The Infinite Monkey Cage - Invasion

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

Invasion!Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedian Phill Jupitus, bat expert and ecologist Professor Kate Jones and forensic botanist Dr Mark Spencer to look at the problems caused by alien invasions, although not of the little green men kind. They look at why such innocent and innocuous sounding plants such as floating pennywort strike terror and fear in the heart of environmentalists up and down the country, and how clever microbes and diseases are able to jump from animals such as bats to humans causing devastating consequences. Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is the first radio

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Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. This is the Infinite Monkey Cage, a show that has now been running for so long that when we first started broadcasting, people still believed the Earth was round. It's not. It's an ellipsoid. It's close. It's close to a sphere, but it's not precisely spherical.

There's a thing called the GRS-80 reference geoid, actually. I have no idea what I'm meant to interrupt, because this could go on for quite a while. It's really a gravitational-like potential system. Yes, anyway, so that's not exactly the film I was referring to on YouTube, but nevertheless, continue. Thank you. This week's

episode is about invaders, species that invade, dominate and often suffocate indigenous life. And at this point in the show, I reckon we've experienced a peak listenership, which will soon dwindle once we explain that the invaders are floating pennywort and Himalayan balsam. Kind of going to be sort of a xenophobic gardener's question time. Himalayan balsam coming over here, originally decorous and now with its pretty pink stranglehold on our buttercups and daisies. Oh, no, here comes the Japanese knotweed. It seems to have got hold of Melanie Phillips.

Today's show is called Invasion. What happens when we transport species or diseases around the globe and animals, plants or microorganisms end up where they weren't meant to be? Is the introduction of a non-native species into an ecosystem always a bad thing? What are the costs of invasive species to the environment, the native flora and fauna and to the economy? But also are all species on the planet Earth invasive species? Are we the product of panspermia, life brought to Earth on a meteorite or a spaceship? Was Stonehenge the product of Venusians?

And are we being manipulated by a reptilian super race? Been reading David Icke again, haven't you? I have been reading some David Icke. Because I was at a book festival and I actually got drunk and they said, you can browse as late as you want, and I bought five, five David Icke books while intoxicated. And he mentioned a goalkeeping. There's no goalkeeping them in there at all.

It is extremely disappointing. So, joining us to discuss the delicate balance of the natural world are two scientists in perfect harmony with their environment and a Phil Jupitus. And they are... I am Phil Jupitus, poet and comedian, and my favourite invader is Suggs from the band The Invaders, which were the precursor to madness in 1978.

I'm Kate Jones. I'm a professor of ecology and biodiversity at the University College London. My favourite invader is a small microbe called Ebola. Can I just say now that at no point on even the disease-based version of The Price is Right did Ebola get an... Did they really do it?

Did Brucey do a special, a disease special? In my head, they did. Now we go to the fever round. Is it higher or lower? Or is it lower? Oh, dengue! That's one of his lesser-known catchphrases. Oh, dengue.

We haven't made it easier for you, Mark, to do your introduction, but let's pretend none of this happened. Hi, I am Dr Mark Spencer. I'm a forensic botanist, and I also specialise in the other dark side of plant life, which is invasive plant species in this country. And my favourite invasive species is us, because we are the ultimate invader. And this is our panel.

Right, Mark, obviously we've called this particular show Invasion, but we should define it. What is an invading species? It's actually quite hard. There are various definitions, but basically an invader is an organism which has usually been moved into a new part of the world through the actions of humanity

and causes sufficient damage to the ecosystem or to the economics that it changes things it supplants and changes the environment and often causes great harm to people as well in the process very different to the simpler idea of a non-native species many of these things are just organisms that have been moved around and they sit there quietly minding their own business and don't cause any significant harm. So you only know after you've tried, in a sense, then you had to be a history of damage. Well, we can attempt to model it. So there's a delightfully named thing called a pest risk assessment, which is a marvellous thing, which is where we look at what are known pathways,

such as shipping or horticulture or agriculture or going on holiday. Tourists can be vectors for non-native invasive species, such as mosquitoes. So we assess from our known knowledge of science and the behaviours of organisms what we think the risk of a new organism moving into landscape. It's fairly dry dry tedious and hard work but it's actually a really important way of actually understanding what may happen and so

just thinking about looking around a typical garden because there are certain things that we immediately might imagine we mentioned before in the kind of intro things about japanese knotweed and that kind of thing but there's strawberries strawberries indeed strawberries we know a lot about strawberries yes on this show. We know, for example, that they were first bred in Brittany around 1750, a cross of a North American Chilean species. So much as a strawberry can be both alive and dead, which we've discussed at length on this show,

a strawberry can be invasive or non-native and a linear combination of the two. Well, a strawberry can be invasive, but in this particular case, it's not. It's, as you say, derived from two non-native species. But actually, the garden strawberry is quite a sedate plant. It's never been known to go out and ravage the British landscape or to actually have its wicked way with our native wild strawberry, Phrygeria vesca, which is a lovely wild plant, which is actually decreasing quite significantly in the UK, sadly.

So the garden strawberry is most definitely a non-native, sorry, but is not an invasive. But potentially, hybridisation is a really important part in invasiveness, because when two organisms get together and hybridise, that mixture of genes can actually create novel genetic traits and bring things to the fore which can really help a species become, or a new hybrid become, really, really damaging in the environment. But in the case of our strawberry, nothing's going to happen.

I love that the image you created there initially of this kind of marauding strawberry plant there is like some kind of Triffid invading Wimbledon during the point it's a lovely um phil you are someone who travels uh well around the world and is a perpetual touring comedian and poet do you see yourself as an invasive species i see all comedians as invaders uh basically culturally. Spending a lot of time, as I do now, in Scotland, certainly the invasion of Edinburgh every August by thousands of them is something that is quite apparent to the locals. And what the comedians have done is they've crossbred over the years

to provide a much more resilient strain lately. And they'll gig everywhere. Lofts, cellars. It's very difficult to get rid of them. Anyway, my favourite invasive species, to tell the truth now, I like the grey squirrels, because I know that they wiped out the red ones, but I'm colourblind, so I didn't care anyway. But they've got different kind of... There is aren't the same either, though. I mean, it's not the case of watching Snooker in black and white. so I didn't care anyway. But they've got different kind of... Would you...

Their ears aren't the same either, though. I mean, it's not the case of, like, watching snooker in black and white, the difference between squirrels. There's structural differences, wouldn't you say? Yeah, they're smaller. The red squirrels are much smaller. They've got little cute tufts

and the grey squirrels are, like, aggressive. Oh, the narrative. The narrative. Cute. You had to say cute tufts. Grey squirrels, madam, are gorgeous in their monochrome way. Yeah, but they're vicious and, you know, they've got carrying this pox, squirrel pox. Hold a peanut at the top of your thigh in Greenwich

Park. What have you been doing in Greenwich Park? Outside of the leg, outside of the leg. They will. I've got this question on mine now. Yeah. No, but not there. You don't want to put there. For listeners at home,

you don't know that accidentally the peanut mine became quite lewd. Didn't they wipe out the red squirrels or reduce the numbers? Was it a disease that they carried rather than...? Yeah, squirrel pox. So the grey squirrels have got this disease. So they used to think they out-competed them for food, but actually they just wiped them out with a horrible disease. When you say squirrel pox,

is it dirty squirrels we're talking about? Is it squirrel syphilis we're talking about? It's parapox virus, actually. I'm happy to be corrected on that one. You look like a guilty man who thought, I know I should have slept with all those squirrels. I bought a bar of whole nut and one thing led to another. I have to tell you, the outside of the thigh.

Kate, this is an interesting point. Somewhere in here, this is an interesting point. Somewhere in here, there's an interesting point. Because the idea that an invasive species cannot just out-compete, or as you said, with this idea that the squirrels are more aggressive than the red squirrels, but can introduce disease into the population is one of the main problems, isn't it?

Yeah, so microbes can be... They're just, you know, they could be bacteria and viruses that we can't see with the naked eye. So that's the definition of a microbe. And most microbes are totally beneficial to humanity and the planet. But there are very few which cause problems, and this pox virus is one of them. But, you know, the ones which hit the headlines

cause, you know, problems in hit the headlines cause um you know problems in humans like the ebola virus um and um there's one virus which is very under underappreciated which is the lassa virus so lassa virus is like ebola and it causes more problems to people but um it doesn't get the headlines it's only got one book after it and And Ebola's got like a whole film, loads of films. So these microbes are called zoonotic viruses. So zoonotic pathogens. So they go from, they're in animals and they go into people. And you can have things like rabies,

which goes into a human and stops and the human dies. Or you can have things like Ebolaola which goes into a human from from an animal and then it goes human to human so you get it from the animal and then it goes human to human okay so it's called a stuttering chain so zoonotic one into two humans and the human dies like rabies, slavering in the mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then... But can you get humans-human transmission? I mean, if a human bit another human, for example,

would it pass on that way? I don't think that's ever happened, but somebody might correct me. Anyone? And as Kate looked out to an entire audience of rabies specialists... Generally, I imagine most of you will be, because if you're about the same age as this panel, we were brought up, weren't we, on all of those public information films,

going, hello, children, rabies is coming. Look, here's an old woman with a handbag filled with rabid chihuahuas. It's all over. It's ever since we joined the Common Market. I have to say... Whenever I used to get the ferry into France, I always thought that La Rage was a French punk band. But why is it a particular problem when a species, a non-native species,

brings a virus into either the human population or geographically? Mostly it's because the pathogen or the the organism isn't adapted to the new host and so it's not really adaptive for the pathogen the organism the new organism to kill its host i mean it's completely counterproductive but it's not adapted to the system so the new system it's in and then causes you know huge problems in the host so as we as if we evolved to cope with uh the these new organisms you get better at adapting to it so some species like bats have got different protein they've got a number of different proteins which suppress really nasty viruses in their bodies so that they carry the virus but it doesn't cause them harm but when it spills over into

somebody into another species that doesn't have those coping mechanisms that causes the problem i see so we're talking about not only the uh the human in this case adapting to the virus but the virus should adapt so it doesn't kill its host too quickly yeah i mean there's some theories that um like the cold virus you know when it first jumped into humans was devastating but you know that was so far ago that we don't we have no recollection of that but um you know that family of viruses is the same as SARS so you can they're coronaviruses so they're very similar to SARS which caused a huge problem a couple of years ago. So it's just that we're not really adapted to these new pathogens, these new organisms in our bodies, but also in ecosystems in general.

Can I just ask, so you've given us a little bit of the background there on Ebola, but in terms of the journey of that invasion, where does, you know, the last large outbreak. So where does that story begin, the story of that journey of that invasion? Well, the thing I'm really fascinated about is we're absolutely terrible. You were saying before, we're absolutely terrible at predicting where these things will emerge from. You know, we don't know where that spillover between animals and humans is going to happen. And that's fascinating to me because as we change our planets, climate changes, as we deforest areas and change land use, we're bringing people into contact with animals

and we're exposing them to pathogens which they've never seen before and they're not adapted to, and that's when you get these leaps. So it's not so much that these animals are evil and they're giving us to, and that's when you get these leaps. So it's not so much that these animals are evil and they're giving us all these horrible viruses. It's the fact that we go into the forest, we chop it down, and we hunt them for bushmeat and eat them raw. That's the problem, really. And that's where Ebola came from. It was from chimpanzees.

Well, I really like bats. I really like them. I think they're cool and amazing. And we probably think of our list from bats. But I try and hide that fact. But as you say, it's not a conscious decision, is it? We're not sure, though. Our current understanding of many other animals' intelligence is that it's not a kind of arch-evil bat

that's gone, ha-ha, no-one will believe what I'm bringing here. That's part of nature, isn't it? So I don't think it means that we should make the bats evil. It's other things they've done that we should talk about. Brian's trying to say something. Sorry. From eating them or from being bitten by them? No, it's probably from butchering them

and having contact between body fluids. So, like, you know, having something cut or something when you're cutting up a bat or slaughtering it. So that's where they think... When you're slaughtering a bat? Madam. I wasn't... I'm not slaughtering the bats? Madam. I wasn't... I'm not slaughtering the bats.

Aren't you? I love bats. This is definitely the darkest episode of Call My Bluff we've done yet. I was going to say, Mark, compared to that, floating pennywort now seems an anti-climax. No, because actually many of the things that are going on with

zoonotic organisms, this disruption is actually what's happening in plants, animals and invasive species. And floating pennywort sounds a bit sedate, sounds quite cute, sounds a bit like a sort of Victorian nursery rhyme almost, doesn't it? But floating pennywort is one of the most significant invasive species in this country, out of the plants, because I don't do things with legs and wings. Floating pennywort, it's a little green thing floats on the water and it causes major major damage to waterways and in the time it's been in the uk and also the netherlands and other parts of europe's originally from south america it has caused major major major problems with our waterways it's actually affecting your water bills as well because invasive species cost

our economy conservative estimate i think 1.6 1.6 billion pounds a year for the uk that is probably a significant estimate and in the case of floating pennywort the water companies are having to pay very significant amounts of money to clean this plant from these drainage systems from sluices along with actually there's a thing called the zebra mussel and the quagga mussel which do a similar thing they actually block pipe work and cause the bore of the pipe to shrink as the muscles get more and more and more in the pipe work the pipe shrinks effectively because there are thousands and thousands and thousands of muscles on the inside of the pipe. So we're actually facing real significant problems

with managing our water system through invasive species. So it's not just droughts in summer that are really problematic. And is it just the fact that there are no natural predators to these things because they're alien species? Again, a bit like this the the traits in in zoonotic organisms actually we have this idea of something called predator release which is you know human being goes from europe often as not to a new part of the world and we find a lovely exciting new plant or animal that we think is really good um and we look at the population

and we go which one is the really most robust and healthy looking you don't tend to collect the sickly one because it's got to get back to the europe for example you select that subpopulation you may purposefully remove any pathogens it might have on it give it a brush down give it a wash that organism is pert and healthy. You bring it to Britain, you put it in a garden or in a zoo or whatever, you cultivate it, you encourage it, and its predators are released. They're taken away from it. The organism then moves into a new environment where actually all the locals don't know how to deal with these things.

So my other favourite non-native species is buddleia, of all things. And buddleia is actually from East Asia. And buddleia doesn't really have any close relatives in Europe. So when we moved buddleia over as a garden plant in the 19th century, we took the best plant, we took a nice cutting, we put it in our gardens, all the pests and diseases were cleaned off. All the fungus got rid of. And he went, I'm going to grow like the clappers. First time buddleia was found in the wild in Britain was in 1922 in Merionethshire.

Since then, it has become one of the most abundant shrubs in lowland Britain, particularly in urban areas, but it's spreading further. And that's partly because there's absolutely nothing bar one or two moths that will eat it or touch it it's released from its predators moths were just mentioned there before we uh came out you were talking uh about bats obviously it's mainly what you talk about and uh but you mentioned uh a particular moth which i don't know if it's an invasive moth or not. No, it's got ears to hear bat echolocation. And when bats use sound to find their way around, it's got nothing to do with the other bit of the concept.

No, I was just intrigued. I heard moths, and you were telling me about one of your favourite moths beforehand. Well, OK, so these moths have got ears that hear bats echolocating. So bats echolocate to find their way around so they emit sounds and they get them to bounce off objects and then they can interpret what it is so moths have kind of cottoned on to this fact and they can some of them have got these ears that they can hear bats making these sounds and so they can fold up their wings in midair and take evasive action to get away from the bats and then some moths have evolved a capacity to jam bat signals so they emit a call that the bats then get confused

about where the moth is and can't catch it which is cool no yeah i think it is i just wanted to know about that but don't worry we're going to get back to killer diseases now. So, that was... Can I just tell you about a plant, though? Yeah. Yes. You always... There's a plant which has made a parabolic leaf

to attract bats in, and it's like a bat beacon. So the bats make echolocation sounds, and then this plant, to attract it into its you know pollen and nectar it goes here it is with the bat beacon amazing let's say that the plant which can attract the bat with its parabolic leaf beacon the beacon leaf plant is also the home to the signal disrupting moth what would happen then that's just craziness just as long as that's the craziness needed to establish that another bat that's got oh i imagine there's a number of them. No, this one's cool. This one has got a tongue that's so long that it's got a little special cavity in its chest.

So it rolls it all up and then it kind of pollinates and gets the nectar from this one plant. So is it particularly one species of plant that it pollinates? Yeah, it's going to be really screwed when that climate change takes it out. Yeah. Well, that's what... Sorry, Mark. No, I was just going to be really screwed when that climate change takes it out yeah well that's what i'm sorry mark i know i was just going to say you know climate change is the is the real sort of twister in the situation because we know that invasive species climate change and habitat loss are massive disruptors of systems and are causing huge problems so climate change is the

one we're all going what is going to happen next because we've got a fairly good understanding of biological invasion as things stand through what we've already seen but climate change is just throwing things so much up in the air we do not understand actually what's going to happen in fact actually some people are arguing essentially that we should just accept biological invasions and that actually we should accept large-scale movement, either purposefully or accidentally, of organisms around the planet because the biota is so disrupted that we just need to essentially let the fittest survive.

There's some fairly lively debates going on in this. There's also another idea called pangeification, which is this idea that back in the midst of time, when Europe, when the world was only one continent, Pangea, you might remember exactly what time period that is. I'm terrible on dates. I know he looks like he has an age, but he's not that old. Where's the years difference, isn't it?

I don't remember. Is it about 100 million? It's more than that. It's like 320 or something. Anyway, a long time ago, the world was basically one continent. And at that time, all the world's biodiversity was fairly similar, particularly because the centre was a huge desert. So it was fairly homogenous. And now we've obviously got continents all over the world and all these biodiversity hotspots have developed

and we've got different environments and et cetera. There is a concern as we move things around the planet and mix things up that we're pangeifying the planet because we're making widespread and successful organisms such as ourselves actually supplant these local unique habitats and landscapes. It does raise an interesting question, which is why do we choose a particular time frame to preserve why we're deciding that now is the time or the 19th century before some species were moved around so why do we idealize now um i don't think it's really a matter of idealization i mean often actually in this debate about invasive species people get confused about the idea of native and non-native.

So native purely and simply means an organism that's been in a piece of landscape of its own volition. Non-native is something that a human or the human population has moved around. So kind of non-native species management has sometimes been critiqued for an idealisation. It's really not so, or we try not to be. It's about being pragmatic. We know that we can't set the world in aspic in, say, 1920. What we're aiming to do is essentially minimise damage. Of the thousands of non-native species on the planet, we don't have the resources or the knowledge to

control every single one of them so we tend to focus on the ones that we know are significantly damaging because it's it's really about being fairly careful with our resources you know if i rush around and see every non-native plant that i see in london go ah non-native plant kill kill kill kill i would look quite lunatic but it's a terrible waste of resources so we're really looking to actually manage those species that we believe are going to be hazardous and problematic or already are because some of these things are actually really going to affect your own health there's actually a horrible well it's a nice plant as well and thing called ragweed um ambrosia lovely name um and actually for those of you who are asthma sufferers and haemifever sufferers you will not want it coming to this country because it is a major allergenic far

worse than your average bit of pollen and it's invading parts of southern europe and it's really rather unpleasant you said you'd look quite kind of uh you know insane if you ran around going kill kill kill but you would get a column for the Daily Express, so it kind of goes both ways. Phil, you were unnerved by our last show that you were on about simulation theory, and you were expecting this to be a fun one about plants. I was. How are you feeling in terms of unnerved tonight?

Well, I'm less likely to clasp the nut to the outer edge of my thigh now, knowing that if the squirrel might be carrying Ebola, I may not have picked up all the facts in the right order on this show. Here's the thing about invading, and you said the show would be about invasion. To me, invading is a verb where you have to... I don't imagine that the squirrels had a meeting and said, we must go to Europe, where the red ones are waiting,

we will destroy them. In the Victorian era, there was this... All around the world, there were societies called naturalisation societies, which was essentially Europeans going to all sorts of places around the world that possibly they shouldn't have been in the format they were, and deciding that they wanted to make them more English.

So particularly in countries like New Zealand, we decided that New Zealand's plant life and animals were not interesting enough, so we went, right, let's introduce foxes, stoats, rabbits, blackbirds, sparrows. These were all purposeful things done to beautify and improve these landscapes which in the case of new zealand has been absolutely disastrous um it's costing the new zealand's economy millions to manage and new zealand's unique plant and wildlife is being really really hammered by these things so it's um a bit of a mess I like the fact you call colonialism a format. Just pitching it to Channel 5.

I was struggling for words. The format we're looking at is a lot of pith helmets and a certain amount of subtle anglicised aggression. I've managed to save one of my favourite things. It's the bat that walks, isn't it? Well, that. No, this is a non-bat example. Oh, my gosh. The kakapo. The kakapo's the best. I love it.

The kakapo is the most awesome thing ever. It's like a large parrot that's about this big. That doesn't work on radio, does it? No, but it's nice. It gives them the freedom to imagine whatever size they'd like it to be. It's a true moment of natural history democracy. Was that that big from

the table or the ground? Because the ground... Is this how big I hope it is? It's a metre long parrot. They are, yeah, they are fantastic. They're knee high. But they've got little pads, heating pads, so they don't have to get cold.

They monitor them, they've got little weight scales that they go on to see if they've gained weight and go back again. I love that example because it is one of my favourite organisms on the planet, after all the plants, of course. But it really does show, actually, the risks of us letting biological invasion continue in the way it is because the kakapo's numbers are increasing somewhat, but it is a species that is on the life support system.

It is taking a massive amount of care and love and commitment by those amazing people to keep that incredible organism with us. There are less of the kakapo, individual numbers of kakapo, than there are people in this room. And that's awful. What is the competition? Is it it from birds non-non mainly non-native mammals uh they and they eat them particularly the young they they take the eggs and stoats etc etc so that's the main significant problem and people occasionally people kill them

um so yeah we are as i said earlier on we are the ultimate invader we have moved from our ancestral lands in africa we've colonized the whole world and increasingly space and everywhere we go we change and sadly often destroy habitats and environment okay just thinking of uh in in terms of the the creatures that the mistakes we make when we change habitat i was thinking then mentioning like cane toads which are probably quite legendary and there was an amazing documentary made about 30 years ago all about that version and and is is there a kind of human habit where which we probably hopefully got better at now which is oh i have a problem with this this will stop it if i introduce that which we mentioned before about

gray schools as well so with the cane toads it seems to be the equivalent of i have a problem with this, this will stop it if I introduce that, which we mentioned before about grey squirrels as well. So with the cane toads, it seems to be the equivalent of, I have a problem with mice, so I'll introduce tigers to the habitat. Oh, this seems to have had a lot of ramifications. I mean, is that... I mean, the cane toad story... Yeah, there's a lot of examples in history of us doing that and some terrible consequences. And, you know, I'm a bit ambivalent about this uh next example which is um using crispr and things like cas9 to modify genomes so that we make new organisms to control

diseases so this is actually happening now with mosquitoes so uh teams around the world are making either modifying mosquitoes so that there is a sex bias so that there's only males and that suppresses a population or you have a kind of introduce a new gene which makes possibly not susceptible to the plasmodium for the malaria so that you have this gene drive so it kind of takes on in the population and so as you they've got a selective advantage so you just get replacement of the population with these species but there are they are new new species that we've made so you know that's it's quite scary to me actually i mean malaria is a huge problem worldwide one of the biggest burdens of disease that we have

so you know we have to be realistic about that we need to deal with it but um i find these new technologies a little bit scary i'm i was going to be positive oh my god i'm going to be positive if i may um that that concept of cane toads so you know um falls under this idea of biocontrol and certainly tinkering with genomes is challenging but biocontrol is a really interesting idea which has been around for quite a long time and often people say ah cane toad and the idea of biocontrol is what you do is you've got an invasive organism that's causing a problem you go into its home range and you select very carefully a pathogen the thing you left behind that will eat it we've actually been doing work on this with himalayan balsam in this country so there are risks with these introductions of either new organisms to control or some of these other things like changing genomes.

But I believe they are increasingly our last options in many cases. Trouble is, we don't always know what's going to happen. Biocontrol itself, the cane toad is a terrible example of so-called biocontrol because basically it was a group of people going, oh oh let's take this organism which eats just about anything they already knew that it had an appetite that was just vast put it into the australian landscape whereupon it ate virtually everything bar the target organism so it was a dreadful example of biocontrol whereas there is potential certainly in the area i work in himalayan balsam which phil was just saying earlier on was actually a horrible pest in parts of the

british isles causing significant damage to waterways it is a very beautiful plant we're working on releasing a specialist fungus which is heavily co-evolved to just live on himalayan balsam and himalayan balsam is actually a type of busy lizzie, basically. It's a relative of your garden busy lizzie. And we've tested this fungus on other busy lizzies around the world, because there are many of them, and it only likes Himalayan balsam. So we do all these sort of tests and risks. Clearly, these things can have unforeseen consequences.

So that's why I said right at the beginning program it's very important to actually go with prevention these kind of cures that we're trying to explore around altering genomes doing biocontrol organisms should be last resorts really what we should be doing is not doing it in the first place what is the concern with it look at mosquitoes for the example that you gave. Modifying the genome specifically to exclude the parasites that carries malaria seems to me to be an extremely simple and good idea. What concerns you about that? The population suppression modifications,

I worry that that will disrupt ecosystems. I don't have any data on that, and I don't think anybody has looked at that yet. That's reducing the number of mosquitoes, because then, for example, well, bat populations... But what, are the bats going to eat? Yeah. You know, I've got the bats in mind here.

But in terms of the modification to essentially target the parasite itself... I feel like Jeff Goldblum here. Life will find a way. You don't know what's going to happen, how they're going to get out of... If there's one gene, you've got to be really careful. You can't just do one gene modification. You've probably got to do five or ten or something

so that you can then evolve. They can't just evolve out of it so so you're introducing new new organism into the environment and you know how do we know that's safe i'm not trying to be negative but we do need to think about these things yeah are we always going to end up though as much as you know human beings believe that they can control the you know somehow we'll manage to do it. We always end up in the... As Richard Feynman said, the imagination of nature is far greater than the imagination of man.

And so whatever we do, it'll end up being the old woman who swallowed a fly. Don't worry, I've got a cure for that. Oh, that's had ramifications. Have the bird, then. Oh, no, that is always going to be... I think we are undeniably in the biggest biological experiment of all time really apart from possibly the evolution of life in the first place on this planet you know what we're doing um to our planetary systems is extraordinary you know the anthropocene the age of man you know is found now in evolving rock strata is being played out in our world's biodiversity. And, you know, things we're doing in terms of pathogens evolving,

human health crises, et cetera, et cetera, these are all part of this significant problem of biological invasions on our planet. Also, we are crammed into cities. And if it's something that microbes like, is a host which is very crammed together? You said what microbes like. How do you find out what they like?

You have to specialise to find out those kind of things, Phil. Anyway, we're living in these huge cities which have got, you know, if you have a spillover like Ebola, then because they were so kind of crammed with people and their healthcare systems weren't brilliant in that region in West Africa, that's why you've got such a potent mix of factors which caused that huge epidemic and there is one question that we always ask when we record during uh the summer uh especially with a panel like this um is it still acceptable for us to kill all the wasps or will there be ramifications no wasps

are wonderful we should love them um you know there them. There is concerns over the Asian hornet, which is actually a relatively easy organism to identify. There are ID sheets out there on the internet. But wasps are fantastic. They're incredibly important controllers of other invertebrate populations. Nobody should kill wasps. But we should kill the Asian hornet.

No, you should report it. Report it? Report it? Report it to the police. What are they going to do? I eat your grass. There is a system for report, well, there are many systems now in the UK and across Europe for reporting invasive non-native species

because actually whilst there are experts like myself around, there are not enough of us and there are not enough eyes in our expert heads to see all of these organisms so there are many many of these citizen science programs and engagements with volunteers to keep their eyes out for these organisms so in the case of asian hornet the beekeepers have been very heavily enrolled into this program of keeping their eye out for it and so the action we've taken as soon as possible but it's a hornet it's a big thing it's a big chunky hornet and it's got a different banding pattern on it compared to our native european hornet which is also a marvelous insect which we should not harm phil kill the

wasps no anyway so the uh um we asked our audience question we asked the audience if one species was going to rule the world apart from human beings what would would it be and why? Jeremy Clarkson. He's not human, but he has a skin thick enough to survive nuclear winter. That's from Ronnie Smith. Bees. Down with the patriarchy. It's time for the matriarchy.

I love it when he does reading that he's not seen before. You see, this is like... Because if it's things on the periodic table, he's fine. But with, like, full verbs and nouns, it's like... It requires a knowledge of bees. What does the human being mean? What is this thing called love?

Oh, it's bees. Matriarchy, patriarchy. No, I want you to explain to me why it says that. What is it? Well, I'm at a loss as well, you know. I think it's because it's the Queen Bee, so obviously what they're saying is because the queen bee... I'm just guessing here, I'm just guessing, right?

So, now, here's the next... By the way, someone did an amazing drawing of a silverback gorilla. So, it really is. That shows you how long people have to wait to get in here. This is... If one species were going to rule the world apart from human beings, what would it be and why? Silverback gorilla.

The eyes show deep thought and disgust in equal measure. Who's going to argue? Thanks, Jeff. And that will, of course, be joining the gallery. I'm afraid we cannot return your paintings. Phil, go on. I've got one here. It's the one species ducks.

Because, to start, they could be tax deductible. French poodle! Just to annoy the Brexiteers. I'll go for this one then. Robins. They're not big or clever, but they can make us laugh. Bless you. Thank you very much to our panel, Phil, Mark and Kate.

Bless you. Thank you very much to our panel, Phil, Mark and Kate. And also, by the way, just a quick apology. Sorry to any Flat Earthers who took umbrage with our introduction. They've actually threatened to come round, but they won't find us because their sat-navs won't work working on that system. So, goodbye. Monkey cage, monkey cage In the infinite monkey cage Without your trousers In the infinite monkey cage

Turned out nice again. Hi, this is Lauren Laverne. I've taken control of your podcast airwaves for a moment to let you know about Late Night Woman's Hour, my podcast for Radio 4. Every week I talk to brilliant, interesting, funny women about life, politics, friendship, love, instinct, feminism, hair, snacks, money, and, well, everything, really.

You know when you talk to your good mates and the world seems to make sense again afterwards? That's what we try to do every single week on Late Night Woman's Hour, and we'd love you to join in. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with

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