Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Box Jellyfish Attack - A Surfer Stung by a Mystery Assailant Has to Think Outside the Box

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Wes goes over the story of a North Carolina surfer who came face to face, or actually, chest to tentacles with one of the most venomous creatures on planet earth. We talk about why peeing on a jellyfish sting is a bad idea, especially if you hang out with a guy named Stanky P, Wes digs into some passive agressive "It Came from Quora", and Jeff simply can't let a fact from his sloth episode last week go unnoticed.  ~~ 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

Tooth and Claw Podcast. That's us. Coming at you. Live on... We're not live. The streets. Yeah, we're not on the streets. We're not live.

We're each in the comfort of our home. Here we are. We're tooth and claw podcast. What do we do here, Jeff? We talk about animal stories. We sure do. We talk about animal encounters, why they happen, what we can learn from them. We explain.

how usually the people are at fault in a lot of these encounters, and we're trying to desensationalize what the media puts out there often. We're also hitting you guys with some conservation messages. We're sneaking those in. So if tooth and claw were a live show, would that mean we are podcasting while watching somebody get attacked by a wild animal? I don't think so. I don't think that's necessary for us to do a live show.

I think we got to try that. We could do that at some point. Yeah. Like we could be like the best spot to wait. I guess running. of the bowls maybe. Yeah. Next to Coyote Peterson.

Yeah. Go to running of the bowls. Just hang up by Coyote Peterson. Yeah, we heard you. Yeah. Okay. You didn't say anything. I don't get it.

Because he's constantly getting attacked by animals. Yeah, he'll just like dunk his arm in the shark tank or something. That's like his thing. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. Anyway, let's, you know, we might do live shows sometime soon, so keep an eye out for that. Sweet. Yeah.

You might see us doing one as you're going about your day. Keep your eyes peeled. What's going on with you guys? I'm just feeling like razzing you today, Wes. Yeah, that's fine. I look like an idiot. You kind of do. He's got a bucket hat on, but not like a cool bucket hat.

Oh, it's cool. It's got a whale shark on it and it's smiling. It does have a nice whale shark. Yeah, it's very cool. Definitely like a grandma. Oh, it's a bucket hat hat. Yeah, they all are. Nah, some of them like, they're kind of in.

But I'm not sure. I like this one. I'm also wearing Aloha shirt. And that's, it's all because our story today features surfers. But, you know, we hinted at me divulging some more embarrassing stuff about my past in this episode. Do we have to do that now or can I do that in a future episode? Let's leave that up to you. Okay. Let's tease it, though.

How about? I think, so if you want to learn more about a really weird thing I did as a kid, get a teaser for it, you can join our subscription channels. Because Jeff just did an episode about sloths, and it kind of came out in that episode, and I started to divulge it. Yeah, you started to, and then you're like, I'll just give you a tease, and then you, like, said the entire thing. Oh, no, there's a lot more.

I didn't say all of it by any means. But I said that I definitely gave, like, the bullet points. But I think I'm going to save that story for next time we do a spider episode because there's a whole spider backstory to why I developed that really strange behavior. Didn't John Wayne, when John Wayne died, didn't they find like 40 pounds of compacted fecal matter on a related, semi-related note to what your story is going to be about? I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not a big John Wayne fan.

It did some pretty bad stuff. I got to admit, I was thinking about it all day because we just did our sloth episode. Yeah. And like, I'm a little disappointed. You guys didn't think it as cool. They can dump a third of their weight. I did think it was cool. Yeah, we're pretty into that fact.

Yeah. When I was like Animal Olympics, they can dump a third of their weight. You guys are like, oh, other animals can dump way better than them, like the Triceratops in Jurassic Park. I don't. I just said that they can't do it like back-to-back days. Yeah. So. But, yeah, they're not going to dump a third.

They did a third of their body three days in a row. They wouldn't have any body left. Man, how many facts have I rattled off where I get no response whatsoever? And then Jeff says one that he needs us to think about all day. I just don't want to hand out gold medals. Yeah, like their candy. This is serious business here at Tooth and Cloth. Name another animal that dumps that much of its body weight.

We've talked about this already. We don't. We're not going to. I unlike Jeff gave this no first. thought after we finished the episode last night and I refused to do it right now. That's my whole point. Yeah, I know. You didn't take it serious enough.

It was a great episode, though. See, you didn't like the fact. You're acting, you acted like you liked. You just said there's a reason. I don't need to talk about it in concurrent episodes. I didn't like it that much. It didn't matter to me. It was a great fact.

I'll talk about it with you. But it's not like I like that night in my journal was like, wow, I sure learned an impressive fact today. Sloss can poop up to a third of their body weight. You don't really write in a journal ever. No. And to be fair, I already knew that fact. So I didn't really, it didn't matter that much.

And you never shared that with us on the show? I don't, I didn't feel the need to tell them, like, all the facts that I knew already. I made an entire episode just so I could tell you guys that. I thought we were friends. All right. We're not anymore. Okay. I'm going to save my pooping story for later.

We're just going to get to this episode before we get completely off the rails. Yeah, let's just do it. Yeah, are we thinking out of the box today? We are thinking out of the box, yeah. Great, again, great segue into an episode about box jellyfish. But you didn't think it was. No, I was going to say, this is one that I went on a real journey with. Because I thought it was a jellyfish.

And so I told Mike and Jeff, hey, prepare like your pop culture jellyfish, whatever. And then I learned it was a Portuguese man of war, which was not a jellyfish. They're actually like a community of organisms that they're not a jellyfish. So I was like, hey, JK, not a jellyfish, come up with a man-of-war reference. And then the story did a total 180 on me and it ended up not being a Portuguese man-of-war. So I'm just going to say this story is from the show on Disney Plus called Something Bit Me, is where I first learned of it and then I found a bunch of articles

the main one being one from W. Way News, which is a North Carolina news station. But it is about a box jellyfish which is going to be, which a bit of a spoiler actually. Portuguese Manor Wars do enough damage to warrant an episode? They've only killed two people

and both of those people died from kind of interesting complications. We will do an episode on them. I put about two hours into research and found some really cool facts about Portuguese Man of War before I realize that's not what we were talking about today. So I have those facts filed away for a future episode. You're just full of teases today.

I think they're actually like they're more interesting to me than box jellies even. But we're going to do it later because I like the story. This is a good story. Jeff, get that little mischievous glint out of your eye. I know you're just trying to think of ways to rip into me right now. All right. I'm waiting, dude. So this takes place in this little community called Ritesville Beach.

It's a really small and cozy North Carolina town. It's just east of Wilmington. And it was really busy in July 2018 and early July. And the reason for that is because Tropical Storm Chris had just blown through the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolina coast. And in its wake, it left some really good waves and perfect surf conditions. Mike, what are you laughing about? The fact that we use very generic names to, yeah, for massively destructive. It is.

Yeah. I thought of him when. Tropical Storm Chris came up. Who's your favorite Chris in actor? Not Pratt, that's for sure. Well, I'm just, and you know, it's not for a lot of the reasons people don't like him. I'm just tired of him. It's like the rock.

Wait for Mario. Yeah, wait for Mario. My favorite Chris is probably Hemsworth. Really? Yeah, I'd probably go Chris Pine. I like Pine too, but I think I like Hemsworth more. I'm going to go Christopher Plummer. Pull a little slick card out of my back pocket.

Christopher Wacken? Oh man, that's got to be all three. He's my favorite. He's my favorite. He's my favorite. Never mind. Christopher walking. I just think of him as a Christopher, though.

I think he got to have it. He's a Chris. Hurricane Christopher to talk about him. Okay. All right. So surfers from all over the area are descending on this little town. And John Cheshire was one of those surfers. So John had grown up in Rowley and he lived in Wilmington and he was really familiar with

Wrightsville area. He had surfed there countless times. He was really. well known in the North Carolina surfing community and a lot of his friends call him Johnny Chesh. So I'm going to either call him Johnny Chesh or Chesh for the rest of this story. I can't fully explain or imitate this accent that he has when I was listening to his interviews. He has like a Southern Carolina accent combined with like a surfer accent and it's very special. I really liked it.

But it's really hard to imitate. He was married at the time. He had two kids. I think he's still married. He comes from a line of surf. surfers, and it was really an obsession in his family. His brother surfed, his dad surfed. They were big into surfing. So that day in July, he's out in the water with one of his best friends, Andrew Walden, who had known for about 20 years, and they're self-described best bros. So they're really,

you know, they've like gotten into a lot of mischief together. Measchiff. I almost said mischief, like I'm jar jar binks or something. They'd got into a lot of mischief together. They like really fed off each other's energies. They're really good friends. Days before, they had been watching tropical storm Chris, and the anticipation for the big waves was really strong among the two. And then on a morning following the storm, they hopped into Andrew's boat, and they headed from Mason Borough Island, which is an isolated nature reserve famous among the local surfers, and they had hopes that they would find some really good waves in that area.

So with these two, with Johnny Cash and Chesh and Andrew was their friend Sean, as well as their friend, Stanky P. And Andrew said, this is a quote from him, he said, Chesh was really stoked and Stinky P was stank. So that's a quote from him. He's the last guy I want peeing on my jellyfish. Yeah, you don't want stinky pee on you. Anyway, there's no roads on this island that they go to,

and so when they get there, they have to go through these small sandy trails to get to the beach. And as they get to their surf spot, they're greeted with the sight of these perfect blue waves. crashing on this really fine white sand. So it's just a perfect day. They knew it was going to be a great morning for surfing. When they get in the water, it's every man for himself, and all of them are thrilled with how warm the water temperature is. It's like 85 degrees.

The tropical storm had blown this warm water into the coast. So it's like perfect waves, warm water, a beautiful summer day. It's just like a perfect day for all of them. They're relishing these warm water conditions, but what they didn't realize is that the conditions were also attractive to a number of different marine creatures, and that the storm had blown in more than just great waves. Great whites.

Yeah, maybe. Johnny Chesh is having a hard time catching waves. He's paddling around as much as possible to get in the best position to catch a wave, and he's kind of striking out. That's like every time I've ever surfed. Yeah, it's not easy. Surfing looks easy, but it's not.

Two hours of me, like, trying to get to where. Yeah. And then when I get one, I'm, like, not fast enough at paddling to go. It's one of those things that you think is a lot easier than it is. He's striking out, but then he sees this really nice looking wave rolling in, and he's in just the right spot to catch it, and he starts paddling into the lineup with the wave, and he's like at the height of his paddle when suddenly he feels something hit his chest,

and this massive shock of pain follows and knocks him into the water. And he's, Chesh is having a hard time catching his breath. The pain is so intense, and he's floundering in the water, and it's just like this all-intense consuming pain, so intense that he thought he might even pass out in the water, which was really scary to him. But then what's even scarier is that he has no idea what his attacker is at this point. And Andrew hears Chesh cry out, and immediately his mind turns to,

if you're surfing and your friend suddenly falls off his board and screams, what do you guys think it probably is? Box jellyfish. Mike, what do you think it probably is? Shark. Right, you assume shark. And this is a really sharky part of the country. North Carolina has tiger sharks, they have bull sharks.

They are known for having some shark bites and shark attacks. So Andrew and Chesh both knew this. Andrew immediately thinks shark and Chesh kind of thinks shark too. So he comes to the surface and he's struggling and he's thinking about sharks and is wondering if he's been a bit. Yeah, he's looking for blood in the water. He's looking for a big gray shape. He doesn't see anything. So Andrew yells out to Chesh to see if he's all right.

And then he watches as Chesh gets up on his board and Andrew sees that there's no blood, there's no limbs missing. So he's like, oh, he's fine. And he keeps surfing. Oh, he keeps surfing? Yeah. But Chesh is far from fine. He sits up and he feels something stuck onto his chest.

And he reaches down and sees that he has a jellyfish on him. He peels it off. And as he peels it off his chest, the tentacles like fasten on to the side of his body, like kind of on those lower chest like going down. And again, he feels this intense, unbelievable blinding pain surging through his body. Like he got hit by a truck, maybe? No, he doesn't say truck, yeah. But he does describe it as like superheated coat hangers that someone's poking into his skin over and over and over again.

Oh, wow. Which we've all felt, we all can relate to that. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, though, that it's probably pretty close to what he felt. Yeah. Yeah. That's easy to pick.

picture. That's a pretty good... It was very vivid. I like it. Yeah. And I like how he went with coat handers instead of like needles. Yeah. Yeah. Summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup and Kraft singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly milty cheese and thick rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and Kraft.

So they had grown up in this area and Johnny Chesh had spent a lot of time free diving, too. He's like a spear fisherman. He's just like a person that likes to spend a lot of time in the ocean. I actually looked at his Instagram and it's like full of ocean pictures. He seems really cool. And in that time, he had seen a lot of Portuguese Man of War. So he assumed that's what was stinging him. That's like kind of the jellyfish that they were usually looking out for, even though it's not a jellyfish.

Colloquially people, that's a hard word. People say that they're jelly. Portuguese Man of War is actually a colony of these little, like, zoids. They're like, they're each their own organism, but they form a colony and they're each responsible for different parts of the like animal itself. So it's almost like their organs, but they're their own animal and they create a single animal. It's crazy. It's so cool. It's like wild.

It took me a long time to wrap my head around it. And when I finally did, I realized I was researching the wrong animal. So he thinks it's a Portuguese man of war. he's worried about passing out from the pain in the water and drowning as a result from these stings, and he knows that he has to get back to the beach, even though he's really struggling to breathe or even move on his surfboard. So he hops back on his board, and he starts paddling for the shore. His buddies are still unaware of what's happening, and they assume he's just taking a break.

Like, I have no idea what stinky pee is doing at this point. He's probably out catching waves, being stanky. Not hydrating. Yeah, just lost in that sauce. know, that stinky, stinky sauce. As Chesh starts swimming toward the surface, he feels his body start to shut down from the pain. And he knows that it's like... Oh, wait, so he pulled it off of him?

Yeah, he had pulled it off. Sorry, when he pulled it off, it reattached, and then he ripped it off again. He didn't really talk about that in the story, but by the time he's to the beach, it's off of him. So, like, it didn't take him that long to pull it off. It just reattached and really hurt, and then he pulled it off. It essentially got him twice. was the lesson there. Oh, yeah, okay.

Like when it first hit him, it wasn't too bad, but then when he tried to pull it off, it wrapped around him, and that's when he got hit the hardest. And then he just yanked it off. Yeah. The pain's so bad that his mind is starting to feel fuzzy, like he's starting to lose consciousness,

and he realizes, like, I got to focus on my wife and kids, I have people that depend on me, I need to push through this pain and get to shore. He's about 100 yards from shore. But he finally gets to shore, and he realizes that something is really wrong. His body is starting to kind of shut down. And like I think anyone would do if you didn't know what was happening,

you would want to rub that burning sensation. And, you know, when you, like, when something stings you, inherently just like rub it. It's like an instinctual thing that you do. And so he picks up sand and starts rubbing this sting. And unknown to him when a, and we're going to talk a little bit more about this, but when a box jellyfish stings you, it has these little cells that fire these little harpoons. And sometimes a lot of those cells get left on your body. And if you rub them,

they're like, they haven't fired yet. But when you rub them, they start firing. They release the toxic. Yeah. And they release the venom. It's venom. Venom. Yeah. And so like he, when he started rubbing, suddenly the pain just gets so much worse. He describes it. This other time as like a burning hot knife just being cut into him over and over and over again. And then he says, but it was 10 times worse than that. It was so much worse than you can imagine. That's how he describes it. Jeez. So we're going to talk a little bit more about how that all works with these guys, but essentially I just like to picture these little cells as unexploded grenades, and they're just sitting on your body, and if you decide to disturb them or give them a reason to explode,

they'll do it. So another friend... It would be almost impossible not to touch it, too, because it would just sting and hurt so bad. Yeah. Like, imagine the worst mosquito bite you've ever had times infinity, you know? Yeah. And then try not to touch it. Well, there are some of these box jellies when they do first sting you, it does kind of feel like a mosquito bite. It's not terrible, but then it increasingly gets worse and worse and worse.

But this one was instantly painful. And you're right, it would be really hard not to mess with it. But I will just caution everyone out there, all you listeners, if you're ever stung by any kind of jellyfish, Don't touch it. Do whatever you can not to aggravate that because you will cause it to hurt more. It's just not going to help if you touch it and mess with it. And we're going to get to what you should do,

but you shouldn't mess with it. Okay, what you shouldn't do, a friend on the beach runs into Chesh, this other guy who, I forget his name, but doesn't really matter. He sees that Chesh is struggling in pain and he immediately says, we got to pee on you. Yes. It's that guy.

Johnny Chesh doesn't want a golden shower, so he's like, no way, dude, I don't want you to pee on me, pee in a bottle, and then I'll squirt it on me. Which, you know, he missed out on a great opportunity there just to get peed on, but whatever. So yeah. What? Why take extra steps? Get this done. So the guy... I think the bottle is a good solution, personally.

Whatever. The guy pees in the bottle. Johnny Chesh squirts it on his, on his stings. and it makes it a lot worse again. It just hurts more and more and more. Because again, you're not changing anything. You're just disturbing those cells, and they're shooting those harpoons off again

and injecting venom into your body. Setting grenades off with urine. Yeah, there's a concept. The pee thing is like the same as like sucking the venom out of a rattlesnake body, right? At this point, it's like completely wrong. That debunked, there's no one that says, like no biologists that study jellyfish.

say that it's a good solution. It's bad. It's just something pervert came up with it a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there are, like, maybe a stingray or something. Pervert probably came up with the rattlesnake one too. Yeah, that's true.

Just want to give someone an icky. Yeah. I don't know about stingrays and some of the other stuff, but I know with jellyfish it doesn't work. Okay. Some of his friends had been stung by Portuguese Man of War before, and this is starting to feel really different to Johnny Chesh. The pain is way too intense.

It's way too prolonged. Usually when you're stung by a Portuguese man of war, which I've been stung by, it's very quick. Like you get this shock of pain and then it fades really quickly. It's kind of like a bunch of bee stings all at once. That's what it felt like for me. But after a little bit, I couldn't really feel it anymore. Dude, bee stings hurt for so long? Yeah, but it's like...

The last time you got stung by a bee. Last time I got stung by a bee, it hurt for like 10, 15 minutes. And it didn't like get worse. Like, it was the worst right off the bat and then it slowly got better. and that's how a Portuguese man a war sting is. But with box jellies, the pain can get worse and worse and it amplifies, and we're going to talk about why that is. Anyway, it's getting worse.

He realizes it's probably something else. His skin is starting to blister, and he thinks that he's about to die. Like he's having a hard time breathing. He can feel his blood pressure rising. Things are getting really crazy in his body. And now his friends have realized something's wrong. They're all crowding around him on the shore. Andrew's really starting to worry,

and he knows that they need to get help. for Johnny Chesh. Stinky pee, no idea where he is. Might be out surfing still. He's just doing his own thing. Andrew tries helping his friend back to the boat, and he's struggling to make it. On these trails, he's falling down. He's having a really hard time breathing.

He's super nauseous. And he's telling his friends that he thinks he's going to die. So Andrew calls EMS, and he gets the boat moving, and they try and put, like, cold water. You mean ball, right? What? Like, there's not a boat coming to help. No, they took a boat to the island. Oh, so there is an actual boat coming.

They're in a boat. They got an Andrew's boat to go to the other side of the island. Oh, I see. Yeah. Get the boat moving? Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So they tried to put fresh cold water on his stings, which once again is the wrong thing to do. That fresh water, when it hits those cells that have been left behind, also triggers them to inject their venom. But at least he gets the pee washed off of it. Yeah, that's true. He's clean of pee now. So his pain is getting like worse and worse and worse.

He feels like it's about to cause him to have a heart attack. And more and more his friends realize like, okay, this isn't a man of war. This is probably a box jellyfish. All right. So we're going to take quick break. We're going to go into box jellyfish biology, which I'm excited to talk about. There are 51 species of box jellyfish in the ocean. I say 51.

That's what I found the most often. There are differing accounts of how many species there are. We're going to stick with 51 for now. Some of those species produce a really devastating and potent venom, and their tentacles are used to distribute that venom. They can paralyze or even instantly kill their prey with that venom and their tentacles. The ones that are notorious for being lethal to humans are generally found in the Indo-Pacific region of the world. So pretty much throughout Indonesia, Papua New Guinea,

Australia, the South Pacific, New Zealand, that whole part of the world is where they're really famous for being encountered. So not all species of box jellyfish are deadly then? All of them are venomous, not all of them are deadly. There's only a handful that are deadly. And they can be found throughout temperate and tropical waters. So they've been found as far north as California, as far south as Cape Town and New Zealand. And then even up to Japan in the Pacific Ocean, too.

So they can be found in lots of different. places. They get their name from this box-like shape of their bell. Their bell is like the main kind of body that you see on a jellyfish. That bell has four lower corners and from each of those corners there's a stock and from those stocks long hollow tentacles hang. And there can be as many as 15 tentacles per stock but sometimes they just have one or two. So these guys can have up to 60 tentacles but it's more commonly you see them with like a smaller number than that. They're really cool looking. So those stalks dragged through the water, they snare fish and other sea creatures that the box jellyfish will feed on.

Their tentacles can grow up to 10 feet long, and each tentacle is lined with about 500,000 sonytocytes. So the sonitocytes are these little cells that contain nematosis. And nematosis are these little venomous harpoons that shoot out of the sonitocyte. So just picture like all these little round cells and inside them there's this little coiled up harpoon. and when that cell gets a chemical signal from like the skin of its prey, it'll shoot off. So it's not necessarily contact that makes them shoot. It's them hitting a certain chemical that we have on our skin and that fish have on their skin and stuff. They get this like response that makes them shoot.

How do fish do like getting out of the tentacles? Not great. It usually kills them immediately. Oh, wow. Yeah, they're really good at killing stuff. So essentially these harpoons shoot in. They inject their venom. It causes instant.

pain and a lot of other effects. And when you hit a box jelly, you could technically come into contact with hundreds of thousands of those little cell grenades and then millions of the little harpoons. So, I mean, it's like a lot of potential pain. Yeah. Some will fire immediately and some, like we talked about, can get left on your skin and they'll fire later. And something that's really interesting that I learned is that their tentacles can be like

that 10 feet long or whatever, but they'll coil them up when they hit something to give it more surface area for those little cells to explode into you. So that's like what happened when he tried to move it. It moved its tentacle up on his body so it could sting them even harder. Man. So those little nematosis. Yeah, nematosis, yep. They're basically microscopic then, right?

If millions of them are, so you can't really like target and tweez them out. No. And we're going to talk about that a little more too. But there are some really cool videos like under a microscope of seeing. these little harpoon shoot out into something and it's crazy it's like you see all of a sudden just like 30 or 40 hairs just shoot into something and they're all these little venomous barbs so the venom that they use creates these proteins that attack different cells in the body and they actually make pores or holes in those cells so it's essentially like a shotgun effect

where it shoots all these little proteins at your red blood cells and then they eat little holes in your red blood cells and that causes your blood cells and that causes your blood cells to break down and it can lead to some really terrible things like cardiovascular failure and it pumps a lot of potassium into your bloodstream and that same that effect it's not good you're supposed to get potassium you don't want that much so you don't want it from all your red blood cells yeah you want enough from like a banana or two he's not going to cramp he's not going to cramp that's well he might actually i don't know um anyways he might be dead but he'll be loose as a goose Yeah. So these like proteins also attack your skin, your skin, they attack your nerves. That's why there's so much pain associated with this venom. They're just kind of attacking everything.

You think they really need to be all that. Mean? That seems pretty mean. Yeah. I mean, it works. I guess. There are a number of scientists out there that consider one species of box jellyfish to be the most venomous animal in the ocean, possibly in the world. They are just incredibly venomous. Is this defense mechanism going to be effective against like a shark? Or like if they brush up against a big predator like that? I don't know what eats these. We'll probably get into that. Yeah, we will get into it.

It would be effective. It would be effective enough to like get it away. It's not going to kill it. And sharks have a hard time aiming their pee. So it would be tough to take care of it. I can't say for sure, actually, if it would be effective against the shark. But we are going to talk about really the only animal that eats them. A little bit more about their.

anatomy, they have this lip that curves inward underneath that bell. And what that does is constrain the overall size of the water that can go in there. And it creates a jet. So as it pulsates its bell, it can squirt water out and it propels itself through the water. And box jellies are unique for being one of the only jellyfishes that do this. And they actually will hunt down and target prey because of that. They're not just like a jellyfish that drifts in the water and hopes to snare something. they actually will propel themselves through the water at four knots, which is pretty fast. That's like 20 feet per minute to be able to target and capture prey. But jellyfish don't really have brains, right?

These ones do have a pretty complicated nervous system. So they do. You think they can, like, decide to hunt prey? They can't. And a crazy thing about box jellies too is they have these eye stocks. They have four different eye stocks. And they have, on each of those eye stocks, they have an eye stalks. they have an eye that has a lens, a cornea, and a retina, just like our eyes.

And scientists think they can even see color vision. So if they can see color vision, then they definitely have a brain that can process what they're seeing. Can they starve to death? Yes. And they actually can starve to death quite quickly. They need to eat really often. So they have these four normal eyes, and then they have 20 simplified eyes that can only detect light and dark. So they have a total of 24 eyes on a box jellyfish.

and it makes them really effective hunters. Like they can see color, they can target fish. They're pretty impressive. It'd suck if they, like, had bad eyesight and they're 24 eyes. It's just all of them are blurry. Like they can't see it all. That'd be really expensive, LASIC. Optical insurance would be a lot.

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All right. So the inside of that bell is divided into a stomach and then four gastric pockets. And those segments are actually lined with the stinging cells. And those can help to subdue prey if it's brought into the stomach alive. And then they have a mouth in there that kind of looks like an elephant trunk that they actually feed on the prey once it's inside of that bell stomach. Pretty cool. So a little bit about jellyfish reproduction. Not as interesting as some stuff, but I do still think it's interesting.

An adult jelly is called a Medusa. And there's a really like, Mike, what does Medusa look like? She's got that big old hair, head full of snake hairs. Right. What am I trying to say? How do you say that, Jeff? You got that. A hair with snakes instead of hair.

They're made out of snakes, hairs. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's very eloquent. Most of the time. She is, really. Yeah, it's hard not to look at her, I think, is the thing.

So she gets you. The reason we call, they're pretty hot. That's not. what I'm saying. I'm saying they have this central kind of body that has tentacles hanging off of it. So it kind of looks like a medusa. So that's what an adult looks like. And these adult medusas will

release it. They'll release their eggs and their sperm into the water and then those like floating eggs and sperm will contact each other and fertilize. This is kind of how like coral does it too. They just eject everything into the water and hope they hit. So once the fertilized egg happens,

it'll develop into what's called a planulet and it's like a larva for a jellyfish. And that planulae will swim around and then it settles on a hard surface and it develops into polyps. And as a polyp, a jellyfish can reproduce asexually in a process known as budding,

B-U-D-D-I-N-G, which essentially means this little polyp will grow a clone of itself and that clone pops off and then suddenly you have two jellyfish that can turn into adult medusas. So it's kind of cool. Like it's fertilized but it actually can like split into another one.

And so a single fertilized egg of a jellyfish can actually turn into two jellyfish, which is really neat. That's cool. They don't really live that long. They may spend less than a year as an adult, but they're pretty interesting little animals. All right, a couple things about jellyfish and humans and jellyfish and their predators. Their main natural predator are sea turtles.

And some species of sea turtles... That's what I was going to guess if you asked. Really? All right. I thought sea turtles ate them. They do. And green sea turtles are famous. eating box jellyfish.

They have really thick skin, even in their mouths and their throats. And that helps them avoid the stings as they're eating these little jellyfish. And they eat those little f***es like popcorn. I mean, they really eat a lot of jellyfish. Is that like what their main go-to thing is? It's a main food source for sea turtles that live in jellyfishy. Does it just shell help protect them? I'm sure it does.

Yeah. It just seems like a bad thing to make the main thing you eat, something that's like full of venom and can't. Yeah, but if you're built to eat it, then it doesn't matter, you know? And it's good that something eats them because otherwise they would just propagate. I'm grateful for the green sea turtles. Don't get me wrong. So there's only a few of the species of box jelly that are potentially lethal humans, but they have been known to cause cardiac arrest in people in as little as two minutes. And one of the most dangerous species in Australia is the Chironex Fleckery,

which has caused roughly 79 deaths in the last 150 years. Another really, dangerous one is one that's just the size of your thumbnail, and it's called the uricanji, and it causes some really crazy symptoms, including severe headache, backache, muscle pains, chest and abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, sweating, anxiety, hypertension, tachycardia, and pulmonary edema. Rarely kills people, but the pain from that little thumbnail-sized one can last like 30 days, which is pretty intense. It's hard to say for sure, but some estimates report that up to 100 people a year die from box jellyfish. And if that's true, that's up to 10 times the amount that die from sharks.

So a lot of people die by these guys. I think like the more conservative estimate would still be like 50. So a lot of people. What do you think sounds worse? Death by a shark or death by one of these little guys? Oh, death by one of these for sure. Yeah? Yeah.

See, that's so crazy that everyone's so afraid of these sharks. But these things sound so much worse. And you have way higher chance of dying. With the shark, it's like you bleed out, you know, which you might not even feel pain by the time you bleed out because of all the adrenaline and stuff. With these guys, it's just instant blinding, mind-numbing pain. Like pain's so intense that the pain can kill you from shock. So it's pretty wild. All right.

So back in North Carolina, in his own words, Andrew's goose in it. Do we know what he means by that? If you've been stung by a box jelly, you don't necessarily want your first. friend to goose it. What he meant by it is that he's really putting the pedal down or the hammer down on this boat. He's going really fast. He's goosing it. Top gun. I'm not, but that's a good joke or a good guess, I guess. The guy in the, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about your quote. He's not. He said goose in it. He meant he's going really fast. He's not bumping his head on the he's not ejecting out of the boat and killing himself on the boat. No. All right. So racing the boat would

seem like a really good idea, but it is hitting the waves really hard, and it's causing this pain to, like, jolt through Chesh every time. But honestly, it's probably good that he's gooseing it so hard, because they get to the beach and help is waning. Emergency personnel's there. They're ready to take Chesh to the hospital. But before they did, they try something that is really unavisable again with any kind of jellyfish sting. They take a razor blade and they try scraping his wounds to get away those little stingers. And it's just, they're too small. You can't get them with the razor blade. There's even a medical paper where they advise this and it's just not what you're supposed to do. Everyone else says don't do it. It just makes it worse. And it did make it a lot

worse. So these little hares have venom in them? Yeah, these tiny little harpoons that are microscopic have venom. You can't get them with the blade. It makes the pain much worse because again, it triggers a bunch of the ones that haven't exploded to explode again. So Johnny Chesh is in like a really bad way at this point. They finally do something right and they give him oxygen because at this point, They didn't know that, but he had pulmonary edema, which means that his lungs are kind of shutting down from all the pain and the proteins attacking the vessels and whatnot. So they give him fentanyl, which is pretty crazy. Whoa. It doesn't help at all.

Opioids don't really help. What's his name? Swaggy pee or whatever. Give him that. Skanky pee? Skanky pee had some fentanyl on him. Skanky pee's got everything, dude. He's your one-stop shop.

Anyway, this fentanyl's not doing. anything and it's because opioids aren't known to really help with the pain associated with box jelly stings. And again, they can make it harder and harder to breathe. So, oh gosh. He gets to New Hanover Regional Hospital in Wilmington. He sees his wife in the emergency room. And at this point, he describes the pain as though his flesh were ripping itself apart from the inside out and then melting away in a fire. So, like, like, hellraiser shit. You know, this is like what you expect to happen to you in hell, which I don't really believe in, by the way. All right.

Just throwing that in. I said this is what you expect to believe in hell, and I don't actually think that happens to people. Okay. So the venom had attacked his circulatory system, and each pump of his heart is pushing it through his body, and it's just causing this constant devastating pain. He tells the doctor at this point he had been stung by a Portuguese man, war and the doctor takes one look at his wounds and listens to his descriptions of the pain and says no it's a box jelly this is not a man-of-war sting chesh had never seen a box jelly fish in the water

he had dove there a lot he had surf there a lot he had never seen one but what probably happened was tropical storm chris had come in and it had blown the box jellies out of this brackish kind of marshy spots that they like to inhabit and blew them out into the main part of the ocean so they're not typically in those areas, but the storm had blown him out. So the storm that had brought him such perfect waves had also put him in contact with one of the most venomous animals on the planet. So Chesh thinks he's going to die. Nothing's bringing him relief. Finally, the doctors put hot compresses onto his skin, and that helps to reduce the pain. The idea there is the heat from these hot compresses actually kind of denature those proteins from the venom, and they deactivate them

and the venom stops working at the same level. So this hot compress is finally working, and then the pain medication starts to work as well. There's kind of a crazy fact where the doctor was like, hey, we've given you all the pain medication that we're legally allowed to give a person. So you can sign this waiver and we'll give you more, but you might die from it.

And Chesh says that he just immediately signed it. He's just like, yep, yep, give it to me. Understandable. Yeah, totally. So he's finally starting to turn a corner. The pain's getting a lot better, and not long after he gets discharged from the hospital. He still has these pretty gnarly scars on his side from where the tentacles hit him, but he's happy to be back out in the water.

He doesn't blame the jellyfish. He knows that it's just a risk associated with going in the water and being such like a lover of the ocean, which I think is really cool. This is a cool dude. It'd be kind of crazy to blame a jellyfish. Yeah. I want to kill every goddamn jellyfish in the water. Yeah, that is true.

That jellyfish was like trying to kill me. Yeah, there was a part in the show that I watched where they were interviewing a jellyfish biologist who was really like, she was great. And I think she is like one of the leaders in her field. But she was like, yeah, there's a chance it saw it surfboard and kind of was like investigating him as prey. And I'm guessing the producers kind of prodded her to say that.

because they wanted it to seem a little bit more sensationalized because I don't think a jellyfish would ever recognize something that big is potential prey. But that's just my like uneducated opinion because I really don't know much about jellyfish. What do they eat? What size would they be tempted by to go after? It's mostly small fish and like baby fish so like fish fry and then they also will go after like shrimp and small crustaceans and like some of those little creatures that live on the like deep sea floor too. So that's it for the story. No update on Stinky P.

He only came up once in the whole episode, which was a bit of a disappointment. He's still riding that way. Yeah, still. He doesn't know what happened. He's going to hear this and be like, oh shit, Chesh got stung by a box jelly. All right. So I think that's it. You guys have any questions about the story or box jellies?

No, I think they'll probably come up later. They will. We're going to do more stories. This wasn't even on purpose. We were doing them today. What percent of their weight can they dump in one dump? I don't know, Jeff. Not as much as slots.

Oh, all right. One thing that was interesting is the big ones in Australia, that one that I said is considered the most dangerous. They're the ones that can get like 10 feet long. And their bell can be the size of a basketball. So they can be a pretty big box jelly to have a bell that big. Yeah. Did you see statistics on like the survival?

rate of people that get stung? It's pretty high. Okay, so like, if you get stung, you're, you shouldn't be super certain that you're just about to die then, right? No, you want to get help as quickly as possible. And I'm going to go into what exactly you should do when we do the, what would Mike and Jeff do? Cool.

But it's pretty high. It's rare that people do die from them, but it does happen. And it's mostly in places where, like in rural Indonesia and stuff, where they can't get them to medical treatment quickly enough or where they don't have, maybe, the education disseminated far enough to know how to deal with the stings because there are some pretty basic ways that you can reduce the pain and stop the envenomation really quickly. So we're going to get into those in a minute. Great.

I will say too from Mike's subscriber episode that he did on box jellyfish, like it's crazy how much scarring you get from it. Oh yeah. Some people just have like a lattice work of scars. Yeah, it's intense. Well, and it doesn't even make that much. sense to me because you don't really bleed right? It destroys the tissue.

You don't bleed, but like from the inside it destroys the tissue. I just didn't even realize you could like scar like that without bleeding or like a tentacle, you know? Yeah, you kind of do bleed, but you're like bleeding inside. It's like destroying your blood vessels from the inside. And then they're also, it's destroying that skin tissue and everything. I guess a burn, sometimes with burns you don't bleed and you scar up. Usually you don't.

It's much more like a burn than anything else, for sure. His fresh wounds look just like a big long blister in the shape of a tentacle. I should say Chesh is just what his friends and family called him, which Mike, I know we like to get into sometimes, but I feel like we're his friends and family. It's just a name. That's what I've been saying. All right. What was I going to say about the scars?

Oh, yeah. With Mike's subscriber episode, he did show us some crazy photos of like really terrible box jelly. wounds and scars. And I think that's usually a function of how many tentacles that particular box jelly might have. So like I think this one that hit Chesh didn't have that many. It might have been one that just had four tentacles or something. But some of those people get hit by the ones that have like 60 and they're going to have just that lattice work of scars from those tentacles. So it's pretty crazy. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boosts the boosts.

it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. All right. So let's get into our ouchies. I'm going to, I'm going to say 10. I'm going to say 10 outchies. Well, I'm going to say nine. And the reason I give it nine is because they figured it out quick enough to where he didn't have to, you know, endure weeks or days of the pain.

Like the next day, he was feeling a lot better. So just for like duration, I'm going to give it a nine instead of a ten. But as far as like the pain associated with the incident, I feel like it's hard to beat a box jelly. They seem like it's pretty terrible. Yeah, it just sounds about as bad as it can get without actually leading to death. I haven't looked, but I would be amazed if any of those people online that have made a career of being stung by things, if any of them have been stung by box jellies on purpose, because it is life-threatening. So I just imagine it's worse than just about any of that. Probably not.

I don't know, yeah. Coyote? Maybe, we'll see. Because you can neutralize it if you're ready for it. But it could kill you in two minutes, too. Dude, coyote would die for sure. Yeah. I'm going to go with a nine, too.

as well, nine as well. I'm going eight. With the caveat, I think it's like the worst pain in the moment you can have, but then the recovery seemed pretty fast as far as pain. Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay.

Well, that's it for the story. So we'll get into our categories. Let's start with our favorite pop culture jellyfish. This can be any jellyfish. It doesn't have to be a box jelly. I picked a box jelly, but I'm curious to see if either of you, You picked it, so I'm going to let you guys go first. I'll go first.

I want to just do the jellyfish in SpongeBob, and I think it's funny that he makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with their jelly. That's a good pick. It's a good joke. Mike? It's hilarious. It's extraordinarily funny. That's a pretty good joke.

Do you hate SpongeBob, Mike? No, I actually. I quite like SpongeBob. Yeah. The King Jellyfish? Like, he's pretty sweet. I went with uh, Metroids.

Oh, yeah. Since I don't, I mean, they're technically not jellyfish, but they're always described as jellyfish like entities. And you know what? I just love super Metroid. Yeah, it's a fun game. I picked the scene from the movie seven pounds where the character played by Will Smith is like, we learn that he's harvesting his organs to give to people.

And the way that he decides to off himself is by a box jellyfish. in a tub and because the uh it won't affect his organs apparently which isn't true um so he gets at a tub with his pet box jellyfish and that's how he uh dies in that movie spoiler alert huh terrible movie that's got to be one of the only box jellyfish pop culture references so good poll thanks yeah i had not seen it dumb i thought it one while we were recording that i want to ask okay Favorite pop culture moment where someone has like something attached to them that they have to like rip off of their body. Hmm. So like isn't alien they have it attached to their face and they try to rip it off?

The facehuggers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is that your pick? Yeah, probably. Huh. Honestly, like my mind went to Prometheus when there's that little like cobra alien that goes inside the guy's space suit and it's like going down his throat and they're trying to pull it out.

Yeah, that's a good one. But all I can think about. is the octopus in Luffy's pants. Yeah, from one piece. Which is a one piece reference for everyone out there that doesn't understand that. Yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. I'd have to think harder about that, but I'm going to go with Prometheus for now.

Okay. I'm sure there's some good leech scenes in movies out there. Oh, you know what? You know what it is for me? It's, oh, this scene haunts me still. The Peter Jackson King Kong, where they fall down into that under, kind of like, underground area and all those bugs come out and start killing them. and what's his face.

Andy Circus's character has these like weird worms attack him and they like latch on to him and he's like trying to cut them with a machete and stuff. And it's such a disconcerting scene because it's all those weird brown bugs that you just want to pretend don't exist. And there's like no music during that scene either. It just gets eerily quiet and they're all just screaming and dying. And yeah, I don't know. That scene gives me the willies. So that's the one I'm picking for sure.

Good pick. All right, our next category is what would Mike and Jeff do? So what are you guys doing? If you get stung by a box jelly, surfing with your bros and stinky pee out in the ocean. All right. So if I'm Johnny, like, I make it back to shore. And then you're not supposed to like, like, I'll yell to my friends and tell them, like, I'm in real trouble. I need to go hospital right now.

And then as soon as, like, I'm done doing that, I'm not going to be able to keep from rubbing my. chest because like I just want to get rid of that pain. So you know Fargo season... I know, but I'm saying it's like how can you not touch it? Because it hurts so bad. Yeah. So like you know Fargo season one episode one after he kills his wife? Yeah.

I'm just going to run straight into a tree head first. Knock yourself out. It's a good idea. I knock myself out. Yeah. Mike? I'm getting everyone. to pee on me, dude.

You think that a non-of-p-y-work. Yeah, I think his problem was not enough. Poup on you. I'll tell you what you should actually do. The first thing you want to do is flood the area with vinegar. Vinegar has, it's like, has this acidic quality that actually denatures those proteins, deactivates them, causes them to stop firing that venom. And you'll immediately, it'll immediately cut down on the pain and help with your recovery.

then from there you want to stop rubbing the spot obviously you want to make sure if you have someone around they're ready to give you CPR just in case you do go to cardiac arrest you want to call emergency services and then you can apply heat too so if you can actually like dunk the person in hot water somehow like a hot tub or like a really hot bath or shower or something that's really going to help again with that venom and it's going to help them feel a lot better a lot quicker there's also like a pressure bandage that you can apply that will help the person stop trying to mess with it or like stop rubbing against things or whatever. But really the main things are like getting that vinegar on there, getting them in hot water, and then getting them to the hospital if they need medical attention. So some beaches in like Australia and other places now, the lifeguards will actually have vinegar on hand in case someone is stung by a box jelly.

Yeah. All right. We're going to go to where Mike and Jeff paying attention. So I have some questions, some are easy. One of them is going to be really easy, I think. But yeah, who wants to go first? Yeah, I'll go first. Should there be a penalty for the loser?

Loser gets peed on? Loser has to rob a convenience store. Okay, deal. Loser's robbing a convenience store. Yeah. All right. Jeff, aside from Andrew and Stinky P, what was the name of the other friend on the boat? Next.

Mike, do you want to steal? William? Sean. Dang it. His name was Sean. I was thinking Sean William, Scott was probably mixing me up. Mike, according to me, but a disputed fact, how many species of box jellies are there in the world? 62?

Jeff, would you like to steal? Yeah, 50. 51. Oh, 51. He's got it. I'm giving it to him. All right. I did try to change it before you say it, no.

You did. You did. I'm giving it to you. Mike, you mad already? Mike, you get the gimmey question, just out of luck. You always get mad. Wait, it's my turn. Oh, it is your turn, isn't it?

Because you stole. Sorry, Jeff gets the gimme question. Jeff, what was the name of the tropical storm? Chris. Nice. Two zero. Okay. Mike, we're going to give you an easier one, too.

What are adult jellies called? Adult jellies? Medusas. Correct. Two to one. Jeff, how many gastric segments do box jellies have? Four. Oh, good jellies.

job three to one uh mike how many total eyes do box jellies have oh gosh what was it like 18 is that your guess 20 20 18 4 6 wait jeff 26 24 24 all right all right jeff when they're in their poll up stage jellyfish can reproduce asexually what is that process called i don't know mike sex sex Budding. It's called budding. Mike, how many advanced eyes do box jellies have? Four. Correct. Two to three. Jeff's winning still. All right. We got two more questions.

Jeff, about how many people die each year from box jellies? I know you said this one. I for sure wasn't paying attention. I would have remembered, too. I missed it when you said it. Do you want to guess? Yeah, let's guess 12. Mike? A hundred. A hundred, correct.

It's tied up. A hundred on the nose? Tied up. All right. This is the final question. It goes to Mike. What body part did I compare the really tiny species of box jelly to? Like a human body part?

Mm-hmm. I said they were as big as a human. Oh, thumbnail. Correct. Mike, you win. Jeff, you got a rob convenience store. Man. You got one close.

Yep, that was a good to come back. You're going to be better at it than me, I think. Robin, I think so. Yeah, I feel like I'm the winner because I'm going to make some extra money here. All right. Did you guys prepare a truth and a lie? Yeah. Cool.

Do you think, Jeff, when you're running out the door and you know how they have the measuring stick by the doorway that's like, that measures out the feet and inches, do you think they'd give you six feet? No, they'll be, they'll say, 5.11 and three quarters. Oh, they have that? I didn't realize they have that. It's to say how, like, tall thieves were. That's what I've always heard, like, to give a description of someone. I don't know if that's true, but, yeah, that's what I've always heard, at least. I'm going to have, I'm going to buy two extra getaway cars and just drive, like, three blocks and switch cars and just keep switching cars.

That's smart. Nice. Buying two extra cars will sure make that a profitable robbery. All right. Let's do truth and a lie. All right. I'm still undefeated because last time. You pick who goes first. Really quick. Correction Corner. Last time when Jeff did the truth in a lie, he misnamed the dog.

So I actually got it right because the fact wasn't right. So I'm still undefeated. Mike, why don't you go first? Well, I want to call you out on something then. Okay. But I didn't like the sloth thing. Humans eat about 80,000 pounds in their lifetime. And I said they eat about as much of the gray whale.

I had that on my list for a correction corner. That was dumb. All right. That's like a 15% difference. I don't, I'm not going to give that to you, Jeff. Well, if you live to be like 100, then you could eat it gray well. That's all I said. Dude, 90-year-olds, they eat like half a cup of oatmeal and like a walnut a day.

They're not adding a whole lot. I'm happy to accept when I'm wrong. I don't need to turn it around and throw something that you guys were wrong about. You pick who goes first, Wes. All right, Mike, you go first. Okay. Truth or a lie, Wes. Spotty Eagle rays.

You know what those are? Yeah, I've worked with them a little bit. They have two sets of five gills. on each side of their body. Okay. Jeff? Lions are the seventh fastest land animal on earth. Hmm.

African lions. I've handled a spotted eagle ray before, and I'm pretty sure both, all of its gills are on its underside, not on top. When you say on both sides of its body, do you mean top and bottom, like dorsal and ventral? No, 10 total gills on the undercarriage. Okay. I don't know how many gills they have, but they are all on the bottom. bottom. I would have a hard time believing that lions are the seventh fastest land animal,

because I think there's probably a lot of ungulates that are faster than them, but they are hella fast. So this is a hard one. You guys did good on this one. I'm going to go ahead and say, that seems like a lot of gills. So I'm going to go ahead and say that Jeff is telling the truth and Mike is lying. Oh, you got me. We got you. But actually in the wrong way, Lions are the fifth fastest land. Oh, okay. They are fast. That's why I was like, they could be up there.

Wow. So, all right. 50 miles per hour. That was a good one. Good job. Wireless can feel like a world of traps. But not with Visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot.

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We're going to go to, it came from Quora. I found some good Quora entries. They're not great, but I will say my favorite Quora answers are the ones that are just really passive-aggressive. Like, the person asks a really legitimate question, and immediately they're just answered with like a really really passive aggressive answer. So I found some great ones of those for box jellyfish. All right. So the first one comes from, I don't know who asked the question, but they said, how deadly is the Australian box jellyfish? And Jason responded, I believe they're deadly, enough to kill you. But if you stay out of the water, you don't have to worry about one stinging you,

which is very true. Why didn't we do that? Yep. All right. Someone asked, do beaches in Australia have box jellyfish? And Michael responded, some do, some don't. Okay, thanks Michael. That was the full answer. Someone said, is it safe to touch any jellyfish bell since the bell can't sting? And this one I just thought was kind of funny because of the terminology. Marcello said, as long as you don't touch the sinato blasts, everything will be fine. Like out of context. That's an amazing sentence. Yeah.

Like if you are just worried about touching a jellyfish and someone says, oh, don't touch the synodlast. It's like, okay. The what? All right. Someone asked, are all jellyfish stings equally life-threatening? And Joe said, depends on the type of jellyfish. So. So no.

Great answers, everyone. Thank you. Thanks for being dicks. That's it came from Quora. Okay. Jeff, do you got any listener questions for us? Or should we lead off with... That's such a bad.

That's such a good last one, you found. Yeah. Or should we do... Let's do our subscriber questions first, yeah? Yeah. All right. So this is for all of us. It's from Philodora.

Philodora asks, What's your favorite Monty Python sketch? Mine is, listen. Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swartz is no basis for a system of government part of Holy Grail. You guys Monty Python watchers? Just kind of like the greatest hits, like the big movies is all.

Mine's the Holy Hand grenade of Antioch from Holy Grail. I can recite that entire section verbatim. So that's definitely my favorite part. I love that part. Is that party trick a big hit? It's not. I've never done it for anyone. You just do it to yourself in the mirror in the morning?

Pretty much. Yeah, mine's probably the dude. The flesh wound guy He gets like his limbs cut off And just wants to keep fighting That'd be me Yeah that would be Yeah, I'm a fighter

You'd want to keep swimming after that shark You'd still be saying I'm faster than you You kind of like you like pain a little bit I feel Well yeah He's a real masochist Yeah I guess mine is from Monty Python The Holy Grail as well

But at the very end when the police Just come and arrest everybody I just think that's the dumbest in funniest way for the whole thing to end. It is so good. Yeah. All right. This is one that's on topic kind of with what we talked about a little bit.

It's from Laura. And Laura asks, I read in an old survival book that if a person was struck in known shark waters, they should pee in little spurts and swim away from that area, pee another tiny bit, and then swim away until a person has emptied their entire bladder. Are sharks actually attracted to pee like they are blood? or is it more a matter of curiosity that pee may attract them?

Never heard that in my entire life. I don't know. Wouldn't it be trying to avoid the sharks? I think the idea was like, oh, if you pee over here and then pee over here and then swim to another area, it makes it so the shark gets confused looking for your pee trail and then you lose it. I think sharks aren't. They're not that dumb.

Dumb. And I don't think they're attracted to pee either. Yeah. So peeing in pools is like none of us. are okay with that, right? Or West, kind of West. Shoot, I forgot you were one of those people. So you probably have no problem then just peeing in the ocean.

Because I still feel really guilty when I pee in the ocean. I can't pee in a wetsuit. I have a hard time peeing in a wetsuit. You feel guilty as far as like other people getting in your pee in the ocean? Yeah, that's stupid. You shouldn't feel that way at all. It's a little extreme, but it's liberating to pee in the ocean, Mike. I mean, I'd rather be too considerate than not considerate.

Yeah, it's an interesting question. Okay, Jeff, this one's for you. It's from Stephanie. On one of your older episodes, I can't remember the circumstance of the story, but the person only brought hard-boiled eggs for their snack on a hike. I remember we all talked about how that was kind of gross. Jeff, Stephanie didn't actually say, Jeff, but I'm going to ask it to you. Would you rather eat all of those hiking eggs in his pocket or one molecule of poop?

Why are you asking me? I already know what you're missing. I just want to make you say it again. I'll for sure eat the molecule of poop. What about you guys? I saw a lot of pushback actually from listeners who said hiking eggs are totally normal. Yeah, I'll eat the eggs over poop molecules. If I know I'm eating poop molecules.

Yeah, sure. Honestly? You just ate one probably. Well, let me say. I think I'm on Jeff's side on this. Yeah. If those were my hiking eggs, I would eat the eggs. if they were from his pocket, I would eat the molecule poop.

Literally walk into your bathroom and you will have eaten more than one molecule poop. Eggs sound kind of nice. I like hard-boiled eggs. I'd rather eat those than something I don't want to eat at all. I don't know. The idea of warm eggs when I'm like kind of sweaty and out on the trail just sounds so gross. I know it sounds like it's a normal thing, but I'm going. You can meet me all go.

I'd get like two or three molecules even. All right. Fine. All right. I'm dead. this Ooh I won't get that Oh let's see you can go highest

All right So Leah Leah asks Imagine an animal That has multiple horns How many horns are you picturing Does multiple ever only mean two to you Or does it have to be a minimum of three

It's causing contention between Leah and the siblings So when you guys think of multiple horns Does it have to be more than two horns or is two multiple horns? I mean, it's when you made me think of it, I thought of a triceratops with three horns. Okay. But it doesn't have to be three.

Like a rhino, like I could think of a rhino with two horns. Yeah. Rhinos kind of have like one of their horns almost looks like it has two on it. But yeah, I get what you're saying. I've seen rhinos with two horns. Yeah, like the double. I could just think of that and that's multiple horns. Yeah, same.

I think of multiple as just more than one. Simple. More than one. But when I was told to envision multiple, I thought four for what that's worth. Interesting. You guys both envision more horns than me. I just thought of like... At first I thought I'd like 10.

Wow. And I was like, that's too many. Too many horns. Then not enough molecules of poop with too many horns. All right. That's it for subscriber questions for now. Jeff, you got any listener questions? Yeah, and I actually had one subscriber question too.

Cool. Jeremy wants to know what we think of co-escriber questions. colossal bioscience and de-extinction. Apparently they plan on having mammoths by the end of 2024. Yeah. And like a lot of that one, I guess. I don't like it. I think that's an animal that was selected for extinction and the world has changed too much to introduce like megafauna back like that.

There's already animals that have occupied those ecosystems. There's not a space for them. I think it'd be cool to bring one back as like a kind of like a side show. curiosity and like for people to see a mammoth but like reintroducing them to me seems like a really bad idea it seems like too it wasn't even really that much humans fault that mammoths went extinct right no they kind of think that we extincted mammoths that like yeah that people got too good at hunting them but still it was it's it was too long ago things have changed too much since then in my opinion if i saw a mammoth i'd be pretty excited me too i'd be happy

about it. And relatively, it wasn't like it was that long ago. It was just a couple thousand years ago, right? Yeah. I mean, it's not like super long ago, but I don't know. I just think stuff has already occupied that area. And we're having a hard time keeping stuff that we have alive, much less introducing new things. I think if we could bring, I think if we could bring back animals that we recently cause their extinction, that's great. But I think they've been gone long enough that, I don't know. But it would be really cool to see one. My like nerdy side just would love to see a mammoth. So bring them back. All right.

What the hell? From Instagram. C. What are your favorite sports to watch and favorite sports teams? I really like Utah Jazz. I like Steph Curry. Right now I just became a Joe Burrow guy. I love Joe Burrow.

But probably my favorite team is the Montana Grizzlies college football team. That's what I was going to say. University of Montana college football. And then Utah Jazz. after that. A championship for any team I'd choose the jazz. Me too. Yeah.

Mike? So. Chargers? I think they... This is a complicated answer for Mike. As much as I wish it were any other way, the charges are at the top of that list. I can't help it. And then probably the Super Sonics.

If anyone wonders why Mike hates so many things. It's a lifetime of... Pain inflicted on people I had no choice in falling in love with. And then the Padres. Yeah. So San Diego, sports is kind of where my heart's at, along with the Seattle Supersonics, who are coming back, I hope. You're going to be full-blown fan again if they come back?

Yeah, for sure. Bairtender is asking, what is your most controversial TV-slash-film opinion? So I'm going plot-wise in the event. Avengers, not only do I think the Avengers are the bad guys and Thanos is the good guy. I think Thanos wasn't doing enough and should have killed like 75% humans. Because what's the very last one called? Is it end game? Yeah.

Yeah. So in Endgame, Freaking Captain America says he sees humpback whales in the harbor at New York. So obviously the world like besides humans are. doing amazing. Yeah. But Thanos, did he kill half of all the animals? I don't think so. Like if he kills like half of the 80 pygmy sloths left, that's kind of messed up.

That's true. He did say like all the beings in the universe. Who knows? He needed a little bit more rules. But I think Thanos is the good guy trying to just make the planet survive. Yeah, I tend to agree with that. He just wanted some peace and quiet. I don't blame him for that.

Yeah. Um, my controversial take are, is that, um, I think the Godfather's boring. It's pretty controversial. I need to rewatch it because it's probably been like, really a terrible opinion. 15 years since I watched it. But when I watched it in like my 20s, I was like, this is kind of boring. I also thought the deer, the deer hunter was really boring too. Oh my gosh.

What? Yeah. So I tend to like, I feel like I have good taste in movies too, but for whatever reason, Those two were pretty boring for me. I get a little bored in Godfather. Yeah. I haven't seen three yet, though, so I can't. Yeah, you got to finish the.

It's a pacing issue for me. Maybe it's Mady HD manifesting itself, but. Yeah. Could be. So I've always been a strong advocate of Nicholas Cage actually being like an awesome actor. Genuinely, I think he is a great actor. I don't know. I think people are coming around, back around on him again recently.

as far as liking him at least, but I still think people look at his acting as a little bit of a joke. But yeah, I've always said that Nicholas Cage's top 10 movies could go head to head with any other actor in Hollywood history's top 10 films and have a really good chance at coming out on top.

Okay. All right. I'm going to do a little follow-up. One other one that I have is I think the Star Wars prequels are kind of good. It's the stupidest thing you've ever said. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. All right. Well, I'm saying it.

I mean, your take... I had fun last time I watched him. We could be meaner about your take. About Nicholas Cage? All right, let's go. Let's do it. I think he's a good actor. I agree with Mike on that one.

But he's not one of the... He's not like the best actor ever. No. I don't think he's like a good actor, but I think he's good. I think he's a good actor, but I wouldn't say he's the best. You're kind of saying he's the best actor. I'm saying his 10 best movies could go head to head with any other actors' 10 best movies. I disagree with him.

I'll take Keanu's. I'll take Brad Pitt. I don't know. Leonardo's. Really? Cool. Yeah. Speed isn't a good movie.

It's a fun movie, but it's not like good. We're going against Nick Cage. Right, but he has like some like really good movies. So does Keanu, the Matrix? Yeah. Matrix is one of the best movies I've ever seen. We got one and counting. Replacements?

No. All right. Let's move on. Let's move on. Winter keeps me warm. My son told me a jellyfish could kill an orca by entering its blowhole where the vital organs are. True or false? I mean, hypothetically, maybe it's true, but I would say false.

That's our cage match, too. How does it box jellyfish do in the cage match? I didn't include it because it just didn't seem like a good. Could kill a humpback, you think? I don't think so. I think there'd be a lot more dead whales washing up with, like, jelly fist stings on them, and that's not happening. So, let's see. Girono, Giorondo.

Wait, Giorandano. I miss that up, but it's impossible. Somewhere in there. How much does Jeff bench? I've never, I've gotten close to 200, but I've never gotten above it. Right now probably like 150 or like 155 since it always goes by fives. Sweet, dude. How much can you bench?

I have no idea. Why are you making fun of me? I'm just answering a question. That's just a funny question to have asked to yourself. That is a funny question. Yeah, exactly. You got to pick which questions you answer. It's the kind of question that someone that isn't you would have been like, oh yeah, probably like $375.

Yeah, it's not like I'm just laughing at it. normal number. Right. How much can you guys bet? I truly have no idea. I've never really tested. Yeah. You guys don't bench press?

No. I haven't bench pressed for probably 15 years. High school. See, this was an interesting question to ask because that's crazy to me that you guys haven't benched pressed in 15 years. I probably have, but I didn't, I just like put on plates and benched. Like I wasn't afterwards like, hey, how much was that? Oh, dude.

You're really strong, man. No, I just like, I don't know what the... Too much to count? I don't know what the bar weighs. It's for me, like... The bar is 45 pounds, and I think plates are, like, the big 45-pound plates is what you call... Yeah. So if you're putting those big ones on, what is that?

It's like 135. Yeah, I truly don't know. I used to work out a lot, but I would just do that body pump class where you just do lots of, like, small weight, lots of intervals. Yeah. And, yeah, I don't know. I do mostly body weight stuff as well. All right.

Katie Moore wants to know. is Mike aware that horse girls are his type, and his dislike of horses is partially rooted in jealousy. That is true. Horse girls kind of are your type, Mike. What are you talking about? You do kind of like a horse girl. I'm not saying it. Hold on.

What is pointing people towards? She's a horse girl. You like her? I didn't want it to come out in this kind of a forum, but. That's a good question. Think about it, Mike. Let that one sit. I guess I will. Simmer for a while. Alexander J-Cav, what's your favorite city you visited?

Oh, great question. Mine's probably Lubiana, Slovenia, the capital of Slovenia. I just really fell in love with that little city. I just loved the vibe in Slovenia, love the country, love the people. That might be it for me. Yeah, I don't know. I like towns more. I'd say like Banff or something.

Yeah, you can count that. But if I have to go like a city, I might even just say L.A. Like, I really like L.A. I love Las Vegas to visit. Yeah, because it's fun. Just got it all. Probably, like, the coolest experience I've had visiting a city was Gowsong in Taiwan.

Yeah, I want to go there. No, I have been there. Yeah, you have. I loved it there. Yeah. Amazing food, really, I mean, the people, at least people I'm at, like, really, really nice, accommodating, and just a cool city. Yeah. It's hard to pick.

I mean, there's so many cool cities out there. I want to do a new back. question so let me just do two more here because I got two more good ones okay what are Jeff's opinions on jelly beans okay oh man I just like that I said I I unintentionally said I have two more really good ones and that's what I was one of them Jeff you just need to have your own that's all what's the questions to you but what's you guys favorite jelly bean juicy pear mine was always like the Dr. Pepper one juicy Pear is my favorite. Very cherries up there. Juicy pears very low on my list.

I love that. Black licorice. I do like a black licorice jelly. It's my least favorite, but that's okay. That means we'd be compatible. But even like, if we're talking, what's the Harry Potter beans? One bag of only one flavor. That's true. Right. We used to play it in college. We would buy those Harry Potter jelly beans, and we'd sit at

the back of the lecture hall. me and my friends, and we would play the game where we had just passed the bag around, and you had to eat whatever you got. And once one of my friends got like four booger-flavored ones in a row, and he just vomited all over the seats in the classroom, and they had to, like, shut the class down. It was so funny. All right.

From Brady Zips Off, which reality competition show do you think you could win? Survivor. You think you could win? Win Survivor? Yeah, I think I'm really good at, like, negotiating my way through social things. So I think I'd be really good at Survivor. We should get you on, dude. You have the whole bear thing going.

Yeah, maybe. I think I'd be good at Amazing Race, too. Those two, I think, would be my strong ones. I think either of you two would make a good team on Amazing Race. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I think Mike halfway through would just be like, I'm over this.

I'm done. I'm tired. We've, like, gotten first every time and Mike just quit. Yeah. I'm gonna do America's Got Talent. I think I might be the best parallel parker in the world, so I just do something like parallel park on stage or something like that. Ooh.

They'd love me. I don't know. I've seen some drift clips where people drift into parallel parking spots. Yeah. I'm gonna go with the challenge. They just, they aren't very smart. That's true. You do good at Tripp.

Like, the smartest contestants think, like, literally more. than one step ahead. Yeah. And everyone's like, this guy is so smart. He's like a master chess player. I can't believe what he just pulled off. And it's just like the most obvious things. It's a great show, except for this season.

All right. Okay. Well. Do you have any more God hope? You want another one? No, I don't. Let's just go out. If they're as good as those last two, then yeah.

Megan Wilkie wants to know what our favorite color is. Oh, there we go. All right. Brown. I'm going to go into box jelly conservation. Jellyfish color. Quick answer. Green's my favorite color.

All right. Mike said brown. Jeff, what's yours? Orange. All right, there we go. Conservation for box jellyfish. We don't have to worry about these guys at all. They're doing just fine.

As we remove a lot of their natural predators from the water, sea turtles, sometimes other fish will eat them too. They're just proliferating. They're doing better and better and better. Climate change is actually probably helping them too. This is an animal that as we overfish the oceans and as the oceans change, we're going to have a lot more jellyfish in the ocean. So it's kind of not great how many jellyfish are popping up.

So if you love box jellyfish. Yep, you're in for a tree. Just keep using single-use plastics. Keep eating unsustainable fish. Yep. So you know that question that people ask, like, if you could get rid of any one animal in the world? What would you choose? Would it be bad to just get rid of box jellyfish?

I mean, yeah. I don't think it would actually ruin much, to be honest, because, like, the turtles that eat them and stuff, I think they have other jellyfish they could eat. So yeah, this might be a good pick for that, actually. Like, I don't think it would affect much getting rid of box jellyfish. But I could be wrong. But yeah, I like that. answer. So our final category, how much do we like this animal? Our claw ratings and Jeff's arbitrary rating that's actually not that arbitrary, apparently. I'm going to say for my claw

rating, I'm giving them, I'm going to give them a four. I don't ever want to bump into one of these box jellyfish. I think, like as Jeff just kind of pointed out, they're probably an animal that we could do without even and probably be okay. I do think they still have an inherent right to survive. like every other animal on the planet that's evolved to this point. I think they're, the reason they get a four for me is it's really cool that they're the most venomous animal maybe on the planet. And I think they're like mesmerizingly beautiful.

Watching jellyfish move through the water to me is just so beautiful that that's why I give them. Maybe I'll even bump them up to a five. I'm going to go five. I'm going seven for all the reasons you just laid out. And I just have an inherent bias towards a, aquatic, like sea life. I think they're amazingly beautiful. All jellies of all shapes and sizes.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to give it six, I think. I really like jellyfish, and I love going to the aquarium and just like, that's the thing that I'm always like, I don't know, most, grabs my attention the most. It's just staring at the jellyfish. Yeah. But I prefer jellyfish that can't kill me or make me hurt super bad. So as far as like actual jellyfish go, these are like lower on my list, even though they are really pretty.

I kind of like that jellyfish don't have brains and just kind of float around. Like these ones kind of like being able to think, I don't know, I kind of like that about jellyfish that they don't have that, you know? Yeah. Okay. Jellyfish tanks are kind of like screen savers in real life. Yeah, they are. Yeah. It's so meditative watching them.

All right. So we got five, six, seven for box jelly. please. All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening. Why was I afraid of seven? Because seven, eight, nine? Yeah. Okay. Thanks everyone for being here. Sorry to everyone that we just lost. And yeah, thanks again. No one died. No, I know. Someone probably just died, but maybe not a listener. You think they drove off the road because they were laughing so hard. So hard at that joke. Yeah. We'll see you guys soon.

Thanks for your continued support. We really do appreciate it. This thing really means a lot to all three of us. So thanks for listening, as always. And we love you. Love you guys. See you next time.