Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Black Bear Attack: Bear vs. Bacon

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

The story of Cynthia Dusel-Bacon, who spent her summers working in the wilds of Alaska taking geological samples. But on one fateful day in 1977, she was the one that was sampled; by a relatively small but still insanely powerful black Bear that had decided it wanted to make a meal of her. ~~ 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 Tooth and Claw. On today's episode, Wes shares the horrifying account of a black bear attack that happened in Alaska back in the late 1970s. He was prompted by his friend, mentor, and fellow bear expert Tom Smith to share this story after Wes asked him which attack stuck out in his mind as being particularly terrifying. So yeah, prepare yourselves for that. Besides Tom, the information that Wes goes over in this episode comes directly from a book authored by Larry Coneyote titled Alaska Bear Tale.

So there's a small plug for that book if anyone's interested in some more bear reading material. And one last bit of housekeeping before getting to the rest of the show. Thank you so much for being patient with us as we dealt with all kinds of technical difficulties. We really have been trying our best to make sure we're still getting all of our episodes out on time. And we think we resolved the major kinks and issues, so it should be smooth sailing for us from here on out. But we did see some hiccups concerning our status on Apple podcasts, especially when it came to our ratings and reviews. So we just wanted to use this opportunity to, again, invite anyone who hasn't rated and reviewed our show on Apple Podcasts to do that for us. The more we learn about the system and how the algorithm works, the more we're realizing just how important it is that podcasts get those two things.

So you really would be doing us a massive favor. So thank you in advance for doing that for us. And thanks for listening to our show. All right, that's more than enough talking. Let's get to it. Okay, we are back for another episode of Tooth and Claw. Right. Hey, guys.

Here we are in my apartment again. Nice. Wes's place. Yeah. I like doing it in your apartment because it kind of feels like we're out in the jungle a little bit. I got a lot of plants in here. You got a lot of plants. A lot of, you can kind of conflate the hammering sound like a woodpecker.

Yeah, the hammering sound outside. Yeah. I've got a little nest of birds that's nesting right outside this window. But I found a dead baby on the ground the other day. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, I saw that walking in. Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. Yeah, it's kind of gross.

Yeah, I know I'm kind of hoping. neighbor's dog will just eat it. Nice. We could cover it on our podcast. That attack? Yeah. It's nice here. Spring is sprung.

We're in Salt Lake City, Utah right now. It's nice outside, kind of. Yeah, I like, this is my favorite temperatures. Where would you rank spring? You know what? Spring used to be probably third for me. It used to be summer, fall, spring, winter. Springs climbing for me.

It's between summer and spring now. No, summer's number one. but I love spring because especially late spring you have the entire summer ahead of you and it just feels very hopeful and nice and you just know that it's going to get warm and you can go outside and swim and stuff. Yeah. How about you, Jeff? I don't know.

Spring is probably third or fourth. I know it's cliche to say that you like all the seasons, but I definitely like having all the seasons. Me too. Spring and fall are my favorite temperature-wise. Summer is my favorite for like activities, but then I just think winter's, too beautiful to put it last. Mike? I'm a fall guy. Oh, fall is my favorite. I like autumn.

You like that game too, fall guys. I'm a summer boy. I love the rivers. I love swimming and fishing and hiking and doing all the good summer stuff. Get your summer bottle. Oh, yeah. Ready? My summer bod is, oh, yeah. See, in... It's not. In Montana, summer might be my favorite. It probably would be. But in Utah, there's no way. It's too.

hot. Yeah. Well, we could talk about this all day. All right, let's keep going. So I'm getting my fall body ready to go. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm already prepped on my winter body. Hyperphasia. Iperphasia is what bears do right before the winter. Oh, yeah. They just eat a ton and get really fat. So what made you think about bears? Well, I think we should. I think that's actually a perfect segue. Oh, okay. Yeah, what made you think about that? We're going to talk about bears again today. Hey, hey. And as we've mentioned before on this podcast. A lot of animal attack stories are either bears or sharks. So we're going to have a lot of bear attack stories. We're going to have a lot of shark attack stories. They're all very different

from each other. You know, you always make this little statement before another bear story. Like, it's some kind of thing you have to apologize for. We're all pretty into bears. Okay. I think we're all just happy that we're talking about bears again. I just know we have a lot of listeners that are constantly saying like, do this animal, do this animal. And what I don't want to do is burn through all the animals that only have one story really, and then be stuck on just doing bears and sharks. So we're going to pepper them through, you know? Yeah. No, your logic's infallible.

Okay. As always. All right. So today we are going to talk about a black bear story, which is a rare type of bear attack. It doesn't happen that often. But when it does, they're generally pretty horrific. And this is actually interesting because I, when I was doing my black bear work, I was doing it with Dr. Tom Smith, who is kind of one of the de facto experts on bear attacks.

He's written the papers on bear spray. He's analyzed pretty much every bear attack that's happened in North America. If you were to pick the top two or three biologists in the world, that their specialty is bear attacks, he would be in that list. Wow. And he's my mentor, and I have spent countless hundreds of hours talking to him about bear attacks. Could you get his autograph for me? I could, yeah.

We're close friends. I've talked to him, too. He's really cool. I like Tom a lot. Jeff, every single time I talk to Tom, he asks how you're doing. That's nice.

Every single time. Yeah. Wait until he meets me. Yeah, then it's just going to be mine. I wrote him an email, and I asked him if he had any attacks that are always at the top of his mind,

ones that he kind of thought were particularly interesting or horrific or anything. And he wrote me back and he said, yeah, there's dozens of them. But Cynthia Dussle Bacon is one that I really think about a lot. So that's who we're doing today. Cynthia.

You don't do a dussle bacon. The Tom special. We're doing the Tom special. Thanks. I have a question for you. I'm going to save it till the end, but I'll ask you after the story. Well, thanks for the warning. Yeah.

Appreciate it. Okay. Now I'm not going to be able to think of anything else. I'm worried. Well, I can ask you now. No, it's fine. Okay. Let's wait until you're ready.

Okay. So this attack happened in 1977, in August of 1977. All right. So it's a while ago. So in the summer of 1917. Cynthia Dussle-Bacon was working for Alaska U.S. Geological Survey. From now on, I'm probably just going to say USGS, because that's the acronym for U.S. Geological Survey.

And she was working in the Yukon-Tanana Upland. She was responsible for geology field mapping, and she had been doing that job for several years. And that requires a lot of hiking, a lot of just kind of traipsing around in the wilderness, and they would go out and just take rock samples as they explored these different areas. What state is the Yukonan in? This is the Yukon, Tanana Upland. It stretches from the Yukon and Canada over into Alaska. Got it.

So she's in Alaska south of Fairbanks, Alaska. So some years they had a helicopter that would take them out to these places where they're going to be doing this mapping. And then sometimes they had to hike. There's five different geologists in her crew. And in the summer of 77, they actually had the helicopter. And the helicopter would essentially drop them in the region that they wanted to be that day. They would spend the entire day mapping and surveying, and then the helicopter would pick them up in the afternoon and take them back to camp.

They would do this alone, so Cynthia was pretty comfortable working alone. Bears were pretty common sight for them working in Alaska in the wilderness. The first bear Cynthia ever saw was a black bear, and it was walking on the edge of a mountain field, like a meadow, and she froze, and the bear didn't even notice her and walked along the rim of this meadow and then went into the trees. and she had a couple more experiences like that where she saw bears that didn't even notice her. And then one day she was walking on a trail

and she heard something on the trail. She was like staring at her feet and she heard something on the trail ahead of her and she looked up and there was a young black bear 40 feet away in the trail and it took off running the second it saw her. And she had heard over and over again that black bears are really shy.

They're more afraid of us than we are of them. And this experience really solidified that for her. It was like, oh yeah, this bear immediately took off when it saw me. So on her third field season, she finally spotted a grizzly from the air, and she was in the helicopter. And a lot of the other biologists had seen grizzlies in the field, and she considered herself lucky that she had avoided them. And that's because she had been taught that grizzlies were much more aggressive and much more unpredictable than black bears, which is true. Right.

So an important note on this story, bear spray didn't exist in 1977. It was developed in the 80s. They didn't really have a great deterrent for bears in 77, aside from me. guns and guns aren't a really great deterrent. There's a million gun fanatics out there right now that are going to argue that with me, but it's true. The science is out. Firearms just aren't that great of a way of stopping a bear attack. Even if you're just really proficient with your gun, when you have 600 pounds of grizzly rushing at you, there's a good chance you're going to miss or you're going to injure the bear and piss it off that much more. There's my, again, Tom Smith,

he analyzed just hundreds of bear attacks involving firearms and bear spray. and the rate of injury with firearms was like 50 times higher than it was with bear spray. Oh, wow. It's very common that people that try and shoot a bear that's charging them end up getting attacked. And it's very, very uncommon that you do when you use bear spray. And to clarify, you're not talking about the bears, the rate of injury from the person. Yeah, for the person. And that's, but that is a secondary thing, too, is like, bear spray is so much better because you're not

killing the bear or injuring it. But again, in 77, they'd have bear spray. And Cynthia's field tech or her field crew leaders, who it was, he didn't want to give them guns because he knew that hurting a bear creates a much worse situation than just hoping it doesn't attack you. So they weren't armed when they went out into the wilderness. They really didn't have any kind of deterrent, which is pretty scary. How do you feel about that?

I don't love that, to be honest. In Grizzly country. If it were me, had I been the crew leader, I would give them each a pretty heavy caliber pistol and I would say you only use this when it's impossible that you're going to miss. Well, Justin Beaver didn't exist back then too. Right. So you couldn't play his music like that one guy. Like the guy in Russia. And got it away. Yeah. Uh-huh. That's very true. If it were me, I'd give them pistols and that would be if they were actually being attacked by a bear. It's been shown that a pistol can be really effective because you can actually pull it out and put it up against the bear

and shoot it while it's attacking you. So they're actually better than long guns. for stopping bear attacks. So that's probably what I would have done. I do think it's pretty risky to have people out in the wilderness of Alaska on their own with no kind of deterrent. Yeah, that seems like you're kind of asking for it. Yeah, so they had gone a couple years.

Their main thing that they would do is that they would have walkie-talkies and they would just check in with each other all day. And that act of checking in also makes it so you have to talk and then you're hopefully not going to surprise any bears. But Cynthia was really careful to like clap and yell and do all sorts of talking and make lots of noise while she was out in the wilderness so that you didn't surprise a bear. She knew that surprising a bear was the worst case scenario,

especially a mom with cubs. So they had been doing pretty good. They hadn't had any big incidents. It had been a couple years and they hadn't had any kind of problems. I guess so like just going two years without problems isn't that great of a track cracker. It's like we haven't been attacked by a bear in two years. We're doing great. Yeah, I picture them having one of those signs that says like days since someone's been attacked by a bear. Yeah. Anyway, so in August 1977, August 13th, Cynthia was dropped off in the wilderness by their helicopter pilot, Ed Spencer.

She was covering a really big area that day, and she was on a really rocky ridge about 60 miles southeast of Fairbanks. She placed her walkie-taki in the outside pocket of her backpack, and she said goodbye to Ed and made a plan for a pickup later that day. And then she got to work. Throughout the day, she was making contact with the rest of her crew, with the radio. And she was in pretty good spirits because this area that she had gone, this ridge actually had a trail that had been bulldozed into it.

There's a couple fishing camps nearby and stuff. And so there was a nice little trail for her to walk along. And usually she kind of just had to bushwax. So she was like in a pretty good mood. And then she was pretty comfortable too because it was really rocky terrain with really dense brush. And so it wasn't great bear country. Typically you see black bears in fringes of forests and close to escape terrain, places where they can run away. And then Grizzlies, at least in the lower 48, are going to be on more open terrain.

Black bears are very much a forest animal, though. Anyway, so she's feeling pretty good, and she's thinking it's unlikely she's going to run into any bears. And she's moving down that ridge, taking different rock samples, when suddenly she hears a crashing sound in the brush about 10 feet away down from her on the trail. And a bear stands up out of this brush and starts looking at her. And she immediately sees this bear and she's horrified. And then a sense of relief washes over because she realizes, oh, it's a black bear and it's a pretty small black bear. So she is feeling pretty good, but that sense of relief is misplaced because she didn't know that she had just encountered really the rarest type of black bear. And that's one that decides that people are prey.

So this bear isn't spinning off into the brush. like a bear typically does. And Cynthia starts yelling at it, but it just stays completely motionless and staring back at her. And again, it just had kind of risen out of this brush. It's just like standing up, standing up, looking at her, completely motionless.

Is she still feeling pretty good? I bet her worries starting to increase a little bit when the bear doesn't run off. Not feel quite as good. Yeah. So she starts clapping her hands and she's yelling even more, and this bear's just tracking her with its eyes the whole time. So the bear drops down.

and it now starts to slowly climb the hill towards Cynthia, and it's watching her the entire time. It's very focused, and it's kind of slinking, and she starts to realize, like Jeff just mentioned, that something is pretty wrong now. She knows that this isn't a typical black bear. She had fully expected this bear to go sprinting off into the woods, but now it seems to be stalking her,

and it kind of looks like what a big cat would be doing in this kind of situation, where it's keeping itself kind of close to the ground, it's moving slowly and very deliberately towards her. Is that a bear thing? That sounds like kind of creepy to me. It's not because it's very, very, very rare that bears stalk people. Right. But when they do, it's because they're predatory and they will stock you the way the cat would.

Yeah, that's frightening. So is it down on all fours now? Yeah, it's down on all fours. It's not just walking slowly towards it. Or like on his front two paws if he was doing like a handstand walk. Yeah. That'd be creepy. West.

I don't know. That all must be like too crazy. to like be creepy. Very cute. This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian.

Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. Wes, if you're like seeing a bear in her situation, what's like the best thing you can yell at it? Right. Like, do you want to hurt its feelings? Or do you want to just... Just politely ask it to leave.

I would just, I don't think it really matters. Curse words? I would probably be cursing. Yeah. If it were me. If it's a thing sounds like, I just feel like I'm like, my grandma. Would you yell curse words at it? I would be yelling just whatever came to mind.

I wouldn't be too worried about its feelings. Okay, I'm just like maybe if you yelled something really mean, it would just leave you. If it was a female bear and you asked its age. How much do you weigh? Yeah, how much do you? Exactly. Like, you're not going to survive the winter. You haven't forged enough.

Yeah, very true. Like that. This bear is stalking her. She's yelling. She's waving her arms. She's banging her rock hammer on the cliff. And nothing is deterring the bear. It's getting closer and closer.

And Jeff brings up a good point. Like, what do you do in this situation, even though he was joking about it. I don't think I brought up a good point. But thank you. You at least made me think about what you actually should do. And that's why we have you, Jeff. Black bears aren't, they're usually very shy. They usually do exactly what she would expect it to do, which is run away.

The second it sees that a person is that close. But if you see one that is acting a little predatory or stalking you or whatever, you're in a very, very rare situation. This hardly ever happens. We're going to talk about those stats a little bit later. But what you have to do at that point is convince it that you're not prey. So the number one thing you do to convince that you're not prey is to stand your ground. because prey is going to run from a predator, and that immediately will trigger to chase you down.

They're much faster than you. They're much more powerful than you. It will catch you. So you stand your ground. You make yourself look as big as possible. You wave your arms. You throw rocks at it. You throw sticks at it. You do whatever you can to convince it that it's bitten off more than it can chew. And again, it's very important that we remember this is black bears we're talking about. The situation with grizzly bears is very different. If you want to brush up on that, listen to one of our grizzly episodes. But with Black Bears, the only time they really attack people is when they're predatory. And so playing dead or doing any of that kind of stuff isn't going to help you.

You're just giving an easy meal. You have to fight back with everything you've got. So she starts doing that. She starts yelling and clapping and everything. Probably like want to yell fighting words at it. Yeah, exactly. Like you want a piece of me? Yeah.

You come get it. All right. Sounds like you practiced. Yeah, something like that. Anyway, they can stand to be about three. feet at the shoulder they can be up to seven feet long the average for males is between 150 pounds and 600 pounds so pretty big average in there yeah um that really depends on what area of their range you're in our biggest bear was 350 yeah the biggest in our field where yeah when me and jeff were trapping bears

the biggest one we caught was close to 400 pounds and you said this 350 yeah you said this bear is smaller than average right yeah this is well so this is a female, and their average is about 100 to 200 pounds. Okay. And this one's in that average. But for Alaska, it's pretty small. So they live in 32 states in the U.S. They live in northern Mexico, and they live everywhere in Canada aside from Prince Edward Island. They can be black, they can be brown, they can be cinnamon colored, they can be blonde, they can be white spirit bears in BC. And then there's even, they're called glacier bears. They're kind of a bluish-gray color. Oh, wow. Yeah. So they can be a lot of different colors. They're voracious eaters. They eat pretty much anything they

can. They can eat over 100,000 berries a day just for like an example of how much these guys eat. They really are just constantly thinking about what their next meal is. It's a lot of berries. Yeah, it really is. Blackberries? Yeah. They're amazing climbers. Good joke, Mike. Thanks. Mike took a real long pause and looked around after that. I need a... I need affirmation from you guys. I'm sorry. They're great climbers. They're just really, I mean, they're really good at living and surviving in a forest ecosystem. They have sharp curved claws that they use for climbing.

And then like every bear, they have really big teeth as well. Okay. This bear's coming at Cynthia. She decides to take a step back and get a little higher to stay in the dominant position over this bear so that it's downhill from her. Like Obi-1 against Anakin. Yeah, exactly. He's got the high ground. He can't win.

Yeah, I don't see how the bear has any chance right now. Oh, I'm so glad. use that reference. Anyway, so she takes, as she takes this step, though, she is stepping backwards and that does kind of trigger the bear to think that she's moving away. And so, in my opinion, that triggered a much quicker predatory response. It stops stalking and it actually bolts forward, gets behind her. So now it has the high ground.

Now it has the high ground. Smart. Why doesn't she just get the high ground again? Okay, we're done with the high ground talk. In an instant, Cynthia struck from behind, and she feels herself being thrown through the air. She got struck from behind? Yeah. Why didn't she just turn around once the bear went behind?

It was really quick. Okay. Like, this happened, I mean, when she first saw the bear is only 10 feet away. Okay. So when this bear starts stalking, I'm imagining when it finally gets behind her, it's just a few feet away and kind of, I mean, you've seen how explosively fast they are. So I just don't think she had time to react. Got it. Do you guys need to get more high ground talk out of the way?

No, I think we're good. Cynthia struck from behind. She feels herself being thrown forward through the air. And she lands face first on the ground below with her arms outstretched to the sides. She remembers, unfortunately, some bad advice that she should be playing dead and that'll cause the bear to lose interest in her. And that again, that's true if you're being actually mauled by a grizzly bear. If a grizzly bear is on top of you malling you and you don't have. bear spray, then yeah, your best chance might be to play dead and hope it's a territorial

attack. But if it's a black bear attacking you, it's almost certainly a predatory attack. Playing dead is just giving it an easy meal. So she should be trying to get up, like find a rock to throw at it? She should be fighting back with absolutely everything she has. The one thing she shouldn't be doing is running away or playing dead, the two things. Okay. The one thing. So Jeff is Playing dead ever good with black bears. No. Good. Because if a black bear attacks you, it's trying to eat you.

Almost certainly it's trying to eat you. It's very rare. You should assume that it is. Yep. Do you think it would be easier or harder to play dead when being mauled by a bear? Because I think instinctually you'd kind of lash out. We're going to kind of go into that. And I'm going to kind of go into how it's very not easy to play dead when something is eating you alive.

Right. Like easier than if you're not being attacked by a bear? It'd be harder. You could play dead so easily when you're not being attacked. I don't follow your logic. Think about it this way. You're being mobbed. You're probably basically close to dead anyways.

So you just kind of lean into the role. Just lean into being dead. All right. So she's laying motionless on the ground and she's listening for the sound of this bear moving away because she's thinking, oh, I'm playing dead. It's probably going to leave. And instead, she hears the sound of the bear biting into her shoulder, ripping through muscles and tendons. She screams out in pain, so she's not able to play dead anymore as it starts

biting into her shoulder. And she feels herself get lifted into the air and then shook side to side with the bear still clamped onto her shoulder. So it's ripping through her shoulder as it's shaking her side to side. Oh man. This testifies to the insane power that even a small black bear has. Jeff, you know, like as we've handled bears that we've sedated and stuff, when you grab their forearms or their legs or whatever, you feel their muscles, it feels like you're holding a chunk of steel. They're just built for... They're so powerful.

So it lifted her up by the shoulder? Yeah. That's crazy. So the bear stops shaking her and drops her... Or no, sorry, doesn't drop her, but still has her in her mouth, but stops shaking her. And she's laying there trying to think of a way out of this predicament that she's in. And she knew her flight back to camp wasn't coming for a few hours.

She knew she had to get her radio somehow to let her colleagues know what had happened. into her right shoulder still in the mouth of the bear, but her left arm is free. So she decides to try to reach behind herself and try and get into this outside pocket of her backpack to get to her radio. But immediately as she tries to do this, she realizes that she can't access the pocket, and she has like a little case that's buckled down over her radio, and she can't get that case undone. But this tiny bit of movement causes the bear to realize that she's still alive, and it starts

ripping into her upper right arm. Oh, man. It starts to cause her, this bit of movement makes the bear start to bite into her right arm, and it's ripping off chunks of flesh of her right arm and eating them. Jeez. She's completely conscious of this flesh being torn away from her arm by the teeth and the claws, and she can feel its teeth scraping against her arm bone. And she feels this really numb horror rise inside of her as she realizes,

oh, it's going to eat me alive. That's what's happening here. And the bear is far from done at this point. It starts ripping chunks of flesh from her shoulder and arm and then starts biting her side right underneath her right arm. And it actually eats the lymph glands out from underneath her armpit. Oh, gosh. So those are pretty buried up in there. They do have parts of the body that they really like to eat first.

And they like glands and stuff that has chunks of flesh. So anyways, it's biting into her lymph nodes and her armpits. And then it moves onto her head. And it gets her head in its mouth and she hears a crunching noise that starts to bite into her skull. At this point, she realizes, okay, I'm going to die. This is it. And she knew that the bear isn't eating or biting anything that's going to cause her to die immediately. It hasn't ripped out her throat.

It hasn't bitten her heart or eaten her organs or anything. And so she assumes she's probably going to bleed to death, which is very common in black bear attacks. Awful. That's typically the way that people die because the bear does tend to want to eat the fleshier parts of the person first. And so they'll open up arteries and stuff and you burn to death. And she just kind of like lifeless on the ground. She's still trying to play dead. Oh, okay.

So like the bear doesn't even really care about trying to kill her. Yep. Because it's just like I can just eat her. And it easily overpowered her. Yeah. So she even considers like shaking her head back and forth while it's biting her head, hoping that that like pisses it off and that it like shakes its head back and forth and breaks their neck because she's just thinking.

Like a way to like kill herself faster. I would rather die this way than bleed it. out over time. Suddenly, the bear decides to clamp its jaws down onto her right arm, though, and it drags her down the slope. So my guess what's happening here is that this is a pretty small black bear. It's cohabitating with grizzly bears. I don't know if cohabitains right word there, but it's living in the same habitat as grizzly bears, and it's out in the open right now. It's a tacter on this trail. It probably wants to drag her somewhere where it's not going to run into other bears, and it's going to be able to eat her in general peace and quiet.

They're not top dog. So they're trying to stash their food or eat it somewhere where they're not going to have any competition. So my guess that's what's happening here. The bear starts dragging her away from this trail. It drags her about 20 feet and then stops to rest and it's starting to lick some of this blood that's like gushing out of her wounds. And then it starts dragging her again.

It's dragging her over rocks and brush. And it's stopping frequently to rest and to chew at her arm. With her pack, she weighs like about 150 pounds. She said it was about a 20 to 30 pound pack, and she's like 120, 130 pounds. So that's quite a bit of weight for a smaller black bear to drag. So it has to keep stopping. And finally it grows tired and it drops her and sits down about four feet away. And it's just kind of keeping its eyes on her.

So at that moment, she knows that she has to get to her radio. That's her last chance. The bear's finally stopped for a little bit. Her left arm at this point is completely undamaged. It's been completely focused on her right shoulder, right arm, side, and head. Big mistake by the bear. Yeah, bear really should have taken out that left arm too. Her right head, you said?

Did I say right head? Maybe. I said right shoulder, right arm, side, and head. Oh, yeah, I'm misunderstood. I don't know what I said. We can listen to it. I was just wondering. This is being recorded.

If she had two heads, that would have been a key detail. I thought you would have mentioned before. She doesn't. So she reaches back to try and get at her radio, and she's hoping to God that her radio, is still in her pack because this bear's been dragging her through the thick brush. And she reaches back and she finally has a tiny bit of good luck. The radio's still there and not only is it there, but being dragged through the brush has

caused that little case to flip open so she can easily access it. And she slowly and quietly removes it from the pack. So her right arm is completely numb and useless at this point. So she uses her left hand and she has to turn on the radio, pull out, there's three antennas she pulls out, or there's three segments. pulls out two segments, and then she pushes the button to activate the radio, and she puts it as close to her mouth as possible. And speaking as loudly as she dared, she says, Ed, this is Cynthia. Remember, Ed's the pilot. Ed, this is Cynthia. Come quick. I'm being eaten by a bear. So that's

her message. There's no immediate response. So she says the same message again, come quick, I'm being eaten by a bear. And then started explaining where she was when the bear realizes that she's still alive. So the bear runs at Cynthia and this time it attacks her left arm, the arm that's holding the radio, knocks the radio out of her hand. And she screams again as she feels the teeth and claws ripped through her good arm. Her horror is more intense than ever at this point. She's confident her calls haven't been heard. She's in a ravine. She only got two of the three segments out on the antenna and she hadn't heard static because usually when someone's about to respond to you hear a little bit of static beforehand. So she thinks no one's

hurt her and she really feels herself just sink into her situation and she knows that she's kind of giving up yeah i don't i wouldn't say giving up but she she realizes that she has no options at this she thinks she might have a problem yeah so at this point because of that she had still been kind of holding to this idea of trying to play dead and she lets her natural reactions take over so as the bear starts to eat her and eat her left arm she's screaming now so the bear stops ripping at her arm though and starts sniffing all over her body and she's thinking okay it's just trying to find a new section of me that it's going to eat and that would be like just imagine that if it's already ripped into you in all these different places and then you feel it like sniffing all

over you you're just like man what's next but luckily what happens then is the bear smells her lunch that she had packed in her backpack and it starts eating that oh nice yeah so now she's pissed that she doesn't have lunch i don't think that really crossed her mind But 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 and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com.

Sleep number to a good life sleep. She finally has a little bit of time to think. And during that time, she thinks of her husband that she's only been married to for five months, Charlie. And then she also thinks, I'm going to die in the worst way possible. This is absolutely the worst way to die. I'm only 30 years old. And I'm about to get eaten alive by a bear. So she wants nothing more to be home with her husband.

And that's all she's thinking about when suddenly her thoughts are broken by the sound of a helicopter. So she feels this glimmer of hope. because she hears a helicopter in the distance and it's getting louder. And then she actually hears it circle overhead. And she feels then a crushing despair as that sound gets quieter and quieter and disappears into the distance. So she thinks they hadn't seen her and they'd left her alone with this bear. And the bear didn't get spooked? They hadn't seen her.

The bear had not gone spooked by the helicopter. So after finishing Cynthia's lunch, it starts in on her right armpit again, eating this whole area underneath her armpit. Yeah. As it's starting to eat out that area, the sound of the helicopter returns again. And this time it hovers like right over them. So she's like, okay, for sure this time they've found me. This is finally going to end.

And so she starts kicking her legs up in the air to let them know that she's still alive and that they have to work quickly. But to her horror, the sound disappears once again. Dude. So she feels completely alone. But the helicopter this time was close enough that it scared the bear off. Oh, nice. She's laying there motionless.

She's thinking, okay, I'm going to die still. I'm going to bleed out. And then for a third time, after about 10 minutes of waiting, she hears the helicopter. And relief starts to sweep over this time because the helicopter is very close. She hears that land up on the ridge, and then she hears people calling her name. So Ed and two other geologists, both of them women, had returned and they found Cynthia. And they load her up into the helicopter. Hot in that helicopter.

Did they see her? The helicopter. Did they see her from the air? Or did they just kind of know where she would be? No, Jeff, you're just right on pace with this story. That's just about to tell you guys. So, her calls had not gone unnoticed. Bev, whose Ed's wife, was actually monitoring the radio.

And she had heard her calls and she, like, clearly understood exactly what she said. So she radioed Ed and she let him know what had happened. But when Ed first flew out there, I think he just, like, kind of rushed out there without thinking it through. he was trying to look for and also fly the helicopter at the same time and he realized he couldn't do that. So he returned, got one geologist, went out and they found her, but the area she was in, it was really, there was only one landing spot, and it was pretty far from where she was,

and he wasn't confident that just the two of them could get her all the way back up to the helicopter. So he went back to camp again, got a third person, and then they went and rescued her. So that's why there's the three trips. Okay. First one he didn't find her, second one they found her, third one they got a third person. Luckily, between the second and the third visit, the bear didn't do any more damage. They scared the bear off.

Yeah. So it wasn't that huge of a mistake, but it was also for her, for her mental health, she said it was really, really hard hearing the helicopter keep coming and disobeying. But he didn't like hover right over. And did the lady not respond on the radio just because she probably heard her voice being real quiet and like sneaky and didn't want to like blow the cover? Yeah, I don't totally know why she didn't respond. Maybe she did, but by then the bear had knocked the radio away and she didn't hear the response. I don't know. But, yeah.

So she's feeling this really deep sense of gratitude as they all fly away from the mountain. She knows that her organs were intact, so she knows that she's probably not going to die. But she also is keenly aware that her body is going to be very different than it was before. The bear had completely shredded both of her arms, and it had also essentially scalped her. So she's taken to a nearby army fort where they have a medic, and they give her blood and some morphine, and then she's taken to an army hospital in Fairbanks, and they immediately go into surgery. Almost all of the flesh had been torn from her left forearm and her elbow, and the doctors decided as soon as she got there they're going to have to amputate.

So they took her left arm between the elbow and the shoulder. So they thought they might have a chance to save her right arm, which had also been pretty much shredded, but they grafted a vein from her left thigh and put it into her right arm and they use it as a makeshift artery to try and keep that arm alive and keep it warm and keep blood circulating, which is pretty interesting.

Yeah, that's wild. So four surgeons worked on her for five hours late into the night. At top of trying to save her arm, they had to cut away like tissue that was damaged beyond repair and they cleaned her wounds of tons of sticks and rocks and all sorts of debris.

She stayed at the first of the first of her. Fairbanks hospital through that night, and then she was flown to a hospital in San Francisco the next day, and her husband, Charlie, who also worked for USGS, had been informed of the attack at this point, and he was there at the San Francisco Hospital when she arrived. So for about a week, Cynthia hoped in vain that the vein... I see, now I'm working. It's a terrible joke. But she hoped that that graft was going to work, and the doctors could save her right arm, but a blood clot put an end to that hope. She got a pretty bad blood clot. Her entire arm went cold. There wasn't blood moving through anymore or circulating, and it started to die. So the doctors knew that they were going to have to do

another amputation. But before it is doing that, what they decided to do was wait a little bit and see where the flesh died and where it was still alive so that they could cut at the right spot so that she could because if you have a stump, your mobility for a prosthetic is so much better than if you just are like at the shoulder. And so it's really great if they can save a little bit of your arm. You can do a lot more that way. Unfortunately, though, they didn't have that ability to wait because she started getting an infection.

And she got really sick, got a really high fever. And the doctors knew that the infection was spreading through her body, so they just cut her arm off at the shoulder. So they took her entire right arm. Her whole right side under the arm had been ripped open, where we talked about where the bear had eaten the lymph glands. Yeah. And it was also really susceptible.

to infection, so they would have to cover it with skin grafts. Not amputate it? No, they didn't have to amputate her whole right side. Okay. Before they could do the skin grafts, they had to let it heal a little bit. So she had to stay in the hospital for a couple weeks waiting for that wound to heal. And then once they thought it was ready, they took strips of skin from her upper left thigh, or upper right thigh.

And they laid them, she said they laid them on the wound like rolls of sod. So crazy how they can do stuff like that. Yeah. And then they just had to. keep them clean and open to the air for a few days. And then once they took, she had to wait a bit longer. So she was in the hospital for a total of around six weeks. Wow.

Pretty long time. They did find the bear. And they did kill the bear, which honestly for a predatory bear, it's probably the right move. It's unfortunate, but you just don't know. And it's a really big liability to leave them out there. Yeah. It ended up being 175 pound female. So that is small for Alaska.

It is within their normal range, though, for those species. But it's a bit small for Alaska, and they didn't find much in its stomach, aside from Cynthia and some blueberries. Her lunch? Yeah, so there really wasn't much in there. Yeah, did they find her lunch? I'm sure they did find her lunch, too, yeah. Think she wanted it back. So they do think this bear was probably a little malnourished, and that's likely one of the factors that led to this attack.

There's not really a great explanation for what causes some black bears to the, decide that we're prey. It's just that there's a lot of black bears and a few of them are going to decide. I read somewhere that it's about one in a million that they think decides to be predatory. We have about 750 to 800,000 black bears at any given time. So not even in a single generation of the entire population. Do you expect there to be a predate? Or I guess you would expect there to be one. That's so unlucky. Or like three, fours of one. Yeah, it's very, very rare. Your chances of being murdered by a human are 60,000 times more than being killed by a black bear. What about like eaten by a human? Probably is a lot less. Yeah. Yeah. But being killed by a human, you're 60,000 times

more likely than a black bear. So Cynthia ended up having two artificial arms. Her face and scalp recovered pretty well. And she actually continued to work in the field for USGS through 2014 when she retired. I believe she's still alive. I didn't look that up. So black bears have killed roughly. 70 people since 1900. As I mentioned, your chances of being murdered are much higher than being killed by a black bear. Your chance of being attacked by a grizzly bear are also roughly 11 times higher than being attacked by a black bear. Grizzlies attack about 12 people a year, whereas black bears attack on average like one, and it's about every other year that someone gets killed by a black bear. There are roughly, as I mentioned, about 800,000 black bears in North America. They're only

found in North America. We're talking about American black bears. There's also other types of black bears throughout the world. There's Asiatic black bears. But as far as Ursus Americanaus, North American black bear, there's around 800,000. That's more than double the population of every other bear species combined. Is there a state where you're more likely to be attacked in America? I think the biggest, the majority of black bear fatal attacks have happened in British Columbia and Alaska. As far as like just attacks, they do, there's a number of times

when people are feeding bears or camping with food in their tent or their dogs make a bear really pissed off where a person ends up getting bit but they're not being killed. There was like a 10 year old in Utah 20 years ago, right? They got eaten? Yeah, in 2007.

He was, and he was eaten. That's the only Utah fatality ever. Yeah, the Ives boy. His last name was Ives. But they rarely eat people it's very very rare considering how many of them there are how many people are out recreating in the great outdoors they almost

almost always run from you but we've learned both with our Elena Hansen story and now Cynthia's story that you can't count on them not attacking you there's always the chance better it be prepared yes if you're hiking alone especially

you should just carry bear spray even if you're it's just black bears that you're dealing with it's not that expensive it works really well. And if you can hike with a buddy, that's also going to stop most black bear attacks. Okay, so any questions about this story? It's a pretty crazy one. Yeah. I think about bears all day. Like, I'm constantly thinking about bears. And I typically, when I think about bear attacks, I think about grizzly attacks just because they are so much more common and there's a lot more reasons that they happen. But whenever I do read about a black bear attack, it hits me in a different way.

They're very horrific. Yeah, it seems like. like one of the worst ways to die. Yeah. Just had she, had she not gotten her radio, like she would have just been eaten. Right. It's just going to sit on you and eat you slowly. It's not like a, like a cat where like a mountain lion's going to try and like pierce the back of your skull and sever your vertebrae or like a lion's going to bite your windpipe

and rip out your throat. It's going to take a while. Yeah. It's not. Mike, when we just did your little, your mini episode with animal attacks and movies, I was reminded of this movie Backcountry that has just a gnarly black bear attack in it. And it's very true to form. It's like a black bear breaking into a tent doing a predatory attack.

And it just eats one of these people. And it's very, if you want to watch a movie that has a really horrific bear attack in it, watch that movie. All right. And if you want to hear about some of our other favorites, listen to Mike's Patreon episode. I was mountain biking in Glacier when they closed the going to the sun road. Yeah. And I saw a bear on the side of the road and it just didn't seem to care about me. So I rode past it.

Right. A black bear. And then when I was coming back down, it was still there. Uh-huh. And like, I felt weird just cruising past it because then my back would be to it, you know? So I slowed down and then it went in front of me and just faced off with me for like 20 seconds. Yeah. And I was a little surprised because you expect them to run away.

Yeah, we've seen a lot of black bears, and they just, especially out in the open, they tried to get away. And this one just stared me down. But then I kind of just talked first. I was like, hey, bear. Yeah. And it just, like, stared at me. And then I yelled at it and it ran. But I could tell it was kind of like making its mind up of, like, what it should do.

Yeah. And I had bear spray, so I didn't feel scared. There's a big difference between a bear that's acting predatory and then a bear that's acting habituated. or food conditioned. So a lot of bears in national parks are habituated to people. They know that people are always around. They usually don't mess with them. So they just kind of get used to having people close by.

And you were still within that distance where the bear was like, okay, it's just another person. I'm comfortable with it. But then when you got louder and maybe a little bit closer, it was like, okay, that's enough. And that's a habituated bear. A food-conditioned bear is even more dangerous because that's a bear that's gotten human food,

realizes how calorie dense it is and how much easier it is to get those calories than eating 100,000 berries. And so it will take risks to get it food. It like seeks people almost. Yeah. And that's a bear that's going to take some risks and act like a bear typically doesn't act. But then a predatory black bear is one that's going to be slinking and stealthily following you and trying to like, it's treating you like your prey that it's stalking. Yeah. It's very distinct. And she saw that right before her attack. So my question that I had that I teased at the start. Oh, here we go. You said, can't wait. You said that for bear attacks, black bear attacks are pretty rare. Yeah. So what, how would you rank per, like if you just had one bear of each species? Yeah. Where would you rank

most likely to attack you to least likely to attack you? Of all eight? Or can we just do the North American ones? Of all eight. Okay. I'll admit as far as far as. As far as. I'll admit, as far as as sun bears and spectacled bears go, I don't know a ton. I know that sun bears are famous for being kind of aggressive, but I still don't think they attack many people. And spectacled bears hardly ever do, I believe. But I don't know too much about their behavior to say that. But as far as the other ones go, I would say the one that I would least likely want to stumble upon in this kind of situation. Most likely to attack. Most likely to attack would be a slot bear. Okay. Next most likely would be a grizzly bear, or brown bear. After that, I would probably say Asiatic Black Bear, then a polar bear, then

American Black Bear, then a Panda Bear, and then Spectacled and Sun Bear I'm not totally sure about. Okay. So we're just going to let them off. But yeah, American Black Bear's, it's pretty, it's like very unlikely. There's a ton of people that live in their range, and there's a ton of bears, and it hardly ever happens. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions before we get into our categories? I've got none. Okay. Nope. So we have done Black Bears before on this podcast. So I wanted to mix up our categories a little bit.

Oh. Yeah. It's going to be a real treat. So for our famous bears, what your favorite bear in pop culture is, I'm going to ask you guys about a few animated or CG bears, and I want you to tell me how much you like them or dislike them. Okay. So this is mostly, I'm just going to ask you guys.

I'm not going to get my answers. All right. Like a lightning round? Yeah. Okay. So we're going to start with Yogi Bear, the famous bear from the Hannah-Barbara cartoons. I like Yogi Bear. Me too.

I like that he likes picnics. Piccnic. Piccinic. Piccinics. Yeah. And he likes what? He likes sandwiches a lot, right? That's pretty cool.

I think he just likes whatever. He likes piccanic. That's good. I like Yogi, too. I don't like anything else about that show but Yogi, though. You don't like the little bear? No, not at all. Boo-boo.

Boo-boo. Yeah, I never got too into Yogi Bear. Sorry, I wasn't going to answer. I thought it was weird you weren't going to answer. I guess I can. Yeah. I always liked that it was called Jellystone Park and not Yellowstone Park. That's funny.

That's why I think you like sandwiches. Yogi always seemed a little too cocky to me, though. I never loved Yogi Bear, to be honest. But I didn't dislike Yogi Bear either. Yeah. Okay. Our next one is the Charmin Bears from the commercials. I don't like that.

I'm not into the Charmin Bears. I think I like them. What don't you like about the Charming? It's just a weirdly intimate thing being crossed over with cuteness. And it's just never, I don't like it. I'm with Mike. Those bears like wiping their butts way too much. Yeah.

It's like, that's their favorite thing to do. Yeah. And especially since it involves really little, almost infantile bears. It's just creepy. And they're just stoked. I like it because whenever I see like a new Charmin commercial with the Bears, I'm like, oh, here we go. Yeah, this is going to be weird.

Let's see what happens this time. Okay, fair enough. Ballou the bear. Yeah, I like Blue. You can't not like Blue. Honestly, maybe my all-time favorite animated bear. What kind of bear is he? So technically, Blue's in India, so he'd either be, they have three bears there.

Or they might even have four. So they have Sloth Bears, which is their most common bears. So most likely he's a sloth bear. They have brown bears in Northern India, Grizzly Bears. and then they have Asiatic black bears. And then I think actually sometimes they get, they have one little spot that has sun bears too. Is his, uh,

the color of his fur accurate to what a sloth bear might look like? No, not really. He doesn't really look like any of them. Okay. But chances are he's a sloth bear. Okay. It's pretty cool move when he floats on his back and let's Mowgli hang out on his stomach. Yeah.

So I'm not going to do Winnie the Pooh because every bear episode you guys bring up Winnie the Pooh. There we go. Yeah. So our next one is going to be Little John from the Robin Hood movie. Oh, love. I can't think of it, so I'm in no answer. He's just, he pretty much looks like Ballou.

It's like pretty much the same drawing. It's the same voice actor, yeah. I can think of the picture of him with like the hat, right? He has like a little Robin Hood hat kind of. Yeah. Remember when he... Remember it's like Robin Hood Hood, Little John running through the forest? No.

Udollah. Util Oolah. Remember when he sneaks into Prince John's little tent. and steals the jewels and he smiles and has all like... Ooh, I do kind of remember that. He's just kind of a rascal. Yeah, he's awesome. I'm a big fan.

Okay. A lot of these are Disney animals I'm realizing as I'm reading it. So our next one we're going to do a not Disney one. Muck, who is the bear from Balto, which I didn't realize has a name, but it's a pretty scary bear. Yeah. I really liked that bear. It's probably a grizzly, but it's like dark black.

And they do a really good job with just making that a pretty intimidating scary bear. Yeah, he's just like super mad at him for being dogs, right? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Which is true, bears, don't love dogs. Yeah, I like that, bear. I will say I do too. Scary bear.

Keenai from the movie Brother Bear, an indigenous boy who goes on a quest and turns into a bear to learn some important life lessons after the female bear kills his brother. It's weird that he's the thing I probably remember least about that movie. Really? Yeah, I like him. I like the movie a lot. That's an animated movie that I don't think about that much.

But when I did watch it, I was like, this is a great movie. Yeah, I like it. Okay. Paddington. Paddington Bear. I think this is our last one. That's my number one so far. He's just, all he's got marmalade sandwich in his hat, which is really a cool move.

Most likely a spectacled bear because he's from, well, for sure, a spectacled bear because he's from Peru. And his aunt wears glasses. Yeah. Yeah, probably my favorite on this list, too. Battington 1 and 2, amazing movies. Mike has yet to see him. Sorry. It's all right.

Turn the whole prison culture around. He did. He's wonderful. He's delightful. He's good at cleaning windows. Yeah. He causes problems everywhere he goes, though. Okay.

Our next category is going to be our cage match category, which Mike is going to lead us through. We're switching it up this time, guys. All right. So we brought this up tentatively in our Spider episode, but it ended up not really mattering. but we're going to apply weight classes this time around. So should we do this specific bear since it weighs 175 pounds, or should we do it as a species as a whole? Let's do it as the average, like, female size.

And we'll say pounds. We'll say any animals within 100 over or 100 less. Sure. We're going to put it with the mountain lion. We're going to put it with the chimpanzee. We're going to put it with the... What else do we have? Let's put it with the grizzly bear.

and... Grizzly's too big. Not like the average weight. 200 pounds? For a female. Yeah, a female's like 300, 350. So it's like right on the edge. Well, I'll answer that one.

It loses. Okay. The moose probably weighs way more. Moose is too much. Wolf? Yeah, we'll put it with a wolf. Alligator? Yeah.

Put the alligator in there and we'll put the python in there too. Cool. Okay. So it and the mountain lion are going to have a pretty good fight. I think that one could go either way, but I'd probably put my money on the bear. But it's not a given. I think like six times out of ten, the bear wins that fight. The wolf, I would say about the same thing.

It could go either way. The chimpanzee I'd probably bet on the bear. But again, I don't know. We finally have a really good matchup with this weight class. Huh. It could beat any of them and lose to most any. Yeah. I think it beats the alligator most often if it's not in water.

If it's in water, the alligator wins. The python, I don't think the python would attack a black bear, so I think the black bear would win that one. Is that it? I think we covered them. Yeah. So that's a good fight. We got some good fights.

Yeah. People are going to pay some money. That's a good weight class. People are going to pay some money to see this. Competitive. Everything pretty much. I think, yeah, I think in a lot of these, if I were a betting man, which I am, I'd probably bet on the black bear in most of those fights.

Okay. But I wouldn't be surprised to see it lose some of them, too. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So next we are going to do what would Mike and Jeff do if they were attacked by a predatory black bear? Jeff? Yeah.

So like in this situation, the bear's like standing up, facing off. Bearscray has not been invented yet. Bear spray is not invented. You know, I would probably have my radio ready. Get that ready. Yeah, that's a good point. She had a little bit of time there. Yeah, maybe just try to think of like some worst insults to yell at it.

You know something about its mom. Yeah. You know? Okay. Like your mom's sleeping with other guys. Right. Something like that. Interesting.

Are bears polyamorous? They don't, they don't, they're not monogamous. They don't like return to the same man. And that wouldn't probably hurt her feelings very much then. And actually like, yeah, it's pretty non. With breeding black bears, though, like sometimes a female mate with a bunch of males in a given season. I should say the males will mate with a single female a bunch of times. So they have a lot of different mates.

Yeah. Mike? I might put my arms in my sleeves. It sounded like it was just going for arms. Yeah. So if you're hiding them. It's not a bad idea. So it sounds like playing dead is the worst option.

So I wouldn't do that. You'd play alive? Yeah, I'd play alive. Jumping jacks, I guess. Which sounds like the appropriate strategy is just to be big and to not, to stand your ground almost. Yeah. Is there any strategy involving, You probably don't want to make aggressive movements towards the barrier.

You would, so if you want to approach it aggressively. Okay. Yeah. So that's what I would do. Good. I'd sprint at it. We have a funny story of our dad. So he was fishing with our grandpa in British Columbia, and a black bear, like, went in the river

and was just, like, watching him. And then my dad said it got, like, 10 feet away from him, so he's, like, stops fishing. And my grandpa, like, just looks at my... my dad and is like, why'd you stop fishing? And my dad's like, there's a bear right there. And he was ready to like throw his pole and jump in the river. And my grandpa is like, is that bear bothering you? And he's like, well, yeah, it's staring at me.

And my grandpa just goes, wha! And then the bear just like takes off running. And then he turns to my dad and goes, now keep fishing. Yeah, now keep fishing. Yeah. So I kind of spoiled this category already by telling you guys what you should do. But Mike, what you said is a really good point. I've seen a few videos where people are being followed by black bears that could potentially be predatory.

And they'll be like backing up and every step they take backwards, the bear takes a step towards them. And then whenever they stop, the bear will stop. And I just want to reach in there and like yell at the person, run at the bear. Or throw something at the bear. Show it that you're dominant. And they don't like, they don't like taking risk. and that'll a lot of times be enough to scare off the bear. So you just got to be as aggressive and as dominant as possible.

Interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't be my first instinct is to run towards animals. They know they're not top dogs, so they don't like to have a threat. Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, so our next category is a new one. It's our Animal Olympics category. Hey.

So we're pretty much just saying, if this animal were in the Animal Olympics, which event would it be best at? What do you guys think? I think there's not a lot of animals that could climb a tree faster than it, right? That is an Olympic event? That's what our new, it's an animal Olympic event. But we're just saying, yeah. Yep, that's what I would say too.

Tree climbing. What events would it be a person in the Olympics? Berry eating contest? It would beat them in like the 100 yard dash. Yeah, it'd beat us in. Like Usain Bull, it would be faster. Yeah, they run it. They can get up to like 30 miles per hour.

But probably not like the fourth. 400 that's probably a little too. I think they'd probably beat them in the mile maybe. Yeah, maybe not a mile. Swimming? Is there, are they way better swimmers? They're not as fast as us, but they can probably do it longer. Okay. But you could out swim

if you're a good swimmer, you could out swim a bear. Maybe if we taught one how to shot put, it could shot put further. Yeah, but yeah. So yeah, pretty much any of the running events it would be better at, and then climbing are the things it would be good at. But as far as the animal one,

Like what it's better than other animals at, climbing trees is the one I would give it for large mammals. For its weight category. Okay. It's probably the best. So that's its best skill. Oh, it's better than like a mountain lion you think?

It's right up there. The two of them are pretty pretty matched on that. Cool. Yeah. Okay. So let's do some listener questions. All right. That's me.

Go, Jeff. All right. So from our patrons, this is from Claire. Patrons. It's fine. It's your pet name for our patrons. That's right. Patriots.

Do you all ever have nightmares about an animal from an animated film? Mine is the Harpy Solanio? Oh, man. The Harpy? Harpy's on. Mine is the Harpy, yeah. Saleno. I don't know.

Okay, the Harpy Salernio. From the last unicorn. When I was a small child, my parents and brothers told me I couldn't go outside a alone or she would scoop me up. I still fear her. Yeah, Last Unicorn's a nightmareish movie. It's really good, but it's got a lot of scary creatures in it. I don't.

I don't have any nightmares from animated movies. Do you guys? Not animated, but I do remember distinctly having a recurring nightmare of the scene in the never-ending story. Oh. The horse stuck in the mire. I don't know. It was just so sad and so scary to think about an animal that was so helpless.

It's amazing to me that you had feelings for a horse I know I have animal attack nightmares all the time I probably have a bear attack dream a couple times a month but I kind of always like them I'm kind of always excited Yeah I don't really get attacked dreams

Maybe a rattlesnake but not Okay And then she also says I live in the high desert area It's actually where Tremors was filmed In the eastern Cierras Hey, cool. One day I was driving and I saw a big, bushy black tail go behind some bushes. I stopped to try to see what animal it belonged to, but the vegetation was too dense and I lost sight of it.

This was not a dog or house cat. And I distinctly remember it must have been a mountain lion with its black tail because of the shape of it. But can mountain lions have black tails, any ideas on what this could have been? So if it was a long tail with a black tip, it probably was a mountain lion. They have a black tip on the end of their long tails. If it was like a short bob tail, it was probably a bobcat because they also have black tails. Those are the only things I can think of in the history. Sounds like it's a long black tail.

A long bushy black tail. If the whole thing was black, I don't know. It can't be a mountain lion. It could be like a darker mountain lion. They don't get black though. Yeah. What big cats turn into like black panthers? Leopards and Jaguars

That's the only two Yeah Okay Yeah So if it was black It was just bad lighting You probably just saw A big black house cat

Yeah All right Or a yeah A graboid So this question's from Hannah And she says She's super nostalgic About Swiss family Robinson

One of our favorites Yeah But for her The attack that really sticks out is the snake attack Right And just how it Fritz was

Getting drowned by it And like they're stabbing it and can't get rid of it. And she says it's just really stuck out to her as like a heart-pounding moment. Any ideas on the type of snake or the accuracy of the attack? Yeah, it was a green anaconda. And it was very accurate because they used a real green anaconda. And it almost killed some of the stuntmen.

Wow. So it was very accurate. About as accurate as it can get. That's probably why it stuck out as like kind of a horrific scene for her. is like they were actually. Yeah, that's a great question. And yeah, it's very accurate. Interesting.

Yeah. I think they had to go through two snakes, though, which is pretty sad. They really played fast and loose by those rules back in the old Hollywood days. They didn't care that much about animals. Okay, this is from... An Instagram question? Yeah, this... So, two our Instagram questions.

Yeah. This is from Nomadidicus. Let me see it. Hold on. Nomad didicus. Nomad didicus. Nomad didicus. Yeah.

Okay. So what's the most mind-blowing animal fact you know? That's a great question. I could have just gone with Joshua because he tells us it's Joshua. Okay. But I struggled through it. Do one of you guys want to start or do you want me to start? I can start.

Yeah, go for it. I'm going with koalas. I think it's insane that they sleep. 18 to 22 hours a day. Yeah, that's pretty wild. And that they, like, insist on eating a plant that's poisonous to everything else, eucalyptus, and, like, it's not a very efficient plant to eat, but that's all they're really eat.

Okay. And their fingerprints, they're so similar to a human's fingerprints that they could, like, mess up a crime scene if they found a koala. Yeah. Yeah. Mike? Yeah, so I want to do two, because my first one's going to kind of bring the room down a little bit. So I want to lift spirits afterwards. So we learned on the shark episode,

the Great White Shark episode, that humans kill 100 million sharks yearly. And that blew my mind. That was mind-blowing to the definition. I just couldn't believe that that's a real statistic. And that's really sad. That's more like a fact about animals than an animal effect. We'll let them have an open interpretation. Okay. Well, pedantics aside, let's go with the movie The Pebble and the Penguin. It's based off the fact that Adeli Penguins go out and find a little pebble to kind of propose to their potential mate. And that's a real thing. So I thought that was kind of cute.

Yeah, that's really good. Okay, so mine is going to be about the pistol shrimp, which is a tiny shrimp that lives in the ocean. And they have a claw that has like a really big hammer part to it and then a smaller part. and that claw like cocks back and then it fires. And when it closes, it closes so fast and so hard that it creates this little burst of energy and some bubbles that shoot for it at 60 miles per hour. And that energy is so powerful that it creates a heat of 4,800 degrees Celsius. Oh my gosh.

Which in, just to like kind of picture that, the sun's surface temperature is 5,600 degrees Celsius. So it's almost as hot as the surface of the sun, the little bit of energy that it produces. And it also creates a sound that's 218 decibels, which is louder than a jet engine, and one of the loudest sounds on Earth. And it closing its claw that quickly and that fast can kill a little prey right in front of it with just the energy that it pushes forward. That's incredible. It's insane, yeah. So obviously that interaction happens on like a tiny little scale. It can only kill stuff that's right in front of it.

and like a human would just hear like a little clicking noise or whatever but when they like put something in there to actually measure it the heat and the the sound are absolutely off the charts. That's probably what scientists studied to like invent an atom bomb or something. It's like it's up there with like the amount of energy that it can create. It's insane. Okay. So next question from Rue Art. What are your favorite bugs?

You know what? This is kind of a boring answer for me. But my favorite bug is probably just a really beautiful butterfly. Yeah, a favorite type of butterfly. I really like blue morphs. No, blue morphos. They're like the really big blue ones you see in like South America in the jungles and stuff. Yeah, those are pretty.

Yeah. Mike, I'm worried we have the same one, but you go. Oh, really? I don't know. Let's go and we'll see. So I get really excited whenever I see a ladybug. Oh, no. Okay.

That would have been weird. Yeah. Just, I guess, small explanation. why. When I was really little, my neighbor had a blackberry bush that he'd let me go over and pick berries from. Yeah. And he told me that ladybugs were really, really important to the ecosystem of, you know, a healthy home garden environment. They eat aphids and other stuff. Yeah. So not only are they, you know, I like berries, so they're helping berries grow. But I just think they're really cool looking. They're really particular kind of adorable little bug. Cool. Jeff. I'm going with the Hercules beetle.

Yeah, now I know. I'd see it. You've got one right here. Yeah, I bought West one for a present once, and I think they, I've watched a video of one, like, flipping another bug with its horn once. Yeah, it was really funny, and I just think they look so cool. Yeah, they are cool. They have, like, really, they have a lot of, like, different colored Hercules beetles, which I think is cool. Runner-up would probably be, like, a praying mantis. Yeah, my runner-up would be an orchid mantis. Yeah, those are sweet.

Cool, thanks. You're welcome. I meant the person that's the listener Oh yeah yeah okay From Nihaha Which way do you tilt your head when you eat a taco Mike you want to start? Okay let me recreate it real quick

To the left To the left? Left left All right And then from Hefe Larson Okay that's you Wait a minute What's the closest

You've ever come to dying I almost drowned in a river once in southern Utah, and I was pretty close. I was hitchhiking the back of a small truck driving through the jungles in Thailand, and there was nothing to hold on to, and he was going way too fast, and it was the curviest road I've ever been on. And I was legitimately terrified. I thought I was going to die. Jeff?

My cousin fell asleep at the wheel, and then I woke him up right as he's about to crash, and he, like, miraculously saved it. Also, the arch swing in Moab, I didn't almost die, but that was like, I felt like I was going to die for a second when I had a lot of jumped off of that. A lot of those, but the one where I was actually like, oh, this is it, I'm going to die. Was when I was like pinned on some logs. Got stuck in a logjam. Yeah. Okay.

Well, thanks, Heffey Larson. That's just Jeff asking himself questions, everyone. All right. I mean, that question is worth asking. That is it for listener and host questions. So we're going to wrap this thing up, but really quickly, we have talked about this already in our other episodes or other episode talking about black bears. They're doing pretty well. We've got about 750,000 to 800,000 black bears.

They're increasing in a lot of their range. Yeah, there's room for them. Like, that's not too many black bears. The way that we do mess things up for them is through hunting, through habitat loss. But they're not necessarily like a species of concern. Finally, do we like this animal? We have talked about this already. This is a top 10 animal for me.

I did multiple years on a black bear study. I've handled a lot of black bears. I've handled their cubs. I've really grown to love them in a really connected way. So I absolutely love black bears. They're really an important animal for me. Yeah, I love them. I forget what I ranked them when we did it.

I don't want to re-rank it. I'm going to guess I went with like eight, though. Okay. But I'm going to stick with what I had in the first. at the show. Yeah. Yeah, I like, I like black bears. What would have to happen for you guys to not like black bears anymore? Honestly, I, like, if a black bear killed someone I really loved, I probably wouldn't like that black bear anymore. But nothing. But I don't think I would feel like, oh, black bears are responsible for this and I hate black bears now. They would, it would knock them down

a few pegs, though, you know, there would have to be a big caveat when I tell people about how much I love black bears. I'd be like, by the way, one killed my mom. You wouldn't have, I'd have to bring that up. I don't know, that's a hard question. Maybe they just all moved into cities. Or if they just teased you all the time? Like if there's just like 10 black bears in between this house in our car,

that would be kind of annoying. Like if they were like squirrels, but they were like, they could attack you I'd like them less then. I'd probably be like, man. These guys are annoying and I'm pretty sick of fearing for my life all the time. Black bear crap all over the sidewalks. Yeah, that's something I'd like it for a while, though. For a while, I'd be like, this is the best.

That's a great question though, Mike. You should submit it to the listener questions. All right. All right, well, that's it for this episode. Again, we want to, especially like with these bare episodes, I want to reiterate, I don't want you guys to be afraid to go out in the wilderness. Just be prepared. Take your bear spray, hike with friends.

If you do really simple things, you can be totally at peace in the woods. And if you see a bear, you're going to have a really fun experience where you get to witness an animal in its natural habitat in a really beautiful way. And it's just taking those basic precautions that can open that world up to you. These stories are really interesting. We really like telling them. But my favorite part of this podcast is teaching you guys what you can do to avoid problems. And that, to me, is what makes it worthwhile. So take those hints and those tips into effect.

Be safe when you go out in the woods. And thanks again for listening. Thanks, guys. See you later. All right, everyone, you've made it to the end of the episode. This is where we'd like to give a special shout out and thank you to all of our new subscribers over on Patreon. If you guys weren't aware already, on Patreon, we give early access to all of our episode. We release a lot of bonus content and episodes that everyone seems to really like and we're having a lot of fun doing and have the opportunity to sign up to eventually get some pretty cool merch.

And we plan on sharing what some of that will look like really, really soon. So if you guys are interested in any of that, go ahead and subscribe to us over on Patreon. All right, here we go. Thank you so much to Trenton, Sarah, Bridget, Chloe, Colette, Jeremiah, Kate, Jordan, Jason, Jasmine, Tegan, Shallan, Bree, Ella, Hannah, Danny, Michelle, Jesse, Kate, Madison, Lorna, Alicia, Christine, and Chad. Thank you so much, you guys are so amazing, and it really is because of you that we can keep the lights on at Tooth and Claw and Work as much as we do on it. We hope you guys are all enjoying the benefits of being subscribed to us on Patreon, and we'll talk to you soon. See ya.