Nature Preserves Are Looking a Lot Like a Concrete Jungle

A new book is taking a look at how wild animals have adapted to urban life. Bret Burkhart and Veronica Carter spoke with the author, award-winning writer and social epidemiologist, Dan Werb.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A new book is exploring how animals are adapting to
our cities and are reshaping the natural world.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Joining us now on the Cocoa News liveline from U
SEE San Diego is author Dan erb Dan. Thank you
so much for joining us on San Diego's morning News.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
What do you call animals that are known to live
alongside humans?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
It's one of my favorite words. The word is sinanthrope,
So this refers to sin together and anthro with man.
So these are animals that live together with humans in
human modified environments. And yeah, this book is all about
how they have adapted to doing exactly that.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
So we're talking like raccoons and squirrels.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
We're definitely talking raccoons and squirrels. But there are some
really odd and wild and wonderful animals that have found
ways to adapt to cities. Actually, one of the most
successful sinanthropes in the world is the bat. There are
more bat species living in urban areas across the entire
world than any other order of animals. And you know

(01:02):
that's just the start. There are leopards, there are babboons.
For this book, I travel to Sauthi, Arabia to a
town in the mountains that have been completely overrun by
bards of hundreds of babboons. And you know, there's even
marine animals that have adapted to cities because you know,
cities are of course they're founded on land, but they

(01:24):
control waterways and they have this deep relationship with water.
And in Seattle, the giant Pacific octopus, which is one
of the most highly intelligent animals on Earth, it has
actually started to live closer and closer to the edge
of Seattle. There are more giant Pacific octopus living right
by the coast of Seattle, living in old refrigerators and

(01:50):
Volkswagen bands and toilets that have been tossed into the ocean,
then out in the pristine ocean environments that are their
natural home range.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
This is fascinating. Dan Werb is our guest on San
Diego's Morning News. This new book is called Our Wild Familiars,
How animals are adapting to cities and reshaping the natural world.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Gosh.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
I remember during the pandemic, I was working in San
Francisco at the time, nobody was coming to the office
US seeing coyotes run down the middle of the financial district.
Who is adapting is are the animals adapting or are
we adapting?

Speaker 3 (02:22):
You know, we're now in a period in which humans
are really going to have to catch up. Biologists are
describing the age that we live in as the Great
Urban Shift, where there are now literally thousands of animals
that are predicted to move into cities across North America
over the next few decades. We're now talking not just
about you know, pigeons and rats and raccoons and animals

(02:44):
that were used to seeing in urban environments, but a
lot more rare and endangered animals are going to be
moving into cities and towns all across the continent. And
the implication here is that, you know, we need to
start thinking about how we're going to at our urban
environments are cities, how we are going to design cities

(03:06):
to minimize conflict, but also how we design them to
be sustainable, to promote biodiversity, and to save species that
are moving into cities who you know, are really on
the edge of extinction.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
So, I know, the bad things that animals moving into cities,
especially rats, you know, they carry some diseases and they
can cause some harm. But what are the positives of
animals living so close to us.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
It really boiled down to an opening up of our
sense of connection with the world.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
I love your passion and I hear it loud and clear.
It's super cool. I can't wait to get my hands
on the book. Doctor dan Werb, thank you for joining
us on San Diego's Morning News.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
All right, the new book is called Our Wild Familiars,
How animals are adapting to cities and reshaping the natural world.