All Things Pumpkin and Spice
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Season 2: Episode 35 Description
Ten News Gets Extra: 🍂 Fall is in full swing! Pumpkins and changing leaves are on our mind. 🦁 Nature Nerds Podcast Laine Farber shares what animals love to play with pumpkins and how it helps their health. 👀 It is "leaf-peeping" time. Find out what that means and why this season looks different. 🎃 And test your pumpkin knowledge in today's Trivia on the Ten. ✅
Sources for the episode
16 Little Known Pumpkin Facts - Farmers' Almanac (farmersalmanac.com)
15 Fun Pumpkin Facts - Weird Information & Trivia About Pumpkins (goodhousekeeping.com)
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TRANSCRIPT:
Bethany Van Delft 0:03
Fall is in full swing. The leaves are changing. The weather's getting colder and the pumpkins are being eaten. I'm Bethany Van Delft. It's Saturday, November 20th and this is no ordinary episode of The Ten News. This is The Ten News Gets Extra.
Various Voices 0:21
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Bethany Van Delft 0:29
Pumpkin Bread, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin cereal. Yes, it's a thing. This is the time of year when all the stores are stocked with pumpkin-flavored goodness. Did you know that animals are big fans of the yummy flavor too? No way. Laine Farber from the Nature Nerds Podcast is here to tell us about some furry pumpkin lovers.
Laine Farber 0:54
It's fall, y'all. So you know what that means? Time for pumpkin-flavored everything. Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkins everywhere. People love pumpkins. But did you know that animals do too? That's right. Even animals enjoy a good pumpkin during this chilly time of year. Now, don't get it twisted. Animals shouldn't be sipping on a Pumpkin Spice Latte. But pumpkins are a tasty treat for many critters. Knowing this, zoos around the country pass out pumpkins to their animal pals each fall. I sat down with the zookeeper to get the inside scoop about this autumnal tradition.
Chris 1:38
My name is Chris St. Germain. I am a zookeeper at Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Laine Farber 1:44
Chris has worked as an animal handler for over 13 years. During this time, he has taken care of many species, including giraffes, lions, Komodo dragons, vampire bats, and even Puranas as a zookeeper. Chris is responsible for feeding animals, cleaning their enclosures, and making sure they are happy and healthy. One important way to make sure a wild animal stays happy in captivity is to keep their brain active. Zookeepers get animals thinking through enrichment.
Chris 2:15
Animal enrichment is a way that we as zookeepers can break up the animal's day, and give them something new to interact with, and hopefully exhibit some behaviors that you would see them do in the wild.
Laine Farber 2:27
Enrichment is all about creating choices for the animals by adding new things to their enclosures. These choices make the animals feel more in control of their environment. While challenging their brains in new and exciting ways. These challenges are important because they encourage the animals to display behavior exhibited in the wild. For example, wild bears spend most of their time foraging for food in the forest. In captivity, food is provided. But zookeepers hide it throughout the enclosure so that bears can search for it and stay active.
Chris 3:00
Some people will liken it to giving them toys. Well, it's not just that it could be a big toy ball, they can bat around, it could be taking almond extract and spritzing it in some different areas so that they have something different to smell like, Oh, what is that? I want to get on that I want to rip that apart.
Laine Farber 3:18
Another common form of enrichment is giving animals an unfamiliar food item. That's where the pumpkins come in.
Chris 3:24
So pumpkins are not just good for Halloween and Thanksgiving time. They're also very good for digestive health. Since pumpkins have so much fiber in them. They're good for constipation or diarrhea.
Laine Farber 3:36
And it's not just the veggie-loving animals who enjoyed this nutritious treat. That's right. Even big cats enjoy pumpkin playtime.
Chris 3:43
Some animals really, really like them because it's a big hollow ball that you can put meat in and they can bat around. Some animals just like to eat it. We had a clouded leopard that I worked with that went bananas for canned pumpkin.
Laine Farber 3:56
So, if you're craving pumpkin this fall, just know that you're not alone.
Bethany Van Delft 4:06
Do you live in an area where the leaves are changing color for many places, especially in the Northeast? Seeing the fall foliage this time of year is a big deal. Visitors will hop in the cars to drive around and take in the beautiful golds, oranges, and reds from the changing leaves. But why do the leaves change every year? And why does it seem to be happening later this year? Correspondent LizaBanks Campagna is leaf-peeping to find out.
LizaBanks Campagna 4:38
Fall is finally here. And one of the best parts of the fall is when the leaves change colors from green to orange, yellow, and red signaling the coming of a new season. This year though things feel a little bit different. The leaves haven't changed colors in quite the same way or even at the same time as past years due to rising global temperatures because of the warmer temperatures. The peak season for foliage has been set back a few weeks in places like the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The beautiful colors of the changing leaves draw huge crowds and even boost the local economy with a flood of visitors from other areas of the country. They call this type of tourism leaf-peeping season, and it generates billions of dollars for the New England economy. Residents and business owners in New Hampshire, like Nancy Aldright, the owner of Polly's Pancake Parlor have noticed that the peak season keeps coming later and later instead of early to mid-October. A lot of places along the east coast have seen fall foliage arriving in late October to early November. Why do the leaves change colors? Let's get into science. When it is daylight out, leaves use the sunshine to produce sugar. At night when the sun goes away and it gets cooler, the sugar gets trapped in the leaf. This process is what causes the pigment of the leaves to change from a vibrant green to gorgeous orange and red. The process is called anthocyanins. Cool. And now since there have been a lot warmer days that lead to warmer nights, the leaves have had a harder time producing the sugar that helps them change colors. This is what causes the peak of foliage to be delayed. The colors of the leaves are not as vibrant and the foliage palette has become much more yellow-green and slightly orange rather than the traditional and dominant red fall leaf color. Even as we get into November, the east coast is experiencing warmer temperatures and missing that crisp air that makes it feel like fall. In some areas, temperatures are being forecasted to be 30 degrees above normal. Okay, that's bad in DC last week, it was sunny and 75 degrees, which feels strange after breaking up my winter coat the week before the delay of the peak fall foliage is just one of the many consequences of climate change and is another one of mother nature's reminders that we need to do a better job of taking care of her.
Bethany Van Delft 6:50
Fun fact, the pumpkin capital of the world is Morton, Illinois. Home of Libby's Pumpkin Industry. The Morton Pumpkin Festival is attended by around 75,000 people each year. Last year, the biggest pumpkin at the festival weighed 815 pounds. That's as much as a moose. Except you wouldn't want to eat a moose pie. Yep. Coming up next...
Various Voices 7:18
What, what, what's the big idea?
Trivia on The Ten. Pumpkins are delicious and nutritious. They're found in so many meals, sweets, and treats. But what type of food are they? Are pumpkins a) vegetables b) fruits or c) nuts?
Bethany Van Delft 7:47
Did you guess it? The answer is B. Pumpkins are fruit. Many people call them vegetables because they taste savory instead of sweet but because pumpkins are seed-bearing flowering plants that make them fruit. Most pumpkins have around 500 seeds inside and those seeds are edible. Surprisingly, every part of the pumpkin is edible. The pumpkin itself, the vine, the flowers, even the stem times up but before we go, here is a quick note for the grownups. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Look out for new episodes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and extras on Saturdays. The Ten News is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and is distributed by iHeartRadio. The Ten News creative team is eating pumpkin spice everything and includes Tracey Crooks, Tessa Flannery, Pete Musto, Adam Barnard, and Nathalie Alonso. Lane Farber, from the Nature Nerds Podcast, and LizaBanks Campagna contributed to this episode. Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and our executive producers are Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and thanks for listening to The Ten News. You know what? I take it back. Maybe a moose pie would be delicious.
