00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can review with Ryan kel Kellan now Here's Kel. The oldest human artifacts in North America have been found in Idaho, of all places. The archaeological team leading the dig at Cooper's Landing Idaho verified all artifacts through two different methods in order to prevent any bias and ensure accuracy in dating test results. The results are back, proving humans lived, hunted, and gathered in Idaho sixteen thousand, five hundred years ago. This find pre dates other early human sites, such as the famous New Mexico Clovis sites by at least a thousand years. Everyone at this point is at least casually familiar with the Bearing land Bridge and the thought that humans started showing up in North America after making a long frozen trek from Asia into what is now Alaska, eventually following an ice free corridor down the coast latitudes in the lower forty eight. This theory is substantiated by the shared technology found at early human sites, again like the Clovis point, which suggests that there was a common human origin point rather than several groups originating from different points. Well, this Sitan Cooper's Ferry, Idaho, located on the Salmon River near its confluence with the Snake River, major tributary of the Columbia River. You know, that really big river that hits the Pacific. Is especially interesting because some believe that it may eventually prove a different human migration theory, the theory that people got to North America much earlier, and not by foot, but by boat, following what is called the Kelp Highway. This route is essentially a water version of the Bearing land Bridge, where early humans hugged the coastlines in primitive boats, sticking primarily to roots thick with kelp for us. The kelp for us would provide a consistent food source as well as a safer means of sea travel, as the kelp will break up some of the surf action, allowing for smoother sea travel. The key artifacts found at Cooper's landing that potentially support the Kelp Highway hypothesis or Western stemmed points. Western stem points again predate Clovis points by roughly a thousand years, which is cool, but that's not the most exciting link. Very similar Western stempoints have been found in Japan, and you guessed it, dated to sixteen thousand, five hundred years ago. Now remember back to this origin theory, how shared technology links groups of humans. How could we have very similar technology from roughly the exact same time period at two points separated by the Pacific Ocean at a time when a significant porsche and of the possible land route was covered in ice. If there weren't any boats present, if you were traveling the coast in a primitive boat, making a left turn and going up the Columbia Ways, maybe all the way to Idaho, possibly on a river that seemed more steel head and salmon than water, that option could have looked a little bit better than just crossing the Columbia at its historically dangerous mouth. Of course, other than the fact that humans camped at Cooper's Ferry, Idaho, sixteen thousand, five hundred years ago with western stempoints, this is all just theory, I will tell you. Coincidentally, I hiked and hunted only about fifty or so air miles from this site just last week, and the only signs of humans beyond myself we're an old pole tab cours camp in a spot I thought naively no human could have been. I guess I was only the second hunter in that spot, potentially just missing each other by about sixteen thousand, five hundred years. This week, we've got hurricanes, ants, forehead breathing sea snakes, motor bicycles, and so much more. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. I traveled out to eastern Oregon, lucky enough to have a highly coveted private land bowl elk tag for Nature Conservancy property known as the zoom Walt Prairie Preserve. Again, and coincidentally, I was almost within sight of Cooper's Ferry, Idaho, above the m Naha River which flows down to the Snake just like the Salmon where Cooper's Ferry is located. I looked at, and checked out, and discovered and found all sorts of incredibly interesting things out on the zoom Walt Prairie Preserve. I could fill up this entire episode with all that knowledge, but the world keeps turning and my little area of focus cannot take up our twenty minutes. So I'll just hit you with a highlighter two right here, right now. The rest of the story you'll be able to catch at the Meat Eater dot Com. In a special and upcoming video edition of Cal's weekend review. Trust me, you won't be spared any details. Anyway, ants made a serious impression on me this trip. First, we found big grit aphids on thistle plants out on the prairie. These aphids were at first impression being predated upon by red ants. However, this was not the case upon closer inspection. The ants were in fact tending to the aphids in order to harvest their sugary excretions. Apparently, allow me to explain as this mutualistic relationship we witnessed on the prairie is fascinating stuff. Aphids a past to any plant grower or farmer, sometimes known as plant lice, consume large quantities of fluid from plants that excrete, a high sugar waste fluid referred to as honeydew. Ants will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure this afid produced sugar source keeps producing. Almost like a dairy farmer tending their herd. Ants will actually stroke or milk a fids with their antennae to promote the excretion of honeydew, to the point where some aphids have quit being able to excrete without ants. There are some human relations and chip references I can make here, but let's not go down that path. The ants will protect the afids from predators such as ladybugs, as well as store afied eggs inside ant mounds to protect them from winter temperatures. When spring comes around, the ants will actually plant the store at afied eggs on new food sources to start the cycle all over again. The ants make sure the a fids are safe and well fed in order to get fed and return. Sounds like a pretty good system, although when food sources get scarce and the AFID colony is stressed to the point of trying to relocate in hopes of finding better food, the ants have actually been observed chewing the a fid's wings off, which doesn't sound quite so Disney or mutualistic when you think of the other aunt phenomenon we encountered out on the zoom Wall prairie were tiny flying ant swarms. These little winged guys and gals were about the size of a fingernail, clipping the air above the prairie are. Last morning was thick with them. When I say thick, I mean at first glance the swarms appeared to be smoked or maybe a huge flight of starlings in the distance, hundreds of thousands, tens of millions. I really can't say. What I can tell you is in the morning, they coded everything, clothing, faces, nostrils, ears, cameras, binocular lenses. At one point I had to extract one venturous wing damp from the eyeball of the preserve steward chap dots and memorable for all parties as I had to ask if he wanted to lick my finger, if he was cool with me using my own saliva. You know, saliva being used as a type of adhesive for picking things out of people's eyeballs. Found it has a much more appropriate viscosity for the task than tap water. Uh no word yet if infected him with anything saliva or finger related. Anyway, A bunch of cool experiences out there on the zoom wall. Major thanks to the Nature Conservancy for having me out looked forward to the Cow's we can review video episode coming soon to the meat eater dot com where you can see this stuff and much much more. Very quickly before we get going, I had a ton of folks right in on the big mouth buffalo, the oldest documented freshwater fish, which is commonly and erroneously referred to by folks such as myself as a big mouth buffalo cart. However, it is actually not a cart. The big mouth buffalo is, in fact a sucker. I had a lot of folks right in thank you for telling me how much you care. I think it's really cool, how many fans of this very cool, long lived but not so pretty fish are out there? And uh, last, but not least, I would be doing you a major disservice if I did not tell you about our new super comfortable Captains for Clean Water shirt collaborative project between Ed Anderson Meat Eater and Captain's for Clean Water. All profits from this sharp looking hoodie will go to Captains for Clean Water to help them lobby on behalf of Florida's fisheries. On top of that, you can drop some Cow's Weeken Review knowledge on everyone who comments on your new good looking tarpen shirt. That tarpan is the only member of the family Megalops and its cousins are in the fossil record going back a hundred and fifteen million years. They're also what is known as obligate air breathers, meaning that even though this fish has gills, a tarpin needs to get a sip of fresh air every so often, and then when they are sufficiently wild, you can tell them to go to the meat eater dot com and get a good looking share to their own and support conservation at the same time. That's a win win win type of scenario. Alright, moving on, I'm hoping that by the time you hear this that Hurricane Dorian has weakened and ended its path of destruction. But as I record this, the former category four, then Category five, then Category four, then Category three, then Category two, then Category three storm is aiming for the East coast. He Humans and other terrestrial creatures, particularly those living on isolated islands like the Bahamas, have little capacity to escape coming storms. Aquatic creatures, on the other hand, can and do swim away from impending weather. Contrary to bad horror movie lore, sharks, for example, have an incredible capacity to sense and avoid systems. Multiple studies have shown that sharks will move to deeper water away from the paths of storms. In two thousand one, during Hurricane Gabriel, fourteen of fourteen tagged black tip sharks did just that. When the storm approached, they moved into deeper water eventually migrating back to shallow water after the storm had passed. Their innate ability to detect barometric changes prevents the possibility of any real life shark NADOs, but while a good science stand in the way of bad sci fi. Other toothye critters, however, have been displaced by tropical storms. In eighteen seventy seven, a rural South Carolinian witness something straight out of a terror read movie when a reptile fell from the sky in front of it turned out to be an alligator, and the man went on to find six other twelve inch alligators, all of which had fallen from the sky after being picked up by a waterspout six miles away. Although gators are an extreme example, critters fall from the sky more often than one might think. All over the globe, people have witnessed raining wildlife such as spiders, worms, frogs, toads, fish, and in a few cases, jellyfish. While sharkacans aren't actually a thing, the destructive power of hurricanes is difficult to overstate. Biblical rain, tidal surge and a hundred and thirty mile per hour winds are plenty destructive, as our low lying neighbors to the East are all too aware. Right now, we don't know the full extent of the damage Hurricane Dorian unleashed on the northern Bahamas, but sources on the inside tell me that the destruction in places like Grand Bahama and Abaco is almost unimaginable. Those are fishing communities. And while it's going to be quite some time before we learn the long term impacts of a Category five storm camping over the top of a small island chain and pummeling it for forty hours straight, we know that lives have been lost, houses have been flattened, and communities have been displaced. Hunters and anglers take care of our own, so we're auctioning off a whole selection of lures and flies, handmade by the meat Eater team and donating every dime to Dorian relief efforts. Check out the details on the meat Eater Instagram account coming soon. If you think having a hole in your head is a bad thing, check out the annulated sea snake. Sea snakes can breathe through their skin, which is just one adaptation a list of many that's incredible. Low oxygen arterial blood flows directly beneath the skin. This low oxygen blood sort of creates a vacuum, a strong enough vacuum to actually pull oxygen through the snake skin out of the relatively high oxygen dense sea water. What makes the annulated snake unique, though, is the hole in the top of its skull, and researchers just found out that, in fact it is unique. Major blood vessels run through the hole in the sea snake's head and continue on in a complex network of veins just under the surface of the forehead and snow. This complex web converges into a single large vein that runs directly into the brain. It is this concentrated oxygen gathering web with direct route to the brain that allows this nine and a half foot long sea snake to swim and hunt beneath the waves. So if you live in Australia or Vietnam, happy swimming, Moving on, and I'm gonna hit you with a big one from our call to action desk right now, So pay attention. Have you ever ridden a bicycle and thought to yourself, would this be a heck of a lot easier if there were a motor on this bike, something that would help pedal or maybe do all of the pedaling for me. Well, you aren't the only one. Back in the eighteen sixties, just shortly after bicycles were invented, a few crafty individuals started putting small steam engines on bicycles. Then in eighty five to German inventors by the names of Dimeware and may Boch put a petroleum based combustion engine on a bicycle. Let me stop for a second and tell you what old Melbote Toast was packing. We're talking single cylinder, two d sixty four cubic centimeters, seven mile per hour top speed, and a half of horsepower muscle. Alright, alright. Different versions of bicycles with motors have come and gone throughout history, with names like Douglas Cyclopeds, and of course the moped popularized in the fifties. All of these motorized bicycles have had some level of pedal assist or full power, with the pedals acting as a place to just rest your feet, with the exception of the moped. And now to fast forward to the magical world of today, we have a resurgence in people putting motors on bicycles. Only this time they're getting real squarely on their definition of motor. Acting Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt has just issued Secretarial Order three three seven six, which states that electric bicycles or e bikes are now allowed wherever bicycles are allowed in national parks, as long as the motor on the electric bicycle does not exceed seven hundred and fifty watts or one horsepower. Secretarial Order three three seven six instructs the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Wildlife Refuge System managed by the Department of Fish and Wildlife to follow suit. Now I'm going to be upfront with you and tell you that if you love writing e bikes and that is your preferred method of recreating, I think that's just fine. My boned pick here is not with you. It is with the part of Secretarial Order three three seven six or Secretary Bernhardt instructs the directors for the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation to expressly exempt all e bikes as from falling under the definition of off road vehicle and further to exempt e bikes from being to find as a motor vehicle. Now, remember our history lesson on putting motors on bicycles back in heck, back in the eighteen sixties, let's call it a hundred and fifty years ago, roughly folks put engines half the size on bicycles and called them motorbikes. What is the point of calling a motorbike a not motorbike? And what are the ramifications? Well, some people have called this the end of the BLMS management for human powered recreation. Some think that this is a major win for access, citing the fact that the elderly and handicap will be able to get more places easier. This is what I know. One, if you have a bicycle and you put a motor on it, it is called a motorbike. That's not much of a stretch to a huge art of funding for trails, trailheads and campsites come from o h V or off highway vehicle stickers and off highway vehicle registration fees. If Secretary Bernhardt is correct and Secretarial Order three three seven six is successful in providing access to more miles of trail to the people who are apparently waiting with their electrically motorized bicycles, where will the money come from to maintain and improve the trail systems and trailheads. I am all for people getting outside, but again, look at our history. Lesson in eighty five, a single cylinder two hundred and sixty four cubic centimeter engine was put on a bike which propelled the bike at seven miles per hour with only half a horse of power. Comparatively, a brand new two hundred and forty eight point eight cubic centimeter KTM single cylinder engine will have you running at eighty miles per hour in no time. But I'll admit that's not exactly comparing apples to apples. The point is technology evolves and will soon be getting a lot more out of our one horsepower or less electric bicycles than the law currently intends. And e bike that falls under Secretary Burnhart's definition of non motorized as a factory mac speed of twenty eight miles per hour, and they'll soon be on non motorized trails. Trails that already sustained the impacts of the bulk of existing non motorized users hikers, backpackers, bird watchers, hunters, folks who ride horses. These are the trails that get the most used. These are the trails that need the most funding. If this situation is concerning to you, I strongly suggest you reach out to your duly elected officials and let them know. Let them know that you value your public lands and access, and we need more folks paying into the system, not just barely peddling through it. Thanks a bunch for listening. If you found something fun and interesting, Please tell a friend or two. If you want to harass me or tell me how I'm doing shooting me an email at ask cal that's a s k C a L at the Meat Eater dot com. I'll talk to you next week.