --> 01:30:30,000
the fish. And for the first six weeks, the people

1418
01:30:30,159 --> 01:30:33,880
are just eating the meat of the fish. The shoeshaw me. Basically,

1419
01:30:33,960 --> 01:30:36,840
they're catching the fish, they're eating the meat. But over

1420
01:30:37,079 --> 01:30:42,039
and over and over, there's been a thing that happens

1421
01:30:42,159 --> 01:30:44,800
right around six weeks where suddenly they catch a fish

1422
01:30:45,199 --> 01:30:46,880
and they pull it up and they're looking at this

1423
01:30:47,079 --> 01:30:52,359
fish and they're going, damn, those eyeballs look delicious. Why

1424
01:30:52,439 --> 01:30:56,319
have I never eaten those eyeballs before? And the liver,

1425
01:30:56,640 --> 01:31:00,600
Oh yeah, man, I want that liver. And this I

1426
01:31:00,640 --> 01:31:03,159
don't know what this yellow, gooey thing is, but I

1427
01:31:03,359 --> 01:31:06,640
want that too. And suddenly a switch gets flipped in

1428
01:31:06,680 --> 01:31:10,039
their brain and they start eating all these other parts

1429
01:31:10,079 --> 01:31:12,319
of the fish too. And it turns out those parts

1430
01:31:12,359 --> 01:31:15,479
are very high and nutrients that the body needs. The

1431
01:31:15,600 --> 01:31:21,399
body recognized there's nutrients that it needs in that fish.

1432
01:31:23,319 --> 01:31:26,199
How this has come into plants. Well, when we think

1433
01:31:26,279 --> 01:31:30,199
about our senses, our sight, our smell, our taste, even

1434
01:31:30,239 --> 01:31:33,279
our hearing and our sense of touch, we have a

1435
01:31:33,359 --> 01:31:36,680
tendency to downplay it. When we think of like sense

1436
01:31:36,720 --> 01:31:39,520
of smell, we think of the bloodhound, you know, who

1437
01:31:39,720 --> 01:31:42,279
are a bear who can smell, you know, like a

1438
01:31:42,800 --> 01:31:47,439
thousand thousand times better than us. When we think of eyesight,

1439
01:31:47,560 --> 01:31:49,680
we think of the hawk that can see the little

1440
01:31:49,760 --> 01:31:52,600
mouse from a mile in the air. When we think

1441
01:31:52,640 --> 01:31:56,079
of hearing, we think of rabbits or something, or deer deer,

1442
01:31:56,159 --> 01:31:58,399
you know, a great sense of hearing, all this sort

1443
01:31:58,399 --> 01:32:04,920
of stuff. But nonimal has the complete package that we do.

1444
01:32:06,199 --> 01:32:11,079
Our vision, you know, we can see millions of colors,

1445
01:32:11,319 --> 01:32:14,960
shades of colors, and if you're a super si, well

1446
01:32:15,039 --> 01:32:17,640
you get the average person be I don't remember these

1447
01:32:17,720 --> 01:32:22,319
numbers exactly, but somewhere between eight hundred thousand and one

1448
01:32:22,359 --> 01:32:24,199
point two million shades.

1449
01:32:25,159 --> 01:32:25,359
Speaker 2: Wow.

1450
01:32:25,640 --> 01:32:28,359
Speaker 3: And then the super seers can see, you know, like

1451
01:32:28,479 --> 01:32:31,399
two million or three million. They can distinctly make out

1452
01:32:31,479 --> 01:32:34,600
that many shades so color. They're very good at color.

1453
01:32:34,880 --> 01:32:41,079
Our eyes are particularly designed to see shades of green. Okay.

1454
01:32:41,960 --> 01:32:44,960
Our sense of smell, we think, yeah, dog has a

1455
01:32:45,039 --> 01:32:48,800
sense of smell. That's amazing. We can sense molecules down

1456
01:32:48,880 --> 01:32:53,159
to one in a trillion. We actually have a really

1457
01:32:53,279 --> 01:32:56,479
good sense of smell. In modern life, we spend more

1458
01:32:56,560 --> 01:33:00,079
time time to avoid smelling things than we do. But

1459
01:33:00,199 --> 01:33:01,800
if you spend time out. One of the things I

1460
01:33:01,920 --> 01:33:04,039
found that if you spend you know, like the long

1461
01:33:04,079 --> 01:33:07,720
distance backpackers and stuff, their sense of smell becomes incredible.

1462
01:33:07,800 --> 01:33:11,199
They can pick out all these different smells. One thing

1463
01:33:11,319 --> 01:33:12,760
I like to do. I haven't had time to do

1464
01:33:12,840 --> 01:33:14,880
it in the last few years, but especially during the

1465
01:33:14,960 --> 01:33:17,800
covid is. I'd go for a nightly walk and I

1466
01:33:17,840 --> 01:33:19,680
would walk to a place in the neighborhood and I

1467
01:33:19,680 --> 01:33:23,840
would stop there with my eyes closed and just smell

1468
01:33:24,119 --> 01:33:27,399
and try and figure out how many different smells I

1469
01:33:27,479 --> 01:33:29,199
could smell, and then go to a different part of

1470
01:33:29,199 --> 01:33:32,840
the neighborhood. There's a tribe I can't remember exactly where

1471
01:33:32,840 --> 01:33:36,960
they are, but their calendar is basically made of smells.

1472
01:33:37,000 --> 01:33:39,760
When they smell a particular flower, it's this time of

1473
01:33:39,880 --> 01:33:42,920
year and they should be doing these things because that's

1474
01:33:42,960 --> 01:33:45,560
when that flower blooms. They know when that flower is blooming,

1475
01:33:45,760 --> 01:33:47,960
the rainy season is coming or the dry you know,

1476
01:33:48,439 --> 01:33:52,279
and so their calendar is scent based. We have an

1477
01:33:52,319 --> 01:33:55,279
amazing sense of smell. Same with their sense of taste.

1478
01:33:55,319 --> 01:33:57,119
You know, you talk about the five you know, the

1479
01:33:57,239 --> 01:34:01,600
five six nail, Who've got Me? But you know sweet, hour, salty, bittery.

1480
01:34:01,840 --> 01:34:04,640
I mean, but we can actually taste hundreds of thousands

1481
01:34:04,680 --> 01:34:08,640
of different flavors. Where I'm going with this is our

1482
01:34:08,840 --> 01:34:16,319
senses are really good at analyzing our surroundings, working with

1483
01:34:16,479 --> 01:34:18,680
our brain, and then our brain figuring out you know what,

1484
01:34:19,399 --> 01:34:23,439
if I took this vine and twisted it around, I

1485
01:34:23,520 --> 01:34:26,880
could make something that will catch that rabbit. And so

1486
01:34:27,039 --> 01:34:31,800
we normally think the brain is analyzing things. I'll call

1487
01:34:31,840 --> 01:34:34,039
it from an engineering point of viewer. How can I

1488
01:34:34,079 --> 01:34:36,960
attach this rock to a stick? How can I make

1489
01:34:37,039 --> 01:34:39,479
this rock sharper so I can cut the meat? Things

1490
01:34:39,560 --> 01:34:44,359
like that we completely forget we're also analyzing the chemistry

1491
01:34:45,439 --> 01:34:48,960
around us. Another good example is a pregnant woman with

1492
01:34:49,079 --> 01:34:52,079
their cravings and suddenly they want like pickles and ice

1493
01:34:52,119 --> 01:34:54,399
cream that you know the running joke at least from

1494
01:34:54,520 --> 01:34:57,119
gen X and so forth, And it boils down to

1495
01:34:57,479 --> 01:35:02,479
a sort of salts and calcium and facts, things the

1496
01:35:02,600 --> 01:35:05,399
developing fetus needs and things they're going to be needing

1497
01:35:05,560 --> 01:35:09,720
to support the fetus. In Africa is very common for

1498
01:35:09,960 --> 01:35:13,960
women to develop cravings for this one particular clay. It's

1499
01:35:14,159 --> 01:35:16,960
very mineral rich and it has the minerals that the

1500
01:35:17,039 --> 01:35:21,479
body needs to help bring a healthy child. So we

1501
01:35:21,800 --> 01:35:26,880
are doing this, We are taking in this information. Our

1502
01:35:26,960 --> 01:35:29,399
brain is analyzing me, not in the front where we're thinking,

1503
01:35:29,479 --> 01:35:31,359
but in the rear brain and say, you know what

1504
01:35:33,119 --> 01:35:38,880
eat that. The food manufacturers know this and they have

1505
01:35:39,239 --> 01:35:44,800
hijacked that impulse that hey we need that and yeah,

1506
01:35:44,960 --> 01:35:47,399
and so that's why they're so good at the brito's.

1507
01:35:47,920 --> 01:35:52,319
Oh well, a freedom. It's like it hits all the

1508
01:35:52,439 --> 01:35:53,600
caveman parts of our.

1509
01:35:53,560 --> 01:35:57,279
Speaker 2: Brain, doesn't it. So think, do you think there's a

1510
01:35:57,359 --> 01:36:01,079
parallel between you're describing our brain and our psychology and

1511
01:36:01,199 --> 01:36:05,199
our evolution. Is there a parallel? Maybe I'm stealing your

1512
01:36:05,199 --> 01:36:09,680
thunder here, but is there a link or a parallel

1513
01:36:09,720 --> 01:36:15,119
would probably be a better word for bigfoot evolution and

1514
01:36:15,399 --> 01:36:22,399
its development of its diet and its adaptation to invasive

1515
01:36:22,439 --> 01:36:27,000
species to bring it full circle in its own environment.

1516
01:36:29,119 --> 01:36:32,359
Speaker 3: Yeah. So if you look at other creatures, octopuses, octopy

1517
01:36:32,680 --> 01:36:37,079
whatever the plural is, they're figuring things out, they're eating

1518
01:36:37,159 --> 01:36:41,399
the invasive species. They are developing hunting techniques, specialized for

1519
01:36:42,239 --> 01:36:45,159
the invasive species that different camouflage and so forth. So,

1520
01:36:45,319 --> 01:36:51,359
I mean octopuses are pretty smart. But there's other indications

1521
01:36:51,479 --> 01:36:57,119
in the wild of animals analyzing and crows. I mean

1522
01:36:57,159 --> 01:36:59,359
it's seen where crows they'll figure out like a seven

1523
01:36:59,479 --> 01:37:05,039
step process chunk of food. Yeah, and figure crows again

1524
01:37:05,159 --> 01:37:08,439
have about the intelligence seven to six to eight year old.

1525
01:37:08,920 --> 01:37:10,520
So that would really, you know, if you want to

1526
01:37:10,680 --> 01:37:14,319
think comparisons, Yeah, you know, with the primates, the gorillas,

1527
01:37:14,359 --> 01:37:18,640
the chimpanzees, the crows all being around a six to

1528
01:37:18,680 --> 01:37:22,119
eight year old brain capacity. That's a pretty amazing brain.

1529
01:37:22,720 --> 01:37:28,359
Speaker 2: It really is. I would think, Yeah, that's I I

1530
01:37:28,439 --> 01:37:30,640
don't really want to stop this podcast because this is

1531
01:37:30,800 --> 01:37:35,479
except interesting, Like I really don't, but I'm gonna I'm

1532
01:37:35,520 --> 01:37:38,359
gonna throw it out there. Is there anything that I

1533
01:37:38,520 --> 01:37:42,000
did not ask that I should have asked, that maybe

1534
01:37:42,199 --> 01:37:45,119
I'm in an echo chamber or a tunnel vision and

1535
01:37:45,239 --> 01:37:48,359
I'm so focused on these things about bigfoot, you know,

1536
01:37:48,520 --> 01:37:52,600
these facets, these bullet points. Is there anything from your

1537
01:37:52,760 --> 01:37:56,880
perspective that I Am just not seeing or not asking

1538
01:37:57,720 --> 01:38:01,119
or that is just it's right in front of me

1539
01:38:01,159 --> 01:38:05,159
and maybe obvious to you, or something that I completely

1540
01:38:05,199 --> 01:38:09,079
may be overlooking. You've already done it with the hackberry, frankly,

1541
01:38:09,600 --> 01:38:14,520
But in addition to the hackberry, is there anything that

1542
01:38:15,119 --> 01:38:18,920
I haven't touched on or am blind to from your

1543
01:38:19,039 --> 01:38:24,159
perspective that maybe I should consider or start to look

1544
01:38:24,239 --> 01:38:25,640
into more or learn more about.

1545
01:38:27,720 --> 01:38:31,680
Speaker 3: So one thing that's a big mystery for the Sasquatch

1546
01:38:32,000 --> 01:38:37,840
is how big is the family unit gestation period and

1547
01:38:38,960 --> 01:38:43,000
social gathering. Do they travel around in small family My

1548
01:38:43,239 --> 01:38:48,479
guess based on the ecosystem and other animals and gorillas

1549
01:38:48,479 --> 01:38:51,319
and so forth, is they are somewhat of a troop.

1550
01:38:51,399 --> 01:38:58,399
They have core clusters. How many are in that is

1551
01:38:58,439 --> 01:39:01,760
a question? How many of them are directly related is

1552
01:39:01,800 --> 01:39:05,600
a question. Most likely they're you know, closely to second

1553
01:39:05,680 --> 01:39:12,359
third degree. My guess, just taking human culture and primate

1554
01:39:12,479 --> 01:39:16,079
culture and all this stuff in is they're probably moving

1555
01:39:16,119 --> 01:39:19,920
around in small family groups. But every so often there

1556
01:39:20,000 --> 01:39:25,680
could be like a jettimot where they gather at a

1557
01:39:25,720 --> 01:39:31,920
particular location, maybe swap some troop members for other troop

1558
01:39:32,000 --> 01:39:37,640
members to keep the genetic diversity up. If that were happening,

1559
01:39:37,800 --> 01:39:39,600
it would probably be at a time where there would

1560
01:39:39,640 --> 01:39:43,079
be a lot of food available in a particular area

1561
01:39:43,760 --> 01:39:47,479
probably fall where you got a lot of nuts things

1562
01:39:47,560 --> 01:39:50,479
like that. The ground hasn't frozen yet, so they can

1563
01:39:50,560 --> 01:39:57,640
get the tubers. So thinking in that way, would that

1564
01:39:58,119 --> 01:40:04,319
guide I don't use guide the search for them. So

1565
01:40:05,239 --> 01:40:07,279
if we could find, you know, look at what is

1566
01:40:07,319 --> 01:40:11,920
the gestation period for the great apes we have. I

1567
01:40:12,000 --> 01:40:15,560
wasn't able to find anything along that for the Gigantipithesceenes

1568
01:40:15,680 --> 01:40:20,279
or any of the other prehistoric apes, but even the

1569
01:40:20,479 --> 01:40:27,479
you know Chromegnum man, the the Australia Australia Pithescenes, you

1570
01:40:27,520 --> 01:40:30,279
know those things. What what do we know about their

1571
01:40:32,159 --> 01:40:37,600
clustering and grouping and can we extrapolate something or can

1572
01:40:37,680 --> 01:40:40,479
we use that as a baseline to guide us. But

1573
01:40:41,600 --> 01:40:43,479
I said, going back to I really think they're probably

1574
01:40:43,520 --> 01:40:45,880
traveling around in small family groups. I mean, how long

1575
01:40:45,920 --> 01:40:48,640
does it take to train a young soft squatch to

1576
01:40:48,680 --> 01:40:51,359
go out and do squatchy stuff on their own? I

1577
01:40:51,439 --> 01:40:54,800
don't know, But if we looked at apes and so forth,

1578
01:40:54,840 --> 01:40:57,600
we could probably get an idea. You know, not only

1579
01:40:57,680 --> 01:41:01,439
what it's a gestation period, but what is the point

1580
01:41:01,520 --> 01:41:05,760
where the animal is capable of living on its own?

1581
01:41:06,520 --> 01:41:11,279
So not just the does it need mother's milk or

1582
01:41:11,319 --> 01:41:14,600
things like that, but it has learned the skills what

1583
01:41:14,760 --> 01:41:15,560
foods it can need.

1584
01:41:16,159 --> 01:41:16,800
Speaker 2: Is it proficient?

1585
01:41:17,840 --> 01:41:22,199
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, where where it truly can go off and

1586
01:41:22,319 --> 01:41:27,279
it knows it doesn't need the parents feeding it right right? So,

1587
01:41:28,079 --> 01:41:30,640
But like I said, I I I honestly believe if

1588
01:41:30,680 --> 01:41:32,800
there's going to be the YETI moots, I love that

1589
01:41:32,920 --> 01:41:36,680
I came up with that. I'm gonna use that. Yeah,

1590
01:41:37,239 --> 01:41:39,159
well I was thinking the ench moot from the Lord

1591
01:41:39,159 --> 01:41:39,680
of the Rings.

1592
01:41:39,960 --> 01:41:42,439
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's squashed mood.

1593
01:41:42,479 --> 01:41:42,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, but.

1594
01:41:45,199 --> 01:41:48,079
Speaker 2: You you're already but you made a Tolkien reference, so

1595
01:41:48,279 --> 01:41:49,079
even better, right.

1596
01:41:49,520 --> 01:41:53,760
Speaker 3: So, But I yeah, I gotta think they happen. I

1597
01:41:54,079 --> 01:41:57,159
really think in the fall there's probably gatherings. I know

1598
01:41:57,239 --> 01:42:01,800
there's this movie coming out where like Shia the Scotch

1599
01:42:01,880 --> 01:42:04,520
or Bigfoot or something, and people are complaining, like there

1600
01:42:04,600 --> 01:42:08,239
is some graphic yetti sects and stuff in it, but

1601
01:42:08,359 --> 01:42:10,439
it like followed the family troup, and I think in

1602
01:42:10,600 --> 01:42:13,000
that regards, I think they travel around in groups like that,

1603
01:42:13,560 --> 01:42:17,880
but they have meetups. It'd be really interesting if you

1604
01:42:18,000 --> 01:42:22,119
had like some Canadian sauce squatch and some Florida skuncakes,

1605
01:42:22,199 --> 01:42:23,319
would they be friend.

1606
01:42:23,159 --> 01:42:25,319
Speaker 2: Or foe and going back to the interesting.

1607
01:42:25,359 --> 01:42:29,079
Speaker 3: I mean, oh sorry, I just had a really interesting idea.

1608
01:42:31,640 --> 01:42:39,279
Could you put a pile of North America plant that

1609
01:42:39,520 --> 01:42:42,600
isn't found in that location there and see what happens

1610
01:42:42,640 --> 01:42:44,319
to it. I mean, you're going to get the raccoons

1611
01:42:44,359 --> 01:42:52,199
in the you know, I'm gonna say pine. But you know,

1612
01:42:52,880 --> 01:42:57,520
I know people tried baiting the sauce squatch, so it

1613
01:42:57,560 --> 01:43:02,520
might be interesting to you know, try some sasquatch food

1614
01:43:02,600 --> 01:43:05,520
from another area to see if there's any sort of

1615
01:43:05,600 --> 01:43:08,680
response or curiosity anyone.

1616
01:43:09,960 --> 01:43:10,199
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1617
01:43:10,680 --> 01:43:13,159
Speaker 3: I got to think they have a curiosity about their environment.

1618
01:43:13,960 --> 01:43:15,600
Speaker 2: Well, they eat dandelions, so they must.

1619
01:43:17,079 --> 01:43:21,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, going back to the US them sent

1620
01:43:21,920 --> 01:43:23,159
food based stuff.

1621
01:43:23,399 --> 01:43:29,159
Speaker 2: You so interesting. I have I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed

1622
01:43:29,199 --> 01:43:33,760
this conversation. I think this is by far everything that

1623
01:43:33,880 --> 01:43:38,479
I'm trying to do through this podcast. You have epitomized,

1624
01:43:38,520 --> 01:43:42,800
if that's even a word, by by joining us, because

1625
01:43:43,359 --> 01:43:46,439
you've I mean, I think I described it to you

1626
01:43:46,479 --> 01:43:48,800
when we were talking emailing back and forth. I want

1627
01:43:48,840 --> 01:43:52,079
to bring people in to the community and their expertise

1628
01:43:52,640 --> 01:43:58,560
who are not necessarily Bigfoot researchers, right, and we've done

1629
01:43:59,079 --> 01:44:01,800
just that on this show today, where you've you've given

1630
01:44:01,880 --> 01:44:04,279
us a ton of different insights. I mean, I can't

1631
01:44:04,279 --> 01:44:07,720
even list them all on both hands that I think

1632
01:44:07,800 --> 01:44:09,720
people are going to talk about. They're they're going to

1633
01:44:09,840 --> 01:44:12,520
learn things that are useful in their everyday lives and

1634
01:44:12,600 --> 01:44:16,760
their adventuring in their research, and and then we've got

1635
01:44:16,800 --> 01:44:20,439
a lot to think about from I mean everything we've

1636
01:44:20,479 --> 01:44:23,079
talked about, so this has been like, you might have

1637
01:44:23,159 --> 01:44:25,000
to come back on Honestly, if you're up for that,

1638
01:44:25,119 --> 01:44:30,880
I think we need em right, you might have to

1639
01:44:30,920 --> 01:44:33,479
be a regular, but they I know there's gonna be

1640
01:44:33,479 --> 01:44:35,560
a lot of questions in the comments when this comes

1641
01:44:35,600 --> 01:44:38,560
out that that people are just going to go nuts

1642
01:44:38,680 --> 01:44:40,680
with all the thought they're going to have and the

1643
01:44:40,840 --> 01:44:43,880
things that they're inspired by. So really, if you're open

1644
01:44:43,960 --> 01:44:47,159
to it, maybe we can have a follow up episode

1645
01:44:47,199 --> 01:44:49,279
to some of the questions that the that the viewers

1646
01:44:49,279 --> 01:44:52,920
and the listeners come up with, because I know, I

1647
01:44:53,319 --> 01:44:55,439
know I couldn't possibly think of all the questions that

1648
01:44:55,560 --> 01:44:58,399
the community is going to have. But I think this

1649
01:44:58,600 --> 01:45:02,079
is a great, great app episode, and I'm elated to

1650
01:45:02,199 --> 01:45:04,560
have had you on the show. I can't say thank

1651
01:45:04,600 --> 01:45:07,439
you enough. I've watched It's funny. I've watched the light

1652
01:45:07,760 --> 01:45:10,399
on your windows above you go from daylight all the

1653
01:45:10,479 --> 01:45:13,560
way to dark. So I'm like, okay, that's my cue.

1654
01:45:14,920 --> 01:45:17,000
I do want to say thank you very much for

1655
01:45:17,119 --> 01:45:18,840
being on the show, and I do. I tried to

1656
01:45:18,880 --> 01:45:20,680
give you the chance before, but I want to make

1657
01:45:20,800 --> 01:45:25,039
sure that we promote anything and everything that you want

1658
01:45:25,079 --> 01:45:28,840
to get out there about anything you have upcoming, anything

1659
01:45:28,920 --> 01:45:31,319
that you have out there, like your books, your website,

1660
01:45:31,520 --> 01:45:33,600
your account. Please let people know how they can get

1661
01:45:33,600 --> 01:45:35,880
a hold of you if you'd like them to all

1662
01:45:35,960 --> 01:45:38,399
of the above. Please, It's the least I could do

1663
01:45:38,520 --> 01:45:41,520
for having you on the show. I'm very appreciative, and

1664
01:45:41,560 --> 01:45:43,079
I want to make sure that people know how to

1665
01:45:43,159 --> 01:45:45,279
find you and how to learn all they can about

1666
01:45:45,319 --> 01:45:45,880
everything you do.

1667
01:45:47,199 --> 01:45:49,680
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I just love

1668
01:45:49,720 --> 01:45:54,279
connecting people to nature so and giving them insight into

1669
01:45:54,359 --> 01:45:57,600
the science behind what's going on. It excites. I'm a nerd.

1670
01:45:58,279 --> 01:46:01,920
But yeah, the center of everything is the Foraging Texas

1671
01:46:02,000 --> 01:46:06,640
dot com website, and there, like I said, as two

1672
01:46:06,720 --> 01:46:10,279
hundred and some plants. It has lists of upcoming in

1673
01:46:10,479 --> 01:46:14,159
person classes. I teach, not just all across the South,

1674
01:46:14,399 --> 01:46:18,359
or not just all across Texas, but even like Georgia,

1675
01:46:18,399 --> 01:46:22,279
Bushcraft and Minnesota and stuff like that. I if you

1676
01:46:22,720 --> 01:46:24,720
don't wave some money at me, I will show up

1677
01:46:25,640 --> 01:46:27,199
start ef thing. So I was going to say, if

1678
01:46:27,199 --> 01:46:29,399
you have a live gathering, sometimes give me a call.

1679
01:46:29,640 --> 01:46:32,520
Speaker 2: Oh, I will not hesitate. I will not hesitate.

1680
01:46:33,800 --> 01:46:36,279
Speaker 3: So Foraging Texas dot com. Then from there you can

1681
01:46:36,319 --> 01:46:39,560
find my different social media. You can also find my

1682
01:46:39,880 --> 01:46:45,359
herbal primaries, business Medicine, Man Plant Co, Medicine Man Plant Company,

1683
01:46:46,319 --> 01:46:50,159
or you can just go to medicinemanplantco dot com. And

1684
01:46:50,520 --> 01:46:57,560
that's where I have different personally formulated herbal concoctions based

1685
01:46:57,840 --> 01:47:01,159
on science to help with different issues. So like the

1686
01:47:01,239 --> 01:47:04,880
liver pill, the brain pill, the serenity pill, the lobido pill,

1687
01:47:04,960 --> 01:47:10,399
you know things like that designed to work. Each each

1688
01:47:12,239 --> 01:47:16,399
formula works under three different mechanisms known mechanisms in the

1689
01:47:16,479 --> 01:47:19,560
body to help accomplish what you are trying to do

1690
01:47:19,760 --> 01:47:23,840
while you're taking a thing. There's also some herbal honeys

1691
01:47:24,119 --> 01:47:27,039
and some wild forged te's and all that sort of stuff.

1692
01:47:27,079 --> 01:47:30,840
So if you're interested in health especially I don't use

1693
01:47:30,920 --> 01:47:33,800
interm ancestral health because a guy I don't really care

1694
01:47:33,880 --> 01:47:38,439
for took that term. But basically, the health we had

1695
01:47:38,520 --> 01:47:40,479
when we were conquering the world with a rock on

1696
01:47:40,560 --> 01:47:43,119
a stick as opposed to the health we have today

1697
01:47:44,199 --> 01:47:48,800
medicine Manplant Company dot com. But yeah, if you go

1698
01:47:48,840 --> 01:47:52,560
to the Forging Texas there's also hundreds of hours of YouTube.

1699
01:47:53,920 --> 01:47:57,680
I've moved over to Rumble because I get less problems

1700
01:47:57,800 --> 01:47:59,880
with Rumble than I did with YouTube, So I got

1701
01:48:00,520 --> 01:48:04,319
the Texas Village Healer Initiative going on and Rumble. There's

1702
01:48:04,399 --> 01:48:08,560
Merriweather on substack. I've been doing this before there was

1703
01:48:08,640 --> 01:48:12,760
social media, so as a new social media thing comes,

1704
01:48:12,800 --> 01:48:21,039
I set some ground there and so many now. Foraging

1705
01:48:21,119 --> 01:48:24,119
Texas dot com there's an email asking me a question.

1706
01:48:24,159 --> 01:48:26,600
If you have questions, go ahead and email me. I'll

1707
01:48:26,640 --> 01:48:28,640
try and help you out there. Definitely, I love the

1708
01:48:28,760 --> 01:48:33,760
idea of taking the viewer questions and doing another show

1709
01:48:33,800 --> 01:48:35,159
on that. That would be fun.

1710
01:48:35,880 --> 01:48:37,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that would be a lot of fun,

1711
01:48:37,319 --> 01:48:40,359
and I'm very grateful that you're willing to do that

1712
01:48:40,479 --> 01:48:42,640
because I know there are going to be so many questions,

1713
01:48:43,119 --> 01:48:45,720
and they're going to be burning questions right like, oh,

1714
01:48:45,880 --> 01:48:48,720
now that people have gone down this trail with us.

1715
01:48:49,520 --> 01:48:52,319
I bet it inspires so many more questions and people

1716
01:48:52,399 --> 01:48:54,760
have made observations and maybe they didn't think about or

1717
01:48:54,920 --> 01:48:58,039
connections that they might make after listening. I can only

1718
01:48:58,119 --> 01:48:59,680
imagine the questions that are going to come through in

1719
01:48:59,720 --> 01:49:02,960
the comments about it. So don't be surprised when I'm

1720
01:49:03,000 --> 01:49:07,880
emailing you. Hey, doctor r W, you available such such

1721
01:49:07,880 --> 01:49:12,119
a date so I can make it happen. Excellent. Well,

1722
01:49:12,199 --> 01:49:16,920
thank you very much. I'm so happy that you joined

1723
01:49:16,960 --> 01:49:18,960
us on the show today. I have a great night.

1724
01:49:19,079 --> 01:49:21,039
Thank you so much for being on the show.

1725
01:49:21,960 --> 01:49:24,279
Speaker 3: Thank you. I had a wonderful time. This was so

1726
01:49:24,399 --> 01:49:28,800
much fun. Excellent. Really yeah, it's just you know, it

1727
01:49:28,920 --> 01:49:30,199
gets the brain thinking.

1728
01:49:29,960 --> 01:49:31,520
Speaker 2: And it's curiosity all.

1729
01:49:32,960 --> 01:49:35,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I said, weaponize my attention deficit disorder. This

1730
01:49:36,159 --> 01:49:37,600
was a great way of doing this.

1731
01:49:38,000 --> 01:49:40,920
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well until next time. That's how I'm going to

1732
01:49:41,000 --> 01:49:42,520
end the show. Until next time.

1733
01:49:48,720 --> 01:49:56,800
Speaker 4: Why so, rids guy read shot So so you be quiet,

1734
01:49:57,560 --> 01:50:10,840
be aware, Goldfee dark, rage my blood and your frozen

1735
01:50:11,119 --> 01:50:18,000
Raine dreams. Nope, Paine round fast broken, shade.

1736
01:50:26,439 --> 01:50:52,079
Speaker 5: Tree meside cool, call me

1737
01:50:55,520 --> 01:50:55,760
Speaker 3: Your f