00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can review with Ryan kel Kelly. Now here's Kel. Recent news from the University of Bristol will leave both spider lovers and arachnophobes shocked. That's shocking. Researchers recently tested and observed spiders taking flight in a sealed box when electrical fields were present. When the charged atmosphere was turned off, the spiders fell. If levitating spiders make your tiny hair stand on end, you aren't alone. Those tiny hairs on spider's legs, called trichobothria, are how they sense the intensity of the Earth's electric field. When conditions have enough pull, they tiptoe their ab demands to the sky, release several independent strands of negatively charged silk and lift off subtle air currents. Were believed to be the only way spider flight was accomplished until the magnetic field theory was introduced. The Bristol experiment is the first to confirm the theory that spiders can ride the lightning, so to speak, the negatively charged strands of silk cling to the positively charged currents in the atmosphere just as a balloon rubbed against a kid's head does Isn't that amazing? I do know. Not everyone is amazed by spiders. In fact, some people take this knowledge as a negative. The idea that spiders are ikey or dangerous supersedes the fact that spiders are good neighbors. They eat pests, both those that pester our food and those that pester us. Some have six eyes, some have eight, Some eat gnats, and some eat birds. But only thirty three species of spiders out of the forty five thousand known species of spiders, are harmful to humans. The majority of those thirty three are mainly harmful in theory. And when I say harmful in theory, I mean it like this, Like in theory, you have a brown widow spider trapped between your skin and your clothes. And I did say that correctly, the brown widow spider has twice the deadly potential as the black widow spider. Didn't you know that? Anyway, Let's say you get a brown widow trapped in your clothes and it bites you. Then at that exact moment, a buddy years comes along and smacks you on the back and somehow forces more than the average dose of venom out of that spider and into you. Then that spider would move from harmful to deadly, which is, you know, just another reason to social distance. Right. That's a long winded way of saying, there are potentially harmful and deadly spiders, but the actual risk is low. Leave them alone and they will continue to eat pess anyway. I do see the icky nous if you will, the legs, the hairs, the eyes, the fangs, and the fact that they can fly without wind, They can harness electrical fields like a darned comic book character. I can see where you're coming from. But relax, the spiders really can't fly far, you know. When compared to let's say, an albatross that moves itself through space not bound by electro static propulsion, spiders have only been recorded at heights of one and a half miles above the earth and covering measily distances of like a thousand miles. So you're safe. Don't even worry about it. Oh, did you know that Charles Darwin recorded spider flight or ballooning on board the famous research ship the Beagle. He estimated that he was sixty miles from land on a boat in the Ocean. This week we've got the Snort Report, Citizens Science, the Return of the Toilet Weasel, and Boxing Day. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week and my week as well as this podcast, as you know, is sponsored by Steel Power Equipment. Here in Montana, is just about time to start cutting wood for next winter. Make sure you have a steel on the job to make your cutting and bucking faster, safer, and more efficient. I sure do. Here's a little personal problem I've been having losing birds late season. Roosters are tough to get shots at, and you have to work your ass off for them. These birds have been hunted by people with dogs for almost two months. They know the game, they know their homes. The cover a heck of a lot better than I do. I'll tell you that physical fitness stamina comes into play much more than what the average picture of an upland hunter and a magazine displays at minimum. I've been intermittently sprinting during miles of hiking more than I ever do pursuing big game. The dogs work twice as hard as I do. Frozen ground, thin ice, old barbed wire, wild rose, sagebrush. Dog would cat tails, rush, and olive, and those whispy willows that typically are an annoyance, but when a hunter's ears are frozen, those same somewhat soft willow sticks crack like bull whips and sting like hornets on your ear tips. Getting in tune with the seasonal offerings of the various covers takes practice. Where do the birds want to be at what times a year. That practice comes at a high cost time, lots of time, some fuel, money no substitute for time and the woods. Learning how these birds will escape that cover. You're gonna work how you can work the thickest of the cover that will likely offer no shots in just a way to push those birds to an adjacent cover that will provide a shot. If the birds don't just fly for the next county, then there is the puppy factor. Wanting to yell at the top of my lungs snort when that puppy strikes out after a hot pheasant scent well beyond effective shooting distance, but knowing that if I yell, all these cag wild cocks will either hunker into the thickest of the thick cover under a layer of snow, or fly again for the next County. The former is more preferable than the ladder. Getting a shot is rewarding, Missing a shot is horrible. Making that shot when it finally presents itself is great, magical intersection of bird launch and flight path that meets the hunter shooting lanes, provided the hunter is in a position that is both near enough to the bird and a clear enough for a shot. And of course that shot cannot take place when the bird is clear. If you know you're hunting, partner buildings are a hen are on the back side of that bird. When all of that comes together in the right way and the bird goes down and you cannot find that bird, it is heartbreaking. My buddy Kyler left his old seasoned dog at home, Phil so he could get the younger dogs his scout mind snort some firsthand experience. He made a great long crossing shot to start out the day, dropped a rooster noticeably dead, as you do with late season birds. We sprinted to the location and encouraged the dogs to search while we took advantage of the fresh snow and searched the outskirts of the cover for tracks showing the rooster's escape. Over and over again. We sent the dogs into the cover. They worked hard and came up with nothing. Forty five minutes later, Snort gets really excited about undercut bank below where we thought the bird had landed. I slide onto the thin ice, which immediately breaks, filling a boot and search under the bank to come up with nothing, but my new eye level to the bank position finds a tail feather sticking out of the snow, a spot surrounded by dog tracks and people tracks. The shot was a great one. The bird was dead on impact, and I theorized that because of this, the dogs were distracted by wandering overlapping bird sense that did not lead to the dead bird that had dropped like a meteor and buried itself like a feathery lawn dart under the snow. Either that or the dogs just darn't worth a darn. But they did some amazing stuff too, I swear. Not seventy five yards from the commotion made of a near hour long search, we flushed another rooster, this one crippled by me. Hit the ground at a run which would not stop for over a mile. Snort right on his tail, sniffing his every step, so I know her nose works and scout Tyler's GSP running along the outside, cutting him off, preventing another near loss. We got lucky twice that day. We did lose a bird as usual. It seems like it shouldn't have happened. Two people, you know, with our huge smart brains and forward facing eyes and two dogs equipped with olfactory equipment capable of detecting drugs, cancers, explosives, and birds. In theory, one of those hunting things we can dance into two words, it happens. I, my friends, am just more interested in the why than I am in the excuse. If you have any sure fire methods for finding lost game birds, let me know a s k c L let's ask how at the meteor dot Com. Moving on to the updates and p s a desk. The lap hand man suspected to have been killed by a mountain lion in Hood County, Texas, is still deceased, unfortunately, but not from a run in with a mountain lion. According to the Star Telegram, The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said Texas Game Wardens, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologists, and a United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services trapper investigated the scene and evidence and came to the same conclusion as the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department staff. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has no record of a mountain lion attack in Texas or confirmed records of a mountain lion living in Hood County. Better correct at ipan Texas Wikipedia page. Onto the p s A. And this is one we've covered before, but it's just too good to pass up. According to National Geographic Participation in citizens, science is on the rise due to the disruptive routine caused by COVID nineteen. Technology is at our fingertips, so many more people have access to a combination camera and geo tagging device, be it an iPhone or Samsung or Google. Whatever the thing you text and occasionally talking to that device can verify sightings of bugs, birds, plants, weather and astronomical events. Adding these findings to that great data set in the sky can help the scientists who mind that data come to conclusions that expand our knowledge of these animals, plants, and natural patterns. Don't you want to be a part of that? I sure do. Go to s c I as in Science Starter. That's sci Starter dot org to see where you can jump into the citizen science game. I followed the link entered into the subject search bar fish, which is very generic and I guess I should clarify it. I'm talking about the thing you catch, not the jam band, and found that there is a request asking for folks to go through historic fishing photos to count and identify people's catch. Now, how many grumpy old fishing folks do you know that would love to have the hobby of going through old photos and telling people what they caught. The data they provide could do some good. I'm sure many of you are thinking, my gosh, I could be showing off my fishing knowledge and helping on a historical fish take survey instead of playing whatever game you waste your brain with your pocket computer. Well, if that particular one isn't filling your net, help out that amazing wealth of knowledge. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology a resource I am always mining for tidbits. According to nat GEO, participation in their interactive programs E bird and Nestquatch have risen twenty nine and respectively over the last year. Don't be the last cool kid to get in on the birding game. This can all be done online yet socially, which is responsible. If that doesn't fill your nest and you just want to identify the things you take pictures of, check out I Naturalist, an app we covered here many episodes ago as a man used it to identify a toilet weasel, which, as it turns out, was not its proper name. That's a great episode, by the way. To find out more, you'll have to go way way back to episode six. Toilet weasels, wooly mammoths and poachers And like I probably said in episode six, if you don't have a toilet weasel that needs to be identified, don't worry. I Naturalist in the community they have curated can help you identify just about anything outside of your toilet and weasels. So one more time, do yourself a favor. Pick up a new hobby. Go to size starter, s C I, S T A R T E er dot org. If you don't believe me, type in fish, start identifying fish and how many there are and old photographs. Sounds like a blastomy. Moving on, the first wild animal in the US has been confirmed as infected with stars COVID nineteen and it is a weasel. A weasel that has nothing to do with toilets. It's time to move on. Okay, and yes, for those of you who have been tested for COVID nineteen, they it, in fact use a nasal swab on the weasel. No species will be spared the feeling of a large Q tip being spun inside the upper reaches of its nasal cavity until it's eyes water and gag reflex is triggered. Okay, if you think that's animal cruelty, if you consider what will happen to the captive mank inside the Utah farm, this free ranger is probably being treated better, although it did know what freedom was like. And I assume most of you remember Braveheart. Anyway, as you recall mink farms and quick aside here, please note that a mink is a weasel, part of that amazing mustle lid family, which includes badgers and otters. Anyway, in Denmark and Europe, millions of mink have been destroyed where the COVID nineteen virus has been detected. No word yet as to the fate of the mink farmed or otherwise in Utah. Their fate was probably skeptical with the Sundance Film Festival. Being a remote event anyway, this will be an interesting story to keep track of. After all, this is a parallel story to the captive servit industry and chronic wasting disease. The difference here is we know COVID nineteen is capable of moving from animal to human and causing just a bit of a hiccup on the normal routine around the world. Moving on, many Christmas traditions looked different this year, but I hope you were able to do a few things the old fashioned way. Although the day after Christmas in the US is traditionally used for wondering how we'll be able to re gift the whiskey stones that an uncle gave us, in the UK and British colonies, that's known as Boxing Day, and very traditionally among the British upper classes it is the day of the boxing day fox hunt. Fox Hunting in England dates back to the fift hundreds and it follows very specific rules. The clothes you're supposed to wear known as the kit, the kind of two note horn used, the things you're supposed to say at particular times. For instance, you're supposed to yell tally ho At the beginning of the hunt, Traditionally, an extremely skilled servant, maybe in this day and age, she'd be called the facilitator or a guide called the huntsman, oversees a pack of thirty or so hounds tracking the fox, and two or three whippers in keep the dogs together on the scent. Fun fact, these whippers in are where the name of the position in British Parliament and later our legislature came from the minority and majority whips, who are responsible for keeping their members in line and organizing them for a vote. I would one take the job of organizing dogs over the job of organizing politicians. But maybe that's just me. Am I chickening out by saying, if you're working with dogs, you're probably not gonna get so much boop on your boots. Anyway, I hate to ruin the whip origin for you, in case you were under the impression it was American as apple pie. Writers then follow the hounds, and traditionally, when the hunt ends with the hounds catching and killing the fox, it's tail known as the brush, is given as a trophy, and the body of the fox is thrown to the dogs. I'm not here to judge anyone else's hunting tradition, but I sure prefer ending a hunt with some food. No matter what your opinion is about the practice of fox hunting, there are several things about it that might make you grateful this holiday season for the way hunting works here in North America. First off, fox hunting's popularity in the UK took off after laws were passed dividing most larger tracts of land into smaller agricultural plots, which meant the end of habitats suitable for deer populations, which meant a nose dive in the number of deer, which in turn meant the end of widespread deer hunting in England. Now, of course, urban deer back on the rise and the roar, but that's a different story. Even though wisdom and restraint is not always apparent in the actions of US Americans, we've done a pretty good job of protecting habitat and having hunters pay into the system that maintain that habitat. That means animals that were extirpated across much of their native range, including deer, turkey, and all the other wildlife that thrive and habitats suitable for those game species have made enormous comebacks. Fox hunting in England is also almost exclusively an upper class pursuit. Those horses, trained dogs, paid staff, fancy duds are not for everyone. That means that hunting, particularly fox hunting, isn't part of the daily experience of man any regular citizens, nor is it of anyone in their circles. And so along with the animal cruelty objections to the hunt, class resentments of all kinds crystallize around this very conspicuous and symbolically posh activity. In fact, fox hunting has become so controversial in the UK that it has threatened the careers of more than one of their prime ministers. Lastly, and forgive me if I'm burying the lead here, but fox hunting is actually now illegal in England and Scotland, and has been since two thousand four. There are loopholes in that law that allow for essentially mitigation hunts, which would make a hunt for foxes that have been identified as livestock killers are soon to be livestock killers legal. It is also legal to kill foxes with falcons, to the point that a person can use dogs to flush a fox into a better position to be killed by a falcon while on a horse, so long as the dogs are A person on horseback with dogs does not intentionally kill the fox. To all my listeners in the UK, please write in and sent me straight at ask cal that's a s k C. A l at the Meat eater dot com. But from the outside looking in, the ability to hunt has been systemically removed from the bulk of the population, and so has the support of hunting that would go with it. Much to my surprise, and I am just being honest here, the UK is in pretty fantastic shape as far as open space and habitat. Only somewhere in the neighborhood of four percent of the UK is considered developed. So in my opinion, you've really only screwed up beyond repair four percent of your country, and you've been thoroughly peopled for a long time, so that's pretty good. You've been so thoroughly peopled, in fact, that you've moved a bunch of them over here. We don't need to talk about how that came to be. We're focusing on the now, not the imperialism and feudal system and religious persecution at cetera. I mean the USA is an inside glass house after all. Anyway, here in the US, our game management system has been through many trials and tribulations. One of the principles that this country was founded on was the fact that animals belong to the people. We screwed that up and hunted things like the passenger pigeon, a seemingly unlimited resource, to extinction, and we darned near got there on ducks, elk deer, grizzly bison, black bear, turkeys, and wolves. We introduced largely by self imposition, state management of game species save migratory birds, which are federally regulated tag systems, and limited harvest based off of population estimates performed by wildlife professionals. All of this in order to keep the public hunting. But we too can find ourselves in a position of the bulk of the US population being so detached from hunters and hunting that we could find ourselves carefully wording legislation to ensure that there are enough loopholes to allow those interested in hunting to do so in a quasi legal fashion. And when you have to do your thing in kind of a shadowy, sneaky sort of way, how long will you keep it up? How hard will you try to get someone new involved? Now this ain't exactly legal, but it sure is fun. Isn't the appropriate sales pitch for a lot of folks. Thanks for listening. That's all I've got for you this week. As per usual, let me know how I'm doing and most importantly, what's going on in your neck of the woods by writing in to a s K C a L. That's asked Cal at the meat eater dot com. Thanks again, I'll talk to you next week.