Good. Evening, everybody. Welcome to the North Carolina museum of Natural Sciences. Thank you so much for coming out to tonights thank you for tuning in. If youre watching with us live online, weve a very special program for you tonight. We have just a whole stage full of brilliant people not including myself, of course. My name is chris smith. I work here at the museum of Natural Sciences as the coordinator for current programs that job title means that i get the pleasure and privilege of welcoming everybody into the museum. It also means that i get to really interesting people who are doing interesting out there in the realms of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, art as it relates to science, education, and even more. And so its always thrill to be here in the Museum Talking about science, nature, conservation, any of those great and fabulous topics that make this museum such a great resource and such a great to be, to my left, you can see these are the brilliant people that ive been joined with. First, i want to dr. Michael cove closest to me. Oh, yeah, yeah. We could clap for dr. Co mike serves the Research Curator from mammalogy here at the museum of Natural Sciences. He is an expert on rats. But i a particular type of rat actually. You know what im going to say . He knows a whole lot about a whole lot of mammals. We had an event not too long ago here at the museum and the audience was peppering dr. Here with questions about all types of different animals from all regions of the planet. And he right the top of his mind. Incredible answers, Great Questions from, you know, rats live in the Appalachian Mountains to kathy barras in south america. It was a great, great talk. So thanks for being here, mike. Thank you for having me. And lets talk about pests pests. And then across the way, we have dr. Roland hayes. Roland serves, as the head of the Biodiversity Research lab here at the museum, his glass walled research is over in the Nature Research center. Hes also a professor at North CarolinaState University teaching zoology and an expert zoologist. But dr. Kays is particularly skilled in the realms of animal tracking, maybe not so much as like, like sniffing animal tracks in forests and knowing which way they went. Although would believe that youre very good at that as well i mean, if theres snow, i can do it. Thats perfect. But also more technology, modern techniques of animal trapping, particular like things like camera traps and tracking. Great. Happy to be here. Thanks, rohan. And then course, the reason that all the three of us here and the reason here at the museum tonight is to hear about the new book, pests how humans create animal villains. And tonight we have a very special guest, dr. Bethany brookshire. Our bethanys a science journalist. You could read bethany his work in the washington post, New York Times slate, the and then of course, places like Scientific American science news was a former staff writer for science news for students which i actually scrolled through the archive and just like so many things that i need to learn about in the archive there. So im going to go be a student science history since i and were very excited that we have experts and animals that some people consider passe here at the museum. And bethany, that you could be with us to talk about your new book and share with us some of the cool science and stories you investigated. So lets get to if could. Im going to take a seat. Thank you for letting me join tonights conversation as well. Just testing that. So. So. Okay, lets get started. I guess the best place to start is bethany. Tell us about the book. Whats the whats the sales pitch for . Yeah. So i started i started researching this book all the way back in 16 when the idea first happened. But i have become obsessed with pests because what is a pest . Right. When you really think hard about it, a pest is an animal that makes you its an animal that you off. And that means that a pest has nothing to do with what the animal is, where its going, what its doing. And it has everything to do with you and what you think your environment should be like, who should be in it, who belongs near with your stuff etc. And. So i just became fascinated by concept of pests and i also that almost everyone you talk to when you talk to them about pests, everybody has pest story. So my pest story, which is featured in book involves can i cuss here. I dont know. Youre the boss. I think cspan i cuss. Can i get a. Okay . That looks like a thumbs up. All i think the three of us work for the state of North Carolina. You do not. I do not. Okay, good. The squirrel that i am talking about. His name is kevin. We call him kevin for short. And because a three year old lives next door. But kevin is an eastern gray, otherwise known as sirius. Carolyn insists. And kevin lives in my yard and i hate him so much this kevin, this squirrel we now call all squirrels kevin in house. So well just be Walking Around and be like kevin, this squirrel is the reason that i have not had a tomato from my garden in five years, because every time i go out i plant tomatoes. Im super excited. The tomatoes grow, they swell. They are green, they are hopeful. And kevin, kevin comes into my garden, he grabs a nice green tomato and he takes a big bite. And then kevin recalls that he does not, in fact, like tomatoes he leaves it with its tooth marks it right where i can see it on my porch because he is a jerk. Then the next day he does it again and again and again. This squirrel has taken a bite out of every single in my garden for the last five years, and ive tried many to get rid of him, including bird netting, metal netting, kind pepper, stray cats. I in fact try stray cats. One pest versus another. I know the two cats actually came inside. We now have pets, but kevin just ate cat food. Maybe you need to bring kevin inside. Lets not fight and. I began to realize i just hated this animal. But i would bring it up to my friends and would be like, oh, but you cant hurt. Him, hes a squirrel. Hes tougher, but hes sweet. And they would, you know, take pictures of the squirrel. People feed squirrels, deliver brightly, people set up obstacle courses, they go viral on youtube for these animals. And i realized that every animal could be a pest to someone. It just mattered in ways. And so wrote this book. So i had never had a problem with squirrels literally yet theyve never been a pest. No. Until this morning when youre kevins girlfriend showed up in my attic. Never. Today im like getting, dressed to come here for this event with bethany and is literally a squirrel that had had broken into my attic, had crawled had clawed through some stuff, had this giant nest, had leaves and all the place, and that literally never happened in my life until today. Im so proud to feel like im her. I think youre cursed. Its possible. We actually did have one that got in my roof in one of the places that i rented because. There were holes in the roof. There we go. We named big bertha because she was so big the squirrel when she like you think a squirrel would make a little thump noise . No, this was a every time she looks good. The guy who caught her said it was big a squirrel who everything. I think he told me he took her a farm upstate. I did not. Yeah right. Upstate mike at this point. Im hoping that you have a good squirrel story. Are you going to at least say that you like squirrel . No. This is really interesting because i have been thinking about this a lot. Well, i live a little further outside of raleigh. And my wife, my wife has pet goats and she had some Sunflower Seeds for the goats and they stayed in the trunk in her car for a long weekend and by the end of the weekend, squirrels had chewed up through to the underside of the bumper into the trunk and looted all of these whatever Sunflower Seeds for the goats. And so, yeah, that bumper was held together duct tape for a substantial amount time. So i but ive never actually thought of them as pests say. But it is that youre mentioning this tomato thing because this is an idea that had for a while is like how much do urban squirrels actually garbage or or our soft, fleshy fruits and resources because they mostly eat acorns and stuff and theres usually not a shortage of oaks. We live the city of oaks, right . So it is interesting to hear that theyre eating things than, you know. Theyre birdseed. Theyre eating a lot of birdseed. True. I just i just think of them as eating hard things and not soft things like well thats why they didnt finish your. Yeah, yeah. They were like, i thought this was a green nut and i was. What i found fascinating is that the always figured out. So one year i was like, all right, you know, Nuclear Option i planted no tomatoes, i planted halloween, no peppers instead. And i was like, oh yeah, i had this vision squirrel running away with tears streaming down furry cheeks, squirrels weep, but i can dream anyway. He did not eat them. He never touched that jalapeno pepper. Not a single one. Every single time ive grown hot, he knows not a single one is made out of it. But this is. This is kind of the more of your of your book, right . Its like sometimes needs to change their behaviors. And so the animal. So you need to become a healthier farmer instead of a tomato farmer. Actually, what i did was i figured out i learned things about the spatial memory of squirrels and i learned that they have incredibly in highly accurate spatial memories. And so what you do is, you have to set up your tomato cage over your tomatoes before the tomatoes emerge. If come if you wait until the tomatoes emerge edge which i tried this when the tomatoes emerged, i bought a large gardeners cage. I spent all setting it up. I was feeling really good about myself. I go off to my friends house and i get this text from my husband. Could you please come home . And im like, why . And he sends this video . There are two squirrels that have gotten into the gardeners cage and are now bouncing around like furry ping pong because they cant get out. And he had to let them. 20 minutes later they were back in. He let them out again and yeah, so then it turned into it made us anti squirrel fortress involving chicken wire and the gardeners cage bricks. But this year gardeners cage needs to go up early because if do not taste the thing, they do not know it is there and they will not come and get it. So the moral of the story is to learn about your squirrel behavior and set up your garden cage very early. So sounds like part of the criteria for some critter being deemed a pest, at least is they have to be able to outsmart us regularly if were at least as this the whole squirrels thing is like okay they consistently get around whatever it that we dont we set up to stop them also they consistently frustrate us because they can do those two things. And so its like we get angry, we try to stop them, but they are just able to get around us at every turn. Does that hold true for a set thats like not squirrels, or is it particular to. Yes, i actually ended up writing a lot about this in a section in roland is cited several times because so much of what we call pest is about power and. Its about vulnerability. Its about animals that make us feel powerless that make us feel scared. And these once they make us feel powerless and scared, our fear turns to anger. Our anger turns to hate. We turn to the dark side and its all downhill from there. And one of those animals that really exemplifies that is actually the coyote, which ended up talking to roland about and coyotes have been spreading for some time. And theyre causing people issues. And i would love to hear your take on why coyotes are spreading where they are and why theyre into more suburban environments. On the east coast in particular, youre so so coyotes were originally a western species. They lived in grassland deserts, open habitats in the western united in mexico and up into canada and then around the early 1900s, 1910, 1920, they started moving, expanding all directions. And so if you think about environment like to the north, they moved into the Great Northern forests canada and up to alaska, to the south they moved south into the rainforest. So they werent really forest before. But as we fragment the forest theres more farm fields can they can handle a little bit of forests. So they move now all the way to panama theyre on the verge of entering south america. They havent entered yet, as far as we know, but right at the edge, weve got some camera traps that have gotten them in the darien rainforest. And then the east coast was, this great bit of forest that they never used to in. Now its fragmented theres more fields as as forest and theres coyotes all over the place. And so as coyotes moved east, they colonized, you know, the better for them first, which would have been the more fields and a little bit of forest. But eventually they moved into the deep forest and eventually they fill that up and they started moving into cities because you know, a young coyote grows up and if he goes into the nice park, hes going to get beat up by the other coyotes. And if he goes into the neighborhood, well, maybe he can skin scrape out of living there. And so theyve been sort of slowly across the east coast cities, more and more, i think here in raleigh kind of showed up in the county in like the nineties and and in to the more cities only kind recently started into the developed areas of raleigh and so they are just ultimate in adaptability they can eat fruit they can eat they can catch small prey, they can do okay with big prey. Theyre not really that good. They more often will scavenge roadkill. Theyll eat some garbage, but usually not a lot, but sometimes little bit. Theyll eat, certainly cats even better. Cat if you put out cat food, kyra is going to be quite attracted to that. And so theyve theyve come in and in some ways its probably we got rid of the wolves, right . Wolves were considered a pest a couple hundred years ago. And so we killed almost all of them. And that kind of opened up the space for the coyote to expand and coyotes have become a pest, some people in some places, but a lot of places not. And so i think its interesting to see like a lot of places, theyre sort of filling in for the ecologically not totally, definitely, completely, but, you know, whether theyre a pest, sometimes we use the word invasive species, right. Like an invasive. So they are exotic in that theyre they didnt used to be here. Theyre not introduced. Sometimes we use the word introduced. They werent introduced. They got here on their own. We can see theyre spread. And whether theyre invasive whether theyre a pest is sort of are they harm to humans, human societies or sort of other invasive species, other native species are causing problems. And theres some places where they do that and theres a lot of places that they dont. On average, theyre not that big of a pest, i think. But where they are a theyre one of the bigger, sort of scary to pass out there. Its really fascinating to me how many of the people who i interviewed for the book who had had like personal interact with pests. Right, theyd facing you always hear this, oh my goodness, i had a rat. It was the size of a cat. No, it wasnt i am sorry. It was not. There has been no recorded wild brown norway rat that has been over £2. I know a guy. The rodents ologist bobby corrigan. He carries around a check in wallet. He showed it to me for 500 for the first person who can hand him a £2 rat. And he has never used check. Okay, you tell me that rat is the size of a cat. Thats a kitten. Like, is there in the research collection, we can make 500 off of him. Probably not different species. I got him pouched rat. Those are big. Those. Are big. Theres theres such a thing. But its just really interesting when we have an interaction that makes us feel powerless and that makes us feel scared. All of a the animal grows in our and it becomes huge, right . The raccoon becomes the size of a large dog. The coyote is the size of a wolf. Its not. Well, i mean, coyotes look big, right . They are are true. Theyre theyre very lean. And people compare it with their dogs because people know how much their dog weigh. Their dogs weigh. And many people have like a £50 dog. Im a £50 dog and they see a coyote. Theyre like it the size of my dog. It was £50. And and i understand that have a £50 dog and i think i reason i would approximate them approximate their to be about the size of my dog. But the truth is there are all the coyotes very rarely can get to £50, but on average in the east coast theyre like £35. And in the west coast are even smaller. Theyre like £25. So theyre, you know, on the west coast on average, theyre half the size of my dog. It is theyre so lean and fluffy and and lanky, tall, lanky. Yeah. And and other interesting thing is, has actually been if you hear them howl, it sounds like a huge pack. Oh there must have been ten or 15 of them. And people theres a paper on this where they published they experimentally played people different numbers of priorities howling and people consistently always overestimate it. Its almost like like the its probably part of the of the evolution of their howl. They want their house to sound like a bigger group. And so the way that they do it makes it sound like a bigger group. People fall for it all the time. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I did not know that. Thats amazing. How did i miss this paper . I had to be a spa to know. It was very funny. When i was reporting on coyotes in calif, one of my sources was super happy. He was like, im going to show you the coyotes and golden gate. Its going to be great. At golden gate, we were in hollywood. So hes im gonna show you that its going to be great and were there and were waiting. And the coyotes come out im like, thats it. Hes like, excuse me . Im like, well, theyre so our coyotes much bigger than that. He got all mad me, but i actually a road called coyote outside of washington, d. C. The other day i was so excited i almost pulled over like, this is who you become. Well, and so the reason that eastern priorities are larger is that before, as they were moving east, they actually hybridize with wolves. And theyve got some wolf genes mixed in and then they also hybridized dogs as they moved it so that some dog genes, it makes sense on average, this sort of eastern coyote, its still 80 to 90 . What coyotes are 89 coyote, but its got 5 to 8 of dog genes and 5 to 8 of wolf genes. And theyre all mixed in a great experiment. Evolution, right . If those genes help it survive. Then theyre going to survive better in their passes genes on. An