Detection Dog vs Sea Vomit

0:03 Hey there, I'm Johnny Mac with five good news stories. Good news if you're an elephant in Tanzania. We know that for a long time you guys had a problem because they were the grasslands. And on one side was the national park and on the other the mountains. But between them, farmland, roads, all the complications with the humans. So the good news, the Southern Tanzania Elephant Program spent years working on a solution. They mapped the land, identified a route. 368 landowners were approached and compensated for the land needed to make a corridor work, and in April of 2025, the government officially designated the Wildlife Corridor. It runs about 14 kilometers and is 200 meters wide. They installed some trail cameras, Reforest Africa planted 100,000 native trees with 50,000 more planned. The cameras have been running all this time. They've recorded at least 1,440 mammals using the corridor, among them 529 elephants. Trevor is with the Southern Tanzania Elephant Program, and he described the elephants as, they go everywhere. Well, bad news, good news. The mountains in southern Norway are melting, not quickly, not without loss, but as three glaciers recede, they're giving back the secrets of the ice. The Secrets of the Ice Project has been working with these glaciers since 2006. In that time, they've cataloged 73 archaeological sites and recovered more than 5,000 artifacts, including what is to believe the oldest ski ever found. The ice preserves things

1:34 without oxygen, and organic material survives in ways that it does not in soil. This year, the largest glacial archaeology expedition ever mounted recovered 48 arrowheads and shafts. They were made from slate, bone, and freshwater mussel shells. One of the mussel shell arrowheads came out with its original wooden shaft still attached, a 3,600-year-old tool intact. The oldest arrowhead might be 6,000 years old. Dr. Sim is a marine biologist, but her most useful research tool right now has four legs and a name that means water in Gaelic. Ooshki is a laboratory retriever. She works with Dr. Sim's organization, who are the Conservation Detection Dogs Scotland. They're taking on an invasive species officially called Didemnum vexillum. Researchers have named it sea vomit. It originated in Japan. It travels on ship hulls. And when it arrives somewhere new, it forms thick colonies that smother native shellfish, including mussels and oysters.

2:30 Those are the species that the Scottish fishing communities depend on. Normally, how you find it is expensive and slow. You hire divers to scan the seafloor and you miss a lot. It spreads faster than you can find it. But the dog doesn't miss it. Dr. Sim built a training area in her garage using scent bricks to teach the dog the smell a dog's nose can detect what's on the seafloor below the surface. The scent travels up through the water. The dog walks the waterline, and when she finds it, the team knows where to look. Dr. Sim says with their incredible noses, dogs are able to pinpoint targets much more effectively than humans. We're now training the dog on slipper limpets, which is another invasive species, and on dead bats, which wildlife groups use to understand how many are being killed by wind turbines. Joe is a truck driver from Queens.

3:14 I grew up in Queens. Joe moved away to upstate New York, and he started building his own version of New York in his basement out of balls of wood and foam board. He built a scale model of the entire city. including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and parts of New Jersey and some of Long Island laid out across more than 300 foam boards fitted together like puzzle pieces. Each inch represents about 160 real feet. The model is 50 feet long and 30 feet wide. It took him more than 20 years. Wow. He started with Rockefeller Center, you know, 30 Rock, the main tower, Saturday Night Live, that place, the Rockettes, you know it. Midtown alone took a decade. Joe got faster at it as he went along. More than 800,000 structures in total, skyscrapers, single-family houses in Queens, Yankee Stadium, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. Now, I wonder if, like, at one point he had, like, old Yankee Stadium and then had to take that out and put new Yankee Stadium. How do you handle these things? Well, perhaps this is the answer.

4:07 He made choices that doesn't match any current map. His favorite childhood diner still there? Not the high-rise that replaced it? Good choice. The original Cuscasco Bridge still connects Brooklyn and Queens, and the Twin Towers still stand in Lower Manhattan alongside One World Trade Center. He said, I kept a lot of my own parts of the city just for me. His daughter put a video on TikTok, 10 million views in a week. The Museum of the City of New York reached out and opened an exhibit called He Built This City. People came and leaned over the platform, found their grandparents' old neighborhoods, and traced a family history across the boroughs. How cool is that? In September, a large gray shark swam into an artificial canal at the Northport Waterfront Park in Busan, South Korea. It happens sometimes. What happened next usually does not. The shark, 11.5 feet long, couldn't find its way back out. The canal's layout kept it circling. City authorities took notice. Marine experts were called.

5:00 And then people came to see the shark. 600,000 visitors had shown up at the Northport to watch the shark circle the waterway. Nearly half a million of them came during the Korean Thanksgiving holiday when families looking for something to do apparently decided, watch the trapped shark. The shark became an honorary city mascot. The mayor put out a statement saying the shark has naturally become a new part of Busan's story with the interest and love of the city's people. Authorities did try to free the shark. They used five vessels, water jets, a coordinated herding operation. The shark swam around or under every boat and stayed in the canal. At the time of this recording, the shark was still in the canal. Those are your five good news stories for today. Have a great day.