[00:00:00] Speaker A: Whether you're new to the show or a seasoned listener, you might have picked up that the vibe of the show is like a happy hour or a coffee date with a good friend who happens to really love nature.
Well, today we are taking that fun to a whole new level.
Welcome to Rewildology, the nature podcast that explores the human side of conservation, travel and rewilding the planet. I'm your host, Brooke Mitchell, conservation biologist and adventure traveler.
I am so thrilled to welcome you to the debut episode of the show's newest series called Nature Happy Hour Chat.
Just the name alone should give you an idea of what it's going to be about. Joining me for each of these conversations is my great friend and the brilliant conservation scientist, Charles Von Reese, PhD. Charles and I have spent countless hours in the field, which has awarded us with many stunning encounters in nature. So for our very first episode in this new series, we are kicking it off with a burst of color. Charles and I go back and forth exploring some of our favorite sightings in nature and sprinkling of some crazy stories in between. Charles, in all of his science knowledge ways, also shares with us why some groups of animals are bright and brilliant and beautiful and why some of us are not like mammals. We're pretty much white, tan and black in every shade in between. But if you look at the insect world and the bird world, oh my gosh, there are so many colors that even it's beyond our spectrum of sight, which is so cool and exciting. And of course, whenever you're done listening to the episode, please reach out on any of Rewall ideology's, social media channels, email, anything, and let us know your favorite story of colors in nature. Have you encountered a beautiful bird yourself or crazy insects or a mountainous meadow field of flowers? Anything that has moved you? I would love to hear this story. And if you have any requests for future topics that Charles and I should cover in one of these fun happy hour chats, by all means, please let me know.
But without further ado, friends, grab your favorite drink. As you can see right here, I have my morning cup of coffee ready to go, or if it's evening for you, a wine or whiskey or maybe even just a glass of tea. Anything will do. But get nuzzled in, comfy in and settle in for a great conversation with me and Charles.
What drink do you have today? What'd you come drinking?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: A little bit of like, local flavor, I guess.
A brewery called Terrapin here in Athens. I don't know if they're from Athens. I think they are. We have a handful of breweries here.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: That are can you check out the can? Where does it say? Does it say on the can where it's from?
[00:03:00] Speaker B: I'm sure if I look at it for long enough, but it says Pinkerton, which sounds like a place in Georgia. It really does. But it's a little IPA they have. I'm not one of those people. I'm not like an IPA snob, but it's an IPA that involves some flavors from Hawaii, particularly something called passion orange guava or POG, which, if you ever played Pogs it's good. It's good. Did you ever play or know anyone who played Pogs in the 90s? You're a 90s kid?
[00:03:32] Speaker A: No, I mean, I'm a 90s kid, but I grew up under a rock in the middle of the Appalachians.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: And I ran around barefoot and dress up clothes. That was my childhood.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Love that. Yeah, it was a whole thing. This is a very off topic fact, but yeah, there was this whole thing, this massive fad in the 90s with little paper discs with pictures on them and you had to throw plastic discs at them and there was this whole game and you could collect them and trade them and it was just a huge thing for a little while. In the it comes from Hawaii and it comes from passion. Orange guava. But when I was a kid growing up around Boston, no one knew why it was called Pog. I never got that explained to me then it blew my mind when I went to Hawai and learned about it.
But I'm going to tie this back to our theme for today, because as much as we're going to indulge in plenty of ridiculous conversation, I like the fact that we're applying some rules to what we're doing. And our one very generous rule today was having a theme, a couple stories with a theme, and the theme was colors. Is it safe to say colors in nature?
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, where else would they be?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: I mean, I would rather talk about colors in nature. There's plenty of other colors I see that I'm not nearly as impressed by. But the ones in nature are always amazing.
And I understand that in very true to form, you vastly overprepared for what was intended to be.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: I couldn't help myself, charles, I have a problem, and it's called overpreparedness.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Tell me your process. How did it start? How did the urge begin to prepare?
[00:05:16] Speaker A: The urge was, I can't go into an episode and not have a list of things to possibly talk about, even though the whole point of this episode was to be off the cuff.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: I guess it takes practice. Maybe.
Okay. I guess I should ask this question. How many color experiences did you write out?
[00:05:40] Speaker A: I made myself stop at 13.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Very interesting number to stop at. Okay.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: I had twelve, and then I thought of another one.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: So then I had to write that one down.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little extra. Okay. Twelve is good. I just had a gorgeous, I think, a bluebird go by my window attacking something. I think she might have been eating the spiders outside my window. That's really awesome.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Oh, that's super cool.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Tis the season for yeah, spiders getting smoked by various birds.
All right, so I guess to take what is too much preparation and throw a wrench in it, how about what's your number? Five.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Okay. The fifth thing I wrote down.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: What was the fifth?
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Okay. My peacock friend in Nepal.
Okay.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: I'm curious.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Well, I mean, as we all know, the male macaw is one of the most gorgeous birds. I mean, honestly, to me, one of the most gorgeous beings in general with.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: A big wait, the male macaw?
[00:06:49] Speaker A: A male peacock? Did I say?
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Macaw peacock.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: I might have said McCall. If I did, I apologize, because I was just in Brazil and I saw a lot of McCalls. I actually have one of the species that I saw listed out on this list, but this is the and he didn't have his full tail feathers, but I'm assuming that this particular bird was fed by taurus a lot. And so we were tracking a leopard on foot because that's what you do.
Probably not the wisest thing, looking back in the density of tigers that I now realized was in that area. But I trusted my trackers and my guides. They were really good at what they did. And we were tracking a leopard and this peacock I know I have stories. And this peacock was just following us the entire time as we're tracking this leopard and trying to find it because we were pretty sure it had a kill because we could smell it. We could smell the kill.
And then there was also Langer monkeys that were going berserk with alarm calls. But at the exact same time, there was this peacock that was just following us. It was just our buddy. It was just chucking along with us. And I also love to see peacocks in their actual Asian natural environment.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: That was my next question.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Not walking around somewhere in the United States or wherever else they're randomly at, but yeah. So this is Embardia National Park, and I think I saw wild peacocks in India when I was there in 2017. I have to go back and look. I'm pretty sure I did. But this particular peacock really stood out to me because it hung out with us for quite a long time when we were leopard tracking.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Well, tell me about the colors of this peacock.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. The iridescent blue, everything like that.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: My brain went straight to the tail. But you're totally right.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Well, it wasn't in its mating colors. So it didn't have the big, beautiful tail. Yeah, it didn't have one.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: I don't even know how that a lot of birds in that whatever family or order are like leck breeders, and they're very polygynous and things like that. Do you know anything about how they what they literally.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: You'Re the bird guy, and I'm going to rely on you and your bird knowledge. To tell me I'm going to have to look up peacock breeding.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: I'm going to look that up right now.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah, please do that.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Peacock breeding biology.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I should have looked up I was so distracted by the leopard and the tigers.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: So you did see the leopard and the tigers?
[00:09:37] Speaker A: I saw five tigers on that trip. Oh, my gosh. In the same place that I was tracking leopards?
Yeah, no, not the same day, the next.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: And the peacock had left you alone by then?
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Yeah, we left it. We got back in our jeeps and moved on. What are you finding? Is it Wikipedia? What's Google say?
[00:09:59] Speaker B: I have a lot of chaff to sift through here. Googling. Anything on nature topics often brings up a lot of just crud.
This is a big reason why I started gulu in nature. I kind of want people to have easy access to really scientific information on nature topics that's also not impossible to read or behind a paywall. And that compromise is hard to find, which is making me think that maybe I need to write more about peacocks.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Honestly, I just go to Wikipedia a lot of stuff anymore. I know that you're not now that I'm no longer in school and I could actually use Wikipedia now. It is very helpful and a lot of stuff.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And I think the quality of Wikipedia resources has only gone up. I mean, the first thing that comes up is like a quora question. It's is reproduction in peafowl through the tears of peacocks. And I don't even know what does that even mean? I don't know.
Tears from the male genitalia is poured into the reproductive canal of the pee hen.
This sounds so bizarre. How do you even.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Okay, I'm on wildlife. SOS the breeding season of peacock falls between March and September.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Okay, so they do have a distinct season. I'm guessing that they're polygonous, and I'm guessing that they might display on Lex. That's very kind of characteristic of that group of birds, especially ones where when you see that much, ornamentation on a male, usually that means sexual selection is really strong, which means usually what's the word for that? Oh, no, there's a science word I'm forgetting. But basically within the breeding system of certain species, there's sexual asymmetry, where if one male is fathering, like, 90% of the babies every time, then the selection for being super sexy is so high. And to make something like a peacock where their tail makes them easy to murder or super visible. Right? Like for a leopard, it's like I'll just grab them by the tail where it's that extreme. Usually that means that what is that called anyway? That trait of like what's that?
[00:12:25] Speaker A: The sexual selection or like that sexy trait?
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah, but specifically, like the amount of babies that different males in the population have, whatever it is, reproductive asymmetry or something.
If you have strong sexual selection, that's usually because or one of the reasons it can be is because you have really strong asymmetry there. So probably one peacock is just the man and he fathers the majority of the kids in his whatever territory or something like that.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: So does it happen in deer as well, species? One of my favorite times of the year is the elk rut. And literally they just kill each other and they have harems of females and the biggest and baddest and most beautiful more, but that's more brute strength.
I actually wonder how much female selection there was. I did sit down with an elk researcher in Tennessee, and she has some fascinating she actually studied the reproductive rates that's what she studied was just reproduction and how cool it is. And her group of animals was elk.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: It would be cool to ask her what she knows about their evolution.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Yeah, because that's true. Because the selecting pressures are different because that one is males against males. And I'm assuming in peacocks it's more female selection because a female is just like I mean, you don't see, like, keyfowl just nuking it out like that tail.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: I think they do a little bit.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Probably a little bit.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: I don't think they do it as much as elk do.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Right, exactly.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: I don't think they die from it.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: They're not goring each other with their freaking antlers.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. They're definitely doing more like dazzling.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Dazzling.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not seeing anything.
Everything's just about like their courtship displays, which, like, yeah, we get it, they have massive tails. But I'd be really curious yeah.
Whether they're territorial or whether they all come together in one place. Anyway, so that's a blue. That's like a bluish purple that we're starting off with. It sounds like yeah.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Very gorgeous. And it's like iridescently shines when you see it and when it hits the sun just right. And I'm sure that they're excellent at making sure that they're well lit, they look best for the females and all that kind of stuff. I'm sure that they have that all down to a science. Because why not? I mean, it's literally whether or not you reproduce, we know if you look good. So I guess that's for everything. Okay, so your point? What is your color that you want to talk about?
[00:14:59] Speaker B: So I did not prepare, but I can think of a couple off the cuff.
My first thought was like, when we started talking about mics and blues and purples, I was like, what is a good contrast to that?
And one thing that I've brought up before while nature guiding, actually, is whenever I like I don't know, whenever I show someone some very red color in nature, I'm always tempted to tell this story about the reddest thing that I've ever seen in a natural world, which to this day is a Hawaiian bird, a native forest bird called the eevee. And I think the English name for them is the scarlet honey creeper.
First of all, they're sort of like so they're part of this group that's endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, and they're known as the Hawaiian honey creepers. And I'm trying to remember the name of the family, drapaniday, I think. And they're like, basically some they share a common ancestor with, like, house finches, and some of the other New World finches that got lost, went off course, ended up in Hawaii, and then entered this environment of this super isolated island where they just had this evolutionary explosion and differentiated into every available niche.
And a lot of them became adapted. A lot of the surviving species, I should say most of them are extinct, most of the remaining ones are.
They drink nectar from various flowers of trees that are dependent on them. And the Eevee has this really long, curved bill. And among the species of honey creepers that are still around, it's probably the most iconic. It's this bright red, cool looking bird with this huge, bizarre pink bill, and they just look so weird.
When I started studying Hawaiian birds at the beginning of my PhD, I was, like, seeing these Eevee in field guides all the time, and I was like, I cannot wait to see one.
And I think it was maybe in 2019 I finally got to go see one. I was visiting a friend on the big island of Hawaii and she was a graduate student at, uh, Hilo at the time. And she and some other friends were helping out with this research project where they were leaving out these recording devices in the forests of this I think it was Hakalao National Forest this really big, beautiful, intact forest reserve. And there's not a lot of that left in most of Hawaii, that type of habitat. So we were seriously off roading on this truck, just out in the middle of nowhere, just out there, way up in the mountains, I don't know how many thousand feet, like 8000ft at least, just up there and crazy cloud forest. And in the dawn of us walking out, there just this incredible dawn chorus of all these bird calls that for me were so alien. As a naturalist, I was so used to I don't know, whatever it sounds like in Europe, whatever it sounds like here, it was just totally different. And there was this weird reedy.
I don't know, the Eevee has this song that is just so alien to anything that you typically hear, and I was just like, what is that? That's got to be the Eevee. And of course it was. And I saw my first one, we were collecting the little SIM cards from these song recording devices, and the sun was just starting to come up and illuminating the tops of the trees. And I was looking into this tree called an ohia, which are these beautiful hardwood trees that are endemic to Hawai. They might be the state the state tree that might be the koa tree, but they have these red poofy flowers that a lot of the honey creepers will drink from. And so I just looked up, and there was this incredibly bright red flower and then this bird drinking from it that was like 90 times more red, and the sun was catching it from the sunrise, and it was just the reddest thing I've ever seen in my life, and it was just stunning. And I was just sitting there with my jaw down, hanging open, just watching it through my binoculars, and one of my friends was like, oh, yeah, he's got an Eevee. Just don't talk to him. And I was just, like, losing my mind.
And I just remember they asked me something, and I took the binoculars down, looked at my friend, and there was just, like, a blue Eevee burned into my retina. You know what I mean? If you look at a bright light too long, it was insane. And I just don't think I've ever seen something so violently red in my whole life. Just what an incredible bird.
So that's my color.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, that reminds me. So where I just was is probably it's a birder's paradise, if anybody listening, is a I mean, you don't even have to be a birder. I became more like, I'm starting to understand birding now because of I could.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Not believe those texts from you about just, like, becoming bird curious. I was like, no way. I did not expect that.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: I know, I'm so mammal centric. I am. I'm just all about the predators. I mean, even predatory birds, I'm just like, oh, you're so freaking cool. They're just oh, my God, they're so cool. But when I was there, the caller that stuck out to me, because I've never seen anything like it before was the rosette spoon bill.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Where was there?
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Oh, the panzanao. Oh, my God. I didn't even say that.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Brazil, the world's most impressive wetland, like.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: The largest wetland in the world, and it's an entire biome in Brazil. It is literally a biome. It's a biome in Brazil.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: That's so cool.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: It was amazing. And it's very rare. I mean, you think of flamingos of know, you think of flamingos when you see that bright, brilliant pink, but I had never seen it on anything else, really. And then these spoon bills, and their name is perfect. They have a spoon bill, and just watching them, and we were getting near the breeding season. A lot of birds migrate there to breed because it's just such a plentiful area. Lots of food, lots of resources. Birds come there to have their babies a lot of the time, and I did see a lot of different chick species of a whole bunch of stuff.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: It was just baby time.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: It was baby time. Lots of babies for lots and lots of babies.
I just saw all these spoon bills, and they were in these massive flocks, but they were also very skittish. And so getting a photo of them was actually very difficult for me, especially a bird that size. They're like a foot. They weren't small. They weren't like a little finch or whatever, something.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: You mean, like the body not including the legs. Right. They have pretty long legs.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: I include the legs because that's all.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: The things I'd give them, like a yard. I'd give them, like, a few feet. Okay, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I have not seen nearly as many spoon bills as you have.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: I just saw a lot at one time how tall they are, but they were stunning. And also just watching their behavior and seeing them in these big flocks. And they were also with a lot of egrets, a lot of snow egrets. So it was just this massive color. But also seeing them with the snow egrets, which are pure white, so they were white. And then you had this stark pink right beside each other, and they were just mingling like they normally do. But I have, like, videos, and there's this one nesting colony where they were, I don't know, thousands. I have no clue how many birds.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay, that was my next question, was because a lot of time with those types of waiting birds, you'll get these what we call rookeries in the business, where in these wetlands you have some standing trees. Dead or not, that like yeah, a.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Lot of them were dead. A lot of the trees were dead, yeah.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Were the egrets and spoonbills nesting together in that rookery?
Dang.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Yeah, dang. I'll show you after this.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: I'll show you after this. Yeah, it was fantastic. And a couple of birds on this trip that I was leading, there were some birders on the trip, and our guide was also a bird specialist, so they were able to bring a different level of life to the pansenel that you wouldn't have understood or appreciated otherwise. Because there's like 600 and some species of birds there. And I saw like, 100 and 2131 hundred and something, something. I don't know. They were keeping track. I was not. But it was well over 100.
I probably photographed at least 50% of them. At least, yeah.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Yeah. The craziest bird I saw oh, my God. Wait a second.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: What was it? You got your bird guide for me.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: Do you see it? Aren't you so proud?
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Specific to the Pontanal, I mean, it makes sense. I'm pretty sure the Pontanal has more breeding bird species than the entirety of North America.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Dude, I freaking believe it because you should have seen how much shit I saw.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure that is insane.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: The craziest bird I see, I haven't posted it yet, but I'm going to do a social media post that says, on this bird, find this bird, because you wouldn't see it.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Okay.
Oh, my gosh. You saw. Wait, which poto did you see?
[00:24:59] Speaker A: They said it was a greater wow. Yeah.
So, you know, it was during the day, and they're nocturnal species, so we couldn't see them. So they were looking away from us and they were just, like, completely still.
You couldn't see them at all.
But that was probably because then I was like, what is this bird? And then we looked it up and it doesn't even look real. It looks like those super stupid, just AI generated animals that aren't real. No, the putu is real and it is wild.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: They're completely nuts. I have always wanted to see one, or hear one, for that matter. Like the smaller species, the common potu, they have a really cool song that sounds like bizarrely musical.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: It's very I wonder I think I still mean, I'm assuming I'm allowed to play I have the Merlin app, and I have all the Brazil stuff still on here, so I wonder if okay. I wonder if I can I don't know.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: You might have to email Cornell and be like, hey, guys, can I? Yeah, that's probably I think we did that on the Nature guys. I think whenever we use their calls, they're not going to say no, but.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: I think they want, hey, before I publish this.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah, but you can still play it and then ask, and I don't think they're going to care.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Okay, so let me do poo do.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Is that a giant phone?
[00:26:22] Speaker A: This is the Samsung Whoa Galaxy.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Look at the number of cameras on that thing.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: I know. Okay, so here's a great putu.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Okay. I definitely like that's a weird call. That's creepy.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: That's a scary do you want song or calls?
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's not the musical one. That's just horrifying. I would run for my life.
The common potu is the one that just sounds like a weird have you seen my neighbor totoro?
Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Oh, my God. It's like he's laughing.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it reminds me of, like, if you've ever seen this very famous Miyazaki movie, my Neighbor Totoro. And there's a scene like, these kids are hanging out with this crazy wilderness spirit guy, and he's very fat and he's wonderful. He's like a raccoon thing, but he plays like an ocarina, basically like this nut that makes music. And that bird sounds like that to me. It sounds like that sound. I've still never seen one. I've come really close several times because they're in Costa Rica, and I'm in Costa Rica a lot more often than a normal person. And I keep swinging missing whenever I'm.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Trying to get a well, they're impossible to see. I mean, like, no freaking wonder.
They have the perfect camouflage and they don't move, and they're right.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: So that's a very different type of color. It's the you're never going to find me color.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: It is, literally.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: And the behavior. Right?
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: The way that they can just they'll park themselves on a dead stick of some kind and then look like a stick and then sit there for like 12 hours and not move with their.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Babies and it won't move.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Super cool.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: I cannot believe, Brooke, how ornithological this conversation has been so far.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: I know. This is not normal for me.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: No, this is shocking.
I don't know what's going on over there.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Two bird species. Aren't you proud of me?
[00:28:29] Speaker B: I'm proud. I'm confused.
What are you drinking that has you talking about birds so much?
[00:28:38] Speaker A: I just in my thirty s now. I think that's just what it is.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: Yikes.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: I'm just getting older and I'm seeing more stuff. And the more stuff you see, I think there's a direct correlation. I think the more stuff you see, the more you appreciate everything. And also the more stuff you see, the less extraordinary things there are to see, if that makes sense. So, like, I've seen tigers, I've seen leopards, I've seen lions, I've seen elephants, I've seen rhinos. Almost all of the rhinos. I've seen so many things. And so when you have so many experiences at that level, you start to appreciate everything else that there is in that ecosystem.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. Well, I think that reflects very favorably on your kind of personal appreciation for things. I know a lot of people who see gorgeous stuff and then get jaded and don't appreciate anything anymore, but the fact that you're like seeing the most, whatever, stereotypically mind blowing and then getting just as interested in the other things, I don't know. I think that's a very admirable quality there.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: You do bring that up. And you are right, because I have traveled with people significantly older than me that if we weren't seeing the big stuff, then they were just let's just say they were not happy.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: That would make me so sad as a guide.
If I was like, look at this amazing spider. And they were like, yeah, but like lions. I'd be like, oh, you are missing out. You are denying yourself joy right now.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Of appreciating what this ecosystem actually is like. This whole every single life part that is I mean, except the freaking flies. I could do without TT flies. I can do without this biting shit. You should have seen my legs when I came back. I was destroyed. But it was unseasonably hot when I was in Brazil.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Unseasonably hot for Brazil. Must be terrible.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I was supposed to be there in the quote unquote wintertime. There was nothing about over 100 degrees. What is that, like 35 to 40 Celsius during the day?
EW. It was terrible.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yikes.
That's brutal.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it was hot.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: It was 85 in Georgia this week, and I was whining about it so much.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: I think it was 29 here this morning.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Are you serious?
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. I'm jealous, Winter. I'm really jealous.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: It is officially coming here good. Yeah. My coworker in. Colorado. She already has like seven inches of snow at her. I think her cabin is at like 9000ft or something.
It's spot on. Yeah, we're officially in the heart of fall now, so that makes sense, right?
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Yeah, good point.
All right, so now what have we covered now? We've covered some browns, we've colored red, we've colored blue. Covered blue.
I was trying to think of a good blue that I've seen lately.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: I have one.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: I don't know. You have one?
[00:31:54] Speaker A: I have one.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: What number is it?
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Actually, I have a couple of blues, but the first one I think would be really cool to talk about.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Okay. Where is it on your list, though?
I just can't believe we had a whole discussion about like, we're just going to wing this and you're like, yeah, don't worry about it. I'll get my whole list together.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: I know I wrote it to the max.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: To the max.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Brooke, it's great.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Okay, what number is this one?
[00:32:21] Speaker A: It's number seven.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: Number seven. Here we go.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: And it's a mammal.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: Oh, good transition. Okay.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: It is the blue monkey. I saw them in Tanzania at Lake Manara National Park.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: I'm sorry, what?
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Yeah, google it.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: I am. Right?
Like if I say blue monkey, is it going to come up with something weird? Is this also like a sex act or something or no. Okay. Oh, that is a blue monkey.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: It's blue.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Oh, come on. This has to be somewhat Photoshopped. This is crazy.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: No, I can show you my really crappy. Okay. There are some like hardcore there are definitely some photoshop saturated the shit out of someone.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Someone just Photoshopped orangutan and made it.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: Yeah, but if you go to Wikipedia, like, you could see it and what.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: Where was this, in Tanzania?
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I was in So and it was Lake Manara. And they were up in the woodland area and this dense woodland area that's it's like it's like close to the crater area. So it's like surrounding this big massive Lake Manara. And we were driving through in our safari vehicle and it was over this little creek and we heard all of this rustling. And then we looked up and they're like, oh, it's a blue monkey. Her guy's like, it's a blue monkey.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Why are they blue?
[00:33:40] Speaker A: When I was there in 2019? So actually this sighting was a little while ago, but it's so rare to have any sort of species that's a mammal that is not the normal colors. Right. Actually, I don't know what makes them blue.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: I'm trying to find that right now.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: And they're not like no peacock. They're not like iridescent, but they're definitely blue.
Okay. I wonder why.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a bluish cast to them.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And so I wanted a chance to talk about them because like I said, it's so rare to have anything that's any remotely close to another collar that's a mammal. So I was like, okay. Yeah, it was really cool when we saw him. Like a blue monkey, but yeah, it's like the most generic name of all time.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: It's to the point, though, isn't it? It really is. Like, it gets you where you need to go, oh, it's a monkey.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: I mean, we're not talking like mandrel blue or some other bright, vibrant blue and pink and all this kind of stuff, like very few mammals have. Do you have mandrel?
[00:34:56] Speaker B: And that's like their skin, right? I think I remember seeing a mandrel at the zoo as a kid. But isn't that their skin? Oh, my gosh. How do they do that?
That is wild. Is it only the males that have that blue on the face?
[00:35:11] Speaker A: I think the females, though, I think they're reproductive parts when they're swollen.
That's how I think of one of the ways that okay.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah, apes tend to have pretty gnarly reproductive flashy. Trying to get too gruesome here, but yeah. Also, I did not know how endemic mandrels were. Like, I'm looking at a distribution map and it's like just one corner of West Africa.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really hard to see them.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Wow. What countries is that? I can't whoa.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Mandrills distribution. Let's look that up.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. They've got a male mandrill with an extremely blue butt on.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: In the it's up in Brazil. Yeah. Okay. So part of the Congo, the little.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Place where Brazil used to fit before the continents did their whole.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a rainforest, so I'm assuming that's part of the Congo rainforest. That's where you'd find them.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: Okay.
Jeez.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: But yeah. So I've not seen Emmanuel yet. I've not been to that part of Africa. I've been south and east, but not west and north.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: So I've not had the chance to see a mantrel in the wild yet, but that would be awesome. And they are big. Holy crap. Those are not small animals either.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: I was going to ask if that seems like a pretty it looks also like there's a lot of sexual dimorphism there.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: They're bigger. Like the alpha males are huge.
Yes, the sexual dimorphism. In a lot of ways. The males are way bigger. They're way more vibrant.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: I wonder, wait, how big is a male mandrel here?
[00:37:02] Speaker A: I have no clue.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Are they baboon, technically? Is that it?
Oh, here we go.
Female males, 37 inches. Body length, 42 to 80 kg. So 66 pounds. Females up to 33 pounds. So that's double the weight of a female. That's pretty wild.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: That's huge. That is a massive difference.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: I mean, people aren't too far off from that.
There are some men who weigh twice as much as the average woman anyway, but I guess we have a lot more variation.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Just within people. Within people in general. But I don't know, maybe it's because I do MMA, but I know lots of dudes who are like, 250, and it's just like, I'm used to being one of the smaller guys around?
[00:37:51] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. No, same. I like bigger guys. That's just kind of my thing.
Maybe that's just my taste. I don't know. I like big guys.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: You and the mandrels. It's great.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
I am the mandrel. Lady of the human species.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: I don't think you're alone. I don't think you're alone in that.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: I think it's a type, definitely.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: People have a type. That's good. We should all have our types. That's very important.
All right. This whole conversation got me thinking about a blue.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: And maybe I'm just being horrible Charles, and thinking about taxonomic diversity too much, but I thought of an insect that I like that's very blue. It's called the long tailed skipper.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Well, I got to Google that. Tell me all about the long tail skipper while you yeah.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: I would describe their coloration as being a can of sprite from the 1990s.
Right. That is pretty fade from green to blue with some beautiful turquoises in between. It's like an old can of sprite. Maybe sprite still does that. I don't know. Are they no offense to sprite. I just don't drink a lot of sprite nowadays.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Where did you see them?
[00:39:15] Speaker B: They're native to here. They're native to, like, eastern US.
I'd have to grab my book. I don't know how far north they get, but I bought my first butterfly guide back in 2012, like, a total nerd, and spent all this time flipping through it, and there were, like, three or four butterfly species in there that I was like, I really want to see that someday. You know what I mean? I was just like, oh, you know what I mean? Sometimes, especially if you're a naturalist or any kind of nature nerd. When you flip through a field guide, it's a little bit like shopping. There's a bit of, like, I want to see that. I want to see that.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Like the JCPenney's catalog. We were kids at Christmas time.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You're like circling that one? Like, oh, I hope I get that one this year.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: The page corner.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Yeah, 100% and back in 2012 was very nerdily doing that.
The one that was dazzling me the most was the long tailed skipper. So it's part of this family called the skippers. They are very small butterflies, typically very small, and they're very fluttery, which is probably how they get their name. You don't see them, like, flying through the air. You see them, like, hopping between locations. Usually. They're not, like, soaring butterflies. They're very flappy.
The scientific name for the family is the hesperiday. They're really neat. A lot of them, like, the babies will eat grasses, so they'll turn up in weird places, but they're very cool. I had never seen a long tailed skipper, but I remember seeing on some range map that maybe there were a lot more of them in the south. And I was up in Massachusetts, which is just like New England is a tiny bit too far north for a lot of stuff in we, the species diversity for lots of things really drops off around between DC and New York. A lot of things just stop going that far north. I don't know why, but that's just.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Well, the Appalachians start not too far away from there.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, like, maybe the latitude.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Is high enough where it just has to get too cold.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: I think that's part of it. And then we have the issue of how far the glaciation went down.
I don't think the glaciers went that much further than I'm going to make an idiot of myself. Maybe like Pennsylvania. I don't think they got that far south of the tri state area, the glaciers. And that pushed a lot of species diversity out. That drove a lot of species extinct temporarily. And then they retracted, and then species have had to recolonize right. Since whole there's a whole rant. I could go on about that type of biogeography. But point being, I think that's one of the drivers that we don't have a lot of plants that a lot of cool butterflies eat up in New England. But then, yeah, you're totally right. Like, the cold is just that's going to be a limitation.
But I moved to Georgia a couple years ago, and part of me was like, wait a minute, I bet I could see a long tailed skipper. And I went to visit the city of Savannah on the coast of Georgia with a friend of mine from Florida, because it's like halfway between. So we're like, oh, my gosh, we can meet up there. It'll be so nice. Indeed. It was very nice. Savannah is beautiful. If you haven't gone, you gotta check it out. What a neat city.
But I remember reading an account from John Muir because he kind of, like, walked through the whole Deep South. And as a naturalist, he described all this beautiful stuff. And before I moved to the South, I read this account from John Muir because I think his writing is beautiful and I wanted to learn more about the south. And he's not from there. So he had a very outsider's perspective on the culture and the natural history of the south. And so he wrote this beautiful stuff about it. But he had this one period of time in his crazy journey walking across the south where he ran out of money because he would usually I guess you could do this in the 18 hundreds if you were, like, a white man, but he would just show up in people's houses and be like, can I just give you $2? And I'll stay here for a while? And they'd be like, yeah, sure. And they just give him dinner and breakfast and stuff. It's just crazy.
You could do that nowadays. But he did eventually he ran out of money, and so he got stuck in Savannah and his brother was wiring him some money, or I guess you're not wiring in those days. He was, like, mailing him some money, and it wasn't coming in time, so he had to wait, like, weeks. And so he just started camping. But he didn't have a tent, so he would just sleep outside. And luckily, it's the south, so he spent a couple of weeks sleeping in the woods of this cemetery, this old cemetery around Savannah that's like he was describing how beautiful the nature around it was and whatever. So when I went to Savannah, I was like, wait a minute.
People don't usually destroy graveyards, especially if there's, like, rich white people buried there. They'll preserve them. So I was like, I bet that place is pretty much like he described it, so I really want to go. And so I went on a map, and I found it, and I went to go visit there with my friend. And first of all, it was beautiful. It was so cool. But we just walked around this cemetery, and I was just admiring all the pretty trees and just thinking about how he had described it. And then in the middle of all that, just messing about and taking pictures of the beautiful views of the ocean and stuff from the coast, a long tailed skipper just flies in front of me between one flower or another, and I lost it. And I just started screaming and yelling, and just like I was just in paroxysms of joy. And all these other people, these civilized, normal people at the cemetery were like, uhoh, someone's having an episode.
But I got some pictures of it, and I think there's actually I was taking a video of it, trying to record the thing, but you can also hear me just, like, freaking out in the background. This is a whole thing, but just yeah, you've seen the picture now it's a beautiful butterfly. It's this tiny, interesting thing. Most of the other butterflies in that family are, like, orange or brown or black. They're not very attractive. And this thing is a can of sprite, is it not? It's green and blue and turquoise and just oh, they're so pretty. And now I just keep seeing them all over the place. Now. I've seen them on the UGA campus, and I'm just like, oh, hey, man, good to see you. But anyway, they're delightful.
That's my blue.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: And I'm just like speaking of the back to the mandrel conversation, I'm like, OOH, they thick. They are thick butterflies. They're not like, dainty little yeah, I.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Mean, they're they're tiny, but you're totally right. Yeah. For their size, they're like relative to how big they are as butterflies, because they're smaller than most other species, but they are beefy. They don't have these long, elegant wings. They're kind of like yeah, they're solid.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: Yeah, they are. I'm just like you got some, UMP to you.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: I think males and females look the same too. I think they're both like that long tailed skipper. I don't think there's any difference. Really? Yeah. No, they look the same to me. What a gorgeous color, though, especially now that I'm seeing pictures again. I'm just like, what a stunning animal. I'm sorry. Like, invertebrates do not get the love they deserve. Oh, my gosh, these pictures are so good. Thank you, hugh Christie. Whoever took these.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Good.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: What an incredible insect.
Anyway, all right, do you have a yellow on your list?
[00:46:59] Speaker A: Do I have a yellow?
[00:47:03] Speaker B: If not, I want to hear about number two.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: I do, actually. It is not an animal.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: Wow, Brooke, look at you go. Okay.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: I know. Yeah. So it is number four on my ah.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: I was so close.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: And actually you were number two. I actually thought about talking about next, but you gave me that wonderful prompt. And I have two yellows, actually. But this one, I think if someone hasn't experienced this yet, you have to put it on your list. And it is yellow aspen in the fall. It is one of the most gorgeous.
It's hard to describe the yellow that the trees turn specifically in September, at least in the Rocky mountains in Colorado, where I lived.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: You're spot on.
[00:47:57] Speaker A: It is unbelievable. And especially when you're walking through these forests and you're hiking and you're smelling the smells as all these leaves are starting to fall and decompose and everything. And it was one of my favorite times of year. My favorite.
Like, I'm closing my eyes, envisioning myself walking through an aspen grove when it is yellow. And it is I mean, you were in Montana. You it's I don't know. Especially if somebody hasn't been through a forest that changes like that with the seasons. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And I was lucky. The last year that I was in Colorado, I was on more the western side, so I was actually in the heart of the Rockies, and I lived outside of these big lakes, and so there was a lot more fog and stuff. And so I have these stunning photos, some of my photos, like, favorite landscape photos I've ever taken of these dark green evergreens in the Rocky Mountains with these bright, bright yellow aspen just in this layer of dense fog around the mountains. And I just I'm hearing like a.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Bob Ross painting right now.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: It sounds like perfectly exactly what you're thinking.
And, I mean, even when you're driving through the mountains at the time of year, you can just see because all these aspirants really are in groves. They're not like in individual trees. They are in these groupings. And so you just have this bright flash of yellow. And then where I was, the elevation was around 8000, 8500, and the mountains surrounding were up to 13,000. So we watched the aspen change color, like, through the month of September into October.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Up the elevation the elevation time machine, as I call it.
[00:49:55] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
Yes. And then also going up to Trail Ridge Road, because I lived right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. And so then you could go up to there and see the highest ones up until the point where aspen can't grow anymore. But you could get to some of these vista points with the views, where you could see entire valleys and just all of this sprinkled, beautiful, bright yellow aspen groves and this deep green pine evergreen.
And then also the Rocky Mountains themselves, they are very rocky. They are aptly named. They are correctly named the Rockies. And then the contrast of the almost, like, pastel lichen that are on all of the Rockies, it's not a vibrant color. It's a very dull pastel, is what I call the Rockies there.
And then also, I've become quite a photographer. So to have this bright yellow aspen on these misty, moody, foggy days, just.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Like yeah, I'm telling you, it's Bob Ross. That's just gorgeous.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Gorgeous, gorgeous. So, yes.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: Question.
Were there larches as well?
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Larches?
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
Tamarac no, the look I'm getting right now, well, in that part of the country, there's a fairly abundant conifer.
[00:51:33] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: You know what I mean? I feel like my botany mentors are going to get mad at me because I'm trying to remember the genus. I think it's is it laryx. Oh, no, hold on. Is that it? No, that's not uh oh, wait. Laryx.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: I was tracking animals every day and smelling the pine.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: I was not. I respect yeah, larches. So this is what's so cool about larches. They're conifers, right? So they're in the pine family. They got needles, all that good stuff, but they're deciduous, they turn colors, and they shed their needles every year.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: What? Okay.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: I know. And if you're used to, like, spruces and furs, then you're like, oh, my God, it's dead. But they're fine. But they turn bright yellow and they shed.
I'm sure you saw those.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: Oh, I saw lots of these.
[00:52:20] Speaker B: I was going to say those would add so much to that yellowy color pattern palette. Like, when I was in Montana, the larches, it kind of varied year to year. Like, some years they were very synchronous and very colorful, and some years they weren't. But, like, my like, when they went off, it was always just so golden and so nice. Yeah. I don't know. I suspect, yeah. Those might have been part of that frost painting.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: And my next thing is a blend of both.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: Can I request a bathroom pause real quick?
[00:52:53] Speaker A: And then yes. Okay.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: Because we're doing great. We're on a fucking roll.
I just think this is going insanely. Well, this is such a good conversation.
So sorry. Otherwise, I'm just going to sit here squirming for the next, like, 20 minutes until I pee myself. Okay. I'll be right back.
Great.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: All right.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Yeah. What are you drinking on break?
[00:53:17] Speaker A: And we're back with Charles pee break. All right. I know. Mine's almost gone. I have a blotter of steel.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: I feel like when you spend a ton of time in the field, you lose your ability to hold it.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: Well, yeah, actually, it's been the exact opposite for me. I spent so much time in the field. You got to hold that shit.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: You're right. That's not fair. That's not fair.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: When did I say this? I don't know if I've recently said this on the show, but I'm so excited that I've now peed in the bush on four continents.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: In the bush. That's very Australian of you, I must say.
That is. Wow.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: You haven't been to Africa yet.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: That's true. Okay. That's true.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Okay. It's very Southern Hemisphere wilderness.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: Wilderness, yeah.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: Now, on how many continents? Four.
[00:54:08] Speaker B: Yeah. You got me beat. Definitely.
Well, maybe wait, does Central America count as a different continent?
[00:54:15] Speaker A: No.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: Dang. Yeah?
[00:54:17] Speaker A: You got five.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Never mind. No, I've got four. Never mind. I forgot. I forgot. Australia, like Oceania, is I mean, Australia itself, is a.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: Seas, but different. Same seas, but different.
[00:54:40] Speaker B: Yes. The way that we do it is different.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: I think that you're, Connor well, I.
[00:54:44] Speaker B: Mean, you deserve more credit because I think the way that you pee in the bush is way more difficult.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a whole production.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: And risky. Yeah.
I don't envy that. I recognize my privilege in that respect.
I recognize it enough. For example, I once got a lifebird while peeing. That's a real thing that happened.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: I can't say about that.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: I was, like, looking around and was in a beautiful place. And here's the thing, is I actually think that you will more often, regardless of what kind of equipment you're dealing with, when you go to pee in the field, I think you will often see more cool stuff because you're being quiet. You're usually not, like, yelling or singing or running around while you're peeing, and you're usually, like, a little, tiny bit off the beaten path because you're trying it away from people. You know who else is trying it away from people? Wildlife. And so, I don't know. I always end up spotting something neat when I have to. When nature calls, as it were, I usually end up seeing a lot of cool nature.
Just an observation.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: I'm usually like making sure I don't pee on my shoes, holding on to something.
I've had this time. Oh, my God. I had this hilarious time where things did not go okay in the bush. Pee.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: Oh, no. A bushweed. Apparently that's what they call it on the show. Bluey. That, like children's show. They call it a bushwee. I learned that recently.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: Oh, I did not know that. I don't have kids, but, yeah, I was hiking. Oh, wow. I think I still have pictures of this. I was hiking in the rockies, like I did every single weekend when I was out there.
And almost pretty much before, after, you would always have the pee, of course, because my hikes were at least an hour, an hour and a half away. Or you would just go hike for five, 6 miles, and when you time you get back, you need to go.
[00:56:51] Speaker B: I mean, good for you, being a well hydrated person, I really admire that.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Yeah. It would get migraines otherwise. And so I found this nice spot and I found one of the easiest things to do, especially in the mountains when you're a girl and you need to pee, is you find a tree on a hill and you hold the tree, and then your butt totally going down the hill.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:57:13] Speaker A: Much better than you don't pee on your shoes. You don't splatter all over the things. Well, this particular branch that I chose snapped, and I fell down, like, the side of this hill mountain thing to a creek, and I landed in another tree and I scraped my ass up all the way across my cheeks.
[00:57:44] Speaker B: You got the cross cheek scrape.
[00:57:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it was like all the way on my left butt cheek. Like, all the way? The entire way? Like all the left butt cheek? The whole thing.
Yeah.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: I'm suffering just hearing this.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: I think I have pictures of that. This is hysterical. Like, I put on a bathing suit and took a picture because you could see the scrap from outside of my.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: Oh, you poor thing.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: Oh, it's okay.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: It's fine.
[00:58:22] Speaker A: It's a good story now because, I mean, I didn't break anything and nobody saw my naked ass rolling down a hill, so we're good.
[00:58:29] Speaker B: Sounds like you broke your dignity. I would be so oh, my God.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I went back to my ex and I just was laughing hysterically. And then I got to the car and I pulled out my pants and I showed him of course you did math. And he's just like, oh, my God, what happened to you?
[00:58:47] Speaker B: Were you, like, bleeding through your pants at that point?
[00:58:50] Speaker A: No, luckily, it didn't go too deep. But it was almost like a cat scratch. Like a really deep cat scratch, but just like the whole thing.
[00:58:59] Speaker B: I'm so sorry.
[00:59:00] Speaker A: That is fine. It was a good times. Good times.
[00:59:06] Speaker B: Wolf.
[00:59:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Can I tell you my blue and yellow to bring the colors back together?
[00:59:12] Speaker B: This is blue and yellow as one. Okay.
[00:59:15] Speaker A: It's another bird. Can you believe this, man?
[00:59:18] Speaker B: Actually, I sort of can. I'm going to save this rant for later. But there is a reason why I'm not, like, mind blown that we're coming up with birds so much.
[00:59:27] Speaker A: Well, I mean, what else is that? Colorful birds and insects.
[00:59:30] Speaker B: Right. And, like, the reason why is what I'm pondering right now, but anyway, please.
[00:59:34] Speaker A: Okay. You can explain the reason why later. I would love to hear.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely don't want to do it now. No.
[00:59:40] Speaker A: But it is the thing that I brought up on accident earlier, and it's the Hyacinth McCall, the beautiful bright blue McCall with those bright yellow eyes.
And luckily, they're no longer endangered. Oh, here.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: That was my first question as I was trying to remember if because a lot of macaws are endangered, right.
[01:00:03] Speaker A: Like most of yeah, this one, it was a really fantastic conservation story that I learned when I was in the Panthenol. But they are very specific nesters, and they nest in, like, one or two species of trees. And that species of tree was also, like a great wood to produce products out of. I don't remember if it was hardwood or whatever it was. So it was high in demand. It was being cut down a lot.
[01:00:30] Speaker B: Is it the manduvi tree?
[01:00:32] Speaker A: I don't know. Maybe. I heard a lot of stuff in Brazilian and Portuguese that I don't exactly know how they translated, of course.
[01:00:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Because a lot of the stuff was in both languages, but yeah. And there was this amazing I guess this one woman started it. She recognized what was going on, and she started to build nest boxes made out of this type of wood or near these trees that they loved, and she alone, and then started this big project around. It brought back the hyacinth. McCall.
The whole reason why I was able to see multiple monogamous pairs when I was in the panther now was because of her work, like, however many decades ago, she come back. Yeah, it's like a conservation win.
It's a feel good story with the highest HITH McCall and God, and they're beautiful. And they're big. They are a big McCall.
[01:01:24] Speaker B: That was my next question. It looks like a unit of a bird.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: I don't know if they're the biggest one. I mean, if they're not the biggest McCall, they have to be one of the biggest. Honestly, I think they were the biggest in Brazil, but I don't know, because.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: Again, a meter long.
Yeah, they're huge to three pounds in weight. Like, for a bird, three pounds is extraordinarily heavy. Like, birds have hollow bones. They're so light. Three pounds. Oh, my gosh.
[01:01:55] Speaker A: Yes. This page shows, like, the it looks.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: Like the biggest one on the page anyway. Yeah. What's the other one with all the yellow on its belly in front?
[01:02:05] Speaker A: That is the blue and yellow McCall. Oh, well, I saw rescued ones, so they were semi wild. Like, they were definitely wild. They were rescued and rehabilitated on the Vazinda San Francisco that I was on in the Southern Panthanal.
And so I got some pictures with them, and so they would set out some food for the rescued birds that would come back in the evening times. So it wasn't the same as, like, beta birds because they actually do amazing rescue and rehabilitation off this place. So I didn't mind. But. I got some pictures of them, but the hyacinths were wild.
[01:02:42] Speaker B: I only saw and that's an endangered species, it looks like, whereas the blue and yellow is maybe a bit more widespread.
[01:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, they have a much bigger range, but yeah, like the perfect blend of blue and yellow. Right. Like the hyacinth to bring our blue conversation and our yellow conversation into one animal.
[01:03:02] Speaker B: And what a blue too? I mean, it's such a what a blue?
[01:03:05] Speaker A: It's such one of the most beautiful blues.
Like that rich navy.
I went to a wedding recently, and I'm pretty sure the dress I wore was this color.
[01:03:17] Speaker B: I was going to say I don't wear a lot of colorful clothes. I feel like my personality does the work for me, but I would wear a very deep blue. I would wear a highest with McCall colored shirt, 100%. Yeah, that's nice. That's really nice.
Yeah.
[01:03:36] Speaker A: Or a suit that would look good.
I only have gracious by the yellow, though. They're probably like, what are you doing?
[01:03:45] Speaker B: Oh, if you had, like, yellow accents on or something. Yeah, I think people are used to my strangeness enough. Are you just aggressively drinking water right now, or is there something interesting?
[01:03:55] Speaker A: This is not water. It is almost gone. It was gin and oh, snap.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: Okay. Wow.
[01:04:02] Speaker A: This whole thing wasn't gin. It was gin.
[01:04:06] Speaker B: No, I would not I didn't mean that judgmentally.
[01:04:10] Speaker A: Yeah, this entire thing was no, and I just kept it really light and simple with a grapefruit. Zevia, the non sweetened sodas. Like, they don't have sugar. They're sweetened with stevia. So Zevia cool.
[01:04:24] Speaker B: I see. Okay. Very good branding. Very original.
[01:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah. I was going to do more of a fall drink, but I don't have all the ingredients here. So our next one I'll prepare. I'll have a whole themed cocktail. You know what?
This was the caller episode. We should have done like, that Empress Gin. That's like purple or blue or something, and yeah, we should have you're blowing.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: My mind right now.
We can do that next time. By the way, I feel like we talked about something earlier that I felt would really make a great next one.
[01:05:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:05:05] Speaker B: I'm trying to remember now.
Oh, no. I might have to just listen to this episode when it comes out, and then I'll give us the next one.
[01:05:13] Speaker A: Do you have another caller?
[01:05:16] Speaker B: Another caller?
I'm sure I could come up with one.
I I don't want to think about well, I I might go briefly on a bit of a bird rant here. Not too deep, but we've already talked about birds on this episode, and I feel like we might want a lot.
[01:05:36] Speaker A: Of birds, mostly birds.
[01:05:37] Speaker B: Discuss.
[01:05:37] Speaker A: Actually.
[01:05:39] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. There's a lot of bird stuff going on.
Yeah. And I felt it might be necessary or interesting to talk a little bit about why is it when you talk about colors, do birds come up so darn much. And this is pretty interesting in my mind. So I learned about this when I first took an ornithology class in college back in 2009 or something like that, that, yes, we are mammals, but we are primates. And primates are really weird in that we are so visual. And our sense of smell just to be realistic, our sense of smell sucks.
You and I work with Canine Conservationists, a fantastic nonprofit that takes advantage of the literally superhuman smelling abilities of dogs. We can't come close.
Most other mammals exist in a world of smells. And part of that is why mammals don't look any interesting colors, because a lot of them are colorblind. Right. I think you explained that to me about the deer in our Nature Guys episode that we did together with tigers. Yeah, mammals just don't do a lot of color. Most mammals don't see a lot of color. Even more. Mammals don't produce a lot of color. Mandrel asses accepted.
But primates really do. Primates see a lot of color, probably because we used to eat a lot of fruit. I imagine something like that.
But the other animal that overlaps extraordinarily strongly with us in what scientists would call it sensory space, the wavelengths it can see or hear or smell or whatever in terms of what things it can perceive. Birds and primates have a really strong overlap. And so part of the reason we find birds so beautiful is because we can hear the things that birds hear and we can see the things that birds see, because those birds are not making those colors for us, right. They're making them for the males and females and whoever else they're trying to impress.
And lots of flowers are making those colors for the bees or the birds or someone else they're trying to impress. But because we're primates and we happen to be sensitive on those same spectra, it really appeals to us. And so anyway, so that's part of the reason why a lot of people find birds so impressive, is, like, yeah, the kind of mediums in which they show off their stuff right, is, like, how we tend to see. So it's super appealing to us. And I think if we were much more nasmic animals like pigs or dogs, we might not be nearly as impressed by birds. Right. But we'd be thinking about what kind of smells we've run into in nature. Maybe that's a good episode. There's smells, but that could get pretty gross pretty fast. Anyway, that's my bird rant. I hope that made some kind of sense.
[01:08:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it did. So we are just beneficiaries of the beauty that has evolved in birds.
Unfortunately, insects are creepy to most people, but insects are also beautiful.
Part of them, if you actually look at them, a lot of them are very colorful.
But yeah, birds, too. I mean, just like even like a random thing that was not descriptive at all.
[01:09:08] Speaker B: Where is this going?
[01:09:08] Speaker A: Prairies or just common birds? Like, everywhere. There's cardinals everywhere around here. That is a vibrant red bird. How many vibrant red things are there? And we just don't even think about it. Or the blue bird that you saw outside of your window. Or like, the stellar J that I would see all the time when I go to Rocky Mountain National Park or even the magpies that had this iridescent blue and their black tail feathers and stuff. It's like we don't any of that.
We're, like tan brown and black.
That's like the colors that we can generate.
[01:09:46] Speaker B: And from what just mammal stuff.
[01:09:49] Speaker A: I have bright blue eyes, but from what I understand, and maybe you can tell me if I'm wrong or we have to Google this, I'm pretty sure that my eyes are from a lack of color.
I'm not generating my blue eyes. From what I understand, it's the exact opposite. I just lack color in my eyes. And so they appear blue.
[01:10:12] Speaker B: Right, from yeah, I mean, you're more of the mammal expert, but if I'm not mistaken, a lot of predatory species, as babies, have blue eyes until their irises melanized. Basically, they have to produce melanin to turn brown.
Yeah, I have blue eyes, too. I imagine a very different shade from the looks of it. But one of the things that you probably notice as a blue eyed person that I did not realize was weird until I was older was like, you're really light sensitive when there's a lot of glare from the sun. You're like as a little kid, I can remember recess just, like, knocking a little my eyes sometimes when it was bright out in the winter. And that's because the reason brown eyes are a thing is because it protects you from all that extra sun. And when you happen to be genetically unable to produce the melanin in your eyes, they're blue, and then you can't absorb that extra light, and so it's, like, glare. You become really sensitive to it. I certainly do, yeah. It's interesting. The question remains then, like, why would it be blue in the first place in the absence of melanin? And I don't have an answer for that. Maybe the same reason why the sky well, yeah, a lot of blues in nature are blue for the same reason the sky is blue. And it has to do with well, no, I think the sky being blue has something to do with absorption rather than just scattering. But that could be wrong.
But you know how sometimes smoke is kind of bluish?
That's the same thing as how most blues in nature are blue, is that they're actually like it's what they call structural color. And basically that means that there's some property of the surface that's like scattering light that hits it and only letting the blue kind of bounce off, basically. Whereas molecular color, or pigment, as we call it that's actually blue is apparently very difficult to make.
I think it requires some weird metal or something like that that's hard to get nutritionally. So a lot of animals don't have blue and can't produce it, but they can make a fake blue by taking advantage of that effect, that blue, that scattering of the light. There's definitely some stuff on my blog about this which makes me feel really guilty for not remembering it, because it's like some fancy white guy's name, like so and so's law. There's some phenomenon that happens, but basically we call it structural color in the business. And, like, blue birds, blue jays, stellar's days, blah, blah, blah. Lots of blue things have that scattering of color. I think a lot of flowers, too.
Weirdly enough, the two groups of at least birds that I know of that can produce actual blue, this is pretty relevant. This is an interesting tieback. Are the citizenes, which are the parrots and the I forget the name of the group, but they're the turacos in Africa. And those two groups of birds both produce completely unique proteins, completely unique pigments that can produce blues and greens, whereas everybody else who makes blue and green color is actually kind of faking it, and they're just using structural color. But some parrots and the taracos can make, like, actual blue, which is kind of nuts. I don't know why it's so difficult, but wow. There's a biological color thing for you.
[01:13:53] Speaker A: Wow. Learning me all the things right now. Love it.
[01:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah. What's the deal with toracos taracos, the bird family? Muso fagade, which, if I'm not mistaken, muso fagade means banana eaters. Yeah, it does. Banana eaters or plantain eaters, also known as go away birds, which is that's an awesome name, is that they're called.
[01:14:22] Speaker A: Or really annoying.
[01:14:25] Speaker B: There'S a very large there's maybe a genus within that family that are called the go away birds. They're in Africa somewhere. You've probably run into them. I think they say go away, or they say something that sounds like that.
I've never seen them.
[01:14:41] Speaker A: I probably have encountered them. Yes. Good guess. Very good guess. I've been a lot of places and a lot of ecosystems across Africa except the rainforest and the high desert. That's like, the only two I haven't been in Mean and Ethiopia. That's high on my list. I really want to go to Ethiopia. I want to see a gelata.
[01:15:00] Speaker B: I just want to set foot on the honestly.
Oh, my gosh. Wow.
Yeah.
Don't tempt me like that. Oh, my gosh.
[01:15:11] Speaker A: Don't tempt me with a good time.
GNCS all day. Let's go. All the gin and tonics.
[01:15:20] Speaker B: Let's go. Love it.
I'm having trouble coming up with another Mean. So one array of colors that I came across recently was hiking in the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountains because I moved to the south, and now I'm exploring it, and the nature down here is lit.
Fall in the mountains of the south is a really impressive place to witness fungal diversity.
[01:15:56] Speaker A: Oh, because it's so yeah, yeah, probably.
[01:16:01] Speaker B: Other things, too, but the moisture is a big part of it, and, like, my, like, I don't know what I'm seeing yet. I just bought a field guide to the mushrooms of Georgia from the University of Georgia press, and I am so stoked to read it, but there is so much going on. I have gone on hikes and just, like, dozens and dozens and dozens of mushroom species popping up in every conceivable form. What's?
[01:16:28] Speaker A: That that's crazy.
[01:16:29] Speaker B: It's amazing. And the colors, I mean, I've seen purples and blues and oranges and glow in the darks. Like, there's a few species that just really they're bioluminescent. Yeah, like on the scale of a firefly, but it's a fungus. Just I need to see this.
[01:16:48] Speaker A: I would love to see that, like, legit.
[01:16:50] Speaker B: There's a handful of species that do it. I've only seen the faint ones that the mycelium is glowing, but yeah, I don't know. It is undeniably awesome. But I've seen very purple ones and bluish ones, and these incredible bright oranges fungi are not messing around, you know what I mean? They're amazing organisms. And the colors that they can produce, which I'm assuming they're producing them in very different ways than we are. It's impressive.
They're really cool.
[01:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah. That is like a whole group of life that I honestly don't know much about because I think I grew up far enough north where we have some mushrooms, but not that much. And then I live so long in the mountains where there is no moisture, so there is, like, very rarely did I find any sort of mushrooms or fungus of any type.
[01:17:44] Speaker B: I think there's a lot less out west. Yeah, it's hard to find.
[01:17:48] Speaker A: No, that's really cool. I would just imagine that diversity down there alone would have to be higher.
[01:17:55] Speaker B: It's incredible.
Having grown up on the east coast, it's wet enough all the way up the east coast that there's a lot going on, but being a naturalist down in the American Southeast, in the Deep South, it's really been surprising. I mean, it feels like everything I grew up with turned up several notches. I'm used to four species of frogs, and now there are, like, 30, and I'm like, oh, I'm used to maybe one or two species of salamander, and now there are like, 30 or like, oh, I like this handful of tree species, and now there's like 100.
And there's like, weird stuff down here in the deep south. We are on the northern edge of the highest up a whole bunch of weird tropical species get because we're like subtropical.
So I just recently found this out because a friend of mine got to foster care. For one, we have the furthest north butterfly in the long wing family. So if you're in, I guarantee you ran into long wings while you were in Brazil. Maybe you didn't know it, but there's this family of really cool butterflies called the OOH.
Nope, not coming to me right now. The common name is the long wings, and oh, gosh, helicona day. Yes. And they're mostly tropical, but there is a cousin of that family that comes all the way up here to Georgia. They're called the Gulf Friday. They're not related to other Fridays. It's a butterfly, and they are gorgeous. And they show up here, and for the longest time, I was like, why do they look so weird? And then I started reading up on them, and, yeah, it's a tropical species, but they are the northernmost one, and we are the northernmost part of their range. And there it is.
[01:19:57] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:19:57] Speaker B: So the Southeast is interesting that way. There's a lot of we get, like, Armadillos, for heaven's sake. We get, like, Armadillos and black bears and possums all in the same place. And you're like, what's going yeah.
[01:20:08] Speaker A: What is this soup that I'm living in?
[01:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a party down.
Whole summer. The whole summer. You're just breathing pea don't as a New England boy, I don't love the humidity.
[01:20:23] Speaker A: Oh, I bet you oh, this just gives me the bluff thinking about it.
We can't even complain. We're in the United States. We whine about humidity and heat, and I've now been lots of places that are way hotter and way more humid, and I'm like, I can't bitch anymore. I will. But I shouldn't because I have perspective now.
[01:20:46] Speaker B: That's very useful perspective.
[01:20:49] Speaker A: Okay, what is your last caller? One last caller.
[01:20:56] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[01:20:57] Speaker A: It doesn't have to be a species. It doesn't have to be an animal.
[01:21:00] Speaker B: It can be right?
Okay. I think it's a bluish color.
[01:21:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:21:10] Speaker B: And I'm thinking about the Caribbean, the ocean, the water.
I used to help teach this field ecology course in the Bahamas when I was in graduate.
You know, we would spend all this time on boats going between various little islands all over the Bahamas. And so I think you're kind of still on the continental shelf. If I'm not like, everything's very shallow still.
But what was explained to me by the main ecologist on the trip was like and this was so mind blowing to me. He was like, tropical oceans are a desert.
There's nothing growing in them. There are no nutrients. They're very nutrient limited. And as a result of that, the waters are super clear. And you get this incredible turquoise I mean, aquamarine, right? Of the ocean. That's so much clearer than when we get up north, especially where I'm from, like, Boston. Like, our water is not that pretty, regardless of pollution. It's just not like the Atlantic is just not a pretty ocean. I love it, but it's just but that super clear water that you can see so far down and stuff. The reason it's so clear is because nothing is living in it because there's no nutrients to live on. And so it's funny to think about. I remember finding that a fascinating kind of paradox that this incredibly beautiful color was due to the fact that you're in a desert and there's nothing there to eat, there's no nutrients there to foster life, so there's no planktonic community, and therefore the water is very clear.
And that ironically, of course, that then supports one of the most productive and diverse ecosystems in the world, which are these coral reefs. That because the water is so clear and the light can penetrate so deeply, all these corals can live there because, of course, they're dependent on photosynthesis.
So, I don't know. Not only was the color, I can just never forget how bright blue those colors were, but that kind of weird lesson in ecology has always stuck with me. What a fascinating thing that sometimes the desolation, the lack of anything available can actually lead to incredible beauty.
[01:23:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:23:43] Speaker B: That was heavy. Sorry.
[01:23:45] Speaker A: No, that was so good.
I've not had a chance to go to the Caribbean yet, and so I have not experienced those type of waters. But that gave me two different it reminded me of two different bodies of water that I could say that are colorful for very different reasons that I've experienced. And I think one of them we can't not talk about it. And it is all the geyser pools in Yellowstone.
[01:24:16] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[01:24:17] Speaker A: Yeah, because if anybody's been to the Rockies and just, I guess the lack of color and then you go across Yellowstone National Park and you see these unbelievably gorgeous geysers and you're like, how is this even a thing? How are these even mean? Honestly? Because the way you were talking about that.
One of my favorite photos, one of my favorite landscape photos that I've ever taken was of I forget which geyser, but I think it was in the west thumb part. Is that like, in the middle? I don't remember, but sorry.
And it literally looked like the color of a Caribbean ocean, just how blue it was. And just to think that it was this almost pre life, historic sulfur lava heats, I don't even know what you want to call it that was not a scientific way to describe that at all. But talk about smells in nature, man, Yellowstone is not a smell good place.
And then in the stark contrast, when you go to these other just rich, like this volcanic rich heat areas, I guess volcanic isn't the right term, but just active Earth, active areas.
[01:25:57] Speaker B: Geothermal.
[01:25:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the word I'm looking for. Sorry. My Jen's gone.
[01:26:02] Speaker B: I'm here to help.
[01:26:02] Speaker A: Definitely is definitely the word I was looking for. And then having these other ones that are bright orange and, like, bright yellow, and all of these pools that are these different colors, or even the ones that are like the stairstep ones, and they're green and yellow and just all this different, I would imagine. What it's probably like an algae or something that's making those colors. I doubt that. Maybe it's mineral deposits. I would probably have to look it up.
[01:26:32] Speaker B: But I think there's a bacterium involved, probably.
[01:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's my assumption as well. Especially the orange ones. Especially like those orangey ones.
[01:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah, probably sulfur oxidizing bacteria.
[01:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, why not? There's plenty of sulfur to go around.
[01:26:49] Speaker B: Yeah. You can smell. Yeah.
[01:26:52] Speaker A: And then similar to that, if you go a little further north, if you go into, like, Banff National Park, I don't know if we've ever been up to Canada.
[01:27:02] Speaker B: No. Oh, my gosh, I've been dying to go.
[01:27:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Or any of those northern parks with those light turquoise blue rivers and the gorgeous lakes like Marine Lake and all these famous lakes that you see on Instagram and all the places they really are that beautiful.
I know there's filters and stuff nowadays, but they really are that beautiful. And it's with the mineral content that's specifically in these rivers and these lakes that make it that color, and they are that turquoise. Like the first time I saw that. No, I mean when I drove up there. So I flew into Calgary, and then we got a rental car, and then we drove up into the Banff area, and then I spent a whole bunch of know searching the national parks. There's actually a few national parks attached in that area. This great, fantastic off the beaten path road. I found bears, I found elk, I found all this amazing wildlife when I was up there. But one of the things that stood out the most was the water, the turquoise, even the water that was flowing through town was this turquoise. And I'm just like, how is this real?
Because nowadays you don't even know online when you see photos online, if that collar is real.
Is that really what that looks like? It is. It really is what it looks like. That turquoise is so gorgeous. It is so pretty. And it just happens to be yeah. With the mineral deposits and just the soup, the natural soup that's in those waters that are making it that way. I would have to look it up. Exactly. What is the specific makeup of those waters that's making it that color? But it blew me away. That blue. Yeah. So the geysers so they're not too far away. They're not too far away. Consider we've talked about the globe, but very yeah. The geyser pools in Yellowstone and the beautiful colors that are produced through whatever's living in them.
I'm sure somebody has had the courage to study those very dangerous talk about a dangerous research question. What is growing in these geysers? Like, don't get eaten or not eaten, but dissolved essentially in these pools. People, please don't do then. But you can go into the rivers and stuff in Canada and experience the beautiful waters they're freezing balls, but you can get that's. Okay. He won't die. But yeah. So just natural things that just happen to be stunning when you see them for the first time, especially.
Yeah.
[01:29:49] Speaker B: I think my last color question is about your nail polish right now, because was this a Halloween thing? You matched your glasses and everything. Like, what is going on over there? You are just knocking it out of the park.
[01:30:01] Speaker A: Yeah, these are my adult Halloween nails, aka they're purple. They're purple and black.
Yeah, because I feel like I missed the black.
[01:30:12] Speaker B: Okay.
Oh, wow.
[01:30:16] Speaker A: So these ones are purple, and then these ones are purple. Fades are black, and then my thumbs are black.
[01:30:22] Speaker B: Jeez.
[01:30:23] Speaker A: My sister wanted a girl's day. I never get my nails done, but my sister wanted a girl's day.
[01:30:28] Speaker B: I'm not judging. I just noticed.
As you were, gesticulating. I was like, oh, my gosh, there's something impressive going on there in terms of colors.
[01:30:37] Speaker A: Yeah, they do match my glasses perfectly, don't they? Because these are, like, black.
[01:30:40] Speaker B: I was going to say that seems. Yeah. Okay, so that wasn't part of a costume.
[01:30:44] Speaker A: No. I was talking to somebody the other day. They're like, what is your favorite color? I'm like, well, it used to be pink, but the reason why I like pink so much is because I love black. So they complement each other. Wait, I also love blue a lot, obviously. I love blue. I look good in blue. I have blue eyes. I love blue. And I was like, you know, I am starting to really gravitate towards purple, and I think it's because it's like the mature, adult version of pink.
[01:31:13] Speaker B: But how did you get from black to pink? How did, like, loving black become loving pink? I think it's because I got lost.
[01:31:19] Speaker A: Love hard metal. I don't know. I've always loved rock music.
[01:31:23] Speaker B: I mean, you've sent me some really good metal. I thank you for that.
[01:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah, you're welcome.
I appreciate your spotify playlist of good metal and metal core, alternative metal, all those kinds of things. I will gladly as well as all my other music that I listen to, but I do listen to a lot of metal rock. Keep it coming. But yeah. So when I was young, I loved wearing pink and black because I was a drummer and I love metal, but I was also still a girl.
[01:31:51] Speaker B: I forgot you were a drummer. Oh, my God. Yes. Okay.
[01:31:55] Speaker A: I know I have all these past lives that I don't really talk about on the show.
[01:31:59] Speaker B: Many talents, every episode. Somehow our weird prompt for the episode will lead us to one of Brooke's amazing former lives. All nine of them.
[01:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah, because you've learned quite a few more of them with our conversations recently of some of the other stuff that I've done in my past. And you're like, Brooke, who are you? Essentially, I've had a lot of lives, and I don't talk about them on the show that much because we'll get them out.
I'm always focused on my guests, so.
[01:32:35] Speaker B: I don't talk about of course. Yeah. And that's the advantage of this format. Right? It's like we're going to turn the focus on Brooke as much as onto anyone else.
[01:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I just love these.
[01:32:48] Speaker B: That's a change of pace.
[01:32:49] Speaker A: Yes, just a fun change of pace. Well, what? Okay, so we got through, like, four or five of my 13. Does that sound about right?
[01:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like we covered a lot of colors that was nontrivial. We got our way through a lot of a rainbow.
[01:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. Look at me prepping way too much. Look at all my notes.
[01:33:13] Speaker B: Wow. Oh, no. Oh, you had handwritten notes. Oh, I'm so embarrassed for you. This is oh.
[01:33:20] Speaker A: Okay, everybody, for perspective, Charles and I what? We talked for an hour yesterday how we were just going to wing this, and when I was sitting down thinking about this episode you're just going to.
[01:33:34] Speaker B: Dig yourself this hole. Brooke, you don't have to do this.
[01:33:38] Speaker A: I was like, okay, I will feel better if I prep, because I always prep for all of my episodes. I'm always so prepped and ready to go with every single episode that I record. And I was like, I can't go. What if we ask her? What if I blank? Oh, my God. What if I can't think of something we hit, like, what, not even 50% of my things?
[01:33:59] Speaker B: No, but you did great. You did great.
You over prepared, which seems like your Mo.
And the listeners will tell you what they thought, but a fantastic new format.
[01:34:16] Speaker A: Awesome. Charles. Well, thank you for coming on and sitting down with me. Thank you and giving me lots of laughs. Always a pleasure educating me about all the things about structural colors and some birds that are actually that color and larches.
What was that?
Oh, my God. What was the butterfly?
[01:34:39] Speaker B: Oh, the long tailed skipper.
[01:34:41] Speaker A: Skipper. I thought stripper for a second. I'm like, it wasn't stripper.
[01:34:43] Speaker B: So what was it?
[01:34:46] Speaker A: I was like, Charles, save me from stripper. It's not stripper. It's not stripper.
[01:34:51] Speaker B: What is I feel like that could be its own Halloween costume next year. Oh, no.
[01:34:59] Speaker A: Thanks, dude. Can't wait to do this again.
[01:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah, likewise. Thank you.
[01:35:06] Speaker A: Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure today. I hope you've been inspired by the incredible stories, insights, and knowledge shared in this episode. To learn more about what you heard, be sure to check out the show
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