Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're talking about some animals
Speaker 1: that you should not have as a pet unless you
Speaker 1: want to become extremely dead. From innocent looking beach beauties
Speaker 1: to our lovable goofy and deadly cousins, these creatures would
Speaker 1: sooner destroy you than cuddle. Discover this and more as
Speaker 1: we answer the age old question when does a kangaroo
Speaker 1: become your King of Doom? Joining me today is the
Speaker 1: Internet's zoologist TikTok Star and author of the book one
Speaker 1: Hundred Animals That Can Fucking End You.
Speaker 2: Mama, do welcome.
Speaker 3: I just want to say that was your radio voice.
Speaker 3: That was amazing. I want to be able to do
Speaker 3: that one day. But thanks for having me. This is
Speaker 3: really exciting.
Speaker 2: You're very welcome. That's about it for my radio voice.
Speaker 1: The rest of the show is just in my normal
Speaker 1: voice because I don't have written out for me what
Speaker 1: I say. So, Yeah, I love your content. I love
Speaker 1: how you make evolutionary biology relatable, exciting, fun and scary.
Speaker 1: It's it's definitely the kind of thing I'm super into.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, I really appreciate it. My whole thing
Speaker 3: with what I do is I kind of wanted to
Speaker 3: make the type of content that I myself as a
Speaker 3: kid would have really liked not necessary for people that
Speaker 3: don't necessarily watch the hour long documentaries or they're not
Speaker 3: exactly Animal Planet like junkies the way I was, they
Speaker 3: could still get something out of the content because of
Speaker 3: just the way I present information. I feel like it's entertaining,
Speaker 3: it's funny, but you can also come away with it
Speaker 3: and learn something, and you have a bunch of things
Speaker 3: you can like take to your friends and start conversations,
Speaker 3: and you know, just being able to foster an interest
Speaker 3: in the environment the way that I do. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that's kind of the main goal of like the
Speaker 3: platform that I have, and that's been going pretty well
Speaker 3: so far.
Speaker 1: I think it's the absolute best use of tik talk
Speaker 1: because TikTok's very addictive, but I love just having these little,
Speaker 1: like little cookies of information that you get and there
Speaker 1: it is. It does remind me of when I was
Speaker 1: a kid and i'd watched Animal Planet, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite shows I think was like the World's Most Extreme
Speaker 1: and they do like a countdown of the most extreme animals,
Speaker 1: and that was always so fun.
Speaker 3: No, I watched that show religiously.
Speaker 1: Me too, just every day after school, and it was
Speaker 1: like it was so exciting for me. And so I
Speaker 1: love how you capture that excitement of like looking at
Speaker 1: some of the most intense animals that blow your mind
Speaker 1: that they even exist.
Speaker 3: Honestly, Yeah, even if you watch that show and you
Speaker 3: watch my content, you could definitely see like where I
Speaker 3: like took inspiration from it. Like that show was. As
Speaker 3: a kid, I wasn't really allowed to watch TV on
Speaker 3: the weekdays, that was the rule. But I was able
Speaker 3: to get around that because Animal Planet Discovery channels technically educational,
Speaker 3: so I was able to get away. So I was
Speaker 3: watching the Most Extreme all the time. I had even
Speaker 3: had blank CDs and I had my mom burn like
Speaker 3: episodes on the disc, so I just watch it whenever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love that show.
Speaker 1: We would have been friends in school because yeah, that
Speaker 1: I was all about that show. That was amazing. And
Speaker 1: so today we are doing kind of the most extreme
Speaker 1: animals in terms of how surprisingly deadly they are. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are not the deadliest animals in the world or
Speaker 1: the most dangerous. These are animals that you would not
Speaker 1: think are as dangerous as they really are. Animals that
Speaker 1: we love, that look innocent, that look beautiful, and definitely
Speaker 1: don't seem like they would pack the punch that they
Speaker 1: really do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I feel like everyone can easily identify what
Speaker 3: animals are dangerous, the lines, the tigers, the bears. But
Speaker 3: a lot of times these animals that people like kind
Speaker 3: of take for granted that people just assume because they're cute.
Speaker 3: They kind of put human characteristics onto them to answer
Speaker 3: form size them and to be fair, I do that
Speaker 3: a lot of my videos. But I feel like when
Speaker 3: people like take that like out into the real world,
Speaker 3: that's when people like really get hurt. Like I don't
Speaker 3: know what the exact numbers are, but I know the
Speaker 3: animal that causes the most like injuries in America more
Speaker 3: than like the cougars and the bears, it's like bison. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because people will walk right up to these bison, these
Speaker 3: two thousand pounds bison, because they're like docile, they're pretty
Speaker 3: calm around people. If you're like respect their space, people
Speaker 3: will go right up to them and take pictures of
Speaker 3: them and then at least once a year somebody gets
Speaker 3: gets sent to the hospital because they get gored, and
Speaker 3: just things like that. Is like it's fun to like
Speaker 3: free people out with animal facts, but just also to
Speaker 3: like make people aware that you know, these are still
Speaker 3: wild animals, and you know you wouldn't say like that
Speaker 3: and that like an animal went crazy, it just did.
Speaker 1: What It's just an animal, yeah, exactly. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think there is this misconception that herbivores are harmless, that
Speaker 1: only carnivores.
Speaker 2: You have to worry about.
Speaker 1: But herbivores have a tough life. They have to defend themselves,
Speaker 1: and so they're some of the most dangerous animals can
Speaker 1: be herbivores. I mean, like hippos are much more dangerous
Speaker 1: than lions, and they're herbivores, but they are much more aggressive,
Speaker 1: much more dangerous. You're much more likely to be injured
Speaker 1: by a hippo than you are by a lion.
Speaker 2: And it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is just respecting nature, not always thinking you
Speaker 1: can like stroll right up to an animal, pick it up,
Speaker 1: touch it without there being consequences.
Speaker 3: Definitely, something I would always say is that like when
Speaker 3: you're dealing with a carnivore, you have to you just
Speaker 3: convince it that you're not worth the calories. But for
Speaker 3: a herbivore, it assumes that you're trying to kill it,
Speaker 3: so it's trying to come after you first. Like that's
Speaker 3: why moose are like a pretty big problem, like more
Speaker 3: so than bears and wolves and cougars. It's the herbivores,
Speaker 3: like you said, like moose and bison, and even like deer.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of people in the hospital and
Speaker 3: a deer sent them there. So you know, it's just
Speaker 3: understanding that these animals have been around for like millions
Speaker 3: of years. They have developed these like ways to survive
Speaker 3: in like pretty harsh climates. And well they're not exactly
Speaker 3: they're not like you can respect them from like a distance,
Speaker 3: but once you like enter like their like environment, you
Speaker 3: can be conceived as a threat. And that's that's where
Speaker 3: things get bad for people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's all about respect. You always
Speaker 1: have to respect nature, respect deer and they won't they
Speaker 1: won't come hunt you down find you. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: first we are going to talk about an animal that
Speaker 1: looks very harmless in fact, like you may be on
Speaker 1: the beach spot one of these and think literally nothing
Speaker 1: of it other than it's pretty and something that maybe
Speaker 1: you would want to collect as a beach comber, but
Speaker 1: you should never do that because they're extremely dangerous. And
Speaker 1: these are the cone snails. They're one of my favorite
Speaker 1: surprise dangers of I remember learning about these a long
Speaker 1: time ago and just being horrified at the idea of them. So,
Speaker 1: cone snails are a group of beautiful marine mollusks with
Speaker 1: these spectacular cone shaped shells, and there are many different species.
Speaker 1: There's over nine hundred species. They're found in warm tropical
Speaker 1: waters all over the world. And they look innocent, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: they definitely do.
Speaker 3: And I feel like just snails in general are just
Speaker 3: something cartoons teach a lot of people that snails are
Speaker 3: like harmless and slow and just. But these cone snails,
Speaker 3: one thing about them is they are what they are
Speaker 3: incredibly venomous. But it's not just one toxin that a
Speaker 3: lot of cone snales have different combinations of toxins up
Speaker 3: to fifty and like you said, there's nine hundred different
Speaker 3: types of cone snails, so there isn't one specific venom
Speaker 3: that one uses. That's why if you get stung, there
Speaker 3: is really no anti venom. All they can really do
Speaker 3: is manage your symptoms and keep you from like, you know,
Speaker 3: like gets flatlining. But yeah, and to be fair, like
Speaker 3: the chances of you dying from a cone snail with
Speaker 3: like media medical attention, you're probably gonna be fine. But like,
Speaker 3: all they can really do is manage your symptoms and
Speaker 3: keep you breathing because there's just so many toxins that
Speaker 3: they use. And another thing is they are ironically one
Speaker 3: of the fastest things on the planet. I don't know
Speaker 3: the exact number, but they strike faster than you can blink.
Speaker 3: They are incredibly fast because they obviously they can't move,
Speaker 3: so like whenever a prey item like a fish, gets
Speaker 3: anywhere near them, they have like a split second to
Speaker 3: like just ensnare them and just engulf them. So that's
Speaker 3: what like, if you're anywhere near them and you think
Speaker 3: like they really, they can strike you faster than you
Speaker 3: even have time to recognize what's going on. So yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's incredibly painful that no one wants to deal
Speaker 3: with that. So yeah, cone staals, you see them on
Speaker 3: the beach, do not do not pick. And that's the problem, right,
Speaker 3: because they're so colorful and a lot of people take
Speaker 3: that as a sign to pick them up. Their color
Speaker 3: is designed to tell you not to pick them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because anything that isn't trying to actively hide from you,
Speaker 3: there's a pretty big reason for that. Like the poisoned
Speaker 3: dart frogs. The color, they're not trying to camouflage. There's
Speaker 3: a reason why they're like standing out somewhuch.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, not pick them up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Apemitism is when an animal has a bright color or
Speaker 1: pattern that is a warning to potential predators that it
Speaker 1: is toxic, poisonous, or venomous. And yeah, these cone snails
Speaker 1: are indeed very venomous, and like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: they move slowly in terms of locomotion, but they are
Speaker 1: able to strike extremely quickly like some kind of gunslinger.
Speaker 1: And they are not like your typical innocent little snail,
Speaker 1: marine snail. They are predatory carnivores and they are armed
Speaker 1: to the teeth. In fact, that injection the venom that
Speaker 1: they do is a modified tooth that is turned into
Speaker 1: a harpoon and it literally looks like a miniature harpoon,
Speaker 1: like a man made harpoon, just like tiny. It's hollow
Speaker 1: and it is attached to a venom snack and it
Speaker 1: shoots that out like you said, in an incredib do speed.
Speaker 1: It sticks into its victim, it injects the venom, and
Speaker 1: it uses this for both hunting and for self defense.
Speaker 1: So when it's hunting, this is great because it basically
Speaker 1: uh just ambushes its victim with this harpoon. It paralyzes
Speaker 1: it with these many like these conotoxins, like you said,
Speaker 1: many many different compounds. That's why it's we don't have
Speaker 1: a good anti venom, but a lot of these toxins
Speaker 1: are designed to like incapacitate its prey. So it basically,
Speaker 1: you know, just like freezes the prey and then that
Speaker 1: allows it to engulf it and eat.
Speaker 2: It and get that business done.
Speaker 1: And I love there's this technical name of the harpoon,
Speaker 1: which I actually just learned researching for this, called the
Speaker 1: toxogloss and radula. It's a it's a but yeah. It
Speaker 1: it does have certain species of cone snails. Like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, there are many different species, but the larger ones,
Speaker 1: UH do have enough toxin to potentially kill a human. Now,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's very rare the cases where it
Speaker 1: has killed people. It's like sometimes like a freak thing
Speaker 1: like someone picked up I think two of them kind
Speaker 1: of held them up for a photo and they both
Speaker 1: got them right in the neck and that was fatal.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you do not, especially with small children. That's
Speaker 3: when they get the.
Speaker 1: Wor yes, yes, the smaller you are, the faster it's
Speaker 1: gonna get through your bloodstream and it's the higher concentration
Speaker 1: that's not good. But yeah, even if it's not fatal,
Speaker 1: it's very painful. So you do not want to uh
Speaker 1: to mess with these guys. So the the method of
Speaker 1: action of these conotoxins are like a lot of neurotoxins.
Speaker 1: Each species has its own fun cocktail of deadly chemicals,
Speaker 1: but it will sometimes block the receptors of your neural
Speaker 1: cells or sometimes interfere with nerve channels, which is bad
Speaker 1: for us in terms of remaining alive or not being
Speaker 1: in extreme pain. But interestingly, the cone snails can also
Speaker 1: use different cocktails depending on the situation, So like defensive harpoonings,
Speaker 1: the ones that we're probably more likely to receive are
Speaker 1: going to be designed to be more painful, whereas hunting
Speaker 1: venom can actually include like painkilling properties and paralytic because
Speaker 1: they don't want their victim that they're hunting to freak out.
Speaker 1: They want them to just like go still become subdued
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, their whole thing is just just incapacitating you as
Speaker 3: quickly as possible, even if it doesn't necessarily mean killing you.
Speaker 3: It's the same mechanism as a box jellyfish or especially
Speaker 3: the ukanji, which people can automatically identify as dangerous. But
Speaker 3: with the box jellyfish, they can't afford to have their
Speaker 3: prey struggles since they might snap on their technacles. So
Speaker 3: they're just laced with all these millions of stinging cells
Speaker 3: like harpoo likes thinging cells that inject this neurotoxin that
Speaker 3: will paralyze you. That's where the intense pain comes from,
Speaker 3: just to like have keep their prey from struggling. And
Speaker 3: it's the same thing with the con snails, since they
Speaker 3: really only get one shot to like subdue their prey.
Speaker 3: The prey breaks away, then there is no second attempt
Speaker 3: and they have to find somebody else. So it's really
Speaker 3: designed to just just take their prey down as quickly
Speaker 3: as possible, and that's where like the pain comes in
Speaker 3: and That's why depending on where you get stung, Like
Speaker 3: if you get stung on the hand or the leg,
Speaker 3: you'll probably be fine with medical attention. But if it
Speaker 3: is one of those rare cases where you manage to
Speaker 3: get stung in the neck, that's where you can like
Speaker 3: that's where they first of all, that's incredibly painful, and
Speaker 3: once that venom gets anywhere near your heart, like, that's
Speaker 3: how you can go into like cardiac arrest. But of
Speaker 3: course those are like really extreme cases. A lot has
Speaker 3: to go wrong for it to get to that point.
Speaker 3: But you still don't want to take that chance.
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean, like, like you said, even if
Speaker 1: it's not fatal, the pain alone should be enought to
Speaker 1: stop you from picking up these guys because it's not
Speaker 1: something you I mean, it's like if you look I'll
Speaker 1: include this in the show notes, but if you actually
Speaker 1: look at that the barb that they shoot out, it
Speaker 1: does it looks like a tiny weapon and that goes
Speaker 1: into your skin. So that is and then on top
Speaker 1: of that the painful venom. It's not something you want
Speaker 1: to mess with. But there are medical uses for these
Speaker 1: conotoxins because it does interact with neural pathways with pain pathways,
Speaker 1: often in a bad way for you if you're stung
Speaker 1: by one. By modifying these conotoxins, it can actually potentially
Speaker 1: be a pain reliever. So there are studies going on
Speaker 1: to see like using not necessarily I'm not saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a pain reliever if you inject
Speaker 1: yourself with a con snail's natural toxins.
Speaker 2: That's not true.
Speaker 1: But by studying these toxins figuring out how they work,
Speaker 1: researchers can actually derive potentially painkillers that would be able
Speaker 1: to block or interfere with pain receptors, which you know,
Speaker 1: there may be some discoveries in terms of pain management
Speaker 1: thanks to the cone snails.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you said, it's about just being able to
Speaker 3: isolate the pain killing properties. It's pretty interesting the way
Speaker 3: all these applications for all these like different venoms that
Speaker 3: normally you wouldn't want to touch it all. Like I
Speaker 3: was reading the other day, like with box shellyfish. Historically
Speaker 3: people have been trying to isolate certain properties or their
Speaker 3: venom to create like a form of botox of all things,
Speaker 3: like from one of the most venomous things on the planet,
Speaker 3: people trying to use it to I guess look younger.
Speaker 3: So that's always interesting, I do.
Speaker 1: It is something about humans, isn't it. We find something
Speaker 1: in nature that's like incredibly dangerous or deadly, it's like,
Speaker 1: how can we capitalize on this?
Speaker 2: Like should I stick this.
Speaker 1: In my face? Should I put it in my mouth?
Speaker 3: It's makes you wonder about the first person I ever
Speaker 3: tried it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean like there are a variety of
Speaker 1: things that are good, like you know, like spices and stuff,
Speaker 1: hot peppers, and you wonder about the first person who
Speaker 1: like put that in their mouth ad it and it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: oh this is bad or actually maybe good.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I'm pretty sure like the whole reason
Speaker 3: of behind like the spice of certain things it's to
Speaker 3: be a deterrent to keep at them. And then we
Speaker 3: came along We're.
Speaker 1: Like that's we like the pain. Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: That you know, the spices of like a hot pepper,
Speaker 1: it's it's a deterrence for like insects or other animals
Speaker 1: that would eat the peppers. But humans are like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is great, I love this. Give me more pain
Speaker 1: that they didn't. These plants did not calculate that humans
Speaker 1: are so masochistic that we would intentionally inflict delicious pain
Speaker 1: on our mouths yep.
Speaker 3: And then they have no answer for that stuff.
Speaker 1: But we like them so much that it is ended
Speaker 1: up being good for them or well, I guess neutral
Speaker 1: for them, because we kept we started cultivating them, so
Speaker 1: they did end up surviving at least in a form
Speaker 1: that we find delicious input on our food. So we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, but when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a animal that is very jumpy,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean it's intimidated by you. So one
Speaker 1: of the most iconic animals in the world is the kangaroo,
Speaker 1: and they're.
Speaker 2: Such a goofy animal.
Speaker 1: I think like they've got these long ears, these big feet,
Speaker 1: they hop around. They're associated with Australia, and they're this
Speaker 1: big marsupial. They're so they're so strange and funny and
Speaker 1: wonderful and cute too, Like they've got these ctacute faces
Speaker 1: that they seem they don't seem like they would be dangerous.
Speaker 1: It seems like you could beer throw an arm around
Speaker 1: one and just have a good time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kangaroos. I have a theory, a working theory about kangaroos,
Speaker 3: and it's that they have gotten cocky basically, like Australia
Speaker 3: doesn't really have a dominant apex like a predator or
Speaker 3: at least a land predator. I mean, you have like
Speaker 3: dingoes and packs, and you might have large monitor lizards,
Speaker 3: you have your go in this, but there isn't like
Speaker 3: a large big cat or there isn't like anything like that.
Speaker 3: So these kangaroos are kind of I guess they're like
Speaker 3: they got drunk off success. They didn't really earn once
Speaker 3: you get like especially the big bread kangaroos, the ones
Speaker 3: that can be six feet tall, nothing can really you know,
Speaker 3: affect them. So now they just I don't know. I
Speaker 3: just see so many videos of kangaroos just starting problems
Speaker 3: completely unprovoked, Like they're honestly like what deer are here,
Speaker 3: That's what kangaroos are on Australia, only they actively seek
Speaker 3: out cars. Yeah, Like I think I read something about
Speaker 3: maybe nine out of every ten animal related car accident
Speaker 3: in kangaroo was caused. Well, I said in kan in
Speaker 3: Australia was caused by a kangaroo, And a lot of
Speaker 3: times they just walk away from it. While your car's
Speaker 3: just like done for it.
Speaker 2: So they're insurance for like.
Speaker 3: In cartoons exactly. You know what, there has to be
Speaker 3: kangaroo insurance. Now, there's no way they don't prepare for
Speaker 3: that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's Australia is so full of these dangerous animals.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine they don't have different speed like insurance
Speaker 1: for many different species, Like this is for kangaroos, this
Speaker 1: is for getting a koala dropped on your head and
Speaker 1: scratching your eyes out. There's got to be insurance for everything.
Speaker 3: There has to be. I mean, even like something like
Speaker 3: there are brush tail possums. They become like invasive in
Speaker 3: certain places. And every once in a while something a
Speaker 3: picture will go viral of one just breaking through the
Speaker 3: wall and yeah sitting there. Yeah, like I've seen like
Speaker 3: pictures of just their polishes hanging out or dry wall
Speaker 3: or in one case this was really funny, one broke
Speaker 3: into like I think it was a bakery and they
Speaker 3: found him like in a box of yeah, eat and you.
Speaker 2: It was just that picture.
Speaker 3: You can catch me, but it's just done.
Speaker 1: It's it's I've already won. You can't take anything from
Speaker 1: me for I am victorious.
Speaker 2: Yet I love that picture.
Speaker 1: That's like, I feel like that is an embodiment of
Speaker 1: my attitude sometimes where it's like, as long as I
Speaker 1: have a pastry, no matter what has happened to me
Speaker 1: that day, It's like if I get some pastries in me,
Speaker 1: it's like you can't win bad luck, like I've won today.
Speaker 1: I ate a bunch of pastries and I'm covered in delicious.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it. Yeah, there's no regret
Speaker 3: in his eyes at all, none And I couldn't even
Speaker 3: see his people, but you can see it.
Speaker 1: No remorse, remorseless pastry thief in my hero. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so so kangaroos are I love your way of phrasing it.
Speaker 1: They have kind of grown too cocky or maybe cocky
Speaker 1: enough because they are the largest mammal in Australia. They're
Speaker 1: also the largest macropos. So macropods are these large marsupials
Speaker 1: like kangaroos, wallabies and possums. And there's actually a recent
Speaker 1: news story about a man who quote unquote owned a kangaroo,
Speaker 1: was keeping a wild kangaroo as a pet, and this
Speaker 1: kangaroo actually killed him. And I think that it is
Speaker 1: I mean it's sad when I hear this, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't I feel bad because I think that if
Speaker 1: people were taught more, learn more that like you really,
Speaker 1: if an animal seems okay, like a wild animal doesn't
Speaker 1: seem on its surface that dangerous, that does not mean
Speaker 1: that you can turn it into a pet, because that
Speaker 1: is going to, you know, potentially be quite dangerous for you.
Speaker 2: And this is not.
Speaker 1: This doesn't happen very often, so kangaroo fatalities are relatively rare.
Speaker 1: The last reported attack was in nineteen thirty six. So
Speaker 1: they don't want to murder you, or at least they
Speaker 1: don't try to murder you that much. I can't say
Speaker 1: what they want, but they will do it if they
Speaker 1: feel like they must do it. So yeah, keeping a
Speaker 1: wild kangaroo is a pet not a good idea. So
Speaker 1: this kangaroo that killed this man was a So it
Speaker 1: was a western gray kangaroo and a male.
Speaker 2: So males are.
Speaker 1: Gonna be, in general, a little more feisty than the females.
Speaker 1: Females can be feisty, especially when they are protective of
Speaker 1: their joey's, but males, I think, are the ones that
Speaker 1: tend to just kind of randomly seek out confrontation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. See with male kangaroos there the whole thing is
Speaker 3: they have harems and they have to fight for control
Speaker 3: of the harem, and then if you lose, then you
Speaker 3: don't you lose the right to like reproduce. So there
Speaker 3: can be really intense competition. Even if that competition isn't there,
Speaker 3: that instinct always will be. So if it sees you
Speaker 3: as a threat, like it really doesn't take much for
Speaker 3: a kangaro to hurt you. A lot of people see
Speaker 3: the cartoons with you know, the kangaroo and the boxing ring.
Speaker 3: It's not the punches you have to worry for. Like,
Speaker 3: what they'll do is they have powerful forums. They'll hold
Speaker 3: you in place and try to kick you, and they
Speaker 3: have a long, like sharp like middle toe nail that
Speaker 3: can easily disemvalue and can cut through flesh. They've killed
Speaker 3: dogs that way, especially since dogs are you know, lowered
Speaker 3: the ground. So if it cuts like a crucial artery,
Speaker 3: like anywhere near the neck, or for a human, if
Speaker 3: it cuts like the femeral artery, that's where you can
Speaker 3: get in a whole lot of trouble because you will
Speaker 3: bleed out. And that's like that's how they injure each other. Like,
Speaker 3: kangaroo fights aren't just like punching and kicking. They cause
Speaker 3: like massive damage to each other where the loser often
Speaker 3: sometimes just dies, Yeah, just can recover from those injuries.
Speaker 3: So that's like, that's why, well, kangaroo attacks on humans
Speaker 3: are rare. When they happen, they can be pretty like catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean sometimes you might see like
Speaker 1: a photo of two kangaroos and it looks like they're hugging,
Speaker 1: like it's like, oh, cute, they're hugging. No, no, they
Speaker 1: are having a fight because the males will, like like
Speaker 1: you said, they'll hold onto each other, lean back on
Speaker 1: these strong, powerful tails and kick and scratch at each other.
Speaker 1: And they have claws both on their forearms and on
Speaker 1: their hind legs that they can use in with extremely
Speaker 1: powerful kicks and armed with a claw that can be
Speaker 1: very very dangerous and so like. So the western gray kangaroos,
Speaker 1: which I believe are some of the most common kangaroos
Speaker 1: in Australia.
Speaker 2: They're fairly large.
Speaker 1: They can weigh around one hundred and fifty pounds or
Speaker 1: sixty eight kilograms for the male's females are a little smaller.
Speaker 1: Some have been known to weigh up to two hundred
Speaker 1: pounds or ninety kilograms, but those are sort of the
Speaker 1: big boys. But so much of that weight is like muscle,
Speaker 1: and so much of that muscle is distributed to their
Speaker 1: extremely powerful legs, so that is not something you want
Speaker 1: to mess with. And they are not even the largest
Speaker 1: kangaroo you mentioned earlier, the red kangaroo, which is the
Speaker 1: largest kangaroo, and it.
Speaker 2: Is quite big.
Speaker 1: They can be, like you said earlier, six feet tall
Speaker 1: or one point eight meters or even taller in certain circumstances.
Speaker 1: They can weigh around two hundred pounds or ninety kilograms,
Speaker 1: and they can run over thirty seven miles per hour
Speaker 1: or sixty kilometers an hour, and they have three hundred
Speaker 1: degree vision.
Speaker 2: So if you think.
Speaker 1: That you can escape an angry red kangaroo, it's that
Speaker 1: you could not. If they were determined to catch up
Speaker 1: to you and find you, they definitely would.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the scary part is the way their legs
Speaker 3: are and the way they like move they actually expend
Speaker 3: less energy, like the faster they're moving when they're just
Speaker 3: when kangaroos are kind of like at leisure and they're
Speaker 3: like raising. Uh. They actually spend more energy doing that
Speaker 3: than when they're in a full out bound going the
Speaker 3: thirty five miles per hour. They can like max out
Speaker 3: at Yeah. And with the guy, obviously it's like tragic.
Speaker 3: But with like a male kangaroo, like the like I said,
Speaker 3: the fights can cause serious injury and no kangaro wants
Speaker 3: to deal with that, so they have these ways to
Speaker 3: communicate that they don't want to fight that they're like
Speaker 3: kind of letting the other guy like you know, you're
Speaker 3: you're the alpha. That's fine. They'll do things like they
Speaker 3: won't make eye contact is usually just bad with any animal,
Speaker 3: especially like predator based. They'll try to avoid eye contact.
Speaker 3: They'll do this thing where they'll cough, like that's kind
Speaker 3: of like an admission of like submission where you're like
Speaker 3: basically giving up before you like can potentially get hurt.
Speaker 3: So I'm guessing with this man, he raises kangaroo, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people raise these animals like humans, So
Speaker 3: things that like things like eye contact, things like being loud.
Speaker 3: They they're doing that with these animals, and eventually if
Speaker 3: that animal feears threatened and you do those same behaviors.
Speaker 3: It's going to see that as a threat no matter
Speaker 3: what you tried to teach it throughout his life. And
Speaker 3: I'm guessing I don't know the story with this man,
Speaker 3: but it feels like the kangaroo was like standing up
Speaker 3: to them. The guy was like not backing down, and
Speaker 3: the kangaro saw as a threat and just did what
Speaker 3: like instinctually they've been doing for like a while. So
Speaker 3: that's just it's sad, But those are like reminders that
Speaker 3: these are wild animals and they don't like not it's
Speaker 3: only a matter of time before they like revert back
Speaker 3: to like their actual wild behavior, right.
Speaker 1: And we don't speak their language, so, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you see this a lot in various animals. They don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to engage in conflict all the time. They
Speaker 1: will if they feel that they need to, but especially
Speaker 1: with like male and male sort of like rivalries, they
Speaker 1: will often have this like if the winner is really clear,
Speaker 1: this is when they can back down from a fight.
Speaker 1: Like if it's not so clear who would win this fight,
Speaker 1: then you may have quite a violent fight. But if
Speaker 1: you have like a male who's like, oh, I cannot
Speaker 1: take you on, and I do not want to fight you.
Speaker 1: They have a communication system for that because it is
Speaker 1: costly to have a competition between two males. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that probably it sounds about right, probably what happened,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, especially if someone raises an animal.
Speaker 2: From a baby, like from.
Speaker 1: A young animal, they may be surprised when that animal
Speaker 1: reaches maturity and their hormones kick in and their behavior
Speaker 1: suddenly changes, because like a mature male is going to
Speaker 1: be much different from an immature male. I mean the
Speaker 1: same thing with female animals in many cases. But yeah,
Speaker 1: once they reach maturity, their behaviors are going to be
Speaker 1: quite different, and it can be more aggressive because you know,
Speaker 1: this is the point at which they have to compete
Speaker 1: for females, and so behaviors you may have had with
Speaker 1: like a baby kangaroo with a joey that the joey
Speaker 1: didn't you know, get upset by.
Speaker 2: The adult kangaroo may get upset by it.
Speaker 1: And again, if you don't know that much about kangaroos
Speaker 1: or you don't speak kangaroo language, then you're not gonna
Speaker 1: see that coming, that that change in behavior where they
Speaker 1: no longer think you're just playing around, They think that
Speaker 1: you're actually a threat or threatening them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when a joy, when it goes from a joy
Speaker 3: to a boomer, that's when that's when things change. That's
Speaker 3: when the picking order changes.
Speaker 2: In the house. Yeah. Yeah, and it can be quite violent.
Speaker 1: I mean this is half, I would say, half myth,
Speaker 1: but there is a truth to it, which is the
Speaker 1: idea that kangaroos will try to drown you.
Speaker 3: So I'm glad you I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So there's this, i don't know what you'd
Speaker 1: call it, old wives tale, internet rumor that kangaroos will
Speaker 1: lure you into water so that they can drown you,
Speaker 1: or lure a predator into water so they can drown you.
Speaker 1: The intention to like the luring part of like, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get you to come in the water so
Speaker 1: that they can drown you.
Speaker 2: That's not true, care don't. They're as.
Speaker 1: Sort of pugnacious as they are. They don't have like
Speaker 1: a premeditated murder mindset where it's like I'm going to
Speaker 1: get you in the water so that I can drown you.
Speaker 1: But it is true that herbivores have a strategy where
Speaker 1: they go into water when they feel threatened. And this
Speaker 1: is not because they're planning on drowning you. This is
Speaker 1: because often predators maybe don't want to follow you into
Speaker 1: the water, Like you know, it's more difficult terrain for
Speaker 1: a lot of predators. They're suddenly at a disadvantage because
Speaker 1: you know, they especially shorter predators. It's like now you
Speaker 1: don't have any terra firma, any ground to like be
Speaker 1: able to stabilize yourself against. So a predator might just
Speaker 1: give up at that point. And that's what the kangaroos do.
Speaker 1: But if a predator does follow them into the water,
Speaker 1: they're going to defend themselves, and for a kangaroo, this
Speaker 1: may mean drowning that predator.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially as bipeds. Again, they can be pretty tall.
Speaker 3: So like and I think they're the biggest predator might
Speaker 3: be dingos, especially if they're like being hunted in pasts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So again, like it's a natural prey response to like
Speaker 3: retreat into water. Plenty of animals do it, buffalo like,
Speaker 3: but especially with kangaroos, Like they'll just go to the
Speaker 3: deepest point. Now, if the animal happens to follow them
Speaker 3: into the water again, like you said, they'll use their
Speaker 3: forearms and try to shove them like underwater until they
Speaker 3: either retreat or they just end up drowning them. And
Speaker 3: that's why since they like had to deal with dingos
Speaker 3: for so long, they're basically what I called like dog racists.
Speaker 3: So like anything that looks like a dog, a kangaroo's
Speaker 3: probably going to attack or attempt to drown. So like
Speaker 3: if a kangaroo like runs into water, that's kind of
Speaker 3: its last stand because again it's not actively trying to
Speaker 3: like lure people in, like because that's still bringing conflict
Speaker 3: to itself and no animal really likes that. But they
Speaker 3: do have ways to like defend themselves if they do
Speaker 3: get followed into the water. But it does remind me
Speaker 3: of like this other myth where like people would say that, well,
Speaker 3: for the longest, people thought the komodo dragon it was
Speaker 3: the bacteria in its mouth that killed its prey, but
Speaker 3: really it's it's venom. The problem is they do have
Speaker 3: like a septic bite, and what do buffalo do if
Speaker 3: they've been attacked, they'll like run into the water. And
Speaker 3: then when you have like when you have this unclean,
Speaker 3: unsanitary water around this open boom, that's when they can
Speaker 3: develop like a bacterial infection and that's when these buffy
Speaker 3: loo can have these slow, painful deaths, and that's how
Speaker 3: the Komodo can end up tracking them, especially with their
Speaker 3: sense of smell. They're like leather blood outs. They can
Speaker 3: smell you at almost any point in the island. It's
Speaker 3: they're actually they're legitimately terrifying. There's no point you can
Speaker 3: go where Kamoto will eventually track you down. But I
Speaker 3: think that's where the whole bacteria thing came from. But
Speaker 3: like most prey animals have like an inclination to like
Speaker 3: get into the water since most mammals have just the
Speaker 3: natural ability to swim. So yeah, they just feel safe
Speaker 3: the water. That's what they do. And uh it behelve
Speaker 3: you not to follow them in there.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes absolutely, you know they come out of dragon
Speaker 1: put it like that.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of the movie.
Speaker 1: It follows just like this this very like this slow
Speaker 1: and steady predator that's like inescapable. It's just tracking you
Speaker 1: and as soon as you slow down, it's gonna get you.
Speaker 3: It's so scary, it really is, because that's almost exactly
Speaker 3: how they operate once like they I think another thing
Speaker 3: is that people believe the komodo will bite once and
Speaker 3: then let you get away and then track you. Not
Speaker 3: really because obviously if one komodo can track you, a
Speaker 3: whole bunch can. The thing is they have the one bite,
Speaker 3: and if you do manage to escape, they have such
Speaker 3: a developed sense of smell that they can track you wherever,
Speaker 3: to the point where people would say, like women that
Speaker 3: are in their eventual cycle are they should stay inside
Speaker 3: if they're anywhere in kimmodo country because they really can
Speaker 3: get tracked by kimmodo dragon. And I don't know how often.
Speaker 3: I imagine it isn't too often, but there have been
Speaker 3: cases of komodos like digging out human graves and eating
Speaker 3: corpses inside. They're like apex. Yeah, so literally they can
Speaker 3: eat anything, like including each other, like to the point
Speaker 3: where young kimodos will often hide in trees where adult
Speaker 3: komodos can't get them because adult kmodos will eat baby
Speaker 3: kimodos like without hesitation. They're like truly like, uh, they're
Speaker 3: pretty much like a relic from like back when we
Speaker 3: had dinosaurs and everything, especially with like Megalaia. Megaladia was
Speaker 3: just basically komodo dragon three times bigger. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 3: truly terrifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is.
Speaker 1: There's it's it's how methodical they are, how thorough they are.
Speaker 1: They're like the scariest serial killer where they can find
Speaker 1: you anywhere, they have a great sense of smell, and
Speaker 1: then they're so tenacious that they have the patience to
Speaker 1: continue after Yeah.
Speaker 3: It'll be days, days, they'll come after you.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so scary.
Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna take another quick break while I hyperventilate
Speaker 1: about Kimodo dragons.
Speaker 2: But when we're when.
Speaker 1: We get back, we're going to talk about actually one
Speaker 1: of the for me, it's one of the scariest animals,
Speaker 1: though I also love it as I yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: love them, but they terrify me in a way that
Speaker 1: I think no other animal really does. So we will
Speaker 1: talk about that right after the break. So I finally
Speaker 1: got to see Nope, it's it. I don't know, of
Speaker 1: all the horror movies, I feel like this one really
Speaker 1: scared me in a profound way that other.
Speaker 2: Ones don't really get at. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's maybe it's because I love evolutionary biology so much,
Speaker 1: and there are so many references to evolutionary biology in it,
Speaker 1: and it's like it.
Speaker 2: Like touches on my deepest, darkest fears.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it's the realism that really got me. Especially I
Speaker 3: don't want to give away too much to anyone who
Speaker 3: hasn't watched it yet, but certain things in that movie,
Speaker 3: so the scariest scenes, those happened like in real life,
Speaker 3: especially with one of the animals we're going to talk about. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: in some pretty horrific like attacks, and ironically you don't
Speaker 3: even see it in the movie, but like you get
Speaker 3: you see just how catastrophic that kind of thing can be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it's I mean, yeah, the whole it does
Speaker 1: touch upon and I don't think this will spoil anything,
Speaker 1: but it will. It does touch upon the sort of
Speaker 1: unconquerability of nature in certain ways where it's like we
Speaker 1: think that because we're you know, we have our human
Speaker 1: civilization and we you know, kind of have insulated ourselves
Speaker 1: a lot, we feel sort of all powerful in a way,
Speaker 1: but when it comes down to it, we are not.
Speaker 1: And that is a little bit humbling and scary to
Speaker 1: think about. So the most terrifying animal I think, which
Speaker 1: is also an animal that I really love, and that's chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: So they are, They're adorable, they are amazing. There are
Speaker 1: close relatives, and they you know, are highly intelligent, and
Speaker 1: they're absolutely terrifying in a way that I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like I guess it is because they're so close to
Speaker 1: being human that they're so scary, because there's a certain
Speaker 1: like with when you know, if a lion eats you,
Speaker 1: it's just being a lion, it's just trying to you know,
Speaker 1: get its next meal. But a chimpanzee, like they could
Speaker 1: be kind of sadistic in a human way, and that
Speaker 1: is there's something very uncanny about that. So they are
Speaker 1: they they they kind of scare me not you know,
Speaker 1: like obviously I still really love them because they are
Speaker 1: they are incredible and incredible species, but they you know,
Speaker 1: in the same way that I love humanity. But humans
Speaker 1: can be the scariest things in the world to me.
Speaker 3: That's well said. I definitely me too. I love chimpanzees.
Speaker 3: I think they're really fascinating, intelligent, complex creatures. But uh,
Speaker 3: there's a couple like there's a few misconceptions about them
Speaker 3: that I feel like people kind of like overlook. One
Speaker 3: is the whole people believe there's like this myth that
Speaker 3: they're like five to eight times stronger than any given man.
Speaker 3: It's more like one point five to two I'm stronger.
Speaker 3: The thing is they have they're just riddled with extra
Speaker 3: fast switched muscles so they can react faster. They basically
Speaker 3: have four hands, like their legs function just the same.
Speaker 3: They're incredibly strong. They have a really powerful bite force.
Speaker 3: And number two is that chimpanzees are predators. They're not
Speaker 3: like they're not like the herbivores that a gorillas are,
Speaker 3: that are orangutan tans are. They actively hunt other animals
Speaker 3: like colonbus monkeys and colonist monkeys. Aren't small. They're like
Speaker 3: pretty big. If you've seen them in person. Bush babies,
Speaker 3: they've been known they use spears to hunt bush babies.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and they they hunt almost the exact same way.
Speaker 3: Well not, it is the exact same way we did.
Speaker 3: Like they have drivers animals that will like the chimps
Speaker 3: that will go in and like freak the animals out
Speaker 3: and chase, and then they have people. Yeah, they've got
Speaker 3: they have a chimp station, specifically the more experienced ones
Speaker 3: in the group that will ambush the animal and like
Speaker 3: just like cut off its cut it off its path,
Speaker 3: and once it catches it, they all like home in
Speaker 3: on it and just literally just tear it to shreds.
Speaker 3: But the part that really freaks me out about chimps
Speaker 3: they will they can like commit calculated and coordinated acts
Speaker 3: of violence the same way humans do. Like, uh, it's
Speaker 3: rare for it to be within a troop, but that
Speaker 3: can happen where basically chimps are like people. They form alliances,
Speaker 3: they form friendships, but everything's calculated so if they feel
Speaker 3: like one ship might be a threat to it, especially
Speaker 3: in the hierarchy. Because chimps are like male dominated, they
Speaker 3: can get they can get good with some guys in
Speaker 3: the troop and they will jump this other chimp. And
Speaker 3: that's it sounds it might sound funny the way I'm describing,
Speaker 3: that's literally what will happen. There are videos, obviously they're
Speaker 3: pretty graphic, but well of chimps just committing like acts
Speaker 3: of violence against their own, tearing them apart, and they
Speaker 3: don't just kill them. They know what's important to a chimpanzee,
Speaker 3: they know same thing with a human. They know it's
Speaker 3: important to a human. So it's almost like they draw
Speaker 3: out like the way they torture you. And that's why
Speaker 3: with chimp attack victims, the ones that survive, that is,
Speaker 3: they all have the same like injuries. They have a
Speaker 3: disfigured face, they're missing fingers, if not entire hands, their feet.
Speaker 3: They go for genitals because they know that that's important.
Speaker 3: They know what that does, they know the implication of
Speaker 3: losing that. So they like, if you see like a
Speaker 3: rival chimp that was attacked by other chimps, it's usually
Speaker 3: missing it's genitalia. And that's just how vicious these guys
Speaker 3: can be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it reminds me of like human warfare,
Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to remember. I think it was some Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might have been some kind of Greek thing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'm getting getting it wrong, but there was something
Speaker 1: where there is some ancient war and basically they cut
Speaker 1: off the enemies genitals to like prove that they had,
Speaker 1: you know, defeated this enemy. And it's yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that you're exactly right that it's the ability
Speaker 1: for these animals to kind of calculate things that is
Speaker 1: so unsettling. Like they, like you said, they can form
Speaker 1: these alliances, so mail chimps are arranged in this dominance hierarchy,
Speaker 1: with dominant males sometimes violently enforcing their authority, but sometimes
Speaker 1: the weaker males will form these alliances and together they
Speaker 1: can take down a more dominant chimpanzee that otherwise they
Speaker 1: would not be able to take down. And so they
Speaker 1: can like basically form a coalition, decide to either murder
Speaker 1: or intimidate another chimpanzee and enact that plan. But they're
Speaker 1: also like kind of fickle, so they can backstab each other,
Speaker 1: so if a better opportunity arises, they can totally turn
Speaker 1: on each other. I mean, like, I'm sure the drama
Speaker 1: that have weppens in a chimpanzee troop is something that
Speaker 1: could be put on you know, HBO. It can get
Speaker 1: very very messy, messy drama and also very violent drama.
Speaker 1: You know, they are they are highly social, so they're
Speaker 1: not constantly attacking each other. There can be harmony, There
Speaker 1: can be you know, like they like to groom each
Speaker 1: other to sort of affirm social bonds. But you know,
Speaker 1: they can be quite violent, and they can even be
Speaker 1: violent within the same group.
Speaker 2: The worst violence is like out.
Speaker 1: Of outside of their own group. There can be these
Speaker 1: really really vicious. I mean there it's basically wars like
Speaker 1: wars with other groups over territory, just like humans do.
Speaker 1: So I would say it's like, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think chimpanzees are evil, but they are unnervingly like humans,
Speaker 1: you know, they are, so they're they're that kind of
Speaker 1: the capacity for violence and their motivations for it's similar
Speaker 1: to humans. Although I'd say humans we did evolve to
Speaker 1: become more gentle, to become more cooperative, and so that
Speaker 1: is that's good news for us that we are not
Speaker 1: quite so grumpy, I would say, as chimpanzees are, which
Speaker 1: which is good, which is probably one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that we have been so successful. Is that greater cooperation
Speaker 1: and more capacity for being gentle and less being less
Speaker 1: prone to fly into a rage than chimpanzees are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's probably the most eerie thing about them,
Speaker 3: is just that they share ninety percent of their DNA
Speaker 3: with humans and you can see it. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if they will, like like I said, they'll commit
Speaker 3: these coordinated attacks against other troops that if you see,
Speaker 3: if they you see it happen like they walk in
Speaker 3: single file lines and once they leave their territory, they
Speaker 3: go completely silent. Every once in a while they'll stop
Speaker 3: and just listen for other chimps and try to gauge
Speaker 3: how many other chimps are in this rival group. And
Speaker 3: once the leader like says, gives the go ahead, they
Speaker 3: just go an attack. They'll take like sticks and like
Speaker 3: bang them against the base of trees. They'll scream and
Speaker 3: shall try to make themselves seem like there's more of
Speaker 3: them than there actually are, and they will specifically go
Speaker 3: after the children, and like it can get incredibly like grizzly,
Speaker 3: to the point where they will tear apart like infant
Speaker 3: chimpanzees and then just cannibalize them and just share them
Speaker 3: with the rest of the troopers. That part might not
Speaker 3: be too human or no, well humans now, like they
Speaker 3: have theories about cavemen and what their diets consisted of.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we can talk about that here,
Speaker 3: but it's you'll see it. But like, yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: whole thing with chimps. And the thing is chimps like humans,
Speaker 3: they have different personalities. They're not all like raising psychopaths,
Speaker 3: but like they are humans, but without the social construct,
Speaker 3: there is no jail. There is no, like RELI, there's
Speaker 3: just survival, yeah, and act and just acting in your
Speaker 3: best interest, like not selfishness. It has like a negative connotation,
Speaker 3: but like in this you have to be selfish like
Speaker 3: in the wild. And that's what you see with chimps
Speaker 3: and the way they'll form these alliances, the way they
Speaker 3: can backstab each other, the way they can decide they
Speaker 3: don't like another chimpanzee. Like there was one one of
Speaker 3: the worst like chimp attacks that I've like seen, Like
Speaker 3: it was on YouTube. It got like taken down a
Speaker 3: while ago, but it was just it was it was
Speaker 3: in a within the truth too. There was this one
Speaker 3: chimpanzee who just seemed to have the wrong like type
Speaker 3: of personality. He was like very outgoing, very ambitious, but
Speaker 3: he also wasn't like it's weird to say people person
Speaker 3: but he wasn't great at forming alliances with the other chimps.
Speaker 3: But he was also acting like he was like higher
Speaker 3: up than he really should have been. They didn't like that,
Speaker 3: and one day, maybe like ten to fifteen of them
Speaker 3: just converged on him and beat him down to the
Speaker 3: point where one of the older like higher ranking mails
Speaker 3: stepped in and like stopped it, but by the time
Speaker 3: they did, he was like mortally wounded. It was clear
Speaker 3: he wasn't welcome in the troop, and like two days
Speaker 3: later researchers found his body. Yes, that's not super like
Speaker 3: common within the troop, but like chimpan chimp homicide is
Speaker 3: like it's a thing and it's really it's ugly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when it happens to humans, you see just how strong
Speaker 3: and a motivated chimp can't be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is yeah, it's I think so wild chimps
Speaker 1: don't tend to attack humans. They are pretty smart in
Speaker 1: terms of avoiding humans because we know we are bad news.
Speaker 1: But captive chimps are the ones who are the most dangerous,
Speaker 1: even though like it's it's ironic, right because it's like,
Speaker 1: if we've raised a chimpanzee and like quote unquote tamed it,
Speaker 1: it seems like it'd be safer than a wild chimpanzee,
Speaker 1: but it's not because it's actually bolder because it's not
Speaker 1: afraid of humans, and it also has more opportunity to
Speaker 1: attack humans. So captive chimpanzees are actually quite a bit
Speaker 1: more dangerous than a wild chimpanzee because a wild chimpanzee
Speaker 1: is probably just gonna like run away from you. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to want to. I mean, they chimp
Speaker 1: attacks do happen in the wild, but they generally want
Speaker 1: to avoid people if they can, if they feel that
Speaker 1: they can. But yeah, these scariest attacks have been from
Speaker 1: pet chimpanzees. And I say pet in sort of the
Speaker 1: loosest possible version of the term. I do not think
Speaker 1: that pretty much any primate really can be kept as
Speaker 1: a pet. Like, yeah, I mean, strictly speaking, people do it,
Speaker 1: but it's not you know, they are not domesticated animals.
Speaker 1: Their lives with a human aren't going to be fulfilling
Speaker 1: for them. And it is especially for something like a
Speaker 1: chimpanzee that's very smart, has a lot of social needs,
Speaker 1: and is very very strong. That's like a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned something earlier that I think is really interesting,
Speaker 1: so that chimpanzees. No, they're not like five times as
Speaker 1: strong as a human, but they are pound four pounds
Speaker 1: stronger than us, and they're about one and a half
Speaker 1: times stronger than us, even though they're only like they're
Speaker 1: maybe about five feet tall one hundred and fifty centimeters tall,
Speaker 1: maybe ninety to one hundred and fifty pounds. They're not
Speaker 1: that huge. But you mentioned those those fast twitch muscle fibers,
Speaker 1: so those are the more powerful muscle fibers, but they
Speaker 1: fatigue more quickly, so they are able to kind of
Speaker 1: go into this like berserker mode, whereas humans don't have
Speaker 1: as much density of these fast which muscle fibers. Ours
Speaker 1: are actually a little better for endurance, which has actually
Speaker 1: suited us really well. It's been very successful for humans.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we don't have as much of that like
Speaker 1: sort of instant access to this like incredible strength that
Speaker 1: chimpanzees do. So so yeah, when if it's a chimpanzee
Speaker 1: versus a human, often the chimpanzee will come on top,
Speaker 1: and it.
Speaker 2: Is it is very scary, like they are.
Speaker 1: Capable of a lot of damage, and yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: like like you mentioned, I think when these famous cases
Speaker 1: of chimpanzees, like they can you know, destroy your entire face,
Speaker 1: amputate your hands, it is it's very it's upsetting, and
Speaker 1: I think it is it is a kind of harrowing
Speaker 1: reminder that these are not pets. These are not fun
Speaker 1: goofy little like trainable you know, circus pets that we
Speaker 1: can just have and feel this sort of entitlement over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like that's something people forget a lot.
Speaker 3: Like they are predators, Like owning a chimp is really
Speaker 3: no different from owning like a grizzly bear, right, it
Speaker 3: is an incredibly intelligent predator that cannot be tamed. And
Speaker 3: I think the most famous chimp attack evolve was definitely
Speaker 3: what happened with Charlotte Nashvill's Travis back in two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine. People that don't know, there was this lady
Speaker 3: Sandra Na Sandra Herold. She had a chimpanzee, Travis, as
Speaker 3: she raised as a baby, just she raised him as
Speaker 3: a human, taught him. He knew how to drive cars,
Speaker 3: he would drink out of wine glasses, he would drink
Speaker 3: actual wine. Actually it's part of the family. But the
Speaker 3: thing with chimps is they are in terms of strength,
Speaker 3: they are about they might be the same or slightly
Speaker 3: inferior to humans up until about five years old. Once
Speaker 3: they start to hit like puberty, especially the males, that's
Speaker 3: when things change. They become a whole lot stronger. Their
Speaker 3: attitude changes because around that time they'd probably be fighting
Speaker 3: for like their place in a hierarchy, in a troop,
Speaker 3: that's when they're like that's when their sexual maturity hits.
Speaker 3: So with Travis, he was raised around humans his entire life,
Speaker 3: never saw another him, so he's not engaging in any
Speaker 3: of those like natural instincts that he still has. He
Speaker 3: obviously there's no female chip for Travis. And eventually, unfortunately Sandra,
Speaker 3: his owner's husband, passed away. Uh he was affected by that. Travis,
Speaker 3: he exhibited signs that he was like depressed and like breathing.
Speaker 3: But Sandra was also depressed and she couldn't really take
Speaker 3: care of Travis the way that she was before. Also,
Speaker 3: he had some incidents outside where people believe it wasn't
Speaker 3: safe for him to really be outside, although since he
Speaker 3: was around and everyone was familiar with him, nobody thought
Speaker 3: to have him taken away. So now he was confined
Speaker 3: to the house. After seeing after being allowed to be outside,
Speaker 3: he was confined into the house. He was well overweight
Speaker 3: eventually that he was put on Xanax to deal with
Speaker 3: like his uh yeah, emotional issues that he had. It
Speaker 3: was it was a matter of time and like that,
Speaker 3: like he was going to it was gonna happen eventually,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately it happened with with Charlotte Nash and like
Speaker 3: the worst possible way. But like with chimps, they have
Speaker 3: two ways of really hurting you. One is like, well,
Speaker 3: I guess three, But so one would be just bludgeting
Speaker 3: you with their arms and again there's so much stronger
Speaker 3: than people. So like it. It feels like imagine somebody
Speaker 3: hitting you full force, like not holding back at all
Speaker 3: with their forearm or their elbows or like kicking you,
Speaker 3: and it's like multiply because this chimp might actually be
Speaker 3: trying to kill you. Two is that they'll bite, bite
Speaker 3: at the face. They have powerful Again, they're predators, they're
Speaker 3: not just herbivores, so they have teeth designed to like
Speaker 3: tear through flesh and they'll do that. They go for
Speaker 3: the face because they know that's at a really conflict damage.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they'll go out of their way to goug your
Speaker 3: eyes out. And then three would be they have hands
Speaker 3: and they'll just tear at you. Yeah, with chimps, it's
Speaker 3: like like you said, you made a good point that
Speaker 3: chimps they have all the muscles, fast switch muscles, but
Speaker 3: they're not really built for endurance. You can see that
Speaker 3: the differences and how we hunt. We were long distance runners,
Speaker 3: so we would just chase prey and no matter how
Speaker 3: far it would run, eventually we will catch up. It
Speaker 3: would get exhausted, and then we would hunt them. Chimps
Speaker 3: focus all their energy into one like explosive like charge
Speaker 3: to like catch their their prey off guard. So with chimps,
Speaker 3: a lot of times they'll attack you and then kind
Speaker 3: of just rest a little bit while you're there, and
Speaker 3: then especially if it's if it's a group attack, one
Speaker 3: chip will like make this a long call and they'll
Speaker 3: like kind of just initiate it all over again. Like
Speaker 3: these chip attacks can if it's not put down, it
Speaker 3: could last a very long time where it's not killing you,
Speaker 3: but it's like slowly chipping away, taking time to like
Speaker 3: it's it's just it's truly awful, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's never pretty when the chimp's involved, and
Speaker 3: for the chimp, it's like a miserable way to live,
Speaker 3: you know. If there's something that intelligent, like that's another
Speaker 3: conversation you can have about whether chimps really can be
Speaker 3: in captivities an animal that intelligent, that has a level
Speaker 3: of self awareness, and the fact that it's like behind
Speaker 3: a cage or like it lives a certain way and
Speaker 3: it sees people in racts with people, but it's like
Speaker 3: from behind the glass, it's they're probably there's probably a
Speaker 3: lot to going gone, and it's head to the point
Speaker 3: where like now that they're they're actively like trying to
Speaker 3: act out or they're engaging in like delicious like acts,
Speaker 3: because that's kind of what boredom can do. That's why,
Speaker 3: like animals in captivity are much more dangerous than ones
Speaker 3: in the wild, like orcas are the best example, while
Speaker 3: dominant apex predator like of the world, like not just
Speaker 3: the ocean of the world never killed a human in
Speaker 3: the wild, multiple like kills like captivity. Same thing with tigers,
Speaker 3: most tiger deaths these days. Well I guess that might
Speaker 3: not be true, but like there's a high density of
Speaker 3: tigers in America. I think there's more tigers in America
Speaker 3: than in the rest of the world, like combined. That's
Speaker 3: where like most of the occur, especially in me.
Speaker 1: Isn't it like more captive it really is than they
Speaker 1: exist in the wild, Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 2: I think it's also I think that's part of the reason.
Speaker 1: I mean that I feel that it's it's not just
Speaker 1: fear when it comes to chimpanzees. There's something deeply unsettling
Speaker 1: about it. And I think it's the empathy that I
Speaker 1: feel for them, because you know, they have, like animals
Speaker 1: have minds, chimpanzees have a very very intelligent mind, and
Speaker 1: so they can have, you know, mental health needs, and
Speaker 1: if those mental health needs aren't met, they can suffer mentally.
Speaker 1: And then but on top of that, they don't have
Speaker 1: the same moral reasoning that humans have. And so a
Speaker 1: chimpanzee who is suffering mentally, like I think it sounds
Speaker 1: like Travis was, you know, they can act in a
Speaker 1: way that is, you know, basically an expression of their
Speaker 1: suffering or their anger or whatever. But they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: understand exactly what they're doing, So they don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: the moral reasoning of thinking like, oh, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna like do something bad to this person or something.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily you know, we don't know how Obviously
Speaker 1: we can't step into the consciousness of a chimpanzee, so
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly what they're thinking. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that they have the same meta cognition that a
Speaker 1: human would.
Speaker 2: And so there's something like I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't say anymore without spoiling the movie.
Speaker 2: Nope, but I would.
Speaker 1: Say, if you have a capacity for watching horror movies
Speaker 1: and this idea of you know, of having empathy for
Speaker 1: an animal that's also kind of scary, like, you should
Speaker 1: definitely watch the movie.
Speaker 2: But it's yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: I think it's such a it's such an important thing
Speaker 1: to respect animals in terms of not just in terms
Speaker 1: of how they can be dangerous towards us, but also
Speaker 1: in terms of like their emotional needs, their emotional state,
Speaker 1: and that an animal who does something that's terrifying to us,
Speaker 1: like mauling person, like well, let's find out why they
Speaker 1: did that, not blaming the person who was mald necessarily.
Speaker 1: But there is a problem I think when we when
Speaker 1: we try to, when we have sort of the hubris
Speaker 1: to think that we can incorporate wild animals neatly into
Speaker 1: our human lifestyles, that I think we need to kind
Speaker 1: of kind of face and realize that it's not. A
Speaker 1: wild animal is intelligent, they have a mind, they have emotions,
Speaker 1: but they aren't necessarily they're not you know, little furry
Speaker 1: humans that we can like, you know, bring into our
Speaker 1: society and then like have you know, have them perform
Speaker 1: tricks for us and you know, have as a form
Speaker 1: of entertainment.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I really think it just goes back to people
Speaker 3: just placing human traits on animals, and a lot of
Speaker 3: times people will do that to kind of rationalize exploiting them,
Speaker 3: whether it's exploiting them as a house pet that has
Speaker 3: no business being there, or in Travis's case, he was
Speaker 3: used in commercials, TV shows things like that. These animals
Speaker 3: don't really have the understanding that you do. So like
Speaker 3: if an animal's upset and like you're reacting in a
Speaker 3: certain way, it's not going to rationalize that, Okay, it's
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So, like that's how these
Speaker 3: attacks can happen. So a big example that I'd like
Speaker 3: to use. Are you familiar with Grizzly Man?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I am Timothy Treadwell.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So basically the important thing is he wasn't like
Speaker 3: a zoologist or a biologist or anything. I think he
Speaker 3: was like a failed actor or something. He went down
Speaker 3: like a bad path. One of his friends introduced him
Speaker 3: to the landscape of I believe it was Alaska. He
Speaker 3: went to Alaska and he witnessed brown bears and it
Speaker 3: was kind of like this epiphany that he had that
Speaker 3: he wanted to study these bears, which is great, but
Speaker 3: the way he went about it, he would for I
Speaker 3: think it was about thirteen years that he would just
Speaker 3: go camp out in the Alaska wilderness. He would get
Speaker 3: really close to these bears and he claimed to like
Speaker 3: have their trust, that they had understanding. And again, you
Speaker 3: can't really you can't tame a predator. You never you
Speaker 3: never can. But he got away with it for so
Speaker 3: long that people thought there was some truth to like
Speaker 3: what he was doing. And I will give him credit
Speaker 3: for he was he actively tried to be an advocate
Speaker 3: for these bears, trying to have people see them as
Speaker 3: other than like killing machines. But eventually that's kind of
Speaker 3: that went, like he went so far in that direction
Speaker 3: and he kind of like did a three sixty and
Speaker 3: then like kind of like h made it worse for them.
Speaker 3: So basically like he started getting cocky with these bears.
Speaker 3: He was getting really close to bear cubs, really close
Speaker 3: to them around I think that's what when it happened.
Speaker 3: So like bears obviously they have to hibernate, so they
Speaker 3: have to they have to basically go on all They
Speaker 3: pretty much both for the most part. They both were
Speaker 3: They taken as many calories as possible. Obviously resources the
Speaker 3: competition for resources gets really intense, so that's like the
Speaker 3: worst time to be around, like in bear territory, especially
Speaker 3: if it's around males. So he went around that time,
Speaker 3: right the maybe two to three months before hibernation where
Speaker 3: they're at their most like irritable, when people told him
Speaker 3: not to. Not only that, like, but he also he
Speaker 3: placed his tent around a well known bear trail to
Speaker 3: the point where if a bear wanted to access, like
Speaker 3: it was like a stream where they can get sim
Speaker 3: and it would have to walk right past his tent.
Speaker 3: I think he even brought his girlfriend with him, and
Speaker 3: she was like afraid of it. He's been he had
Speaker 3: been doing it for like thirteen years. I guess she
Speaker 3: trusted him, so it was I remember the day, it
Speaker 3: was October fifth. I think he sent like either a
Speaker 3: message or call whatever he said to a friend talking
Speaker 3: about the landscape. He was like, yeah, the bears are great.
Speaker 3: They're acting a little bit weird, but I'm gonna stay
Speaker 3: here anyway. This is amazing. The very next day they
Speaker 3: found their bodies half eaten. And worst part was right
Speaker 3: when the attack started, a camera was rolling, the lens
Speaker 3: was on. You can still hear it, so like there
Speaker 3: was this six minute audio of this man being eaten
Speaker 3: alive by a grizzly bear that I can't remember if
Speaker 3: it was a bear that he actually knew, if it
Speaker 3: was just some friend.
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was a bear he was not as
Speaker 1: familiar with, but he still tried to approach it, which
Speaker 1: was enough yet another sort of mistake he made, among many, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Among them exactly, And yeah, a six minute audio of
Speaker 3: him just slowly because that's the thing with bears, like
Speaker 3: big cats still kill their prey, usually take it somewhere
Speaker 3: where they don't have to worry about competition from other predators.
Speaker 3: Animals like bears, like wild dogs, hyenas, they just tear
Speaker 3: into you, like whether you're alive or not. And that's
Speaker 3: what happened. Like the bear incapacitated him and just ate him,
Speaker 3: and his girl was there. She's screaming, So what happens next?
Speaker 3: The bear comes after her? Yeah, and audio never was released.
Speaker 3: People say they've heard it, they've heard reenactments. Reenactment, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because I think didn't.
Speaker 1: Wasn't it very Herzog who like listened to the audio
Speaker 1: and decided because like he was listening to it for
Speaker 1: the family to try to determine whether they should hear
Speaker 1: it or not, and he was like, nobody should hear this.
Speaker 1: It's it's like this would be too traumatizing. So it's
Speaker 1: never been Thankfully, you know, it's never been released. I
Speaker 1: think that's that's a merciful thing for the family not
Speaker 1: to not to have that out there. But god, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I I remember when I read about that, I
Speaker 1: had nightmares that I was like listening to the audio,
Speaker 1: but of course it doesn't exist, but the imagination can
Speaker 1: can fill in the blanks in a very terrifying way.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if this was true, but I heard
Speaker 3: her report saying that he were Canta saying that he
Speaker 3: kind of wished that he had released it just to
Speaker 3: like have people understand just what theirs are capable of,
Speaker 3: because I feel like people still haven't really learned. But ultimately, like,
Speaker 3: and this is where I kind of have to take
Speaker 3: back the credit I gave him. He said he tried
Speaker 3: to be an ad for these bears. All he did
Speaker 3: was like he got himself like killed by a bear.
Speaker 3: And what happens to the bear that they had to
Speaker 3: hunt the bear down kill it. And now people are
Speaker 3: hearing about this horrific bear.
Speaker 1: A type that yeah, yeah, yeah, because once a bear
Speaker 1: like kills a human, they it's like, well, you the
Speaker 1: bear can't see humans as a source of food and
Speaker 1: go and hunt someone else down, so then they have
Speaker 1: to go and euthanize it. And it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it's bad, bad news all around. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: such a horrifying thing to happen to anyone. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just we we. I think it is
Speaker 1: this like sense of we're so insulated as humans because
Speaker 1: we've protected ourselves with our society, with with all of
Speaker 1: our sort of innovations and our intelligence that you know.
Speaker 1: I think that sometimes that can lend itself to this
Speaker 1: idea that we are not prey anymore. We're not we're
Speaker 1: not in danger. You know, we're not you know, nothing
Speaker 1: could view us as prey, right because we're humans. We're
Speaker 1: like on top of the food chain, and that is
Speaker 1: not not true at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And whether it's with Travis or the bear, or
Speaker 3: with Sigfried and Roy and their tiger Montok or it's
Speaker 3: just there's like a level of arrogance that some people
Speaker 3: can get where they feel like they have complete control
Speaker 3: over this wild animal. And really it's like we are
Speaker 3: where we are at because of intelligence. Mostly because of intelligence.
Speaker 3: There's obviously physical attributes that we have, like being able
Speaker 3: to run for a really long period of time, being
Speaker 3: able to I think we might be one of the
Speaker 3: no we are We can throw things with accuracy that
Speaker 3: other animals don't have, just on like us having thumbs
Speaker 3: and hands and the way our shoulders are placed. But ultimately,
Speaker 3: like one on one, we can't do anything with these predators, right,
Speaker 3: especially something like a bear or a tiger or a chimpanzee,
Speaker 3: things that hunt for a living. Yeah, you know, so
Speaker 3: there's like it. You can raise them as a baby,
Speaker 3: you can try to like you they're not human though,
Speaker 3: And all it takes is like one moment of them
Speaker 3: referring back to their predatory instincts. It doesn't even have
Speaker 3: to be a predator, but just that's when like things
Speaker 3: can happen, and ultimately that animal gets put down because of.
Speaker 1: It exactly, and our language doesn't align with them. Like
Speaker 1: for chimps, like with humans, eye contact and smiling is
Speaker 1: a nice thing. It's you know, showing the other person like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm friendly, how's it going. If you do that to
Speaker 1: a chimp, you're basically telling it like hey, you know,
Speaker 1: like hum man like, and it's like a confrontation. It's
Speaker 1: like eye contact and showing your teeth is very confrontational
Speaker 1: for a chimpanzee. So like, you can't walk up to
Speaker 1: a chimpanzee act like a human and have it understand
Speaker 1: what you're trying to say, what your body language means,
Speaker 1: because it can mean something very different. And I think
Speaker 1: in cases where we successfully have pets, like with dogs
Speaker 1: and cats, these are cases, I mean, especially for dogs,
Speaker 1: we have selected over thousands and thousands of years and
Speaker 1: co evolved with them to the point where our styles
Speaker 1: of communication can interlock. So like we can communicate with
Speaker 1: a dog when we see a dog. We although sometimes
Speaker 1: people can mistake body language of dogs, for sure, a
Speaker 1: lot of the dog's body language is readable by us,
Speaker 1: and they can actually read our body language fairly well.
Speaker 1: They can read our facial expressions our intonation. So it's like,
Speaker 1: this is why dogs and also cats, you know, are
Speaker 1: quite good pets, whereas something like a chimpanzee, a grizzly bear,
Speaker 1: a kangaroo. These, you know, they can't really you know,
Speaker 1: they can only be tamed inas much. They can be
Speaker 1: habituated to humans, but they can't really be tamed.
Speaker 2: They can't. They are not pets.
Speaker 1: And you know, we can't make them into pets unless
Speaker 1: we had some kind of like you know again, tried
Speaker 1: to selectively breed them over thousands and thousands of years,
Speaker 1: which I don't see the point in doing that either.
Speaker 3: Yeah. My favorite line in the entire movie no spoiler,
Speaker 3: but they says something about you can't tame a predator.
Speaker 3: The best you can do is enter an agreement with one, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that's something that a lot of people forget. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's when these incidents happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, man. Yeah, I think it's it
Speaker 1: is such a good movie for evolutionary biologists, but it's
Speaker 1: also such nightmare fuel because like all of it, it's
Speaker 1: just because they did their research for that movie, I
Speaker 1: can really tell. So it's yeah, it's it's very it's
Speaker 1: very good. But because they were so thorough with the
Speaker 1: research and it is so realistic that is it's it
Speaker 1: makes it.
Speaker 2: Quite scary, definitely.
Speaker 1: So before we go at the end of every episode,
Speaker 1: I like to play a little game called Guess Who's Squawking?
Speaker 1: It's a mystery animal sound game. Every week I play
Speaker 1: a mystery animal found now it's called gets who squawking?
Speaker 1: But it can be any animal in the world, not
Speaker 1: necessarily a bird, any animal. Uh and uh, you the
Speaker 1: listener and you the guests trying to guess who is squalking'?
Speaker 2: So uh.
Speaker 1: Last week's hint was there's nothing deadly or sinful about
Speaker 1: this cutie.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is a sound I honestly had no idea
Speaker 1: this is what this animal sounded.
Speaker 2: Like until I googled it. So here it is. Can
Speaker 2: you guess who's.
Speaker 3: Making that sound? Is it a wh I get hints?
Speaker 1: Well, the hint is there's nothing deadly or sinful about
Speaker 1: this cutie.
Speaker 2: Do you need any any more?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: You can ask me a question and I can answer.
Speaker 3: Is it a herbivore? It is, yes, not domesticated?
Speaker 2: Is it now?
Speaker 3: Can I hear it again? Yes?
Speaker 1: You can just slot Yeah, it is good job you are.
Speaker 1: You are like an encyclopedia for animal knowledge, so I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised that you got this.
Speaker 3: But yes, I also wondering where I heard that from.
Speaker 3: There's compilations of like baby's slow often. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 3: free serotonin. I love it. I recommended anyone watching yourself.
Speaker 1: It is I an ear medicine for the soul. It's wonderful. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had no idea this is what they sounded like
Speaker 1: until I just added curiosity, googled, like, hey, what does
Speaker 1: slaws sound like? These are baby two toed sloths. They
Speaker 1: are Slavs found in Central and South America. I don't
Speaker 1: believe the adults make these sounds. I think this is
Speaker 1: just the babies because they are bleeding for their mothers,
Speaker 1: so they spend their first nine months of lives constantly
Speaker 1: attached to their mothers, and so when they're at like
Speaker 1: a rescue rehabilitation animal center, they will often be given
Speaker 1: teddy bears so they have something to hold onto to
Speaker 1: comfort them, which is really adorable. Also a little sad,
Speaker 1: but yes, they will make this bleating noise until somebody
Speaker 1: picks them up or they get to cuddle a teddy
Speaker 1: bear which is ador and makes me want to cry.
Speaker 3: And that is your wholesome fact for the week.
Speaker 1: After this, after this show where we talked about animals
Speaker 1: eating your face, adorable baby sloth say it. There you go,
Speaker 1: the shot and then the chaser. Congratulations to Joey P,
Speaker 1: Lily H, and Grant W the three fastest to correctly
Speaker 1: guess sloth, although maybe I should have rewarded the three
Speaker 1: slowest guessers given that you know to sloth anyway, make
Speaker 1: a suggestion.
Speaker 3: Next one should be like, ask them play what they
Speaker 3: sound like and then see if they can guess, because
Speaker 3: if they've never heard it before, they will never in
Speaker 3: a million years guess.
Speaker 1: That the the hauntingly angry banshee screaming of a koala. Yes,
Speaker 1: they are, they are, They're I understand why people like
Speaker 1: why Australians have the drop bear mythos just based on
Speaker 1: uh when koalas are a screen me angrily.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, there's like one hundred different types
Speaker 3: of cryptids in Australia and I'm so sure half of
Speaker 3: them originated from koalis.
Speaker 1: Loud it's qualas, Yeah, absolutely, It's like how probably all
Speaker 1: the cryptids in the US are either sand hill cranes
Speaker 1: or coyotes with mange, and that's it, like all your captives.
Speaker 3: I was disappointed. I remember as like, in like seventh grade,
Speaker 3: I saw that video that went viral at the well,
Speaker 3: I guess at the time of like that chuop ofcabre.
Speaker 3: Then I revisited it because I randomly just was curious
Speaker 3: about it ten years later, and I was like, oh wait,
Speaker 3: it's a coyote.
Speaker 1: Coyote with mange. It's always a coyote with maine.
Speaker 3: Pretty anti climactic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, sometimes listeners send me in pictures of like is this,
Speaker 1: like what species is this? Like I found this and
Speaker 1: it looks like some kind of you know, novel species
Speaker 1: in North America, and it's like it's either coyote with mange,
Speaker 1: maybe a fox with mange. When an animal gets mange
Speaker 1: and it messes up their fur, it can make them
Speaker 1: like almost unrecognizable and look very very creepy. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, just a sick animal. It's nothing
Speaker 1: scary or creepy. It's just sad. But uh onto this
Speaker 1: week's mister animal sound. The hint is they sound like
Speaker 1: drunks on land and alien spaceships. In the sea, but
Speaker 1: they're always chill.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmmmmm mm hmmm. That's them on land.
Speaker 2: So now this is them under the water.
Speaker 3: I have actually stopt on this one. So they're amphibious.
Speaker 1: Then, yes, they spend time both on the land and
Speaker 1: under the water. Now they are mammals. Yes, so that's
Speaker 1: another free.
Speaker 3: Hint, because the obvious one would be whales. But then
Speaker 3: you said on land, so huh interesting. Uh, Okay, it's
Speaker 3: sometimes a SELC line. I'm gonna see.
Speaker 1: Oh is it it is?
Speaker 2: You are absolutely correct?
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay, because that's okay, I see.
Speaker 1: Yes, So you'll the listeners out there, you'll have heard
Speaker 1: a cute little duck quack over what mama du said.
Speaker 1: But he did guess it correctly, and you'll have a
Speaker 1: chance to guess it. If you think you know the answer,
Speaker 1: you can write to me at Creature feature Pod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. But I am very very impressed by
Speaker 1: your animal sound guessing abilities. I don't think I could
Speaker 1: have done that, thank you.
Speaker 3: I took a couple of guesses and a lot of hints,
Speaker 3: but yeah, definitely definitely an interesting one, Dick. You would
Speaker 3: have to hear it before to like guess that, like
Speaker 3: I would not have been able to guess. That's just blind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, I And like I I had a
Speaker 1: listener from I think as far as Jaber who came
Speaker 1: on and recommended this animal noise as one that is
Speaker 1: is quite strange, very otherworldly. It sounds like underwater. They
Speaker 1: sound like aliens, like alien spaceships. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: haunting in a way.
Speaker 3: It definitely is. I don't know if I'm allowed to
Speaker 3: say this part, so I guess you could like leep
Speaker 3: this out. But it's actually they use that to like
Speaker 3: find like their little like breathing holes because they can
Speaker 3: like freeze. Oh maybe I should. Well, basically they use
Speaker 3: them to find breathing holes that they might not have
Speaker 3: access to because of where they live. So it's like
Speaker 3: I can't describe it further without giving it away. You
Speaker 3: just have to go see it on a next show
Speaker 3: and then YouTube it because it is free.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, I think this is a hard enough
Speaker 1: sound that getting some more hints is definitely fair.
Speaker 2: But yes, it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's such an unexpected sound. Also, I'll say,
Speaker 1: for such a cute animal where it sounds like there's
Speaker 1: a there's there's a haunted ocean, but then you see them,
Speaker 1: it's like, Oh, you're just a little cutie, aren't you. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate having you on. You are an incredible font of
Speaker 1: animal wisdom.
Speaker 2: Uh and I.
Speaker 1: Think people, if you like this podcast, you will definitely
Speaker 1: like Mamad's TikTok. He's also got a book out called
Speaker 1: one Hundred Animals that King End You, So if you
Speaker 1: liked the topic of this episode, you will definitely like
Speaker 1: that book. Thank you so much for coming on. Where
Speaker 1: can people find you?
Speaker 3: They can find me on TikTok dot MGI underscore ninety seven.
Speaker 3: They can find me on Instagram at the exact same
Speaker 3: use your name. Also have a YouTube channel, realizing not
Speaker 3: a lot of people know that, or at least not
Speaker 3: as many people that know me from TikTok or Instagram,
Speaker 3: But I do have a YouTube channel where I make
Speaker 3: longer flow content as yourble geographic and yeah, those are
Speaker 3: that's pretty much the big three TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 3: thanks so much for reaching out to me. By the way,
Speaker 3: this is also stoked to me, like invide it here.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you on this. This is wonderful.
Speaker 1: This is so fun, and thanks you guys for listening
Speaker 1: to the show. If you're enjoying it, do leave a
Speaker 1: rating or review. I read all the reviews. I appreciate
Speaker 1: all the ratings and as always, appreciate you guys listening.
Speaker 1: And yeah, if you think you know this week's mystery
Speaker 1: animal sound or you have any questions, you can write
Speaker 1: to meet at Creature Feature.
Speaker 2: Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm also on Twitter at Creature feet Pod. That's feat
Speaker 1: not fee ten Pad is something very different and thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics for their super awesome song XO Lumina.
Speaker 1: Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more shows like
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Speaker 1: or Hey gus, what wherever you listened to your favorite shows?
Speaker 2: See you next Wednesday.