The Cryptid Factor - 65: #65 The Missing Pigeons Issue

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Welcome to episode 65, where we're lucky Rhys is present due to self inflicted partying - and lucky Dan is alive due to self inflicted poisoning! Also in this ep you'll discover 50 pilot sky-spider collectors, lots of lost pigeons, an eating restrictor/ventriloquism training device and we find prehistoric man Dennis Oven in a Chinese well! Also Loch Less news and a spooky Slenderman in India. Ooooohhh! *Trigger warning* We discuss weight loss and dieting, if this is triggering for you - perhaps sit this one out. 

The Cryptid Factor, with Rhys Darby and Dan Schreiber. Well, you wouldn't believe it, but we are back! It's incredible, especially with your schedule at the moment. Rhys, what a treat! Yeah, well look, it's important to keep it up, not only for the fans, but for us, you know. We've got to keep tabs on what's happening in the wonderful world of the weird, and I do get two days off a week. Oh, that's good. Thursday, Fridays. I was going to say, traditionally, most people get two days off a week, but then you plot twisted us.

This is where I'm throwing my unique spin on it though, because mine are Thursdays and Fridays. Your traditional Saturday Sundays are work days for me, so I'm throwing a bit of a spanner there. But also, we're very lucky to have you as well, not only because you're crazy schedule, but also because you're a little dusty today. Well, it gives you that idea. Hey, it's the Fourth of July celebrations yesterday, everyone, and so yeah, I did have a big party here, and I might have lost my handle slightly. But hey. You found it again. I'm recovering today.

For those of you that can't see me, I've got my recovery glasses on. They're amazing. They kind of look like glasses that a policeman Lego man would wear. Picture those. They're pretty unique, but they're going to help me get through this day. We should actually just quickly mention that we've permitted Reese to get away without doing a Rappasode this week. It's in the fact that Reese celebrated during Fourth of July, and the fact that we have Reese at all today. I think that's a round of applause for Reese.

Thank you buddy. Yeah, I'm feeling a little under the weather today, so I do apologize, but I've also thought I'm going to do a bumper double episode finale. For the Rappasodes next week, so I'm going to do two to finish the whole story. Oh my God, that's like good news wrapped up with bad news. That's a shit sandwich with only one piece of bread, like the good piece of bread. Double episode, yay! And then there's the poos of it being the end of the story. Like we need another piece of bread to sandwich the bad news.

Well, it may be the end of the story if I dare I say it, wrap it all up. Then two episodes, but there is a chance that it may not, or there may be a sequel. Oh yeah, maybe like a trailer for season two. We could hear a little. This is just the first season. Yeah, of course it is. So I think that's the thing. Yeah.

Oh man. Oh good, we've worked that out. That's great. That's good. So that's coming next week, listeners. I know that your parents really only are tuning in for the Rappasodes. So yeah, I can hear them hearing this in their head right now. As you said that and freaking out.

So I will make sure to call them and give them a heads up that it's, it's not the end when they hear you say that. If they're listening now, I'll say fear well, because obviously they'll be disconnecting now that they know there's no Rappasodes this week. So they've already gone. They've already, as soon as Buttons mentioned it earlier, that's it. All this chat. Okay.

Yeah. Their finger is literally on the stop button. Oh, there you go. Yeah. We have the finger hovering over the stop button constantly, because we know if it's, if there's going to be a no to the Rappasodes. We're out. We're going on.

Tab it out. Great to see you guys. Especially after the let down of the UAP report, but the report about nothing. But it was fun to report on the report. Yeah. To say it was the first time that across all the major news outlets, like everybody from the Guardian to the New York Times to all the podcasts,

like the Daily from NPR, all covering UFOs. Yeah. And the first time I think UFOs have been that big in the media for a long time. That's the one thing it has done. I think is globally it's brought it to the attention of the masses. And it's no longer a, you know, a laughable subject. It is something that hopefully will now have us all looking at the, at the skies, because let's face it,

those sky serpents are out there. We've all seen them. They've got a capsule one. They need a big net. Yeah. In the sky. Yeah. A giant sky net.

We need sky nets. No, we don't need sky net. That's what takes us out in the future, according to John Connor. If you have a massive net and string it between three or four aircraft, you know, and it's literally the size of, I don't know, Texas. Yeah. There's giant massive net and just fly around the globe and just scoop up anything you, you scoop up.

You probably get better. You'll have a lot of birds in there. But yeah, but that's, yeah, yeah. They do that. They actually do that with planes where they put a sort of sticky tape, like substance on the side and they fly up. So when they come back down. Yeah.

It's in order to see what insects are getting to certain heights. So you get to a certain height and that's where you start your collection. You come down. You go, oh, spiders. Okay. So we know that this spider can now get this height by using its webs to, to sort of talk about sky spiders. I mean, yeah, I am.

But so far as we know, the terrestrial that are just hitching a ride, but maybe there is one technical challenge and that, that I can't get my head around though. Is that how do they remove the front of the double-sided sticky tape on the wing at a certain height? Because otherwise if they take off from the ground with the sticky tape on the plane, they'll collect everything from ground level up to, and then back down again.

And how will they know what bug got at what height? I think possibly one of the backup pilots has to do a parachute jump where he holds the corner of the sticky tape and as the wind rips away, he just has to hold tight and strip that. Pull the tape. We're at the sky spider level. Pull the tape. Okay.

God, is he going to parachute off? But then they need another guy to be able to go out and put something on front of the sticky tape to stop collecting stuff to come back down. Oh, when it comes back down. Yes. Yeah. Hey, next guy, get out there. We're going to put the cover on.

We're at a different altitude. Now get out there. Okay. Just hold on. Okay. Got the tape. I'm putting it on. We've got some spiders, guys.

Okay. Just take a photo of that level and put the tape over. Okay. Oh, no. I'm stuck. I got stuck myself. I'm stuck on the tape. All right.

We need a third pilot to get the pilot off. There's about 50 pilots. It's a 50 pilot operation this way. Yeah. We need a lot of guys. Okay. Why? Because we've got there's so many different levels of tape.

We've got to pull off and put back on again. A guy for each one. And sometimes we lose a guy or a guy gets stuck on the tape and he needs to be pulled off as well. We're pulling off guys from the tape. It's a big process. The great thing about that as well is that they get back down and go, you won't believe it.

We've got these pilots up there. We're collecting pilots in the sky. We've got spiders and we've got pilots. No, they were just, no, they're on the sticky tape. I'm logging that. Also, what kind of spiders are getting to the heights that planes were sticky tape to go to? Because your web is carrying you like a parachute but upwards.

You're getting sucked by the upwards. Like Charlotte's weird. Exactly. So spiders can migrate across oceans. What? Amazing. They've survived that long. Like without eating.

What are they eating? I mean, maybe if you've got a fly caught on your web, you can eat that on the way. It's sort of, yeah. I need to see footage of these international travelling spiders that cross oceans. I think you're running into the realms of fantasy again there, Dan. I know.

I feel like I'm really questioning this fact now. I thought I'd just say it and we'd move on. But now. All right. Should we do some weekly, worldwide news? Yes. Weekly world, we're in news. Crazy.

Freaky. Watch out. Alrighty. All right. What do we have? I got a couple of options for you guys. First option is pigeon race goes horribly wrong when 10,000 pigeons taking place in the race suddenly without any explanation disappear.

Mid competition. What? Yeah. Oh, that's exciting. I heard about this. Really? Crazy. Yeah.

So that's option one. What's the other option? Option two is man deliberately poisons himself with eucalyptus oil to test out whether or not it's poisoned his child and both end up in A&E. Yeah. And that's amazing. Yeah. We don't even need the story.

That's it. The story is on the headlines. That sounds like a real quick one. The only thing to add is an extra thing is you won't see this in the news because it's not been in the news, but that child was my son Ted and that man was me. Oh, no. Yeah.

Come on. Are you kidding me? I love those ones. I love those Shriver unveils. Oh, my God. Okay. Stop weekly whirlwind news. This has to be a new segment.

The Shriver unveil. Yeah. I like this week's unveil. The unveil. Tell us more. What happened? We were downstairs in the morning and we were getting ready for the school run with my two boys.

Fenella went upstairs with our youngest Ted and she disappeared in a different room for one set, came back and Ted had what we thought was an empty bottle of eucalyptus oil that was in the bin that he'd found and it was all over him and we thought he might have drunk it. And you know, it's a highly toxic thing, essential oils. It's really toxic. Like if there's green amber and red, it's the top of red.

So we freaked out. We thought, how do we know if he's drunk it? And I thought the only way to find out if we would have a reaction is if I drink it myself to see. So I quickly tipped it upside down and I poured three big drops into my mouth and swallowed it. And my mouth was on fire. My throat was on fire.

And I was like, okay, I guess Ted hasn't done this because he's not freaking out right now. But my wife is very concerned, as was I. So I called what is the emergency helpline here, 1-1-1, to speak to a doctor. And they said, so do you think your son drank it? And I said, look, I don't think he did because I drank it and it did kind of burn. And the doctor said, excuse me, you did what? And I went, yeah, I just wanted to see if it would burn him.

So anyway, he made me, us both, my son and I go as an emergency to A&E where we had to sit all day. I got referred to the poison unit. And I mean, obviously all the doctors were having a field day laughing at my stupidity for purposefully poisoning myself in order to see what the effect would be. Save your son. Yeah, exactly. Turns out he didn't drink any at all.

So it was me that was the main concern all of a sudden that they had to monitor. And then when I get there, I'm telling them what I did. And they said, okay, listen, so you did it by accident. And I said, no, no, no, I did it on purpose. And they would, you poisoned yourself on purpose. I said, yeah, yeah. So they had to close a door and say, listen, you're going to have to change your wording here because that's self harm.

And I'm going to have to refer you to the self harm. So I was like, oh, okay. So he was like, let's do this again. You did this by accident. And I went, okay, yeah, I did it by accident. He said, you panicked. And I went, yeah, yeah, I panicked. He went, you put some drops in your mouth and then you spat it out.

I went, no, no, I swallowed it. You went, what? Why did you swallow it? I said, because I needed to see whether or not it burns. And he went, oh man. But you did that by accident. I went, no, no, on purpose. And he was saying, stop saying on purpose.

So anyway, I did the full day, a full day in hospital, monitored by the poison unit with the self harm unit on standby because I kept messing up. Jesus. Yeah. That's what a great striped unveil. That's awesome. Didn't realize it was so poisonous.

Eucalyptus oil. I think what the parallel is, it'd be like going, hmm, I think there's some smoke coming from there. It may be the house on fire. Look, what I might do is just start another fire at this end of the house and just see if that smoke matches that smoke. And they will know if the house is on fire and then we can call the fire brigade and tell them that the house is burning

because I started it. But the thing is, is I didn't know if it would burn. So if my son had drunk half a bottle and he wasn't, there was no reaction to be had, that's would have been really worrying. I didn't know how much he had. So they said to me, they were like, okay, it was a stupid move and you won't do that again.

Right? And I said, no, of course I'm going to do it again. I need to, I was like, stop. Yeah. But I just, I was trying, I think I would do it again. I, I needed to know what was going on. I can see your logic, but it's still kind of a logical. Yeah.

It's certainly something that I would not do. I have too much self-preservation going on. If I saw that my son had possibly poisoned himself, I'd just take him straight to A and E. I would quickly poison myself as well on the way there. And I mean, the most interesting thing was they discharged me, but the doctor went, do you mind hanging around?

I'm just, no one's ever done this before that I've known of. So I'm just curious to see what happens to you. Yeah. He was just like, you just hang around the hospital. Wait, you're the first person in recorded history. No, I think just in his- Poisoned themselves with eucalyptus oil. We finally got one.

Guys, we've got a dude who's done it. You're never going to guess. There he is. He did it voluntarily on purpose. Is that nothing to eat all day? Just three drops of eucalyptus oil. Imagine if that would kill me. Three drops of eucalyptus oil.

What a way to go. Unfortunately, he took three drops of eucalyptus oil and it was all over in minutes. So yeah, anyway, I'm still alive. Good. Amazing. All right, great. Okay, so back to weekly World Weird News.

Arisi, what's your headline? So this one came out a week or so ago, but we didn't chat about it. And it comes with a cool headline. Massive human head in Chinese well forces scientists to rethink evolution. Wow. Wow.

Like a giant's head. What? We're just looking at a photo. It is a... What? It's hard to tell, isn't it? It's hard to tell. Exactly.

We need to play the reference. We need a bunch of matches. We need it next to another head. Another skull. There's the skull and there's a pin. Oh, wow. It's actually really tiny. So tiny.

Smaller than a viral. I'm putting the pin way back here. See the dance? Oh, that's huge. Well, up against next to Reese's head now. That's a ginormous head, isn't it? So Reese is holding up his iPhone a lot more forward and his head a lot more back.

That's science, isn't it? Yeah. So what have you got? Okay. Well, my one is a local story, a New Zealand story, which is a controversial weight loss device that sparks outrage online. And it's a weight loss device invented

by a New Zealand science team. Yes, I've seen this. Very interesting, this story. You've hidden the glorious extra nugget there for when we go in there. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

It's a hidden nugget. Sorry, you got a gold mine for my story this week. I'm excited. Well, let's end on yours. Let's go into your other story, Dan. Yeah. Okay. So this happened in the UK.

And basically this was a giant pigeon race that was happening. 10,000 prized pigeons were part of this race. And they were released in Petersburg, which is in the eastern bit of England. And they were meant to fly back home to where all of the owners were waiting. So sort of homing pigeon style.

So the race starts, all the pigeons go off, and then just somewhere along the way, they all mysteriously disappear. None of the pigeons come back of these 10,000. And nobody knows where they have gone to. And so there's all these theories. And this has happened a few times in the past in history where suddenly pigeons will just disperse.

So Richard Sayers said that 300 birds were missing from his village alone in North Yorkshire. He said, we've seen one of the very worst ever racing days in our history. And what they think is that the pigeons have been disorientated by something like a massive solar flare. Or a UAP. UAP.

They could all be on the sticky-taped bit of a plane somewhere. Yes. They're all stuck. There's another option. Racing pigeons. Turns out racing pigeons fly at about 1,000 foot. So that's good. Take that off.

Yeah. Go out and change the tape. Get Brian to change the tape now. It's full of birds. Bring all those birds in. Okay. How long was the piece of spider web that the pigeons were flying on? I think a lot of the birds did return,

but I think about 10,000 of them didn't. So yeah, so they're still trying to find where they've gone. And I think some of them are slowly getting found because they've all got little tags on their legs and so on where people can say, you know, this belongs to someone who reported it. But yeah, it's just a mysterious thing that we don't know what happened.

Was it a solar flare? Was it something else? Definitely something, just a moment, scattered them and made them not follow their way home. Right. So here's my question. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, they all took off from the same place, right?

Yeah. Did they? Yeah. And then the idea is they all fly to another place. Yes. And it's a pigeon race, basically, isn't it? Yeah. I don't know that much about homing pigeons,

despite the fact my dad used to race them. Yeah. But my question is, like, once they all head off and then, you know, and the people are at the start, starting gates or whatever, and go on, go, go pigeons, off you go, you know, whatever they say. Tell me all. Fly, my prettys.

And then once they all, as a group, as a flock, if you will, start to move off and get, and go out of sight, how do we know what's happened to them? That's right. I think they just expect, then, at the other end, to have them coming in. Exactly. I mean, there might be midpoint people positioned,

if they know the route that they're going to take, that it might be people, like, reporting on walkie-talkies or telephones or whatever, saying, OK, we can see that they've reached this place, and they're still in a big... I actually don't know how that works, whether or not they just wait there. But to them, this is a huge mystery,

and this is people who do this for a living, and they still have no idea. Well, this is what they said. They said, we believe it may have something to do with the solar wind activity, which can distort the Earth's magnetic field. And so, if that had happened, they all, maybe, all went as a huge group somewhere.

You know, you might have been in a park where, occasionally, there's a normal one or two pigeons, and suddenly, 10,000 descended on it. We don't know if they're all in a clump group or if they're dispersed. Yeah, right. There'll be some seaside village somewhere with some little small kid

with, like, a bag of the crumbs of hot chips trying to decide which birds to throw the chips to, the 10,000 pigeons standing there going, me, choose me. No, I've got a sore leg. Look, ah, like... Oh, that'd be terrifying. Also, and I heard about this article,

some homing pigeons can be worth up to half a million dollars. Really? Yeah. Because, like, there's a lot of money to be made in the races of them, I guess. It's just no different to horse races and the like. And so, if you've got these pigeons

that are worth that kind of money and they just go missing... Could they be all scooped up by a net? You know, because someone might be, like, I'm gonna make a lot of money off these. These are world-class racing homing pigeons. If I just scoop them all up and take them away. That's an awesome idea, yeah. It could simply be somebody

trying to finally capture the sky serpents. Yeah. And they accidentally... Get 10,000 pigeons. Get 10,000 pigeons. Moving on to the sky serpents and the UAPs and the magnetic anomaly that could be the cause of this, could they have opened up a gateway to another dimension

and be taken through, because that's what the negative magnetic anomalies tend to do. But that's when we see paranormal activity, we see cryptids come through, ghosts, et cetera, et cetera, whatever, UFOs. So I think that could be an answer. But you are saying some of them have returned

or made it to the end, did that? Yeah, I think probably some did. It doesn't quite say in the article, but what they're saying is they think as many as 10,000 are still lost. So we're definitely talking about that ginormous number missing. I mean, that's such a big number.

Yeah. Can I just say, though, like 10,000 pigeons all being released at once for a race, that is a lot of pigeons. They're like, how big are the cages full of pigeons? How on earth do you even have little numbers? But you think the first pigeon's got a massive advantage because they've got a little tag that has number one on it.

Yeah. Poor last pigeon's got a tag this long on it. It seems like it's saying 9,998. Yeah, it's saying there's a big number to prove. And the winner is 9,998. Tim and number seven were the only two that turned up at the finish line. So well done, you two.

Good, good. Now, the rest of them, unfortunately, disappeared. Oh, no, come on. Yep, I'm sorry. Guys, they just, we don't know what happened to them. Oh, but what about all my ones? How many did you have? Oh, I had 300.

Yeah, they're gone, mate. Like I said, the only two that came through were number seven and 9,998. Oh, that's mine. Oh, well done. He's a good one. Thank you. Oh, he was released very late too,

being that big number. Yeah, well, he's done exceptionally well. Got right up to number seven and, yeah, ended up actually surviving. There's your ribbons. George, how many birds did you have? I actually had 7,000. Did none of mine make it?

No, I had 7,000, I bought 7,000 birds to this bloody thing. I've been training them for years. 7,000? Yeah, well, I didn't say, there was no limit on the, on how many you could compete with. I had 7,000.

I'm so sorry, George. They've all gone. Oh, well, there's a fucking waste of time in it. Eight years of my life. How big was your Avery, George? It was huge. You've been to the zoo. You know, where you go in the double doors.

Yeah, I've got one of those. Massive. It was 7,000 birds in there. But all gone. Now, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, guys. What am I going to do with this giant Avery now? It's massive Avery.

I've got, well, you've got, you've put more in there. No, I've got, I've lost interest. I've got to be honest with you. I've lost interest in birds now. While I'm here, I'm going to put, I'm going to list giant Avery for sale.

If you don't mind, if you could just let some of your other racing types know about that. Here's my number. All right, mate. You're going to have a chat to Gordon. He's got seven birds. He may be interested.

Oh, man. I mean, do you homing pigeons even, because presumably they fly home. I wonder if I've got this bit of it right, where I'm saying there's like an end ribbon kind of moment. Oh, hang on. This is one of the issues.

You're talking about homing pigeons. I bought disappearing pigeons. I got the wrong. I've just looked at the label now. Yeah. They're disappearing ones. Jesus. You got those magician ones.

The one that gets squished in a bag. I bought disappearing ducks. Well, you know what's happened, don't you? I've disappeared. That's amazing. Okay. Well, we're going to have to update on that story once we find out what happened to them.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Mysterious. I love it. Let's talk about this big head. It's the reason it's big head. Yeah. So discovery of a huge fossilized skull

that was wrapped up and hidden in a Chinese well nearly 90 years ago. It's apparently forced scientists now to rewrite the story of human evolution. This comes from the Guardian. Analysis of the remains has revealed a new branch of the human family tree that points to a previously unknown sister group

more closely related to modern humans than Neanderthals. The extraordinary fossil has been named a new human species, Homo Longhi, or Dragon Man by Chinese researchers. Although other experts are more cautious about the designation. Okay. And there's a quote here.

I think this is one of the most important finds of the past 50 years. And I lost pigeons the other day. Oh, that's interesting. It says Professor Chris Stringer, research leader at the National History Museum in London. Oh, yeah. It's a wonderfully preserved fossil.

Do you know this guy? Yeah, I do, actually. Yeah. I think I've met him. What? He's involved in a lot of fascinating stuff. Did you say, Rhys, that he's saying it could be a new species or is he a skeptic?

No, he believes it's one of the most important finds of the past 50 years. So he's on board with this. Wow. Now, there's an interesting back story for the skull. It was originally found in 1933 by Chinese laborers building a bridge over the Songhua River in Harbin in China's northernmost province during the Japanese occupation.

And to keep the skull from falling into Japanese hands, it was wrapped and hidden in an abandoned well resurfacing in 2018 after the man who hid it told his grandson about it shortly before he died. So that's a cool story. Yeah. He's like, just before he dies, I'm going to tell you about this giant skull of hidden in a well.

Have you? Yeah. Go and find it. Big skull? Yeah, it's in a well. I hid it there. I don't want the Japanese to get it. When did you hide that?

Oh, bloody years ago. Absolutely a long time ago. But it'll still be in there. So they found it and he was right. You'll be like, Grandad, we've been drinking from that well for the last two generations. You always thought it tasted a little bit, you know, musty. It'll be the dragon skull.

It's 23 centimeters long, in case you guys want to know the actual size of it, and 15 centimeters wide, which is substantially longer and larger than a modern human's skull. OK. And it's got ample room, 1,420 millilitres for a modern human brain. It's got a thick brow ridge.

The face has large square eye sockets. It's like a car salesman here. It's got ample room. If you guys are interested, it's got amazing room, enough room for a big brain and modern brain. It's got thick brow ridge. You've been to that sort of thing? Yeah.

And you can choose what color you want it. Do you do sort of like aged bone? It is. Yeah. It's guaranteed aged bone. Wow. Thank you. Also, the skull, they believe, is used to belong to a man.

Candy. They reckon he was about 50 years old, and he would have been an impressive physical specimen. Obviously, he must have been a huge dude. His wide, bulbous nose allowed him to breathe huge volumes of air, indicating a high-energy lifestyle. This guy sounds like me. Hang on.

And the sheer size of it would have helped him withstand brutally cold winters in the region. He was heavily built and possibly a wonderful physical comedian for the time. It's amazing what they can tell from a bone sample, isn't it? It's so amazing. Wow. Can they tell if he liked to party?

They think he probably did, because the skull, he's smiling. The skull is smiling. Smiling skull. But you showed us the photo. He's missing his bottom jaw. The jaw. How do we know he's smiling? Really?

Just by that, you can kind of tell there's a smile there. It's in his eyes, isn't it? You can see it in his eyes. Yeah, that's exactly it. Happy eyes. See it in the sockets, yeah. So how tall, if they've got the size of the skull, how tall do they think he was?

Well, they say it's hard to estimate the height, but the massive head should match a height higher than the average of modern humans. He should be, it looks like it could be around the seven foot mark. They do believe it's a possibility that it could be Dennis Oven. Dennis Oven.

It's Dennis. Dennis Oven. They've been looking for Dennis for ages. What's this article? Why don't they just say that at the top? We think we've found Dennis Oven. There's so many presumptions here. He's having a smile, we could tell,

despite missing half his head. His name's Dennis Oven. I don't know about these scientists. Yeah, they didn't even do any tests, did they? They just looked at it and went, oh, that's Dennis, isn't it? That's clearly Dennis. Look at his smiling eyes.

I mean, Dennis always. He was a happy chap, Dennis. He had a big head, Dennis, and he always liked to joke, and you could always see it in his eyes. Yeah. Where is this again, China? Yeah.

Yeah, classic Chinese name, Dennis Oven. So they think it's Dennis Oven, a mysterious group of extinct humans. I may be saying that Dennis Oven bit wrong. It could be Dennis Oven. No, Dennis Oven's way better. No, that's right. By the way, I've found, just now,

a man called Dennis Oven. He's an English dart player. He's retired now, but his nickname is The Heat. His constant second round exits in numerous televised tournaments has led him to be called The Nearly Man. So he's The Nearly Man. Well, The Nearly Man is very similar to Neanderthal Man.

Exactly. Is he quite smiley? Any photos of him there? Is he quite a smiley chap with big eyes? Let me see. I'll try and find if he's the descendant. We've found your great-granddad, Dennis. Oh, where is he?

Oh, he was in a well in China, turns out. Oh, the cheeky bugger. I've got photos. He's very smiley. Is he? Yeah, he looks very tall as well. He looks quite giant. There you go, Mr. Nearly Man.

Nearly human. Oh, man. We've sussed it. Can you call the scientist? Chris Stringer. The museum? We found the descendant. Yeah, can you call him?

We sorted it out. He lives in Stevenage. Get on to it. OK, I've had enough of this chat now. Let's move on to your piece. OK, well, he is my big attempt at pulling a New Zealand scientist down for inventing a controversial weight loss device.

Now, there's many, many reasons why trying to invent a weight loss device, obviously, is a really important scientific exploit. And so some researchers, some at the University of Otago in Dunedin in New Zealand, have just done a press release about a device that they have invented to try and stop people eating as much.

And that device is a little magnetic device that is clamped onto the top and bottom teeth. And the magnetic force stops the people being able to open their mouth to be able to put food in it. Wow. That's crazy. Which, in my head, is exactly the same

as a chastity belt from the ancient times trying to stop women from getting pregnant. It's almost medieval in its design. It's crazy. It's like a weird diet fad. It literally locks your teeth shut. You can't eat. Wow.

Yeah. But you can talk. You can talk. Well, you can kind of talk. You can't. I'd love to catch up with you today, but I've got my diet teeth combiner in. I say, I don't because I was getting hungry

and I was going to go and have dinner lunch today. And then I thought, oh, no. No, they're eating too much. They're eating too much. That's like the diet teeth thing in there. I can't eat anything. And I can't talk to you. You've got to be our leader.

But look how little Reese's lips are moving. That's amazing. This might lead to a giant boom of ventriloquism acts suddenly erupting. Oh, yeah. It's brilliant. Because we'll all be able to do that. Yeah.

So not only can you get a lot of work at your, your haket. Your what side? I can't say peace. Otherwise you can, your haket. Your haket. Your haket. I try to do, so I do ventriloquism on the side

and I don't eat nuts. I've lost a lot of weight. And I don't, I'm during the world and I've got it. Puppet. Just say Puppet. I can't do that. Yeah. I'll just have a drink.

Thank you. Just one, a drink for me and one tonight's puppet. Yeah. Oh, I don't want to drink. Oh, you don't want to drink? No, I don't want to drink. All right. This one is needed.

You shouldn't drink leader. I didn't want to lose more weight. Oh, come on. I don't want to drink. Just do it. Okay. Oh, come on lady. I'm good for you.

And I'll have a double cheeseburger with a side of fatty fries. Okay. Yeah. Oh, you're not going to. Oh, you didn't turn that. Oh, I'm not going to die. You are. Oh, come on.

Hey, I know you're controlling the puppet. You're just going to eat the food for the puppet. And, uh, when the burger, could we also have a food processor? Yeah, that's the thing, I need to actually get the food into a store, so that's okay to do you guys. Well, believe it or not, it's called the Dental Slim Diet Control and it's on the upper and lower back teeth and uses magnetic forces with a unique custom manufactured locking bolts only allows you to open your mouth about two millimetres, restricting them to

a liquid diet, exactly as you just presumed, but it allows mostly free speech and doesn't restrict breathing, which is handy. You can have free speech with it, you can say whatever you like, yeah. Okay, I've got this in there and now I can talk all down on it, and I like, okay, so I'm really into guns, I think everyone should have a gun, and... Hey, shut the sky down. No, I've got free speech there, I've got a free speech, I've got a diet teeth. Did you just put that in your mouth so you can have free speech?

There's a few countries could do with that. So the other thing is like, you can't take it off yourself. Yeah, I don't think you have control over it. I don't think it's something you can turn on and off. It's magnets, right? Yeah. The idea of like voluntary lock draw situation or whatever so that you don't eat is just, it's just, it's so insane.

I do really hope though we see some great TV celebrity endorsements for this product, you know, like a L'Oreal ad where it's like, hi, I'm Jennifer Lopez and I like to not eat for seven weeks in a row, and just it will be so good, g'day, I'm Russell Crowe. And please come and see my new ventriloquism bar show on next week on The Hollywood Board. Yeah, all right, I've got the Intelliqus in there, and I've got a whole range of blenders to show. I'll see you guys. Oh, it's so true.

Oh man. Anyway, so, well, and I shouldn't blame it all on the Kiwis because it is actually also a joint. The Brits. The Brits are involved, right? Yeah, the Brits. So it's between two universities, it's incredible that they got this far. Well, I think it's kind of like a last resort thing, isn't it, whereby just, yeah, shut

the mouth down. Shut the mouth down. Shut it down. I'm sorry. You're still eating, aren't you? Yeah. Well, that's not going to happen anymore, all right, we're closing that up, okay? Oh, God, I put food through my nose.

Well, you can if you want, but it's not going to work out very well for you. Okay. And we're going to need those 10,000 pigeons back, mate. I know you've got them. One blokes. Missing 7,000. 7,000 of them are his. Well, you tell them, you can come and get them.

Yeah. I'd like to call them, but I can't yell there, no. Here, pigeon, pigeon, pigeon. Okay, well, I'm very mindful that Mr. Darby probably needs to go have a little lie down now because it's been a very exhausting hour. Yeah. Do we have any crypto news to relay? I haven't found anything out there.

It's very devoid. We have a very tiny thing to mention. So should we play the sting just so that we're officially in the segment? Yeah, please. Here we go. Attention, all personnel, it's time for this week's cryptid. Help me! And this is a public announcement to anyone who's living near the Loch Ness area of the

UK, which is that Loch Ness, as it currently stands from July 1st when this article came out, so who knows how long this will last. The water in Loch Ness has dropped to the lowest level ever at the moment, making obviously it easier by a number of centimeters to look for Nessie. Wow, now is the time to get in there. Exactly. We should get there now. Well, that's ambitious, but yeah.

Dan, you're the closest. I'm the closest, so should I actually get up there. So Steve Felton, who I'm sure you guys are aware of, the Guinness World Record holder for the longest continuous Nessie hunting attempt. He's been going for years and years since 1991. He's sort of sitting on the bank of Loch Ness looking every day for the monster. Oh, yeah. He said on his Facebook page that he estimates that the lock is currently about two inches

lower than its normal low point. Two inches obviously doesn't sound very much, but actually it is. A lot of logs are being revealed that are stuck in the banks on the side and you do get a bit more. So yeah, now's the time. If you're a Nessie hunter to get out there and take advantage of the smaller Ness, well, the smaller lock rather. Well, and given that it's only about 750 foot deep, every inch counts.

I got a new term for it. Lockless. Oh, that's right. Actually, I've got something here, guys. Have you guys seen the humanoid alien creature with long limbs spotted walking beside the road at night? What? No.

No. Okay. I want to show you this. This footage is from India and it shows a strange looking humanoid figure with very long legs and arms walking across a bridge. He's got quite a spacious head. He has a ridiculously skinny torso, shockingly white pale skin and very long spindly arms and legs.

Guys, I think we've spotted Dennis Oven. He is in India. He's in India now. Wow. So I'm going to show this video for you. So I can't wait to see this. Oh, okay. On the left.

But hang on, there's a whole bunch of traffic just going past it. Like there's motorbikes literally going and there's cars and everything. Oh, no. There's stop now. What is that? Dennis. That is actually terrifying. And that's that.

Hang on, but there's two major questions here. First of all, the camera work is shocking. Like they literally are on a motorbike and they're panning onto this incredibly scary white slender creature walking along, which looks very, very alien. There's very axe files there. And then they stop recording. It's not like the thing runs away or disappears. They just stop.

Why wouldn't you keep recording? Yeah. That's what leads these things to be suspect always with the filming. You can zoom in on that photo there. That is terrifying. Yeah. It's like a slender white naked humanoid slender man. Yeah.

Maybe never this long legs. Yeah. And there were definitely other motorbikes in that swerving around it. And there's a lot of other motorbikes and what have you that stop and noticing it and shining their headlights on it. So that's the other thing on one hand, the camera work lets it down. But the fact that everybody's reacting to it. It's not just one person.

But where's all the other people's cell phone for each other? People would have got their cell phones out. Yeah. It does look like slender man. Yeah. Or an alien of some sort. I think I'm more drawn to the theory that it is retired professional darts player from Stephen Edge, Dennis Owens, because I have.

I feel it's our job to put puzzles together that and look at it from different angles. But I've just discovered that Dennis Owens as well as being known as the nearly man. He is also known to fans as Captain Hobo. Oh. And that is in reference to his unkept appearance. You know, is that Captain Hobo? It could be.

Walk in the streets. Captain Hobo. You know what he's gone and done? What? With the amount of weight loss this chips had. He's got to be hooked up to the diet braces. I just got to go for a little walk. And just show you how much weight I've actually lost.

You know. Are you going to put some clothes on? No, no. It's going to get naked. I don't think they will get a real good idea of how good these diet devices are, you see. Dennis Owens getting paid by the diet teeth of Otago University. The first endorsement. Guy pulls up in his car.

One sound is window. Hey, mate. I've got a giant Avery for sale if you keep. Yeah, I've left the business. I'm not into birds anymore. Hey, George? Is it you, George? Yeah.

I'm out, mate. I've lost 7,000 of them. You broke? Yeah, they're all gone. Oh, no, George. So if you want that Avery, mate, it's all yours. It takes up two blocks. Oh, look at that.

Hey, George. Yeah. How much weight do you think I've lost? Look at this. Yeah, you are looking bloody slender. Hang on a minute. You know who you look like. Don't tell me I don't stand a man.

Yeah. It wasn't for your giant cranium. Oh, my God. All right, I'm going to get out of here, guys. Yeah, you certainly do. You have done very, very well, Mr. Darby. Thank you. Incredible.

The world thanks you for pulling yourself together for a little bit. Yeah. You can go have a little sleepybys now. Good. All right, well, that's it for this week. Bye. Bye, guys.

Bye.