Joe Rogan Experience #1975 — Dan Flores Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the Joe Rogan experience I've told so many people about coyotes because of you and I seem so smart. Really? also honeypotted my dog into killing my chickens. Did I tell you that story? No, you didn't tell me This dog was just, he was just such a sweetheart. and a malinois no matter what it's still only 60 70 pounds and so we brought in these regency

2:49 any aggression towards other dogs or any aggression towards people. six feet high like a wrought iron fence he couldn't get over this fence he didn't even try to And then have you ever raised chickens before? And they pluck their feathers out and they just sit on this egg and they stop making eggs. and so somehow or another this coyote became friends with my dog just kept hanging around

5:22 I forget what game it was, but I saw in the background, and ran off with it. coop so he tore a hole in the mesh the chicken wire he just tore it apart just Well, I mean, this is an example of what one would call animal culture. So I wonder because we don't have a way of amenable to being with humans and hanging out with us, but also because there are some

8:53 because unlike wolves, they're not the big brawny dogs on the block. They're the ones who have to So they didn't interbreed with them. One was the elimination of wolves in the east, which created an open niche for a mid-sized predator. And the other was this They are coyotes like humans are fish and fusion animals. 1960s, coyotes were first beginning to appear in Louisiana, which is how I got fascinated with them.

12:06 But in the historical record that we have, they weren't on the East Coast until the middle of the 20th century. government hunters, and they argue that by 1944, there are no wolves at all left east of the Mississippi River. They are all gone. There are wolves down in Louisiana. In the deep south, Yeah, they are able to, when they howl, one of the things they do with howls, I mean,

14:51 one of the things that happens is the food base is larger. So if you have a coyote pack has, say, seven pups, Angeles. They're everywhere. I remember the first time I saw one, it was 1994 I mean, that was, you know, they were there when L.A. was founded and they basically never left. Where's all the rats? But the rats. This rat goes, he realizes He's using tools.

18:03 See how he reacted? He's got to know probably. One of the things I noticed is rats had realized if they get to the garbage in the garage like this cannibalism fight for survival is going on in my garage but I don't even think where you are. And that's why coyotes out get the he's like hey you big motherfucker go break that thing it's it they're they're amazing

21:42 in part because I always have really big dogs I have places outside town and usually or built places outside town and lived half an hour away from the city where I was working or where I had to commute they will pluck up a small dog or a cat, and they fly away with them to their roosting spot. And you just see in the distance the eyes of the owl Bang.

26:01 Oh yeah. advocates for coyotes appearing on the scene and taking out cats that people, either feral cats I mean, don't let your cat do this. candy people. They're clever. They do indeed. I mean, they're really big and they sound cool Have you done it? Well, it depends on what you're trying to alarm. You know, I mean, some birds are quicker than others. I mean, as you

30:15 And I've just got a new dog. this particular raven started hanging around where, I mean, in New Mexico and Southwest, so and then fly down and pick up the rat. So then I started closing the distance into five feet and then three feet. This raven, over time, came to realize have conversations. I have no idea what he's saying, but he's very vocal and he's very expressive.

33:49 So they were trying to get dolphins, but they have no idea what they're saying. No idea, which is amazing. No, but they are is that animals just like us have culture. As Charles Darwin said, it's just a matter of degree, not kind. They have all the same attributes and all the same abilities. level of cultural transmissibility, of the ability to communicate with one another,

37:36 It makes sense if you think about their ability to use tools and their ability to displace water. point when this raven fairly clearly, it seemed to me as I observed him, came to some kind of Thanks for, you know. Do you miss him when you go on the road? That is so cool. the raven, but as soon as he goes to sleep, I'll pull my kibbles out, drop them out for the raven

42:12 there's no way of telling. I mean, and ravens kind of tend to all look alike, but this particular What a great story. reintroduced wolves to Montana and Idaho in 1995, and within about three or four years, Like seven or eight years ago, I wrote a book about them, or one of the reasons was it's coyotes. because the elk hunting that I've done, most of it has been ambush, like sneak up on them.

45:58 and that's how they get lured in. They also learn, too. So when there's heavy pressure areas, after Phil. But I succeeded Johnny Prudhomme as the quarterback of the high school team. And I Do you still keep in touch with those guys? I was traveling to the north. in these what they would call the flyover states the disrespectfully most of the country oh yeah

49:35 in a pickup truck driving about 60 miles an hour across rutted fields after us and so my memory of would start on a story we would just say okay it's number 112 guys and so everybody would start Well, maybe we can reunite you guys. Coyote America and American Serengeti kind of set me up to be able to take a step back, where we're trying to accomplish something like returning the American Serengeti.

53:01 America starts acquiring its bestiary, its creatures. In the aftermath of and also through this migration from other parts of the world. But what I try to create with that and try to set up with that is this bestiary of creatures Yeah, I got a lot of it. if you date the human story even back, and I started our story as wild animals in Africa, the reason we do this, this is kind of one of the reasons why all of us love to find spots where

57:41 I mean, that's at the height of the glacial maximum, man. coming down the coastlines, maybe in some kind of craft, managed to get here as long ago as 23,000 all the way to the tip of South America. It's kind of one of the great colonization stories in last well over 300 years. And they're probably using spears, but they have come up with a great new technology, which is the fluted point. They figured out a way, and fluted points aren't found

1:02:06 all 13 calves and adolescents archaeologists found dead in one spot, each with a single She had put up a huge fight to try to defend them, and ultimately she hadn't been successful. But they were succeeded by a group known as So 1908, they discover Folsom sites. to Greece and Rome. And you Americans, you kind of just, you know, you don't have much going on at all. And so what the Folsom site did was to give America an ancient history, a history that made us a major part of this world story that I was kind of alluding to when I was describing people finally discovering the Americas

1:06:25 buffalo hunting plains back in the 1870s, so he had seen buffalo butchered. He knew what the ones that world that humans had been present in America, at the time everybody thought Indians had only all the famous archaeologists in the United States. A guy named Alfred Kidder was the most had killed 32 bison antuquus in what had once been a box canyon on the southern plains 12,450 years ago. And so

1:10:55 History dates to the time Europeans got here in the 1600s. When you say that the Clovis points and the Folsom points So you have a triangular point, and it has two ears coming out and you attach, you use the ears as a place to attach the rawhide. When did they figure that out? Well, they certainly figured it out by what's called the people, about Clovisia the Beautiful, and they were all over America, by the way. There are more

1:14:16 to a little lesser extent Folsom, is that there are these spectacular blades that they did. Wow. that's one of the possibilities these days. We have genomic science that's able to tell us things and survived down to about 4,000 years ago. and the local native people and archaeologists went out to the Shields River, Was there genetic material? and that they probably, when the ice sheets opened,

1:21:08 And the reason these innovations were important, by the way, and to answer your question, it was about 2,000 years ago. When did archery first, when did they believe archery was first invented? injuries from taking on animals. But Neanderthals, one of the things we know from nitrogen isotope They were primarily using wooden spears. They didn't have flint points. They

1:23:59 72,000 to 60,000 years ago. by Faheen Cave in Sri Lanka Remains of these creatures Once people get there and the glacial maximum recedes and the climate begins to warm enough to break apart the corridor that links Asia and North America, It's the term that people have been using these days is the great dying. and to be sure, Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were taking, I mean, you know, some of these amazing structures that they're now finding in the Amazon jungle. Oh, yeah.

1:28:49 Nine of those burials span the entire history, the 300-year history of Chaco. And so a couple of times a year, usually at the solstices, had finally come to North America. And we reached a point when droughts began to strike is what caused this civilization to collapse when the peasant class basically rose this ancient culture and the people wise up and go, you can't make it rain. Yeah. And then they

1:32:31 For about 300 years. So that's Pueblo Bonito. or representation of what it must have? Look at that. disappeared over the life of Chaco because these people were farming the classic Mexican this just applies to us. But these kind of things, living for status, you know, acting in a way that This is the classic way. I mean, you know. They're all still here when Europeans get here.

1:37:47 get pregnant. So that spaces births out. And the other thing they do is, frankly, And I'll say this also about infanticide. After a woman would carry a baby to term by 8,000 or 9,000 or 10,000 years ago and have to go to agriculture and domestication. understood their local ecologies really well. And one of the things you knew is that you couldn't even still among some hunter-gatherers that exist today.

1:42:11 Wild turkeys were domesticated. Any animal that preys on your sheep or your goats has to be eliminated. Other animals are just like us. web. I mean, it's what Charles Darwin finally provides the scientific evidence for. And, content. So it's really engraved in my system. And here's what happened. When I was four years old, My mom and I go out in the backyard.

1:47:17 She looks down at me, and although she's crying and feels compassion for me, So it was my instruction in the European worldview. gold, trees, grass, whatever we want to exploit, we turn them into commodities. And it's sort of the explanation for the global North American And the first great American corporation especially the ones from England and France, they've gone through centuries of the feudal

1:51:04 And suddenly here are all these animals, all this wildlife. I mean, in super abundance. And nobody is telling you that you can't go after it. rural and lower class people basically rise to the middle class as you exploit animal populations and But when I was in Montana at least three times in the last decade I was there, I would buy a deer license and shoot a mule deer out in the pasture in order to stock my freezer with venison.

1:53:02 And, you know, what a lot of people do is if they already think what you're saying, that was happening, I mean, we were taking out, I mean, this is one of the ones that stuns me. bison. I mean, you had to use firearms, obviously, for that. But for passenger pigeons, What did that look like? yeah so this this pigeon is secured in place somehow yeah so it is its feet are attached to

1:56:03 That's incredible. from while they were on their nests. So why were they surprised? I mean, the whole idea is as when the last passenger pigeon died, for example, in 1914, you know, a famous story, So that was kind of the extent. And what I'm arguing with it is that what we bring out of the old world to America is the conviction that we're going to recreate North America,

1:59:05 grizzly bears, wolves, are probably the ecologists it's Aldo Leopold, really, who sort of is the advocate for this more than anybody else. it suddenly occurs to me, wow, there are no strings. There are no, wow, there are no woodwinds. in it quickly and then he has this great line and i use it as the title of one of the chapters in here. I wish to know an entire

2:02:40 I mean, this was kind of the Hail Mary. Now, to be sure, back at the beginning of the 20th century when Teddy Roosevelt is president, in America. After 1900, and we started the predator war, he found 42 of them. So the idea was we're going to use human hunters as the substitute for the predators When you see them in comparison to everything else. Yeah, their legs in particular.

2:05:13 So the question for a while was, so why the speed overkill? predation is they have two fawns. You have two fawns, a spare and an heir, Yeah, there's some in California still, and they used to have a larger population out of the Great Plains. Yeah, the bison story, and you know, I obviously, I tell it in several years old or three years old, they can begin having calves. The gestation period is not as long

2:09:26 numerous, like passenger pigeons. It's one of the arguments for why passenger pigeons survive so when they get to places like Georgia and Florida and Virginia Ice Age, which lasts for about 300 years, from about 1450, 1550 or so, somewhere in that range, within two or three days of us being there, almost all the people in the village fell sick Yeah, it's another one of these amazing stories that, I mean, we've only been figuring this kind of stuff out, you know, for the last 20 or 30 years.

2:14:25 No, I didn't do it. They did that with Rinella as well, with his book, The American Bison. I can get the rights to do it, They're silly. talk to you about is I want to get you together with Randall Carlson because Randall Carlson people out there. You know, Ross McPhee from the American Museum of Natural History, Donald Grayson, Ross McPhee, for example, about the Younger Dryas period, which is, for your listeners,

2:18:22 Yeah. And then there's another site that's- Yeah. And they've already started discovering things. they've started to find things. This is, we're still in March, I think, was when they discovered it, if I remember correctly. There it is right there, right below that. A chunk of a jawbone of a step bison that they found in the East River. It was a fairly small skull, but the horn cores were there. And yeah, it was very exciting to

2:22:02 and also nanodiamonds, these impact diamonds, The photographs are extraordinary brilliantly researched I mean and has had debates with scientists over this they were just hunters and gatherers. Now we know they were capable of very sophisticated stonework And I would love to have if you're interested in that. to describe these things and his recall of the information is second to none.

2:26:29 It's a wild argument. as they spread across the earth over the subsequent several thousand years and cost us in attempt to try to come up with what would explain an extinction scenario that doesn't take out things in the ocean, that doesn't take out about it to have this conversation with you, but I'm blown away by this guy, Randall Carlson, Biologists call those K species, which have these really long gestation periods. So they would make

2:30:39 And it was really entertaining. I can't wait to listen to this one again. It was so good. I appreciate you very much.