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Speaker 4: It's that tiny dog that the passenger next to you
Speaker 4: brought on the plane and you follow them on Instagram,
Speaker 4: but you don't know how to bring it up casually.
Speaker 4: Alliboard back with another episode of Ologies, but not just
Speaker 4: any episode. We are creeking the door open and we're
Speaker 4: stepping a foot into the chill of Spooktober.
Speaker 5: That's right, kiddos.
Speaker 4: Last year we had waldwall creepy halloweeny episodes in October,
Speaker 4: like Osteology about bones, and Spidronology all about spiderwebs, and
Speaker 4: cue Curvatology all about pumpkins, and it was so creepy.
Speaker 4: Then then cut to us standing wide eyed holding twenty
Speaker 4: twenty speer. So think of Spooktober this year as a
Speaker 4: respite from the inferno of chaos that is an election
Speaker 4: year pandemic. Let's chill out by talking about flesh eating birds.
Speaker 4: But first we think, thank you to every single patron
Speaker 4: at patreon dot com slash Ologies, I love you make
Speaker 4: the show possible. Thank you to everyone for buying Ologies
Speaker 4: shirts or a winter hat or a fall blanket or
Speaker 4: face masks, which we now have at Ologiesmarch dot com.
Speaker 4: Thanks to everyone who's writing the podcast and making sure
Speaker 4: you're subscribed and telling friends and family, enemies, and of
Speaker 4: course for those writing a review. I have been known
Speaker 4: to read every single one. I read them, sometimes in
Speaker 4: a deep Southampton in just to keep me going on
Speaker 4: tough nights such as this one.
Speaker 5: This week.
Speaker 4: Bye JLU ninety eight, who says, beware, do you want
Speaker 4: to become an avid birdwatcher, a taxidermist, an astronaut. If
Speaker 4: you said no to any of those things, you're wrong.
Speaker 4: And if you said yes, beware you will want to
Speaker 4: pursue a college degree in everything. After listening to this podcast,
Speaker 4: JLU ninety eight, thank you so much.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 4: Okay, chondrology it is word and Google confirmed it for me.
Speaker 4: Just ask the two thousand and four paper titled Migratory
Speaker 4: connectivity in Bicknell's Thrush, locating missing populations with hydrogen isotopes.
Speaker 4: So the word condor, by the way, just looked it up.
Speaker 4: It means bird of prey and it comes from an
Speaker 4: ink and word hunter, so now you know that, but
Speaker 4: there's no relation to that other word. So this kondrologist,
Speaker 4: I'm a fan of his on Twitter. He got his
Speaker 4: bachelors in biology and his PhD in ecology and is
Speaker 4: now an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and
Speaker 4: Geography at West Virginia University and has been a researcher
Speaker 4: on projects involving the decline of vultures in India and
Speaker 4: how the landscape affects the recovery of the famed, almost
Speaker 4: once extinct California condors. So let's dip our smooth skin
Speaker 4: covered skulls into the festering slop of carry on talk
Speaker 4: as we learn about vultures and gut eating and ecology
Speaker 4: and wingspans and live cams and a comeback from the
Speaker 4: brink of peril, and we summon up all kinds of
Speaker 4: respect for one of the gothiest birds in the game
Speaker 4: with chondrologist, doctor Jonathan C. Hall like a condor scientist,
Speaker 4: I like you never even thought I'd ever get to
Speaker 4: talk to one.
Speaker 5: I'm so excited.
Speaker 4: People are people are stoked awesome. And so you study
Speaker 4: geography but also how geography impacts different species.
Speaker 6: Right, So I'm actually not a geographer by training. So
Speaker 6: my PhD is in ecology. So I got a degree
Speaker 6: in evolution ecology and organismal biology. But my work is
Speaker 6: very spatial, and oftentimes I think it's difficult for people
Speaker 6: to wrap their brains around what geography is. You know,
Speaker 6: you say geography and people think, oh, maps and capitals,
Speaker 6: that geography is so much more. And I recently heard
Speaker 6: a brilliant and famous geographer, doctor Ruth Wilson Gilmour, explained
Speaker 6: geography as why things happen where they do.
Speaker 4: Oh, once again, geographers study why things happen where they do.
Speaker 4: That's beautiful. I've never heard that before. This is great
Speaker 4: because geography, not being an ology, is a hard one
Speaker 4: to sneak in. So you're helping me sneak in some geography.
Speaker 5: Covering two bases.
Speaker 4: And you know, tell me a little bit about like
Speaker 4: where you grew up. What kind of kid were you?
Speaker 6: Yes, I was the nerdy black kid forever and always
Speaker 6: since day one. So I grew up in Columbia, Maryland,
Speaker 6: which I think at one point was voted the number
Speaker 6: one small city in the country. So I grew up
Speaker 6: very privileged economically. My folks worked in DC and in
Speaker 6: Prince George's County. My dad's in public health, and my
Speaker 6: mother is a high school guidance counselor.
Speaker 7: Before that, she was a.
Speaker 6: High school biology teacher. And I grew up as an
Speaker 6: only child, so I'm very well adjusted.
Speaker 5: My only child.
Speaker 6: You know, it was a very good environment because, you know,
Speaker 6: the neighborhood I was in, I had everything that I needed, right,
Speaker 6: wasn't worried about where food was going to come from,
Speaker 6: or you know, whether or not there was issues in
Speaker 6: the home or anything like that, and so I had
Speaker 6: a lot of time to just kind of like sit
Speaker 6: and think and wonder about things. And my mother, being
Speaker 6: a high school biology teacher for most of her career,
Speaker 6: would always kind of her work would kind of spill
Speaker 6: over into the home, and so, you know, she'd bring home, like,
Speaker 6: you know, extra specimens that she was, you know, working
Speaker 6: on for dissections. And my dad grew up fishing, and
Speaker 6: so he would take me fishing all the time. And
Speaker 6: so from a very early age, I was just really
Speaker 6: curious about the natural world, curious about the creatures that
Speaker 6: were there. And so one of my earliest memories growing
Speaker 6: up was sitting down every Sunday night and turning on
Speaker 6: PBS and watching nature and just being fascinated by all
Speaker 6: of the interesting animals that were out there, and so
Speaker 6: growing up, I wanted to always be associated with cool,
Speaker 6: cool critters.
Speaker 4: This next question is in regards to regurgitated for and
Speaker 4: rodent bones. So starting off strong here charm school with
Speaker 4: dad word owl barf. Did your mom emember bring how
Speaker 4: many extra owl pellets?
Speaker 7: Yes? Check button, Yes, they're so amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 6: My mother was running a what was it like a
Speaker 6: summer like a summer science camp or helping out with
Speaker 6: the summer science camp. And I got to go and
Speaker 6: it was really boring because for a while because she
Speaker 6: was lecturing and I was like, I don't know eight
Speaker 6: And then when the owl pellets came out, I was like,
Speaker 6: oh my goodness, it was awesome.
Speaker 4: I swear it's like a kinder surprise egg. It's just
Speaker 4: like something that's like who knows what it's.
Speaker 5: Gonna be, so you put it together. And were you
Speaker 5: ever a bird nerd?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 6: And it's funny because I don't. I don't yet consider
Speaker 6: myself a bird nerd. And there's a graduate student in
Speaker 6: my lab, Darren Gross, who actually works for the Ventana
Speaker 6: Wildlife Society. I actually have two graduate students who worked
Speaker 6: in my lab who worked for the Ventana Wildlife Society,
Speaker 6: and Darren is a burden nerd and I tease him
Speaker 6: all the time about being a bird nerd and identifying things.
Speaker 6: And I've always liked the predatory animals. Raptors have always
Speaker 6: been something that's really interesting to me.
Speaker 4: Well, I think when it comes to condors too, not
Speaker 4: hard to identify. Nope, they are giant and numbered. That
Speaker 4: would be a condor. Yeah, and this is so exciting. So,
Speaker 4: you know, especially being in California, I don't know if
Speaker 4: I've ever seen a condor in the wild, but I
Speaker 4: have friends who have and they say it's like time
Speaker 4: stops and this huge wingspan Josh, yes, okay, quick aside,
Speaker 4: how giant are these wingspans? We're going to find out
Speaker 4: in a minute. But it's about one point seventy five
Speaker 4: alley wards twenty pounds of inky mystery bird hummeling the
Speaker 4: air above you to take flight. But yeah, so I've
Speaker 4: never seen one in the wild. But what was the
Speaker 4: first time you ever saw a California condor?
Speaker 5: And are they even called that?
Speaker 7: Yes? Okay?
Speaker 6: Are most people just call them condors? And you're in
Speaker 6: South America, then there's a different condor there. It's bigger,
Speaker 6: than the one we have it here in North America.
Speaker 7: That's a good question. It was the first time I
Speaker 7: saw condor.
Speaker 6: I'm trying to think it was a Bitter Creek, one
Speaker 6: of the wildlife refuges a bit aways north of LA
Speaker 6: We were driving up to the flight pen that the
Speaker 6: US Fishing Wildlife Service runs is part of their condo
Speaker 6: management program, and I think the first condor I saw
Speaker 6: was one of the older birds that had been that
Speaker 6: was sitting on top of the flight pen. What you
Speaker 6: described it as like time stopping. I was just like whoa,
Speaker 6: and as we pulled up. As we pulled up, I
Speaker 6: think it took off. And then that was another just
Speaker 6: like what moment, you know, when it spread its wings
Speaker 6: and kind of took off. And so I think it
Speaker 6: took me a little bit of time to get adjusted
Speaker 6: because you know, I had been reading about them, and
Speaker 6: obviously when I was when I was younger reading about them,
Speaker 6: I had that you know, Natural geographic kids, and had
Speaker 6: an article on what the captive breeding program was all
Speaker 6: about and the little puppet feeding the baby condors, and
Speaker 6: so you know, it was like my childhood catching up
Speaker 6: with me in real life, which is really amazing.
Speaker 4: So what exactly is a condor what kind of separates
Speaker 4: them from maybe turkey vultures that we see?
Speaker 5: How can I put this? Why are they so cool?
Speaker 5: Biologically speaking?
Speaker 6: Yeah, condors are sort of this class of like very large,
Speaker 6: obligate scavengers birds that primarily are only feed on carrion
Speaker 6: dead things. And there actually used to be more species
Speaker 6: of condors or birds that we that would be classified
Speaker 6: as condors in this part of the world. When you're
Speaker 6: talking about a condor, you're talking about a bird that
Speaker 6: only feeds on dead animals and essentially like a big
Speaker 6: ass bird, much much larger than turkey vultures or other raptors.
Speaker 6: The California condors wingspan can be up to nine nine
Speaker 6: and a half feet wide. Yeah feet what Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 6: that's that's kind of the maximum. I mean like seven
Speaker 6: eight seven eight nine is.
Speaker 7: About you know where they're at.
Speaker 6: But yeah, there's some some big ones in the Amian
Speaker 6: condors ten feet oh wingspan, yeah, which is just bonkers,
Speaker 6: but you know, there was species, there were some species
Speaker 6: of condos that are o extinct that were even larger
Speaker 6: than that.
Speaker 5: Right, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, quick establishing scene here. So condors are super
Speaker 4: social birdies, and they're considered New World vultures whose bodies
Speaker 4: are mostly black with large white triangles on the undersides
Speaker 4: of their wings. And they have this ruddy orangish bald
Speaker 4: head that's ensconced in a spiky black feather boa that
Speaker 4: shits creaks. Moira Rose might envy.
Speaker 5: Now I'm flattered beyond all.
Speaker 4: Reason anyway, Condors they're huge, kind of like a baby
Speaker 4: dragon or if melissafant low key eight rotting flesh, and
Speaker 4: they are bigger than turkey vultures. Turkey vultures only have
Speaker 4: about six foot wingspans, but condors are smaller than the
Speaker 4: giant wandering albatross, who can have up to twelve foot wingspans. Now,
Speaker 4: what about giant birds of the past. Well, about a
Speaker 4: decade ago, scientists discover fossil remains of an extinct seabird
Speaker 4: with a seventeen foot wingspan, which is about as long
Speaker 4: as the average minifan. Now that will become more important
Speaker 4: later on, but for now, why so, why do you
Speaker 4: think they're so big? Is there something also geographically about
Speaker 4: the hills of California and the updrafts and the coast,
Speaker 4: like why are they so huge.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So you know, I mean the condors evolved in
Speaker 6: spaces where there were very very large mammals to feed on, right,
Speaker 6: And so in thinking about those Pleistocene North America, in
Speaker 6: this part of the world, there were just you know,
Speaker 6: just a lot of big mammals, you know, sloth bears
Speaker 6: and marsupial lions and all these giant mammals that are
Speaker 6: no longer around. And so you know, you have these
Speaker 6: giant mammals that are living and dying on the landscape,
Speaker 6: and so the niche of cleaning up those those carcasses
Speaker 6: gets filled by birds that you know, can eat a lot,
Speaker 6: can grow really big, and the landscape allows them to
Speaker 6: kind of cover a lot of distance, and so if
Speaker 6: you're a larger bird, you can cover a longer distance. Also,
Speaker 6: if you're a larger bird on the ground, you can
Speaker 6: kind of fight off smaller scavenging birds. So there's like
Speaker 6: a pecking order of those sorts of things. The environment
Speaker 6: that these birds evolved in was really conducive to them
Speaker 6: being really big.
Speaker 7: It gave them an advantage over turkey vultures and other
Speaker 7: scavenging birds.
Speaker 4: Are there big enough animals still to support.
Speaker 6: Them, Yes, And a lot of that support comes from
Speaker 6: what sort of the settlar ecologies have kind of introduced
Speaker 6: into this landscape through cattle farming, right, and so cows
Speaker 6: are cattle are really big animals, and so condors.
Speaker 7: Feed a lot on cattle.
Speaker 6: But there's still you know, animals like elk and mule
Speaker 6: deer and that part of the part of the country.
Speaker 6: And then the birds that are on the coast, you know,
Speaker 6: feed on marine mammals, right and so, oh yeah.
Speaker 4: I never even thought about a condor eating a whale carcass. Yes,
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 4: can't oh the smells. I mean, okay, wait, hold on
Speaker 4: one second.
Speaker 5: Yes, oh my god, thank god.
Speaker 4: We edit because I just had to have a conversation
Speaker 4: about whether or not my tiny poodle.
Speaker 7: Pooped, So you should keep that in.
Speaker 4: I mean, oh my god, I mean parenting during COVID
Speaker 4: am I right? JK, I have It's so easy. I
Speaker 4: do not know how parents are doing it. I don't
Speaker 4: even have to teach her to read. She keeps pushing
Speaker 4: the door open with her snoop. But okay, so condors
Speaker 4: feeding on marine mammals, oh, and seals, I guess too.
Speaker 6: Ye, seals are a big part of the diet of
Speaker 6: coastal condors that occupy the coastal area. Yeah, oh my.
Speaker 4: God, Okay, I have seen videos. Okay, I had watched
Speaker 4: a video put out by West Virginia University documenting doctor
Speaker 4: Hall's traveled California for his field recent search in Maricopa,
Speaker 4: California at the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge. And it's
Speaker 4: set among these golden hills with oak trees and populated
Speaker 4: by giant frickin' birds. I had questions. I've seen videos
Speaker 4: with you. I have seen videos of the refuge that
Speaker 4: you do some research at their beaks. What are we
Speaker 4: even talking about? With these beaks a whole lot of pain? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Have they ever nipped you?
Speaker 6: I have not been nipped in a way that was ornery.
Speaker 6: I've been nipped in a playful way by a captive
Speaker 6: condor named Dolly who lives at the Los Angeles Zoo,
Speaker 6: and I think as a chick. She fell out of
Speaker 6: the nest and like really messed up her wing. It
Speaker 6: was broken beyond the repair that she would be able
Speaker 6: to fly. She's a kind of an instructional condor and
Speaker 6: very tame. Has a good relationship with one of the
Speaker 6: keepers at the Los Angeles Zoo, Mike Wallace. I just
Speaker 6: wanted to make sure they're recognizing the folks who work
Speaker 6: with condors on a daily basis, on a weekly basis,
Speaker 6: because I've learned so much from them and like they
Speaker 6: are such badasses. I mean, these are the folks who
Speaker 6: are repelling down sheer cliff faces into a condor nest
Speaker 6: to like check on the chick and having the parents
Speaker 6: land on their head and like bite their chest and
Speaker 6: all the stuff. So yeah, I've good shout out to
Speaker 6: Mike Wallace, Joseph Brandt, Mollie, Steve Kirkland, Joseph Burnett, Darren Gross,
Speaker 6: Evan mcgreeth.
Speaker 7: Oh my goodness, I know I'm leaving people out.
Speaker 4: Doctor Hall has so much gratitude for his colleagues and
Speaker 4: so feel free during this episode to take a large
Speaker 4: glug of whatever is in nearby beverage or do a
Speaker 4: tiny imperceptible butt dance each time. He's so kind and
Speaker 4: that should be celebrated.
Speaker 5: I love it. It's like an Oscar speech. People taking
Speaker 5: the work possible exactly.
Speaker 6: Like they're all really interesting, awesome, caring, loving, wonderful brilliant people,
Speaker 6: and they are what makes my work possible. They are
Speaker 6: what makes these birds so interesting. Like there's some one
Speaker 6: setting up condracams all this stuff, so got to make
Speaker 6: sure that I thank them because they're just awesome humans.
Speaker 4: Can you can you look at condor cams? Is that
Speaker 4: just for researchers? Is that just for chondrologists? Or can
Speaker 4: the general populace.
Speaker 6: The general populist, can can can look up condo cams?
Speaker 6: I'll uh yeah, I will definitely send you a link.
Speaker 4: That you can and that I did. And when I
Speaker 4: opened the window on the Ventana Wildlife Societies page at
Speaker 4: bantanaws dot org to see a pair of giant bald
Speaker 4: headed hunched birds bearing these red numbered wing tags tending
Speaker 4: to one fuzzy, tiny little gray chick, I made like
Speaker 4: a squawk of joy. I freaked out, and then I
Speaker 4: just started to exting the link to people.
Speaker 6: Every year, you know, condors are making babies in the wild,
Speaker 6: and these nests have some of these nests have cameras
Speaker 6: set up in them so you can watch a condor
Speaker 6: kind of develop over time. It's really cute.
Speaker 5: How many now are in existence.
Speaker 2: Condos.
Speaker 7: Condos are on the verge of extinction.
Speaker 4: And how threatened did they get.
Speaker 6: They're still critically in dangered. They're about five hundred and
Speaker 6: ten five and twenty condors in existence, which is a
Speaker 6: big improvement from the you know, less than thirty that
Speaker 6: were around in the mid eighties. Yeah, so it's a
Speaker 6: it's a big conservation success story. And so just over
Speaker 6: half of those just over five hundred birds are living
Speaker 6: outside of human captivity, right, So they're out there in
Speaker 6: the world. And there's a couple of different population centers
Speaker 6: for the birds. And so there's there's two populations in
Speaker 6: central California, the Big syrupop which is on the coast,
Speaker 6: and then a little bit more inland is the Pinnacles
Speaker 6: National Forest population. And then there's the Southern California population,
Speaker 6: which is the one that I've been working with. There
Speaker 6: about one hundred birds, and then there's another one hundred
Speaker 6: or so I think out in the Grand Canyon sort
Speaker 6: of Arizona, Utah area. And then there is a population
Speaker 6: of about forty in Baja Mexico.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I didn't even realize that we had them
Speaker 4: in southern California.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah.
Speaker 6: I think one of the awesome things about being a scientist.
Speaker 6: Being a researcher is getting to travel and meeting new
Speaker 6: people and more importantly, eating all the foods of the area.
Speaker 6: So every time I come up to LA I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 6: where are we.
Speaker 4: Going on the topic of research. Let's back up a
Speaker 4: little bit and get some of Jonathan's history, which I
Speaker 4: derailed earlier by asking about the owl vomit.
Speaker 6: Let's see, I started out from PBS at home to
Speaker 6: wanting to be a veterinarian. I went to Morehouse College.
Speaker 6: Some say it's the best historically black college in the
Speaker 6: in the world. I tend to agree, but you know,
Speaker 6: you might have others who might disagree they're wrong. That's cool,
Speaker 6: shout out to Morehouse. And so I went to Morehouse
Speaker 6: as a biology major, and by that time I was
Speaker 6: not satisfied with wanting to be a vetinarian. I wanted
Speaker 6: to work with animals that were less conventional than donson cats,
Speaker 6: and then also not realizing that veterinarians work with all
Speaker 6: sorts of you know, unconventional pets and things like that,
Speaker 6: And so I had a lot of learning to do
Speaker 6: about what animals a vetinarian worked with. But at the
Speaker 6: time I was like, oh, yeah, I don't want to
Speaker 6: work with just dogson cats, And so I wanted to
Speaker 6: become a snake venom biologist. And so I had heard
Speaker 6: about this snake venom curator who, over the course of
Speaker 6: several decades injected himself with a diluted cocktail of snake venom.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, to build up an immunity.
Speaker 4: I think he's talking about Bill Host, a Florida venom
Speaker 4: milker who headed up Miami's serpentarium laboratories Miami Serpentarium founded
Speaker 4: in nineteen forty eight and nearly died twenty times from
Speaker 4: venomous bites. Yet he lived to the ripe age of
Speaker 4: one hundred, probably without much of a health insurance or
Speaker 4: life insurance policy.
Speaker 7: And I was like, Oh, that's the coolest thing.
Speaker 6: And so this man, you know, after a period of
Speaker 6: time of taking a cocktail of snake venom, was immune
Speaker 6: the snake venim And so he'd been bitten by all
Speaker 6: of the venomu snakes that he.
Speaker 7: Kept and not going to the hospital and just kind
Speaker 7: of like.
Speaker 6: Wrote it out and I was like, Oh, I want
Speaker 6: to do that because that's a superpower. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 6: you know I thought that, Okay, I'll get an mdphd,
Speaker 6: right and run a snake venom research lab and have
Speaker 6: all of these venomous snakes and be a superhero, but
Speaker 6: also so be a source of antivenin for particularly for
Speaker 6: communities black and brown people who are just fortunately subject
Speaker 6: to death by venomous sakes. Right Oftentimes, you know, people
Speaker 6: in rural communities in the global South, they're alongside, you know,
Speaker 6: things like russell spipers and bushmasters and cobras and all
Speaker 6: sorts of you know, mambas and things that will kill
Speaker 6: you dead, and they just don't have access if they
Speaker 6: are bitten by one of these animals to anti veenta,
Speaker 6: because it's really expensive to make and produce, and so,
Speaker 6: you know, I wanted to do that, but I kept
Speaker 6: being drawn to the idea of being out in the field.
Speaker 6: And I spent some time working in a lab during
Speaker 6: a summer research program, and that really wasn't my cup
Speaker 6: of tea, and so I wanted to be out with field.
Speaker 4: So Jonathan had spent some time working with parasitoid ants
Speaker 4: and performed termite necropsies and worked in fisheries and began
Speaker 4: to really enjoy research on ecology. Settler ecology he says,
Speaker 4: is much different than indigenous ecologies, which are not destructive
Speaker 4: to plants and wildlife populations like settler ecology is. And
Speaker 4: he went on also to study grasshopper agriculture in Wahaka
Speaker 4: and then had an opportunity through an advisor to look
Speaker 4: at vultures in India who are actually an example of
Speaker 4: convergent evolution, so they're not closely related to vultures that
Speaker 4: we might see in the Americas, but they evolved to
Speaker 4: have similar traits for eating corpses. And Jonathan has gotten
Speaker 4: to spend time in India studying the effects of La
Speaker 4: Nina weather on Indian vultures, as well as the positive
Speaker 4: effects that local Bishnoi people have had on forest conservation.
Speaker 4: And in the seventeen thirties he told me three hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty three Bushnoy people sacrificed their lives in a
Speaker 4: massacre to save a species of tree. So the next
Speaker 4: time you're like, should I bring a canvas toat to
Speaker 4: the grocery store? Should I recycle this box?
Speaker 5: Just yes, do it for the trees.
Speaker 4: Anyway, he ended up in the thick of condrology.
Speaker 6: Shout out to Anil Changani, who is another mentor colleague
Speaker 6: who worked with me on my dissertation, A dear, dear, dear,
Speaker 6: dear friend. Miss him tremendously. Last time I was in
Speaker 6: India was in twenty thirteen, and just want to shout
Speaker 6: him out because again, you know, like without him, I
Speaker 6: wouldn't be where I am today.
Speaker 4: And did you find that you kind of your career
Speaker 4: in ecology has kind of been like a relay race
Speaker 4: between these different mentors and different labs you've gotten to
Speaker 4: work with. Have they each kind of influenced your path?
Speaker 7: Definitely? Definitely.
Speaker 4: The work they scientists do is is never really just
Speaker 4: about one species. It's how it impacts the environment as
Speaker 4: a whole. Yes, for sure, especially with condors who are
Speaker 4: so known to be so critically endangered and to be
Speaker 4: this kind of humback story of this, like champion, I imagine
Speaker 4: that there must be so many people who are excited
Speaker 4: to meet someone who's on team condor, like thanks for
Speaker 4: helping the coma. So not only is it thrilling to
Speaker 4: meet a chondrologist, but it's also a joy to kind
Speaker 4: of meet the birds themselves. So should you ever spot one,
Speaker 4: take note if you can, of the color and the
Speaker 4: number on their wing tags, and you can go to
Speaker 4: condorspotter dot com and you click on the color of
Speaker 4: the tag and then the number, and you get a
Speaker 4: link to a bio about that specific bird. And this
Speaker 4: gossip is juicy, okay. For example, one bird named Redwood
Speaker 4: Queen used to be called slop Slug because she was
Speaker 4: such a homebody and she just didn't stray far from
Speaker 4: the place she was released. Slop Slug, though, it's rude,
Speaker 4: and scientists misgendered her for years, thinking she was a
Speaker 4: boy until she did a mating dance and they were like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 4: also rude. Now I'm going to read the rest of
Speaker 4: her official bio verbatim because it's just too good so quote.
Speaker 4: As far as status goes, Redwood Queen was at the
Speaker 4: bottom of the dominance hierarchy when she was first released.
Speaker 4: She was mercilessly harassed by the rest of the flock
Speaker 4: and forced to wait until everyone else had fed before
Speaker 4: approaching a carcass. Many years later, though she paired with
Speaker 4: number one sixty seven, the most dominant male and the
Speaker 4: big surf flock at the time. Since then, she has
Speaker 4: reveled in her increased status as Redwood Queen, she laid
Speaker 4: her first egg with number one sixty seven in the
Speaker 4: cavity of a redwood tree, the first ever documented case
Speaker 4: for a California condor.
Speaker 8: Day.
Speaker 4: This is more enthralling than anything in Game of Thrones
Speaker 4: or US Weekly. You know, Okay, I have a stupid
Speaker 4: question about condors as well. You know, the tags that
Speaker 4: they have on their wings. This is so stupid, But
Speaker 4: how exactly are those fastened.
Speaker 6: They're fastened with a piercing in the wing and it's
Speaker 6: sort of the equivalent of getting your ear piers Oh okay, Yeah,
Speaker 6: So what folks like like Joseph and Molly and Joseph
Speaker 6: and folks have to be careful of when they're when
Speaker 6: they're sort of feeling around for the wing of the
Speaker 6: condor is to not you know, puncture like a vessel
Speaker 6: or a nerve that's running through the wing and they're
Speaker 6: you know, they get really good at kind of feeling
Speaker 6: around and then they kind of punch a hole through
Speaker 6: and yeah, that's how they attach the wing tag. And
Speaker 6: there's like a little screw on when one end of it.
Speaker 6: And one of the things that happens when the birds
Speaker 6: are captured and kind of we're monitoring their condition is
Speaker 6: to sometimes depending on how long that tag has been
Speaker 6: in there, they check the size of the hole because
Speaker 6: it widens over time. Oh and so maybe they'll change
Speaker 6: it because if it gets too big, then the you know,
Speaker 6: the the tag flops around in the wind and that
Speaker 6: causes more damage.
Speaker 7: And wind hole even more. So, Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Always wondered about.
Speaker 4: Okay, So obviously with carrion feeders, they have kind of
Speaker 4: that bald head so that they just don't get will
Speaker 4: just use something auto monopoetic this on their face, right,
Speaker 4: So what other adaptations do they have for eating dead flesh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So there's just some really interesting work that had
Speaker 6: been done relatively recently and kind of looking at like
Speaker 6: carrion eater's microbiome.
Speaker 7: Yah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's like some of the like most intense
Speaker 6: microbiome environment. And so one one thing is like, you know,
Speaker 6: their stomach acid is you know, a next next level
Speaker 6: acidic because you know they're eating all sorts of noxious stuff.
Speaker 6: But animal's microbiomes kind of extend, you know, from their
Speaker 6: gut to their skin, and so their skin is really
Speaker 6: resistant to a lot of kind of nasty microbes. They're
Speaker 6: just kind of like biologically armored against a lot of
Speaker 6: the noxious stuff that they're encountering.
Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense that they would need
Speaker 4: some sort of like first line of defense against just
Speaker 4: the nastiest amount of worms and maggots and funguses. And
Speaker 4: what about their feet?
Speaker 5: What are their feet like?
Speaker 6: So their feet, you know, I get this, I get
Speaker 6: a question a lot, you know, especially when people see
Speaker 6: pictures of condors and they're like, oh my goodness, those
Speaker 6: feet are intense, and they are I mean they I
Speaker 6: mean they look intimidating. They I mean they look like
Speaker 6: a dinosaur's foot, right, long bones, long long digits, and
Speaker 6: they end in claws. But their feet are not really
Speaker 6: designed the same way that like a predatory raptor's feet are,
Speaker 6: which are essentially like killing fingers, right, like those things,
Speaker 6: and the crushing power that and gripping power that let's
Speaker 6: say a golden eagle has is very very scary, but
Speaker 6: you know, a condor foot is very mild in comparison,
Speaker 6: And really what they need them for is balance, right,
Speaker 6: and standing and things like that. They don't really need
Speaker 6: to like grip their prey because their prey is dead,
Speaker 6: it's not moving, and so they just need to be
Speaker 6: able to stand, and so the claws on their feet
Speaker 6: are not all that sharp because they don't need to be,
Speaker 6: and their feet don't really kind of grip the same
Speaker 6: way that like an eagle's foot would, which I'm very
Speaker 6: thankful for because I've been scratched by condor feet. They
Speaker 6: kind of kick around a little bit and it's you know,
Speaker 6: it's not anything serious, doesn't break the skin, but it
Speaker 6: is intimidating the first time you get scratched by a
Speaker 6: condor foot.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, because the just think of how gross that
Speaker 4: wound would be, Like, is there enough to be a
Speaker 4: sporn to kill whatever is in like a vultures toneenail?
Speaker 6: It's not what you want. I actually, I actually have
Speaker 6: a colleague shout out to Todd Katsna and the Katsna Lab,
Speaker 6: who is the person who actually got me connected with condors.
Speaker 6: So he and I had done research at different times.
Speaker 6: I'm in the same part of India in Rojasthan, India
Speaker 6: on vultures and their ecology in that part of the world.
Speaker 6: So Todd Katzner and his partner Aaron sort of band
Speaker 6: birds and do all sorts of research and work with raptors.
Speaker 6: But they were rehabilitating a turkey vulture, and Todd took
Speaker 6: a bite from a turkey vulture and it was one
Speaker 6: of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.
Speaker 7: It's like how it's like curry mannaise. It's just kind of.
Speaker 6: So you you, you, you definitely want to make sure
Speaker 6: that whenever when whenever you take a bite from if
Speaker 6: you ever take a bite from a carry eating organism,
Speaker 6: you watch that immediately. I think I think Todd had
Speaker 6: to like get antibiotics because.
Speaker 4: It's just oh, I'm sure, like a hand transplant, like
Speaker 4: but just you know, like sell my head on a
Speaker 4: different body out you know.
Speaker 7: Ye, just cut it off, just cut it off. I'm done.
Speaker 4: Oh god, what other kind of bites or scratches have
Speaker 4: you heard about?
Speaker 6: I did hear and I you know, this is just hearsay.
Speaker 6: Maybe this is something that like, you know, people told
Speaker 6: me when I first got there, like a condor myth
Speaker 6: of somebody who had been partially degloved by a condor.
Speaker 6: And so we don't normally wear gloves when we're holding condors,
Speaker 6: and people often see films I'm like, are you insane?
Speaker 7: Yeah, same question, yes, But the thing is is.
Speaker 6: That you know, a glove that that would be thick
Speaker 6: enough to protect you from a condor bite doesn't give
Speaker 6: you the sort of dexterity and the ability to kind
Speaker 6: of feel the condor and control the condor as as
Speaker 6: well as you could with your bare hand, because when
Speaker 6: you're muzzling the bird, you kind of have to make
Speaker 6: a circle with your thumb and either ring finger or
Speaker 6: middle finger to kind of keep the beak closed. But
Speaker 6: depending on the size of your hand, you could be
Speaker 6: kind of pressing in on the condor's eye, right, and
Speaker 6: so you need to kind of like hold the bird
Speaker 6: delicately but firmly and not press on their eyes or
Speaker 6: not press on their names or their nostrils, and so
Speaker 6: all of that like sensitive equipment on the bird is
Speaker 6: very close to its main ripping instrument, and so putting
Speaker 6: a glove on would really kind of like hinder your
Speaker 6: ability to keep the bird safe, even though you'd be
Speaker 6: much safer. So partially degloved without gloves means that your
Speaker 6: skin comes partially. So I have not verified this story,
Speaker 6: and I kind of don't want to, because it's really
Speaker 6: good when you tell graduate students and undergraduate students who
Speaker 6: come out with you to like, really be careful.
Speaker 4: Glove, Like you need to know, Oh gosh, what kind
Speaker 4: of eyes actually do they have? They need good eyesight
Speaker 4: to see a big dead whale.
Speaker 7: They do.
Speaker 6: It's really awesome to like to look at the different
Speaker 6: life strategies that birds have and specializations that like carrying
Speaker 6: eating birds have. And so when you look at a
Speaker 6: picture of a turkey vulture, they have these huge naars,
Speaker 6: these huge, huge nasal openings. And when you compare that
Speaker 6: to a condor or a black vulture, whose naars and
Speaker 6: nasal openings are much smaller, it turns out that that
Speaker 6: turkey vultures primarily use all faction to locate carrion. And they,
Speaker 6: I mean, they have good eyesight, but their kind of
Speaker 6: specialty is sniffing out to the dead thing. Whereas black
Speaker 6: vultures and turkey vultures they do have very good senses
Speaker 6: of smells, but their eyesight are is usually what they're
Speaker 6: using to primarily locate things, right, And so different specializations,
Speaker 6: and so their eyes are kind of scary because they're
Speaker 6: red and they're piercing. They look at you with intent,
Speaker 6: they look at you with intelligence, and they're very very
Speaker 6: smart birds. They're intimidating, but they're they're really beautiful, beautiful eyes.
Speaker 4: How are the doors doing?
Speaker 5: Let's check in?
Speaker 4: Are they okay? Are they staying hydrated? Are they doom scrolling?
Speaker 6: Am I projecting where things at are with condos? Now?
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, the recovery and the captive beating
Speaker 6: program has been an incredible success, and you know, it's
Speaker 6: kind of like the next stage of condo conservation. Can
Speaker 6: these magnificent birds exist in an anthropogenic landscape, a landscape
Speaker 6: whose ecologies, you know, as I was mentioned before, have
Speaker 6: been completely transformed, right, the modes of being and the
Speaker 6: ways that condos have evolved to be on the landscape
Speaker 6: are not as congruous to highways and plastic and chemicals,
Speaker 6: and you know, far far fewer species than they're used
Speaker 6: to seeing and cities and all of these things. And
Speaker 6: so sort of the next stage and what my work
Speaker 6: is focused on now is trying to understand the ways
Speaker 6: in which condos are moving across the landscape, and particularly
Speaker 6: for the work that would doing in my lab is
Speaker 6: what condors are doing where they're doing it on the ground,
Speaker 6: you know, where they're feeding, because you know, the primary
Speaker 6: threat to California condors persistence in the landscape is lead poisoning.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So this is where things might get a little
Speaker 6: interesting in terms of folks who might have an opinion
Speaker 6: about this.
Speaker 7: And they're picking up lead from spent ammunition.
Speaker 6: So we're talking about guns in America, which is always
Speaker 6: a really you know, welcoming conversation. Absolutely, and I say
Speaker 6: this as somebody who is learning to hunt and everything,
Speaker 6: but I use non lead ammunition. California recently enacted legislation
Speaker 6: where now you cannot purchase lead ammunition for hunting in
Speaker 6: the state. Part of the reason why is because of
Speaker 6: the research that was on on condors and found that
Speaker 6: these birds when they're feeding on a gut pile of
Speaker 6: an animal that's been shot by a hunter. You know,
Speaker 6: condors eat very fast when they're on the ground. They're
Speaker 6: big birds. It's difficult for them to take off, and
Speaker 6: they're awkward on the ground, much more awkward on the
Speaker 6: ground than they are in the air, So they have
Speaker 6: to gobble down their food really quickly before some other
Speaker 6: predator might come around and make a meal out of
Speaker 6: them or just kill them, you know, to get them
Speaker 6: off the concass so they eat really quickly, and so
Speaker 6: they're you know, just gulping down hunks of meat, and
Speaker 6: in the meat that's left are lead fragments, and so
Speaker 6: you know, these birds they have a pretty high blood
Speaker 6: lead concentration in terms of their loads sort of on
Speaker 6: the landscape, right, And so a lot of mortality of
Speaker 6: condors has been from lead poisoning.
Speaker 5: I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: So Jonathan says that one of the reasons lead is
Speaker 4: used as ammunition is because it's cheap, it's heavy, and
Speaker 4: it fragments on impact, and it leaves a bit of
Speaker 4: a snowstorm. He says, of lead in flesh, especially in
Speaker 4: the guts of an animal, which are usually discarded in
Speaker 4: the field by hunters. And I did a little more
Speaker 4: ready on this, and it takes only a few fragments
Speaker 4: the size of a couple grains of sand to potentially
Speaker 4: kill a condor, which, as a person who has absent
Speaker 4: mindedly eaten the stickers on more fruits than I care
Speaker 4: to admit, is pretty easy to do. Will they come
Speaker 4: and start to gobble down an animal that's just been
Speaker 4: hunted before the hunter can get to it.
Speaker 6: No, Well, it depends on how long it takes the
Speaker 6: hunter to get to it and where the animal is.
Speaker 6: If you're out hunting and you shoot a mule deer
Speaker 6: or something like that, the condors usually won't get there.
Speaker 6: Like you know, if you had to walk like two
Speaker 6: hours to get to your quarry, you wouldn't be getting
Speaker 6: there when the condor is already starting to feed. One
Speaker 6: of the interesting things about a condor is that they're
Speaker 6: very cautious. So oftentimes they'll they'll find a carcass and
Speaker 6: they'll just if they can, sort of roost nearby and
Speaker 6: just watch, sometimes for hours, maybe even day, just to
Speaker 6: make sure that nothing else is coming by, because they
Speaker 6: don't want to become a snack. If you're a hunter,
Speaker 6: you're not in danger of losing any meat to a condor.
Speaker 4: Well, a hunter shoots something and then kind of lose
Speaker 4: the animal if.
Speaker 7: It runs Definitely, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: You can tell I have not been hunting. But do
Speaker 4: they run away and don't just have no idea?
Speaker 7: Definitely, yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean shooting and making contact with an animal is
Speaker 6: definitely no guarantee that you're actually gonna have meat your freezer.
Speaker 6: You lose them, or sometimes you might shoot one and
Speaker 6: it falls and it gets into a spot that you
Speaker 6: just can't you just can't get to Oh.
Speaker 5: I never even thought about that.
Speaker 4: I mean, imagine just like going to get a burrito
Speaker 4: and then the burrito takes off.
Speaker 5: Or you know what I mean, like you just can't
Speaker 5: get to it.
Speaker 7: You're like, I just pay for this burrito, but it's
Speaker 7: running away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Condour's gonna eat it.
Speaker 4: So there's a movement in ecologically conscious hunters and wildlife
Speaker 4: conservation is to use copper bullets instead, and they don't
Speaker 4: fragment like lead does, and they're more expensive. So, as
Speaker 4: you can imagine, there is some resistance, shall we say,
Speaker 4: to this, But Jonathan himself, who's new to hunting, says
Speaker 4: he doesn't shoot with lead for ecological reasons. And apart
Speaker 4: from that issue, there are other environmental factors affecting our
Speaker 4: favorite dead flesh feeders.
Speaker 6: These birds that are feeding on marine mammals that hang
Speaker 6: around kind of these runoff areas of cities and all
Speaker 6: this chemical downlocks that's happening, and then you get kind
Speaker 6: of the amplification biological amplification of chemicals sort of as
Speaker 6: you move through the food web, you know you've got
Speaker 6: kind of a large population of smaller organisms, and they
Speaker 6: get more and more concentrated as you move through the
Speaker 6: food web into these top predators.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: So you know, you could have a low contaminant load
Speaker 6: for like an anchovy, but by the time you know
Speaker 6: a sea lion is eating another fish that's fed on
Speaker 6: the anchovy, that those toxins.
Speaker 7: Become concentrated, right.
Speaker 6: And so condors are picking up all sorts of nasty
Speaker 6: stuff from the marine animals that they eat that are
Speaker 6: living in these environments where human beings are kind of
Speaker 6: dumbing chemicals into the watershed.
Speaker 4: So these are a few reasons why the condor population
Speaker 4: was so low. It was nearly extinct, but it's steadily rebuilding.
Speaker 4: So we're going to hear more about that in a second,
Speaker 4: But first, a quick break for sponsors of the show
Speaker 4: who make it possible for us to toss some cash
Speaker 4: at a cause of Jonathan's choosing, which this week is
Speaker 4: Blackinappalachia dot org, which, in their words, works to highlight
Speaker 4: the history of African Americans in the development of our
Speaker 4: region and its culture through research, local narratives, public engagement,
Speaker 4: and exhibition. The project aims to raise the visibility and
Speaker 4: contributions of black communities of the Mountain South. So you
Speaker 4: can visit Blackinappalachia dot org to donate or to find
Speaker 4: out more, and you can also listen to their podcast,
Speaker 4: which appropriately is titled black in Appalachia. And that donation
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Speaker 5: If we real this?
Speaker 4: Naharn okay your condor queries? Can I ask you lightning
Speaker 4: round Petreon questions?
Speaker 5: Oh, people are excited? Okay.
Speaker 4: I thought this was a great question, Ethan, But tone
Speaker 4: I think gets Italian.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure. First time question asker.
Speaker 4: Says, I've heard that vultures will project al vomit as
Speaker 4: a form of defense.
Speaker 5: Do condors do this as well?
Speaker 6: No, I mean they will, but there are other birds,
Speaker 6: like turkey vultures who are big fans of that defense strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's awful, but the worst, the worst the birds. People
Speaker 6: who know me, especially my family, know that I have
Speaker 6: like a vendetta against cormorants.
Speaker 5: So specific.
Speaker 6: Yes. So when I was a graduate student, I worked
Speaker 6: at a outdoor classroom. Shout out to Michael Hogarth, the muscleman.
Speaker 6: He works with freshwater muscles.
Speaker 4: Maybe I've lived in southern California too long, but when
Speaker 4: he said the muscleman, I definitely pictured a guy in
Speaker 4: a tank top drinking away protein shake anyway by Valve Guy.
Speaker 6: One of his first field trips in the field Zoology
Speaker 6: course is out on Ohio State's Outdoor A class from
Speaker 6: Stone Lab on Lake Erie is to go to Green Island,
Speaker 6: which is an island in sort of western part of
Speaker 6: Lake Erie close to the Bass Islands that's uninhabited by
Speaker 6: humans and has been so for a couple of years.
Speaker 6: And it is a heron and cormorant rookery.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, so your hell world.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, the night Circle of Hell is being stranded
Speaker 6: on that island because the birds are nesting in the trees.
Speaker 6: We go to that island, like the second field trip
Speaker 6: that's there. The first field trip is to a pond
Speaker 6: where their leeches. The second field trip are Barf Island
Speaker 6: and so there's like biting flies and you have to
Speaker 6: road to the island and as the TA, I had
Speaker 6: to like shuttle people back and forth. So I was
Speaker 6: on the island getting torn up by black flies. And
Speaker 6: then you get onto this island and they're just like
Speaker 6: their nests above you, and these birds are just vomiting
Speaker 6: fish on for like three hours. I shouldn't know, and
Speaker 6: I've never been hit, but a couple of A couple
Speaker 6: of students have been hit by like just like rotting,
Speaker 6: half digested fish, and I hate it.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, I hate it.
Speaker 5: I understand now, I understand.
Speaker 6: Yeah, condors. Condors are pretty are I mean, as long
Speaker 6: as you as long as you keep their head controlled,
Speaker 6: and you do that by pinning their head against their body, right,
Speaker 6: because a lot of their most of their power is
Speaker 6: in ripping right, and so if you've already got their
Speaker 6: head kind of cocked back on their body, then they
Speaker 6: can't really do much more damage if you were to,
Speaker 6: you know, get your finger in that area. And so
Speaker 6: once you have them controlled and you're kind of hugging them,
Speaker 6: they really kind of chill out. I did have a
Speaker 6: student who, for her first condor was a juvenile who
Speaker 6: had just fledged and it peed on her the entire
Speaker 6: time she was holding it for like forty minutes.
Speaker 4: It's just drinking a mountain dew as it's peek, it's
Speaker 4: just rehydrated.
Speaker 6: It was like a steady trickle, you know. Yeah, So yeah, yeah, condoors.
Speaker 6: Condos are pretty chill when it comes to like, you know,
Speaker 6: vultures and everything.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Another great question. Jeffrey Bradshaw wants to know who eats
Speaker 4: condors when they die.
Speaker 6: That's a good question. I don't know of of like
Speaker 6: macrofauna that regularly feast on condors, aside from canids or
Speaker 6: maybe bears that might like be able to snag one.
Speaker 6: But since you know, the birds have been kind of
Speaker 6: really closely monitored, they don't really run into trouble. They
Speaker 6: don't really run into predation that much. Like who would
Speaker 6: scavenger condor? Yeah, I don't know of any examples of
Speaker 6: like other con doors, like, oh Jerry died, let's let's
Speaker 6: go eat them.
Speaker 4: It's like the like the same thing is just like
Speaker 4: crying into ice cream as you're eating it. You know, man,
Speaker 4: he was, I can't stop.
Speaker 5: He was a great guy.
Speaker 7: Man, he's so oh so Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think the only thing that would want to eat
Speaker 6: a condor, given the fact that it's you know, it's microbiome,
Speaker 6: is like holding a bay a lot of nasty stuff,
Speaker 6: and once it dies, that microbiome is kind of like
Speaker 6: out of commission. I think that other scavengers that would
Speaker 6: be able to handle digesting a dead condor are probably
Speaker 6: it's probably not worth the effort to like try to
Speaker 6: pick through all the feathers and everything like that. So
Speaker 6: I think the microbes are the ones that end up
Speaker 6: doing most of the The microbes and the and the
Speaker 6: macroinvernbits end up doing most of the work.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 5: So it's little little ones.
Speaker 4: It's just break free, oh, Grace Lauren. Two great questions,
Speaker 4: Grace says, Hi, doctor Hall, I understand that California condors
Speaker 4: used to have a much wider range prior to their
Speaker 4: population dwindling down. Do we think they'll ever reach a
Speaker 4: point where they can return to their past range? And also,
Speaker 4: what's with the tiny patch of fuzz fuzz on their noggin?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the tiny patch of fuzz fuzz on their noggin.
Speaker 6: I'll answer that question first. I imagine Grace is talking
Speaker 6: about the little fuzz that kind of shows up in
Speaker 6: their nostrils, their nails, and oftentimes you'll see that with
Speaker 6: like younger birds as they're kind of down is they're
Speaker 6: shutting their down and getting their adult adult feathers, and
Speaker 6: they just kind of gets caught in that in that area.
Speaker 4: Ps. These big ass birds can live maybe up to
Speaker 4: sixty seventy years maybe more. But another reason for the
Speaker 4: condors of vulnerability is that they raise really small clutches
Speaker 4: of one to two eggs, and those babys can take
Speaker 4: six to seven years to reach se actual maturity, and
Speaker 4: during that prolonged awkward pubes sence, their heads change from
Speaker 4: a modeled dark gray color to a sherbet orange or
Speaker 4: reddish color, depending.
Speaker 5: On if they're horny.
Speaker 4: And that's all you need to know about their heads.
Speaker 5: There's no more information.
Speaker 6: Sometimes I've been asked, so I'm sorry, I'm going to
Speaker 6: ask my own question. But what does a condor head
Speaker 6: feel like? It feels like a ball sat That's exactly
Speaker 6: what it feels like. And you know, for listeners who
Speaker 6: have felt a scrotum, you know exactly what that feels like,
Speaker 6: and you can immediately call that up.
Speaker 7: For those of you who have not felled to scrot them,
Speaker 7: then you know maybe.
Speaker 6: Condor Yeah, I mean you know you could you could
Speaker 6: feel if you touch a condor head, that's what a
Speaker 6: scrodon feels like.
Speaker 7: If you touch a scrot them, that's what a condor
Speaker 7: head feels.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, No, we know.
Speaker 4: An answer. I never knew to ask the question. What
Speaker 4: is with the tiny patch of buzz buzz? Maybe that's
Speaker 4: you know, the condescaping.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, it's important for the listeners to know,
Speaker 6: so you know, like very delicate, very stretchy, very warm,
Speaker 6: and kind of smelly. So a lot of parallels.
Speaker 5: Checks all the boxes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 5: And then what about their range?
Speaker 7: What are we thinking?
Speaker 6: So I think this is this is a really good question,
Speaker 6: and it kind of gets to the crux of my
Speaker 6: work and trying to understand is it even possible for
Speaker 6: condors to you know, extend their range into northern California,
Speaker 6: up the West coast, into Alaska, down into Mexico and
Speaker 6: even you know, populations in Texas, even in the eastern
Speaker 6: part of the United States. Right, I think the short
Speaker 6: answer is I think that we're a long way off
Speaker 6: from that. And that has to do and has everything
Speaker 6: to do with the way that settler ecologies have to
Speaker 6: be reworked or dismantled for those birds to return, because
Speaker 6: you know, it's just human beings living in this particular
Speaker 6: way have such a humongous footprint. Yeah, and they take
Speaker 6: up a lot of space and they do a lot
Speaker 6: of damage, and that has to change, I think in
Speaker 6: order for condors to return to their normal range. And
Speaker 6: I think that goes for a lot of you know,
Speaker 6: charismatic macrofauna that used to be ubiquitous in the landscape.
Speaker 6: Human beings, particularly ones that are practicing this particular type
Speaker 6: of ecology, need to change.
Speaker 4: Okay, And side note, because doctor Hall is amazing. He
Speaker 4: went back to Patreon and answered so many questions, including
Speaker 4: describing the really strong acid in the condor's gastric system
Speaker 4: as quote like piste Off, wonder woman, fire nazis strong.
Speaker 4: Their bacteria gang is just stronger. Quote at This microbiome
Speaker 4: of the condors can break down even small amounts of
Speaker 4: lead so well that researchers estimate that up to sixty
Speaker 4: percent of the condor fatalities in the wild can be
Speaker 4: attributed to lead poisoning. But things that contributed to their
Speaker 4: extinction in the wild around nineteen eighty seven. This was
Speaker 4: before the captive breeding programs, where things like the use
Speaker 4: of DDT, which has been known to cause really fragile
Speaker 4: shells that break in the nesting process, and these effects
Speaker 4: of DDT were still happening decades after it was banned
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy two, because it was stored in the
Speaker 4: blubber of sea mammals.
Speaker 5: That the condors eight years later.
Speaker 4: And another risk not to bum you out is unlike
Speaker 4: a turkey vulture, a condoor sense of smell isn't so great.
Speaker 4: And sometimes they mistake trash for rotting flesh, which would
Speaker 4: not be trashed to them. So helping out with a
Speaker 4: beach cleanup could be safe these fuzzy little flesh rippers.
Speaker 4: Oh and speaking of diet in Ky Cauldron's words, as
Speaker 4: California condors have a taste for carry on, do they
Speaker 4: have a preference for how long their nourishment has been dead?
Speaker 4: And if it's been dead too long, will they turn
Speaker 4: their beak up at it?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 6: That is a good question that I do not know
Speaker 6: the answers. Yeah, it would be really interesting to like
Speaker 6: layout like a you know, relatively fresh carcass and then
Speaker 6: one that's you know, a couple of weeks old. But
Speaker 6: I would imagine that like animals, you know, carrion gets
Speaker 6: maybe even a little too funky for a condor.
Speaker 4: I wonder, yeah, I wonder if it just becomes like jerky,
Speaker 4: you know, if they're.
Speaker 5: Like, oh, it's kind of dried up.
Speaker 7: No, thank you.
Speaker 4: Doctor Keay Swift, who is a corvid thanatologist who not Yeah,
Speaker 4: she's amazing. She works with them Crow funerals.
Speaker 7: Oh, that episode was amazing.
Speaker 4: So this is her, She says, I have so many questions.
Speaker 4: I'm going to post all of them and let you pick.
Speaker 4: She says, do you consider gut piles left by hunters
Speaker 4: essential to the sustainment of condors or would there be
Speaker 4: enough prey without them?
Speaker 6: Do you think that is another really good question that
Speaker 6: I don't think we have a clear answer to. I
Speaker 6: think the supply of food that comes from human activity
Speaker 6: has to be sustained to a certain level. What humans
Speaker 6: make available through hunting versus what other predators and sort
Speaker 6: of like dying of natural causes is made available to condors.
Speaker 6: That's a good question about like where they are feeding
Speaker 6: and what exactly they are feeding. One I would be
Speaker 6: worried if hunting activity didn't make some of the larger
Speaker 6: ungulates available on the landscape, and that's because they're just
Speaker 6: They're not a lot of predators, particularly in California, that
Speaker 6: are going to feed on like an elk or bighorn.
Speaker 7: Sheep or a mule deer.
Speaker 6: So I think humans are an important part of like
Speaker 6: condor ecology. But you know how much food they're getting
Speaker 6: from like ranchers.
Speaker 7: That's a good question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she has another question. She said, are you familiar
Speaker 4: with or do you support plas to scene rewilding and
Speaker 4: do you think that would significantly advance the conservation of condors?
Speaker 4: And she also says thanks for all you do to
Speaker 4: conserve these epic dynos.
Speaker 6: Well, thanks to you, dot boy. So how much time
Speaker 6: do you have because this issue of rewilding of a
Speaker 6: lot of thoughts. Okay, this and plas to scene rewilding
Speaker 6: and all this stuff.
Speaker 5: Just a heads up.
Speaker 4: If plas to scene rewilding sounds like a new beauty
Speaker 4: routine you don't know about, or a synth folk band
Speaker 4: you've never heard of, I gotcha. So the Pleistocene era
Speaker 4: started over two million years ago, it ended about eleven
Speaker 4: thousand years ago, and rewilding means introducing species that flourished before,
Speaker 4: essentially colonization. So for more on this, you can also
Speaker 4: see the Bisonology episode about Buffalo's Anyway, Jonathan has thoughts,
Speaker 4: great ones.
Speaker 6: European settlers are almost entirely responsible for the sort of
Speaker 6: conservation crises that we are witnessing in what's now called
Speaker 6: North America and in large, large part of the world.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: You know, with European expansion and colonization, you get this
Speaker 6: massive transformation of human life that exists amongst indigenous people,
Speaker 6: but you also get this massive transformation of these ecologies.
Speaker 6: And we never, we meaning researchers who are kind of
Speaker 6: involved in this conversation, almost never acknowledge or talk about
Speaker 6: the restoration of keystone cultures, keystone human cultures.
Speaker 7: Right. And so there's.
Speaker 6: A PhD student in my lab who is researching buffalo restoration.
Speaker 6: Shout out to Meg Davenport. She's studying, like, you know,
Speaker 6: you're talking about buffalo restoration, but you know there are
Speaker 6: dozens of people peoples who are intimately ecologically and spiritually,
Speaker 6: and you know, all of these ways in which humans
Speaker 6: interact to a particular species. We talk about bringing the
Speaker 6: buffalo back, but it gets contentious because then you have
Speaker 6: to start talking about why are you bringing the buffalo back,
Speaker 6: and the buffalo back for whom. So you talk about
Speaker 6: buffalo restoration, you have to talk about restoration of indigenous lands,
Speaker 6: restoration of indigenous people, and you have to talk about,
Speaker 6: you know, the really uncomfortable stuff that settler ecologies are
Speaker 6: really good at avoiding talking about and so you know,
Speaker 6: I think rewilding has to contend with those two issues, right,
Speaker 6: who's responsible and are we talking about bringing back human
Speaker 6: cultures and who's the we and how is that being done? Otherwise,
Speaker 6: you know, it's just another way of settlers controlling the
Speaker 6: landscape and tramping on indigenous sovereignty and not really taking
Speaker 6: an ecological approach to the situation, right, because then you're
Speaker 6: talking about having to control more land, having to keep
Speaker 6: certain people out of the land to bring these species back.
Speaker 6: You're talking about needing authorities to kind of maintain boundaries,
Speaker 6: and that's really not something that's really congluous with, you know,
Speaker 6: trying to restore these ecologies in which you know, human
Speaker 6: created boundaries.
Speaker 4: That's such a good point, and it's interesting that a
Speaker 4: lot of times we don't think about how broad and
Speaker 4: how wide the story of a condor is. It's not
Speaker 4: about just the birds. It's about the you know, our
Speaker 4: entire system of the way that we take land use land,
Speaker 4: you know, exactly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And some colleagues of mine are working on publishing
Speaker 6: a paper and looking at the daily travel distance of condors,
Speaker 6: and other folks have done this research too, But We've
Speaker 6: got some really awesome technology which essentially amounts to strapping
Speaker 6: a GPS, strapping a cell phone onto a bird, onto
Speaker 6: a condor, and being able to get their local their speed,
Speaker 6: their altitude, and like real time, you know, like every second,
Speaker 6: like data points like every second, every ten seconds, or
Speaker 6: every hour, every half hour, every fifteen minutes. And so
Speaker 6: looking at the daily travel distances of condors, and these
Speaker 6: birds cover an incredible distance. We had we tracked one
Speaker 6: bird that essentially traveled the equivalent length of the state
Speaker 6: of California north to south in three days.
Speaker 5: What is faster than I can do it in a car.
Speaker 6: Exactly exactly, I mean, it just stupendously fast. And so
Speaker 6: when you talk about, you know, restoring these birds to
Speaker 6: the landscape, you're talking about a bird that has the
Speaker 6: capability of flying across the state border, right or you know,
Speaker 6: it gets really interesting and really complex and really uncomfortable
Speaker 6: when we when you know, we start talking about condor
Speaker 6: restoration on indigenous land. And so the Uruk and the
Speaker 6: Kurrak people have a reservation and that are currently based
Speaker 6: in northern California are working with the US Fish and
Speaker 6: Wildlife Service in the condor biologists to kind of help
Speaker 6: manage a northern California population, and the Nez Perce tribe
Speaker 6: in what's now Idaho and that region are are kind
Speaker 6: of beginning that process of bringing condors back because these
Speaker 6: birds are really important culturally for them. But it gets
Speaker 6: really to a contentious point. And it was interesting at
Speaker 6: one of the condor meetings, I asked a question sort
Speaker 6: of like in the coffee hour to one of the
Speaker 6: folks who was organizing, and I just, you know, this question,
Speaker 6: who owns condors? And it was a tough question, and
Speaker 6: I meant it to be sort of a tough question.
Speaker 6: I don't know the answer, right, Ye. What happens when
Speaker 6: condors that are managed by the US Firstern Wildlife Service,
Speaker 6: or who are managed by the Peregrine Fund, or condors
Speaker 6: from Mexico start crossing the border right as they are
Speaker 6: being you know, as we hope they expand their range. Well,
Speaker 6: then we have to have all these difficult conversations about
Speaker 6: who has jurisdiction, who's responsible, who's going to, you know,
Speaker 6: look after these birds that they get into trouble. You know,
Speaker 6: what kind of conditions you cross the border, you know,
Speaker 6: anywhere outside of California and you don't have lead ammunition legislation, right,
Speaker 6: And so you know condor that flies from Los Angeles
Speaker 6: into you know, Utah, Arizona or Nevada or wherever gets
Speaker 6: into trouble in just some lead and then comes back
Speaker 6: and is sick, like who.
Speaker 7: And who pays for that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: With a bird in these treatment So it's a it's
Speaker 7: a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an issue even bigger than their.
Speaker 7: Wingspans, if you can imagine that.
Speaker 4: So, Doctor Swift great questions and if you would like
Speaker 4: to hear more about inky birds with great brains and
Speaker 4: Halloween vibes, definitely check out the Corvid Sanatology episode with
Speaker 4: doctor Kayley Swift, which.
Speaker 5: Is about crow funerals.
Speaker 4: Crows have funerals, and it aired around Halloween twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: so definitely go back and listen if you haven't heard it.
Speaker 5: Oh oh.
Speaker 4: On the topic of their giant wings, I.
Speaker 6: Know a number of folks who have condo wing tattoosh
Speaker 6: oh man, they are really awesome.
Speaker 5: Is it a fullback tattoo? I mean you need some
Speaker 5: real estate.
Speaker 6: For the yeah you do, and it's yeah, it's not.
Speaker 6: It's not to scale. We have to have like one
Speaker 6: wing from the bottom of your neck to like the
Speaker 6: back of your calf. But yeah, shout out to Nick Heinen,
Speaker 6: geographer at the University of Georgia, and then shout out
Speaker 6: to Joseph Brandt, who's work with condors in southern California
Speaker 6: for most of his career. They both have condo wing
Speaker 6: tattoos and so they're kind of smaller on their arms.
Speaker 7: And they're just like, really awesome.
Speaker 5: I want to see a picture of it.
Speaker 4: Of course, I will be finding these instagrams and reposting
Speaker 4: the pictures if I find them. I mean, come on,
Speaker 4: what is something about condors or your work that sucks?
Speaker 8: What sucks?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that before listening to
Speaker 6: the show, and I was what sucks? Well, I will
Speaker 6: tell you the scaredest I've ever been researching condors, which
Speaker 6: had nothing directly to do with condors, but a couple
Speaker 6: of years ago, and that was the day when it
Speaker 6: was really cold and rainy and we were not prepared
Speaker 6: for the weather. But what had happened a couple of
Speaker 6: days before was a giant mountain lion had wandered into
Speaker 6: the trap. Oh no, and so you know, you bait
Speaker 6: the birds and you have a cow carcass that's there,
Speaker 6: usually like a stillborn cast.
Speaker 4: So doctor Hall had taken a few students with him,
Speaker 4: Evan and Vince, and it was Vince's first time doing
Speaker 4: field work. And it was cold and rainy, and a
Speaker 4: day or two before the condor bait had lured a
Speaker 4: mountain lion into the trap Doctor Halsaw photo and it was.
Speaker 6: Like the like the most muscly mountain lion I'd ever
Speaker 6: seen in my life. Like, ugh, it was really bad.
Speaker 6: So this is before the flight pen had had this
Speaker 6: big what I called their Jurassic Park fence around to
Speaker 6: keep the paters out. So we show up a couple
Speaker 6: of days later and this mountain lion is like, we
Speaker 6: don't know. I mean, it's it's no longer sort of
Speaker 6: directly in the vicinity, but mountain lion could be just
Speaker 6: like just over the next hill. I think there's elk
Speaker 6: there are, there's plenty to eat in that area. And
Speaker 6: so we're in the barn and the field house is
Speaker 6: about three hundred yards away, and so Vincent didn't have.
Speaker 6: All he brought was short sleeves and short pants. It's
Speaker 6: fifty eight degrees fifty six degrees and raining silence. And
Speaker 6: so even in the barn, Vincent is like really cold
Speaker 6: and he's like, doctorhol I'm really cold. Can I go
Speaker 6: back to the field house and get like a jacket?
Speaker 7: And I was like.
Speaker 6: Yes, but nobody could go with him because we were
Speaker 6: all kind of like busy, and I, you know, I
Speaker 6: started hesitated, and I'm like, he's like shivering. Oh, and
Speaker 6: so I was like, oh, no, Vince, like he's gonna
Speaker 6: get hypothermia. But I don't want anybody walking around here
Speaker 6: by them shows with a giant mountain lion.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 6: That was the longest thirty minutes of my life waiting
Speaker 6: for Vince to come back. And like like he he was,
Speaker 6: he was tired, and so like I think he like
Speaker 6: went to the bathroom and maybe just sort of like
Speaker 6: hung out because this is his first time in the
Speaker 6: field and maybe he's like I don't want to do this.
Speaker 4: He's like googling other jobs.
Speaker 7: But like Vincent is.
Speaker 6: Vincent took half an hour to come back, and I am,
Speaker 6: I'm like, oh my god. You know, I bring out
Speaker 6: this you know, undergraduate and he's sophomore at the time.
Speaker 6: Bring up this undergraduate student and he gets eaten my
Speaker 6: mountain lion and Vincent's black, okay, and so you know,
Speaker 6: like we're the only two black people out there, and
Speaker 6: of course I'm like, okay, this is like a horror movie,
Speaker 6: and of course one of us is going to get
Speaker 6: eaten first. No, you know, how would it look like?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 6: But he eventually makes his way back in one of
Speaker 6: the one of the field jackets, and I was just like,
Speaker 6: really glad to see Vince. Shout out to Vincent, if
Speaker 6: you're out there, hopefully you haven't been eaten by a
Speaker 6: mountain lion.
Speaker 5: Seriously, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's got a jackets like breaker is necessary. What
Speaker 4: about your favorite thing about your work?
Speaker 6: I would say my favorite thing about my work is
Speaker 6: working with students. Is working with young folks and trying
Speaker 6: to do the same thing that the mentors that I mentioned,
Speaker 6: you know, the Tom Waits, the Dwayne Jackson's, then Neil
Speaker 6: chong Ghani's, the Todd Kastners have done for me and
Speaker 6: just giving us an opportunity to explore the world, explore
Speaker 6: our interests, build skills, and really kind of gain confidence.
Speaker 6: It's the best part of my job, and particularly when
Speaker 6: I get to work with students of color, which is
Speaker 6: not often and something that I'm really need to do
Speaker 6: a lot of better job of connecting with other particularly
Speaker 6: black folks sort of in this realm, which is why,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm just so impressed and so thankful and
Speaker 6: so in awe of people like you know, Karina Newsom
Speaker 6: and doctor Esther, who's somebody you should you should definitely
Speaker 6: talk to me. She does incredible work in creating space,
Speaker 6: and so many other people, right. And one of the
Speaker 6: things I was thinking is I was listening to the
Speaker 6: Black and Stem episode, was I was thinking, and I
Speaker 6: wanted to say to everybody who was on that, like,
Speaker 6: if you are looking for post docs, yeah, I'll let
Speaker 6: you boy, you know, but also just you know, I
Speaker 6: look forward to connecting with with folks because you know,
Speaker 6: it's obviously there's a lot of work to do in
Speaker 6: the realm of racial diversity within these fields, and working
Speaker 6: with students and backgrounds that are not represented is just
Speaker 6: so enriching because we have a lot to contribute and
Speaker 6: there's a lot about our experience as black people and
Speaker 6: as other people of color that we bring to bear.
Speaker 6: And you know, these fields are incredibly white, and you know,
Speaker 6: there's nothing sort of inherently wrong with you know, white
Speaker 6: people doing this work, but looking at the lack of
Speaker 6: racial diversity, you know, there's a lack of perspectives and
Speaker 6: ways of approaching problems and questions that we definitely need
Speaker 6: to have in order to kind of make things like
Speaker 6: rewilding not problematic and not replicate, you know, the same
Speaker 6: sorts of marginalized environments that exist. So shout out to
Speaker 6: all of the people of color, black volks, especially in
Speaker 6: these fields and doing what you do. You're an inspiration
Speaker 6: and a big reason or the reason why I continue
Speaker 6: to do what I do.
Speaker 4: Do you have any words to people who are a
Speaker 4: black and stem who are just coming up that you
Speaker 4: wish you knew, any advice to them?
Speaker 6: Oh goodness, that's a whole that's a whole other.
Speaker 7: Episode. I think.
Speaker 6: One of the things that has that I that I've
Speaker 6: struggled with sort of throughout my career is wondering whether
Speaker 6: or not I was crazy, Wondering whether or not I
Speaker 6: was insane right for the interest that I had, for
Speaker 6: the ways that I approach questions, for the approaches that
Speaker 6: I was taking, the things I was interested in, and
Speaker 6: sort of like once I got into the fields. Right
Speaker 6: as I've progressed in my career, I've had to kind
Speaker 6: of create a space sort of an epistemology or approach
Speaker 6: to questions that is not really there. I think that
Speaker 6: I would say to folks, particularly black folks in this field,
Speaker 6: is the way that you are passionate about approaching problems
Speaker 6: and the way that you are thinking about ways to
Speaker 6: solve problems. Don't let anybody take that perspective away from
Speaker 6: you or try to dampen that perspective. And it can
Speaker 6: happen actively, but it could also just happen by the
Speaker 6: fact that there's a tremendous pressure within these fields to
Speaker 6: value knowledge in a particular way, and it's problematic because
Speaker 6: of its lack of diversity, diversity of perspectives. And so
Speaker 6: I would also say to white folks in this field,
Speaker 6: and just sort of white folks in general, that it's
Speaker 6: really important that you know those who are seeking to
Speaker 6: be accomplices. And I like accomplices that term better than allies,
Speaker 6: because allies can can be kind of like cheerleading from
Speaker 6: the sidelines, but they're not actually in the thick of it, right,
Speaker 6: so you can you can you can advocate from the sidelines,
Speaker 6: but not actually risk anything, and there's a certain safety
Speaker 6: in that. But I think what folks need is accomplices,
Speaker 6: people who are willing to put themselves at risk in
Speaker 6: an equal measure as they can being in their privileged
Speaker 6: identities that people who are marginalized do. And I would
Speaker 6: say that being an accomplice or being an ally really
Speaker 6: there's a tremendous learning that has to happen. Don't ignore
Speaker 6: and don't push aside the fact that there's just so
Speaker 6: much about the way in which race functions in our
Speaker 6: everyday lives that we have to learn before we can
Speaker 6: be good actors in dismantling it. Being a good advocate,
Speaker 6: being a good accomplice really starts with that learning and
Speaker 6: it's intense, but it's necessary.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. So yeah, that's all such great advice. I think
Speaker 4: that so many people who don't maybe don't have mentors
Speaker 4: like you, Like that's that's a really amazing statement to
Speaker 4: You're almost acting as like a mentor to a lot
Speaker 4: of people that you'll never meet.
Speaker 7: Which is really great. You know, eyes are starting to
Speaker 7: sweat Alley.
Speaker 4: It's true, Like it's you know, just the more voices
Speaker 4: and the more voices that people hear, the more you
Speaker 4: can see yourself doing something, and yeah, we're we're definitely
Speaker 4: not going to dismantle a system that was built by
Speaker 4: white colonizers by just having people who are descended from
Speaker 4: white colonizers. It's not going to you know, yeah, that's
Speaker 4: really eye opening and really wonderful.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, no, And thank you for creating the space.
Speaker 7: I mean, like this is really important.
Speaker 6: I think that what you have done, what you were doing,
Speaker 6: is just an incredible hub for people to kind of
Speaker 6: understand understand these sorts of things.
Speaker 4: Jonathan also said that one thing he wished he would
Speaker 4: have learned earlier that would have saved a lot of
Speaker 4: energy would have been to not debate and engage with
Speaker 4: people who think racial injustice or privilege doesn't exist.
Speaker 6: It would be a lot easier to deal with if
Speaker 6: I got paid for the labor of like racial justice
Speaker 6: that I'm doing, Like yeah, it's and you know that's
Speaker 6: one thing for like, you know, administrators who are who
Speaker 6: are firm, firm in this idea of legitimacy. It's time
Speaker 6: to get creative to compensate people of color for doing
Speaker 6: this work. And we're talking like we're talking like straight
Speaker 6: cash homeie, like like for real, that would go a
Speaker 6: long way, and so deans and presidents and department chairs
Speaker 6: and all these folks like where we're talking like real
Speaker 6: meaningful compensation in direct correlation to the ways in which
Speaker 6: a lot of people say like, oh we value you know,
Speaker 6: your input, and oh this is so amazing and those
Speaker 6: is so helpful, and oh thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, there's a there's an epic freestyle by Black
Speaker 6: Thought from the roots.
Speaker 7: Know if you've seen it, no, no.
Speaker 6: It is seriously one of the most amazing literary feats
Speaker 6: I've ever seen a human being. Do he freestyles for
Speaker 6: ten minutes. It's it's bonkers. He's like, by far one
Speaker 6: of my favorite hip hop artists. So like Black Thought,
Speaker 6: if you're listening, like it'd be awesome to connect. But
Speaker 6: if not, just now, I'm a huge fan. But in that,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, he's he's a brilliant human being.
Speaker 6: In it, one of the lines is you know, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna say three hundred K and even in the ballpark,
Speaker 6: I charged more just for an awkward small talk. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna say three hundred even in a ballpark, more just
Speaker 6: for awkward small talk. And I'm not saying three hundred
Speaker 6: K for awkward small talk, but you know, people in
Speaker 6: positions of power who value our work as black people,
Speaker 6: who recognize what we're doing and how we are making
Speaker 6: change in ways that other people who are there cannot do.
Speaker 7: I just pay us more worth, you know.
Speaker 4: And just a side note, I love that he raised
Speaker 4: this point because I've seen a lot of folks online
Speaker 4: mentioned that this work is understandably exhausting, especially on top
Speaker 4: of all the grief and the fear and the anger
Speaker 4: in the midst of a pandemic and trying to handle workloads,
Speaker 4: on top of being asked to explain how to dismantle
Speaker 4: systemic racism of which they are the victim and just
Speaker 4: heads up. For the last six months or Soologies has
Speaker 4: been paying honorariums to guests who take on this work
Speaker 4: and educate us, and I want to thank Patreon for
Speaker 4: helping make that possible. And if you're out there, no
Speaker 4: matter who you are, and you're asked to do free
Speaker 4: labor to educate others based on your lived experience of
Speaker 4: systemic oppression, ask for honorariums. Certainly say I'd love to
Speaker 4: consider it, depending on my availability, what's the honorarium for this?
Speaker 4: And then decide after you think about it, just saying
Speaker 4: old Dad Ward and doctor Jonathan Hall know you're worth it.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for letting me ask you so
Speaker 4: many stupid questions.
Speaker 5: Of all kinds. I just know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this has been amazing. This has been really awesome.
Speaker 4: So ask the smart people the goofy and sometimes not
Speaker 4: so goofy questions and thank them for learning you something new.
Speaker 5: I hope you are enjoying.
Speaker 4: The crisp autumn mornings and the leaves rustling and the
Speaker 4: smell of a distant fireplace and the knowledge that a
Speaker 4: condor would absolutely find you delicious.
Speaker 5: Cut Banks, text your crush, We're all going to die.
Speaker 4: You can follow doctor Jonathan Hall, who I am sure
Speaker 4: you are already a very big fan of on Twitter
Speaker 4: and Instagram. His handles are out there j H on both,
Speaker 4: and there will be links to that in the show note,
Speaker 4: alongside a link to his website and more. And we
Speaker 4: are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali
Speaker 4: Ward with one L on.
Speaker 5: Both, so do say hello there.
Speaker 4: More links for this entire episode will be up at
Speaker 4: Alleyward dot com slash Ologies slash chondrology. If you would
Speaker 4: like t shirts or mugs or worm hats or blankets
Speaker 4: or any of these things, you can go to ologiesmerch
Speaker 4: dot com. Tons of stuff is up there. Thank you
Speaker 4: Shannon Feltys and Bonnie Dutch. They host the podcast You
Speaker 4: Are That, which is hilarious, so do find that.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Aaron Talbert, she admin's Theologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you
Speaker 4: to Emily White and her team of transcribers who are
Speaker 4: awesome and are getting transcripts up available to our deaf
Speaker 4: and hard of hearing Ologites and anyone who would just
Speaker 4: like a free transcript. Those are up at alleywar dot
Speaker 4: com slash ologies dash extras. Thank you all the folks
Speaker 4: at patreon dot com slash ologies for making all these
Speaker 4: perks possible. Thank you to Gremy, who was walking through
Speaker 4: the room and who will not be edited out. That
Speaker 4: thing's perfect. She's digging around the bed. Thank you to
Speaker 4: Caleb Patten who bleeps those episodes making them kid friendly.
Speaker 4: Those are up at alliwar dot com slash ologies dash extras.
Speaker 4: Thank you to Noel Dilworth who schedules the Ology and
Speaker 4: helps me stay on top of my own schedule. Thank
Speaker 4: you to editors Jared Sleeper and of course Stephen Ray Morris,
Speaker 4: who are some of the biggest best birds in the biz.
Speaker 4: I usually have notes in a list of who I
Speaker 4: think at the end of this and I don't today,
Speaker 4: and I'm just loosey goosey. Nick Thorburn wrote the music
Speaker 4: and performed it. And if you listen to the very
Speaker 4: very end of the episode, you know I tell you
Speaker 4: a secret. And this week's secret is I did one
Speaker 4: of those foot peels where like you put your foot
Speaker 4: in an acid bath and then like four days later,
Speaker 4: your skid's supposed to fall off. And it's been day
Speaker 4: four and so far nothing's happening. And I'm worried that,
Speaker 4: like my feet are so calloused and nasty that it's
Speaker 4: just no match for it. I might have to use
Speaker 4: some condor stomach juices next. Anyway, remember to vote, because honestly,
Speaker 4: November three is the scariest thing about October.
Speaker 5: But either way, we'll be back next week with.
Speaker 4: Another Spook episode. Oh it's so good, Okay for my pacadermatology, homeology,
Speaker 4: for do zoology, lithology and theology, meteorology, paratology, the apology, seriology.
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