April 22, 2022 • 41 mins
The ultimate Earth Day observation: following is a conversation with a modern day Charles Darwin, biologist, herpetologist, Adjunct Professor of Biological Science at Florida State University Dr. Bruce Means. We discuss a March 2021 expedition in which Means and writer/climber Mark Synnott traveled to a virtual Shangri-la in the deep, mysterious and ever dangerous jungles of Guyana to study an unclimbed tapui, where new species were discovered.
American climber Alex Honnold is featured in the National Geographic film and article, both released in April 2022.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Thom Pollard (00:00):
The following is a conversation with a modern day
(00:07):
Charles Darwin, the biologist,herpetologist, adjunct professor
of biological science at FloridaState University, Dr. Bruce
Means. Spoiler alert during theexpedition in which means and
writer climber Mark Sennetttraveled to a virtual Shangri La
in the deep, mysterious and everdangerous jungles of Guyana to
(00:29):
study and unclimbed Tepui, Meansdiscovered five species that had
previously never been known toscience.
Now that the spoiler is out ofthe way, this is the happiness
quotient. Please subscribewherever you're listening or
watching as this is on YouTubeas well. Comment, like and share
(00:51):
with people you care about. Ifyou want to find additional and
exclusive material on thisconversation, you can find me on
patreon@patreon.com slash thehappiness quotient. Today, I'll
be adding an exclusiveconversation with Mark Senate
about his expedition with Brucemeans and their history
together. Having traveled fivetimes previously to Guyana to
(01:14):
study to poo is, Shangri La hascome to mean any remote
imaginary place where lifeapproaches perfection. Few
Shamgar laws remain on earth butone does exist. That's been lost
since 1595. When on exploringGuyana for El Dorado Sir Walter
(01:35):
Raleigh said he saw a far offmountain of crystal three
centuries later, in 1912. SirArthur Conan Doyle's novel The
Lost World reawakened theworld's imagination about a
remote, ancient world protectedby 1000 foot high cliffs in
truths that last world and about100 others like it really do
(01:57):
exist. They are a series ofancient mesas called two
pulleys, all of which areremote, pristine, high altitude
Eden's of perfection that arenot imaginary. I just read to
you from the introduction of abook that Bruce means wrote
called a tepee, a naturalist inShangri La. It has yet to be
(02:19):
published in March of 2021 meanstraveled with an elite team of
climbers, filmmakers andnaturalists to document new
species in the rich Lee biodiverse elements of a South
American typically, thisexpedition lit me up personally
because for several years backin the early 2000s, I'd studied
(02:40):
intently the possibility oflaunching my own search for
Shangri La, in the nearbyjungles of Suriname to wage a
first ascent of an unclimbedmountain there which to this
day, I actually don't know if ithas yet been discovered or
reached. Our challenge was tomake our way up a five mile long
series of cascades, named afterDutch explorer Sir Walter
(03:03):
Raleigh. We were told that therewere more poisonous creatures
than we could possibly count.
Alas, the expedition never gotoff the ground, and now it lives
purely in my mind as fantasy myShangri La means in Senate's
expedition to Guyana includedfilmmaker renowned oz Turk, as
well as American rock climberAlex Honnold. Senate's article
(03:26):
islands in the sky isessentially a deep dive, if you
will, into the life and work ofBruce means a virtual modern
day, Darwin. That articleappears in the April 2022 issue
of National Geographic. TheNational Geographic film is
called the last to Pui.
(03:52):
I interviewed Bruce in June of2021. But due to the nature of
the information contained in thearticle and film which premieres
today on Disney, plus incelebration of Earth Day, I was
asked to kindly hold off onsharing this conversation until
publication and on the film'spremiere
(04:13):
me means is no stranger toadventure and exploration. This
was his 33rd expedition. Here'smy conversation with the
incredible and brilliant andpassionate Dr. Bruce means from
his home in Florida.
This is why you Bruce. Good. Allright. Hey, there he is. All
(04:35):
right. There we go.
This is the white beardconnection going on.
That's fantastic. Thank you. Soyou've, you're back from a big
trip and I don't know how thatgoes with you if you just jump
into the next one, or do you dokind of rest for a while or
(04:58):
how's that? Oh,
Dr. Bruce Means (05:00):
I wish I could jump into another one. That
trip, you know, I turned 80 Onthat trip. And
not many 80 year olds can dosuch a vigorous trip. And as a
matter of fact, it was quitestrenuous for me. My intention
was to get up to the base of thewall. On this one wonderful
(05:20):
deploy. We were attempting to doa transect from the lowland to
the highlands to the summit ofthe buoy. But they
they radioed me and told me thatthe last leg the last days, hike
up a very steep slope with a lotof downed trees, was something
(05:41):
they didn't feel they wanted meto do. Yeah. Now they had Alex
Honnold on on the trip on theclimb. So they they did the
climb, which is prettyspectacular. Originally, the
idea was to try to help hoist meup at my age, and I'm not a
climber, but I would have doneit. But the problem was, I,
(06:03):
I was pretty, my legs were inpretty bad shape. My knee joints
were bad. And I was veryunstable. And so a slip and fall
was very likely for me. I'm on ablood thinner Xarelto, which has
noWhat do you call it anecdote. So
it had I broken a leg or an armor anything I could have bled
(06:24):
out internally. And that wouldhave influenced, you know, the
whole expedition, because theywould have had to try to find a
way to haul my carcass out oftheir
tradition was quite successfulin the sense that the many days
we spent hiking to get into theultimate sites, and complete it
(06:48):
enabled me to complete anelevational transect of
amphibians and reptiles I'vebeen working on for a number of
years. So it turned out verysuccessfully. But ironically,
I'm still waiting for myspecimens to be sent to me from
Guyana. There's been all kindsof red tape.
(07:10):
I had all the appropriatepermits, but
now it's tied up with FedExdoesn't want to ship preserved
specimens. And so what isincluded in those preserved
specimens? Well, just a few ofthem, not all of them were all
preserved in ethanol to conservethe DNA.
(07:31):
But about about 20 of them therewere 165 and all I preserved
they were large specimen. So Ipreserved in formaldehyde. And
then of course, you know, I'vewatched that off of them.
They're still they're stillformaldehyde in them. And
they're wrapped up in cloth andput in triples, Ziploc bags,
there's no, there's no liquid inthe bags. They've been washed
(07:55):
soap, and but you know, anyway,they just have a policy not to
ship anything with formalin. Andit was difficult to get them to
break their rule for this.
Because even no matter whathappened, even if the bags got
ripped open, somehow you stillwouldn't have had any kind of a
problem. It wasn't like I had abottle of formalin that if it
(08:16):
burst, it would have reallycreated havoc. Yeah. So you're
talking about frogs andamphibians? Yeah, well, reptiles
and amphibians. What'sinteresting in the tropics, and
certainly in this part where I'mdoing these elevational
transects.
(08:37):
Findings snakes is extremelydifficult. And we had we had at
some porters on this expedition,who were local Amerindians, and
I paid them to find animals forme. And all together in maybe
three weeks, we got six snakes.
So snakes is not, but frogs areextremely abundant at night. And
(08:58):
so they're the most profitablegroup to do a biodiversity study
with in terms of gettingsufficient samples to do your
work. Lizards are not verycommon as well. They're
secretive. Turtles, of course,are almost non existent, except
in freshwater.
(09:23):
And so, frogs is it in theNeotropics
Thom Pollard (09:28):
you know, it it's fascinating to me, because I
almost feel as though I couldhave spent two weeks just
prepping to talk to you. Becausethe minute I opened up the first
document you sent me I thoughtoh, this is just the beginning
of this amazing wealth ofknowledge and information. And
(09:50):
then on the on the simpler sideof things. It's like note we're
just we can go back to therecent trip to Guyana and that
will be my easy outBut I'm fascinated with with
your reference to ShangriLa thatthat these two pulleys are that
that you call them, kind of themodern day ShangriLa. And I
(10:12):
think there might be some peoplewho would hear this interview
who don't know what a tepee evenis, and if you could, kind of
just on a general layman's term,explain what it truly is, and
then link it to that referenceto Shangri La, because that's
really beautiful. Yeah.
Dr. Bruce Means (10:32):
Tepuis are very simply meses mesas are mountains
that are formed as a flatlandscape rises, and water
begins to erode all around,leaving the pieces of the flat
landscape isolated on buttes.
You know, we have plenty of themout in American West. But these
in the in the near in the areathat I'm studying Venezuela,
(10:54):
Guyana and Brazil, are the arethe largest and most extensive
two pulleys in the world. Theywere summarized to just around
10,000 feet. There's they'resurrounded by vertical cliffs of
anywhere from one to 3000 feet,the world's tallest waterfall
Angel Falls drops 3000 plus feetoff of one of them, and they're
(11:18):
really lost worlds their islandsin the sky. I'm calling it
and Arthur Conan Doylerecognized their mystery by
writing the novel The Lost Worldbased on attempts that had been
made by British expertexploratory teams around the
(11:40):
night around the turn of the1800s to the 1900s. Many
expeditions to climb MountRoraima, which is the most
famous of the taboo is failed.
until they finally find a wayout found a way up now we've
been myself and Mark Senate, whowas the expeditions leader, have
been in this particular area andalso climbing Mount Roraima. For
(12:03):
a decade and a half. Iparticipated as the biologist on
other expeditions with Mark,having climbed Mount Roraima
doing a technical Cliff climb upthe cliff face, which wasn't
possible to do back around theturn of the 1900 1800 period.
People didn't do technicalclaims at that period. And
(12:26):
because they're such remote,beautiful wild places, they're
also nutrient impoverished. Sothere was no reason for
Amerindians to ever try tosettle not only the summit's
which were almost impossible toattain, but the surrounding
lowlands and the slopes, becausethe sandy soils are just
(12:48):
completely poor for growinganything. So it's remained
biological remote, I call it itwas a biodiversity hotspot
because every time I go there,and other people who do research
on the region, find animals andplants new to science just
regularly. It's very rugged andremote. If you saw the film
(13:09):
Avatar, you know they hadfloating Cliff islands and well
those were those were modeledafter corset two pulleys don't
quote. But thosephantasmagorical shapes with
cliffs and the like are, weremodeled after two pulleys as was
the the little cartoon movie Up.
(13:34):
As a matter of fact, the balloonwent over landed on a cartoon
version of Mount Roraima.
So it's got literary and modern,artistic flavor. And I've been
there, this was my 33rdexpedition. And I have a book
I've written about all of myexplorations, to try to give a
(13:57):
narrative account for people tohave a feeling for what it's
like to be in that part ofnature and finding all these
wonderful organisms. And I wastrying to think of the
appropriate title for it. Andthen it dawned on me that I
thought this region was aShangri La like region, Shangri
La, was themythical city in somewhere, I
(14:19):
guess in Asia. That was asubject of another of a novel.
But Shangri La has come to meana mystical remote, wonderful,
wild paradoxical, sort of eatenlike place. And that's what I
think these deploys are allabout. The word to pui is just
an Amerindian word for Mesa sothere's there's the answer those
(14:42):
questions all in a nutshell,wrapped up so your book has that
been a published or is it it'sabout to be released, seeking a
publisher? I certainly am. Thetitle of it is to buoy comma, a
naturalist inchAngola. Excellent, excellent.
Wow. It's done. Boy to find apublisher for it. This book is
(15:07):
an antecedent to what I just didwith the National Geographic
society's attempt to reestablishtheir explore documentary
series. They're calling thedocumentary that I participated
in the last tip Pui. And that's,that's a reference to my last
(15:33):
set of soapUI. And the wholething is about my, my work on
deploys, and particularly tryingto finish this elevational
transect to the, to a mountainnext to Mount Roraima called
Whassa poo. So and then MarkSenate has written a National
Geographic article about it aswell. So if I could get my book
(15:56):
published, and anyone wants toreally read about the nitty
gritty of all this kind ofwonderful part of the world,
Thom Pollard (16:04):
it would be great, that's fantastic, you know, um,
for years and I was unsuccessfulin endeavouring to head into
Suriname and I had a anexpedition that I had been
plotting and planning there andit was to go up the if you will,
the major river you're probablyaware of Raleigh fallen right
(16:27):
that long, kind of series ofcascading waterfalls in Surinam
that goes for five miles and andback then an inflatable canoe
was not as possible. So we hadthis three piece canoe that we
were going to take apart and,and you know, Portage up into
the, into the jungle and goclimb this mountain that at
(16:49):
least at the time, we believedhad never been climbed before.
But um, so I did a little bitof, of research and became
fascinated with some movies,although we weren't climbing it
to pui that we were what we wereafter. But the one thing that
really fascinated me is thatthere at least I believe this is
true that that there are speciesof of animals, if you will, or
(17:13):
amphibians or reptiles that havebeen isolated on the tops of two
pulleys, and perhaps only existon the tops of these two
pulleys. So somebody likeDarwin, or Humboldt would come
across these things and beabsolutely fascinated like
Galapagos Islands, but in theinterior of the continent, is
(17:36):
that true? All right. Yeah,that's absolutely correct. And
that's what I've been doing. Onall these expeditions. I have a
table top coffee, coffee tablebook, I'm also trying to produce
for a Publish. It's calledislands on the sky. And I, I
it's a it's a photography bookshowing all of this.
Dr. Bruce Means (17:57):
As you go up in elevation everywhere in the
world, you know, differentclimatic zones change and
animals and plants are adaptedto those various climatic zones.
In the tropics, it's extremelydramatic, even 1000 foot right,
a rise in elevation can causeenough difference for organisms,
plants and animals to becomeadapted to the local nuances of
(18:20):
climate and be different butwhen you get on top of a summit
of a tepee that's been isolatedfor maybe millions of years,
then organisms living up there,you know, to please a very, the
summit's are very harshenvironments, because it rains
and it miss all the time. And,but But the interesting the
(18:42):
Achilles heel, heel, in the lifecycles of organisms on deploys
is not when it rains, it's whenthe sun comes out. Because
tropical latitudes, the Add ateight or 9000 feet or the
there's not nearly as muchprotection from the in
insulation, insulation, meaninginfrared and ultraviolet light.
(19:06):
So plants especially can dry outexceedingly quickly, and just an
hour or to have direct sunlightat 1000 feet on the equator. So
what are all the adaptations theplants have water loss
mechanisms to try to keep waterloss down? So the leaves are
thick, or they're hairy, orthey're tiny?
(19:29):
It's almost amat anachronism, I guess, you
know, it's a it's an oxymoron.
Let's put it that way that youget up on top of this rainy wet
place, and you expect the plantsand animals to be adapted for
the moisture. And it'scompletely the opposite. Because
of the severity of what happenswhen it does become sunny for a
(19:50):
while.
Thom Pollard (19:52):
What were we always viewed as the, the
isolated, genus or
Dr. Bruce Means (20:00):
are well, the summit does have the summits of
many of these to please do havean interesting little frog group
call it to Puhi pebble toads,their little codes that have got
special hind feet that enablethem to grasp and decline. And
what happens. And I've actuallybeen involved helping BBC film
(20:23):
this.
They it's very rocky on many topolice summits. And I mean the
large boulders mount house sizeboulders and cliffs in the
light. So they climb up theserocks and these cliffs and if a
tarantula or scorpion is afterthem, they just tuck in their
legs and they roll downhill.
(20:45):
So we've built that, but thebiodiversity is not on the
summit'sthe biodiversity you can reach
so much now you know he can dotechnical climbs, but the most
effective ways by helicopter. Somany of the summits not all but
there's about 100 of theseDupuis by the way they've been
reached by helicopter andstudies have been done on the
(21:07):
summit by biota. But where thereal richness is, is on the
talus slopes below the cliffs,which are exceedingly densely
forested with what's called acloud forest. So when you get
down to 7000 6000 5000 4000,that 4000 foot elevational
range, where all these dense,beautiful forests are men,
(21:29):
that's where life abounds in andgreat measure. One of the
deploys I've studied in Guyana,which is not even on maps, for
goodness sakes, it's 34kilometers long and seven wide,
17 wide. It's huge. I've madefour expeditions there. And
every single time I go there, Ifind one or two species of all
(21:52):
kinds of things new to scienceanimals.
So and I have one right now I'mtrying to write up a beautiful
little frog that lives on thisweb. So So yeah, yeah, the two
pulleys are,it's quite obvious to me that
they reckon they represent an unrecognized biodiversity hotspot
(22:15):
of high importance on theplanet. But their remoteness.
And the difficulty and expenseof getting to the, where the
biodiversity is, has kept usfrom understanding from
accumulating the data that say,well, instead of 25 species, or
100 species, there's 2000species all around in the
(22:37):
region, all of them off the baseof all these two buoys. We don't
know that yet. But hopefully,
Thom Pollard (22:45):
it'll come to pass in the future if we don't blow
it blow each other off the plan.
Yeah, well, that that's thethat's a kind of a, the thought
is like, there's that, you know,and everybody brings themselves
to this realm, and they createin whatever way they create, and
I guess it's all fine and well,that people want to go populate
(23:07):
Mars. But right here on thisplanet, there's, there's a lot
that we don't know, and a lotthat we could use here. And I'm
not saying to exploit I'm sayingthings that we could learn just
like from the, from the tribesthat live in the jungles who
understand how a plant might,you know, help an illness or
(23:30):
something like that. So itsounds like you're because
everybody's like, it's all beendone, there's Everest has been
climbed, the polls have beenreached, and the Mariana Trench
was reached, and but there's alot left that we have know, for
certain on all levels.
Dr. Bruce Means (23:53):
The pulleys, let me give you some examples.
Discoveries are usually madeserendipitously. I mean, some
guy sitting on a grass watchingan apple fall.
Gravity, I mean, come on, oh,that's one of the great unifying
forces of the of the, of thewhole universe. Or sitting in
(24:16):
noticing that a petri dish, acertain
fungal organism kept bacteriaaway from it. I mean, that's
what happens. Well, look, inthese two movies, we have dozens
if not hundreds, of animals andand plants, all of which are
relatively unknown to science.
Many of them have wonderful,special characteristics that
(24:40):
could be valuable to man,although they're valuable in
just in themselves to tothemselves. Look, every single
living organism on this planethas has one thing in common,
there hasn't been a single breakin the reproductive activity
leadinginto that organism. And if you
go back in time, genetics willshow you, you're related to
(25:03):
every single living thing on theplanet. So we've all gone
through the same, includinghumans and our ancestors, the
same trials and tribulations ofevolution and, and threats to
our existence as every otherthing on the planet. So
everything has value. Butbut that doesn't mean that some
(25:24):
organisms like predators, likeus, can't take advantage of
others, provided, we don't takeadvantage of the others in such
a way that we caused them to goextinct. That's something humans
grapple with, and don't do sucha great job with in some cases,
but are many cases. But anyway,alright, so what I'm trying to
(25:45):
do is trying to tell you, Idon't like the, the, what's good
for man hypothesis, but bottomline is it is there's there are
frogs down there that have skinsecretions that I've discovered,
and notice that they're verypungent to smell and they taste
bitter. Those skin secretionscould have a cure for cancer or
(26:05):
a cure for, I don't know, skindisease, or some sort of who
knows. So, look, the whole humanexperience is the experience of
cognition. The one gift we haveis awareness and cognition. And
all of that leads to building ascientific background for look,
what what will we what would wehave done about COVID and other
(26:27):
diseases if we have not had thescientific expertise to know how
to fight it? Or do you get thatexpertise via knowledge you gain
from nature. And so that, thatthat justifies, in my opinion,
any and all efforts to doresearch of any and all kinds
all over the planet? And theplanets, right for a lot more,
(26:48):
we've just scratched thesurface, right.
Thom Pollard (26:54):
Bruce amazing, I this is really fascinating, you
know, it this is kind of a jumpoff into another tangent, I
don't mean to go down a rabbithole or anything. But you know,
I've been kind of followingsome, some threads on social
media of people going into onVancouver Island and, and
logging, you know, ancientforests. And
(27:19):
it there, it's almost likethere's competing forces going
like good versus evil. And Ihate to simplify it, but I guess
since we talked about ShangriLa, in a way that, that maybe
it's it's okay to invoke it. Butit's like, there, there are some
some people on this planet wholook to just exploit nature for
(27:43):
the just big Hey, we're man, wewere put on this planet, and
we'll eat all the animals, andwe'll chop the forest down if we
need to. And then there's theother side, who is aware, keenly
aware of changes going on in theplanet, you know, for jungles
being, you know, decimated andburned down to make room for
(28:06):
cows that become hamburgers atMcDonald's? I guess. And it
there's this balance?
Dr. Bruce Means (28:13):
Where, where?
Where are we going? I mean, Iknow that you're not God. But
are we going to be okay or yell?
No, absolutely not. We'vealready passed many thresholds
that we've shot ourselves in thefoot. Look,
(28:33):
oh, my goodness, the greed thatmotivates people to
utilize resources to theirextinction. Look, we've wiped
out so many marine environment,animals and organisms, you know,
that all is going to fit that isfeeding back on us, for gosh
sakes. You know, we pump so muchco2 in the air. If people would
(28:55):
just watch the Keeling Curveevery day, and realize how
unbelievablyscary it is that we are
continually adding more and moreco2 to the atmosphere? And if
you don't,all of that feeds back
negatively on us, right. Solook, let me tell you one thing,
there's a whole lot of thingsone could be said in this arena.
But the one that I as abiologist most likes to think
(29:18):
about.
If you're interested in learningabout nature, or about you know
what the real phenomena are andhow they act or how how nature
operates, which includes us, youknow, what's in store for us?
You need to have environments inwhich organisms evolved and to
(29:43):
which they're best adapted inorder to study those phenomena.
You don't go out onto a ricefield and try to learn what the
hell the biology is of some ofthe black Redwing blackbirds
that are eating the rice,because that's not their natural
environment. That's just a lotPart of how they're trying to
survive in the face of humanactivity. So conservation, and
(30:03):
especially conservation ofnative ecosystems, where we can
conserve them is exceedinglyimportant because that's where
the main knowledge exists aboutall of the organisms on the
planet. And it also is where thephenomena of overpopulation, and
predation and disease and allthat, that enter, enter, that,
(30:27):
that affects or other organisms,is to be learned because those
same phenomena affect us. Andthey are affecting us right now.
And you know, as Americans,we're sitting in very nice and
comfortable look at my, youknow, I got books all over and
you got a nice place where yougo around, every young youngster
in this country ought to have awhole summer off into a Third
(30:50):
World, part of the world andlive with a family, this Grubin
for a living out of the ground,and realize here's a good one.
We're in the top 20 countries ofthe world, by population alone,
not by density. Where does theUnited States stack? You know,
the first thing is gonna beChina, in terms of number of
(31:13):
people a second will be India,were in the top 20 with us fit
down there probably. That's whatI thought originally two. Yeah,
we're number three, really?
Number three, 300. And what wejust passed the 300.
Yeah, we're the third mostpopulous country in the world.
(31:35):
We're not the third densest, butthe next most populous country,
I think, is Indonesia. So andit's like that it's below 200
million are right around 200men.
As we keepincreasing, and utilizing
resources, and causing, youknow, old growth forests to be
(31:55):
lost forever, for the mightydollar that somebody wants to
generate from it. We're losingall of the important
laboratories, in which naturallaboratories in which the
knowledge about the world andabout how we're going to be
(32:16):
affected by what we're doing tothe world lies and resides.
Anyway,if we keep doing what we're
doing
Thom Pollard (32:27):
well, you know, if all of mankind were, you know,
wiped from the planet, the Earthwould probably be better off for
it. Right. Yeah, the Earth
Dr. Bruce Means (32:40):
does restore itself. Oral does have? Yeah,
you know, we've had manyextinctions, some really major
extinctions. And following theextinction, there is an
interesting, apparently aninteresting phenomenon on this
planet, that life tends toproliferate and, and, and
diversify in time until there'sanother extinction event. So the
(33:04):
planet and the life on thisplanet are not going to go away
no matter what we do it, but wemay well, and we may well go
away sooner than we think.
Thom Pollard (33:15):
So, so Bruce, just to, you know, I'm so
appreciative of your time, andI'm fascinated by this. And I
would love to be on anexpedition with you, I can only
imagine all the chatter atdinner and while you're
trekking, or walking through themuck in the mud and the rain,
and but, you know, say there's athere's somebody considering
(33:40):
going to college, a young personwho's interested in, in what we
just spoke of, what should theydo? What's their what would be a
good? I, you know, obviously,following their, their, you
know, what kind of pulls them,you have to be your own unique
self. But is there a course ofeducation? Is there a field of
(34:02):
study, and as you had said,everybody should go to, you
know, live with a family inColombia or Venezuela and eating
off the land. So I guess youalready told me, but
educationally speaking, ifsomebody said, that I want to be
Bruce means of the nextgeneration.
Dr. Bruce Means (34:21):
Did they come and take your class at FSU, or,
you know, well, first andforemost, you should follow your
passions, you should figure outwhat it is that interests you. I
mean, you know, if you just wantto become a biologist, because
there's some other neat onesaround it sounds neat to you.
That's not the good reason. Ifyou like birds, or you like
(34:43):
mushrooms, or you're fascinatedby bacteria, then pursue that
and pursue it in every way youcan, educationally because it
can lead to a really satisfyinglife and productive life that
enables you to doMaybe add to the wealth of
knowledge that human beings havecreated by, you know, the
scientific method and being goodobservers and speaking only
(35:07):
truth.
Yeah, yeah, it's, you know,biology is hugely variable. If I
had a life to do over again, Itried to just be a botanist, and
learn all all about plants, but,but a good naturalist is
somebody who takes in aspects ofall of nature, geology, you
(35:30):
know, mathematics helpslearning, certainly anything and
everything to do with genetics.
And so you kind of have to writeyour own
recipe, but pursue it whereveryou go. And don't be afraid to
like something like snakes,because they just can lead to
understanding the samephenomena, about how things
(35:53):
operate on this planet, as ifyou were studying funguses, or
you were studying lichens ontrees, or you're looking at fish
in an aquatic environment. Sothat that's my best
recommendation. If you'reinterested, and you're
passionate about things thatappeal to you, and not
everything appeals to everybody,so it's whatever, whatever.
(36:16):
Don't let other people Poopoo.
You. I mean, look, when I wasyounger, and I had an interest
in snakes, as you can imaginewhat kind of pressure I had on
me, snakes was, Wow, well, Icompleted a 40 year study and
just published a couple of yearsago, on the eastern diamondback
rattlesnake. I studied withradio telemetry for that long
period of time. So and in that Ilearned an awful lot that has
(36:41):
useful application to humanbehavior, but I'm off looking at
other creatures and just inhaving a great life. Wonderful,
wonderful. You you were bittenby that one of those
rattlesnakes i different times.
Yeah. And you lift apparentlyless this.
Thom Pollard (37:01):
How did that feel?
How did this
Dr. Bruce Means (37:06):
hazard you know if you're gonna work with
something dangerous and deadly.
Yeah. And you're not carefulover over a long period of time,
the likelihood of suffering theconsequences is high. And that
happened to me but thatfortunately, I knew what to do.
I had access to medical help.
(37:27):
And I survived it and I have noI would have done it. I'd do it
all over again. Just because itinterested me to. This was the
largest rattlesnakein the world. And, you know,
Asia has has the tiger Africahas the lion we got the eastern
diamondback rattlesnake and
Thom Pollard (37:50):
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(38:13):
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(38:34):
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(38:57):
happiness quotient. I will seeyou all real soon.
The following is a conversation with a modern day
(00:07):
Charles Darwin, the biologist,herpetologist, adjunct professor
of biological science at FloridaState University, Dr. Bruce
Means. Spoiler alert during theexpedition in which means and
writer climber Mark Sennetttraveled to a virtual Shangri La
in the deep, mysterious and everdangerous jungles of Guyana to
(00:29):
study and unclimbed Tepui, Meansdiscovered five species that had
previously never been known toscience.
Now that the spoiler is out ofthe way, this is the happiness
quotient. Please subscribewherever you're listening or
watching as this is on YouTubeas well. Comment, like and share
(00:51):
with people you care about. Ifyou want to find additional and
exclusive material on thisconversation, you can find me on
patreon@patreon.com slash thehappiness quotient. Today, I'll
be adding an exclusiveconversation with Mark Senate
about his expedition with Brucemeans and their history
together. Having traveled fivetimes previously to Guyana to
(01:14):
study to poo is, Shangri La hascome to mean any remote
imaginary place where lifeapproaches perfection. Few
Shamgar laws remain on earth butone does exist. That's been lost
since 1595. When on exploringGuyana for El Dorado Sir Walter
(01:35):
Raleigh said he saw a far offmountain of crystal three
centuries later, in 1912. SirArthur Conan Doyle's novel The
Lost World reawakened theworld's imagination about a
remote, ancient world protectedby 1000 foot high cliffs in
truths that last world and about100 others like it really do
(01:57):
exist. They are a series ofancient mesas called two
pulleys, all of which areremote, pristine, high altitude
Eden's of perfection that arenot imaginary. I just read to
you from the introduction of abook that Bruce means wrote
called a tepee, a naturalist inShangri La. It has yet to be
(02:19):
published in March of 2021 meanstraveled with an elite team of
climbers, filmmakers andnaturalists to document new
species in the rich Lee biodiverse elements of a South
American typically, thisexpedition lit me up personally
because for several years backin the early 2000s, I'd studied
(02:40):
intently the possibility oflaunching my own search for
Shangri La, in the nearbyjungles of Suriname to wage a
first ascent of an unclimbedmountain there which to this
day, I actually don't know if ithas yet been discovered or
reached. Our challenge was tomake our way up a five mile long
series of cascades, named afterDutch explorer Sir Walter
(03:03):
Raleigh. We were told that therewere more poisonous creatures
than we could possibly count.
Alas, the expedition never gotoff the ground, and now it lives
purely in my mind as fantasy myShangri La means in Senate's
expedition to Guyana includedfilmmaker renowned oz Turk, as
well as American rock climberAlex Honnold. Senate's article
(03:26):
islands in the sky isessentially a deep dive, if you
will, into the life and work ofBruce means a virtual modern
day, Darwin. That articleappears in the April 2022 issue
of National Geographic. TheNational Geographic film is
called the last to Pui.
(03:52):
I interviewed Bruce in June of2021. But due to the nature of
the information contained in thearticle and film which premieres
today on Disney, plus incelebration of Earth Day, I was
asked to kindly hold off onsharing this conversation until
publication and on the film'spremiere
(04:13):
me means is no stranger toadventure and exploration. This
was his 33rd expedition. Here'smy conversation with the
incredible and brilliant andpassionate Dr. Bruce means from
his home in Florida.
This is why you Bruce. Good. Allright. Hey, there he is. All
(04:35):
right. There we go.
This is the white beardconnection going on.
That's fantastic. Thank you. Soyou've, you're back from a big
trip and I don't know how thatgoes with you if you just jump
into the next one, or do you dokind of rest for a while or
(04:58):
how's that? Oh,
Dr. Bruce Means (05:00):
I wish I could jump into another one. That
trip, you know, I turned 80 Onthat trip. And
not many 80 year olds can dosuch a vigorous trip. And as a
matter of fact, it was quitestrenuous for me. My intention
was to get up to the base of thewall. On this one wonderful
(05:20):
deploy. We were attempting to doa transect from the lowland to
the highlands to the summit ofthe buoy. But they
they radioed me and told me thatthe last leg the last days, hike
up a very steep slope with a lotof downed trees, was something
(05:41):
they didn't feel they wanted meto do. Yeah. Now they had Alex
Honnold on on the trip on theclimb. So they they did the
climb, which is prettyspectacular. Originally, the
idea was to try to help hoist meup at my age, and I'm not a
climber, but I would have doneit. But the problem was, I,
(06:03):
I was pretty, my legs were inpretty bad shape. My knee joints
were bad. And I was veryunstable. And so a slip and fall
was very likely for me. I'm on ablood thinner Xarelto, which has
noWhat do you call it anecdote. So
it had I broken a leg or an armor anything I could have bled
(06:24):
out internally. And that wouldhave influenced, you know, the
whole expedition, because theywould have had to try to find a
way to haul my carcass out oftheir
tradition was quite successfulin the sense that the many days
we spent hiking to get into theultimate sites, and complete it
(06:48):
enabled me to complete anelevational transect of
amphibians and reptiles I'vebeen working on for a number of
years. So it turned out verysuccessfully. But ironically,
I'm still waiting for myspecimens to be sent to me from
Guyana. There's been all kindsof red tape.
(07:10):
I had all the appropriatepermits, but
now it's tied up with FedExdoesn't want to ship preserved
specimens. And so what isincluded in those preserved
specimens? Well, just a few ofthem, not all of them were all
preserved in ethanol to conservethe DNA.
(07:31):
But about about 20 of them therewere 165 and all I preserved
they were large specimen. So Ipreserved in formaldehyde. And
then of course, you know, I'vewatched that off of them.
They're still they're stillformaldehyde in them. And
they're wrapped up in cloth andput in triples, Ziploc bags,
there's no, there's no liquid inthe bags. They've been washed
(07:55):
soap, and but you know, anyway,they just have a policy not to
ship anything with formalin. Andit was difficult to get them to
break their rule for this.
Because even no matter whathappened, even if the bags got
ripped open, somehow you stillwouldn't have had any kind of a
problem. It wasn't like I had abottle of formalin that if it
(08:16):
burst, it would have reallycreated havoc. Yeah. So you're
talking about frogs andamphibians? Yeah, well, reptiles
and amphibians. What'sinteresting in the tropics, and
certainly in this part where I'mdoing these elevational
transects.
(08:37):
Findings snakes is extremelydifficult. And we had we had at
some porters on this expedition,who were local Amerindians, and
I paid them to find animals forme. And all together in maybe
three weeks, we got six snakes.
So snakes is not, but frogs areextremely abundant at night. And
(08:58):
so they're the most profitablegroup to do a biodiversity study
with in terms of gettingsufficient samples to do your
work. Lizards are not verycommon as well. They're
secretive. Turtles, of course,are almost non existent, except
in freshwater.
(09:23):
And so, frogs is it in theNeotropics
Thom Pollard (09:28):
you know, it it's fascinating to me, because I
almost feel as though I couldhave spent two weeks just
prepping to talk to you. Becausethe minute I opened up the first
document you sent me I thoughtoh, this is just the beginning
of this amazing wealth ofknowledge and information. And
(09:50):
then on the on the simpler sideof things. It's like note we're
just we can go back to therecent trip to Guyana and that
will be my easy outBut I'm fascinated with with
your reference to ShangriLa thatthat these two pulleys are that
that you call them, kind of themodern day ShangriLa. And I
(10:12):
think there might be some peoplewho would hear this interview
who don't know what a tepee evenis, and if you could, kind of
just on a general layman's term,explain what it truly is, and
then link it to that referenceto Shangri La, because that's
really beautiful. Yeah.
Dr. Bruce Means (10:32):
Tepuis are very simply meses mesas are mountains
that are formed as a flatlandscape rises, and water
begins to erode all around,leaving the pieces of the flat
landscape isolated on buttes.
You know, we have plenty of themout in American West. But these
in the in the near in the areathat I'm studying Venezuela,
(10:54):
Guyana and Brazil, are the arethe largest and most extensive
two pulleys in the world. Theywere summarized to just around
10,000 feet. There's they'resurrounded by vertical cliffs of
anywhere from one to 3000 feet,the world's tallest waterfall
Angel Falls drops 3000 plus feetoff of one of them, and they're
(11:18):
really lost worlds their islandsin the sky. I'm calling it
and Arthur Conan Doylerecognized their mystery by
writing the novel The Lost Worldbased on attempts that had been
made by British expertexploratory teams around the
(11:40):
night around the turn of the1800s to the 1900s. Many
expeditions to climb MountRoraima, which is the most
famous of the taboo is failed.
until they finally find a wayout found a way up now we've
been myself and Mark Senate, whowas the expeditions leader, have
been in this particular area andalso climbing Mount Roraima. For
(12:03):
a decade and a half. Iparticipated as the biologist on
other expeditions with Mark,having climbed Mount Roraima
doing a technical Cliff climb upthe cliff face, which wasn't
possible to do back around theturn of the 1900 1800 period.
People didn't do technicalclaims at that period. And
(12:26):
because they're such remote,beautiful wild places, they're
also nutrient impoverished. Sothere was no reason for
Amerindians to ever try tosettle not only the summit's
which were almost impossible toattain, but the surrounding
lowlands and the slopes, becausethe sandy soils are just
(12:48):
completely poor for growinganything. So it's remained
biological remote, I call it itwas a biodiversity hotspot
because every time I go there,and other people who do research
on the region, find animals andplants new to science just
regularly. It's very rugged andremote. If you saw the film
(13:09):
Avatar, you know they hadfloating Cliff islands and well
those were those were modeledafter corset two pulleys don't
quote. But thosephantasmagorical shapes with
cliffs and the like are, weremodeled after two pulleys as was
the the little cartoon movie Up.
(13:34):
As a matter of fact, the balloonwent over landed on a cartoon
version of Mount Roraima.
So it's got literary and modern,artistic flavor. And I've been
there, this was my 33rdexpedition. And I have a book
I've written about all of myexplorations, to try to give a
(13:57):
narrative account for people tohave a feeling for what it's
like to be in that part ofnature and finding all these
wonderful organisms. And I wastrying to think of the
appropriate title for it. Andthen it dawned on me that I
thought this region was aShangri La like region, Shangri
La, was themythical city in somewhere, I
(14:19):
guess in Asia. That was asubject of another of a novel.
But Shangri La has come to meana mystical remote, wonderful,
wild paradoxical, sort of eatenlike place. And that's what I
think these deploys are allabout. The word to pui is just
an Amerindian word for Mesa sothere's there's the answer those
(14:42):
questions all in a nutshell,wrapped up so your book has that
been a published or is it it'sabout to be released, seeking a
publisher? I certainly am. Thetitle of it is to buoy comma, a
naturalist inchAngola. Excellent, excellent.
Wow. It's done. Boy to find apublisher for it. This book is
(15:07):
an antecedent to what I just didwith the National Geographic
society's attempt to reestablishtheir explore documentary
series. They're calling thedocumentary that I participated
in the last tip Pui. And that's,that's a reference to my last
(15:33):
set of soapUI. And the wholething is about my, my work on
deploys, and particularly tryingto finish this elevational
transect to the, to a mountainnext to Mount Roraima called
Whassa poo. So and then MarkSenate has written a National
Geographic article about it aswell. So if I could get my book
(15:56):
published, and anyone wants toreally read about the nitty
gritty of all this kind ofwonderful part of the world,
Thom Pollard (16:04):
it would be great, that's fantastic, you know, um,
for years and I was unsuccessfulin endeavouring to head into
Suriname and I had a anexpedition that I had been
plotting and planning there andit was to go up the if you will,
the major river you're probablyaware of Raleigh fallen right
(16:27):
that long, kind of series ofcascading waterfalls in Surinam
that goes for five miles and andback then an inflatable canoe
was not as possible. So we hadthis three piece canoe that we
were going to take apart and,and you know, Portage up into
the, into the jungle and goclimb this mountain that at
(16:49):
least at the time, we believedhad never been climbed before.
But um, so I did a little bitof, of research and became
fascinated with some movies,although we weren't climbing it
to pui that we were what we wereafter. But the one thing that
really fascinated me is thatthere at least I believe this is
true that that there are speciesof of animals, if you will, or
(17:13):
amphibians or reptiles that havebeen isolated on the tops of two
pulleys, and perhaps only existon the tops of these two
pulleys. So somebody likeDarwin, or Humboldt would come
across these things and beabsolutely fascinated like
Galapagos Islands, but in theinterior of the continent, is
(17:36):
that true? All right. Yeah,that's absolutely correct. And
that's what I've been doing. Onall these expeditions. I have a
table top coffee, coffee tablebook, I'm also trying to produce
for a Publish. It's calledislands on the sky. And I, I
it's a it's a photography bookshowing all of this.
Dr. Bruce Means (17:57):
As you go up in elevation everywhere in the
world, you know, differentclimatic zones change and
animals and plants are adaptedto those various climatic zones.
In the tropics, it's extremelydramatic, even 1000 foot right,
a rise in elevation can causeenough difference for organisms,
plants and animals to becomeadapted to the local nuances of
(18:20):
climate and be different butwhen you get on top of a summit
of a tepee that's been isolatedfor maybe millions of years,
then organisms living up there,you know, to please a very, the
summit's are very harshenvironments, because it rains
and it miss all the time. And,but But the interesting the
(18:42):
Achilles heel, heel, in the lifecycles of organisms on deploys
is not when it rains, it's whenthe sun comes out. Because
tropical latitudes, the Add ateight or 9000 feet or the
there's not nearly as muchprotection from the in
insulation, insulation, meaninginfrared and ultraviolet light.
(19:06):
So plants especially can dry outexceedingly quickly, and just an
hour or to have direct sunlightat 1000 feet on the equator. So
what are all the adaptations theplants have water loss
mechanisms to try to keep waterloss down? So the leaves are
thick, or they're hairy, orthey're tiny?
(19:29):
It's almost amat anachronism, I guess, you
know, it's a it's an oxymoron.
Let's put it that way that youget up on top of this rainy wet
place, and you expect the plantsand animals to be adapted for
the moisture. And it'scompletely the opposite. Because
of the severity of what happenswhen it does become sunny for a
(19:50):
while.
Thom Pollard (19:52):
What were we always viewed as the, the
isolated, genus or
Dr. Bruce Means (20:00):
are well, the summit does have the summits of
many of these to please do havean interesting little frog group
call it to Puhi pebble toads,their little codes that have got
special hind feet that enablethem to grasp and decline. And
what happens. And I've actuallybeen involved helping BBC film
(20:23):
this.
They it's very rocky on many topolice summits. And I mean the
large boulders mount house sizeboulders and cliffs in the
light. So they climb up theserocks and these cliffs and if a
tarantula or scorpion is afterthem, they just tuck in their
legs and they roll downhill.
(20:45):
So we've built that, but thebiodiversity is not on the
summit'sthe biodiversity you can reach
so much now you know he can dotechnical climbs, but the most
effective ways by helicopter. Somany of the summits not all but
there's about 100 of theseDupuis by the way they've been
reached by helicopter andstudies have been done on the
(21:07):
summit by biota. But where thereal richness is, is on the
talus slopes below the cliffs,which are exceedingly densely
forested with what's called acloud forest. So when you get
down to 7000 6000 5000 4000,that 4000 foot elevational
range, where all these dense,beautiful forests are men,
(21:29):
that's where life abounds in andgreat measure. One of the
deploys I've studied in Guyana,which is not even on maps, for
goodness sakes, it's 34kilometers long and seven wide,
17 wide. It's huge. I've madefour expeditions there. And
every single time I go there, Ifind one or two species of all
(21:52):
kinds of things new to scienceanimals.
So and I have one right now I'mtrying to write up a beautiful
little frog that lives on thisweb. So So yeah, yeah, the two
pulleys are,it's quite obvious to me that
they reckon they represent an unrecognized biodiversity hotspot
(22:15):
of high importance on theplanet. But their remoteness.
And the difficulty and expenseof getting to the, where the
biodiversity is, has kept usfrom understanding from
accumulating the data that say,well, instead of 25 species, or
100 species, there's 2000species all around in the
(22:37):
region, all of them off the baseof all these two buoys. We don't
know that yet. But hopefully,
Thom Pollard (22:45):
it'll come to pass in the future if we don't blow
it blow each other off the plan.
Yeah, well, that that's thethat's a kind of a, the thought
is like, there's that, you know,and everybody brings themselves
to this realm, and they createin whatever way they create, and
I guess it's all fine and well,that people want to go populate
(23:07):
Mars. But right here on thisplanet, there's, there's a lot
that we don't know, and a lotthat we could use here. And I'm
not saying to exploit I'm sayingthings that we could learn just
like from the, from the tribesthat live in the jungles who
understand how a plant might,you know, help an illness or
(23:30):
something like that. So itsounds like you're because
everybody's like, it's all beendone, there's Everest has been
climbed, the polls have beenreached, and the Mariana Trench
was reached, and but there's alot left that we have know, for
certain on all levels.
Dr. Bruce Means (23:53):
The pulleys, let me give you some examples.
Discoveries are usually madeserendipitously. I mean, some
guy sitting on a grass watchingan apple fall.
Gravity, I mean, come on, oh,that's one of the great unifying
forces of the of the, of thewhole universe. Or sitting in
(24:16):
noticing that a petri dish, acertain
fungal organism kept bacteriaaway from it. I mean, that's
what happens. Well, look, inthese two movies, we have dozens
if not hundreds, of animals andand plants, all of which are
relatively unknown to science.
Many of them have wonderful,special characteristics that
(24:40):
could be valuable to man,although they're valuable in
just in themselves to tothemselves. Look, every single
living organism on this planethas has one thing in common,
there hasn't been a single breakin the reproductive activity
leadinginto that organism. And if you
go back in time, genetics willshow you, you're related to
(25:03):
every single living thing on theplanet. So we've all gone
through the same, includinghumans and our ancestors, the
same trials and tribulations ofevolution and, and threats to
our existence as every otherthing on the planet. So
everything has value. Butbut that doesn't mean that some
(25:24):
organisms like predators, likeus, can't take advantage of
others, provided, we don't takeadvantage of the others in such
a way that we caused them to goextinct. That's something humans
grapple with, and don't do sucha great job with in some cases,
but are many cases. But anyway,alright, so what I'm trying to
(25:45):
do is trying to tell you, Idon't like the, the, what's good
for man hypothesis, but bottomline is it is there's there are
frogs down there that have skinsecretions that I've discovered,
and notice that they're verypungent to smell and they taste
bitter. Those skin secretionscould have a cure for cancer or
(26:05):
a cure for, I don't know, skindisease, or some sort of who
knows. So, look, the whole humanexperience is the experience of
cognition. The one gift we haveis awareness and cognition. And
all of that leads to building ascientific background for look,
what what will we what would wehave done about COVID and other
(26:27):
diseases if we have not had thescientific expertise to know how
to fight it? Or do you get thatexpertise via knowledge you gain
from nature. And so that, thatthat justifies, in my opinion,
any and all efforts to doresearch of any and all kinds
all over the planet? And theplanets, right for a lot more,
(26:48):
we've just scratched thesurface, right.
Thom Pollard (26:54):
Bruce amazing, I this is really fascinating, you
know, it this is kind of a jumpoff into another tangent, I
don't mean to go down a rabbithole or anything. But you know,
I've been kind of followingsome, some threads on social
media of people going into onVancouver Island and, and
logging, you know, ancientforests. And
(27:19):
it there, it's almost likethere's competing forces going
like good versus evil. And Ihate to simplify it, but I guess
since we talked about ShangriLa, in a way that, that maybe
it's it's okay to invoke it. Butit's like, there, there are some
some people on this planet wholook to just exploit nature for
(27:43):
the just big Hey, we're man, wewere put on this planet, and
we'll eat all the animals, andwe'll chop the forest down if we
need to. And then there's theother side, who is aware, keenly
aware of changes going on in theplanet, you know, for jungles
being, you know, decimated andburned down to make room for
(28:06):
cows that become hamburgers atMcDonald's? I guess. And it
there's this balance?
Dr. Bruce Means (28:13):
Where, where?
Where are we going? I mean, Iknow that you're not God. But
are we going to be okay or yell?
No, absolutely not. We'vealready passed many thresholds
that we've shot ourselves in thefoot. Look,
(28:33):
oh, my goodness, the greed thatmotivates people to
utilize resources to theirextinction. Look, we've wiped
out so many marine environment,animals and organisms, you know,
that all is going to fit that isfeeding back on us, for gosh
sakes. You know, we pump so muchco2 in the air. If people would
(28:55):
just watch the Keeling Curveevery day, and realize how
unbelievablyscary it is that we are
continually adding more and moreco2 to the atmosphere? And if
you don't,all of that feeds back
negatively on us, right. Solook, let me tell you one thing,
there's a whole lot of thingsone could be said in this arena.
But the one that I as abiologist most likes to think
(29:18):
about.
If you're interested in learningabout nature, or about you know
what the real phenomena are andhow they act or how how nature
operates, which includes us, youknow, what's in store for us?
You need to have environments inwhich organisms evolved and to
(29:43):
which they're best adapted inorder to study those phenomena.
You don't go out onto a ricefield and try to learn what the
hell the biology is of some ofthe black Redwing blackbirds
that are eating the rice,because that's not their natural
environment. That's just a lotPart of how they're trying to
survive in the face of humanactivity. So conservation, and
(30:03):
especially conservation ofnative ecosystems, where we can
conserve them is exceedinglyimportant because that's where
the main knowledge exists aboutall of the organisms on the
planet. And it also is where thephenomena of overpopulation, and
predation and disease and allthat, that enter, enter, that,
(30:27):
that affects or other organisms,is to be learned because those
same phenomena affect us. Andthey are affecting us right now.
And you know, as Americans,we're sitting in very nice and
comfortable look at my, youknow, I got books all over and
you got a nice place where yougo around, every young youngster
in this country ought to have awhole summer off into a Third
(30:50):
World, part of the world andlive with a family, this Grubin
for a living out of the ground,and realize here's a good one.
We're in the top 20 countries ofthe world, by population alone,
not by density. Where does theUnited States stack? You know,
the first thing is gonna beChina, in terms of number of
(31:13):
people a second will be India,were in the top 20 with us fit
down there probably. That's whatI thought originally two. Yeah,
we're number three, really?
Number three, 300. And what wejust passed the 300.
Yeah, we're the third mostpopulous country in the world.
(31:35):
We're not the third densest, butthe next most populous country,
I think, is Indonesia. So andit's like that it's below 200
million are right around 200men.
As we keepincreasing, and utilizing
resources, and causing, youknow, old growth forests to be
(31:55):
lost forever, for the mightydollar that somebody wants to
generate from it. We're losingall of the important
laboratories, in which naturallaboratories in which the
knowledge about the world andabout how we're going to be
(32:16):
affected by what we're doing tothe world lies and resides.
Anyway,if we keep doing what we're
doing
Thom Pollard (32:27):
well, you know, if all of mankind were, you know,
wiped from the planet, the Earthwould probably be better off for
it. Right. Yeah, the Earth
Dr. Bruce Means (32:40):
does restore itself. Oral does have? Yeah,
you know, we've had manyextinctions, some really major
extinctions. And following theextinction, there is an
interesting, apparently aninteresting phenomenon on this
planet, that life tends toproliferate and, and, and
diversify in time until there'sanother extinction event. So the
(33:04):
planet and the life on thisplanet are not going to go away
no matter what we do it, but wemay well, and we may well go
away sooner than we think.
Thom Pollard (33:15):
So, so Bruce, just to, you know, I'm so
appreciative of your time, andI'm fascinated by this. And I
would love to be on anexpedition with you, I can only
imagine all the chatter atdinner and while you're
trekking, or walking through themuck in the mud and the rain,
and but, you know, say there's athere's somebody considering
(33:40):
going to college, a young personwho's interested in, in what we
just spoke of, what should theydo? What's their what would be a
good? I, you know, obviously,following their, their, you
know, what kind of pulls them,you have to be your own unique
self. But is there a course ofeducation? Is there a field of
(34:02):
study, and as you had said,everybody should go to, you
know, live with a family inColombia or Venezuela and eating
off the land. So I guess youalready told me, but
educationally speaking, ifsomebody said, that I want to be
Bruce means of the nextgeneration.
Dr. Bruce Means (34:21):
Did they come and take your class at FSU, or,
you know, well, first andforemost, you should follow your
passions, you should figure outwhat it is that interests you. I
mean, you know, if you just wantto become a biologist, because
there's some other neat onesaround it sounds neat to you.
That's not the good reason. Ifyou like birds, or you like
(34:43):
mushrooms, or you're fascinatedby bacteria, then pursue that
and pursue it in every way youcan, educationally because it
can lead to a really satisfyinglife and productive life that
enables you to doMaybe add to the wealth of
knowledge that human beings havecreated by, you know, the
scientific method and being goodobservers and speaking only
(35:07):
truth.
Yeah, yeah, it's, you know,biology is hugely variable. If I
had a life to do over again, Itried to just be a botanist, and
learn all all about plants, but,but a good naturalist is
somebody who takes in aspects ofall of nature, geology, you
(35:30):
know, mathematics helpslearning, certainly anything and
everything to do with genetics.
And so you kind of have to writeyour own
recipe, but pursue it whereveryou go. And don't be afraid to
like something like snakes,because they just can lead to
understanding the samephenomena, about how things
(35:53):
operate on this planet, as ifyou were studying funguses, or
you were studying lichens ontrees, or you're looking at fish
in an aquatic environment. Sothat that's my best
recommendation. If you'reinterested, and you're
passionate about things thatappeal to you, and not
everything appeals to everybody,so it's whatever, whatever.
(36:16):
Don't let other people Poopoo.
You. I mean, look, when I wasyounger, and I had an interest
in snakes, as you can imaginewhat kind of pressure I had on
me, snakes was, Wow, well, Icompleted a 40 year study and
just published a couple of yearsago, on the eastern diamondback
rattlesnake. I studied withradio telemetry for that long
period of time. So and in that Ilearned an awful lot that has
(36:41):
useful application to humanbehavior, but I'm off looking at
other creatures and just inhaving a great life. Wonderful,
wonderful. You you were bittenby that one of those
rattlesnakes i different times.
Yeah. And you lift apparentlyless this.
Thom Pollard (37:01):
How did that feel?
How did this
Dr. Bruce Means (37:06):
hazard you know if you're gonna work with
something dangerous and deadly.
Yeah. And you're not carefulover over a long period of time,
the likelihood of suffering theconsequences is high. And that
happened to me but thatfortunately, I knew what to do.
I had access to medical help.
(37:27):
And I survived it and I have noI would have done it. I'd do it
all over again. Just because itinterested me to. This was the
largest rattlesnakein the world. And, you know,
Asia has has the tiger Africahas the lion we got the eastern
diamondback rattlesnake and
Thom Pollard (37:50):
if you'd like a free downloadable PDF of the
happiness quotient of course andhappiness, visit me at
patreon.com/the happinessquotient, where you can also
find exclusive content forpatrons including an interview
with Mark Senate about hisexpeditions to Shangri La with
Bruce means. For moreinformation about me to inquire
(38:13):
about personal coaching orpublic speaking in person or
virtually, please visit eyesopen productions.com or join my
mailing list Tom dot Dharma dotPollard at Gmail. Please
subscribe and share this episodewith anyone that might find
these words inspiring. I rely onthe kindness of my listeners to
(38:34):
share with people that they careabout. And while you're at it,
click some stars and leave me areview. Remember, something very
bright awaits us. Set one's mindstraight and with good intent.
Even though the search can bedeep. something bright awaits us
even in the tragedy. That islife. Thank you for visiting the
(38:57):
happiness quotient. I will seeyou all real soon.
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