Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Avian Air Force: Pigeons at War

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Here's another previously exclusive subscriber episode we're releasing to the public! Not because of its high quality, but Mike needed to feel included again. Speaking of Mike, in this episode he is here to talk about pigeon war hero, so he does. Jeff is here to talk about Star Wars, and he does. Wes is here to do a Disturbed impression. He does one. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. Just a quick producer's note from me, Mike, real quick. So some observant listeners have realized that this is something of a repeat. This is actually a subscriber-exclusive episode for a long time. And the three of us were kind of stuck. Stuck's the wrong word. But we were in India, not a lot of connection, none of our recording gear, and we realized we needed to put something out.

So we selected this one. We all had a really good time with it. I guess if you like it, this is the kind of content you can expect from our subscriber feed. So either Patreon or the Gris Club, both of those feeds will have exactly the same content, and we never want to change that. But yeah, we just wanted to clue everyone in who might have recognized that this is something they may have heard before. And as always, we try to make good to our subscribers when we do this. We just didn't, again, have time or the equipment, but we're going to be pushing some more content over to our subscriber feeds to make it up to them. We don't like doing

this typically. But yeah, if you're a subscriber, expect something new and fun and cool in its place soon and for the rest of y'all we hope you enjoy it i've been talking too much let's get to the episode let's go disdibed that's a good band that was really good can we start with that yeah i wouldn't have it a podcast uh thank you for that west what's that guy's name Darren something uh he's got like a really nice bald head in big lip piercings when he has like a really he has when he talks he has like a crew Rooner voice.

What makes it nice bald head just like no bumps or anything? It's shiny. I don't, I don't think I would have a very good one. I think I'd probably have like a mole or two. His is like pristine. Who has the shiniest head? Maybe him.

Doc Rivers. Oh, you're right. He's got, he's not even completely bald. MJ. Michael Jordan had a good bald head. He did. Yule Brenner.

Oh, he's famous for having a beautiful bald head. Yeah. We'll be talking about him later on this episode. Oh, perfect. Double Yule. I love that. Me and Mike just went to Seattle to kind of scope it out, see if we maybe want to move there.

What did you think? It's cool. Too many people. I don't like downtown. Too many people clipping fingernails in your face. Yeah, downtown, there's a lot of pee and poop, which I actually knew there would be, but I think I just had to experience it to be like, I don't really like pee and poop everywhere. Okay.

You know? All right. I thought I might. I think that's fair. Should have had that one nailed down before. But after we spent some time in the city, the city is really cool. I thought like the skyline's pretty. A lot of food.

Cool architecture. Did you like all that gum? The gum. No, I wanted to avoid it and we just stumbled onto it. I was so mad. Yeah, it was not great. But after we spent a couple days in the city and then we went north up to kind of my old stomping grounds when I used to live in Bellingham. Not that far north, but kind of reminded me why that was my favorite part of the country.

It is gorgeous. It's absolutely amazing. Yeah, that coastal rainforest. Yeah. I'd also been looking at a bit nicer places and pitching the idea of the mic that we'd be roommates again. Get some more like milkshake and lasagna content, you know? Got it. Yeah.

And he's like pre-mad at me for maybe getting a pet that he might have to take care of one day. Yeah, I was there for part of that. He was like mad at me, though. I think you guys were looking at a place here in Missoula that had a bunch of land. And Jeff was like, I'd have to get some animals. And Mike's like, I'm out. I'm 100% out. You'll ask me one day to get care of them.

I think I... And I was like, yeah, I probably will one day ask you to. And I'm mad about it. The thing is, I'm always mad. That's my secret. The thing that I've learned... I'm like the Hulk. With me and Jesse, we had the same arrangement kind of that I didn't want to get horse land

because I didn't want to take care of horses. Right. And she was like, I promise all. never make you take care of my horses. Yeah. But now sometimes... You'll have to. Sometimes.

But sometimes it's like the thought of being able to have time to myself is so attractive that I'm like, yes, I will take care of the horses. That's the worth exchange. I will happily do the horses, you know? So I think the same thing would happen to you where if Jeff was like, I'm going to leave for a couple weeks, you'd be like, whatever. You're outdoors with something to do. Yeah.

Here's the problem with that scenario, though. Yeah. I assume you and Jesse, uh, have sex. Right. Jeff and I don't. I don't. I don't get that benefit.

I mean, we could. That's a mutual benefit. I don't think that really comes into play in this. I also like started just looking on Zillow at the most expensive places in Seattle and being like, maybe we could pull this. He's like, it'll only be $16,000 a month. I was surprised by that.

I don't even think we ought not to sleep with each other, Jeff. I think my needs a break from me on. It would introduce a weird dynamic into the podcast. It's been almost a month together. But what's that called with when it's just friends? It's friends with benefits. Yeah, it could just do that. Right.

But then I think we'd each individually need to also sleep with West, so we're all on equal footing. Yeah, that gets a little weird with me. Yeah, I'm out. There we go. Decided. Thanks for making that decision for us. Tooth and Claw, just see all everyone knows. We're not sleeping together.

This is all platonic. forever. Speaking of platonic, Mike, you got an episode for us? I do. Do you think we had any listeners that are like, will, they won't they? Oh, yeah. They're like done listening now. Just straight heroes.

There's got to, so Rule 34, you know, like, if it exists, there's porn of it. Oh, yeah. There's got to be some, like, fan fiction or something of us. Someone don't make that. There's no way that, like, our mom Cindy Larson hasn't had the thought are Jeff and Mike gay together. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a Yeah. Recently is this morning. What's that? Rule 34. Is that what it's

called? Yeah. Everything. Name something. Anything. Uh, JBL speaker. Yeah. That's like, they're shaped perfectly for all kinds of activities. The first thing I looked at. I guess, have you guys ever heard of, um, I think it's called TTD, Time to Dick? Oh, yeah. Which is like when there's a new technology, how long it takes for it to be used for porn. Yeah. Anyway. Not the most standard of measurements.

They don't teach that one in schools. In school. Well, they kind of do. They don't. They don't. We teach each other. That's a weird way to. We don't teach each other.

Okay. So I do have an episode, Jeff. Thanks for asking. So speaking of school, were you guys ever note passers? Do you pass notes in school? Really? Yeah. You got any highlights or stories?

I think I was probably in a generation where that was still like a big deal, you know, because we didn't have phones and stuff when I was in school. I never got in trouble for doing it, but a lot of my classmates did. But yeah, I don't know. I can't remember anything that. I got past a note in Spanish class once from like one of the hot girls in school. And it was like pretty sexual. And I did not know how to respond at all.

Like I was just sitting there. they're giggling. Yeah. Ging just giggling. Oh, that's tough. Because then the teacher sees you giggling. Like, would you like to share with the class? Oh, Jeff, why'd you draw this?

Oh, it was like drawing. Okay, yeah. My favorite note I ever got past, my friend who is an artist, passed me, the most photorealistic picture of a hand flipping me off. Oh, yeah. And I really just, I got a kick out of that one. A teacher never saw it. I should have shown it to her.

Yeah, I can't think of any specifically. Well, the, the animal. I'm covering today would have been real good at passing notes in class. West, do you have any guesses? I do have some guesses, but it's because I have extra context. You can't tell us by animals. Do you know who's good at passing messages is R2D2? You think?

Yeah, he is. Yeah, you just put like a little chip in there. I feel like often the holograph in him and it's really hard to get out. Yeah, but you wouldn't expect. It's a top secret one. Yeah, and plus he crash landed in the desert. That little dude plays it a little too close to the chest sometimes too. He does.

I've been on a bit of a Star Wars kick lately. And there's so many times where he almost dies or like gets blown up or something when he's carrying very important information. Do you think they kind of give the drones, drones, droids too much personality? And then Anakin will just like shut one off and it's just gone. Yeah. It is a little weird when it's just like, oh, this is a character. that we love and they just like put them in a closet for a year yeah Mike I'm guessing pigeons yeah pigeons but wait I had one more question I just because Wes you'll be able to answer this

for me maybe so at the end of the third prequel movie or somewhere along the way C3PO gets his memory erased right that's the sequels right oh that's sequels is it well they do that in the sequels maybe they do it in the prequels I'm just saying that R2D2 and maybe C3PO They know a lot of things that would have been really helpful for, like, Luke to know in the original run. Yeah, that's a good point. Why doesn't know a lot? Yeah, why don't they, like, why doesn't C3PO grab him and say, I don't think he gets his memory.

Your father made me. He gets a droid as his head. Like, your dad literally made me. His mom, well, you don't want to know what happened to his mom. Yeah. Like, avoid him. He's Darth Vader. He's dark.

And we're like, the Jedi are kind of bad, dude. They are. They are. Totally. Your grandma, they just left her as a slave. Right. So messenger pigeons. Before we get into our attack story, I don't want to give people the wrong impression of the animal we're talking about today.

It's a cool animal. I think a lot of people are down on pigeons generally. Pigeons and doves are kind of like seen as a scourge, rats with wings that are often called. I thought you meant down like in a good way. Oh, no, that would have been, I'm not cool enough to say things like that. I'm a little too white. I think they're down on them both ways. I think there is a group of people who are super stoked about.

In fact, we know. Like, there are celebrities who are like super into pigeons. In the early days of Facebook, I started a group called Pigeons or People, too. And it was all just about how we should appreciate pigeons more. But it didn't go very far. They are pretty. I was bored. Is it still there?

I don't. It might be. Yeah. You might be check it out. I hope not. Yeah. Well, anyway, before we got it. into that attack, the pigeon attack. I wanted to talk a little bit about the different roles that

specifically pigeons have played during wartime throughout history and different birds really. So like, you know, canaries, they're used in mines to detect the gases. But they were also employed during World War I for like detecting mustard gas, mustard bombs and stuff in trench warfare. Apparently parrots were placed around and on the Eiffel Tower to detect and warn of approaching enemy aircraft. Interesting. And Siegel. I don't know if, like, I don't know if employed is quite the right term, but sailors used seagulls to kind of monitor the waters for approaching submarines and, like, underwater mine activity. Huh. So it's not, I don't think they, like, trained the seagulls, but they used the seagulls.

Right. Did they give them currency? Not really. Yeah, they weren't employed then. Yeah, I guess that's the wrong word. Conscripted, enslaved, maybe even. I don't, yeah, I think just looking for seagulls. Food is currency in bird world.

Yeah. Seeds. Sure. I think you could. But it's the pigeon who's proven to be the most, at least the most used and useful during times of war for humanity. Tell us why. So during World War I specifically, more than 100,000 carrier pigeons were put to work, sent off with communications tied to their legs. You know, you guys probably know how that works.

And they delivered their men. messages with a 95% accuracy rate, or a success rate. By the time the war ended, 32 carrier pigeons received the Dickin Medal. You know the Dickin Medal. I mean, I know it because you spoiled it right before. I'm sorry. I was just too excited about the Dickin Medal I needed to tell someone. And that's like a little bronze medallion that's awarded to animals, I think specifically

during times of war for a quote, conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving in military conflict. While we were waiting for you to get here, mom and dad just kept asking Mike about the episode he's doing right now. Uh-huh. And kept telling him all the end, everything. I was just like, dude, I need to like listen to this fresh. You could have left the room.

I don't know. No one was making you listen to me. Uh, maybe the most famous messenger pigeon of all was a pigeon named Cherami, which is French for Dear Friend. on October 3rd in 1918, World War I, U.S. Major Charles White Whittlesey. We just don't have the same last names. White Whittlesley? White Whittlesy.

We should have the same last name. It's weird. You just don't hear Wittlese. Your name is Mike Smith. I know. Smith is so, God. Why? Please.

So U.S. Major Charles White Whittlesy found himself trapped behind enemy lines without food or ammunition. Down to just 194 of his original five. 150 troops and with human messengers failing at every attempted communications run, Whittlesey sent out Cherami, who survived being shot through the breast and leg, but made it to her destination where a rescue party was organized to go and ultimately save Whittlesy and his men. Wow. Man, this bird got shot, a pigeon, you know? You think that would be enough to like finish a pigeon. Right.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. I've watched a lot of movies. Vin Diesel does that. Forrest Gump does that. Get shot? Yeah. Get shot and doesn't stop.

Yeah. The guys got stung by something though. He didn't get shot. He got bit. Oh yeah, stung in the butt. Yeah. Or maybe bit. Yeah.

1917, didn't someone, well, one of the guys died. Did the other guy get shot? I forget. Probably. You think he got stabbed? They're just shooting metal balls back then, though, too, probably. They had flying like five miles an hour. Yeah.

Bullets were less affected. It's impressive, but I'm just saying I've seen it before. Sure. No, I get it. Sherriamie is not all that. I think he is. She. Or she, sorry. So, in all,

Sherriamie delivered 12 key misses during the Battle of Verdun and was awarded the French Quas de Guère with Palm. I don't know. That's a weird mix of English and French there. Quad de Guerre with Palm Medal, as well as a gold medal from the organized bodies of American racing pigeon fanciers. I just love giving animals awards. It's the best.

Because they just, like, have no idea what's going on. Like, the horse, when they win the Kentucky Derby's just, like, got, like, flowers and stuff on it, it just has no idea. It doesn't know it just ran a race. Although, I think some people believe they do kind of are competitive, but they're just like, what is happening right now? What was the group that gave them? Why is everyone wearing hats? They gave it a gold medal? The American...

Especially a pigeon. That's a better. Organized bodies of American racing. pigeon fanciers. I hope that's still a group. We should join in if it is. I'm ready. People just like clapping for this bird trying to like flutter out of its cage

as they're giving it like one of the biggest awards. Yeah. It's just dragging its head. Yeah, it's like still like human size metal. That's great. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

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Terms apply. Where were we? So the wounds that Sherriamie sustained from being shot in the breast, leg, and eyeball eventually led to her passing. Who can tell us that? I know. There's, those I just gave like very brief highlights,

but she went through a lot. They're shooting these pigeons with like a tiny gun, like a pigeon gun? Germans. Yeah. Eyeball shot. Yeah.

That should have been enough. Freaking the axis. I don't know if the Allies ever shot her. She's a giant pigeon. I'd like to believe we didn't. Probably did. I don't know.

The wounds she's sustained from being shot in the breast leg and eyeball eventually led to her passing, and she has since been on display at the Smithsonian. So she's got, she's got, Got one leg. I think the medal she was awarded is still kind of like by her and stuff.

Yeah, her taxidermized corpse, I guess. Were the Germans that bad in World War I? Were they just kind of like another, they're just kind of doing their thing and we're doing our thing? I think some, I'm going to say some of them were pretty bad. Okay. Some of us were probably pretty bad. Yeah, sure.

I don't know. War time. I feel like World War II is where they really hit their stride in being very evil, though. Yeah. Okay. That's true. All right. So during the next World War, which was...

World War II? Yeah, you got it. Wordle War II. Oh, Wordle should start like a... You can't just point at me. I wasn't ready. Okay. Wordle War is a free marketing ploy for Wordle out there, I'm just saying.

Another messenger pigeon during World War II named G.I. Joe, which I don't know when G.I. Joe was first started, so it's either like a very cool and creative name or like you didn't try very hard on that. I like it either way. Yeah. Yeah. It's good either way. But G.I. Joe saved a thousand soldiers from friendly fire in World War II, also earning himself the dick and metal. Of course, when he managed to fly 20 miles and 20 minutes, think about that, 20 miles and 20 minutes this bird flew to relay a message to save an entire village from what would have been a catastrophic. That's really fast. Yeah, a mile a minute. What, that's 60 miles an hour?

Right, exactly. 100 kilometers an hour. So it's got some strong wind probably helping him. Maybe, but these birds are pretty quick, it turns out. Who do you think would earn the dick and metal if you guys live together? Are you asking who's, like, the bottom and who's the top? Never mind. I don't know.

I don't want to think about that. Anyway, G.I. Joe flew 20 miles and 20 minutes to relay a message to save an entire village from what would have been a catastrophic, friendly, air strike, just seconds before the bombers took flight. So basically an allied force of military men took a village, but the bombers on an air base kind of far away still thought the Germans were occupying this village. And so they sent the bird and they're like, actually it's us here, don't bomb us. And just seconds before those planes took off the bird, G.I. Joe delivered that message.

That's amazing. That's great. Many stories exist of similar acts of bravery from birds, some telling us. of pigeons. This is crazy. Some of these stories tell of pigeons who, even though they were too injured to still fly, would just like walk across the ground back to their roost.

Really? Like across a battlefield. They just walk. Like shot in the wing and they just walk. Yeah, they'd limp across the ground or something. It's crazy. So, that dick and metal must have been, the birds must have really been into that. Yeah, getting that award. It's a pretty, it's fine. It's like a little bronze medallion.

Bronze? Yeah. Not even like silver or gold. It's like when Anakin falls into lava and gets his legs burned off, and he still crawls out of there. It is kind of like that, yeah. Kind of. He kind of crawls out of there. He crawls out just enough to where he still lights on fire.

Right. I'm going to, here's the... That's a bad example. Here's the pigeon attack, I promised earlier. Are you guys ready? Finally. Do you want me to say what's happening? Oh. He got bombed by a pigeon.

I mean, for a pigeon, I think that's as much as it could do to a person. Yeah. Just full speed flies into a... A bald man. A beefy man. Who isn't... I'm just going to say it.

Not a great bald. No. Yeah. No, no Yule Brunner. No. And just gets nailed in the side of the head by a pigeon. Then he scratches his head quite a bit. He scratches it for like a minute.

Probably in a like a melange of confusion. Well, he actually kind of goes on with his day pretty quickly, too. Yeah. I like that he doesn't try and, like, throw something at the pigeon or run at it or something. He just kind of looks at it and then wanders off. He's got a cool, this guy, not the bird, he's got a cool beard. Yeah, kind of like a Viking beard.

Yeah, that's the pigeon attack. Way to keep a tooth and clap. I tried my hardest to find a way to make that happen. Oh, here's the dick and metal if you guys were curious. Yes, I'm curious. Just one bunk. Oh, that's, I like the colors. Yeah, I like the ribbon.

Yeah. Just like a little, you pin it on a middle. military man's chest kind of metal looking thing. Yeah. You like that, Jeff? So wait, is that a pigeon-specific metal, or can anyone get that? Any animal during time of war. Animal.

So war horse probably... But not humans. Yeah. Not humans. Humans are, they don't qualify. That bear? Wojhtek. Wojtec.

I don't know how you say it. Yeah. Me neither. So you saw that attack. You still like pigeons? Do you like pigeons still, right? I do. Even after that display of violence.

Yeah. I like pigeons quite a bit. What do you call it flock? Yeah. We saw a big flock of them at Pikes Market in Seattle. And they were all calling in sync, like humming kind of in sync. And it was really soothing to me actually. Yeah.

Maybe put in a pigeon. Just like normal city pigeons, rock pigeons. Yeah, rock pigeons. You know, I don't know. I'm not like a bird guy. I think they're rock dogs. We're going to get into a lot of information about them. All right.

But you're right. So I want to get into a little bit about the history of the pigeon. And this is all from an article written by Aurelin Prim, and it was published on Mental Floss. Really interesting article. But it tells the story of how pigeons become what they are the way we know them to be today. Kind of. I'm going to take kind of a roundabout way to tell this story. So when Charles Darwin set out on what would be his revolutionary expedition, he had no idea how important the pigeon was about to become in the formation of his radical new things.

theories, which was, Jeff, what were his theories that are radical? That were from primates, humans or primates. Evolution. Yeah, more or less. Right. Natural selection. Yeah. It's not that radical.

He'd have done like a back job or something. That would be rad. Oh, yeah. Jeff's right. That's the part of the people really were like, whoa. Yeah, that's radical. You said radical, so that way for the big one. Right.

So while he was on the Galapagos Islands, he grew interested in the similarities and the differences that he observed in mocking birds and finches. When Darwin returned home to England, he found a way to test his theories using the pigeon, or more specifically, he used fancy pigeons. That's what they were called, which makes me want a fancy version of every animal out there. Yeah.

We don't have, like, fancy tigers. Fancy grizzly bay. Fancy pigeon basically refers just to, like, any domesticized, if that's a word. Demosicated. Domesticated. Yeah. Fancy earthworm.

Yeah. tie itself in like a little pretty bow. I was thinking too. So by crossbreeding the many species of fancy pigeon Darwin showed that they all arose from just one wild species

the rock dove. Doves and pigeons, same. Same like group, family. Yeah, yeah. Same family. They're not the same thing. They're not the same thing. They're not the same family.

Yeah, but they are, I just kind of find it weird that people don't super get into pigeons, but they're fine with doves. Yeah. It's because doves have this like connotation of being like peace and beautiful and like white and soap. I don't think doves really spread diseases quite like pigeons. Well, we'll get into that too, just a little bit.

But you're right. That is something that does alter the way we perceive pigeons. But long before Darwin went to, I don't know why I put it this way, long before Darwin went to town breeding pigeons. That's how you wrote it. Yeah. It's a weird way to put it. The rock doves of Mesopotamian. Tamia and Sumer flocked to the fields of the people who started settling there, and that's

kind of like, what do they call it, the cradle of human civilization, uh, because these birds, these rock doves found it was really easy to find a bunch of seeds to peck at and eat. So it was kind of like a symbiotic relationship that they were developing because in turn, the humans had a new source of easily obtained protein. They would find these like young, they call them squabs, which are basically like fat hatchlings that were just really plump and full of. nutrients and we're just like an easy source of food for these early settlers to get their hands on. And pigeons actually quickly became the predominant source of bird meat in the Middle East and Europe,

and that would continue for thousands of years. But their domestication led to more than just discovering just a new source of food. People realize that pigeons have a strong homing instinct, are typically peaceful, but will strongly protect their nest when threatened, and are relatively intelligent compared to other birds that they were dealing with. So their simple but inspiring behavior struck a chord with humankind, and they became a significant part of life, especially when humans found a way to breed them to serve as messengers, which was happening as far back as ancient Phoenicia. So like 7 to 800 BC. They became such an important part of human civilization that they're found represented

prominently in all kinds of religions. You know, we have like Noah sending out the dove or whatever, returning with the palm or the olive branch or whatever. You know, they're just, just all over the place in iconography symbology. Somewhere along the way, though, pigeon enthusiasts noticed how pliable... Only examples of a dove? They're kind of...

Like, he's saying... That's the only one I wrote down. Yeah. They exist in other... You're gonna have to trust me. It exists all through things. Here's a dove. Okay, hold on. I'll look it up. But even, like, what Mike was saying is even the one that we constantly

call pigeon is a dove in some places, rock doves. Yeah. So it's kind of, they're kind of like interchangeable in a lot. lot of ways. All right. Yeah. Pigeon religion is a punk band from Arizona.

That's a good, I'm not going to look that up anymore, Jeff. Dove is just like a softer name too. I think it's like pigeon sounds kind of like a little cockney boy is saying it or something. But Dove is like very, it's beautiful sounding. When I think of doves, I think of white, pretty. Chocolate. Oh, yeah. I always think of soap.

I think of the soap before the chocolate. But anyway. I think of the chocolate first. Somewhere along the way, pigeon enthusiasts noticed. how pliable many of their physical traits could be through breeding. So back in the 1500s, Italian natural historian Ulysses-Al-Dravandi documented groups of pigeons bred specifically for their looks that likely existed as far back as the late medieval period. And a 16th century Mughal, M-O-G-U-L?

Mogul. M-O-G-U-L? There's a M-U-G-H-A-L. Oh, I don't know. It's probably a different spelling of what you're thinking. I don't know. Akbar the Great. He had a flock of 10,000 pigeons that would just fall.

follow him everywhere you went. That's cool. Which is pretty sweet. If you could pick like a group of animals to have it your beck and call. It wouldn't be pigeons. It wouldn't be pigeons. But it's kind of an outsider choice. That's the most realistic one.

Right. 10,000 of them, that'd be sweet. That's a lot. Yeah. I would rather have that than like 10,000 dogs. It'd be cool too. The homeless guy in Seattle had that.

He had so many pigeons around it. Lawrence Fishburn and John Wick. Yeah. It'd be cool if he could like raise his arms too and they all take off behind him. Get them all trained in. Riled up. That would be cool. Insync?

Yeah. You could have poop on one thing and just covered in poop. Right. That would be cool. By the early 1900s, fancy pigeons, quote, became a wildly popular and affordable hobby for basically every class of citizen. They'd cost about 10 pence each, which I guess back then was really affordable. I don't know what the conversion rate is.

Inflation. Pence. I don't think they use pence's anymore. Six pence, none the richer. None the richer. Yeah. The more serious breeders found a way to officially compete against each other, and bird shows have been a thing basically long as dog shows have been.

So just make a really pretty bird, see if yours is the prettiest. I think that's, I don't know how else it would work. I bet you they got to, like, step on, you know, they make them step all funny and stuff. Yeah, maybe go through, like, the agility course. Yeah. But you can't fly. No flying allowed, yeah. So in addition to the competitive fancy pigeon scene, the homing pigeon world is just as alive and well, especially in China.

So basically it's the sport of choice for a portion of China's wealthiest citizens. And flocks of the best racers can be valued at around like $100 million. And even just like single individual champion pigeons have sold for over $300,000. That's crazy. That is really great. We're all just looking for ways to spend our money. It's so weird. Like the economies out there.

Yeah. But it's not just China where high profile people, pigeon fans exist. You guys can probably guess at least one, like celebrity pigeon fan, right? Yeah, Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson. That's our guy. Yeah. You know.

I mean, I don't know. It's not our guy. I think Jake Paul might be able to get it, though. Yeah, but Jake Paul has no relation to pigeons as far as I'm aware. Yeah. And that's not, that does not fall within. I'm a Jake Paul guy. Jake Paul does not fall.

All within the purview of the episode. I wonder, that's really interesting to me. He got hospitalized from his flying to the place to train. Who Mike Tyson? It's not a great sign. Yeah, I still just hope. We're hoping. So Mike Tyson, he bred pigeon since he was a boy.

Nicola Tesla, who is known to prefer his pigeon partners to other humans and whose favorite was a white female about whom he once said. I loved that pigeon. I loved her as a man loves a woman and she loved me. So maybe he doesn't understand how men and women love each other. Or he was getting up to some really weird experiments in those hotel rooms. No, not Elon. I could see that.

The actual Tesla guy. Not the guy who just yells at people on Twitter. And pays other people to invent things. Or X, I guess I should say. No, you should say Twitter. Continuing with the quote, that pigeon was the joy of my life. If she needed me, nothing else mattered.

As long as I had her, there was purpose in my life. Reportedly, when this pigeon died, he was inconsolable. And some even kind of blame it like the end of his scientific prime. Maybe it's like a ratatouy situation. Oh, yeah. Like the pigeon had all that ideas. Yeah.

Oh, man. To me it sounds like maybe he was Wharton at pitchy. Yeah, it's weird. He was a little too in it. Yule Brinner. I told you he'd come back. Yul Brinner had a flock of racing pigeons and he would go up in helicopters

and be up there with them and watch them fly around, which is kind of cool. That is cool. Queen Victoria loved him. Pablo Picasso liked them so much that he named his daughter Paloma, which is Spanish for pigeon. Interesting, right?

That's a good name, Paloma. I like that name. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'd like pigeons more if we called them Palomas. Palomas. Maybe, yeah. Charles Darwin, on the other hand, never quite learned to love them, at least maybe not in the same way as Tesla.

But he did care for them very... He never got that special one. No, he never met the right one. You know. I mean, Tesla only loved one. It was not like he loved all pigeons. Exactly. Yeah.

So Darwin never encountered that... pigeon soulmate. Yeah, the pigeon soulmate. But he loved, he bred them and he cared for them because they were like super important to his, the formation of his theories that would later become his manuscript on the origin of species. They're like a good way to show evolution? Yeah. So he, he, his experimentation was just like breeding fancy pigeons to kind of like see how West's

I think like for him, he went, you know, when he went to the Galapagos, he had the like formations of those ideas. Right. But observing something in the wild like that takes a lot of time and you have to capture wild birds and it's a lot. So once he had the ideas, he could go home and then actually do it in like an experiment with pigeons and could speed it up. Right. And it was kind of perfect right time, right place because at that time was kind of like the, I don't know if you can call it a pigeon boom in England, but they were very available, very affordable. He was just, you know, cranking them out. We've talked about this a little bit. It's like human induced evolution where we, can breed specific things into animals and we can do it very quickly. Like look at it side by side of a wolf and a pug.

Exactly. Yeah. Or like the Fox experiment in Russia that we've talked about a bunch of times. Yeah, we can make things happen pretty quick. Or that experiment where you put baking soda in a volcano? Just like that. There's all kinds of experiments out there. Our kids still doing that?

You got to put the food color in it too. Yeah. Red if you're like trying to be accurate. Yeah. You don't have to do red. Black's kind of cool, though, too. Black's cool. I think I did green when I did mine.

I did green, yeah. That's dumb. Yeah. What? I was a dumb little kid. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer, Gina Carrano, and the main event.

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6 p.m. Pacific time. Okay, so if you don't mind, we'll move on to some pigeon facts. Let's do it. You want to just do that real quick? So one thing to get out of the way is that pigeon is actually a pretty and precise word for these birds.

Pigeons and doves are members of the Columba Day family of birds, a group that includes over 300 species. So, like, pigeon is used as a catcher. all, which, you know, call a duck a duck. I don't care, even if it's a Mandarin or a wood. Okay, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with that. No one's challenging you on that. Okay. Well, do you know this? They can find their way back to the nest from 1,300 miles away. That's crazy. You guys probably didn't need me to tell you that, though.

That's pretty wild, though, when you think about it. I needed that. Like, that's here to, like, Mexico pretty much. I know, yeah. So what they would do, so the experiment was, these scientists would put them in an uncovered cage or something, they'd drive them out, they'd even like spin the cage around, you know, like to confuse them a little. Yeah.

They're not confused. They just, they find their way back somehow. And it's not fully understood yet. But like magnetic fields, maybe people are thinking. You can't even find your way to my parents' house still. And we've been here like 80 times. Yeah, that's true. I think I didn't have problems once I was like three streets away, which is,

We're getting better. Jeff had a GPS up, like actively up in Seattle, and he, holy cow. I missed a lot of turns, and my GPS was just going, like, you know when it just goes insane and you're inside a building and it's telling you to do like a million different things, and I was going the right way. Yeah. Eventually it gave up and it was just like, proceed to route. It's like, what does that mean?

We are beyond help. Anyway, so sports fans in ancient Greece are said to have used trained, pigeons to carry the results of ancient Olympics around. And again, we're used as messengers during the wars between Greek city states. Like, just let everyone know that, hey, we won. Yeah. Here's who won the gold medal. Themistocles.

Hey, cool. Genghis Khan also spoke with his allies and enemies through pigeons too. That's not super long time ago, but it's just kind of cool. Gangus Khan? It's like 1,280, which, you know, relative to the ancient Olympics. Yeah. But I'm just saying it's been happening all over for a long time. I guess is what I was trying to illustrate there.

You guys probably don't need me to tell you this one. I'm sure we do. They can be trained to be art critics. Yeah, I knew that. You probably knew that. Okay, so Japanese psychologist Shigeru Watanabe and two colleagues earned an Ig Nobel Prize in 1995 for training pigeons to recognize the paintings of Monet and Picasso

and to distinguish between the two painters. The pigeons were even able to use their knowledge of impressing. And Cubism to identify paintings of other artists in those movements. In 2009, these same guys, I think, ran a similar experiment where they taught his pigeons to, well, they showed these pigeons the art from like third graders, like elementary schoolers. And they taught them which pieces of art got good grades at school and which ones got bad. And eventually these pigeons could kind of determine like which picture would get a good grade and which would get a bad. If we ever get like a review from a pigeon saying I interrupt too much, I'm going to freaking lose it, dude.

That seems unlikely, but I'll keep that in mind. I mean, they're critics, you know. That's true. But for art, like the visual, a visual medium. This is art. We're not making an art. This is, if it is, it's very lowbrow. We just talked about Tesla having sex with a pigeon.

This is not art. Yeah, but where else are you going to get that? Yeah, that's true. So here's something you get. guess probably don't need me to tell you. They can recognize themselves. Not a common thing in animals, right? That's very uncommon.

What can do that besides humans? Apes. I don't know what else. I kind of feel like dogs have figured it out a little bit. I don't know. I know the thing with dogs, yeah, probably. Dogs, the really cool thing about them is they see us as part as their social circle. And there's like no other animal that does that.

But yeah, I don't know. They probably can. You're right. Who knows? Yeah. Probably a dog expert. Yeah. I'm sure some of the dumber dogs don't.

That they, when they see a mirror, they just freak out. Yeah. We got so many mirrors, you kind of got to be like, yeah, okay, that's not a real dog. Yeah. You think so. Like after, like, ten hours. You don't just think another dog lived with them that they only can see when they walk past like one corner of the room. It's like a dog that perfectly blocks them from going forward.

I don't know, dogs, some are smart. Yeah. But none of them are that smart. Yeah. You know, we always say things like, oh, wow, pigs, intelligent creatures. And it's like, why? Because they can smell a mushroom. Right.

Good job, pig. Heard sheep. The truffle. Sheep. Yeah, meanwhile pigeons are art critics. And winning the Dickin medal. Dickin, yeah. Yeah, pigeons are smart.

Right. Relatively. So pigeons are able to identify pictures of themselves. So when they see pictures of themselves, it's not even just like a mirror thing. They're also able to differentiate between photos of different humans.

Weird. Weird, huh? Yeah. So tell me if you guys didn't need me to tell you this. So they're not as prolific a disease spreader as we kind of commonly believe. They do and they can, but it's rarely, the diseases that they carry

are not very transferable to humans. COVID? I did know that. Ever hear that? So you didn't need me to tell you that. I didn't. COVID, I have heard of that. Yeah.

Not from pigeons. Can you rule them out? Yeah. I will. Yeah. Yeah. So despite the social perception as dirty and disease-ridden, pigeons are actually fairly clean,

and there's very little evidence to suggest that they are significant transmitters of diseases, at least to humans. They do nest in their own poo, which I don't think is super normal. From what I gathered for birds to, like, just take dumps in their nest and sit in it. Yeah.

But again, those diseases are very transferable. There's some birds that do that, though. Yeah. I'm not saying it's unheard of it. I could be wrong here, too, but from what I understand, like, with disease transmission, usually when we get a disease from, like, a bird or a bat or some animal that we're, like, pretty distant from, evolutionarily speaking, there has to be an intermediary animal. Tesla.

Yeah, Tesla. Exactly. Tesla can get diseases from pigeons, venereal diseases. But like, for example, like with COVID, they think maybe it originated a bat, but that that bat maybe gave it to like a pig or a pangolin or something like that before a human got it. And so when people are worried about getting a disease directly from an animal like a pigeon, usually that's not possible. There's not, we're not close enough for us to get the zoonotic whatever. Right, exactly. I always kind of liked the idea of pangolin's being involved in, you know, a small, don't.

downfall for humanity. I think they've kind of of damage. I kind of just got on the lab creation thing for Oh, you're a... Really? To me.

Sure. I don't know. Red-pilled. Is that a red pill thing? I don't even know at this point. I can't keep track of it all. Well, I just, we've covered every base now at least.

No one can get too mad at it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We, yeah. Except for the not. Mike, maybe say it's not.

real? I don't, yeah, Fauci, that guy, quack. So they're not native to the United States. It's kind of like a squirrel situation. Of course, they were brought over by settlers for practical purposes, like food and sending messages and stuff, but mostly people just really liked them. And they're like, we got to have these birds with us. So they brought them over.

So wild rock doves, they're the ancestor of our modern day current pigeons. they live on sea cliffs and mountainsides, which is kind of why they're so readily adaptable to living on skyrides, like high skyscrapers and cities and stuff. Yeah. Just because it's like that's what they would be doing on a cliff. It's just like high up somewhere, you know?

Yeah. It's kind of cool. What do you think the birds were like in America before we brought in all of this stuff? Just like a lot more plentiful. Well, that's actually like an interesting one is passenger pigeons. We had flocks of billions of passenger pigeons. In America?

Yeah. Like four native ones? Yeah, like the early settlers would talk about, this was a native species of pigeon to the U.S. And they would talk about flocks of passenger pigeons like so big that they would lot out the sun. And we eliminated them. Western settlers. Oh, really? Just shooting them killed the passenger pigeon and went extinct.

Wow. And it was actually an early lesson in conservation because people thought this was a bird that was endless, like totally infinite. And then they, in a matter of a few decades, eliminated them. Wow. But yeah, I don't know. I don't think, I don't know if pigeons really, I'm not sure I'd have to look into it if they really, like, affected our native bird life that much because they mostly have sit in cities for the most part.

But yeah, I don't know. Just a lot more birds. Well, here's another fact that you guys didn't. Don't do it like that. So pigeons produce fake milk. Milk production is kind of in the wheelhouse of mammals, really, genuine milk. It's a mammal thing, mammalians. but pigeons and doves along with some other species of birds

I don't want to talk about those ones though we're not talking about those birds they can wait their turn they feed their young with something similar it's a whitish liquid filled with nutrients fats antioxidants and healthy proteins called crop milk both male and female pigeons create the milk which is sweet I always kind of wish I had

some milk you know crop milk and they store it in their esophagus temporarily and newly hatched pigeons drink crop milk until they're weaned off after four weeks or so after they're born. You guys know, you've heard about like tumbling, rolling pigeons, tumbling pigeons? They like fly around, they just do flips all over the place. These guys are sweet. Actually, that's one I didn't think I had to tell you guys about.

Turns out I did. Some pigeons developed what scientists think is a strategy for evading predators. So when they're flying around, they'll just tumble. They'll do like a flip or roll over. It's really cool. That's cool. The National Birmingham Roller Club puts on an annual World Cup. A competition where flocks will be sent out and they're doing hell of flips all over the place.

That's cool. And it kind of looks like in, you know, the old game duck hunt when you shoot a duck, they just kind of like fall straight down and start flopping around. It kind of looks like that. Is it more like a Jackie Chan very planned and like looks good or is it more like a Jar Jar Binks just being clumsy and avoiding things? It's a Binks. To my eye at least, I'm sure like to pigeon enthusiasts, they're like, wow, beautiful role form there. But to me, it kind of looks like they have a seizure mid-air, and they're just like flapping around real quick,

and then they start flying again. Either way, it is cool. Jar Jar Jarbings is cool. Jackie Chan is cool. Yeah. Right, they're cool in their own ways. One study suggests that given the right conditions, they're as good at identifying cancer as doctors.

Wes, you could have used this, a pigeon not too long ago with your lump. I'm okay. Yeah. Right. So at the University of California Davis Medical Center, they put 16 pigeons in a room with magnified biopsies of potential breast cancer. If the pigeons correctly identified them as either benign or malignant, they were given a treat. Once trained, the pigeon's average diagnostic accuracy reached an impressive 85%.

But when a flock sourcing approach was taken in which the most common answer among all the subjects was used, it went up to 99%. Wow. Which, you know, like, it sounds impressive, but it's kind of just like, it is impressive. That is impressive. It's really impressive. But it's not like you can have a pigeon in a doctor's office. Like that person has cancer kind of thing. Right.

We have other ways to do that now. Yeah. But that is impressive. It is. That a bird can like say what's malignant and what's not. And they use like novel images. It wasn't just like memorization or whatever that would be called for these birds. They show a new picture and the birds would be able to correctly identify.

10 years of school to like be a, get that job and the pigeons just take your job. Yeah. You go to oncology school. If we can put a. metal on a pigeon. We could put a stethoscope on a pigeon. Yeah.

That's all I'm saying. I've seen that. I don't know where. Really? But I've seen a stethus, like a cartoon or something. Hmm. I'm not going to deny it. Yeah.

It doesn't sound crazy to me. No. I'm going to skip this stuff. That shit's boring as hell. If I skip that, though, that's the end of the episode. Okay. We're doing it. We're skipping it.

Let's go to... Why do you give us a category about Norman McDonald? We just talked about it. Well, we're going to categories right now. And we didn't. We all said our favorite comedian is Norm MacDonald. And then what joke? He asked what joke we liked the best.

I got something fresh. You can make it interesting. I'm just wondering why that's a category. Because I love Norm. We all do. You never talked about it. Why would you ever want to stop talking about Norm? I just thought you'd bring him up in the episode.

First category, what's your favorite Norm McDonald clip on YouTube? He plays a pigeon in something. That's right. Yeah. Mike Tyson's like mystery friends or whatever. Okay. Yeah. That's why, I guess that's probably why I thought of,

this category in the first place. Yeah. There you go. You pointed at me. Did you want me to go? I'd love for you to go. All right. My favorite one is his reading of his man great ads for his podcast or whatever it was.

I wish we could do that sometimes. Yeah. There's a YouTube ad of it or a YouTube video of it. And it's like him reading for man great, which is like a barbecue thing for men. It's his only sponsor. And he just made fun of them relentlessly. It's so fun. though it kills me and it's like a it's a compilation of him reading for them for like a few

different people compilations are great like his oj one it's so funny so that's probably mine okay uh yeah i'm not doing a favorite because i just did that mike a lot story no uh one i just watched that it was funny to me was the comedy central roast of bob sagget oh yeah and he's just like i watch I think he just thinks roasts are stupid in general, and he just couldn't take it seriously, and he bombed on purpose. Right. For like eight minutes.

It was so impressive. People say that he has nothing on his head, but he does. A hat. It was like, he got his jokes from like a 1930s book of jokes that his dad gave him when his dad found out he was a comedian. It was like the most innocent, dumb jokes. Two people were just dying,

and everyone else is just like, Uncomfortably like chuffling it was losing it. Yeah, it's so funny to me. I'm going to go with the Albert Fish story. The guy was a real jerk. Basically sets up to that punchline. It's the best. Can I do a quick honorable mention?

Yeah, I just thought of. For sure. There was like the YouTube awards early in the days of YouTube, and he was one of the hosts of it. And he's interviewing the Lonely Island, which is Andy Sandberg, Yorma, and Akiva. And he asked them a question about like how they got started and they tell the whole story of like how they started the lonely island and everything.

And Norm's like, wow, I wish I had a time machine. And one of them's like, so you could be there when we started? And he's like, no, so I could go back and not ask you that question. And the way he delivers it is so funny. Well, he asked them before, too, if they would like use a time machine to kill Hitler. Yeah. It's just like some award show. Well, and then he's like, he's like, maybe you'd get caught up in his eyes and like start to believe him.

And Jenny Slate's a host And she's like, we need to switch the topic. Unreal. I think at the start of the interview is like, you guys are the lonely island, huh? Well, I call you Andy Sandberg and the two other guys. It's just like so mean. That's so funny. No one, like, Norm was allowed to do, like, say anything.

He was. He's the best. So next category, what's your favorite and your least favorite trophy that they hand out for sports or Oscars or whatever? Anything. Trophies. Or medals. Or medals, yeah. Any kind of award.

Plaques, even if you want. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, go for it. If you're ready. Okay. I picked the Presidential Medal of Freedom because I feel like they just, like, give it to whoever, and they especially give it to themselves a lot. I feel like Barack Obama gave it to Joe Biden,

and Joe Biden will probably, like, give it to Barack Obama. And they, like, gave it to Nancy Pelosi and stuff. And for me, I was looking through the list of people they've given it to, Oran Hatch It just kind of It just seems kind of like a circle jerk Yeah right And there are people that truly like

Are heroes they get it That is amazing But I think it gets diluted What does it look like? It's like it's got all these like spy It's like a star with like a bunch of little Lights coming off Or not lights like spires coming off of it

I don't know how to say it But I think it's diluted And if yeah anyway What's your other least favorite. That's your favorite? Oh, it's got eagles all around it. That's least favorite. That was least favorite. Was I supposed to do a favorite? My favorite's probably the Stanley Cup. Yeah, that's the obvious. It's just cool and it's cool that like only someone that's wanted is allowed to touch it. Yeah. I just really like that. I love that they all get to spend it. They kind of don't follow that one that much.

Well, they used to be that way at least. Yeah. They like, they'll take it out to bars and stuff and everyone will be drinking it. Yeah. It's great. I love it. All right. I kind of just have some that I wanted to talk about. I was hoping they would. I mean, my favorite's the new NBA Clutch Award. Dude, come on. That can't be your answer. Clutch is important, Mike. It's not even real.

My least favorite award ever given out is the Warriors' first championship, and they gave the finals MVP to Andre Igu Dahlia for playing defense on LeBron James, who averaged 35 points a game, and Steph Curry was on the team and won the championship. That's just stupid. Andre is a good defender. The funniest one to me is the first Star Wars, where they like save everyone and they just like give them a medal. Yeah. But Chewy doesn't get one.

And then he like make up for it later, but they shun't have, I don't think. It's a weird little like one of the sequels. They like give them a medal. Yeah. It's just such a funny thing to me. Like they destroyed the Death Star in the very end. They like give them the same medal. kids get at the end of a soccer season.

It's like a little ceremony. Two of them. Like, Chui does, like, how did Chie not earn one? I will say, though,

out of, in all of Star Wars, the yellow jacket that Luke is wearing at that ceremony is my single favorite piece of clothing anyone ever wears in those movies. Yeah. It's like the Michael Jackson,

like thriller jacket, but yellow and cool. It's like something from the 70s that creeped into those movies. Yeah. I also want to, shout myself out. Okay.

Shout myself out. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's... It sounded weird to me. I know. Yeah. I'll have to even ask

Cindy about this afterwards to make sure I have my story right. But like, I was in scouts as a little kid and the older scouts had built a go cart out of wood and like there was this event at this really steep hill and they were all too scared to like go in it

and like they just put me in it. And I was like way too young. And I ended up like winning first place. I have a little trophy for that. Nice. So that's my favorite personal trophy. You have that trophy still? Yeah, I think so.

I just thought of my actual answer. Let's go. So when we were kids, we would play this, we would made up this game called kitchen racquetball where we would just like hit a racket ball on the floor in the kitchen. You get one bounce. And we built a trophy for it. And it was like important whoever was holding the trophy. And Jeff was quite a bit younger.

so he never really got to hold that trophy. It never had, like, his picture on it. So Jeff built his own trophy for PlayStation 2. And it's just like a Dixie Cup with a marble glued on top of it. That's the racquetball one. No, that's the PlayStation 2 one. It's up on the shelf. I can show you that.

Mine's made a wood. That's right. It's like a wooden one. With, like, me and a hot chick. And it's like a picture of Jeff cut in half with, like, a picture of this, like, blonde, hot chick. And it's like. from a magazine. Yeah, and it just says PlayStation 2 winner on it.

It's so good. That's why I had to go through just to get my brothers try to play with me once. Yeah. We still do. It was just like his own metal. Yeah. You weren't fun to play kitchen racquetball with. That reminds me.

Me and my friends used to put on Smash Brothers tournaments and we went and got like an old bowling trophy at a thrift store and hacked off the top. And then we spray painted like a little Mario statue. gold pasted it on top of the trophy. I handed that out to the winner of the tournaments. That was great. I only won at once. I'm pretty good at that game, too.

You are good at that game. That tells you the kind of circles I was running in. Yeah. You know, gamers. Yeah, you kill me in that game. Yeah, I kill you, literally. In the game. Yeah.

My least favorite, I think, is the World Cup. Like, the actual trophy. The trophy? The World Cup is, like, the coolest event. Yeah. And it's like, I get as excited for it as just about anything. But the actual trophy, I think, is pretty underway. It's a little small.

It kind of looks like molten and misshapen to me, but I guess I haven't really ever, like, gotten a really close look at it. How would you change it? Make it bigger. Make it a little smoother. How big? Four times bigger. Because it's kind of like, I don't know.

It's like a pitcher size. It'd be cool to have, like, even the Stanley Cup, one guy can hold it up. It's hard. Yeah. It'd be cool to have one that, like, you need the team to be able to lift it up. Have you seen the trophy? Like, you give yourselves her in yes, within the trophy. celebration.

Yeah. You would at least. There's a huge trophy. I think you win like the Abu Dhabi golf tournament or something. And it's like huge. It's like a massive pitcher. There's a picture of Rory McElroy like hoisting it up. He has to lean back, put his weight into it.

I think my favorite might be just because of the novelty, the green jacket. I think that's a really, I like, I just kind of like the idea of being able to wear your trophy, you know? It's a golf tournament for any of you. Me and my buddy, when we played mini golf, we had a captain's hat that whoever won the last game got to have the captain's hat. Yeah. Jeff and I used to do that with the buffalo hat. Yeah.

We got to find that thing again. I think I have it. We should have some kind of trophy for our VR mini golf competitions. Yeah. Or virtual trophy. Yeah. If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt.

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or go to sleep number.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Okay, your favorite pop culture moment involving pigeons, no matter how big or small a part that they play in it. Jeff, you got one? Yeah.

So, wait, go to West because I... I'll go first. West has been going on. Or wait, I haven't. Hold on. Okay. All right. So, I mean, my first one where I really, like, got into pigeon culture, I think and understood it was the wire where, like, the little kids are trying to catch a pigeon and he's explaining how much it's worth and everything.

That was, like, my first... Oh, people, like, use pigeons for, like, money still and stuff. Yeah. Also, just... What's the dude's the leopard guy in one piece? Oh. Lucci. Ro Lucci.

His shoulder pigeon is great. I shouldn't. I should have thought of that one. That one's good. He's got a little top hat on. He's got like a tuxedo. And it talks for him for the first one. Les?

We've already named both of mine. I was going to either do John Wick or my number one is Mike Tyson. There's that meme of him saying now Kith. And it's like him holding the two pigeons close to each other. Mike Tyson memes a good answer. Yeah. But I think when I first saw a video of him with his pigeons, it was very, very endearing to me.

Because I think I grew up in, you know, all of us. Like we grew up in a time where Mike Tyson went from like being kind of this hero to also being like really villainized after the Evander Holyfield thing, which you know. And other things. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He's done some bad things to women. Right. Totally. Put that out. I was getting to that. Yeah. Like, and then he had his like domestic assault and all that. And so I think for me seeing him with the pigeons was kind of this humanizing thing.

Yeah. Even though he's a very complicated. That's why I hope Jake Paul kicks his ass. I bet he's not great to women either. Okay, I'll just let you make that claim. I'm doing the James Bond pigeon that does the double take when the car drives out of the water. I think it's Moon Raker.

It's so funny. James Bond. There's like a close-up of a pigeon that just can't believe what it's saying when the car comes out of the water. That's an all-time. Because it's like what a human would do. but they just have a pigeon doing it. And I think what it was is they had footage of a pigeon turning its head

and they just like reversed and then forwarded the footage again to make it look like it was doing a double take. Or maybe it actually was. They could have got one. They can make them judge art. They can make it do a double take. They need to go back to making those movies a little goofy. I know.

Yeah. Pigeon Lady and Home Alone 2? Pigeon Lady and Homalone 2. forgot about her. I never really liked that movie or that part. Do you know why I don't really care for the Austin Power movies? Why? Austin Powers is because Gold and I already made fun of James Bond

in a way that wasn't just like slapping you across the face with the joke. Golden I was like perfect to me because it was so stupid and it knew it. But Austin Powers is just kind of like lost all the subtlety. I liked Austin Powers. Yeah. At least the first two. I know. But okay.

Favorite. Ace Ventura got a good pigeon. That's true. Yeah. Any more? I'm good. SpongeBob maybe. There was an animated pigeon in a movie.

I want to say it was like Bolt or one of those dog movies that was a funny pigeon I remember. I was like, wow, the pigeon in this is really holding this movie together. Bolt. I can't remember. One of those movies? When's the last time anyone talked about Bolt? I don't know. I don't even know if that's it.

But it was an animated movie, it's a funny pigeon. Okay. Next category. Favorite Important Messenger or Message delivered in Pop Culture? I'll go first. Okay. The first guy to do a mayor. I love it.

That's awesome. It's like my favorite story where like he ran was it 26.2 miles. Four? No, I got it right. Yeah, okay. And to go warn like his city about people who were about to attack and then he died. Yeah. And now everyone's like, I can do that without dying.

Look at me. Our dad. Just funny to me, they chose the exact number someone died. I know. Just like mocking him every time you run America. Ever since. His memory of glass. I did one.

Right. Do you want me to go? Sure. I picked the movie Castaway. So Tom Hanks delivering that final package, the fact that that's kind of what, like, gave him strength and courage and like made him kind of, it was like his goal was to deliver that package. And that's kind of what, like, kept him, you know, sane, I guess. The GPS walkie-talkie. Yeah.

The GPS satellite phone. And I like, I personally liked that they never. really let us know what it they never let us know what it was yeah i was wondering what that could be yeah they would like really throw a wrench in his plans i would have evolved for sure yeah but i do i like that part of that movie it's a great movie yeah uh i'm going with the movie clue i don't know if you guys have seen tim car i've never seen it it's the it's one of my favorite movies but there's a part with the singing telegram person it's like a really high tension moment everyone's wondering who's killing who in this house and someone orders a singing telegram and she starts singing and uh she just

just gets shot immediately and they close the door and like that's the end of it. It's so funny to me. Okay, favorite flip or spin move in honor of the tumbling pigeons? You have a good flip, Jeff? Yeah, I mean, I've done a lot of prequel talk on this one, but it's got to be the OB-1 versus Anakin Starlight Savor fight where Anakin just does 10 somersaults in the air. It gets cut in half.

Barrow rolls more. No, not the one, the one when they're fighting in like the control room. He does like 10 barrel rolls in a row really fast. I also, undisputed. What's the dude's name in that? Oh, shoot, the guy that kicks. Yeah, there's a guy who, like, is an action hero. Like, if you're really into action, you know who he is.

B minus list. Forget it. But he'll, like, do this move where he does a backflip and kicks him in the face while he's back flipping. That's pretty cool. And it never, Scott Atkins. And it never, like, his. hits them that hard, but it's always really cool stuff. He'll do like a quadruple spin kick.

And it's like... I also just want to shout out the touchdown celebrations when people can do a backflip and full pads. I'm always like that. That's cool. Yeah. I've been rewatching the prequels. I'm just thinking about this since you brought them up again.

And it's really unclear what the Jedi's are like capable of doing. Very. Because they'll do stuff like that where they just do like eight barrel rolls in a row. but then those like little plasma doors that cut off quagon from Obi-Wan and then Darth Maul kills him, why didn't he just like shoot through those? Yeah, like sprint super fast like they did at the beginning of the movie. Or like when they try and grab their lightsaber and you see it kind of like move a little and then suddenly it shoots over, it's like, I don't know.

Yeah, I could really use that more effectively throughout the movies. I agree. It's the very start of the prequels too. They just like space jump out of the frame. Right. And it's just like, that, they can't do that. I saw that. They're just like, all of a sudden there's a little blur and they're gone. Why doesn't Anakin do that again?

Why doesn't Luke do that? On Mustafa, when he gets like chopped down by Obi-1 Canobi, just jump like 500 feet in the air. Right. You wouldn't die or get turned into Darth Vader. It's stupid. Yeah. I have been enjoying them. So I got to give a shout out to one of the funniest moments in One Piece up on the arc in SkyPio when Usop does like a front flip face plant into the railing of.

He has it like all planned out and then overcalculates. It's his face. But the one I can't stop thinking about is an old Bengals receiver. His name is Jerome Simpson. I was going to bring this one up. It's so freaking cool. He catches maybe like a 10-yard cross-rout or something from Andy Dalton. And he's about 20 yards away from the end zone.

And he sprints up and does like the craziest front flip over a defender and lands on his feet in the end zone for a touchdown. It's the coolest flip. It's amazing. I'm so glad you said that one. Yeah, it's great. I think I kind of like misunderstood this a little bit. I just picked my favorite like flip that people do. Sure.

And for me, it's boring. My answer's boring. It's just a gainer. And it's probably because I've never been able to do one. But whenever anyone does one in front of me, I'm always like, wow, that looked really cool. And so I just think gainers are really cool. You got me to do a crazy gainer in a time. Yeah.

Just off of that John's root cliff. Uh-huh. What, it's like 30 feet? Yeah, probably. But we're like standing up there and Mike's like, you want to do a gainer? Uh-huh. I was like, I don't know if I can't. He's never done on the floor.

Just win for it. It was great. I did. We did it. Yeah. That's it. You don't have a pop culture gainer? Um, no.

I remember there's like some short church film where the guy's just like training and he's like doing sprints and he just threw a gainer in it. It's like, wow. Yeah. Yeah. The casual gainer. All right, cool. Sure. A pop culture one is what's her,

Carrie Strugg or whatever, the gymnast. Atlanta games? Yeah, she like does the pommel horse or whatever it is and lands on her broken ankle, but still lands perfectly. That's a good one. Yeah. USA wins. That was like, for me, the biggest Olympic moment of my lifetime.

Really? I love it. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah, that's a great pick. I'm glad you thought of that one. That's it for categories.

Do we have listener questions? I got a couple questions here. The first one's from Shauna. Shana says, hey, fellas, I know how much you guys like poop. All right. Sure. No, anymore, not now that was in downtown Seattle. I get out on poop.

Yeah, I would say I've always been pretty. Anti. Neutral. I appreciate it. Sure. Yeah. You love poop so much you won't even let out of your body. You sit on your foot.

Not anymore. You hoard it. You're a poo hoarder. All right. Hey, fellas. I know how much you guys like poop. My husband is conducting a survey on whether you are a looker or no looker when you finish wiping after taking a poop, which are you guys. No looking is insane.

Yeah, of course. Like you guys see how healthy you are and stuff. I check out my poops. And I also, you want to make sure you're clean too. So you've got to check the toilet paper as well. Like people don't look at the toilet paper? I don't know. I imagine not.

That's crazy to me. I don't look at the poo as much as I look at the paper. You have to look at the paper. You have to. That's crazy to not. Unless you have like a bidet. I'm a bidet guy now. You still look.

Yeah. But it's like satisfying because you're like, wow, I'm like I. You can't really need toilet paper. Right. To like dry off. Yeah. But I don't, I don't look at the poo. You don't look at your poop?

I look at the paper. Okay. And sometimes I'll catch like a case. You don't look at your own poop? No. I feel like you have to go out of your way to like avoid looking at your food. Yeah. Well, that's the thing.

I don't like, I don't turn around with the specific intent of looking at the poo. I'm like, is the paper good? We're good. I'll take it a step farther. I like probably look at it for five, ten seconds before I flush it. Whoa. Okay. I'm not judging.

I'm just like. And then I watch it flushed to make sure that. Maybe I'm missing out. No, the poops don't get flush. Sean has husband's getting some interesting data points. All right. This is from Donnie. Hey, guys, now that I'm finally caught up, I know this question hasn't been asked yet.

If you could have the ability to be a star athlete for any sport, which sport would you choose, and who would you play for? I mean, I'm going in Ferrari driver, F1. That's my exact answer, scootaria Ferrari, and I'm F1, and I'm their number, I'm their first driver. I'll be their second, I'll back you. All right, thanks. I think I'd be an ace pitcher on the Padres,

lead them to their first world series. Tommy Johns. I think you only have to play, I guess I'm supposed, supposing that I'm not going to be dealing with injuries, but maybe that's crazy to think. And every pitcher gets Tommy Jones. That's true. It's like an elbow. It's like a pitcher's specific surgery.

Yeah, but they get paid a lot. They play like once a week maybe. It's kind of mess around a lot, I think. And they're not like such huge celebrities that they can't go outside. I feel like even the best pitchers can kind of be anonymous still in public. And that's important to me. Let's see here. All right, this one's from Jasmine.

Jasmine says, hello. Hello, Jasmine. I have a question. I was watching, not walking, naked and afraid, and someone on there said you can eat bear scat, and that it actually contains a lot of vitamins for all the berries that they eat. I tried Googling it, but didn't get a straight answer. I'm super curious.

Do you guys know anything about this? Can you eat animal scat in survival situations? I wouldn't recommend it. You probably could, especially bears. you could probably eat their scat, you're not going to get much out of it. If anything, like everything that has come out of their scat

is stuff that their body didn't want to process. You know, so like all you're getting is like the husks from those berries and like the fiber and stuff. And you're putting, you're making your body then process it too and you might get sick as well. So to me that sounds like terrible advice.

And a lot of the stuff I'm naked and afraid you shouldn't listen to. Just don't eat poop, I would say. You know? Like, I think if you were just a good rule. It's a good rule. Starving and you, like, needed to eat something just for the sensation of eating something,

then maybe like a really berry-heavy bear scat could be okay. It's just like the berries there. Yeah. But yeah, exactly. If there's bear scat with berries in it around, then there's also berries around. So find those berries. Okay. Good question, though.

Yeah. What animal poop would you be most willing to eat for survival? For survival? Don't koalas eat their mom's poo? Yeah, but you get chlamydia. Oh, shoot. From eating poop. Is that how that works?

I don't know. I mean, for survival, I think that's like a, those are kind of two questions. Because for survival, I'd want to eat something that just like passed through. You'd want like a Herbert Wars poop probably, right? That would be like the cleanest and the less gross. But like when you think about when bears are eating tons of salmon, they don't even process all of it. So there's probably still some good nutrition in that. but it would be disgusting poop

I would want to eat deer poop just because it's like bite size Like milk duds Or like panda poop is just like pure bamboo Isn't there a rodent or something Somewhere in Africa they use it in coffee They use it for coffee beans or something In Borneo they were saying they

Is that Borneo? Use something Some poop for coffee I think it was the bird spit Right Maybe right Yeah there's also some animals No the bird spit was for like

glue or some. Oh, yeah. Make bird nest soup out of it. Which animal has the cube poo? Because that might be fun, just novelty-wise. A wombat. Wombat. Yeah.

There you go. They were using poop for coffee. We've talked a lot about pooping these listener questions. All right. What do you think the N... This one's from Liz. What do you guys think the NHL should name its new team in SLC? I've actually thought about this a lot.

What's that I have to do with poo? It doesn't. This is a poo-less question. Obviously, sad they can't just keep... the name coyotes. I think that works well. It's a great name. Yeah.

And we have, Salt Lake has coyotes. Kind of. I've never seen them in the city. I've seen them there. Especially up behind the university. I've seen them. Oh.

Smoking. I would say arches. And I think you put the logo as delicate arch with like a hockey net in the arch. Okay. And it looks like a hockey eagle. I'm going with Yeti. Utah Yeti kind of rolls off the tongue. They'd be a fun mascot.

It's kind of goofy. but it works, snowy themed. I haven't really putting any thought into this, so I don't really know. Maybe crickets. Oh, okay. The Utah crickets. Sure.

That'd be unique. Yeah. I don't hate it. And it feeds into Mormon lore of like the crickets saving them. True. Or not the sequel saving them from the crickets. Yeah. The crickets are the scourge.

Crickets are bad. Yeah. But I like that. Well, they're kind of like back right now, too. Crickets? Like literally, they're called Mormon crickets. Yeah. But they've like, it's more Nevada, but they've kind of taken over some cities.

Yeah. It's crazy. Well, maybe they're a sinning again. It's scary. Yeah. That's a scary team name. Yeah, I like it. There was a list that they released recently with like 20 finalist names.

Yeah. I didn't, none of them really stuck out too hard. Utah blast. There's like swarm. Utah glaciers? There's like all from the owner. Glaciers is bad. Just slow moving.

Utah ice. Yeah, these are all bad. These are stupid. I'm not even going to read it anymore. These are all bad. Okay, I got one more. We may have answered this one before. It's from Elias.

Utah Handcartes. Alias says, hey guys, I'm a member of the tooth and clot Patreon. Thank you. Thank you. And I have a question for you guys. What is all y'all's favorite musicals? Oh, singing in the rain by a country mile. Do we count Disney films as musicals?

I think we can. if that's what you need to go with. Then I would say Jungle Book. Yeah, I would say Lion King in that case. I'm trying to think, though, I actually, it's not my favorite, I don't think, but I really enjoyed the newest Les Mis. Okay. Oh, yeah.

Because I somehow had never, like, heard the story. So I think people who, like, were big Lay Miz fans, didn't love it as much because it's like, yeah, I've heard this already a million times. But for me, it's my first experience with it. So I was like pretty into it. Yeah. Songs are great. I love that musical.

Yeah. Sound of music. Love that one. I like sound of music. I never got too into musicals, but like I always enjoy them when I watch them. Yeah. You know, I do think they're fun. Right.

But if I'm being honest, it would be like one of the Disney cartoons that has a lot of songs in it. Yeah. All right. Okay. That's it for today's patron questions. Good questions. Good questions. We're a little bit behind on patron messages between like Borneo and some other travel.

It's just been hard to keep up. that's mostly on me, so I'm sorry, but we will get to them, we promise. Keep them coming. Yep, keep them coming. We'll help you out, though. We'll help you out, Wes. We'll help you out, Wes. Thanks.

Share the load. Yeah, it's all right. Share the load, Mr. Frodo. It's so easy to say that, too, because you look like Frodo. Like, kind of. And Jeff kind of looks like Sam. Maybe if we need to, I'll just give them my wildlife biology perspective. We don't need that.

Yeah. Just with the. huge caveat that you'll do that regardless because we all have like it comes from tooth and claw right yeah so I could just put hey this is west no you can't do that hey this is west actually you don't need to worry about bears in that area just do whatever you want

eat that eat that bear poo don't worry about it thanks Mike good episode that was fun great I'm glad you like the pigeons I like the part about the pigeons same I will say A quick thing that I've been wanting to say this whole episode, I think pigeons are beautiful. And I think when you get a good look at like even the common rock pigeon, the iridescence and the pretty feathers on their necks and their backs are just amazing.

And then there's some wild species of pigeon that are just unreal pretty. Like look up the Niko Bar pigeon right now. Yeah. But does a beautiful pigeon. More or less beautiful than the average bird? I think they're more, but I think we're so used to them that we see them as less. but I think if you were to, if an alien came down and you put a lineup of birds,

the pigeons not last for them. Like it's somewhere in the middle. I think so too. Yeah. Yeah. The Niko Bar, I saw pictures of those doing research. We should do like how much we like them. Oh, yeah.

Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. Pigeons, I'm, I mean, I'm going to four. Yeah. And I'll rank them 3,3001. Okay. I'm going to go with five.

They are exactly like, if there was ever. animal I am ambivalent towards. It would be pigeon. I learned a lot of really cool stuff about them. I like those tumbling ones, but it's like they are the quintessential they exist animal for me. Yeah. And that's the same reason I'm going to give them like a four as well because I'm totally ambivalent.

They don't register for me when I see him. When I think about them though, like all the stuff they can do, the homing, how beautiful they can be, all of that stuff. Then I'm like, wow, pittins are amazing. But I don't think about that that often. So I'm going to give them a four as well. And like with mine, like a caveat on it is I think only one and two are like animals I kind of dislike. Right.

So like a four is still an animal I like. I like them too, but they're unremarkable when I just see them on a day-to-day basis. For me, a four is like I'm slightly more negative than possible. That makes more sense than my scale. But I could maybe do it. If that were my scale, then they'd be a five. Okay. If that's my scale, yeah, I'd go, well, but then, like, if that's my scale, just no animals are ever going to be below a five, really.

So that doesn't make sense. It's, yeah. Worms. But, like, my skills are going to be different. You don't like, I'm leaving it for. No, that's fine. Yeah. All right.

Thanks, Mike. Sure. We'll see you guys. Thanks, Wes. Thanks, patrons. Jeff. Thank you. Chris Club.

You're welcome. Thanks. Yeah. Everyone. Except for the bad guys. I don't like this. See ya.