Speaker 1: Oh hi, Hey, it's that person with your exact same
Speaker 1: name that you wanted to follow on Instagram because you
Speaker 1: thought it'd be funny, but they never approved your follow request.
Speaker 1: Ali Ward back with an episode of Ologies you have
Speaker 1: begged me for? You've pleaded with me Bears, Bears do bears?
Speaker 1: Do bears? What's wrong with you? Do bears? And it
Speaker 1: has been a few years in the making because bear
Speaker 1: scientists are busy people people, and I had the wonderful
Speaker 1: doctor ray Wyn Grant on deck, but the pandemic, she
Speaker 1: started doing fieldwork, and then I started meeting more and
Speaker 1: more bear biologists and I didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: because they were all great. And then this bear guy
Speaker 1: happened to be available. I jumped at the chance to
Speaker 1: chat bruins with him. And Patrons, thank you so so
Speaker 1: much for supporting the show. You can join Patreon for
Speaker 1: as little as a dollar a month. Patrons sent in
Speaker 1: almost five hundred questions for this one, which we couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly have gotten through in one episode, so surprise for everyone,
Speaker 1: there was going to be another with even more personologists,
Speaker 1: so sit tight for that. But before we meet this
Speaker 1: episode's ologists, and thank you also to everyone who rates
Speaker 1: and subscribes to Ologies. It means so much. It honestly
Speaker 1: keeps this podcast in front of so many other ears
Speaker 1: and eyeballs, and I read every single one, and then
Speaker 1: I thank someone who has recently left a review this week,
Speaker 1: such as Justin vick who said the back catalog of
Speaker 1: Bologies held great promise. So I started the Volcanology episode
Speaker 1: and haven't looked back. As of tonight, I've caught up
Speaker 1: on all the old episodes, leaving me both satisfied and
Speaker 1: disappointed that I'll have to wait for new episodes. Ologies
Speaker 1: shares the work of so many cool people and interesting
Speaker 1: topics while always being fun, engaging, accessible, and progressive. Thanks
Speaker 1: Ali and all the Ologists. Justin Vickay, thank you for
Speaker 1: the review. Also, if you have listened to Volcanology, Jess
Speaker 1: Phoenix has a new book that just came out called
Speaker 1: Misadventures My Wild Explorations in Science, Lava and Life, and
Speaker 1: I just thought I would plug that because she's great,
Speaker 1: So if you listen to Volcanology, get her book. Okay,
Speaker 1: buckle up for Bears. So Ersenology comes from Ursus Latin
Speaker 1: for bear. In Greek it's arctus, so if that's right, Arctus.
Speaker 1: The Arctic has bears, Antarctica does not. I will never
Speaker 1: be the same after learning this week. So this ologist
Speaker 1: who what a get? So not only is his voice
Speaker 1: just butter in your ears, which doesn't really make sense,
Speaker 1: but it's good. The dude also just loves bears so much.
Speaker 1: He studied conservation management in Farmborough in the UK, got
Speaker 1: a bachelor's in applied ecology, a master's in advanced ecology,
Speaker 1: and has studied all kinds of forest critters, but his
Speaker 1: heart is all about versus. So he co founded the
Speaker 1: Grizzly Bear Outreach Project, which is now the Western Wildlife
Speaker 1: Outreach Organization, and he is the executive director of Wildlife Media,
Speaker 1: which is a nonprofit production company. He's done research and
Speaker 1: education on every continent where bears exist. He's talked about
Speaker 1: bears hosting programs for PBS, BBC, Discover and more. He
Speaker 1: also hosts a very good, highly acclaimed and respectable podcast
Speaker 1: called The Wild with Chris Morgan. And we recorded this
Speaker 1: episode a month or so ago, but I've been sitting
Speaker 1: on it because The Wild's new season debut today. So
Speaker 1: sit tight and learn about how many bear species there are.
Speaker 1: What happens during hibernation, Panda poops, milking of Grizzly weird,
Speaker 1: Teddy bear trivia, How to read a bear's behavior, camping
Speaker 1: and hiking safety tips, California Grizzlies. Of your cute ears,
Speaker 1: why are they so cute? Soft fur? And the absolute
Speaker 1: majesty of winter bear butts with bear friend and world
Speaker 1: renowned ersenologist Chris Morgan. I'm so stressed out about this,
Speaker 1: I can't even tell you. Boy, the most stressful interview.
Speaker 1: I have never had so many questions about bears.
Speaker 2: Thanks really lovely to hear.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I'm going to get to all them.
Speaker 1: It's like those game shows where you have to go
Speaker 1: shopping in like under a minute. The clock is ticking.
Speaker 1: And first thing I always have people do up top,
Speaker 1: you could say your first and last name, and also
Speaker 1: what pronouns you use.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's Chris Morgan and he.
Speaker 1: Him cool and now you are an erthenologist correct.
Speaker 2: Yes, I guess I am.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, I have a feeling you do not use
Speaker 1: that word very often.
Speaker 2: Not really. No. I was thinking about that before the call,
Speaker 2: and it is. Yeah, it's a strange word that you
Speaker 2: don't hear much in the world of bear biology and conservation.
Speaker 2: But it makes total sense.
Speaker 1: And you're a bear biologist and a conservationist slightly more
Speaker 1: syllables than arsenologist, but you're a person who studies bears.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've done quite a bit of studying of bears,
Speaker 2: and I'm part of a community of people around the
Speaker 2: world that actually focus their lives on these creatures. So
Speaker 2: it's a pretty interesting group of folks, these ersenologists or
Speaker 2: bear experts or bear biologists. And you know, some of
Speaker 2: us are outreach and educators and born from science, and
Speaker 2: others are the hardcore sort of field work research biologists
Speaker 2: that focus every day of their lives doing that stuff.
Speaker 2: And I've dabbled in just about all of it. My
Speaker 2: whole life is about bears and appreciating them, understanding them,
Speaker 2: telling stories about them, having people sort of relate to
Speaker 2: them in some ways, and maybe even learn about themselves
Speaker 2: in the process.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking about the humans involved. What is a gathering
Speaker 1: of bear people like? Good? What's the vibe?
Speaker 2: There can be a lot of ego in the room,
Speaker 2: you know, these big creatures. It would be a very
Speaker 2: interesting task, actually to interview lots of different bar biologists
Speaker 2: from various parts of the world and ask them why
Speaker 2: they got into it, And I'm sure there's as many
Speaker 2: different reasons as there are bear biologists. Some of it
Speaker 2: is just born of the fact that these creatures are
Speaker 2: so incredibly big, impressive and physical. There's a presence about them.
Speaker 2: Another aspect is their high intelligence. Another aspect is their
Speaker 2: conservation value. By protecting them, you protect all kinds of
Speaker 2: other species. And so for different people, it's maybe different reasons.
Speaker 2: And some people slip into it by mistake like I did,
Speaker 2: and other people sort of focused their entire you know, life,
Speaker 2: from day one on these creatures because perhaps they were
Speaker 2: born into it, by their parents being into it, or so.
Speaker 2: It's always an interesting mix of people at these gatherings.
Speaker 2: In fact, there are there's an organization called the International
Speaker 2: Snociation for Bear Research and Management, and it's made up
Speaker 2: a few years ago at least, it was made up
Speaker 2: of about six hundred bear biologists around the world, so
Speaker 2: it's a big community and each of them studying various
Speaker 2: aspects of their own bear species, from India to the
Speaker 2: Arctic and South America to Russia, you know. So we
Speaker 2: have these bear conferences and there's a lot of drinking
Speaker 2: and a lot of bear stories as you can imagine,
Speaker 2: and a lot of science shared and a lot of enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: And then there's certain little cliques and you know, the
Speaker 2: last biologists bear biologists stick together a bit more. There's
Speaker 2: the grizzly corner. You know, there's the black bears that
Speaker 2: are not quite up to being a grizzly bear, but
Speaker 2: you know it's really interesting dynamics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, speaking of that, I understand that there's not
Speaker 1: that many bear species in nature, is or something like seven?
Speaker 2: Are there?
Speaker 1: Way more?
Speaker 2: No, there's eight bear species. That's it. It's a nice
Speaker 2: little tidy package of It's a family of animal called urcids,
Speaker 2: and so there's only eight of them around the world.
Speaker 2: So I've always I always feel like it makes it
Speaker 2: quite manageable, quite understandable. Like way back in history talking
Speaker 2: a hundred years, you know, when nomenclature was really taking hold.
Speaker 1: Nomenclature. Is that a regime or was it a war?
Speaker 1: It took me a minute, but I realized it's nomenclature.
Speaker 1: So yes, at the start of binomial nomenclature of genus
Speaker 1: and species and.
Speaker 2: Such, it was thought that there were dozens, perhaps even
Speaker 2: hundreds of different bear species, but that's sort of condensed.
Speaker 2: They've been clumped a bit more. You know, you get
Speaker 2: your splitters and clumpers when it comes to these Latin
Speaker 2: names for different bear species, and like, for example, brown bears.
Speaker 2: Some of the biggest bears in fact, if not the
Speaker 2: biggest bears in the world, are brown bears coastal Alaskan
Speaker 2: brown bears and those found in that part of the
Speaker 2: world and the equivalent over income Chatka in Alaska. These
Speaker 2: big fish eating brown bears that get to colossal I
Speaker 2: always think like dinas or prehistoric proportions. Some of them,
Speaker 2: the biggest can be eighteen nineteen hundred pounds when they
Speaker 2: go into their dens. Right, that's a brown bear. That's
Speaker 2: Ursus arctus. It doesn't get more bear than Ursus arctus.
Speaker 2: You know. Ursus arctus literally means bear bear, one in
Speaker 2: Latin and one in Greek. So you don't get more
Speaker 2: bear than Ursus arcus.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So these giant bears in Alaska same species as a
Speaker 2: brown bear in Italy in the Bitso's Mountains, where there
Speaker 2: are maybe two hundred and fifty pounds in weight, almost
Speaker 2: ten times less heavy than some of the bears in
Speaker 2: Alaska five times at least, you know.
Speaker 1: So, yes, those nineteen hundred pound chalkers up in Alaska
Speaker 1: and then the two hundred and fifty pound Italian alps
Speaker 1: burrinos across the globe.
Speaker 2: Same species though ursus arcs. These bear bears grizzlies, right,
Speaker 2: so I call them euro grizzlies. So you can see
Speaker 2: how this family of bears, even just within grizzlies were
Speaker 2: split ion to go into war. That's got a bit
Speaker 2: of different species to the one in Alaska. You know,
Speaker 2: Italian and Alaskan bears can't surely be the same, but
Speaker 2: they've clumped them more now into just these eight. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty interesting the history of them.
Speaker 1: And how did they get to where they are. How
Speaker 1: did the range expand all over the globe I guess
Speaker 1: other than the Anarctic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're found on four continents around the world.
Speaker 2: They're not found in Australia. Everyone always says, well, what
Speaker 2: about koalas, you know, distinctly muscle peels as you probably know,
Speaker 2: they're not in the bear family Kohala bears. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they are, and especially when it comes to brown bears,
Speaker 2: they're one of the most widespread. They are the most
Speaker 2: widespread of the eight bear species, and you know, starting
Speaker 2: life in the Asian subcontinent and working their way to
Speaker 2: the New World across the Bearing land Bridge.
Speaker 1: If you're secretly wondering where is the Bearing straight again, Well,
Speaker 1: it's the slim fifty five mile ocean corridor where Alaska
Speaker 1: almost touches Russia like two outstretched fingers on the Sistine
Speaker 1: Chapel ceiling. Except during the Ice Age the sea levels
Speaker 1: were three hundred feet lower, and so there wasn't so
Speaker 1: much as a land bridge, but like a land promenade
Speaker 1: over which bears and humans and all manner of clever
Speaker 1: beast could just saunter over and freaking camels camels that
Speaker 1: evolved in North America and piece the fuck out and
Speaker 1: headed to the other direction. This historical region is called Berryingia, which,
Speaker 1: if you asked me, sounds a little too much like Basinca.
Speaker 2: They became incredibly successful, incredibly diverse in their habits, and
Speaker 2: incredibly adaptable is the word, and it makes them my
Speaker 2: favorite species, the gristly bears, the one that I've looked
Speaker 2: into and worked with and around and being around most.
Speaker 2: I just think it's partly that these creatures are. Oh,
Speaker 2: they look at every day of their life with calculated
Speaker 2: risk and reward and memory and figuring out what they
Speaker 2: need to accomplish that that day and that week and
Speaker 2: that month and that season in front of them. And
Speaker 2: there's some that they're so highly intelligent. They've become incredibly
Speaker 2: adaptable and successful as a bear species, and so they're
Speaker 2: the most widespread the brown grizzly bears. Brown and grizzly
Speaker 2: are the same species.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was my next question because I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, You've called them grizzlies and brown So
Speaker 1: brown bear is a grizzly, but a black bear is
Speaker 1: not a grizzly, Is.
Speaker 2: That right, right? Exactly? Yes, So we would call a
Speaker 2: grizzly a brown bear in Italy, right, So they're all
Speaker 2: under the umbrella of being a brown bear. Some of
Speaker 2: them are called grizzlies, and those are in North America.
Speaker 2: Those interior grizzly bears that we hear about, the famous
Speaker 2: Yellowstone bears, those are grizzlies interior or Alaska, those are grizzlies. Interestingly, though,
Speaker 2: even in North America, you start getting to the coast
Speaker 2: and people start referring to them as brown bears, but
Speaker 2: the umbrella is brown bear. And then some brown bears
Speaker 2: are referred to as grizzlies, even though I joke about
Speaker 2: these these little Italian bears being like the Ureo grizzly.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like Americans have huge trucks,
Speaker 1: and then there are smart cars in Europe, like a
Speaker 1: Fiat still a car.
Speaker 2: Everything is bigger over here in the spense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so yes.
Speaker 1: Grizzlies and brown bears and kodiak bears, they're all the
Speaker 1: same genus and species, but there are subspecies within them,
Speaker 1: including California's grizzly bear, which numbered over ten thousand before
Speaker 1: the discovery of gold nuggets in northern California in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds, and by nineteen twenty four, every California
Speaker 1: grizzly bear had been hunted and killed, and a California
Speaker 1: grizzly with golden brown fur and that signature brown bear
Speaker 1: shoulder hump still adorns are state flag as a reminder
Speaker 1: of how they came here and killed stuff. That's not true,
Speaker 1: but it kind of is, but just a reminder on
Speaker 1: a flag with no grizzlies. Can we fix that well.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, the US Fish and Wildlife Service was
Speaker 1: on the receiving end of a plan to reintroduce grizzly
Speaker 1: bears to California, and they were like, oh, that's okay,
Speaker 1: we have black bears. We're fine. So bear in mind
Speaker 1: that the brown bear isn't the only species of bear.
Speaker 2: Of course, there are seven other species, and you know
Speaker 2: they can sometimes I don't talk about them enough because
Speaker 2: they get so obsessed with the grizzlies, with the brown bears,
Speaker 2: you know, But the seven other species are found in
Speaker 2: really interesting places as well. So the species are up.
Speaker 2: Let's start in the North, the polar bears up there,
Speaker 2: grizzly brown bear that we've talked about, the American black bear,
Speaker 2: spectacle bears in South America. They have these spectacle marks
Speaker 2: looked like eyeglasses, so they called spectacle bears down in
Speaker 2: South America and the Andes. The Asiatic black bear different
Speaker 2: to the North American black bears, so are found over
Speaker 2: in Asia. The sloth bear, and that's a long, shaggy
Speaker 2: coated bear that specializes in eating termites in places like India.
Speaker 2: Interesting creatures. And then lastly the eight species and the smallest,
Speaker 2: interestingly enough, is the sun bear, and the sun bears
Speaker 2: are found in Borneo and south other places in southeastags
Speaker 2: Or I've seen them in Borneo and worked with some
Speaker 2: incredible people who are focused on sun bears there, and
Speaker 2: they're really tropical. So the cool thing about this range
Speaker 2: of these bears and where they're found is really the
Speaker 2: fact that they could be found. I mean, think about it,
Speaker 2: polar bear in the highest reaches of our planet, in
Speaker 2: the most hostile environment in the Arctic that it's thriving.
Speaker 2: The best part of a polar bears year is the
Speaker 2: middle of the winter. Can you imagine that pitch dark
Speaker 2: up there, absolutely treacherously freezing conditions, And that's when they're
Speaker 2: at their best, and that's where they're up and at it.
Speaker 2: That's where the hunting is best, you know. So you've
Speaker 2: got the polar bears up there at the same time
Speaker 2: as a bear and Borneo down in the tropics of
Speaker 2: Asia is scaling trees to eat figs. And these are
Speaker 2: the tiniest of bears, the smallest bear species. A big
Speaker 2: male might be a couple of hundred pounds or one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty pounds, but they're really important because they
Speaker 2: help to manage and help this jungle, this rainforest home
Speaker 2: in Borneo thrive by spreading seeds, by telling the earth,
Speaker 2: by representing most importantly that ecosystem, that rainforest. So and
Speaker 2: we can talk more about that. Because they're incredibly powerful
Speaker 2: as umbrella species, we call them right, you know, just
Speaker 2: being able to look at a bear like a sun
Speaker 2: bear in Borneo, say hey, if we protect that population
Speaker 2: of sun bears in Borneo, we protect everything it needs. Right,
Speaker 2: So you're automatically by default protecting that forest, and bears
Speaker 2: are awesome at that, right. Every one of these species
Speaker 2: has a story to tell and a place to protect.
Speaker 1: Ps. What is an umbrella species, So that is a
Speaker 1: species that needs a pretty big habitat. It might migrate
Speaker 1: or need a pretty wide territory, and preserving their habitat
Speaker 1: provides protection for a ton of other species. So this
Speaker 1: is not to be confused with a keystone species, which
Speaker 1: really defines an ecosystem, really holds it together by being there,
Speaker 1: and without a keystone species, things would start to be
Speaker 1: thrown really off balanced. Now, an indicator species is one
Speaker 1: whose presence is a good sign things are going okay.
Speaker 1: Human beings probably not an indicator species tbh. But now
Speaker 1: let's move on to a hardball question, I think one
Speaker 1: that's on probably all of our minds, and as a
Speaker 1: bear biologist, do you get to hug any bears? Oh?
Speaker 2: One of the best days of my life was doing
Speaker 2: just that I've not done. I've not done bear research
Speaker 2: per se myself in dens. I've not done denning bear research.
Speaker 2: But we joined a biologist back east for I was
Speaker 2: working on a series for PBS about our animal homes. Like, great,
Speaker 2: we got to do animals. So it was everything from
Speaker 2: bird nests to beaver lodges and lots of different species
Speaker 2: over the course of about three different different episodes, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, we've got to do bears. They're like pretty
Speaker 2: obvious choice. Chris, Right, you're the bad guy, but I'm
Speaker 2: a bit biased, right, But I wanted this experience to
Speaker 2: get into a den with some bears, and so we
Speaker 2: went out to Maryland and literally crawled in with the
Speaker 2: biologists into this den. The bear was tranquilized, the female
Speaker 2: was tranquilized, and I got to pull out these four
Speaker 2: little cubs that were just born a matter of weeks beforehand,
Speaker 2: and I was just absolutely heart, heart melting. I had them,
Speaker 2: you know, as as we were processing the female and
Speaker 2: radio coloring her and taking a blood sample and just
Speaker 2: checking on her health. The cubs, of course, are used
Speaker 2: to being a need to be with the female to
Speaker 2: keep warm. I mean it was snowing, freezing cold outside,
Speaker 2: middle of winter, course, and so it was my job
Speaker 2: to hold these black bear cubs in my jacket while
Speaker 2: we process the female. Just purple eyes looking at me
Speaker 2: and just like hi, are you? Are you my new mom?
Speaker 2: It was the sweetest, sweetest thing. It'll stick with me forever.
Speaker 2: So yeah, crawling into those sorts of dens and having
Speaker 2: that kind of experience is amazing. Thinking about what those bears,
Speaker 2: what those bears are going through, and how they accomplish that,
Speaker 2: and hibernation is in bears is such an interesting thing. Well,
Speaker 2: can you imagine being a creature that big? I mean
Speaker 2: we're about as big as a black bear, right.
Speaker 1: How big is a black bear? So smaller than a
Speaker 1: brown bear, with females around one hundred and fifty pounds
Speaker 1: and males topping out usually around two fifty, about the
Speaker 1: size of an English mastiff, which is a very large doc.
Speaker 1: But there are outliers who have topped eight hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: which is huge for a black bear, and one gentle
Speaker 1: giant black bear named Duffy weighed six hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: pounds and then lost over four hundred pounds in a winter,
Speaker 1: just snoozing himself scrawny.
Speaker 2: So you imagine just saying, you know, October comes round
Speaker 2: and just going well, it's kind of cold, a little
Speaker 2: bit difficult to find food. I think you might just
Speaker 2: sleep for six months. It's incredible, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I can imagine very well too well.
Speaker 2: In fact, you yeah, nice, long six months nap. Yeah,
Speaker 2: see ya.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a question about getting into it. The
Speaker 1: world would be overrun with ersenologists if there was a
Speaker 1: promise that one day, even for fifteen minutes, you got
Speaker 1: to snuggle a baby bear. I think you're right, But
Speaker 1: what kind of got you toward this path? Was there
Speaker 1: a specific species or an experience that you had that
Speaker 1: really kind of lit that fire in you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely one. Really. Sometimes it's an evolution, isn't it,
Speaker 2: And an interest grows, and oftentimes it's like an intersection
Speaker 2: and you go left or right, or you bump into
Speaker 2: something or someone and for me, it was definitely that.
Speaker 2: And I'm from England originally. I've lived in the States
Speaker 2: twenty three years. But before I emigrated to the States,
Speaker 2: years before that, I was I'm fifty two now, so
Speaker 2: I was eighteen years old and wanted to come to
Speaker 2: the States and experience the wilderness of the place.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I always say that I think I was born with
Speaker 2: a very strong nature gene I like to call it,
Speaker 2: and I think everyone's born with a nature gene to
Speaker 2: some extent, but I think society sort of whittles it
Speaker 2: out of us and chips around at the edges of
Speaker 2: a nature gene to the point where people and young
Speaker 2: kids think, oh, I can't make a living out of it,
Speaker 2: or I can't you know, I can't survive by just
Speaker 2: having a nature gene, and perhaps they're teased at school.
Speaker 2: You know. We're often loners, we're often introverts. We're often
Speaker 2: people who just want to be out in the woods,
Speaker 2: turning over rocks and stones and looking for insects and stuff. Right,
Speaker 2: So I had all that about me and the depth
Speaker 2: of sort of love for wildlife, but I'd always dreamt
Speaker 2: of going to the States. So when I was eighteen,
Speaker 2: I came and worked on a summer camp in New Hampshire,
Speaker 2: like a wildlife conservation summer camp, and it was amazing
Speaker 2: all these young kids all there to learn about wildlife
Speaker 2: and about how to wildlife management and even hunting and
Speaker 2: other things, you know, bush skills, bushcraft and backcountry survival
Speaker 2: and things like that, and I loved it. So I
Speaker 2: came over as a summer camp counselor from England and
Speaker 2: we'd have these guests come through once in a while
Speaker 2: to talk to the kids about wildlife. And one week
Speaker 2: it was a moose biologist and this woman came in
Speaker 2: to talk about her moose research, and then it was
Speaker 2: a chiat biologist and these were all interesting, but didn't
Speaker 2: you know, for some reason grab me like the next
Speaker 2: guy did, because he came in talking about black bears
Speaker 2: and I just literally remember my jaw dropping everything he
Speaker 2: was saying. Fascinated by him. The fact that this guy
Speaker 2: was studying bears and making it a living and he
Speaker 2: knew thing that he did about these creatures was something
Speaker 2: in the moment of meeting him and hearing about him
Speaker 2: his work talking to these kids that just really grabbed me.
Speaker 2: So I ended up asking him for about three weeks
Speaker 2: if I could join him in the field. I wanted
Speaker 2: to go and experience what he was doing. He was
Speaker 2: catching the local bears and radio collaring them. And after
Speaker 2: about three weeks, I think he was just sick of hearing,
Speaker 2: you know, being annoyed by me, you know, So he
Speaker 2: came to the summer camp picked me up and one
Speaker 2: night it was it was weird. It's like nine o'clock
Speaker 2: at night, ten o'clock at night, even it was dark.
Speaker 2: It was it was about August. It must have been
Speaker 2: jumped on his truck. And we drove out the summer
Speaker 2: camp and you know, it's a left to the left
Speaker 2: turn to the forest where you presume all the bears are,
Speaker 2: and a right turn to town. And he turned right.
Speaker 2: I'm like, where we go? And I thought we were
Speaker 2: going into the field and he said, yeah, we are.
Speaker 2: These are my study animals down here. We got into
Speaker 2: town and he pulled up at the garbage dump. And
Speaker 2: at his garbage dump, there were fourteen black bears sitting
Speaker 2: on this giant pile of garbage, like moonlight shining down
Speaker 2: on them. You didn't even need a flash. It was
Speaker 2: the most aside from like the halacious stink. It's like,
Speaker 2: this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen on life.
Speaker 2: So I want to do what this guy's doing. And
Speaker 2: we hadn't even done anything yet. Just seeing these bears,
Speaker 2: I was like, that is I just couldn't believe someone
Speaker 2: could do that with their life. And so it represented adventure, excitement, wildness,
Speaker 2: intrigue about these curious, smart animals and this smart guy
Speaker 2: that i'd met. I'm like, wow, this guy is, you know,
Speaker 2: probably one of the more intelligent people I've ever met
Speaker 2: as an eighteen year old kid. And he's focused on
Speaker 2: this one animal and that's where his knowledge begins and ends.
Speaker 2: And it was amazing to me for lots of different reasons.
Speaker 2: And so after that, I came home to England after
Speaker 2: a summer of life experiences like that, and well, back
Speaker 2: to the garbage dump. We ended up tranquilizing bears on
Speaker 2: this garbage dump. He would take potshots with tranquilizer rifle.
Speaker 2: They'd go to sleep and he's like, okay, go chase
Speaker 2: that bear. Because the dart had a tranquilizer and a
Speaker 2: signal a transmitter in it. So he would shoot the
Speaker 2: rear end of this bear with a tranquilizer dart. It
Speaker 2: would disappear into the brush and I'd have to go
Speaker 2: off charging after it and make sure we found where
Speaker 2: the bear was before it disappeared out of range. And
Speaker 2: you know, I just remember standing in the middle of
Speaker 2: this garbage dump and I couldn't find this bear. It
Speaker 2: was my first one that I'd ever chased. And suddenly
Speaker 2: went really quiet, and I don't know where it had gone.
Speaker 2: It was pitch dark. I had a headlampond and then
Speaker 2: suddenly among the garbage, just a few feet away from him,
Speaker 2: I'd just hear this, Oh, and it was one of
Speaker 2: the bears that he tranquilized. He was right there asleep.
Speaker 2: So the whole thing blew me away. And I came
Speaker 2: back from England and slowly started to figure out where
Speaker 2: bears were. Do I have to go to New Hampshire
Speaker 2: for this to where are they? So like? I had
Speaker 2: no idea, and then ken to find out they were
Speaker 2: in Spain. They were in two or three euro grizzlies
Speaker 2: brown bears in France. There were these fifty or sixty
Speaker 2: in Italy. So there was some kind of on my
Speaker 2: doorstep near England, and I made it my life's work
Speaker 2: to get to know them, and that's kind of where
Speaker 2: the journey in the bear world began.
Speaker 1: Did you ever keep in touch with that bear biologist?
Speaker 2: You know? I didn't. I think about it all the time.
Speaker 2: I didn't, and I'm dying too. It wouldn't be amazing
Speaker 2: to just pick up the phone and try and find him.
Speaker 2: I tried to find him about what ten years ago
Speaker 2: because I want to thank him for the path that
Speaker 2: he'd set me on, and just that level of influence
Speaker 2: in your life is powerful. I think about it and
Speaker 2: him all the time. Actually, you know, but I've never
Speaker 2: tracked him down, but I will.
Speaker 1: Okay. I did a little digging and it seems that
Speaker 1: the bear guy in New Hampshire is doctor Andy Timmins.
Speaker 1: And I discovered this by googling bears plus dumpsters plus
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. Also, I found out on April fifteenth he's
Speaker 1: leading a seminar about the state of New Hampshire bears
Speaker 1: and human wildlife interactions. I eat bears and garbage. Now.
Speaker 1: The best news is that it's over zoom and I'm
Speaker 1: going to post the link on my website in case
Speaker 1: you'd like to join from your own quarantine den in
Speaker 1: hibernation pajamas still, And can you explain to me a
Speaker 1: little bit about what a bear's yearly kind of cycle
Speaker 1: is like, because hibernation completely blows my mind. But I
Speaker 1: also don't know. I hear bear biologists referred to as
Speaker 1: carnivore ecologists sometimes, but I don't even know if bears
Speaker 1: are carnivores or if their apex predators. Like how are
Speaker 1: they eating and sleeping? You ask a lot of questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they are carnivores, but they are a lot
Speaker 2: of them not very carnivorous, if you see what I mean.
Speaker 2: So they're officially in the carnivore group of animals, but
Speaker 2: a lot of their diet is vegetation. So grizzlies, for example,
Speaker 2: some parts of the world bear eats like ninety percent
Speaker 2: vegetation and only ten percent meat. And then if you
Speaker 2: get to places like coastal Alaska, I spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time literally sitting among grizzly bears there watching them
Speaker 2: feed on salmon. The salmon in that part of the
Speaker 2: world becomes a huge part of their diet, and so
Speaker 2: you know, there's the carnivore coming out of them. Some
Speaker 2: grizzlies will eat elk, some eat deer that have been
Speaker 2: killed by avalanches. They're not essentially really good at chasing
Speaker 2: down big fast prey like elk and deer, but they're
Speaker 2: happy to clean them up when they find them, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's where the carnival comes in. They're kind of
Speaker 2: opportunistic carnivores, meaning that if there's a meaty mealed around,
Speaker 2: oh my god, of course I'm going to take it
Speaker 2: because the metabolism benefits from it. So in the case
Speaker 2: of a grizzly or a black bear, you know, they
Speaker 2: basically spend their entire life just thinking the two things.
Speaker 2: One is food and one is sex.
Speaker 1: Chris says, perhaps that's why bears are so relatable. Just snacking,
Speaker 1: loving cuddling, plus all you can eat salmon sushi and
Speaker 1: boning seasonal depression naps and eating literal garbage who's never
Speaker 1: been there right.
Speaker 2: Constantly sort of just driven by their stomachs and constantly
Speaker 2: trying to find the maximum number of calories for the
Speaker 2: minimum amount of effort. And they do that in a
Speaker 2: very intense way because they've only got six or eight
Speaker 2: months to do it. In during the spring, summer and
Speaker 2: early fall, when they're out of hibernation. They're basically preparing
Speaker 2: themselves every year to go into hibernation. So they need
Speaker 2: enough fat to see them through a winter, which is
Speaker 2: when they recycle. They recycle their fat into urea and
Speaker 2: they don't defecate, they don't urinate. They basically they recycle
Speaker 2: all of their bodily fluids and fat in order to
Speaker 2: stay and survive in the winter den, avoiding the lean
Speaker 2: times of food. So you could see why summer and
Speaker 2: fall is so important to them, like I've got to
Speaker 2: get fat, got to get fat, got to get through
Speaker 2: the winter. And in the case of a female bear,
Speaker 2: it's really important for them to be in shape by
Speaker 2: the time they go into the dea because that's when
Speaker 2: the cubs appear. So the cubs that we were checking
Speaker 2: out in Maryland and the den that was in February,
Speaker 2: just before they were about to emerge March April they
Speaker 2: emerge from the den, but they had just been born
Speaker 2: in like January, in that winter den with the female
Speaker 2: you know, incredible story in itself. You know, a female
Speaker 2: bear basically you know, just pops out a little bear cub.
Speaker 2: It's the size of or smaller and same weight as
Speaker 2: a squirrel. It's hairless, it's blind, it's helpless. It finds
Speaker 2: the warmth of its mother's teeth and latches on and
Speaker 2: drinks some of the richest milk in the animal kingdom
Speaker 2: and grows like a weed.
Speaker 1: Side note, how do they know that? Well, I just
Speaker 1: read a study about obtaining bear milk and it's done
Speaker 1: by tranquilizing the bear and giving it an oxytocin injection
Speaker 1: and then quote manual expression. There's also a company, Grizzlymilk
Speaker 1: dot com that claims to sell handharvested montana grizzly milk,
Speaker 1: and from what I can tell, it's not a real com.
Speaker 1: But speaking of debunkable flim flammery, when mama is giving birth,
Speaker 1: she is not pasted out cold and surprised to see
Speaker 1: kids that look like her. When she wakes up in
Speaker 1: the spring, it's not like draw on your face with
Speaker 1: Sharpie's when did I have this baby? Kind of sleep.
Speaker 2: And then they pop out of their dens in March
Speaker 2: or April and I'm like, wow, okay, into the outside world.
Speaker 2: So the whole cycle is based on you know, eating,
Speaker 2: finding a mate, and for the females giving birth to
Speaker 2: the cubs and making sure that they're in a fit
Speaker 2: enough state through each of those seasons to survive and
Speaker 2: thrive and do those things right and to procreate. And
Speaker 2: for a bet, it's all about calculated decisions, you know,
Speaker 2: about where the food is at any time a year,
Speaker 2: whether it's up in the high mountains or down in
Speaker 2: the valley bottoms or a range of both. Rights. So
Speaker 2: a lot of them will start feeding in the valley
Speaker 2: bottoms in spring, and they a lot of plants start
Speaker 2: gorging on things like obscure plants, like like horsetail, and
Speaker 2: you know, a horsetail being the equiscetum plant, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the oldest plants in the world. That's one
Speaker 2: of their favorite things in spring and then the woody
Speaker 2: it is when it gets old. But in the spring,
Speaker 2: when it's really sort of fresh and delicate, they go
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: Horsetails side note are those plants that look like a
Speaker 1: bunch of tiny bamboo and bears also love to munch sedges,
Speaker 1: which are tofted, grassy looking marsh plants. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like bellying up to and all you can eat salad
Speaker 1: bar for them.
Speaker 2: And the same with sedges. You watch grizzly bears in
Speaker 2: the sedge meadows of Alaska. I've done this a lot,
Speaker 2: and they literally look like sometimes you'll see a herd
Speaker 2: of a herd, what looks like a herd of bears,
Speaker 2: twenty of them strong in a meadow and they're all
Speaker 2: just grazing these sedges because they're packed full of protein,
Speaker 2: and that's what they want when they come out of
Speaker 2: their dens. And then as the plants start to evolve
Speaker 2: and grow and emerge further up the mountain slopes, and
Speaker 2: the bears will follow them on this kind of elevational migration,
Speaker 2: which is such a cool thought. And then they come
Speaker 2: back down as things start to emerge down in the
Speaker 2: valley bottoms again. And then in the case of Alaska,
Speaker 2: the salmon come in in July and then even more
Speaker 2: at the end of August, and the bears know it.
Speaker 2: So you can sit there in Oh, it's just amazing places.
Speaker 2: I took a small group of people to Alaska a
Speaker 2: few years ago. I do a lot of expedition guiding,
Speaker 2: and so there's this small group, four or five people,
Speaker 2: and I said to them, I wanted to show you
Speaker 2: these bears and the way they behaved during the salmon season.
Speaker 2: So I went up to this river and I said,
Speaker 2: we're all going to sit here. It was about six
Speaker 2: or seven feet away from the river bank. The water
Speaker 2: is right there, no fish around, no bear around, no
Speaker 2: bears around. And so everybody's saying, great, okay, yeah, this
Speaker 2: looks okay, But why don't we sit on the river bank,
Speaker 2: like our feet dangling over the edge of the river bank.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, you'll see why. And so we sat
Speaker 2: six feet from the edge of the river bank and
Speaker 2: suddenly the tide changes, the water starts to come in,
Speaker 2: and you can imagine it. There's beautiful clear water coming
Speaker 2: up through the willows and mountains, no capped all around.
Speaker 2: It's the most mind blowing, like primal setting. The tide changes,
Speaker 2: the sea starts to bring in fish. And these fish,
Speaker 2: soke in this case, are coming in and silver salmon
Speaker 2: coming in and into the shallow water to spawn up river.
Speaker 2: And as they do, you can hear them scuttling through
Speaker 2: the water, and the bears hear them too, So the
Speaker 2: bears start coming out of the forest. So these people
Speaker 2: I'm with are like, oh my god, there's the fish,
Speaker 2: and like, oh my god, there's the bears. Literally immediately
Speaker 2: the bears start to come out because they know the
Speaker 2: tiders changed and the fish are coming in. And before
Speaker 2: you know it, this giant female and her three cubs
Speaker 2: walk by right on the river bank, five feet away
Speaker 2: from us, and she stashes her cubs, which are just
Speaker 2: cubs of that year, so the smallest cuters variety, stashes
Speaker 2: them right there next to us while she goes fishing,
Speaker 2: and so there she is tuned into these fish. She's
Speaker 2: seen enough, not many, but enough humans to know that
Speaker 2: we're not a threat, and in fact to know that
Speaker 2: we can actually defend and protect her cubs from males
Speaker 2: which are sometimes going to come in and be aggressive
Speaker 2: towards the cubs because the males are more nervous of people.
Speaker 2: So this bear has been around, she's processed almost year
Speaker 2: after years. She knows where the salminar, she knows what
Speaker 2: to listen to when they're coming up the river. She
Speaker 2: knows she stashes her cubs on the bank next to
Speaker 2: some Homo sapiens and they'll probably be okay while she fishes,
Speaker 2: because she's trying to replenish her fat stores that she's
Speaker 2: lost over the winter. There's like a thousand things going
Speaker 2: on at once. Sorry, I got a bit hyperactive talking
Speaker 2: about this stuff. I love it. It's just it's the
Speaker 2: coolest sensation. And you feel like you're set a stepping
Speaker 2: back in time in a place like this into their
Speaker 2: annual lives, into their seasons and their their thought processes,
Speaker 2: and it really it recalibrates you. You know. Another point,
Speaker 2: this bear comes by and stands on the river bank,
Speaker 2: and the people on with are freaking out by this point,
Speaker 2: a little bit quietly because I've told them to sit
Speaker 2: quietly and everything's going to be okay. And I'm watching
Speaker 2: a monitor in the behavior of all these bears, and
Speaker 2: we're surrounded by six, seven, eight of them now, and
Speaker 2: one of them stands at the river bank in front
Speaker 2: of us, literally stands up grabs its fish that it's
Speaker 2: got between its paws.
Speaker 1: He's talking about a bear and not a person.
Speaker 2: Grabs its fish and stands up on its rear legs,
Speaker 2: and now at this point it's looking over us, and
Speaker 2: a couple of the people like, oh my god, is
Speaker 2: he going to attack? And might No, bears don't attack
Speaker 2: when they're standing up. He's just looking at a bear
Speaker 2: behind us. And this place in Alaska is like they're
Speaker 2: literally looking through you as humans. They're not interested in you,
Speaker 2: they don't perceive you as a threat. You're kind of
Speaker 2: a neutral entity, and it's the other bears that they're
Speaker 2: interested and curious about. So it's this big sort of
Speaker 2: game of chess going on in this place where they
Speaker 2: all know the limits of each other and the dangers
Speaker 2: and how to avoid them and how to avoid physical confrontation.
Speaker 2: And we're just a tiny part of that chess game
Speaker 2: where they actually use us to their advantage at some
Speaker 2: In some cases, you know, the most wonderful connecting thing.
Speaker 2: You know, you're not thinking about email and text while
Speaker 2: you're in.
Speaker 1: I can't. I've never seen one in the wild, but
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us when we hear about
Speaker 1: bears in the wild, we think what do I freeze?
Speaker 1: Do I yell? Do I make myself bigger? Do I
Speaker 1: run away? And I'm realized I wrote just a list
Speaker 1: of questions that I had for you, and then I
Speaker 1: have a bunch from listeners as well. One of the
Speaker 1: questions I wrote down, which I didn't even realize I
Speaker 1: typed it until right now, is just have any bears
Speaker 1: eaten you? What kind of questions.
Speaker 2: Have you ever been killed by a bear? Yet?
Speaker 1: You ever been devoured and mauled by a bear to death?
Speaker 2: And you know a lot of people have asked me
Speaker 2: if I've ever been attacked, and you know it. I
Speaker 2: guess it begs the question, doesn't it? But no, no,
Speaker 2: never I've been charged. I've been treed.
Speaker 1: Did I look up the word treed? Indeed? Because I
Speaker 1: pictured Chris being forced to scramble up a tree and
Speaker 1: high just out of reach as a bear tried to
Speaker 1: swipe its closet. Is But but bears can very easily
Speaker 1: climb trees, so that's not a good escape. And it
Speaker 1: turns out that to be treed means to be cornered
Speaker 1: and forced to face one's attackers. And this can happen
Speaker 1: with or without an exasperated tuba sound.
Speaker 2: I've been very close to aggressive bears, not intentionally. I
Speaker 2: don't have some death wish. I'm always very respectful and
Speaker 2: want to keep my distance and take lots of precautions.
Speaker 2: The thing about bears and being as smart as they are,
Speaker 2: there's lots you can do, lots you can do to
Speaker 2: avoid getting into trouble with them, and they appreciate it.
Speaker 2: More than you do, almost because they don't want confrontations.
Speaker 2: They're born into this bear society of avoiding those types
Speaker 2: of confrontations with each other, because you think about it,
Speaker 2: if you've got an eight hundred pound grizzly bear or
Speaker 2: brown bear that is aggressive and cantankerous, and it can
Speaker 2: do a lot of damage a creature that big, and
Speaker 2: so bears have learned this sort of body language around
Speaker 2: avoiding conflict. It's really interesting and sometimes I think about
Speaker 2: it when I'm watching humans, you know, sitting on a
Speaker 2: bus or a train or walking down the street, and
Speaker 2: we're all just basic mammals underneath this exterior, right, I
Speaker 2: think we've become a bit full of ourselves because really
Speaker 2: we're just these basic creatures and some of the same
Speaker 2: body languages, you know, like looking out the corner of
Speaker 2: your eye, or pretending not to look at somebody when
Speaker 2: you are or maybe walking sideways, or lowering your head
Speaker 2: when you're in front of somebody because you don't I'm tall.
Speaker 2: I'm six four, so I'm constantly lower on my head
Speaker 2: and trying to not look too overwhelming to people that
Speaker 2: are less tall than I am. And there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of things that we're doing all the time, and the
Speaker 2: bears are doing it too, and they've figured out how
Speaker 2: to avoid conflict in that way, and so it's easy
Speaker 2: to stay out of trouble with them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: In the case of grizzlies, keep making lots of noise
Speaker 2: as you're walking down trails. They hate surprises some of
Speaker 2: some situations you can't avoid. In this one situation, remember
Speaker 2: I was on the coast of Alaska and it was
Speaker 2: breeding season, so it was about June. And around the
Speaker 2: corner comes this big brown female and beautiful, prime of life.
Speaker 2: But she's running and looking over her shoulder and my,
Speaker 2: uh oh, something's behind her. And you always wonder what
Speaker 2: it is that's coming towards you. It's clearly a bigger
Speaker 2: bear that she's afraid of. So sure enough, around the
Speaker 2: bend comes this boyfriend want to be, this big male
Speaker 2: three times her size, you know, this sexual dimorphism is
Speaker 2: huge in these bare species. He chases her around the bend.
Speaker 2: She sees us there and she's a little bit startled,
Speaker 2: part startled, part relieved. She runs behind us and sits
Speaker 2: down about fifteen feet behind us.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine a five hundred pound bear tries to
Speaker 1: use you as a cock block from an even bigger, fairy,
Speaker 1: horny bear.
Speaker 2: And again she's using us as cover from this big,
Speaker 2: marauding male that wants to mate with her, and she's
Speaker 2: not ready for it. She might not be an eastrous
Speaker 2: yet or partially an eastress, but not receptive to him yet.
Speaker 2: And he's following her until she does start to ovulate,
Speaker 2: and and he's going to be ready. So he sees
Speaker 2: her behind us and us in between, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's like, what are you doing? This is this is?
Speaker 2: This is my target? This is this is this is
Speaker 2: the female that I want. I'm pursuing. What are you
Speaker 2: doing there? And I could just tell he was getting
Speaker 2: anxious and started to duw pop, which is this kind
Speaker 2: of sound. And then the next stage is a sign
Speaker 2: of anxiety. And then the next stage of that anxiety
Speaker 2: in a bear is salivating, and he was salivating profusely,
Speaker 2: and then bam, like a bullet out of a gun
Speaker 2: just charges right at us and stops just a few
Speaker 2: feet away from us. And that's called the bluff charge, right,
Speaker 2: But it's a stupid name for it because it's not
Speaker 2: a bluff. It's as real as it gets that charge.
Speaker 2: It's a bluff attack, really, is what it is. So
Speaker 2: he didn't attack, but he's charging to give us a
Speaker 2: very clear message, and you know, talk him down. It's okay,
Speaker 2: it's okay, bear, it's okay. You know, we mean no harm.
Speaker 2: You know, just talking calmly to him and to yourself
Speaker 2: to calm the situation down. And he backed up a
Speaker 2: little bit and realized he had the upper hand and
Speaker 2: just walked around us, by which time she looks at
Speaker 2: us and goes, okay, here we go again, and she
Speaker 2: starts running again, and off they go. You know, so
Speaker 2: every situation is different, every bear is different, but it
Speaker 2: is quite easy if you know a few rules of
Speaker 2: their game to stay safe in bear country.
Speaker 1: And is it a myth? I picture? If you're camping,
Speaker 1: just any time in the middle of the night, a
Speaker 1: bear will come into your tent looking for like a
Speaker 1: cliff bar. Does that happen?
Speaker 2: It does? Okay, it does. Yes, it's not a myth.
Speaker 2: In fact, they'll come into your tent looking for a
Speaker 2: piece of candy or toothpastetore.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. My dog is sneezing.
Speaker 1: Is that a dog dozing?
Speaker 2: He's allergic to bears.
Speaker 1: Something's in her, shooner, what you got of there? She
Speaker 1: looks she's like a small poodle shitsu mutt, and she
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a gray bear cub and she's
Speaker 1: the cutest of her. But she's just been napping and she.
Speaker 2: Oh that is that is sweet? You know, dogs have
Speaker 2: a real interesting reaction to to bears. They can get
Speaker 2: you into trouble to start with, because they run off
Speaker 2: down a trail in front of you and sometimes bring
Speaker 2: a bear back, like chasing it. The other thing I've noticed,
Speaker 2: I'm surrounded by bear skulls in my house, you know,
Speaker 2: skulls from various bears that have died. And if I
Speaker 2: take if we don't have a dog, but we have
Speaker 2: lots of friends who have them. If if a friend
Speaker 2: with a dog comes over, I'll take one of those
Speaker 2: skulls and just open up its mouth just a couple
Speaker 2: of inches and it's big canine teeth show. And every
Speaker 2: dog I've ever seen a mana how big or small,
Speaker 2: they's just like completely recoil. They're like primarily afraid of
Speaker 2: that skull and what it represents. It's very interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So dog was hearing the bear stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it so yes, pardon that sneeze distraction. Also,
Speaker 1: I googled dogs plus bears and I must relay that.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, a family just outside of Kung Ming, China,
Speaker 1: adopted a Tibetan mastiff puppy while on vacation, and it
Speaker 1: was so hungry. The little puppy ate two buckets of
Speaker 1: noodles and a bunch of fruit in a sitting pretty
Speaker 1: much every day. And after two years, this Tibetan mastiff
Speaker 1: was two hundred and fifty pounds. But when it started
Speaker 1: walking on its hind legs, the family was like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a bear, and then the critter was yes,
Speaker 1: a bear, an Asiatic black bear, and it's now living
Speaker 1: at the Yunan Wildlife Rescue Center. Also, if you see
Speaker 1: a bear in the wild acting more like a Tibetan
Speaker 1: mastiff and just approaching people for snuggles, as some have
Speaker 1: been spotted doing in California in recent years, definitely do
Speaker 1: not snuggle it and rather call wildlife personnel because no, sadly,
Speaker 1: you're not just cosmically soul bonded with a friendly bear.
Speaker 1: There have been a rash of encephal life cases and
Speaker 1: some sort of unidentified neurological disease that these poor friendly
Speaker 1: California bears have developed. They're still figuring it out. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to camping and bear's sense of smell, which is intense, intense.
Speaker 1: So there might be like some tasty Tom's of Maine
Speaker 1: or something in your cosmetics bag and it'll be like
Speaker 1: m dinner.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, they they are definitely attracted to any unusual smell,
Speaker 2: even the smell of plastics or petroleum based products lipsal
Speaker 2: in your pocket. So whenever you're camping, you definitely make
Speaker 2: sure you don't have anything stinky or even slightly scented
Speaker 2: in your tent. It is a risk, and they occasionally
Speaker 2: do come sniffing around. Now, the idea of a bear
Speaker 2: attacking you to get to that food and injuring you
Speaker 2: or killing you, that's a very very rare thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, but how rare like a thousand people a year
Speaker 1: in the US. What are we talking?
Speaker 2: A few years ago? The stats who are North America wide,
Speaker 2: there's one two deaths per one or two best deaths
Speaker 2: per year in North America from both species of black
Speaker 2: and grizzly bear combined, and ten to fifteen serious injuries.
Speaker 2: That was a few years ago, and I'd be surprised
Speaker 2: if it's changed. So statistics so not much at all,
Speaker 2: considering there's a close to a million black bears in
Speaker 2: North America. There's probably thirty five thousand brown grizzly bears
Speaker 2: in North America, most of those in Alaska. And you know,
Speaker 2: look at the number of people and the number of
Speaker 2: people that are spending time in bear country and camping
Speaker 2: and recreating. It's growing all the time, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: I think part of it with these creatures, it's fascinating
Speaker 2: and amazing to me that they don't do more damage
Speaker 2: when they are so capable of it. Same with mountain lions, cougars,
Speaker 2: you know, same with same with a lot of these species, woolves.
Speaker 2: They are equipped to do damage to humans, and they
Speaker 2: select and decide not to. You know, part of that
Speaker 2: is natural selection, and you know, those that are surviving
Speaker 2: and still walking the landscape, but perhaps the show higher individuals,
Speaker 2: you know, because over many generations they've become that way.
Speaker 2: You know, they've had to. But yeah, they they would
Speaker 2: choose to stay out of trouble more more than they
Speaker 2: would to get into it. But every bear is different.
Speaker 2: If you sat in a room with twenty bears and
Speaker 2: you sat in a room with twenty humans, all those
Speaker 2: those twenty bears would be as different in personalities as
Speaker 2: the twenty humans would be. Just they're that smart, they're
Speaker 2: that different, they're that individualistic.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you cried about a bear?
Speaker 2: This morning was really that's a really nice question. Oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm easy. I'm one of them. I'm
Speaker 2: an easy crier. I cried pretty recently about our North
Speaker 2: Cascades bears. I so probably four months ago, five months ago.
Speaker 2: These guys here are so the North Cascades of the
Speaker 2: mountains here ending Washington State where I live, and there's
Speaker 2: maybe three or four grizzly bears left. That's it. And
Speaker 2: they you know, they've been here for thousands of years.
Speaker 2: They have a right to be here. They have a
Speaker 2: past and just about a present here, but their future
Speaker 2: is totally in question. You know, they need help or
Speaker 2: they'll blip out into with blivion. And they may have
Speaker 2: already blipped out into extinction here in the North Cascades.
Speaker 2: We don't know. There's a few on the Canadian side
Speaker 2: of the border. There's a few on our side and
Speaker 2: they need help. And to me, if we can't help
Speaker 2: a creature like a grizzly bear in this ten thousand
Speaker 2: square miles of wilderness, in a place like this, it's
Speaker 2: that wild and that inaccessible and mountainous that we don't
Speaker 2: need for farming, we don't need for recreation, all of it.
Speaker 2: We don't if we can't share a place like that,
Speaker 2: I think as much as the bears themselves. That's what
Speaker 2: gets to me, you know, It's like, oh, because I
Speaker 2: do think if we can, if we can coexist with grizzlies,
Speaker 2: you could co exist with anything, right, and perhaps even
Speaker 2: with each other.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful sentiment. What do you think a person
Speaker 1: can do that might be able to help. It's so
Speaker 1: good to know that there are people who study this.
Speaker 1: They care so much, you.
Speaker 2: Know, there are a lot of people that do, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's what gives me hope. Part of my work
Speaker 2: is trying to relay these stories to others, though, because
Speaker 2: a lot of scientists don't do it very much. Thank
Speaker 2: God for people like you that are getting science out
Speaker 2: there to huge audiences. And we need more of it,
Speaker 2: don't we. Otherwise science can sit on shelves and collect
Speaker 2: dust and PhD dissertations, and scientists aren't always the people
Speaker 2: that want to be out there on the front line,
Speaker 2: you know, getting attention and raising issues, and you know
Speaker 2: they're often happier in the field they're in a lab or.
Speaker 2: It's so important, isn't it.
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: I think people finding out even who their local biologists
Speaker 2: are and what they're studying and why. And in the
Speaker 2: case of bad there's bear organizations. We've got a little
Speaker 2: nonprofit organization called Wildlife Media. We made a bear film
Speaker 2: a few years ago that followed my journey around the
Speaker 2: world to Borneo, to the sun bears, to Alaska's brown bears,
Speaker 2: to Peru's spectacle bears, and to the polar bears of
Speaker 2: Northern Canada. So four locations, and I did it on
Speaker 2: the back of my motorcycle. I liked to ride a motorbike.
Speaker 2: I've been preparing for my bike trip for the last
Speaker 2: five years. But in many ways, my journey started long ago,
Speaker 2: and this film followed me around to these different locations
Speaker 2: and we found these amazing bear heroes in each of
Speaker 2: these places for each of these bear species. And then
Speaker 2: the proceeds from the film and donations from domes that
Speaker 2: had made the film possible. We gave it all to
Speaker 2: the people that were doing the work on the ground
Speaker 2: that were in the film, and so it felt really good.
Speaker 2: So we created a little nonprofit called Wildlife Media that
Speaker 2: was designed to do that and still is doing that.
Speaker 2: It's creating stories and supporting science and scientists and especially
Speaker 2: young people, you know, encouraging, encouraging those people with the
Speaker 2: nature gene that they feel might sort of be witted
Speaker 2: a way to keep it and go for it and
Speaker 2: make it part of their lives, you know. And we're
Speaker 2: at that stage, aren't we. We've everyone's got a role,
Speaker 2: and you know it kind of is frustrating when you hear, oh,
Speaker 2: it's up to the next generation, they'll save us. No,
Speaker 2: it's up to whichever generation you're in. Each of us
Speaker 2: has to do it. Whether you are a hundred or
Speaker 2: whether you're eight years old, doesn't matter. Each of us
Speaker 2: can play a role to solve some of the planet's
Speaker 2: problems and whatever that means. If you've got money, donate money.
Speaker 2: If you've got time, volunteer and donate your time. If
Speaker 2: you've got intellect and smart then offer that. If you're
Speaker 2: an accountant, do some accounting for a bear biologist. Right,
Speaker 2: if everyone can weigh in protecting big, beautiful animals and
Speaker 2: nature can ultimately ends up protecting us all. I'm obsessed
Speaker 2: with bears. I do it as much of people as ilieve,
Speaker 2: as I do for bears, because by protecting these big ecosystems,
Speaker 2: these ten thousand square mile chunks of the world that
Speaker 2: bears need to thrive and exist. You know, we're protecting
Speaker 2: clean water, fresh air, natural resources, the trees that breathe out,
Speaker 2: the oxygen that we breathe in. Right, really basic fundamental
Speaker 2: stuff like I always think even climate change. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm on this jag at the moment to really sort
Speaker 2: of try and help position the natural world's biodiversity can
Speaker 2: save us from climate change. Right by protecting these vast areas,
Speaker 2: we're protecting forests. You know, something like twenty five percent
Speaker 2: of the warming effect by human beings is because of deforestation.
Speaker 2: So imagine protecting a forest in Italy or Alaska for
Speaker 2: a bear population. Suddenly you're protecting the forest that we
Speaker 2: all need, and you're reducing carbon and all the rest
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you for your questions from listeners. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh you oh okay. Literally, I put up
Speaker 1: a call for questions. Four hundred and seventy eight questions
Speaker 1: overnight came in wold, okay. But before your questions, let's
Speaker 1: give some monies to some bears. So the bonus episode
Speaker 1: is coming out with all of the other wonderful bear
Speaker 1: biologists that'll be out this week, but we're giving to
Speaker 1: several causes for that. But for this episode, it's going
Speaker 1: to Wildlifemedia dot org, which was established to create the
Speaker 1: movie Bear Trak with Chris, and it's a nonprofit dedicated
Speaker 1: to telling inspiring and impactful stories about wildlife and conservation
Speaker 1: and supports emerging and established individuals in the field, including
Speaker 1: scientists and filmmakers and conservationists. You can check out Wildlifemedia
Speaker 1: dot orgs documentaries Bear Track and Ocean Souls about Cetaceans,
Speaker 1: and Chris's podcast The Wild with Chris Morgan. Chris also
Speaker 1: told me that, according to his back of the Envelope math,
Speaker 1: protecting the eight bear species of the world would be
Speaker 1: protecting one third of the Earth's land service, and he
Speaker 1: says his dream is to protect a million square miles
Speaker 1: of bear habitat in an international bear park for each
Speaker 1: of the eight bear species. So it's exciting to support
Speaker 1: that kind of vision made possible by the following sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: this first question was on the minds of many patrons,
Speaker 1: including Laurent dubergh Lass, Katie Bauer, Matt Simo, Bailey Griffin,
Speaker 1: Adam Weaver, first time question asker Taylor Emily Roth, Felix
Speaker 1: Besper Holly, first time question asker Daniel Bellend, Ned Lansing,
Speaker 1: Ashley Herbal, as well as Jasmine Monreal and Rainy Day
Speaker 1: both asked why bear so cute? If so mean, I
Speaker 1: just want to squish. If bears are so dangerous, why
Speaker 1: are they so cute? Why are they both?
Speaker 2: I think I followed that, Yeah, I just want to squish.
Speaker 2: That's great, isn't it right? We've kind of run that
Speaker 2: gamut in the conversation already, from like these little cubs
Speaker 2: that you just want to put in your jacket to
Speaker 2: you know, a bear you don't want the avenue tent
Speaker 2: or on a trail. It's okay, It's a great question
Speaker 2: because I think it answers why bears are so prevalent
Speaker 2: in the human mindset. Right, you know, we're always society, culture,
Speaker 2: you know, through art, stories, fables, mythology, you know, the
Speaker 2: naming of stars. Right, bears have always been there since
Speaker 2: the days of us sitting around a fire in a cave.
Speaker 2: And maybe it's because of that, right, because that, my god,
Speaker 2: irresistibly cute and you want to take them home to
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it could rip my head off if
Speaker 2: I don't do the right thing. So there's nothing boring
Speaker 2: about them either, end of that spectrum, it's a.
Speaker 1: Very good point. Elizabeth Edwards, Mo Casey and a bunch
Speaker 1: of listeners Shyla Zinc, Miranda Halsey, Vincent, Alex Bauman, Andy
Speaker 1: c Miranda, Panda, Grace, Robis Show and b Wilson, who
Speaker 1: asked pandas? What's up with pandas? All of them want
Speaker 1: to know, in Elizabeth words, why are pandas? Shouldn't evolution
Speaker 1: have eliminated them by now? And Mo Casey wants to know,
Speaker 1: can you explain pandas? They seem too ridiculous and chaotic
Speaker 1: to be in the same family as grizzlies? So what's
Speaker 1: going on with pandas?
Speaker 2: I love the way these are phrase, they seem what
Speaker 2: too chaotic?
Speaker 1: What was it too ridiculous and.
Speaker 2: Chaotic to be in the same family as grizzly I'd
Speaker 2: actually kind of agree with that. Do they really belong
Speaker 2: like next to the lineup of eight, next to a
Speaker 2: grizzly no I. Pandas are a bit of a they're
Speaker 2: a bit unusual. At one point, pandas weren't in the
Speaker 2: bear family, and then they were welcomed into the bear
Speaker 2: family of eight. So they are firmly there now. And
Speaker 2: I'm glad they are because you know, they're found in
Speaker 2: these just a few mountain ranges in China, and they
Speaker 2: need help, and China's been pretty good at protecting them
Speaker 2: and getting the word out and raising them in captivity.
Speaker 2: And wow, there's a competition between a grizzly bear cub
Speaker 2: and a giant panda cub. I think the giant panda
Speaker 2: cubs are the most incredibly sweet creatures on earth, but
Speaker 2: they are. They're a bit of a bit of a
Speaker 2: social outline around in the bat finally sitting around eating
Speaker 2: nothing but bamboo. I'm quite happy with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a side note about pandas, how many are there?
Speaker 1: There are fewer than two thousand giant pandas left in
Speaker 1: the wild but they're listed now is vulnerable instead of endangered,
Speaker 1: so that's good. And these carnivores do occasionally scoop up
Speaker 1: a rodent or a bird to eat, but yes, ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of their diet is bamboo, and an adult
Speaker 1: panda I look this up can eat up to thirty
Speaker 1: pounds of food a day, and it's digestible because of
Speaker 1: a microbe that lives in its pretty short poop shoot
Speaker 1: for a plant eater. Speaking of which, next time you
Speaker 1: need some first date low trivia, feel free to mention
Speaker 1: that pandas shit up to forty times a day and
Speaker 1: that their faces are so cute and round because they
Speaker 1: have wood gnashing jaw muscles. Also, their white and black
Speaker 1: fur helps them hide in the snow and in shadows. Hey,
Speaker 1: why are there ears something we want to softly bite on? Well,
Speaker 1: according to science, bears have little wee round ear flaps
Speaker 1: because the smaller the ears, the less heat they lose
Speaker 1: from them. So you know, the Finnic fox huge ass
Speaker 1: ears lives in the Sahara desert. Those big sailboat ears
Speaker 1: help dissipate heat, so bears have the opposite. But both
Speaker 1: types of ears are so cute it makes me personally nauseated.
Speaker 1: I want to touch them so bad, but I won't.
Speaker 2: I promise you know. I don't know about you, but
Speaker 2: I look at a creature like that sometimes and go,
Speaker 2: how is that even possible? How is that even possible?
Speaker 2: And also how is that possible on this one planet? Right?
Speaker 2: That we are here as Homo sapiens sharing this space,
Speaker 2: in time and in place with a creature like that,
Speaker 2: whether it's honestly a giant panda or an earthworms, it's
Speaker 2: puzzling and it's just magical. It's just it's wondrous, isn't
Speaker 2: it that we do that we're sharing it in this
Speaker 2: period of time on this planet's history, with this variety
Speaker 2: of species. And I think that's what gets to me.
Speaker 2: It's like they deserve to exist, exit they deserve a
Speaker 2: place on this planet. They deserve to thrive. It's not
Speaker 2: all about us, my God.
Speaker 1: Not about us. But when we do crash on a
Speaker 1: bear's couch aka go camping patrons such as first time
Speaker 1: question asker Sanny Lee and Anna Luna, who I accidentally
Speaker 1: just called Luna, had a question about if that's always
Speaker 1: such a bloody good idea, and we had a lot
Speaker 1: of folks, including someone named Luna, and Jeffrey Bradshaw, Derek
Speaker 1: Allen and Tyler Duggan, and Annie c who phrased it
Speaker 1: this way. My asshole uncle, who likes to tell horrifying
Speaker 1: man versus nature stories, claims he saw a woman get
Speaker 1: dragged out of her tent by a bear and yellowstone
Speaker 1: because it could smell her menstruation. My uncle is a
Speaker 1: complete and utter dick, But I've wondered if this was
Speaker 1: a thing ever since he told my sister So and
Speaker 1: Luna asked about their moon and camping, and so is
Speaker 1: is that flim flam or? Is that real?
Speaker 2: In terms of the menstruating women attraction by bears? It's
Speaker 2: not true in one degree. The risk is that pads
Speaker 2: and towels used by menstruating women smell of blood, and
Speaker 2: if they're not discarded off safely, can attract wild animals.
Speaker 2: But it's not an animal. It's not a bear saying
Speaker 2: that woman is menstruating therefore becomes a target and I'm attracted.
Speaker 1: No, And so attacks don't happen just from like like
Speaker 1: a shark smelling blood in the water.
Speaker 2: No, exactly, But if towels and byproducts of that menstruation
Speaker 2: are not dealt with. Just like other attractants of any sort,
Speaker 2: food or any other attractants or garbage or anything. Then
Speaker 2: it can bring bears in. And if there is ever
Speaker 2: a correlation, it's that.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, good to know, also ever helpful. The Yellowstone
Speaker 1: National Park website has a whole page dedicated to refuting
Speaker 1: this flim flam, giving statistics on bear attacks which are
Speaker 1: very rare and how an even slimmer percentage of the
Speaker 1: people attacked. We're doing so during their lunar blood letting,
Speaker 1: So people who bleed, you'll be okay, probably, But treat
Speaker 1: your used goods like food and keep it ten feet
Speaker 1: above ground or in a lock box or a car,
Speaker 1: and pack out what you pack in, don't bury it.
Speaker 1: And if your uncle is an asshole, tell him he's wrong.
Speaker 1: And also that the mask goes over the nose. Dude,
Speaker 1: I just have a feeling he's one of those guys. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's change the subject. This is a very softball question
Speaker 1: in every sense of the word. Kristen needs to know
Speaker 1: which bear is the softest.
Speaker 2: Oh, the softest fur, softest as into touch. Hmm, well,
Speaker 2: I haven't touched every species I've got to say I
Speaker 2: still still left to fondle. Let's say, the undefer of
Speaker 2: a grizzly is really the place to be. It's it's
Speaker 2: you know, they have these like three layers. The one
Speaker 2: against their skin is almost felty and thick, and then
Speaker 2: the next one is warm and fuzzy. You've got piles
Speaker 2: of it that I've found discarded on the in Alaska.
Speaker 2: I've got piles of it on various shelves around the house,
Speaker 2: and I just love touching that stuff. And then the
Speaker 2: outside is this guard hair that sort of sheds the
Speaker 2: snow and the rain and keeps the sun out and
Speaker 2: keeps them warm and cool when they need to be.
Speaker 2: And so a bear's coat is a pretty special thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, grizzly bears sort of underfur is a pretty nice,
Speaker 2: nice soft texture, that's for sure. And the cubs, oh
Speaker 2: my god, even more so.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, cant even imagine. No, do you know much
Speaker 1: about the legend of Teddy Roosevelt making the Teddy Bear?
Speaker 2: You know, I not a lot, but I do know
Speaker 2: that he had on much an opportunity to kill a
Speaker 2: bear in a hunt. And whether it's the legendary part
Speaker 2: of the story or truth. But he raised his rifle
Speaker 2: to the bear and decided not to so gave this
Speaker 2: bear a chance. And that's where the name Teddy came
Speaker 2: from in respect of his choice not to kill that bear,
Speaker 2: which is kind of nice, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Fact check and yep. Russian
Speaker 1: born Brooklyn candy shop owner Morris Mitchum and his wife
Speaker 1: Rose heard the story. Rose made a stuffed bear and
Speaker 1: the rest is history. They ended up opening one of
Speaker 1: the largest toy companies in America. So there you have it,
Speaker 1: Teddy Bear. Question askers including Thomas en Wyndham, Natasha Barje,
Speaker 1: Ivy Scotia, Megan a Aloisa Froes, Earl of Gramlekin, Nicole Climb,
Speaker 1: and Katie Timothy Nicki, and first time question askers Mina
Speaker 1: Craig Dowd, Hilali and Morgan Bechel. Okay, so that's answered.
Speaker 1: But who invented the Teddy roux bin? No one but me, asked, Well,
Speaker 1: I had to look it up and the creator of
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties talking singing toy bear was invented
Speaker 1: by a guy named Ken Force, whose previous work involved
Speaker 1: co founding Chuck E. Cheese, and engineering Disney's animatronic country
Speaker 1: bear Jan Burree and designing the Haunted Mansion, which, knowing
Speaker 1: all of that, Teddy Rouxsbin makes so much more sense. Okay,
Speaker 1: speaking of kids stuff, the wonderful Greg Wallach, a listener asks,
Speaker 1: does a cub become a bear in their thirties or forties?
Speaker 1: When are they grown ups?
Speaker 2: Awesome question. So a bear, a really old bear in
Speaker 2: the wild, will be twenty five. I think the oldest
Speaker 2: bear that's known in research right now in the wild,
Speaker 2: certainly in the lower forty eight States, is Bear three
Speaker 2: ninety nine. She's called her name is Bear three nine nine,
Speaker 2: and she's in Grand Titon National Park, Yellowstone, the Greater
Speaker 2: Yellowstone ecosystem, So she's basically a Yellowstone bear, and she's
Speaker 2: twenty four, and so she's really old. Bears don't get
Speaker 2: to be that old usually because we've either shot them
Speaker 2: or hit them with cars, or they've died from fights
Speaker 2: or even lightning strikes and natural causes, drownings as cubs,
Speaker 2: things like that. So she's a really old adult bear
Speaker 2: a cub, you know. Unfortunately, the first year or two
Speaker 2: of life, half of the cubs died just because of
Speaker 2: all these threats to them, you know, so it's a
Speaker 2: tough life being a cub. By the time they're three
Speaker 2: or four years old as a gristly bear, that's when
Speaker 2: they're like, okay, mom, I'm out of here. They hit
Speaker 2: the teenage years, they're like t head out on my
Speaker 2: own and they become independent that three or four years old,
Speaker 2: and they might not get a chance. They can mate physiologically,
Speaker 2: but they might not get a chance to behaviorally until
Speaker 2: they get a bit older, bigger, meaner, decide to you know,
Speaker 2: fight other dominant males or even the females. The competition
Speaker 2: between females for male attention is not uncommon where there's
Speaker 2: dense populations are bears. So yeah, three or four is
Speaker 2: kind of when they're in those young teenage years. And then,
Speaker 2: you know, an established, healthy dominant bear is usually sort
Speaker 2: of ten, eleven, twelve years old. And then by the
Speaker 2: time they're in their mid twenties, like three nine nine,
Speaker 2: they've usually especially the males, from fighting canines, broken off,
Speaker 2: teeth worn down. They don't look like a healthy, happy
Speaker 2: bear anymore. You know, it's the slow demise. At that point.
Speaker 2: They can live longer in captivity, though when they've taken
Speaker 2: well care of.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I didn't know that, okay. Side note, there
Speaker 1: are many instances of bears reaching forty in captivity, though
Speaker 1: if you google oldest bears you will mostly find obituaries.
Speaker 1: I accidentally learned about a thirty four year old male
Speaker 1: grizzly and yellowstone who was put down a few months
Speaker 1: ago after he was munching on calves a lot. So
Speaker 1: his name was one sixty eight, and he only had
Speaker 1: three little nubbins of rotten teeth left. But he was
Speaker 1: able to hunt baby cows by just gumming them to death,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cute and ferocious. It's also impressive
Speaker 1: and makes me sad. Anyway, Rip won sixty eight, Kayla left.
Speaker 1: Kayla says I saw TikTok recently joking about how everyone
Speaker 1: thinks that hibernation was literally just sleep for several months,
Speaker 1: and everyone's like, wait, it's not so. During hibernation. Are
Speaker 1: there like intermissions where they get up? Is it like
Speaker 1: twilight sleep? Are they out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're pretty much out when they're out, But they
Speaker 2: can also rouse themselves. Bess can rouse themselves from that
Speaker 2: winter sleep more than a truly deep hibernating creature like
Speaker 2: a ground squirrel, and they can come out to fend
Speaker 2: off danger, or some of them come out to even
Speaker 2: you know, maybe grab something to eat on a warm day.
Speaker 2: But it really is a form of hibernation. And hibernation
Speaker 2: is really a spectrum right from the very deep sleep
Speaker 2: with kind of like humans, some of us sleep very
Speaker 2: deeply and others quite lightly, and bears are on the
Speaker 2: lighter scale of that. But you know, their breath goes
Speaker 2: down to around one or two per minute, and their
Speaker 2: heart rate drops down to about five or six per minute,
Speaker 2: and they really sort of enter this incredibly efficient physiological
Speaker 2: state of being where they can sleep for that length
Speaker 2: of time, reprocess everything that they need and still survive
Speaker 2: and not urinate, not defecate, and just be ready to
Speaker 2: pop out once the spring emergence of plants that they
Speaker 2: are waiting for comes out in the spring. Again. I mean,
Speaker 2: you couldn't make this stuff up, could you. It's crazy,
Speaker 2: Like even just describing it, I'm like, God, that's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, this dovetails well with a question Arthur Apodaca asked.
Speaker 1: They wrote in Bear with Me and my ridiculous question,
Speaker 1: But do bears make their own butt plugs for winter hibernation,
Speaker 1: and Rica Putnam said, oh lord, imagine if someone else
Speaker 1: did it for them. But yes, is there some sort
Speaker 1: of nature's butt plug happening.
Speaker 2: There is a nature's butt plug, and it's called it's
Speaker 2: even got a name. It's called a tappan. It's not
Speaker 2: like it's not the bear and sitting in his den
Speaker 2: going all right, I'm going to forge this tapping out
Speaker 2: of a clump of dry grass and you know, shove
Speaker 2: it where the sun don't shine. It's not that they're
Speaker 2: out eating a certain vegetation that when they go into
Speaker 2: the den actually becomes sort of plugged. So and the
Speaker 2: theory is that so that they're not defecating in the
Speaker 2: den and it helps that process. So, yes, there is
Speaker 2: such a thing as a as a bear butt plug.
Speaker 1: Oh wonderful to know. If you were to say, look
Speaker 1: at the ingredients list on the back of a tappen,
Speaker 1: you might see the words bark shed epithelial cells, undigested
Speaker 1: plant material, the bear's own hair, and some dried up
Speaker 1: foot calluses. So, according to bears dot org, they have
Speaker 1: a page that wants you to know that this winter
Speaker 1: ass quirk is just the natural desiccation of stuffed parked
Speaker 1: in the colon for a while, and that when bears
Speaker 1: groom themselves, yeah, they eat their own hair and calluses
Speaker 1: a little bit on accident, maybe a little bit not
Speaker 1: so what you would too. Also, the tappin doesn't just
Speaker 1: prevent midwinter pooping, it also keeps ants out. And yes,
Speaker 1: when spring springs and the blossoms start to bud and
Speaker 1: they awaken, they do their thing in the woods and
Speaker 1: they inject the tappin. But in order to pull off
Speaker 1: a David Blaine sitting in a room underground without eating
Speaker 1: or pooping for half the year stunt, they have to
Speaker 1: prep and patrons Eric kay Hope, Mary Beacon and Jesswan
Speaker 1: had questions about the Battle of the the Docks. Kelly
Speaker 1: Phillips said, do you follow the National Park Services a
Speaker 1: Fat Bear week every totally?
Speaker 2: Yes. In fact, I know those bears quite well because
Speaker 2: they're in a park, a national park. Thank Guard for
Speaker 2: these national parks, right, And this is a really special
Speaker 2: one cat My National Park in Alaska, and I've guided
Speaker 2: a lot there and observed the bears there and practically
Speaker 2: lived among them for film projects over the years. And
Speaker 2: it's a really special place, and those are the bears
Speaker 2: that are feeding on the salmon I was talking about
Speaker 2: earlier on that get to these giant proportions, because when
Speaker 2: you think about it, they're losing sometimes a third or
Speaker 2: even up to a half of their body weight in
Speaker 2: the winter den and they regain that and most of
Speaker 2: that in the summer and form and most of that
Speaker 2: regaining of it is in the sort of midsummer to
Speaker 2: late fall before denning. They get into this mode of
Speaker 2: excessive eating and it really puts them into this overdrive
Speaker 2: of feeding. The bears there during that fat bear week
Speaker 2: are just gorging on sokey sam. I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: You can watch them eat in ten or twenty of
Speaker 2: these fish in the course of an hour. And each
Speaker 2: of these fish is five six seven pounds, you know,
Speaker 2: and they get to the point where they're eat in
Speaker 2: so many of those fish that they'll just choose, they
Speaker 2: get very selective. They'll just choose to choose the most
Speaker 2: beneficial parts. So they'll they'll pull off the brain, they'll
Speaker 2: bite the brain off, and they'll strip the skin off
Speaker 2: these big beautiful salmon that you know that we pay
Speaker 2: thirty forty dollars for in a store and the file
Speaker 2: a'll just float off down the river. Not interested in
Speaker 2: the in the meat. They just want the brain full
Speaker 2: of protein and fat and the skin the same, you know,
Speaker 2: because they're okay, they're like they're full up, but they're like,
Speaker 2: I still need more, still need more. I'm in overdrive.
Speaker 2: You know. It's it's called, oh my goodness, my brain
Speaker 2: has just slipped. What is it, excessive hypophagia, hyper feture,
Speaker 2: so excessive eating, you know, they go into that mode.
Speaker 2: And that's what those bears in Fat Week are right
Speaker 2: in the middle of where they they look like something
Speaker 2: out of a Disney cartoon where they can hardly you know,
Speaker 2: waddle or and fat happy bears. Thank goodness, they have
Speaker 2: places like that, you.
Speaker 1: Know, And isn't it Alex Brown, first time question asker
Speaker 1: wants to know. Was that kind of a blubber that
Speaker 1: they put on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we wouldn't call it blubb but it's just a
Speaker 2: fat layer. And on some of them, you know, the
Speaker 2: rump fat layer on a bear can be six seven, eight,
Speaker 2: nine ten inches long on some of the big ones.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's what they're born to do, is put
Speaker 2: that fat layer on every.
Speaker 1: Year, oh last October's winter and Alaskan beautiful beast known
Speaker 1: as number seven four seven and the bear's bios are
Speaker 1: all hosted at explore dot org. And I have to
Speaker 1: tell you, scrolling through their before spring skinny pictures and
Speaker 1: their autumn afters where they're plump and ready for winter,
Speaker 1: some topping one thousand pounds, it's truly body positivity and
Speaker 1: a reminder that all animals are indeed extraordinary machines to
Speaker 1: be celebrated. Now, what if you encounter one of these
Speaker 1: bears though? Will it be hungry for you? Rachel Moore
Speaker 1: and a few other people wanted to know if there
Speaker 1: are any useful rhymes or sayings to remember which bear
Speaker 1: you're supposed to cower and fear at, which you're supposed
Speaker 1: to yell at, just to give people a peace of mind.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I'm glad it was asked because
Speaker 2: you know the difference between various we've already established bears
Speaker 2: or all individuals, right, they're all completely different characters and
Speaker 2: personalities like humans. And there's even been scientific studies done.
Speaker 2: You know, in the scientific literature you can find words
Speaker 2: that describe certain bear personalities, like playful or joyous or
Speaker 2: angry or discontented or irritable or aggressive and violent, you know,
Speaker 2: all the things that you might describe a human buyer. Right,
Speaker 2: So every encounter with any one of those bears is
Speaker 2: very different when you're thinking about your safety out in
Speaker 2: bear country, and so you might encounter a normally playful
Speaker 2: bear that is particularly aggressive that day because it's protecting
Speaker 2: a food carcass, that it's an animal carcass, that it's
Speaker 2: killed there's essential food for it or its cubs, or
Speaker 2: it might be a mother protecting its cubs. Or we
Speaker 2: might have surprised that bear and they don't like surprises.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's lots of factors stacked on each
Speaker 2: other about how dangerous the situation can be with a bear.
Speaker 2: But for the most part, you want to make lots
Speaker 2: of noise to avoid them, let them know that you
Speaker 2: come in to avoid the surprises. Don't go in anywhere
Speaker 2: near bears where they're sitting on carcasses. So if you
Speaker 2: smell stinky, stinky, nasty, rotten meat when you're out in
Speaker 2: the forest, don't head that direction. If you find yourself
Speaker 2: in the middle of berry patches in the mountains in
Speaker 2: the fam blueberries and huckleberries. Know that a bear might
Speaker 2: be there just feet away from you, doing exactly the
Speaker 2: same thing. You know, So just being aware of your
Speaker 2: surroundings and circumstances. Know what bear scat looks like.
Speaker 1: Right picture if you will, an upturned tin of brownies
Speaker 1: studded with pomegranate seeds, but a pile bigger than both
Speaker 1: of your hands. Just gaze into it, asking it questions
Speaker 1: of the forest.
Speaker 2: One of my deep fascinations is everything you can learn
Speaker 2: from bear scat. And look for claw marks on trees,
Speaker 2: look for fur on trees where a bear will stand
Speaker 2: up against the trunk of a tree in rub it's
Speaker 2: back and leave hair behind. So all these indicators, and
Speaker 2: then if the worst comes to the worst, the question
Speaker 2: about a rhyme or how do you remember you know?
Speaker 2: There's really two categories of bears attacking humans. One is
Speaker 2: generally a category of like self defense, being defensive. You're
Speaker 2: in my space, I want you out of my space.
Speaker 2: That's when you'll get a bluff charge like the bear
Speaker 2: that charged at me. Then you'll also have bears that
Speaker 2: could be predatory, and they're very different. That is a
Speaker 2: bear that is looking at you as a meal as
Speaker 2: a source of food, or a meal yourself. So you
Speaker 2: can see immediately those two categories need two different responses. Right,
Speaker 2: the bear that you've surprised wants you out of its space,
Speaker 2: Do not surprise it, and get the hell out of
Speaker 2: its space right quietly, calmly, don't look at the bear
Speaker 2: in the face, back away, be incredibly humble and respectful,
Speaker 2: and just make sure that that bear knows it's allowed
Speaker 2: to come by. And I've been in the countless situations
Speaker 2: and you just come off a trail and the bear
Speaker 2: will either walk by you or it'll disappear at a
Speaker 2: high speed in the other direction once it knows it's
Speaker 2: kind of got a handle on the situation. So in
Speaker 2: that situation, back in a way, okay.
Speaker 1: Somber may run at you to scare your way or the.
Speaker 2: Predatory situation is different. And strangely, this is statistically more
Speaker 2: common with big, wild, dominant black bears in the back
Speaker 2: country that don't encounter humans much. Those attacks can be
Speaker 2: incredibly scary, and so in that sort of case, you
Speaker 2: need to be more dominant, and you need to make
Speaker 2: sure that the bear knows you're not going to make
Speaker 2: an easy meal, you're not surprised it, you're not in
Speaker 2: its personal space. It's following you, it's expressing interest. So
Speaker 2: it used to be that people would separate them. Well,
Speaker 2: if it's a gristy bear or a brown bear, you
Speaker 2: do this, and if it's a black bear, you do this.
Speaker 2: The rhyme that she might be thinking about, and it's
Speaker 2: not really correct, is if it's brown, fall down, if
Speaker 2: it's black, fight back, because a black beard fights in
Speaker 2: a predacious way more common than a grizzly, and a
Speaker 2: grizzly is going to potentially attack you to defend its space,
Speaker 2: in which case should fall down and play dead. But
Speaker 2: the rhyme with brown fall down with black fight back,
Speaker 2: there's overlap. So we don't use that rhyme anymore. And
Speaker 2: I'll get into trouble for actually saying it. So I
Speaker 2: get that's a really long answer. The short answer is
Speaker 2: there isn't a great rhyme. But it used to be
Speaker 2: used to be that one brown fall down, back fight back,
Speaker 2: But really you're better off looking. Is this aggressive a
Speaker 2: sudden defensive encounter or is this a predacious encounter or
Speaker 2: something in between, and just you know, knowing where the
Speaker 2: bears are knowing their behavior, knowing what they're inclined to do. Man,
Speaker 2: it's really easy to it's really easy to work around
Speaker 2: their world. Touch would and give them the benefit of
Speaker 2: the doubt, and let them give you the benefit of
Speaker 2: the doubt.
Speaker 1: You know. Also I read that if you're buying bear
Speaker 1: pepper spray, always bring for the larger can and don't
Speaker 1: wait until a bear is directly in front of you.
Speaker 1: Bears can cover eight to ten feet in one stride,
Speaker 1: so if you spray it while the bear is thirty
Speaker 1: to sixty feet away, the cloud has time to take
Speaker 1: effect and disrupt the charge at you. So how you
Speaker 1: use it is important. Now for a few more bear tips.
Speaker 1: Keep your ears open for that very special Bodus episode
Speaker 1: this week, because when I get four hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: a bear questions, sometimes you got to call for backup. Okay,
Speaker 1: two quick lightning round. How many bear tattoos do you have?
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't have any tattoos?
Speaker 1: Really? Okay, it was either going to be zero or
Speaker 1: one thousand? Okay. And how often do people just refer
Speaker 1: to you not with a name, but just as the
Speaker 1: bear guy.
Speaker 2: All the time, all the time. Yeah, yeah, even my
Speaker 2: children some of my friend's kids actually call me not
Speaker 2: just the bear guy, but my full name, and then
Speaker 2: it says like, where's Chris Morgan the bear guy? Like
Speaker 2: a full title? You know, it's bizarre, it's hilarious. You
Speaker 2: a little kids.
Speaker 1: On your business card? What about movies or cartoons that
Speaker 1: really do not get bears? Right? A lot of people
Speaker 1: want to know what kind of bear Winnie the Pooh
Speaker 1: is looking at y'all, Anne, Marie Daniels, Kevin Riggy, Lisa Burnell,
Speaker 1: Nicole Kleinman. First time question asker Hey Artemis and Zachary
Speaker 1: Peterson If Winnie the Pooh is actually a girl bear?
Speaker 2: Well, good question. I don't know, but I would imagine
Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh's a brown bear. What's the marmalade all about?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 2: I can't even remember?
Speaker 1: Ye the honey? They eat honey in real life? Right, yeah, honey,
Speaker 1: I can't get enough.
Speaker 2: Stuff. Was Winnie the Pooh marmalade? Or was that Haddington Mom?
Speaker 1: I think marmalade? Can I think?
Speaker 2: What's cooking marmalade? Mister brown go on? Have a taste?
Speaker 2: That's right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But do they dig? Do they dig honey that much?
Speaker 2: They do? Love honey absolutely. They would love marmalade if
Speaker 2: they could get their pools on it, but honey is
Speaker 2: cerently high on their list. I've seen yeah, and sun
Speaker 2: bears in the tropics. He eat lots of honey, and
Speaker 2: I've seen black bears climbing tree for honey. Groslies love
Speaker 2: it as well. Yes, absolutely packed full of calories for them.
Speaker 1: I imagine the beastings don't get to them that much.
Speaker 2: No, they're pretty well equipped with that fur, and they're
Speaker 2: just hardcore. I have a bear in my local forest
Speaker 2: here that I track, and I have one remote camera
Speaker 2: out there. I just have this one camera experiment and
Speaker 2: the woods are just out the back door here and
Speaker 2: so I can check my camera and see what's on it.
Speaker 2: And one day there was a bear on it. Last year.
Speaker 2: It's just before hibernation, before fall, and I thought I'd
Speaker 2: go out and see if I could find this one bear.
Speaker 2: I was excited because there aren't many right here, And
Speaker 2: sure enough I found him right in the forest just
Speaker 2: a couple of days after finding him on this hidden
Speaker 2: remote wildlife camera and tracked him. He was a young
Speaker 2: black bear and eating hornets from a hornet's nest.
Speaker 1: Hornets don't make honey. He was eating the hornets, fistfuls
Speaker 1: of hornets for breakfast. I mean the bragging rights.
Speaker 2: So they'll dig into the roots of old rotten trees
Speaker 2: and pull out hornet nests and larvae and grubs, and
Speaker 2: you can see them swatting them away from their nose.
Speaker 2: But it's just like be a mosquito bite to us
Speaker 2: kind of thing, and it's definitely worth their while. They
Speaker 2: eat a lot of insects.
Speaker 1: Oh and was it one of those famed overblown murder
Speaker 1: hornets in Washington?
Speaker 2: Talking about what would they make of those? I know, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's true.
Speaker 1: A stiff price for a meal. And the last questions
Speaker 1: I always ask this one was I usually ask it,
Speaker 1: but it was phrased so well by Sarah Bowen. Not
Speaker 1: a question, but I do hope you ask him what
Speaker 1: is the most unbearable part of their job? Because of
Speaker 1: the pun But usually I always ask what sucks the
Speaker 1: most about being an ersenologist? What's either something petty or
Speaker 1: something trivial or something huge. But what is the hardest
Speaker 1: part about what you do?
Speaker 2: A paperwork? Probably it's you know, you don't get into
Speaker 2: it for that, I guess you could say weather, or
Speaker 2: insect bites or what. I love all that stuff. The
Speaker 2: worse it is out, the more pressure the nature puts
Speaker 2: on you and puts you through, the happier right. I
Speaker 2: love bushwacking. For example, bears do a lot of bushwacking.
Speaker 2: I love bushwacking. I like getting right off the trail
Speaker 2: through stick of bushes and just thick scrub and whatever
Speaker 2: it takes. I love that stuff. So none of that's
Speaker 2: miserable to me. It's just the stuff back at home
Speaker 2: in front of a laptop.
Speaker 1: If only there were worms and grubs under our laptop,
Speaker 1: we'd be more likely to pick them up. What about
Speaker 1: the best thing about bears? Just your favorite thing about them?
Speaker 2: I think, I think is their intelligence. Actually, I mean
Speaker 2: they're strong, they're mighty, they're powerful, But I think they're intelligence.
Speaker 2: It's just it's off the charts, and it's surprising. The
Speaker 2: most people you know, you've got your primates, you've got
Speaker 2: your wells and dolphins certations. A lot of people put
Speaker 2: bears next. Are very high up in terms of animal intelligence,
Speaker 2: and I think it makes them special spiritually and special
Speaker 2: as a species to learn about, because they're full of surprises,
Speaker 2: because they're smart.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't realize how intelligent they were and
Speaker 1: how social and able to read cues and really assess
Speaker 1: a situation almost emotionally.
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, and capable of memory and applying things that
Speaker 2: they've learned over space and time, so they can learn
Speaker 2: They can learn where a salmon run is in a
Speaker 2: particular run at what particular time of year, and they
Speaker 2: can traverse hundreds of miles between that time and the
Speaker 2: next year when they're going to be back, and they'll
Speaker 2: know to be there in time. It's amazing. Same with
Speaker 2: the garbage can Unfortunately, so they get into trouble, you know,
Speaker 2: in places where there are humans on that human wildlife
Speaker 2: to mension, which is where a lot of my work
Speaker 2: is in trying to have people understand wildlife and especially bears,
Speaker 2: and in that human wildlife space, that gray area between
Speaker 2: where our world ends and their world begins, because I
Speaker 2: think that's the front line of conservation. And so you know,
Speaker 2: bears learn very quickly to get benefits from that space,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's whether it's getting into garbage or
Speaker 2: occasionally killing a young livestock or things like that. You know,
Speaker 2: so it's right on the edge of people's tolerance, and
Speaker 2: it's right on the edge of where the bears are
Speaker 2: able to be, and it's fertile ground there, and they're
Speaker 2: smart figuring it out all the time, which makes them
Speaker 2: they always seem like they're a step ahead.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, I know people can learn more about
Speaker 1: you and other ersonologists and bears through your films and
Speaker 1: through your podcasts. Any particular film that you think people
Speaker 1: should go to first.
Speaker 2: I would love people to go and watch Bear Trek.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. It was a film that we did
Speaker 2: a few years ago. It came out in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: and it was that journey. I took around to four
Speaker 2: different plays to meet three different bear biologists, each save
Speaker 2: in their species, from the most mind blowing rock climbing
Speaker 2: bears in Peru, spectacle bears that my friend Robin Appleton
Speaker 2: studies there, to these sun bears in tropical Borneo and
Speaker 2: my friends Sute Wang studies them to poll the bears
Speaker 2: in the Canadian Arctic with doctor Nick Lun And it's
Speaker 2: each of these bear species has a different story to talent.
Speaker 2: The story starts with me and Alaska among the big
Speaker 2: bears that I've been that I've been talking about and
Speaker 2: then I sort of embark upon this journey to go
Speaker 2: and find others who are crazy about bears, other ersenologists
Speaker 2: like myself, you know, to try and understand what makes
Speaker 2: them tick and what their bears need.
Speaker 1: So that's the movie Bear Track, and it's streaming on
Speaker 1: Amazon in case you want to see all kinds of
Speaker 1: bears with Chris. And also had a camp on a motorcycle.
Speaker 1: Okay it was.
Speaker 2: It was really popular and it resulted in lots of
Speaker 2: good things for the biologists and people can can stream
Speaker 2: that on Amazon, so easy, easy to access and love it.
Speaker 2: If people would check out The Wild with Chris Morgan.
Speaker 2: That's a podcast that I do about wildlife and and
Speaker 2: lots of bear stories in there as well and from
Speaker 2: different parts of the world, but lots of other species
Speaker 2: as well. Just doing one on jaguars right now. I
Speaker 2: was in Belize recently doing some field stuff on jaguars
Speaker 2: and Scarlet Macau's. I'm really attracted to these bright, interesting
Speaker 2: creatures that represent so much, so that's that's kind of
Speaker 2: what the podcast is about.
Speaker 1: So ah amazing. I have a feeling there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of people tagging along with whatever your next
Speaker 1: adventures are just consider ourselves plus ones too, like the
Speaker 1: front row seat to all those beautiful stuff. So this
Speaker 1: has been so so great. I'm so glad I got
Speaker 1: a chance to talk to you.
Speaker 2: This has been fun. I've really enjoyed it. I hope
Speaker 2: I didn't talk a mile a minute too much. You know,
Speaker 2: don't ask me about bears whatever you do.
Speaker 1: No, well, you're kidding. This is like my ears are open. Great,
Speaker 1: so ask intelligent organisms, doofy questions and then just sit
Speaker 1: back and bask in the bear bayolo. Now once again,
Speaker 1: that was Chris Morgan, who hosts the excellent podcast The
Speaker 1: Wild with Chris Morgan. New episodes this season are out
Speaker 1: literally today, so go find that. And the film he
Speaker 1: talked about is Bear Track available streaming. You can follow
Speaker 1: Chris Morgan on Instagram at Chris Morgan Wildlife and at
Speaker 1: Morgan Wildlife on Twitter. They will be links to all
Speaker 1: that plus the charity in the show notes. And we
Speaker 1: are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm Ali
Speaker 1: Ward with one L on both and links are in
Speaker 1: the show notes to that. There's an Ologies podcast Facebook
Speaker 1: group moderated by my good friend Aaron Talbert. There's merch
Speaker 1: available at ologiesmerch dot com that is managed by Shannon
Speaker 1: Feltis and Bonnie Dutch. And thank you Noel Dilworth for
Speaker 1: helping schedule all of the interviews and for leaving an
Speaker 1: easter basket on my doorstep and making me want to
Speaker 1: cry in a good way. Thank you Emily White for
Speaker 1: transcribing episodes. If you ever need something professionally transcribed, find
Speaker 1: Emily White. She has a new website called The word Ery.
Speaker 1: She is excellent. Transcripts and bleeped episodes are available at
Speaker 1: Alleyward dot com slash Ologies Extra for free to anyone
Speaker 1: who needs them. Thank you Caleb Patten for bleeping the episodes.
Speaker 1: Thank you to full time hunk and editor Jared Jarebear Sleeper,
Speaker 1: as well as the Sunniest Sunbear Steven Ray Morris, who
Speaker 1: hosts the podcast see Jurassic Right in the podcast. They
Speaker 1: both edit the show. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme song.
Speaker 1: And if you stick around to the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: I divulge a secret nuggetive truth and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: this week number one, the plastic is still in the
Speaker 1: neighbor's tree. It's so high. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do and number two. I was talking
Speaker 1: to my friend David about this and if anyone feels
Speaker 1: like they've hit a wall where they're just really tired
Speaker 1: and the world seems like maybe it's about to open up,
Speaker 1: but you're also like, I also kind of want to
Speaker 1: hibernate for a while, even though that's supposedly kind of
Speaker 1: what we've been doing for a year. Don't worry. I
Speaker 1: think that you're totally normal. I think we're all going
Speaker 1: through that a little bit. So if you feel really
Speaker 1: tired and you're like, yeah, m hm, that's I think
Speaker 1: that's normal. Okay, that's not a very good secret, but
Speaker 1: it's earnest alright, alright. Pacodermatology, hobiology or do zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology,
Speaker 1: old batology, nathology, zeriology, slidology, bears, beats, Battlestar Galactica,