Whose Story?
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There's a story my mom loves to tell. It's taken on a life of its own. And the story is about me. So, mom, I would love for you to tell the story of what I got up to at the kids' camp that they had on the holidays. And it was day one. Well, every school holiday, there is a school camp. And, you know, in Zimbabwe, we are very...

proud of our wildlife and our farming traditions and culture. So at the school camps, you know, children are taught about conservation and Tendo must have been five years old. And so I'm not really expecting my daughter to be touching anything outside of beetles and spiders, you know, things that you find in the playground.

They said there would be a reptologist, but in my mind, I thought he would bring smaller reptiles. I didn't think he would bring snakes. So anyway, my mom left me there for the day, and in the afternoon, she came to pick me up. And all these little kids are running to their moms, and they're telling their moms, hey mom, hey mom.

This little girl, she got the snake and she got it into her shirt and she started wiggling. They're all screaming and the moms are screaming. And I'm thinking, no, no, no, this is definitely not my child. But I see all her friends are now in the car park, but mine is missing. And so she came to find me. She's always been a very social child.

And of course she turns and she sees me. She comes, hey mom, hey mom. And she's so excited. Guess what mom? I touched this thing and I held it in my hand and it crawled up and then it went around my arm. So my daughter was now the exhibit. I wasn't all about that. But you know what? The look on her face. I had to act being very impressed.

Very curious. And then we cuddled. And I said, sweetie, please, next time don't touch the snake. Well, Mom, that's a great story. But that's not what happened at all. I should know because I was there. So whose story is it? Yours or mine? I'm Rutendo Shackleton. And I'm Sebastian Echeverry. And this is the BBC Earth podcast.

Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much?

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. In this episode, we're talking about stories and who they belong to. We've got music made from mushrooms, a bird that's forgotten its song, and an interview with a legend of African wildlife television.

Whenever I hear my mom tell that story, I cringe a little because it's simply not how it happened. It's not true. Wait, so was there a snake? Yes, there was a snake. But what happened was I was at a kid's camp and there was a reptile specialist there and he had some harmless snakes, some small lizards that he was, you know, having everybody touch and engage with. But

But what my mom doesn't mention is that I was actually late on that day. So I was right at the back and I had to like reach out through the crowd and with...

a single finger stroke the body of a snake. I don't think I saw a head or a tail. It's not like what my mom was saying where the snake was all over me and like wrapping itself around me. She simply wasn't there. It's not how it happened. Yeah, I feel like that's something that happens a lot when we tell stories

We are reconstructing the story every time we tell it based on our feelings and how we think other people are going to feel about it.

And that story evolves sometimes a little bit and sometimes a lot. Yeah, that's true. That's so true because I now don't know what to believe. I mean, I think your mom might be like really proud maybe of coming up with such an entertaining story. She's a very good storyteller. That's the thing. She's great. And what makes...

her stories amazing. It's just the emotion that she brings to them. Stories really do have that power to make you feel something. It's kind of how we like understand the world, right? That's how we get a lot of our information.

And it's kind of how we start figuring out what stories we could tell, who we might be. Yeah. And when I think about that, I think about the narratives that I wanted to be in. And especially when it comes to the natural world, the storytellers that I really connected with who actually, when they came,

told stories about the natural world strengthened my connection with it. People like Steve Irwin, who showed us that crocodiles were worthy of love, you know? Oh, yeah. No, absolutely, Steve Irwin. Just the idea of someone walking out into the wilderness and being like, let me show you my cool friend who may be trying to bite me, but that's okay. Yeah.

That positivity was just infectious. And I remember watching Bear Grylls when he was showing you how to get out of quicksand with a stick, just a stick. I remember holding my breath whilst he wiggled and pulled himself. He was great. And I just felt so exhilarated when he finally got out. Yeah. I mean, I think for both of us, right, those nature storytellers were a big part of our origin story, why we're here.

But in all of the stories that I watched, there wasn't anyone that looked or acted like me. There wasn't anywhere where I could see myself fitting in. And I didn't know how to come up with a story out of nowhere. Yeah, and that's really true for me.

I didn't see black African women on screen or being credited. And so these stories are so important because seeing is believing, right? And change is happening slowly. Absolutely. Largely because there are pioneers in the field who are expanding these

the storytelling space. And one of those pioneers is Dr. Paula Kahumbu, who is one of my biggest heroes. She's an elephant expert like myself, and she is the CEO of the conservation charity Wildlife Direct, and she's a filmmaker in Kenya.

All over the world, whoever tells the stories becomes the champion for that story. And African stories have for too long been told by people who don't own the stories. As a respected African conservationist, Paula has been interviewed many times by international filmmakers keen to absorb her experience and integrate it into their content.

only to later discover that her contributions have been cut out or her words adapted into someone else's script. And it's quite frustrating because it's hard for those people to understand that if you take my story and tell my story, you've actually disempowered me. You've actually stolen something from me.

And she's not alone. This has happened to a number of other African wildlife experts. It's really important that I am empowered to tell my own story. Not just that it's authentic, which therefore will resonate with the audiences, and it'll be honest and true, but also it boosts my ability to have more impact out there.

Paula reclaimed control by making her own documentaries. Very good. Paula, I'm so happy to see you here. I've heard that this is the place to find lions. Yes. Bolkinye has the highest density of lions in the Mara region. And we have several prides. We have the Sambuangare Breaker Pride that came from... I want Africans to feel so excited about telling our stories. It's so delicious what happens on the ground. This life we have living with these animals that other people would give anything

anything to come to Africa and be in our position, we need to have the right to authentically tell those stories. The elders have told me a lot about how their work and their beliefs have saved the forest of the lost child, not just for decades, but for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Paula began making her own documentaries, showcasing African wildlife stories for African people. The front line, rangers protecting mountain gorillas, or walking with lions in the Masamara, you know, these stories were so powerful, it felt a shame that we were only telling them to international audiences.

In these documentaries, African wildlife and conservation experts tell their own stories in their own way. And African viewers see their own world from a perspective they can relate to. This has an important impact on the environment too. Children could see themselves in those people.

If we intend to create and drive an environmental movement in Africa, if we want to save these iconic animals for ourselves and for the world, then we have to get the buy-in of local African people. And storytelling through film is by far the most powerful tool that we have. No, you're completely right. What I aspired to be as a conservationist, I saw on TV, but I never saw...

conservationists that look like me on those films. Yeah, there are many challenges. It's not just who the main hero is, it's also who the villain is. Right. The villains are almost always people who look like us. People of colour, often men, sending a very strong subliminal message that people of fairer skins are the good guys and the darker skinned people are the bad guys.

These portrayals have serious consequences in the real world. Most young people in Kenya who pursue an interest in nature and wildlife are discouraged by their parents. And I would say it's not just Kenya, it's across the African continent that going out into the wild, spending time with wild animals or learning about trees

is seen as something that foreigners are interested in, not local people, and that you can't make a living out of doing those things. And so a lot of people have been looking for opportunities to, of course, be aspirational, to work in fields like medicine or law. Even farming is seen as somehow a career choice that is not very prestigious in Africa, which is really unfortunate.

Paula's programs, aptly called Wildlife Warriors, do much more than just feature people who work in wildlife. They also champion and train future conservationists. Overall, it's a movement of creating a generation of people who are active stewards, what we're calling wildlife warriors, people who will

aspire to be like the role models in the series. We want to see them inspired so much that they really care about nature and they go to the national parks, which we've been able to demonstrate has been happening. And we also want them to feel so strongly that they will take action if something is threatened or if they have an opportunity to make a difference.

Yo, it is so inspiring to hear people like Paula, not just taking back control of how they're featured in documentaries, but...

rebuilding their connections to nature on their own terms. That is so cool. For sure. And that's why I love what Paula is doing with Wildlife Direct and Wildlife Warriors, because she is rebuilding the connection that Africans have with their natural history. And the people that Paula features are indigenous people with indigenous knowledge, sure. But they're also indigenous people with indigenous knowledge, and

And degrees. They are proper local experts and scientists. And they deserve to be able to tell their own stories. Because local experts know their ecosystems best. Storytelling is this really important way that we pass down knowledge. It can feel like a uniquely human thing, but there are plenty of other animals that do it too.

Some species, yeah, are born with a lot of the knowledge and skills that they need, kind of hardwired, like it's instinctive, right? But many others also learn from mentors, from trial and error, or both.

And these things that they're learning, it's what they need to survive and reproduce. Yeah, totally. I mean, I've seen this in action in elephants. So I don't know if you know this, Sebastian, but for a female elephant to be a good mom to her calf, she needs to first have experienced...

and witness what it is to be a good mother. So she watches maternal behaviors being performed by her own mom, her aunt, her sisters, her grandmother, all around, and she takes in this information so that when she has her own baby, she knows what to do.

Because when she doesn't see these maternal behaviors being displayed around her, she might actually end up hurting her calf, especially if she's a first-time mother. I mean, I get it. Child rearing is really complicated. And without that chain of passed-down wisdom, you know, handed down generation to generation, really important knowledge for our survival can be lost.

It's happened with humans. There are ancient forms of navigation. There are languages that have died, that have been killed off. And it's also happening in the animal kingdom. Like right now, there's this bird in Australia called the Regent Honey Eater. Daniel Appleby has been studying them, and he's a PhD candidate at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he's part of the brilliantly named Difficult Bird Research Group.

Yeah, so the Regent honey eater is a lovely little omnivorous bird on the east coast of Australia. It's black with a gold streaking through it or scalloping as we would call it. It's got a bare patch around its eye that's covered in little warts. It has a range from southern Queensland to northern Victoria, but it used to live in a much larger area from South Australia where it's now extinct.

Most of this is due to its massive loss in habitat. Over 90% of its preferred woodlands have been cleared. And so now its population has gone from around 1,000 a decade ago to around 300 in the wild now. When they were first discovered, they had huge populations. They were first seen in trees, 50 to 100 birds at a time. Now we're unlikely to see them even in groups of more than 10 most of the time.

The males sing to attract a mate and to establish territory, and they have a beautiful, simple song. It has bill snaps involved in it, a clicking sound, followed by a sort of upward whistling motion. It's very simple, like a lot of Australian bird songs, not like birds in Europe that go on for 20 to 30 seconds. It's a short song, two or three seconds in length, sometimes low warbling, but always very gentle and quiet.

So a few years ago, some colleagues were out trying to get a better picture of the wild population. And while they were doing that, they realised that some of these birds sounded quite different to what we'd expect. Not only were some of these just strange, they were also sounding like other species. So we had them mimicking cuckoo shrikes, little waddle birds, noisy friar birds. Things that we expect to live near them, but certainly not to sound like them.

So unlike what we see in some other species over here, like lyrebirds that mimic other birds' songs as a sort of form of positive adaptation, Regent honey eaters are picking up

other bird songs by mistake and we never hear them sing Regent honey eater songs when they need to. So from a conservation perspective that's really damaging to that species because if you don't sound like a Regent honey eater you're very unlikely to find a Regent honey eater mate and produce offspring to keep the species going.

It's terribly sad in two ways really. One, because it has big repercussions for conserving this species, but also because it's a form of extinction in itself. These birds are disappearing physically, but it's being sort of foreshadowed by the loss of this song. There's a beautiful sound that you expect to hear in the bush in eastern Australia that's just disappearing.

Because of the population contraction, the fact that there's so few of these birds now and that they live so nomadically, some of these birds are not having the opportunity to really interact with suitable tutors, much like we would expect with human beings where the language is passed on from a parent or another suitable adult to the young. And because of that, they're just not getting the opportunity to practice these songs.

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And to do that, we take them out of the crèche once they've fledged and they're self-feeding and then we put them in an aviary adjacent to a male that sings correctly. Over time, we hope that he'll pick that up. The other option we have is

playback from a tape. So we create a composite track of about 14 hours from sunrise to sunset and we play that all day and hope that that seeps into some individuals and they teach it to other individuals. So our aim primarily has been to reintroduce this culture to essentially bring this species back from the brink. It's going to take a lot of different elements and song is undoubtedly a huge contributor to that.

From the time these birds hatch there's culturally appropriate song playing from sunrise to sunset. I go in with a microphone and follow birds around the aviary as they practice their song. What's that? That's pretty good. That's 'Fot Pink Green'. And they practice their song just like human children do. They start off babbling

making lots and lots of incoherent noises and then you start to notice little bits forming, you know. We assume that they make a sort of mama-dada kind of noise. They make little bits of the song that sound correct but in the wrong order and as they get older it starts to crystallise and form into a more culturally appropriate song. Yeah, right. I think I've got a lot of yellow and black.

So we've been running our tutoring program now for just over two years. We've trained about 55 male birds and we're seeing massive improvements in

They're sounding more and more like a wild bird, which is hugely encouraging. We're hoping that within the next year we have a group of birds that sound exactly like wild birds. And we're hoping that they can then spread that through the captive population as well. So within a few years, there's no intervention from the staff at the zoo. We can just let them teach their young and spread exactly how we would expect to in the normal, healthy population.

The great thing about having a captive population that sings the right song is that one, it'll increase their chances in the wild at finding a mate, but it also increases the chances that we can help to stabilize that song in the wild so that it doesn't continue to be lost. Wow, that story really hits me on several levels.

That feeling of creeping in isolation. You know, we hear about it as this abstract thing that's, you know, this species went extinct, but the actual story of it, you feel each loss of the birds in the population, right? They start from a lot, then there's fewer, and every time there's fewer birds,

the chances for that species are going down because they can't talk to each other. It's really shocking to think that the Regent honey eaters' very simple song has a massive impact on their survival. I mean, imagine if memorizing something like Mary had a little lamb was key to human survival. Then I would be dead. I'm willing to be okay with the fact that if that was the limit,

For my survival. I'd be in trouble. I'm bad at remembering songs. But that's the thing. Daniel keeps calling it this really simple song. When I heard it.

I think it's a subtle song. Yeah. There's a lot of little itty-bitty differences. Yeah, our brains simply aren't wired to pick up those subtleties. And I suppose that's the beauty of using a recording. I love the lengths that conservationists will go to to bring species back from the brink. You were telling me, Rutendo, the other day about the extremes that this can get to with pandas. Yeah.

Yeah, it was. I mean, it's funny. Yes, you're absolutely right. So I'm talking about panda porn. So interestingly, pandas have a really small window in which they can ovulate. And that means just simply they have about two to three days in which they can actually breed and potentially get pregnant.

And so when panda numbers were in decline, some zookeepers actually started playing panda porn videos to teach young males how to mate and to kind of get them in the mood. So these videos had other pandas in them actually performing the act of mating activities.

to get the young males into the mood. I mean, that is hilarious. It means that someone had to sit down and decide, okay, what videos do we pick to show the pandas? Which is, you know, that's a conversation that would be very fun to be a fly on the wall for. So, Rutendo, you know that sound library that Daniel made with all the Honey Eater songs? Okay, so I'm thinking...

If he wants to publish that as a record, right, who would actually be listed as the artist? Like, would the birds be getting songwriter credits on it? I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I guess the question is, if a human is using a non-human living thing in the process of telling a story...

are the storytellers there? Yeah, that's a really good question. And it brings me to Taurun Nair, who's a biologist and a sound artist. His videos have gone viral on TikTok, and he makes music under the name Modern Biology, but his instruments are mushrooms.

So as a musician, I'm kind of obsessed with using as much information as possible from the present moment to create music. And sometimes that takes the form of plant and fungal bioelectricity. You know, I head out into the woods and either find plants or mushrooms that look interesting. I have my little modular synthesizer set up that I carry out with me and usually a portable power supply.

and I run a very small current through the mushroom and based on fluctuations in bioelectricity in the mushroom itself, note changes on a synthesizer are triggered. So it's a little window into the living energy of a mushroom or a plant. And then I sort of, you know, put some effects and stuff on it. Sometimes I play other keyboards along with it.

What's created are these little vignettes of a moment in time with different natural organisms.

For example, yesterday up on the northern Gulf Islands outside of Vancouver, I found some turkey tail mushrooms which are known for their medicinal properties and it was this great rotten log covered in turkey tails. And so I brought out my modular synthesizer and clamped two electrodes onto one of the little fruiting bodies.

Even though the idea of making music with plants has been around for decades now, what's actually happening in terms of bioelectrical communication, signaling, all of this is a very fresh realm of science. And so I really do approach it with the eye of an artist.

I'm sure one could do multiple PhDs and try to figure out precisely what's happening and what it means, but that is not me. I'm a guy with a synthesizer that plugs into nature.

That said, there's been some fascinating research recently about action potentials in mushrooms and people using linguistic theory to try to decode what's actually happening and coming up with fungal languages that are based on electricity. So, you know, some of that is definitely playing itself out in what we're listening to when we're listening to the music that I make.

But I think there's a lot of ways of engaging musically with plants and the way that has blown up on TikTok for me and on social media is one way, but I'm actively working on a bunch of other ways as well. I'm just sort of fascinated with the whole concept and very much learning like everybody else is at the moment.

I think it's important always to differentiate what the plants or fruits or mushrooms are doing is just living. And small changes in their bioelectric field are leading to note changes on a synthesizer. So they're not actually making music, they're just being alive.

And then I'm plugging them into a synthesizer which is making music. So the timbre of the sound is due to the synthesizer that we're plugging it into. But the fluctuations of notes and the rhythms that are being played are what are coming from the bioelectrical fluctuations.

I'm used to making songs with bridges and hooks and melodies and arrangements, and this way of making music is entirely different because it's not me who's determining the melody, and it's not me who's determining the rhythm. It's truly ambient music, and making music like this

I have the feeling that it's not really about me at all. I'm making some subjective decisions based on what timbre the synthesizer should be and also quantizing to certain scales sometimes to make them work with other musical concepts. But the product is very much a collaboration and it's a collaboration that's specific to a moment in time.

Wow, I can totally picture Tarun walking in the forest. Like something out of like Alice in Wonderland or Avatar and just tapping each mushroom fruit with his synthesizer and it bioluminescently glowing as his synthesizer picks up the sound. I mean, I can't stop.

thinking and asking myself, where is this story, this music coming from? Who's the musician? Who's the storyteller? Is it the mushrooms? Is it the computer? The synthesizer? Tarun? Or is this some sort of super collaboration? We'll let you decide.

The BBC Earth podcast was hosted by me, Rotendo Shackleton. And me, Sebastian Echeverry. Our interviewees were Rukudzu Wazara, Paula Kahumbu, Daniel Appleby, and Tarun Nair. Our producers are Jeff Marsh and Rachel Byrne.

The researchers are Dawood Qureshi and Seb Masters. Podcast theme music was written by Axel Kakoutier and mixing and additional sound design was by Peregrine Andrews. The production manager is Catherine Stringer and the production coordinator is Gemma Wooten. The associate producer is Kristen Kane and the executive producer is Debra Dudgeon. The BBC Earth podcast is a BBC Studios production for BBC Earth.

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