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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from How

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and our subject

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Speaker 1: for today is ten historical animals you should know. But

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Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a cheeses because we're only

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Speaker 1: going to give you one through five this episode. We'll

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Speaker 1: give you six through ten in another one we're coming

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Speaker 1: up soon. But of course Candice and I had talked

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Speaker 1: about historical dogs in a different podcast, and Sarah and

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Speaker 1: I had talked about military battle horses, which is probably

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Speaker 1: still one of my favorites, mainly because of incatatas. I

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Speaker 1: loved that episode. I love brainstorming it with you. We

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Speaker 1: were like jotting down famous last name. It was a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a last minute it was. It was

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Speaker 1: a fun one though. But this topic is actually courtesy

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Speaker 1: of Robert Lamb, who's one of our coworkers, right. He

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Speaker 1: does a stuff from the Science Lab podcast. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: as most of you know, we're all editors and writers

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Speaker 1: here How Stuff Works too. We don't just do podcasts,

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Speaker 1: and so when we have articles coming out, we all

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Speaker 1: get together in brainstorm about what they'll cover through email,

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Speaker 1: and so one article in particular, Robert made a suggestion

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Speaker 1: to maybe cover some cool historical pets, and Katie and

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Speaker 1: I immediately emailed each other and decided this would be

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Speaker 1: an awesome history podcast idea. We were thinking about things

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Speaker 1: we've mentioned in earlier podcasts to like Josephine Baker's Cheetah

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Speaker 1: on the Sun and Lord Byron's bear you know how

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Speaker 1: dearly we love bears and something about Hearst was at Zebras. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's just weird menageries. I think we've mentioned before Hurst

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Speaker 1: and Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth certainly has some weird, if slightly

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Speaker 1: unfortunate animal histories attached to her bear baiting stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: Anti bear. We have a whole list of royals and

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Speaker 1: other historical figures that we consider to be anti bear.

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Speaker 1: So just you don't want to be on the lift. No,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to be on the list. So let's

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Speaker 1: bring you number one, which is Henry the Third of

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Speaker 1: England and the Tower of London menagerie. So Henry was

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Speaker 1: a child king, but somehow or another he managed to

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Speaker 1: not get murdered or imprisoned, which a good job, as

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Speaker 1: you know from our podcasts. That's pretty impressive. But the barons,

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Speaker 1: of course, as always, were rebellious. This is during the

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Speaker 1: twelve hundreds, by the way, we should give you a

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Speaker 1: little date on this, and they weren't very fond of

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Speaker 1: this young king. Surprise. They were firmly behind the Magna Carta,

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Speaker 1: which you know, sort of took away some of the

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Speaker 1: king's divine exclusive power and um, they didn't really like

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Speaker 1: his appointments that you know, the people he was putting

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Speaker 1: in power now, and they also didn't like his extravagance.

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Speaker 1: He had some pretty heavy taxes, which people never like,

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Speaker 1: for building churches, for these unsuccessful battles that he waged

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Speaker 1: in France. He also tried to get one of his

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Speaker 1: sons to be the king of Sicily and ended up

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Speaker 1: taking on the pope's death in his quest to fight

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Speaker 1: the Holy Roman Emperor. So in other words, he wasn't

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Speaker 1: particularly popular, but he fought for the rights of the

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Speaker 1: monarch against the barons during this time when England was

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Speaker 1: just sort of coming together and has managed to strike

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a balance between the nobility and

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Speaker 1: the people and the king. And that's what he's known for.

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Speaker 1: Just a brief bio He's also known for another thing, though,

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Speaker 1: and he's very closely associated with the famous Tower of

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Speaker 1: London menagerie. And so we'll start We'll start with how

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Speaker 1: this whole thing got going, because a menagerie is not

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Speaker 1: made in a day. Henry was given leopards by Frederick

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Speaker 1: the Second, who was the Holy Roman Emperor, and the

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Speaker 1: leopards didn't do so well. This is unfortunately going to

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Speaker 1: be a theme with some of these We didn't know

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Speaker 1: a lot about how to treat animals in captivity, how

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Speaker 1: to keep them safe, how to feed them, and you

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Speaker 1: will see some sadder stories of that a little bit later. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So these leopards died pretty soon after they were given

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Speaker 1: to Henry, but their presence inspired him to bring in

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Speaker 1: other animals from his family, lynxes and camels and a lion,

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Speaker 1: and over the next six centuries, all sorts of animals

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Speaker 1: were added to this managerie, building it up over time.

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Speaker 1: A white bear from the King of Norway, which may

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Speaker 1: have been a polar bear, was allowed to fish in

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Speaker 1: the Thames. I think they would attach a rope to

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Speaker 1: it and just sort of let it go out and

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Speaker 1: see what it could do. Imagine walking by and that's

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Speaker 1: what you're seeing in the morning. It died early as well,

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Speaker 1: along with an elephant that was a gift from the

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Speaker 1: King of France. But it was Elizabeth the First who

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Speaker 1: opened this menagerie to the public, and in the eighteenth

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Speaker 1: century this was the thing to do. You would go

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Speaker 1: see the lions, the tigers, the bears, the hyenas, the rhinos,

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Speaker 1: the antelopes. At one point it was pretty expensive, so

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Speaker 1: you could donate a cat or a dog to feed

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Speaker 1: to the lions to get in, yeah, I know. And

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Speaker 1: you could also get climbed all over by monkeys in

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Speaker 1: the monkey room if you so desired, like a nightmare. Really,

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Speaker 1: I would love that of a little monkeys that on

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Speaker 1: my shoulder and play with it. The menagerie was really

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Speaker 1: well known for its Lion Tower, which was a separate

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Speaker 1: enclosure um and at one point it actually housed barbary lions,

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Speaker 1: which are now extinct in the wild. I think there

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Speaker 1: are a couple in captivity, but that's pretty much it.

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Speaker 1: But they're not Everything is is fun animal sight seeing

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Speaker 1: in the menagerie. There's some ghoulish tales from it too,

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Speaker 1: Like King James may have added some eagles and jackals

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Speaker 1: to the collection, thanks James. But he also liked to

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Speaker 1: throw in a lamb or a dog and just sit

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Speaker 1: there and watch a lion completely tear it apart. And

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Speaker 1: George the Third fed an ostrich iron nails to see

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Speaker 1: if it could digest them, and you know, when it died,

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Speaker 1: they figured it out that I couldn't. This is a

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Speaker 1: terrible thing to do. Well, apparently they thought at the

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Speaker 1: time that ostriches could. I don't know where that came

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Speaker 1: for from, but I guess I should give them credit

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Speaker 1: for at least trying it out. I don't know. I'm

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Speaker 1: not sponsoring animals. I'm not promoting animal experimentation here. Um.

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Speaker 1: And we also have sort of a sad elephant tale

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Speaker 1: from this menagerie too. It turns out that the elephants

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Speaker 1: were often fed nothing but gallons of wine, so they

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Speaker 1: obviously died because elephants can't live on wine. And this

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Speaker 1: went on for a while. It wasn't just like it

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Speaker 1: happened with. It wasn't like an elephant, and they well,

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Speaker 1: exactly and they couldn't figure it out. You would think,

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Speaker 1: with I don't know, you might want to take a

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Speaker 1: scientific approach and try to figure out why elephants that

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Speaker 1: are only fed wine keep dying well, especially even if

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Speaker 1: you don't look at it. From uh being kind to

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Speaker 1: the elephant itself, I'm imagining it would be a pretty

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Speaker 1: big investment to bring an elephant to England. You'd want

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Speaker 1: to take care of it, you would, you would think, Sarah,

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Speaker 1: But you would be wrong. So the menagerie was shut

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Speaker 1: down in eighteen thirty five by the Duke of Wellington

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Speaker 1: and many of the animals went to the London Zoo.

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Speaker 1: And now let's bring you number two on our list.

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Speaker 1: Cosimo de Medici. Saw Cosimo the first the Medici and

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Speaker 1: a monkey. Since there are a lot of the there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of Medachi period, but there are, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of Cosimos. But this guy's around

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Speaker 1: from fifteen nineteen to fifteen seventy four. He is, of

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Speaker 1: course the Duke of Florence and the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

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Speaker 1: And we've talked about the Medici so much, we're not

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Speaker 1: going to get too much into Cosmos. Like, he's not

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Speaker 1: the most interesting one to me. So I started outlining

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Speaker 1: his biography and then just kind of stopped and decided

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Speaker 1: I was more interested in the story monkey about to

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Speaker 1: tell you. So this Medici animal story isn't a nice one.

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Speaker 1: Cosimo was in the audience for a fight. It was

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Speaker 1: a fight between a court dwarf who was only dressed

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Speaker 1: in his underpants and a monkey. We know this from

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Speaker 1: letters and court records at the time from Medici dot org,

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Speaker 1: which is a great website, is antiastic website. Um, it's

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Speaker 1: a pretty brutal fight. Both participants are injured, the dwarf

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Speaker 1: and the shoulders and arm and the monkey and the legs.

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Speaker 1: And this is the confusing part. Somehow the monkey of

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Speaker 1: a sign that it was ready to surrender, and Cosimo

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Speaker 1: interpreted it as such, but the dwarf did not and

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Speaker 1: tried to beat the monkey to death. So Cosimo stopped him,

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Speaker 1: and the dwarf won the fight and was rewarded, but

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Speaker 1: the monkey was saved. So I'm not sure exactly how

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Speaker 1: Cosmo spoke monkey language. Yeah, that's not really known as

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Speaker 1: something that Medici were fantastic at. But there's also another

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Speaker 1: Medici animal story, Yeah, the Medici giraffe, and um, we

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Speaker 1: could have talked about Julius Caesar because he's another another

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Speaker 1: giraffe owner. I couldn't find enough information about him in time.

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Speaker 1: But the Romans are the ones who named it to

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Speaker 1: the camel leopard, and that's still in its scientific name. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But Lourenzo, the Medici, who we've talked about extensively, had

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Speaker 1: a giraffe in the fourteen hundreds, which of course no

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Speaker 1: Florentine had ever seen a giraffe. This is just the

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Speaker 1: kind of thing that can add to your reputation as

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Speaker 1: a medici, bringing in a giraffe Italy exactly. And it

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Speaker 1: was pastly a present from a sultan who needed help

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Speaker 1: against the Ottomans. But we are going to go from

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Speaker 1: one of the illustrious medici to a US president, Teddy Roosevelt,

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Speaker 1: and a badger. So Teddy Roosevelt was a young president.

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Speaker 1: He was only forty three when McKinley was assassinated and

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Speaker 1: he rose to power and his famous quote was speak

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Speaker 1: softly and carry a big stick. Um. But he wasn't

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Speaker 1: a stay in the office behind politician, not at all.

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Speaker 1: He's a rancher or a hunter, a big fan of

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Speaker 1: going on safari's that's probably one of the things he's

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Speaker 1: best known for. And also a conservationist. And yeah, not

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Speaker 1: to mention a rough writer in the Spanish American War.

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Speaker 1: But his political reputation, he's known for being a trustbuster.

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Speaker 1: He's known for being very involved in foreign affairs, and

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Speaker 1: before that we were a little more less a fair um.

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Speaker 1: But as Sarah mentioned, yeah, he's also known for being

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Speaker 1: a conservationist and for being a naturalist. Candice and I

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Speaker 1: talked a little bit about that and was Teddy Roosevelt

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Speaker 1: the first Green President an earlier podcast. But if you'll

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Speaker 1: remember Roosevelt's great trip out west, that's when he discovered

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Speaker 1: places like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and decided to

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Speaker 1: save them from development. And that's where our stories from.

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Speaker 1: So on that trip, he stopped in Sharon Springs, Kansas

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Speaker 1: in May three to this reception of odd Americans. You know,

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Speaker 1: you can just imagine it. He's coming in on this

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Speaker 1: fancy train, the President, all the slender, super exciting for

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Speaker 1: all the people in this little town. So everyone came

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Speaker 1: out to meet the train, including a little girl who

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Speaker 1: asked him if he was interested in having this little

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Speaker 1: baby badger she caught, which is the sweetest press. Badgers

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Speaker 1: are mean and nasty, but I imagine it's such a

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Speaker 1: cute idea. She's like, what is the coolest thing. I

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Speaker 1: currently have a baby, a baby passure. Maybe the President

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Speaker 1: would want it, and he's totally into it. Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1: He says yes to her offer, and he lets her

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Speaker 1: and her friends tour this fabulous train and he gives

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Speaker 1: them flowers. And this badger named Josiah continued on the

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Speaker 1: journey with Teddy, who fed it potatoes and milk, and

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Speaker 1: it even lived at the White House for a while

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Speaker 1: until his nasty badger caused him to be sent to

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Speaker 1: the Bronx Zoo. And that was the end of the

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Speaker 1: badger in the White House. So we're going to go

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Speaker 1: from Roosevelt to a very different kind of man, Colombian

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Speaker 1: drug lord Pablo Escobar and his hippos. So Escobar was

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Speaker 1: an incredibly wealthy Columbian drug lord. It's estimated that at

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Speaker 1: one point he was in charge of perhaps half of

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Speaker 1: the US's cocaine market in the nineteen seventies when cocaine

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Speaker 1: was extremely popular. So we're talking billions and billions of dollars,

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Speaker 1: and of course you don't get to the top without

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Speaker 1: some ruthlessness and without making quite a lot of enemies.

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Speaker 1: Escobar was assassinated in after he had a government official

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Speaker 1: killed for proposing to extradite him. But he really enjoyed

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Speaker 1: the wealth he had. You know, he's living it up.

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Speaker 1: His favorite estate was this five thousand, five hundred acres

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Speaker 1: called Hacienda Napolis. I think I'm saying that right. I'm

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Speaker 1: sorry if I'm not. And he threw the usual drug

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Speaker 1: fueled parties, but he also had quite the menagerie full

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Speaker 1: of elephants, zebras, giraffes, ostriches, and hippos. So after he died,

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Speaker 1: the Colombian government took over the hacienda. What are you

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Speaker 1: gonna do with this huge piece of land, let alone

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Speaker 1: all the animals that since has fallen into disrepair, complete disrepair.

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Speaker 1: It's been taken back by nature. There's bamboo and insects.

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Speaker 1: It's been looted, and the animals aren't there anymore. Most

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Speaker 1: of them have either died or been sent off to Zooth,

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Speaker 1: except for the hippo collection. So Escobar's hippos, four of

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Speaker 1: them came from a dealer in New Orleans at three

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars each. I don't personally know any hippo dealers

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Speaker 1: in New Orleans, but maybe I just don't have loved

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Speaker 1: And there are some things you should know about hippos.

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Speaker 1: They're huge. They're up to four tons, twelve ft long

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Speaker 1: and five ft tall. The males, at least, they're faster

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Speaker 1: than you. If they're running on land. We don't know.

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Speaker 1: They don't didn't know. They look so ponderous. I guess

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Speaker 1: they're actually pretty quick. They're a bit bad tempered, and

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Speaker 1: they reproduce quickly when there aren't any enemies around. So

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Speaker 1: those four hippos quickly turned into more than twenty hippos. So,

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Speaker 1: as Sarah mentioned, Yeah, the government takes over this hacienda,

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Speaker 1: and they're faced with this dilemma, what do you do

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Speaker 1: with a bunge of hippos. Transporting them would be so

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Speaker 1: incredibly expensive, So for a while they just left them

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Speaker 1: alone in action. And of course you get more and

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Speaker 1: more hippos that way, because they're not just sitting around.

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Speaker 1: And as the estate fell apart, the hippos that are

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Speaker 1: increasing in numbers started to leave and go roaming about

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Speaker 1: looking for other sources of food. So imagine a hippo

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Speaker 1: stomping around in your neighborhood. It's eating your crops. I

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Speaker 1: was saying this there earlier. It's it makes Peter rabbit

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Speaker 1: probably not look so bad to Mr McGregor pretty fabby.

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Speaker 1: So they've become a safety hazard around the area, according

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Speaker 1: to the government at least, and some have suggested killing them,

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Speaker 1: while others have urged the government to give them to

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Speaker 1: some kind of organization like a you know, like a

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Speaker 1: reserve or something preserve, but there aren't any takers because

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Speaker 1: I mean seriously, getting a hippo moved is a big

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Speaker 1: expensive deal. So they're still roaming the hacienda and menacing

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Speaker 1: all the people who would like to develop the land

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Speaker 1: because they're very territorial and that hacienda is now the

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Speaker 1: land so rawn. Notice that might be my favorite one.

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Speaker 1: All right, But our final for this first part of

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Speaker 1: our series is Charles Darwin and Harriet the Tortoise. Darwin

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Speaker 1: lived from eighteen o nine to eighty two, and he

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Speaker 1: wasn't a great student growing up. That didn't mean he

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Speaker 1: wasn't interested in the sciences. He loved the outdoors and

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Speaker 1: chemistry and travel, natural history, zoology, collecting insects, botany, geology,

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Speaker 1: and I personally would love to talk about his personal

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Speaker 1: life and another podcast, especially his relationship with his wife,

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Speaker 1: which I think is really cool. Um, But what we

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Speaker 1: know him for, of course, are his contributions to the

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Speaker 1: theory of evolution, so it makes sense that we'd be

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Speaker 1: talking about an animal friend of his. So Darwin's famous

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Speaker 1: pet tortoise Harriet, was known as the oldest tortoise in

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Speaker 1: the world. When she died of heart failure just a

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Speaker 1: few years ago. She was a hundred and seventy six

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Speaker 1: years old, which, as you'll see, you get to experience

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff if you live for a hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy six years. I don't think she actually was

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Speaker 1: the oldest, even though that was her reputation. She was

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Speaker 1: beaten by an al Dabra tortoise named Clive who lived

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Speaker 1: to two hundred fifty five and a Madagascar tortoise named

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Speaker 1: I think twee Malila at one and the latter tortoise's

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Speaker 1: other claim to fame was having been given to Tonga's

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Speaker 1: royal family by Captain James Cook. The Harriet, of course,

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Speaker 1: has an even more impressive pedigree, even if she's not

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Speaker 1: the oldest. Well, she belonged to Charles Darwin, or at

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Speaker 1: least that's the story. So supposedly Darwin bought Harry at

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Speaker 1: the time from the Galapagos in five He thought she

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Speaker 1: was a boy. She wasn't. He was good at some stuff,

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Speaker 1: but maybe not turtle gender identification. But this wasn't just

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Speaker 1: any trip to the Galapagus, obviously. It was a voyage

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Speaker 1: on the HMS Beagle, and the mission of the voyage,

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Speaker 1: of course, in case you're a little fuzzy on it

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Speaker 1: was to chart South America's coastal waters. And the captain

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Speaker 1: was Robert Fitzroy, who had invited Darwin along just for company.

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Speaker 1: He was a fun guy to hang out with, with

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Speaker 1: his scientific accomplishments or his knowledge. It was just like,

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Speaker 1: it would be really nice to have someone to talk

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Speaker 1: to while I'm doing this. Hey, there's you know, good

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Speaker 1: old Chuck over there. He should come with me, exactly.

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Speaker 1: But the voyage lasted five years, and Darwin was just

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Speaker 1: happy as a claim. Even though he's staying on land

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Speaker 1: the whole time, investigating the flora and fauna of the islands.

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Speaker 1: He's observing, he's taking notes, he collects specimens, and more importantly,

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Speaker 1: he begins to develop his theory of natural selection. So

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Speaker 1: if Harriet was present for all of this, I'm going

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Speaker 1: to count her as a very lucky tortoise. Indeed, I

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Speaker 1: imagine them just you know, he's working at night by candlelight,

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Speaker 1: Harriet sitting there smiling in a tortoise like sort of

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Speaker 1: way at him. She would have been about the size

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Speaker 1: of a dinner plate when he took her home, and

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Speaker 1: a very young little creature. There are doubts about whether

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Speaker 1: Darwin brought her back, but nevertheless that is the story

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Speaker 1: that's stuck with her and in later years she lived

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Speaker 1: at the Australia Zoo and Steve Irwin's family adored her,

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Speaker 1: that considered her a member of the family, which is

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Speaker 1: pretty cute. So with these five entries, I bet you're

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Speaker 1: wondering what we have coming up? How could it get

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Speaker 1: a better? Right? So you should tune in soon for

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Speaker 1: six through ten. And that brings us to listener mail,

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Speaker 1: and today's emails are all about the Essex. This one

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Speaker 1: is from Jesse and I just listened to your Race

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Speaker 1: to the South Pole podcast and I was excited to

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Speaker 1: hear something about Antarctic history. I've been working in the

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Speaker 1: US Antarctic program in various capacities for many years, so

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Speaker 1: I thought I would share my real life Antarctic reading list.

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Speaker 1: I too have been pinned down by terrible weather. Although

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Speaker 1: definitely nothing is dire, as with Captain Scott and his

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Speaker 1: men experienced and have found that anything by Charles Dickens

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Speaker 1: is great to have a long Dickens novels are interesting

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Speaker 1: enough to keep me engaged and dense enough to take

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Speaker 1: me a long time to get through. When you stand

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Speaker 1: to face days without being able to go outside, you

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Speaker 1: don't want to be stuck with light reading that you

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Speaker 1: can breathe through in a few hours. I read Martin,

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Speaker 1: Chuzzlewit and bleak House during a couple of my trips.

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Speaker 1: And also, you perhaps don't know this, or maybe it

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Speaker 1: was intentional, but your podcast aired on the same day

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Speaker 1: that the National Science Foundation started up then U SAP

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Speaker 1: summer field season at McMurdo Station, September twenty three, New

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Speaker 1: Zealand Local Time, continuing the tradition of world class scientific

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Speaker 1: research that the early explorers like Scott pioneered nicely timed

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Speaker 1: and actually no, we didn't know that completely coincidental, it was.

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Speaker 1: It's great, and we have a couple more. We've got

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Speaker 1: one from Kirk. He said he had two takeaways from

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Speaker 1: the episode. First was that after centuries of whaling, This

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Speaker 1: was the first and only time a whale had attacked

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Speaker 1: a ship. The Nantucket boys have been slaughtering them for generations,

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Speaker 1: and the whales just swam along and took it. So

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Speaker 1: the whalers were flabbergasted and never saw it coming. Second

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Speaker 1: was that the whale managed to sink them at just

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Speaker 1: the right spot geographically, so they were farthest from land

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Speaker 1: anywhere on Earth, smack in the middle of the Pacific,

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Speaker 1: four thousand miles from anywhere in any direction. So nice job, Cetacea.

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Speaker 1: So which which is a very good point. And we've

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Speaker 1: also got one from Anson said, greetings from the yellow Knife,

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Speaker 1: Northwest Territories. I enjoyed the Race to the South Pole podcast,

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Speaker 1: but I want to offer one correction. Innuit is the

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Speaker 1: plural form for Innuit people, not Inuits, as mentioned in

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Speaker 1: your podcast. Sorry about that, we didn't know, and a

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Speaker 1: single Innuit person is an Inu two syllables. And also

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Speaker 1: regarding the dreaded man hold sledge. This can be used

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Speaker 1: to great effect, as shown by John Ray. He mapped

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Speaker 1: huge sections of the northern Canadian coastline, as well as

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Speaker 1: discovering the fate of John Franklin's expedition so thank you

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Speaker 1: for one the correction and to the interesting piece of information.

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Speaker 1: We've gotten a lot of suggestions for Ray too, especially

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Speaker 1: after the Franklin podcast and Shackleton. We got a lot

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Speaker 1: for Shackleton after the Essex so we will like their

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Speaker 1: polar Explorer. We're going to have to think about that one.

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Speaker 1: But if you'd like to email us with any history

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Speaker 1: of facts that we've missed or would like to know,

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Speaker 1: our email is Street podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: We've also got a Facebook fan page and a Twitter

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Speaker 1: feed that missed in history and going back to our

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Speaker 1: historical animals of the day and their owners. We've got

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Speaker 1: a great article on the site on Charles Darwin by

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. If you'd like to search our homepage at

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Speaker 1: www dot how stuff works dot com for more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com and be sure to check out the stuff

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Speaker 1: you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com plan page