Season 6 Episode 10: Writing Therapy, Family Dogs, and Tiger Conservation with Sam Helle

Back from the eclipse!

Ok let's delve into how the simple act of writing and ditching our negative thoughts, inspired by a Japanese study, could be the outlet we've been searching for.

I also weave in a heartening snippet of pet science, revealing the profound influence our furry companions wield over children's lives, and set the stage for a fascinating discussion with conservation biologist

Sam Helle, whose passion for wildlife conservation ignites our conversation with tales from her path into this vital field.

Embark on a journey with us as we navigate the dense terrain of tiger conservation, guided by Sam Helle's insights into the admirable progress of Nepal's community forestry and the ambitious WWF's TX2 initiative. The narrative of how Nepal nearly tripled its tiger population is not just a success story; it's a clarion call to action, reminding us of the potency of localized conservation strategies. In this engaging narrative, we also offer guidance for eco-conscious tourists and introduce a children's book designed to stoke the flames of curiosity in young, aspiring biologists and conservationists.

As we wrap up, prepare to be moved by stories of the animal kingdom, from Gwendolyn, the fiercely protective collie-border collie mix, to the paralyzing power of a tiger's roar. These anecdotes underline the profound connections between humans and animals, from the humorous misconceptions children have to the unique bonds pets form with their families.

Until next week!



Sam's Links
https://twitter.com/samanthaiam
https://www.projectconservationfund.org/
https://www.amazon.ca/Tiger-Young-Zoologist-First-Stripes/dp/1684493595

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 10 of season 6. This podcast is out a bit late and it's for very good reasons.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Chris and I, as you may have been listening, we traveled to Dallas to experience the eclipse. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. We were worried about cloud cover, but we drove until we saw daylight. We drove until we saw clear skies. We wound up in Sulphur Springs and I think in the family section we might touch on this a little bit, but we had to miss two days of school and when we came back it was like out of the pan and into the fire, because both Chris and I had an incredibly busy teaching week. I'm scraping this together on the Friday after my work week as a teacher, but we have a really good show in science news. We're going to be looking at a way to deal with angry feelings, based on a scientific paper and in pet science, an adorable study looks at how dogs and kids really impact the children's lives, and our guest at Ask an Expert is conservation biologist Sam Helley. Okay, we heard that the eclipse puns from last week were really good, so I've got another two. What did the sun say when it reappeared after the eclipse? Nice, to heat you, okay. And what's the most famous painting of an eclipse? The Mona Lisa? Okay, those are bad. All right on with the show, because there's no time like Science Time.

Speaker 1: 2:10

This week in Science News, let's take a look at how we can reduce how angry we get sometimes. I won't lie, I do get angry from time to time. I'm a pretty even-keeled person. You have to be as a teacher. I do get angry from time to time. I'm a pretty even keeled person. You have to be as a teacher and you have to have pretty thick skin. Kids aren't out to hurt your feelings and to make you sad, but they're teenagers. They can say some pretty cruel things and they can just be wrapped up in their own world or be trying to score points with their friends and I never take it personally and honestly I've gotten to the point where I can have a better comeback than whatever some kid can throw at me. And also from running the Bunsen and Beaker account I've got pretty thick skin from really terrible things people have said to us online. I don't know what it is.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Sometimes things get under my skin and I stew on them. I guess lately I've had a couple huge videos that blew up, went viral and as soon as things go viral on the internet, looky loos come and they just start posting dumb stuff. And got under my skin when this random guy on a Bunsen and Beaker video where I was explaining how cold it was outside this is like an old video but they keep growing, so you have new comments every couple of weeks and it was like minus 52 with the windchill and the video was like how cold it was. And then the next video that I had that went big was Beaker snow pants and somebody the same guy commented that there's no way a golden retriever needs snow pants, she'd be fine in the snow. And instead of ignoring it, I had a little bit back and forth with this random person. I regret it now. Like I, normally I just delete those comments because I like to have somebody have their rant and just instantaneously delete the comment. All their hard work to try to hurt my feelings just goes away. But this bothered me for a week, I'm ashamed to say so.

Speaker 1: 4:11

This study popped up about how we can make, about how, if we are feeling angry, we can get those gross emotions away, and I was like, hey, we should probably cover this, all right. So a research group in Japan discovered a really interesting method to reduce feelings of anger after some negative incident. Now the lead researcher's name I'm just going to say his last name, it's Kawai, I believe they found that if you write down your reactions to a negative incident on paper and then you rip it up or throw it away dramatically, it can almost eliminate those feelings of anger. This finding is pretty significant, because controlling your anger and controlling your anger at work and with your family, man, like if you have a temper and again, like I said, I do get angry from sometimes the time, especially when I was a younger dad, I definitely would snap and I do regret that too. I think any dad listening would know that in a moment of frustration you've said something you shouldn't have to everybody, but it being angry affects everybody around you.

Speaker 1: 5:26

A lot of the anger management techniques they lack research, like they're done because somebody says they work or they have good anecdotal evidence, but there's no real empirical research to support anything. So this study was published with empirical data in scientific reports. So the team asked participants to write about important social problems. They didn't know this was going to happen, so they had to pour their heart into something that was really near and dear to them. Think of a social problem, I don't know homelessness and then fake evaluators. And then fake evaluators just were total a-holes and criticized their writing. So these participants had to read these really cutting and cruel not even negative feedback, just awful feedback. So they were like totally taken aback and after they had to write their thoughts on the feedback to understand what triggered their emotions, the participants who then disposed and shredded their paper that they wrote on. They returned to their initial level of regulation. The people who kept the paper experienced only a small decrease in anger.

Speaker 1: 6:54

I was in Kung Fu for many years and one thing my Sifu always said was and of course, like it's pretty stereotypical, you got all these like Kung Fu's Chinese, like ancient Chinese wisdom, but after you write in the sand, you wipe it clean for the next day. And he would say that if you screwed up a thing or you lost a match and you would spar and you'd get punched in the face or kicked in the head, you'd lose. After you write in the sand you wipe it clean. So there may be something to that. If you write your feelings down, you get them out there and then you shred them. It's a physical act of saying goodbye to those feelings. And the sample size was big. It was like a hundred people. And the sample size was big, it was like 100 people, two groups, with statistical analysis after, where in interviews, the people who had thrown away the scraps of paper or shredded their scraps of paper with angry feelings, they went back to their original baseline before people criticized their writing.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Now, culturally, in Japan there's a tradition of hak-adash-shishiria, where people smash discs which represent things that make them angry, and that cultural tradition within Japanese culture. A lot of people who do this, who smash the discs feel relief. So the idea was that if that worked culturally, let's try it with this method. Now there was some criticism that perhaps the people who did were within the study, they were trained culturally, that this is an act of saying goodbye to bad feelings. Right, that's not necessarily something that me, as a Canadian, I was ever taught to smash a disc that represented me not doing great on a project. So perhaps translating this to other cultures wouldn't work as good. But I tell you, the next time Beaker eats through one of our pockets, I think I'm going to write my feelings down on a piece of paper and then shred them and see how I feel.

Speaker 1: 9:03

That's science news for this week. This week in pet science we're going to be looking at an adorable study. It has a small sample size though, but it is really sweet. The title of the study is she is Like a Sister to Me Children's Lived Experience with their Dog. This was published in AnthroZooz and the lead author is Ioannis Kokonikis. This study was translated from Greek and I actually contacted the author of the study and they sent me a translated version. I could talk about it on the Science Podcast. So the aim of this study was to investigate how kids experience and interpret the role of their dog in their everyday life.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Now, I didn't grow up with a dog. I always wanted a dog, I think, being honest, my whole family was extremely busy. I have three siblings, a brother and two sisters, and we were all sporty, mcsportsons and doing all these different things. So being home for a dog when we were young, I think would have been impossible. My parents both worked. They were very busy, so I get it. But our youngest son, adam, he has only known a dog. He has only known dogs in the house. We got Callan when he was a little guy, very little. Callan was the dog before Bunsen and Beaker and I often wonder how his childhood was different than maybe our older son, duncan, who we didn't have a dog when Duncan was little.

Speaker 1: 10:36

The study also aims to document the child-dog cohabition and how that bond between child and dog as a companion animal is really felt by the kids. There were only 13 kids in the study, age 17 to 12. They were all from Greece and they were all living with a dog for at least three years. This age group was selected by the researchers based on previous research indicating that a stronger bond and increased involvement between kids and dogs is in this age range. Younger kids are, maybe they're not necessarily at the age where they can take responsibility with a dog and they might be too little to remember their experience with a dog. And as kids get older and become teens, they are more self-absorbed, so they are more concerned with their own lives and less with the pet dog that lives in their house.

Speaker 1: 11:34

All of the data comes from semi-structured interviews and they were conducted with kids over seven months. Each interview lasted about 30 minutes and there were different components to each of the research questions, with the following interviews delving deeper into topics from their previous meeting. So whatever they talked about in the first meeting, it was brought up in the second, while parents were involved and had to give their permission. The parent perspective was not part of the study, it was just the kids. All of the kids in the study had detailed transcripts of their conversations, but they used pseudonyms to protect everybody's identities, and that includes the dog In the transcript I've got here. The dog is D and obviously parent consent was obtained and kids were actually informed of their right to withdraw at any time if they didn't like talking to the interviewers, let's talk about some of the themes the study was able to parse out.

Speaker 1: 12:33

All of the kids in the study emphasized that their dog played a huge role in their life, but it also had this constant presence in their life. It also had this constant presence in their life Like the important things in their life that were always there. Their parents, siblings also included the family dog. The kids all said that the relationship between themselves and the dog was strengthened through active participation. They built on common experiences with the dog, meaning like walks with the dogs, playing with the dogs, just having joy with the dogs, vacations with the dogs. The kids also noticed that the dogs were a huge contributor to whatever the kid did in the day. The dog impacted what the child experienced each and every day. Many of the kids said that the family dog intervened during family distress and it diffused tension and it offered support to people who were sad. And lastly and the one that just gets me right in the heart heart is, the kids valued the dog's emotional support. The kids all said that the reason why the dog had such an impact on their emotional support was that it was always available. It had unconditional acceptance, they were able to be emotionally secure with it and they felt the dog had empathy. When they were sad, they felt the dog knew that. When they were happy, they felt the dog knew that.

Speaker 1: 14:15

Now I'm not going to read all of the conversations because there's pages and pages of them, but there's some that are, there's some that are sweet. So this one's more general. Researcher asks one of the participants what would you say has changed in your life, if anything, since the dog came? And the male child says my everyday life In the past it was more boring at home. The dog makes me feel much better when at times I have problems. The researcher asks the girl would you say you look for the dog to be beside you every day in some particular situations? And the child says yeah, when I do homework. And the researcher says can you explain why? And the kid says I think she's better company than my brother who screams all the time. My dog sits next to me quietly and keeps me company. And this last one, oh, might not be able to get through this one without choking up. The researcher asks if I ask you what it means for you to have a dog, what would you say? And the child says she is the other half of my life. The researcher is puzzled and says meaning. And the child says if I was to lose my dog, I can't even imagine what my life would be like. This little study oh man, it's been a long week, I'm not going to lie, a good week, but I'm tired and doing little kind of science communication reports about studies like this. It makes it all worthwhile. That's Pet Science for this week.

Speaker 1: 16:03

Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger, the science cat, has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have conservation biologist Sam Helley with me today. Sam, how are you doing?

Speaker 2: 17:05

I'm doing great. How are you?

Speaker 1: 17:07

Yay, I'm good. I'm good. I'm really excited to talk to you, sam, but where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 2: 17:14

Right now I'm calling in from very chilly Madison, wisconsin in the United States of America.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I'm not certain when this will come out, but that polar vortex that we survived in January has moved down south. So I think you guys are getting like the blame Canada South Park thing happening with your weather right now.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Yeah, first the forest fires and now the polar vortex.

Speaker 1: 17:37

Yeah, sorry about the smoke.

Speaker 2: 17:39

Get Justin Trudeau on the line. Have you lived in that area your whole life, Sam, or have you had to like ping pong around doing academia and stuff. I'm originally from Milwaukee, which is about an hour east of here, and I did schooling in Minnesota and then, of course, I've been back and forth for work in Nepal for almost 10 years now and never thought I would be back in Wisconsin. But here we are for the PhD.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Yeah, and that's my next question, is your conservation biologist? You're coming up on the end of your PhD. What's your training in science? Just for everybody up to this point.

Speaker 2: 18:14

Sure, like I said, born and raised in Milwaukee middle of the city, I grew up across the street from a major city hospital, had no background in wildlife or experience environment, but wanted to. I'm a first generation college grad and so mom sent me up to school at University of Minnesota. I had no idea what I wanted to do and the transfer officer was like what do you like? And I'm like I like animals. And they're like well, why don't you increase wildlife conservation biology? I'm like great, I have no idea what that is. So it was honestly a transfer officer putting me in that program and then I just fell in love with it, so did my bachelor's at University of Minnesota and then worked a little bit in between before doing a master's there and then worked a little bit between that and I'm doing a PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Speaker 1: 19:03

It sounds like, sam, you didn't have the typical arc of a scientist. You were the science kid, mixing potions doing the science. It sounds like you came a little bit later. Is that correct, or were you enamored with science when you were young?

Speaker 2: 19:17

I think I've always been a curious person, I've always been someone and still I am the first person to ask a question or say I don't know, tell me more.

Speaker 1: 19:25

You were the why kid.

Speaker 2: 19:27

Absolutely, absolutely the why, and it got me in a lot of trouble with my mother Because she'd be like you're not supposed to do that. I'm like why? But I, yeah, I would say that's true, I had, especially when it comes to, like, natural resources or conservation, what I do now. It's Especially when it comes to natural resources or conservation, what I do now, not a typical background of what I see, but also that's changing, yeah, so before I even went to school, I wanted to be a hairstylist oh cool.

Speaker 2: 19:55

Okay, or I could have gone in. I tell people all the time I could have lived like 17 lives I was interested in. If I would have gone into medical, I would have done something like plastics. I've always been fascinated with science adjacent things, yeah. But ending up in conservation biology was happenstance, but also a little bit of destiny.

Speaker 1: 20:11

And the destiny it's taken you to tigers, oh my God. So can you talk to us a little bit about, like what you do with your conservation science, because that's the big question for our chat today.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Sure, and I'll. So I'll also say cause I get this question a lot how did I get to tigers?

Speaker 2: 20:32

as like a study species and it's really unfortunate because I know there's tons of people out there that are like. I've wanted to study tiger since I was five years old. That was not me, because I was working. So I did study abroad program in Nepal and my last semester of my undergrad and I was working with who would become my master's advisor, jld Smith, who is a tiger biologist, one of the foremost tiger biologists If you see any of the old work plenty of what we know about tiger breeding comes from his primary research.

Speaker 2: 21:04

And I was just working in Nepal, interested in human wildlife conflict, and that led to tigers. So that's how I fell into that and I've studied all around both social and biological aspects of tiger conservation, specifically in Nepal's context. It's very different depending on where you go, and I can't even say like where. I've spent a lot of my career around Chitwan National Park, which is in the south of Nepal. The conservation needs are very different from out west in Nepal, in Bardia.

Speaker 2: 21:33

Something that's going to work for tigers in Nepal won't necessarily work for tigers in Thailand or China or Vietnam, and I've worked on both social aspects. So like asking people what they already know about protecting themselves from tigers before going into the forest and collecting wood and looking at kind of gender dynamics of risk for getting attacked by a tiger between men and women because they fundamentally go into the forest for different things and then seeing how these existing structures like you have a national park or you have community-based anti-poaching units or women's groups or men's groups how they work together to mitigate conflict. And the project that I'm working on right now with my PhD is taking a right turn from more of the social stuff of getting the context of tiger conservation in Nepal to understanding where tigers are moving now that tiger numbers are growing in Nepal. So we're looking at occupancy of tigers in community managed forests between their two big tiger population strongholds in the national parks.

Speaker 1: 22:42

And what type of tigers are in Nepal? I have no idea. I know Tony the tiger. I know tigers are great, but aside from that, that's it Sorry. So the big baddies, the Bengal tigers, rumored to be the biggest tigers of all the subspecies, wow, so when you were in Nepal, did you see them, or was it more like you hoped you didn't see them?

Speaker 2: 23:06

I always. It's always like an auspicious moment to see them. I have seen them, so I've been working in Nepal now for 10 years which is wild, which is insane.

Speaker 2: 23:16

And I have, in the wild, seen a tiger just doing its thing maybe three or four times. And then I've been on rescue missions where there's been dartings to put a collar on a tiger or to remove a tiger from a conflict situation a couple more times than that. But it really is a tiger's a normal tiger's natural instinct is to not be around people, so they typically avoid humans. And even when we're working in the forest like there was one time I was training a technician on how to identify front versus rear paw prints that are made in the mud and we were measuring them and taking GPS points and we had found these paw prints and on our way back we found a fresh set of paw prints.

Speaker 1: 24:00

So that tiger completely avoided us but was very close oh, spooky it is spooky but that kind of makes sense because the big cats that we have in alberta mountain lions, cougars, bobcats I've lived here my entire life and I'm gonna go to the mountains all the time and I've never seen a cougar in real life one single time I bet a cougar's seen you yeah, that's the thing. It's just they're hanging out, they're like oh, looks like a big orangutan. Probably too much work, um, that's why I didn't get murdered by a cougar, most likely great where okay, can I ask another really dumb question?

Speaker 2: 24:39

There's no dumb questions. This is science.

Speaker 1: 24:41

Nepal is. It's got mountains right. That's where Mount Everest is Correct. Do the tigers live in the mountains? Do they live in? Where do they live? I don't know. That's the dumb question.

Speaker 2: 24:55

So I love this question actually because people don't really know about Nepal and its great biodiversity and its diversity in general, diversity of people, diversity of landscape. So you do have Everest, sagarmatha, which is what it's called, and those high Himalayas, then you have the midhills and then you have the Terai, which is the lowlands, the foothills and the bottom plains of these large, huge mountains, and there are tigers in Nepal, there are hyenas in Nepal, there's wolves, there's snow leopards, there's clouded leopards.

Speaker 1: 25:32

Bears.

Speaker 2: 25:33

There's bears, there's elephants, there's rhinos all in this country. That is about the size of Illinois.

Speaker 1: 25:40

Yeah, it's tiny, right, it's a little teeny, tiny thing.

Speaker 2: 25:43

It is. So, yeah, there's a huge diversity of carnivores, birds, herbivores all across this seemingly tiny little country, but it is wonderful. So if you're looking to see a diverse range of wildlife, you should put Nepal on your list.

Speaker 1: 25:59

Okay Sounds, but like the Bengal tigers, where do they live? In Nepal.

Speaker 2: 26:04

They're in the South, so they're in the grasslands. Wow, okay, I just always have this picture of jungle, like tigers live in the jungles and lions live in the Savannah, but that's not necessarily true, I wouldn't call the South Savannah, but there are large, there's large areas of grassland and it is jungle, it is forest, it's thick forest, but tigers primarily hunt in grasslands because that's where the deer go.

Speaker 1: 26:29

That's what they eat. They're like Nepalese in deer.

Speaker 2: 26:33

Yes, the deer. Okay, Two of their predominant deer species that tigers go after are the spotted deer called cheetle and they call them Spotted deer.

Speaker 1: 26:43

Yeah, okay, yep.

Speaker 2: 26:44

I call them forever bambis because they have spots their entire life and they're adorable. And then sambar, which are huge and probably more the size of an elk.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Oh my Wow, Elk are huge. Elk are huge and it's incredible. They're like three or four times the size of a well, kitty and elk. At least they're like three to four times the size of a white-tailed deer.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Yeah, and I think that adds to. I don't think people realize how big tigers are, especially Bengals, and some of the biggest Bengal tigers have actually been found in Nepal. So starting they start at about 250 pounds.

Speaker 1: 27:20

Oh, my God.

Speaker 2: 27:22

And average we see around 300 to 400. For context, like a mountain lion, leopard is like 100. So four times the size.

Speaker 1: 27:32

I'm laughing because every time I interview a guest since we've got a cat, we have this orange cat named Ginger. She always comes into the podcast room to just be my companion. Love that and I'm just looking at her and like she has an and she's got a relative in nepal, that is the scariest thing to ever walk the earth. It's just like a super big predator, right she's got a baddie in the family.

Speaker 2: 28:00

Good for her.

Speaker 1: 28:02

Can I ask you a question unrelated to related? Cats are affected by catnip. This is like just my brain jumping around, but I read that other cats, like big cats, are affected by catnip too. Is that tigers as well?

Speaker 2: 28:16

I actually have no idea.

Speaker 1: 28:18

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2: 28:18

Because I have only worked and observed tigers in a natural landscape, so there's probably something out there of somebody who works with them in captivity.

Speaker 1: 28:27

Gotcha. Maybe, so my other question is you've been working with tigers for 10 years. It's very cool that their numbers are coming back, like I had always assumed their numbers were like on the decline, so that's great. Is there some things you'd like the public to know about tigers? What's some of the messaging that people like me, who don't know anything about tigers, you'd like us to know?

Speaker 2: 28:52

Sure. So I think numbers are coming up slowly. I think recent estimates are hovering around 5,000. And around 10, 15 years ago we were thinking it was somewhere under 4,000.

Speaker 1: 29:07

Oh wow, that's a 20% increase.

Speaker 2: 29:11

Yeah, it's still not great when you think of in context, like there's over 25,000 lions in Africa and tigers have lost over 93% of their historic habitat in the recent past. So in the last hundred years they're living in 7% of their historic habitat. So habitat loss is a huge issue. Human wildlife conflict is another issue and, of course, poaching. We're still finding lots of tiger parts and imports both in China and the United States. The United States is also a huge importer of illegal wildlife parts, parts of what?

Speaker 1: 29:43

Why do people want parts of a tiger?

Speaker 2: 29:46

There's lots of superstitious value around it, everything from the whiskers to toes to teeth. People believe lots of different things if you ingest those, and other people want tiger pelts or just want a piece of a tiger. It's this powerful symbol and it's made its way into lots of different superstitious beliefs. So, yeah, and I would say something that people probably aren't aware of. So now, being 10 years down the road of working on this endeavor with a bunch of amazing conservationists that are on the ground in Nepal, we have seen Nepal has nearly tripled its tiger numbers in the last decade.

Speaker 1: 30:29

Go.

Speaker 2: 30:29

Nepal, go Nepal. And all of this was part of an initiative that WWF brought forward, world Wildlife Fund brought forward, called T x 2. Wwf brought forward, world Wildlife Fund brought forward, called T x 2. So it was this global initiative to double the global population of tigers by 2022, which was the Chinese Year of the Tiger, and Nepal was the first country to achieve that. So now we're over 300 tigers in Nepal, which still isn't a lot, but it's a lot for a small country and the habitat that's available there. And a lot of that has to do with communities managing forests in a program called Community Forestry. So it's local people managing forests for themselves and for conservation purposes of wildlife. So local people and I would say this across the world local people are the biggest champions in tiger conservation Because they are creating and sustaining habitat for these animals.

Speaker 1: 31:25

Are they starting to see? Like ecotourism in Alberta and British Columbia and Canada is huge. Like people come from all over the world to see the wildlife that Western, with the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains have. So like we have a vested interest to protect these animals. Is that a thing? Perhaps that's starting to happen?

Speaker 2: 31:45

It's different in different contexts.

Speaker 2: 31:47

I would say so speaking from experience in Nepal. Ecotourism is a big thing but it's not quite balanced. A lot of tourists go to the oldest national park, which is Chitwan National Park, and it's also the easiest to get to. Nepal is a mess to navigate because we're in the Himalayas, so you're driving around these islands, which are mountains, or taking a flight and it just takes a long time. And if you're on a schedule of okay, I'm going to be in Nepal for 10, 15 days and it's going to take me a day and a half to get to out West Bardia, which I would Bardia National Park, which if you want to see a tiger, that's where I'd recommend going, because there's not a lot of ecotourism out there. It's still growing but also not everybody benefits from it.

Speaker 2: 32:30

So that's like the dream is that everyone is benefiting from ecotourism. It's still very much disjointed in that way. So there's programs like if you go to a national park in Nepal, 50% of the park's income so if you buy a ticket to go on a Jeep safari or go on a walking tour or something like that in the national park, you buy that port permit 50% of that income goes to the communities that live directly in the buffer zone and that can be used for anything. So that could be used for infrastructure, schools, roads, health posts, things like that, but not everybody is going to be directly benefited by that. So my advice is that if you do go to a country where tigers exist so one of the 13 range countries and you go specifically on a tour to see tigers, go stay in homestays, eat at the local restaurants because that is your biggest impact and tell people. Tell the people, tell the local people I came here to stay to see tiger.

Speaker 1: 33:28

That's good advice for the folks that are listening. Thanks, speaking of tigers, you have tigers in a book. I do. Could you tell us a little bit about your book?

Speaker 2: 33:38

Thank you. So it is a children's book called Young Zoologist Tiger. It's part of a series, so the series is called Young Zoologist and it is part. So the series is a collectible animal book from my publishers, the amazing publishers at Neon Squid, and the aim is really to inspire the next generation of biologists and conservationists. So it walks through everything from why tigers have stripes, what makes them stick out their tongue, how can they survive in habitats from up in snowy Siberia up in Russia down to these really hot jungles in Indonesia. And then also it talks about how you can become a tiger zoologist or a tiger biologist and learn how to track a tiger, learn how to identify prints biologist and learn how to track a tiger, learn how to identify prints, and it's really a book that is filled with simple science and lots of animal facts and also looks at conservation challenges and really meant to inspire kids that they can do something like this and they can care about something like this.

Speaker 1: 34:42

It is chock full of really cool illustrations and information. There's a couple little sneak peeky things Like. I looked through a little bit of it, love it, yeah, and there's. I learned some stuff from just like the sneak peeky. Like fake eyes, tigers have white spots on the back of their ears. I didn't know that.

Speaker 2: 34:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:00

It's the idea that you don't want to get flanked right, Like they don't want something coming up behind them.

Speaker 2: 35:05

Yeah, and they also use those to communicate with other animals and tigers. So there's a lot of because they can't talk and they're not using verbals all the time. So that's part of like nonverbal communication. So if you see those whites, you're in trouble.

Speaker 1: 35:18

Oh God Okay.

Speaker 2: 35:20

You know what it looks like when your cat lays its ears flat.

Speaker 1: 35:23

Yeah, her and our golden beaker are usually in a tussle.

Speaker 2: 35:29

Yes, ears flat. Yeah, her and our golden beaker are usually in a tussle?

Speaker 1: 35:31

Yes, so if you see those whites you better get out of there. Awesome, where can?

Speaker 2: 35:33

people find the book, so they can find the book. I know that it's available on Amazon, walmart, and there's another one that I'm forgetting that is available in Canada.

Speaker 1: 35:42

Okay, chapters.

Speaker 2: 35:44

I don't remember. Let me look it up right now Indigo chapters Yep. Yes, indigo. Okay, so it is available on Amazon, walmart and Indigo and probably something else in the UK that I'm forgetting.

Speaker 1: 35:58

It is very highly rated on Goodreads. I'm just going to tell everybody Thank you.

Speaker 2: 36:02

Oh, I love that. I haven't even looked because I've been terrified.

Speaker 1: 36:05

We'll make sure there's a link to at least one of those sources for everybody who's listening to. Maybe pick up a book for the future tiger zoologists in the family, or maybe just for inspiration yourself.

Speaker 2: 36:18

Yeah, and it's really. It's aimed for somewhere between seven and 10 to 12, but I wrote it. I can tell you I didn't like completely child it down, but it's really. These are conversations and things that you're learning. Here are things that are facts and factoids that I give to adults and all ages.

Speaker 3: 36:36

And very.

Speaker 2: 36:38

the key theme here is simple science, and that's what I like to convey, as a science communicator and a conservation biologist, is everything's very simple. We don't have to embellish with all these large science-y words, because it's really, it's pretty simple science.

Speaker 1: 36:52

I love it. My kids are all quite a bit older now. I'm not reading books to them anymore, but now that we have nieces and nephews that are little, it's just love reading science-y books to kids. They just are little sponges. They just love it, love, love it.

Speaker 2: 37:09

Yes, and they're so excited.

Speaker 1: 37:11

So I have a question for you, because I'm going to get asked this by my nephew. I have two nephews and they read these books. It's called who Would Win? Yes, have you heard of these? I have. So who would win a lion or a tiger in a fight?

Speaker 2: 37:32

I've been asked this before. I would still go tiger just because of the size.

Speaker 1: 37:36

Because they're bigger than lions.

Speaker 2: 37:38

Because they're bigger.

Speaker 1: 37:39

Wow Okay.

Speaker 2: 37:40

Yeah, purely on size, claw length is probably a little bit longer too. Tigers are a lot beefier than lions are, because lions are meant to. They're running after lions are running long distance. You can't have that much like beef and bulk on you. Tigers are ambush predators, so they're a little more bulky. So I would go yeah, I would still go tiger because of size and they lift when it comes to the big cats.

Speaker 1: 38:04

They're jacked.

Speaker 2: 38:04

They are jacked when it comes to the big cats, they're jacked, they are jacked, oh my goodness.

Speaker 1: 38:09

Okay, that's great. My nephews are going to be thrilled. I really appreciate that, sam.

Speaker 2: 38:18

The one that I think the versus one that I still don't know the answer to is tiger versus jaguar, because jaguars are also very beefy and those are animals that will jump in the water and take out a crocodile so I saw a jaguar at a zoo.

Speaker 1: 38:34

They're like jet black right they can be.

Speaker 2: 38:38

Yeah, there's a lot of melanistic ones oh, it was like terrifying.

Speaker 1: 38:42

I was like, oh my god, that if some, if somebody said hey, what would an animal look like if it was death Like, that's the animal.

Speaker 2: 38:51

Yeah, they're like the linebackers, the big cats. So that's when I'm like, oh, I don't know, I think they could do it.

Speaker 1: 38:57

Oh my goodness, what's next for you in the next couple of years? Are you finishing your PhD? Do you have anything coming down the pipe?

Speaker 2: 39:09

Yeah, so hard focus on the PhD right now. I'd like to be done mid 2025. And then I'm in the job market. Right now I'm doing data analysis. I was in Nepal for 2022, 2023. For almost a year doing camera traps and doing field surveys looking for tiger and tiger prey, and now we're analyzing all that data and hopefully going to come up with some interesting results as to where tigers are existing outside protected areas and in community managed forests. So that is my food and air for the next year.

Speaker 1: 39:46

We wish you the best of luck. Being getting that PhD done. That's a huge accomplishment, thank, you so much. We have some standard questions we ask our guests on the show. One is for a pet story. Could you share a pet story with us from your life?

Speaker 2: 39:59

Of course. So the one that stuck out first is actually like pre slash beginning Sam, and it's a story that my mom told me when she was pregnant with me, so she was actually in labor with me, and our first dog was a collie border collie mix named Gwendolyn.

Speaker 3: 40:16

Okay.

Speaker 2: 40:17

And my mom was was doing laundry and was going into labor with me. My dad had come home from work and my mom's like, hey, I think this is happening. And so he goes downstairs down where she is and the dog is, because when my mom was pregnant the dog always stuck by her and I don't know if this is like a thing, but I've heard stories where, like dogs will stick close to pregnant women. They just know. And so he goes down to try to get her. My mom's in pain and Gwendolyn starts attacking my dad because she can't figure out why my mom's in pain, but she associated that with my father.

Speaker 2: 40:51

So my mom's telling me. So he's trying to help me. Exactly, he's trying to help me up the stairs and is fighting this 60-pound dog off of him, so he had to like he's hold on, grabs her, puts her into another room in the basement, closes the door. Here's the dog going nuts to get my mom into the car to go to the hospital.

Speaker 1: 41:14

Just protective creatures, hey.

Speaker 2: 41:15

Yes, and we were best buds from the moment I came out. I love that I do too.

Speaker 1: 41:20

There's something super sweet about like the baby, the dog that just falls head over heels for the baby. You see it on TikTok now. Obviously, there's lots of little stories like that and they just warm my heart.

Speaker 2: 41:31

Yeah, and it's so interesting because, like they, it's this weird knowing right. Like you see, everyone like walk in with the baby and they're like, oh, this is ours.

Speaker 1: 41:40

It's a puppy, oh no, maybe I don't know. It's a. It's part of our family. Fine, I love it.

Speaker 2: 41:45

Okay, it's here.

Speaker 1: 41:46

Yeah, that's a sweet story, sam. Thanks for sharing, and the last question I have for you is if you have a super fact for us. It's something that you know that when you tell people, it blows their mind a bit.

Speaker 2: 41:59

I had to think about this question for a while, because I have a couple, I think. The one that comes to mind is I've been asked about roars, specifically tiger roars, and this idea that a tiger like a roar, a tiger roar, could scare you to death or let you pray.

Speaker 1: 42:16

Okay.

Speaker 2: 42:17

And there is actually some truth to that. There is something to the idea that a tiger could scare you like stiff, and this has to do with the hyoid apparatus, which is, in all Panthera, so big, the true big cats, except for snow leopards. And what this is is it's called infrasound, and so tigers roar when they feel challenged or afraid, and it can be heard upwards of a three mile radius, and scientists have found that tiger's roar can have a paralyzing effect on prey, and the mechanism behind this is called infrasound or infrasounds. This is low frequency below human audibility and that tigers can produce with this tricked out muscle called the hyoid apparatus, and it has been found to rattle and paralyze. You can hear the parts that you can hear of a tiger roaring. I want everyone to go YouTube. There's parts that you can hear, but there are parts that you can feel when you're in person, and that's that infrasound below audibility that is actually stunning you. So you're not hearing it with your physical ear, but you're feeling those vibrations.

Speaker 1: 43:28

Oh my God Spooky.

Speaker 2: 43:36

It is and the reason that they have these. So these low pitch infrasounds can travel really long distances and it can cut through thick jungle. So this tiger is really sending a message loud and clear, far and wide, with the base turned all the way up like don't mess have you felt it?

Speaker 1: 43:50

oh, yes, and it's terrifying wow that I, I'm just stunned.

Speaker 2: 43:58

I'm stunned, that's just this is where yeah, this is where you need to insert the roar okay, I don't have it on my soundboard, but I should get one. But yeah, there is actually something to that, and it's called infrasound.

Speaker 1: 44:13

Wow, that's cool, so I'd like to hear it. I don't know if I'd want to be in a position where I don't know where the tiger is or I'm like out in the forest somewhere hearing it. That would be spooky.

Speaker 2: 44:28

Yeah, I've made a couple video recordings because usually every time I've heard this has been on like a rescue or a capture and of course tigers don't want to be captured. Every time I've heard it or I've taken a recording, I'm like I'll be like laughing showing my friends the video and I'll be like look at how much I'm shaking.

Speaker 1: 44:44

I hear you it and I'll be like, look at how much I'm shaking. I hear you it is terrifying yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:50

But it works.

Speaker 1: 44:51

I would imagine like if moose had a sound like that, they would be equally. They would be even more terrifying than they already are. Speaking of moose, Goofy sounds, that's all.

Speaker 2: 45:02

I had in one of my past lives. I worked as a natural history interpreter and I remember I was teaching. I think they were like first graders and you know the age where they guess. Anything you'll be like. How much does an eagle weigh? And they're like a thousand pounds.

Speaker 3: 45:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:16

Like okay, and so I was teaching them about herbivores and carnivores and we walk up to the moose diorama and I'm like what, what do you think this thing eats? Or is this an herbivore and a carnivore or a carnivore, and without a skip they go carnivore. I'm like moose are already terrifying, but that would be like if moose were carnivores. Can you imagine?

Speaker 1: 45:43

Who would win a tiger or a moose? That would be an epic battle right there.

Speaker 2: 45:47

I would put all my savings on the moose for that one.

Speaker 1: 45:50

It'd be pretty close. It'd be pretty close.

Speaker 2: 45:53

Listen, those long legs just kicked straight to the head and teeth.

Speaker 1: 45:58

I'll have to get an ungulate scientist and ask them that.

Speaker 2: 46:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Sam, we're at the end of our chat. This has been delightful and educational. Are you on social media anywhere? Do you have some social handles you could throw it for people to connect with you?

Speaker 2: 46:11

I do. Thanks so much for having me. This was so fun. I am on Twitter, slash, the X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram as Samantha I am.

Speaker 1: 46:26

So not quite Sam, I am but Samantha.

Speaker 2: 46:29

No, already taken. Samantha, I am, I love that.

Speaker 1: 46:34

Well done, good handle. We'll at least have your Twitter one in the show notes. So, folks, you can, you're one click away, that's all. But don't do it while you're driving Unsafe.

Speaker 2: 46:42

Unsafe.

Speaker 1: 46:44

Again, thanks for being a guest today and best wishes in the future towards your PhD.

Speaker 2: 46:49

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 46:50

Okay, take care of Sam.

Speaker 3: 46:53

Bye.

Speaker 1: 46:53

Well, that's it for this week show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to us. No family section. I apologize. Uh, adam actually caught a terrible bug while we were away. He hasn't quite shaken it, he's gone to bed. Chris has gone to bed. I am finishing this podcast myself, so we're going to have to wait until everybody's rested and not sick next week for the family section. I do want to thank our guest this week, sam Haley, and also the top tier pop hack for supporting our show. Thank you so much. The recording of Chris take it away. Let's hear a shout out for those top tier people.

Speaker 3: 47:33

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