00:00:08 Speaker 1: From Media Doors World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can review with Ryan kel Kell. Now here's Kel. This week turkey season ended here at Meat Eater headquarters in the state of Montana. So all my turkey facts are over after this little tidbit. That is, you should know that Benjamin Franklin spoke more highly of the wild turkey than our national bird, the bald eagle. You thought the bald eagle was a bad moral character and a rank coward, while the wild turkey was a little vain and silly, but at least courageous, So keep that in mind this too. Turkeys have a cloaca, what you could refer to as a uni hoole or a one hole does all situation. The cloaca is defined as a common cavity at the end of the digest abtract for the release of both excretory and genital products. As in, the cloaca is the only hole for the digestive, reproductive and urinary tracks. You know, you can actually tell a turkey sex by its poop. This has to do with the shape of a turkey's cloaca. The male has a sort of pecker like structure, which causes a constriction and its cloaca, so the poop passes through a narrow channel, which leaves its dropping cylindrical with a little jay hook on the end. There's more of a cavity in the female's cloaca to accommodate eggs, which butts the poop spread out and form a coiled blob. Some folks will give a different theory on this, which is that a hand can hold her poop, but a male can't. She does this so as not to defile her nest site. Somehow, it's thought that holding her poop makes it change shape, and him not holding produces the jayhook. Personally, I'm gonna go with the shape of the cloaca x planation. Now that we covered how things go out of turkeys, what about things going in. Well, I'll tell you from the outside, it does appear both the male and female have basically the same parts. They don't obviously. When it's time to get down to business, the birds line up and touch their respective cloaca together. The male sperm is injected into the female, typically in less than ten seconds of copulation. This act not limited to just turkeys. The you know the touching of the cloaca, not the ten seconds of copulation. Is not limited to just turkeys anyway. This act, not limited to just turkeys, is known as a cloakle kiss. Moving on this week, we've got cat rush two thousand, nineteen, white tailed deer news from Florida, beaver's flesh eating bacteria, and we'll get in a whole lot more. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. Fellow by the name of c J wrote in and asked me, said, cal is it bad to remove shed antlers from the woods. Don't the squirrels and small critters that chew on them get nutritional benefit? Do we know how necessary that resources for them? Was the impact of removing all those shed antlers on the smaller critters roaming around the woods? Great question? Well, and here's what I've found out. It seems that there's no doubt that shed antlers of all types, if left long enough, are eventually eaten or distributed back into the soil by natural degradation. Calcium and phosphorus make up the bulk of the minerals and deer antlers, comprising thirty to thirty of the mature antler by weight. I say, mature antler, because this is like when the antler is hard horned versus in velvet, it's done growing had to clear that up. In addition to calcium and phosphorus, a University of Georgia's study detected nine more minerals in white tail antlers. The next most common elements were magnesium and sodium, then potassium, barium, iron, aluminum, zinc, strontium, and manganese. Studies on white tail specifically suggest that deer show a clear need for sodium, but they don't demonstrate a clear need for mineral deposits that lack sodium. These studies, this evidence would suggest that picking up antlers won't necessarily impact dear As for the other critters you know, those studies I haven't found. Uh Now, for my anecdotal evidence, I have areas where I shed hunt and have shed hunted for years where, regardless of the time of year, it is rare to find a bite mark on an antler, no bite marks from deer, porcupines, squirrels, or otherwise. In other areas, if you weren't picking up antler as close to the time they dropped as possible, is more than likely that the shed you pick up up will have been chewed on to some degree or pretty much eaten up entirely. This evidence, although again anecdotal, would suggest that the shed antler and the mineral within has more value to wildlife in some areas than in others. You could extrapolate that out and come to the conclusion that if the mineral and the antler is valuable, then mineral could be lacking from the soil and general area, so the return of that mineral to the soil is of high value as well. Just something to think on, as I have not found any studies specific to this question floating around out there just yet. I find it nearly impossible to not strap the shed antler on my back when I come across it. At the same time, I do find it hard to imagine that Mother Nature would be cool with me holling away all of these admittedly preposterous ornaments that animals grow on top of their heads in order to someday, may we turned them into a chandelier. Now, I got a little housekeeping to take care of before we move on. In episode one of Col's Weekend Review titled Murderous Birds, Wildlife Bridges in the Year of the cat I screwed up, which is embarrassing. What happened is that I credited Defenders of Wildlife for leading the ridiculous and unnecessary pushed and all forms of cat hunting in British Columbia. I should have said the Wildlife Defense League, who is in fact the guilty party. Sincerest apologies to Defenders of Wildlife. All right, that's it for my week. Let's move on to this week by starting off with some quick hitters, then we'll tackle a couple of bigger topics. Six national parks in the d C area have provided more than nineteen thousand pounds of white tailed deer meat or roughly seventy five thousand meals to local nonprofits. White tailed deer populations are booming and the deer to thrive in the kind of edge habitat that these parks, many of which are Civil War battle fields, provide. The parks are managing the deer here it's to protect and restore native plants. In some cases, reports indicate that the deer is so pro effect they have eaten nearly all tree seedlings, preventing the forest from being able to regenerate. In the parks where the deer management or culling has occurred, such as catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland. They've seen almost an elevenfold increase in tree and shrub density. Since we're on white tail, the state of Vermont has just recorded its oldest known hunter killed white tail. Vermont hunters were asked to turn in a tooth from harvested deer last season. The results are in. Three thousand nine hunters turned in teeth during Vermont's two thousand eighteen season. The oldest buck was twelve years old, which is very impressive. The oldest dough taken by a youth hunter from Braintree came in at an astounding twenty years old. This ties the record for the oldest known in Vermont hunter killed or not, which was a twenty year old deer that got hit by a car. The next time you hear some old timer talk about the good old day as a white tailed deer hunting, politely remind him that those good old days are happening right now. If you want to know exactly how good things are, go to the meat eater dot com, where our very own Spencer new Hearth has an article called two thousand eighteen The Year of record breaking bucks. You know, I'll take just a quick second here to talk about another character over here at Meat Eater. That's Ben O'Brien. Ben O'Brien moved from Dripping Springs, Texas in order to work for Meat Eater. Now, what's interesting about Dripping Springs, Texas is it was founded by a guy with the last name of Pound. There is currently a movement to rename Dripping Springs to Pound Town. I don't know how far they're going to get with that one. Moving on. Also, in two thousand and eighteen, Florida Wildlife Conservation officers were notified of a five ft twenty pound lizard in the Key Largo area. They've been on the hunt for that lizard ever since. It turns out that it was an Asian water monitor, which proved to be a very difficult critter to catch. Ultimately, though, it was caught by using a combination of motion sensor cameras and live traps. The Asian water monitor, which is native to South and Southeast Asia, is the second heaviest lizard species behind the Komodo dragon. These opportunistic eaters have wide diets that can include everything from mollusks to mice and turtles to birds. They've been known to grow over nine and a half feet long hit a hundred and fifty pounds now. In order to get that big, and they have to eat a lot and often a lizard the size of this one in Florida probably eats three to five times a week. So that's a minimum of a hundred and fifty six birds or reptiles or mammals that this escaped pet consumed during its year long Key Largo vacation. It's good for the local wildlife that it didn't encounter an Asian water monitor of the opposite sex and turn that little vacation into a romantic honeymoon. For now, Florida has rid of at least one singular invasive species elsewhere in Florida, man stabbed himself at the fishing hook while fishing and almost lost his arm. When the Penellas County angler made it back to shore from a fishing excursion, his hook wounded hand got all swollen painful. Recognizing this as a strange reaction to a common fishing injury, our anglish sought medical attention in the hand was treated with antibiotics. The following morning, the angler found black blisters had formed around his wound and up his arm. Infectious disease. Doctors from the burn unit were able to diagnose the symptoms as necrotizing fasciitis, a strain of rare flesh eating bacteria. Surgeons were considering amputating the angler's arm until they eventually curbed the infection. Just a month before the fishook incident, and Ohio man was vacationing in Florida and did a bit of kayaking outside of Tampa Bay. On his flight home, what he thought was a sunburn on his leg swelled to concerning levels upon landing. Doctors spent eleven days working hard to avoid amputating that limb. It was the same thing flesh eating bacteria. Between two thousand six and two thousand eighteen, the Florida Department of Health has documented three cases of people who have contracted a form of flesh eating bacteria such as Vibrio vulnificus or necrotizing fasciitis. Nine of these cases resulted in death. The Florida man with the sore hand wasn't the only angler to get beat up. Another Florida angler in Wesley Chapel, got whooped by his girlfriend. Apparently an argument over proper childcare ended with a thrown kitchen pot to the head of the angler man, who had spent quote the last couple of days fishing instead of performing his fatherly duties. The girlfriend has charged with domestic battery. If the guy had half a brain and a bit of a conscience, he'd take his kid fishing. His girlfriend would probably thank him instead of whipping him with the pot and now being charged with domestic battery. North of here, over in Greene County, Georgia, couple fishing under the bridge on Lake o'coney pulled in a satchel containing two guns and some jewelry. Due to engraving on one of the pieces of jewelry, investigators were able to track down the former owner's son and Auburn and Alabama, who confirmed the items were stolen from his father back in I like stories like that. I think it's neat to get a surprise on the end of your line every once in a while. And who doesn't like to get their long lost stuff back. A couple of interesting things have been documented regarding two use and other species. I'm transitioning here from stuff underneath the bridge too. Things that I think yournee, which are animals using tools anyway? A couple of interesting things have been documented regarding tool use and other species. Late last year, a guy's trail cam caught a striped skunk using a rock to break through a layer of ice on top of a water bowl set out for a dog. The skunk picked up a rock between its front paws and proceeded to procure itself a drink. That's tool use. And just recently, scientists from the University of Akron observed the triangle weaver spider using its web, which it unsurprisingly weaves into a triangle. The triangle weaver spider hauls on a line of web attached to the point of the triangle until it's stretched top like a bow. When potential prey passes by, the spider releases the stored tension in the web, catapulting the web and itself onto its victim. Another example of tool use from the animal world. I bring this up because we're all is pointing out examples of animals being like us or not like us. Some people love stories that make animals seem more human like by using tools, for instance. Others would prefer that we keep our corner on the tool use market. On top of that, we have a sort of prejudice about which species we celebrate. A chimpanzee uses a tool, everyone gets all excited. Some skunk or spider uses a tool, nobody really talks about it. Come on, people now. From our fishing records desk, I feel, without doing too much digging, that when it comes to record books, folks are more inclined to get into trouble for stretching the truth in the fishing categories. Something of this nature just recently came to light in South Dakota, though it could be categorized as an honest mistake. What happened is that South Dakota just avoided its longest standing fish record, that of a channel catfish weighing fifty five pounds, which is a big gas channel cat. The fish was caught by a guy named Roy grow As. To give you an idea of just how big of a channel cat this would have been. This fifty pounder was also the world record channel cat for fifteen years until South Carolina Angler broke that record back into Oddly enough, the South Carolina Angler was fishing in a lake famous for big blue cats that will come in later, Why would South Dakota declare such a long standing record null and void after all these years, I'll tell you why. Unluckily for Roy, there is photographic evidence of his catch, and over the years, whenever catfish aficionados have looked upon this yellowing photograph, they'd often comment on that being a nice blue catfish instead of a channel catfish. That's right, It was somehow classified as the wrong species. How could this happen? One might ask? After all, blue catfish can get to be well over a hundred pounds, but channel catfish rarely exceed thirty. The height of the blue cap is unspotted and generally has a bluish tent, while the channel cat is generally gray with speckles or olive colored spots. But these relatively easy clues that distinguish a channel cat can get a little bit murkier as the fish gets into the tin to fifty pound range. Channel cats will generally start losing their spots as they creep into old age. Anyone was fished for a while can also tell you that coloration can vary within a species on occasion, and brown trout can look awfully silver, and a fish like the Atlantic salmon can look a lot like a brown trout after it's been in the fresh water for a bit, But there's a bullet roof way to tell a blue from a channel, which is why so many folks who have seen the photo of roy Groves fish gave pause. There's a fin on all of America's catfish called anal fin. It's located between the vent and the tail fin on the bottom or ventral side of the catfish. Channel catfish has a curved anal fin with nine anal rays. A blue cat has a straight anal fin with thirty to thirty six anal rays. Although the photograph from nine has faded, yellowed and blurry, one can clearly see the antal fin as straight as a damn board. Before you start feeling too bad for Roy Groves, take heart in the fact that is reclassified channel catfish now sits as a record blue catfish, albeit way lower than number one. It should also be noted that his channel catfish had actually landed him the national record books for a while, however, erroneously, until it was beat by a real channel catfish weighing fifty eight pounds from Santia Reservoir, South Carolina. In the year nineteen six and four. At this point, Roy has had the same fish land him in three record books. That's not a bad day on the water. If you're looking to see your own name in the record books, South Dakota is the place to do it. And right now the Channel Cat record has been reset to zero, meaning any entrent will be a state record holder. Just like when gold was discovered in Klondike and folks struck out for the wild seeking fame and fortune, the waters of South Dakota are inviting the same kind of fever. The state has declared cat rush two thousand nineteen. All you have to beat is the new verified Channel Cat record of eight pounds three ounces. I'm gonna hit you with one more before we go. The City Council of New York City has proposed a bill to ban fur sales. To make this complicated right out of the gate, new for sales specifically would be banned recycled for as in old fur on new garments, will we find as our vintage first, but not that new new for Also, there are no restrictions on leather, which I find odd seeing as how a piece of leather is a fur with the fur all scraped away. I don't think this distinction matters one little bit to the critter who supplies the fur or leather, but the New York City City County sold must have a better understanding of animal hides than I do. Right now, the fur market in New York City is located in the Fur District South the Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan, pretty fitting roughly a hundred and fifty businesses, creating eleven hundred jobs and bringing in around four hundred million dollars in revenue. Despite that, it's not what it once was. One of the founding fathers of New York City is, of course, John Jacob Astar. When he died in eight his net worth was an estimated twenty million dollars. In today's money, that would be six hundred and twenty six million, nine hundred and fifty six thousand, nine hundred and sixty two dollars and three cents. A couple of interesting facts about Astor. He opened his New York City shop in seventeen eighty six, and then he formed the American Fur Company in eighteen o eight. The American Fur Company is credited by some for delaying British trade resource is on the west coast, just long enough to prevent permanent British establishment there. Additionally, the men of the American for A Company identified what would become the Oregon Trail and inadvertently opened the West Settlement. Beaver Pelts allowed Aster to initiate his fortune, which he later leveraged into myriad other business operations that built New York. If you look at the State Seal of New York, you'll find not one beaver but to now. The city Council might take the beaver out of New York, but you can't take the Yeah, you know what I'm trying to say. Thanks for listening to Cal's weeken review. Remember to subscribe and hit that furthest right hand star when you do. If you want to get ahold of me directly, please write into ask Cal at the meat eater dot com A s k C. A. L App the meat eater dot com. Additionally, if you want to check out more amazing stuff from the natural world, please check out the meat eater dot com.