Species Unite

"So I think this whole idea of cumulative culture is a way to make humans exceptional. But it's clear to me that humans are exceptional, and seeing it through baboon glasses, I can understand in a different way why they're exceptional. But many of the things that we think are uniquely human are actually present in other animals." - Dr. Shirley Strum Dr. Shirley Strum is a groundbreaking anthropolo...

 "I sit in the camp that is going to defend wildlife, and I will live and die in that space. Even though what I see is in the West, wolves have a bad reputation. It's still there…" -Jeffrey Reed     What if we could understand wolves? How they communicate, what they might be saying? Jeffrey Reed, is a computational linguist, naturalist, and technologist who's doing just that—using artificial intel...

I think you could probably go back and track the stages of grief, probably that is what I went through. But I think if you do it right, you end up at acceptance. And that's where I ended up. And that's not to say that I've fully accepted the idea that the golden toad is extinct. Personally, I do still hold out hope that it could still be out there in those forests." - Trevor Ritland    This conver...

"72 juveniles is 28% of the current population of sunflower stars under human care in California. More than a quarter of them are at our facility. If you had asked us that question about a year and a half ago. The answer would be zero at our facility, and the answer across California would be six total." - Andrew Kim In 2013, one of the largest marine disease outbreaks on record, sea star wasting...

"We don't actually know how many animals we're testing on in this country, because most of them are not protected by any laws. There's not even a requirement that you track their numbers. " – Delcianna Winders Today, I have the pleasure of sharing some genuinely promising news. For decades, the FDA and NIH have required or relied on animal testing as the gold standard for drug development and biom...

"It is a scientific fact that these macaques, like all other primates, including humans, are communicating. They communicate in much the same way we do - facial expressions, vocalizations, body postures, those kinds of things." - Jeff Kerr Jeff Kerr is PETA foundations Chief Legal Officer. I asked him to come on the show to talk about one of PETA's current lawsuits against the National Institutes...

"The one that really surprised me was the organic humane Certified Egg Farm. I thought Humane Certified would at least mean that I would see some chickens running around somewhere, but it looked exactly the [00:00:30] same as any other egg facility. They were just big warehouses. You don't see a chicken anywhere in sight. And then I learned, of course, that, um, you know, the this whole free range...

John Kinder is the director of American studies and a professor of history at Oklahoma State University. And he is an author. His most recent book is called World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age . John's book tells a story most of us have never heard: what happened to the world's zoos—and the animals inside them—during World War II. It's a sweeping, d...

"I used to be the largest dairy consumer on the planet. I used to eat so much dairy and meat. The more that I looked into the dairy industry, the more that I saw that it was the singular, most inhumane industry on the planet, that we've all been lied to, including myself, for years. I always believed that the picture on the milk carton, the cow standing next to her calf in the green field with the...

"There's a drug called vioxx that was found to be safe and effective in animal trials, so they moved it on to preclinical trials in humans. Once on the market, that drug caused 88,000 people to have heart attacks and killed 38,000 people." Meredith Blanchard   We have some big news at Species Unite. In January and February, our team traveled to Bainbridge, Georgia to begin filming our first docume...

  "One year, we actually offered the Faroe Islanders One million pounds to stop the hunts. 1 million pounds, which would go to promoting whale and dolphin tourism to the islands and marine conservation education to Faroese kids in schools. And the Faroese response to our offer was the most emphatic no you've ever had in your life. They actually held a hunt on the 1st of January. On the first day o...

"If we march into that village and we start trying to persecute people for using poison, something that's very illegal, nobody's going to talk to us. We're not going to find out where the poison came from. We're not going to be able to shut anything down. We should take the approach that people are using poison because they're desperate, because they see no other alternative." – Andrew Stein   And...

"But it makes a lot of sense especially when you think about how traditional healers and shamans have worked, they haven't felt that separation from nature like Western medics do. And so to rely on the knowledge of other species actually makes a lot of sense. It's probably a lot more than we know at the moment." - Jaap de Roode  Jaap de Roode is a biology professor at Emory University, and he is t...

"I mean, organoids in general are very exciting replacements for animal research because you could model a kidney or a liver or a or a heart without taking them from a real animal, which it's very important to support that kind of thing. But yes, when it's the brain, there's this fear that you might end up creating another sentient being. And then and then you've just replaced one sentient being w...

"The basic premise of the event is that hunters hunt rattlesnakes from the surrounding environment all across West Texas, and bring them into the roundup for the weekend. And during the roundup, these snakes are kept in a pit and then, one by one, beheaded and skinned in front of in front of audiences." - Elizabeth MeLampy  Elizabeth MeLampy is a lawyer dedicated to animal rights and protection, a...

"When we arrived, we had no records, we had nothing. We had no documentation. And one of one of the first things that you have to actually prove to all of these international government parties and so on, you need to you need to say, where did you get this elephant? And we had no idea. We were actually government officials, and we had this elephant, and we had no real idea of where this elephant c...

"That's taxpayer's money that is going to support research and development and pilot projects to develop a food system that is based on environmental destruction and greed and disregard for animals, fish, and any of the other marine mammals that might be around it. " - Andrianna Natsoulas Andrianna Natsoulas is the campaign director for Don't Cage Our Oceans, an organization that exists to keep ou...

"It is a little bit terrifying, because it means that AI systems are going to be entering this uncanny valley where we are not sure how to experience them in five or ten years. You might be talking to Siri on your phone, or ChatGPT on your laptop, or your Roomba, vacuuming your floor. You might be talking to these beings and genuinely be unsure whether they think and feel things when they talk bac...

  "I think it's really the amounts of money that they're able to offer people paired with the violence that they're willing to put on people. It's very much like the drug cartels in Mexico, just more focused on poaching of wildlife." – John Jurko John Jurko is a director and producer of the film, Rhino Man , an award winning documentary which highlights the courageous field rangers who risk their...

"I know that one day for me in Antarctica, one morning for me in Antarctica is a dream for someone who will never get there. Because it's hard to get to. So, I don't waste those opportunities. I don't sit there and go, 'I'm in Antarctica again.' No, my brain will not go to that space because I know that people would kill [to be there]. I am the portal sometimes, through which some people will expe...

"We don't want Idaho to have a bad reputation. This is our home state. We love our home state. It's beautiful. We pride ourselves on our nature. We pride ourselves on our wildlife. And instead, we are continuing to do things that are… that are sickening. " - Ella Driever   In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to central Idaho, and in 2003 a Boise High school called Timberline officially adopted a loc...

"I know that veganism can be a little daunting for some, and they feel like it's either you go fully vegan or you're not allowed in the club. " – Cheryl Martinez   Because it's January and because a lot of people may have made some big resolutions a few weeks ago, we are going to talk about one of them – plant-based eating. Because, well I think it's a really good resolution to do all year long. ...

Text "Do people even want to know about some of these issues? Because I think some of the meat production concerns, it's kind of like people would rather in some cases, I think some people might not really want to know all the nitty gritty. They don't want to know how the sausage is made. That poses an interesting question and challenge about how you communicate about some of these issues, when ma...

"People in the animal welfare world, I think, should broaden their purview to the human parts of it and sort of work in coalition. Like if you can really expose the labor conditions, you're weakening the industry, and if you can increase labor regulations, if you can make it to where workers don't routinely get repetitive stress injuries and they're not breathing in harsh chemicals, and if you slo...

"I remember during my training having professors tell me, 'one day you might do something important and you'll tick off a vested interest, and they're going to come into a meeting with you, and they're going to bring a copy of your dissertation and slam it on the table and start challenging you.' And that is exactly what happened." – Keeve Nachman   This is the 2 nd episode in a special four-part...