Lions, New Tigers, and Bears, oh my: The 344th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

0:00 (Music) Hey folks, welcome to the DarkHorse podcast live stream, 344-ish. It is now officially autumn.

0:15 As of 5 05 p.m. Pacific time yesterday,

0:19 September 22nd, 5 05 p.m. Pacific time, whatever that is, GMT, 7, 8, something. Which means that the days are changing fast. For some people this means they can finally go outside again. For those of us in farther northern latitudes, it means the end of the light. Yes, and it means that the dehiscence is about to begin.

0:45 September 22nd, 5 It has already, but that might warrant a definition. The dehiscence is the release of the deciduous leaves from the trees wrongly described in the scientific literature as senescence of the leaves, which is not what it is. Yeah, it's not always described that way, but it has been described that way. But yeah, it's begun.

1:13 September 22nd, 5 There are definitely little eddies of leaves being caught in small vortices of wind that we are seeing here in the Pacific Northwest. I don't know what's going on in the northeast at this point or the upper Midwest, but I imagine that everyone above 45 degrees north is feeling it. It's feeling it. Yeah, it's amazing actually our weather this year seems to have changed almost at the instant.

1:37 September 22nd, 5 The equinox I walked outside this morning was like, "And it smells like autumn." Yeah, sure does. So today we're going to talk about cats, old and new, fat bears, and overwhelmed frogs. We're going to do biology today. We got cute and fuzzy, fat and fuzzy, and- They're cute. And cute and- Slimy. Slimy, yeah, pretty much.

1:57 September 22nd, 5 Pretty much. And cute and slimy and horny. That's what the frogs are. I cannot speak for them. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe the cats and the bears are too, but that's not the part of the story that we intend to talk about today. Yeah, I think in the bears case, it's the wrong moment. But anyway, we will get there.

2:13 September 22nd, 5 Yeah, although I didn't have time to look into, and maybe you know this, with regard to the bears who are putting on all the fat right now, becoming all chunky, when the females in particular need this in order to get through not just a winter of hibernation, but a winter of gestation, birth, and then lactation, which is actually incredibly energetically expensive, more so in many ways than gestation is, because you're growing- Now that you've got it out of you, you can grow the mass of your babies even faster if you can supply them with the nutrients.

2:47 September 22nd, 5 So these females give birth sort of mid- in the middle of, I don't know, it's not the center of, but in the middle of hibernation. And I don't remember if they, like many mammals, have delayed implantation, or some other reproductive feature by which they manage to store sperm, or otherwise basically decouple the act of mating and the period of time when they have access to males, and gestation being a set length within species-ish, and then the time of birth.

3:23 September 22nd, 5 Because where individuals live doesn't necessarily make the length of time between copulation and birth the right time for both. Well, as the resident mammalogist, I'm embarrassed that I don't remember off the top of my head, I wish I'd looked it up, but I think there is diapause in in grizzlies, and I'm trying to remember any details about the exact mechanism and I don't.

3:55 September 22nd, 5 But anyway, yes, I do think they are decoupled because hibernation creates this sort of awkward obstacle to a linear gestation. Yeah, awkward, but also, I mean, we're gonna talk about bears in a bit, but awkward, but also provides an obvious moment for cubs to be born and not to have to have the lack of safety that comes with a mom having to disappear in order to replenish her stores.

4:24 September 22nd, 5 She's replenishing her stores now, she's building them up, so that at the point they're born, she can never leave them. Yep, which is pretty much the story that we are going to be getting to is a buildup of exactly those resources. Yeah, but first cats. First cats. And first, okay, so we're gonna do a Q&A on Sunday at 11am Pacific.

4:47 September 22nd, 5 Join us there on our Locals. You can join us on Locals right now for our watch party. We've got access to our Discord server there, all of our past Q&A's, Q's and A's. I think we've established is how that should read sound. And also check out Bret's Patreon where he has monthly conversations. And last bit of housekeeping before we get into cats is of course our awesome sponsors of which we today and always have three right up front and no more no more ads read throughout the live stream.

5:21 September 22nd, 5 So let's get that started. Yeah. Our first sponsor this week is Cowboy Colostrum. As DarkHorse listeners already know, the modern world is filled with hyper novelty and we, amazing, adaptable beings that we are, are still just barely keeping up with the changes. One of our newest sponsors, Cowboy Colostrum, can help.

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7:47 https //cowboycolostrum.com/darkhorse. I was sourcing a piece of information. Did you clarify that it is not colostrum from cowboys? Because I think that's... It is not colostrum from cowboys and it's also not colostrum from cookies. Interesting, yes. Good point. Nor is it colostrum. I mean, you can infer this from just the Venn diagram of what we just did.

8:08 https Nor is it colostrum from cowboys who are eating cookies. Cookie-fed cowboys. And I would just point out... Cookie-fed and finished. Cowboys. All right, that is... I'm back. Yeah. I do want to point out. I know you do. Cowboy. Inferior term to the Spanish horseman. I don't know why we call him cowboys.

8:34 https I just need to register that. Yeah, I think it's fine. I've been reading some books about the Gulf Coast that take place in the Gulf Coast of Florida recently and if I remember correctly, I think it's... Cowhunters is what they're referred to as. The cowboys of old in Florida and old Florida were referred to as cowhunters.

9:00 https Cowhunters? That's all right. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah. I could see that. Yeah. Caballero. I don't... Horseman, okay, but Caballero is a good word. I'll grant you that. Well, that's what I'm saying. I know, but in the Spanish. Yeah, in the Spanish. It sounds right and the meaning is... I mean, Nino de Baca is not going to be there.

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14:53 https So correction on my part. Yes. The Jewish New Year has already passed for this year. I wasn't gonna weigh in. That's what I believe to be the case but... Never in love with the family. Yeah, so right. So it is not a reference. Well, no, it's actually more plausibly a reference except I wrote that and just didn't catch that.

15:13 https It still had a line from some months ago. I think our point is if you are somewhere in whatever year it is that you're using this would be a good time to have less toxins in your life. Absolutely. I mean spring cleaning is this thing, right? It makes sense. You get to open up after having been closed down to keep out the cold for a while.

15:33 https And so you just air everything out and it's an excuse to go through things and de-dust and declutter and all of this. But in some ways it's more important to start out the colder enclosed season in a non-toxic framework so that you don't start accumulating and concentrating toxins. Absolutely. A little fall cleaning.

15:50 https A little fall cleaning. The new academic year. That's what it's a reference to. Got it. It's getting worse. Really? Yes. Really. Okay. I want to talk about cats today. Yes. Because as probably everyone will have heard by now, there is a newly named species of cat in the academic world. Can you see my screen?

16:18 https Yeah. Okay. Don't show it just yet. The tilcayo, a name that is the specific epithet given by the team of researchers who have described it and given its species level status. And that is a name that has been used definitely in the Bolivian communities where it is found. So this is one of these cases that is probably actually very common, but not usually so clear with regard to the sort of order of operations where local knowledge actually precedes the Western scientific knowledge about what's out there in the world.

16:56 https I did not encounter the Bolivian knowledge in looking into this. How much can we glean? How much have the Bolivian seen of this animal's behavior in the wild? So we, of course, we'll get back to the tilcayo. And I'm going to start by going out phylogenetically and talking about some of their relatives and get closer and closer.

17:18 https But I will say before we do that, that we seem to know very, very little. There are, in fact, two individuals on which the description of this as a full-fledged species is based. Both the genetic work and to some degree the physical description, including skull morphology, of the organism. So there are non-living specimens.

17:49 https They are from, there have been mouse parts detected in, I can't remember if it's fecal, or it's probably, it must be fecal, although it could be other kinds of samples. If domestic cats are any-- Cat owner. Yes, if domestic cats are any model, which we might expect them to be. So little rodent eaters is a little cat, like four or five pounds.

18:17 https It's been misdescribed in several places in several ways, including it's a three-pound cat. Now it's about a 1.5 to two kilogram cat, which is closer to five, six pounds. But that's still a small cat. That's still smaller than our domestic cats, even the ones that are appropriately shaped and not overfed by their ridiculous owners.

18:36 https So I want to just say something about the state in mammalogy. Very common for new species to be declared almost always, especially with a fairly large creature, and it's tiny as this kitty is, it's a fairly large creature. It's not a little tiny rodent somewhere. But in general, when you get a new large-bodied mammal, it's the result of what would be called splitting, where something that was once recognized to be a species turns out to be two by some standard that's applied by mammalogists.

19:07 https That's not so interesting. I mean, it might be interesting if you're interested in the particular clade, but it's not that interesting that there's some division, because all of the intermediates on the way to being your own species exists too. So we have every level of division within a population, where subpopulations might have some little quirk that doesn't justify species-level designations.

19:29 https And indeed, in the paper, the authors actually raise an existing subspecies to the level of species as well, separately within the same clade of so-called tiger cats. That is not big news, the splitting causing a new species. The idea that there is a bona fide cat that was unknown to science, that is discovered, that's a very rare phenomenon.

19:51 https This has happened a few times. A creature this size or larger has been found in the jungle somewhere. I remember one when we were in graduate school that was, I believe, a little antelope. But it's pretty uncommon. To find a new world cat is a very special thing. The story of how this happened is kind of a classic.

20:21 https Go for it. We have plenty of time to go back through the history of Feliformia and Felidae, which I will do, and then we'll arrive at the tilcayo. So my understanding is that a gentleman who will be understandable to all of us living the Andes found an orphaned kitten. Having one of two reactions to such a thing that are conceivable, he took the kitten in.

20:48 https No, he lived with it for a year first. That's what I mean. He took it in to his home. Oh, yes. Okay. And at some point, it became clear to him that the incomplete work of domestication that has been accomplished with our house cats had not yet been done with this animal. He couldn't live with it, so he decided to take it to a sanctuary.

21:09 https And at the point he delivered the cat to the sanctuary, cat experts realized that this wasn't something that they were familiar with. And a little bit of digging and then a bunch of genomics revealed that, in fact, this is a, you know, not only a new species, but long divided from its closest relatives.

21:31 https I don't know how long divided. We'll get to that point with regard to the range of the entire tiger cat species complex. Well, I guess long range. What I read, which you may have some evidence that argues against it, said something like a million and a half years separated. Oh, I don't think that's true.

21:48 https It was a hard number to believe it seems too long. Yeah, especially because, I mean, part of what is understood about the felids, the cats, all the cats in South America generally, is that they only started moving into South America. They are their progenitors at the point of the great faunal interchange that occurred as a result of the Panama isthmus forming as North and South America moved together.

22:12 https I don't remember which actually, which landmass was moving. Maybe South America was moving North. So at the point that those two land masses became connected, if you've never considered what might happen under such a circumstance, all the terrestrial animals suddenly have twice-ish the land to explore.

22:30 https Those who don't do as well, for instance, the marsupials, didn't do as well. You only have a few remnant marsupials left in the Americas, whereas in Australia, which never had a funnel interchange with, say, mainland Asia, the marsupials have done quite well. They don't tend to compete as well in direct competition with the placental mammals.

22:51 https Cats moved South. At the point that the Panama isthmus was formed. And that's not that many millions of years ago. That's pretty recent. Yep. I still, I don't think the great faunal interchange actually argues against a 1.5 million year. I don't think it does inherently, but the tiger cat complex is, well, let's get there.

23:16 https Yeah, let's get there. I did not spend time on the dates, and I don't think the original research has been done here really focused on the dates either. So I'm not sure that we can- I mean, the dates are always questionable because they will have been arrived at here exclusively since it's the only evidence we have through genomics, which requires assumptions about the rate of evolutionary change of DNA sequences, which are fundamental.

23:45 https I mean, just, we're far afield here, and we're inside phylogenetics as it were, which is a better term than inside baseball because more people are interested in baseball than phylogenetics. Yeah, exactly. But phylogenetics, which is to say that the- or systematics, it goes by a lot of different names, but is the science of the discovery of and description of relationships between species and establishment therefore of clades, which is nested sets of species going out and out and out.

24:15 https So one of the remarkable things about this science that both you and I benefited from in grad school being, you know, imagining when we went into grad school that phylogenetics, systematics, was nothing we were interested in. We were glad that there were people doing it, but not what we're not what we're interested in.

24:32 https We were interested in the live animals and what they were doing and why. But because it is an historical science, there is so much inference that is required that you have to be, you are forced to be explicit about your philosophy, about your epistemology, about the assumptions that you are making about what your claims of truth are.

24:52 https That just forces a logical parsimony and clarity that you then start to use everywhere else in your life. Because once you see the value of a deep and ingrained philosophy of science where you're looking at your assumptions clearly and explicitly every single time, you cannot go back. Like there's just no way to take yourself or anyone else seriously if they are not making similarly clear claims about what it is they think they know and why.

25:22 https And so, systematics is in part, I think, a remarkable science because it forces this into the explicit. I agree. Evolutionary biology is inherently hobbled by the fact that time erases evidence. So you're always working from incomplete data sets at a level that's counterproductive. Phylogenetic systematics, especially as you have things like large data sets based on increasingly large fractions of genomes, allows you to actually be rigorous in a way that's useful to the whole discipline.

26:02 https I would argue for a whole, I know you agree with this, but a whole second importance of phylogenetics, even if drawing trees that describe the evolutionary historical relationships between species and larger clades, isn't what you're most interested in. It allows you to understand adaptive evolution in a way that would be, I think, literally impossible to do with any level of rigor if you didn't have reasonably good maps.

26:29 https You'd be stuck in arm waving territory, so-called adaptive storytelling, without evidence, without rigor for many of the questions that are most interesting, absent the systematic basis of what were the relationships. Yeah. And to make this obvious at one level, if you're interested in adaptive evolution, we struggle and in some ways are hobbled at a critical level anytime we don't have two examples of something.

26:57 https If you have one example of the evolution of something like feathers, which have literally only evolved once, then saying why they evolved is a difficult puzzle, maybe impossible. And so that may seem like a strange example to those who haven't considered evolution of feathers, but there is a real and live debate in the evolution of birds as to whether flight or feathers or endothermy evolved first.

27:22 https In any case where you have more than one evolution of something, you can start to talk about what it is that correlates, you know, where the examples that we have seen this evolve and what goes with it. And every time that something is absent, you know, the trait you're interested in is also absent, that begins to make a strong argument for at least a relationship between the two things.

27:43 https So you need a tree in order to know how many times something has evolved. Tent making has evolved multiple times. We can talk about it in an adaptive terms this way, tent making and bats, which was what I studied. Tent making at the North Phase, in an awesome reading. Yeah. But anyway, point being, phylogenetics is whether you're interested in it directly or not, it is so necessary to all of the stuff in evolutionary science that you and I became good at it and fascinated by it and appreciative of the whole philosophy of science that we were not otherwise being exposed to.

28:17 https Yeah, precisely. Okay, let's talk about, so again, the tilcayo, the newly named new species of Bolivian mountain cat, is a new world cat within a clade of new world cats within cats within the larger group called Feliformia, Feliformia, Feliformia, within the group called Carnivora. And Carnivora is a strange name at some level, because it, like many names, given the scientific names, given organisms, is easily conflated with the ecological description.

28:52 https And in part, it was the group was named Carnivora because it was observed that almost all the members of the Carnivora are in fact carnivorous that eat meat. But there are some members of the phylogenetic group Carnivora that don't eat meat, my favorite example being the kinkajou, which is this gorgeous arboreal nocturnal frugivorous, this like dedicated fruit eating mammal of the new world tropics, just gorgeous, sweet, sweet little animal.

29:20 https A procyonid, which are raccoons. So the point is, it's in a little clade of carnivores and it evolved a different niche. So it's a frugivore, but it's a carnivoran. So within the carnivorans, there is basically a bifurcation. You have the caniform or the dog-like carnivorans and the feliform or cat-like carnivorans.

29:47 https Okay, so you can show my screen now. I've got several slides of pretty cat-like things to walk us through and you can interrupt at any moment you want. So here we have spotted hyenas. Crocuta crocuta, these ones happen to be in Botswana. Spotted hyenas are actually extraordinary. Most people who haven't thought about them much think of them as being kind of gross and mean and smelly, but they're truly extraordinary.

30:12 https They are in the feliform, half of the carnivoran tree, but they are not felids. So what that means is, again, we're in nested sets territory. So if you say, "What all is a spotted hyena phylogenetically?" you can say, "Well, it's alive on Earth, so it's life on Earth, and it's a eukaryote," which means it has cells that have nuclei nested in them.

30:36 https And I'm going to skip a whole bunch of stuff, but it's an animal and it's a vertebrate and it's a tetrapod and it's a mammal and it's a placental mammal and it's a carnivora and it's a feliform, but it's not a Felidae. So this is cat adjacent, but not a cat. So wait, I've got to interject here. A lot of people looking at that, most people when they first encounter the idea of hyena feel like it is of a dog form.

31:04 https Yes. It's important to say that when you say that it is a feliform and those are the cat-like carnivorans, it doesn't matter how dog-like it becomes in any regard. What puts it there in the cat-like part of the carnivora is history. So it doesn't matter that it strikes us now as more dog-like in some ways.

31:29 https Exactly. And to use the example that I always go to that's easiest to make this point with, I mentioned that these guys are vertebrates and tetrapods and mammals. Tetrapod, if you know any Greek, you say, okay, that's four-footed. Okay, it has four-footed. Well, we're tetrapods too. And you can say, okay, well, we came up on by two feet, but we still have the two others, so I get it.

31:53 https But snakes are also tetrapods, not because they actually have four feet, but because they come from a lineage that did. And the lineage was named for the major innovation that occurred at the point that that lineage began to merge onto land and take over. And just because some members of that lineage have reversed course, have become whales or snakes or whatever, doesn't make them any less tetrapoda, but it does make them less quadrupedal.

32:22 https Yeah, and I was going to make this point. The idea that you have these two terms means that you don't have to trip over this every time you're talking about it with somebody else who knows the code. When you say something's a quadruped, you're saying it's four-footed. When you say something is a tetrapod, you're talking about where on the evolutionary tree it is, irrespective of how it locomotes.

32:40 https Right, but there are a lot of terms like carnivora that aren't quite so clear. Well, yeah, carnivoran as the phylogenetic term and carnivore as the ecological term. But almost no one knows that. It's not as clear. Okay, so spotted hyenas and the other hyenas, including the aardwolf, are a feliform from the catish half of the carnivoran tree, as are fossas.

33:07 https Here's Cryptoprocta ferox. This is again not a felid, but it's a feliform. These guys are from Madagascar. This is the largest carnivoran in Madagascar. There are several others, Galidia elegans being a little beautiful little weasel-like animal. These are pretty big. We never saw any. They're very elusive, very hard to find solitary.

33:29 https We saw lots of Galidia. We saw lots of Galidia, but we never saw fossas. And there are others too, but unlike the caniform half of the carnivoran tree, where there's lots and lots of other things going on besides things that look like dogs, which include bears and procyonids, as you said, which is the raccoons and coatis and such, the cats, the feliforms have a few little lineages, including weasels and civets and such, and then it's mostly cats.

34:03 https True cats. True cats. So here we go. We've got eight broad clades of true cats, and I'm going to gloss over a couple of them because they're not familiar to most of us. But there are three of those clades that are only found in the old world, the old world being a term referring to everything that's not the Americas, basically.

34:26 https So this new cat, this tilcayo that has just been described is from Bolivia. It's a new world cat, and it's from the only clade of cats that only exists in the new world, in fact. So let's first just start in the old world and say, well, the caracal, which is a gorgeous animal, and the way this one is standing, those ears almost look like antlers, the African savannah.

34:47 https And so this is from what we call a good group, a monophyletic group that includes both a stem ancestor and all of its descendants that includes servals. This particular caracal is from South Africa. There are a couple of other groups of Asian cats, so leopard cats, and one other group that I'm forgetting at the moment of uniquely old world cats that have not been to the new world at all.

35:15 https And then there's also these guys, Felis catus. This is our current epic tabby, Fairfax, on a tree near our house. But the domestic cat clade is actually another good monophyletic clade, and it includes the African sand cats from which we believe domestic cats have evolved. So this is considered an old world clade.

35:42 https And in fact, I almost wasn't going to talk about it because most of the literature is like, well, there's four totally old world clades of cats, one of which is the domestic cats, like clearly they've gotten everywhere. We have helped them. They didn't get here on their own. They didn't raft on, you know, vegetation rafts across the Atlantic, but we brought them and they're here.

36:03 https Anything to say about that? Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I still think old world lineage is a fine way to describe it. And, you know, they're invasive here and, you know, yeah, I don't have anything really to add. Okay, so then this leaves, there's four monophyletic lineages of cats that are found in the new world, but only one that is only found in the new world.

36:28 https So let's go first through the three lineages that are found in both new and old world, not including these guys, the domestic cats. So first we have puma, also known as mountain lion, also known as Florida panther, also known as catamount. This guy has a ton of names, right? And the distribution, the geographic range of these animals is extraordinary.

36:53 https They go everywhere from like tundra down into the Amazon. And so they have ecological capacities that are beyond most of what most of cats. And they come from a clade that includes also the jaguarundi, which is a strange name. A lot of these cat names are weird because they're named for some cat that someone was thinking of, even though the cat they're named for is not closely related.

37:18 https So the mountain lion is not particularly closely related to the jaguar. It is in a clade with the jaguarundi, which I don't have a picture of here for you, but it's a sort of an odd looking smaller bodied cat. And then also cheetahs. So cheetahs and mountain lions are very close relatives. Actually, you can kind of see it in the face.

37:34 https You could kind of see it in the face. So I wanted to just point something out here as we are in passing through this clade. The idea of an animal like this having that huge range is significant because it is a creature like us in the sense of our range is immense. How is that possible? You know, even before modern technology, how is it possible for us to have gotten to the four corners of the earth as one species?

38:09 https The answer is software. That the Puma is a generalist platform that can survive. There's enough for it to survive on and it is capable of doing all of the important things, preserving heat when it needs to, shedding heat when it needs to. It can do all those things. The robot part of the creature is broadly capable and the software part of the creature can be adapted to things as different as, you know, tundra, Amazonian lowland jungle, marsh, sub-tumble marsh.

38:44 https Everglades. So the point is that's it's not the way to think of it is not really, hey, that species can do everything. It's that that creature is a body plan that can do everything with software programs that can be adapted to local opportunities. And so the software is highly speciated and we are the same way.

39:09 https Our ancestors were highly speciated in their software program, even if not speciated at the level of the wetware. And you can infer evidence for a similar sort of software diversification in the domestic cat. Yep. Right. That they are able to, even if they aren't thrilled to do everything from living in a high rise apartment and never see the outside to being feral and living on the streets in the inner city to having, you know, a good life on a farm, say, where people also bring them in at night.

39:38 https Yeah, highly flexible. And, you know, there are other you know, we're going to get to one in the next segment. But bears also, especially things like brown bears, have a very wide range of habitats. Also, same explanation. This is a generalist body plan and a software program that can get rewritten by evolution on things that are past outside the genome.

40:04 https Basically a culture that in something like a bear or a puma is past mother to offspring. And we're not going to talk about them today, but also found in North America and elsewhere, generalist body plan, great diversity of capacity and software is crows. The person's general. Okay, so this was the first of the four new world cat clades that is and the first of three that is also in the old world, the cheetah being the representative from the Felis clade.

40:38 https Then we also have jaguar and, you know, Jaguars are extraordinary. It's the only new world cat. This the jaguar is the only new world cat in a clade that basically includes most of the big cats cheetahs are different cheetahs are related to mountain lions, but this includes leopards, snow leopards, lions and tigers.

40:58 https So interestingly, this clade cat's big, fierce, scary, gorgeous cats also includes the one social cat. And, you know, that's that's a diversification itself that also suggests a high reliance on culture because there's a lot of communication and handing down of traditions within lion prides. Yes. And also, it has a much reduced range.

41:23 https Now humans have been hard on it, but it also originally had a very large range. The jaguar. Yeah. Yeah. So same same explanation. And, you know, way to flip that around is evolutionarily speaking, one great way to get from one bit of time into the future is to be a generalist body plan that can be adapted to many different opportunities and have the software be written by local opportunities that that actually has an immunity to extinction to it because things go wrong in some large portion of your range.

41:59 https There's some other portion of your population that isn't affected because it's eating something else. That's right. That's right. Okay. And then the third clade of cats that is found in both the new world and the old world is the lynx. So Lynx canadensis is the Canadian lynx. This also, it also includes the American Bazel within this clade and the Eurasian lynx.

42:26 https This particular cutie is in Montana, but of course extends far north into Canada. Man. Look at those paws. Look at those paws. Yeah, I had a picture first that didn't include the paws. And like you need, you need the paws on this one. Yeah, snow-fued cat. You need the paws. And I love a cat with those, those ear tufts as the caracal and the serval also has, right?

42:49 https So, you know, really gorgeous animal. Okay, that leaves, though, one remaining clade of New World cats that we haven't talked about that's entirely New World, which is Leopardus. Currently, everything's in Leopardus, the genus, although that's probably going to get split up as things get renamed. This is an ocelot.

43:08 https Everyone's heard of ocelots, and this is actually from Corcovado National Park, where you and I have spent some time, a long time ago, on our very first exploration through the neotropics together, back in the early 90s. Ocelots are a larger-bodied member of the tiger cat, or of the clade, that usually the actual tiger cats is like a smaller, slightly smaller group within this clade.

43:37 https So, I'm being a little imprecise here because I feel like there's some difference in terms of how people are thrown into the clade, but Leopardus is the genus. Ocelot is the biggest of them, if I... Yeah, I think I said that. And then another one that many people have heard of, although it's somewhat less common within this clade, is the margay, Leopardus.

44:01 https I never know how to pronounce this specific after that, actually. Wiedii. I think it's wiedii. Yeah, it's like Weidi-i or Weidi-i. Weidi-i? I don't know. Those look like Weidi-i's to me. And in this, and we'll show you pictures of the actual, of the tilcayo soon, but this, unlike the ocelot, right? The ocelot could almost, like, almost looks jaguar-ish.

44:25 https It's much smaller, but that coat looks a little bit jaguar-ish, but the head shape, and the eye shape and the ear shape are all pretty distinct. And here on the margay, you see that even more so. And this, again, is a photograph from Costa Rica. The margay is a little smaller than the ocelot, but also like the ocelot, sort of basal within this genus.

44:48 https And then we're going to just go into National Geographic, which has really the best photographs out there. And they're still, you know, they're still holding on to them. So we're going to show you these photographs from National Geographic of the tilcayo, the newly named species of wildcat discovered in Bolivia.

45:06 https And there's really, there's just two live individuals known at this point, and I believe they're both in captivity. So these aren't wild pictures. Let's see, this is, and this is, this is not, this is a photograph by one of the National Geographic photographers, but here's the first time we're running into the name of the woman who really is the person behind all of this work, who was first to identify that this was an unusual cat that had been brought in to the shelter, and then is the second author, but one of the two lead authors on the study, and her name is Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz.

45:46 https Here we have this kitty again. This is weighing just three pounds. That might be true of that animal, but again, it's more usually described as a 1.5 to 2 kilo cat, a bit more than three pounds. And here we have a description of some of the different physical markings, which is you can't grant a new species status based on physical markings in a mammal, or really in anything, because these things can change so fast.

46:15 https But the muted fur, the less distinct markings, the extra large spot markings, and a frame smaller than an average house cat are what are being described here. Here we are in a sanctuary, and this is the researcher Nogales-Ascarrunz observing an individual of again Leopardus is the genus, and tilcayo, which has also been given as the common name for the species.

46:43 https Okay, so if we go back out to my PowerPoint here, now we can look at the paper itself. So this was just published, and I was, I don't know, it gives me hope for the world that it got so much attention. It's that people are interested in hearing about a new cat, and not thinking about all of the craziness of the day.

47:09 https This is the graphical abstract, which is a relatively new phenomenon, and we'll come back to it. The range map that we're seeing here, but the title is Phylogenomics and Museomics Reveal Five Distinct Species of Tiger Cats in South America. Let me just say that term, "museomics," which is not a term I've heard before, but refers to the value of museum collections that have been, that, you know, these are dead animals that have been collected for science without any, usually any particular hypothesis or goal in mind, except to conserve and preserve organisms in a state that they are known to have been in at some specific time and place.

47:50 https Museum collections are always very careful. They always have all of the locality and collection and time data associated with them. These authors, including Jonas Lescroart, and Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, and several other authors, went not just to these two individuals that they thought were a new species, but also into museum collections, and then they also looked at several individuals from several other members of the tiger cat species complex.

48:23 https In brief, just what the graphical abstract says in brief is that they demonstrate, this paper demonstrates, that the contentious tiger cat species complex consists of five cryptic species. That is, they are raising, they are finding species within what is understood to be the tiger cat species complex that haven't been understood to be species before, and the tilcayo.

48:47 https Based on analyses of 38 whole genomes from the Neotropical cat genus Leopardus, including genomes obtained from museum collections, they describe a new species and a new subspecies and elucidate tiger cat evolutionary history. So here is figure 2b from the paper. It's a phylogenetic tree. If you're not used to looking at them, you probably hate it already, and there's no expectation that you think carefully about what's going on here.

49:12 https I show it in part because what they've got is they're showing all the individuals for the individual species are colored the same way. So the top four, the top four lines are all the eastern tiger cat. They've got four individuals that they sampled and did DNA work on of the eastern tiger cat. They have four for the southern tiger cat, four for Geoffroy's cat, on and on and on and on.

49:37 https And they've also got pictures, and so these are obviously not giant pictures, but you can see the similarity in the species complex. They're all these not just small body kind of spotted cats, but they have the rounded ears and the blunted faces and the particularly round eyes that we don't really see from a lot of the other wild cats in the world.

50:01 https Yes, and so we'll come back to it when when you're done, but I want to point out that this raises a question. Given that you have apparently a generalist body plan, why do you have so many species of these little cats? Why not have the same pattern as we see with the mountain lion and the jaguar, where you have a wide distribution and the software program is swapped out, but you know the cat is physically the same.

50:32 https Yeah, so yeah, we will come back to that. In fact, kind of right now. So this is figure one. I went in reverse order just to show you the phylogeny first. Oh, actually go back to figure two for a moment. You see, this is not where we teach you how to interpret phylogenetic trees, but very roughly speaking, the way this tree is organized, those animals lower on the screen are more basal within the clade, very roughly, and that is not how you read phylogenetic trees in general, but in this particular case, that's true.

51:05 https And so you see the margay and the Andean cat and the ocelot all fairly basal within this group. And then they've got the out group is Puma concolor, which is the mountain lion and Felis chaus. I don't remember what that is, but that's within the domestic cat group. So they've just they're sort of establishing what the out group looks like, and then within this species complex, they've got ocelots and margay is pretty basal, and then this whole tiger cat group, which now includes the tilcayo.

51:38 https Okay, figure one, and here we have another sweet picture of the little guy and left lateral view of a skull. We also have sample localities of the tiger cat species complex that they analyzed, and this is just a map in which they're showing the dots are places where the samples came from. And again, some of them, they didn't go into all these spaces and collect new animals.

52:04 https Some of these are from many of these are going to be from museum collections. But when you see it looking like this, what's excluded is the Amazon. So you've got this entire tiger cat complex, and you know, it's not exactly a ring species, it doesn't connect. And it doesn't, it doesn't, it might connect in the north, although not quite, it definitely doesn't connect in the south, at least not now.

52:27 https And that this blue little tail down here is the tilcayo. It's out in the middle of kind of nowhere compared to all the rest of the tiger cats. It's high elevation, although several of these are along the spine of the Andes. And what none of them are really is in the Amazon. And that's something to explore.

52:51 https Yeah, you have things to say about it? If you want to, do you want to do it? Well, what I ran into was the argument for these species being a response to, let's think about it this way. You have a species and you have a habitat to which that species is well enough adapted to exist. Let's imagine that you're looking at a mountain and you have some animal that exists on the flanks of the mountain.

53:30 https There's going to be an edge at the top where there's no productivity. You've got a glacier up there, so there's nothing to eat because, you know, let's say it's a cat on the flanks of this mountain and it's eating, you know, granivores, mice or something. There's a point at which there's not enough seeds being produced to support the mice.

53:49 https So you'll find that the cat only comes up to so high and then you'll see the same thing down low. There'll be some limiting factor down low. The point is in the center of the range, the cat is really well adapted. As you get to the edge of where it can exist, it's worse and worse off. And so what seems to be suggested by this distribution is actually that the driving factor for the evolution of these tiny little tiger cats is the fact that the ocelot is finding itself increasingly marginal.

54:23 https Like literally the term margin is about this. It's marginal at the edges of its habitat. It's barely able to survive. And the ocelot is in the Amazon. Right, exactly. So the point is where do you see these tiger cats? You find them in places where ocelot is either not there because it can't live or barely hanging on.

54:44 https So a specialist, a tinier cat is able to drive it out and be ecologically dominant. But these tiger cats cannot dominate where the ocelot is well suited. Yeah. So which gets to the question of why you would find a bunch of different ones of these cats is that it's not necessarily that it wouldn't be possible to have one species and have its software swapped out.

55:09 https But you get a kind of a patchiness to the evolution of these things because the ocelot's habitat, it's not going to be a circle. It's going to have idiosyncrasies which result in an increased tendency for isolation once these tiger cats have evolved. Exactly. And you look, this map has the lines of latitude on it.

55:32 https And the tilcayo was extending between, looks like something like 12 and 16 degrees south, well within the tropics, but at pretty high elevation. Did we blank out because technical problems? And that's going to be a very different habitat, even though it's solidly within the tropics, than something at zero at the equator, especially out on the coast and whatever that's going to begin or that's actually near the mouth of the Amazon.

56:02 https It's going to be a very, very different habitat. So you've got, just like you say, you've got an ocelot with a somewhat generalist program that can do pretty well across all of the Amazon, but can't start going up slope or into different areas. And then at the edges of its ranges, you have probably a series of speciation events, creating different specialists that also become smaller.

56:26 https Like the ocelot is the largest body member of this the largest body member. And actually we'll come back to this when we talk about bears. But if you think about it, the idea that an ocelot is just too big a creature for parts of its habitat, as it becomes marginal, it's like there's just not enough resource to support an animal that big.

56:47 https So would a very similar animal that was a quarter of the size be well suited? Yes, it very much might. Almost each and every time that the ocelot is challenged by just being too big. You know, so you could get a dwarf, but in some sense you've already got something that has answered that question, that ecological question.

57:09 https And the fact that we find a bunch of them is pretty neat. Yeah. And I mean, the logic that you're using is exactly like, and metaphorically and almost literally, you're experiencing the evolution of new forms on islands. Exactly. Yeah. If you've got cryptic islands. All right. And then just this again from the graphical abstract, but just zoomed in, this shows what they have done with regard to describing species.

57:44 https And they include organisms that were in museum collections from before that are now in the tilcayo species, but no one thought to ask whether or not they weren't just part of this complex and no one really had bothered or could figure out what was going on with them. And of course, this is brand new research and the sample sizes for the genomic analyses are small and lots could get overturned.

58:15 https But at a first pass anyway, it looks quite interesting and good. And the description or the map of the distribution of the species in the species complex, I find just exactly as you were just talking about, completely fascinating. And in fact, that's a perfect way to end here once more on the ocelot, a bigger bodied animal that also is not just in the Amazon, but all the in Central America.

58:41 https This, I think probably gets up into Nicaragua and certainly in Costa Rica here. So question here, when you looked at that map. This one? Yeah. And by the way, I don't know how good the assumptions that went into drawing this map are salient and I don't know what they were. And I've taken out a bunch of the notes that say like, oh, we weren't sure like the museum specimens should be perfect, but of course nothing is.

59:07 https And so there's some where they weren't totally sure about the locale because they were described in terms that weren't lat-long. Yep. Right. Um, what I'm wondering about a, I would be thrilled to find that all of these little tiger cats are parapatric. Um, meaning that there are three possibilities. The two very familiar possibilities are sympatric.

59:36 https They live in the same place, you know, the way an ocelot and a margay live in the same place. Um, or they are allopatric. They live in disjunct habitats, but parapatric is where you have one species that lives up to the point that the other species takes over. That's what it looks like. That's what it looks like.

59:54 https That's what it looks like from the paper. You know, they're hedging a little bit and it's, it's new. And so, but that, that is, that is clearly what they are hinting at. That is what they think are going on. And that is what this map suggests. And if that is the case, it will be an excellent demonstration of something I will cover some other time, uh, about something we misunderstand about evolution and species production, which, uh, could be very illuminating.

1:00:21 https But anyway, the reason I don't just launch into it here is that, you know, if the algorithm for drawing this map is that you've got these isolated dots and that the assumption is, well, we're going to fill in around this dot where we have one up to where, you know, you could certainly to some degree they've done that because, I mean, you've got a range there for the tilcayo, just to pick the obvious example that, um, that bottom left most sort of flange coming off the, coming off the ring.

1:00:49 https That's not a full ring. Um, and we know they only had two living species and I don't remember, um, how many museum specimens that they, they then retroactively were like, Oh, that's part of this, this different species. Um, so, you know, they don't, they didn't describe margins fully. You can't, you never, you never can.

1:01:08 https So there's inference here. Well, but to what degree is there inference that is warranted by the data and to what degree is it hopeful? What you might see is if it's not basically a parapatric distribution, uh, all around, what you would see is that there are locations from which you have specimens of two of the species, right?

1:01:29 https If you saw that, you'd know that's not exactly what's going on. Yes. If you never see that, then it might well be. Yes. And they do not report having seen that. I do not remember that they report explicitly not having seen that, but I think, I think that's what I got on. All right. Well, it's pretty good.

1:01:47 https And, uh, apologies to all the dog people, although I don't know why I'm following. Why would you apologize to the dog people? They're gone. Um, yeah. No, no, no, no. Dog people seriously. Also, we have people grow up. If you're going to disappear, when we talk about dogs, like what the hell it's caniforms, caniforms are awesome.

1:02:06 https If you know, if you want to be like, I'm a mole guy versus a vole guy, like fine. You want to disappear and we talk about voles. That's fine. I probably want to disappear. We talk about voles too. They're just not that interesting. Although I find it more interesting than some of the stuff we talked about some, but like, seriously, feliforms versus caniforms.

1:02:22 https It's all good. Right. All interest. You dog people are about to get your, your caniform. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, your, your patience is about to be rewarded even if it will seem like it wasn't. No, I mean, I show all those pictures. I mean, I had fun sourcing them. I had, I had some of them already because Getty is, is great for this.

1:02:43 https But um, if you aren't affected by the beauty of a cat, I don't, I don't know what's wrong with you. Yeah. And you know, are there some domestic cats that look ridiculous? Sure. Are there some domestic dogs that look ridiculous? More so actually, come on, be honest. Like we've done some really stupid things to dogs and we've done fewer stupid things to cats.

1:03:06 https I mean, most of the people probably won't put up with it. We haven't had as much time. We haven't had as much time. Lots, lots of things going on there. But you know, given under human selection, we can destroy perfectly beautiful things. We know this under many, many domains, but the wild forms are staggeringly gorgeous and functional and diverse.

1:03:26 https And if you are really so devoted to the idea that I'm a dog person, not a cat person or vice versa, and you look at a member of the other clade and just can't get into it because you've already decided that you're one thing and not the other, you probably don't think too well on in other domains either is my sense.

1:03:44 https So, you're devoted to your own identity as this kind of person and can't be in awe of beauty when it comes your way. Like, I don't know, grow up, like figure out what's gorgeous and just be appreciative of it. Yeah. I mean, I tend to think that the reason that, you know, lots of dog people like cats well enough.

1:04:05 https They just prefer dogs, but there are obviously lots of people who really dislike cats. Yes. By dislike cats. Including people who aren't particularly dog people who are just like, I don't know what I like, but I don't like cats. Yeah. I assume that it's basically that they don't like domestic cats and that they would be perfectly excited to see lions or something.

1:04:22 https But I've always imagined that it's actually about the quirky nature of cats, you know, that in fact, there are two things about them. One, as we talked about last week or the week before, because their relationship with us is not partner that is enhancing of us. It's more like a child that is draining of us, that they're, you know, there are people who just resent that.

1:04:53 https But the other thing maybe more interesting is cats are, the way I think of it is 90% of them are neurotic and, you know, 10% of them might be psychotic. And then... That's a hundred, dude. Oh, wait, you're right. Let's say 80% neurotic, 10% psychotic and 10% just really well adjusted. But the point is...

1:05:23 https That's some crazy numbers you came up with. I've met a lot of cats. I like a lot of the neurotic ones. It's just that it's rare to encounter a cat that doesn't have any like weird quirks or it's tearing up your stuff because, you know, of angst or whatever. There's a lot of neurosis in cats, which I take to be the result of the fact that they are, you know, you do have this generalist critter that has the software loaded in after it's born.

1:05:56 https And the way that we have our cats being produced doesn't allow them to pick up coherent software that's well socialized and all this. So they end up having this kind of neurological chaos built into almost all of them. And I think that the point is you either have to have a kind of patience to be sort of interested in, you know, you're best in class at this.

1:06:25 https Taking a cat on its own terms, figuring out how it sees the world and if the cat is one that's sort of, you know, worth interacting with because it's ready to reciprocate in some way, you'll figure out, you know, you'll figure out how to get there. But a lot of people, they don't understand why they should want to.

1:06:43 https And they shouldn't inherently want to. You know, I feel that way about some people. Well, that's my point is that this is people like that. The number of people who are damaged is also it's not quite as high maybe as cats, but the number of people who are damaged in some way is very, very high. And so I think the sort of cat dysfunction is reminiscent of people dysfunction and that causes people to be repulsed by it a little bit unless you have a particular interest in figuring out what's in that little animal's head, which is often, you know, it's fascinating, right?

1:07:25 https The extent that you can sort of, especially your own pet that you can kind of figure out what must they be thinking is really, you know, it's a gift. It's a very fun game. Yeah. But lots of people have no patience. You know what I'd love to know, and I do not remember the guy's name, but the guy who first found this cat that became the reason that we now have a species of cat called a tilcayo and who took him in and lived with him for a year.

1:07:52 https I don't remember if that was a female or male actually, but I would love to know what he actually experienced. You know, like did he, obviously that's a one-off cat as an individual and presumably was just not interested in being domesticated. And so the guy finally turned him into a sanctuary, but still there must have been many interesting moments in that year in which the cat revealed some of his individuality and presumably had interactions with the guy.

1:08:20 https Wasn't simply an angry wild thing in a house for a year. Well, I think I think I more or less have a beat on what probably happened. I'd love to know at what age this guy found this kitten, but I think it was pretty young. I think so too. So let's just say, I think the general pattern is this. If you acquire any mammal early enough, you can raise it so that it will treat you with decency as long as you treat it with decency.

1:08:55 https You can't guarantee that it's going to be well adjusted at all, but you can guarantee that it will not view you in some, you know, instrumental way that it will regard you more or less like it regards a parent. However, there are, you know, I joke, you and I have endless conversations about exactly what fraction domesticated are domestic cats.

1:09:22 https Yeah. And my feeling is we're doing great, but we have thousands of years to go. But part of that, you know, it's both a compliment and an insult to cats. Part of that is based on the stories about what happens when you take an animal that has the capacity to be a cat like pet that has not had any of that work done.

1:09:43 https Yeah. And the answer is it's horrifying. And we actually know a story. Sherman, a friend of ours from grad school, ended up with an orphaned raccoon. And it's a very tragic story. I won't tell the whole thing. But anyway, took this raccoon in and on the plus side, it was just like having a cat in the sense that it was a highly intelligent, very loving, affectionate, interesting, fun companion, but could not deal with the home environment as bad as cats are.

1:10:21 https It was like a million times worse and also couldn't tolerate being left alone. And, you know, the story ends tragically because Pete didn't know what he was taking on. And you can imagine you're a raccoon. You don't know how to get by on the world. And your effective mother is, you know, leaving like, is this death?

1:10:44 https Is that what just happened to me? Am I about to starve death? So anyway, point is, I have a feeling with this person in taking home what looks like a house cat that isn't a house cat. Got was an affectionate critter that appreciated him, but didn't have any of the groundwork that would allow them to live indoors or any.

1:11:03 https Yeah, you know, it's not carnivorans, but in our in our early days traveling and in grad school and doing research in the neotropics of Madagascar, we had a couple of opportunities where it seemed like we could have ended up with a primate. Both in the New World, but the one I'm specifically remembering is the Lemur catta, the ring-tailed lemur in southern Madagascar that was orphaned and that was like really in need of a home.

1:11:30 https And it was offered to us at this reserve that we were at, as I remember it. And, you know, it even seemed like the paperwork would follow through. And, you know, it seemed impossible. This is before I was doing research there. This is our first trip that we took as our post-graduation from college trip.

1:11:45 https And it seemed like how could you possibly say no to having a ring-tailed lemur? And it also seemed like how could you possibly say yes? Yeah. And a ring-tailed lemur, a primate presumably is even worse. Oh, yeah. Like way worse because somewhat smarter, although people say the lemurs are really dim. So, you know, maybe not smarter than a house cat.

1:12:09 https I don't know. But but they're all certainly ring-tailed lemurs, I think all, but they're all social and ring-tailed lemurs specifically are highly social and live in this big groups. And the idea that you could take one and be like, now you belong to two apes and that lemur is going to be happy in your home is basically impossible.

1:12:30 https Yeah, I think I mean, I cringe at the story that we ever even considered it because it's such an insane gamble. I don't think it's 100 percent certain that it would have been a disaster. I think it is all but certain in the case of Lemur catta. But I don't think it's all but certain in the case of primate.

1:12:50 https Because people used to have marmosets that they effectively had as pets and sort of like fashion accessories that seemed to work. And also is it capuchins were, you know, basically props as like organ grinders. Yeah. Right. I don't know how well that worked actually. But I mean, you and I both know capuchins from the forest.

1:13:14 https It's it doesn't seem to get what not the monkey you want at all. It's an angry little animal. But I mean, you know, they have a right to be where in their forest. But but nonetheless, they do throw stuff at you. Yeah, it's not it's not the starting material you want. Yeah. All right. Shall we should we talk about bears?

1:13:35 https Yeah, let's do that. Jenn, do you have something to show us here? I had a harder time pulling stuff together, having been thinking about cats. Here we go. Because the Department of the Interior is actually do you have that that video from June? Can you show that first with with you had asked if you want.

1:13:59 https We wanted to be able to talk over it. This one. Yeah. So this is not now. This is I think this is still in Katmai in the National Park in Alaska in June. Several months ago, these bears are not fat yet. And these are some teenagers along with some adults hanging out at the falls where for the most part, the salmon are not yet running and the bears are not doing a brilliant job of of doing whatever is they're trying to do.

1:14:26 https And they're occasionally in the thwack by their elders who do not want them up. And this is this is just a scene from what will become the the amazing feeding grounds of the extremely fat bears. So now if we can go back to Fat Bear Week, the Department of the Interior was posting stuff all week that yesterday began Fat Bear Week, which is apparently an annual celebration of in which people looking at pictures the Department of the Interior is posting, you can scroll down a little bit, can vote on who the fattest and best bears are.

1:15:06 https So let's just keep going. There should be. Oh, yeah, this is just the polls. Let me just see if I can pull up something. If you want to talk about bears, while I try to pull up the. All right. Well, I have a special fondness for bears, and I don't know what fraction of it comes from watching a bit too much Grizzly Adams as a child.

1:15:29 https But there was a long portion of my childhood in which I felt like, you know, life seems complicated. But if one, let's say, were accused of a notorious crime that they had not committed and had to resort to living in the wilderness and they were to encounter a bear who they could then pal around with, that wouldn't be the worst fate a person could suffer.

1:15:54 https That was my feeling was that that was, you know, of the ways life could work out. That would be all right by me. I wasn't looking forward to being accused of a crime I hadn't committed. Nonetheless, the rest seem to follow. But you have been obsessed. Yeah, I. Well, I. Here's the thing about bears. They live in habitats that.

1:16:17 https If you were to try to sustain yourself in those habitats, you would struggle because the habitats are pretty marginal in some ways. And yet the animal is so gigantic. And, you know, obviously there's a range, you know, from, you know, spectacled bears, which are relatively small and are avocado specialists, avocado specialists to, you know, brown bears, of which grizzlies are a member to polar bears.

1:16:46 https So obviously it's a wide range, but even the smallest bears strike me as an impressive amount of material to be accumulated in one animal that has to sustain all of that. That bulk. Yeah. And with regard to the grizzlies in Alaska in particular, that they are effectively salmon specialists and the salmon aren't there 12 months of the year.

1:17:12 https Right. And winter is harsh. Both those things are there. Those are distinct observations and they both contribute to the need to put on a crazy amount of fat when when winter is coming, but also when the resources are there. So it's it's they don't have grocery stores that are constantly stocked. These are in as every wild organism is inherently seasonal creatures.

1:17:36 https But their prey is so highly seasonal, as anyone who lives in salmon country knows the salmon come, you know, different species in the Pacific Northwest. We have several species and there's a spring run salmon and there's several fall run salmon and they vary somewhat with regard to exactly when they come.

1:17:50 https But in June, there's no salmon. In February, there's no salmon. Right. So you've got to you've got to get it while the getting is good. Salmon are bringing this, you know, oily, fatty, rich food from the sea. And the bears gorge as much as they can and they get as fat as they can. And then they they basically sleep on salmon for the next many, many months.

1:18:12 https So to put this together. The streams in these habitats aren't capable of supporting salmon. Right. So the salmon have solved this problem by farming the sea and returning to breed in these streams that couldn't support them. That creates an abundance for the bears who have solved their problem by basically a refrigerator or cupboard strategy where they collect the resource when it's available.

1:18:39 https They store it, which makes them clumsy and awkward. And they sleep through the worst of the seasons. And when it's both very cold for an endotherm and because it's so cold, there's also almost nothing to eat. So they're solving both of those problems, no resources and no heat. Right. No resources and no heat.

1:19:01 https And they get an advantage. So there's something pushing in the case of grizzlies. There's something pushing in the direction of bigger rather than smaller. In part, we've talked about this in another context recently. But the larger you are, the lower your surface to volume ratio. And so from the point of view of creating your own heat by burning salmon and radiating as little of that heat to the environment as possible, minimizing your surface area being as close to a sphere as you can be is actually a good thing.

1:19:37 https So the counterintuitive lesson here is that in a habitat that seems like you would want to be tiny in order not to have big requirements, actually, you're better off pushing towards gigantic and round and able to just kind of opt out of ecologically participating in the seasons when it would be impossible to make a profit and, you know, gorging yourself when the salmon, which can't possibly make a profit in these habitats, come back to breed and die, leaving a tremendous amount of resource.

1:20:09 https So it's a it's a quirky, weird system where you would expect there to be, you know. Little mammals. And in fact, you have this gigantic mammal who solved it in a whole different way. Yeah, exactly. OK, so let's just share a little bit if I can find where it was from this site that's a little glitchy, a little weird, but this is explore.org, which is what the Department of Interior is directing you guys to when you when you go to Fat Bear Week.

1:20:43 https And here's Meet the Bears of Fat Bear Week. They've got and, you know, there's been researchers studying these bears for a long time, so they've got them named, they've got family, sub-adult, single adult females. And this is all again in Katmai National Park. And they're describing they are describing brown bears are omnivores who eat dozens of different plant animal foods.

1:21:03 https But for the Fat Bear Week, bears, sockeye salmon are especially important. And this is at Brooks River, which is the waterfall we're just seeing. Bears gather to fish for salmon between late June and late October. Did I say there were no salmon in June? Here, there are no salmon in June in Alaska. Apparently there are.

1:21:21 https So just pointing out, I'm just going to scroll through some of these pictures, which are not I have to ask. This is a government website. I cannot explain why this looks like this. And frankly, it glitched out yesterday. And I can't tell if it's not up to date or retro. I and it's actually explore.org.

1:21:39 https I don't even I. Yeah, I almost skipped the bears entirely because this is so weird. And then the voting glitched out yesterday. So you couldn't even vote. I don't know, man. But let's see, actually, if I can make it, I can make it a little bit bigger and OK, get rid of some of the weird Lego pixelated things on the side.

1:21:56 https But here we just have some pictures from late June through early September. Same family putting on mass. Right. That's that's. And we don't have we don't have actual mass numbers. We don't have actual weights here, but. But we know these are the same individuals and just just getting as the department interior keeps telling us chunky.

1:22:19 https Here we have cub looking bears in July, like really cute little cub looking bears. That's what bear cubs look like. And now here, just less than two months later, that mom still doesn't look like she's frankly got enough for yet. She's going to need to fatten up a lot. But those cubs are looking like actually miniature adults at this point.

1:22:40 https They don't look like cubs anymore. And so you've got to ask the question about why the calculus between the mother and the cubs. So yeah, obviously the mother, evolutionarily speaking, the mother gets into the future through her cubs. Right. But sacrificing is she's not an octopus who's going to sacrifice everything to.

1:23:01 https And the cubs are not going to eat her. Yeah. So the question is, are the cubs getting bigger and the mother not getting that much bigger because the mother is provisioning the cubs? She's helping them put on mass because they are more threatened and she can do the work later. And I don't remember. I didn't have time to look into the specific reproductive strategy of these bears.

1:23:23 https But my suspicion is that the females at least have a year on year off cycle, if not year on, two years off cycle. So if these cubs were just born this last year, they can probably hibernate together, but she's not like she does not need to generate enough fat to make all new bears. Right. This year. Yeah.

1:23:40 https Well, yeah. So that would that would push it to a two or three year cycle. But now we're into by the way, I did ascertain they do have diapause. They may define this is in this case, it's delayed implantation of a blastocyst. So basically the animals get fertilized. Females get fertilized and they go into a stasis and then development begins after the egg.

1:24:10 https The egg is fertilized and becomes a blastocyst, but it doesn't implant the uterine wall and so does not begin to develop or does not continue to develop past blastocyst stage until some later date, some time in in hibernation. Yeah. So these are sub adults still not quite as massive as as you might expect.

1:24:29 https But a big change again between mid July and mid September. Looking at sub adults. And we're just here we have. I think this is a single adult female. This is Marshmallow from July to September. That's two months of weight gain. She's she's looking like she's ready. Yeah, I'm thinking she may she may make some new bears this season.

1:24:55 https Studios similarly. I'm thinking she's ready for new bears. She looked lean and a little gaunt in July, but she's looking pretty heavy now. And 909, let's just let's get to some of the are these males now or did I skip? Sorry, I know we're still in females. I just want to get to a few adult males. Now we're getting to the really they literally named him Chunk.

1:25:23 https And late June, he was already pretty big, but basically his belly is so low now that there's almost no distance between it and the water. I feel. No, this is this is this is good for them. This is good for them. Sexy bears. This Backpack here at September 8th, Bear 89. This is this is sexy bear look.

1:25:45 https Yeah, I just I still I still feel bad. You're anthropomorphizing the beauty of the bears. Bears did not ask to be on the Internet. They did not. They did not. I'm not concerned about them. You'll are we ridiculing them? I'm not ridiculing them. No, no. OK, now this this is maybe and it will stop scrolling through here, but this is maybe the biggest change of all.

1:26:08 https This guy who they call Bucky, Bear 164, in late June, really just a little bit more than two months ago, looked really thin. He did not look like a bear who was who was ready. For for much and he is he's fat now. He put on a lot. And one has to wonder what what happens that causes such differences in weight gain over July, August and September among these bears are all living in the same place.

1:26:37 https So is it strategy? Is it luck? Is it is it getting in the right place by chance and then realizing that you're in the right place and never ceding it to any other bear? And that's just where the salmon come in a way that you can get them. It's dominance. That's not an answer. Yeah, I think it is. So that feels like kicking the can down the road.

1:26:56 https Not really. I don't think I think what's going to happen is you've got a habitat. It's highly idiosyncratic in terms of where the best hunting is. You know, even in one waterfall, there's places that the salmon have to go up. There's places where they can't quite go up. The bears that are in a position to displace other bears will the bears will sort themselves out and the best real estate will go to the toughest bears who will put on the weight the fastest, who will stand the greatest chance of getting into the next year.

1:27:30 https And, you know, you can now if you can imagine that game in any particular cascade, you can imagine it iterated across all of the cascades in a given watershed. Yeah, I just don't feel like the word dominance adds anything to the story. I think we still need to understand what is it that establishes dominance.

1:27:49 https And in the end of June, was Bucky already a dominant bear or, you know, and does, you know, because territoriality and dominance hierarchies and such are a big part of what I have thought about professionally in this regard, not with bears. I don't know if these guys effectively can resume the same spot in the waterfall that they've had in past years.

1:28:13 https Like, do they do they establish a tiny piece of territory that they defend? They get basically right of first refusal on following year. I'm not. I mean, I don't think it's right of first refusal. I think you mean there would obviously you have to defend it. But if there's defacto, like that's mine. My guess is every animal who's had a good spot will try to take that spot unless there's a spot that they've been coveting because they think it's better and they, you know, those who they are.

1:28:46 https What contributes to dominance? It may it may be very closely lined up, at least for males with age. I think I think, you know, dominance in females is going to be very different because of what has to be a cycle that isn't we're having babies every year. They they they just do not look ready. And I didn't look into what we know about them, but they I think that there's no chance of the females are giving birth every year.

1:29:08 https The males then probably become better and better adapted, putting on the pounds. The older they are, because they know more about the particular microhabitat in which they are fishing. They're going to have home court advantage. But my guess would be that the brutality of the sorting mechanism results in rapid senescence.

1:29:31 https And so. I guess, as you have a very. Strong, well defined hierarchy by virtue of the fact that the incentive to test an animal who has a good position in the river and might not be able to defend it, you know, so there's going to be lots of lots of attempts to displace individuals that have have desirable territory, and that's going to result in a.

1:30:05 https How would I describe it? The selection pressure to be absolutely awesome in order to defend the best territory is high, and it's very hard to maintain that over a long period of time. So those two things would go in opposite directions. They have rapid senescence pushing in one direction and knowledge about how to fish in and defend a particular piece of territory going in the other direction.

1:30:29 https But my guess is they're very well defined, very dynamic year to year dominance hierarchies and how the males and females interact. My sense is that males often are not deferential to females while they're putting on the pounds. I suspect. And again, I did not look into any of the specifics of what we think we know about about these bears or about grizzly social dynamics in general, but in general, as you are well aware, when you have a large aggregation of individuals of both sexes, you have parallel, not particularly interacting dominance hierarchies, one of females and one of males.

1:31:12 https Right. But the problem here is that the how good is this spot for hunting salmon will be one hierarchy. And so, you know, do the males all outrank all the females? I doubt that. Well, no. And I think, I mean, dominance hierarchies don't, you don't have like two dominance hierarchies and one of them is just above another.

1:31:32 https That is almost never what you see in like baboons. It's fairly rare. And of course, and this is, this is a temporary situation. So it's part of why I'm not compelled that you, I mean, you put a hypothesis on the point, I don't put as much stock in that as I think you do, that there is going to be a clearly defined, but yes, very dynamic dominance hierarchy within the males at least.

1:31:56 https But, but as you say, there is a resource that matters to both sexes, to all individuals equally. Do I have enough food to get through the winter? Do I have enough food that I've eaten that is now, and I'm now wearing in the form of fat to get me through the winter or do why not? Yep. And then you get to the question of dimorphism, which will be substantial in these animals, which will contribute to the precariousness of males.

1:32:24 https So I'm not sure that you won't have essentially males by virtue of their larger size, having access to the best spots, but also effectively requiring them. You know, so I'm wondering if life isn't harder on the males year to year in terms of something like survival. Well, and I would also guess, and again, I'm sure this is known and I just did not look into it.

1:32:54 https I would also guess that the females who've had cubs that year and who still look too thin to make it through the winter, that they probably done with those cubs. And so they get warmth benefit, although not a physiological benefit, but they get heat loss benefit from being able to curl up with their last year's cubs.

1:33:13 https Yeah. I think that's, that's likely right. Yeah. All right. Are we done with bears forever? No. We have only just begun. Okay. But for, for today, we're probably there. Okay. Well, I kept promising frogs and I, and I, and I kept skipping it and I don't have any images for these because I was thinking about cats.

1:33:36 https But there's this, another piece of research, just like the tilcayo is a new species of cat in the Bolivian Highlands research came out this year, like just a few days ago, 2026. There's another piece of research by Hemingway and the company, Hemingway et al., published in 2026 called Choice Overload Constrains Mate Choice Independent of Energetic Masking.

1:33:56 https Okay. So that's, that's a lot of, of terms that seem kind of, kind of hard to parse. So the idea is that energetic masking is sensory overload and choice overload. See the language that they're using. It's just, I don't, I don't love it. So hold on. You just talk about frogs for a minute while I see if I can find my original PDF where I've got some stuff highlighted, which I did not manage to open.

1:34:25 https All right. So in frogs, it would be much more common than it is in mammals to find a new species. In fact, Heather and I, were in Madagascar, I believe we were site scouting for Heather and happened on a Mantella frog, which is a frog in the poison frog group that Heather was studying that we could not narrow down to any known species.

1:34:55 https And we went through the effort to start bringing it back and see if we could get it named. And it turned out somebody else had spotted it. It was indeed a new species, but it was quickly named by whoever it was. Not that quickly, because without going into any of the specifics, the person who had identified it and who basically claimed the right to name it, was not very quick on the draw at all.

1:35:21 https And he just, he was sitting on it. He was not doing the work that was necessary to proceed, but he had priority of naming rights. But anyway, the point is, okay, you and I had a near brush with a novel species of frog, because in frogs, it would be much more likely to find something actually new. I just ran across pictures of this guy, actually, and looking through.

1:35:42 https Yeah. Black and green guy. Okay. So, yeah, the paper doesn't have it there. On my computer? Yeah. No, it's in slides. Oh, okay. This is from the early 90s. We weren't taking digital photos. No, I thought it might have been digitized a long way. It might have been, but I have no idea. It was your photograph.

1:36:05 https So if you have it, that would be great. I certainly don't. All right. I don't think I do. Yeah. Okay. So this is research looking at Cope's tree frogs, which is a North American species that has had a lot of work done. It's actually, again, like with the cats that we were talking about, the tiger cats, a species complex that has had much worked on it.

1:36:30 https But what they were looking at was the question of, okay, when it's noisy. So these frogs, like most North American frogs, have this explosive breeding assemblage style of breeding, which is to say that in the spring, when there are some ponds where you'll just hear nothing but frogs every night for a few weeks, that is all the frogs in an area coming, coming there.

1:36:53 https And all the males are yelling and all the females are choosing based on who yells best, basically. And, and then they breed in water in the pond that they're in or in little streams, depending on the particular species of frog. And neither male nor female ever sees their kids, right? They have external fertilization.

1:37:12 https The female has chosen a mate based on what he is advertising, usually primarily based on his call, but that the choice that she makes is, can be found in the resulting offspring, but neither she nor the male that she chooses ever meet those offspring, or if they do, they don't know that they're theirs.

1:37:31 https So this like almost all other Northern American species of frogs, they do that. But there's a question of, wow, that's loud. Like how would, how would you know what you like? How would you know how to choose? So this is what I wonder about people who spend a lot of time at clubs. So this is exactly the punchline that I will get to.

1:37:52 https I'm so sorry. No, it's part of why I've sort of been delaying talking about this because the research itself, I find it's quirky and there's one problem with it that I'll talk about here, but there's like, there's one punchline, which like, but let's just go there now, which is, okay. So it turns out that there's sort of two broad hypotheses for why it can be more difficult to make decisions that are good when there's a lot of stuff going on.

1:38:15 https And it could be that it's just, it's so loud, you don't know how to think basically, and that's colloquial. Like, I just, I need some peace and quiet to be able to make my decision. But it also could be that when you specifically ab, like separate from independent of the noise in the area, if you've got lots of potential suitors coming at you at once, it's harder to choose between them.

1:38:35 https So these are distinct hypotheses. Notice like the noise could be coming just from the suitors. Um, or it could be coming from the fact that you're like at a club and there's just one guy coming out, you're like, I don't know, I guess like it's fine. Right. Or no, I'm not, no, not you. And it turns out he was the guy and you just can't make good decisions because it's loud, or you can't make good decisions when you've got a lot of guys coming at you at once.

1:39:00 https And I'm talking about this in terms of guys, because female choice is the rule and there are very few species in which it's male choice and not female choice, uh, and in frogs, it's female choice. Yeah. Female choice. There are lots of species. There's still the exception in which there's mutual choice, um, because there's co-investment, but this ain't that.

1:39:18 https Um, all right. I want to ask, uh, I want to zoom out beyond frogs for a second. I've been thinking recently about mostly it's about birds and shrill calls. Actually birds, crickets, lots of things. There's lots of creatures in which there's a problem, which is you are not so common an animal that you can find a mate.

1:39:50 https Your mate may be in the habitat, but the mechanism by which you will find the mate is not obvious. If you're, you know, a terrestrial, if you're a fox like creature, well, you can figure out where another animal is and probably what sex it is based on for, you know, scent marking where it's pooped or, uh, peed on something.

1:40:11 https So that animal can solve its problem relatively quietly. If you are a, you know, a Finch in an archipelago, then you may have found a piece of habitat that's hospitable, but then the question is, well, how do you find a mate? And so loud calls that simply alert creatures from a long distance, that something that you're looking for is over in this direction, that call that you can follow has the same impact.

1:40:44 https And so back to frogs. One component of frog calls is the more, if you have it like a seasonal pool, the more, uh, conspecific frogs who have bred in it, the safer your offspring are going to be from predators because the predators will be saturated. There's so many eggs and tadpoles that the chances that they will find your offspring are lower.

1:41:14 https So there's a school density dependence, right? On the other hand, not for the eggs, which are produced from resources that the female has before she gets there. But for the tadpoles, the more competitors, the worse. Yes. So unless they're willing to be cannibals, which many of them are many species. Ah, so if that's true.

1:41:36 https In which case there's, uh, a selective pressure to be early and to develop fast, which then puts you at risk of not being, uh, stable enough to survive. But if you do, then you've got your entire population to eat. Right. Okay. So then this raises the question. If, if what we're trying to address is why are these, why are these environments so loud and how are females possibly choosing in such a loud environment?

1:42:05 https If what they are choosing is the quality of, or intensity of a particular call, how would they even sort it out? Now it is certainly true that there are many species in which it has been demonstrated that females are being choosy within the assemblage. Yes. Is it including, in fact, uh, in this species, but the other work didn't establish, uh, whether or not the choices got worse under some circumstances.

1:42:33 https They are definitely choosing, but are there conditions which make it more difficult to choose? Got it. Okay. So that answers my question. My question was going to be if the creatures who are breeding at the pond have an incentive to attract as many other frogs to the pond as possible to increase the, the, the females want more males, but the males don't want more males.

1:42:59 https Yeah. The males don't want more males, but it's possible. The game theory still could support broadcast as loud as possible to get as many in animals to the pond that doesn't require females to be choosing within the calls, however, a male who didn't call would get the advantage of all of his competitors calling.

1:43:19 https And so I guess, well, but she's choosing based on the call. And so, you know, as I've said many places, you know, a male's call, all, almost all male anurans, frogs and toads call. There's a couple of interesting exceptions. One of which lives underneath a waterfall. It's somewhere in Southeast Asia where it's so loud already that they use visual signals and they don't call because no one could hear them.

1:43:42 https So that's, that's a little side, side story. But in general, frogs use acoustic cues to, to attract mates and it's, and it's males who call and, but the male call says is two things simultaneously, even though it's just one word and it's male stay away warning. I'm big and bad. I'm a brute. I'll, I'll bite you.

1:44:02 https They won't bite you, but you know, I'll get you and females come here. Like this, this is, this is the, this is the come hither call to the females and the stay away call to males. And depending on what sex you are, you read it very different ways. All right. I know that you will forgive me for this.

1:44:17 https Oh, no. The species in the waterfall. Yeah. I don't remember. It doesn't matter. Suggestive of a marvelous cartoon that somebody should make of one of the females from the species, speaking to another female from the species saying, I just don't understand why he won't call. Yeah. We right. Yeah. It's okay.

1:44:44 https But she might have to put into text. Actually, that'd be funny if it was just the frogs. Yeah. Texting. Yeah. Right. Why doesn't he call? Yeah. Yeah. What? Okay. So, uh, these calls, Cope's, Cope's gray tree frogs. Yeah. Hyla chrysoscelis. Um, are understood from other research to females prefer longer calls.

1:45:11 https So in this research, the question is posed as, okay, if females, um, have a harder time under noisy circumstances and under lots of suitors circumstances, let's see if we can determine between those two sets of situations. But it took me a little while looking, reading the paper to realize, well, how do we know whether or not the females are making the right choice?

1:45:36 https What's the right choice for these females? And, you know, I, for me, the, the, the better, the perfect, yes, it would be noisy and messier because it's more sort of field-based and the complexity of a living organism situation would have been, you know, maybe bring them into the lab, but allow females to choose between real males and then modify what those males are doing or, you know, put them into a noisy environment, have, have females from among males that she's already chosen among and see if she continues to keep the same choice she's made before.

1:46:07 https Um, that is not what they did. What they did was looking at previous research that established that one of several parameters that females choose is call length, I believe it was. Uh, they pre-decided that females should choose longer calls and that any female in a situation where she's choosing a shorter call is making a bad choice and she's being inaccurate.

1:46:33 https So that feels to me like a little logical leap in the middle of the paper that I don't totally love, but if we, if we accept that and go like, okay, okay, there's lots of variables, but they were just, they were generating calls, um, from existing calls, but they were generating calls that were sort of perfect with regard to the other parameters, presumably, uh, call modulation and amplitude and all of this.

1:46:54 https Uh, and then they said, okay, we're going to, we're going to give females, uh, choices in otherwise loud situations and choices with lots of different calls, but of different call lengths and see what they choose. The upshot is it's both. It's both females choose less. Well, less accurately caveat, assuming that you agree with their assessment of what makes a female's choice accurate.

1:47:18 https Female frogs are choosing less accurately, both in noisy environments and where there's lots of males coming out at once, which does yes, help us get back to the club and the wing man and the like, why do these things work on women? Why do they end up making the ridiculous decisions that they make in those situations, uh, they have had whatever cognitive capacities they, they natively have to make choices between males, dampened by the very environment that they're in.

1:47:48 https All right. Interesting. It also raises another question about the ultimate explanation for the loudness of these assemblages, which is interference competition. Do lower quality males effectively drown out higher quality calls because it increases their chance of mating successfully? Well, I think I have thought before that one of the ways, the reason that in general, female frogs should prefer longer calls, and that's not just the result from this species, like that's, that's well-established across many frogs.

1:48:35 https That doesn't mean that it is always going to be the case, but in, in all of those species, and it, you know, it was one of the parameters that I looked at in the Mantella for my dissertation research was, was length of call as one possible thing that females would be choosing. Um, if it was, if they were looking at loudness, they might, then interference competition might be a way for a lower quality male to, uh, to win.

1:49:01 https If he could just belt out something super loud for a moment, uh, I think that it would be easier, even a poor condition or poor quality male to do that than to sustain it for longer. The reason I believe for the preference for a longer call is that it is an indicator of quality or condition. Right. So I would, uh, going too deeply into it, you know it well, but in, in my model where females, basically they're two, two distinct places or two distinct contexts in which females are evaluating, um, male displays and unfortunately they look alike.

1:49:45 https In this case, we're talking about the temperate version where, um, the advantage to females doing this is effectively to measure what males have in the bank because what they have in the bank is what allows their offspring for whom they are choosing a father to get through hard times. So females would be choosing for longer calls because they evidence more, uh, excess resource.

1:50:15 https Given what you're saying, a male could belt out something briefly, but the point is it depends on confusion, which I think is likely in this case, it depends on the female maybe mistaking the brief belted call and not realizing that it is not part of a longer call that's in the immediate environment.

1:50:35 https So, um, so, you know, you kind of go. Which might be precisely why it's harder to make accurate choices, uh, when, when either thing is true, when there's a lot of noise that is ambient or when there are a lot of other males saying exactly the same thing in your immediate vicinity. Which actually gets right back to, um, the club and who I think prefers it.

1:51:03 https Okay. Okay. So my sense as a fairly wordy guy, an articulate guy is I don't understand how anybody stands loud environments because what they do, you know, language requires subtlety. And if you're down to, you know, only getting 85% of the gist of what somebody is saying, it's just torture to have a conversation like it is right.

1:51:33 https So the, uh, you know, the hot guys who have less to say my environment in which the low quality of what they have to say is disguised by the fact that you don't know whether what they said is clever or not. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yep. I mean, I think that's as good a place to, I think that's a fairly, fairly robust hypothesis.

1:52:00 https Yeah, indeed. Okay. Well, this has been a new cats, fat bears and overwhelmed frogs week. There you go here at The Evolutionary Lens. Yes, it has. Who knows what we'll get to next week. Yeah, we don't, we don't know yet. But we hope that you see us then and join us on Sunday for our Q&A on Locals. And anything else to say before we sign off?

1:52:25 https Um, no, consider, consider joining the Patreon conversations, which are upcoming first weekend in October. Yeah. So not this week, but next week. Yep. Yeah. All right. Be good to the ones you love, eat real food and get outside. Be well, everyone.