Air Date: December 27, 2024

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The Extreme Life of the Sea


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Life in the ocean is a longstanding mystery to most humans, and even now that we can travel deep beneath the waves, we've barely scratched the surface. A 2014 book, The Extreme Life of the Sea, sheds an entertaining and informative light on some of the ocean’s oldest, oddest, fiercest and strangest creatures. Coauthor and biologist Steve Palumbi discusses the work with Host Steve Curwood. (11:46)

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in An Age of Extinction


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Animals like the American Bison, bald eagle, and giant panda are just a few of the charismatic species that have come dangerously close to extinction. But thanks to some visionaries, species like these have been saved from that fate. In her 2021 book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, science writer Michelle Nijhuis shares the stories of some conservation heroes, and she joins Host Jenni Doering to discuss. (17:10)

FaceTime: Bumblebees / Mark Seth Lender


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What’s going on inside the tiny, fuzzy head of a bumblebee? Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence, Mark Seth Lender, says there might be much more going on than you may think. (03:34)

How To Be A Good Creature


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From tarantulas in French Guinea to reclusive, aquarium-dwelling octopuses to the dogs and chickens in her own backyard, naturalist and author Sy Montgomery has connected with creatures all over the globe. They are her friends, her family, and especially her teachers. In her book, How To Be A Good Creature, she looks back on the valuable life lessons she’s learned from her friendships with feathered, furred and tentacled animals. Sy Montgomery joins Host Steve Curwood to discuss her treasured memories of these creatures. (14:31)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

HOSTS: Steve Curwood, Jenni Doering

GUESTS: Steve Palumbi, Michelle Nijhuis, Mark Seth Lender, Sy Montgomery

CURWOOD: From PRX this is Living on Earth.I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering. Celebrating the people who pioneered pushback against extinction.

NIJHUIS: What I hope people will realize is just because we can’t save everything, doesn’t mean that what we’re doing doesn’t matter. It’s still possible to make a huge difference, it’s still possible to save species that are going to be valuable not only for our own survival but for the survival of the future generations.

CURWOOD: Also, our dogs and other animals teach us “how to be a good creature.”

MONTGOMERY: Molly was essentially the older sister I never had. I mean, most little girls idolize their older sisters. I never had any siblings but I had something better. I had a Scottish terrier.

CURWOOD: Those stories and more this week on Living on Earth—stick around!

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ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from United Technologies – innovating to make the world a better, more sustainable, place to live.

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The Extreme Life of the Sea

DOERING: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Jenni Doering

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood. At this time of year, we like to take a break from the news and revisit favorite moments from over the years. And today, we’re celebrating some of the unique animals we’ve had the joy of learning about from our guests, starting with the amazing life forms under the sea.
In an engaging 2014 book called The Extreme Life of the Sea, biologist Steve Palumbi and his novelist son Tony deepen our understanding of how strange sea life has managed to survive against all odds. Joining us is half of the pair of authors - Steve Palumbi, a professor of marine biology at Stanford University. Welcome to Living on Earth!

PALUMBI: Hi Steve. It's a pleasure to be here.

CURWOOD: Why did you write this book? Why now?

PALUMBI: Well, the real reason is that we’re trying an experiment: can you take the narrative style and approach that a novelist would use and combine it with what a scientist would do? And come up with an environmental narrative that is more engaging than we’re used to. It’s all sort of, in a small way, described by a simple phrase: that you don’t really care about the plot until you care about the characters, and so we wanted to write a book that made you care about the characters.

CURWOOD: Now, you write about the extreme life of the sea, the oldest, the hottest, the shallowest, to name a few. Why did you choose this approach?

PALUMBI: Because it was a way of getting people’s attention to the really sort of amazing things that these critters do. Organisms in the sea live in some of the hottest places, they live in some of the coldest places, and how they do that is something marine scientists have paid a lot of attention to. So it was really a way to make it more engaging, more fun, and to let us move credibly between different kinds of organisms all in the same chapter.

CURWOOD: Now, which of these particular extremes did you like and why?

PALUMBI: I was most surprised by all the information we got about the oldest creatures in the sea.

CURWOOD: And the oldest are?

PALUMBI: Well, the oldest by far is that set of deepwater corals off the coast of Hawaii. Black corals, they live in about 1,000 feet of water. It’s dark, it’s steady currents, it’s a very, very, calm and steady environment. And those corals are clocked, the oldest one we know about, at 4,200 years old.

CURWOOD: That’s old.

PALUMBI: That’s old. I mean, these corals we’re alive before some of the pyramids were started.

CURWOOD: Speaking of age, you had one extreme that you called immortal.

PALUMBI: That’s an amazing jellyfish called turritopsis, and it has the remarkable ability to age in reverse. So when the environment is bad, this animal can essentially go from its adult body form back, back, back to its larval form, and then start all over again.

CURWOOD: It’s reborn, huh?

PALUMBI: It’s reborn. It’s called transdifferentiation. It’s the only critter known to be able to do that.

CURWOOD: Hmmm. Wonder if I could package that?

PALUMBI: [LAUGHS] Well, you know, there’s lots of movies about when you all of a sudden wake up and you find you’re back in high school, and so do you really want to do that, Steve?

CURWOOD: Oh, I don’t need to go back there.

PALUMBI: Think about it. [LAUGHS]

CURWOOD: Tell me about your favorite from the deep, deep, deep.

PALUMBI: One is this amazing critter called the Stoplight Loosejaw. Like typical deep sea fish, it’s got fangs and a huge jaw and amazingly sharp teeth. It can actually eat a fish bigger than itself. The deep sea is extreme in that it’s dark, and there’s also not much food. There’s bioluminescence, flashes of blue and green that are down there, and if you use your light as sort of a search light to find something then everybody else can see you too, and come after you.

So the Stoplight Loosejaw fixes that problem by cheating. It has two searchlights that beam out from under its eyes, and they’re not the typical blue-green of bioluminescence. Those searchlights are red, and they also change their eyes so that they can see red. So the only fish down there that sees red, and then produces red light. So they can prowl around with these search lights on and nobody else can see them, but they can see their prey.

CURWOOD: So a predator with night vision.

PALUMBI: A predator with night vision goggles essentially, yes, so imagine if you’re some laser tagger in an arena and you’re the only one who can actually see anybody else.

CURWOOD: Describe the whale fall and why these are important.

PALUMBI: The whale fall is an amazing exception to the generalization that the deep sea has not got much in the way of food. When a whale dies, it often dies in the middle of the ocean in deep water, and it falls down to the bottom of the sea with a sort of plumph that dumps tons of meat and bones and gristle all at once. It’s an incredible instant oasis of food, and from all around, critters come immediately to start feeding on it, and they disassemble the whole skeleton in just a matter of weeks. But it goes beyond that because a set of predators comes in to eat the critters that are eating the whale, and they slowly all form this community - short-lived community - until most of the whale is gone. And then you have the bones left, scattered around the bottom, but the bones of the whale are actually enormously valuable for food. They’re full of oil. So another set of critters comes and lands on those bones and starts feeding on those. Finally, all you’re left with is just a thin dusting of the remains of an entire whale and all the bones on the bottom of the sea floor.

CURWOOD: Now there’s some pretty interesting sex lives. Tell me about these.

PALUMBI: [LAUGHS] It turns out one of the most extreme things about marine critters is their family lives. For example, another deep sea example is the Anglerfish, made popular in the “Finding Nemo” movie, have a remarkable lure that attracts prey to them. And scientists studied them for a century or more, always bemoaning the fact they could only find females. And then a parasitologist was working on them looking at the parasites that these females always seem to have hanging off them and discovered that those were the males. They were parasitic males attached to the females, and living only with them, depending totally on the females for everything. After they bite the female their jaws dissolve, and then their brains dissolve, and then their guts dissolve and then their blood systems mesh with the females, and all they are just at the end is a testes that’s there to fertilize the female’s eggs when she’s ready.

CURWOOD: I thought you weren’t going to talk about human relationships here.

PALUMBI: [LAUGHS] Well, when we give these book talks, the women are usually laughing, the men are somewhat bemused, and then, by the end, the men are all horrified.

CURWOOD: One of the most fascinating parts about your book is how you tell the story of evolution through microbes in the ocean. What made you decide to do that?

PALUMBI: Microbes are the smallest creatures in the ocean, but they are by far the most numerous, and you can’t understand the life of the ocean without including them. They are, in fact, the organisms that determine that the ocean is livable. You might be referring to the evolution part to a sort of scary, shivering, chilling type of process that biologists have called “kill the winner”. And here’s the way it goes. The microbes in the sea, you think the best one would take over...the one that could grow the fastest in the most places, but that doesn’t happen. The microbes in the sea are incredibly diverse, and it boils down probably to the enemies of these microbes, and those are viruses, and any microbe that gets good enough and big enough and abundant enough to maybe take over the ocean is also a target for viruses that evolve to attack them specifically. So the viruses are constantly killing the winner of the competitive race among microbes in the ocean, and by doing that, they’re keeping the ocean in balance and highly diverse.

CURWOOD: Now, how does the human consumption of seafood affect the marine ecosystem and the balance of bacteria?

PALUMBI: You know, Steve, the real problem is that this huge ocean with all these creatures in it is not big enough that is immune to the kinds of changes that we can make in it. In particular, overfishing has the effect of breaking the food chains that the ocean normally has. And you can think of the food chain as taking the smallest little critters, and they’re food for the next larger ones, and they’re food for the next larger ones up. And so the food energy in the ocean - or any ecosystem really - moves from the smallest critters up through the bigger and bigger and bigger ones. But when we fish, especially fish heavily, we break the food chain. We end up, essentially, allowing the food energy to clump up at parts of the food chain that it doesn’t usually. So we get big huge blooms of jellyfish, for example, with the ocean out of balance by us overfishing.

CURWOOD: Talk to us about how climate change is affecting the life of the sea.

PALUMBI: So climate change is a pervasive, growing and huge problem. It’s, of course, making the sea level rise. It’s also making the oceans warmer, it’s making them more acidic and stormier. And all these things mean that how we interact with the ocean is getting harder and harder, and a lot of the organisms that we might depend on to grow barriers, natural living sea walls, for example, around our coast are succumbing to extra heat and the acidification. And these problems are visible now, and they’re projected to grow into the future. If we stopped the process by which climate change is happening, which is, we stop carbon emissions, it’s still going to take 50 years or so for the oceans to absorb what we’ve already put into the atmosphere and begin to get better.

So it’s like you’re booming along in a speeding car, and all of a sudden you see the red brake lights in front of you, and you think, “OK, we’ve got to stop,” but there’s a stopping distance. You can’t stop immediately. You can’t stop a speeding car right on a dime. It takes a while. And that stopping distance for climate change is about 50 years, so the biggest problem is that we’re just now beginning to see the red lights in front of us, and even if we all decided, “OK, we’re going to put the brakes on now,” which we have not yet decided, but if we did, we’d still have 50 years of stopping distance before things got better.

CURWOOD: Steve, what do you hope readers will take away from your book?

PALUMBI: We wrote the book to give readers a sense of guiltless wonder about how wonderful the life of the ocean is, and that these critters out there are not just seafood, they live in all the corners of the ocean, they can live and thrive in amazing places with amazing abilities, and that they add to the wonder of our planet. It’s really a book that’s meant to entertain people, it’s meant to give them the sense of, “Wow, I never knew that.”

CURWOOD: Steve Palumbi is a Marine Biologist at Stanford University and co-author of “The Extreme Life of the Sea”. Thanks so much for taking this time today, Steve.

PALUMBI: Hey, Steve, it’s an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Related links:
- The Extreme Life of the Sea Tumblr
- Extreme Life – Shark

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[MUSIC: John Keawe, “ Kaulana Na Pua”, on Slack Key Guitar 2004]

DOERING: Just ahead – some conservation heroes working to save our “beloved beasts.” Keep listening to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[MUSIC: Along Came Betty, “Buying Clothes For My Imaginary Friend” on The Secret Parts of Fortune, by Biff Smith, published by Along Came Betty]

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in An Age of Extinction

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering. American Bison… Bald Eagle… Giant Panda. These are just a few of the charismatic megafauna that have come dangerously close to extinction. And once a species is gone, it’s gone forever, and these days we humans are usually to blame. But thanks to some visionaries, large herds of bison are back, bald eagle populations are soaring, and giant panda numbers are on the rise. A 2021 book by science writer Michelle Nijhuis tells the stories of some of these conservation heroes. It’s called Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, and Michelle Nijhuis joins me from White Salmon, Washington. Welcome back to Living on Earth!

NIJHUIS: Hi, Jenny, thanks so much for having me.

DOERING: You know, one of the stories in your book, Michelle, that really inspired me was about Rosalie Edge, and her courage in standing up against these Audubon Society leaders the establishment that was really unwilling to protect birds that sportsmen considered pests or targets. She even bought a mountain to help conserve raptors. Can you tell us about her and her story?

NIJHUIS: Rosalie Edge is one of my favorite characters too. Rosalie Edge, immersed herself in the suffrage movement. She was a leading suffragist fighting for women's right to vote. And after that victory was achieved after suffrage was achieved in New York State and after it was on its way to being achieved nationally. Rosalie edge and her husband separated and while she was mourning the breakup of her marriage, she discovered real solace in the company of birds. And she wrote very movingly about how the natural world was a comfort to her in the midst of this personal disaster. And so she became in her 40s a devoted birdwatcher. And as she got to know the birding community in New York City, she learned that the primary organization fighting for the protection of birds the Audubon Society was not sticking up for all birds. The Audubon Society was sticking up for the birds that it considered, quote, unquote, good birds, not birds of prey that many of its members considered pests at the time. So Rosalie edge thought this was ridiculous, and she took it upon herself to show up at a annual meeting of the board of the Audubon Society and give them a piece of her mind. And she rallied Audubon members and other people who cared about conservation to demand that the Audubon Society which had become a bit complacent. They demanded that the Audubon Society get more ambitious on behalf of other species and work for the protection not just of species that they happen to like and appreciate but all species.

DOERING: Yes and they wrote some pretty fiery pamphlets that just got sent out, I guess, mailed out by the hundreds calling for this establishment to take a stand.

NIJHUIS: Well, they were very popular, they named names and, you know, warned of what tragedies would befall the natural world if the Audubon Society didn't grow some kind of backbone. And she made herself a real pain in the neck. And she succeeded. she succeeded at waking up the Audubon society's leadership and membership. And I think that the Audubon Society retains a sort of grassroots feistiness that owes a lot to Rosalie Edge.

DOERING: And some of these birds that weren't being protected properly. Were raptors like hawks especially. Why were these Raptors under such attack?

NIJHUIS: Well, a lot of sportsmen did consider raptors pests. They had these exaggerated ideas about how often they ate farm animals and poultry mostly, and they just disapproved of them in a way they thought they were scavengers and kind of lowly animals. So there was a particular Ridgeline in Pennsylvania where the topography and the wind currents converge so that the hawks that were migrating up and down the East Coast in the spring and fall, were funneled over this one ridge top, so sportsmen would go there. And because there were so many raptors passing so close to the top of this ridge top, they were able to just shoot them by the dozens, even the hundreds. And Rosalie edge saw a picture of hot carcasses lined up on the forest floor and was just horrified that this was happening that this, you know, these birds were just being shot wholesale, really for no reason. And she found out that the land on that ridge top was for sale, and she bought it and established a hawk sanctuary that still stands today. And not only has it protected the Raptors that use that migration corridor. But the data taken there, Rosalie Edge, suggested that the caretakers start recording the numbers and kinds of birds that passed over during their migration. That data is now one of the longest record of raptor migration in the world.

DOERING: Wow, it sounds amazing to be there. And you did go there. What is it like to be on Hawk Mountain watching the raptors flyby?

NIJHUIS: I really recommend that people take a trip. It's not too far from most of the major East Coast cities but it is a different world because you climb up to the top of this ridge line, kind of an unassuming looking ridge line in Pennsylvania. But once you get up there, you realize how magical it is because the birds are flying by, not only above you, but sometimes beneath you. So it's not not only an amazing experience of being close to birds, but it's a popular place. And so most of the time you're up there with, it can be just a couple of other people or it could be a whole crowd of people who are all just gripped by this natural phenomenon. And it's delightful to feel their joy along with your own as you stand there and watch these birds do what they have done for so many years, and can do thanks to the foresight of Rosalie edge.

DOERING: So another person who really helped shape conservation, and maybe a lot of people will know this name was Aldo Leopold, what do you think is his most important message for us today?

NIJHUIS: Well, many people may have run into Aldo Leopold's book, A Sand County Almanac. It's his best known book. I've always loved Aldo Leopold. And it was a real joy to get to know him better. In the process of writing this book, he was such an eloquent writer. And he had such a sense not only of the complexity of other species, but of the complexity of the human species. But his primary accomplishment, I think, was to bring the science of ecology into conversation with the work of conservation, because one thing I observed in learning about the history of conservation is that some people are drawn to conservation because they are eager to get away from their fellow humans, sometimes for very good reasons. Sometimes people, you know, had had a terrible loss early in life, and they found comfort in other species, or as I mentioned, like Rosalie Ed's, they experienced a tragedy, and they found solace and other species. But there are definitely people in conservation who feel more comfortable with other species than with their own. And Aldo Leopold was not one of those people, he he felt as warmly toward his own species as he did toward other species, I can't help but think that that informed his work. And that he saw, unlike so many conservationists, he saw that humans could have a constructive role to play when it came to conserving other species, that conservation wasn't just about protecting species from the destruction that humanity can wreak. It was also about finding that constructive role. And I think that's still a piece that's missing from conservation today. And that's something that Leopold can still remind us of.

DOERING: Yeah, that really resonates with the part of your book, where you're talking about the myth of the tragedy of the commons. And you know, the fact that it's handed us this idea that the only way to manage resources sustainably, whether that's like an aquifer or an antelope herd, is to impose this order from the top down. How has this been proven to be the wrong way of looking at conservation?

NIJHUIS: The tragedy of the commons is a mysteriously persistent metaphor that was proposed in the late 1960s, by an ecologist named Garrett Hardin. And as you say, he theorized this was an idea he had not something he tested in real life. But he he proposed that humans given the chance would use up as many resources as they could until the resource was gone. And that the only way around it was total government control or total privatization. But scientists since then, and even while he was proposing this theory, were observing that that was not true at all, that people had for centuries, developed rules that allowed them to both sustain their own livelihoods and sustain the resources, the species that they needed. And I think the tragedy of the commons is persistent, in part because it does happen. And we do experience it in small ways all the time. Anyone who's been in a traffic jam has experienced the tragedy of the commons.

DOERING: Or trying to buy that last roll of toilet paper.

NIJHUIS: Yes, or trying to buy that last roll of toilet paper. I mean, it's it is all around us in small ways. But I think it's so important for everyone and for the conservation movement, in particular, to remember that it doesn't have to be that way that we as humans have figured out ways of avoiding it. And even as Garrett harden was publishing, the theory of the tragedy of the commons, in the journal Science, there was a young political scientist named Elinor Ostrom, who was reading his article and thinking, well, that's not true at all, because she was working on her PhD in Los Angeles at the time, and she had been observing that water users in the Los Angeles basin where groundwater is of course, you know, a highly prized resource, had figured out a way of cooperatively sharing their resource that didn't involve radical privatization that didn't involve total government control and and she devoted the rest of her life to studying systems all over the world where people were cooperatively managing their resources. And she eventually won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work shortly before her death. So she's very respected and she, in fact, was the founder of a whole field that continues today. But I think that as respected as she was in his her work is still not as well known as it should be. I think it It hasn't had the staying power that the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons has, but I do hope that we as a society, we as a species, will embrace the complexity of Elinor Ostrom work because in that complexity, I think lies the solutions that we need for conservation to be meaningful worldwide.

DOERING: Yes. And you saw some of this complexity in action, you saw the importance of local involvement, you know, as opposed to like a top down government order or, or privatization, you know, communities really caring for the species and and the places that they've lived among for many, many years. So what did you take away from your visit to a community conservancy group in Namibia?

NIJHUIS: Well, I got to visit Namibia in southern Africa in the course of research for this book. And I was quite inspired by the work of the National Community Conservancy system in Namibia, which has been in place for about 30 years now. And the goal of community conservancies is to reawaken the relationship that local people had with their the species they lived alongside and have lived alongside for centuries. Before colonialization these species were often managed through the kinds of systems that Elinor Ostrom observed throughout the world. Colonization disrupted those systems and disrupted the relationship that people had with their local species. And it became quite common for people to think of other species, especially troublesome or dangerous species as the property of the government something that they they didn't benefit from. And they didn't have any responsibility for and they just considered kind of a burden. People often saw themselves as bearing all the burdens of conservation and and not realizing most of the benefits, they saw the benefits as as going to, you know, foreign tourists who visited national parks. The goal of the community conservancies is to restore that relationship by returning some conservation authority to the local level, giving people the ability to set their own hunting quotas, based on data that they help collect. They have the ability to earn money from tourism, they have the ability to earn some money from commercial hunting. And I was able to see some of this work in action. And I was so struck by it because I went to a annual meeting of one of the community conservancies in the midst of a deep drought, during a very tough time for the community. And the meeting on its surface was a little bit chaotic. There was an argument that broke out at one point, there were a variety of issues that needed to be handled. But when I got up to leave, I realized I was exhilarated in a way that I never am when I've gone to similar meetings in North America, in meetings with people who have far more resources and far more expertise available to them. And I realized I was exhilarated because people had taken the trouble to come to this meeting and think about the long term future of these species. And I think the success of the community conservancies is that they've reduced the burdens of conservation, enough conservation still cost something it's still is, you know, it still can be troublesome to live beside a herd of elephants, it still can cost money to restrict your exploitation of neighboring species. But it's reduced those costs enough so that people are willing and able to pay them. Because I think, at heart, most people don't want their neighboring species to go extinct. They're willing to go to some lengths to protect them. They just need to have some assurance that they have a say in how these species are managed, and that they have a way to support their families and to make a living. And I think once those things are in place, most people are quite willing to do what it takes to protect species for the long term.

DOERING: Michelle, at so many points in the history of conservation, you know, even as its leaders have accomplished great things like like saving species that were on the brink of extinction. They've gone about it in such a blinkered and misguided way a lot of the time and they've really left essential communities out of the process. So I guess I'm wondering now do you think the conservation movement has learned anything and what do you think is missing now from the conservation movement?

NIJHUIS: There is a long history of racism and colonialism in the conservation movement, which is not to say that the project of conservation that the work of conservation is necessarily racist or colonialist or to say that conservationists as a whole, have these blind spots. But it is to say that in every generation of the conservation movement, there have been people who have these very destructive, blind spots. One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is that I felt that it can only be good for conservation, for conservationists, to examine this history, to look at these patterns and see how they can be avoided in the future. I think the conservation movement, in many ways has learned from its mistakes. And there is a reckoning now over race and privilege taking place in society that I think the conservation movement is involved in in a very significant way. And I think many people are learning from that. And I think that's a very promising sign for the future. In the past, these blind spots have been so counterproductive for conservation because they have left out most of society, they have shut most of society out of the conservation movement. A more inclusive conservation movement will not only be a more just place to be an activist, but it will also be more effective, in that includes people in a constructive role in conservation.

DOERING: Michelle, Nijhuis is the author of Beloved Beasts Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. Thank you so much, Michelle.

NIJHUIS: Thank you, Jenni.

Related links:
- Learn more about Michelle Nijhuis and her work
- Learn more about the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary founded by Rosalie Edge
- Click here for the Beloved Beasts book (Affiliate link helps donate to LOE and local indie bookstores)

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[MUSIC: Rikard From, “It’s an Upright Thing]

CURWOOD: Coming up, tips on how to be a good creature from some good creatures. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Friends of Smeagull the Seagull and Smeagull’s Guide to Wildlife. It’s all about the wildlife right next door to you! That’s Smeagull, S - M - E - A - G - U - L - L, SmeagullGuide.org.

[MUSIC: Goldspiel Provost – Classical Guitar Duo, “Danzas Espanolas - Villanesca” on Latin Magic, by Enrique Granados, gpd Records]

FaceTime: Bumblebees

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

[bumblebee sfx]

What’s going on inside the tiny, fuzzy head of a bumblebee?

Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence, Mark Seth Lender says there might be much more going on than you think.

Bumble Bees, Long Island Sound
© 2020 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

The hurricane did not amount to much. Not by the standards of New England where we have history, of great storms, that take lives, and sink ships, and tear away the land. This one brought more water than wind. Even so. Here close to the sea it was enough. Surrounded by debris, a single hydrangea, sole survivor among what once were many is in flower and covered with bumblebees. One to every stamen in the dense white array of blooms.
How important to them, this one living plant, the difference between extirpation and continuity. They go about their business at a low contented hum. Like a punctuation mark in her warning colors of black and yellow a guard bee leaves the others, straight up, straight towards me. She stops eight inches from my face. Right between my eyes. Below and behind her the others continue in their work. Not her. She flies out and around me returning to the same place. And again. And again. And does not touch me but only hovers, perfectly balanced, unwavering and too close, her impossibly small bumblebee wings beating to a transparency. I know what she wants.
She behaves as if she knows that I know, or at least that I should. But I wait. To see. What will she do? How long will it take before her patience wanes and she stings me. Five hundred million years of evolution separate us. Her ancient compound eyes are not the eyes by which I see. Her brain is not like mine, nor her form except for the fact of a fundamental symmetry we share, that the left side is the same as the right. And yet perceives what and where
my eyes are and that this is how to get my attention. That I live behind my eyes. Me. I am there. This is where my consciousness abides. That I am a Sentient Being. How can she know? It can only be a projection. One she would not make if she were not conscious of her own Consciousness and its same location. Perhaps this is why rather than harming me, she waits. Until, I take my two steps back - She pauses for a fraction of a beat - Then dives into the flowers where she disappears.

DOERING: That’s Mark Seth Lender, Living on Earth’s explorer in residence.

Related link:
Mark Seth Lender's website

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[MUSIC: Michala Petri, “Variations brillantes for descant recorder and harpsichord, variation IV” on The Virtuoso Recorder, by Ernst Krahmer, RCA/BMG]

How To Be A Good Creature

CURWOOD: Author and long-time friend of Living on Earth Sy Montgomery wrote the New York Times Best Selling memoir, How To Be A Good Creature. In it, Sy tells us exactly that. And who knows better than Sy how animals can teach us how to be good inhabitants of the world? From tarantulas in French Guinea, to reclusive aquarium-dwelling octopuses, to dogs and chickens in her own backyard, Sy has connected with creatures all over the globe. They are her friends, her family, and especially her teachers. Joining us from her home in Hancock, New Hampshire, is author Sy Montgomery. Now, this book is a memoir that really talks about some 13 different creatures that have taught you how to be a good one. And you start your stories with Molly, the dog.

MONTGOMERY: I'm looking at her picture right now on my desk. Yeah, Molly. Molly was essentially the older sister I never had. I mean, most little girls idolize their older sisters. I never had any siblings but I had something better. I had a Scottish terrier and even though she was chronologically younger than I was, I was very aware that dogs mature earlier than we do. They become adult in just a few years. We take, you know, 15, 18, 21 years to mature. But Molly was a fierce, strong, independent, wonderful, wise, adult individual. And I wanted to be just like her.

CURWOOD: Ah, your dog taught you to grow up to be a strong woman.

MONTGOMERY: Yes, she did. She totally did. And I used to dream of the day that I could run away with Molly, and live in a hollow tree or live in the woods somewhere, that with her, I'd be able to learn the secrets of the animals who lived in the wild. And that's what I went on to do.

CURWOOD: Now, in your book, you recount your career, and it seems like you're well on your way to being the journalist, a little girl had a newspaper, and grown-up woman has job as a reporter, and you're all set to go, and then, well, something happens along the way.

MONTGOMERY: Well, my father, ever my champion, gave me the gift of a trip to Australia, and I didn't want to just go as a tourist. I wondered if there was some way that I could volunteer or do a study or, you know, help a scientist. And there was. There's an organization, as you know well, called Earth Watch. You can spend a couple of weeks helping a scientist almost anywhere in the world. So, I looked to see what they had in Australia. And what they had in Australia was a project called “drought refugia.” And this was a study with Dr. Pamela Parker of the Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat. Now, who can resist that? Almost nothing was really known about them until Dr. Parker came along. So, for a couple of weeks we lived in tents in the Outback and by day we would try to find the wombats. And I was crazy about this. I had the best time and I worked really hard, and afterwards, Dr. Parker was impressed enough to say, Sy, I wish I could hire you to work for me. I wish I could buy you a ticket to come back and Australia, but I can't. But what I can do is, if you ever wanted to come back on your own, I'd let you stay at my camp and you could eat my food. So, I went back to my wonderful job. And I quit that job and moved to a tent in the Outback. And I studied emus.

CURWOOD: And, you write that the emus really taught you something important, what was that?

MONTGOMERY: They showed me a lot. I mean, I certainly learned a lot of field work knowledge from them, but the most important thing, Steve, it was that doing the science, doing the reading, all that intellectual stuff really matters. But, if you want to understand an animal, you also have to bring to that understanding your heart. I let them choose to be around me, and I wouldn't approach them so closely that they would feel frightened. The minute that they seemed upset I’d just back off and stay still. You know, at first I thought, I'm gathering important scientific data. This is really fun. And the data is important and taking notes is important. But the more I follow, the more I was with them. I found myself falling in love with them. And there were times that I realized that taking the notes wasn't the most important thing I was doing. Maybe the most important thing I was doing was falling in love.

CURWOOD: Indeed. Now, you're a writer, and so, there's always the editing process. Just how difficult was it for you to whittle your stories down to just 13 animals in 10 chapters?

MONTGOMERY: Well, I did leave out some important animals in my life, and they very much still animate my life. But the ones that I included in this memoir, it's a memoir in 13 animals, that’s the subtitle, are ones that taught me very specific lessons for my life about how I should perceive the world and how I should behave. And I chose those that best illustrated that. Some of the animals taught me how to cope with loss. Some animals taught me how to find your destiny. One animal showed me how to forgive, and Thurber showed me that there's always something wonderful lurking right around the corner that you can't possibly anticipate.

CURWOOD: Talk to me about how a creature taught you to forgive.

MONTGOMERY: Well, this was an ermine. They are the white-coated version of weasels, who live in the north. So, this weasel, ermine, who I met, I met on Christmas morning. And every Christmas morning I always make my hens a big bowl of delicious hot popcorn. And I was carrying it down to give to the ladies. And one of my girls was lying dead on the floor of the coop. And someone had a hold of her head. And when I pulled her away, this white head popped out from the corner with coal black eyes. It was a tiny little critter. This animal probably weighed less than a handful of coins, but so fierce, and I could not be mad at that weasel. I mean, the animal had just killed someone who I loved and it was Christmas morning and you’d think that would make you really angry or that you might even hate someone who did that. But that wasn't what I experienced at all. What I experienced was the glory of this creature, the glory of its wildness, and its ferocity, and its determination, and its courage, its braveness. And I thought about my mother. And my mother had just died, oh gosh, that very year. But throughout my childhood and growing up and even as an adult, we'd had a number of disagreements and, at one point, my parents had disowned me for marrying the love of my life, Howard Mansfield. We had a lot of disagreements, but in the moment that I beheld that ermine, I just felt this wave of forgiveness sweep over me for my mother. And I realized that she was fierce like that weasel, she shared a lot of the characteristics of that ermine, and there was so much in her to admire, and I realized how much I loved her, and how much I missed her.

CURWOOD: Now, you write about octopuses, in fact, a little shout out about us at the show when we went to meet one of your octopus friends at the New England Aquarium. How did you get into, well, talking and being with octopuses?

MONTGOMERY: The first octopus I met, I went in with an assignment for Orion Magazine on the intelligence of octopuses. And one of the keepers opened up the tank where Athena lived. And this huge animal, I mean, her arm span had to have been, oh, gosh, nine, ten, or more feet. She turned bright red with emotion. She slid from her lair, looking me straight in the eye with hers, and then out from the cold, 47 degree water come boiling up her arms, reaching for me with these questing suckers. So, naturally, I plunged my hands and arms right into the water to greet her. And the next thing I knew, I was patting her head. And she was just as curious about me as I was about her. And I came back several times to meet her. But the thing about octopuses is, they just don't live very long. And after only a few visits, I got the horrible news that she just died of old age. So, the next octopus who came, they invited me back to meet her, and that's the octopus, who you met, Steve, Octavia. And there's a chapter in this book about Octavia. And when I introduced you to Octavia, only once before had we had a close interaction. So, I really wasn't sure what she was going to do when she met you. But she was quite brilliant. She was interacting with you, and the producer, and the sound person. And while we were all petting, and feeding, and watching this octopus, just our senses being flooded with the sensation of touching this beautiful animal, feeling her suckers watching her change color right out from under our noses, she stole a bucket of fish, do you remember that?

CURWOOD: [LAUGHS] I do.

MONTGOMERY: [LAUGHS] She totally outwitted us.

CURWOOD: [LAUGHS] You know, I have to confess I was a bit fearful. I mean, I hadn't met an octopus before.

MONTGOMERY: Right. And they're depicted as monsters in all kinds of literature, and paintings, and etchings.

CURWOOD: Yeah, when I reached in their first there was one sucker, and then there were several suckers, and everything attached. But thanks for you being there, I simply relaxed. But when I heard that she too died of old age and motherhood, I was sad.

MONTGOMERY: I know, I know, they just break your heart. But I knew her more intimately than any other octopus, because I knew her pretty much from when she first showed up at the aquarium until she died. And it was just so beautiful to be able to see the full arc of her life. And the last thing a mother octopus does is tend for their eggs. And even though her eggs were infertile, she tended them with all the tenderness and love that a mother octopus would feel for living eggs. And that was a real blessing to be able to see.

CURWOOD: Now you, I think you struggle at times with making sure to not anthropomorphize the animals in your stories. But you also make the point that, perhaps the worse mistake is to assume that animals are emotionless, that they don't have emotions.

MONTGOMERY: Exactly, exactly. What we don't want to do is project our feelings onto other animals, or other people. And so, and, we can't help it sometimes, you know, we can easily imagine that an animal wants to be petted, and when maybe it doesn't. That's a common mistake. But more dangerous, as you said, is to think that they don't have thoughts or feelings, thoughts and feelings are not human things alone. We're part of a huge family of living creatures, and consciousness does not belong to us alone. Emotion does not belong to us alone. These are things that are helpful to animals to let them live. So, we do ourselves and the creatures a terrible disservice to assume that they are thinking nothing, that they are feeling nothing, that they know nothing, that they do not make decisions. We will never understand the lives around us unless we realize that animals are thinking, feeling, knowing beings.

CURWOOD: So before you go, Sy, what do you hope to impart to animal loving listeners, or even those whose relationships with animals may be a little more tenuous or even skeptical?

MONTGOMERY: Well, I would want to say that we are embedded in this glorious world of other souls, other minds, and these others have so much to teach us. And being surrounded by teachers in a confusing and difficult world should make us feel far more at home here, and far more in love with our homes, and give us the courage to fight for this beautiful Earth that is so imperiled, and so alive.

CURWOOD: Sy Montgomery's book is called How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir In 13 Animals. Sy, thanks so much for taking the time with us today.

MONTGOMERY: Oh, such a pleasure, Steve.

Related links:
- Sy Montgomery’s website
- How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals
- Our interview with Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas from 2017
- A previous LOE story where we met Octavia, the Giant Pacific Octopus

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[MUSIC: Bob Moses - “Elegant Blue Ghosts” on Time Stood Still, Gramavision 1994]

CURWOOD: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Paloma Beltran, Kayla Bradley, Josh Croom, Daniela FAH-ria, “Mehek” Gagneja, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Nana Mohammed, Aynsley O’Neill, Sophia Pandelidis, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt, and El Wilson.

DOERING: Tom Tiger engineered our show.

Allison Lirish Dean composed our themes. You can hear us anytime at L-O-E dot org, Apple Podcasts and YouTube Music, and like us, please, on our Facebook page - Living on Earth. We tweet from @livingonearth. And find us on Instagram at livingonearthradio.And we always welcome your feedback at comments at loe dot org.

I’m Jenni Doering

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood. Thanks for listening and Happy Holidays!