The Chaser Report - ARVO: Dave Hunt on Killing Koalas and Wombat Arses

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

For a very classy and intellectual Arvo Chat, Charles and Dom are joined by author Dave Hunt. Together they gracefully dwell on the topics of the extinction of koalas, and how it can be sped up, as well as the exact shape of a wombat's bum. Just another classy Chaser Report episode for your Monday afternoon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to an afternoon, an edition of The Chaser Report. Dom Knight and Charles Firth with historian David Hunt. Hello, David. Gidey, Dom. But look, I don't really get this. We're not talking about Gert Nation. We've done that already.

Yeah, yeah, been there, done that. But this is not about the journey to nationhood for the Commonwealth of Australia. This is about koalas. You look, I'm a man of many hats, Dom. One of them is made out of koala skin. Well, that's good, because there's some very good news that's just come out last week, which is that koalas are now officially endangered in Queensland and New South Wales. They're on their way out.

We can finally get rid of these fuckers who are vicious little cunts. Well, Victoria. Victoria is not trying hard enough. Yes, exactly. Yeah, go on, they're letting down the team. Their koala population is still thriving. Well, they're spending most of their time in small coffee shops off in the hinterland, but, you know, they get along.

But koalas are awful beings, aren't they? Because they've all got chlamydia. They do, and chlamydia leads to blindness, which is why probably Blinky Bill blinked a lot. Oh, really? Yeah. So I thought the chlamydia thing was just a recent thing. Have they always just had lots of chlamydia?

Well, look, I think the origins of koala Chlamydia are unknown. Perhaps it was some desperate explorer in those early days of the convict colony who... Well, look, it's perhaps a disease that jumped the species barrier. Koalas got it from somewhere. That's all I'm saying. Well, I mean, but they're vicious. They're claws.

They're not be a good... You don't like koalas, do you? That's what you're trying to say. No, what I'm saying is, I think that it's not necessarily... Like, everyone goes, oh, we love koalas. But I once actually got at Taronga Zoo, they let me hold one. And they, and I got these gloves that were literally an inch thick because they're vicious little fuckers.

But look, I think that's probably a natural reaction to any living being that's been held by your child. Look, koalas are an Australian icon. I'm proud of the koala. It makes me feel patriotic when I look at a koala. Yeah. And I think Australia will go to hell in a handbasket if there aren't enough koalas left for us to look at and appreciate. Well, I disagree because we've got lots of photos and we've got lots of videos of koalas.

Surely that's enough. Now we can get rid of them and build some apartments. I mean, I just don't think it's a species that wants to survive. No. Because when I've researched koalas in the past, because they're quite bizarre, right? They make stupid food choices. We all know people who have terrible diets, but the koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves,

which have almost no nutrients. And not all eucalyptus leaves, Dom, very select offering a euclipter sleeves. Yeah, so they spend their entire lives eating something that is terrible for them that gives them no nutrients, and they have to eat so many of them in order to survive, it's a shit existence. Like maybe it's doing them a kindness.

Well, also, it's so nutrient-poor, the eucalyptus oil, that they don't have enough energy from their food to run their brains their brain actually their brain takes up produces the most energy in the body

and they don't have enough energy to run a brain so their brains have actually shrunk to something like the size of a walnut which is much smaller

than the koala skull so when the koala moves its head too quickly it gives itself concussions the brain's so you know yeah it's a terrible animal and the other thing is

is that why it's never been able to reason that actually this is a stupid diet and it should eat something with more nutrients in it It just doesn't have the brain. Or it's never been able to reason. Maybe I should pop down to the 7-Eleven and buy a packet of condoms before I sleep with

a lady koala who might give me chlamydia. No, but this is the thing. So there's a huge dilemma there, which is if they have sex to reproduce, then they all get chlamydia. That's a huge, like, what are they, what do you do in that situation? It's a bit of a catch-22 for the poor old koala, isn't it? But I've heard that the female, the lady koalas, they're pretty, they're pretty. pretty picky, aren't they?

This is the one that you attempted to pick up that scratched you. No, look, lady koalas just don't like male koalas. And they're a little bit quicker, as a general rule. They're a little bit lighter and quicker, and they run away, often when a male koala is in the mood. So that's why they're having problems is because, like, they don't want to fuck. They're terrible at having sex, and their brains are getting smaller by the By the year. Look, the other thing is that large numbers of koalas...

Sounds like the Liberal Party. Yeah, I love it. Oh, no, except for the sex part. Lots of six. Don't tell. Touch that. Look, the other thing about koalas is a lot of them have been dying in the bushfires of late. But if all you eat is eucalyptus oil, you are incredibly flammable.

I mean, these things just go, whoof! They go up like nothing else. And I think if we want to move a... from coal and gas we could just burn we could tap into that unused fuel source

renewable renewable yeah yeah not for the koala but but for the rest of us it's good you're reminding me that a lot of kailas perished in the bushfires too and that mustn't have taken long

is what you're saying no they in fact do they explode is it sort of sort of a sort of look I don't I don't think anybody I mean I don't think anybody knows Charles I mean, who knows what a koala does at 140 degrees, centigrade, and rising. Sounds like a good topic for a YouTube video.

So, oh, I did a thing, right. So is the problem we're going to have, though, that if we keep neglecting the koala and they end up dying out, our tourism's going to suffer? I mean, surely, like China, with the panda, both, you know, both things that aren't bears but get called bears, are we going to find we need them, but we're going to have to recreate. Can we genetically engineer better koal?

Yes. Yes. Well, look, there was a story this week that people are looking at bringing back the thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger, by getting freaky with a numbat, which is a much smaller marsupial, but the closest relative of the Tessi tiger. And the idea is that you genetically splice some thylacine stuff into a numbat DNA. So they've got the thalasine DNA? Yeah, they do.

They do. They could do. They could do this. So why are we kicking up such a farce? We could lose the koala. Yes. We could find a wombat who was a bit hard up for cash, and we could just splice some koala genes into its nearest relative.

Yes. And have them back any time we want. There's a Japanese, you know, trade delegation coming over, find a wombat, splice some koala DNA into it. There you go. I mean, robotic koalas, if we can get the Japanese onto it, might actually be a more efficient solution, mightn't it?

Robo co. Robo co. I like it. Cool. And you wouldn't need to, but surely it's not good for the eucalypt either, having the koala stripping all their leaves out. And a robot koala wouldn't urinate on foreign dignitaries

when I was feeling overstressed. Unless you put that setting in. Oh, like those dolls that you used to get that used to cry and envy. Yeah. And we, we, yeah. Oh, that's food for thought, Charles. LESA report, less news, less often. So, you're all very pro-genetic modification.

I'm just a little bit hesitant about that whole plan with the thylacine because I read a... Because it's Tasmanian. Non-fiction book called Jurassic Park a few years ago. And I think they made a documentary about it as well. Called Jurassic Park. Called Jurassic Park. And Jurassic World.

Where they recreated, you know, beings from the past using DNA. From mosquitoes. And it was a bit of a disaster because then they overtook the island and everyone died. Is that not a bit of a worry? Like, are we risking Tasmania being overtaken by thylacines? Well, imagine if you actually sort of spliced a bit of velociraptor DNA into a numbat. and a thylacine. I mean, what's the harm if thylacine's overrun Tasmania?

Yeah. What's the downside? I mean, it's a sort of net benefit, isn't they? It's sort of two birds once down. It would be like Thylacine Island. I think that'd be, that'd actually be a tourist. Like, you just keep motor in a bubble. You only need motor in the thylacines and everyone would come.

I'd pay to see that. In fact, I'd pay to fight my way up the derwent with a flamethrower as thylacines attack from all sides. just so I can spend 50 bucks to watch some overpriced sort of cloaca producing fake shit. And you know what you'd use, you know, you'd have, in storage, you'd have a whole of koalas, which you'd light and throw at the thylacines and they'd explode to get rid of it.

I think you're just getting silly now, Charles. Just thinking of Jurassic Park, though, I seem to remember that one of the great mantras of that series, Like one of these lines that kept coming back was nature will find a way. But clearly in the case of the koala, it won't. Like clearly nature's just saying, you know what, Colors have had a good run.

We haven't equipped them with the tools to survive. It's time to say goodbye. Well, no, look, I think sort of modern, I think the Liberal Party has an important role of play in saving the koala. They believe, they don't believe in handouts. I think they should encourage the koala to help itself. why not train koalas

to carry those little wilderness society like plastic buckets that's good cut out the middleman you don't want any of these rancid greenies with their dreadlocks sort of accosting you on the street why not

have a work for the gum leaf scheme where the government funds koalas to help themselves Yes, to go around, stand on street corners with a bucket. Yeah. And to collect gum leaves. No, not gum.

No. Or money, money to buy gum leaves. Gum leaves, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you've got to have the profit motive in there somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I think that's a great idea. That is a genius idea. And they can spend the money on something that isn't as ridiculous as gum leaves.

Why don't we just train them to eat, I don't know, meat pies? Or hot dogs. Like just something that has nutrients in it. Like they clearly don't want much nutrients. So me, it would be perfect. Is there a risk, though, that then they'd grow a brain back? Yeah. And take over the world.

Or Tasmania. Start small. They'd become the alpha. Yeah. In Tasmania. I think it's better if they just die out, frankly. Look, I am worried about genetic modification of the koala because you've all heard of the drop bear.

Yes. the terrifying corolla with razor fangs and claws that falls out of the tree only on unsuspecting tourists. But have you said, yeah, because they said, because the Australian Museum

has a whole thing on drop bears and they said that nobody actually has died from a drop bear in years. It's actually a myth. Did anybody ever die from a drop bear? Causes injuries. It doesn't, people don't really die. Well, the koala will soon be as extinct

the drop bear. They're not extinct, Dom. Look at the Australian, have you been to the Australian Museum website? Looked up drop bear? No. Honestly, go there. They've got a whole scientific section on it. He's a man with too much tape on his hands.

I actually did. I did a serious interview with someone a couple of weeks ago where they said that we have to genetically modify creatures if we're going to keep the current balance of the ecosystem. Like, for instance, the corroborary frog. is dying out massively due to this fungus that came from overseas. So basically we have to, we've screwed the world up so much that we have to now fix it out. It's like you broke it, you fix it.

We've got to just modify everything if we're going to keep the ecosystems going as they are now. And that's why they're playing around with Numbat D&A at the moment, not just to bring back the thylacine, but there's such a loss of genetic diversity in the Numbat population. They're a very inbred little band of Western Australian critters. And so they're looking at actually introducing genetic diversity into the numbat by splicing bits of foreign DNA in there. So they don't breed themselves into extinction.

So, yeah. So in some ways, it's not really a thylacine scheme. It's for the numbats. It's for the numbats. Save the numbat from itself. Why don't they... Are they going to genetically engineer Tasmanians to have more genetic diversity? Well, that's been a long-standing problem in Tasmania. It's a long-standing problem with island populations. Was it Norfolk Island that got very imbred? Which one was the one where... Pick an island.

Pick an island. Any island, Charles. Any island smaller than Australia. So what have we established in this chat that Charles hates koalas that they got like a rocket? What about wombats? Do we hate wombats as well? Because the wombats are a pissed. No, but they, that is square.

They do cubic poos. I think we've got to protect that. That's unique. Yeah, that is. Yeah, okay, that's good. Why is it square? Because, like, whenever I go to where there's lots of wombats. Are we having a proper conversation about this?

They actually, I mean, it's totally true. They're completely cubic in nature. Don't they play Tetris in their burrows? Or wordle. Turtle. Light up five blocks. Well, the thing that I, because I once was going for an early morning walk and I walked into a whole wombat colony where there was tons of wombat holes.

And it was sort of remarkable, it was like 6 a.m. And they were just scurrying between each hole. Like there were dozens of them. And it was sort of almost like they were visiting each other's house. It's like that whack-a-mole game. Yeah, yeah. Where the little head pops up with that. Yeah, it was weird.

I just stood there for about. an hour just going, this is the most amazing sort of thing. So do you think that they were going around and stacking their poos or something? Was that the... I suspect not. I mean, they might have been borrowing each other's bathrooms so as not to leave their cubic cubes out for the study of strange humans who find the fact that Wambats have got square assholes

the most astounding fact they've ever come across. So it's the asshole that's square, is it? Look, have you ever tried to look at a lot? wombat's asshole. Well, they don't like it. They don't like it. So nobody knows. Friendship farm.

You remember the wombat's Friendship Farm at Trongazoo? I used to go and visit them as a kid. Oh, yes. Yeah, Friendship Farm. Friendship Farm. You, they didn't mind being patted. Yeah, no. They didn't mind having their tummies tickled.

Yes. But as soon as you tried to check out their back business, they got very, very shirty. Clause were out. I mean, that's not a form of friendship that I respect. No. And wombat's can actually, you know, disembowel. Oh, yeah.

When they get angry, they've got incredibly powerful claws for digging. Yes. Very sharp incisors for cutting through tough roots. Yes. You don't want to get on the wrong end of a wombat. No, no. No. You know what a tough route is at koala.

You'll get chlamydia. So, but what you're saying, Dave, is that... No one knows, Charles. Nobody has ever been able to look at a wombat's assholes. Well, I haven't. I mean, I'm speaking from personal experience. I have, however, I am however able to confirm as the son of a zoologist who spent a lot of my time wandering through the Australian bush

that, yes, wombats do have cubic poos. Yes. And, you know, it's got to come from something of a similar shape I would have thought. Right, yes. This has been a fascinating excursus into Australian marsupials and wombats and other crutches. I read the first volume of Gert because the stuff on megafauna is fantastic. Yeah, the demon duck of doom, an eight-foot-tall carnivorous, kick-ass duck. Thank you very much, David.

I had no idea you were so expert on matters of marsupial. Neither did I, Dom. Our gear is from Road Microphones, and we are part of the ACAST crowd in our book. See you tomorrow.