Mary Roach Discusses "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law"

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe welcome acclaimed science writer Mary Roach back to the show to discuss her new book "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law."

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production
of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to
Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. In today's episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
we have a special interview guest. It's science writer Mary Roach.

(00:23):
We're gonna be chatting with her about her new book
fuzz When Nature Breaks the Law, which is out today
wherever you get your books. This is my first Mary
Roach book, and I love it. It. I I feel
ashamed now that I had never read one of her
books before. Um, but she has such an infectious and

(00:43):
enjoyable prose style that really gets in your head. Um.
One of the things that I wanted to emphasize in
the intro here because because I've just been thinking about it.
In terms of subject matter, this book gets into a
lot of kind of dark and grizzly sounding stuff. But
it is but despite that, it is a really funny book.
It is like one of the most laugh out loud

(01:05):
funny books I've read in a long time. Yeah, it's engaging,
it's weird, it's fun. Um. I was telling my wife
about the book and she's read Mary Roach before, and
my wife was like, well, some of that sounds a
little dark. I don't know, I want to read that
right now. But but of course this has always been
the way with Mary roach books. There. They do get
into dark territory, but they are always fun and and humorous.

(01:27):
Um if you're not familiar out there. Her previous books
include two thousand three Stiff, which is about cadaver's two
thousand five Spook, which is about scientific inquiries, especially early
scientific inquiries into the supernatural, two thousand eights Bunk, which
is about sexuality, two thousand tens Packing for Mars, which

(01:47):
is about the science scientific research into UH into into
the Quest for Space, two thousand thirteens Gulp, which is
about human digestion uh and then two thousands sixteen book
was Grunt, which is about military scientific investigations. I've read
all of these, and I think this is the This

(02:09):
is the fourth time Mary has actually been on stuff
to blow your mind, as she previously dropped in to
talk about Packing from Mars, Gulp, and Grunt. She's either
our most featured guest at this point or she's tied
for the honors. I can't remember either way. Friend of
the show's status is definitely in place. Mary Roach, thanks
for joining us today. Could you introduce yourself? Of course,

(02:32):
I'm Mary Roach. As you said, I have a nonfiction author,
and my most recent book is called Fuzz Sometimes When
Nature Breaks the Law. I have been so enjoying this book.
I love your dry, humorous prose style in it. And
I thought, before we got any broader questions about about

(02:54):
the book and what you've learned from writing it, I
thought it would be good to kick off with an
example of the kinds of speriences you cover in the book.
And so I loved the story you cover in the
very first chapter about the wildlife Human Attack Response training
course you went through in Las Vegas. Could you tell
us a bit about this conference and and what got
you there and what it was like? Sure? Sure, yeah.

(03:17):
It's called uh Wildlife Human Attack Response Training UH or WART,
which by its founders admission, is a terrible acronym. So
WART is a five day course which I was lucky
enough to be able to sit in on, and it's
most almost entirely attended by people who deal with wildlife

(03:39):
attacks the aftermath of the attack. And it's basically, you know,
you're setting up a crime scene and you're doing forensics
as you might in the case of a human on
human killing, uh, and you're trying to trying to take evidence,
collect evidence, established linkage between the perpetrator and the victim. Um.
And if they they caught an animal that they think

(04:01):
might be the animal and the DNA doesn't match or
they don't they're not able to establish that language, they'll
release the animals. So there's these bizarre parallels to the
human the human criminal justice system. But for me, it
was just a fascinating five days of hanging out and
hearing a lot about predator attacks and the aftermath, which

(04:22):
was both fascinating and often quite grizzly. G R. I. Yes,
it's not easy. Um. So Yeah, it was utterly fascinating
to me because I've you know, I've never encountered this
world and did not know that these prime scenes were
processed that way and that this work was done. Yeah.
So you include some details about like, uh, these sessions

(04:45):
where you would be given a mannequin that had these
wounds inflicted on it with saws and knives and things,
and you'd have to establish what type of animal it
was from the wounds on the mannequin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They had these soft touch mannequins. They're not like something
you'd see in a store window. They were. They were
you know, they're fleshy, I'll say fleshy. And they were.

(05:07):
The people who had created these wounds were people who've
seen they I mean, they were based on actual bodies
and the wounds on the victims of attacks. Some of
them bear, some of them cougar or mountain lion. Um
and uh quite uh quite realistic, I have to say.
And and so they were, they were. We all had workstations,

(05:28):
you know, they were about it. There were about I
think eight or more, maybe a few more workstations each
group had, uh, mock victim. And the idea was, look
at these wounds and what can you learn? And you
can pretty quickly, uh make a distinction between first of all,
human versus animal and then um uh mountain lion versus bag.

(05:50):
They kill in very different ways. They have very different
teeth and claws, and the marks on the body and
the wounds will tell you, um, quite readily who the
perpetrator or what species the perpetrator was. Um. And then
after that is established and you sort of you're moving
down to more than nitty gritty of looking at saliva,

(06:12):
you know, matching DNA between the victim and the animal.
So you might be doing that with saliva on the
victim's body or blood. You might be looking into the
gums of the animal to see is their human tissue
there and does is that? Does that match the victim,
So you'd be just like you might do on you know,

(06:32):
C S I or one of those shows that I
never watched, but those forensics shows so uh, super interesting stuff.
One of the details from the section that really stuck
with me was in warning to everyone, this is about
to get gruesome. The idea of since bears tend to
when they do attack humans, which is rare, but when
they do, they tend to bite repeatedly at the face

(06:54):
that you might expect to say, find human facial features
like lips or something, it's stuck in the bear's teeth
or the stomach. You would examine the bear's stomach contents
and they're you know, they're they're not necessarily chewing all
that thoroughly, and so you might find, you know, an
entire i or in one case, a part of the

(07:17):
scalp with a mohawk haircut and which in fact match
the victim's hairstyle. So yeah, with bears, because bears when
they attack each other, they use their teeth and go
for the face. They go for each other's face because
that's lightly furred and they can inflict more damage. And
that's the sets. They're kind of Achilles heel, which is

(07:37):
in there their head, not their foot. Uh So they're
that's kind of what they do and when that which
makes for some pretty horrible injuries. Also, you see that
also um with with cougars because they they're biting at
the neck. But sometimes you know when um, I use

(07:58):
the comparison and in rather grizzly, but when you think
of biting into a very ripe plum, how when you
bite into it, the skin pulls away. So so what
you sometimes have is kind of these scalpings as it work.
Was that you know, if you if you try, if
you're an animal and you're trying to get your jaw
around a human head, you're hitting bone right away, and

(08:20):
then you close your jaws and it pulls the skin away.
So some of these um mannequins were really a little
tough to tough to see and I can imagine coming
upon the real thing would be pretty disturbing. But one
of the interesting things that is this is a takeaway
from observing all these different kinds of wounds, is that

(08:40):
almost all of them indicate that we are not really
what this animal has evolved to use its jaws or
claws on. And so like you described with the with
the cougars biting the back of the head or bears
attacking humans, the bites almost reveal the strangeness of this
encounter between the human and the animal. Write a bear

(09:02):
bears eat, I mean they're they're mostly eating nuts, berries, fruit, um,
if sometimes fish, grasses. So they have molars that they
have a jaw that goes side to side, and they've
got molars for crushing and grinding um. So there, So
the bites on a human, it's a it's it's messy,

(09:24):
is the way it was put. It's kind of a
messy affair. Whereas uh, a mountain lion is does a
leaps attacks secures, the pride does a killing bite. So
these puncture wounds, these triangular puncture wounds, it's a less
messy death, if you will. So, yeah, you can really
see how the animals equipped to gather its food and uh.

(09:47):
And with mountain lions, yeah, they do tend to they
pounce and kill. They are predators and true carnivores, but
they're not true We're not on the menu they like
deer or wild pigs or they're not They're not going
after humans. Very very rarely a whole decade, we'll go
buy in California where we don't have a single mountain
lion fatality. It's just a very unusual occurrence. Now, speaking

(10:11):
of bears, I re really I really enjoyed the how,
not only with the bear chapter, but you know, multiple
chapters in the book. You you kind of you turn
our pre existing notions of these animals kind of on
their head, even if we think that our pre existing
notions are kind of you know, well informed. Uh, but
with the with the bear in particular, when you're talking
about the break ins that are perpetrated by bears and

(10:35):
in these cases, how it seems like the bear is
such a contradiction. Can you speak to like some of
those some of those details about like how how reckless
they can be, but then so how just almost hauntingly precise. Sure, Yeah,
I spent some time in um Picken County, Colorado, on
the outskirts of downtown Aspen, up in the hills. Um,

(10:57):
and this is a ski or as or town. We're
up in the mountains. We are in bear territory. Uh
and so uh the bears are in. The bears start
to realize nuts and berries, these are great, grab apples,
choke cherry, this is great. But these humans, these humans
seem to have some really good stuff inside their homes.

(11:19):
And a bear that kind of realizes that surprisingly adept
at popping a window or even turning. They call the
bear handles their French door handles, which you just pushed
down on and pushed the door and it opens quite easily.
So bears are find it very easy to to get
into two people's homes and people are sometimes surprised. It

(11:41):
depends on the bear. But some bears like the break
in that where I went to the aftermath of this
break in, and the bear had gone through a downstairs,
through a deck leading to a bedroom downstairs, and then
up to the kitchen. Didn't knock anything over. Uh, didn't
even leave footprint sun bears. Um. The guy who the

(12:03):
wildlife invested was Colorado Fish and Game and fish and
wildlife that he was talking about, how they they will
sometimes reach in like take out a carton of eggs
and inside, or or take out things that they don't
want to put them aside. One bear allegedly opened hers
she's kiss open the foil her. She's kiss uh and

(12:24):
and ate that. So there there, um, yeah, they there.
While they can create, you know, a god awful mess,
whether it's on a body or in someone's kitchen, sometimes
they're surprisingly um precise and laid back. It's it's interesting
how different their person individual personalities are. Was it from uh,

(12:44):
the person you were speaking with the Colorado Fish and
Wildlife that you got that fact about, or at least
the allegation that some of these bears apparently have brand
preferences when it comes to ice cream, like they really
like Hogin does, but they don't like the store brand. Yes,
it was. It was. It was a woman from the
neighboring town is It's Snowmass. I think the it's a

(13:06):
it's a again a mountain resort ski and mountain biking
resort town, Tina White I believe her name was, And
she said that the black bears in the area they
prefer premium brands. They will not touch Western Family ice Cream,
which I guess is like a low rent brand that
they have in Colorado, and they're like, no, no, no,

(13:27):
thank you. I gotta say the parts of that chapter
where you were talking about the bears getting into the trash,
the unsecured trash outside of fancy restaurants, that was really
making me hungry when you were listing all the foods
they were stabbing their snouts into, so the rotten Barata
cheese and the and the sustainable sicunas salon, and exactly

(13:48):
if they were like, this is some good, thank you,
thank Let's see. Let's let's go a little broader for
a second here and just talk about the book itself,
which again is fuzz when when nature breaks the law.
I was just wondering, how how long have you been
planning this particular book, and is there is there anything

(14:10):
in particular that you can point to as being like
the inspiration point that led you down this road. Oh,
I wish I had a great origin story because people
people often ask about that, and um I came to
it this one and it's a really kind of circuitous
roundabout not necessarily all that interesting. Half I had originally

(14:31):
gotten interested in wildlife crime scene forensics, but not when
the animals are the perpetrators, but when the animals are
the victims. So I was up at this forensics lab
that the Fish and Wildlife Department has, talking to this
woman who was an expert in how to tell counterfeit
versus genuine dried tiger penis, because of course it's illegal

(14:54):
to traffic and animal endangered animal parts. And uh, as
it turns out, almost all as was being passed off
as tiger penis is deer or horse or cow, partly
because those are easier to come by, and they're bigger
and more impressive. And if you're trying to quote unquote
cure erectile discilation or make yourself more virile, a little

(15:15):
tiger penis doesn't. It doesn't have the right optics. Anyway,
that's a long winded way of saying. I was up
at this lab, the Vision Wildlife National Wildlife Forensics Laboratory,
and I thought, well, this this could be an interesting area.
But as it turns out, I was not going to
be able to follow any open investigations. I wasn't to
be able to tag along with investigators and do the

(15:36):
kind of thing I really have to do for my
books to make it interesting for myself hopefully for the reader.
So that was a dead end, and I kind of
various other things happened. But I eventually thought, well, what
if I turned it around, and what if the animals
were the perpetrators and the people are the victims, and
and you know what, what would what's to be done there?

(15:57):
And I learned that there's in fact a whole science
this devoted to this, called human wildlife conflict and the
science of human wildlife conflict, and there's conventions and scientists
and researchers. So I thought that could be an interesting
world to step into. So it was a circuitous path,
it wasn't It wasn't. I have not been attacked, or

(16:19):
not until the book, by any animal. That's right, you were.
You were robbed by a monkey. I was mugged by
cac Yes, I was. So when I when I picked
up the book and was getting into it, you know,
I expected a lot of it, of course, to be
happening in a contemporary setting and dealing with our modern world,
thinking like, okay, this is where the legal system has
led and this is where you know, the growth of

(16:41):
human populations and expansion has led. So I was I
was really surprised and interested when you mentioned a book
from nineteen o six, The Criminal Prosecution and Punishment of Animals.
But I believe E. P. Evans, Can you talk a
little bit about this? Sure, that's something I came upon
very early on and also pushed me towards this topic.
A bizarre book. This is a book detailing the things

(17:04):
that human societies used to do to deal with animals
and insects that were committing crimes against them. Crimes in
the sense of following our laws, you know, stealing or
or committing manslaughter. And what used to happen is that
they were uh, criminally prosecuted. The example I given the

(17:26):
book is this case. It's from sixteen fifty nine in
Northern Italy, a province in northern Italy, and um caterpillars
were eating a lot of the crops, lettuces, whatever they were.
And these caterpillars will do they're hungry, They've got, you know,
bulk up for their little transition. And so the community

(17:47):
that the um whoever the magistrate or the head person
was posted summons legal summons on the trees in the area.
Requesting that the caterpillars appear in court on a set date,
at which point the summons said they would be assigned
legal representation and a trial would ensue. And of course

(18:08):
the caterpillars did not appear in court, but by that
time had pupated, weren't causing any problems anymore. But but
that's this book. It's like four hundred pages of well
documented situations and cases. There were, you know, livestock, some
of it pigs, pigs killing small children. Not don't care
about that happening much today, but apparently used to happen

(18:30):
with some frequency. The pigs being tried, executed, sometimes imprisoned.
And I thought this, I almost thought this was a
hoax because it was so so bizarre. But the bat
be appendix as a number of these documents and um
in some detail in Latin a lot of the times,
sometimes French. Uh, And so it was. It was real,

(18:51):
and it was not that there were just simple minded people.
It was the way, the way the author explained it.
It was a way to um display the breadth of
your powers as as a legal entity or as a leader,
you know, even nature must follow my rules, and you
will be punished so it's kind of a display, kind
of ludicrous, but a display of dominion and power and

(19:16):
I control all so. But but the the details were
quite quite amazing. I mean people ritz w r I
t rits of ejectment that were stucked into the burrows
of rats like you must leave the must they get
the premises under penalty of law. Honestly, legal system not

(19:36):
the best approach of the animals. They don't read, they
don't care. They just want a place to have a
nest or get something to eat, and we offer that
and they take advantage of it. These are crimes of
opportunity for the most part. Anyway that that book is
a fascinating it thought particularly easy to get through, but
a fascinating read. Nineteen o six when the book was published.

(19:59):
Do you think these kinds of legal actions were at
all um based on a certain theological understanding of law.
I don't recall any mention of this in the book,
but you know, was there an idea that maybe if
you issued a certain kind of legitimate uh sanctioned by
the court, that somehow God would enforce it or something. Yeah, yes,

(20:21):
there there definitely was a religious element. There was this
sense that this belief that these plagues and these um
actions of these animals were being or a punishment on
the people themselves, that that God was punishing us by
sending these creatures. So, yeah, that was that was tied
into it. There was a belief that we the community

(20:43):
are being punished and so you know, we will I mean,
I don't know that's exactly what you were asking, but
that was that was definitely part of the part of
the belief. But that on the subject of theology and religion,
you do and later the book get into that a bit,
uh talking to individuals about like what is what is

(21:05):
one's religious responsibility towards these animals that we may think
of as vermin. Well, yeah, I spent some time in India,
which has quite a different attitude and relationship attitude toward
animals and relationship with them, partly because a lot a
lot of the deities and Hinduism are animals, where they're
you know, they appear as animals, or the spouse is

(21:28):
an animal, or they ride around on an animal, and
they themselves like hant him on is you know, the
monkey head and Gunnesh the elephant. Cows are considered sacred.
So it's a when when those animals start to cause problems, Um,
people are not as quick to rush in to calling
the authorities to exterminate them or call them. Uh, there's

(21:52):
a there's a stigma attached to that, you know, a
new Delhi, the tremendous problems of macaques troops and not
just not just Deli. All over cities in northern India.
Macaques cause a lot of problems. And uh, one of
the things that's done in nadelis to catch them and
transport them down to this large sanctuary in the southern
part of the city. It used to be a mine

(22:14):
and now it's really wilded and is a place where
the maccaques are let loose. And it's very very hard
for the authorities to hire monkey catchers. I mean that
is this just you would you would be looked at
a scance if you were somebody who was trapping and
man handling macaques. Because of the religious significance of these animals.

(22:34):
The other thing going on while their pests and nuisances
to people that people are also they gather at temples,
these monkeys because they know people will and offerings. They
will not only inside the temple where you know the
more conventional um offerings are made, but when they go outside,
they see the monkey, and they will give them monkey,
you know, fruit or little packets of soda or whatever

(22:57):
they'll they'll, So they're they're both encouraging the animal and
then also being harassed by it. So it's a sticky
problem there. The religious the religious elements make it more
complicated when when it comes to finding some sort of solution.
There are several examples in the book where you discuss
animals that in some way interact or have conflict with,

(23:20):
or live alongside humans, and how there might be a
sort of emergent evolutionary pressure on animals that know how
to exploit humans and just like just to the right
extent without overstepping and then being being dealt with violently.
Like you talked about this in the chapter with the bears,
which I thought was really interesting, how there there could

(23:40):
be a kind of evolutionary advantage for what are called
the fat Albert bears and bears that are you know,
get in and get a lot of calories out of
your fridge, but are less likely to have a scary
conflict with a person or less likely to damage the house. Right, Yeah,
the fat fat Albert was a bear that was quite
good at breaking into people's cabins and homes. This is

(24:03):
again Colorado, but people would marvel afterwards, like came in here,
didn't damage anything, and people were kind of impressed, you know, okay,
rated the fridge, took some stuff, didn't break anything. So
so not as likely to be angry or to perceive
this creature as a threat and to call uh, Colorado
Parks and Wildlife and and you know, request something be

(24:26):
done about the bear. So so then, you know, the
more fat Alberts, the more these bears persist and survived
to breeding age, the more you're gonna sort of see
more hopefully more fat Alberts. Because the bears that are
very aggressive, that are aggressive toward people or their pets,
or that break in and cause a lot of damage.
They to use the phrasing of the person I was

(24:48):
talking to, they're gonna get whacked fast, like some people
are going to be feel threatened. They're going to complain,
They're going to call the agency. Agency is going to
come out seat a big colvert trap and that animal
will be destroyed and so um, possibly, yes, possibly, you know,
the fat Alberts will be seeing more and more of
them and fewer and fewer of the aggressive ones, and

(25:09):
that could be a good thing over time. Now, in
your your section, in your in Fuzz dealing with animals
on the highways, you discuss self driving car solutions to
animal strikes. Uh, and I found this very fascinating as well.
How does it seem that self driving cars are likely
to react to animals on the road in the future. Well,

(25:32):
right now, there's something called a large animal detection system.
So an animal that kind a long legged, tall animal. Uh,
anything that comes into the path, the beam of the
detector that fits that visual profile will cause the car
to stop. That I mean that the brakes will be applied. H.

(25:55):
And the reason is a large animal detection system. What
they're hoping to prevent is illusions with a moose and
elk or an elk, because those animals are tall enough
that if the car strikes them, it strikes them in
the legs, and the entire torso and head and antler's
cart whales back over the car. And these animals are
tall enough that that that they come through the windfield

(26:18):
and land on the driver and or the passenger. And um,
the result is often a broken neck, death or or
or paralysis. So, um, it's quite different than just hitting
a deer or the deers. I mean, there's gonna be
a lot of damage to the car and to the deer,
but often the person's the person survives without serious injury, unless,

(26:40):
of course they swerved and hit a tree and went
off the road. Um. So a self driving car, uh,
the ones that I heard about I called, UM, I
think I've talked to someone at Volvo. Volvo and sad
because there's they're sold a lot in northern regions. Have
concerns about moose hitting moose because there's a lot of
fatalit easy, but when it I got curious about small animals,

(27:05):
like how does the car decide when it should just
plow forward because it's safer to hit a pet than
it is to swerve or how you know? How uh
if you stop short for a small animal, then the
car behind now smashes into you. How do you how
does a car make those decisions? You know? At what
point is it's safer for the human for the driver

(27:27):
to just go ahead and hit the raccoon? Um instead
of serving to save the animal's life. How? And I
tried to get an interview with someone at weimo UH
and a couple of other places, and they don't They
didn't want to talk about that. They don't want to
They didn't want to engage on the topic. Which leaves

(27:47):
me to think they haven't quite worked out worked out
what to do, because it's it's it's situation by situation, um.
The worst thing to do in the case of a
small animal on the road with you know, if there's
trees and things on the side of the road, you know,
to swerve sharply um and and put yourself at risk
of going off the road and hitting a tree or
a rock or a barrier. Um. That that's not what

(28:10):
you want to do. But but it's also to say, well,
our cars will just go ahead and plow into your
dog or cat or recoon to save your life. We
will just be just plowing right on through without even
breaking or even blinking an eye. So that you know
that the optics of that are kind of awful too.
So that's a question that I have that I that

(28:30):
as far as I know, hasn't really been answered. I
think that the priorities right now and they've got so
many other things to figure out before they get down
to what do we do about someone's beagle? Yeah, I
mean it reminds me of stuff I've read recently just
related in general to self driving cars. They're just about
all the things we do sometimes just nonsensical risks that

(28:53):
we take. Be it, um, you know, a risky left
hand turn, or the fact that yet that, like I'm
driving to pick my kid up school, I might swerve
around the chipmunk in the road, and it was in
retrospect it was dangerous, but also in retrospect, I'm not
sure I would have done anything else, you know. And
how do you translate or improve upon that that kind

(29:13):
of decision making in the machine? Right? And how do
you tell a small animal from a kid on a
small bicycle? And how do you I mean, those those
fine grain distinctions, how do you trust the car to
make those? It's it's really it is really tricky on um. Yeah,
and even you know, I have a a new issue

(29:35):
of a new edition of Stiff coming out and with
an epilogue where I went back and I talked to
me like what's new in these topics, And one of
the things that came up was passenger safety in a
self driving car if you you don't need to be
at the steering wheel in a set position. If you
can now sit sideways or or you know not, you're
not confined as you were as a driver. Well, now

(29:57):
in an impact, how do you keep that person safe?
Where do you put the air bags off? Somebody? People
can kind of sit across from each other, and you know,
you freed people up in the interior of the car.
How do you keep them, how do you keep them safe?
Where does the airbag go? How do you you know,
how do you configure the seatbelt? So all of that
has to be a rethought and probably you know, the
small animal portion of it will be pretty far down

(30:18):
the list. Is there Is there a date for the
new edition of Stiff? This? Yeah, this this week? I
think that. I think August thirty one, the new edition
with a snazzy new cover comes out. Yeah. This is
of course your your your first big book that that
kicked it a off. My first book, kind of Stiff,
came out in three I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(30:41):
I've read that. I've read I read all of your
books that have come out. They're always always thank you, jeez,
I'd love to hear that. Thank so One thing I
found interesting about UM the sections of the book involving

(31:02):
humans and animals that come into violent conflict UM, is that, well,
so you have a chapter about leopards in India that
intentionally stalk humans as prey repeatedly they become habituated to this,
and you got me wondering, what are some of the
broad truths about the difference between animals that sort of

(31:23):
stumble into hapless encounters with humans that might turn violent,
versus animals that deliberately stalk humans as prey. Yeah, the
broad truth is that it's very uncommon for an animal
that can easily attack and kill a human to do that.
We are not really on the typically, we are not

(31:46):
on the menu. Something has to to change. And in
the Middle Himalaya where I was in India, a couple
of things happened. One is the theory that Jim Corbett,
who has brought into hunt down some of these kind
of famous man eaters as he called them. His theory
was that during the pandemic of nineteen sevent there were

(32:09):
so many people dying that the traditional ritual of you know,
taking the body to the river and building a pyre,
and you know that wasn't happening, and they would, Um
it came up with a more expedient ritual, which is
to put a hot coal in the mouth and send
the body off sort of down the hill towards the river,

(32:29):
not to actually make the track and do the whole ritual.
And so there were a lot of bodies that were
now available, and leopard will scavenge. And the his belief
was that they developed a taste for human meat that way,
and that they then went on to incorporate human meat
into their diet going forward. Um, that's a that's a

(32:51):
theory that may well be true. Um. The theory of
the researcher that I traveled with was it had to
do with what's going on in that part of the world,
which is a lot of farming communities. Um, the men
have given up farming and gone to look for work
in the cities, and so there's a lot of rewilding land.
It's it's occupied by people. There are a lot of

(33:12):
you know, women and children left behind there. But there's
cover now for and there's a lot of brush around
homes and communities and which leopards need to hunt. They
will sneak up and then you know, cover the last
distance in a burst of speed and a pounds, so
they tend to need to have cover. Also, livestock there
isn't being as well tended, so it's kind of be

(33:34):
it's false prey to the leopards and the people, the
people who are watching the livestock. Sometimes there kids and
uht of the individuals killed by leopards in that region
in this once this researcher study, we're kids underten. Uh
So there's opportunities that weren't there for for animals that

(33:55):
hunt and and and sadly a human or a child
there or the or people's pets, they're they're easier to
catch than a deer or a wild pig. So part
of it maybe leopards just realizing this is an easy dinner.
It seems like a lot of these uh these stories
in some way involve um rapid changes or modification to

(34:20):
the landscape done by humans. Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah
that the situation there with elephants again surprising to me anyway.
Number of deaths five deaths a year caused by human
deaths caused by elephants. Um. And what's happening there is
there's this elephant corridor as it's called. The elephants tend

(34:43):
to move along this path looking for food. Um. It's
across northern India to the border with Nepal, and these
regions are seeing an influx of refugees and also Terry
has built several establishments. There's roads coming through and the
elephants are getting this is the term pocketed, stuck in
little pockets, and elephants eat a lot they travel and

(35:06):
sizeable herds and they are turning to the farmer's crops
for food because they don't have enough food and they're stuck.
They can't keep moving on the way they used to.
And so then that's when you have conflict because you
have these um villagers who they're they're depending on this
food to survive. You know, it's it's um subsistence farming.

(35:29):
And so you know, a troop of elephants that comes through,
even if they don't eat what you're growing, they're gonna
trample you know, you get the seven or eight elephants
are going to cause a tremendous amount of damage. So
people see the elephants coming onto their land and they'll
run out and they'll try you know, they're they're angry
and they're upset, and they tend to they tend to
be deaths from getting trampled or knocked over or I

(35:51):
mean an elephant even if they're that's not the elephant's intent.
It's a very big animal and it's just knocks you
with it's trunk. It can kill you. And um, so
so yes, it's it's humans moving into the territory and
and changing the landscape in ways that steiny's their their
natural behaviors and there there their way of surviving and

(36:12):
getting food. You see that also, you know highways, interstate
highways in this country, sometimes they're put in without taking
a look at, well what what animals migrate seasonally to
get food, go to a different elevation to get food
or to breed, and are we cutting them off? You know?
That's so that's um, that's a problem. And you can
build an overpast, but that's an expensive thing to do

(36:32):
and you know, much better to look at that beforehand,
saying you know, what is the situation here in this
this swath of land, what kind of wildlife do we
have and how do they move each year seasonally? Is
there is this a bad idea? Correct me? If I'm wrong,
but I think another example of that kind of thing
about um modification of the landscape and and the problems

(36:54):
that causes is like poor choices about the relationship between
different types of plants or fruit bearing plants, especially and
settled areas. Like I think you give the example of
was it an aspen or somewhere else in Colorado that
the city was planting crab apple trees within the city
even while they're trying to solve their bear problem. But
then the other thing that stuck with me was I

(37:16):
think you were talking about um cabins being like sited.
Somebody buy a plot of land and build a cabin
right in the middle of a bunch of natural berry trees,
so that would be the place where like the bears
would already be habituated to coming. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The crab apples and downtown aspen um I mean crab
apple if you I mean, if you've seen a crab

(37:37):
apple tree, it's they're tiny crab apples, but their own set,
their clusters of them call like grapes, and the bears
just sort of like opens its mouth, you know, and
like pulls its mouth down the branch and gets these
big mouthfuls. I mean, the crab apple trees just heaven't
you know, if you're an animal looking to get a
concentrated food source and lots of calories to put on
weight before you hibernate crab apple tree. Yeah. So the

(38:01):
fact that those are planted in downtown, um, they're pretty
when they blew. Yeah, that's true. They are lovely in
the spring, but creating creating some issues there and and
there was even efforts to get them the city to
take them out and they resisted that, which this seems
a little it was a little ill advised. But yeah, yeah,

(38:22):
I mean here in the in the Bay area, a
lot up in the hills in Berkeley and Oakland, a
lot of deer. So it really behooves you when you
do your landscaping to plant plants that deer are not
interested in. That is something any good landscape or here
will do, is suggest plants that deer I don't like,

(38:42):
otherwise you won't have much landscaping very soon. And of
course that this all leads to some people might might
jump to the conclusion, well don't don't we need to
kill more of these animals, And that's that's something you
discuss quite a bit like this idea that if sometimes
these just elaborate efforts to remove the animals that then
just backfire for for reasons that you get into in

(39:04):
the book. Um And at one point you you refer
to quote the inside out history of conservation in America,
which which I think I love the way you put
that there, because yeah, dealing with how conservation in America
is often tied up in these also these eradication movements
or in the hunting movement. Can you speak to some
of that that complexity there? Well, sure, concert conservation, wilderness

(39:29):
conservation came out of a desire to set aside these large,
pristine tracts of wilderness so that hunters would have a
place to haunt. Essentially, they were they were hunted fish
and they're still. I mean, to this day we have
a lot of government land that is managed by wildlife agencies,

(39:51):
and wildlife agencies are funded still by hunting licenses and
taxes on equipment. So there's a there is this link.
I mean, on the one hand, it is fabulous that
these these were set aside, that they didn't become agricultural land.
I live in in California, and if you go out
to the Central Valley. Um, there are these little pockets
of California as it used to be, these wetlands with

(40:15):
these tremendous diversity of bird life that you know, bird
bird stopping over and during migration. You know, you have
you know, ducks, gadwalls, geese, just dozens of species. It's
a birders paradise. But there's also a little hunting cabins
for duck hunters who come and the land was set
aside by and for hunting, but it's also something you know,

(40:38):
for hikers and and birders, and it's a weird it is.
You know, I, as a birdwatcher used to go out there.
I never knew about the little hunters cabins. It's kind
of like this sort of secret reality of that that
area and those wetlands. But it really struck me, you know,
driving home, going from this really beautiful kind of verdant

(40:58):
swath of California being that behind and going out into
the more typical Central Valley California, which is just a
big flat expanse of big agriculture, you know, of crops,
and so you know, I felt very grateful towards the
people who had set this land aside and you know,
there is this sort of instance of hunters and birders

(41:20):
now uh and uh, but it is it is strange
to think about the fact that some of our um
park lands and wilderness areas were originally set aside for
people who love to hunt. But of course there's still
the funding issue here, right, And that's something you get
into in the in the book that you have these
conservation efforts that are still still funded by hunting, funded uh,

(41:43):
by fishing, etcetera. And I guess you know, in a
perfect world that would all balance out, But there are
cases it seems like where it raises the question is
this the right approach? Should there not be you know,
more federal funding for conservation? Yeah? I think that there
tends to be mistrust. You know, if the money is
coming from hunting and fishing, um, isn't there temptation on

(42:08):
the agency's part to put the desires of those of
their constituents first, you know, can we trust them to
be unbiased and neutral saviors of the land? Um? So?
And there is there is there has been talk of
of of separating, separating, making the funding for some of
these conservation efforts federal funding, making it independent of hunting

(42:32):
and fishing, you know, creating some sort of body or
pool of money that would would be earmarked for conservation
and and and just sort of creating some distance between
the two. So so yeah, that is a concern, and
and I think it would be great too for that
to happen. Thank you, thank you, thank so. Here's a

(42:56):
question that might be a little odd, but I wonder
if you have thoughts about it. How do you think
about motive the concept of motive differently in a criminal
justice context when the perpetrator of a crime is not human,
because a big part of human criminal justice is about
understanding and establishing motive, treating crimes differently based on what

(43:18):
the motive was or what the perpetrator's understanding was. Uh.
The thing about the internal brain states that motivate the
attacks of non human animals, it seems like you could
think about them either as like less complex than their
human equivalence, and thus may be easier to understand. Often
an animal is just feeling threatened in some way, or
might be hungry, or you could think about them is

(43:40):
maybe more obscure because animals are more alien to our
experience and they can't explain their motives in language. Yeah,
the question of motive. It's interesting in India that's factored in. UH,
the cases are treated differently. UM if it's a if
it's um a predatory attack versus a defensive attack. M

(44:03):
So that's if there's if there's a series, there's kind
of a you know, three strikes rule. You know, if
this if the animal is coming in and praying on
intentionally praying on livestock or people, you know, that's that's
different from a defensive attack. There with leopards, there are,
as we've talked about before, there are predatory attacks where

(44:23):
the animal is specifically and intentionally going after a human.
But there are tremendous numbers of if you go further
south into the tea growing regions, which I also spent
some time in the in the tea on the tea plantations,
lepers sometimes sleep under the tea plants because it's shadier

(44:44):
and it's cooler, and the tea workers, the pluckers, people
plucking the leaves, will sometimes surprise an animal. The animal
will like leap up. Sometimes there's an injury, rarely a fatality,
but that's a that's a that's that's a defensive just
an altercation that happened as the person surprised the animal
and it felt threatened. So those are considered differently than

(45:04):
a predatory attack. So there is that distinction made. Um.
You know, here in the US, when an animal harms
a person, it's it's it's considered a public health threat,
and it's it's typically that's that it has crust the line.
Regardless of whether the bear was surprised and was defending itself,

(45:27):
we tend to not make that same distinction. If it
harms or if it kills a person, it will be destroyed.
Even if it was the person had a dog, The
dog ran at the bear, the bear got upset, the
person sort of tried to intervene, the bear turned and
attacked the person. You know that there's no trial where
we can we can set forth the reality of the

(45:49):
situation and why the bear might have done it, and
what the what the situation created and in a sense
kind of come out a motive or lack of motive. Yeah, yeah, things.
So in the American context, Um, the way we react
to conflict with animals is maybe less understanding of whether
or not they might be justified, and it is more

(46:10):
just kind of a pure utilitarian you know, if if
an animal has harmed a human or or or a
pet or something, it's just thereafter considered probably dangerous and
thus usually is dealt with violently. Well, yeah, it's a
it's a public safety issue. And when the public safety
is threatened that you know that that's gonna the people
are gonna be the priority, not the animal. I mean,

(46:30):
I did talk to this a bever, a bever researcher
who had spent some time I believe it was in
Nepal where they have Oh god, now I'm forgetting which
species it is. I think there bears. There bears that
come in and they raid the property and they they
sometimes get into altercations where someone is injured. And he said,

(46:51):
to the person in the community who responds to when
these attacks happened, he said, if you saw a bear
on a person, would you shoot the bear? And the
guy said, it's not up to me to decide which
life is more important. Was it's a different you know,
it's a it's a it's a very different mindset of
you know, the value and the rights of animals versus humans.

(47:15):
And you know, I'm not I mean, it doesn't surprise
me that we in the United States have the rules
that we do. I mean, it's public safety, you know,
the beats. If you if your family is being you know,
is in harm's way, then that there's going to be
agencies that will come in and try to mitigate that threat.

(47:35):
That's what we do. So again, the book is is
Fuzz When Nature Breaks the Law by by Mary Roach
And I want to stress that we we didn't ask
about anywhere close to all of the animals or scenarios
or topics that you discuss in the book. It's just
it's it's it's it's it's just so would like each chapter, Uh,
you know, impressed me. There's so much discussed in the book.

(47:58):
It's an unsecured garbage can, overflowing trees. Oh, I love that.
Can I use that as a blurb on the paperback? Yes,
But but I thought, just just for anyone out there,
like what if you were to summarize, like, what is
the big take come you want people to have from
reading Fuzz? Uh you know what what would that be? Well,

(48:21):
first of all, I know, I want I want people
to know it's a fun read. It's not. I mean
sometimes talking about these things it can seem like a
bit of a downer. It's it's animals there sometimes ending
up being destroyed. But now I try, I try to
keep things entertaining and light, and there's lots of room
for that in this book. Um. But as a as

(48:42):
a takeaway, um, you know, I just hope that people
because people have a tendency to just especially since we
use the words pest and nuisance, and I do use
the word nuisance in the book as well, we have
this tendency to immediately when we've got an animal coming
onto our property doing something we don't want it to do.

(49:02):
We want to just pick up the phone and call
someone and make it go away. And there's the way,
there's there's things that prevent any further damage. There's there's
you know, you can exclude the animal, you can call
someone who actually has the welfare of the animal in mind.
And the Humane Society of the United States is a
great web page, species by species, here's some things to
do to solve resolve the problem without harming or killing

(49:23):
the animals. So I just I just not not to
be all on a soapbox running which just to just
to try to calm down and think about think about
what you might do before you call the wildlife control
operator to set a trap and let it go in
a park and which is not supposed to do, etcetera.

(49:45):
Or set a trap and um or put out a
glue trap. I can't believe they even sell those anymore.
So that's not a very short takeaway, is it. But
that's that's what I guess. I'd like people to just
to think before they act a little bit. Well, And
I do want to concur that the book book is

(50:06):
very fun and very funny. Uh like all your books
that I've I laughed, but I also I also felt
sad at times. It made me think about things in
a new way. So I essentially I felt all the
fields as the as the young people say fully concur
Oh thanks, thank you, oh yeah, thank you. Thanks for
taking time out of your data to come on the

(50:27):
show and discuss the book. Totally. Thank you so much,
most welcome. Thank you all right, Well, thanks once more
to Marry Roach for taking time out of her day
to come on the show and chat with us. Her
website if you want to learn more about her and
her work, is Mary Roach dot net. And as mentioned
in the episode, there's Also, this new edition of Stiff

(50:48):
out now as well with new cover arts, so so
look for that. If you've never read it, this will
be a great Halloween season to pick it up or
or Spook for that matter, Both of those I think
would make for tremendous Halloween seasonal reads. In the meantime,
if you would like to check out other episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us wherever
you get your podcast look for the Stuff to Blow

(51:08):
your Mind podcast feed. We have core science episodes on
Tuesday and Thursday, Artifact episodes on Wednesday. Uh listener mail
on Monday's. Friday is our time to cut loose and
talk about a weird film with Weird House Cinema, and
then on the weekend you get a rerun. Huge thanks
as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us

(51:29):
with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio with

(51:50):
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening
to your favorite shows by Press twin four D four
First Part