Stuff You Should Know - Selects: What is an invasive species?

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

Invasive species can mean a lot of things, from fungus to feral pigs and European starlings to kudzu vines. Basically, it's anything brought to a place, either by humans or nature, that didn't originate there. They aren't always a problem, but many times they can wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. Learn all about these invaders in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. We semi-recently recorded an episode about cats being an invasive species. Oh boy, and we're going to hear it for that one. But I thought we'd go back to the OG episode on Invasive Species from January 11th, 2018. What is an invasive species? Listen now.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles of You, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know, action edition. I got to laugh out of Jerry, at least. Hi, Giggle. I got a derisive snort. How about that? That's what it was. How you doing? I'm great. Well, I'm concerned about the earth. You're concerned about the earth? Yes. More than usual? Yes. Because of this podcast? Yes. Okay. Yeah, man. So before we get started, you've heard of the Anthropocene, right? I know you have. You definitely have. We've

certainly mentioned it before on the podcast. So there's this debate right now over whether we've entered a new geological age from the one to the Anthropocene, right? I really wish I could remember what the current one is because people are going to write it and be like, it's this, a million times over, which thank you, everybody, for writing out. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. But the idea is that we've entered this period. Some people place it starting at the industrial revolution. A lot of people place it more at 1950 when there was apparently a huge spike in the presence of humanity from radioactivity, plastics, all this stuff in the environment as a whole to where our presence has so muddied the geological record that we've effectively come

up with a new age, a new geological age, the Anthropocene, the age of humans. Right. So one of the things, one of the factors that people point to that suggests that we're changing the natural geological record. We're leading the Holocene. Thank you, Charles. Sure. So the idea that we are altering the natural course of the Holocene or the course it would have taken had humans never been around, one of the ways we're doing that is by shuffling species from one environment to another, from one ecosystem to another where they've never been before, probably never would have ended up, at least not in any of our lifetimes, and that they are altering those ecosystems in radical new ways such that when those things

fossilize, those ecosystems become fossilized and can be studied hundreds of thousands or millions of years hence, archaeologists would be pretty puzzled by what they were finding. That's the basis of the idea that we should be calling this the Anthropocene. Wow. Now I'm scared. That was my goal. Well done. Thank you. All right. So what we're talking about is invasive species, and I'm surprised we hadn't done this one. I was too. I went back and double checked and I don't think we did. Me too. I don't, and I remembered what episode I remember. It was the Beagle Brigade. Oh. We talked a lot about invasive species in the Beagle Brigade. I'm trying, and we may have even said we should do one on that. If so, wish fulfilled.

So what we're talking about is invasive species. This can be any type of, it is not necessarily a plant or just an animal. It could be seeds. It could be eggs. It could even be a disease, right? Or a fungus. Sure. Yeah. A pathogen, a pest, a predator, a plant. It could be anything. Yeah. Any kind of, any kind of living organism that's not native to a singular or a particular ecosystem. Right. But, and the House of Works article kind of leaves it at that, but the National Wildlife Federation article that you found, I think really kind of drives home that there's like an extra couple factors involved, right? Yeah. Because you can have a non-native species that we actually kind of like, like European honeybees. They're a non-native species

here in the United States, but we're crazy for the pollinating they do. It doesn't always wreck things. Right. And the honey that they make, rice is not a native crop here in the United States, but people love rice. So there are, just being non-native isn't enough. It has to actually harm the ecosystem that it's not native to and has been introduced to in some way, shape, or form. So it's a non-native species that's causing harm either directly or indirectly or both to this new ecosystem it's been introduced to. That's an invasive species. Right. And it's not just, do we grow rice in the United States? Sure. Okay. And it doesn't have to be from another country. It can, like we said,

it's an ecosystem. So it could be something from one area of the United States to another area of the United States or from Mexico to the United States. Right. Like trout from the Great Lakes, that's their natural habitat. So they're fine, but you take that same trout and put it in, I think the example given was the Yellowstone River and they're now competing for habitat and food with the local trout. That's an invasive species. Right. They come in all shapes and sizes, as our very own article says. They're different names for them. God loves them all. Like some people might say exotic pests or non-indigenous species, alien species, stuff like that. But invasive species is kind of, I think that's the go-to these days.

Sure. That's the one you hear starting in the 90s. Actually, it's funny. Like all of the eco stuff that we know about from recycling to invasive species, it all was like born in the 90s. You know what I mean? Yeah. Bill Clinton, I think he invented that name, but he went, I think he gave it the stamp. What did he say though? I think he said, nailed it. He could have been talking about any number of things or people right there. But in that case, he was talking specifically about executive order 13112, where the term invasive species was first defined by the United States government. And the reason that they did this, this was 1998. The reason that they were defining invasive species is because

around about that time, the world was really waking up to the fact that if you take a species of plant, animal, bacteria, pathogen, whatever, and you put it into a place, a new ecosystem where it has no predators, it's going to create havoc for the ecosystem as it was before. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of one of the keys here is that generally they will cause a lot of harm, maybe to the environment, maybe to the economy, maybe to people, maybe one, two, or all three of those. And another key aspect of the invasive species is that it's pretty hard, if not impossible sometimes, to contain and eradicate. Yeah. I think I get this impression from researching this, Chuck, that like the second wave of waking up to invasive species realizing like they're never

going to go away now. It's done. Like the first wave you don't notice, it's already happening. Right. Yeah. By the time we do notice, it's too late. And then now we're realizing like, oh, okay. Well, we can handle this. It might be tough. And now I think we're finding, like you can handle it, you just can't eradicate them. One of the big problems is like if you if you say develop a poison that kills some, you know, non, some invasive fish that was introduced, right? Say carp. You're going to kill the other fish in the area too, or some of the other sea life or something like that. So there's just not really any way you can target these things short of shooting each one of them. And you're going to shoot a plant. They'll think you're crazy.

They'll lock you up for that. So don't even try it. And here's the deal is this, this is not a new phenomenon. This nature has been doing this for years on its own in various ways, whether it's leaping over the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand, right? Or over a channel of water, like, or over a mountain range, it happens. But generally, bodies of water and mountain ranges and deserts and all these other geological features help to stop this stuff. It's really humans that are doing most of this, not necessarily on purpose, but sometimes on purpose. Yes, as we will see. But sometimes it's just like, it's in the ballast water of a ship, or it's in, there's an insect in the wood of, or it's in packing material, it's in the wood of the,

what are those things called? The crates, the pallets? Yeah, pallets, shipping pallets. And all of a sudden it leaps out on the other side of the world. And you have an issue to the tune of 50,000 estimated non-native species in the United States alone. Yeah, I was looking that up, that's pretty, that's one of those things we always like give, you know, evidence, or not evidence advice. If you see something all over the place, like double check it, you know. Right, is that not a real number? No, I think it is a real number. It's from 1999. So there's no telling. We're probably at 50,000 in like 500 now. But it was from a guy named Pimentel, who was a world famous ecologist. Pimenteller? No, Pimentel. Oh, okay. He's from Cornell.

I don't know if he's still at Cornell, but the thing that this leaves out though, it's 50,000 non-native species. But that same study from 1999 found that about 4,300 of them could be considered invasive. Okay, that's what I was wondering. The other ones are like the honeybee where we're like sweet. Sure, or rice. Don't forget rice. And like I said, sometimes in the water of a ship's hull, sometimes in this wood, and sometimes on purpose, like we said, like when the Burmese python found its way to Florida. Dude. That was no accident. Have you looked up Burmese python Everglades recently? Yes. Dude, they get so big down there. And did you see the one that had burst itself to death eating an alligator? No, but I did see the alligator and

the python fighting on a golf course. That's amazing. That is amazing. That makes me glad to be alive to see something like that. Well, here's the deal while we're on that. More than 2,000 of these pythons have been removed. 2,000 have been removed since 2002 when it was just, I guess, recreational activity. But starting in March of last year, 2017, Florida started sanctioning python hunters. And 1,000 dudes applied. They accepted 25, said, we'll pay you minimum wage. We'll literally pay you eight bucks an hour. Or I think that was a minimum wage at the time to hunt pythons. And they're all like, done. Right. And they started hunting pythons. They've caught 743 since March of 2017. And earlier this year, or I'm sorry, late last year in December,

the dude, Jason Leon, did you see that one that he caught? No, 17 feet. 17 feet long, 133 pound Burmese python. Geez. And the reason why these are a big deal, you know, aside from just sheer terror, is they're eating furry creatures, a lot of them. I saw that some populations down in the Everglades of types of deer, rabbits, a lot of creatures that you know and love have gone down by up to 99% in some areas of the Everglades because of the python. University of Florida. And I won't say what everyone wants me to say. Good for you, man. Yeah. That's like, how can you be, you know, possibly the national champs and throw shade at anybody below you, you know? So the University of Florida in Gainesville

did a project. They released, and this makes me so sad, they released 95 rabbits into the Everglades. And they, these are all tracked and it's not like when these rabbits didn't turn up a year later and they're like, we can't find them. I guess snakes ate them. They know that snakes ate them. So snakes did. A year later, 77% of these rabbits were eaten and dead from these pythons. Wow. So it's a problem. That is a sad study. It is. Can you imagine like opening that was crates and being like, all right, go be free. Go live your new life. It's an adventure. Oh man. It's so sad. So that's just one example of the most horrific. And that's not one that's like costing a $200 billion in damage a year. But that is an estimate

from a professor at Cornell. That's the same one. Pimentel. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's the estimate from him that it's costing the United States between a hundred and $200 billion a year in damage from all these invasive species problems. Yeah. That's a lot of dough. It really is. And the Burmese python is a good example also of people just releasing like a pet that you don't want anymore. That's probably how they were established. That's absolutely how it was established. There's another, there's another, there's a lizard called the tegu, which is a big problem in all of Florida apparently as well. Oh yeah. They're just a huge lizard that were originally pets and were released and now they've established a feral population in Florida.

And they apparently will eat your cat. They've been known to do that. They'll storm your house. They'll come into your house. Yeah. It's just a bad jam, right? There's also the Nutria swamp rats, which were originally grown for their fur in Louisiana. They use rat fur apparently in Louisiana to keep warm. And when the rat fur industry went under in the 30s, I think, they released these things into the swamps. And then most recently, feral hogs were imported so that they could hunt them. And there's a huge population that's wrecking their, the ecosystems they've been introduced to. So a lot of times humans are long heads when it comes to shuffling animals into ecosystems where they're, they're not native. That snake's too big. Put it behind the

house. Let her loose. Then let a bunch of rabbits loose and see what happens. See who wins. Snake wins. Snake wins. Should we take a break? Yeah. I was going to say the same thing, man. Well, actually quickly before we take a break, I talked about how much it was costing the US department of interior spending about a hundred million bucks or more a year trying to fight this in various ways. All to very little success. Yeah. All right. So now with that stat, we will, we will take a break. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not

another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if

you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we talked about people releasing animals purposefully. And you mentioned some other

ways, but one of the things that gets me is ballast water. How is this allowed to go on, where a ship will take on water to balance out its cargo load? Because different cargo is going to weigh different. It's going to be laid out differently. So you need new ballasts every time to balance it out, which makes sense. But surely there can be some other technology, because you're like in Eastern Europe, picking up a bunch of water to balance your ship out. And that cargo is bound for Detroit. So you enter the Great Lakes and you're like, oh, well, water is water. I'll just release it here once I unload my cargo. And whatever animals you picked up in Eastern Europe, now live in the Great Lakes. And this actually happened with the

zebra mussel, which is a huge, huge problem in the Great Lakes now. Yeah, the zebra mussel and the quagga mussel, which apparently are almost the same thing and how they act. They're from Eastern Europe and they're small. And that's exactly how they ended up in the Great Lakes, like you said. And they, boy, talk about spreading. Are they like, how many are these? Like a trillion? A trillion, at least. Isn't that crazy? The reason why is like a quagga will live, or quagga or zebra mussel will live about five years. And the female in that time will produce five million eggs. There's 10 trillion of them. That's so many mussels. 100,000 of those eggs will reach adulthood. And so the offspring of one single mussel will produce about half a

billion adult offspring. So yeah, 10 trillion is a pretty reasonable number. And they just entered the Great Lakes in the, I think the 1980s. Yeah. So just within what, 40 years? Gosh, can you believe that 80s were like 40 years ago or coming up on it? I can. It doesn't seem that long ago to me, but man, that's crazy. Well, and the problem with these is you're like, wait, wait, I'm reminiscing still. All right, I'm done. The problem with these is like big deal, they're these tiny little mussels, but they are blanketing the bottom of the Great Lakes. And they're eating plankton because they love to eat plankton, which makes the water nice and clear. Everyone's like, look how shimmery Lake Michigan is. Have you seen pictures of

Lake Michigan recently? No. It looks like the Caribbean. Really? White sand, beautiful sea through like turquoise water. Wow. That's not good people. Gorgeous. No, it looks really amazing, but ultimately no, it's not healthy because like you were saying, they eat all the plankton that's supposed to be on top. And on the bottom too, and the sunlight can penetrate all the way to the bottom, causing algae blooms. Right, deadly algae blooms. I just happened to run across an article yesterday, Chuck, and I understood why I was seeing what I was seeing, but the article was about how the Lake Michigan has become so clear that you can see shipwrecks on the bottom of the lake from the air if you're flying over it. You can clearly see shipwrecks. And the reason why is

because the zebra mussels have doubled the clarity of the water since the 1980s. Well, and not only is it just the plankton, but the plankton is causing salmon to go hungry, whitefish. So it's wrecking the ecosystem down there. Right. Thank you, Eastern Europe. Well, thank you, ship captain, who took on that water as ballast. Another ballast story I ran across too was fire ants, the worst thing in humanity, right? It's pretty bad. Fire ants are native to South America, and they think that they stowed away on dirt that was scooped up as ships ballast and released in New Orleans. Really? Yeah, and like the 30s or 40s. But that's where the fire ants came from. They shouldn't be here. Didn't that make them even worse? Yeah. Hate those things. So here's

another one. You want to talk about the Asian carp? Sure. So in the 1970s, and I think like in Arkansas, there were some farmers, fish farmers, that is, who said, let's get some of these Asian carp in here to filter the water. And they did. That sounded identical to what the researchers from University of Florida sounded like in my head. Right. And they all sounded like Bill Clinton. Right. Who was from Arkansas, right? Yeah, full circle. So Asian carp were introduced. I guess they did a pretty good job of filtering the pond water, but then they started spreading. And that's the deal is, like with the zebra mussel, they get in these waterways, like in Chicago, these man-made waterways that basically are like expressways,

where they get in the Mississippi River, and it's like, all right, here we go, rest of the country. Let's do this. Yeah. And so Asian carp, it's sort of a catch-all name for a bunch of species of carp from Southeast Asia. But here's their problem, is they're very dense. They consume about 20% of their body weight each day in plankton. They can be as big as 100 pounds, which is very large for a fish, if you haven't noticed. And they're all over the place now. They went up the Illinois River. They are almost, or maybe even are invading the Great Lakes now, is that they didn't have enough problems. And they're another one. They lay about a half a million eggs each time they spawn. Right. And they eat a lot of plankton. And there's this guy, they're a good example,

because they're so thoroughly crowd out the rest of the ecosystem, or the rest of the animals in the ecosystem, that it actually, like, kind of wrecks the whole ecosystem. Yeah. They're an example of like a grade three, or level three, I think you'd call it level, level three invasive species, right? Right. There's this dude. He is a marine biologist. And I don't know if you could tell or not, but I'm stalling while I look for his name. I can see you. Is it coming across, everybody? So, I cannot find the dude's name. Anyway, you don't have it either? No. Well, he came up with these. Let's call him Dr. Javago. Okay. Dr. Javago came up with these, basically four levels of impact that an invasive species can have on biodiversity

in an ecosystem. And the first level is basically like, they're just a new species. They're not doing anything. You could even make a case that it's a good thing that they're there now, because they've improved or increased the biodiversity of the habitat, right? So, level one is they're just there. Nothing bad has happened yet. Level two is when they start to have an effect on the ecosystem in some very specific way. And Dr. Javago gives this really great example of the Eastern North American gray squirrel, which was inexplicably introduced in 1876 to England. And since then, it has basically outcompeted the native red squirrel there. But it's just the native red squirrel that's been affected. The rest of the ecosystem is

basically the same as if the North American squirrel had never showed up. It's just the red squirrel who are trying to go around and tell everybody, like, doesn't it suck that North American squirrels are here? And everybody's like, oh, it's fine with me. I don't care. And the red squirrel just can't get any kind of ally in this. That's level two. Okay. Shall I continue? Please. Level three is where the species becomes so dominant, spreads so fast, so wide, reproduces so quickly and so massively that they begin to impact the entire ecosystem as a whole. Right. And we'll talk about that in a second. And then the fourth level is where they have upset the ecosystem that they are not native to, but have established themselves in so thoroughly that

it now impacts other ecosystems, either nearby or that are somehow connected to that ecosystem. And then level five is when you wake up covered in a hundred squirrels. Right. I'll just quietly staring at you. Can you imagine? No. Have you ever seen those black squirrels in Brooklyn? Yes. I've seen them in, like, Toronto, usually. DC. I love those things. Yeah, they're pretty cool. I'd love to get some of those. They're tough guys, too. Yeah. They'll charge you. They don't take any guff. No. But see, if you brought some to Georgia, it could be bad for the squirrels here because it's a non-native species, even though it's in the same country.

Yeah, but man, we got so many squirrels in Atlanta. I wouldn't mind seeing a few of those go, and I love all furry things. Well, you know how I feel about squirrels. Well, that's why it's going to haunt your dreams, waking up being covered by a hundred squirrels. Yeah. It'd be worse if I had a dream where a hundred squirrels covered my bird feeder. That's worse to me. I'd rather them cover me. Cover me instead. Leave my bird feeder alone. They would be so happy to chow down on you, though. Their little tails would be all flitty. They would be so excited. They'd say, this is a long time coming, Josh. They'd store some of you for the winter and their haunches.

But then they'd forget, except for about a third of me, where they put it. Exactly. Stupid squirrels. So those are the four levels we were kidding about the fifth. And I feel bad for Dr. Chevago because what if that dude listens, and he's like, oh, they're going to say my name. Yeah. Oh, Dr. Chevago. Or maybe he's going to start going by that. Maybe so. We just changed that dude's life. All right. So we talked a little bit about how some of these can affect things like eating plankton. What are some of the other deleterious effects? Deleterious. So there's, well, I mean, you can basically categorize the effects that these

things have in two categories. There's direct and indirect ones, right? So direct would be like if you, like let's say those Asian carp eat the eggs of the other fish it's competing with. That would be a direct impact that would make the other fish very unhappy, right? Yes. They could also be a bug that carries a disease that kills trees. Like I can't remember what bug carries like Dutch-owned disease, but there's bugs that carry diseases that kill trees. That's directly impacting the trees in that ecosystem. Then there's like indirect ones too, right? So like, let's say you have like a grass that grows really well in its new habitat, a non-native grass, so much so that it out-competes the other

grasses. Well, this new grass is really good at growing in this ecosystem, but it's terrible as far as like nutrient density is concerned. And it's choked the rest of the grasses out, which means that the sweet little deer and the rabbits that are about to be eaten by snakes don't have those grasses to eat anymore and they can't eat the new grass. That's an indirect impact. So suddenly the populations of these higher animals are going to thin out either because they're going to die off, they don't reproduce as fast, or they just move. So that's an indirect impact of an ecosystem. Or like that cacongrass, which is the one here in the Southeast, it's an Asian plant. Like that one does the one thing

you're talking about, no food value for the wildlife, but it also burns really hot and fast, more so than native grasses. So it's like it has this dormant danger of being a wildfire hazard. Right. Yeah. So another one called cheatweed has the same thing. It's altered the wildfire cycle, I think in the Southwest where it's growing from like 50 to 70 years to something like three to five years now. They have like massive wildfires. And it's because it burns so fast and it's so dense. It's just such a great fuel that, yeah. There's another way that they can indirectly affect an ecosystem too. A lot of plants that are non-native come in and alter the composition of the soil. They either change the amount of nutrients that are available, they change the pH, they

just alter the soil chemistry. And I mean like the soil, that's like the building block of an ecosystem. You start altering that, everything from the soil up is affected and impacted in some way or another. Well, and then that soil can then be transported to another ecosystem, you know? Right. Yeah. Which how the stuff spreads. Yeah. That's actually one of the tips for something you can do is not move soil very long, far distances that can cut down on invasive species transferred to you. All right. Well, let's take another break and then we will talk a little bit about the two ways to try and manage this a little bit. And some more. Yes. And what you can do and the story of Kudzu, which is probably not quite what you think.

Who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell

everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league

baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology. It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So as far as management, there are a couple of main ways that we're trying to control invasive species, proactive management and reactive proactive. If you go to California and you have to stop at the California border and they say, do you have any fruits or vegetables from outside

the state? That would be an example of proactive management is trying to keep it from happening to begin with by not allowing stuff in that shouldn't be in. Yeah. I guess apparently in this how stuff works article, the author talks about how they quarantine firewood sale up in Connecticut to keep emerald ash borers from making their way through the state or Guam. Guam has this huge brown tree snake problem. We must have talked about this in the Beagle Brigade, but they've like basically killed off the population of every other animal on the island. It's a little bit of exaggeration, but it's not too far. They've really had a huge impact on it and they train dogs to sniff them off the case from any cargo plane or ship that leaves Guam has to be inspected by these

things, by these dogs to find the snakes because they are taking it that seriously because they've had such a terrible impact on Guam. Well, proactive management, another thing that they do aside from like border inspections and stuff like that is basically just trying to destroy it in I guess in that first phase, Dr. Javago's first phase. By the way, Dr. Javago's name is, I found it. Are you ready for this? I think we should get a drum roll. Jerry? Dr. Alexander Mienz. M-E-I-N-E-S-Z. Marine biologist. But he says you can call me Al. Or just call me Dr. Z. Like Paul Simon. Yeah, sure. All right, so yeah, eradicating them in the early stages. And this has happened before in California specifically. They beat down an invasive weed

brought in from the tropics. So it can work, but I get the feeling that in researching this stuff, like once you're past that first stage, you may be SOL. Well, yeah, I have that same question. And you just cross your fingers that it's not one that'll wreck the ecosystem. So that's proactive. There's also reactive management too, right? Yes. And there's the age old, well, just get your hands on whatever its natural predator is, and then introduce that into the ecosystem. Or that's like from that classic Simpsons episode. You remember that? Where Bart has a tree lizard that eats birds. So they release some tree snakes, and then they release some gorillas, eat the tree snakes. And they say that a cold snap

will cause all the gorillas to freeze to death. So that'll be that. That's like, that's basically what they're doing. Like there's this bug called brown marmorated stink bugs, which are actually, they're stink bugs and they'll swarm in your house. So they're a pest, but they're also really bad for fruit crops and vegetable crops. And they don't have a natural predator here over in Asia where they're from. They are predated by a parasitic wasp. So they're thinking of bringing parasitic wasps over. And it's like, oh yeah, sure, nothing could go wrong if you bring parasitic wasps into an ecosystem. Man, those stink bugs, they will scare the bejesus out of you in the middle of the night.

Yeah, because it'll swarm. Well, I mean, I've never seen more than one at a time. Oh yeah. But I'm just talking about waking up because one of them is crawling over your cheek. Well, supposedly the brown marmorated stink bugs are different from the southern stink bugs that we're used to. Oh really? Yeah. And they swarm. Yeah. I can't tell the difference. I've never smelled any stink either. I haven't either. I saw somebody say that they smell like cilantro. I'm like, that's fine. That's great. Put some of them on your tacos. It's weird. They're all over the place though. I see them in my bathroom, especially in the winter. Yeah, because they come inside to stay warm. Yeah, I feel bad for them. But supposedly,

they swarm. The brown marmorated ones swarm. So they come inside your house, hang out, and then just cover your face. And you fall down the stairs. And then the squirrels get you. That's invasive species in a nutshell. What else we got here? You want to talk about a couple more of these? Yeah, I want to talk about my favorite of all time. Are you ready for this? Yes. The Starling, the European Starling. Yeah, and you know what? This is a great time to shout out one of our new brother podcasts here on the network, Omnibus with Ken Jennings of Jeopardy's fame. Sure. And John Roderick of the Indie Band Long Winters. Right. They have a new show called

Omnibus that is about sort of obscure history. And they did an entire episode on the European Starling. Oh, they did? Yeah. Well, then this ties into that. It does. So go listen to that show, subscribe, and hear that is in a nutshell. Oh, okay. So back in 1890, there was this guy. He was a German immigrant to the U.S. His name was Eugene Schifrin. Did I pronounce it right? I think so. Eugene Schifrin was a Shakespeare enthusiast, right? To say the least. He had this idea that it would be really cool. And remember this is 1890. They had no idea about invasive species. No. At the very least, you wouldn't think a bird would be. But he decided that it would be really cool to release all of the birds mentioned by Shakespeare into North America.

So crazy. And he would start with the European Starling. So in winter of 1890, and then again, like a month or so later in 1891, he released a total of 100 European Starlings in Central Park. That's right. 100. Make note of that number. 100 were released in 1890. And now there are more than 200 million European Starlings in the United States. And they are jerk birds. Yeah. Yeah, they'll swarm like a brown marmorated stink bug. They'll swarm. But they swarm on cattle to scare them away from their food so that the Starlings can eat their food. So these birds are capable of scaring cattle off. Yeah. That's a big one. They'll also crash your plane. They will. They will swarm your airplane. It has happened before. There was one that took off from Logan there in

Boston. Worst airport bathrooms in the world. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Okay. I think I talked about the bathroom stalls there. There's like three inch gaps in between the door. Oh, yeah. Yes. It's like literally you can just see each other pooping. You could fit like a whole annies through there. Yeah. Like you're gonna eat that bagel? Just let me slide it through there. Right. Well, she makes pretzels, delicious pretzels. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't saying she made bagels. I got you. I was just trying to think of something fatter than a pretzel. Could you fit a bagel through the stall? Is it really that bad? You could fit a bagel flat. Man, like a bagel half? No, it's not quite that bad, but it's bad. I remember pooping at Logan and making eye contact

with the dude. Just stained eye contact. Very distressing. Yeah. So anyway, birds crashed a plane into Boston Harbor, killed 62 people. These starlings. Yeah, that's not good. And they are also very dense eaters apparently, right? Like the carp. Yes, I believe so. They're definitely a huge problem from what I understand. But the idea that they were released in appreciation of Shakespeare, I just find fascinating. I know. Thank you, Eugene Shiflin. Now, they're a major problem. There's one other one we got a shout out to, Chuck, is the cane toad. Oh, yeah. Which is another invasive species that was introduced using the Simpsons technique, because there were some cane beetles that were harming Australia's sugar crop back in the 1930s. And so they got the idea

to import some cane toads to eat these beetles. And the cane toads, from what I understand, worked pretty well, but then their population boomed from, I think, 107 initial ones to, again, 200 million, just in less than 100 years. Yeah, there's that great classic documentary on the cane toad. And we talked about them before in an episode, didn't we? Sure. Yeah. One of the ways Australia is delightfully weird. Yeah, we'll see you guys this fall. That's right. Your spring. Oh, yeah. That's true. They're all confused. Like, where are we, mate? Right. Although it's their summer. Well, no, it's their, September will be their spring. But now it's their summer.

Oh, right now, yeah, it's the dead of summer for them. Man, I can't wait for, can't wait to meet those people in person. So I know it's going to be cool, man. I'm going to get me a hat that has alligator teeth around the brim as his local custom. So, Chuck, let's talk Kudzu, you want to? Yeah, we'll finish up with Kudzu. This is a great story called the true story of Kudzu, the vine that never truly ate the south by Bill Finch. And everyone has probably heard of Kudzu. It has a very steeped mythology. And it's one of those things where people, especially outside of the south, talk about, oh, you got your, Kudzu is just everywhere you look, there's Kudzu in the south. And if you go to any southern town, there will be a Kudzu cafe

or a Kudzu antique. There's a Kudzu antiques right here in Decatur. It's just one of those things. The south took it and ran with it as far as just like a marketing thing. But here's the deal. Most people know it was introduced at the 1876 World's Fair Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. It was a vine from Asia. And the story goes that it just took over the south, but that's not quite right. In 1935, there was dust storms that damaged the prairies. And Congress said, you know what, erosion is a big problem. So let's use Kudzu. And they brought in 70 million seedlings to grow in nurseries as soil conservation. Right. Remember our episode on desertification? I think we talked about that. Yeah. So they were planting it on purpose. They were paying people

as much as $8 an acre, which was pretty good money back then in the 1930s, to plant Kudzu. Flash forward a little bit. There was a radio host for the Atlanta Constitution. One of our newspaper, well, now it's the AJC. Back then, there were two newspapers, the Journal and the Constitution. And his name was a columnist named Channing Cope that became an evangelist for this stuff. And basically during these Depression-era radio broadcasts would say, you know, plant Kudzu so the south can live again. Yeah. Yeah. To restore the soil back to its original nature. Yeah. And so these farmers were taking money from the government saying, okay, sure. I got some land that I'm not using

or that could use some fixing. So I'll plant this stuff for eight bucks an acre. And they did. But the problem is, is no one could ever figure out how to make money off of it. It wasn't a crop. It wasn't good for grazing because apparently when cattle and horses grazed on it, it died. And no one really wanted to buy it from a nursery. So there's no way to make money off of it. So when the soil conservation payment program ended, everybody just kind of tilled it into the soil and Kudzu went the way of the dinosaur or it would have had it not been for the railroad industry and the highway construction industry. Yeah. So the original goal was to plant about eight million acres of the stuff around the south. But by 1945, that was just about a million acres

planted. But because of the fact that cattle don't graze by the highway generally or on the railroad, that's where really took hold and did envelop things like roadside signs and full trees. And if you were, and this is how it got their reputation because people would be on the train or they'd be driving down the highway and that's where it was the worst and they would see it and it got this reputation as this monster vine that was eating the south. Yeah, because it really is disconcerting to see Kudzu growing up like a 50-foot tree and totally covering it like it's consuming it. It's very much, it evokes that same feeling like seeing a snake eat like a whole rabbit, right? Yeah. It evokes the same feeling and the thing is is

most Southerners from say like the 50s on when this was when this really started to take root on these roadsides, their connection to the land was no longer in the farms or the forest. It was in the cities and they traveled mostly in their car or on trains, which is where Kudzu was most visible, remember? So there was this idea and it was a pretty understandable idea that Kudzu had taken over the south or was in the process of taking over the south and the whole thing was helped along apparently by a garden club newsletter. Yeah, so the idea is that there were, and this is a stat that you can, an incorrect stat that you can still get that says, you know, up to 9 million acres of the southern United States is covered in Kudzu.

It all comes from these two books, a craft book and a culinary and healing guide are these two books that are most frequently quoted as to that number. The U.S. Forest Service says actually it's about 227,000 acres of forest land about the size of a small county in Georgia, nowhere near what they're saying it is. And while it's still when you drive along some of these southern highways, it looks like it's eating a water tower and it is. Once you step 10 feet into the forest, it stops. Yeah, because it grows terribly in shade. And yeah, if you have a Kudzu problem, just get some horses or cows and there goes your Kudzu problem. It's not a very hardy plant, it's just it has no real predators or anything to hold it back on those roadsides or on those

railroad embankments, which is why it grows so wild there. So those that culinary book and the craft book that have to do with Kudzu that seriously are the most widely cited sources by academic journals, by scientists, by the government. Everybody cites these sources and apparently they just made it up. But they said that it grows at a rate of 150,000 acres a year and that same Forest Service report estimated it really grows at about 2,500 acres a year, which is entirely manageable. So this, what's basically the poster child for invasive species in the United States, Kudzu is actually not really much of a problem at all. Yeah, so everybody, we don't all drink Coca-Cola. Well, that's actually not true. Yeah, we all drink it. Actually,

I don't really drink it that much, but yeah, there is not a Kudzu problem. Stop it and stop saying Hot Lanna. Yeah. Nobody here says that. No, I remember that that again, in the 90s, there was a little push for that. Recycling invasive species in Hot Lanna, one of them didn't make it. That's right. You got anything else? No, I thought this is a good one. I thought so too. If you want to know more about invasive species, there's tons of them that we didn't even cover. Go look them up, educate yourself, and then go save the planet and tell them Josh and Chuck sent you. In the meantime, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a very sweet orchid story. A big hello to Josh, Chuck, and Jerry. I'm writing

in to say how much I love your orchids episode and also share a bittersweet and pretty amazing thing that happened to my family. My grandmother was an avid gardener who had a knack for coaxing her collection of orchids into bloom again and again. I think some of her orchids might have been a decade or more old. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she passed along her orchids to my stepmother who has continued the tradition. One particularly beautiful orchid had refused to bloom after the move until one day in August 2016 when it did bloom again. When my stepmother posted the picture to Facebook that morning, she didn't know that my grandmother was in the final process of passing away. Someone used their smartphone to show the photo to my grandmother at hospice, and it was

one of the very last things she saw. Mr. brought her a lot of joy to know that her orchids, in fact, lived on. She attached a photo, very beautiful orchid. She said orchids will always have a special place in my heart for sensing my grandmother's last day with us in each of those plants. It's a treasured family heirloom. I hope I'll be the next to inherit the matrilineal. Matrilineal. Matrilineal. I think so. Yeah, that's right. I hope I'll be the next to inherit the matrilineal green thumb. All the best, Maggie. That is a great orchid story. Yep, great listener mail. That's how you get on listener mail, everybody. Yep, you just warm our hearts, okay? Or insult us. Yeah, but we don't actually read those. We just

make grumbly references to them. That's right. If you want us to make a grumbly reference to something you wrote, well, then write us an insulting email. If you wanted to get read, then warm our hearts. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast, and you can also hit up the official Facebook page at Stuff You Should Know. What else, Chuck? Emails? Sure. You can send us all an email, including Jerry, Noel, Matt, everybody, to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatigler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on

this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.