Hello, friends, and welcome to episode 155 of Just the Zoo of Us. This week, I got to talk with a friend who studies the relationship between whales and people to talk about the adorable little apex predators, zipping through the waves, dolphins. We talked about animal charisma, dolphin culture, and society, and play, a Westside

story style rivalry, a whale's favorite ice cream flavor, and how these animals who are so

different from us have flipped and whistled their way into our human hearts. Just the Zoo of Us

Presents with Drew Smith. Hello, everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford. I'm here with your favorite animal review podcast,

just the zoo of us this week. We have a friend here speaking with us. This is Drew Smith. Say hi,

Drew. Hello, everybody. And Drew, can I get your pronouns real quick? Yeah, it's he, him. I appreciate you asking.

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to talk to you because we've been like Twitter buddies for a while.

So I feel like we've kind of had some chit chat back and forth, but this is our first time actually

speaking speaking. And we are here to talk about some incredible animals for today that I know

so many people have asked us to cover on this show. Before we talk about our animal,

let's talk about you a little bit. What is your relationship like with our marine friends?

All right. So I'm actually an anthropologist by training

and my degree and everything else, anthropology to my core. However, I studied specifically the

interaction that we have between humans and nature. And we have what's called charisma in the realm of conservation. And it's

quite simply the idea that certain animals are more entertaining or mean more to us or whatever

it may be in that sense. And it's really, really fun with my own particular research in whale

watching because all of my data is literally at the

surface. I'm on a boat at the surface of the ocean, and you see the whales come up for breath

at the surface of the ocean. Of course, it's primarily the big whales that are, you know, the reason

that people are out there, they're the reason that people want to go on these

adventures. But my own particular interests are dolphins. We have several different species

here in California, and I can't wait to at least kind of introduce them to you, among other

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