Hi everyone. We semi recently recorded an episode about cats being an invasive species. Oh boy, and we're gonna hear it for that one. But I thought we'd go back to the o G episode on invasive species from January? What is an invasive species? Listen? Now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Child's of you, Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Do Do Do Do do do do do do this stuff you should Know Action Edition. I gotta laugh out of Jerry. At least Google I got a a derisive snort. How about that? That's what it was. How you doing? I'm great. Well, I'm concerned about the Earth. You're concerned about the Earth? Yes? More than usual? Yes? Because of this podcast? Yes? Okay? Yeah. Man. So before we get started, you've heard of the Anthropocene, right? Uh? I know you have? You definitely have. We've certainly mentioned it before on the episode or on the podcast. So there's this debate right now over whether we've entered a new geological age from uh, the one to the Anthropocene. Right. Um? I really wish I could remember what the current one is, because people are going to write it and be like, it's this a million times over, which thank you everybody for writing out I mean to sound ungrateful. Um. But the the idea is that we've entered this period. Some people place it starting at the Industrial Revolution. A lot of people place it more at when there was apparently a huge spike in the presence of humanity from radioactivity, plastics, all this stuff in the environment as a whole. So where our presence has so muddied the geological record that we've effectively come up with a new age, a new geological age, the anthroposyne, the age of of humans. Right. So one of the things, one of the factors that people point to that suggests that we're we're changing the natural geological record, Thank you, Charles so. Um. The the idea that we we are altering what the natural course of the Holocene, the of course it would have taken had humans never been around. One of the ways we're doing that is by shuffling species from one environment to another, from one ecosystem to another where they've never been before, probably never would have ended up, at least not in any of our lifetimes. Um, and that they are altering those ecosystems in radical new ways such that when those things fossilized, those ecosystems become fossilized and can be studied, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Hence, archaeologists would be pretty puzzled by what they were finding. And that's the basis of the idea that we should be calling this the anthroposy. Now I'm scared. That was my goal. Well done, thank you all right. So what we're talking about is invasive species UM. And I'm surprised we hadn't done this one. I was too. I went back and double checked and to think we did, I don't, And I remembered what episode. I remember it was the Beagle Brigade. Oh, we talked a lot about invasive species in the Beagle brigadim and we may have even said we should do one on that. So if so fulfilled. So what we're talking about is invasive species. This is um. This can be any type of It is not necessarily a plant or just an animal. It could be seeds, it could be eggs, it could be it can even be a disease, right or yeah, pathogen a past predator and a plant just it could be anything, Yeah, any kind of any kind of living organism that's not native to a singular or a particular ecosystem. Right. But and the House of Works article kind of leaves it at that. But the National Wildlife Federation article that you found, I think really kind of drives home that there's like an extra couple factors involved, right, Yeah, because you can have a non native species that we actually kind of like like European honey bees. There are non native species here in the United States, but we're crazy for the pollinating they do. It doesn't know its right, and the honey that they make. Rice is not a native um crop here in the United States, but people people love rice, So there are just being non native isn't enough. It has to actually harm the ecosystem that it's not native to and has been introduced to in some way, shape or form. So it's it's a non native species that's causing harm either directly or indirectly or both to this new ecosystem it's it's been introduced to. That's an invasive species, right, And it's not just do we grow rice in the United States? Sure? Okay? Uh? And it doesn't have to be from another country. It can. Like we said, it's an ecosystem, so it could be something from one area of the United States to another area of the United States, or from Mexico to the United States. Right, Like trout from the Great Lakes, that's their natural habitats, so they're fine. But you take that same trout and put it in I think the example given was the Yellowstone River, and they're now competing for habitat and food with the local trout. That's an invasive species, right. They come in all shapes and sizes. As our very own article says, uh, they're different names for him. God loves them all. Like some people might say exotic pests or a non indigenous species, alien species, stuff like that, but invasive species is kind of I think that's the go to these days. Sure, that's the one you you here starting in the nineties. Actually, that's It's funny, like all of the eco stuff that we know about, from recycling to invasive species, that all was like born in the nineties, you know what I mean. Bill Clinton, Uh, I think he don't think he invented that name, but he went h I think he gave it, gave him, he gave it the stamp. What did he say, though, I think he said nailed it. Yeah. He could have been talking about any number of things or people right there, but in that case he was talking specifically about Executive Order one three one one two, where the term invasive species was first defined by the United States government. And the reason that they did this, the reason that they were defining invasive species because around about that time, the world was really waking up to the fact that if you take a species of plant, animal, bacteria, pathogen, whatever, and you put it into a place, a new ecosystem where it has no predators, it's going to create havoc for the the the the ecosystem as it was before. Yeah. I mean that's kind of one of the keys here is that, um, generally they will cause a lot of harm, maybe to the environment, maybe to the economy, maybe two people, maybe one, two or all three of those. Uh. And another key aspect of the invasive species is that it's pretty hard, if not impossible, sometimes to contain an eradicate. Yeah. I think I get this impression from researching this Chuck that like the second wave of waking up to invasive species realizing like they're never going to go away. Now they're done. It's done. Like the first wave, you don't notice it's already happening, right, Yeah. By the time we do notice, it's too late. And then now we're realizing like, okay, well we can we can handle this. It might be tough, and now I think we're finding now we like it. Well, now you can handle it. You just can't eradicate them. One of the big problems is is like if you if you say, develop a poison that kills some you know, non some invasive fish that was introduced, right, say carp um, you're going to kill the other fish in the area too, or some of the other sea life or something like that. So there's just not really any way you can target these things short of shooting each one of them. And you're gonna shoot a plant. They'll think you're crazy, they'll lock you up for that. So don't even try it. And here's the deal is this. This is not a new phenomenon. This nature has been doing this for years on its own in various ways, whether it's uh leaping over the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand or over a a channel of water, like or over a mountain range, it happens. But generally bodies of water and mountain ranges and deserts and all these other geological features helped to stop this stuff. It's really humans that are doing most of this, uh, not necessarily on purpose, but sometimes on purpose um as we will see. But sometimes it's just like it's in the ballast water of a ship, or it's in uh there's an insect in the wood of uh, or it's in packing material, it's in the wood of the what are those things called the crates the pallets, Yeah, palettes, shipping pallet, and all of a sudden it leaps out on the other side of the world and you have an issue to the tune of fifty thousand estimated non native species in the United States alone. Yeah, I was looking that up. That's pretty That's one of those things we always like give um, you know, evidence or not evidence, um advice if you see something all over the place, like double check it. You know, no, I think it is a real number. Is from so there's no telling is we're probably at fifty thousand and like five hundred now. But it was from a guy named Pim Intell who is a world famous ecologist. No, pim Intell. He's from Cornell. I don't know if he's still at Cornell. But the thing that this leaves out though it's fifty thousand non native species, but that same study from ninety nine found that um, about forty three hundred of them could be considered invasive. Okay, that that's what I was. One of the other ones are like the honeybee, where we're like sweet sure or rice don't don't freak a rice? Uh? And like I said, sometimes in the water of a ship's hule. Sometimes uh in this would and sometimes on purpose like we said, like when the Burmese python found its way to Florida, Dude, that was no accident. Where you have you looked up Burmese python everglades recently? Dude? They get so big down there. And did you see the one that had burst itself to death eating an alligator? What? No, But I did see the alligator and the python fighting on a golf course. That's amazing. That is amazing. That makes me glad to be alive to see something like that. You know. Well, here's the deal. While we're on that um earlier, that well, all right, more than two thousand of these pythons have been removed. Two thousand have been removed since two thousand two would it was just I guess recreational activity. But starting in March of last year, Florida started sanctioning python hunters and a thousand dudes applied. They accepted twenty five So we'll pay you minimum wage, will literally pay you eight bucks an hour or I think that was a minimum wage at the time to hunt pythons. And they're all like done right, and they started hunting pythons. They've caught seven hundred and forty three since March of two thousand seventeen, and uh earlier this year or I'm sorry, uh late last year in December, the dude Jason Leon, did you see that one that he caught No. Seven sevent ft long a hundred and thirty three pound Burmese pythons? Uh. And the reason why these are a big deal just, you know, aside from just sheer terror, uh, is there eating furry creatures, A lot of them. I saw that some populations down in the Everglades of types of deer, rabbits, um. A lot of creatures that you know and love have gone down by up to in some areas because of the python University of Florida. And I won't say what everyone wants me to say. Good for you, man, Yeah, that's like, how how can you be you know, possibly the national champs and and throw shade at anybody below you? You know. So the obviously Florida and Gainesville did a project they released this makes me so sad. They released ninety five rabbits uh into the Everglades and they these were all tracked. And it's not like when these rabbits didn't turn up a year later and there we can't find them. I guess snakes eate them. They know that snakes ate them, So snakes did. A year later, seventy seven percent these rabbits were eaten and dead from these pythons. Wow. So it's a problem. That is a sad study. It is. Can you imagine like opening that was crates and being like, all right, free go you live your new life. It's an adventure. Oh man, it's so sad. So that's just one example of the most horrific uh. And that's not one that's like costing two billion dollars in damage a year, but that is an estimate from professor at Cornell. That's the same one pimentel. Yeah, okay, um, that's the estimate from him that it's costing the United States between a hundred and two hundred billion dollars a year in damage from all these invasive species problems. Yeah, that's a lot of dough, it really is. And the Burmese python is is a good example also of people just releasing like a pet that you don't want anymore. That's probably how they re establish That's absolutely how it was established. There's other there's another there's a lizard called the tagu which is a big problem in all of Florida apparently as well. Um they're just a huge lizard that were originally pets and we're released and now they've established a feral population in Florida and they apparently will eat your cat. They've been known to do that. They'll um storm your house, they'll come into your house. It's just a bad jam right. There's also the Neutria swamp rats, which were originally grown for their fur in in the in Louisiana. So they use rat for apparently in Louisiana or to keep warm and um that when the rat for industry went under in the thirties. I think they released these things into the swamps. And then last most recently, feral hogs were imported so that they could hunt them. And there's a huge population that's wrecking their the ecosystems they've been introduced too. So a lot of times humans are lunkheads when it comes to shuffling animals into ecosystems where they're they're not native. That snakes too big, Put it behind the house, right loose. Then let a bunch of rabbits loose and see what happens. We see who wins? Snake wins, snake wins. Should we take a break? Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. Well, actually quickly, before we take a break, I talked about how much it was costing the U. S. Department of Interior, spending about a hundred million bucks or more a year trying to fight this in various ways, all to very little success. All right, So now with that stat we will we will take a break. So, Chuck, we talked about people releasing um animals purposefully, and you mentioned some other ways, but one of the things that gets me is ballast water, Like, how is this allowed to go on where a ship will take on water to balance out its cargo load because you know, different cargo is going away different, It's going to be laid out differently, so you need new ballasts every time to to balance it out, which makes sense, But surely there can be some other technology because you're you're like in Eastern Europe picking up a bunch of water to balance your your ship out, and that that cargo is bound for Detroit. So you enter the Great Lakes and you're like, oh, well, waters, water, I'll just release it here once I unload my cargo. And whatever animals you picked up in Eastern Europe now live in the Great Lakes. And this actually happened with the zebra muscle which is a huge, huge problem in the Great Lakes. Now, Yeah, the zebra muscle and the quagga muscle, Yeah, which apparently are almost the same thing. Uh, And how they act there from Eastern Europe and they're small, and that's exactly how they ended up in the Great Lakes, like you said, and they boy talk about spreading are there, Like how many are these? Like a trillion? A trillion at least the reason why it is like a quagga will live or quagga zebra muscle will live about five years, and the female in that time will produce five million eggs. There's ten trillion of them, A hundred that's so many muscles, a hundred thousand of those that of those eggs will reach adulthood. And so the offspring of one single muscle will produce about half a billion adult offspring. So yeah, ten trillion is a pretty reasonable number. And they just entered the Great Lakes in the I think the nineteen eighties, so just within what forty years? God, can you believe the eighties were like forty years ago were coming up on it? Um? It doesn't seem that long ago to me, but man, that's crazy. Well, and the problem with these is you're like, wait, wait, I'm reminiscing stiff. All right, I'm done. The problem with these is like, big deal. That are these tiny little muscles, but they are blanketing the bottom of the Great Lakes. Uh. And they're eating plankton because they love to eat plankton, which makes the water nice and clear. Everyone's like, look, how shimmery like Michigan is. Have you seen pictures of like Michigan recently? It looks like the Caribbean, really white sand, beautiful sea through like turquoise water. That's good people, gorgeous. No, it looks really amazing, But ultimately, no, it's not healthy because, like you were saying, they eat all the plankton that's supposed to be on top and on the bottom two and the the sunlight can penetrate all the way to the bottom, causing algae blooms, deadly algae blooms. I just just happened to run across an article yesterday, Chuck, and I understood why I was seeing what I was seeing. But the article was about how the like Michigan has become so clear that you can see shipwrecks on the bottom of the lake from the air. If you're flying over it, you can clearly see shipwrecks. And the reason why is because the zebra muscles have doubled the clarity of the water since the nineties. Well, and not only is it just the plankton, but they're eating the plankton. Is is causing salmon to go hungry whitefish. Um, So if you you know, it's just it's wrecking the ecosystem down there, right, Thank you, intern Europe. That's say yeah, well, thank you ship captain who took on that water as ballast. Another ballast story I ran across too, was, um, uh, fire ants the worst thing in humanity? Right, that's pretty bad. Fire Ants are native to South America, and they think that they stowed away on dirt that was scooped up as ship's ballast and released in New Orleans. Really yeah, and like the thirties or forties, but that's where the fire ants came from. They shouldn't be here. Didn't that make them even worse? Hate those things? So, um, here's another one. You wanna talk about the Asian carpet. Sure. So in the nineteen seventies, and I think, like in Arkansas, there were some u some farmers, fish farmers that is, who said, uh, let's get some of these Asian carpon here to filter the water. And they did. That sounded identical what the researchers from the University of Florida sounded like in my head, right, And they all sounded like Bill Clinton, who was from Arkansas. Right. So, Asian carp were introduced. I guess they did a pretty good job of filtering the pond water, but then they started spreading and that's the deal is is you know, like with the the zebra muscle. You know, they get in these waterways like in Chicago, these man made waterways that they said basically like expressways where they get in the Mississippi River and it just it's like all right here, here we go rest of the country. Yeah. And so Asian carp Uh, it's a it's sort of a catch all name for a bunch of species of carp from Southeast Asia. But here's their problem is they're very dense. They consume about of their body weight each day in plankton. They can be as big as a hundred pounds, which is very large for a for a fish, if you haven't noticed. And uh, they're all over the place now. They went up the Illinois River. They are almost or maybe even are invading the Great Lakes now. Is that they didn't have enough problems. And there are another one. They lay about a half a million eggs each time they spawn, right, and they eat a lot of plankton. And there's this guy um that they're a good example because they're they're so thoroughly crowd out um the rest of the ecosystem, for the rest of the animals, in the ecosystem that it actually like kind of recks the whole ecosystem. They're they're an example of like a UM grade three or level three, I think you call it level level three invasive species. Right, there's this dude. He was he is a marine biologist. And I don't know if you could tell or not, but I'm stalling while I look for his name. Is it coming across everybody? Um? So I cannot find the dude's name. Anyway, you don't have it either. Well, he came up with Okay, doctor doctor Javago came up with these basically four levels of of impact that an invasive species can have on bio diversity in an ecosystem. And the first level is basically like they're just a new species. They're not doing anything. You could even make a case that it's it's a good thing that they're there now because they've improved or increased the bio diversity of the habitat, right. So level one is they're just there, nothing bad has happened yet. Level two is when they start to have a an effect on the on the ecosystem in some very specific way. And doctor Javago gives this really great example of the eastern North American gray squirrel, which was inexplicably introduced in eighteen seventy six to England and since then it is basically out competed the native red squirrel there um, But it's just the native red squirrel that's been affected. The rest of the ecosystem is basically the same as if the North American squirrel had never showed up. It's just the red squirrel who are trying to go around and tell everybody like, doesn't it suck? The North American squirrels are here and it's like, oh, it's fine with me, I don't care, And the red squirrel just can't get any kind of ally on this. That's leveled two. Shall I continue? Please? Level three is where the species become so dominant, spreads so fast, so wide, reproduces so quickly and so massively that they begin to impact the entire ecosystem as a whole. Right, we'll talk about that in a second. And then the fourth level is where they have upset the ecosystem that they are not native to, but have established themselves in so thoroughly that it now impacts other ecosystems, either nearby or that are somehow connected to that ecosystem. And then level five is when you wake up covered in a thunderd squirrels, Right, I'll just quietly staring at you. Can you imagine? No, have you ever seen those black squirrels in Brooklyn? Yes, I've seen them in like Toronto usually DC. I love those things. Yeah, they're pretty cool guys too. They'll like, yeah, they'll they'll like, they'll charge you. They don't take any guff No, but see you if you brought some to Georgia, it could be bad for the squirrels here because it's a non native species, even though it's in the same country. Yeah, but man, we got so many squirrels in Atlanta. I wouldn't mind seeing a few of those guys. And I love all furry things. Well, you know how I feel about squirrels. Well, that's why it's gonna haunt your dreams, waking up being covered by a hundred squirrels. Yeah, it'd be more. It would be worse if I had a dream where a hundred squirrels covered my bird feeder. That's worse to me. I'd rather them cover me, cover me instead leave my bird feeder. Will They would be so happy to chow down on you, though the little tails would be all flitty. They would be so excited, they'd say, this is a long time coming, Josh. They'd store some of you for the winter and their haunches, but then they'd forget except for about a third of me where they put it exactly stupid squirrels. Uh So those are the four levels. We're kidding about the fifth. And I feel bad for Dr Chivago because what if that dude listens and he's like, oh, they're gonna say my name, yeah, doctor Chivago, or maybe he's gonna start going by that maybe, So we just changed that dude life. Alright. So, uh we talked a little bit about how some of these can affect things like eating plankton um. What are some of the other uh deleterious effects deletrious So there's well, I mean you can basically categorize the effects that these things have in two categories. There's direct and indirect ones. Right, So direct would be like, if you like, let's say those Asian carp eat um, the eggs of the other fish that's competing with that would be a direct impact that would make the other fish very unhappy, right, um. They could also be a bug that carries a disease that kills trees like UM. I can't remember what bug carries like Dutch elm disease, but there's there's bugs that carry diseases that kill treats. That's directly impacting the trees in the ecosystem. Then there's like indirect ones too, right, So like let's say you have like a grass that grows really well and its new habitat and non native grass so much so that it outcompetes the other grasses. Well, this new grass is really good at growing in this ecosystem, but it's terrible as far as like nutrient density is concerned, and it's choked. The rest of the grass is out, which means that the sweet little deer and the rabbits that are about to be eaten by snakes don't have those grasses to eat anymore, and they can't eat the new grass. That's an indirect impact. So suddenly the populations of these higher animals are going to thin out, either because they're gonna die off, they don't reproduces fast, or they just move UM. So that's an indirect impact of of an ecosystem. Or like that cocoon grass, huh, which is the one here in the southeast. It's the Asian plant. Like that one does the one thing you're talking about, no food value for the wildlife. But it also burns really hot and fast, more so than native grasses. So it's like it has this dormant danger of being a wildfire hazard. Right. Yeah, it's just's so another one called cheatwheat has the same thing, and it's it's altered the wildfire cycle. I think in the Southwest where it's growing from like um, fifty to seventy years to something like three to five five years now, they have like massive wildfires. Is because it burns so fast and it's so dense. It's just such a great fuel that. Um. Yeah, there's a there's another way that they can indirectly affect an ecosystem too. Um. A lot of plants that are non native come in and alter the composition of the soil. They either change the amount of nutrients they are available, they change the pH they just alter the soil chemistry. And I mean like the soil that's like the building block of an ecosystem. You start altering that, everything from the soil up is affected and impacted in some way or another. Well, and then that soil can then be transported to another ecosystem you know, right, yeah, which stuff spreads. Yeah, that's actually one of the tips for something you can do is not move soil very long far distances that can cut down an invasive species transferred to All right, well, let's take another break and then we will talk a little bit about the two ways to try I manage this, yes, and what you can do and the story of kad Zoo, which is probably not quite what you think. Oh all right, So as far as management UM, there are a couple of main ways that we're trying to control invasive species. Proactive management and reactive proactive. If you go to California and you have to stop at the California border and they say do you have any fruits or vegetables from outside the state, that would be an example of proactive management. UM is trying to keep it from happening to begin with by not allowing stuff and that shouldn't be in Yeah, I guess apparently. In this how Stuff Works article, the author talks about how they quarantine firewood sail up in Connecticut Emerald ash boards from making their way through the state um or Guam. Guam has this huge brown tree snake problem. We must have talked about this in the in the Beagle Brigade, but they've like basically killed off the population of every other animal on the island. It's a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's not too far off. They've really had a huge impact on it. And they they they trained dogs to to sniff them off. The case from any cargo plane or ship that leaves Guam has to be inspected by these things, by these dogs to find the snakes, because they are taking it that seriously because they've had such a terrible impact on Guam. Proactive management another thing that they do, aside from like border inspections and stuff like that, is basically just trying to destroy it. And I guess in that first phase doctor Javago's first phase. By the way, doctor Javago's name is, I found it. Are you ready for this? I think we should get a drum roll. Jerry, Doctor Alexander Mean M E. I N E. S Z Marine biologists. But he says, you can call me al or just call me doctor Z like Paul Simon. Yeah sure, um, alright, So Yeah, eradicating them in the early stages. Uh. And this has happened before in California specifically they beat down an invasive weed brought in from the tropics, so it can work. But I get the feeling that in researching this stuff, like once you're passed that for stage, you maybe s o L Well, yeah, I have that same cross your fingers. That is not one that will wreck the ecosystem. So that's proactive. There's also reactive management to write. And there's the age old well, just get your hands on whatever it's natural predator is and then introduce that into the ecosystem or that. That's like from that classic Simpsons episode, you remember that where Bart has a tree lizard that eats birds. So they release some tree snakes and then they release some geility the tree snakes, and they say that a cold snap will cause all the grills to freeze to death, so that will be that. That's like, that's basically what they're what they're doing. Like, there's this this um bug called brown marmordd stink bugs, which are actually they they're stink bugs and they'll swarm in your house, so they're a pest. But they're also really bad for fruit crops and vegetable crops. Um. And they don't have a natural predator here. Over in Asia where they're from, Um, they are predated by a parasitic wasp. So they're thinking of bringing parasitic wasps over and it's like, oh, yeah, sure, nothing could go wrong if you bring parasitic wasps into an ecosystem. Man, those stink bugs, they we'll scare the Bejesus side of you in the middle of the night, Yeah, because they'll swarm well, I mean I've I've never seen more than one at a time, but I'm just talking about waking up because one of them is crawling over your cheek. Well, supposedly, the brown marmorated stink bugs are different from the Southern stink bugs that were used to yeah and just warm. Yeah, I can't tell the difference. I've never smelled the stink either. I haven't either. I saw somebody say that they smell like cilantro. I'm like, that's fine, that's great. Put some of them on your tacos. It's weird. They're all over the place. So I see him in my bathroom, especially in the winter. Yeah, because they come inside to stay warm. Yeah, but supposedly they swarm the brown marmaradd one swarm, so they come inside your house, hang out and then just cover your face and you fall down the stairs and then the squirrels get you. Yeah, that's invasive species in a nutshell? What else we got here? You want to talk about a couple of more of these? Yeah, I want to talk about my favorite of all time. Are you ready for this? Yes, The Startling, The European Starling. Yeah. And you know what, this is a great time to shout out one of our new brother podcasts here on the network, Omnibus with Ken Jennings of Jeopardies fame and John Roderick of the indie band Long Winters. Right, they have a new show called Omnibus that is about sort of obscure history and uh, they did an entire episode on The European Starling. Oh they did. Yeah, well then this ties into that. It does, so go listen to that show, subscribe and here that is in a nutshell? Ohh okay. So back in eighteen ninety there's this guy. He was a German immigrant to the US. His name was Eugene Schifflin. Did I pronounce it right? Eugene Schifflin was a Shakespeare enthusiast, right to say the least, he had this idea that it would be really cool. And remember this is eighteen ninety. They had no idea about invasive species at the very least you wouldn't think a bird would be. But he decided that it would be really cool to release all of the birds mentioned by Shakespeare into North America and he would start with the European starling. So in winter of eighteen ninety and then again like a month or so later in he released a total of one hundred European starlings in Central Park. Make note of that number one were released in eighteen ninety. And now there are more than two hundred million European Starlings in the United States. And they are jerkbirds. Yeah. Yeah, they'll swarm like a brown marmoradd stink bug. They'll swarm, but they swarm on cattle to scare them away from their food so that the starlings can eat their food. So these birds are capable of scaring cattle off. Yeah, that's a big one. They'll also crash your plane. They will, they will, they will swarm your airplane. Uh, it has happened before there was one that took off from Logan. Uh there in Boston the worst bath airport bathrooms in the world. And yeah, yeah, it's pretty bad. I think I talked about the bathroom stalls there. They're like three inch gaps in between the doors. Yes, it's like literally you can just see each other pooping. You could fit like a whole and he's through there. Yeah, like you're gonna eat that bagel just man, slide it through there. Well she she makes pretzels, delicious pretzels. Okay, um, yeah, yeah, I wasn't saying she she made bagels, I got I was just trying to think of something fatter than a pretzel. Could you fit a bagel through the stall? Is it really that bad? You could fit a bagel flat man, like a bigel half. No, it's not quite that bad, but it's bad. Like I remember pooping it Logan and making eye contact with the just stained very distressing. Yeah. So anyway, birds crashed crashed a plane into Boston Harbor, killed sixty two people startling. Yeah, that's not good. And they are also very dense eaters apparently right like uh like the carpet. Yes, I believe so they're definitely a huge problem from what I understand, But they were the idea that they were released in appreciation of Shakespeare I just find fascinating. Thank you, Eugene Schifflin. Now they're a major problem. Um. There's one other one we got a shout out to, Chuck is the cane toad, oh yeah, which is another um invasive species that was introduced using the Simpsons technique because there were some cane beetles that were harming Australia's sugar crop back in the nineteen thirties, and so they got the idea to import some cane toads, uh to eat these beetles, and the cane toads, from what I understand, worked pretty well, but then their population boom from I think a hundred and seven initial ones to again two hundred million just in in less than a hundred years. Yeah, there's that great classic documentary on the cane toad. And we talked about them before in an episode, didn't we. Yeah. One of the ways Australia is delightfully weird. M Yeah, we'll see you guys this fall. That's right, your spring. Oh yeah, that's true. They're all confused where are you right although it's their summer, well, no, it's their September will be their spring. But oh right now, yeah, it's the deadest summer for them. Man, wait for you can wait to meet those people in person. So I know it's gonna be cool. Man. I'm gonna get me a hat that has alligator teeth around the brim is local custom. So Chuck, let's talk kuds. Do you want to? Yeah, we'll finish up with kudzoo. Um. This is a great story called The True Story of kad Zoo Comma The Vine that Never Truly Ate the South by Bill Finch and Uh, everyone has probably heard of kudzoo. It has a very steeped mythology. Um. And it's one of those things where people um, especially outside of the South, uh, talk about, oh yeah, you got your cut. You know, kud zoos is. It's just everywhere you look, there's kud zoo in the South. And and if you go to any southern town there will be a kud zoo cafe or a kud zoo antique. There's a Kudzoo Antiques right here, indicator. It's just one of those things. The South took it and ran with it um as far as just like a marketing thing. But here's the deal. Most people know. It was introduced at the eighteen seventy six World's Fair Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Was a vine from Asia and the story goes that it just took over the South, but that's not quite right. Um. In nive that was dust storms that damaged the prairies, and Congress said, you know what, erosion is a big problem, so let's use cud Zoo. And they brought in seventy million seedlings to grow in nurseries as soil conservation. Right remember our episode on desertification. I think we talked about that. Yeah, so they like, we're planting it on purpose. They were paying people as much as eight dollars an acre, which was pretty good money back then the nineteen to plant cud zoo. Uh, flash forward a little bit. There was a radio host for the Atlantic Constitution, UM, one of our newspapers, well announced a j C. Back then there were two NewSpace person journal in the Constitution. His name was a columnist named Channing Cope that became an evangelist for this stuff. And basically, during these depression era radio broadcast would say, you know, plant kut zoo. Uh so the South can live again. Yeah, you know, to restore the soil back to its its original nature. And so these farmers were taken money from the government saying, Okay, sure I got some land that I'm not using or that could use some fixing, so I'll play it this stuff for eight bucks an acre. And they did. But the problem is that no one could ever figure out how to make money off of it. It wasn't a crop, it wasn't good for grazing because apparently when cattle and horses grazed on it, it died um and no one really wanted to buy it from a nursery, so there's no way to make money off of it. So when the soil conservation payment program ended, everybody just kind of tilled it into the soil and cut Zu went the way of the dying store, or it would have had it not been for the railroad industry and the highway construction industry. Yeah. So the original goal was to plan about eight million acres of the stuff around the South, but by that was just about a million acres planted. But because of the fact that cattle don't graze by the highway generally or on the railroad. That's where it really took hold uh and did envelop things like roadside signs and full trees and if you were and this is how it got their reputation, because people would be on the train or they'd be driving down the highway and they would that's where it was the worst, and they would see it and it got this reputation as this monster vine that was eating the South. Yeah, because it really is disconcerting to see kut zoo growing up like a fifty ft tree and totally covering it like it's consuming it. It's it's very much. It evoked that same feeling like seeing a snake eat like a whole whole rabbit. Right, Yeah, it's it's it evokes the same feeling. And Um, the thing is is most Southerners from say like the fifties on when this was when this really started to take root on these roadsides, their connection to the land was no longer in the four the farms or the force. It was in the cities, and they traveled mostly in their car or on trains, which is where kad zoo was most visible. Remember, So there was this idea and it was a pretty understandable idea that kad Zoo had taken over South. There was in the process of taking over the South, and the whole thing was helped along, apparently by a garden club newsletter. Yeah, so the idea is that there were And this is a stat that you can an incorrect stat that you can still get that says, you know, up to nine million acres of the of the southern United States is covered in kad zoo. It all comes from these two books. A craft book and a Culinary and Healing Guide. Are these two books that are most frequently quoted as to that number. The U. S. Forest Service says, actually, it's about two and twenty seven thousand acres of forest land, about the size of a small county in Georgia. Nowhere near what they're saying. It is. Uh And while it's still when you drive along some of these southern highways, it looks like it's eating a water tower and it and it is um. Once you step ten feet into the forest, it stops. Yeah, because it's terror grows terribly in shade um. And Yeah, if you have a Kudzye problem, just get some horses or cows and there goes your kudzee problem. It's not a very hardy plant. It's just it has no no real predators or anything to hold it back on those roadsides or on those railroad embankments, which is why it grows so wild there. So those um, those that culinary book and the um Craft book they have to do with kud zoos, That seriously are the most widely cited sources by academic journals, by by scientists, by the government. Everybody cites these these sources um And apparently they just made it up, but they said that it was that it grows at a rate of a hundred and fifty thousand acres a year, and that same Forest Service report estimated it really grows it about acres a year, which is entirely manageable. Manageable. So this the but what's basically the poster child for invasive species in the United States, kud zoo is actually not really much of a problem at all. So everybody, we we don't all drink cocola. Well that's actually not true. Yeah we all drink it. Actually I don't really drink it that much. But yeah, there is not a kud zoo problem. Um, stop it and stop saying Hotlanta. Yeah, nobody here says that. No, I remember that that again. In the nineties, there is a little push for that risk yicling invasive species in Hot Lanta. One of them didn't make it. That's right. Do you anything else? No? I thought this is a good one. I thought so too. If you want to know more about invasive species, there's tons of them that we didn't even cover. Um, So go look him up, educate yourself, and then go save the planet and tell him Josh and Chuck sent you. Uh And in the meantime, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this very sweet orchids story a big hello to Josh, Chuck and Jerry. I'm writing in to say how much I love your orchids episode and also share a bitter, sweet and pretty amazing thing that happened to my family. My grandmother was an avid gardener who had a knack for coaxing her collection of orchids into bloom again and again. I think some of her orchids might have been a decade or more old when she was diagnosed with cancer. She passed along her orchids to my stepmother, who has continued the tradition. One particularly beautiful orchid had refused to bloom after the move, until one day an August when it did bloom again. When my stepmother posted the picture to Facebook that morning, she didn't know that my grandmother was in the final process of passing away. Someone used their smartphone to show the photo to my grandmother at hospice, and it was one of the very last things she saw. Must have brought her a lot of joy to know that her orchids in fact lived on. She attached to photo, very beautiful orchid, she said, or kids will always have a special place in my heart. We're sensing my grandmother's last day with us and each of those plants. It's a treasured family heirloom. I hope I'll be the next to inherit the matri ne Neal, Matrilineal, Matrilineal. I think, so yeah, that's right. I hope I'll be the next to inherit the Matrilineal Green thumb all the best, Maggie. That is a great, great orchid story. Yep, great listener mail. That's how you get on listener mail, everybody. Yep, you just warm our hearts, okay, or insult this. Yeah, but we don't actually read those, We just make grumbly reference. That's right. If you want us to make a grumbly reference to something you wrote, well, then write us an insulting email. If you wanted to get read, then warm our hearts. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast uh, and you can also hit up the official Facebook page at Stuff you Should Know and what Else Chuck Emails. You can send us all an email, including Jerry, Noel, Matt Everybody to stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at at Home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,