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. Don't judge a book by its cover. Good things come in small packages. To assume would make an ass out of you and me. All phrases that could come to mind when regarding this latest discovery of Berkeesia chameleons Brukesia nana. The mail averages a body length of just thirteen point five millimeters long, making them the world's smallest known chameleon and possibly world's smallest known reptile that we can find anyway. I am big, it's the pictures that got small. Thirteen point five millimeters is just under your average unshelled peanut and length or the diameter of a double A battery. This critter could fit on your thumbnail with plenty of room to spare. With the tail, the males can get to about point eight six inches or twenty two millimeters in overall length. This tiny critter has been discovered in a small pristine piece of Madagascar rainforest. Madagascar actually has a reputation for tiny animals. Another example would be the world's smallest primate, the pygmy mouse lemur. The pygmy mouse has a body length of under two and a half inches long and weighs in at just over an ounce. The largest lemur, the dary, gets as large as twenty one pounds, But the pygmy mouse is much more fun for the fact that it lives in female lead groups and stores away fat for the dry season in its rear. End. Baby got back. Why do so many small animals live in Madagascar? There are two predominant theories regarding the small scale of island inhabitants. One small animals living in small places hide better, and two as species proliferate, evolve and divide, creating more species, and a small terrarium, which is kind of what an island is. All species trend smaller like a honey I shrunk the kids scenario. If the house is too small, don't move or add onto it, just shrink the people. But enough of this small talk. Another noteworthy discovery of Brukeesia Nana is that the male and females are quite disproportionate in size. They stretch sexual dimorphism. The females can be twenty nine millimeters in total length nineteen millimeters in body size due to the very small area in the very small and shrinking montane or cloud forest these lizards were found in. Scientists had to wonder how the lizards reproduced what were their odds of making it which you could calculate if they knew how good they were at making it, which is the line of thought. I'm guessing they went down when they made their big discovery. The male's penis makes up over of its total body size, the theory being that the mails were forced to adapt to the sexual size gap. Big things come in small packages or big packages anyway. This week we've got snakes, crime, more bad bills, and so much more. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. And my week as well as This podcast is brought to you by Steel Power Equipment, makers of the world's finest chainsaws and as. I have had many many times shears and loppers that pulled double duty as both garden and trimming tools as well as kitchen tools. Just someday I used my thirty inch loppers to cut the femur on a CU's deer ham I've been dry aging for three weeks. Made it cut so fine I was able to vacuum seal the ham without fear of puncturing the bag. Dry aging sounds more interesting than it is. I just keep rotating the piece of meat. In this case, again, it's a boned in CU's deer ham. In my refrigerator. I don't put it on like the nasty refrigerator rack, but put a paper bag in there. For whatever reason, it would be ideal to hang the meat, but I don't have the space. I try to promote airflow. However, I can A nice RHND develops, which is excellent for dog treats. The meat inside is nice. I think a bit more tender, but I don't see much of a flavor difference, which is one of the things people reference with dry aged meats. To keep on the cooking subject, I had a hankering for spaghetti and meatballs. I pulled out a piece Louisiana Bayou pig from this summer, a bag of frank Church Idaho Wilderness mule deer, and married the two in the Western grinder. Had a real fantastic fresh meat ball the night of the spaghetti. And that's mule here from feet and hog from zero feet in elevation. However, each critter's home may be equally as wild, and I like thought of that. I got absolutely spanked out on the ice again. We had a big crew, fished hard, and I believe we landed five fish in a good six hours of fishing about ten lines in the water the entire time. Not exactly fast paced, but don't worry. Not being able to figure things out is a much stronger motivator than stacking them up. I'm looking to hit it again and get some flaky white meat in the diet. We're gonna make a quick op the snort report and then move on snort my wonderful little yellow lab while she is deep in the off season, she's starting her formal professional bird dog training. To clarify, there's a difference between a bird dog and a pro bird dog, and in my mind that is defined by blind retrieves and the use of hand signals. It is cold in Montana, even though it's February. Tan. As I record this, I feel like winter just got here and that little dog is a partier in the snow, so it's not slowing us down. We just need to dial in the routine and that's up to me. Moving on to the snake's desk, where we're looking into a fascinating evolutionary arms race. Whenever you happen upon a snake. To keep everybody calm, someone always says, now, it's more scared of you than you are of it. A recent study in the journal Science is uncovering how deeply true that's saying is Certain snakes seem to have evolved some amazing defense mechanisms directly in response to threats from our human ancestors. Most snake venom contains compounds that serve to paralyze and incapacitate prey, meaning these snakes are not adapted to using their bite to harm us. Although they might bite an attack and self defense, it's almost always a last resort. Spitting cobras, on the other hand, are different. The orifices and their fangs face outward, allowing them to spray venom as far as eight feet away. This serves no purpose for catching prey, so it must have evolved as a defense mechanism. If you take a critical look at the spitting cobra, almost everything about it seems designed for self defense. The flaring hood, the standing up off the ground makes the snake larger and more intimidating In general, this is not a come on over and say how the type of gesture a bar hum equivalent to a meathead puffing up their chests and you want a piece of meat? Put which body of place. Recently, a team of scientists from Cornell in the University of Liverpool decided to learn more about how and why spitting cobras evolved in this way. Did evolution the need to defend against a consistent predator make them this way or like in our bar room example? Is it just low self esteem? First, the team analyzed the makeup of spitting cobra venom and found that it contained two different compounds, one common to almost all cobras and one only found in the spitting variety. The scientists exposed mouse neurons to each individual compound in isolation and found little response. The two compounds in combination, however, caused the neurons to fire like crazy, indicating that it was this exact combination that would create the most painful reaction in a threatening animal. Hey, you got chocolate on my peanut butter? You got peanut butter on my chocolate, which if someone who has been sprayed by a spitting cobra is listening. You are right now thinking, um, yes this, we know. If the spit didn't hurt, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. I get it. Hang on. The scientists then analyze the genetic structure of the different kinds of spitting cobras to see when in their evolutionary history they had developed this one too combo punch. It turns out that each distinct spitting cobra variety evolved their characteristic front venting teeth and nasty venom right when early human beings arrived on the scene. Specifically, African cobras started spitting around seven million years ago, just when the earliest human ancestors split off from chimps and bonobos, and then when Homo erectus reached Asia two and a half million years ago, that's when Asian cobras started spitting. Although we can't be certain that snakes adapted to us, there had to be some pretty focused, selective pressure to cause that kind of dramatic change, but it has been well documented that many primates will try to kill snakes on site, often using sticks, rocks, or other quote technology for doing harm while attempting to stay out of striking distance, So it would make lots of sense that the snakes who could inflict serious damage at longer range and scare the Jesus out of everyone in the process, would have a much improved chance of survival. I'm now moving into the realm of pure speculation, but it's hard not to wonder if after spitting, cobras evolved to keep early humans far away, humans adapted right back. Maybe we got better and better at throwing, partially because there was an advantage to hitting snakes with rocks from further away. To take this one step further, and this will be my only nod to the Super Bowl this week, but maybe there would be no Tom Brady throwing perfect spirals all over the field we're at, not for some very very nasty snakes deep in his lineage. Who can say for sure that I'm wrong? Moving on, Researchers at Duke University recently documented one of the fastest movements ever seen from a living thing. And we're not talking cheetahs or falcons or antelopes. The animal in question is the amphipod, a three millimeter long crustacean that looks like a tiny crayfish with an enormous claw. Much like our chameleon example. Enormous is relative to size anyway, that claw accounts for fully one through the amphipod's body mass, and that law is what generated all this interest. Scientists in Japan began studying amphipods in two thousand eighteen, but they soon discovered that their cameras weren't fast enough to capture these tiny claws closing. So the Japanese team called in Duke University, who has a camera that can run at two million frames per second for context, Your standard video camera that we use for like film and meat eat hunts. Some Cal's Weekend review shoots runs at a measly twenty nine frames per second. And I'm pretty fast, and it captures me just fine. What the Duke scientists captured was astonishing. The amphipods were closing their claws in ninety three micro seconds, reaching a top speed of twenty nine per second, and hitting an acceleration rate of two point four times ten to the fifth meters per second squared. Right now, you're thinking, wow, that is really fast. Cal. I know it makes no sense to most of you. It definitely makes me feel like an idiot and makes no sense to me. So we're gonna break this down and tell you what old melbot toast here is packing ninety three micro seconds a human blink of the eye takes a whopping three and fifty thousand micro seconds. Next, that acceleration number, I'm not going to recite it again, but it rivals the acceleration of a bullet out of a gun. Lastly, the top speed of twenty nine per second, which is just shy of sixty five miles per hour. Now, this last figure might seem comparatively slow. My old three Chevy celeb could get up to about sixty five most of the time, but the anthropods claw is going from dead stop to sixty five miles per hour in one seven thousand of a blink of an eye. Let's just say it took the celeb a little bit longer than that. This is so fast and so powerful that scientists don't really understand how the amphipods body doesn't break under the load of that acceleration. Just imagine if your hand were shot out of a gun, there wouldn't be a whole lot left. What is even more incredible is that the amphipod is executing this movement through water almost all the other fastest organism movements trap jaw, ants closing their mandibles, philoballis, fun guys shooting their spores happen in air, which is much less dense than water. Even crazier, those ants and fun guy can only make their movements once, whereas the amphipod can close its claw at this pace over and over and over again. The closing action creates vapor bubbles in the water. Was so much energy that after enough time, the ripples can degrade metal. I'm gonna say that again, the ripples caused by their claws snapping together can degrade metal. Wow. Okay, I think we've established how truly awesome this is, But let me tell you my favorite part. In order to find these amazing crustaceans, the team did not have to travel to the Great Barrier Reef or the Marianas Trench or some other exotic locale. They just drove over to a local marina in North Carolina and combed through some algae. Amphipods can be found all over the world. Right now, one is probably closing its claws faster than a speeding bullet at your local boat launch or fishing spot. Just an everyday miracle of nature right under our noses. Now that the team at Duke has published these findings, the next question is why do amphipods have this ability? We don't know, but you will be the first to know as soon as we know. Wow. Moving on to the ever popular law enforcement desk, a forty four year old man has been sentenced to five years of federal probation, which would include a five year ban on hunting, a lifetime ban from Crater Lake National Park, and over forty two dollars in restitution. Adrian Wood has been under investigation since two thousand fourteen for poaching elk and deer out of Crater Lake National Park. During the investigation, which finally ended in his guilty plea for violating the Lacy Act, which forbids hunting in national parks, Oregon State troopers obtained text messages of Adrian bragging about his elk hunting abilities, which I'm not quite sure what to think of. Was he telling people that he was a terrible hunter? Hunting in a national park is like saying no, I catch a lot of fish. What I do is I head down to the pet shop and I scooped goldfish into plastic bag. I'm a heck of a fisherman. Hunting in a national park is something that we've joked about in years past, even on the Meat Eator podcast The yellow Stone supertag we called it, but it was a joke because if you're good at hunting, hunting elk in a national park would not be hunting, It wouldn't be challenging, so what would there be to brag about? Adrian. Additionally, Mr Wood was found to have taken at least one bowl elk at night by using a night vision scope, which I think we can safely assume was not an attempt to make things more difficult. Next up, Garden City, Idaho, a place surrounded by agriculture and warm water like a factory for tasty waterfowl. Someone dumped thirty four ducks in a dumpster behind fred Meyer Grocery store. Authorities have identified a vehicle suspected in the dumping, a dark two thousand eight two thousand ten Ford Super Duty Extra cab with a light stripe along the running board. Seeing in footage from the Garden City fred Meyer's store security camera, nineteen hole ducks, mostly mallards, and fifteen others with only the breast meat removed. First, shoot what you were going to eat. According to my calculations, you really only wanted about five ducks. Second, if you aren't eating duck legs, you are missing out. Third, if you can't make a duck taste good from that area of the country, throw your shotgun away. Fourth, a lot of hungry people out there. Idaho Fishing Game is still looking for this wasteful human. If you know of someone who probably brags about killing a lot of ducks, but to your knowledge you just can't ever remember them talking about how one tastes, that's probably a good start. Call Idaho Fishing Game two oh eight four six five eight four six five or Citizens Against Poaching six three to five, nine nine nine. Do me a big favor and send in your favorite simple duck recipes to a s k C A L at the meat eater dot com. I'll read a couple out loud or get them up on the Meat Eater website so as to help those with itchy trigger fingers and lazy culinary lives duck legs. To get the party started, just grill to a medium rare on a barbecue or like a trigger grill. If you want to do like my buddy Sean in California does throw a little warmed up oyster sauce on there. It's really that simple. Those puddle duck legs do not work very hard and they taste very good. Next up or down, depending on your geography. Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Raheem Pierce, aged twenty, the youngest parish councilman in history, received a summons after staying to his Facebook page his breakfast consisting of French fries and fried robins straight from his backyard. Councilman Pierce had a pretty good morning of violating the Migratory Bird Act for never leaving the backyard. He admittedly begged ten robbins. Now, I will admit there are a lot of tasty looking birds out there who, with a shotgun in hand, hasn't let their eyes linger a little long on a robin's breast or even that of the metal lark. Non game migratory birds are off limits, and the killing of one can result in a thousand dollar fine and or one and twenty days in jail, which is a good reminder if some of you listening are just chocking this up to what happens in Cajun country. There is no doubt that institutional knowledge doing things the way Dad or Grandma did does exist, but so does the Internet. I will also direct you to Col's Wee Can Review episode five, which was by the time of this posting ninety weeks ago, which is how I can measure my life anyway. In episode five, you will hear about non Cajun songbird eaters from the quote cultured countries of France and Italy. If it sounds like I'm taking it easy on the young councilman from Iberville Parish, I am. This is his first foray into politics, and you can imagine what would happen in this country if all politicians followed this young councilman's example and just posted all of their illegal activities on Facebook. I think we'd be better off moving on. After last week's bad bill around up I was flooded with more bills and all of us outdoor loving folks should be paying attention. Maryland House Bill zero nine one one would restrict layout boats from the Susquehanna for the purpose of waterfowl hunt. Apparently, there is not enough room on that giant river for folks who choose to hunt by body booting, which is standing in the water with your decoy spread while hiding behind a pivoting decoy, and those folks who lay in a low profile boat amongst their decoys. Oddly enough, the body booters, at least some of them use boats to get to their spots. Too. Dying to learn more about this, so feel free to write in and educate me. Kansas, pay attention you white tail fanatics. House Bill to zero to five. Would like a similar bill introduced in South Dakota restrict state employees which includes wildlife officers from setting foot on or even surveilling private property, which I am not sure how the law can restrict anyone's vision from crossing property lines, but anyway, you'd need a warrant if this bill were to pass. Spencer new Hearth and we at the meat eater dot Com just recently reported on the case of John Black Jr. The Sharon, Kansas poacher, who, as a result of a multi year investigation, received a one hundred and thirty nine count indictment which led to prison, a fine of more than three hundred thousand dollars, and revocation of privileges. He killed sixty white tail bucks illegally that they know of you white tail crazy folks, help me out. You think he got sixty trophy bucks off of one property or multiple? Do white tail bucks move across property lines in the rut? Do you think a wildlife officer's job would be helped or hindered in their attempt to catch people like this who are stealing public wildlife. Even in a state that is private, wildlife is still public no matter who owns the land. House Bill two zero to five, were a warden, if I'm reading it right, can't even legally see a poacher on private land with out a warrant. Really makes you wonder how a bill like this gets started. If you're into big white tail, I'd prefer to give the wardens a boost. Next. Indiana State Bill three eight nine, the so called Wetland Elimination Proposal, And I'm not laughing at this because I want to Elimination is not just a placeholder word in this case of Indiana's wetlands have already been drained, and SB three eight nine would eliminate any restrictions on draining the remaining wetlands in the state outside of federal control, which would mean about of the wetlands left in the state. Maybe this one operates off that old math theory we were challenged with as kids. If you reduce something by half, can you ever get to zero? Wetlands are incredibly important for clean water, for wildlife, and for people. Take a look at the examples in the prairie pothole states of North and South Dakota of what happens when wetlands are eliminated by people upstream. The folks downstream get really wet. If you like clean water, nature, migratory birds, and you have anything to do with the state of Indiana, I'd be paying attention to State Bill three eight nine next up HR one Firearms and Ammunition Licensing and Registration Act. I would contact your congressional representative on this one. Among the many things wrong with HR on is it excludes anyone under the age of twenty one from legal ownership or possession of a firearm, basically turning every farm kid in America into a criminal. This one is bad. It's ill conceived, and that's really all I have to say. And last, but not least, some really good news and e eleven year old angler from Wasilla, Alaska hauled out a nine pound two ounce bourbit from the ice just before midnight and at time. The story is a bit confusing, as the angler's name is Pike, Amy Pike, and she caught a bourbon, which is a landlock cod, not a pike. Well, then who's playing first Yeah? I mean the fellow's name my first base playing first base for St. Louis the guy on first base? Who what are you asking me for? Also, the state of Alaska gave Pike, which is not a bourbon, a youth fishing certificate noting her large catch. But even though I am jealous of you, Amy, this is not a record book fish in either the adult or youth categories. This is just a pat on the back for doing something awesome, fun, legal, and in terms of food productive at midnight. The official state record for bourbon a fish I am enamored with for many reasons. One of these reasons is if you run from tail to nose on a bourbon, the anatomy would read caudle fin or tail anal fin, heart anal vamp, and so on. Point being is their heart comes before or I guess after their anal event, depending on your perspective. I am dying to know how the orientation of the bourbon's heart is beneficial to this species, if anyone knows, please right in anyway, official State of Alaska record is twenty four pounds twelve ounces, and that was caught in six I was discussing this with my good buddy Stephen Ronnella, and he theorizes that there is so much wild country in Alaska and so many people fishing all the time, that the odds of this being truly the state record is very, very low. Like the odds that somebody pulls out the state record in an area where they could actually get it officially weighed and measured just seems off to him. Not discounting twenty four pound bourbon though. Anyway, congrats and keep at it, miss Pike. And for a very last bit of uplifting news, this one in memory of Robert Victus, a successful orthodonist and outdoorsman from the Syracuse, New York area, recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. But in the fashion of someone who truly loves the outdoors, he left behind a legacy of opportunity. He left ten million dollars to the Central New York Community Foundation to help support outdoor parks and recreational areas and Onondaga and Madison Counties. Here's another fun fact for you. Onondaga, as a tribe in the Iroquois Nation, got nothing to do with this. The Doctor Robert J. Victus Fund will support programs that will involve youth hunting and fishing or conservation efforts to improve wildlife habitat and forest health. That's according to Tom Griffith, vice president of Development for the Community Foundation, and reported by Syracuse dot com. The cash will be distributed in grants not to exceed a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the He is to keep this endowment self funding and ahead of inflation. Dr Bob also donated two million dollars to the Upstate New York Land Trust to support watershed protection, public access, recreation, hunting, fishing, and forest management. I thought that was a pretty darn cool thing. Thanks for listening. As per usual, let me know 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. I'll talk to you next week.

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