October 9, 2012 • 39 mins
It's been called the world's lungs, the world's pharmacy and the world's air conditioner. It takes up only 6 percent of Earth's land, yet houses 50% of the world's species. Find out the math behind why they may be gone in 40 years in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house storks
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh, and the little dinosaur
friend of yours. Yeah, he's kind of become a fixture.
Where what's this? Yeah, it looks like a she what's
(00:24):
his her name? Oh? Dinah? That was sharp, Thank you.
I appreciate that. Not as sharp, however, unfortunately, as the
blade of the cattleman's chainsaw cutting down their traffical rainforests
like crazy or burning it. Yeah. Crazy, Well, that's what
(00:48):
they used to do, supposedly. I don't know if you
know this or not, but I read a couple of
books by a guy named Charles C. Mann. One other
calls fourteen, the other is called four and Um. In it,
he talks about how there's a lot of evidence that
the Amazon Basin was a completely human managed creation, that
(01:11):
it's not like some virgin tropical rainforest in its natural state,
that it was like creative planted it and managed it.
And um, I think he says, like, if that's the case,
then it's like the largest public works project ever undertaken
in the history community. But one of the pieces of
evidence is this like slash and char agriculture, where it's
(01:36):
like you set the forest on fire, um, but you
don't let it burn all the way down in the ash.
You like, you know, put it out and it leaves
these stumps of charcoal which actually make the ground more fertile,
which it turns out. It is a surprising factor if
you ask me, a surprising fact of the podcast that
(01:56):
the ground, the soil in this incredibly lust Amazon rainforce
or any rainforest, tropical rainforescet is really not very fertile
at all. Yeah, at least deep down. That's a good point,
and that is in this article. And I thought that
was pretty interesting too. I thought this article was jam
(02:16):
packed and stuff, and then it just takes a really
depressing turn at the end. Yeah, because everyone knows what's
going on with the rainforest. And we're gonna read a
plug later. But our old friend Joanne Um who nominated
us for an Emmy nomination. Of course, we learned quickly
that spoken word albums you don't have a shot. Well, no,
(02:39):
it's kind of a rip off because all the spoken
word Emmy's, I'm sorry, Grammy's to say Emmy, all the
spoken word. Grammys are people reading their autobiographies who know everybody.
It's just such a rip off. It really hard working
folks like you and I can't be nominated for a
Grammy because Tina fe read her book out loud inm
of a microphone and look, it's so funny, got like
(03:00):
a man's forearms. It's hilarious. I love Tina Fey. But anyway,
Joanne uh stand aloneus and I think I'm pronouncing that
right works for the Amazon Institute and she's one who
kind of um got me thinking about this today, and
we're gonna plug her organization later. You can adopt a sloth.
(03:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's great, pretty neat. So having said that,
thank you, Joanne. You don't make a problem with those
programs is you don't actually get to take the sloth
or the kid or whoever home with its adoption. I
think it's just like giving money to somebody, is pretty much.
But yeah, I think that's a good thing to plug. Chuckers,
chuck um. I want you to know something. The tropical
(03:46):
rainforests on Earth cover six to seven of the dry
land on the planet. Yeah, not counting the oceans, right,
but they may they are home to about out of
the species on the whole planet. Yeah, mind boggling. I'm
(04:07):
just gonna go ahead and say this whole podcast, you
will be blown away by the numbers, the sheer numbers
of diversity going on and sadly six percent now it
used to. Yeah, it's going away at an alarming rate.
There's a statistic given at the end um of this
(04:27):
article that I've heard many times with some of these
like kind of hippie um ecology statistics, you have to
kind of go back and look, you know, um a
lot of them, like they're just so staggering and it's
very important stuff that some sensational ones kind of slipped
through the cracks and like it reported over and over
(04:49):
and over again. But the forty Like, okay, so there
there's a statistic that at the current rate of deforestation,
there will be no tropical rainforests left on Earth and
forty years. And I looked it up and um, apparently
that's fairly close to accurate. So at the rate that
it's being deforested today, which is about fifty thousand acres
(05:11):
a day's one point three acres a second or something
like that, one point five acres a second. Okay, every second. Yeah,
that is depressing. Yeah, so fifty tho acres a day. Um. So,
if you take the total acreage of rainforest left on
Earth and divide it by fifty acres lost a day,
If you do that constantly, twenty four hours a day,
(05:32):
every day in forty years, there's no rainforest left at
this right. You want to hear something else, scary, h
Five years ago there were ten million Indians living in
the Amazonian rainforest. Ten million today, less than two thousand. Yeah,
that's that's the Amazon alone, right, Yeah, Amazonian rainforest. Well,
(05:54):
the Amazon is by far the largest rainforest. It's the
Amazon makes up of the tropic rainforest left on Earth.
Of all the tropical rainforests, Yeah, but all all in,
I think there are more than eighty countries through Africa, Australia, Asia,
Central and South America that um and we're talking tropical.
We're not talking about you in Seattle and you and Oregon.
(06:17):
Those are rainforests. They're beautiful, they're not tropical rainforest. But
you try to find a sloth in there, you can't
do it. No slut, not that I know. I don't
think so. Uh So I guess let's talk about weather,
lots of rain and rainforest. Yeah, they don't call it
that for nothing. Now, did you convert these inches defeat
(06:38):
because it's startling when you do. No. Um, I'll give
you inches first, and if you have that conversion, that's great.
A hundred and sixty to four hundred inches of rain
per year, thirteen to thirty three ft of rain of
rain every year, and we can get rains in Georgia, right. Yeah, No,
it makes Georgia look like the Sahara Desert. Yeah, maybe
(06:59):
even the go Be Yeah. Uh. For those of you
living outside of the United States and what other country
was it? But he's the Imperial system Liberia. Um. That's
we're talking four d and six point four to one thousand,
sixteen centimeters centimes a lot of meters. Uh. There is
no dry season, yeah, like you have in some places,
(07:22):
like where you have like Monsousi monsoon season, try season. Uh.
It's wet all year round, spread out pretty evenly. Temperature
remains pretty constant, hot and muggy below sixty. That's because
tropical rainforests form a band around the equator between the
two Meridians the tropics. Things don't change a lot there, right,
because the what is it? The procession of the earth
(07:45):
doesn't create seasons like it does elsewhere in the northern
nor southern hemisphere. Sure, we get a little further away
from the sun gets a little cooler, right, So what
you have hot, wet and um green? Yes? And the
reason like monster green, monster green? Like? Uh, I guess
we should start at the top with a canopy. Um
(08:07):
I drew also, Chuck, if you need any help, I
drew a little diagram, did you it's a text to picture.
You need to put a little happy face on your sunshine.
I didn't even bring a pen. We can add that later.
But if you need this, this is here. Appreciate that. Uh,
the canopy. We're talking giant trees six fifty ft um tall,
(08:31):
forming the thick canopy such that only like one person
of light will eventually hit the floor of the jungle,
and then above that. Sometimes you're gonna have these and
I see you drew them the little what if they
called emergence. Emergence, These trees that are so uh stubborn
and intent on getting sunlight. They're like, you know what,
(08:52):
I'm gonna grow even higher than the canopy and steal
all that sunlight for myself. Crooked trees. Basically, there's a
lot of cooks that we're gonna get doing this. Yeah,
it's kind of okay. So one thing that I learned
from reading this is the tropical rainforest is a real
like dog eat dog um ecosum. Maybe we should just
get rid of it all. I don't think. I mean,
(09:14):
it's brutal plants like sucking the life out of other plants.
That's just how it goes. That's what it's like in
the jungle. Josh, So you've got the canopy level, got
the canopies, and you said another fact of the podcast
to me, um, only one percent the sunlight that hits
that canopy makes it down to the forest floor. Yeah.
(09:35):
And another cool thing that was pointed out a little
later is that, um if if like one of these
trees dies and there's a hole in the canopy and
little sunlight gets through, it's like everyone and everything goes berserker.
Plants and animals like sun. You gotta get to it.
That's our life, and they like scramble towards these little sunspots.
It's like, um that rush song the trees. Yeah, that's
(09:57):
a good one. Uh, that wasn't They were like way
proggy early phase. They then I like prog rock because
I like Rush. Yeah. Well, apparently their new album is
pretty good. Everything they did was good. No, I mean
they had name one album of theirs that wasn't good. Well,
I mean anything since the late eighties to me, no, man,
(10:19):
I'm telling you still. Well, they're getting high marks where
their do. One for being like sort of a throwback
to their old sound. That's great. I actually don't like
their earliest stuff, like twelve, not that big one. All right, boy,
that's a dude conversation. You ever been to a Rush
show the five girls there, Yeah, it's true, and they're
looking around like, yeah, exactly, and the guys don't even
(10:42):
notice them because Getty leaves on stage and I'm wearing
a wizard's hat. Alright. So the forest floor, where it's
nice and dark and dank, um, you're gonna find what
you would probably expect, which is a lot of moss
and fungus. No grass. Now, you'd be hard pressed to
grow any grass on the forest floor of a tropical
rain because there's not much light, Like we're talking about
(11:04):
one percent of available light. Yeah, they're on the jungle floor.
Uh so, like you said, let's say a tree dies
there's an opening. It's kind of like, um, a rent
control apartment, right, everybody's scrambling for it. This this happens
probably more than you would think. And it's not even
(11:25):
necessarily a tree dying. A tree could just fall over,
as we'll see later. Um. But uh, when when that's
not the case? In an area where their seedlings trying
to grow, most of them die because you have to
make it sixceed to a hundred feet to the top
of the canopy to start growing branches, and takes a
lot of light to generate or to undertake the process
(11:49):
of photos instance, to get that tall to ensure your
survival anyway, Um, and if you are one of those
lucky one percent ceilings, oh wait, I just confuse two
different statistics. If you are one of those lucky ceilings
that happens to have an opening in the canopy and
makes it all the way up there and starts growing,
makes a nice life for yourself. Um, you are probably
(12:12):
going to be subject to basically what are parasitic plants. Yeah,
not carnivorous plants, even parasitic plants. Yeah. The epiphytes actually
grow onto giant trees that use that as their ladder
to get to the top. Well, they form the understory too,
so you have the canopy and then just under that
where there's still some light coming here but nothing like
(12:35):
above the canopy, you have those epiphytes, and those are
like ferns and um and orchids, which are very beautiful
air plants. Yeah, because the roots turn in the ground
there on the side of the tree. Yeah, they're like
the succubus, and they can eventually kill this tree if
they get to the top and they're doing fine up
there and then their roots spread out and choke the
(12:57):
tree to death. Then that tree can actually decompose, but
the lattice framework is still there. So the uh, epiphyt
is just like great, thanks for the ride. Sorry, sorry
I killed you. Thanks for the ride, lady, exactly. Uh. Yeah,
So an epiphyt can turn into a strangler. It's basically
an epiphyt that's gone bad. Well, like you said, it's
(13:19):
doggy dog. Everyone's trying to get up to the top.
I know. But if you're an epiphyt oral Leanna, which
is a h I think that's how you pronounce it,
which is basically a vine that can grow all the
way up and then starts to spread. It's like kudzoo um.
You're not doing anything really on your own. You're depending
(13:40):
on some other organism, whereas if you're a tree, you're
doing your own thing, but then you're dependent on the sun. Well, yeah,
I can hardly be faulted for that. Everyone's mooching off
of somebody, except I guess the sun, so the one
that's providing it for everybody. All right, So you were
(14:01):
talking about the infertile soil um. It rains so much
that the nutrients get washed away really easily, and they
didn't never get to like penetrate deep into the earth.
So uh, Jerry laughed at that and it wasn't unsettling
off putting. And so what happens is you get a
very thin layer of fertile soil. So what you get
(14:23):
there is very thin um, not very deep roots, and
in the end you get trees that fall down pretty easily.
Like in here in Atlanta when we go through a
heavy drought, you'll also often see like trees falling down
during windstorms because their roots never like got super low. Yeah,
this is exactly the same thing, exactly. Uh. But some
(14:45):
trees have adapted a way around this called buttresses, which
is basically like a trunk coming off of the trunk
and just going down to stabilize it. Yeah, if you did,
you look those up. I've seen this before. It's pretty cool.
I mean it's like a stand almost surrounding in the
base of the tree. It's kind of neat. That's a buttress. Yeah. Well,
a buttress of any kind is a support system. Um,
(15:08):
you're one of my buttresses. Appreciate that. Uh So I
think that is worth saying again. Like, the reason that
the tree roots are shallow is because nutrients are scarce. Um.
And one of the reasons why is because it rains
so much. Right. Um. But even still, like these these
(15:29):
plants species and animal species as we'll see are um,
they've just adapted for life, and that's really high up.
Like everything everything that sustains life is basically up there
for the most part, um, and all of these these
plants and animals have made these awesome adaptations to live
(15:49):
high up in the air, um, in a place where
nutrients are really hard to come by and there's a
lot of competition for everything, a lot of competition. I
think it's fast like a buttress. It's like, oh, well,
I'll fall over if I don't grow another trunk, so
I'll grow another trunk well or the uh. The hippophytes
can get to the top and then leap from tree
to tree and further seal in the canopy, which is
(16:12):
kind of cool. Um, So we should talk about bacteria
for a minute. Plays an important part in any ecosystem,
but especially in the rainforest. Um. You know, trees breakdown
bacteria with food. Uh or I'm sorry, provide bacteria FOODA.
(16:33):
I agree with that. Trees breakdown bacteriaus food and then
the bacteria poop that out and feed the trees, right,
and they're just like it's a great little relationship symbiotic.
Everybody gets what they want. It's like those little birds
that pick bugs off of the back of what a hippo.
A hippo that does that? I don't know I've seen
that though, Or there's no there's one that there's a
bird that picks food out of like the mouth of
(16:54):
a hippo. It's really dangerous to be that bird. But
like the hippos are like, thank you, that's cute. Uh.
And here's another mind blowing stat If we want to
talk about diversity. Let's say you live in uh, northwest Oregon,
and you're like, dude, we've got like a dozen tree
species here in this forest. It's like so diverse. Hit
(17:17):
the hacky sack again, let's get out of here. Three
hundred different distinct tree species in the in the in
the rainforest. Yeah, buts just trees. They're really really spread out. Yeah.
So like in an acre you might find just like
a few of that species. So there's a bunch of
different species packed into one acre. Yeah, I mean it's crazy. Um.
(17:40):
Ten million animal species. Unfortunately, Uh, they're being destroyed at
the rate of fifty species per year. Experts say that
we're losing a hundred and thirty seven plant, animal, and
insects species every single day deforestation seven specs. Not just
(18:01):
like oh that bug died, it's like all of that
bug died today on Monday, and we guess what will
happen tomorrow, All of another insect will die and thirty
seven of them. It's great. It's just like it's the
saddest thing ever. Um. And it's not just said too,
I mean we'll see in a second. Like what the
problem is when that happens. You know, biodiversity is important,
(18:25):
and if you're talking about the cradle of biodiversity, then
it becomes even more important because it's like the cool
part of town and then the suburbs. As far as
Planet Earth goes and the excerpts, we can't even talk
about that all right, But out of these ten million,
(18:45):
of course, insects are going to be the most abundant.
And then out of all of those, ants are the
most abundant thing in the rainforest. So I found somewhere
that they make up of the biomass of the tropical
rainforest from what I understand, Like, that's like the entire biomass,
the trees and all that stuff. The ants make up that. Man, Yeah,
(19:07):
I bet they're not fun to deal with, yes, and
something like so half of that is fire ants. Wow,
can you imagine? Have you seen this incredible movie It's
called um Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's an Indiana
Jones movie. There's these fire ants and there's just crazy
what they can do to a man. It's such an abomination. Um,
(19:31):
did you see the South Park about that? It's great,
It was great. It was also probably the most disturbing
you've ever seen that what happened least to see it.
We can't say it. On the other no, I can't
even I shouldn't even be endorsing that episode. UM. So
these insects also have a very symbiotic relationship with the
(19:53):
forest because they, along with birds, helped spread the seeds
around because there's not a a wind going on. Yeah,
so seeds aren't gonna propagate by flowing through the air
like they do elsewhere. So you got these little insects
eating them and then carrying them off tim twenty feet away,
or birds carrying them miles and miles away, pooping them out,
(20:14):
pooping them out, and then you're spreading seed, which is
probably another reason why each acre has like so many
different kinds of uh plant life going on, right, Yeah, yeah,
well I think that's definitely why. UM. The birds also,
especially like say hummingbirds, which there's an abundance in the
tropical rainforest. Um, they will get pollen all over themselves
(20:35):
as they go from like orchid to orchid, so that
helps propagate um orchids or epiphytes, which typically can't really
get from tree to tree, you know, so when you
when you have an orchid that's evolved specifically for a hummingbird,
it's going to attract those hummingbirds with your delicious nectar
and help generate new orchids elsewhere. I associate humming were
(21:00):
with the sun for some reason. Yeah, probably because where
I live. Yeah, but it's hard to imagine them in
like in the dark jungle. Well, I think in the understory,
which is where the epiphytes are. It's it's not that dark,
it's like where it's like you can't really see um
reptiles obviously, tons of reptiles and amphibians. If you if
(21:20):
you want to avoid snakes, then the Amazon rainforce is
probably not where you want to go. Um. But a
lot of these are being smuggled out. Evidently live animals
are the fourth largest smuggling commodity. Smuggling out these live
animals for resale. Is it for bush met just for pet?
No pet like black market pets. This is a documentary
(21:40):
that I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, I was kind
of surprised. Behind drugs, diamonds and weapons. See that's such
a b s. They always say that, like it's always
like those and then whatever you want to put behind it.
I've seen counterfeit materials for being smuggling for fourth year,
for like black Mark stuff. It's like whatever whatever you're
(22:02):
talking about four after those drugs, diamonds, weapons and knight. Uh.
You might be right, Josh, I think, but I'm going
with it. But you did talk about earlier about the
different types of adaptations for the animals, like um, little
webs of skin like on a flying squirrel and other
(22:24):
animals to allowut to like soar between trees. It's creepy,
pretty neat. Prehensile tails. I love a prehensible town, which
is just like an extra hand, especially for grasping hand.
Basically is what it is, Not like a card playing hand,
more like a branch grabbing hand, like I'm gonna hang
on to this with and like carrying my body weight
with my tail so I can use both hands. Watch
(22:46):
me show off exactly. I'm a Howler monkey. Can you
do a Howler monkey impression? Can you know? I don't
know anyone who I bet that guy from Police Academy
kuld Oh, yeah, Michael, it's Michael. Do you remember it,
Michael winter Bottom? No, I don't know. He was good though.
(23:09):
You know, we're gonna get some emails about it. Yeah,
it was Michael so and so. Lots of bats and
then thus lots of bats. Cat, dude, there is a
there's a park in Zambia, um called Konsaka Konsenka Kassanka
National Reserve, and it's home to the largest bat migration
(23:33):
in the world. Every October, ten million bats come to
roost and eat these mangoes that are ripening nearby. And um,
they cover everything and apparently when they when they take
off at dusk, they blot out the sky for like
twenty minutes in every direction. Sy, I'm sure they just
(23:56):
want the mangoes. Yeah, they don't care about you. But man, man,
I even like bats, and I'm creeped out by that. Austin,
Texas has nothing on those. Oh yeah they had that,
yeah the overpass moever. Yeah, um, guerrillas, great apes orangutangs, pigs,
big cats and batscat. By the way, another thing I
(24:18):
found in like that was a huge, huge industry bats.
But like back guano mining because they used it for
like fertilizer for so long that like people made like fortunes,
like oil fortunes off of these things, and it was
all like in in these tropical areas. They were like
quarries of that they were digging out back quano from Yeah.
(24:43):
And who were the big names there that got rich? Oh,
I don't remember. I would imagine they were mostly in Brazil.
It's not like the getties or the standards. I don't
think so the standard standard oil. I knew a standard
really sure, h Um. People like we talked about indigenous tribes,
(25:05):
uh like, are being basically shoved out at an alarming rate.
And these people it's really sad because they have like uh,
these medicine men who have a great deal of knowledge,
who are very old and if they're not in one
of the little hippie websites I went too said, if
you know, one of these medicine men dies, then it's
(25:26):
like burning down a library, like unless they passed on
their knowledge, then it just dies with them, just like
some native languages do. It's really sad. And that's why
the movie Medicine Man was was said in the Amazon,
just because like people think, if there is a cure
for cancer and aids, it lies in the jungles. So
(25:47):
that's one which I believe, by the way, well they
called rainforest the pharmacy of the world. Yeah, but I
just have a personal theory that there is no disease
wherein there is not a cure here on earth. Yeah.
I think it's it's the biblical of you. No, it's
nothing to do with that, you don't think so now.
I just think it's the yin and yang of mother Nature,
like there cannot be one without the other. Does that
(26:09):
make sense. It's pretty interesting. I don't have anything to
back that up. It's just my personal thought. Well, let's
stick around, you know. And uh yeah, um, So apparently
a quarter of all the medicines we used today have
their origins from plants in the rainforest. That's a that's
pretty significant backing for what you're saying. Well, yeah, which
(26:29):
always cracks me up when we get uh crap for
talking about like Eastern and Western medicine, people like you
should just call it real medicine or not real medicine.
I don't think a lot of these people realize how
much of their pharmaceuticals are based on plants that some
shaman discovered. You know, we have a lot of angry listeners,
don't we sometimes, Um, but just one percent of the
(26:53):
plants in the Amazon rainforest has been um analyzed by
Western Western hemists. I guess yeah, isn't it crazy? Yeah,
remember we did an ethnobotany episode that was pretty good.
Oh yeah, that's right. Um. But even still even with
just that one percent um of our Western medicine from
that one percent of all of our medicines came from
(27:17):
that that one percent analysis. Yeah, A hundred and twenty
one prescription drugs are plant derived. That's amazing. Um. We
get a lot of food. Apparently there's something like two
thousand um types of usable fruit three thousand, three thousand total.
Indigenous tribes throughout the rainforests use about two thousands estimated,
(27:42):
and then we in the West have used like two
hundred and that nuts. They were like literally eighteen hundred
types of fruit that we just don't eat over here.
And you got to these farmers markets and you see
something like, wow, I've never seen this whatever it is,
like imagine eighteen hundred different things that you've never before, right, um. Yeah,
and that's like a farmer's marketing. I'm still like blown
(28:04):
away by jackfruit, which one is that it's they're huge
and they have like spine, um, like Um, you know
what I mean? Into that stuff? Now, exotic fruits he
should go to like, um, he goes to the Bufford
Highway Farmers. Okay. Um, And speaking of good eating, the Amazon, well,
(28:24):
not the Amazon, I always want to see the Amazon,
but the tropical rainforests of the world are home to
one quarter of the bird population parrots to cans. Yeah,
you can't eat it too, can you need fruit loops?
A lot of the things that we take for granted
over here came from the rainforests, like potatoes, rice, black pepper,
(28:45):
my favorite spice, cinnamon, cloves, avocado, pineapples, corn, chocolate, coffee, tomatoes,
like everything you love, almost potatoes the food we eat.
I don't think potatoes were from the rainforests. I think
they were from the mountains something. And why did I
say that in here? Then it is wrong, it's possible. Well,
(29:05):
roughly eight of the food we eat originally came from
tropical rainforest. So that's a pretty amazing statue. Um. Also,
yet we're just tearing them down willy nilly. Um. Yeah,
that's that's kind of a problem. So we're losing the pharmacy,
We're losing tons of um delicious fruit and delicious birds. Um,
losing people a lot of people ten million to two
(29:28):
thousands from pre Columbian Yeah, I mean it's been a while,
but still that's a drastic reduction. You also hear that
the we're losing the world's lungs, but apparently that's not
necessarily true. Yeah, they used to call it's funny it
goes they go by the lungs of the world. Is
the Amazon the pharmacy of the world. And then someone
else sitting here calls it the air conditioner over the world.
(29:50):
Why can't it just be the jungle. Well, I think
we're trying to drive at home to like fat lazy
Westerners who are like, I need that stuff right right,
I don't want to be hot. Yeah. They used to
think that the rainforest was super important for providing oxygen,
but um, apparently recent evidence shows that it doesn't have
that much of an effect on the oxygen supply, not
(30:12):
a net effect. Not a net it does it still
produces like of the world's oxygen, which was the stat
that was bandied about for a long time. But it
requires about that much to decompose everything on the floor.
But it is the air conditioner of the world. In
a way. So, well, the dark depths of the rainforest
(30:35):
are gonna absorb a lot of heat, and if you
mow these things down, there's gonna be a lot more
sun reflected back up in the atmosphere, which is going
to increase the overall temperature of the planet. So let's
talk about why why would anybody mow this down? If
these things are like the nature's pharmacy or the world's pharmacy,
the world's air condition or the world's along as the
world's the world strip club. Yeah, everything right, So like,
(30:58):
why would anybody cut stuffed down? Uh? Shortsightedness of huge
corporations is my answer? Even more directly, like what are
they after though, clearing land for like lumber, paper products, uh,
making pastures for cows, which is not a very smart
(31:20):
way to go about things. No, it really isn't, Like,
let's cut down old growth rainforest for these cows so
they can have a you know, barren landscape. Well, that's
part of the problem, is um, because these soils are
so nutrient poor. Apparently when you clear cut the rainforest chuckers,
you have like usable land, arable land for a year
(31:40):
or two um. So part of it's because this nutrient
turnover from all the rainfall, but also all of a sudden,
the soil that's used to almost no sunlight whatsoever is
suddenly subject to light and heat of immense proportions were
at the equator, and so it bay and cracks and
(32:01):
loses its nutrients even faster through runoff, so causes flooding.
It's really a terrible, terrible use of this land using
it for crops and livestock. Yeah, I've got a stat
for you to um. I mean, it doesn't pay off
either in the long run. Um. This one statistic is
that land converted to cattle operation yields the land owner
(32:24):
sixty dollars per acre. If they harvest it for timber,
it's gonna be worth four dollars per acre. But if
you uh use renewable and sustainable practices when you're harvesting
your land is gonna yield breaker in the long run.
So it's it's short sighted us. And it's not these
like it's not these indigenous people that like, we need crops,
(32:45):
so we're gonna cut down the rainforest. It's Mitsubishi and
uh who else, Texaco, Georgia, Pacific. Oh, what's the huge
like the huge corporations are going in the unical What
do you think, I said, un don't know what that is.
It's this clothing company out of Japan. Well they hate
(33:08):
the rain, right, they don't even have any steak in it.
They just go cut it down. Yeah, uh, we're laughing,
but that's really sad. Well. Also, um indigenous tribes who
are protected are frequently murdered by UM mercenaries who are
hired by these mega corporations that you know, want this
land and drive these people off of their protected land. Um.
(33:31):
I believe there was like a little girl who was
found dead, an indigenous tribe member who has found dead
like chain to a tree and like just killed by
loggers who wanted that land. It's really bad down there.
That was Brazil, I think. Well, plus the mudslides and
flooding and everything else that happens when you disrupt an
ecosystem so drastically. Yeah, it's like the hunting whale sharks.
(33:57):
That's what I was reminded of when you were saying,
like the economic impa act of preserving it is way
better than just using it up right then? Yeah, short sightedness,
short sighted that's very sad uh. Yeah, the company is
still like that. There's not a body that can say like,
we gotta stop this now, Like there's tons of people
like Joanna doing this great work, Don Henley Sting, these
(34:19):
people that have been on it for years, but it
just keeps happening. Well, why don't you plug him? Are
we done? I don't have anything else any search bar. Well, no,
we should tell everybody about something very special and dear
to our hearts. New York said, that's right. We are
going to Comic Con and we will be doing a
live podcast on Friday, October twelve at Comic Con at
(34:43):
the Jabbitt Center. It's like our new thing. We did
San Diego, now we're doing New York. That's right next
up Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic Con,
you should come back and see that. But after Comic Con,
we have one of our famous that's famous to us,
All Star Tribua Nights. Um. Where is it gonna be
the cutting room? It is at the grand reopening of
(35:03):
the Cutting Room in the Flat Iron District, which is
what's the address? It is forty four East thirty second
Street in New York and uh, it's in the Flat iron,
you said, And the doors open at seven thirty. Trivia
goes down at eight thirty. And what's first come, first serve? Right, free, free, free,
first come, first serve. We will have a bar there
that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us
(35:25):
drink that's right. We're gonna basically be having a really
good time if you if you're not familiar with our
trivia nights, like, just come out and check it out.
It'll be worth your while absolutely, and stay tuned for
info on Facebook and Twitter about the makeup of the
All Star team. We're filling that out as we speak.
But we will have some special guests that you will
want to meet. Yeah, and at the very least you
can come take on me and chuck right yeah, yeah, okay,
(35:47):
it's just fun. So what is that? That's Friday, October twelfth, right, yep,
the panels that went. The panel is at at least six, okay,
and then we're gonna be at the cutting room starting
at eight thirty. Tribute Star said, eight thirty. Doors at
seven thirty, be there, be square. You're good at this,
thank you? So okay. If you want to learn more
(36:09):
about rainforest, type that word in r A I N
F O R E, S T S U into the
handy search bar how stuff works dot com and it
will bring this up. And I said, handy searchbar, So
it's time for plugging the Amazon Institute. That's right. Um,
things are, They're making some headway over there, but um.
She basically points out that the bounty that Amazon is
(36:31):
great provides h a lot of fish, fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants,
pretty plenty of fresh clean water. I saw stat I
can't remember it that we didn't mention. It's something about
a percentage of the world's clean fresh water is in
the rainforests, like a lot. I can't remember how much
it was. We've got the ice caps in milking well. However,
(36:54):
due to a lack of nutritional education, uh, they hunt
monkeys and sloths to eat there. I'm telling these animals
do not provide any nutritional value, though there are bones
and attendons and tastes good either weird. They just fill
space in a hungry stomach. So you can participate and
the adopt a sloth program. Your money buys food and protection,
(37:16):
basically two kilos each of beans, rice, coffee, sugar, and
flour soap, milk and eggs are given in exchange for
a sloth or a monkey that was scheduled to be
skinned and grilled. That's how they put it. UM. So
if you donate seventy five bucks, you can adopt a sloth,
(37:37):
You get a certificate of ownership with the name you've
chosen for your slow. Do you own that slow? And
you get a CD of rainforest sounds, and students can
actually adopt a slot for a class, and they have
curriculum that they provide teachers K through twelve UM. They
provide teachers with an educator's packet of lesson plans. If
you email with your class size and curricular structure, they
(38:00):
will give you like customized materially three classroom. So it's
kind of cool. So you can read all about this
at Amazon Institute dot com and they're well worth supporting.
That's a good going, Chuck, Yeah, take going to Yeah, Yes,
thank you very much for everything for nominating us for
an Emmy Grammy Grammy. What's wrong with us today? Well,
(38:20):
we're heading to TV. We're like Emmy's UM. If you
have a really good UM nonprofit that's helping things people,
lets you adopt something. We're always down for that, especially
if you're willing to nominate us for an award too.
That definitely greases greases the wheels um. You can tweet
(38:42):
to us at s y s K Podcast, You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
or you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast
at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. Mhm
(39:11):
hm
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house storks
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh, and the little dinosaur
friend of yours. Yeah, he's kind of become a fixture.
Where what's this? Yeah, it looks like a she what's
(00:24):
his her name? Oh? Dinah? That was sharp, Thank you.
I appreciate that. Not as sharp, however, unfortunately, as the
blade of the cattleman's chainsaw cutting down their traffical rainforests
like crazy or burning it. Yeah. Crazy, Well, that's what
(00:48):
they used to do, supposedly. I don't know if you
know this or not, but I read a couple of
books by a guy named Charles C. Mann. One other
calls fourteen, the other is called four and Um. In it,
he talks about how there's a lot of evidence that
the Amazon Basin was a completely human managed creation, that
(01:11):
it's not like some virgin tropical rainforest in its natural state,
that it was like creative planted it and managed it.
And um, I think he says, like, if that's the case,
then it's like the largest public works project ever undertaken
in the history community. But one of the pieces of
evidence is this like slash and char agriculture, where it's
(01:36):
like you set the forest on fire, um, but you
don't let it burn all the way down in the ash.
You like, you know, put it out and it leaves
these stumps of charcoal which actually make the ground more fertile,
which it turns out. It is a surprising factor if
you ask me, a surprising fact of the podcast that
(01:56):
the ground, the soil in this incredibly lust Amazon rainforce
or any rainforest, tropical rainforescet is really not very fertile
at all. Yeah, at least deep down. That's a good point,
and that is in this article. And I thought that
was pretty interesting too. I thought this article was jam
(02:16):
packed and stuff, and then it just takes a really
depressing turn at the end. Yeah, because everyone knows what's
going on with the rainforest. And we're gonna read a
plug later. But our old friend Joanne Um who nominated
us for an Emmy nomination. Of course, we learned quickly
that spoken word albums you don't have a shot. Well, no,
(02:39):
it's kind of a rip off because all the spoken
word Emmy's, I'm sorry, Grammy's to say Emmy, all the
spoken word. Grammys are people reading their autobiographies who know everybody.
It's just such a rip off. It really hard working
folks like you and I can't be nominated for a
Grammy because Tina fe read her book out loud inm
of a microphone and look, it's so funny, got like
(03:00):
a man's forearms. It's hilarious. I love Tina Fey. But anyway,
Joanne uh stand aloneus and I think I'm pronouncing that
right works for the Amazon Institute and she's one who
kind of um got me thinking about this today, and
we're gonna plug her organization later. You can adopt a sloth.
(03:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's great, pretty neat. So having said that,
thank you, Joanne. You don't make a problem with those
programs is you don't actually get to take the sloth
or the kid or whoever home with its adoption. I
think it's just like giving money to somebody, is pretty much.
But yeah, I think that's a good thing to plug. Chuckers,
chuck um. I want you to know something. The tropical
(03:46):
rainforests on Earth cover six to seven of the dry
land on the planet. Yeah, not counting the oceans, right,
but they may they are home to about out of
the species on the whole planet. Yeah, mind boggling. I'm
(04:07):
just gonna go ahead and say this whole podcast, you
will be blown away by the numbers, the sheer numbers
of diversity going on and sadly six percent now it
used to. Yeah, it's going away at an alarming rate.
There's a statistic given at the end um of this
(04:27):
article that I've heard many times with some of these
like kind of hippie um ecology statistics, you have to
kind of go back and look, you know, um a
lot of them, like they're just so staggering and it's
very important stuff that some sensational ones kind of slipped
through the cracks and like it reported over and over
(04:49):
and over again. But the forty Like, okay, so there
there's a statistic that at the current rate of deforestation,
there will be no tropical rainforests left on Earth and
forty years. And I looked it up and um, apparently
that's fairly close to accurate. So at the rate that
it's being deforested today, which is about fifty thousand acres
(05:11):
a day's one point three acres a second or something
like that, one point five acres a second. Okay, every second. Yeah,
that is depressing. Yeah, so fifty tho acres a day. Um. So,
if you take the total acreage of rainforest left on
Earth and divide it by fifty acres lost a day,
If you do that constantly, twenty four hours a day,
(05:32):
every day in forty years, there's no rainforest left at
this right. You want to hear something else, scary, h
Five years ago there were ten million Indians living in
the Amazonian rainforest. Ten million today, less than two thousand. Yeah,
that's that's the Amazon alone, right, Yeah, Amazonian rainforest. Well,
(05:54):
the Amazon is by far the largest rainforest. It's the
Amazon makes up of the tropic rainforest left on Earth.
Of all the tropical rainforests, Yeah, but all all in,
I think there are more than eighty countries through Africa, Australia, Asia,
Central and South America that um and we're talking tropical.
We're not talking about you in Seattle and you and Oregon.
(06:17):
Those are rainforests. They're beautiful, they're not tropical rainforest. But
you try to find a sloth in there, you can't
do it. No slut, not that I know. I don't
think so. Uh So I guess let's talk about weather,
lots of rain and rainforest. Yeah, they don't call it
that for nothing. Now, did you convert these inches defeat
(06:38):
because it's startling when you do. No. Um, I'll give
you inches first, and if you have that conversion, that's great.
A hundred and sixty to four hundred inches of rain
per year, thirteen to thirty three ft of rain of
rain every year, and we can get rains in Georgia, right. Yeah, No,
it makes Georgia look like the Sahara Desert. Yeah, maybe
(06:59):
even the go Be Yeah. Uh. For those of you
living outside of the United States and what other country
was it? But he's the Imperial system Liberia. Um. That's
we're talking four d and six point four to one thousand,
sixteen centimeters centimes a lot of meters. Uh. There is
no dry season, yeah, like you have in some places,
(07:22):
like where you have like Monsousi monsoon season, try season. Uh.
It's wet all year round, spread out pretty evenly. Temperature
remains pretty constant, hot and muggy below sixty. That's because
tropical rainforests form a band around the equator between the
two Meridians the tropics. Things don't change a lot there, right,
because the what is it? The procession of the earth
(07:45):
doesn't create seasons like it does elsewhere in the northern
nor southern hemisphere. Sure, we get a little further away
from the sun gets a little cooler, right, So what
you have hot, wet and um green? Yes? And the
reason like monster green, monster green? Like? Uh, I guess
we should start at the top with a canopy. Um
(08:07):
I drew also, Chuck, if you need any help, I
drew a little diagram, did you it's a text to picture.
You need to put a little happy face on your sunshine.
I didn't even bring a pen. We can add that later.
But if you need this, this is here. Appreciate that. Uh,
the canopy. We're talking giant trees six fifty ft um tall,
(08:31):
forming the thick canopy such that only like one person
of light will eventually hit the floor of the jungle,
and then above that. Sometimes you're gonna have these and
I see you drew them the little what if they
called emergence. Emergence, These trees that are so uh stubborn
and intent on getting sunlight. They're like, you know what,
(08:52):
I'm gonna grow even higher than the canopy and steal
all that sunlight for myself. Crooked trees. Basically, there's a
lot of cooks that we're gonna get doing this. Yeah,
it's kind of okay. So one thing that I learned
from reading this is the tropical rainforest is a real
like dog eat dog um ecosum. Maybe we should just
get rid of it all. I don't think. I mean,
(09:14):
it's brutal plants like sucking the life out of other plants.
That's just how it goes. That's what it's like in
the jungle. Josh, So you've got the canopy level, got
the canopies, and you said another fact of the podcast
to me, um, only one percent the sunlight that hits
that canopy makes it down to the forest floor. Yeah.
(09:35):
And another cool thing that was pointed out a little
later is that, um if if like one of these
trees dies and there's a hole in the canopy and
little sunlight gets through, it's like everyone and everything goes berserker.
Plants and animals like sun. You gotta get to it.
That's our life, and they like scramble towards these little sunspots.
It's like, um that rush song the trees. Yeah, that's
(09:57):
a good one. Uh, that wasn't They were like way
proggy early phase. They then I like prog rock because
I like Rush. Yeah. Well, apparently their new album is
pretty good. Everything they did was good. No, I mean
they had name one album of theirs that wasn't good. Well,
I mean anything since the late eighties to me, no, man,
(10:19):
I'm telling you still. Well, they're getting high marks where
their do. One for being like sort of a throwback
to their old sound. That's great. I actually don't like
their earliest stuff, like twelve, not that big one. All right, boy,
that's a dude conversation. You ever been to a Rush
show the five girls there, Yeah, it's true, and they're
looking around like, yeah, exactly, and the guys don't even
(10:42):
notice them because Getty leaves on stage and I'm wearing
a wizard's hat. Alright. So the forest floor, where it's
nice and dark and dank, um, you're gonna find what
you would probably expect, which is a lot of moss
and fungus. No grass. Now, you'd be hard pressed to
grow any grass on the forest floor of a tropical
rain because there's not much light, Like we're talking about
(11:04):
one percent of available light. Yeah, they're on the jungle floor.
Uh so, like you said, let's say a tree dies
there's an opening. It's kind of like, um, a rent
control apartment, right, everybody's scrambling for it. This this happens
probably more than you would think. And it's not even
(11:25):
necessarily a tree dying. A tree could just fall over,
as we'll see later. Um. But uh, when when that's
not the case? In an area where their seedlings trying
to grow, most of them die because you have to
make it sixceed to a hundred feet to the top
of the canopy to start growing branches, and takes a
lot of light to generate or to undertake the process
(11:49):
of photos instance, to get that tall to ensure your
survival anyway, Um, and if you are one of those
lucky one percent ceilings, oh wait, I just confuse two
different statistics. If you are one of those lucky ceilings
that happens to have an opening in the canopy and
makes it all the way up there and starts growing,
makes a nice life for yourself. Um, you are probably
(12:12):
going to be subject to basically what are parasitic plants. Yeah,
not carnivorous plants, even parasitic plants. Yeah. The epiphytes actually
grow onto giant trees that use that as their ladder
to get to the top. Well, they form the understory too,
so you have the canopy and then just under that
where there's still some light coming here but nothing like
(12:35):
above the canopy, you have those epiphytes, and those are
like ferns and um and orchids, which are very beautiful
air plants. Yeah, because the roots turn in the ground
there on the side of the tree. Yeah, they're like
the succubus, and they can eventually kill this tree if
they get to the top and they're doing fine up
there and then their roots spread out and choke the
(12:57):
tree to death. Then that tree can actually decompose, but
the lattice framework is still there. So the uh, epiphyt
is just like great, thanks for the ride. Sorry, sorry
I killed you. Thanks for the ride, lady, exactly. Uh. Yeah,
So an epiphyt can turn into a strangler. It's basically
an epiphyt that's gone bad. Well, like you said, it's
(13:19):
doggy dog. Everyone's trying to get up to the top.
I know. But if you're an epiphyt oral Leanna, which
is a h I think that's how you pronounce it,
which is basically a vine that can grow all the
way up and then starts to spread. It's like kudzoo um.
You're not doing anything really on your own. You're depending
(13:40):
on some other organism, whereas if you're a tree, you're
doing your own thing, but then you're dependent on the sun. Well, yeah,
I can hardly be faulted for that. Everyone's mooching off
of somebody, except I guess the sun, so the one
that's providing it for everybody. All right, So you were
(14:01):
talking about the infertile soil um. It rains so much
that the nutrients get washed away really easily, and they
didn't never get to like penetrate deep into the earth.
So uh, Jerry laughed at that and it wasn't unsettling
off putting. And so what happens is you get a
very thin layer of fertile soil. So what you get
(14:23):
there is very thin um, not very deep roots, and
in the end you get trees that fall down pretty easily.
Like in here in Atlanta when we go through a
heavy drought, you'll also often see like trees falling down
during windstorms because their roots never like got super low. Yeah,
this is exactly the same thing, exactly. Uh. But some
(14:45):
trees have adapted a way around this called buttresses, which
is basically like a trunk coming off of the trunk
and just going down to stabilize it. Yeah, if you did,
you look those up. I've seen this before. It's pretty cool.
I mean it's like a stand almost surrounding in the
base of the tree. It's kind of neat. That's a buttress. Yeah. Well,
a buttress of any kind is a support system. Um,
(15:08):
you're one of my buttresses. Appreciate that. Uh So I
think that is worth saying again. Like, the reason that
the tree roots are shallow is because nutrients are scarce. Um.
And one of the reasons why is because it rains
so much. Right. Um. But even still, like these these
(15:29):
plants species and animal species as we'll see are um,
they've just adapted for life, and that's really high up.
Like everything everything that sustains life is basically up there
for the most part, um, and all of these these
plants and animals have made these awesome adaptations to live
(15:49):
high up in the air, um, in a place where
nutrients are really hard to come by and there's a
lot of competition for everything, a lot of competition. I
think it's fast like a buttress. It's like, oh, well,
I'll fall over if I don't grow another trunk, so
I'll grow another trunk well or the uh. The hippophytes
can get to the top and then leap from tree
to tree and further seal in the canopy, which is
(16:12):
kind of cool. Um, So we should talk about bacteria
for a minute. Plays an important part in any ecosystem,
but especially in the rainforest. Um. You know, trees breakdown
bacteria with food. Uh or I'm sorry, provide bacteria FOODA.
(16:33):
I agree with that. Trees breakdown bacteriaus food and then
the bacteria poop that out and feed the trees, right,
and they're just like it's a great little relationship symbiotic.
Everybody gets what they want. It's like those little birds
that pick bugs off of the back of what a hippo.
A hippo that does that? I don't know I've seen
that though, Or there's no there's one that there's a
bird that picks food out of like the mouth of
(16:54):
a hippo. It's really dangerous to be that bird. But
like the hippos are like, thank you, that's cute. Uh.
And here's another mind blowing stat If we want to
talk about diversity. Let's say you live in uh, northwest Oregon,
and you're like, dude, we've got like a dozen tree
species here in this forest. It's like so diverse. Hit
(17:17):
the hacky sack again, let's get out of here. Three
hundred different distinct tree species in the in the in
the rainforest. Yeah, buts just trees. They're really really spread out. Yeah.
So like in an acre you might find just like
a few of that species. So there's a bunch of
different species packed into one acre. Yeah, I mean it's crazy. Um.
(17:40):
Ten million animal species. Unfortunately, Uh, they're being destroyed at
the rate of fifty species per year. Experts say that
we're losing a hundred and thirty seven plant, animal, and
insects species every single day deforestation seven specs. Not just
(18:01):
like oh that bug died, it's like all of that
bug died today on Monday, and we guess what will
happen tomorrow, All of another insect will die and thirty
seven of them. It's great. It's just like it's the
saddest thing ever. Um. And it's not just said too,
I mean we'll see in a second. Like what the
problem is when that happens. You know, biodiversity is important,
(18:25):
and if you're talking about the cradle of biodiversity, then
it becomes even more important because it's like the cool
part of town and then the suburbs. As far as
Planet Earth goes and the excerpts, we can't even talk
about that all right, But out of these ten million,
(18:45):
of course, insects are going to be the most abundant.
And then out of all of those, ants are the
most abundant thing in the rainforest. So I found somewhere
that they make up of the biomass of the tropical
rainforest from what I understand, Like, that's like the entire biomass,
the trees and all that stuff. The ants make up that. Man, Yeah,
(19:07):
I bet they're not fun to deal with, yes, and
something like so half of that is fire ants. Wow,
can you imagine? Have you seen this incredible movie It's
called um Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's an Indiana
Jones movie. There's these fire ants and there's just crazy
what they can do to a man. It's such an abomination. Um,
(19:31):
did you see the South Park about that? It's great,
It was great. It was also probably the most disturbing
you've ever seen that what happened least to see it.
We can't say it. On the other no, I can't
even I shouldn't even be endorsing that episode. UM. So
these insects also have a very symbiotic relationship with the
(19:53):
forest because they, along with birds, helped spread the seeds
around because there's not a a wind going on. Yeah,
so seeds aren't gonna propagate by flowing through the air
like they do elsewhere. So you got these little insects
eating them and then carrying them off tim twenty feet away,
or birds carrying them miles and miles away, pooping them out,
(20:14):
pooping them out, and then you're spreading seed, which is
probably another reason why each acre has like so many
different kinds of uh plant life going on, right, Yeah, yeah,
well I think that's definitely why. UM. The birds also,
especially like say hummingbirds, which there's an abundance in the
tropical rainforest. Um, they will get pollen all over themselves
(20:35):
as they go from like orchid to orchid, so that
helps propagate um orchids or epiphytes, which typically can't really
get from tree to tree, you know, so when you
when you have an orchid that's evolved specifically for a hummingbird,
it's going to attract those hummingbirds with your delicious nectar
and help generate new orchids elsewhere. I associate humming were
(21:00):
with the sun for some reason. Yeah, probably because where
I live. Yeah, but it's hard to imagine them in
like in the dark jungle. Well, I think in the understory,
which is where the epiphytes are. It's it's not that dark,
it's like where it's like you can't really see um
reptiles obviously, tons of reptiles and amphibians. If you if
(21:20):
you want to avoid snakes, then the Amazon rainforce is
probably not where you want to go. Um. But a
lot of these are being smuggled out. Evidently live animals
are the fourth largest smuggling commodity. Smuggling out these live
animals for resale. Is it for bush met just for pet?
No pet like black market pets. This is a documentary
(21:40):
that I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, I was kind
of surprised. Behind drugs, diamonds and weapons. See that's such
a b s. They always say that, like it's always
like those and then whatever you want to put behind it.
I've seen counterfeit materials for being smuggling for fourth year,
for like black Mark stuff. It's like whatever whatever you're
(22:02):
talking about four after those drugs, diamonds, weapons and knight. Uh.
You might be right, Josh, I think, but I'm going
with it. But you did talk about earlier about the
different types of adaptations for the animals, like um, little
webs of skin like on a flying squirrel and other
(22:24):
animals to allowut to like soar between trees. It's creepy,
pretty neat. Prehensile tails. I love a prehensible town, which
is just like an extra hand, especially for grasping hand.
Basically is what it is, Not like a card playing hand,
more like a branch grabbing hand, like I'm gonna hang
on to this with and like carrying my body weight
with my tail so I can use both hands. Watch
(22:46):
me show off exactly. I'm a Howler monkey. Can you
do a Howler monkey impression? Can you know? I don't
know anyone who I bet that guy from Police Academy
kuld Oh, yeah, Michael, it's Michael. Do you remember it,
Michael winter Bottom? No, I don't know. He was good though.
(23:09):
You know, we're gonna get some emails about it. Yeah,
it was Michael so and so. Lots of bats and
then thus lots of bats. Cat, dude, there is a
there's a park in Zambia, um called Konsaka Konsenka Kassanka
National Reserve, and it's home to the largest bat migration
(23:33):
in the world. Every October, ten million bats come to
roost and eat these mangoes that are ripening nearby. And um,
they cover everything and apparently when they when they take
off at dusk, they blot out the sky for like
twenty minutes in every direction. Sy, I'm sure they just
(23:56):
want the mangoes. Yeah, they don't care about you. But man, man,
I even like bats, and I'm creeped out by that. Austin,
Texas has nothing on those. Oh yeah they had that,
yeah the overpass moever. Yeah, um, guerrillas, great apes orangutangs, pigs,
big cats and batscat. By the way, another thing I
(24:18):
found in like that was a huge, huge industry bats.
But like back guano mining because they used it for
like fertilizer for so long that like people made like fortunes,
like oil fortunes off of these things, and it was
all like in in these tropical areas. They were like
quarries of that they were digging out back quano from Yeah.
(24:43):
And who were the big names there that got rich? Oh,
I don't remember. I would imagine they were mostly in Brazil.
It's not like the getties or the standards. I don't
think so the standard standard oil. I knew a standard
really sure, h Um. People like we talked about indigenous tribes,
(25:05):
uh like, are being basically shoved out at an alarming rate.
And these people it's really sad because they have like uh,
these medicine men who have a great deal of knowledge,
who are very old and if they're not in one
of the little hippie websites I went too said, if
you know, one of these medicine men dies, then it's
(25:26):
like burning down a library, like unless they passed on
their knowledge, then it just dies with them, just like
some native languages do. It's really sad. And that's why
the movie Medicine Man was was said in the Amazon,
just because like people think, if there is a cure
for cancer and aids, it lies in the jungles. So
(25:47):
that's one which I believe, by the way, well they
called rainforest the pharmacy of the world. Yeah, but I
just have a personal theory that there is no disease
wherein there is not a cure here on earth. Yeah.
I think it's it's the biblical of you. No, it's
nothing to do with that, you don't think so now.
I just think it's the yin and yang of mother Nature,
like there cannot be one without the other. Does that
(26:09):
make sense. It's pretty interesting. I don't have anything to
back that up. It's just my personal thought. Well, let's
stick around, you know. And uh yeah, um, So apparently
a quarter of all the medicines we used today have
their origins from plants in the rainforest. That's a that's
pretty significant backing for what you're saying. Well, yeah, which
(26:29):
always cracks me up when we get uh crap for
talking about like Eastern and Western medicine, people like you
should just call it real medicine or not real medicine.
I don't think a lot of these people realize how
much of their pharmaceuticals are based on plants that some
shaman discovered. You know, we have a lot of angry listeners,
don't we sometimes, Um, but just one percent of the
(26:53):
plants in the Amazon rainforest has been um analyzed by
Western Western hemists. I guess yeah, isn't it crazy? Yeah,
remember we did an ethnobotany episode that was pretty good.
Oh yeah, that's right. Um. But even still even with
just that one percent um of our Western medicine from
that one percent of all of our medicines came from
(27:17):
that that one percent analysis. Yeah, A hundred and twenty
one prescription drugs are plant derived. That's amazing. Um. We
get a lot of food. Apparently there's something like two
thousand um types of usable fruit three thousand, three thousand total.
Indigenous tribes throughout the rainforests use about two thousands estimated,
(27:42):
and then we in the West have used like two
hundred and that nuts. They were like literally eighteen hundred
types of fruit that we just don't eat over here.
And you got to these farmers markets and you see
something like, wow, I've never seen this whatever it is,
like imagine eighteen hundred different things that you've never before, right, um. Yeah,
and that's like a farmer's marketing. I'm still like blown
(28:04):
away by jackfruit, which one is that it's they're huge
and they have like spine, um, like Um, you know
what I mean? Into that stuff? Now, exotic fruits he
should go to like, um, he goes to the Bufford
Highway Farmers. Okay. Um, And speaking of good eating, the Amazon, well,
(28:24):
not the Amazon, I always want to see the Amazon,
but the tropical rainforests of the world are home to
one quarter of the bird population parrots to cans. Yeah,
you can't eat it too, can you need fruit loops?
A lot of the things that we take for granted
over here came from the rainforests, like potatoes, rice, black pepper,
(28:45):
my favorite spice, cinnamon, cloves, avocado, pineapples, corn, chocolate, coffee, tomatoes,
like everything you love, almost potatoes the food we eat.
I don't think potatoes were from the rainforests. I think
they were from the mountains something. And why did I
say that in here? Then it is wrong, it's possible. Well,
(29:05):
roughly eight of the food we eat originally came from
tropical rainforest. So that's a pretty amazing statue. Um. Also,
yet we're just tearing them down willy nilly. Um. Yeah,
that's that's kind of a problem. So we're losing the pharmacy,
We're losing tons of um delicious fruit and delicious birds. Um,
losing people a lot of people ten million to two
(29:28):
thousands from pre Columbian Yeah, I mean it's been a while,
but still that's a drastic reduction. You also hear that
the we're losing the world's lungs, but apparently that's not
necessarily true. Yeah, they used to call it's funny it
goes they go by the lungs of the world. Is
the Amazon the pharmacy of the world. And then someone
else sitting here calls it the air conditioner over the world.
(29:50):
Why can't it just be the jungle. Well, I think
we're trying to drive at home to like fat lazy
Westerners who are like, I need that stuff right right,
I don't want to be hot. Yeah. They used to
think that the rainforest was super important for providing oxygen,
but um, apparently recent evidence shows that it doesn't have
that much of an effect on the oxygen supply, not
(30:12):
a net effect. Not a net it does it still
produces like of the world's oxygen, which was the stat
that was bandied about for a long time. But it
requires about that much to decompose everything on the floor.
But it is the air conditioner of the world. In
a way. So, well, the dark depths of the rainforest
(30:35):
are gonna absorb a lot of heat, and if you
mow these things down, there's gonna be a lot more
sun reflected back up in the atmosphere, which is going
to increase the overall temperature of the planet. So let's
talk about why why would anybody mow this down? If
these things are like the nature's pharmacy or the world's pharmacy,
the world's air condition or the world's along as the
world's the world strip club. Yeah, everything right, So like,
(30:58):
why would anybody cut stuffed down? Uh? Shortsightedness of huge
corporations is my answer? Even more directly, like what are
they after though, clearing land for like lumber, paper products, uh,
making pastures for cows, which is not a very smart
(31:20):
way to go about things. No, it really isn't, Like,
let's cut down old growth rainforest for these cows so
they can have a you know, barren landscape. Well, that's
part of the problem, is um, because these soils are
so nutrient poor. Apparently when you clear cut the rainforest chuckers,
you have like usable land, arable land for a year
(31:40):
or two um. So part of it's because this nutrient
turnover from all the rainfall, but also all of a sudden,
the soil that's used to almost no sunlight whatsoever is
suddenly subject to light and heat of immense proportions were
at the equator, and so it bay and cracks and
(32:01):
loses its nutrients even faster through runoff, so causes flooding.
It's really a terrible, terrible use of this land using
it for crops and livestock. Yeah, I've got a stat
for you to um. I mean, it doesn't pay off
either in the long run. Um. This one statistic is
that land converted to cattle operation yields the land owner
(32:24):
sixty dollars per acre. If they harvest it for timber,
it's gonna be worth four dollars per acre. But if
you uh use renewable and sustainable practices when you're harvesting
your land is gonna yield breaker in the long run.
So it's it's short sighted us. And it's not these
like it's not these indigenous people that like, we need crops,
(32:45):
so we're gonna cut down the rainforest. It's Mitsubishi and
uh who else, Texaco, Georgia, Pacific. Oh, what's the huge
like the huge corporations are going in the unical What
do you think, I said, un don't know what that is.
It's this clothing company out of Japan. Well they hate
(33:08):
the rain, right, they don't even have any steak in it.
They just go cut it down. Yeah, uh, we're laughing,
but that's really sad. Well. Also, um indigenous tribes who
are protected are frequently murdered by UM mercenaries who are
hired by these mega corporations that you know, want this
land and drive these people off of their protected land. Um.
(33:31):
I believe there was like a little girl who was
found dead, an indigenous tribe member who has found dead
like chain to a tree and like just killed by
loggers who wanted that land. It's really bad down there.
That was Brazil, I think. Well, plus the mudslides and
flooding and everything else that happens when you disrupt an
ecosystem so drastically. Yeah, it's like the hunting whale sharks.
(33:57):
That's what I was reminded of when you were saying,
like the economic impa act of preserving it is way
better than just using it up right then? Yeah, short sightedness,
short sighted that's very sad uh. Yeah, the company is
still like that. There's not a body that can say like,
we gotta stop this now, Like there's tons of people
like Joanna doing this great work, Don Henley Sting, these
(34:19):
people that have been on it for years, but it
just keeps happening. Well, why don't you plug him? Are
we done? I don't have anything else any search bar. Well, no,
we should tell everybody about something very special and dear
to our hearts. New York said, that's right. We are
going to Comic Con and we will be doing a
live podcast on Friday, October twelve at Comic Con at
(34:43):
the Jabbitt Center. It's like our new thing. We did
San Diego, now we're doing New York. That's right next
up Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic Con,
you should come back and see that. But after Comic Con,
we have one of our famous that's famous to us,
All Star Tribua Nights. Um. Where is it gonna be
the cutting room? It is at the grand reopening of
(35:03):
the Cutting Room in the Flat Iron District, which is
what's the address? It is forty four East thirty second
Street in New York and uh, it's in the Flat iron,
you said, And the doors open at seven thirty. Trivia
goes down at eight thirty. And what's first come, first serve? Right, free, free, free,
first come, first serve. We will have a bar there
that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us
(35:25):
drink that's right. We're gonna basically be having a really
good time if you if you're not familiar with our
trivia nights, like, just come out and check it out.
It'll be worth your while absolutely, and stay tuned for
info on Facebook and Twitter about the makeup of the
All Star team. We're filling that out as we speak.
But we will have some special guests that you will
want to meet. Yeah, and at the very least you
can come take on me and chuck right yeah, yeah, okay,
(35:47):
it's just fun. So what is that? That's Friday, October twelfth, right, yep,
the panels that went. The panel is at at least six, okay,
and then we're gonna be at the cutting room starting
at eight thirty. Tribute Star said, eight thirty. Doors at
seven thirty, be there, be square. You're good at this,
thank you? So okay. If you want to learn more
(36:09):
about rainforest, type that word in r A I N
F O R E, S T S U into the
handy search bar how stuff works dot com and it
will bring this up. And I said, handy searchbar, So
it's time for plugging the Amazon Institute. That's right. Um,
things are, They're making some headway over there, but um.
She basically points out that the bounty that Amazon is
(36:31):
great provides h a lot of fish, fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants,
pretty plenty of fresh clean water. I saw stat I
can't remember it that we didn't mention. It's something about
a percentage of the world's clean fresh water is in
the rainforests, like a lot. I can't remember how much
it was. We've got the ice caps in milking well. However,
(36:54):
due to a lack of nutritional education, uh, they hunt
monkeys and sloths to eat there. I'm telling these animals
do not provide any nutritional value, though there are bones
and attendons and tastes good either weird. They just fill
space in a hungry stomach. So you can participate and
the adopt a sloth program. Your money buys food and protection,
(37:16):
basically two kilos each of beans, rice, coffee, sugar, and
flour soap, milk and eggs are given in exchange for
a sloth or a monkey that was scheduled to be
skinned and grilled. That's how they put it. UM. So
if you donate seventy five bucks, you can adopt a sloth,
(37:37):
You get a certificate of ownership with the name you've
chosen for your slow. Do you own that slow? And
you get a CD of rainforest sounds, and students can
actually adopt a slot for a class, and they have
curriculum that they provide teachers K through twelve UM. They
provide teachers with an educator's packet of lesson plans. If
you email with your class size and curricular structure, they
(38:00):
will give you like customized materially three classroom. So it's
kind of cool. So you can read all about this
at Amazon Institute dot com and they're well worth supporting.
That's a good going, Chuck, Yeah, take going to Yeah, Yes,
thank you very much for everything for nominating us for
an Emmy Grammy Grammy. What's wrong with us today? Well,
(38:20):
we're heading to TV. We're like Emmy's UM. If you
have a really good UM nonprofit that's helping things people,
lets you adopt something. We're always down for that, especially
if you're willing to nominate us for an award too.
That definitely greases greases the wheels um. You can tweet
(38:42):
to us at s y s K Podcast, You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
or you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast
at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. Mhm
(39:11):
hm
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