Diane K. Boyd
Appearances
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And when they do that, they're not very well set up to survive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's a parasite from cats. Another book you'd like to read is called Spillover. Have you read that by David Quammen?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So he wrote it, I think, 2017. It's an older book, maybe 2012. And he wrote, it's a spillover from wild animals, just Q-U-A-M-M-I-N-I-N, wild animals to human populations. And it starts with a horse disease in Australia that becomes some extremely viral, terrible disease in humans. And he actually traces back the origins of HIV. And all this happened before COVID.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And it just was so set up because COVID is the same kind of same kind of a deal. But it's a fascinating book. And because you got an inquisitive mind, I think you'd really enjoy it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, I'm not going to go there because we have different... But natural spillover is clearly real. But spillover documents many, many species. And actually, it's fascinating. Mad cow disease, it's the same thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, it'll be really interesting with the resources of the Yellowstone researchers who do amazing stuff to see what the long-range outcome is from this realization that, you know, there are 46 likely more times to be a leader of the pack. And what do these risk-taking behaviors entail? I'm really excited to follow this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The first one, my understanding, the first one in Yellowstone that released wolf, the first mortality of a wolf was getting hit by a UPS truck.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I just feel kind of bad for the driver. I shouldn't laugh. I mean, there's a dead wolf, but can you imagine?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's mind-boggling to me. You know, people think, oh, wolves can just kill it. Well, they can do whatever they want. They have a hard life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right, right. It's crazy. The whole interface between humans and wildlife is becoming a more and more popular field. And if I was young and could do my career over, I wouldn't go into that because it's really crazy. The CWD. Mm-hmm. So when wolves first encountered parvovirus and distemper, it came from people and dogs going into parks and camping and dogs pooping.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the disease came into being in the 80s. But we started documenting it in Glacier. And the first year that I was catching wolves and we took blood samples, they're off the chart in their immune response, the antibodies, to that particular disease. And we had most of our pups all die that year.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They live in packs because they're not very efficient killers. You know, mulled lions, bears... they're a more efficient predator, especially a mountain lion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Boom, like that. And people don't think about, yeah, I got my little dachshund up at, you know, McDonald Lake and he pooped and you don't pick it up and the wolves get it. But the same thing happened in Yellowstone and they have certain years where they have horrible pup survival. It's called recruitment and they don't make it into the fall.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But the other thing of interest, so they've been learning by studying coat colors of wolves in Yellowstone that genetically, the ones who carry the gene for the black coat color, they have a different disease resistance to those diseases than the gray wolves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Maybe Jamie could look that up. At certain times when the disease prevalence is higher, the wolves will select a mate of a certain color because their genetics change. prove to be an asset to the survival of those pups.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So they've also been looking at that. So when I first came to Montana, many of the wolves were black, and now it's probably 50-50 or less. In Minnesota, the original Midwestern wolves... were gray and now they've got black color genes and there are changes with the population density.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But what I learned to my best knowledge, it's a K locus gene and they think that when people domesticated dogs from wolves and we took the wolves into captivity and we mutated, they had mutations that we helped survive, that gene for black color coat was from dogs and then dogs got bred a little bit into the wolves occasionally and that coat is from a dog.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Doesn't mean that the animals out there that are black are hybrids. I'm just saying it goes back thousands of years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And they got all the claws to hang on, but a wolf can only go with its teeth. And so it generally takes numerous wolves to successfully hunt an animal, especially something big like a moose or a bison.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Oh, boy. You know what? I haven't gone there. I mean, if you look at Romulus and Remus, those are gray wolves in Rome.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That's the idea, like having Arctic wolves being white.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But it's the K locus for the black color gene, and it depends on if they're homozygous or heterozygous, and one is, here you go.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It is, literally. Yeah, literally. And I suspect from people living in northern latitudes, the Inuits and the Native Americans throughout Russia and across the north, you know, they kept dogs, too, and they bred them to wolves and made better sled dogs. But an early reference told me that the dog native to North America was brought over here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The Native Americans didn't have dogs here thousands and thousands of years ago. That's what I've been reading.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The Spaniards brought horses with them in the 1500s, and that's how they got their horses.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That they're immune, more immune to respiratory infections. So anyway, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, I don't know how long distemper goes back. The other thing with the pronghorn, I mean, I just came from hunting wolves. I mean, hunting birds. We were seeing pronghorn everywhere. Antelope.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I love them, but they're really prehistoric. And do you know why they run at 60 miles an hour?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Exactly. Yeah. The cheetahs whittled the limbs of the antelope. What is that?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They got to be 60 miles an hour to run a cheetah. Not wolves, not bears.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I've read that. I mean, I would love to be a paleontologist. There's so many things I would like to do again and do over.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
We still have to listen to people, experts, and do a lot of reading and think for ourselves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Can I read you just a 30-second introductory paragraph? Sure. Then it'll give you and your readers a flavor of what it's about. So it's a memoir. It's all real. It's not a forward introduction. There we go. Okay. Let's see if I can see it. Do you need glasses? I got glasses.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
We can talk about that after. Let's just be 30 seconds.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
My pickup banged and rattled along the potholed inside road in the northwest corner of Glacier National Park. Boxes of wolf traps and jars of bait slid across the truck bed. I was in a hurry. My mind focused on the wolf caught in a trap somewhere ahead in the lodgepole pine forest. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed motion in my rearview mirror.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I looked up to catch the glassy reflection of vivid yellow eyes framed by a wolf's black face looking over my shoulder from the back seat. How did I get here?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So the audiobook. So when I signed my contract, this is my debut book, A Woman Among Wolves. I've not written a book. I've published scores of scientific articles, but not a book. I signed the contract. I love working with Greystone. They're a fantastic publisher. It's just a standard contract. I signed away the rights for movie, audio, etc., etc., but I get a share of the royalties and stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So when... Somebody bought the bid on and bought the media rights for audiobooks months before it was produced. And I didn't hear about it for a while. And by the time I'd heard about it, they had just started producing it. And I said, well, I'd like to read for it. I sent off an audio tape of my voice. And looks like they would need to do a bunch of polishing. And it was almost September.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That does happen, and I saw some in Glacier Park, too. To that end, I'll say there are three times more mountain lions than there are wolves in northwestern Montana.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
uh annunciation and i don't know oh they have to teach you how to say it differently i mean i think i'm a pretty fair speaker but just anyway it would take some training and then it would more important it would take up so much time it takes like 80 hours to produce an eight hour audiobook i know but the thing is it's like the authentic version of this book is going to be in your voice
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They hired a professional actress. The other thing was this happened just before bird hunting season opened in Montana. Sorry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Steve Rinella said the same thing. Like, you made a big mistake, Diane. It's like, I kind of didn't have options. It's okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's been a blast, Joe. Thank you so much for having me as a guest. You just treated me royally. This has been wonderful.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. And mountain lions are, on average, a little bit bigger than wolves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're amazing. They're beautiful animals. And I always think when I'm out in the woods, I got a little cabin way up northwest of Montana. I wonder how many times mountain lions have watched me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I worry about mountain lions. They're stealthy. I don't worry about wolves. Yeah, you should worry about mountain lions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
My little cabin is 55 miles off the grid, and it's dry. I don't have any water. I don't have electricity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Mm-mm. It's way off the grid. But I built it. I took down an old historic homestead, and I moved the logs up to where it sits. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, no, no. I had help with a lot of friends helped me over the years. It took me seven years from the time I got the logs and had friends help me take it down until it was livable.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
What's up? How are you? I am great. Long flight in from Montana, but I'm great. Thank you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Long time, because when I had money, I didn't have time, and when I had time, I didn't have money, right, for building it. But I eventually got it done, and a lot of friends, very dear friends helped. But I poured concrete, and I cut logs, and I did everything. But when I built the place... Where was I going with this? Sorry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Okay. No electricity, no water. So for years I've lived without, and I haul water from the spring, and in the winter I melt the snow because we get a lot of snow. But three summers ago now, I was there alone, and I fell down the stairs, all the wooden stairs, and I broke the top of my foot. Whew.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And I said, you know, this isn't going to be very fun for a while because I got to close up the cabin and I have a propane fridge and stove and I got to undo the propane and empty the fridge. And I got a lot shorter because I'm not going to be back. I got a broken foot. So I'm hobbling around. And I said, OK. Now I'm going to get Starlink.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That was my motivator because if I had a phone, I could have called somebody for help, but I didn't and I couldn't. So after that, then I got on the Starlink. They were still in the beta development, I think. And anyway, I got on. So I have Starlink available to me at my cabin. But only when I choose to turn it on. It's not like if you were to email me or call me up there, you wouldn't get me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And when I choose to turn it on, I get the messages. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. But I don't live there full time anymore. I live in town.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
No, Isle Royale, which is an island in Lake Superior. It's actually technically part of Michigan. They walked over on the frozen Lake Superior ice in the late, like 1949, 50s, early, and they stayed and they got seated there and they had endless amount of moose to kill and eat. So they were kind of a wolf paradise with that. And is it still like that there? Yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The new one that's got the router with it. It's incredible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I did two, and I didn't hit water twice. But I'm on a creek. I sit on a bluff above a creek, and the water's about 90 to 100 feet straight below me. Oh. And I drilled my wells 140 feet. But it's a really interesting limestone shale in the water. I don't know how it works. I even had a guy witch it for me because I'm a scientist, but what the hell, it might work, right? So they witched the spot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. Divining rods? Is that what it is? Divining rods, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Like I said, I'm a scientist, but if it might help, why not? But I didn't hit water.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Two sticks, sometimes metal, but usually wood, like a willow or something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I have to tell you. I don't know. And I'm kind of a skeptic on that stuff. But I had somebody do it and we didn't hit water. So it's okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It looks like he's got... Those are probably metal, like coat hangers or something. Whoops. Right there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They crossed. And then, of course, but then they're going to go sink and do really well. It might be two feet. It might be 200 feet. I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You know, there may be people in the world who have some kind of a gift. Their electrical lights are different. I don't know how it works. I have been told that I can be a woman of science and superstition.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I can think of twice only in my life, before I built my little cabin, I lived up this very, even more remote outpost called Moose City, loosely Moose City, because it was not a city at all. It was an old homestead with a lot of empty cabins. Twice up there, I got this feeling that there was something dangerous outside. Twice. And something just said to me, don't go outside.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And I'm not afraid of anything. I mean, I spent my life dealing with wolves and grizzly bears and angry humans. But I listen to those feelings because I don't know any different. Why not? Why not listen to it? Like, I think we have some primordial part of our brains. I don't know if you ever had that happen. Do you want to have been out walking or hunting?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, and I have no idea what it was. But I've never had that feeling around wildlife. I tend to think it was human. I don't know if we... Oh, you feel like it was human out there? Yeah. I don't know if we can smell and not register in our forebrain what we detect. Maybe it's really primitive. I don't know. I'm just saying I had it happen twice.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the populations of wolves and moose go up and down because, you know, in nature, nothing is here. We always wanted to be here, but it's always doing this. Right. And yeah, they're doing there. And then interestingly, when they when they arrived, they migrated on their own power. There was very little immigration there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, and I think that's because we're all raised in an urban environment, more or less, nowadays. And so having lots of people around is normal, but to have one person in a pretty remote area, we don't experience that very often anymore.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I have a chapter in my book, early in the book, where I describe an event that I've basically been a real private person all my life until this book came out. And once I wrote this book, I had to bring up stories that are very personal to me. And I had an event one night that was terrifying, probably the most terrifying thing that's ever happened in my life. It involved humans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So, yeah, I totally get that. People in places where they shouldn't be. What happened? Do you want to read it? Do you want me to spoil it? You want me to do the spoiler thing?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Okay. I'll just give you the elevator speech part of it. Okay. So I was in my cabin at night. And the dogs started growling. I had very big dogs. I always have dogs. And I looked out my window, and it was winter, and it was cold, and I could see a couple of guys out there lurking around. And I was in the middle of nowhere. And then it kind of digressed from there. So I...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
For the only first and only time in my life, I pulled a gun on these guys.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They called me by name, which was really freaky. So you think somebody in the woods walking around scares you? Wait until you see somebody who you don't know who it is and they call you by your first name. That's freaky.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
There was a couple of wolves documented showing up here and there, but apparently genetically there was no influx of new genes. So the wolves that came and went didn't breed. And eventually they became so inbred, they started having physical anomalies.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I drove them off. And it was terrifying to me. It was not terrifying at the moment because I was absolutely focused, like predator focused, calm. But after they left, I started to shake. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of after the adrenaline surge happened.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, it wasn't good. And so how did they know who you were? Do you know? Oh, it's a long story. I was working up there. I was kind of a novelty, a young blonde woman. I was only about 25, living alone, studying wolves. And at the time, there were other people coming and going, studying wolves. But at that winter, I was alone. And I had been working—it's a long story—
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I was working behind the customs station right on the Canadian border, and they were hauling logs down out of Canada, bringing them to the customs station. They would have to transfer the logs to an American truck, and then the Canadian trucks would go back. And I temporarily took a job as the knot bumper at the log deck landing, which means my job was to run a chainsaw, trim off the branches.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Trim the length of the log to exactly fit the log bed. Anyway, so I was around. So these loggers knew who I was. And I was, you know, I was cordial enough. But it was two of those guys.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. And I don't, I never told the story until I wrote this book. And I just thought. It's a part of me that's very personal. It's a part of me that I learned from. It's never happened again. And I had one old logger, old Bob. He saw me on the road the next day. I was pretty shook up. And he stopped. We chatted often. and he had seen a wolf. He'd taken a picture of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And eventually, just a few years ago, four or five years ago, they got down to just a father-daughter team and only two wolves left and it was over. And so they wouldn't breed because they don't breed close relatives generally. So they just did a reintroduction to Iowa oil, too. That's been relatively new, just a handful of years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So anyway, we chat, and he says, so I hear you had some visitors last night. I looked it up, because he's up in his log truck. I said, yeah. He says, you don't have to worry. That won't happen again. He's kind of like watching out for me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, because we had kind of befriended each other because he'd spotted this wolf and he'd taken pictures of it. Anyway, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The logger network, the CB radios. I don't know. I didn't tell anybody. But he knew right away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. They just kill because they kill because they eat.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
People are weird. Yeah. People are creepy. A little sign about their being weird. I love that. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, off and on. So when I arrived there, I joined a team of young researchers. We were studying wolves and grizzly bears, and we helped each other with their work. So it was done and all that. And then when we ran out of funding, then I was up there alone for about three years. But other than that, there were people coming.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, I had two dogs. I wasn't totally alone. And people were coming and going seasonally. I had summer help and I had winter help, but certainly there wasn't people there on the shoulder season.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You know, it's interesting because it didn't. Really? Back when I was younger, I was a bit of a misanthrope and I liked being alone. And when I was alone, being alone is different than being lonely. It just is. Now as an older person, I feel different about people. I'm more engaged with people. I enjoy people. So, yeah, I get lonely now, but I didn't back then. I mean, how could you be lonely?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You're living in the majestic mountains and wilderness of Glacier National Park, and everything is new, and there's tracks to find, and on and on and on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, that's why you're really good at what you do, because you're a social person. You like to engage in conversation, but I didn't used to be that way. You wouldn't have wanted to have interviewed me 30 years ago, let's put it that way. Really? Yeah. I bet we would have worked out. It would have been all right. It would have worked out. I'm more conversational now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So they had to reboost the population if they wanted to keep them going or wait for the lake to freeze again, which may or may not happen in our lifetimes, you know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yes. And it's sort of like, it's like when I go, I go up to my cabin for a visit. No, I no longer live there full time, but I live there a couple of months a year, maybe three, maybe usually two. When I go up, it takes me like three to four days to decompress and get back into the mode of, oh, I can't call. Oh, I can't go on the internet. Do I want to hook up this darling? No. No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Go out and just sit outside and have a cup of tea and listen to the crick and then think about what you're going to do for the day. Go on a hike. But it takes me a few days now to get to that frame of mind. It doesn't. It's not instant anymore. So I've changed who I am.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I did that, but I bought stuff in town and I would buy a lot in November while I could still drive in because sometimes in the winter you couldn't drive in anymore. So I would stock up and buy, you know, three, four hundred pounds of dog food and Bulk supplies of flour and oats, and I canned. Back then, I actually did some canning. Now, I don't have time. I don't care about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I can buy canned peaches or whatever. And I never grew a food garden because of the bears.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're always there, but you don't see them very often. So it's sort of like all the wild things that are up there are pretty wild. And there weren't a lot of people up there then. Now everybody's discovered Montana and there's people everywhere.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I mean, I've just come back from bird hunting. I just was 31 days on the road and I just got home three days ago and now I'm here. And I was out bird hunting with friends and I said, I told them, I said, so when I hunt with my pointers, I got a griffon and a wire hair. I said, don't talk. Don't call the dog's name. Don't holler about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Just watch and enjoy and smell and feel what goes on and trust the dogs. If you see them getting birdie, get ready. Because so many times you hunt with people and they're hacking their dog, they're calling, they're hollering, they're talking to you about something going on over here. Hey, did you watch the Vikings game? Well, nobody watches the Vikings game. Anyway, did you watch this or that?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's like we're out there seeking a smart bird that has ears. Watch the dogs. So I feel that way when I'm out living in the wild, too, with hiking. I'm not going to see elk or bears or even fox if you're yammering away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. Yeah, you know, and it's fun to interact. I mean, but even when I go to Yellowstone, I go to Yellowstone at least a couple times a year to watch wolves. I love the wolf watchers. They're so enthusiastic. But something's going on and you can't take a video because everybody's talking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
No. So in my book, I've got a chapter called Slaying the Super Wolf. And so people call these wolves super wolves because they say that they're not native. They're Canadian super wolves and they weigh 170 pounds and it goes on and on and on. But I documented a wolf that I caught in the Glacier Park area, Wolf 8551. And we just had VHF collars. We didn't have satellite collars in those days.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That's probably at Mammoth Gardener area. That happens all the time up there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The same thing's happened to the wolves in Yellowstone because they were taken from Canada where they don't see people and they had no exposure to livestock. They're very wild at first. And then they can't get away from humans. So after a while, they just start disregarding people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And like if they have to cross the road, there's a wolf jam and everybody's crowding with their cars and they're trying to bring their pups across the road to a better spot. And they can't even get through because of everybody. So they get kind of laissez-faire about it and they get used to people, conditioned or habituated people. And that's passed on to the next generation next.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And then when they leave the park and they go outside the park and they walk down some open public land spot where there's a hunter with a rifle, they don't think anything about it. So they're pretty easy targets.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I know. And yeah, it's tough. And the unfortunate thing is a couple of years ago, there were 25 Yellowstone wolves killed just outside of the park because they're used to people and they wander around. Anyway, that's like out of 100. So it's about a quarter of the population. And there were a couple of particular individual wolves that were very well recognized and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
loved by the wolf masses and photographed and they got killed and this this just went viral and this huge hatred for these people who shot these wolves because they were so special and I make the point when I give talks and stuff I said you know if you really feel that strongly it's
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You should really be concerned because every year there's about 300 wolves shot that way in Montana, but you don't know them. They're not famous. They have just as important of lives. They live, die, eat, breathe, get injured, heal up. The same as these movie star wolves in Yellowstone. And you should feel that way about, oh, wolves, in my mind. Oh, yeah. In my mind.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right, yeah, yeah, the dentist. Dina Dentist killed him, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And she hung around for a while and then she just disappeared. And seven months later, the British Columbia Environmental Ministry game warden called me. He says, we got one of your wolves killed. Do you want to call her? Yes, please. Where is it? Puskupe. I said, oh, where is that? Well, it turns out that is 540 miles north of Glacier Park in seven months. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It is bizarre. Thank you for understanding that. I forgot about Cecil. But when we were first... monitoring the wolves and glacier. There was just a handful and we would catch them and we would give them names because it's easier. Like Phyllis was wolf 8550 and Mojave was wolf 8963. They had both names and numbers. And so when we did our scientific papers and reports, we used a number.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Because we were told by the officials that we don't want you to name the animals because what happens when Phyllis kills a cow, if that happens?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Then you can't manage Phyllis. So we went along with it, but we used the names and we did the scientific stuff with numbers. But then when you go into the park, people would want to know what's going on. You need to talk about these different wolf numbers, 86, 54. And they say, well, who is that? Oh, that's Aspen. Oh, yeah. And they would know by the name. So whatever works.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yes, and I know the wolves in Yellowstone, they don't have names, they have numbers, but they're so identifiable by 907 or whatever that it becomes like a name.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You know, it's been interesting to me because for my career, I've done everything. My first year, my first job, I worked up in northern Minnesota in a little tiny 300-person farming community. And I was hired, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to go in and help farm.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
prevent livestock depredation and when wolves killed cattle or sheep to go in and remove which meant trapping hollowing and they were euthanized and when there weren't depredations to go out and research traps and put collars on the other wolves and it was I mean this was big stuff for a girl from Minneapolis pretty naive to go up and save the folks of North Home from the wolves you know oh my god
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It was such an important summer for me to learn professionally and personally. And I wrote about that. But I learned a lot. And it was interesting work. But I realized, yeah, wolves can cause conflicts for people. And it was a new concept for me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, they would be me because I was the one catching and trapping me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right. So I had to bring them to the main office in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where they were euthanized. So prior to that, in 1978, you couldn't euthanize wolves. They changed the status from endangered to threatened. And so when they were threatened— then under Endangered Species Act, you could actually euthanize them. And they didn't translocate them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
This is a really good question because they found over the years with studies in Minnesota and eventually in Montana too, that when you translocate or move a wolf who's causing a problem, That wolf very, very rarely survives to reproduce because it gets killed by other wolves. It comes back to depredate again. It moves on to another farm or ranch and does it again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They don't generally survive, and so it was determined that it makes officials feel good to move them, and it's a good facade for the public to believe in, but sometimes it results in a pretty prolonged and inhumane existence for a few months or a year until they die anyway. So, yeah, it's...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So we didn't know if the guy, a farmer, shot it in July. If they hadn't shot it, we would never have known what happened to her. But if she would have gone south instead of north, she'd have been about 100 miles south of Yellowstone Park. So clearly they have the ability to disperse that far. The other interesting thing about that wolf is
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's tough once they learn to take cattle or sheep. It's tough to break that pattern. Let's put it that way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, yeah. I mean, if it was me out there walking around and I had a choice between a deer that's going to kick me in the teeth or taking the cow, I'd pick the slow, dumb groceries every time. It's just me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So it's a difficult challenge and wolves are continuing to expand everywhere in the West, the Midwest, Europe. And so there's more and more challenges, and a lot of the early excitement about wolves has changed into a bitter battle. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yes. And so kind of the die was cast when those wolves were removed. And basically by the 1930s, there really weren't viable populations in the West anymore. There are wolves here or there in a pack here or there, but there weren't thousands. And they went inside the national parks. They have a picture in many books of rangers with cute little wolf pups that are like seven, eight weeks old.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And they took the pictures. This was in 1926. And then they killed them all. So they even removed all the predators within national parks. So people, historic memory, you know, we have really short memories. Historic memory of, say, for example, the northern range, northern herd range of elk out of Gardner. It was about 20,000 before the wolves were introduced. Way over carrying capacity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Elk were starving. The browse lines as high up as they could reach, they ate everything they could eat. They were paying people, people were being paid to come in and kill deer and elk. And then they started the late hunting seasons out of Gardner, which I went in because my boyfriend at the time had a tag.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And they just have a shooting line in February and kill all these elk because they aren't going to make it anyway. And so you shoot a starving cow in February because it wasn't predators. So then when the wolves came back, two things happened. Number one, it was a new predator. But number two, in the winter of 96, 97, we had some of the deepest snows ever recorded in the mountains, ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And so many of the herd died from snowfall. And I've had hunters tell me, yeah, the population elk went from 20,000 to 10,000 in two years. Damn those wolves. And it's like, do you think 35 wolves killed 10,000 elk? Come on. Let's just do the math a minute.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
is when she went north, they got the reintroduced wolves from two areas, from Hinton in Alberta and Fort St. John's in British Columbia. And she dispersed past the Hinton population and ended up almost at where the Fort St. John's wolves were. So this little wolf, 80-pound wolf, showed us that it's one continuous population from Yellowstone almost to the Yukon.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I would say, to the best of my knowledge as a biologist, that winter die-off is the limiting factor for ungulate herds. It's not lions and bears and wolves and humans and cars. Every so often, every 20 years or whatever, you get a massive winter die-off. And it takes quite a while for those populations to build back up. Predators can keep that at a lower rate. They cannot affect it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I have to think back to what people say about wolves killing all the deer now. I think if you look to statistics in Montana and Wyoming, which both have had a lot of wolves for a couple decades, they're giving away more elk permits. I was just reading they proposed unlimited elk permits in Wyoming, and Montana's got basically in most of its management units more elk than ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And I just say there's more going on than wolves. And to point your finger at wolves all the time, you need to look at habitat. You need to look at access issues. You know, there's a lot of places where hunters want to go shoot these elk, but they're on large private ranches and you can't get on them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right. I mean, if the viewers can think of imagining a checkerboard and you're trying to get from one black square to the next black square, but you have to step over a tiny piece of white square to get there, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, that would be good. And some ranchers do. But many people have been in this business four or five generations on their family ranch. And they've had bad experiences with hunters that come in and cut their fences, shoot their cows, leave their gates open. And they just say, I'm done. I'm closed. And they get really angry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Thanks, and I'm excited, too, because I thought, well, we're both hunters, we're both dog lovers, you've got an interest in wolves. It's all good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I just hunted on a guy's ranch about a week ago up in north central Montana. And he owns 60 sections. That's 60 square miles of land, which may not be a big place in Texas, but for most of the rest of the world. That's huge. It's huge. And he gave us permission, but... He had to tell us all the challenges he's had and why he had a big sign, don't even ask, basically. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But I know he was going to let us because some other friends of mine had hunted there. But he had all these heartburns over things that had happened to him. Hunters gave him a really bad taste in their mouth at night.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I, as a single individual person, can't do a lot about it, and I'd like to see, you know, hunting organizations, many really good ones, help promote better hunter behavior and better hunter-landowner relationships. You would be very generous to do that, but most people will not give an easement.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's connected because it's a walkabout for a wolf. It's not a big deal. We just didn't back then, we didn't have the tools to document kind of those long dispersals. But I just read this week that a wolf that showed up in Colorado that was shot this year, they just did the DNA on it apparently pretty recently, and it was from the Midwest. Think about that, to Colorado. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's just like any other group of people. Like anything else. Exactly. Yep. Exactly. And I know in my business with wolves, I've always tried to be very transparent. I'm very honest. And if somebody asks me a question, I'll give them the best information I have. If I don't know an answer, I'll say, I don't know. But, you know, you could call so-and-so who's maybe had the experience with that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I got nothing to hide by being dishonest or trying to sell somebody. It's like hunting impacts of wolves on hunting animals. You look at populations and they go like this all the time. And sometimes wolves cause it, sometimes not. Sometimes it's winter. Sometimes it's accumulation of lions and bears and wolves. But it's like the stock market. People want to see it do this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I think the hardest thing is so much social media. Everything goes on instantly and whether it's true or not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And that film or the video ran viral big time. But there's no one species that's going to make or break the world except maybe people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But in terms of the impacts, no. And it's been shown since that video came out, the movie, that that might be true in a short time period in small places. But it's not the global picture for Yellowstone Park. Wolves have not saved the planet. They just haven't. It's just not that simple. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I think, yes. So you can go either way. And I think people who are out on either extreme... can actually make people in the middle more involved with conservation efforts. Like that guy with the movie. Well, it's a rosy story, and pieces of it may be true in certain places for a temporal or spatial time period.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But then there's the guy in, where was it, Daniels, Wyoming, who roared over that wolf in the snowmobile and crippled it. You heard about this, didn't you?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And had it in the bar so people could be entertained for an hour before they took it out back and shot it. Now, that's a pretty horrific thing, whether it's a deer or a moth lion or an owl. Or any animal. It's horrible. Any animal. But that horrific act got a lot of people in the middle fired up to become more strong conservationists. So I'm sorry that that happened.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But on the other hand, it brings a lot of awareness to people who are not aware of the level of capacity of people to be stupid. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. It just said the Great Lakes region. It didn't just identify because they're all kind of the same. But it was not a Western wolf. It was not from Wyoming or Montana. Really interesting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, I mean, he ran it over intentionally and he had a gun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I thought about this a lot. So why wolves? What's the deal with wolves? Why does it create that? If you look at the facts, I mean, elk, coyotes, lions, bears, coke machines, whatever, kill people, lightning, every year, lots of people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Wolves, it would be a very rare experience. It occasionally happens, but it's so much rarer than everything else. And yet people don't hate lions or grizzly bears.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I'll have to look that up because I haven't actually heard of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, I'm reading it too. I just would say... You're a little skeptical? I'm very skeptical.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But we're looking at news stories from 110 years ago. I know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So my question about this story, and I'm not, I'm just saying I'm skeptical. Largest wolf pack.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, I'd love to look up more detail, but I can tell you about the news source, and I'm not familiar with that, and I don't read that kind of stuff usually, but... If it's true, it's true. I don't happen to believe it's true. But what I can tell you about the true about wolf biology is wolves live in packs that are generally a family group. They have a genetic investment in their pack members.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
There's oftentimes one or two that aren't related. And they defend that territory to the death, whether there's five of them or 25 of them. And that would be a large pack. The largest pack I've ever heard of was in Yellowstone. I think it was 34 because three females had pups in it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
What's the benefit to them? They're gathering, collaborating with animals that aren't related to them, that have no genetic benefit, to see them each survive. And normally... packs that are not related kill each other. It's the biggest cause of mortality in Yellowstone Park is wolves killing non-pack members.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I get what you're saying, but you ask would I believe it, and I have to tell you no, I wouldn't believe it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So if there were 400 wolves that were starving, they would starve, right? I mean, they wouldn't pack.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You're giving them some human reasoning skills. They don't think like humans do. They just don't. And I'm sorry. I'm not. Don't be if I'm not calling you a liar. No, it's not me. I don't know. I'd have to investigate that. But I'm 100 percent skeptical on it. Just because of everything that I'm familiar with. But it doesn't, you know, it stuff happens.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You asked me, I just said I don't believe it. I hear you. Beth, I don't have anything to contribute further on that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I have only observed probably 15, but that's not Yellowstone. That's in my history. And I know in Yellowstone, like I said, I know one year they get up to 34. And I think probably the largest I've ever heard of being recorded that I know is factual. It might be 40, but that's extremely unusual.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Might be Canada. I'm trying to remember my source. I can't remember. But 34 in Yellowstone. That's unusual.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I think, well, three things happened. Three different females had pups. On average, they have six pups, seven pups. So there's recruiting right there, 18, 20 pups right there. In addition to the adults that were there, they had a good year. They had lots of prey. And so all those pups presumably made it to their first year. So for one winter... They were a huge pack, and then mortality happens.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Wolves are not designed to live in packs of 34. I mean, packs in the Midwest where the prey is smaller and the wolves are smaller, they live in smaller packs. In Montana, Wyoming, Idaho...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
average pack might be somewhere between 10 and 15 and every year you gotta remember every year they have six to seven pups and by the next spring they're back down that's six or seven through mortality or dispersal or whatever happens hunting yeah so stuff happens yeah it's a hard life It is a hard life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Another thing, I've heard lots of people, well, I've heard several people, and people I know quite well tell me stories about they encountered a wolf, or they encountered a wolf pack, and they were really frightened because they had their dog with them, and the wolves were interested in the dog, like little Carl there or something, and the wolves were circling around, and these people were terrified.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And when they told me this story, two people, they told me this story, and they said, yeah, they could have killed me. And my response is, yeah, easily. But you're here telling me this story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So it's not very common for wolves to attack people. That's just what I'm saying. Not anymore. Not anymore. And I don't know how good the reporting was way back when.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
When we had time. But they had guns. They had guns. They had poisons. They had traps. They had livestock. They had children. That's just what I'm saying. In this country.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, I grew up in Minnesota, and you can probably tell from the Fargo accent. But I grew up in Minnesota, and back in the 60s and 70s when I was thinking about a career, Minnesota was the only state in the lower 48 that had wolves, with the exception of a few, like 25 maybe in Iowa, a couple here or there in Wisconsin. And so I was interested from the beginning with that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
With probably a, I don't mean to be offensive, but a better base of information with all the opportunity in the world for all those things you just set up. Remote living, no protection, harsh winters like the winter of Charlie Russell paintings where all the cattle were starving. Right. You didn't have packs of 400 wolves coming in and killing everyone.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Incredible. It's beautiful. I just actually watched it within the last year.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I'm trying to remember the name of the book I read. It might just be called Tiger. I'm trying to remember the name, but it's a story of a predatory tiger and these guys, a story of the tiger's life and how they go to finally try and kill it. It's a terrifying story. In Siberia? It's a true story. Yeah. And it's modern times.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Oh, my God. A cat that's 600 pounds stalking you? In the snow. No, thank you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yes. And I think that tiger had an injury that was caused by humans. And that's often the case. It wasn't able to hunt real proficiently. I mean, when you're reading the book, you get the drift that it had a vengeance against humans because it was injured.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. There's no doubt that animal, according to the story here, definitely had vengeance on its mind.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The book is called The Tigers. I had the title right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's a fascinating story. Wow. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting because with- Look at the footprint.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. Wow. Fascinating story. And then there's this, the tiger is just trying to be a tiger.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But some of the interesting things looking at that is, like in Glacier Park or anywhere I play, were wolves-
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
overlap with with mountain lions which we call lions mountain lions and grizzly bears and coyotes and whatever when they they kill one of their other competing predators just like that tiger they don't usually eat it it's secondary it's to kill off a competitor so wolves don't get eaten by mountain lions they do get killed by mountain lions occasionally right occasionally matter of fact one of the colorado wolves that was just introduced was killed by mountain lion
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And one-on-one, a 120-pound cat and a 100-pound wolf, one-on-one, the cat's going to win. But when you have a pack of wolves, I mean, we've watched them treat the cat, and they'll wait until they can get it. They'll wait. But one-on-one, the cat doesn't have a chance.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right. I mean, when the cats won and you got a pack of eight waiting. Right, right, right. But we documented a case where the wolves treat a cat and it couldn't stay up with the tree any longer. It was on a skinny lodge pole and it was sliding down. And as soon as it got to the ground, they killed it and they just ripped it apart and they didn't eat any of it. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's strictly to vanquish a competitor, just like the tiger.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, they had better options. Have you ever eaten mottlion?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It looks like a pork tenderloin and you cut it. It's very light colored. I've only eaten it once.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I don't think it'd be very good. They're skinny and stringy and sinewy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
No. Anyway, no, I'm glad you showed me that stuff because it's nice to know the stuff is still out there and alive and well. I hear it all the time. And I hear about the Canadian super wolves and...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
To a certain point. And then when you get to where it's so cold and Arctic that the resources, the availability to get food is diminished. Right. Like Arctic wolves on Ellesmere Island are pretty small and they're white.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're smaller. Right. The Piri's caribou up there are smaller than, say, the caribou in Alaska. Because it's hard to make a living.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But, yeah, northern climate, like the wolves from Canada, most of them are pretty big. And same with the... everything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. You got, I've been up to, to McNeil to watch the bears and yeah, my God, they're just enormously fat. They're almost obscene waddling around with their
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're so content because they have endless food resources. That's why you can have tourists go out and sit and watch grizzly bears feeding within 100 yards of you sometimes, eating salmon and you're under no danger. Why would they bother you when they have thousands of pounds of salmon in the river?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I kind of had a similar experience. McNeil, not that close, but close enough that I was uncomfortable. I live with bears because I'm used to bears that have skinny resources and they're voracious and they're pretty aggressive in the fall. They can be because they're getting into hyperphagia where they got a good enough calories to hibernate. And if you keep them from getting their calories, it
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's you or the huckleberry patch, maybe, or you or the elk that you just hung in the woods the night before and you went back to get. That happens. People hang their game in the woods and they go back the next day and the grizzly bears found it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yes. And what I would point out with that is that that bear had every chance in the world to kill every one of those guys. It didn't hurt any of them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That's a good move. I mean, yeah, I probably would have. Leave the shoulders and the neck.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
My point is that bear could have run through and killed one of them or all of them in a moment of anger. It didn't. It did a bluff charge. It turned around. It woofed and gnashed its teeth.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right. And then we have this happen a lot in Montana. Every year, at least one person is killed by a bear, or many can be injured. And the thing that's common is they say the bear charged them, and before that, it was woofing. And a lot of times, they do what's called a bluff charge, but...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
People don't want to wait until the bear is 15 feet away to figure out if it's a bluff charge or not, so they shoot them. And bear spray is very, very effective because you can do a longer distance, and it's accurate. But I personally don't... The science shows, and many of your listeners won't believe this, the science shows that average hunter is better off with a bear spray than a firearm.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But... In a moment of panic, you can't say what you would do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
To survive with less injury or at least less fatal. And people have sprayed a bear that's attacking somebody and the bear breaks off and leaves. Of course, you've got to deal with the after. Have you ever been around bear spray, pepper spray?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Oh, it's awful. How did you get everybody to go off camera and get?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I think pepper spray – yeah, it might even be worse. Otherwise, they'd have tear gas for bear repellent, and they don't. They have pepper spray.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's bad. But I'm just saying – and people can argue this, and it all depends on the situation. But in general – Bear spray is a more effective tool because you can spray it three times past where he's sitting and the bear hits that spray and they run away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And I guess I've heard the bear biologists say to me, try shooting a rolling tire at 40 miles an hour and see how accurate your shots are because that's what you're shooting at if a bear is charging you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right. It's not necessarily the killing factor. It's just that you're not going to hit very well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I've heard it, and I have never heard about it being used on wolves because generally wolves aren't sneaking around. But if I had a cat stalking me lying, boy, you bet I'd have my bear spray out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Oh, yeah. I think if you had infrared vision for the heat detector and you could see what's out in the woods, you'd never go outside to take a leak when you're at your cabin.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But they can still smell it. Just be as careful as you can be.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Or a wolf. Yeah. And I've read studies. And if the wind is right, I've read several miles. So you can smell something. It is unbelievable. And yeah, I... Incredible. Yeah. I think, yeah, the whole scent thing, we just, it's way beyond our ability to detect. And when I've been burying these traps after being so careful with everything and...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
it's kind of voodoo and science mix it's art and science and you bury everything you bury the trap the hook the grapple cable I mean just everything and then you cover it up and it's been in the ground two weeks nothing's disturbed it and then one day you see where a wolf has come by taken its paw and dug at the back side of the trap and lifted it out by the spring and pulled it up onto the trail not snapped and then there'd be a scat two feet away
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But why mess with it at all if they know it's dangerous?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
My imagination and my theory is that maybe this is a wolf that's already caught, been caught, and it's got other pack members that are naive. And it stops because it smells. It's like, oh, man, I know what this is. Maybe it's time to show Junior what's going on here, and maybe they pull it out. I don't know. I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I haven't seen the video, but I've watched stuff with crows.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the camera with the full eye reflection sitting indoors in a room, that doesn't smack of wildness to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I think there's a huge portion of our brain that we never, never touch. And I think animals are more tuned in. I think in many ways, many species are smarter than us just because they can sense their environment more acutely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The Yellowstone's been a great place to observe hunting. I mean, when I was working up northwest Montana, it's heavily forested. We never... Almost never got to watch wolves chasing prey unless we were in the airplane. But in the Lamar, you got scopes and everybody's watching it. And I've seen some pretty incredible chases.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And there's certain, in some packs, certain individuals are the chasers, the younger animals. And some of the individuals are the coup de grace. They go in for the kill after the animal's been tired. And I guess there was some older animals that are too valuable potentially to risk being injured early on. But they join in the chase and they know how to kill an animal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So one thing I've always wondered, I don't know if this is with the morphic resonance, but that's something different maybe. But I've always wondered when wolves were first walking down from Canada and dispersing from Glacier before wolves were reintroduced and there was a very thin population of wolves out there. How do they know where to go? For example, there is a wolf pack in the Nine Mile.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's a river drainage outside of Missoula. And this pair of wolves had formed a mating system and they had a litter of pups. The female was poached on Memorial Day, which is those pups are born in middle April. So they were pretty young. They were five, six weeks old. They were still dependent on mom.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the concern was that the dad wouldn't be able to raise those pups because he's got to go out and hunt. And they're just being weaned and blah, blah, blah. Well, two weeks, two weeks after the female was dead, my colleague Mike, who was working down there, says, Hey, Diane, are you missing any collared wolves from Glacier? I said, Yeah, I'm missing several that I don't know where they went.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
He says, Because... I just had a collared wolf show up here and joined the Nine Mile Mail. I said, really? I said, well, here's my list of frequencies of the missing wolves that had been missing. And he ran through the receiver and listened. And one of those wolves was one that I had caught in Glacier and disappeared immediately. six, seven months earlier.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So she wandered around in not cyberspace, but mountain space, trying to look for a place to fit in. And all of a sudden, when this female gets shot, boom, she's there to fill in the slot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
How does that happen? And that happens in Yellowstone, too, where one of the breeding animals will be killed. And very soon after, a wolf of unknown... Well, there they know a lot of the wolves. But a wolf will just show up, the right gender, the right age...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
and and potentially bond and start a new pack how do they know and i guess all i can say is with that there's scent the wolves smelling the air and the scat can detect all kinds of things hormonally and the the the dominance of an animal if the female went missing almost said they won't smell it anymore and maybe it's a male a female coming in and she knows it but geographically how do they know to migrate right 200 miles and show up exactly when the other wolf disappears
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's amazing to me. So have you ever heard of the book called World on the Wing by Paul? I think the last name is Whedon. I don't know. It's about the world of migration. It is mind-boggling. If you like to read nature stuff and science, it's written so anybody can enjoy it. You don't have to be a scientist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But it's fascinating and full of facts about the world of bird migration and how they get places and like a particular important flat in China that was critical habitat for a group of birds suddenly gets developed. And it's like the wintering ground for half a million of these birds or whatever it was. And certainly, where do they go?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I just heard a lot of stuff. I've had, I remember, yeah, one winter night I was at my little remote cabin and it was at Moose City and it was stormy and it was like November and it was stormy and I went outside to use the outhouse and I heard this calling and it was dark and stormy and I was calling and calling and got closer and closer and I put my bright flashlight straight up
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And there was a flock of snow geese. I'd never seen snow geese up there, never. And they were circling around, and they were lost in the storm. And there's no lights up there except for my house light and my flashlight, and they were circling around the meadow. And I listened to that haunting call, and I thought, how are they going to survive it? This is the valley bottom.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Are they going to try and go up over the mountaintops?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
in the storm are they gonna crash land in the meadow for the night anyway i got to thinking about them i thought why how did they get here they got blown off course i just shut my light off and i don't know what happened to him never saw him again wow but i think about these birds a lot of them die migrating yeah they don't have a good ending you know there's birds that fly across the entire ocean it's mind-boggling mind-boggling they sleep while they're flying
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The wolf that I'm talking about. Yes. Yeah, she was born in Glacier Park. We caught her first as a pup, so we know where she was born. We know the den. And then at about a year and a half of age, almost two... She dispersed that far and she didn't have to go that far.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I know. I wished I could do that when I was driving. I try sometimes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, I got to see albatross one time when I was down, I think, where was I? I was down, I think it was New Zealand, but they were amazing. I like the comments.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So it would be interesting to me. I would hope the day would come with wolves and other large carnivores where people learn about the science and they get just as excited as this instead of the wolves have killed all the deer now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And then when I went to the University of Minnesota, Dave Meech, who was like the god of the wolf world, his office was on my campus. So I just stopped by and kept bugging him. I wouldn't go away like a good parasite. Persist, persist, persist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I mean, if she wanted to find other wolves and start a pack or join a pack, she could have gone any direction, 50 or 100 miles and found other wolves. You know what? If you tell me why wolves do what they do and I'll buy a lottery ticket. I mean, I don't know how these things work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. So a couple of things. I, as a wolf conservationist, I guess I'd say, and researcher. And a wolf lover. And manager. Well. Don't you love them? I love wolves. I love dogs. I love foxes. I love white-tailed. I love wildlife. That's better. And I'm.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
kind of in the middle, but obviously I'm passionate about wolves and I lean towards whatever we need to do to ensure that they continue as a species. I'm not saying they're going to live in Iowa and Texas. I'm just saying there's places that they can live where they more likely belong. I'm just going to put it that way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But I am not in favor of reintroductions and I was not in favor of the Yellowstone and the Central Idaho reintroductions, which usually surprises people because I promote wolf conservation. But I felt that wolves were coming down on their own from Canada. And before those wolves were ever reintroduced by 1995, we had like eight packs of wolves in the state of Montana, 70, 75 wolves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And you can Google that with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service early reports. They were making it. And I feel like some of these places where reintroductions are happening are Because of ballot box initiatives like Colorado, wolves were already starting to get to Colorado.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the people who are wolf proponents say we want them reintroduced because they'll never make the great desert across Wyoming. They'll all be killed. They can't make it. Well, a few of them have. And they even made pups in 19, I think it was 2020 or 2021. And then this wolf was, did I tell you about the wolf from Michigan?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, the wolf that was killed, trapped in Colorado this year that came from the Great Lakes. My God, how did it get there? But it did. So I feel sort of that Colorado is on the cusp of natural recovery. If it's going to be one year or 10 years or 50 years, it's a time issue. And I think the same was true for Yellowstone and Central Idaho. They were already getting to those places.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Wolves had already been seen, two of them confirmed, in and around Yellowstone Park in 1991 or 2 before they were reintroduced. And my wolves going to Idaho, it's just a slower wave. And people want to jumpstart this with reintroducing wolves. Well, in my humble opinion, I'm not a psychologist, but I think that... Social tolerance of humans for anything is better when it isn't forced on them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's becoming more and more common. So now that we have satellite callers, we've been using those for years, we can track them without having to stay in touch physically with them. In the old days, we just had VHF callers and you had to physically be there within range, like from an airplane or track them. But now that we got...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I don't like having things forced on me. Of course. Yeah. So when you force wolves on somebody, it's going to meet with human resistance. If they walk around on their own, I believe... They will get there. Our science has shown that they do. It just takes longer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The other thing of interest about the reintroductions is that people think the wolf-loving hippies pushed to have the wolves reintroduced into Yellowstone and Idaho. I'll just say Yellowstone, but it's the same.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
To some point, it is that faction, but the reason it happened was because two conservative senators, one from Idaho, McClure, one from Wyoming, Simpson, very conservative ranching supporting base, promoted to Congress to pass laws to get those wolves reintroduced. Because they could see the writing on the wall that the wolves are coming anyway.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And if they walk down there on their own, they're going to be fully endangered. Well, if we were to introduce them, they get a different classification called non-essential experimental population. Meaning because humans put them there, you can manipulate them and kill them if they're taking livestock. It's just more flexible management. So the senators thought, well, they're getting there anyway.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Let's just put them in there. Really? So, yeah, that's a little bit of the interesting background that people aren't aware of with the reintroductions, that it was really people way on the right and way on the left coming towards a common goal for different reasons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
satellite collars i mean my gosh you got wolves going from washington to montana and one of the wolves from wyoming went all the way down to arizona to just north of the grand canyon wow with the satellite collar was tracked and then it turned around and started home and it got shot in utah so when they're doing this and you track them how long do those collars batteries last
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I think I read about this wolf. There's a wolf that went down through the Central California Valley and ended up going down through the vineyard country. I think it was probably that wolf that it was seen.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Historically. Back eons of time, wolves had the largest global distribution of any mammal in the world except people. I mean, wolves live from the Arctic to the prairies to the temperate forests to the Gaza Strip still. Really? There's wolves in the Gaza Strip? There's wolves in the Netherlands right now. Wolves have expanded.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They will live anywhere that we don't kill them off because they did historically. I mean, there were wolves on Staten Island, I'm sure. Now we have different wolves there. But I'm thinking, yeah, anyway, stock market. Wolves of Wall Street. Yeah, exactly. That's where I'm going. So but they live anywhere because they can.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
eat anything, but mostly what they need is four-legged hoofed mammals, usually deer elk, caribou, moose, whatever, occasionally livestock. They need a place where they can secure that they can whelp and raise pups. And then they need a freedom of persecution from humans, being in traps, poison shooting, whatever. If you have enough of those three factors, they will be there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I mean, they've been showing up in Iowa and Missouri and the Dakotas for years and years now, but they don't make it because they get killed. But they're trying.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So if you get a chance, Joe, if you're really interested in seeing wolves, just take a trip to Yellowstone and go. I would suggest not in the summer because it's just crazy. I'd go in the winter. You can hire a wolf tour guide or you can go on your own to stay at a hotel, but you got to get up before dark.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And you got to go out dawn and dusk. In the wintertime, they're easier to see because of the snow. And it's really fun depending on the season. If you go in the fall, they got bigger pack because the pups are all still alive. You go in the winter, they got breeding behavior and stuff going on. It's just... There's always something to see. I go there myself, but I know a lot of the wolf watchers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I just drive the roads until I see people pulled over and I get out and watch. And they might be a mile away. They might be 400 yards away. But bring a scope. And I'd suggest you just hire a guide. You'll see wolves. Guaranteed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
How long ago were they killed? Was there anything left?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Really? Yeah. I know that's on my Instagram. Wasn't it a bear kill or a lion kill?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I just asked because bears and lions both pluck and eat. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. Magpies and ravens are my best friends when I'm out looking for kills. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, sadly, for the VHF collars, the wolves generally die before the collars do, because wolves don't live very long. An average VHF collar lasts about four years. An average satellite collar, one to two years, and I don't understand why the technology is not...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So there's been stories written. And there's a guy who does a lot of raven studies. Oh, his name escapes me right now. They're so smart. Yeah. He's done some really interesting studies with ravens. And if you ever watch the videos of crows solving puzzles and ravens, oh, my God. Incredible, right? Next life, I want to come back as a raven.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The raven guy's name is Bernd Heinz. He's German. Bernd as in Bernie with Bernd. Bernd and Heinz. Yeah. Anyway, it's cool stuff. I mean, you and I are both obviously very interested in animals. We hunt our own food. But just... When I'm out hunting, I feel a little bit like a predator. Not a lot because I got a gun, but I watch the dogs who are basically predators.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And I watched animals in the landscape and it just, you see so much when you're out hunting. I'm sure. I mean, what's the coolest animal you've ever seen when you've been out on the landscape, hiking or hunting or anything?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, our grizzlies in the Rocky Mountains are quite small compared to the coastal brown bears and the same species.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
better to prolong some kind of a new battery because once you put all the trauma of going through the wolf with a helicopter and catching it or whatever you'd think they could get some kind of a super battery that would last a long time probably too heavy heavy yeah and they're you know wolves are on average 100 pounds and the batteries are pretty big but i'm waiting for elon musk to develop a super radio collar battery
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But they're very different in death. They have to make a living. I mean, if you had to make your living picking huckleberries and eating gut piles in the fall, it'd be skinny. And they have to put on a lot of weight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're bugling and mating on the post office lawn. What?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I think I've heard of occasionally wolves find out and they sneak into town at night.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yes. It was a closed-gated community between Whitefish and Kalispell, and they had their pups in this closed-gated community because there's no hunting. It's unlimited green space and undeveloped forest because people have McMansions, and they have a huge acreage, and it's just quiet time. There's not a safer place, and the people there like them because they don't have livestock.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're usually not hunters. It's great, except then they grow up and they have to leave, the wolves. Right. You know, so then they get out in the real world and then they get their asses kicked.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right. It's really interesting. Yeah. That pact didn't make it. I'm not surprised.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But it was just so interesting to me how adaptable wolves are. You know, when I first started this business, I come from Minnesota and the wolves lived only in the northern third or quarter of the state where it was boundary water canoe area and really wild because any place else they got killed off.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So I always thought these wolves were denizens of the wilderness and they would only live where it was incredibly wild. And they've come to show us that's not true. They will live wherever we'll tolerate them. And that could be it. I mean, there were wolves in Texas not that long ago, red wolves. So they were here, but, you know, they're just not tolerated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But of course, it's a biased survey because it's by San Francisco. So it's not. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
If I was a mountain lion living near San Francisco, I'd be eating poodles and chihuahuas and cats. Absolutely. Easy prey. There are a lot of them. Nobody's going to shoot you in California. It's illegal. It's a charmed life until you get run over on the freeway.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Thank you, Jamie. You're the best. You see the white triangle on the chest? Yeah, yes. That indicates to me it's a younger wolf because the pups can be born. Yeah, can you wind that back again? Yeah, thanks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So the white chevron pups, younger wolves have that. And as they get older, like the rest of us, they get gray. And that doesn't stand out so much. So it would probably be a yearling, maybe a two-year-old wolf.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I know for a fact that there was a wild wolf that was tracked going down through central and to Bakersfield. I don't know if it was black or gray, but I know there was one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
No, it's not. My friend Kent Loudon does the wolf work in California. He's a biologist, used to be in Montana and Idaho. And no, they're making a comeback. I think there's six packs now and they're doing really well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Northern California. Yeah. And there's lots of conflict because they can't, I'm pretty darn sure, they cannot kill the wolves that are killing livestock. So it's set up for a conflict. Kind of like in California. Right. They're having some management flexibility in California. I mean in Colorado. But-
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So far, I mean, they just now, so a pair of wolves that they reintroduced found each other and made a pack, and they had the only litter of pups known to be in Colorado this year. I believe both of those wolves... came from Oregon and they both had livestock killing experience before they chose them to release, which is really unfortunate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So the dilemma was, okay, they did okay until people started calving. And now there's little calves on the ground and all the wolves are coming in and they're starting to kill calves and then they might kill a heifer or something. And anyway... They're killing livestock. So what do you do? You've got a male and a female and a litter of pups, and they have started a history of killing livestock.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
What do you do with them? The slight majority of people in Colorado, the ballot box initiative stuff, want to see all the worms protected, and a slight minority, it's like 49 1⁄2 to 50 1⁄2 or something, want them removed. And the people in the middle are trying to figure out what to do. So they went and captured them and put them in a holding facility for a while.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Then they're going to release them later. Well, you still have a problem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They will probably likely to continue killing livestock.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
In Montana, there is, I presume, yeah, there is in Colorado, yeah. They're reimbursed, but as I've worked with ranchers and they said, I didn't raise my cows for your damn wolves to kill them. I don't care. I don't want the money. I just don't want the wolves here. And sometimes when you're working with a rancher community, that's the only common...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
denominator you have is you're out there because you don't want their cows killed because then wolves have to get killed they don't want their cows killed because they didn't they raised them for all these generations they have a genetic a good pool genetically they are invested so you have the same that's the same common goal and you might have different reasons to come to that goal but that's how you work with people you know how it is yeah there's always a common denominator
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Sounds a bit like Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man. Very similar. It's the same deal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
What I'll say is captive wolf facilities, and I'm going to have many people who love their captive wolves, but captive animal behavior and wild wolf behavior have some parallels, but they're not the same.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And that guy doing this thing would never happen with wild wolves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah. And many people – I did part of my career earlier helping to try and keep wolves out of livestock. And we put out sirens and we put out blinking lights and – bought raw cowhide patches and raw hamburger and laced it with lithium chloride, which is a toxin that makes you violently ill right away. It's not going to kill you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That's a – always when I do have a talk, I ask the audience, how long do you think the average wolf lives? So if you guess from the time they're visible from the den emergence, like you start to see them at four weeks. And if you die before that, until they die, do you want to take a guess at –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The idea being that these wolves would eat this bait wrapped with string and taste all this wonderful beef burger and taste the hide and then associate that bad experience of vomiting your guts out for 24 hours or whatever to the animal on the hoof out there. That's a great idea for how your human brain works. They just ate every bait we put out and there's piles of puke everywhere.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Right. And that one guy rancher I was working with, we were putting out the baits, whatever. I did the sirens and I did what's called fladry. And fladry is – they used it in Europe in places like Poland to hunt wolves where you hang streamers down from fences.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And you start out with a really wide funnel in the woods and the hunters used to drive the wolves through the forest with people at the end with guns and they would see the flattery and it would be quite a ways apart, like a mile or two or something. And they wouldn't cross the flattery because it scared them and they get to the end and it's like shooting pheasants at the end of a cornfield.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So people have taken that idea. to try and keep wolves out of, like, calving pens in specific areas where the livestock are confined. It doesn't work well when they're out in free range. And it works pretty well. So I was out working with this pasture guy in northern Minnesota, and he had a long, skinny pasture. And I got highway blinking lights that came on at night in the fladry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And he was so kind. This was a lot of years ago. It was just this young starry-eyed thing. So I stopped in to visit him, and I said— well, I know you had a loss, you got a calf. I said, have any, the wolf's been back. And he looked at me and he says, well, no, hon, they haven't been back. He says, I said, do you think the blinking lights are working on your pasture?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
He says, well, I don't know, but I damn near had a plane land here last night. I broke up laughing. He broke up laughing. It was just like, yeah, it was a tough job. Let's just have some fun here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But again, he didn't like wolves. I didn't want him killing his cows. And that was a common factor to try and keep them apart.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I believe potentially a decreased human tolerance. And the wolves don't have a learning curve. They're taken from one place and then, boop, they're popped there. Versus if they kind of migrate, they were down, they run this gauntlet. They kind of have to learn on the way to be successful to get there. They have to learn to avoid...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
livestock pens or whatever they have to learn and stay a little more secretive. So that's just my belief that when they make it on their own, they've been smart enough to get there. Whereas when you just put them there, you're going to forever have people believing they don't belong there, they're not native.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I believe so, yeah. And so, for example, now we've got wolves in the—they were put into—a total of 66 wolves were put into Idaho and Wyoming, and another 10 were added to Wyoming for Montana. But it's a very small number of wolves. But now wolves have taken over Washington, Oregon, California. They've made a few, made it to Colorado. They're trying to get into Utah. A few have been shot there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And all those wolves came from this introduced population, some from Montana. But they'll never be considered native.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the wolves that were taken for the sources, like I explained earlier, they're taken from an area that wolves from Glacier Park walk to. They are one population, but there's a belief socially because they were put there. They're not native. They're Canadian super wolves. And I've heard the crazy stories like these wolves weigh 175 pounds and they were selected out of all the wolves captured.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They took the ones that were the most aggressive so that when they put them on the ground, they would survive everything. It's like, oh, my God, no, no.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And I don't think it was an F you to the renters. I think what happened was because of the ballot box initiative, The state of Colorado was required by law by December 31st of 2023 to get 10 wolves or so on the ground. But what if they weren't successful?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I don't know. But what I'm saying is they had a pretty limited time. They spent a lot of time trying to prep people and doing committees and working with people to get them prepared. And by the time they were able to get everything in place, they were running against a wall. They introduced these wolves very late in the year. I think it was December.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the only place they could get source wolves, they got them from Oregon. And that point, Oregon gave them 10 wolves. Half of them, roughly half of them, happened to have some livestock experience. So this time, right now, they're already gearing up for the next reintroduction, this winter probably. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You did. I bet the antlers were getting smaller by that time. Yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're working with British Columbia, I believe, and they're going to take wolves, presumably that have not had livestock experience, and let them go, like they did with the original introductions into Yellowstone and Idaho. And I really believe because of the political pressure to squeeze this into a short timeline –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
that the people who were really pro-wolf, it was forced that they had to take the wolves that they got. That's what I believe. I don't think it was an FU, I think it was unintentional, but it's like, these are the wolves you're gonna get, and they took them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
You know, I'm kind of a wildlife person. They're the ultimate in a really wild and smart animal. They're a carnivore. They're social-like people. And I think I was denied having a dog most of my life growing up until I was about 15. So I had this passion for canines in general. I love dogs.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well... I know, but I'm not there, and I'm not trying to badmouth their effort. They were under a lot of pressure. Half the state wants wolves, half doesn't. They're under a short timeline. Oregon was the only state that offered up their wolves. Wyoming said no. Montana said no. Everybody said no. Oregon says, you can have 10 of ours. Here's the 10 you're going to get.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're not evolved to live that long. Right. They just aren't. They usually die sooner because they burn up so much energy in years of mating and breeding that they get worn down and then, you know, they die.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's time frame. See, all this stuff has to do with the time frame, the mistakes and the rewards. So the most positive pros of reintroductions is you speed up the time frame. So like if we had let wolves slowly wander down from Canada and eventually get to Yellowstone... It may have taken 10 years. It may have taken 50. I mean, it happened in Montana pretty quickly once they hit critical mass.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But it took them a few years to get there. And then they just started, you know, the curve. But people didn't want the time window. And we had a presidential administration that was in favor of it. We had conservative congressmen that were in favor of it. You had the Wolf Groupies in favor of it. And it...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's just like all came together in the timeframe and the window of opportunity opened about four inches and they shoved them through. And Colorado mandated by citizens ballot initiatives, which is not a really great way to, I don't think, to do business on any bill. I mean, we have bills in Montana coming up now for voting. But the timeline was short.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And I think if they had more options, they would have taken wolves. They would have taken wolves from Wyoming or Montana for sure because they're more wild, whatever. We do have depredating wolves. But they kind of got down to the wire and everybody denied them except for Oregon.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But the wolves, I mean, in a zoo or a captive situation, they can live to be 15. Right. Like a dog. Yeah, but that's extraordinary. I think the longest I had a wolf, a wild wolf, that I knew her age because I caught her as a pup and I recaptured her and we tagged her, 12 years. That's extremely long for an old wolf.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Pretty simple. On the other hand, they can learn new behavior. Like the wolves that were taken for their introductions to Yellowstone, they had never seen a bison, most of them. And they've learned now in Yellowstone, a lot of the animals to kill are bison. No kidding. Yeah, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's mind-boggling to me to see a herd surround a bison and eventually wear it down or kill it or find one that's injured. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But I mean, Indians did that all the time. I shouldn't say Indians. Native Americans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, there's a few in Yellowstone that I got that old. We had one of mine that dispersed to Idaho. And he, kind of interesting, I caught him in 1990. And he dispersed about a year later on his own, went to Idaho in the middle of the Frank Church River, if not return wilderness. There were no other wolves at that time. And he just hung around. We'd see him once in a while. By himself? By himself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And wolves, too, for that matter. I mean, there were millions of bison on the prairies with tens of thousands of wolves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
If you were healthy or you protect your calf, you're fine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I would say right now there's about 6,500, I think, elk in the northern herd. We're not talking all of Yellowstone. It's just this herd that's been studied where the wolves are. That's where it's at now. It's stabilized. There's lions and people outside the park and wolves and bears, all these things, and that's where it's at.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And that's with everything, and it hasn't changed because the number of wolves, too, went – from 0 to 31 to 160, 165. In the last 10 years, it's been right about 100 wolves every year because they contain themselves by killing each other and defending the resource. So they're stable right now. The wolves are not increasing anymore.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
He was a big male. When I got him, he was 111 pounds. But this animal had to survive by killing animals alone. You think about... That's crazy. Trying to pull down an elk with your teeth.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Wolves killing each other and trespassing. People go, oh, that's awful. I said... Not really. I mean, if you had somebody coming into your home to steal your goods, wouldn't you shoot them if you had the chance? Or wouldn't you defend your home?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
To defend your home, right? Yourself, your family. The wolves do the same thing. It's sort of like what's going on with the wars everywhere in the world. The wolves do the same, and they don't always kill the trespassers. If they can catch them, they beat them up pretty bad. Sometimes they kill them. Sometimes you may have a benevolent pack leader that just... kind of has the wolves chase it off.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But wolf mortality, the greatest rate, I think it's like 70 plus percent, 75, is wolves killing other wolves in Yellowstone Park, non-PAC members.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So you'd have to go to the Yellowstone researchers to look at it. But I would say genetic relations, if it's closely related, they're more likely to not kill it. And if there's abundant food, they'd be more likely to probably not kill it. I think it's a combination of the two.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
The animal up in the northeastern part of the U.S. is called a coy wolf, and it's a coyote mixed with a wolf of unknown origin mixed with dogs. And there's lots of theories out there, and I'm not up on the most current theory. The original wolf up there was more like the red wolf. Then you get down here and down in Louisiana, Texas, Florida.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
There were red wolves, and now they're just at the alligator refuge in North Carolina. But those are being bred almost out of existence because they're hybridizing with coyotes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
He went to where there weren't any wolves, interestingly. But he had a success story because he just waited it out. And when they reintroduced those wolves into Idaho in 95 and 96... A little black female wolf pops out of her crate and just hits the road as fast as she can go. And she bumps into this wolf when they set up a territory in Kelly Creek.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, up in the Great Lakes, if you look at those wolves, that's where he started doing wolf stuff, they look a little bit like coyote. And the mitochondrial DNA shows some traces of coyote. But it's very uncommon. When a wolf encounters a coyote, they kill it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So they were, I mean, so you get a fox, it's like 10 pounds. You get a coyote, it's like 30 pounds. You get a wolf, it's 90 to 100 pounds. It's about three times between each step. And so the ones that are closest, so for coyotes, the foxes are a threat. They kill them. For the wolves, the coyotes are a threat and they kill them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But a 100-pound wolf and a 10-pound fox, it might be a nuisance and you let it scavenge. But it's not a threat to you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Exactly. So when wolves come back on the landscape, it happened up where we are, happened at Yellowstone, where it's just been a coyote economy since the wolves were taken out. Coyotes rule, right? I love coyotes too, but I shouldn't say love. I really respect them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
But when you have the wolves coming back and they start displacing and killing and hammering on the coyotes, well, surprise, all of a sudden red fox are coming back. And like where I work in the North Fork, All those early winters, we had people out all winter on skis tracking wolves. We never saw fox tracks. Never. And I never caught one in a wolf trap.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And then as time went on and the wolves took a foothold, so to speak, a toehold in the country, and they started hammering the coyotes. All of a sudden there's fox. I got fox denning on my property now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Sure. Or do they eat them? I don't. You know what? I haven't followed that. I don't track that that closely. But I would guess most of the time not unless they're incredibly hungry. I would guess it's a strict eliminating a competitor situation. I've seen. I mean, you can look at the data in Yellowstone.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They have witnessed tons of times of wolves going up to coyote dens and digging out on killing all the pups and trying to kill the parents. And I don't think they usually eat them. I could be wrong in that, but I don't think so.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, and urban coyotes are not real wild. They'll eat whatever they get. They habitualize, right? Totally.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, and it's really interesting to me how amazingly versatile coyotes are because I am starting to see wolves. being the same, that they're much more generous than I would have thought, and that they can adapt to situations pretty easily, like that wolf pack raising its pups in the subdivision. Crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They do eat dogs. Yeah. When every time I go up to my little cabin, I am very conscientious about not leaving my dogs outside without me there. Yeah. I did have a big Malamute killed by a Moutline about 35 years ago.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And they became a breeding mating pair for years and years until he died of old age.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's a big dog. Yeah. Moutline killed it. They don't care.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So this is interesting. I mean, you're a voracious reader, obviously. Have you ever heard of the study in Russia? Yes, I know what you're going with.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Go ahead, explain it. The book title is How to Tam a Fox and Create a Dog. One of the most interesting books I've ever read, but this is true. I'm not saying that the 400 wolves is not true, but I doubt it. This is true science supported by photos that in the 50s or so, this Russian scientist was starting a study of foxes. And he wanted to select simply for tameness.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And by selecting the tamest male and female from these different fur farms, these are captive fox to start with. that he would see if their morphology or their physical appearance changed. So he went to fur farms and he was picking just for tameness. And eventually, after many years, he'd go to the fur farm and this fox would lunge at him and snarl, he'd leave it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And they'd say, oh, this one over here in the corner, she rubs against the fence. When you go to feed her, you take that one. But over years, they have photographs of these foxes, and they start changing. They were silver fox, a lot of them, instead of red. And they're black and white. They kind of look like border collies. And they start to have, you know, tipped over ears.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And they got pictures of the guys in the pens. One person's bent over, and there's a fox standing on their back while they're putting out the food bowl. Crazy. Yes. And so that was in a very short time that they changed the behavior – the picture –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I'm glad you read it because I suggested it to friends because I'm passionate about all canids, well, all things wild. And it was one of the most amazing pieces I read. Because if you think about humans domesticating animals, we took some kind of a primitive form of a horse and a cow and a sheep and we got our breeds now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
For years, they had bears in captivity, brown bears in Europe forever, living in king's castles and riding the bicycles in the circus and whatever. But in terms of North America, of course, we've been here anywhere in the world. Nobody's domesticated the African wild hunting dog. Nobody's domesticated European lynx.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Without having helped to kill your food item either. That's what amazes me. Because he could have gone to Montana and found other wolves, but he didn't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Nobody has successfully taken a wild predator and bred it long enough with heavy artificial pressure by our selection, like shooting them in the head if they aren't friendly, and turned it into a different animal with the exception of wolves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I know. A lot of people have. Or coyotes. Yes. You keep coyotes, and after 15 generations, they still look like coyotes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They do. And this little thing with the fur fox, it was extraordinary artificial selection pressure to see that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
He could pet its head. I'm sure he probably can. He or somebody before him had probably food condition it to be accepting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Of course. Mr. Treadwell was not really in the bell curve on the big high point in the normal range either of normal behavior. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They're really unique. And they're also, they really adapt well to people. They live in agricultural areas. I've got them done. I mean, we see them all the time now. They're a different animal than a coyote or a wolf.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
It's kind of interesting to think about the early relation of people with wolves. I talk about that in A Woman Among Wolves, my book, is there was a couple of paleontologists or sociologists that speculated, and I can't say if their theory is correct or not, but they speculated that when people were still living in caves and having spears and atlatls, that they would watch.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So people were living in a family group in a pack. The wolves were living in a family group or a pack. They would watch the wolves chasing through a herd of whatever animal they were at that time, depending on where they lived. And eventually... Getting one tired enough, or maybe it was a cripple had a bad language. They would surround it and eventually kill it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I would guess he was killing elk calves, deer fawns, some deer. And if he got lucky, if he had a really deep snow winter, it's the advantage of the wolves because they've got big snowshoe feet. And elk, you know, punch through, they get little shark hooves. But he did well. Whatever he did, we don't know. We didn't follow him that long. We didn't pick up scats. It's just speculation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And then they speculate that the humans would learn that, you know what, we can go up to that killed oryx or whatever they had just killed, the primitive horse. And just drive those wolves away. We got tools. We can kill the wolves if we have to. So then it changed to where maybe those wolves had come around when the animal was cornered, but not dead.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And the humans would come in and do the final blows and drive the wolves away and take what meat they wanted and then leave. And the wolves could then come in and get the spoils of all the work that they had done that the humans had taken. And this is their theory, that there was this relationship between
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Just because it's a brutal world, not synergy and not altruistic and not, oh, aren't this cute? Just like, hey, people, look at those wolves got an animal, a camel cornered over there. Let's go kill it. Take what we need. Wolves would come in. And that that sort of began potentially the process of wolves and people beginning to interact.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I hate to hesitate to use the word collaborate, but collaborate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
There's many ideas about how dogs... Over time. Right. The ones who were least afraid hung around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, and then people would grab one of those wolves or let them hang around, and then they would clean up the offal around the camp and whatever. There's many ideas. Of course, nobody knows. But what is kind of known is the dates from DNA and carbon dating, the dates at which humans were able to domesticate livestock and the dates at which humans were able to domesticate dogs from wolves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And domesticating dogs preceded livestock. Livestock was like 11,000 years ago, roughly, of all species, swine, horses, cows, whatever, sheep.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And no livestock. No livestock. Exactly, because it hadn't happened yet.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So there would be more opportunity, potentially, for these animals... Again, I'm not saying it was to help each other so much, but they took advantage of each other's strengths and weaknesses. The wolf's strength was being able to hunt, run something down. It's also tired that people didn't do that. And then people say, oh yeah, that thing's crippled over there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Let's go kill it and we'll get our meat and the wolves can have the rest or whatever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Probably not, unless it was in the tundra, and it was wintertime, they could freeze it. But the relationship of, I mean, there's many dates that said about when people domesticated dogs, and it varies a lot, but I think there's some consensus 30,000, 35,000 years ago. Wow. Wow, was that long ago? Long ago. I didn't know that. And you can Google it, Jamie. I thought it was like 10,000.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
No, because it happened significantly before we began domesticating livestock. So what I'm saying is there wasn't a conflict base. Resources were abundant. There wasn't protection of our livestock. There wasn't this and that. And eventually people took – when livestock became a thing – Then eventually people would take a wolf-like cane and a dog that we domesticated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
I mean, they can kill a big elk, but they risk being killed every time they have to take a meal like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
And then I find it interesting to train it to keep the wolves, their wild cousins, away from the livestock. Talk about... Wow. Crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Humans are so creative with what they can do. And dogs are so plastic. I mean, you take a wolf and you put a lot of pressure on it and eventually you come up with a golden retriever and a griffon and a poodle because they have a lot of domestic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
They have a lot of plasticity genetically, morphologically, behaviorally that I don't think a lot of the other species have or would show up when we try to domesticate them. That's just my theory.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Yeah, I saw a video of a wolf from Yellowstone last year. It had been kicked in the jaw by an elk, and it had a broken jaw that was hanging. And a month later...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That was a parent dog. It looked like a wolf. Oh, gee, he's really wailing on that puppy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Well, I'm going to have to Google that and look up the—see, this is my first thing. I'm a researcher. It's like, I want to know the source. I want to know where it came from.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
What was the book he wrote like 20 years ago? Something primate. Yeah, I've read a long ago book. I haven't read currently.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
a month month and a half it was healed enough and it was in the process of killing another elk and and wolves came along and killed the wolf other wolves wasn't his own pack obviously but he survived that that's wow they're tough his jaw healed up and he got enough food while his jaw was healing yeah that's incredible i imagine he was scavenging around you know picking up on kills and whatever how is he even chewing
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
That was a fascinating book. You have. I'll have to look for it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
Do you know about lions and wolves and toxoplasmosis?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
So in Yellowstone, it's basically a dog-eat-cat world down there for the most part because of packs of wolves and the lions. But they have found that because the dogs are coexisting with the lions and sometimes ingest or scatter their guts or anyway, they eat some part of it. They get exposed. They have found with now the wolves have toxoplasmosis. And what happens is there is something like
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2213 - Diane K. Boyd
11 times. It's a huge amount. I wish I can't. Maybe Jamie can Google it. More likely to be extra bold and leaders of a pack than a dog, than a wolf that does not have toxoplasmosis. And these wolves that have the parasite take extraordinary risks and are more likely to die and lead the pack to death. So in the long run, it's sort of a cat's revenge on the wolves.