Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Crocodile Attack - The Killer Croc Down Under

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

A saltwater crocodile attack that took place South of Darwin, Australia. It involves 3 young friends out for a day of fun on the banks of a flooding river and, due to an enormous crocodile, it unfortunately ends in tragedy.  ~~ 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

Welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. On this one, we're talking about the saltwater crocodile. And, oh, this one is really cool. West prepared for all of us, not only a pretty crazy story, but, well, you know the routine by now. He's got all kinds of really cool facts, the whole nine yards. We had a lot of fun recording this one. And don't worry, Jeff's microphone quality goes up after about, I don't know, two minutes

into the episode, and then he's back on that good stuff. So, yeah, I feel like that's all that I need to say. So let's get to the episode. Thanks for listening. Okay, what's up, guys? Hey, listeners. So, yeah, this is tooth and cloud. We got Jeff, Mike, and Wes here.

Wes is a wildlife biologist. I am. And then I'm Jeff, and that's Mike. Everything important has been talked about. Oh, man, I've been having back pain. So ever since I had COVID. Oh, we're going COVID corner right off the back. My back has been tight.

but I'm just so glad I bought that massage chair last year. I sit in it. I sit in it so much that it like hurts to sit in it because I've just been like getting massaged all day. So wait, we're all suffering long-term consequences. Do you guys still have like stuff? Like you like don't like to taste a honey nut churios or something. Yeah, that's like one of my top five cereals ever.

And also my favorite candy, Reese's peanut butter cups. They taste like burnt hair and onions now. Oh, man. That sucks. My lungs just don't work well anymore. So let's catch up on a couple things real quick. For people who don't know, I'm in Jackson, Wyoming, and I've been kind of like hired to be a bear babysitter.

So there's a really famous grizzly bear here that has four cubs. And they've been in developed areas and kind of getting into some trouble. So Fish and Wildlife Service emergency hired me to kind of. down and just try and stay a step ahead of her and keep her out of trouble. So that's been my job. It's like a real game of cat and mouse. You're like... It is.

Yeah. You're trying to out with the bear, like the riddler? Yeah. The other night, though, her and all four cubs were in like downtown Jackson. Oh, so they got you. And it was like pandemonium trying to get him out of there. Luckily, it went pretty smoothly and no one got hurt and nothing bad happened. But it was funny because the next day all these news articles were out about it.

And they were all like, wildlife officials escort the bears out of Jackson. And it just made it seem so easy and calm. And meanwhile, I'm like, I'm like running around on the ground trying to find these bears and hazing them out of ditches and doing all this crazy stuff in the middle of a city. So it was a pretty wild night. But it went really smoothly. And honestly, the whole thing's gone really smoothly. And the bears back up in the Teton's now and she's safe and all her cubs are with her.

So really it's been like a really cool project So how many bears do you think it'd take to beat you in a fight? To beat me in a fight? If you won 1 v5. I don't think I would call it a fight so much as just like a standoff. You think if there was 15 bears, they would still stand off? You would still be able to stand off? If it were one mom and 14 grown cubs, because her cubs are grown, like they're pretty

much as big as her now. Maybe. Maybe they would still run away. I don't know. I was pushing it, though. Five bears is a lot of bears to handle. It's scary. So, yeah, that's a little bit about what I've been doing in Jackson.

I'm sure there's a lot of people that have more questions about it. There's Nudas articles and stuff out about it now, so you can read more about it online. Just Google 399 Jackson, Wyoming, and whatever you read is what I'm part of. So it's been a crazy job, though, so far. 399 being the name of the bear. Yeah, that's her name. Sometimes, well, it's her number when she was caught. She's 25 years old, so she was bear 399.

It was a long time ago. Ever, the 399th bear? Ever. Yeah. Wow. In the history of bears. It is old. Hey, guys, happy Steve Irwin day.

Oh, hey. That guy? Yeah, I don't know why it's November. Is this like when he died? No, he died in September. I want to say September 8th. Don't fact check me on that, but I think that's the day. We'll probably do an episode on that.

Yeah, we will. When we're ready. It's too soon. But for whatever reason, his family decided that November 15th would be the day that's nationally or like worldly, internationally worldly, known as Steve Irwin Day. So today is a celebration of Steve. And honestly, Steve Irwin was like one of my biggest role models growing up. I absolutely love Steve Irwin.

I watched the crocodile hunter all the time. I wanted to be like Steve Irwin. So I got really sad when Steve Irwin died. It was like a big shock to me. It was kind of weird how even just at school, there was just the day that we all learned that the crocodile hunter died. Yeah. It was just a somber, silent.

We all kind of went home and it was just not a day of fun. Yeah. Like totally deserved. He, if anyone deserves a day out of the year devoted just to them might be him. I think Norm, Norm McDonald is the only one who I cared more about. when he died. Uh-huh. And coincidentally, one of my favorite bits of his is when he's talking about Steve Irwin

dying. To John Stewart. Have you heard that? No, but he's like, he's on the daily stove. And like John Stewart just doesn't want him to keep talking once he like brings up the he's like, so the crocodile hunter died and John Stewart's like, I don't like this already. Yeah. And he's like, that's how I feel right now.

He's saying like, he lived to be 40 years old. but you know for a crocodile hunter that's actually pretty good that's a ripe old age for a crocodile hunter that's pretty yeah r-i p norm macdonald too it's a good bit i'll listen to it it's funny because recently i saw some articles about steverwin and it was like pita or someone saying how he and i've seen other biologists say this too like how he needlessly harassed animals and stressed him out and did all these things and like how he actually wasn't someone that we should look up to. And it just bugs me because it's like, yeah, that's true. He did for sure needlessly stress out a lot of animals. But I don't know if needlessly is the right word because he inspired so many people. And I think

that good that he did is worth so much more than some animals being stressed out. For sure, Steve Irwin loved those animals. And I'm not saying that's how I feel about Timothy Treadwell. No, I definitely don't feel that way about Timothy. And we'll get to Timothy for sure. I'm just messing with you. But I'm not saying that's a good reason to stress out an animal because it's not. But Steve Irwin did a lot more good than he did bad. And so many of the biologists I know personally were inspired to become biologists because of Steve Irwin.

And I'll, you know, I love him. Me too. Well, speaking of crocodile hunters, what are we talking about? We're talking about saltwater crocodiles, which is kind of. kind of weird. I actually got one of those, right? Yeah, you are. Or you did.

Broken clock. I am. You are. It's kind of funny because I picked salt water crocodiles a few days ago and was doing research today. And as I was doing research, I figured out it was Steve Irwin Day today as we're recording. So. Oh, so this wasn't planned.

No. This is serendipitous. This is like, meant to happen. Really do you have to be so mad that a stingray killed him. I know. They were like, oh, that was ours. They had so many chances. Dude, my theory about that is the crocodiles were in on it.

And he was just like sneaking him crocodile snacks off camera. He's like, play your part in with both. Well, he was doing it on camera. That's true, too, yeah. Anyway, it's going to be hard for me to do a Steve Rowan episode. That's going to be a hard one. Yeah, but Jeff, you nailed it. We are doing saltwater crocodiles.

I'm going to be honest, I got a little bummed out today and not because of Steve Irwin. Saltwater crocodile attacks are pretty insane. And doing research for them was like a hard one. This was a tricky one. And I went down this weird rabbit hole on YouTube where sometimes when I do a story, I'll get on YouTube to see if there's any interviews from the people associated with the story because it just gives me really good context. and I typed in the name of one of our people today in the story and was looking at videos and the one that popped up was like sad video crocodile attack and it just fully shows someone getting killed by a crocodile

and there's a few of those online and it really kind of killed the mood for me it was like oh man this sucks I just watched someone die which I don't love watching I like how the you saw a few of them you saw one and then you're like I wonder if there's any others like this Guilty is charged. I did watch one other one, but they both really bummed me out because they're both... It's a weird feeling like watching people die online. It is.

And they're both like involving people who lived in like really rural areas and just were really sad. It was just sad. They might not even like known the crocodiles were there. Anyway, so just so you know, got pretty bummed out doing this one. My research ended up being a lot happier. I just listened to Elton John's Crocodile Rock like five times right before recording. Yeah. I was going to say, I remember once I got on a subreddit that was just people falling off of giant buildings and dying.

Oh, man. I spend about half an hour. Oh, geez. Wow. A half hour? Yeah, I still kind of regret it. But once you see one and there's just a whole list of other ones, it's like, I don't know. I know.

I do know. I don't think I could do that. It's pretty messed up. After one, I'm just like, well, I haven't been back to it, at least. Anyway, I'm going to get started on our story. Okay. Most of the information from this story, it came from a lot of different sources, but there's a really good article by Barbara McMahon for The Guardian in 2008.

So that's where I got a lot of the information. But just so, you know, it came from a lot of different sources, but that one was kind of like my key source. Shout out McMayhen. Yeah, I think that's a lot of. say her name. Sorry, Barb, if I got it wrong. All right. On December 21st, 2003, Brett Mann and his two friends, Ashley McGoe and Sean Blowers. They're all three boys, by the way. They left their homes late morning one day to go do some of their favorite activities. So they're leaving like around 1130 in the morning.

And this activity they were going to do was race and made TVs around on some salt flats. So they're called the Kangaroo Flats. They're on the edge of Litchfield National Park in northern Australia. So if anyone out there is familiar with Australia, we're talking an area that's about 50 miles south of Darwin. So Brett Mann is 22, and then both Ashley and Sean are 19. And all three friends are like pretty outdoorsy. They love taking advantage of all these different outdoor activities that they can do in rural northern Australia.

And they're really excited to go out and race their ATVs around. So they're passing all this tropical forest, and they're traveling these dusty roads. And they're doing this for about an hour until they get to their desk. destination, these flat salt plains near the Finnis River. Brett, Ashley, and Sean are racing around on their ATVs for hours. They're spraying each other with mud. They're having a really good time.

They're roaring around on their machines. And Sean later when people talked to him after this incident, he remarked saying that he knew the area like the back of his hand, and he had been camping there since he was a kid. And in that entire time, since he was a kid going to this area, he had never once seen a single crocodile or a single sign of a crocodile in that area. So around 4.30 p.m., they're covered in mud, and they decide they'll ride their ATVs down to the river and they're going to wash off. So they're washing their clothes and their boots in the water, and they're talking a bit about how high the water seems. So this time of year

in Australia, in northern Australia especially, there's like a lot of rain, it's flood season, and this river had raised quite a bit. So as they're there washing their clothes off, they're talking about how high the water is, and they're kind of like not really paying that much attention to it because it is that time of year. So they're walking around in the water a little bit. There's some thin trees they're walking through when Brett just suddenly decides to walk out a little bit further into the water. And as he does this, he's swept away by the current. So when that happens, Ashley and Sean immediately jump in. They both decide to follow their friend. And they're trying to help them get out of the current. So all three boys are swept away. And they catch up with Brett

about 300 meters down the river. And all three, they're within an arm's reach of each other, and they're pretty comfortable in the water. Jeff, what I'm imagining right now is the bitter root when it floods in the spring, and we'll still go, like, paddleboard it and whatnot. It's big, and it's moving, but it's not like a roaring river, and it's not like crazy. Okay. I think he just kind of lost his footing and then got pushed downstream, and it was moving fast enough

that he couldn't regain his footing and they were into deep a water. They weren't panicked. No, so they're not panicked. They sound like clever Waterman. Yeah. Like Gallup? Yeah, like Gallup. Yeah, exactly.

Just floating on a log. Brilliant move. Anyway, so none of them are panicking. How did he come up with it? That's one of our favorite lines for the movies, everyone. Yeah. No one gets our inside joke. All right, so no panic setting in, just like you said, Jeff.

They're all pretty calm. They're like floating down the river and they're talking about an exit strategy. how they'd get out of the water. They're looking for trees they can maybe grab on or some dry land that they could crawl out on. Maybe like a crocodile head to jump off of. Yeah, exactly. Bounce across some.

So I think like from picturing this, what I picture is that the current kind of like washed them out more into the middle of this channel. And they're just getting swept downstream. So they're talking about this and they end up almost a kilometer down from where they, where they started. So they've gone quite a ways. and suddenly Ashley sees something that makes him a lot more anxious and a lot more panicked. He sees a large saltwater crocodile.

Oh. So we're going to take a break. We're going to talk about biology. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop.

So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. Seasite for details. Saltwater crocodiles are famously found in northern Australia, but they range throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, eastern coast of India, coastal Southeast Asia.

They used to live in Singapore, Cambodia, and Vietnam, but they've been extirpated from those areas. So they really live throughout that entire kind of Oceania region, like all those islands throughout Southeast Asia and in Australia. So they are the largest reptile in the world. There's no bigger reptile than saltwater crocodiles. Bigger, so they are bigger on average than alligators. Just much bigger. Much bigger.

So I'm going to get into that. Bigger's not always better, though. An average male length. You have a hard time finding legroom on airplanes and stuff. That's true. I honestly, I'm like not a big guy and I love being, like, growing up, I hated being shorter and now I love it because I fit so well in like airplanes and cars and everything. And suitcases.

Yeah. You have suitcases. You just fly for free. Yeah, I just fly for free. Jeff just packs me up. Okay. Saltwater crocodiles. Average male length is 14 to 16 feet long.

So an average male saltwater crocodiles is like as big as an alligator can possibly get. The biggest male crocodiles, the biggest male saltwater crocodiles can grow to 23 feet long and weigh 2,200 pounds, man. The biggest great white was like 19 feet, right? Right. Like they think there's bigger than that, like 20 something feet, but like- But crocodiles got them by like a couple feet. Probably, yeah. Yeah, so that's like, what, half of a bus. So, Jeff, I was ready for this and I looked it up.

And an average short school bus is right around like anywhere from like 20 to 24 feet. So these guys are as long as a short school bus. All right. Yeah. Good way to look at it. Yeah. Because some of our European listeners don't know feet. Right.

So they should know a small school bus. Yeah. Another good reference, and this is perfect for that segue, a European record listeners, 23 feet long. That's one foot shorter than the width of a soccer goal. So soccer goals are pretty wide I mean when you're like in their defending you realize like that's a lot of distance

These are huge animals So they would be a pretty good goalie Yeah they'd be a great well Yeah if you're kicking on the ground Yeah Well you you think they'd be good at baseball too They could tail whip They could tail whip the soccer ball

The jury is out on that one I think All right keep going So I just like sometime When you guys have a minute listeners Look up photos of the biggest saltwater crocodiles ever captured or ever seen. You can't really picture how big they are until you see these photos. For reference sake, just the head of a male saltwater crocodile can weigh over 400 pounds.

Oh my gosh. Just their head. That's like all of us. Yeah, exactly. So females are much smaller. They're actually like one of the most sexually dimorphic of reptiles, or of all crocodilians, especially. They rarely grow longer than 10 feet, and they're typically around.

like 300 pounds. So the females are much smaller than the males. Interesting. Yeah, that's crazy. And the average male is 14 to 16 feet and about a thousand pounds. So the females are a good deal smaller. Yeah, that's a pretty big difference. Do there spikes hurt at all?

They would, yeah, if you got hit hard with them. One interesting thing about saltwater crocodiles, they don't have nearly as many spikes on their neck. They're not nearly as armored as some of the other crocodilians around their neck area. So that's a good way to tell I'll saltwater crocodile from like a freshwater crocodile or something like that. Okay. I know that in the past we've talked a lot about bite force. It is a flawed science.

The best way to look at it is bite force quotient, which is like adjust for size. But as far as just overall bite force, not adjusted for size, these guys are the champion. 3,700 PSI, there are leaps and bounds above any other animal. The only other one that people think might be close is great white sharks. but they don't really have a good way to test what a Great White Sharks bite force would be. Crazy. Yeah, what's the, uh, in Archer when they're like floating down? Yeah, do you remember the, the episode where they get attacked by a crocodile?

They say it's like 20,000 newtons. I don't really watch Archer. Oh, okay. No, you can keep going. Well, so we've said this before, but Archer's just noting to one of the other passengers. He's like, this is the apex predator. They've remained the same over hundreds of millions of years. They're unchanged.

Their bite pressure is such and such. Are they any more of a dinosaur than an alligator? No. Like, what do you mean? Are they, like, closer to their evolutionary descendant than alligators? That's all I got. That's what I thought about it. As far as I know, they're pretty much the same.

But the really cool thing, and Mike, you did just bring this up, is they really haven't changed much. Really? Nature kind of perfected crocodiles a long time ago, and there wasn't really any need for improvement. They're really good at what they do. And evolution usually comes over like tons of generations and it's like a necessity. If the animals learned how to do something better, so over time that gets worked into their genetics and the ones that do that thing do better, so they pass it on.

And that's evolution. With crocodiles, they haven't changed much because they just started out really good at what they did and they didn't need to change a lot. So I love that. Interesting. It's really cool. So a few more facts. Their teeth can grow up to four inches long, which, you know, do four inches with

your fingers. That's, that's big. Like, those, those are big teeth. They generally have 66 teeth, and they have small replacement teeth that grow under the mature teeth. So a crocodile can go through over like 3,000 teeth in their lifetimes. How many do they have in their mouth at one time? Do you know? 66.

You said that. Yeah. I was not list. I was doing the four, four inches with me. Yeah. You distracted. That's your fault. No, it's fine.

That was. I'm sorry. That's okay. Okay, so they get their name because they can survive long periods in salt water, thanks to a salt excreting gland under their tongues. So one tag saltwater crocodiles swam 370 miles of ocean in 25 days. This is a pretty good distance. Wow.

Yeah. They spend so much time at sea, especially the adults, that they've found saltwater crocodiles that have barnacles growing on them. Oh, cool. So this was a fact that I had a hard time really establishing. they can hold their breath for over an hour. So I had a hard time figuring out what exactly that time is. A lot of articles.

Did you try to hold your breath for a night? Yeah, I just kept trying to hold my breath. There were some articles that said eight hours. There are some articles that said less than an hour. Eight hours. Yeah, most of the ones I found said about an hour. So that's what we're going with for now. If someone out there is a crocodile expert and they want to correct me, go for it.

They do slow their heart rate down when they're holding their breath. for extended periods of time. They can swim at 15 miles per hour. The fastest human swimmer is like around 6 miles per hour, so they're pretty much three times faster than us in the water. They can live to be 70 years or older. One really interesting fact, at least I think it's interesting. The sex of young saltwater crocodiles is going to be determined by their incubation temperature.

So if that incubation temperature is below 30 degrees Celsius, all of those hatchlings are going to be female. If it's above 32 degrees Celsius, they're all going to be male. So if it's in that middle two degrees, I don't know if it's like a mix. So do they try to like choose what they'll be? No. No, it's just like. It just happens.

Yep. So I think that's pretty interesting. What is the mother's behavior during the prey? Do they have like certain nesting or kind of like conditions that they try to put themselves in to keep their body warmth? They don't, no, they don't like incubate. They don't lay on top of the nests like that to keep the eggs. worm. They actually, like most crocodilians, they'll make like a nest mound and they put a bunch

of like leaves and litter and stuff on top of their eggs and dirt and whatnot. And that's what's doing the incubation. It's not the mom that's doing the incubation. She'll usually, sometimes they'll lay on top of the nest, but it's not to provide warmth. They're cold-blooded animals, so it's not, they're not radiating warmth. They are extremely territorial around their nests. So you don't, if you ever find a crocodile or an alligator nest or any crocodile nest, you don't want to hang out on that area. Like they are very territorial, which is pretty unique among reptiles. Most reptiles won't defend their young or their nesting site or anything like that. Oh, cool.

Yeah. So they mostly eat fish and crustaceans when they're young crocodiles. And then as they mature, they start eating birds, sea turtles and mammals. So a large male saltwater crocodile, like one of these 15 to 20 foot crocodiles, can pretty much eat anything on land that gets close enough to the water in their range. So they can even pull down. Except for like elephants. Yeah, I was thinking that same thing. Like if an elephant, if an Indian elephant got close to the water, I don't think a

crocodile would go for it. But like, they can take down water buffalo, which are huge animals. So they actually just watched a video of an elephant stomping a crocodile. Yeah, that was a Nile crocodile in Africa. What are these forums you're looking at, Jeff? The Reddit. Jeff's just on Reddit, looking up whatever. kind of gnarly shit you can find.

Okay, so they typically will not like swallow their prey underwater. So when I was doing research, there was all these like fact websites and like one of them, a lot of them were like, crocodiles can't swallow underwater. And it kind of made my spidey sense tingle where it was like, this is probably one of those facts that everyone repeats that actually isn't true. And so I looked that up and it's true in that they have like a valve. It's called a palatal valve that closes their throat. and stops water from coming in.

So if you ever see like a video of an alligator or a crocodile and it's under water and it's opening its mouth, they're blocking their throat off and that's why water isn't like just gushing into their throat. Okay. But if they do attack prey underwater, they'll almost always bring it to the surface or to land to eat it for that reason.

But it's not impossible for them to eat stuff underwater and it has been observed. So I'm not going to say that's a fact. How are they gator rolls? They do gator rolls. Yeah. death rolls is what we're going to call them. But you're actually, you know, Jeff, you're just giving me the perfect segues today.

They hunt. Well, you ruined it when you say that. Why is that? You got to just go straight into it. Yeah, I'm just trying to give you. I'm just trying to give you. Hey, he's like hot. All right, my bad.

Now you ruined it. Should we just turn off the podcast? All right. I think it's ruined. So they hunt by submerging and then they quietly swim over to their prey before, you know, pouncing upward, striking suddenly. So they use their tails to propel them through the water. And you'll see that often in like nature videos and stuff,

especially in Africa with Nile crocodiles where stuff comes down to the water and they're drinking and then the crocodile shoots out of the water and grabs it. That's their tail that's doing this to that work. They can get like to where everything but their tail is out of the water. Yeah, like even smaller crocodiles can get completely out of the water, even their tail. Geez. Whoa. Yeah.

So they can really, I mean, their tail is their like, that's their rock. That's what propels them through the water. They're one of the coolest animals to watch hunt. They're one of the coolest animals, period. Yeah, they're so cool. But I'm just saying, like, if you're watching, like, animals kill other animals, yeah. This is one seed, you know?

This is, like, watching them just sneak up. And, like, the zebras or antelope are always so scared to get any water. And then the second, they, like, take a tiny little sip. They just get chomped. Yeah, so if you're Jeff and you need a break from, like, watching Alcate executions and stuff. And you want to watch some crocodiles. Something lighter.

Yeah. Some crocodiles tear animals to pieces. Anyway, Jeff, death rolls are used by saltwater crocodiles. They're really used by every single crocodilian. They use those roles to disable, kill, and then dismember prey into smaller pieces. So we mentioned that on our alligator episode that, like, a big part of the death roll is just to rip off chunks of flesh. But they will actually use it to kill animals to or to, like, dismember them.

Okay, so on average, about two people per year are killed by saltwater crocodiles in Australia. It's unknown how many people they kill globally. They've almost for sure killing more people in like the Philippines and Indonesia, but many of those attacks likely go unreported because a lot of times it happens in these really rural areas. So it's possible that they kill hundreds of people every year, but we just really don't know. The best reporting we have from them comes from Australia. in Australia, about 30% of attacks by saltwater crocodiles are fatal. In comparison, only about 7% of alligator attacks in the U.S. are fatal.

So what is that? Four times more saltwater crocodile attacks are fatal than alligator attacks. And that's because they're a bigger animal and they're a much more aggressive animal too. Like once they bite you, you can't really fight back much. Yeah, and they're big enough animal that they see us as prey. Like alligators don't usually. and when they do, it's usually because they only see your head floating above the water and they think you're smaller than you actually are.

Crocodiles, we're prey for them. We fit their prey profile. They're one of the few animals on Earth that will just actively seek us out as prey. We are food for crocodiles. It's pretty cool. Okay. So about half of crocodile attacks in Australia are probably territorial in nature. Those attacks often involve smaller saltwater crocodiles, and those victims will generally escape those attacks.

Fatal attacks almost always involve large male crocodiles bigger than 14 feet. And then when we talk about crocodile attacks, sometimes you hear that there's thousands of fatal crocodile attacks every year, which is probably true. Most of those come from Africa, and they involve Nile crocodiles. And the main reason for that is because people in Africa generally have to live closer to water because it's not just as wet. as some of these places that we're talking about with saltwater crocodiles. Right. So they tend to be more tied to these riparian areas. And they have to like go there to wash their clothes and like get water.

And like they have to like kind of be in water that has crocodiles. Right. Whereas in like Indonesia or Malaysia or Australia or whatever, there's a lot of different places to get water. You don't necessarily have to go down to the river to wash and do all that kind of stuff. So that's why there does tend to be more attack. in Africa. That's one of the reasons. And then finally, last fact, they kill people the same way they kill any other large mammal. They stalk them from the water, cruise up, low profile, generally just their head sticking up,

and then this powerful explosive attack. Then the victims generally death rolled and held underwater and they drowned. I love the videos where there's no headline. You just don't even know there's a crocodile until it comes out of the water and bites its prey. Yeah. They're so sneaky. They are. They're crazy.

They're top three sneaky. animal. And they often live in these areas where it's like really brackish, dirty water. It's hard to see them. Okay. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard. Confessions. My boss asks for results. So I open my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions. Cut the bullspend. See revenue? Not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of your ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit.

Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign. Turn sick conditions apply. But Ashley knew it was a crocodile the second he saw it. So remember that these three boys are floating down the river and Ashley turns and he sees the head of this crocodile coming toward them. Okay. So he yells crock, crock, crock to his friends. And then he says, I'm not joking.

There's a fucking crock. So Ashley and Sean immediately turn and they swim toward the nearest tree. and as they turn around to swim toward this tree, Ashley and Sean, a roughly 14-foot crocodile launches through the water, bites into Brett, pulls them under the dark water, no splashing, no commotion, no screaming. Totally silent. So Sean gets to the tree, and he reaches down to pull Ashley up.

Remember, these are two like 19-year-old boys, and they turn around and they call it to Brett, but their friend's completely gone. So they scream his name and they search around and they're frantically wondering if maybe he's been swept even further downstream. And Ashley still has this image of the crocodile in his mind. And they're both probably like trying to hope against hope that that's not what it was.

But then two minutes later, reality sinks in. Because they watch in horror as a large black crocodile surfaces near the tree they're in. And their lifeless friend is in its jaws, face down the water. And they even said in interviews that to them, it felt like the crocodile was showing it off to them, showing them. I got them. Taunting them. Yeah. So the crocodile sits there.

It stares at the boys in the tree for a little bit. They're only 15 feet away from them at this point, and they're still staring down in shock at their dead friend, and then it noisously drops below the surface, and that's the last time they would ever see Brett. So pretty traumatic, really awful, and I think it's crazy just a quick beat. And a lot of our animal attacks we talk about, there's this really long narrative about the actual attack with the bear or mountline or something. Sometimes these attacks go on for a long time, and you have all these.

these different things that happen. With crocodiles and alligators, it just happens and then it's over. It's so quick because they, and I'm sure there's a lot more that happened underwater, but there's just no chance. No. Do you know like what the most common cause of death is?

It's drowning. It's drowning. You can drown like really fast, right? Yeah, especially if you're like inhaling water and stuff. Yeah, I was going to say it. Like that's not just regular drowning.

That's getting chewed on. thrashed around by a crocodile and drowning. That's just, that sounds like the worst. Yeah. All right. So the crocodile returned not long after. And for hours, it's appearing under this tree and then disappearing below the water. So it keeps just like popping up right under the tree.

Sean's on this. It wants more food than just one person. It's possible that it was just being territorial. But it's also very possible that it, yeah, it wants to eat these other boys. And so Sean's on the second fork of the tree and Ashley's up in the, the third fork. And it was actually like a pretty stormy night and the wind and the rain and everything are shaking the small tree and they're getting really cold and it just seems miserable.

So they can't get out of the tree without going in the river? No, they're like, so this river started. They said that typically this river is like 10 meters wide and at this point it's five kilometers wide. Oh, man. So it's huge. So the tree's like in the middle of it. Yep.

They're just like completely surrounded by water. And neither boy's willing to like risk going back in the water and trying to swing. swim to safety. No, of course not. What? Yeah. But the night, it's like, it's getting really cold and they're soaking wet and they have like a real risk of hypothermia.

Exactly. So in the middle of the night, Sean decides that he needs to move from this lower branch and climb up to the other branch that Ashley's on. And like, that's both to get away from the crocodile and to be able to like huddle up to his friend for warmth. And so he's like pretty tired and cold. And as he's trying to move up this tree, he loses his balance and he falls into the water.

Oh, man. And it's nighttime? Yeah, it's night time. So Ashley's watching in total horror as his friend falls off the tree. And then before he even has a chance to realize what's happening, Sean's back in the tree. Like, apparently it took this kid a split second from when he hit the water to hop back in the tree and scurry back up. Just immediately. Yeah.

So the crocodile doesn't get a second boy. So Ashley actually ends up climbing down to this lower branch. and the two boys spend the rest of the night. They're huddled together for warmth, and they hardly speak the entire night aside to tell each other when they were moving. So back home, they had said that they would be home around 7.30, and when they don't show up,

their friends mount kind of like a search and rescue party, and they go out to where they knew they were going to be, and they see their car, and they see the trailer, and they know something's wrong. So they go back home and they round up some law enforcement teams, and they go out and they look for the boys in the morning. And it's really rugged terrain and it's really flooded, so it's making it really hard for them to search.

But around 10 a.m., Ashley and Sean are in the tree, and they hear shouts from a family friend that was looking for them. And they call back and they immediately say, hey, don't come out here. There's a crocodile in the water. And at this point, it's 10 a.m. And Sean can still see the crocodile lurking nearby. Oh, geez. Relentless.

Yeah, exactly. So the police know they're in a bit of predicament here. The river's rising rapidly. It's getting really big. As I mentioned, it's five kilometers wide at this point. They feel like getting... The crocodile is starting to bite down the tree, probably. Yeah, just chopping down the tree from the bottom.

They feel like getting a boat is probably going to take too long because they'd have to go all the way back to town and get a boat. So they call a local helicopter company, and they send a chopper to try and get the boys out of the tree. But as the helicopter kind of approaches this tree to get a better look at the situation, the wind from the rotor breaks off some of the branches and, like, starts pushing the boys off and they're about to fall into the water. So the pilot and the crew are like, okay, we got to get out of here.

And they go back to where the cops are waiting. But this helicopter actually has a life raft on board. So they lower that life raft and one of the guys from the helicopter and one of the cops get on it and they're going to try and use this raft to save the boys. And they don't even have paddles. So they're using like diving flippers to paddle and steer this raft. And as soon as they get out in the river, they're going downstream, but the river pushes them kind of out into the middle.

and they're like not able to direct themselves towards where the boys are. So the helicopter actually goes up and points its rotors toward them and pushes them towards the boys. Whoa. That's a good pilot. Yeah, which is pretty crazy. So then they use like vegetation and stuff and they're pulling themselves and they finally get to where they're directly beneath the boys.

And unsurprisingly, neither of these kids are really that willing to get out of the street. They're in total shock at this point. They don't want to get out. So it takes the cops a little while to persuade them to jump down. But finally they do, and each of them jump off the tree and into the raft. And they're finally safe, kind of. You know, they're in a rubber raft, which isn't very safe with the crocodile. Because I actually did read some stories of crocodiles actually crawling into boats to get people.

But luckily, they're able to fight this current back upstream. And they managed to get the boys back on dry land into safety. Both boys are in good physical condition, but they're both deeply troubled by the death of their friend. Press conference a couple days later, Sean says he was a quiet guy, but he was the best bloke I've ever really known. So a few days later, for a bunch of days afterward, searchers are going back to the river trying to find this crocodile. But all the rain and the flooding and everything is making it really dangerous. And then about a week after the attack, some park and wildlife service rangers shoot a four meter crocodile, which is about the size of the crocodile that we're talking about.

And when they shot it, it actually sank. So they couldn't retrieve the body. and there's no way to know if that was the actual crocodile that got Brett or not, because they couldn't cut it open and look for remains. Did they shoot it because of Brett? Yeah, they thought that it was the one, so they killed it. But it's hard to know if that was it. So in an interview with the paper, his parents, Brett's parents, Jeff and Christine Mann,

said that they'd always really encourage Brett and his brother to really enjoy the outdoors, and that they were all really aware of the potential danger of crocodiles. And they said, really, there's no blame, no reason, no experience. excuse. It's just one of those things, wrong day, wrong time, which is like pretty crazy that they could look at it so level-headed. It's really impressive to me that they were just like, he knew about crocodiles and they really, they did their best and it just happened to be unlucky. And that's really the case here. Yeah, it's very reasonable and true. Yeah. Sean's sister, on the other hand, Melissa said, I personally want this croc as a handbag, which also understandable.

Understandable. I don't totally blame her for feeling that way. So when this article was written in like 2008, Sean and Ashley were still living in the area. Sean worked for a family business cleaning swimming pools and he would tell customers if they had blow up crock toys to make sure they were out of sight before he arrived. Ashley, I guess, took a really long time to get over it and he's still said to be really affected by everything. I guess Brett's parents did end up getting divorced and they moved away. but every year his family and Ashley and Sean and all their friends go back to the spot where Brett died and they have a barbecue and everyone says nice things about him and it's really sweet and made me really sad.

Yeah. Anyway, I was planning on doing some other crocodile attacks, but after watching those videos and like just this bummer of Astoria is kind of like, I'm not doing it anymore because they were all really kind of gnarly. We'll definitely do more saltwater crocodiles for sure. There's a ton of stories out there. But this one was somber enough that I was like, I don't think we really need more.

And we're also going to skip ouchies because someone died and two people survived, so we're not doing our ouchy scale. Yeah. It's nice that the families have found, I don't know if ritual is the right word, but kind of just a recurring date, they all come together and heal and find a healthy way

to deal with it. And it sounds like a positive way. And remember him. That sounds like. nice. Yeah. And I mean, again, this, the main article that I read was written in 2008, so I don't know if that's ongoing or not. But you know, if any out there new Brett, sorry you lost your friend to a crock. Yeah, that's, that's tough. All right. So do you guys have any questions about the story or about saltwater crocs, salties? What, what's the difference with

alligators where, so they have teeth that go up and down? No. Wait, who does? Alligators? No, crocodiles That's what I mean Crocodiles have the zipper teeth So with crocodile it's up and down Alligators They both have teeth that point up and down But when alligators close their mouth

You can only see their top jaw So you only see downward pointing teeth Like an overbite Right, they have an overbite And with crocodiles They line up better so you can see both up and down Good question, though. I was actually going to bring that up, and I forgot.

Any other questions? Are they always green? No. So, like, as they mentioned in this one, the crocodile they saw looked really black. So they can be, they're typically like a greenish hue, but they can be really dark. They can look almost black. They have, like, tan. They generally have some stripes on their back that aren't really easy to see.

There's a couple albino ones. Yeah. Mostly alligators. I don't know if I've ever seen an albino crocodile, but they probably exist. I have. Anyway, yeah, they, they're more brightly colored when they're babies, but they can actually, like, I think crocodiles are beautiful. Like, maybe I'm alone in that, but whenever I, especially when I see them out, like,

footage of them swimming through the ocean and, like, clear water, I just think they're one of the most graceful and, like, beautiful animals that exist. And their colorations beautiful and their eyes are beautiful. Mike, I know you really, really think they're beautiful. But, like, I think they're really cool looking. animals. Yeah. I saw this one and maybe this is more river crocodile coloration, but it was this really striking bronze color almost. Just like almost like a metallic suit of armor that they're wearing. It just looks so cool. I think they're amazing too. Yeah. Cool. Kind of like water stegosaurus.

Yeah. Sure, with teeth. More like a spinosaurus. Okay. So if there's no more questions, we're going to get into our categories. We're going to start with our favorite crocodile in pop culture. So, Jeff, why don't you go first? Okay. I'm going to do two honorable mentions in my favorite. Of course. You are.

So we'll go with Crunch. He's the character in Diddy Kong Racing. Okay. Ooh, that's a good one. And then I'm going to go with Crocodile, my favorite villain in One Piece. Oh, how did I not think of that? Oh, man. I'm so happy you did.

I thought you might pick that one as well. And then my number one is just the crocodiles in the game pitfall where you bounce on their heads. Okay. Because when I think of a crocodile, like for some reason, that's what I think of first. All right. So that's not a real thing you can actually do with crocodiles. Is it? Maybe it is.

Bounce on their heads? Yeah. Don't you can't do that. They do it in a James Bond movie. For real they do? It was alligators. Yeah, this stunt guy had to do like 30. takes of him just running across

alligator. Okay, fair enough. So I guess he can't do it in real life. All right. My favorite is from the movie The Rescuers, Brutus and Nero, especially the scene when Bernard and Bianca are hiding in the pipe organ, and the crocs are like playing on the keys to

blow them up the pipes and eat them. It's just the fun. I thought that was the funniest thing when I was little. Yeah. And those actually, I think are crocodiles, even though they're in the U.S., I think they're American crocodiles. That's a good pick. I picked the crocodile from the animated Peter Pan. I just kind of always liked how devious he was,

and he was always just, like, waiting for Captain Hook. I just always really liked that crocodile. I thought you were going to go Indiana Jones. No, Temple of Doom? Yeah. Nah. It'd be pretty smart to get all the crocodiles to swallow a clock so we could know when they're coming to get us, right?

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It matters where you stay. Hilton, for this. stay. We're going to go into a special category. I asked you both to bring your favorite crocodile jokes. So, Mike, why don't you tell yours first? Oh, man, this one's good. You'll really appreciate this one, Jeff.

So, what do you call a crocodile that likes to bowl? Let's see. I know the answer, so I can't say it. It's more to say it. An alligator? because it's funny. There's a couple of things that really make this joke funny. You're going to break it down for us.

Do you need me to you? It's actually an alligator joke. You just put in crocodile? Yeah. Well, it's kind of both. Because it said what crocodile is anyway. Yeah, but it's obviously supposed to be what alligator. Right?

An alligator. They're crocodilians. We're counting it. Hey, I just took this. That was number the 18th. joke on a website I looked at last night. All right, guys, which reptile can't admit he's a reptile? Crocodile.

Something about the Nile, like denial, right? De Nile crocodile. That's a good one. What's yours? My just the classic, see you later, alligator. In a while, crocodile. That's funny. That's a joke.

All right. That's the funniest category is going out of the window. All right, let's get on to our cage match. I actually thought a lot about this today. These guys are pretty high up on our list. So, you know, we've talked about this a bit. And they can kind of go land and water. Yeah.

I think if we're saying like the biggest of all of them, like you got your biggest crocodile versus your biggest of everything else, they're taking out pretty much everything aside from our hippo, our orca. Great white. That's a good one, right? That's a good fight. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. Like a 23-foot saltwater crocodile and a 20-something foot gray white is going to be a good fight. So I don't know. Like, I would probably give the Great White an edge on that fight, but I don't think there's a clear victor. I think if it's not a cage match, the crocodile could really sneak up on the Great White. That's true. It's a great white for it. Yeah, maybe.

Great whites are pretty sneaky too. Just like as a giant log. Oh. No, they aren't. They have their dorsal fin. and just showing everyone where they are. They usually like rock it up from the bottom. Remember, you remember Rob Rebstock?

That's right. Yeah. Floating on the surface. So I can't think of anything else where I think I would give them the edge besides. What about like polar bear or grizzly bear on land? If it like jumped on the back of the crocodile, you mean? And like dragged it out of the water. Because crocodiles go on land sometimes.

Yeah. I would actually give the more tiger a better chance than the polar bear or the grizzly. grizzly bear. I think the crocodile would probably kill a polar bear or grizzly bear. But like it might not be able to get the tiger in its mouth. Well, and tigers are just better at killing things quickly. Whereas like polar bears and grizzly bears, their tactic is just kind of like sit on it and eat it, which wouldn't work very well with a crocodile. Jaguars kill.

What do jaguars? Cayman. And they can kill like pretty bit like six or seven foot Cayman, but they couldn't take on a 23 foot saltwater crocodile. And then I think it could pretty easily kill a moose. So really, I think it's Orca, Hippo, and Great White. Great White's going to be a good fight. Orca and Hippo for sure could kill a saltwater crocodile.

And on land, maybe a tiger. Maybe, yeah. But it's a better predator than tigers. They live in the same place, and usually the two try and avoid each other. There have been tigers that have killed saltwater crocodiles, but smaller ones. And there have been crocodiles that killed tigers, too. Well, like you were saying, the biggest crocodile, I mean, it's head of, alone weighs more than that tiger would.

Yeah, well, not than our biggest tiger, though. Oh, do they? A big or more tiger is like 800-something pounds. Oh, okay, never mind. Yeah. I should learn more about animals. Yeah, it's all right, you know? You're just hosting an animal podcast.

Somehow. Well, this tells us so many facts. Hey, I remember all of them. You're like encyclopedia Brown. Okay, so we're going to move on to some listener questions. Actually, no, let's wait. Let's do what would Mike and Jeff do? Okay.

So I'm going to give you guys a specific circumstance from this story. You're up a tree surrounded by water. There's a crocodile underneath. What are you doing? I'll go first. Okay. So I'm going to wait until it's right under the tree. I'm going to jump down onto its nose and it's going to open its mouth and I'll springboard up like a diving board.

And then I'm going to go like perfect form dive. straight into its mouth before it can bite me and go like straight into its stomach and get it from the inside. You're getting, this is twice now that your plan has been to get something from the inside. Yeah. I don't really understand what you mean by that. Like, what are you going to do once you're inside of it? Just punch it hard out or something.

Oh, okay. All right. I mean, it's pretty tough on, unless you go for that place you said was weak, they're pretty tough. They're pretty armored on the outside, so I just figure I'm going to get it. I'd rather wrestle its insides. And you think when you're being swallowed by it, you're just going to like go right by its heart

and just feel the know. I think if my dive is like a good enough form, I'll just go straight in. To its stomach. I have to imagine they have pretty strong stomach lining if they're swallowing like horned animals and all these things too. Not as tough as they're outside. I think true, but I think you're

going to have a hard time punching out of its stomach too. All right, Mike. So when we're thinking about it in the context of this story, there are two of them up in the tree. So I'm looking at as if Jeff and I are stuck in the tree together. Yeah. And basically, every clip I see of the crocodile hunter taken down a crock, he jumps on its head, and then he gets his wife on the back just sitting and straddling on it. So it seems like with two people, we could probably handle it pretty easily. All right.

So Jeff's, Jeff's is ridiculous. Mike would just cut it up for warmth for me. I think there's like a pretty key thing about yours that's off is that whenever Steve Irwin actually would jump on the crocodile, it's after he had it on land. Like he wouldn't try and wrestle them in the water. So I'll bait it up into the tree first. Yeah. So you can't, you don't want to jump on them and you don't want to jump on them, period, everyone. But if you are going to be a crocodile hunter or wrestler or whatever, you definitely don't want to do it in the water.

They've got a big edge on you. Is it true, though? You can hold their mouths close. close, right? Yes. Their mouths aren't very strong for opening. It's just closing that they're super strong. The thing that's scary about holding their mouth closed, though, is again, especially

with crocodiles where they have teeth pointing both ways, if they get into that death roll and they like start twirling around, those teeth will rip up your hands and you're not going to be able to hold them anymore. And just like the rest of them is so strong, they can probably knock you off balance and then open their mouth. But like just a little bit of duct tape is enough to keep their mouths closed. but then they have a ton of pressure closing. Same with people.

A little bit of duct tape, which actually isn't true. I feel like duct tape's pretty easy to get off your mouth. A little bit. It's a couple of wraps around the head. All right, so what you actually should do, first and foremost, you just want to avoid going into any water where there might be saltwater crocodiles. In Australia especially, they're usually going to post signs and stuff if it's an area where they know they're saltwater crocodiles. And just don't get in the water if they're around.

This, again, is an animal. that will actively hunt people and eat people, and you're really taking a huge risk if you decide to get in the water with them. That especially is true at night. Don't ever get in the water in one of those places at night. That is when they do most of their hunting. If more people were active in those areas in night in the water,

there would be a lot more deaths by saltwater crocodiles. So that's first and foremost. Just don't put yourself in a situation where you could be attacked by a saltwater crocodile. If you actually are being attacked, you pretty much don't have any control over it. The two things that you can try to do are gouge its eyes or try and pull on its nostrils. That's pretty much it.

In the Mother's Day episode, she stuck her fingers up its nostrils. Right. And that worked. And I read a couple stories from Saltwater Crocs where gouging eyes or nostrils has worked. But you're way past the point of control at that point. You're hoping that this thing that usually doesn't work is going to work. And so the main thing is don't ever hear yourself in that situation. So that's really it with them.

They're big enough and strong enough that there's not much you can do to fight them off once they got you. Okay. Jeff, listener questions? Okay, we're going to start off with a Patreon question. Now I'm just saying like, you're saying a mix. Patron and Patreon because I say that. So from Melissa, if each of you could have any type of animal tail, what would you pick? Saltwater Crocodile hit home runs.

Play baseball. I'm picking a spider monkey Swing from trees Yeah and they can use it to like grab things It's like another limb for them You could like sleep upside down It's prehensile yeah I'm picking a spider monkey

And you could hide it way better than me That's an angle I was thinking Because the world really isn't made for having a tail You know very comfortably So I think I'd be a gecko Where you can just like take it off And it'll grow back later Nice

I think that's like a fun experience for them Actually I'd probably go tiger so I could do a springboard off of it. What? Like a pogo stick off of my tail? Like, if I had a tiger? Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good one. We'll go with that one. Yeah, good pick. I'm sticking with Spider Monkey. So this one's from William Eryct. Eryct. Jeff and Wes, do you ever get stuck in the Bairdends and can't get out? No.

Oh, there is one time. Libby's. The icy one? No, Libby's. I had to like pull you out. Yeah. Remember? I had to be in there to like pull you out because it's such a tight squeeze.

Yeah, I could have gone out, but it was like pretty gnarly. We have a Patreon episode where me and Wes really dive into like a lot of our bear done experiences and we go into a lot of detail on that one. Yeah. Okay. So from Canon Coupiers, why do you guys mention that Bear Spray is so much? more effective than firearms. The reason I bring it up a lot is because my mentor actually wrote an entire paper dedicated toward that.

And he compared all these different incidents in Alaska, like hundreds of them. And hundreds of them involved bear spray, a lot, a ton of them involved firearms. And there was like a really big sample size. And it proved pretty conclusively that bear spray is a much better tool. Out of like all these hundreds of incidents with bear spray, only like three people were injured and none of them sustained serious injuries. And then, like, hundreds and hundreds of incidents where they used firearms, there was, like, a lot of serious injuries, a handful of deaths, and a lot of dead bears. So that paper comes as close as you can to proving that bear spray works

better than firearms. I don't think it's a bad idea to have both. Go to your bear spray first, and if you need to use your gun later, you use it. But if I have both, which I often do, I'm using my bear spray first. It works better and it's not going to kill the bear. All right. From Good Kid, Rip City. Enjoy the podcast, guys. Thank you.

Thanks. Any possible stories involving crocodile attacks in the future? Nah. And then he says, P.S. Love Jeff's voice. Tell him to get into voice acting. Yeah, we've had a number of people tell you to get into voice acting.

Yeah, I don't know. If you guys have an in for me, let me know. Yeah. Someone needs to animate like a really high. squirrel or something and Jeff could do its voice. I have heard people say like it's nice your voice is the way it is because I can tell you apart from them really easily. Yeah.

You know? So Mike, if Jeff, if you were to make an animated movie and there's like an animated animal that Jeff would voice, what kind of animal would it be? A sloth comes to mind. Yeah. Or like a turtle. Yeah. Sloth or like one of those like a surfer turtle like in the finding needs.

Yeah, but I see more of like a land-based turtle, like maybe a tortoise. Oh, tortoise is good. A tiger. I'd have a good tiger voice. All right. So from no so bye, N-S-O- yeah, no-so-bye. No, and so-bye. Okay.

Is water a good escape from bears? Example, if you're camping near a lake and a bear is after you, should you jump in the lake and swim away? or would the bear swim after you? It's not a good escape. They swim faster than us, and they very well could swim after you, and if it does, then you've kind of given up any other options for defense or for anything, really.

So it's not a good option. There's a video online, if you want to look it up, of a bear killing an elk in Yellowstone in the middle of a river, and if they can kill an elk in the middle of a river, then they can kill a person in the middle of a river. So, yeah, don't try and swim away from them. All right. And then from C.J. Turner 13. Did you play a game as kids where you pretended to be an animal? And if so, what animal did you pretend to be? Oh, man, that's all I did as a kid. We did that a lot together. Yeah. I would make, I would make Jeff, like, play animal pretend with me. I'd be like a shark or an alligator or a leopard. That's all I did all the time.

Yeah. And then he'd just like bite me super hard. And be like, well, I'm a crocodile. out, Jeff? Mike, did you ever do? Probably. I was probably like embarrassing myself pretending I was Pikachu or something back in elementary school. You probably pretended to be a koala and just slept all day or something.

I wouldn't have done that. Quala's kind of suck. We did play sharks and minnows at swim practice though, so that counts, right? Yeah, that counts. Yeah. I had this clear memory of me rearranging the furniture and then like pretending to be a shark swimming in an out of the furniture in our living room and doing that for hours.

Not just like once. Like I would just do it over and over and over again. I had a fascination where I was always an animal and I would get a laundry basket and just like trap myself. So I was in a zoo. And I'd just always be an animal in the zoo. It's probably a therapist you could talk to about that. Yeah.

Plus a lot of other things apparently based on his Reddit browsing. So this one's for Wes from Master Monty. What is your. favorite story contained within the Simmeralian? Mine is the story of Baron and Luthian. Ooh, love. Love story? It's love, it's beautiful.

They like fight Morgoth. They have a huge werewolf chasom. Power couple. It's got everything. It's a cool story. That's my favorite story. Thanks for the listener questions, everyone. If you didn't, if you're a patron...

Yeah, those were fun. If you're a patron and your questioning, you didn't get answered, we'll get to it in one of the Patreon episodes. Okay. Our next category is how are we met? messing things up for them. So saltwater crocodiles historically were hunted pretty heavily for their skins. Also a little bit for their meat.

Their skins are really prized in the fashion industry, and they're actually like one of the most sought after crocodilian skins, saltwater crocodiles. So by 1971, the population in northern Australia had been reduced by 95%. Oh, wow. So they started protections in the early 70s and crocodile populations have recovered in Australia. So they went from a low of around 3,000 animals to over 150,000 today. Man, so they really are just like biologically great animals. Yeah, they reproduce quick.

Right back. Yeah. That's cool. So that is in Australia. There are places throughout their global population where, like, individual populations are really struggling. As I mentioned earlier, like in Cambodia and Vietnam and parts of Thailand, they've been completely extirpated.

So they're no longer exist in those places. used to. And there are other places where they're being hunted really heavily and they're having big issues. So they're kind of in a lot of ways like a grizzly bear where globally they're doing great and there's places where they're doing great. But there's also places where they're not. So their main threats are from habitat loss, especially nesting habitat and then poaching and hunting. So that's the main things that we're doing to mess things up for that. People eat them too, right? Yeah, you can eat them. They mostly get killed for their skins, but sometimes for their meat as well.

Yeah. So IUCN does rank them as least concern, but there are places where they're in a lot of trouble. Okay. And then finally, our last category, do we like this animal and our claw ratings and Jeff's overall rating?

This is a 10-clah animal for me. Oh, shocker. I'm going 9. I'm ranking it 18th. Mike? Overall. Yeah, I'm going to go with the 9-2. Crocodiles are sweet.

Yeah. I think I give them a 10 because I really love crocodiles and crocodilians, and they're the biggest, baddest ones. So I think if we're a Nile crocodile, it'd probably be a nine for me, but for Salt Waters, I'm giving them a 10. They're a 10. You convince me. I'll go to 10. Okay. Alligators would get a 10 probably, too.

I think anything in my top 20 can get a 10. Yeah, I think that's fair. Okay. You guys have anything else you want to say? I have big muscles. Oh, let's see. Take that shirt off. Take it off.

He's taking it off. Which muscles are you talking about exactly? Oh, there we go. Our muscles. Yeah, they're big. I guess. Yeah, sure. Good job, Chad.

I just want to say something. All right. Hey, thanks everyone out there for listening. And thanks for, you know what else is really nice. I'm just going to say it. All of your nice reviews on Apple Podcasts. Like, boy, we get nice reviews from people. Honestly, when I feel like kind of down, I just look at those.

So Jeff looks at him every day. Yeah. We really appreciate it, guys, like, truly. And if you haven't written us one and you want to write us a nice one and leave us a five-star review, go for it. Because it's going to make us feel great. You won't see us trying to stop you. No. All right. Maybe if you're doing like two stars, we might.

Yeah, we'll show up. Yeah, we'll probably try and stop you. Yeah, we got people who will come find it. A lot of animals owe us favors for all the work that we do on this show. All right, everyone. Well, happy Steve Irwin day. and hey, love you guys. Yeah, we do.

Like YouTube, no, you too guys. Everyone else I love to, but especially you do. Oh, thanks. Yeah, if you were eaten by a crocodile, it would be just as sad as those guys. Oh, thanks. Yeah, thanks. That goes for you too. All right, see you.

Bye. See you. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the end. This is the part of the show where we give a special thanks and a shout out to all the new patrons who subscribed to us over the past couple of weeks since last time. we did the shoutouts and also invariably the time where I start to ramble on about random stuff that nobody including me even really cares about so maybe we'll just dispense with that and get right to the shoutouts once again thank you to all the new subscribers we hope that you're enjoying all the new

perks and the bonus episodes which you know we we take pretty seriously because of course we want to be entertaining and all that we do but we also want to be informative first and foremost educational yeah we We take pride in what we do over on Patreon as well. All right, that's enough talking about whatever. Let's get to the shoutouts. So, thank you so much to Shannon, Andrea, Taylor, Anna, Kayla, Anna, this time with two ends. I'm glad you two spell your name differently. We would get you confused and we wouldn't know what to do.

We also have Danielle, Zed, Weston, Kylie, Richard, Jackie, Sophie, Emily, Toby, Donna, Bethany, Joe, Daniel, Stephanie, Kate, Charlotte, Lauren, Tom, Elizabeth, Michelle, Beavers. Again, we hope someone out there actually has the name Beavers, because that's pretty dope. We have J.R. Dog, which hopefully we're not doxing you by releasing your full legal name to the public. But I'm just going to go out on a limb and say J.R. Dog is not your actual name. But if it is, let us know. We'll scrap the whole podcast. We'll erase everything we've ever done. and hopefully that show of supplication will be enough for you to forgive us. Also, we've got Hallie, Catherine, Megan, Justice, Rebecca, Kai, Candice, Jeremy, Beth, Emily, Matt,

common white girl, I guess what I said earlier applies to you as well. And the last two, we have Amelia and Luke. Thank you again so much, you guys are amazing. We love you, we truly do, we appreciate you every day. Me, Jeff and Wes, we're always texting each other back and forth. about how happy we are to see new people. We're communicating funny questions that you guys are asking us in the DMs. And it's just been such a bright spot in our lives to have just a huge group of new friends who we really feel like we're getting to know and connect with on a deeper

and more meaningful level than just, you know, like podcasters and audience members. So just know that we appreciate you and we think about you a lot. And with all of that being said, let's just let's be done. It's over. There's nothing more. I don't know what else I can say. Except for, thanks again for listening. We'll catch you in the next one.

And until then, stay safe, keep living well, and spread the love. I feel like I just became like a motivational YouTuber or something. Shout out to all the free thinkers. Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I'm done. See you guys. Thanks again.