Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Drop Bears

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Australia is home to all sorts of things that can kill you, but perhaps the deadliest is the drop bear, a vicious cousin of the koala.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just us. No Dave, no Jerry, no nothing. But we are here and being tourists walking through the Australian bush right now, we need to be careful of drop bears. That's right, because you know, if you're especially a tourist, or maybe a foreign soldier,

you're walking around the outback, look up, because if you walk under a tree, a drop bear might drop down, knock you on the head, and eat your head. Yeah, might bite your skull open with its molars, might use its fangs to bite your neck, and you're dead. You're dead when a drop bear drops on you because they can get fairly big.

I saw about the size of leopards. Leopards average something like six feet long, seven feet long, weighing between 100 to 200 pounds. This is a big animal. The thing that makes it so crazy is that it looks a lot like a koala except with orange wiry hair. Yeah, and luckily we toured Australia

and did some great shows all over that wonderful country. And we both checked in as safe at the end of it from drop bears. Thank God it didn't happen. No, we made it out alive basically. Because if you get dropped on by a drop bear, they're very patient, they're very quiet, they'll wait for hours up in a treetop for someone to pass by and then they drop out right on top of you like you said.

You're dead. You're toast. So had we met a drop bear, one or both of us would not be sitting here today. That's right. I'm genuinely wondering how many Australians think that we're being serious right now. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, they're like, don't these guys know? Man, you do the best New Zealand accent. That was it. Okay.

Sure. It all sounds like Murray. Murray. Yeah. So yeah, we should probably tell everybody who isn't from Australia that drop bears are made up. They're a myth. They're a joke, really. A long-standing, pranky joke that Australians play on newcomers and tourists and travelers and visiting military, that kind of thing. Yeah. A lot of people think it started in either Sydney or South Wales.

The early settlers there, you know, playing pranks on people who came probably because they didn't want them there, would be my guess. Sure, or just to humiliate them out of boredom. Yeah, exactly. Apparently the Australian Museum over the years has kind of kept this joke going by fabricating sightings. It's sort of like here in America, like a jackalope. Oh, yeah. You know, like creating these creatures. Not like a Bigfoot. It's not a cryptid, but I guess a jackalope probably technically is. But you know, just sort of a humorous thing

to keep going and the official government even gets involved and kind of plays along. Well, I saw one of the things that, as part of this legend, is that the Australian government doesn't recognize the existence of drop bears in reality because they don't exist. But as part of the legend, it's because the Australian government is covering up their existence because they don't want to harm the tourist industry in Australia. Because again, they jump on tourists.

Basically people who don't have Australian accents. Well, and I'm sure they're also like, there's all manner of things that'll kill you. Like, the last thing we need is a made-up thing. Exactly. So we said the Australian government's part of it. So a lot of other institutions have contributed to kind of keeping this idea alive.

I saw an article in The Conversation about drop bears and surviving drop bear attacks, and it was totally straight from start to finish. There wasn't even a little disclaimer in italics at the end. And they've even been given a scientific name, thylarktospelomatus. That's pretty funny.

It is. It's great. There actually is, like, evidence that there could have been some sort of ancient animal in Australia during the last Ice Age that is similar to a drop bear. That does have a real scientific name, thylacoleo carnifex or a marsupial lion. Apparently the skull does resemble a koala or maybe a wombat, but instead of grinder teeth they have shearing teeth and apparently it once belonged to a group of marsupials called the Diprotodonts and with today's koalas they're in that same group of marsupials, so possums, wombats, kangaroos, and koalas. They were all part of this group back in ancient times,

but whatever this more fearsome one was, A, it wasn't a drop bear, but it was similar enough for people to reference it at least. Yeah, and people were living at this time. This is during the last ice age. So there were people in Australia at the time, Aborigines were there, and they would have seen and possibly interacted with this marsupial lion. So it raises the question like is this actually like an echo from the past? Like this is this drop bear prank is actually based on like a human knowledge of the fact that there was something similar years back in the Scott passed down all this time and then morphed into the prank. Some people say no, I think there's a possibility. It just seems weird to have come up with that

independently. I could also be overthinking it. Yeah, maybe. Who knows? The first official mentions that people know about were in the beginning of the 1900s. And it wasn't in a newspaper like the words drop bear until 1982 apparently when there was a message in the 21st birthdays column of the Canberra Times on 31 July. You know it's from a different country if they say 31 July. We say July 31st over here. And apparently I say Canberra and that's not right either, right?

I think it's Can-bra. Can-bra, okay. I think not even br-ra, bra, like bra. What's up, bra? Yeah, what's up, Can-bra? Okay, I got you. But in this message, regardless of pronunciations, it was Tam, T-A-M,

beware of drop bears in the future. For sure, totally love Clint. And no one knows who these people were. We'll never find out who these people were, but the words drop bear, first time in print apparently. Yeah, but the year before, a post-punk band called the Drop Bears had formed back in 1981. I went and looked up one of their videos

for a song called Fun Loving. Good? Yeah, it was not bad. Okay, let's check that out. But yes, so drop bears somehow just came out of nowhere, that term did, but there had been this idea of a koala-like animal dropping from trees and attacking people.

That had been around at least in print since the 1920s. It seems to have been a military prank. Like that's where it kind of was kept alive all of the decades. But it eventually made the leap to pop culture thanks to a guy known in Australia as Hogs. His name is Paul Hogan. Here in the United States, we know him as Crocodile Dundee.

I say we take a break. That's quite a cliffhanger when you got Crocodile Dundee hanging out there. And we'll be right back after this. ["Crocodile Dundee"] All right. We promised talk of Crocodile Dundee. In 1981 on his show, The Paul Hogan Show, he did a skit where he starts talking about the untold horrors of the Australian bush.

And although he didn't use the word drop bear, he talked about killer koalas silently sitting and then dropping out of trees and killing people. Yeah. So within a few years, this thing crosses over to the mainstream. Drop bears are attached as the name and it just becomes an institution in Australia apparently. That's right and we've gotten real tips because you know they like to play along with this stuff and so you can actually get real published tips on how to avoid being killed by these right? Apparently one so remember they're telling like soldiers in Australia are telling like

some American detachment that's visiting or doing training exercises or something to do these things. And apparently they do sometimes. One is to put dabs of toothpaste behind your ears. I mean, that's very tame. I mean, toothpaste, of course. Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised that's all it was. Because why didn't they say like human feces or something?

If they really want to kick it up Yeah, yes, but I mean just the fact that you did something that yeah, they can demonstrate you did that That's that's enough when they tell you that this whole thing's a joke and you're a total moron Yeah, I guess so. I guess they got a little closer to human feces on this next one They said you got gotta smear your cheeks and forehead with Vegemite. Boy, I'm gonna get killed for that one. You are, but.

I'm so sorry, Australia. Australia, you should know by now, no one outside of Australia likes Vegemite. That's just your thing. That's right, and you've all got great senses of humor, so I know you'll take that with a plum. That's right. So another one was putting forks in your hair.

That's good. I mean, you'd have to have thick curly hair to hold a fork in your hair. Yeah, a fork would fall right out of my hair. Same here. Yeah. And then you could wear a neck guard. That would be the funniest one to me. That's what I would try to get people to do.

Remember like the old school neck guards that like in that episode of the Brady Bunch where there's the car accident, the person that Mike Brady hit was wearing like a neck protector to keep them from turning their head. And then he throws the briefcase and they look really quickly and Mike Brady proves his case. Foiled. Yeah. Yeah. If I could get somebody to wear one of those to protect against a drop bearer attack, I would feel pretty good about myself. Yeah, and if all of these things fail,

I believe so much of what you say. If you told me I needed to wear that for any reason, I probably would. All right, well, keep sharp, man, because I'm gonna try it sometime. You know if you want to podcast better, put on a neck brace. Apparently, if none of those things work though,

and you are a visiting military soldier, and you are attacked, to protect yourself, curl into a ball, and protect all of your major internal organs and major arteries. Yep. Pretty great stuff, Chuck. Yeah. No, I mean, that was kind of sad. If you look up drop bear, there's some funny pictures of like, just photoshopped koalas

that look super scary and mean. What do you mean? What was sad? No, no, no, no. Did I say sad? Yeah, you said it's kind of sad. Did I? Either that or I've just totally lost my mind finally.

In my mind, I said funny. I guess only the listener will know the truth of which. Of which one of us just had a stroke. Maybe you guys can write in and tell us. In the meantime, everybody, short stuff is out.