Name: Joe Rogan Experience #954 - Justin Brown
Uploaded: 2017-05-03T20:27:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #954 - Justin Brown' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-05-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #954 - Justin Brown' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-05-03. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #954 - Justin Brown

five four three two one
and we're live with Justin Brown Justin first of all I'm very upset they gave
you such a small
badge what's up with that yeah no it's nice and tiny there no law enforcement
so seems like you
should have like like you there's some badge there there's some enforcement
right it sure
looks like it doesn't it but yeah no law enforcement on my end I'm just a biologist
well listen man I've read about your work in an online article I don't remember
where it was but
about coyotes in the urban area all around Los Angeles and I've been fascinated
by this since
I moved to LA the first time I saw a coyote was in 1994 when I first moved here
I was in Burbank
and I had an apartment and what you know all those um they have those uh pre-furnished
Oakwoods Gardens
apartment on Olive Street you know where that is uh not off the top of my head
but it's where people
always when they they transition to LA they get one of these pre-furnished
apartments you know
anyway yeah I'm driving up Olive and I saw these coyotes and it was the first
time I'd ever seen
a coyote and I was like this is crazy like this is in Burbank this is in a
residential area and they
were just hanging out and I pulled over and I stopped and I rolled down the
window and I was staring at
them and they're staring at me and they didn't give a shit about me they were
so calm and they didn't run
and I just remember thinking this is so strange these are like wild dogs that
live like right amongst us
and then from then on I've had some encounters I had a coyote steal a chicken
from my yard I watched
him hop the fence with a chicken in his mouth I've had quite a few encounters
with coyotes but I'm
absolutely fascinated by them I mean they've been amazing I've been working
with them now for almost 15
years actually a little bit more than that now and I've seen them do some
amazing things I mean
they're able to live in some of the most urban environments we can imagine I
mean I'm tracking
them right next to I don't know if you know where the Westlake neighborhood is
in downtown LA but yeah
I have a coyote running that neighborhood which when I first drove through
there so I worked in Chicago
for a long time we were tracking coyotes in some incredibly urban areas there
like right along
Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and but in Chicago there's some green spots where
when you get down
in LA there's not a lot of open spots yeah some little vacant lots and stuff
but I tracked this
coyote for about nine months down there in that area and she was just amazing
like she was running
the streets she came to hang out in these little vacant lots and what was even
more amazing is that no
one was really complaining about her we actually talked to people in some of
the houses and stuff they
were actually fascinated to see them versus yeah being like they're in my
backyard what are they doing
well people have always had a weird relationship with coyotes I had Dan Flores
on the podcast last month who's the author of
Coyote America and he's a wildlife historian and has just some amazing insight
into like the relationship that coyotes had way back with the Native Americans
you know they thought there were gods and in a lot of ways
yeah I actually listened to your podcast with Dan that was great Dan's got some
pretty interesting facts just in his book in general things I
didn't actually know about before it's kind of nice to have a historian tie in
some of the facts I get lost asked lots of questions about where the
coyotes came from how they're moving around yeah and so it's nice to have
something like Dan's book to kind of reference people to I think
most people in the downtown LA probably welcome something like a coyote because
it's kind of cool you know to have this thing like hanging
around you as long as you don't have a dog or a cat that it snatches yeah and
that's definitely the case a lot of people think it's cool but
they do cause problems I'm actually dealing with one in Silver Lake
neighborhood that's keeps going up to people walking their
dogs and trying to it's got a den in somebody's backyards actually dinning
under their deck so the decks open and she put our seven pups
underneath this den whoa yeah so it's pretty crazy but she would basically
anybody gets close with a dog she comes out and tries to run
them off and this is pretty common during pupping season this is like the time
when most people have issues with coyotes cuz they're
trying to protect their dens I mean we're all obviously protective of our
offspring right so they think that the dog is going to find the
pups and kill them or something uh I mean we don't really know why they're
doing it we assume that's probably the case they come up and
the most of the attacks have been where they just come up behind the dog and
start trying to like nip at its back and
wow the dog the people move on people freak out um as far as I know there hasn't
been anywhere that coyote actually like draw blood on
the dog so it's almost more like it's like get the hell out of here right so
they're just scaring them they're not trying to
they're not actually being predators that's what it seems like for the most
part I mean they definitely do kill little dogs
yeah and occasionally end up fighting with big dogs as well but that's that's
rare
wow so these what are they eating like this especially the one in downtown
yeah so that's that's interesting um we've actually been doing this study using
working with a bunch of citizen scientists and I don't know if that's the story
you read or not but we're basically having
people collect coyote scat from around downtown LA and we're actually breaking
the coyote scat up to look what's in it
and we're seeing a huge variety of things I mean lots of fruits and stuff they're
actually big time in the vegetation type stuff yeah a lot of fruits and in the
urban environment obviously we've got peaches and plums and all kinds of crazy
fruiting stuff that they take advantage of
but they're also eating rats and squirrels cats um insects we've seen things
like earwigs and those big old potato bugs that people see I mean they're just
eating almost anything you could think of they're taking advantage of human
trash
well I I've had them in my yard for a long time and one of the things that
surprised me is how much coyote scat that I find with berries in it
like I didn't know that they were omnivores I mean they were they really are
omnivores then it's not like uh like a dog or a cat I mean they eat pretty much
everything
yeah I mean coyotes can take advantage and that's why they're able to live
amongst us I mean because even when there's not a lot of prey available they do
they're able to take advantage of these different fruiting trees
yeah you know I was talking with a friend about it and he was uh saying that he
hates them and you know he wants to kill them all and all this stuff and I was
like but yeah but
ever notice that you don't see any rats
like we we hardly have any rats
like it's so rare that you see a rat or a mouse in my area and I think a big
part of that is because you hear coyotes all the time and I think they're
eating them all
I mean they definitely will take advantage of them I mean there's other
predators too I'm not sure where you live exactly
owls and owls and hawks and bobcats yeah and all those different things
definitely yeah
advantage of those prey as well but yeah coyotes I mean they're amazing
yeah they're they are they are really are a fascinating animal so this this one
that got to downtown LA
do you know like when it arrived I don't know when it arrived so I
I kind of drove through there looking to see where I might be able to call her
a few animals
so we could kind of see what's going on and how these animals are persisting
down there
um and actually do that uh how do I see where they're persist no how do you
collar them oh how do I collar them
so first we have to capture them so we'll put out traps we'll capture them and
then once I get them in a trap
I'll go out with a pole I'll pin them to the ground and then I'll hold them
down jesus
I'll put a muzzle on them and hold their feet together and then we'll throw a
collar on them
we'll take blood to look for disease you don't tranquilize them
wow that's crazy yeah they actually go very docile they're a lot like a dog
once you kind of show them
that you're the dominant thing they they kind of just lay over I mean you still
have to be careful
obviously they can turn and bite you if you don't muzzle them right but usually
once you get them
down that first time they usually just lay there until you're done no kidding
and it usually takes
me somewhere 35 40 minutes to do the whole thing and they just lay there they're
not fighting me
do you have video of that uh I'm sure I do I want to see that that's got to be
a trip
yeah I know I would think that they would be like a wild cat like I've had a feral
cat before
yeah um and I had her when she was a kitten or he rather when he was a kitten
and he was like a spaz like you couldn't even hold on to him you'd freak out
and climb the curtains and hiss and sputter at you and that was like a little
domestic cat that was born outside oh yeah we do drug any of our cats we catch
so we catch um bobcats that's another study that we're doing a lot of uh we've
actually had a bobcat project going on since 1996 and so we've been collaring
those guys for a long time they're not docile they're not docile we don't trust
them raccoons are another
species you don't handle those guys undrugged oh yeah I would imagine they'll
make you pay the price
isn't that crazy like people don't realize that raccoons are predators yeah
well they're they're
they're definitely omnivores right just like the coyotes are they actually eat
a lot of fruit and stuff
they take I mean part of them living in an urban environment is they're just
taking
massive advantage of our garbage right raccoons just I mean we've I've seen
amazing photos of like 13 14 raccoons in
one garbage can all feasting down I have uh chickens in my backyard and this
one raccoon was by my chicken
coop the other day and I flashed a light on him and he walked towards the light
I was like look at this
cocky bitch he just started walking at me and I got nervous I was like I don't
have a weapon on me or
nothing I thought a flashlight he'd be like whoa let me get out of here he's
just looking right at the
flashlight walking towards me you know trying to get to the chicken coop yeah
well you'd be amazed how many
people feed them oh because they're so dang cute right big old mask on people
are like oh they're
starving out there they can't find their own food and so they feel like they
need to feed them and
same thing with coyotes too it's people feel like these animals can't fend for
themselves which is
ridiculous because they're not able to make it there because we're feeding them
they're making it because
there's resources for them to take advantage of yeah I would imagine they
probably play I mean like I
said I think in my neighborhood they do play an important part of keeping the
rodent population down
but in downtown there's got to be a ton of rodents as well I mean downtown for
people who don't know
is like the only area in all of LA that really looks like a city yeah
definitely I mean I like I said I
drove through there I mean after tracking coyotes in Chicago I didn't think
they'd be in some areas
they are in LA there seem to be everywhere I look I get photos of coyotes on
our cameras or get people
reporting them to us and this one that's in downtown it's just a single coyote
by herself no actually she's
got a whole pack so I collared her and then within a couple she was actually
lactating when I caught her
so I know she had pups and then we ended up seeing her with five pups probably
a week later and there
was actually a ambulance that drove by and she just started howling and all the
pups were out there