Scichat: Uncovering the Majestic World of Moose and Beyond with Wildlife Author Jason Bittel

Get ready for a wildly entertaining episode as we chat with wildlife author and animal expert Jason Bittel. We kick off the conversation with a fun game of moose facts, uncovering surprising truths about these majestic creatures like their impressive swimming abilities and their incredible speed at just five days old. You won't believe how much there is to learn about these fascinating animals!

Join us as we explore Jason's writing journey, including his work as a science educator, and his unforgettable experiences in Belize. Discover how his childhood reading habits and love for animals have led him to write for National Geographic Books, and learn about his upcoming project, Sort of Funny Field Guides, as well as other works like How to Talk to a Tiger and Other Animals, Animals Lost and Found, and The Frozen Worlds.

Finally, we discuss the mysterious and magical properties of antlers, the potential performance-enhancing effects of antler velvet supplements, and whether or not it's painful for moose to lose their antlers. Don't miss out on this captivating episode where we uncover the incredible world of moose and other wildlife with Jason Biddle.

Jason's Links:
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/bittelmethis
Website: https://www.bittelmethis.com/

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Transcript

Speaker 3: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts, Welcome to SciChat. My name is Jason Zikowski. I'm the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker the science dogs on social media.

Speaker 4: 0:20

My cohost is Hi there, i'm Chris Zikowski and I am so happy to be here to learn all about the moose and other wildlife. With Jason Biddle, i am the dog mum to Bunsen and Beaker and a cat mum to ginger here in Red Deer, alberta.

Speaker 3: 0:39

And without further ado, we'd like to welcome our guest tonight, Jason Biddle, wildlife author and animal author, who has written for Nat Geo, Washington Post a bunch of other publications. Jason, welcome to SciChat.

Speaker 5: 0:56

Hey, thanks for having me. This is awesome.

Speaker 3: 0:58

I'm so excited. We've been looking forward to talking to you because you were writing a book and you have. You had a really funny moose thread. You know some things about moose And that is right up our alley here. On the Bunsen and Beaker account, as everybody knows, bunsen found he still finds the legs of animals And one winter he found how many legs? was it Nine moose legs, chris.

Speaker 3: 1:23

And it was disgusting, it was awful, it was the worst. So, before we get to the interview, if you're just tuning into the replay, hello. And if you're listening on Good Pods, we love you. The Science Podcast is the number one science show in the world this week. Everybody, the number one science show in the world on Good Pods. We pulled ahead of Dr DeGrease, tyson, we pulled ahead of Bill Nye, the Science Guy, the SGU, all those other shows. We are number one. So if you're listening on Good Pods, we love you, thank you. We're going to start with the game. So, jason, i see you're in there, and then we got a whole bunch of people playing. The game today is about moose facts.

Speaker 4: 2:04

I am a moose avatar.

Speaker 3: 2:05

There are so many moose avatars. Somebody has logged in as the.

Speaker 2: 2:12

Slim.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Shady.

Speaker 3: 2:14

Moose. That's an in joke. Chris always logs in as Slim Shady. I think it's time to play. Let's go everybody. Moose facts here on SciChat. Yes, i did get most of the facts from National Geographic. Moose can live, so this is not within captivity, this is in the wild. How long can moose live? 20 to 30 years, 10 to 15 years, 50 plus years or 15 to 20 years Again. I got this from National Geographic, so that is my reference source, and I was surprised by this one. Yes, 15 to 20 years. I thought they would live longer than that, being so big. I don't know. Did you get that one right, jason, or did you get bamboozled?

Speaker 5: 3:02

I did, i think. Whenever I wrote that last story about them, i was looking this up, so I had a little awareness of it. But what I thought was interesting is the smaller deer species, like the white-tailed deer. We think of them as being, like you know, living a long time having those big antlers, but the average life of a white-tailed deer in the wild is usually like four years.

Speaker 3: 3:22

Wow, is that because they get snacked on by predation?

Speaker 5: 3:26

Mostly it's because we hunt them. Most deer especially in places like Pennsylvania. when they die, they're killed by hunters, And with cars being a close second, I think.

Speaker 3: 3:37

Yeah, okay, well, all right. So, oh my God, liz is in first place. Liz is in first, then Silky Ramona and then Bev Bean. Okay, next question Moose are powerful swimmers and can dive up to 20 feet underwater. No, yes, 20 feet is deep. If you think of a swimming pool, right, that's well over multiple times a very tall person's head. Okay, is this true? And the answer is yes, it is true. Moose are aquatic, as you find that in some of your research too, jason. They love the water.

Speaker 5: 4:26

You know, i guessed. Yes, i wasn't sure on this one, but I'm thinking, i'm wondering if they actually are more like sinkers and runners than they are. You know, active swimmers, true, so big and heavy, i wonder how much they just kind of sink.

Speaker 3: 4:39

They do. That's what that's one way they do. They let their air out and they sink to the bottom of a lake, eat the vegetation, because they love the vegetation down there, and then they walk out of the lake Incredible, i know, it's wild. Okay, chris is in first place. Then we have Silky, ramona, bev Bean and Bittle Me This. You're on the board, jason, you're on the leaderboard, okay. Next question Moose can outrun you by the time they are this old Five days old, right out of the shoot, two weeks old, one month old. Moose can outrun you by the time they are five days old, right out of the shoot, two weeks old or one month old. So again, i got this from National Geographic. Don't shoot the messenger. It's five days old. Five days old. They can run faster than you.

Speaker 5: 5:34

Long legs.

Speaker 3: 5:35

Yeah, i think that's what happens with baby moose, is they grow their legs first. They're like legs to the moon. Chris, did you get that one? I got that one. How do you get these? How are you? I didn't show you these questions. Well, chris is in first. Jason is in second, silky. Good job, jason, yeah.

Speaker 5: 5:56

Thank you.

Speaker 3: 5:56

Chris has not lost a cahoot in a while, so maybe you can dethrone her today. That's a lot of pressure.

Speaker 4: 6:03

Please do not dethrone me.

Speaker 3: 6:05

No, she does not take losing. Well, okay, next question The moose is one of the least social animals on the planet. Nope Or yep, the moose is one of the least social animals on the planet. Hmm, what does everybody think? What do you guys think The moose is the least social animal on the planet? You don't know, it's yes. Yeah, they're super anti-social.

Speaker 4: 6:36

Do you know why that is Jason?

Speaker 5: 6:38

I don't. I took a flyer on that one. I got it right though.

Speaker 3: 6:40

Oh, good, good for you. Good guessing. They're just anti-social. They're just not social. They're kind of like orangutans They only come together to mate and the mama takes care of the baby until it's time, and then they part ways too.

Speaker 5: 6:54

They have that reputation for being very standoffish, both mothers and calves and the bulls, especially whenever they're in mating season. So you know it made sense that they're not hanging out in big groups And also, i feel like with an animal that size they're, you know, probably competing for food.

Speaker 3: 7:11

Touche, touche. Yes, okay, chris is in first, followed by Jason, ramona, silky and Cat P. Okay, last question, everybody. The flap of skin under a moose chin is called a grand bell, flim, tinu. Hmm, grand bell flim or a tinu?

Speaker 4: 7:43

People will get this one if they got our text from Bunsen book because, this is in our book.

Speaker 3: 7:47

Yeah, this one is in text from Bunsen. It's a bell. I'm sorry if you pick grand or flim or tinu, i made those all up. Grand is the is the great big battering ram that is used by the forces of Sauron to open the gates of Menacecearth. Flim is from a childhood game that our oldest son, duncan, loved to play, called Freddy Fish. the flim flam, fliminy flam, flapper-japper. It was like some weird thing in this, this point and clip game. And tinu, i just made that up. I don't even know where that comes from, so I don't know. Jason, did you get that one, the bell?

Speaker 5: 8:24

No, I dropped a fourth with tinu Tinu.

Speaker 3: 8:29

Okay, i think Chris won again, everybody. Well, congratulations to everybody who played. Okay, we've got Chris, and first Silky Ramona and then Jason's enforced and then Slim Shady Moose. The Slim Shady Moose is in fifth or, yeah, fifth place. one, two, three, four, five, yeah, well done. Okay, so we've got Chris. We got the game over. Let's reintroduce our guest Jason. Welcome to SciChat. We're so happy to have you. I introduced you as an author. Could you tell us a little bit about your work as a writer?

Speaker 5: 9:05

Sure, so I write for a lot of different audiences and a lot of different places, but the thread that holds it all together as animals. Somehow, over the last you know, almost 10 years, i've gotten to a point in my career where I get to write about animals pretty much all day, every day, and it's a dream job that I did not know existed whenever I was a kid. So I'm not sure what the demographic of the show is, but if there are kids out there, i really want to get that message out, that this is a thing you can do, and it's a thing you can do for a living, which I think is just incredible. So I, you know, yes, i write for National Geographic. I've written for their website, their magazine, their travel and kids magazines, and I'm currently writing a book for National Geographic Books which is due out in 2025. And it is tentatively called Sort of Funny Field Guides, and the very quick pitch on that is that, basically, if you wanted to learn about any animal, you could probably go find a field guide already. They would tell you how much they weigh, where they live, you know, maybe, what their diet is, but I'm going to guess that that field guide will be lacking in wonder, and so what I'm trying to do is make a field guide that is accessible for almost anybody, to pick up anywhere and, you know, learn about animals. But not only accessible, but it's fun, and so you know it won't be a chore to read. It should actually be entertaining, and so that's sort of the the pithy title, you know, sort of funny feel guides.

Speaker 5: 10:28

Beyond that, though, i Right for kids in a number of different places. I used to have a column with the Washington Post called ever wondered where we would answer one question that seven to eleven year olds Would have, and it was so fun. They actually it just went on under. Like a month ago the whole kids post section went down. There, i guess, was, you know, canned. So that's unfortunate. But I've also gotten to write a few kids books. So I have one book about animal communication called how to talk to a tiger and other animals.

Speaker 3: 11:01

Yeah, i saw that. That looks intriguing, to say the least super fun, i mean it.

Speaker 5: 11:07

It kind of blew my mind when I started researching how many different ways that animals communicate, you know, with all these different senses, and most of them, you know, are completely invisible to us, mm-hmm. But I've also got two more recent kids books. One's called animals lost and found and I sort of look at it as like a, you know, an intro guide for kids to learn about conservation, extinction and endangered animals and recovering animals, and so it's Kind of got a little bit of everything but it's a really good sort of like. I know my kids are always asking me How many of this animal are left, how many of that animal Okay?

Speaker 5: 11:42

This animal still around, and so it sort of explains a lot of that with a really cool artwork. And then my newest kids book is called the frozen worlds and it's published by DK penguin And it is about the Arctic and the Antarctic and its nature in science, and so it's full of penguins and polar bears and krill and weird kinds of ice and It's also really fun and beautifully illustrated.

Speaker 3: 12:07

Love it. So when you were young, jason, were you? were you a reader and writer like? was that something you were? you did a lot as a kid.

Speaker 5: 12:14

You doodle right, journal, any of that stuff 100% what I didn't what I didn't realize was you know sort of You know how I could be a writer someday. You know I definitely read. I actually have a presentation I give to elementary schools. That's called reading is a superpower, because you know, even if you're reading dr Seuss, you know anything. You're reading is exposing you to new worlds, new ideas. You know new thoughts, and You know the cool thing about reading is it levels up as you level up, and so the order you get, the more difficult and more interesting and more you know expansive books get, and so you know There's a book out there for every age group, and so I think that's you know partially what got me down this path.

Speaker 5: 13:00

But as I grew up and became a better writer and started to wonder, okay, you know I like to write, and it's my teachers are telling me I'm good at it. What can I do with that? and I don't know. You know what your backgrounds are, but there's an ongoing joke that you know English majors. What are you going to do with an English major? And so I was one of those English majors and it sort of took me a long time to Back into science writing as a career, because I'd always been interested in animals.

Speaker 5: 13:27

I grew up in a rural area and I was definitely that kid that was always, you know, flipping over rocks to see what lives underneath, yeah, poking dead things with a stick, Yeah. But you know, again, i got to junior high and science kind of turned into memorizing formulas and equations. Oh yeah, that wasn't for me, and so I just decided, okay, well, i'm not going to be a scientist and fortunately, years later I was a after my graduate or undergraduate program. I didn't apply to any graduate schools and I had learned about the student conservation association and Which is sort of like a Maricor, but for outside work, like environmental work, and I Saw this job through the SCA, called wild hog eradication intern.

Speaker 5: 14:11

No idea what that was, but I thought, if they let me do this, i have to do this. and so, sure enough, i got to go to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and I trapped and eradicated wild boar for the National Park Service that is, they are not small creatures, jason.

Speaker 5: 14:29

They, some of them.

Speaker 5: 14:30

There was one that I got that I had a hard time dragging the carcass by myself, like they are huge And so, but it also exposed me to all the science that's done in a national park.

Speaker 5: 14:41

You know whether it's through the wildlife department I was working with, which was mainly dealing with problem bears and invasive species like the wild boar, but also the botany crew and the herp crew and the fisheries crew and I just my mind sort of exploded. Unfortunately, right after that I had already gotten into a graduate writing program and when I got there on the first day the leader of the program asked everybody what your book idea was. And a lot of my cohorts were writing memoirs and I knew I wasn't. I didn't have memory me yet, but I did just have this really weird job with all these pigs and bears and you know all these crazy characters and you know Everybody seemed to like it, and so I wound up writing 200 pages about it and learned about all these other incredible science writers in the world And you know, sort of the rest was history.

Speaker 3: 15:26

Ah, awesome. Chris is doing an amazing job putting a bunch of Jason's tweets up in the nest on Twitter. Now I know for people listening to the replay if you're on Facebook that doesn't mean anything to you, but it's just some links to his books and some really cool photos. I believe like one of them Speak easier speaking about reading, writing and science at a title one program in your background backyard last night. That's cool, yeah that was amazing.

Speaker 5: 15:54

You know really little kids and I think you know what I love doing about those programs is like that's, that's when you still have That wonder right. You know, like we all I think most all of us start life with wonder for the natural world And, you know, eventually it kind of either gets beaten out of us or we just have more important things going on and we just realize, okay, i'm not going to be a scientist or you know, a wild boar or a indicator, you know I'm going to be a sous chef or a lawyer or whatever, and we sort of just think that that's the province of other people. But what I think is incredible about this is like this is science that you can be part of literally in your own backyard. And so like I'm just trying to get kids to keep that idea in their head that they don't have to be, you know, like a lab coat scientist to still participate and still have wonder for the world around them and still, you know, be Aware of the science that's happening everywhere.

Speaker 3: 16:47

I love that message On on our podcast. Everybody, just let everybody know, like the last two guests I've interviewed on purpose, they weren't scientists, they were just science enthusiasts about some stuff like things that they're they love so much, and we should never gate, keep, gate keep science based on degrees or PhDs. I think that message of yours of having wonder for the world is so important and Chris and I are both high school teachers and we do try our best To make sure that that wonder the little kids in elementary have for science sticks with them In high school. But you're right, there is a lot of memorization and formulas and figures and math And part of it's necessary.

Speaker 5: 17:33

But like think about you know, we've all gone down the rabbit hole of a Wikipedia page. Yeah you just you went there searching for one thing and the next thing, you know You're like 12 pages deep and you're learning about, you know, india's involvement on World War two and you're saying you know, how did I get here? I don't know, but I'm gonna keep going because you are curious. Yes, and you know that wonder can drive Incredible amounts of learning.

Speaker 2: 17:56

Yes.

Speaker 5: 17:56

And you know and art and you know and many other things. So, like I, i always like to tell kids There are many different ways to be a science writer. A lot of my colleagues started as scientists and decided to become science communicators instead. Or also and I went the other way I started as an English major, a writing major, and Science was just something I was interested in, and so I've sort of, you know, put my Chocolate in my peanut butter and, you know, never look back.

Speaker 3: 18:23

I Don't know if Chris likes that reference. You're not a fan of Reese's pieces, are you Chris?

Speaker 4: 18:28

Oh, no, No, i'm not a fan of Reese's Pieces. Oh actually. I like Reese's Pieces, but not the Reese Peanut Butter Cups.

Speaker 5: 18:36

Mm, it's the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate. to you.

Speaker 3: 18:40

The ratio. That's very quick, jason, i love that. Well, you'll be happy. I'm the science department head of my school and we had a directive a couple years ago to come up with the values of our department, right. And I fought and I convinced my colleagues to have wonder as the number one directive of our entire science department. Love it So. Not assessment, not experimentation, even though that's part of it. Not you know all these other things which are very important teamwork, you know calculations, memorization. I fought for wonder and that's the number. That's the first directive of our science, our whole science department.

Speaker 5: 19:23

That's amazing And honestly, it just something occurred to me right now and it's just that, like so much learning happens now outside of school and after school and in other schools. you know, like, especially at that early age, if you just keep the wonder going, you can get the basics, the you know, the nuts and bolts later, if you don't get it in the beginning. But if you have that wonder, you're just going to keep going. I love it.

Speaker 3: 19:47

Jason, can I ask you a couple more questions about your writing, if you don't mind? Absolutely. I was waiting with bated breath for us to get to moose and, like a good interviewer, i'm leaving that for a little bit later to increase the anticipation. So you've written for, like the Washington Post and that geo, what's one of your most memorable stories? Like if you're thinking back from now till the, you know days, weeks, months, years ago, what's, what's one of the things you've done that's just memorable to you.

Speaker 5: 20:21

It's funny. People are always asking me what my favorite animal is and I always say whatever I'm writing about that week because it's just. You know there's an epic poem hiding it inside literally every living thing. And you know we so rarely read those poems that every everything is incredible. Yeah, but I definitely, you know, have been lucky enough to go some places and see some things.

Speaker 5: 20:43

Two years ago I got a chance to go hang out with a bunch of bat scientists and Belize, they have this big grouping where you know all these bat scientists from all over the world come to this one little jungle and they conduct basically like a conveyor belt of science on the bats they collect. So you know every scientist would go out. You know, imagine studying a moose. You know one scientist, you know looking at a moose or catching a moose and doing that work. This is, you know they're catching hundreds, you know thousands of bats and then they are sitting around in a circle and then this one is looking at their parasites and this one is looking at their microbes and this one is looking at their you know spatial distribution and you know on and on and on and literally all night, every night for two weeks. You know, dozens of scientists are collecting just mountains of data And it was, you know that was in itself incredible to behold and just to see all these different species of bats trap tropical bats.

Speaker 5: 21:41

But you know the story. And also I should say this is one of my more like. You know, most of my job is sitting in front of a computer or staring at a book or, you know, calling a scientist on the phone or Zoom. You know I don't want to pretend like that is not the most of my job, But every once in a while you do get an Indiana Jones moment. And in Belize, on our second to last night, it was actually a total lunar eclipse and we had to go back out to the jungle to extract a few of the bat nets that were still out there. And all week the guides had been telling us these ghost stories about, you know, this area being haunted and the particular area we had to go into was an unexcavated Mayan ruin. And so you know, you got haunted, unexcavated Mayan ruin, during a total lunar eclipse in the middle of nowhere. You know it was just an epic scene. But on that trip we actually caught a bat called the false vampire bat or the spectacle bat.

Speaker 3: 22:50

Oh, the spectacle bat Yep.

Speaker 5: 22:53

I did not, honestly. You know like I write about animals for a living and I didn't know that thing existed. And then we caught one in our net and it was. You know, if every other bat we caught that week was like the size of a, you know, a sparrow, you know, maybe a blue jay, This thing was the size of a crow, It was huge And it was unbelievable to behold. And you know, I kept referring to it as like a forest god And I later learned that these bats don't drink blood. Like vampire bats, They eat meat and they catch bats and birds on the wing or in their nests as they're sleeping and then they haul them back and then tear them limb from limb And I just like I got to see that thing. You know there's Jack is flying Jaguar, They call it like. It was incredible. I'll never forget it.

Speaker 3: 23:39

So how close were you to it? Like were you super close, Like you were really really close to this thing.

Speaker 5: 23:44

It was just me and the other scientists working this very specific part of the net. We probably had, you know half a dozen nets out with you know maybe 20 scientists lining all the nets, and I was part of the one spot that this bat flew into. Wow, we think, we think that it was responding to the squeaks of the other bats that we had already caught and that it was honing in on those. And there was a big hole in one of the nets in front of us And we think maybe it had busted right through that and got caught in our. The cool I was holding the light for Dr Winifred Frick was the scientist that was extracting it from the net And so, like I was helping her extract this, this thing that, again, i did not know existed.

Speaker 3: 24:26

It was so cool, they got, they got yeah, like I, i, i know what it is. I brought up a Google image search and it must be just wild, cause they've got great big eyes, like huge eyes.

Speaker 5: 24:36

And now I go ahead, Chris.

Speaker 4: 24:38

Sorry, i put a picture of their teeth. I have. I found it on your Twitter and the teeth are insane And it's up in the nest. It is way better than a Google search, because this is something that you actually experienced and can share with us.

Speaker 5: 24:53

Yeah, that image is slightly out of focus, but it's the best photo I've ever taken, like it was just incredible.

Speaker 3: 25:00

That's so cool. We've spoken to a like a bat scientist, Dr Kristen Lear, and she you know they, they, some people are very terrified of bats, So I love that we're talking about bats again. They're just so important to the ecosystem. They're such unique, amazing creatures.

Speaker 5: 25:17

Yeah, and maybe you know, on that note, you know again one of the again I'm writing a book called it. My book is, i should have said it's about the wildlife of North America. And so while I've gotten to go to Belize, i've gotten to go, you know, on safari in Africa and I've seen some really incredible animals in their native habitats. Part of my whole you know spiel is that you know there's mind blowing wildlife everywhere, everywhere, you know, wherever you are in your backyard, even if you're in a city, there's wildlife and it's doing its thing and it's incredible. And two weeks ago I actually was able to take a trip to Texas And on that trip I got to see one of the, the mating dances of one of the most rare birds on earth, the Atwater Prairie Chicken, which there are only a few hundred left. And then, just a few days before that, i was at Bracken Cave, which is home to between eight to 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats. It's like the largest single species of bats on the planet.

Speaker 3: 26:16

Dr Lear mentioned that. Jason Dr Lear actually talked about that cave in Texas.

Speaker 5: 26:20

Yeah, So Bracken's been on my list, you know, since I've learned about bats, wow, and I've always wanted to go there and it again. You know, words don't do it justice, but I was there for the emergence. You know, every night for six months out of the year, these bats come up from Mexico, they migrate, they're basically all females and they're basically all pregnant and they come there to have their babies And so they come out of that cave every night in a I mean, there's only one word for it, and that is batnado. You know, they swirl up into the sky for three hours. It takes three hours for all those bats to get out and they spin off into the distance like a plague of flies, like and it's the most incredible thing And I was just standing there and they were swirling all around me And so, like Did, you feel like Batman.

Speaker 5: 27:10

I felt like yes, i mean it was. I was speechless, you know, and if you can render a science writer speechless, then I think you know.

Speaker 3: 27:19

I have the. I've got goosebumps, jason.

Speaker 5: 27:22

It was, i mean hard to explain, but the moral of that story is, if you're out there and you're afraid of bats, i was in the presence of maybe 15 million bats swirling all around me. They don't want anything to do with your hair, they don't want anything to do with your blood, you know, like they are just swirling up into the sky, trying to avoid the hawks that are picking them off one by one and going out into the night so that they can eat beetles and moss and mosquitoes and everything else.

Speaker 3: 27:50

Just incredible. Maybe we need to go see that. Chris, do it. Okay, sounds good. We know some people in Texas. Actually, we have Donna and we've got cowboy cat wrench. I don't know if Donna is in the call today.

Speaker 4: 28:06

Donna is. Yeah, she is.

Speaker 5: 28:08

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 28:08

Cowboy crunches as well.

Speaker 5: 28:09

Yeah, nice, if you are a member of bat conservation international, which, again, if you're looking for an organization that does incredible work for animals, bat conservation international is the one that owns a Bracken cave and Winifred Frick, who I mentioned earlier with the false vampire bat, she is, i want to say, head science advisor, and I don't want to get her title wrong, but she's big over there. Anyway, she facilitated my visit there and they do take members for a visit, so you can be there, just a totally normal member of the public, and see this for yourself. It's in the United States. It's incredible, gotcha.

Speaker 3: 28:51

There's some hoops you have to jump through. I believe I remember Dr Lear said that you can't just randomly go there. or you can, but you might get in trouble.

Speaker 5: 29:00

Well, i believe you have to. it's behind a gate, so you do have to schedule a tour, and I believe that tours are limited, but it is possible.

Speaker 3: 29:07

Nice, nice, okay, guess what, everybody, we're to the question. You've all been waiting for moose. It's time to talk about moose, or is it meese or meeses?

Speaker 5: 29:20

I am totally okay if you say meese and I use meese, but I think the preferred is moose, and not even meuse is just meuse. Meuse is plural and singular, unfortunately.

Speaker 3: 29:30

Chris, when was the last time you saw a moose?

Speaker 4: 29:34

Two weeks ago.

Speaker 3: 29:34

Yeah, yeah, hopefully.

Speaker 4: 29:37

I did see two.

Speaker 3: 29:38

Yeah. So we're we see, we see, we see moose all the time. Our property overlooks this Cooley, this creek bed and they, the moose, move along and like we're just, we just love them. And of course everybody knows the story about Bunsen with the moose. But my question to you is you got on my radar, Jason? I apologize, I didn't know about you before this. I didn't know you even existed.

Speaker 5: 30:03

I'm sorry, i was your spectacle dad.

Speaker 3: 30:06

What? Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly, well done. You wrote a moose thread with, like it was just hilarious. I loved that. I was like oh, this is an instant follow. I was wondering if you could tell us some of the stuff you've learned about moose. I mean, everybody who's listening, that loves Bunsen and Beaker would love to know some more stuff about moose.

Speaker 5: 30:27

Sure. So I think what's really cool about that thread is? it all started because there was a video from Alaska that showed a moose. I want to say it was on a nest cam and it just sort of walks into the line of sight of the cam and it shakes its head and its antlers fall off and it walks away. And for you guys who see moose all the time, that might not be that big of a deal, but the internet went bonkers for it And everybody I think it might have even been on TikTok people were just like what is happening here? What is that moose? Okay, should we go find it? Yeah, what's wrong with the moose? And that was really interesting to me because that shows that lots of people don't really know how moose work. And that's also interesting to me because moose are these gigantic creatures, they're the largest deer species And they're in our backyards and we probably know a lot more about the daily lives of penguins than we do about moose, i guarantee it. I love stories like that And so I did a little bit of digging. We did a story on National Geographic News about it.

Speaker 5: 31:33

So the first thing about moose is that they are the largest deer species on earth And what they have are antlers as opposed to horns, and lots of your viewers or listeners already know this. But there's a fundamental difference between antlers and horns. In general, horns are sort of simple structures. They're built out of keratin, which is like the same material that makes up our fingernails and our hair, and they grow slowly over time and they build up year after year And they make sense. They make logical sense, antlers are total Like they make no sense.

Speaker 3: 32:09

What is going on with those Jason?

Speaker 5: 32:11

So every single year, a moose will lose its antlers, and there are lots of good reasons for this, and this applies to elk and deer.

Speaker 5: 32:21

All the servants do this. And so, to start at the beginning male moose, male deer, male elk they have these two little spots on the top of their heads called pedicles, and we're still trying to figure out exactly how this works, but I always envision it as like those little black snake fireworks that you had when you're a kid and you'd light it and it sizzles and then it sort of grows like a little black tube. These pedicles are like these magical little growth sites for bone, and so what antlers technically are are organs, and so you can imagine growing antlers like growing kidneys out of your forehead, but after a little while those kidneys actually turn to solid bone, and then after a little longer, you just lop them off and start over next year, and this is all so weird. No other animal, no other mammal creates a gigantic structure, and we're talking huge, like a moose can have antlers that weigh more than my second grader. They weigh like 75 pounds in some cases.

Speaker 3: 33:25

They can be six feet across. I checked. It's a gigantic structure Six feet across man, like just wild, and they're built out of thin air.

Speaker 5: 33:35

I mean, they're built out of twigs and leaves. The animal is actually growing these organs out of their forehead, and what's wild to me is that, you know, you must think, oh, you know, oh, nature's perfect And it's all perfectly balanced. Well, no, it's not. Whenever deer and moose grow these antlers, they have to take so many nutrients They can't even fulfill the nutrient requirement by eating enough, and so what their body does is it leaches nutrients out of its frame, you know, like out of its non-weight-bearing bones, and sends it up to the antlers to grow these gigantic structures. The other thing that always blows my mind is that we think okay, that's a heck of a thing. You know, clearly, these things are used to defend the animals against predators, but most cervids are more dangerous by using their hooves, so they'll pick and they'll charge, and, yeah, they will use their antlers in a pinch, but, like, mostly they're not for predator defense, which again makes sense because they don't have them for half of the year, and so what they are for is purely squaring off with other males of the same species. And what I think is also interesting about that and again, i could go on about antlers all night.

Speaker 5: 34:46

But we have this idea that male, deer, male moose are just out in the woods clacking antlers with every male they come across.

Speaker 5: 34:55

You know, like they're just constantly battling each other because that's what we see on nature TV, that's what we saw in Bambi, you know, like that's that's how we perceive it. But in truth the only time it comes to blows is if two males are evenly matched in a way that they can't look at the other guy and say, you know what, i'm not going to fight him. And so if they both think they have a shot, then they will tussle And it's truly they. You know it might last 10 seconds and one of them realizes it's in over its head, you know, literally, and then it'll just, you know, bug off. But if they're truly evenly matched, then they can go at it for hours and expend a ton of energy And it's enormously dangerous to both of them because one bad move and they could have organs punctured, they can die. And then this thing I also talk about in the thread sometimes happens where the antlers get connected. Yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 5: 35:49

And so we've seen many famous images of, you know, moose frozen in ice. You know they got locked together and died together and frozen, and this happens every year with deer. There are some cases where three deer get locked together. There's even a case where deer and sometimes moose will get locked together and then the other, the other male, dies but the head is still attached, and so you'll see like a deer or a moose wandering through the woods with the head of another dead deer attached to its antlers.

Speaker 5: 36:19

So you know all of this underscores the fact that antlers are also a liability. You know these animals live in forests And so they're constantly catching their antlers on branches, in briars and, of course, on human garbage And that's right also has lots of pictures of moose and deer tangled up in, like everything from garbage bags and Christmas lights to basketballs, and so it is kind of handy that they lock them off every year and then just start growing them again. And so again this is a long winded way of saying that I am obsessed with the fact that this is happening all over North America all the time, and most of us don't realize that it's happening. I just think that's incredible.

Speaker 3: 37:02

Oh my God, i have tears coming out of my eyes. Jason, you did such a good job of explaining all of that, thank you. The whole kidney to bone Like I've taught that before, but I've never. I've never used the analogy of like a real human organ. And that's literally what it is. It's an organ, can you? I just can't imagine like growing some, you know, like some new spleen coming out of your head And then it just turns to bone.

Speaker 5: 37:34

And here's what's really incredible. So they've actually. What's neat is, you know, this isn't this is all you know fun facts, but it's also like ongoing science. You know, we're still trying to figure out how this works because, technically, those growth sites, those pedicles, are wounds And so they heal and regrow every year, and this means that deer and moose are some of the only animals that are capable of regenerating lost tissue Wow, and so researchers are looking at that to try to figure out how to regrow things like nerves, for you know, people that have been in bad accidents And so currently we can regrow nerves, but only, you know, a few inches. But you know, think about a moose, like you said, those things can be six feet across, so one of them is three feet of cross. Those nerves, in the matter of you know, days, weeks, months are growing three foot nerves to nerves, growing tissue beneath them. So we're really trying to figure out how that works, and I will give you a little teaser.

Speaker 5: 38:34

I don't have a chapter on moose in my new book, which again is called sort of funny field guides do out in 2025. But I do have a chapter on the white tail deer, because and I joke, actually not a joke. I thought whenever I set out to write this book, if I can make deer interesting because where I live in Pennsylvania deer are just like background noise But if I could make them interesting, then I can make any animal interesting And this will be an interesting book. You know, start to finish, and so I did that. I wrote my sample chapter about white tail deer and it learned that scientists have taken the pedicle tissue from deer and transplanted it to like deer shins and antlers grow. They've transplanted it, they've transplanted it to the foreheads of lab rats and antlers start to grow.

Speaker 3: 39:19

That's a jackalope.

Speaker 5: 39:21

It's incredible, like it's magical.

Speaker 3: 39:24

Man can you that's like. What is that potion in Harry Potter that makes like their bones fix themselves?

Speaker 5: 39:31

Yeah, Skelly.

Speaker 3: 39:32

Skelly something. That's what it just make like a drink. You like chug this kid. you know some eight year old kid that broke his arm in half on the monkey bars And it's just full of like antler pedicles and blah, blah, blah. It just grows back again And so that's actually.

Speaker 5: 39:47

Skelly grow, there we go, skelly grow, yes, i mean. So there are people that take antler velvet as a supplement. And it's not. I believe it's not approved by the FDA And I think it used to be banned by the NFL and maybe the MLB because they thought there might be some performance enhancements to it, But I don't know. that it's, you know, made it past sort of pseudo science phase yet, but it's a possibility.

Speaker 3: 40:14

Yeah, the jury is very, very out on that. Antler velvet, it's one thing to take the cells and the active cells and like attach it to active cells, and another to eat like ground up dust of something. So, but you never know, you never know, skelly grows coming, maybe. Exactly, i have totally lost track of time, jason. This has been so entertaining. I think we should probably go to the Q&A section for everybody if there are other moose questions folk have. Chris, do you want to read the ground? Do you want to read the ground rules, as I'm just looking in the back channels?

Speaker 4: 40:56

Okay, For sure. So our space is a community space where we welcome people of all ages, so make sure that your topics are definitely PG age appropriate for anybody choosing to come and listen to our space as well. We check your profile to see what you're tweeting about, if we don't know you. Just to make sure that we keep our community safe from trolls, and I think that's it.

Speaker 3: 41:26

So if you have a question for Jason, something we didn't get to, we'd love for you to come up and Chris and I will. Chris and I will moderate. There is a question in the chat. Nobody's requested yet, but I'm sure there'll be some people. Jason, this question is for you from. I'm sorry I lost it from Kathy L. When moose lose their antlers, is it painful?

Speaker 5: 41:53

Hey, cathy L. Thanks for the question. I don't think so. What's interesting about that video that set off that tweet thread and the story I did for National Geographic was that the moose looks pretty surprised about what happens in that video, and so it might have been a moose that was losing its antlers for the first time, and so that might feel strange to suddenly have 50, 75 pounds disappear from your head.

Speaker 5: 42:20

And you also have to remember moose can't see their own antlers And deer can't see their own antlers. They can only feel what they feel like by rubbing them up against trees, other animals, and so it must be strange to have this structure growing on your head that you can't put your hand up and touch. But as far as we know, once the bone starts to separate at the base, it's actually one of the fastest deteriorations of bone known to. Science I want to say is the right way to phrase that And it's pretty seamless, like it just sort of deteriorates and lops off, and again, by design, because if the animals were injured in the process, they might not be able to grow good antlers the next year. We do know that if that site, the pedicle, gets injured in some way, the antler will sort of quote unquote remember the injury and it will grow a strange antler the next year and the next year and the next year.

Speaker 3: 43:19

Wild. Thanks for answering that question, jason. We have some people we brought up. I believe David was first, so we'll go David, cc, and then Paula, and then there's a question on Facebook. David, go ahead. Do you have a question for Jason?

Speaker 2: 43:35

Yes, i do. It's very interesting listening to the interview And I was curious about something is what would you say the vein? is there such a thing as a main area in North America for moose, like, are they more common in certain areas than others? I'm going to upstate New York in a week to go driving across to visit my mom in Canada And I haven't seen her in a while And I'm like wondering. It's got me thinking and what's the odds of encountering one of these things when I'm driving.

Speaker 5: 44:14

Well, i'm not sure what the odds are, but I would definitely say keep your eyes peeled, because I know folks that live in moose territory tend to be very cautious of running into a moose. They can be very life threatening. So keep your eyes peeled. I'm looking at my copy of North America's or I'm sorry wild mammals of North America. It's a 1500 page tome full of all sorts of mammal information And the distribution map shows pretty much all of Alaska, most of Canada, and then it has territory coming down into upstate New York, most of New Hampshire and Vermont, and then you have a little bit of swath up in North Dakota, minnesota, wisconsin, michigan and then also out West There are a few pockets. So I guess the long story short is you definitely have a chance to see them, but I don't know how big of a chance.

Speaker 2: 45:08

Yeah, and I guess the time of year is enters into it too, or I would imagine that springtime or early summer it's like. Oh, i don't know, i should look this stuff up. Anyway, i just wanted to ask that real quick And I really enjoyed the bit about the diving or the submerging thing. It sounded like a hippo, to be honest.

Speaker 5: 45:31

Definitely.

Speaker 3: 45:32

They're about as dangerous too. Oh, yeah, for sure, thank you. Thanks, david, over to CC. Hi CC, do you have a question for Jason?

Speaker 1: 45:45

Yeah, hi, can you all hear me okay?

Speaker 3: 45:47

We can.

Speaker 1: 45:48

Okay, great. Thank you so much. This has been really really fascinating, yeah. And so I mean my question kind of got answered about moose, which was that like can, like most endearant creatures with antlers, do they have a sense of self reflection, like if they were like look in a stream or whatever? could they be like what's that on my head? But that kind of got answered. So I have a question about working with kids, because I'm a librarian and while I mostly work with college students, i was wondering if you talk a little bit more about, like, how you got into working with kids on literacy And like if you have plans on, like, bringing some of these awesome moose facts or other strange animal facts to your work with kids to sort of help that sense of wonder and amazement about the world that we live in.

Speaker 5: 46:45

Thanks for the question, cece. You know I would say that I definitely do want to do more of the outreach. I've sort of really just gotten going in the last year or two And it sort of has happened organically. You know, my sister is an early ed teacher so I spoke to her class And then I knew somebody who knew somebody who is a science teacher and they brought me in. I finally got to go to the high school. I went to this year and then the rival high school And so it's sort of starting to build And I'm developing my programs for each audience.

Speaker 5: 47:18

I'm definitely not at the level yet where, you know, i have a crate full of animals I haul around and you know, wow, all the kids everywhere I go, but it is, you know, something that I think is fun to do. But I also think it's really important because, you know, the earlier we start this, you know what it is is scientific literacy. You know, the more we are comfortable with science and, you know, are comfortable with the ideas of, you know, interrogating the world around us, the more apt we are to, you know, read more and to engage with, you know, ideas, big ideas like climate change and, you know, like all of these huge things that require a base understanding of science and, you know, a trust of the scientific process, and so I think it's an enormous. You know, again, that's not stuff I'm going to tell kindergartners, but you know you know most facts. I do have sort of a spiel, that is, you know, weird animals are a gateway to broader scientific literacy.

Speaker 5: 48:17

You know we all love learning about animals. My kids, you know, as much as I'm. You know, bringing this stuff home. It's part of its inherent. You know you can just see they love the animals that they're learning about and they want to know more. And so you know that can be a foothold to. You know, maybe it's geology or crop science. You know there are just endless ways that you can take that wonder and that sense of learning. And so, in as I get my book actually turned in and I start focusing to promotion, i do hope to put more time into talking to these younger audiences who aren't necessarily the audience for my new book but who are incredibly important to get to, just, you know, for their own enjoyment but also for the future of the planet, i think.

Speaker 1: 49:05

I love that. Thank you so much. Yeah, i mean I feel like I'm not a children's librarian but like any children's librarian, i feel like would be ecstatic about that And yeah, and also just like David, about your question about where moose live Maine is also quite a popular place And I would. I think you'll be okay if you're like on highways and stuff because of their like, anti-social nature and stuff. But thanks for your question. It was really great.

Speaker 5: 49:36

Thank you for all you do, cece, and that's a great point. I somehow left out Maine. I'm going to get some hate mail for that one.

Speaker 3: 49:43

Thanks, cece. Okay, over to Paula. Hi, Paula, do you have a question for Jason?

Speaker 6: 49:49

Oh, i sure do. How's everybody doing tonight? Jason, i really appreciate you talking all about moose and bats. That's like two of my favorite things. My question is I have this is kind of for Jason As everybody knows, bunsen loves moose legs Do they taste like chicken? I mean, why is this dog always going after moose legs? Is it something of the scent maybe? And he just gravitates towards that? you know stanky moose leg, or you know. Is there any fact to you know how they taste? But my real question is to do, how fast can adult moose run in miles per hour?

Speaker 5: 50:31

That's a good question. Let me see if I have it quickly available to me.

Speaker 3: 50:36

The answer, Paula, is faster than you want to know.

Speaker 6: 50:41

Yeah, probably right.

Speaker 5: 50:43

So the National Geographic website says they can run up to 35 miles an hour over short distances and trot steadily at 20 miles an hour.

Speaker 3: 50:53

They book it, and they can do that through deep snow.

Speaker 6: 50:57

Yeah legs. They have long legs. Now are they? can they get that deer in a headlight? look too. So let's say, if you did see one on a road, do they get mesmerized by car lights like headlights?

Speaker 5: 51:10

I don't have firsthand experience with this, but anecdotally I want to say yes, because I know of friends that live in Vermont and Maine who you know. Their conventional wisdom growing up was always to if you see a deer, you're supposed to sort of like brace for impact. If you see a moose, you need to swerve because they won't get out of your way, and if you're in a small car you'll take out their legs and the the heft of the body will come through your windshield. Again, i've not studied that. That's the anecdotal. No, that's true.

Speaker 5: 51:40

Okay, but I will say that you know, structurally, moose have and I'm going to butcher this pronunciation, i'm a reader more than I am a public speaker but the Tapidum lucidum which is lining on the back of their retina which, in layman's terms, the way I understand it, it sort of reflects all the available light. So, like in dusk and in low light environments, it reflects available light back onto the retina, if I'm getting this correctly, basically giving them a double dose of light, and so it gives them a form of night vision, and so that is that Tapidum lucidum again pronunciation not sure is what reflects whenever you see an animal's eye shine at night, and so deer definitely have that. I would be very surprised if moose don't, since they are also species of deer.

Speaker 6: 52:33

Okay, well, thank you very much. It's been very interesting. I really appreciate it, and I still think Bunsen thinks moose legs taste like chicken.

Speaker 3: 52:42

They sure don't smell like it. Paula, the very first guest of the Science Podcast, everybody on episode one, season one, right When I didn't know what I was doing and I had a terrible mic, her name is Kimberly And she hit a moose with her car. Yeah, and that's what happens if you're in a car yet their legs get taken out and they go flying right into you and they you can get killed by the moose easily. She was injured pretty badly, broke her arm. She survived, but that's something that happened to her. So, yeah, terrifying, yeah, they're just so big. They're just so big.

Speaker 4: 53:29

How successful was the walkovers that we had built on Highway 1?

Speaker 3: 53:38

Oh, the, the BAMF overpasses the animal wildlife tracks. Yeah, not very successful to start with, because the animals thought it was weird, so I looked in. I looked into that for the podcast. I think that was something I did Once. They had trees and rocks and the smell of nature on it, it did better. Yeah, i don't know if you're familiar with that, jason. We have. There's one highway in Canada, because Canada has one highway, it's our socialist highway that everybody must travel on And when it goes through Alberta it sneaks through the mountains and and animals were constantly getting killed on our one big highway So they built overpasses for them, to the animals to travel over, in hopes that they wouldn't get smucked.

Speaker 5: 54:26

Yeah, i have a colleague, ben Goldfarb, if you're ever interested, if you've not had him on already. He's writing a book about road ecology And there's some fascinating work being done about, you know, trying to make our roads, trying to retrofit our roads to be more accommodating to, obviously, the wildlife all around us. But I believe that's the topic of his next book.

Speaker 3: 54:47

Sweet. If you have a second, if you could DM me some information about him, I'll troll for him.

Speaker 5: 54:55

Oh, absolutely Yeah, He actually. So his last book you could do a whole episode about that is called Eager Why Beavers Matter, and it's all about beavers.

Speaker 3: 55:05

Beavers are amazing. It's a great book. We have a question from Facebook, from Madison Redford, from Facebook Live Are moose, but, mr Redigan, are moose docile? or when they protect young, do they charge?

Speaker 5: 55:22

Yeah. so I think the general rule of thumb is you don't want to be anywhere near a moose. If you're worried about, if you're thinking those sort of thoughts, you should back up. They are definitely capable of great fury And, like we know, they can cover short distances very quickly and they're gigantic. I'm not sure what the evolutionary strategy behind this is. It's just that they can't run that fast forever Like a deer. you know, deer can run fast for a much longer, i want to say. And so they are looking to escape a predator. It seems like moose have gone the other direction, almost like a grizzly bear, and they're going to confront rather than flee. So I think that's the general advice there.

Speaker 3: 56:09

Have you heard Jim Gaffigan's moose comedy? his like stand up about moose.

Speaker 5: 56:14

No, but I love him. How have I not heard it?

Speaker 3: 56:16

Yeah, it is so good. Just the one line that I love he's like you know, he went to Canada and they're like he might see a moose and he's like, ok, and then his. Then they said you got to be careful because they'll kill you. And then he's like everything I knew about moose was wrong. I saw them on cartoons and they're like I'm a moose, but in reality they're like I'm going to kill you.

Speaker 5: 56:42

So so much of our perception about animals is based on the media we've consumed over the last 50 years, and so much of it is just terrible advice.

Speaker 5: 56:52

Yeah, rocky and Bulley, i just wrote a, I just wrote a skunk chapter and you know, you know the whole time I'm thinking of Papilla Pew and everything we've learned from him, And so, like you know, but these are, and again, Bambi and Deer, these are the sort of things that the public just has living in our brains for free, And you know we have to sort of unteach a lot of that stuff.

Speaker 3: 57:14

I've interviewed two, two different dogs, mushers. So one has been in the. I did a rod Blair, braver men, awesome. And then another guy, richard photo. And they they are. That's one thing they're always terrified of is moose. They call them murder ponies.

Speaker 3: 57:30

They sometimes will chase, they'll chase a dog sled team And I know Blair has some stories of when they've been out with her. like her or her husband Quincy, they carry like a gun And they don't. the only reason they carry a gun is because the moose will chase them like chase an entire pack of dogs pulling them on a sled. So yeah, moose are no joke everybody.

Speaker 5: 57:53

I mean herbivores that you know they're prey animals When I was in Africa the guides you know lions, hyenas, leopards. You know no big wolf. You know they're right beside the truck. You know nobody bats an eye. Nobody bats an eye. Hippos, elephants, kate, buffalo They're very, very cautious around the herbivores because those are the animals that will do the damage.

Speaker 3: 58:21

Madison has a follow up question and I don't know the answer to this, jason. The question is is there a proper way to get away from moose?

Speaker 5: 58:29

Huh, i don't know that based on my research. But if I had to guess, just based on their attributes, i think you'd want to do the serpentine. You know, try to zig and zag because they are big in their fast, but my guess is they can't corner very well. That said, if you can climb a tree, they can't. So if you can get at least eight feet into that tree pretty quickly because they can stand like seven feet at the shoulder, so maybe, maybe like eight to nine feet into that tree pretty quickly, that would also be a good way to go. But that's a great question.

Speaker 3: 59:04

Um, there was a. There was a viral video six or seven years ago of a moose charging a young boy and he did like the um sand people like, uh, you know, like in Star Wars, they like do that thing. He did that with like a stick and it scared the moose away. So he just like made himself really big and yelled at the moose.

Speaker 3: 59:24

So I don't, yeah, i would not suggest doing that if you could escape the moose, um, but anyways, that worked for this little boy. That does sound like the sound that would come out of me if a moose was charging me Um.

Speaker 5: 59:35

one more question from Facebook.

Speaker 3: 59:40

Amber flim is asking do the moose antlers get fuzzy like deer?

Speaker 5: 59:43

Uh, yes, Uh, so that fuzziness is called velvet and that's actually the living tissue, um.

Speaker 5: 59:48

So if you could and you wouldn't want to try this but if you could touch um a moose or a deer while they were in velvet, the antlers would feel warm, and that's because there is actually blood in the moose And that's because there is actually blood coursing, you know, through veins beneath that fuzzy tissue, that living tissue Um. And what happens whenever the rut comes on, which is whenever, you know, the beginning of the mating season, that tissue dies in the veins beneath the dye and all that living stuff dies And what's below there calcifies into hardened bone, and so that's the stuff that you know. Can you know? it's bad already, um, once all that uh dead stuff or, i'm sorry, once all that tissue dies, though it's still attached and I guess it's very itchy while the nerves are still in place. So that's why, uh, moose and deer will rub their antlers on trees or even like, play, fight gently with each other to try to get all that stuff off Um, because while they still have sensation it's it's apparently very itchy Um. So, yeah, they definitely, those huge palmated uh antlers, will be covered in uh velvety fuzz.

Speaker 3: 1:00:56

That is something I did not learn until I was an adult that like uh antlers, both on uh deer and moose they are, they would be warm to the touch because they have blood flowing through them. Like that's just such a wild thing, you would never expect that right. Like why would you think that? Why would a normal person ever?

Speaker 5: 1:01:14

think that Horns make sense. Antlers make no sense.

Speaker 3: 1:01:20

Um, so I think we're. I think we're at the end. Uh, jason, i said it would be about an hour. We're just a little bit over. Um, chris, were there any more questions that you saw come up?

Speaker 4: 1:01:31

Uh, not in the chat. That um, that I've seen I've been going through. Sometimes They um, the comments don't show until later, Um, but yeah, so nothing here, Perfect, Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:01:46

And I just want to give a shout out to Indra. Indra, hello, uh, indra is our partner. She runs spaces on mindfulness, meditation, wellness, all that good jazz Um. She is the founder of the positivity vibe tribe. I don't have a space from her to share, but I'm sure if you check her profile, she runs audio shows that are a great. You know ying to our yang with what we do with science and empathy, and then you can listen to Indra's about meditation, mindfulness, wellness, all that kind of stuff. So, uh, jason, i think I think we're at the end here. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for giving up your valuable time to talk to us tonight.

Speaker 5: 1:02:24

Hey, jason, chris, indra Bunsen, beaker full crew. This was truly a treat. Thank you so much. I'd love to come back sometime.

Speaker 3: 1:02:31

Now all of your books. where can people find them? Cause we got people wanting to know about your books in DM No.

Speaker 5: 1:02:37

So you can find them all on my website, which is, uh, jason, biddlecom or BiddleMeThiscom, um, or you know, they're all on Amazon, uh, if you just give me a good Google, uh, they should come up. But I will say my last name is B, as in boy I. T is in turtle, t is in turtle, el. Uh, there are many other ways that it's often spelled that are incorrect. Awesome.

Speaker 3: 1:03:00

And are you just on Twitter?

Speaker 5: 1:03:02

So I'm on Twitter, um, instagram, facebook, uh, i just started blue sky. I'm giving that a go, Um, but if anybody is interested in more animal um knowledge, as I write this book, i'm finding there are just way too many things that I that I can actually fit in this book, and so I've actually started a sub stack newsletter. It's completely free, um. All you need to do is go to sub stack and sign up with your email and you'll get um about weekly or so emails from me with weird stories that I've discovered while writing Um. You know other sorts of bits of uh my stories that are out on uh available on the internet, and you can just kind of keep track of uh my progress there. Sweet, uh, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:03:42

And it's in your profile actually, so I know a lot of people are subscribed to our sub stacked, which I I do a couple posts a week about. So, wow, good for you. Well, we do the newsletter. The newsletter comes out once a week, for sure, okay.

Speaker 5: 1:03:58

I will have to subscribe to that myself. I don't know.

Speaker 3: 1:04:01

I needs to be in our profile. I post. I have a scheduled post that comes out every night about the newsletter, so, um, it'll. Uh there. Chris just replied with the sub stack and chat um for Jason. So if you guys want to sign up for a sub stack, it's down there. Substack's awesome, by the way. I can't rave about it enough. Um, you can, of course, charge for it. We don't, and I know you, jason, you don't either, but it's. It's just a really cool way to get your thoughts to to out there. Yeah, thanks for posting the link.

Speaker 5: 1:04:29

And yeah, i've also really enjoyed it. Uh, it's something I don't know. it's refreshing in a way. Hmm, you betcha.

Speaker 3: 1:04:34

Yeah, especially thanks to Jason Biddle, who's our guest tonight. Amazing, talking about bats and moose and writing. Um. Again, thank you for being our guest into all of the speakers who had great questions, both on Twitter and Facebook. And hey, facebook people, thanks for listening in. We've getting a bigger and bigger contingent listening on Facebook, which is really cool. And then, lastly, give uh, give Indra. Space is a listening. Um, i've put hers up in the uh the uh the chat. Um, i've put hers up in the uh nest, i believe. How to overcome procrastination, indra. I was going to post that a little bit later, but I decided to overcome procrastination right away, So I posted it immediately, instead of yesterday or I mean tomorrow. Um, and so, chris, do you want to talk about the stuffy Uh?

Speaker 4: 1:05:26

yes, I sure do.

Speaker 3: 1:05:26

Okay, so this is. We've been talking about the stuffy for like a week, but we've got some new news about it, so, chris, go ahead.

Speaker 4: 1:05:34

Uh, the new news is that we are moving forward with, um uh, producing the ginger stuffy.

Speaker 3: 1:05:42

Yeah, and that was news today. Yes, yeah, so the order is going through. Um, and one thing that we've heard from people is they'd like us to keep the pre-order campaign going a bit longer, so we're extending it. So, if you did not get the ginger stuffy, um, it's going to be.