Kids Ask Why?: Recent Episodes
Kids Ask Why?
Produced by Wyoming Public Media and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Kids Ask WhY features young journalists from Wyoming, who explore topics that connect them to their home-- the modern American West. Diving into questions about Wyoming’s history, wildlife, and culture, their thoughtful conclusions help people of all ages see Wyoming through a new lens.
Kelly School
This season's podcast follows Mrs. Lowenfel's 4th and 5th Grade Class at Kelly School in Teton County Wyoming. The kids had many questions for our experts and lots to share about the American West. This episode features Stella, Bowen, Shelby, and Elise.
Corey Anco
Corey Anco is the Curator of the Draper Natural History Museum. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from Lewis University, a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University, and a Master of Science in Biology from Fordham University. He has worked with the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Geological Survey. Anco has held additional positions with the National Geographic Society’s Big Cats Initiative and Wildlife Conservation Society before joining the Draper Natural History Museum in 2017. Outside of the museum, he enjoys cooking, playing guitar, and backpacking in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Frank Carus
Frank Carus is the director of the Bridger-Teton National Forest Avalanche Center. Frank has had a love for snow as he climbed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park at age 19. He works diligently to monitor the avalanche center and numerous weather stations in Wyoming. Franks early working years supported his climbing and skiing obsessions by guiding and building things out of wood.
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Transcript
Why, why, why, why?
In Wyoming it snows less than other places, like Russia and Ukraine and all that. So I'm just wondering why that is?
Why, why, why, why?
Why do avalanche bombs stop avalanches from happening?
Welcome to the kids ask why podcast. Production by Wyoming Public Media and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. This season the podcast is following fourth and fifth grade class from Kelley School in Teton County, Wyoming. We have lots of questions and lots to share about the American West.
Elise: Hello, my name is Elsie. I am from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I'm in fourth grade. And I think what's interesting about snow science is like how it can get sticky, and then it can get like sugary and then it can get really hard and icy. Stella.
Stella: Okay, my name is Stella. I'm from Jackson Hole Wyoming and I think snow is interesting. Well, I chose this because how animals can survive under the snow and how snow is like cold, because snow is just water that kinda like got cold. But like, how is it white? And how did it like, get cold? Bowen.
Bowen: My name is Bowen and I'm from Kelly, Wyoming. What I wonder about snow is, um, I know that it depends on where on the equator you are. But it's like since Russia gets more snow than we do and we're at the same equator level. I don't know if that's what called. That's just what I wonder why.
Shelby: Hi, I'm Shelby. I live in Jackson, Wyoming and I am in fifth grade. And to me how snow science is interesting is, I'm super interested in how they form.
Bowen: Today, we are talking with Corey Anco who is the interim curator of the Draper Natural History Museum in Cody, Wyoming.
Stella: So my questions are, how do animals survive under the snow? Because snow is cold. And if it was warm when the snow melts, and under the snow, how do animals eat and breathe?
Corey: So let's start with the first one. You know, how do they live there? Animals are going to do one of three things when you know an environment changes. They're going to migrate, like elk, they migrate, you know, to an area that's more, that's better for the conditions where they can find more food. Some animals like bears, they hibernate. They're not active in those conditions. They store up things like body fat and reserves to stay to stay warm. And then you have the other these other organisms that we're going to talk about that are active in the snow. And those are adapted to the cold environment. So we have migration, hibernation or adaptation. Well, who might you think lives in the snow? We have some hints behind me. What do you see here?
Stella: Well, I see a weasel that's white, a fox stepping onto the snow, a wolf, another white weasel in the snow chasing a little mouse.
Corey: Yeah, so we have small mammals. We have a reptile down here. We have a snake and they're building cavities. Right? So how do they survive in those conditions? There is air vents that are created either by the burrowing activity of the animals or by vegetation branches. You know, from, let's say a tree shrub that's growing in the ground extends up into the surface. There's little air pockets there, so you have airflow, and then the neat thing about snow is, it's an insulator. So you think of like an igloo, inside the igloo, it's warmer inside. So beneath about six to eight inches of snow, the temperature stays relatively stable, just hovering at about 32 degrees or freezing temperature. These organisms are equipped to handle that that kind of temperature. So regardless of how cold it is above the surface, you know, we get into negative temperatures, that snow acts as an insulating blanket, and that's how many of these organisms can continue to live.
As far as what they eat well the herbivores, so things like the mice and the voles, they'll eat seeds, they'll subsist or they'll consume a shrub bark, the bark of shrubs. They'll also feed on grasses that are below the ground, or that are below that snow layer growing out of the ground, but then you also have predators as we see. We have the weasels that feed on the mice and the voles, but then above the ground, we have the fox and we have birds of prey. Things like raptors, so owls and hawks, and coyotes as well. These animals all have excellent hearing and they can detect movement and tunneling activity, up to 30 yards away in the snow. That's how they hunt and find prey inside that subnivean zone.
Stella: I think that's really cool.
Corey: Yeah, its pretty neat. It's kind of like "neature".
Stella: So under the snow, how do animals eat? And then under the snow how do animals breathe?
Corey: Yeah, yeah, so we all need oxygen to breathe, and so do all these mammals. They will create air events that will help with airflow. In some of them, it's the voles, I believe, will create complexes underneath the snow. They have separate rooms for eating separate rooms for sleeping, and separate rooms, for where they use the bathroom. They can make these different compartments and all between those compartments, you have air circulating and flowing between the surface and those different cavities. They are still able to access that food underneath the ground because as the snow falls, it'll bury some of that food source, but they're tunneling underneath all of that. And that's how they access things like vegetation or seeds to consume.
Bowen: So my first question what is the biggest animal that lives under the snow? And where does it live?
Corey: The weasels will hunt, but they don't necessarily live there. They may make a den or a cavity that's slightly above ground. So I'm going to have to go with one of the rodent species, but as far as which one's the biggest, you might have me there. I don't know off the top of my head.
Bowen: Yeah. I know that there's crocodiles that live under ice but that doesn't really count as snow on frozen lakes. But yeah, I don't know. And then my second one is how do animals under the snow move? Like, how do they dig tunnels really fast or something like that.
Corey: So when the snow first falls, it's very powdery as you get more and more snowfall. If you ever think about when you have to shovel the driveway, if you wait too long, and it starts to warm up and then it gets cold again, what happens to the snow?
Bowen: It freezes.
Corey: Yeah,
Bowen: It hardens.
Corey: So as it melts, it condenses and freezes again, and that it becomes a kind of a crusty and a difficult layer. But when it first falls when you get a lot of snowfall, and if it stays dry, and it doesn't heat up right away, then it's very easy to move that snow around. So the burrowing activity, they'll use their face, and they'll use their front paws to make tunnels into the snow. And then as more snow falls, they kind of have those first tunnels built and they're able to move around and as that layer above them, kind of hardens from freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing, they kind of have their tunnels established. Another important thing to think about is if you are a mouse, and you're close to a bush, as that snowfall is that snow is going to fall on the bush first and leave the ground underneath you open and dry. So they may hunker there and as more snow falls, then they'll start burrowing out so that becomes there main cavity.
Bowen: I see so how many types live under the snow and also where could I, where would you find the animals that live under snow like anywhere in Jackson? Like somewhere.
Corey: There's many different types of wildlife many different species including plants that live under the snow. One interesting tidbit is that photosynthesis, we know that plants acquire energy from the sun and that's a process called photosynthesis. While they can still produce that energy from the sun, several feet below the snow, so that's how vegetation can still survive, even though it may be covered by snow. You have the vegetation, but then you have all your insects, you have reptiles that can live under the snow, you have mammals, and depending on the species of birds, some organisms may spend time under there. Because again, there's an insulating layer, the snow is insulating.
Now, where can you find some of these areas, oftentimes, we're going to look for kind of an open meadow or a plain ecosystem. Places where you have like a lot of sagebrush, a community of sagebrush, or you have a plains or a meadow. The Elk National Wildlife Refuge, for example, it's relatively flat down, then you have all the native grasses and vegetation growing there. As snow accumulates over there, if you were to walk out there, you may see little evidence of these tunnels. What you want to look for is holes in the snow, and then little footprints.
Bowen: Okay, and my fourth question, kind of third forth was, like, I thought that like, the equator was kind of, um, where it's snowed more and snowed less. But it's like, in Wyoming, it snows less than other places like Russia and Ukraine and all that. So I'm just wondering why that is?
Corey: Yeah, yeah. We have the equator is kind of that that midline, zero degrees of latitude and right. And as you increase distance in both directions, from he equator, you reach the poles, the poles of the earth. The Earth is tilted, right, it's a sphere that's tilted on an axis. As that rotates around the sun, you know, the, the intensity of the sun reaching the earth is kind of at its peak there at the equator and as you extend distance from the equator, it's like, if you were to stand out in the sun, and you only have a, you know, that central kind of beam on you. As you know, right there where that sun is shining is very bright and warm and hot but as you increase distance away from that, it's cooler. Then also topography has some something to do with that as well. As you increase in elevation, it's cooler as well. So even at the equator, it may be very warm there near sea level but as you get several meters several 1000 meters up in elevation, the air temperature is cooler.
Stella: Okay, so what I learned was animals under the snow, it's really cool to learn about them. That was the first thing I learned. And then the second thing I learned was, it's warm under there because the, the snow, like keeps the heat inside because it's like it's packed in so the heat stays in there. Okay, Bowen.
Bowen: What I learned is that there's probably that there's like bigger and more animals under the snow, and stuff like that. For me, I didn't really know that the ferrets lived under the snow, that was kind of a new one to me.
Shelby: Today, we're talking to Frank Carus. He's a director of the Bridger Teton Avalanche Center in Teton Village, Wyoming.
Elise: So my first question is, why do no snowflakes look alike?
Frank: Wow, that's a great question. Lots of snowflakes look similar and that depends on the temperature at which they form way up in the sky. Depending on how quickly they grow, they will grow large or small. If they grow slowly, from in cold temperatures, from way up high, they'll grow really long arms, like the ones you cut out a paper and when it's warmer, oftentimes they'll just be much smaller or they'll get coated in white stuff called rime. So to tell you the truth, I don't know why none of them look alike other than just to give us all something to wonder about.
Elise: I know like, it's like hydrogen or hydrogen doesn't go together. But why are they the shapes they are? And why are like they mainly hexagon?
Frank: I think it's because of the way those crystals bond to each other, the water molecules, when they're cold, they form those crystalline lattices that you might have studied about a little in chemistry, if you talked about that. And there was a pattern tall that may create the pattern that you ended up seeing in the snowflake.
Elise: So how deep can snow get, like in a season? And how deep can it get?
Frank: Oh, it can be, you know, depending on where you are, if you're in a really wet environment, or wet mountain range, like the Cascades along the Northwest or British Columbia and Canada, you could have 10 or 15 feet on the snow on the ground pretty easily. You know, where it would cover you know, comes up to the edge of the roof of a house. And that usually happens at higher elevations. Sometimes, I was on a ski tour in British Columbia and to get into the hut we had to climb down stairs that were made out of snow to get into the front door. And it was like a 15 foot A framed building. And it was pretty much buried.
Elise: Oh,wow snow can get really, really deep. And another question in it. Why like some mountains like the Tetons, the snow never melt, even in the summer,
Frank: Because they're high enough to stay cold. In that cold weather, preserves the snow and in some mountain ranges those permanent snowfields start to move, and once they start moving downhill, we call them a glacier.
Elise: The question is, how do you like save the dude from an avalanche or a personal avalanche because we learned the materials and how to use them but we didn't learn how to dig them up. We dug up a backpack.
Frank: To save a person that's buried in an avalanche you have to work really quickly. It would be you know, the best way to save that person was if you were the one skiing with them and you immediately saw them caught by the avalanche. And you keep eyes on where they were going, then you use your beacon to do a search for their beacon, which is on them and beeping. That helps you know where you need to go to get a really good location and know exactly where they are and then you dig down with the probe and find the person. The best thing to do was to not let that dude get buried.
Elise: So I kind of have two questions that go with that. And one of them is what if the person doesn't have a beacon.
Frank: In that case, you look for clues like a gloved hand poking up out of the snow or something that might help you know where they are. Then beyond that, you really need to use that probe and identify the most likely places where they would be buried up against a tree or in a little depression in the ground for a flat spot, any anywhere where snow piles up. Bad news, those people get caught in an avalanche and they're not wearing a beacon, they usually don't survive.
Shelby: Okay, so my first question, how can the weak layer not like, packed together with the layer on top?
Frank: If you imagine a whole bunch of little pieces of rice in a jar and then you put a bunch of walnuts in the jar on top. That's kind of what old snow with new snow on top of that looks like. So those little rice grains if they're a little bit sticky like snow is and they'd all stick together. But the walnuts that are a lot bigger, they're not touching nearly as many little walnuts next to them. They might be touching in two or three spots so they're not very strong. Those pieces of walnuts are those walnuts aren’t cohesive, don't stick a walnuts also don't stick to the rice very well because there's not a lot of contact. That makes sense.
Shelby: Yeah. My second question is how much weight does it take to make the snow fracture up at the top?
Frank: Oh, good question. And that really depends on the structure of the snow itself. And how strong it is. Is it walnuts or is it rice grains? Rice grains that are stuck together would be really well bonded. We call it sinter. S-i-n-t-e-r. That bond is really strong, so it would take much more than the weight of a person, maybe more than the weight of a car. There is snow that are less, that are much bigger and stuck together, or they have a weak layer beneath them. Like say those walnuts get covered over by another layer of rice like snow. Then those walnuts can fracture and break, which would allow the slab of rice above it also break. In that case, it might only take the weight of a single person or even an animal.
Shelby: Oh, cool. Okay, and then my third question is, why do avalanche bombs stop avalanche avalanches from happening?
Frank: Well, it's kind of a little technical bit of trickery there. They actually start avalanches, and they make the avalanches before the avalanches get really big, or in such a way that ski patrollers or department of transportation workers can make sure that nobody's in the way. With those bombs, or the Gazex things, what they're doing is they're causing an avalanche when it's safe for that avalanche to occur.
Shelby: One last question. Have you ever been caught in an avalanche? Or do you know someone that's ever been caught in an avalanche?
Frank: Yes to both questions. It's really scary. Like, have you ever gone to the beach?
Shelby: Yeah.
Frank: And, swam in the waves? You know, sometimes a wave gets a little too big and pushes yo under and you swirl around for a while. And just for that instant, you think, oh, boy, this is really bad. That’s what happens when you get caught in an avalanche?
Shelby: That's scary. One of my questions is, do more animals caused avalanches or do more people cause avalanches?
Frank: Well, we don't really have any way to track numbers of how many avalanches get caught. We do know that they cause avalanches from time to time. Also think to a certain extent animals are a little smart about avalanches. They don't go up on steep slopes that much. They're usually looking for grassy spots and shallow snow. And they also, like the elk in Jackson Hole like, to hang out in the valley. My guess is it's probably a toss up. It's pretty close. Even though there are a lot more animals in the woods running around than there are people. My guess is they're roughly the same. But that's just a wild guess.
Shelby: One of my biggest questions was how come all the snow doesn't pack together? That was probably one of my biggest questions. And it was it, the answer was incredible, honestly.
Elsie: So I learned how to rescue somebody from the avalanche and all sorts of tools but that wasn't on kids ask why. I will also learn that you usually don't survive if you don't have a beacon. But if you don't, they find clues like a glove or your finger sticking out from the snow, but they usually can't find you. So, wear a beacon while you go skiing.
Shelby: And what I also really liked was, they actually don't have the answer. If more animals cause avalanches or people?
All: That's why we ask why.
At this time of year as nights become longer, we often shift our attention to the beautiful sky overhead and wonder about the stars, galaxies, universe and beyond. In this episode, Wren and Sydney speak with Leo Bird, a science educator, about how the Blackfeet People have explained the night sky. He relates a story about “A Girl who Marries a Star.” Then Miles, Audrey, and Joy pepper Dr. Samuel Singer with many questions about our amazing universe.
Kelly School
This season's podcast follows Mrs. Lowenfel's 4th and 5th Grade Class at Kelly School in Teton County Wyoming. The kids had many questions for our experts and lots to share about the American West. This episode features Joy, Audrey, Wren, and Miles.
Leo Bird
Leo Bird is a science educator for 23 years at Browning High School, Browning, Montana. His work in Bilingual education and Indian education for all (IEFA) , has earned him the Montana Indian Education Association (MIEA’s )Teacher of the Year award. He has also been awarded The Milken Family Foundation National Educator of the Year for his work on a first ever high school inquiry chemistry text and cowrote two books on Astronomy, “Blackfeet Skies” and “Montana Skies, Blackfeet Astronomy”. His belief is culturally responsive inquiry teaching helps to build relationships with the students.
Leo is a father, grandfather, society leader, educator, veteran of US Army, consultant, as well as a lifelong learner. Leo has a BA in Biology and Broadfield Science education degree from the University of Montana.
Dr. Samuel Singer
Dr. Samuel Singer is the founder and Executive Director at Wyoming Stargazing, which is a non-profit that educates people about astronomy and tries to make the complex concepts accessible to everyone. He grew up in Nevada where he first fell in love with the night sky. Samuel went on to study Physics and Astronomy at Hampshire College in Massachusetts before coming to Wyoming for his graduate work. He has been recognized by NASA as a volunteer Solar System Ambassador, as well as by the IGES and NASA in their Top Stars program for an astronomy lesson plan he wrote. Samuel currently splits his time between Jackson, Wyoming and Boulder Creek, California.
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For additional information, vocabulary definitions, activities, and more click here!
Transcript
Why? Why? Why?
What is your story about the night sky?
Why? Why? Why?
What is a black hole?
Welcome to the Kids Ask Why podcast where the kids ask the questions! Kids Ask Why is a production of Wyoming Public Media and Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
This season the podcast is following my fourth and fifth grade classroom from Kelly School in Teton County, Wyoming. We have lots of questions and lots to share about the American West.
Joy: Hi, Audrey, why are you interested in the night sky? And what grade are you in? Where are you from?
Audrey: I'm in fourth grade. I'm from Jackson. And I'm interested in the night sky because I want to learn if there's lots of other things out there. And if there's other people just like us. Wren, tell us about yourself and why you are interested.
Wren: I'm Wren. I live in Kelly, Wyoming. I'm in fourth grade. And I think I am interested in the night sky and space is because I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. And I've just always been interested in how the universe got here and how it, just all of it, I guess. Sydney, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Sydney: I am Sydney and I like space because it's so cool that every night I just look at the stars. Miles, tell a little about yourself, and where you are from.
Miles: I am in fifth grade at Kelly Elementary in Wyoming. I was gonna put a bad pun here, but I didn't have time to “plan-et”. Joy, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Joy: Hi, I’m Joy and I live in Jackson, Wyoming. And I am in fifth grade at Kelly Elementary School. Well, first of all, I have a galaxy full of questions. And I am really interested in space and astronomy. Because I really want to be a NASA engineer when I'm older, and because I would just be able to be involved with space without actually having to get in a spaceship, because I'm claustrophobic. And I'm kind of scared to go in a spaceship. But yeah, and it's just so interesting how there's so much around us. And we, a lot of us haven't taken the time to notice nature and the night sky’s true beauty.
Sydney: Today we will be talking to Mr. Leo Bird, who is a member of the Blackfeet tribe and very knowledgeable about astronomy, chemistry, and the stories of his people.
So I have a question. What is your story, I guess, about the night sky?
Mr. Bird: That's an outstanding question and introductions are very important, and we learned that from the night sky. We learned how important it is for all of our people- everybody- when they see one another that they introduce themselves. And for us, I'm from Browning, Montana from the Blackfeet reservation. And we, in our language we say, [blackfeet language being spoken]. When I got interested in the stories and started looking at the star stories, I was about your guys' age and our star stories were all a lot of questions. So in Montana, Wyoming, we can see the stars all the time. A lot of people can't see them like we can see them. They have overcast skies or different things, but 90% of our life is spent under the stars, looking at everything around us. I've been teaching high school for 23 years here in Browning. I teach mainly chemistry, the Blackfeet language, and I teach an astronomy course called Blackfeet Skies. So I teach my students how to travel using the stars.
One of the stories that I really like is called “A Woman Who Marries a Star”. I'm so in love with the stars and the knowledge of the stars that I found 88 peoples from around the world that have the same story- a woman who marries the star. And we look at in this story, The Big Dipper is a way to find the North Star. So the story teaches us how to find that North Star. It also teaches us about the planet Venus. So the planet Venus in the story is both a male and a female. So the male is a “morning star” and the female is the “evening star”. And in the language, we call her Soatsaki, and she's a female. And she ends up looking out at a star one night, and she looks at that star, and she says, “If that star that is so beautiful in the sky, if he were a man, I would marry him.” And when that statement was said, she didn't really know that that started the whole story of what she was going to do with her life. The star came down and his name was Morningstar. He came down the following day and turned himself into a man. And he told the young lady, “I'm here for you. I'm here for you.” So she ended up going to the sky. And she told the man that when he first came to see her, she said, “I don't. I don't remember saying something like that.” And he said, “No, it was yesterday. You said if that star was a man, I would marry him.” And so he came in, he reminded her and she said, “Okay, okay.” In our way, in our Blackfeet way, those things when we make a statement like that, we follow the statement, and we go with that.
So, Soatsaki, feather woman, she went with the man and they went into the sky. As they lived in the sky, they met the sun and the moon. And she found out a lot of information about the happenings of the sky people, and how they act in the sky and different things. She eventually came back, had to come back to Earth. And she came through that little hole in the sky that is called the North Star. So she came back to her people, and she brought a ceremony back with her back to us, that helped us to survive, to be stronger, a stronger people and all that. This is why it's so important to me is that it teaches us as people, how a man and a woman treat one another, you know, the respect that we have. And every single year, we reenact this story. So down here on Earth, we reenact the story, and we go through the whole process and we call it the [blackfeet word] or the Sun’s Lodge, and we recreate that.
Wren: Well, I have always been interested in space. And I've kind of always been interested in the Big Bang always since I've ever, well since have heard of it. And I was wondering if you knew any stories about like, like how the Big Bang started or what it was.
Mr. Bird: The Blackfeet have a couple of origin stories that really help us and they don't really define it as a “big bang”, but they talk about a time period when the Sky People, the Earth People, and the Underwater People all live together. So that was right directly after the Big Bang- that's when they started doing that. So, we have stories that relate back to when the Star People and the Land People and Underwater People all live together, and they were all in harmony together. And this is why when we're telling our stories, the relationship to the stars, the relationship to the underwater, the relationship to the plants and animals around us, all comes from the origin, or the Big Bang. So the big bang energy was actually, you know, people call it the higher power, the spirit, the creator, different things are out there. So it was really a time when energy was out there, and the creator was starting to think about, What would life be like, if we started all these different things in motion. So a lot of our stories talk about Him grabbing things. So he takes his hand, takes his hand, and he reaches in, and he pulls all this land or the soil, the different things that are out there. And he uses his mouth, and he blows air into there, so he starts that motion of life, as he goes through there, the creation of the worlds and everything around us. Also, when the moon was created, he reached into the Earth, and he pulled the soil from the Earth… He blew into his hand, and the moon was made as it went through there.
So the moon is so important in everything that we do, though. It controls the water, the oceans, the tides, everything that is out there. And when the Creator started forming things and bringing things together, this is about the time that the Big Dipper story came into our life, and told us about how the Mountains were formed, how the rivers were formed, all the canyons, and there was a story about seven boys. In our language, we say “Ihkitsikammiksi, Ihkitsikammiksi”, seven boys. So we can go all the way back to that story. That story takes seven days from the time the sun goes down. The next day, when the sun comes back up, we start the story again. It takes seven days to tell the story of how things were made. How the oceans, the air, the thunder, the lightning, all these different things were made as it goes through there.
Wren: I guess, me and my sister were thinking about questions to ask and came up with this one, where I kind of wanted to know, like, what is the oldest constellation and like the one that was the first one that started all the constellation stories. And just, I guess, all our constellation discoveries, I guess.
Mr. Bird: A lot of the knowledge that we have with the sky, age, the that we have out there, relationship, really the North Star, and it's not so much a constellation as it's part of a few constellations, the North Star. But we have the North Star is so significant within our people, that we actually have a meaning of the North Star. We call it our belly button, and that's the beginning of life. And so that's, that's the only relationship I could have. Because measuring, today we can measure a star's life by light by the lights that are out there. But I would really say the oldest is the North Star. Today we call it Polaris. We call it the belly button-- Oo-yees-- the belly button. So it connects us to all life, like our mother. When we're connected to her mother, that's the belly button. So in the stories we call, call the Northstar Oo-yees. It links us to the Big Dipper, which is not really a constellation, but there's a big bear and a little bear constellations that are connected to that. So the Big Dipper, the pointer stars are the two oldest stars of the Big Dipper which point you to the North Star, and the North Star is connected to the Little Dipper or the little bear. So age-wise, I would have to say that that is the oldest. A few scientists have contradicted as they went through there because if you look at our galaxy, the age of our galaxy compared to the other 1000s of galaxies that are out there, we're, we're fairly new still, our galaxy is fairly new compared to the other things. So I think maybe one day we'll find out what's going on.
When we're done talking, we say, oki-niks-icoo-ax. Now we're all related. We're all related. We've shared something together. So, oki-niks-icoo-ax
Wren: O-key-nix-sic-coax.
Sydney: O-key-nix-sic-coax.
Mr. Bird: Sounds beautiful. So now we're all related. So we can all if we have questions, and we want to talk to one another, we have email, we have zooms, we have different things that we can help one another with as we go.
Wren: What I guess I really liked about his answers was that he answered them in really full answers. And when we asked him what his favorite story was about the night sky, he just really tells a lot of detail about it. And I learned a lot. Like, I didn't even know that many stories I didn't even know there were. I thought it was really cool how he incorporated his culture and his language into his answers, and just how he said it was really cool.
Sydney: Just like Wren, she she kind of like, what Mr. Bird said, when he answered all my questions, like, I did not know that. Well, I was thinking, like, Oh, this is so cool. I didn't even know any of it. So that just came up to me.
Audrey: Today, we are talking to Dr. Sam Singer, who is the Founder and Executive Director of Wyoming Stargazing located in Jackson Hole Wyoming.
Audrey: Well, my first question is, how many galaxies are there?
Dr. Singer: So that number keeps changing, as astronomers learn more and more about the universe. The current estimate is that there are probably around 1 trillion galaxies that exist in our universe.
Audrey: Wow. Yeah. How many constellations are there?
Dr. Singer: Well, yeah. So there are officially 88 constellations recognized by this organization called the International Astronomical Union. So they're the biggest group of astronomers on Earth that recognize 88 constellations. Well, there might be other astronomers on some other planet that we haven't discovered yet that have their own set of constellations. But astronomers on Earth recognize 88 constellations, both in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere combined. So we don't get to see all 88 of them in Wyoming, we only get to see the ones in the Northern Hemisphere.
Audrey: Next question is, are there any stars that we know of that could be in other galaxies?
Dr. Singer: Yeah, the technology that we have, with the combination of telescopes, and cameras, are actually able to take pictures of stars in other galaxies. And that actually isn't a new thing. We've been able to actually take pictures of stars in other galaxies for about 100 years. So there's a really famous telescope in space right now called the Hubble Space Telescope. It's named after an American astronomer by the name of Edwin Hubble. And he was one of the first astronomers to take pictures of stars in other galaxies using the technology that existed 100 years ago. And he was able to learn a lot about those stars. And he was the one who figured out that the universe is expanding, that all the galaxies in the universe are actually moving away from all the other galaxies. And he did that by looking at the individual stars in about the 20 or so closest galaxies to the Milky Way.
Joy: Okay. Let's see. My first question is, in a brief explanation, can you tell me what a what the Big Bang was?
Dr. Singer: So, about 100 years ago, astronomers weren't sure whether the Milky Way was the entire universe. or all these other little spiral nebulae that they were seeing were inside the Milky Way or separate galaxies. But Edwin Hubble proved that all those spiral nebulae were actually spiral galaxies much farther away than anybody realized. Once he showed that they were separate galaxies, he was also able to prove that they were all moving away from our galaxy from the Milky Way, with a few notable exceptions. But he realized that, as he looked at these other galaxies, calculated how fast they were moving away from us, and calculated how far they were away from us. But there was a relationship that emerged from all of the numbers, all the data that he was collecting. And he realized, when a galaxy was twice as far away, as another galaxy, that galaxy was moving twice as fast away from us. So there's this called a linear relationship, a straight line relationship between how far a galaxy is away and how fast it's moving away. So, Edwin Hubble did some thinking about this. And he realized, okay, if every galaxy, almost what we see is moving away from us, and they're moving away at a certain speed, there must have been a time in the past, that they were closer to us, to our galaxy. And really, really far back in the past, everything would have been much closer to everything else. And in fact, really, really, really far back in the past, everything would have been right on top of each other. So, Edwin Hubble realized that there must have been a time a long, long time ago, where everything we see in the universe must have been in the same spot right on top of everything else. And that's kind of hard to think about, because it's not just the stuff that would be on top of everything else. But actually space itself would be on top of itself. So there wouldn't be any space before that moment. That's the moment of the Big Bang, when space popped out of nothing, and started racing away in every direction.
Joy: All right, that was the best explanations I've heard.
Dr. Singer: Sweet!
Joy: And then where do you think like around which place in space would people most likely start a space colony?.
Dr. Singer: Hmm I mean, I think it's absolutely going to be Mars first.
Joy: Yeah, me too.
Dr. Singer: Elon Musk is pretty certain that he's going to have people on Mars by 2030. Right. So we're talking like eight years from now? Maybe it ends up being like 2035, you know, but my guess is he will have people living on Mars definitely before 2040. Definitely 18 years from now, he’ll have people living on Mars. NASA says that they're going to have people living on the moon before that. So it may be that we have people living on the moon in a colony before we have people living on Mars in a colony. But it just depends who is able to start their colony first, either NASA on the moon, or Elon Musk and SpaceX on Mars. But it'll be one of those two places for sure.
Joy: That sounds really cool.
Dr. Singer: Yeah cause I’d go like vacation on the moon for the weekend.
Joy: Yeah. That'd be really fun. Um, and then around which planet or star do you think there is most likely life?
Dr. Singer: Well, other than our star, other than the sun, there's this star called TRAPPIST and the Trappist star- I can't remember in which constellation it is appears in in the sky- but around that star called TRAPPIST, we know of at least six planets. And or maybe it's eight planets. And a few of them are earth-like, some of the most earth-like planets we've ever discovered so far. And so the James Webb Space Telescope is actually going to be studying those planets in the TRAPPIST system, once it starts collecting data in about six months in June or July. So we'll be able to know a lot more about whether life is possible on those planets in the TRAPPIST system, and around about 20 other stars in the Milky Way galaxy that we've already identified as having earth-like planets. But our technology isn't good enough to actually know whether or not there's an atmosphere on those planets, or liquid water. But the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to detect water and an atmosphere if it exists on any of those planets. So probably in the next year or so, we'll know which of those 20 or 30 planets is most likely to have life on it.
Joy: Wow. That's really soon.
Dr. Singer: Yeah, it is really, really soon. It's pretty exciting as early as this summer as soon as the summer.
Joy: Yeah. My last question is, what happens to pizza grease that's on a pizza in space?
Dr. Singer: [laughs] Well, I guess it depends on how much grease we're talking about. And you know, sometimes when you get a pizza with a lot of veggies on it, there's just a little bit of grease compared to when you get a pizza with pepperoni. And there's like tons of grease. And you can like see the little droplets of grease like on each slice of pizza. So, the amount of grease on a pepperoni pizza in space would definitely start globbing off and you'd have these little globs of grease start to float around where the pizza was. It wouldn't stay on the pizza as it would with probably a vegetarian pizza. And on the pizza box. So yeah, a pepperoni pizza would probably result in way more little globs of grease like floating around your spaceship than a veggie pizza would. So maybe better to go veg pizza than pepperoni pizza in space.
Joy: That sounds gross. But yeah, fascinating. Well, that was all my questions. Thanks, and Mile, your turn.
Miles: Okay, so I am going to start with a question that's kind of building off everybody else's? Well, not all of them. But do you think there is a multiverse?
Dr. Singer: I do. Yeah, all of the ideas that astronomers have right now about the way that the Big Bang occurred, and our observations of how the universe looks right now suggests that the multiverse probably exists. We don't have any direct evidence of it. All we have is indirect evidence. But if it turns out the multiverse doesn't exist, we have to reformulate our idea of the Big Bang. If the multiverse turns out not to exist, there are some really big problems in how we think the universe formed and what we see right now.
Miles: Okay, so what is a black hole?
Dr. Singer: A black hole is a very, very dense object out in space- in the Milky Way galaxy and in every galaxy in the universe, as far as we can tell- that has an escape velocity, (And I'll explain what that means in a moment) that is greater than the speed of light. So, every object like a planet, or a moon, or a star, has what's called an escape velocity. It's how fast you have to travel in a rocket ship to get away from that object's gravity. So, on Earth, it's about 7000 miles an hour. It's pretty fast. But that's how fast every rocket ship goes. When it gets launched into space. Every time we launch a satellite, every time we send astronauts up in like the dragon capsules with SpaceX, they all have to go about 7000 miles an hour to get out of Earth's gravitational field. As the object you're trying to get off of becomes more and more massive. It has more and more gravity, because that's what gravity is, it's just the amount of stuff crammed into one space. So more gravity, more mass, and thus you have to travel faster to get away from that object. So, for instance, to get off, well, let's say that we found an Earth-like planet, that was like 10 times the mass of Earth, the gravity on that world would be 10 times as strong. So black holes are the densest thing that we know of, it's a huge amount of stuff, of mass, crammed into a tiny, tiny, tiny little spot. Because of that, gravity is so strong, the velocity that you have to travel to get away from that object is faster than the speed of light, which is impossible, because nothing can travel fast as or faster than the speed of light, not even light. That's the maximum speed in the universe. So if there's an object that has an escape velocity greater than the speed of light, like a black hole, there's no way that even light can escape the gravitation of that object, which is why they're black, because any light that gets close to a black hole gets sucked into the black hole and can't get out again.
Miles: Okay, so I have one theoretical question that I know is impossible, because you just proved it. But if I went in a black hole and didn't die somehow, for five years, and then came out, what would the time still be just five years later? Or would it be messed up because time is messed up in black holes?
Dr. Singer: Yeah, so if you actually went into a black hole, and then came out, that means that you would have traveled faster than the speed of light. So, if you did that, you would experience extreme time dilation, you would find that probably 10s of 1000s, or hundreds of 1000s of years had passed since you went into the black hole. Now, if you just skim around the outer edge of a black hole, so there's this technical boundary around a black hole called the event horizon. So that distance from the center of a black hole, the event horizon, that's the boundary where the escape velocity becomes greater than the speed of light. So long as you stay just farther away from the center, as the event horizon, long as you're just outside the event horizon, you could keep orbiting around the black hole over and over again. But like you said, because you're in such a strong gravitational field, time gets all messed up. So let's say that it takes you a year to travel around just beyond the outer edge of the black hole, I don't know the exact number, but it would be I think, several thousand years would have passed when you came back to where you started from. It's called time dilation.
Audrey: My favorite part, about like, how she answered my questions was how he was so descriptive. And sometimes the question I asked, he actually answered another one. So, I really liked that.
Miles: I think the thing that I liked best about talking to Dr. Sam is how she could tell you things that he knew, with 100% certainty. And he could also answer some pretty random questions like the pizza question.
Joy: My favorite answer was that the pizza was just so funny to know that you should go with vegetable pizza and space and not pepperoni.
That's why we ask why!
On this episode of Kids Ask Why, we learn about biodiversity and how things like bugs, skunks and sagebrush are all interconnected. Cedar and Leena speak with former Curator of the Draper Natural History Museum, Nathan Doerr, about wildlife food chains in Wyoming. Rory and Addie interview plant ecologist, Trevor Bloom, about the importance of plants like sagebrush to the ecosystem.
Kelly School
This season's podcast follows Mrs. Lowenfel's 4th and 5th Grade Class at Kelly School in Teton County Wyoming. The kids had many questions for our experts and lots to share about the American West. This episode features Cedar, Lenna, Rory, and Addie.
Nathan Doerr
Nathan Doerr is the former curator of the Draper Natural History Museum in Cody, WY. His background is in science, education, and museums, with degrees in in environmental science and non-formal education. He has held positions as an Educator with the Teton Science School, a Naturalist with Grand Teton National Park, the Executive Director of the Sheridan County Museum, and Curator of Education at the Wyoming State Museum.
Trevor Bloom
Trevor Bloom is a community ecologist with The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming. His experience includes research and field studies on plants and animals, fire ecology, and climate change. Bloom is passionate about science outreach through teaching, writing, guiding, and filmmaking. Contact: trevor.bloom@tnc.org
Photo Credit: Noah Waldron
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For additional information, vocabulary definitions, activities, and more click here!
Transcript
Why? Why? Why?
Why do animals feel so safe around roads and people?
Why? Why? Why?
Why do plants come back alive after the winter?
Welcome to the Kids Ask Why podcast, where the kids ask the questions! Kids Ask Why is a production of Wyoming Public Media and Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
This season the podcast is following my fourth and fifth grade class from Kelly School in Teton County, Wyoming. We have lots of questions and lots to share about the American West.
Cedar: Hi, I'm Cedar and I'm in fifth grade and, um, my favorite breakfast is eggs, toast and sausages. Okay, Lena, tell us some things about you.
Leena: My name is Lena and I really love skunks. I think that biodiversity is important. We've been studying it in school, and I really liked it. I got really interested in it. Addie, tell us about yourself.
Addie: My name is Addie. And I like French Bulldogs. The reason why I chose “biodiversity” is because it's kind of like, I guess you're studying the ecosystem. And like how it works. Rory, tell us about you.
Rory: My name is Rory. I'm in fifth grade. I love soccer, basketball and football. And I'm doing biodiversity because I was sick yesterday and I got put in this group.
Rory: Biodiversity, it's like a lot of ecosystems. And it's like, it all works together. Even though it might be like a predator and prey even though they’re killing each other. It's still how it needs to work. And if like the prey dies out, then the predator dies out because they have nothing to feed on.
Leena: So I know that it needs a variety of plants and animals. It really helps everything all around us, including humans. And if one thing drops out, things aren't super amazing. And then if too many things drop out, then suddenly, BOOM, it all just disappears.
Cedar: Today we're talking with Nathan Doerr. He’s the curator of Draper Natural History Museum in Cody, Wyoming. So this year in Wyoming, it's been just raining a lot. Usually there'll be a lot of snow here already. But there's no snow and it just been raining a lot. Does that affect biodiversity?
Nathan: Before we talk about the answer, did you know that approximately 70% of Wyoming surface water comes in the form of snow?
Cedar: Oh, I actually did not know that.
Nathan: So that means that snow is really important for us. And that means if we receive less snow than normal, that we might expect there to be less water available. So how does less water affect biodiversity? Well, I want to think about food chains and food webs, really quick. Can you tell me what a food chain is?
Cedar: So it's the Sun powers a plant, and then a plant powers a prey and then a prey powers a predator and so on.
Nathan: Yeah, that's perfect. So, when we think about those food chains, and then the food webs within an ecosystem, we can tell that each of those is really, really important. So you already mentioned plants at the bottom of the food chain. So if there's not enough water, then those plants, we risk losing those plants. So if there's less vegetation for herbivores and omnivores to eat, then those animals might have to move around more in search of food and water. So as those herbivores and omnivores move around, then do you suppose the carnivores are going to have to follow them around as well?
Cedar: Um, yeah, probably.
Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. So these animals, if there's less water and fewer plants, that means they're really going to start moving around a lot.
Cedar: Okay, so my next question is: In Wyoming, what if like, all the bugs disappeared? What it like affects, it probably would but like, what would it do?
Nathan: How do you think the disappearance of bugs could affect biodiversity? What might happen, what might be some of the things that would happen?
Cedar: Birds eat bugs, so it would affect them. Also it would affect birds, they would also maybe affect like bees because they do all the pollen things. So it affect our lives too, kind of.
Nathan: So I think of animals like reptiles and amphibians, and like you mentioned birds. They all rely heavily on insects. But insects, they also do a lot of really important jobs, and they eat a lot of different things, too. So you mentioned pollination and bees. So insects helped to pollinate crops really all over the world. And those plants produce fruits, because those insects, and if we didn't have insects, then we wouldn't have those fruits. Have you ever planted a garden with your family or at your school?
Cedar: We had one at our old house, which was in Washington, DC, and also there's a community garden every summer we do that too.
Nathan: So what kind of crops did you plant that produce fruits that were pollinated by things like bees?
Cedar: Did a few flowers, but we did potatoes, but I don't think those are bees pollinate those. We also did tomatoes, I'm pretty sure.
Nathan: Excellent. Yeah.
Cedar: We did carrots, too.
Nathan: Very good. So those are just some great examples of the fruits that we plant that are pollinated by bees. But we also know that insects help to clean up waste--things like dead plants, or animals or even animal scat. So as insects break down those materials, they add nutrients to the soil, and that helps to improve the soil, which means there's more chances for different plants to grow.
Leena: Hi. So, um, I have a lot of questions. Mostly not about kinda like the if one thing disappeared, what would do the best? Or something like that. Um, they're all like, well, I guess I'll start with them. So my first one is, so last year's, like, I think it was Christmas Eve or something, me and my dad and sister were down by the bridge in Moose and we were making a snowman, and we saw a skunk--a striped skunk--walk past. And my dad had to stop the traffic so that it could cross the road safely. My question is, why are animals so, like, feel so safe around roads and people?
Nathan: That is a really interesting question, Leena. And I think to help us think about the answer a little bit. Let me ask you a question. Why did the skunk cross the road?
Leena: To get to its babies on the other side…
Nathan: Maybe it was crossing to get to its babies on the other side, or maybe it's crossing to get to food on the other side, or water on the other side or shelter on the other side. So those animals cross the roads, because they need things on the other side that can help them to survive. There are areas that we know where lots of wildlife populations cross the roads, and we call those places wildlife corridors. Now, when we think about wildlife corridors, mostly what we're thinking about are big game animals, like deer or moose or pronghorn or elk or even where you're at bison as well. So a corridor is an area of habitat that connects wildlife populations that are separated by things like roads, or developments like towns. So wildlife corridors are especially important during migrations. Now I know you live in a place where you experience migrations, what time of year do migrations happen?
Leena: Before, like around, in the fall usually just before winter. But also I was a little bit confused because I thought that skunks were supposed to hibernate and it was Christmas Eve. It was the middle of the winter.
Nathan: Oh, interesting. Yeah. So hibernation. Hibernation is a really interesting adaptation. And you may have stumped me. I don't know that skunks hibernate, I'm gonna have to look into that. I think skunks hang out all year round. But I'm gonna have to research that because that's an interesting thought.
Leena: So if it did cross the road to get to like food or something, wouldn’t it have to cross back?
Nathan: Oh, that's a really good question. So it might, so animals have to cross roads, numerous times, right? And maybe, depending on if it lives, if it's den is on one side of the road, but it goes on the other side of the road to get water or food and it has to go back and forth. But do you suppose that after a while, that animal might change something to relocate? If its den is on one side, and food and water are on the other, do you think it might move its den at some point?
Leena: Yeah.
Nathan: Yeah, definitely. Oh, go ahead.
Leena: So you, so maybe the skunk was going to get to a different spot to live because all the good stuff was on one side, and it was on the other side?
Nathan: It certainly may have been yeah. That's, that's a good observation. And that's something that I think is really important to remember, and to keep doing that you've done a really good job of, is to keep observing. We can learn so much about plants and animals and the places that we live, just by being more aware. So not only does being more aware, help us like when we're driving down the road, to be aware of animals, whether it's a big bison, or something small, like a skunk or even smaller. But being aware and making observations of those things, can help us to start learning a lot. And I really liked what you did, too, is you asked a question, you posed a question, which is a really amazing part of the scientific method.
Leena: Animals are important to biodiversity, because lots of them eat things and lots of them get eaten, and it goes around usually. And yeah.
Cedar: One of the most interesting is to ask the question, since there hasn’t really been a lot of snow, I really wanted to know that since there isn't, does that affect biodiversity? And he said that it does, since most of our water it's like the water that powers plants and stuff, it's like from melted snow. So if there's not enough snow, then the plants can't grow that easily. And then that makes it so there's not as much food for the preys. And then there's not because then the prey aren't that, like they get hungry and stuff. So then there's not that much food for the predators.
Rory: Today we're talking to Trevor Bloom. Trevor is an ecologist for the Wyoming Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He is currently studying native plants and how climate change is affecting their life cycles.
Why do plants come back alive after the winter?
Trevor: Yeah, Rory, That's a great question. So, plants have several different stages of life or types--there's different types of plants. There's annual plants, that they only live for one year, and that same plant actually doesn't come back to life after winter. There's biannual plants, that they come back for two years. And then there's perennial plants. And a lot of the plants that we have in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem tend to be perennial plants. Think about like trees, for example, they come back year after year. And these perennial plants, many of them in the winter, things that like the wildflowers that live in the sagebrush, like in the pictures behind me, they kind of go to sleep in the winter, they drop their leaves, they drop their flowers, because life is pretty hard for them. And then they still live in their roots underneath the surface of the snow. And then when the snow melts, it actually triggers them to grow again. So those perennial plants will come back year after year, after the winter, so they're not wasting their resources in the winter. And then in the spring, that snow melts, gives them lots of water and they see the sunlight again, and they come back to life. Does that answer your question?
Rory: Yes, thanks. All right. And then my second question is, what was the first biodiverse ecosystem in Wyoming that we know of where it was?
Trevor: The thing about biodiversity is it's a relative statement. So biodiversity is the variety of life in the world or a particular habitat or ecosystem. So by that definition, all ecosystems are biodiverse. There is no ecosystem that only contains one type of life, right? From plants to animals and birds and wildflowers and fungus. So simply put, all ecosystems are biodiverse, but some are much more biodiverse than others. So the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is largely in Wyoming, may be the most biodiverse in Wyoming, and the most studied, and it contains over 1000 species of plants, hundreds of species of animals, from mammals to birds. And then also an incredible biodiversity of what we call an extremophiles. Those are bacteria and fungi and archaea, that that live in the hot springs. But all the systems are biodiverse. Some are just more biodiverse than others. That was a really, really smart question.
Rory: All right. And then lastly, how do you help biodiversity in your job?
Trevor: Yeah, so I'd like to think that I help biodiversity in in a few ways. One is actually on the ground conservation. We do a lot of collecting of seeds of native plants, and restoration of native plants, like the project that you guys helped with, you helped us plant sagebrush and antelope bitterbrush. So actually putting them in the ground to help biodiversity. Another way that I like to help biodiversity is by being a guide. I'm a wildlife guide, I lead tours in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. And by teaching people the importance of biodiversity, a lot of people when they think about the Greater Yellowstone Area, one a lot of people don't even know what Biodiversity means. But most people just think about the animals. And the animals are really important--the wolves, the bears, the elk, the bison, but the greatest biodiversity are the plants, right? There's 1000s of species, over 1000 species of these plants, and a lot of people don't think about the plants. So I really like to be a voice for the plants and talk about the importance of the plants, why wildflowers and sagebrush are really important. And then make efforts to protect that both by doing seed collections by planting them in the ground and working with the Nature Conservancy and other partners to actually just protect pieces of land and say, Hey, this piece of land can't be developed into a hotel or into a new ski resort that we need to protect this biodiversity.
Addie: Yeah, my first question is, how does sagebrush impact animals?
Trevor: Good question. Yeah, sagebrush is a very important plant that forms this whole ecosystem. We talk about the sagebrush ecosystem, and it has the sagebrush and then hundreds of other species of plants that live with it. But the really important thing about sagebrush, as you guys know is it doesn't lose its leaves in the winter. And so it provides food for wildlife throughout the whole year. Whereas some of these other plants that I talked about, they lose their leaves in the winter, and they don't provide food for wildlife. So in particular, mule deer and antelope and the greater sage grouse rely on eating the sagebrush in in the wintertime and throughout the year. The other thing that sagebrush does are, you can think of them as little trees, you know, even though they're only about a couple of feet tall. They provide really important habitat for wildlife to live in, for birds to nest in, for animals to take naps in. So they provide really important habitat or actually a structure for the animals to live in.
Addie: My second question is, how does photosynthesis work to support our ecosystem?
Trevor: Wow, that's a very advanced question. So good job thinking that one up. So photosynthesis is you know, the process where plants take energy from the sunlight. And they also need to use CO2, carbon dioxide, so they take carbon dioxide, water and sunlight and they essentially turn that into sugar, and oxygen. And all of those processes are really important. The most important in many ways is the production of oxygen for us all to live in. And then that sugar provides the building blocks for other life to take place. So even the elk and the bison, they might be eating the plants getting the sugar, and then the wolves and bears are eating the bison. And ultimately that energy actually came from the plants. So the plants are kind of the building block of all the all the nutrients. And the other part of that is that the plants the photosynthesis is taking CO2 carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and that helps regulate our climate. As we know we've been seeing an increase in carbon dioxide. And so the more plants we have that helps take the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into oxygen that we can breathe.
Addie: Plants, they help biodiversity by being food for some animals, giving air to everything that is living or that needs to breathe.
All: That’s Why We Ask Why!
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