00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we can review with Ryan kel kell in now here's kel weak penis bones or brittle baculum in Otter's point to excessive contamination around Alberta's oil sands So you know, check that tap water fellas A recent study performed in part by the Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Project, which is quote the governments of Canada and Alberta working with indigenous peoples and their communities, stakeholders, and environmental agencies to ensure the oil sands region is developed in a responsible way. Together, they are working to provide comprehensive environmental monitoring data and information to improve on understanding of the long term cumulative effects of oil sands development. We don't yet know what long term means, but in the now term, those frisky otters are underperforming. If you have never heard of oil sands before, think of really thick oil called bit umen, which is mixed with sand and gravel sometimes hard rock. Bit Jumen is most commonly extracted using drill rigs that treat the bit yumen in place in order to make it flow. This is done either by delution or heating of the bit umen, injecting steam into the deposit, which sort of liquefies the bit human. The pressure forces it to the surface through a return pipe. That's a real quick and dirty rundown, which is appropriate because you're dealing with oil and lots of liquid and sometimes it's dirty. Thousands of gallons of water used in extraction, and during this process other minerals are extracted and things leach into the soil, which is why the Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Project exists. When people refer to the Alberta oil sands, they're talking about the Peas River area, the Athabaska which is the largest, or the Cold Lake area. Reports from primarily Dean and cree trappers who count on the furs from species like otters for income have been noting otter litter sizes seemed consistently small. These reports raised the natural question that comes to mind, how are their vaculums doing. The vaculum, for those of you who do not know, is the proper name for the penis bone. Weak penis bones have proven to be associated with poor litter sizes and reduced litters in general. Lots of animals have vaculums. Humans do not, but guerrillas and chimpanzees do. Bears, badgers, raccoons all have baculums. Fun fact for you. In some bear hunting circles, the baculum is boiled, cleaned, and then lightly sealed with a food safe lacquer and used as a cocktail stir stick. If you think that's in poor taste, I agree, the badger vaculum is much more noteworthy than the bears. Anyway, No matter what your cocktail of choices, you don't want a brittle vacuum breaking in your booze. You don't want animal suffering in the let's call it bedroom for our oil consumption. Either, Trappers near and far away from the oil sands sent in the penis bones they collected to McMaster University lab where they were tested in several ways for strength, including measuring the amount of pressure it took to snap the bones in half. Now I know the relationship of weak penis bone to undersize offspring count is documented, so that is likely why the penis bone was selected as the bone to send in and break. But couldn't they just have easily pulled a tooth or a fingerbone One all bones show the same weakness to someone out there maybe have an agenda. The outcome of this relay of information from Cree and Dean trappers to study is that otters in areas with low hydrocarbons have strong penis bones. Otters in areas with higher contamination higher hydrocarbon counts have weaker penis bones and will produce fewer offspring. This story and study is a great example of how boots on the ground conversations of people who are intimately involved with the resource can effectively communicate and help get that scientific backing which is needed to take action on an issue, especially if folks are making money on it. I know that the reaction to this study will be far too slow for the trappers, but the combination of folks in the lab, publishing a peer reviewed study, and those stories from the people that live with the wildlife, the insiders and the outsiders, will be more effect of than one or the other. The full report can be found in Chemosphere Scientific Journal titled Coexposures to Trace Elements and polycrylic Aromatic Compounds Impacts North American River Otter Bacuum. If that doesn't get you excited, well you might be swimming in the wrong water. This week, we've got fishing reports, anti sense legislation, frozen squirrels, and so much more. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week and my week as well as This podcast is sponsored by Steel Power Equipment. If you're thinking about tools that stand the test of time, do me a favor and check out your local steel dealer. Tell him cal Sanya. They may not know who I am, but then you get to do them the favor of educating them on a great podcast. Anyway, I met up with some friends and we completely lucked out on a duck and goose scenario. I had exactly five duck decoys in my truck. We had solid wind, and got permission on a pond where it seemed every bird wanted to be. On top of that, the mallards and Canada geese were really responding to calls, so much so that we got several groups of geese to commit to landing on this tiny body of water. It was great. We shot really well and had all the elements working for us. The first day, the wind switched and we shot poorly the second day, but Snort got exactly what she needed a lot of retrieving, she got a lot of water work, multiple birds falling at the same time. Her first goose retrieves. I think she ended up retrieving seven geese, some of which were probably a quarter of her body weight. She still has so much to learn, but this weekend was huge, particularly with the geese. And I'll admit it was not the plan to have her retrieve geese on this hunt, but it happened. I will say if I had given her an out, said no or leave it, she likely would not have gotten anywhere near a goose. Possibly. Ever, again, there was a lot of loud encouragement over the weekend. It was needed. This is the most experience at the youngest age compared to any of my previous Labrador retrievers. And it seems to me that this dog, perhaps because of her age of only seven months, perhaps just her personality, does question some of what the shooting results in. One of the best things to happen on our hike out of this hole we were in is she picked up a mallard and chose to carry it the quarter mile or so back to the truck, which, you know, it just made me very proud, seemed to be a very proud little girl walking to her duck all the way back to the truck. Late season, Mallard's are the last thing to go into the freezer and the first thing to come back out. It is some of my absolute favorite, deliciously fatty meat. One thing I often think of in regards to water is hunters or shooters saved these migratory species from likely extinction. We hunters fed the restaurants of metropolitan areas and boomtowns on wild waterfowl until they started to not show up. The demand for migratory birds as food to be paid for took millions of birds from the sky and the big waters of the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay and the Sacramento Delta. Now, however, even amongst some of my friends that hunt ducks heavily, there is this shuffle of how the hell do we get rid of these birds? It's crazy to me, and I find the attitude pretty darned disrespectful to the resource that was saved by hunters. Canada geese for dummies. Take the breast and thigh meat, throw it in a pressure cooker with plain water for fifteen minutes. You can get fancier than this, but This is the simplest way. Shred the meat. It tastes like dark meat turkey, and you can add it to whatever and mix it with barbecue sauce and anyone will eat it and ask for more. If you want to take that to the next level, throw some fat in a pan. Take that shredded meat in there, let it crisp up heavily. Season it with tacos seasoning. Then you got carnetas. You'll never give away a darned Canada goose again. Ducks for dummies, take those breasts and thighs skin off. If you're someone who does not enjoy flavor, put a little bit of butter in a pan. Get it hot. While you're doing this, you've coated your breasts and thighs and salt, a little pinch cayenne, a dash maple syrup, fat, salt, sugar, heat. Cook it to medium rare. If you cannot stomach medium rare, check out Hankshaws duck hunters sausage. If you have ever made a handmade burger, you can make this sausage. You'll never give away a duck again. Moving on HR eight to eight to restrict the use of steel jaw leg hold try apps and conna bet traps on animals. In the United States. This Act may be cited as the Public Safety and Wildlife Protection Act. It is the policy in the United States to reduce risk to public safety, as well as unnecessary harm to companion animals and wildlife from indiscriminate and injurious trapping methods by prohibiting the import or export of, and the shipment in interstate commerce of steel jaw, leg hold traps, and conna bet traps. It shall be unlawful for any person to import, export, deliver, carry, transport by a means anywhere or whatever, and do Long and short is they want to ban trapping. Introduced by Congressional Representative Atoms of North Carolina's twelfth district. This is a bill that would end trapping in America. And remember trapping is not done only by backwoods cariculture type folks or young Stephen Ronnella's putting themselves through community college, or by those cree and dean trappers that are currently saving otters. There are no provisions here for research for conflict mitigation. Only for mice. It is, according to HR eight to eight, just fine to kill mice with traps which really makes me want to have a conversation with this congress person. So let's just send this one to the bottom of the round file, shall we. Even if you don't like the idea of trapping, even when it's a conna bear trap designed to snap the neck of the animal that triggers the trap, just like a mouse trap, which is apparently totally fine, you do like what trapping does for you, Whether you live in a community that could be flooded by industrious beavers, a community that occasionally gets rabies outbreaks, which we have covered here over and over again, or a bird hunter that likes finding birds. A bit of trapping does benefit all of us, which let's be on us. This bill still leaves room for trapping. It just says that live trapping is better. It says that it is better to put a wild animal in a trap, let it stay alive as it is transported somewhere away from prying eyes, to then be killed. I'll tell you right now that I've spent some time with some trappers. Some of them are their own worst enemy. There needs to be good, responsible behavior. There needs to be good spokespeople for trapping, and there needs to be a better understanding of what trapping is. There's a lot of trapping that goes on in the United States. Again, a lot of that benefits people that live in cities too. Now it should be on everyone's New Year's resolution to get more familiar with your elected representatives at all levels of government. And this is a softball to start with. We manage wildlife in this country. And unless you own stock and one of those anti coyote jackets for lap dogs they sell in the Los Angeles are call your congressional representative and let them know what you think of Hr eight to eight. Let them know who you are, and let them know that they'll be hearing from you again. Moving on to the fish desk, one of the beautiful things about fishing in rivers with low visibility is you never know what you'll haul in. Could be a thirty pound catfish, could be a nasty, mud filled pair of old sweatpants, could be a near two white tail skull. Although Josh Blake, who is an avid hunter and fisherman, was neither hunting or fishing, he did haul up one side of a white tail rack while clearing the screens of the American Electro Hydro Power facility at the London, Mormot and Windfield locks on the Canawa River. The Canawa River is a tributary of the Ohio and if you are a fan of whitewater, the New and Gali Rivers feed the Canawa Uh just right into a s K C A L at the mediator dot com. You can tell me how to pronounce that later. It is e economically correct. According to West Virginia Metro News, the first half of the buck scored roughly eighty inches, which would have been a great find on its own, especially when you're getting paid to drag stuff out of the river. The next day, a member of the crew hauled up the other half of the buck's rack, this side non typical and sporting about one inches of antler, for an estimated gross score of a seven eighth. West Virginia Department and Natural Resources believe the buck went into the river while still in velvet, but they, along with Blake, can only guess when and where that happened. Blake, who is an avid hunter. His biggest deer to date is a hundred and forty buck, and just like fishing murky water, he, along with anyone else who hunts West Virginia is having dreams of what this one catch might mean. Are there more monster bucks roaming the West Virginia Hills? Moving on, Benjamin canuteson on famous Lake mill Locks landed back to back fifty plus inch muskies within hours of each other. For those that know, the muskie is called the fish of ten thousand casts, which means canutes and would have had to have made five thousand casts an hour or eighty three point three casts a minute to put in the effort necessary to boat. The second fish reminds me that terrible joke I just flew in, and boy are my arms tired. The first muskie was fifty six point five inches in length and estimated at fifty one pounds, the second fifty three point to five inches and fifty four pounds. According to for the Win Outdoors, the fifty four pounder could tie a catch and release weight record that has stood since nineteen fifty seven, although neither fish is a record breaker for mill Lock, fifty inch muski are extremely rare and something anglers dream about. Seeing two in one day is amazing. Actually catching two is unheard of. Way to go, Benjamin canutes them, Moving on over to the animal Domestication Desk. The title of this desk has gained a meaning this week, and that it seems that animals are the ones doing the domesticating. On this show, we end up talking about a lot of cattle, dogs, pet snakes, fenced in deer and so on, the animals that humans have taken out of wild context and put into use either for work or food, or swimming after ducks and bring them back. All of this talk rests on the assumption that we humans are the only ones getting animals to do what we want them to do, But it seems we are not alone. Recently, a team of scientists discovered that the long fin damselfish, a species native to the Carribou Bay coral reef in Belize, has put another species to work cultivating the algae that makes up its primary food source. Long fin damselfish grow to be about four and a half inches long and are typically gray black with bright blue and yellow accent marks. They have been observed fiercely protecting the patches of algae that grow on the reef from all other species. All other species except one, the tiny miceid shrimp. The damselfish allows these shrimps onto the algae patches. The shrimp waste fertilizes the algae, and the fertilized algae grows faster and is more nutritious for the damselfish. And whereas mice had, shrimp are usually easy pickings for the many predators around them, they can stay safe inside the dome of protection that the damselfish provide. This may sound familiar. Free ranging chickens can fertilize your garden. You gotta eat the eggs, but without feeding protection they wouldn't last long with the foxes nearby. There are many symbiotic relationships in the wild, and in some of them, certain species protect other species and a turn for providing a food source. The relationship between ants and aphids has been well documented. For example, aphids produce a sugary material called honeydew as a byproduct of their digestion, and the ants keep a fids around just so they can eat the byproduct. Ants even stroke the abdomens of a FIDS to stimulate the production of honeydew, and certain species of aphids have become so adapted to the ant relationship that they aren't anatomically able to excrete their honeydew. Waste without ants there to uh, you know, stroke them. The ants will provide protection from a fid eaters. They'll even bring the little guys along when they have to migrate to a new colony. This obviously bears a whole lot of resemblance to how humans cultivated dairy cows, goats, sheet anything with nipples. I guess I have nipples, greg me. So. Although symbiosis is common, what sets the damsel shrimp interaction apart is it seems to be the only observed case of one animal species using another animal to cultivate a separate food source, in this case the algae, which is pretty incredible. Next, I'm hoping that will discover a four age club on the Caribou Bay coral reef. Maybe we can catch some young damselfish showing off their price shrimp for the season. But that auction gets heated. Here's a fun fact for you. One you should know if you're gonna be stuck trying to entertain or impress some relatives or friends or tinder dates. Symbiotic is a prolonged relationship in which both parties benefit. I would call the aphid ant relationship symbiotic. Mutualistic can be quite similar. But when I think of mutualistic, I think of the fact that the party's involved benefit but remain independent lacking of that relationship. Think of let's say the prairie wolf that followed the pioneers across the prairies. The wolves cleaned up after the pioneers by eating the waist, the prairie wouldn't stank to high heaven scavengers reduced the presence of disease as well. You could call that mutualistic. Then there are obligate mutualistic relationships where neither species can survive without the other. And here's where the symbiotic the mutualistic relationship discussion really heats up. Like the aphids that cannot expel their own honeydew without the sensitive stroking of anti antennae, the yucca plant is pollinated only by the yucca moth. The yucca moth lays it's larva inside the fruit of the yucca. The larva eats only part of the seeds produced that year, and in turn is a comfy protected home for larva of the yucca moth, and the yucca gets pollinated. The yucca plant is obviously very different from a moth. That gets to hatch wings and fly, but they cannot live without each other. You may want to ask yourself, if you're currently in a relationship, which are you an aunt or a yucca? Moving on, here, we are in a brand spanking new two thousand twenty one and New Year's resolutions abound, especially related to losing some of those quarantine pounds. But how do we do it? If you have a friend who has ever done cross fit, or tried a whole third year dabbled in the Keto diet, you have no doubt heard more than enough about the practice of intermittent fasting to take off the pounds. The premise of intermittent fasting is simple enough, skip breakfast every day and you'll lose weight. What about second breakfast? Or don't eat anything one day a week and watch the pounds melt away. Proponents of fasting will tell you, and keep telling you, that its effects are not just the result of taking in fewer calories. When your body hasn't had any new NW transfer long enough, it responds by changing its metabolic functions. After a ale of not eating, your body will start looking for damaged cells to get rid of. A process called autophagy. Because there's less sugar coming into the system, less insulin is released, your body may even eventually switch over to burning fat for energy. Your CrossFit friend can go on about several other desirable metabolic changes that may result from fasting, including possible resistance to cancer and a longer lifespan. You won't even have to ask them, they'll just tell you. But no matter how much that friend can deadlift or how committed they are to their regiment, when it comes to fasting, they are no match for the Arctic ground squirrel. Researchers with the University of Alaska Fairbanks have been studying how exactly Arctic ground squirrels can survive the stunningly long periods of time they go without food and water during hibernation. In the eight months eight months they spend in their burrows, these squirrels can slow their metabolisms down so much much that they take one breath and their heart beats only one time in an entire minute. Scientists have long been amazed by how extreme this hibernation is. The temperature of the squirrels brains goes down to just above freezing, while the temperature and the rest of their bodies actually goes down below the freezing point, sometimes getting as low as twenty seven degrees. We don't quite know why their blood doesn't freeze solid, but one hypothesis is that the squirrels can somehow cleanse their system of any of the kinds of particles that ice crystals form around the University of Alaska Fairbanks team broke new ground by directly observing part of the squirrels hibernation metabolism change. It had never been seen before. If almost any other animal went so long without food, their bones, muscles, and organs would deteriorate. Even if they were able to survive somehow, their bodies would undergo extreme damage. But the sy aists showed that as the muscles of the squirrels broke down, they were able to take the nitrogen released by this process and convert it into amino acids, and then use those amino acids to build new tissue for their organs and skeletal muscles. In this way, the squirrels can emerge from their hibernation with their muscles and organs in pretty good shape. Now that this nitrogen recycling process has been described, scientists are now wondering if something similar could be triggered in human beings. Maybe the kind of muscle and tissue wasting that happens to the elderly and people recovering from illness could be slowed or reversed. Maybe astronauts traveling all the way to Mars could slip into an icy sleep for a few years and wake up none the worse for wear. Or let's say you rung in the new year long into the early morning or even day of January one, and you want to get fresh and forget what happened, the damage that you did by over indulgence. Well do we of the new health and recovery fad for you? Get that A G S. That's lard to ground squirrel bro, Yes, that's awesome. That's all I've got for you this week. Thanks so much for listening, and as per usual, let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods by writing in to ask Cal. That's a s k C. A L. At the Meat Eater dot com. Happy New Year and thanks again. I'll talk to you next week.

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