Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Elephant and Giraffe Attacks - Tyke Crashes the Circus & A Giraffe Impersonates a Wrecking Ball

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

This episode comprises of two previously released Tooth and Class bonus episodes, wherein Jeff covers the case of Tyke the Circus Elephant, and then Mike tells the tale of a couple of unfortunate tourists having a run-in with an extra large giraffe. Wes, as usual, brings all kinds of animal behavior and biology knowledge about each of the two animals. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. It's been a while since we've done one of these little intros. I just wanted to give you a quick rundown of exactly what this episode's all about. So, while Wes and Jeff are away on a little family vacation, we thought it'd be fun to release a couple of the episodes that are usually exclusive to our subscribers over at Patreon or Apple, just to give you all a taste of what those bonus episodes look like. So that's what we've got here. We just slammed two bonus episodes together back to back.

And if you decide that you like what you hear and you want some more of it, feel free to head over to our Patreon account. That's at patreon.com slash tooth and claw podcast or over at Apple. And we have over 50 bonus episodes at this point, probably around 60 hours of total bonus content. And that gets added to every other week. So yeah, we hope you really enjoy these. I'm done talking. Let's get to the episode. Thanks so much for listening.

All right, let's go. Hi, everyone, tooth and claw subscriber episode. Here we are. How are you guys doing? Us or then? Are you talking about us? They can't respond. Okay. Context clues, West. I'm good. I'm good, too. I'm leaving tomorrow for a little trip that I've been looking forward to for, I don't know, probably eight months now.

So you're probably... You're going to hammer some heads. Yep, I'm going to see some hammerheads. Leaving on a jet plane, Wes. I am. You know when you'll be back again? I don't. Well, yeah, actually, I do. I'll be back on the 17th.

It, Missoula is kind of a tricky place to fly out of. If you ever want somewhat affordable prices, you have to leave at like 5 a.m. So I have to get up at like 3 to go be to the airport in time for my flight. And then it's an all-d-flight. How are you at sleeping on planes? Pretty good. And I also am really good at just being in airports and on planes. So I'm actually looking forward to just a day of travel tomorrow.

You're good at it. I am good at. I am good at it. I am good at it. Yeah. What do you do that's better than the average person in an airport? I treat myself. I always get a little treat and just don't worry about what it costs.

I watch a lot of movies and TV and I purposely don't try and do any like real work because I just think it's too chaotic of an atmosphere to try and get anything done. You just need to relax and just have a nice time and disconnect from the world for a little bit. Have you ever gotten one of those shoe shines? I haven't ever gotten a shoe shines. I don't, that's like the peak indulging behavior at an airport. I don't think I've ever... Those have to go out soon.

Yeah. I don't think I've ever had shoes that would take a shine. Right, exactly. I think people used to like dress up to fly on airplanes. Right. So that used to make sense. I think peak indulgence for an airport is to go into one of the lounges. Like one of the airline lounges where you pay.

And you get like free drinks and free food and like it's, they're really comfy. Yeah. If I have more than a four-hour layover, I'll do one of those. And I really, it always feels great. They make me a little nervous that I'm just going to miss my flight because it's too comfortable in there. Then you could just live there. You got to get an alarm. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, so I'm going on that trip. I'm going to go dive with great hammerhead sharks, which I took up diving last year. I really love it. I still want to go diving with Mike. But, yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to go do some, uh, some diving and see some big, sharks. Synchronized diving with me, Wes? Is that what you meant?

Synchronize dive with you? Sure. Yeah. In full scuba gear? Uh-huh. That'd be tough. The 10-meter synchronized scuba gear dive, that category. There wouldn't be that many tricks you can do in full scuba gear, but it would be fun still. Yeah. It's worth trying. Anyway, how are you guys? You guys doing all right? Jeff, are you okay? Yeah, I'm like, I got like constant hangar right now, but it's intentional. Oh, because you're on a diet? I'm doing pretty hard dieting. Okay. Yeah, you look angry right now.

Oh, yeah? But you look thin, so it's worth it. I'm like the Hulk, just always angry. When you're angry, you kind of like talk out of the side of your mouth and you kind of are just like, I'm a little angry right now. And your eyes get a little squintier too. I can tell you're angry right now. I'm angry right now. Yeah, and you talk a little slower too, like you're sleepy.

Well, I got trashed in that email that like 100-year-old lady sucked us too. We got a real mean email from some old fossil. Yeah. It was funny because I... She'd think she'd be better off without me, I think. It was, well, the funny thing was, I, like, went to look at our email for something else, and I saw just your response in the first line. It was really nice.

It was very cold, though, and so I was kind of like, oh, man, like, who's Jeff being cold to? And then I read your response, and I went to the email, and I was like, oh, shoot, I'm going to have to, like, be nice to this person because Jeff was cold and then i read her her email and i was like oh jeff was so nice to this person considering what she was saying and so then i responded and was kind of like hey you're a rude old lady i didn't say old lady but i was like you're rude and like we don't want you as a listener so yeah anyway and we don't she said i have a condition yeah she like said you were like you had a mental condition and she was like telling me how nice i am i think she's talking about ADD yeah maybe it has to be it was

a very rude email. Anyway, if you guys send us those emails. I hope she's a patron listening. Yeah. If you're out there, get out of here. Don't. Just cancel your membership. Try not to fall down any stairs.

All right. Well, I prepped an episode for us today. Uh-huh. And it's a good one. I'm excited. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a famous story. And, yeah, it's just really interesting.

All right. So we'll see, we'll see how it goes. And you have, you have crippling, you have crippling ADD. So if it's interesting to you, it's going to be fascinating to us. Yeah. Yeah. My notes are very ADD. They're pretty all over the place.

That's to be expected. Yeah. That's just how I function, you know? I guess. So we're going to be talking about an elephant attack and also just like a lot of circus information. Okay. And they're not connected. I just randomly am talking.

about both things. I think that's fine. Yeah. We're talking about an elephant Tyke, who was a circus elephant for 22 years. And when you say Tyke, that's his name, not like a baby elephant or a child elephant.

No, that's his name, but it is a funny, well, I said 22 years, so you can't. All right, well,

I'm just making sure. You know, Tyke means a lot of things. But it is kind of a funny elephant name. Yeah. Okay. In 1994, so,

Honolulu has its own circus, and the whole town was getting excited because the circus was in town, and a lot of people just loved the circus at this time. It's the 90s. Not everyone really knows all of the animal abuse history with circuses. And there's this little grandma who was, so I got, first of all, I got a lot of my information from a documentary called Tyke Elephant Outlaw. Okay. And in the documentary, there's like this old grandma who went to this circus performance in Honolulu, and it's her birthday. And she's just like super excited to go to the circus. And she says that she's watching the trapeze artists or whatever.

And she's just got her fingers crossed that the elephants are going to be the next thing she gets to see. So she's super excited to see the elephants. Real question for you guys really quick. When you guys would go to the circus or things like this when you were younger or as an adult, what percent of you wants to see something horrific happen? Like a hundred? Yeah, I didn't want to admit it, but me too. Like, especially, I think if...

Like, I think after it happened, you would be scarred. You would be like, that sucked. Yeah. But nothing's happening. You're like, man, that'd be awesome if this elephant just went crazy for this lion. Decided to mind someone. Mike, you told me that you hate elephants

and that you don't care if circuses mistreat them. What? Yeah, that is what I said, isn't it? That is not true. Mike loves elephants. No way, do you? We all love elephants.

Okay, you didn't say that? I think you may be, you're conflating me with someone else. Mike Smith. Like with Satan or something. Yeah. So we're going to come back to Honolulu. First, let's give a little background.

So, Tyke was taken away from Mozambique when he is just a baby elephant, or sorry, when she was just a baby elephant. And it was by this corporation called the Hawthorne Corporation. And this dude who sucks, whose name is John Canoe or Coonoh. He sucks. We don't even need to say his name right. Canoe. Okay. Yeah.

So this John guy owns the elephant. and it's kind of a popular business practice for this Hawthorne Corporation. What they would do is they would get animals and then lease them to different circus performing and like just performing things for animals. And so like the Ringling Brothers, this was the Honolulu Circus, all these different organizations would use these elephants as like a lease. They're like animal pushers. That's like a truly evil.

business to get into. That's another level of evil that I just hadn't been attributing to circuses. I already thought that they were just bad enough, but there's like renting animals. It's awful. They're just kidnapping them, chaining them up, and then renting them out pretty much. Wes, do you remember the name that mom almost named me? Tyrone? Yeah.

Be a much different person, I think. My name was Tyrone. Yeah. So Tyrone Taylor went to a circus when he was a young kid and he joined the next day. And he eventually became one of 100 elephant trainers in the world for circuses. Okay. And something unique about him that you may have guessed with his name is he was African American, which was really rare in the circus industry at the time.

But he was just very ambitious, made friends with the right. people and like worked his way up to become an elephant trainer. Mm-hmm. And in this documentary, Tyke the Elephant Outlaw, I don't know. It's hard to know if you like this guy or not. He's not the worst, but he's also not the best, right? Right. Sure.

It's kind of, I do find that's pretty common in these industries where people are training the animals. Like, they just are there because they love animals, but then they end up doing bad shit to them, even though they're not the ones responsible for them being there in the first place or like putting in place the practices that are the rules but you still have to at some point you have to be like this isn't good for this animal and you have to get out of there yeah and like to his credit according to him he just like always used positive reinforcement as the way to get animals to do what he wanted them to and he said tyke right off the bat always expected punishment

from him yeah would close his eyes and like move his head away and just always expect to punishment whenever he missed a baton or like didn't throw the ball the right way and stuff like that. And it was really surprising to Tyrone because he wouldn't punish the elephants he trained. Right. To see this response was really noticeable to him. Yeah. And Tyrone says the first day he met Tyke, the very first interaction he had with Tyke, Tyke picked up a tray of hay and just chucked it at him.

Really? Wow. Oh, man. Yes. So like right off the bat, he was like, And this elephant's got some attitude. But Tyke became Tyrone's favorite elephant, and Tyke was super affectionate towards Tyrone, and they grew a really good connection.

And in the show, just an aside about Tyrone, he has a full arm sleeve of Winnie the Pooh characters. Okay. Which I thought was interesting. I'm glad you brought that up. Do you remember when we went skydiving and that guy had a full arm sleeve of Pokemon tattoos? Yeah, it was awesome. And the plane had it's like duct tape holding the door closed and stuff. Those guys were insane.

Such a janky skydive. Anyway. So according to someone named Sally Joseph, who was one of the only female elephant trainers in circuses at the time, elephants were chained up up to 22 hours a day when not practicing for circuses. So they lived a really awful life. And they're always chained up. They're mistreated. They go through tons of different handlers.

And like a lot of these handlers were, well, most all the time they were men. And most all the time the men got a kick out of being over an elephant, like having control over an elephant. And like, you know, it's just big power trip type of deal, which leads to a lot of mistreatment. Yeah. When I went to India, I got to go with this group who's rescued a bunch of elephants from captivity out there. And there they're used for like weddings. and all sorts of different things or two-risk traps. And they go through the same kind of breaking procedure

that they do in the circuses. And they use these tools that look like instruments of torture to break their elephants, all these crazy hooks and hammers and everything. And they chain them up, and they never let them out of these little concrete rooms. And it's true, brutal torture for the entire life of the animal. They never get a break from it. It's constant pain for them. and it's just it's one of the most inhumane ways to treat an animal that exists in the world.

All of these elephant trainers have bull hooks, which is just like a stick with a long, sharp hook at the end, and they know all the most sensitive spots on the elephant to be able to control it. It reminds me of even with another level of sinister intent with these elephants, but of our, when we learned about killer whales when you told the story a long time ago, just how like emotionally intelligent and complex, especially elephants are. Yeah. It's psychological torture.

It's physical torture. It's the worst possible life. An animal could. It's brutal. I found a lot of correlations with the, is it Tolcum? Yeah. No. That's the avatar.

Tilcum, right? Or now I can't think of it. Tilicum. Tillicum. Yeah. There's a lot of correlations of a telcum. Tolkien, probably a little bit. Yeah.

We'll get into that later. Probably not as much. All right. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost.

Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want save, Not surprises.

It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. So 16 months before the Honolulu incident, Tyke is in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and he's about to do a performance there, and all of a sudden he just burst through these doors and, like, get stuck out on a second floor balcony. Didn't you say Tyke's a girl?

Do I keep saying he? Yeah. My bad. And get stuck out on this second floor. floor balcony and is completely like not what these elephant trainers and circuses are used to. And it's crazy, the door, I saw a picture of it and it's just like a normal size two-way door thing. Yeah.

So then there's just this huge hole where an elephant went in. Jeez. Almost like a cartoon. Like there's no way that door actually fit the elephant. It just like took out so much wall and stuff. It'd be funny if you could see like the ear outline. Yeah. But then, like, Tyrone gives this information, and he says that the cops come and they're wanting to shoot Tyke out on this balcony.

They're like, this is dangerous. We don't have control over the situation. And they keep asking Tyrone to move out of the way so they can shoot the elephant and he won't move. He's like, you're not shooting this elephant. And eventually he gets Tyke to go back the way that she came and she calms down. and everything's cool, right? Yeah. So this is 16 months before, and then they call someone named Ed Stewart,

who works with the organization called Paw, which is Performing Animal Welfare, so Paw. And he has some elephants from circuses before, and they call him and ask him what he thinks they should do, and he's like an elephant expert, and he's like, yeah, definitely never have this elephant perform again. It obviously doesn't want to perform. That's not behavior that you can trust. And that John dude who owns the elephants, like, no, just go harder on it, discipline it more. And like, we need this elephant to keep performing.

John sucks. John does suck. John. And Tyrone seems like he didn't really go too hard on it even though he was consulted to. Yeah. Still time to put your job, Tyrone, if you love elephants. Sally, the female elephant trainer, says elephants can hold a grudge for years and will wait years to kill you if they want to. Yeah.

Some foreshadowing. So then fast forward a couple months and we're at the Minot North Dakota Fairgrounds. How do you pronounce that town? Isn't it? I can't remember. I don't know. My note North Dakota, eh? And Tyrone's there with Tyke, and he has his main groomer Warren, who's his right-hand man, who he takes everywhere.

And Warren's like pretty, has a good relationship with all the elephants. And they were given an additional groomer named Mike. And Tyrone says, like, I didn't want Mike there. And they made me have Mike there. And Mike gets this obsession with Tyke and just keeps strong. trying to interact with Tyke, keeps calling Tyke's name, like Tyke, Tyke, Tyke, Tyke. And all of a sudden, Tyke just turns on him, charges him, pins him up against a garbage can and starts kicking him, kicks him three times.

And then Tyrone has to go there with his bull hook, bowl hook's Tyke by its ear, and then she just runs off into the fairground. Jeez. Oh, my gosh. So then Tyke's just running through this. little fairground in North Dakota for 20 minutes and Tyrone's like, okay, I got to do

something or someone's going to get hurt. After 20 minutes he decides that. Yeah, well, I think he was trying to catch up with her for 20 minutes. So when he finally catches up with her, she's just tried to kill this dude, Mike. So he doesn't know how she's going to act because he has a good relationship with her,

but you don't know. still was a wild elephant, you know? So he walks up and he says that he just puts his arms out for a hug. And Warren says he's freaking out now because he's like, I'm pretty sure he's going to get attacked by the elephant. And the elephant just walks up to him like normal and takes a hug from him and hugs him back and lets him guide her back to the chains and he gets her chained up.

Jeez. So this Mike dude almost died got pretty, injured and like... Sounds like you deserved it. This elephant just rampaged a fair. So maybe don't have this elephant perform anymore, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Wrong. John's a businessman and he's going to get his money worth out of every elephant, right? I hate John. There's like more events and John's like, you got to keep Tyke in the lineup. And Tyrone's like, no, we're not using this elephant anymore. And he says that even though he got threatened. end a lot to fulfill his contract. He used three elephants until the contract ended and never used Tyke again in anything.

But fast forward. So now we're in August of 1994. This is 10 months after the North Dakota incident. Yeah, like a year and two months after Jurassic Park came out. Oh, nice. That's your frame of reference. It really is. It truly is.

So Tyke goes on a four-day trip from L.A. to Hawaii. Nice. And you guys know circus conditions, right? Probably not the best boat. Yeah. They're just never great. They want to make as much money as they can. So the enclosures are never great.

Yeah. This guy named Alan Campbell was the main elephant trainer. And Alan tried to get Warren, who was Tyrone's right-hand man, to come to Hawaii and kept saying like I'll see you in two weeks. I'll see you in two weeks. And Warren's like, no, I'm not going. You're using Tyke. That's crazy. I'm not going to go. So he couldn't get Warren to come, but he's just like, whatever, I'm experienced. I'm going to use this other groomer. And I have other elephants that will keep Tyke in line. So then Sally, you remember Sally, she's the female elephant trainer. Yeah. She also told Alan not to use Tyke. And she said that he just

laughed at her because she was a woman. Jesus. God, this is... So then... Yeah, the comedy of errors. So there is a lot of pressure on Allen right now. A few different voices telling him, don't use this elephant, this is dangerous, this is a bad idea.

And probably the voices... So why would he use the elephant? I don't know. Because those should be the voices he trusts the most. The trainers are the people that are working with it day after day. Well, he's a main trainer, too. Okay. But yeah, you're right.

My guess would just be pressure from John. John's telling him to use it. So it's in the contract that he has to have a certain amount of elephants at the circus. Wow. So he has to use her or else he could be financially obligated to, he breached his contract type of thing. He should have just like dressed a cow up like an elephant. Just put elephant ears on a cow. That's such a good idea.

Oh, man. It'd be cute, too. would like that. All right. Now we're going to go back to the grandma's point of view, right? It's her birthday. She talks to someone who works for the circus. They put her front row. She's crossing her fingers. I want to see these elephants. There's all this commotion going on behind the curtains and people can only see a little bit of stuff going on under the curtains. And all of a sudden, this elephant comes barreling through the curtains with this doll that just keeps flopping around in front of it. So all these people are, they're not really sure what's going on, but they kind of think

it's part of the show. Yeah. And then they realize that this doll that's rolling in front of the elephant isn't a doll. It's a person. Oh, my gosh. And they're saying it's a doll just because it's all like floppy and broken bones and stuff. Yeah, there's no movement. Yeah, conscious movement.

Mm-hmm. It just looks like. a rag doll. Yeah. So the person is Dallas Beck and he was the groomer that Alan Campbell had hired to do this. I didn't write as an age down. He was like early 20s though, really young kid. Yeah. He'll bounce back then. He just decided to take him out and is trying to kill him. Tykes actively trying to kill him in the middle of the circus, in the middle of the grand stage trampling him and then do you know how elephants kill people yeah they'll put their head down on them and like push their head into them and then they'll also like stomp on them too but the head is the

main way they push the top of their head down onto someone yeah it's kind of crazy yeah so she's she's kicking him stomping them and then she's just pushing her head down into him with all the weight that she can muster to just crush him that's crazy so alan comes out and puts him in between Tyke and Dallas. Wow. And puts his arms out to hug Tyke. And this doesn't work for Alan. Alan, he's kind of like collateral damage because Tyke just wants to kill this Dallas kid.

Yeah. But he got in the way. So Tyke just takes Alan out, starts trampling him, does the same thing, pushes her head down into him, puts all of her weight onto a him and just crushes him and he ends up dying. Oh, man. Yeah. Dallas suffered major wounds, but made a full recovery and honestly wasn't, when you watch the video, you guys watch the video.

Yeah. He's not the one in like the bright blue. He's the other one who just gets stomped a ton of times. Yeah. He ends up doing fine, which is kind of crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I, we try to be pretty sensitive on our show to victims.

and to people that are hurt and whatnot. This one is one where it dances on that line of animal justice almost. Sure. It's like you push an animal so far that one day it just decides to push back. And you got to imagine even these guys who are just groomers or trainers or whatever, they have to deep down know what they were doing to these elephants, even though it was the 90s and everything. If you're grabbing an animal with a hook and you're purposely trying to get

it in the spots that hurt it the most, I just kind of don't feel quite as bad as I normally do for some of our victims. Yeah, especially like Sally was saying a lot of the men just liked feeling dominant over an elephant. Yeah, right. And she said Alan kind of had that in him, too. Yeah. So, I don't know.

I mean, it's tricky. It is like we shouldn't be dominant over an elephant. Yeah. It's, to me, it's just occupational hazard. too. It's like if you play with fire long enough, you're going to get burned. And it's like, even if you treat these animals with the utmost respect, you treat them super well. An elephant's so big that it can kill you so easily just on accident even. I'd never like to hear about people dying, but there's a sliding scale. So female African elephants wave between.

6 to 8,000 pounds, which is crazy. And can be 10 to 13 feet tall. Yeah. I mean, they're the largest land animal on the planet. You know, like, our victims who say it is like I got hit by a truck. Yeah. This was like being slowly crushed by a little bus. Yeah.

That's exactly what I was thinking. I mean, they probably weigh more than a small bus, right? I don't know. I guess it's about the same. Yeah. Yeah. But like they didn't get, they don't get their. full weight onto you ever.

No. But they get a lot of it on there. Yeah. And they were, yeah, I don't know. Just the weight of their head is more than enough to crush a person. Like their head's a few hundred pounds at least. So. Yeah.

So then Tyke crushes these people, stomps on them a few different times, and is just standing there not really knowing what to do for a few seconds, has her ears as wide as she can, listening to the other elephants back in the back that are kind of freaking out and doesn't know what to do until Dallas moves a little bit so then she goes and crushes them one more time and then decides I'm out of here takes off and does a pretty good job finding the exit honestly finds the exit and all of these frantic audience members are rushing through the exit so tyke just plows a couple of them over and makes her way out and then is stuck in a parking lot for a little bit. But now she's outside in Honolulu, right? It's crazy because the clip you had us watch,

there's a couple times, like there's this guy who describes turning one way with his kids and the elephant goes the other way and you think, man, had that dude decided to gone the other way, his kids and him might have gotten trampled by an African elephant that day, you know? Like just These stupid little decisions that these people made could have ultimately cost them their lives. It's crazy. Crazy because she's outside. So there's like bystanders not at the circus who are all of a sudden seeing an elephant outside. Right.

And they're like, what the heck's going on here? So there's like this person who is filming Tyke in like a gated parking lot. And there was one other person in the parking lot with Tyke who just, had to almost like comically kept dodging Tyke behind a car. Ah, and like had to run away. And then there was one point where he actually outruns her and gets away, but she was trying to get him for sure. Yeah.

Oh. And then she does a few laps around the parking lot, and there's a gate. It was the producer of the circus is holding this gate shut and can't lock it or anything. So then Tyke finally decides, I can get through this gate and just, just charges it, headbutts it, and he's still holding it trying to keep it close. Oh, I've seen that clip. And he just gets... And then it just like sends him flying.

I've seen that clip. It's crazy. It looks like... It's awesome. Like, I can't believe he thought he could keep the gate close because he's just holding this gate and this elephant rams him. It's crazy how quickly he just goes flying through the air. It's wild how powerless he is against this elephant.

But then she starts... crushing him and putting her weight on him. But there's either fortunately for him and unfortunately for her, there's two cops just standing right there. Yeah. So they see this elephant crushing a person. They take out their guns and just start shooting the elephant, which then causes the elephant Tyke to take off into the city.

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so now Tykes running through the streets of Kakaku for 30 minutes. Wow. Which is just crazy. Like going past cars. Can you imagine just like going to work and you're stopped at a intersection and elephant just runs through with like a few bullet holes in it?

I imagine it every day, minus the bullet holes. So then the police track the elephant down and at this time they kind of just decide. I guess there was some reports that they had tried. tried to tranquilize her and it didn't work. I don't know how true that is. But they track her down and just open fire on the elephant. And there's like in the video, it's one, it's just a terrible video to watch. Not going to recommend watching Tyke's death to anyone.

But in the video, it's just like so sad because they're just, I don't know, 15 feet away and they're all just shooting at it. Right. And there's even like one random Hawaiian guy who just has his gun that he owns, who's joined in. How many shots of just like normal guns do you think it would take to kill an elephant? Like a 9mm. I'm going to say. I'm a gun guy and I think that's about what a normal gun is.

I'm going to guess to bring her down 85 shots. Mike? Sure. 30,000, 30,000 bullets. So the documentary said 87 shots. Wow, I was close. What the heck? Yeah, he did really good.

And there's also a lot of reports saying that it was 86, making you even closer. That was one shot away. You didn't even go over. You win. I win. There's even a hard rock band who named themselves 86 bullets after the incident. And then a cruise. Christian metal band named Terniquet has a song named 86 bullets.

Huh. And it's for Tyke. Wow. So conflicting reports, but it was a lot of shots. You lost me at Christian Metal. Yeah. I wonder if a single person has ever listened to that song. I might go check it out.

I'll watch you guys now. But yeah, Tyke ends up dying. And honestly, if you watch it, it's just the saddest video ever. Yeah. She's crying, like visibly crying. And you can just tell she's confused, but also it might be better just to die than be a performing elephant. Oh, yeah. And go out in a blaze of glory.

She's kind of a hero for all of circus animals because, I mean, it showed how poorly they're treated. It showed that they don't want to be performing. And it put it out in people's face because she is in the middle of a huge town in Hawaii and got murder. murdered in front of people. Like there's videos of little kids up on an overpass just watching police shoot this elephant point blank, you know? That's crazy. Like it was in the public eye.

Everyone saw this elephant get mistreated. So now tight's a hero because there's all this conversation from animal rights groups that have been like, see, we told you these guys suck. So then the Ringling brothers, they have this PI that they've hired for like years that his whole job is to spy on animal rights groups against them and other circuses. And he would pay people to go stand out whenever there's protesters for circuses saying, like, the circus mistreats animals. He would pay people to hold signs that say, like, kids should have fun.

Really? Oh, it's so stupid. Yeah. Yeah. So they call him right after this incident and was like, you got to go to Honolulu and you got to to argue four animals being in the circus. Ah. So Steve Kendall, he's kind of on John's territory for the biggest shithead we're talking about.

So then we're going to go to court now. So then in Hawaii, the Hawaiian Humane Society is bringing to court a bill that won't allow the use of wild animals in the circus in Hawaii anymore. So Pam Burroughs said that most circus animals are commonly caught in the wild, and that was like a big argument. They had a policy that performance animals had to be treated humanely, but after this incident, they tried to change this because they decided that no wild caught animals could ever be treated humanely being forced to perform. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, that group I told you about that as with the India Wildlife S-West, that's their whole message is elephants aren't meant to be ridden. That's not something they do. It's not natural for them.

Their backs aren't built for it. It's just there's not a humane way to do it. And to get an elephant to be submissive enough to have someone on its back or to do a trick or whatever, you have to break it. There just isn't a humane way to do it. So if you're ever, if there's ever an elephant performing for you or letting people write it or whatever, you need to know that that animal's been hurt. Through hell. Yeah. Have you guys ever wrote an elephant?

I have. Yeah, as a kid. And I feel bad about it now. I do. When the circus came to Montana, I wrote an elephant. Totally. And if that elephant had killed me, that's in his right, you know? I agree.

Or her. Yeah. So Steve Kendall has this one lady named Kavis. Bawall, who's also like a Hawaiian humane representative, and she becomes one of his biggest enemies. And I don't know why he's in this documentary because he just looks like the biggest dick ever. But basically he's like, he's just saying, she won't believe me. There's nothing I could do to convince her that animals wanted to perform in the circus. She's so stubborn. Well, if you're making your living being like a professional animal abuse astroturfer appearing in a documentary for

some pocket change is probably like not even a blip on his radar he's like i'm a terrible person i know it may as well get some money for me yeah yeah all right so i wanted to do a quick court case and mike you're going to be steve kendall all right so you're going to be explaining why elephants should stay in the circus after this and west you're going to be kind of Kathy Bobol and you're going to be saying why elephants should no longer perform in circuses. Okay. All right. Mike, give us a few reasons.

An opening argument? Yeah. Well, if not helping humanity feel powerful, what else are elephants really doing to serve the greater good in the world west? Or no, what's your name? Bobel. Kathy, right? Kathy Boban. Was that your opening argument?

Yeah, that's my story. Strongest point. Torturing and brutalizing animals for our human entertainment is inherently wrong. And they intrinsically have the right to not suffer at our hands. Yeah, but I mean, we've outlined the fact that they can kill us pretty easily whenever they feel like it, right? Yes. It appears to me, if they're not killing us, there's a small part of them that maybe wants to be in captivity, Kathy. If you psychologically break an animal to the point where it hardly even knows what it is anymore and doesn't have the will to live, then it's probably not going to attack you unless you push it too far. And that's the problem here is these animals are tortured to a level where they're no longer acting in their natural best interests.

Well, it seems like a real survival of the fittest situation, in my opinion. All right. How long do you want us to go with this? That's good. Mike honestly did a better job so there's like footage from the court and Steve says they only ever receive positive reinforcement which is just a lie the public has a right to choose if they want to see this type of entertainment circus goes back hundreds of years and he also said good point They get the elephants to stand up while they're performing, and elephants like to stand up because in the wild they stand up to get food and also when they're having sex.

So making them stand up is like a good thing for them. They get off on standing up. It'd be like if Mike got kidnapped and he was like gagged and tied up, and then the kidnappers were like, well, that reminds him of when he's having sex, so it's fine. Yeah, they know me These are the worst arguments ever So the bill Ends up not succeeding still Steve wins by one phone

And I don't know, maybe only one person voted I assume more than one person votes but it wins by one vote But the two women who I mentioned They pretty much say yeah, they lost the court case, but no circus animals have ever returned to Hawaii to perform and like the public super against it. So they basically won because the circus, the circus in general kind of lost from this incident. And in 2017, Ringling Bros had to close down.

Most circuses have gotten pretty beat up from all the public. Yeah. In a lot of other countries, they're still alive and well. So don't go along. Yeah, and I'm going to cover that. Okay. So in 2004, Hothorn was charged with violations of Animal Welfare Act, and they were ordered to release all of their elephants that they had in captivity.

Release them. Just like, kick them loose? Like, approved facilities. Okay. Yeah. The end of the documentary, it has Ed, who works for pause, just say, elephants are not meant for captivity at all. And he had some really cool quotes where he was kind of like saying the circus would tell you that

Tyke wasn't acting normally. Tyke was like an outlier elephant. But that's how elephants are supposed to act. Tyke was acting like an elephant when it mauled her people abusing her and then went out into the wild. That's elephant behavior. What you see in the circus is not elephant behavior. Huh? Which I really liked.

Yeah, I like that too. And then since Tyke's death, more than 20 countries and over 300 cities have banned the use of wild performing animals. So like, I don't know, I just think there's such horrific images of Tyke being killed. But it does make me feel really happy that a lot of good has come from her just breaking down and not wanting to perform anymore. Yeah, she was kind of a sacrificial land. The animals want to perform. They enjoy performing. And Tyke just showed the world like, no, he don't.

Honestly, and part of it probably is that when they're performing, they're not being tortured. You know, it's like one of the few times where they get to go out and just do their little routine and not get hooked and beaten and all these different things. So yeah, they probably did kind of enjoy performing because there's a break from the monotony of their lives of being just tortured and brutalized all the time. And when they weren't training for performances, they were just chained up for like 22 hours a day. In like concrete rooms. Yeah. Have you guys seen those pictures? I don't, it's probably not how the Ringling brothers were treating their elephants.

But I've seen pictures of spiked collars and ankle. They're little enclets. That's in India. They do that too. Yeah. So like they can't even move without suffering. So yeah. Let's get into that.

Let's get into circuses in general. Wes, did you have like some information you want to give? I mean, honestly, all I know is that my main message there is just that there is no way to make those animals perform at that level without some sort of negative reinforcement. Like positive reinforcement won't go that far. And so you really can't go to a circus where they're using wild animals like elephants and tigers and lions and these big charismatic megafauna. You can't go and see those kind of performances without there being this hidden cost of them being tortured. You just can't. Especially like the traveling shows where they put them in carts and cart them around the country.

There are animals that do it really well. Like birds, for example, there's bird shows where you can train birds to do really incredible things with positive reinforcement. But big, complex, really socially intelligent and emotional animals like elephants, you have to break them first. You just have to. And it's not humane. It just never is. I feel like the bears we've covered in me. movies. It's still controversial.

Yeah. But most their owners, like, have space for them. Right. Have, like, good conditions for them at least, you know? Movie animals is... Circuses are just the worst. Movie animals, it's more of a gray area. And there are some really stringent laws and stuff in place to make sure that they don't abuse those animals.

But circuses have always kind of had this weird loophole where they can just torture them. And it's, that still exists in other countries. So be careful. So I didn't look up all the countries that. still have circuses, but the internet did say, like, most countries who have had circuses have banned the practice of wild animals and circuses. Cool. And one of the only countries that still not ban the use of circus animals is Russia.

Russia. Yeah. Come on, Russia is a lot. So some of the animals that they use are monkeys, tigers, lions, lynx, poomas, sea lions, walrus, eagles, kangaroos, hippos, rhinos, and elephants. Jeez, man. Yeah, which is crazy. And I feel like circuses, too, in the early 1900s, like, I don't think they had to have the

animals do as many tricks because it's just, there's not that much entertainment out there. Not everyone's, like, watching TV. Right, right. There's just, like, not a ton of entertainment, so just to see an elephant was enough. Totally. Like back then they could just have the lion like run around the ring once and people lose their shit. Yeah, exactly. And then like once they're in the 70s, once there became like a ton of other entertainment options, they started having like a freaking bear stand on the elephant's back and like lions jumping through hoops to like make it more exciting. Totally. And that's just more abuse to the animals.

Yeah. It does. It says something about human nature that since Roman times. you know, or probably before, we've felt the need to like torture animals for our enjoyment to make them perform for us. It's just, I'm glad that I am glad that as a society we're getting to a place where I think sometimes animal rights activists can be misguided, but I do think with circuses and performance and stuff, there's, it's one area where I'm very online with them that it's just something that needs to be stopped. So it is nice that we're getting there. Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great,

till the CFO sees them, that's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard, Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bullspend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more.

Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign, terms and conditions apply. Yeah, and it's interesting you brought up Rome. So that's kind of where circuses originated. Yeah. But it wasn't like the circus we know. And it's just called a circus because that was like their word for round.

So that's why circuses are called circuses. And that's why it's always a round tent. The first American circus was in Philadelphia in 1793. But in 1825 is when the tent was introduced and is able to take off. become more of like a moving show. The Ringling Bros and the Burnham and Bailey circus were the biggest circuses. And when Bailey died in like the early 1900s, the Ringling Bros bought that circus. And like in the 1920s, they became the Ringling Bros.

and Burning and Bay and Circus. And what people recognize is they called themselves the Greatest Shrits. show on earth. Yeah. And that's where that tagline came from. And then I just have a few circus bullet points that I'm going to read. So these are just kind of things I found online about the history of the circus that I just took a few bullet points that I'm going to read you guys.

Cool. This is all Ringling Bros. So the circus made a lucrative offer to Frank Buck, a well-known adventurer and animal collector to tour their star attraction and to enter the show astride an elephant. He refused to join the American Federation of Actors, stating that he was a scientist, not an actor. Sounds like what. I also refused in another line of Federation of Actors.

Though there was a threat of a strike if he did not join the Union, he maintained that he would not compromise his principles saying, don't get me wrong, I'm with the working man. I've worked like a dog once myself, and my heart is with my fellow who works, but I don't want some union delegate telling me when to get on and off an elephant. Eventually, the union gave Buck a special dispensation to introduce Dranchua, the gorilla, without registering as an actor. So they kind of like said, you can introduce this gorilla and you don't have to be an actor.

I just thought that is funny. Yeah, that is interesting. This one is one I think I should have known, but I really didn't. But this is probably the most historic thing with Ringling Bros, I would imagine. So on July 6th, 1944 in Hartford, Connecticut, during an afternoon performance attended by some 8,000 people, the big top tent caught fire. At least 167 people were killed, many hundreds injured. That's crazy. Yeah.

So Ringling Bros had to pay. survivors of the fire for the next 10 years after that and like got in a ton of trouble. In 1968, they hired an African American unicycle club from the Bronx to play basketball on unicycles. Okay. So, I just thought that was interesting. In 2004, Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey was investigating following the death of a lion who died from heat and lack of water while the circus train was traveling through the mojave desert in 1998 the united

states department of agriculture filed charges against wringling bros for forcing a sick elephant to perform ringling paid a twenty thousand dollar fine oh got them big time 20k and then in march 2015 failed entertainment announced it would stop using elephants in its shows by 2018 stating that the 13 elephants that were part of the shows would be sent to the circus center for elephants conservation, which at the time housed over 40 elephants. So this is kind of when they stopped using elephants, and there's bands of bullhooks after that.

So it took until pretty recently to really start enforcing. It's interesting to me that they have to. I feel like whenever they make those kind of announcements, it's always like, hey, in three years, you know, we're going to stop, but not for three more years. It's like, why? Yeah, we got plans. Yeah, just put them in those reserves now, get them out of there. I don't know.

It bugs me, but whatever. At least they did it. All right. My last one, seven tigers, six lions, and one leopard were part of a convoy to temporarily move the animals out of Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma on September 5th, 2017. One of them, a six-year-old Siberian tiger named Susie, who had previously starred in the Ringling Bros. escaped from a convoy of trucks transporting her from Florida to Memphis International Airport and was fatally shot by police after attacking a nearby dog.

Jeez. Whoa. So those were just some of the bullet points of like the history of Ringling Bros. They started in like the 1870s and then joined with Bailey and company. or whatever it's called in like the 1920s and became huge. Yeah. They struggled during World War II and almost went bankrupt, but then Teddy Roosevelt actually helped him out and like wanted to keep them going.

Teddy. Yeah. I mean, but the time it was kind of like viewed as educational. Right. Because people didn't have access to information on a lot of animals. Yeah. I get that back then it was like this exotic, crazy thing that you got to see from like all over

the world. But I don't know, you can watch, you can just watch them on your iPad now. Or if you have the means, go see them in the wild. I feel like people sometimes connected zoos and circuses for animal treatment. They're very different. Yeah. I was going to make that point. Like it's a great thing that the circus animal things are getting canceled.

And hopefully even though they're in enclosures, people can kind of recognize that zoo animals are in a much different. situation. Yeah, they and they're, it's much more highly regulated too. Like they need to hit all these different benchmarks to be able to keep their animals to be able to stay in a credited zoo. It's just a whole different world and the amount of conservation money that comes out of zoos and goes into projects like some of the ones that I even worked on. It's just they're taking the human need for education by seeing things in person and they're really making something good out of of it with zoos. And with circuses, it's a spectacle. It's something that's based on lies and on torture. So they're very different. Well, that's all I got. You guys are any questions?

I had one thing I wanted to add. I find it really interesting that Tyke is an African elephant. Usually when you see circus elephants, they're almost always Asian elephants. And I do think that's because they're a little bit easier to break and easier to work with. Almost whenever you see someone riding elephants too they're almost always Asian elephants so I do wonder if Tyke being an African elephant had something to do with Tyke being the elephant that kind of caused this whole scene because it's it is quite rare that you see African elephants in captivity and performing so I do think that's pretty interesting like they had about 50 50. Tyrone said he had two Africans and two Asians okay and he was doing his tour with yeah I just feel like every time I ever see

people riding elephants, it's almost always an Asian elephant. But African elephants are... Maybe for riding, yeah. Larger, right? Yeah, they are larger. They're like pretty significantly even? I don't think it's too significant the size difference, but they are larger. And they do tend...

From what I've heard, they tend to be a bit more aggressive. And from what I've seen, I've seen both in the wild and African elephants were a little bit more territorial than Asian. But that's very anecdotal. That's like my one-on-old. observation of each. All the elephants you've met. Mike, you have anything? Yeah, you guys like circus peanuts?

Yeah, I do. They're weird, but I like them. The orange ones? Yeah. Oh, man, I don't even... The last time I had one, I liked it, but I was a kid. I like that squishy texture. Like marshmallow. What would you describe its color as being, Wes? I would say...

It's like a Band-Aid? I definitely say it's orange. No, it's oranger than that. I would say... Oh, I don't know. I'm trying to think it's a cream. Those things are unnatural, man. I don't like it at all. Yeah, like a creamicle.

Yeah, creamsicle is good. Hmm. To me, they taste like stale marshmallows. I kind of like them. Mm, okay. Ooh. My. Last thing I'll add is just like, I watched a lot of video of it, and it's just kind of, I don't know,

maybe I'm screwed up, but watching the elephant crush these circus performers, didn't bother me at all. Because it's kind of like they kind of deserve it. The elephant is finally fighting back. Yeah. Then when it like yeeded the guy trying to keep the gate closed, it was funny. Yeah. And then when they shot it to death is like one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time.

Totally. That clip you sent us, there was a small portion that showed, I think it was Tyke, bursting through like the curtained doors. And I just imagine. like a W-W-E wrestler that like the unexpected entrance where they run down the runway and get in the ring is pretty exciting. Tyke was just like, I'm not killing this guy behind the curtains. I'm doing it in front of everyone. Yes.

I will say when you first said you were going to do some stuff about Tyke, I was going to look up a bunch of elephant facts. And they're one of those animals that I started digging into them and they're so fascinating and so amazing their social structure. and like even just the musculature in their trunks, I found so fascinating that I think I'm just going to save it for when we do a full dedicated elephant episode. And I think you came up with some good circus facts,

so I don't think that's really needed here. But anyone out there that's itching for some elephant biology, you're just going to have to wait until we do an episode on them. Oh, damn. Or you can just maybe go on the internet yourself and type in elephant right in Google? Nah, just wait. Just wait.

Yeah. Wait till you hear. Let's do it. All right. Well, let's move on to some categories. I get it. Cat agorries? Nope.

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All right. So favorite pop culture circus. Okay, mine's in my background photo right now. It's from the movie We're Back. It's about the dinosaurs that come back and they're They take like the brain food and they're all happy and nice. But then there's that circus guy who gives them brain drain. And they turn back into rampaging mean dinosaurs. And he throws this weird circus that's all dark and gothic and full of demons and all sorts of cool stuff. And I just loved that scene when that movie came out. It was so creepy and dark and fun.

So that's my favorite circus moment is from the movie We're Back. I haven't seen that movie in so long. All I remember is it has Lisa's voice actress from The Simpsons. I think. And Billy Joel does the sound, like the music for you. Yeah, I knew that. And, uh, yeah. You should watch that circus scene again because it is good.

I will. I rewatched it. It's fun. Mike, what's you? So I have something wicked this way comes the book by Ray Bradbury. Uh, just like a perfect, creepy, perfect stylist. for like a Halloween time read if anyone's interested in this I don't know next upcoming Halloween it's really really atmospheric and creepy and cool so any all y'all book readers out there

put that one on your list for for Halloween time yeah I want to say place beyond the pines because that's probably my favorite movie with a circus but there's not like enough circus content so I'm going to go with a bugs life okay I like that yeah yeah Where all the bugs are doing the circus tricks. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. The one, it's like the 20, the bug is like, I only got 24 hours to live. I'm not going to waste it on this crap.

Yeah, so good. And doesn't the tent burn down? I don't know. Something does, yeah, something like crashes and burns, I think. Oh, man. All right. Favorite pop culture in Hawaii? I'll start this one.

I'm just going to go White Lotus season one. It's a good pick. I just love that show and it did such a, like, great job of making me want to go to Hawaii, but also, like, showing how much rich people suck at vacations, that they just can't be happy with, like, anything. Sure. So I'm going to say the end of Point Break. That's Bell's Beach, Australia. Oh, is it?

Yeah. I thought it was it the remake, I think. Maybe I forget. Okay, we'll just cut all that. Anyway, my real answer is... We're not cutting that. Poned. Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Wrecked. Oh, that's a good one. I usually don't like those kinds of movies. It almost feels like disposable rom-com type stuff to me a lot of times. But for some reason, that movie really does it for me. I feel like there's a lot of comedy rom-com set in Hawaii, too. Yeah, like 50 first date. Well, Adam Sandler.

Yeah, 50 first dates. Yeah. And he has a couple in Hawaii. Yeah. I'm going to go with, I'm going to say Lilo and Stitch. Oh, that's on my list. I think it's a really fun Disney movie. I really like the style of animation with all the watercolor and stuff.

I'm pretty sure they used Hawaiian actors for that one, which is good. Like, I think they did. I probably shouldn't say that before I double check it. No, we're leaving that. The Rock. I had a backup. My backup was. And that's Mulana.

Moana, yeah. Mulana. My backup was kind of a lesser-known movie that was a real kind of guilty pleasure for me. It's called A Perfect Getaway with Steve Zon and Timothy Oliphant and what's her name, Milovovich? And it's about these two couples that happen to meet each other while that are on the Nepali Trail in Kauai, which is my favorite Hawaiian island. We have family that is from Kauai. And it's just a really kind of fun-whed-of-it-murder mystery movie that is also really dumb at the same time. So that's my honorable mention.

Mike, what's your favorite island? Probably Oahu. It's just the one I've spent the most time on. Do you guys have like a favorite Hawaii memory? Huh. I don't know. I can't think of one. I mean, I just, our cousins,

our aunt live there and for me it's just so fun to hang out with them and our cousins are half Hawaiian and it just feels like you're getting an insider view of what it's like to live in Hawaii so it's really I just love hanging out. I have a cat that they named after me. Oh yeah. It's a screwball. Yeah. I just love hanging out with them. That's my favorite thing about going Hawaii is hanging out with family. It's the first place I ever went scuba diving. I wasn't even certified. There was like this little group that just threw on a regulator and a BC on little kids and they're like like, you'll be all right if we don't go deeper than 30 feet, probably. So me and my brother just went out there.

It was really cool. It was where I first fell in love with it. So that's cool. That's probably mine. For me, is for sure, my first time swimming close to sea turtles. Yeah. Because they just don't care there. Like, they're not afraid of people at all.

And there was just so many the first time I was swimming with them that, like, they were bumping into my feet as I swam. And, like, it was just cool. Oh, I just thought of a funny Hawaiian story. that I'm going to tell really quick. When we went to Maui a few years ago for my cousin's wedding, we decided to take a little boat ride out to, I think it's Mol. I can't remember, maybe Molokai or Lanai.

It was the island out there to do some snorkeling. I think he's Lanai. Yeah, I think you're right. And it was kind of rough ocean, and my older brother Cyrus has the worst sea stomach. He just can't do it. He won't watch Avatar in 3D. Yeah, you can't do it.

And he vomited pro. I think he vomited like 30-something times on that boat. And then we got there. He was so sick that he couldn't snorkel. And he finally decided to try and snorkel. And he got in the water and immediately vomited. And I remember seeing it and seeing all these fish swarming around him, eating all his vomit out of the water.

And it was the saddest, funniest thing of that whole trip. It was so terrible. Okay. Love you, Cy. All right. Let's do, what would Mike and Wes do? I would not torture elephants for a living. That's what I'm not going to do.

I'd take it further. That elephant was out of line. You got to discipline those elephants. Oh, man. It's dark. That's maybe the darkest thing we've said so far as far as far. Yeah, that's the worst joke you've ever made. If I was the elephant, I'd do what Tyke did.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I didn't realize that was an option. I'm leaving it open. I'd like to see. Tyke, I'm showing the world this is what they're doing to me. I'd like to see Tyke line up with a person, then flip around, cock her leg back and, like, kick them as hard as she could,

just to see what kind of distance she could get with, like, a really well-placed kick. That'd be good. Yeah, if I'm Tyke, I'm not doing, like, the head-crushing thing. I'm doing the full jump on you with my front legs. Yeah, get all that weight on you. I'm going to jump on you. I like that. Pop some heads.

Yep. And then I'm going out into the town and charging the cops. Yeah, I'm taking some cops out. I'm not running away from them. Yeah. All right. Cool. We're on the same page.

Okay. Craziest performance you've ever seen. Sticking with the circus theme. I hope someone says the phone book thing. I was thinking about it. So I have the phone books and then a listener, man, I'm forgetting your name. I think his name's Mike. But wrote me.

me and said the exact same thing happened to me. Oh yeah, you said that. But no, he gave me more detail and said he's in like, I don't know where he lived, Wyoming or something. But he said that the person made the half court shot too. Of course. Like he drained the half court shot. Like this person just like, can't making them, I guess.

I love that. There's once I went to a jazz game and there's a halftime performing. I was with Mike where there's like these this little guy and this bigger guy and the bigger guy just like kept juggling the little guy above him on his feet and like doing circles and stuff with them and throwing them in the air and Mike was like that's like the most impressive stupidest thing I've ever seen and that was very true and then I wanted to shout out our mascot when I was growing up in Missoula Monty. He's currently Benny the the ball in the NBA. Uh-huh. But he would do this thing at basketball games where he would stand backward or like he would throw a basketball over his head without looking and just drain it. Uh-huh.

And he would make like one out of three of them. And it's the most incredible thing ever. That is incredible. When you say he's Benny the ball, you mean the guy, parents close your kids' ears, the guy inside the suit. Yeah. And I was watching the Chicago Bowl's feed of the jazz game like two nights ago. And he was doing it.

And at time out, he was shooting half-court shots backwards. I thought of mine, and it's a clear standout for me, when I was in college, I went to this nearby college for this big event thing. And they had hired this mentalist who at the time, I guess, was the highest paid entertainment on this, like, college circuit. And he, it was insane the stuff he did. So he told me, he called me up out of this whole group. of people. And this was just one of the many things he did that absolutely blew my mind.

But before he called me up, he said, get a dollar bill of any denomination from the person sitting next to you. It happened to be my friend David Esman. And I said, hey, give me a dollar bill. And he's like, don't show anyone. He gave it to me. And I slid in my pocket. It was a $100 bill. And I went down there. And this guy had me blindfold them with like 10 different blindfolds that I tested first. And then he had me put my finger over the serial number of this $100 bill. And he was. like first of all you have a $100 bill in your hand and he's like second and he read the entire serial number letter and number like verbatim to me and i it was the most insane thing i've ever seen in

my entire life and i still can't explain it that's so crazy there are in you or there are internet videos they explain how mentalists do their okay i still like none of them though has made sense to me because it yeah like i saw that guy once at utah state and it was insane i just couldn't explain it. So someone, if someone wants to tell me how, let me know. But the internet videos haven't explained it to me. I once saw a guy beat Mike Tyson's punchout, the Nintendo game, blindfolded. I don't, I don't understand. It's the most incredible. I like, I can't get past the second guy. And I've like, I've played that a lot. Yeah. It just doesn't make sense. I think it's something to do with the audio cues, but that's, there's like this whole sub

category of speed running where people beat games blindfolded and it's the craziest thing to me that they can do that. What's the guys name Mac? Little Mac. Little Mac? Little Mac. Yeah. Champion. All right. Let's do some listener questions. I got a bunch from Patreon. Nice. First one. This one's from Jesse. Hey guys, random question for you. If you could have anything in the world named after you, what would you choose and why? Statue of Liberty Oh, that's a good That's a significant

Jeff Just such a good pick That is a good pick I think a national park Would be really cool I think I'd pick a national park That seems a little egotistical Thinking about it now

But like You gotta have done some really good work I think at this point To get a national park named after you So Sure I'd pick like Some billionaires

super mega yacht like the SS mic or something they just have to tell all their stupid rich friends that they named it after yeah a mid-level podcast host right yeah can i just change like the name of black bears to jeff bears i like that yeah just yeah you can this is that's a good pick there are no rules uh man okay next question from loren i was always told that with black Bears, you should get in the fetal position and play dead, which listening to your podcast I've learned is a great way to get eaten. My question is, do you think that's a rumor that was started by bears? I don't. Okay, that was only part one of her question. Okay. Part two is, have you guys heard of the show, We Bear Bears? We Bear Bears? Yeah, I have heard of it. Okay, I don't know

anything about it. It's a cartoon, right? No. She's wondering which bears do you guys think each of us would be. She thinks Jeff would be Pan Pan, Pan, Mike would be the Ice Bear. Ice Bear. I'd be the Ice Bear. I know. We gotta switch that around. And Wes would be Gris, although I do think Wes has some ice bear traits, she says.

But yeah, so Jeff is obviously. Yeah, I'm ice. I've got ice powers. Yeah. Jeff's been on a real kick with Ice Powers lately. Anytime anything has anything related to ice. Ever since it's Batman and Robin and just how happy Schwarzenegger was, is like, confirmed it to me.

Yeah. That's amazing that, well, whatever. That movie did that for you. Were you going to say something about the rumor of playing dead for black bears? The thing I was just going to say is that's a really bad idea. With any bear, but with black bears especially, it's the only time you ever want to do fetal position, and this is just a reminder to everyone out there, is if you're being mauled by a grizzly bear and it's actually mauled.

you, then you can go into fetal position. With black bears, if it's mauling you, it's probably trying to eat you. Our patrons, or our patrons know that. They know that. They know that. I just want to make sure that was clear. Do you know where the rumors start? No, but there's that common phrase that everyone always says, which starts out really great. It says black, fight back, brown, lay down, white, say good night, where it's like,

that, you know, with black bears, you are supposed to fight back, but then it gets really convoluted with brown bears and polar bears so anyway and with pandas you get all mixed up because they're both like what are you doing there it just started with bad information and say good night it's yeah it started with it just started back in the day when people didn't really know bear safety so that's where it came from it used to be the advice and now it's not so you're saying it's not entirely out of the question that it started with black bears that rumor yeah okay yeah oh that they started it. That's out of the question. You, okay, whatever. I'm just saying

you haven't dissuaded me. All right. And I'm pretty smart. You are very smart. Okay, next question is Jack. Wes, do you think bearspray would work in the event of a Komodo dragon attack? Similarly, do you think there are any land animals that could possibly kill you that bear spray would not work on? Yeah, we've had a few people ask us this question. I don't know if it would work on a Komoto dragon, to be honest.

and there are definitely animals out there where it wouldn't work very well. I had one that was a good example of that, but I am kind of blanking on what it was. Yeah, but there's land animals too that I don't think it would work very well on. Hammerhead would be hard to get both eyes. Yeah. Yeah. You could have to like reach back and forth. I don't know.

I would feel I would definitely still rather have it than not have it for any animal out there. land but i do think there's definitely animals where it's much more effective when they have soft mucus lining on their you know in their nose and their lungs and everything that's where it really holds and does really well with comodos they are so smell sensitive that i kind of feel like it would work yeah but there are there's lots of animals that are able to like physically shut their nostrils and their eyes and stuff when they see a threat coming and comotos might be one of those I think camels can do that. Bison can do that to some extent.

So there are animals where it's not as effective as it would be on like a bear or a mountain lion. So, right. Yeah. Last question. This one's from Lindsay. Have any of you ever been to Michigan? If so, what part did you visit? And did you like it?

I have been to Michigan. We went together once, right? I don't think so. Did I go with you? On our trip to Boston? Oh, yeah. We did drive through Michigan. Yeah.

And there's hell of lakes there. That's Minnesota that you're thinking. There's still a lot. There are a lot of lakes in Michigan. But I have talking about Minnesota. Like the Great Lakes is probably what. Oh, yeah. Ann Arbor is such a cool place.

Like in Michigan games. Yes. That's Michigan. The big house? Is it? Yeah, you're right. You're right. It is.

Yeah. That's where Michigan plays. Right. That was like one of the stadiums I most want to go to. I've really only been, I worked in like Toledo, Ohio for a little bit, and I'd fly into Detroit. to go to Toledo. And so I didn't really see too much of Michigan.

I really want to get up to like the upper peninsula because I hear it's just beautiful. And I'm all for, you know what, I'm all for learning more about Michigan. What was, what was this person's name? Lindsay. Lindsay, you know what? Impress this with some Michigan photos or something and we'll come visit sometime. We'll plan a trip. Yeah.

Get like a tooth and claw cult going out there and we'll do a live show. Yeah, we'll come to a live show. Spread the word for us. Doesn't even have to be a cold. Yeah, that's... But if you want to take it there and not be personally. All right. Thanks, Mike.

Thanks, listeners. Thanks, listeners. Yeah. I had one more question I want to ask. So, like, of the circus animals, like, the main ones that you know... Yeah, like if they have a cracker. The ones I listed, which one do you think would do the most... damage if it just decided I'm done with the shit I'm taking out as many of these people as I

can oh without a doubt an African elephant like if it wanted to just kill people yeah yeah for me there's no there I think that's the the terrestrial animal that without a doubt is like the one that you don't want to run into see when I was watching that video though the elephant wanted to kill the Dallas Beck person yeah and it didn't even kill him and like Like, just kept trying to crush him with her head. I was just thinking like a tiger would be, would have killed him for sure. The thing to remember, though, is like,

they've been psychologically tortured too. So they're not responding the way that they would respond if they were just purely wild. Like, if you pulled a 100% wild bull African elephant and put it in the middle of all those people, it would go on an absolute rampage and kill dozens of people. If you pulled, you know, I just think the problem is they're so smart and emotionally complex that even as it was trampling those guys, it probably was like maybe not fully committing to it, you know?

And I just think there's, I've seen African elephants up close and they're unlike any other animal that I've ever seen and they're just the power that they sued. So if you were like hypothetically at a Russian circus and one of the animals is going to go, That's the last one you would want to go crazy. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. What if instead of a human cannon ball, the guy just put a real cannon ball in the cannon, that'd do some damage. Dude, the last circus I went to, I was pretty excited for the cannon shot.

It was cool. He went pretty far. Yeah. That'd be a fun job. It did look fun. I'd rather see someone get shot by a cannon. That one's always funny. Like Homer.

They like get some big guy to just get shot by a kid. All right. Well, that's all I got. That was great. Thanks, Jeff. That was an interesting story. Interesting and tragic. But I had always wondered the backstory behind those videos.

So I'm glad you told it. Thanks for your sacrifice, Tyke. Go pour one out for Tyke. Yep. Tyke. And while you're at it, maybe another one for Harambe. Yeah. One day we'll start a tour where we go to.

to Tyke's grave and then Harambe's grave. I like that. Ooh, all right. I'm more excited to go to Hawaii than I'm in Cincinnati. Hawaii. All right. All right. Bye guys.

Love you. Well, love you guys. Bye. Ruth and Klau. Back at you. How you guys doing? We're here in Yellowstone with West. Coming at you live from our nation's first national park.

Not live, I guess. Smallest live audience for any show ever. There's zero people Just the three of us We'll insert like a laugh track Some elk We're here in Yellowstone National Park Mike scared of elk

Off the road last night But there's just a cliff on the other side of the road So I'm convinced it just jumped off a cliff It's very clearly just standing on the other side Of a little barrier It's a lot for that A cow or a bowl Cow

It's impossible to tell that I have no follow-up questions to that There's more cows than there are bowls but the cows have calves. Yeah. How many cows will blow impregnate, one bowl? I don't know. A cup.

Like a big bowl will get a harem of cows, so he'll have like 20 cows. And I don't know how many of them he mates with. Probably like a good percentage of them. Yeah. How does that work? Do they all stay in kind of a geographical location? So they spend most of the season apart from each other. So you'll have like big groups of cows.

calves and then like little solitary groups of bulls and then during the rut the bulls come down and the biggest bowls will like group up a group of cows they'll like kind of hurt them together and then they just stick with them during the entire rut and defend them from other bowls oh interesting and then they'll just mate with them so that's going on in mammoth we'll see that probably bugling they're doing is just calling females in it's both to like announce themselves to females and other bowls. It's just males that do that. Yeah. Well, great. Cows make, like, kind of a barking noise.

It's kind of unethical archery hunting, I think. Because they're bugling? Yeah, because you call them in with a bugle. So they, well, no, because they won't think they're getting sex, right? No, it's more they think there's a challenger, and so they're, like, going to fight. I thought it was, like, you're tricking them that they're going to get sex, and then you just shoot them with an arrow. Right.

Yeah. Which isn't sex. Okay, so that's ethical. And then the hunter can have sex. all the cows since it took down the bowl. He's the new alpha. Here in Mammoth, though, we have grass in Mammoth, so a lot of the elk come to Mammoth during the rut.

It's raining today, so they're not really out there, but most days, they're just like elk everywhere. I have to be careful when I leave the house because there's just help. Because they view you as a challenge? I've got charged the other day by one of the big bowls. Yeah, so it does happen. Well, you were I in the cows. I wasn't, though.

I was eyeing him. A direct challenge to him. You were looking at that cow's ass. He showed me that I was the beta. You're getting a little lonely out here. He started eyeing those cows. At my house, the squirrels are going crazy. Oh.

I think they're just getting ready for winter. Yeah. There's a lot of nuts. Collecting those nuts. Right now. Yeah. Or something. I don't know.

I see them everywhere. Have you figured out the difference between squirrels and chickens yet? Or is that still up in the air? It's getting murkier and murkier. Okay. All right. Well, let's just go for it. Okay, so I prepared an episode on giraffes.

Nice. We haven't really talked about. I don't think we've talked about it at all. Really at all, yeah. Giraffes are crazy. We don't know, like, nothing about giraffes, right, Wes? Almost nothing. There's, like, they are understudied, for sure.

Have you guys ever seen that picture where it's like a graph, a graph of a giraffe? It's a graph of a giraffe. You can just say giraffe. We'll know what you mean. A giraffe. Well, it's a picture. It's a different thing. So it's asking where a giraffe would wear a necktie if they were to wear a necktie.

So it's like at the base of their neck or would it be all the way up at the top? What do you guys think? I think it'd be down at the bottom of the top. Really? Yeah. Like right under the chin? I guess that doesn't make as much sense. I think it'd have to go over their chest.

I get what you're saying. But how about a turtle neck? Would that go all the way up their neck? Like the Houston, Texas. quarterback Mills. He has a really long neck. That's true. And he doesn't wear tight like at the top of his neck.

Yeah. It would be at the bottom. Jeff's right. And I think their turtle neck would go all the way up. I don't know. Yeah. Like a real tough custom. The turtle neck would have to go all the way up.

Okay. So that we've got that cleared up. Okay. That'd be a lot of material. A lot of turtles. Yeah. You're right, Jeff. threw you up.

Are we going to have the episode? Yeah, let's do this. So before we get to story time, I just want to take you through a quick little journey that I went through. Most of my research has led me to believe that giraffes rarely ever kill people. Not like never happens. In fact, recently someone did die a biker down in South Africa. So when I was in South Africa,

a lot of the people we were around did mention that like giraffes are an animal that you do have to be cautious of. It's not like you have to be cautious. of any animal, but, like, they're one that it doesn't take much. Like, one kick from a giraffe is sufficient to kill a person. And so, and there's some really cool videos online of, like, lions attacking giraffes, giraffes where they, like, get kicked. And, like, the lion's down for the count after some of those kicks. They're a powerful animal.

I like giravs. Giravs. Because, like, the plural of staff is staves. So maybe giraffe would be jeraves. Geraves. Yeah. D giraffes are like the easiest animal for a lion to take down though. No.

Yeah. Why? The easiest animal? Well, because they go for your necks. So they have a really big target. So they just grab your neck in here. The mountain lion with like the bite through the vertebrae. Yeah.

Yeah. Mountain lion's probably like salivating when they see pictures of giraffes. Now that you brought this up, I'm going to have to bring it up on a main episode. We're going to have to do a correction corner on that a little bit. Because I talked to a mountain lion biologist here in Yellowstone. and he said that is like a method that they use, but it's not necessarily like their go-to. It really depends on the size of the prey.

So our next mountain line episode, we'll get into that. Great. We're nothing if not transparent around the... So giraffs to kill people. It's not that common. Not super common. Bite them. Swing them in the air with their...

We'll get into that. Okay. I'll say biting is not their go-to method. It's usually a kick or a head or a neck swing. Yeah. So story time. guys ready? Yeah. So this, I found this story reported both at global rescue.com as well as Africahunting.com. In early 2016, Daniel and Laura Kor were vacationing through Zimbabwe.

So southern Africa, right, West? Yeah. And as their day out and about was winding down, they decided to head back to their hotel inside the Mosea Oatunia National Park. So like you've told us before, there's like national parks in which people like actually live. And like, there's civilization happening inside of national parks, right? Yeah, and I was mostly talking about South Africa that has like a different conservation system than like anywhere else. But in these other places too, there's within the national parks, there's often like villages and towns and stuff.

Mozambique. Mozambique. In fact, we're kind of like in a little place inside Yellowstone National Park. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. See it to believe it kind of thing. I wouldn't. have believed it if I weren't here. You wouldn't have? No, I would. I mean, I was like, is Wes just sleep on the ground? I liked how halfway through that thought you realized how dumb it was.

Pretty dumb. Okay, so to Daniel and Laura's delight, their tour guide spotted two giraffes, kind of just walking down a nature path alongside the cart path that they were going down. And the tour guide was like, sure, it's totally fine to get out of the cart and snap some pictures and hang out with these giraffes. Just keep a safe distance. and you'll be fine. So they did.

They spent a pretty nice moment, pretty close to these giraffes, taking videos, and out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw what he said was, quote, a really big giraffe, slowly walking towards them

coming from the opposite direction. So how big would a giraffe have to be if you're like hanging out by a couple of giraffes and then you notice one that is particularly big? For me, it would have to be like 20% bigger

than the other ones. I noticed, when I was down there that, like, there is a lot of variation between them because their, like, calves are a lot smaller, you know, and then, like, the females are quite a bit smaller than the males. But I don't know exactly how big they get. I hope you know. I do.

But I don't know exactly how big. Yeah. We'll get into that. Yeah. They get pretty big. Yeah. But I'm just saying to remark that a giraffe is significantly bigger than other drafts, it's got to be pretty huge.

Yeah. Like 20 feet plus. Because they're already a big, a big animal. Yeah. Uh, Jeff? Even their calves are big. Yeah. Yeah, like a bus.

Right. That's kind of true if you like, if a bus started like standing up, right? If it was at like a 45 degree angle or like a 60 degree angle. If a bus was doing a wheelie, it was probably. The short bus. Okay. As an experience veterinarian, this Daniel guy was, he was pretty familiar with like the usual signs of when a wild animal is like feeling threatened.

So, you know, they'll pin their ears back. Maybe they'll start vocalizing. This giraffe that was coming at them, this huge. giraffe. It wasn't really displaying anything that he noted as being like, okay, this giraffe is feeling threatened by us, you know? So it turns out they just don't really like exhibit those kinds of signs outwardly. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that West, but like they don't do a lot of like growling. Right. Like they don't have like a really big display for when they're feeling threatened. There's not like there are some animals that are there's like a really obvious one like a rattlesnake,

you know, or like animals like a moose where they pin their ears. straight back and they like shake their head and start breathing heavily. I would have to imagine that there's some kind of thing a giraffe does, but maybe it's just much more subtle than like... I think, too, it takes a while, like it takes longer to hear the drafts because it has to travel through its whole throat. That's true. So like if it's making a warning noise, you're not going to hear it for a few seconds

after it's already mad. Yeah, speed of sound. Distance thing. They don't really like need to make a warning noise. They need to make themselves look tall, like a lot of animals do. They don't need to make themselves look big, yeah. Because they're like, you know I'm tall. And that's probably part of it is that they don't, I mean, they do have natural predators,

but like a big male like bull giraffe, I think they're called bulls. They really don't have much that goes for them. They're calves and stuff will, but like the big adults don't really. Lions won't attack them. The only other thing they really have to worry about is us and other giraffes. Yeah. I saw a video of a lioness just jumping up at a giraffe's throat. Yeah.

And the giraffe just like ran, like Derek Henry ran through this lion. Like it was nothing and just like flipped it off. Yeah. Yeah. It did get me thinking, though, that that's a pretty good strategy if an animal did want to just get a human. Like Mike Myers, you know, in Halloween, he was just really silent and quiet. I guess the mask was probably a sign of like, that's probably a bad thing to be around. He would hold his knife.

up by his head. I think he's the least sneaky. Yeah, maybe I'm being... You can be pretty sneaky. Like, he's in your closet a lot of the time and stuff like that. Yeah. I'm just saying like Han Solo, fly casually kind of thing, you know? Act casual. A human probably let you get pretty close if you're not like a, you know... Wearing a mask with a knife. Exactly. Yeah. So not like Mike Myers. Sorry. That's Michael Myers. So, back to the story. Sorry, we got way off there. The giraffe was getting closer and closer at this point. And when it got about 20 yards away, the tour guy had picked up a branch and was kind of just waving at it to chew it away. He thought that that would

suffice. That's probably that tour guy, like, in a completely new circumstance for him. And he's like, oh, I guess I'll pick up a branch. And the people with him are probably like, oh, he knows exactly what he's doing. And inside. He's like, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. Well, it was kind of that way because, like, Daniel turned his back. He was like, okay, this situation doesn't seem that dire. But about 30 seconds later, he said, I heard her guide scream run. In Africa, when your guide screams run, it's bad. Yeah. Pretty much anywhere, it's bad.

Yeah. I can't think of, yeah, maybe if there's like a track mate, that would be the one circumstance where if someone yelled run, I'd be like, okay. Forrest Gumpling that catches a football. That's true. So he's been told to run at this point. The giraffe took one large step further towards him and swung its head, quote, like a wrecking ball, catching Daniel in the chest. So for everyone out there who's been attacked by a wrecking ball, you know what, this is

like Miley Cyrus. Yeah. For all you Miley Cyrus is out there. The impact lifted Daniel into the air and threw him onto a pile of rocks. He said, I've been hit by bulls and kicked by horses, and I played football all through college. But I've never been hit that hard in all my life. He's been hit by bulls? I guess.

Yeah. That's what he said. I believe him. Did he say bowls? Like has someone thrown a bowl at him before? Yeah, he's B-O-W. Yeah. He landed on a pile of rocks?

Yeah. Out. Yeah, for piles of things that you're going to land on, rocks are pretty low on the list. Yeah, like cactus is worst. Yeah. Cactus. Hand grenades.

Um, piling grids. Dumb tacks. Thumb tags, that's a good. We could go on for a while. Yeah. Tigers. Um, so. This guy, he played football his whole life.

He had never been hit that hard. What's the pile you would most want to land on? I already did establish marshmallows. Fire ants. They'll revive you. Yeah, fire ants is the pick. So he played football. He had never been hit like this.

Got hit by multiple bowls. Bulls. Yeah. A horse. I have some questions there, but okay. This didn't all happen at the same time. It wasn't getting hit by bulls. A bull can kill you.

We understand that. Okay. Yeah, it's true. He got hit by a bowl and lived through that, so this guy knows what he's about. But, like, I also wonder, like, how solid the bowl hit him. That's true. Like, they just get, like, knocked into a fence a little bit or something. Well.

But anyways, this elephant got him good. It's not an elephant, but that's okay. It's a giraffe wrecking balled him. That's where we were. I like this detail. This was kind of funny to me to visualize. Ten feet away from where all this took place, his wife, Laura, just laid down on the ground and played dead.

Interesting. Which, I don't know. Maybe that's, I, like, it's just funny to visualize her watching her husband get head-budded like that and then be like, I should just lay down 10 feet away. That's an animal where I don't think laying down is what I'd want to do. It turns out. It could stomp you. Right.

So she played dead so that the giraffe wouldn't attack her was her line of thinking. Daniel was quoted as saying, I saw the giraffe pick up his right hoof and I thought, oh, he's going to kill. Fortunately, my wife had dropped her purse about a foot and a half away from her torso. What the giraffe had his eye on was that poor purse. He came down on it and it just exploded, which is just another funny kind of visualization. What do you think was in that purse, Jeff? Handgunate.

Yeah. Gushers. Yeah. So after that, Daniel, feeling the full brunt of this headbutt, he got to his feet, grabbed his wife rushed to the cart and the tour guide just gunned it down the path away. And he said after their high octane escape, he took stock of his injuries saying, I had about a three inch cut on my head and I could tell big contusions and bruises were coming. So he could tell the future, apparently.

The real story, in my opinion. So after this attack happened, they went to the game reservations clinic to get all patched up, but it sounded like there was just a general lack of like staff on site and supplies to take care of it. So what they decided to do was consult with global rescue. It sounded like it was just kind of a resource wherein they could take pictures of their injuries and send it to some experts. And that's what they did. And they got back to them pretty quickly. And they said, they determined, and I don't know how they did this through photos.

I just thought that this was an interesting thing to bring up. But through these photos that Daniel sent them, they were able to determine that there weren't any broken bones, no blood in his lungs, and no symptoms of a head injury. So it sounded like he lucked out. He lucked out. Yeah. He was bruised, but he would be fine. But things could have really been a lot worse, which they were grateful for, Daniel and Laura. And they all hopped back in their cart and finally reached their hotel. But, and this is a quote, right before we arrived at the hotel room, guess who's standing there, straddling the path? The giraffe. The giraffe.

The same one? I don't know. It might have been. That's what they seemed to have thought. It has some purse, probably. It's like got the purse slung over its shoulder. It's like you forgot your purse. But fortunately this time the Corps was able to pass by the giraffe without any conflict.

But that was pretty suspenseful storytelling. You got it. It is. Yeah. It's pretty. It would have been scary after having just gotten wrecking balled by a giraffe. And then it's like menacingly standing there in front of your hotel room. Here's the thing that I really.

realized when I was down there that was a complete revelation to me is that in the U.S., we don't really have an animal that you're not safe. Like, if you're in your car, you're fine. There's not an animal that really threatens a person in your car. Like maybe a bison. There's a few things that, like, could potentially do some damage, but it's not going to, like, kill you or anything. Maybe sometimes will open the door if it's not locked.

Yeah, but you can, like, get away or whatever. But in Africa, there's animals that can just flip your car, you know, and then, like, and like stamp it to death. Like an elephant or a giraffe could stop you in your car. And then it could like kill you in your car. And that's like, that was a really big revelation for me. Because there's one point where we were driving and a big bull elephant came out in the road. And the guy I was with, he was a wild dog biologist.

He was like, ooh, this might be bad. And in my mind, I was like, oh, we're in my car. And then I was like, oh, it doesn't matter. Like this car is no protection for us. And that's like, that's an interesting thing for, with like giraffes, this megafauna, like, you're not necessarily safe even in a vehicle. That's a good point. Giraffes are pretty easy to fight off, though, right?

Just like the Matrix punch thing where he like stops his punch and then he does the throat fingers. Or like the Empire Strikes Back, ATAT Walker move. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they got, they're vulnerable for sure. It'd be really easy in a rodeo to, like, lasso one. So that, I'm glad you said that because of any animal capture in the world, I think a giraffe is the one I want to do the most because that's what they do. No way. Like, someone will dart one from the plane and then, like, people rush in and they lasso them.

And then, like, you just use the leverage of their neck to literally just, like, pull them to the ground. And once they're on the ground, they can't get up because all you have to do, like, truly all you have to have is one person on their neck holding their neck down. and you have to keep their head kind of elevated because they go into shock if you don't. But that one person can keep that giraffe down because it can't get the leverage to pick itself back up. And then once they get back up, you just have all these ropes tied to them and people just kind of like walk them around. So you hardly even like, it's like you're managing a live animal. It's not like a bear or something where we sedate them and wait until it's totally passed out. They do it when it's like still running around and stuff.

It's pretty cool. That's really cool. It's like the most extreme version of ring toss. Yeah. I just keep laughing because I can't stop thinking of that matrix scene. It'd be such a good move to be on the giraffe. Okay, let me wrap things up here for the story. Undaunted by the giraffe attack, the cores continued their vacation through Africa.

Everywhere they went, people would ask, quote, did you hear about the American couple that got attacked by that giraffe? And Daniel would say, yes, we're intimately associated with them. They had a good sense of humor about it, which... Yeah, no serious injuries. You can laugh about that later that day. I wish she did a John Wick, and he was like, oh, I think we know. I'm thinking we know that giraffe.

We know. Thinking about it, it'd be one of my preferred animal attacks to be able to say I lived through is just getting like wrecking ball head-budded by a giraffe. Like, and, like, thrown by its head. Yeah. Were they there to view wildlife or to hunt wildlife? Do you know? I don't know.

It just said they were vacation. I think they were just viewing, is what it sounded like. That's, like, one of those things where it's like, in my mind, it's like, it'd be cool if giraff's head-budded things. But, like, I don't really think they do. And then, like, I'm really glad they do. Yeah. Yeah.

That's how they, so you're probably going to get into this, but, like, sparring males, There's good videos of this online. Do you want me to wait? No, go for it. This is a good time. Those osacones on their heads, their little horns, they use those for, like, fighting with each other. And sparring males, like, they get a full swing with their necks,

and they just crack into each other. And then those little horns, like, it focuses that pressure, like, on a little point. And so they can do a lot of damage, and they really swing their necks hard. It's really cool. You would expect them to be, like, kicking and stuff, but it's mostly, like, they call it next. But it's like they're just, it's a little different. It's different.

But they're using their necks to like fight with each other and assert dominance and stuff. And it's, it's really cool. That'd be cool if UFC had that as a move. Just like, Connor McGreg just like using his neck. It hurts so bad if you just like swung your head into someone's head. So I'm going to split this next section into two different little subsections. We're going to go over some basic facts and then I want to play. I'd like to play a game.

All right. Like jigsaw. Yeah. With you guys. Okay. It's not going to be less dangerous probably than the one he likes to play. Basic giraffe facts. Giraffes are the tallest mammals on earth.

Females on average are about like 14 to 17. And then males are about 18 to 20 is about as big as they get. I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say they're the tallest animal on earth. Okay. Yeah. Put your stamp on it. Oliphons. Oliphons don't count.

Yeah. their diet. mostly consists of fresh leaves on the top of trees. Like they're the only ones that can reach up there, which is really important because really tall trees. That's like a chicken or the egg kind of thing. And long legs. No, it's like an evolution type thing. They're symbiotic though, right?

Well, they've, I think they've evolved to occupy that niche. So, like, I think if you were to go back millions of years, this is just a guess and look at their, like, ancestor animal. My guess is it has a much shorter neck. Yeah. And over time, they evolved to, like, get higher and higher in trees. With bigger necks would get more food. So then they would produce more.

Now they got huge necks. And they, dude, a thousand years from now, they're going to be probably more than a thousand. Just all noodily and they're just like waving around. Yeah, it's going to be more than a thousand years. It'll be like a billionth of a centimeter long or something. On average. But this is important because really tall trees,

logically would have deeper roots just to be able to stand up straight. And what that means is that these leaves are jam-packed full of water. So giraffes are actually pretty drought-resistant animals because they're really the only ones that have access to this water source, which I thought was kind of cool. So wait, why do the upper leaves have more water? Well, so taller trees just have deeper roots, which reach, like, bigger water sources under the ground.

Yeah, I should have been a little more clear about that. they live on average around 20 to 25 years and are mostly found in the grasslands and open woodlands in East Africa. But there are small pockets everywhere, relatively speaking, larger pockets in South Africa. Yeah. Are they only in Africa? Yes. I think they used to be in other places. Like, I think they used to be in like the Middle East and some other areas.

But now they're just in Africa. But, you know, don't quote me on that. But that's my guess. That's kind of true for a lot of African animals is like they used to exist. in like the Mediterranean and like the Middle East and some of those places. And they've now been confined to Africa. Cheetahs. Yeah.

Cheetahs, lions, a lot of that stuff. So one thing I was going to say about the, like, them feeding on the upper parts of trees, it's really like a niche that only they exploit. And so they're actually like, even though a lot of like ranchers and farmers and stuff down there might see them as competition for like their livestock that also feed in those areas, they're not because they're, they're, they're, they're, the only ones that can reach that part of the tree besides maybe elephants. And so it's like they're, they're unique in that they don't really compete with a lot of other animals for their resources,

which is really cool. Yeah, it is really cool. It'd be funny if we just found out like 80 years ago, giraffes just lived in Chicago. I feel like sometimes you look up like when you learn that woolly mammoths lived like 3,000 years ago. It's like, huh? Yeah. That's crazy. Like they weren't that long ago. Yeah. Probably didn't live in Chicago. Like a crazy thing is we had like a, there was like a North American cheetah and a North American like lion. Yeah. And like some North American zebra, like we had, we had a lot of this fauna that we like associate with Africa and stuff. Prehistoricly we had really similar animals in North America. It's cool. It is really cool. One last fact. I wanted to cover this just because I think it's pretty neat. Mother giraffes give birth in a standing position, which means that

newborns come into the world by just dropping like five feet to the ground and the shock of their body like slamming into the ground wherever they're being born, it snaps their umbilical cord and the jolt causes them to like come to life. Mike, yeah. Question for you. Yes. Me and Wes, do you think one of us, neither of us, or both of us watched a video of that within the last week?

The way you're framing this makes me think you did. I wouldn't be shocked if Wes also had. You're right. The Hogal Zoo. What? Oh, really? A Hogal Zoo giraffe just had a baby. And they, like, put it on their Instagram the whole birth.

It's cool. That's, like, that's, we put it on our story on Instagram. Okay, well, you know how that is. So a lot of our listeners have probably seen it. Yeah. Well, you listen. No, this is great timing. That's crazy, though, I didn't, I didn't really put it together that the ground

kind of like snaps them to life. It's really interesting. And a lot of ungulates do have their birth standing up. Like, a lot of them do that where the baby just kind of slides out. Yeah. Humans kind of have the worst. deal when it comes to pregnancies. Because we were supposed to, I don't think there is bad.

They're not born with quills. That's a good question. We used to be quadrupedal. And as like humans started being bipedal, the birth canal shrunk. That's why humans have such a hard time giving birth because like the birth canals so small. And like most animals, because the way their bodies are, the baby just kind of like plops out. Slips out when it's ready. Yeah.

It's crazy, too. Like, human babies take, like, a year to walk. Yeah. And then, like, that giraffe is, like, up right away. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, like, pronghorn babies here, they're, like, running when they're born. It's so impressive. It's gnarly.

Okay, let's go into phase two of giraffe facts. Based on each of these facts, I want you to pick an actor or an actress who would best play a giraffe in, like, a giraffe biopic. Okay. Based on these facts. Based on these facts, yeah. Got it. So the first one, giraffes kick, stomp, and bash their heads into would-be predators and other

giraffes like Wes was talking about that are threatening them. An adult giraffe's feet are about 12 inches in diameter, and they have those osicones on top of their head. What actor or actress or celebrity, if you can't think of a good one, would you guys pick to play a giraffe in that circumstance? Vindiesel. Yeah, it's got to be Vin Diesel. Except for, I feel like you need to have hair for the osolots. Ossacom.

Oscelots. Yeah. Acelots, too. We can't both pick Vin Diesel, though. My second pick would be Jean-Claude Van Dam. Okay, next fact. Giraffes only need to drink once every few days since they get a ton of water from their food source like we were talking about earlier. But when they do need to get a few gulps of water, they're so tall that even when they lower their neck all the way to their ground, they can't reach it.

So they have to do this, like, really awkward splits move. Yeah. Or kneel down to. to get their head close enough to start gulping down some water. So who would you pick in that? So now I feel dumb for picking John Cleverman down for the last one. I'm glad you did. Because he's easily the pick for this one.

Oh, because it splits. I mean, you can double up. You know, he's the first selector. Boban, the NBA player in like the third John Wick, just because if he was going to drink out of a puddle, he would really have to like get creative without a get it. There's also, like, what actresses are there that are famous for like doing split? and being really acrobatic.

Scarlett Johansson does a lot of that. Yeah. Scarlett Johansson is Black Widow. All right. Yeah. Next fact. She has head butts, too. Yeah.

I like that. Does she? That's a good pick. She's a good giraffe. Yeah. Great. Giraffes have a lot of heart, by which I mean that literally a giraffe's heart

can weigh approximately 25 pounds, making it the biggest of any land mammal. It can pump 60 liters of blood around its body every minute, and at a blood pressure twice that of an average human. I've referenced football to many times this episode, but be a great football player. He's got heart.

Sean Aston. Yeah, Rudy. Well, and Sam. He's constantly playing characters with heart. In Stranger Things, the guy that saves them all in season two, he's a really heartfelt character, always. I'll go to the guy in the avatar. Like the main guy?

Yeah. Sam Worthington. Because isn't even Friday Night Lights, too? Scully? Is that his name? Sully. He's the quarterback in Friday Night Lights, so he has heart. Okay.

Wait, Sam Worthington's in Friday Night Lights? I'm pretty sure. In the movie or the show? The movie. Oh, okay. It's one of them that looked like that guy. What do you think Sean Aston's worst role is, like where he's a dick? Probably Encino Man.

In Cino Man, he's kind of like, he's like pretty misogynistic in that. He's building a pool to get laid. Yeah. And then he takes advantage of his friends. get late and like still only cares about making a pool like what it can do for him he's a bad dude in that right he's mean to poly shore that's true but at what cost you know what lesson do you get from that this is a weird tangent very quickly yeah let's do it since i just said polly shore if you guys ever seen the trailer for the pinocchio movie that polly shore was in it's insane

uh-uh you got to watch the trailer it's like is it recent yeah it's like an animated pinocchio movie but he voices Pinocchio, and it's like, just watch it. It just sounds like middle-aged polyshore. Yeah, this is the weirdest thing. Yeah. All right. Amazing. Continue.

Okay, next. Giraffes are prolific and unique pollinators. As they wander around feeding on the tops of trees, they inadvertently transferred the genetic material on their muzzles from the flowers of one tree to those of another that only they are able to reach. Hmm. An inadvertent promiscuous. Pollinator.

I'm trying to think of who. He's very... Bill Cosby. There he go. Geez. I don't think his was inadvertent. Who's someone that's just had a ton of kids in Hollywood? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have a bunch.

Yeah, but they tried. And a lot of theirs are adopted. No, Nick Cannon. Oh, Nick Cannon has a... Nick Cannon has like 10 kids. Yeah. Elon Musk has a billion kids, too. Yeah.

And I hate Elon Musk. We did extend the category to include celebrities, so that counts. All right. Last fact. Giraffes have anti-fainting valves. in these like elastic arteries and veins in their neck that slows down the speed of blood flow up to their head, which is important because like when they lift their head up from drinking,

you know when you stand up really quick, you get a little faint? Yeah. That doesn't happen to them. They have like these very specific to them structural neck properties that just don't allow that to happen. And as a byproduct of that, when NASA learned that that was the case, they actually studied giraffes to help design anti-grave suits

and space suits to like help astronauts. deal with sudden changes, gravitational forces and stuff. So, yeah. I just think that's really cool. From what I understand, like, with them, there's so much blood that can rush to their head that it can kill them. Right. If, like, they didn't have those, like, that structure, they would actually die from

the blood rush. Yeah. It's crazy. I'll go, I'll go cure nightly because Pirates of Caribbean, she has that, like, corset on. And she's, like, fakes, fainting, but she's really fine. Who did you have in mind for this one? That's a great answer. I was going to say Matt Damon, since he's always in space suits.

He's always up in space, getting lost and stuff. I like that. Yeah. I don't have an answer for that one. That's fine. Okay. Okay. What are we at?

We have Mike's mythology minute, if you guys would indulge me. I would love to indulge you. Okay. So I wanted to bring up this old Bushman legend. And Bushmen are basically, it's the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes that occupied Southern Africa. And they're like the first culture that developed and civilized that area of Africa. Is it just the Kalahari that they were in or is it all of South Africa?

I didn't. I'm not sure. That's a good question. I should have been a little more thorough in getting these exact people's right. I just don't want to be insensitive, you know, so I just decided to include all of them, which... No one's going to look it up. Yeah, that's true. No one's curious. Just go for it. Yeah. People are like, they probably turned off our podcast by now. A long time ago, when the earth and the heavens began, every animal had a purpose except for the giraffe. This filled the giraffe with sadness. So the giraffe would often look up at the sky and pray for a purpose.

At that time, the sun did not have a direct course in the sky and would bounce around like a ball, causing inconsistencies and warmth and light. Kind of like the three-body problem. Yeah, we just read like the unstable arrows. So the giraffe was tasked with leading the sun steadily through the sky. So from morning until night, it would lead with its head a straight line across the sky. And he did such a good job that in honor of him, some stars were rearranged in the sky. so that they would always point in the direction of the sun. For us, the constellation is known as the Southern Cross,

but a long, long time ago, it was known as giraffe. I thought that was like a cute little story, you know. There's another one that I just thought was funny. We don't have to. We're going to do it. So this one's called tortoise and the bullying giraffe African folk tale. Tortoise and giraffe met one day. Giraff began teasing tortoise and said,

at once, I could trample you to death. Tortoise being afraid remained silent. Then giraffe said, at once I could swallow you. Tortus said nothing to this. D giraffe got pissed off with tortoise in his silence and swallowed him. But the tortoise got stuck in the giraffe's throat and he choked to death. When the giraffe was dead, tortoise crawled out and went home. And to his family shouted, giraffe is dead.

And they went and fed on his body for a whole year. Oh, geez. Dark day. I just thought that was funny that the giraffe was just like, what's up? I could kill you so easy. It's like this tortoise is probably just sitting there. Okay, that's it. That's all I've got for you guys, except for categories.

Yeah. Anyone have any closing thoughts on what we all just went through together there? No. What's the pattern on giraffes for? Just camouflage? Isn't there something more to that? So there, like, one thing that I know about it is that there's different subspecies of giraffe and you can recognize them by their patterns.

There's actually, so now like for a while giraffe researchers thought there only one species and like up to nine subspecies but now they think there's maybe like multiple species and then a few subspecies of those species but like there's a very different if you look at them you don't really realize this until you pay attention to it the pattern for like the ones in Kenya is very different from the ones in like south Africa they have a very different they're all reticulated giraffe I believe but they all they have a very different pattern and I'm not I'm sure their patterns like part helping them camouflage it's probably We part recognizing.

It's like, what are you even camouflaging for? They are, but sometimes like, because. Maybe they late. How do they sleep? Uh, I think they sleep standing up. They sleep, yeah, that's what I saw. In that, uh, ghost in the darkness movie, remember he says they only sleep for five minutes a day? Yeah, there's a lot of misconception about that.

I didn't want to include it because I didn't come to like a very clear answer. Mm-hmm. But there's like a myth that drafts only sleep from like five to 30 minutes. per day. But that's kind of like very short periods of time that they just take to rest throughout the day. But it's thought probably it's more close to like four hours. Yeah. And I don't know if they cross their legs and lay down or if they stand up. I can't remember. Little ones curl up and put their head on their butt, which is pretty cute. Big ones don't lay down now, huh? It didn't seem like that. Again, I'm not confident in saying that, but everything I saw didn't like said that they don't do that.

And I'm not totally sure what their pattern is for. But I'm sure it's, for the same reasons that most animals have. I did see a really cool, you know, back with our reindeer episode, there was like a thermal photograph taken in their nose. It's like really glowing and red. I saw a picture of a like a thermal picture of a giraffe and their spots are significantly warmer than where their spots aren't.

Oh, that's just like, yeah, so it's some kind of heat maybe. Thermal regulation. Yeah, that kind of thing. Well, one thing too that I learned somewhat recently about giraffes is those osacones, they're different from horns and antlers. So, like, you can't call them horns. You can't call them antlers. Like, horns, they're more similar to horns because they have a, their bone.

But the difference is they have a permanent layer of, like, skin and blood vessels and stuff over them, the osacones. Whereas bones don't. Like, and then antlers sometimes have skin over them, like, when deer are in velvet or whatever. But they lose that skin and they lose their antlers. Like, antlers are shed every year. and bones are permanent. So they're kind of like a mix between the two

and that they're permanent and they have skin over them, but that skin is also permanent. So they're kind of cool. Anyway. And we store their water. That's not where they store their water. No. We'll probably, I think at some point we'll probably do

a main episode on giraffes too. There'll be more facts. We'll get to the rest of this at some point. Yes. But not now. No. Let's go to the categories. All right.

Yeah. Favorite giraffe in pop culture. Okay. Okay. What's the guy? name in one piece. Kaku. Kaku.

Kaku was really fun. Yeah. Like, they all get these devil fruit powers and don't know what they're going to be. And this guy was just a giraffe. And he had to, like, pretend that he had the best power, but, like, everyone was making fun of them. Okay. It was a pretty good one, though.

Like, he found out he could, like, slice buildings in half with his giraffe neck. It's pretty sweet. Uh, I couldn't think of one. So, just by default, I'm going to say the giraffe in Madagal. Ascar. Oh, yeah. I didn't really even like that movie that much, so, but that's what I'm saying. Toys R Us.

Jeffrey. Jeffrey, Giraff from Toys R Us. Yeah. It's a good Jeff. Yeah, that's a good Jeff. Yeah. Okay. I was going to pick Jeffrey from Toys R Us.

But also, Kaku. So, I know, we covered everything, I think. All the good ones. All the good ones. All the giraffes. The one actually I was going to say, and I forgot, so I just went with the One Piece one was, there's a wild boy's where Steveo gets on stilts. Oh, yeah.

Kisses a. giraffe or something. That is pretty much. Oh, I actually thought of another one too that I felt this is the giraffe in pop culture I felt the worst for were Michael Jackson's drafts because he like on the Neverland Ranch, he had a lot of animals and he was notorious for being like a terrible animal keeper. And his giraffes almost like burned to death in a barn fire. And then this other woman had to rescue him and a lot of them still died because they were so

malnourished and like poorly taken care of. And like his animal keepers. would, like, beat him and stuff. So I think if you ever look at those old things with Michael Jackson and somehow overlook everything else about him and remember that he also was a pretty bad animal keeper. Yeah. Yeah.

Next category. Favorite kick, stomp, or headbutt in any movie. Okay. Or TV show. I don't know. We don't need to limit ourselves here. We're free. This is our podcast.

We do what we want. I'm doing one of each. Okay. Let's start with you. My favorite one was the stomp from Vin Diesel and Fast and Furious. seven. Yeah. Or wait, it might have been eight,

where, like, he's fighting Jason Statham on, like, the parking garage. And he's like, the thing you forgot about this is it's a street fight. And then he just stomps the ground and it all just, like, crumbles. Yeah, he breaks, like, steel-reinforced concrete. That was the best stomp ever. Doesn't he say the thing about street fights is the streets always win? That's what it was. Something like.

Yeah. Something really, and it's like it's a parking garage, not a street. It's stupid for a reason. Statham's like, that street fight. It's like the thing about street fight. And then favorite kick, karate kid. Yeah, what's it called? Crane.

The crane kick, yeah. Favorite headbutt is Terminator 2. Through the windshield. Headbutts through the helicopter windshield. I almost picked that one. I did favorite headbutt. I'm going to do a favorite stop. Honorable mention is Stampy from the Simpsons, the episode where if they get a, where they get a, or is it stompy?

It's stampy. Where they get a pet elephant. But he does a lot of stomping in that. But my favorite headbutt, I think, is from the movie Gangs of New York. There's a part where Leonardo DiCaprio is fighting Bill the Butcher in like this big kind of like auditorium thing. And Bill's on top of him and you just head butts them like six times in a row until his head is just like covered. in blood. And that movie is just so gnarly, but really good.

Oh, Daniel Day Lewis. Daniel Day Lewis, acting up a storm, making everyone else look bad. Yeah. One moment transcends all other movie moments for me in Fast and Furious Six. Vin Diesel's flying headbut into... Just a full body headbutt. It's incredible. It's in the back of a plane.

Oh, you're right. Yeah. But there is some back of the car. action that happens on the runway. Isn't there one in that one where he like jumps off of a car and headbutts someone in the air? I don't think so. Okay. I wouldn't be surprised.

All right. But the one I'm thinking of is like this big muscle dude. And it would have been the easiest tack to like dodge or block. And he just tanks a headbutt to the face from Vin Diesel. And it's like. Pins his arms to his side. Yeah. He does like a full torpedo.

And it's like the angle from behind makes it look like someone just tossed like a fake looking Ben Diesel doll with this guy. I love it so much. All right. That's a good pick. Okay. What would West and Jeff do? Yeah, let's do that.

If we were, set up the circumstances. It's like I was, which one? Yeah, so you're Daniel, and you see this very big giraffe coming at you. I'm going to be the guide. Okay. Yeah. I would get a bigger stick than what he got. Oh, like the branch that he was waving?

Yeah. and wave it even harder. Okay. Okay. I'm going to be the wife. I guess that's not terrible. And I'm going to fill my purse with like really good leaves from the tops of the trees. So when it explodes my purse, it's like, oh, and it eats the leaves instead of attacking me.

Yeah. Or I'll be the husband and I'll just set up little piles of pillows everywhere so that when it hits me with its head, I can aim for one of my piles of pillows. I'll be on like 25 foot stilts, so I'm taller than it. And then it can't swing its head down low to hit you. Yeah. I mean, it would trip you on the stilts pretty easily, I feel. Not if you're really good at stilts. You're the one that thought this through.

Yeah, that's true. Okay, you got any listener questions for us, Jeff? Yeah. Are you going to say what we should have done? Do you have any info for what you do if you're... I don't. It seemed like it was just keep your distance. Yeah.

You know, if it got just, it got too close and they had the means to get away. Right when that giraffe came out, they probably shouldn't. Yeah, I think just moved a little farther away. It's probably like any of our ungulates that like getting away from it isn't bad. You know, with our carnivores, like you don't want to run or whatever because you can trigger them to want to hunt you down. But with ungulates, you can just kind of get out of there. And so if you can get out in your vehicle or whatever, get out, I think this is me guessing, but I would believe, like, if you saw one close quarters and you did, didn't have the ability to get away, the next best thing would be to put something big in between

you in the giraffe, whether that's a tree. A giraffe. Or like a termite mount, another giraffe. I just think getting something large in between you and the animal with ungulates is usually a really good strategy because all it's trying to do is get you out of there. But if you can buy yourself some time, it's a good way to do it. But you know, when we do a full episode on that, I'll look into it a lot harder. Good.

Okay, from Amy. My lifelong dream has always been to go shark cage diving with great whites. My husband says he will only let me do it if I let him go skydiving. I think that's ridiculous. Nobody survives a skydiving accident. Amy? You caught up. Plus, great whites, they kick ass.

Can you settle the argument? I think you should let your husband go skydiving. Yeah. I would agree that skydiving is probably a little bit more dangerous. But it's still not like dangerous. Yeah. I guess like Great White, if you're in the cage, they never. Every once in while they get in cages though.

Really? Like every once in while they'll bust through and get in. I don't think anyone's ever been killed in the cage, but it's like, it's not like it's like totally safe. Yeah. And like skydiving's pretty safe. I think just both of you should just go live out your dreams. Life's short. I don't, I don't think you can say you can't go skydiving, but I can't.

and go great white shark diving. I agree. They're both diving. Yeah. We support you, Amy. We both, we really think you should do both of those things, though. You should go with your husband, and he should go with you. I think that's the right idea.

That sounds like fun. Yeah. Sounds like both of you should. I feel like we are hard on Amy. Amy, we're not being hard on you. No. I'm not being hard on you. No.

Yeah. I've gone great white shark diving. It was amazing. You should do it. Go with an ethical guide, though, and company. They're not all ethical. This one's from Robert, and they want to know. First, there's a question for Wes.

Who would win in a cage match Royal Rumble style between Mellian, Gandalf, the white, Sauron, and Glorffindel? Okay. After being sent back. Probably Sauron. Okay. Mellian, so all, Mellian, Gandalf, and Sauron are all Maiar. Glor Fendell's just an elf that got, like, resurrected. So the three Maiar, they are.

the ones that would have an option, but Sauron's, like, considered to be, like, the most powerful my art, so it'd probably be Sauron. Weren't you just talking about how, like, Gandalf can't die or something? None of them. None of them I are, they just, like, their spirits are just, like, resurrected. Well, I mean, but they would still lose, but, like, it's not like death is the only loss, you know. All right.

And then for all of us, what's the worst slash funniest roommate situation you ever had? Oh, I need to be prepped on that one. Can you guys think off the top of, you guys have a funny one. We got a bunch. A big chicken milkshake incident. Still mad. No. The funniest of yours, I think, so I'm going to tell this story really quick, and you guys

can fill in the details, but this is my funniest of yours. Mike and Jeff and my cousin Brent lived in this place called the Cube for a little while. And they had two roommates. They were like in their mid-20s, and then they had two roommates that were like, 50. Yeah. And one of them was just like one of the weirdest dudes have ever met my life. We called him Melvin.

What was his real name? Eric. Eric. Eric, yeah. We called him Eric. Behind his back, we called him. Yeah. It wasn't like, we weren't mean to him.

Yeah. Never mean to. But my favorite story you guys told me is he would always make spaghetti and then he would like put a full plate of like made spaghetti in the like cap. It's just once. But yeah, there's like, well, first he was just like, he would just stare at. at the water the entire time until it was boiling, like

intensely, and then like with like a chair right next to it. But yeah, there's one day that I like went to like make something to eat and I opened the cupboard and there was just like a fully untouched plate of spaghetti in the cupboard.

And I just closed the doors and like went back upstairs. I was like, I can't deal with this. The day he moved in, He carted up in a little like children's play red wagon with all of his stuff. This guy was like, we genuinely liked this guy. He was a really awesome roommate, like just a nice dude. He told a full story once about like, he's like, yeah, back in one of my old houses, I had six pairs of jeans.

And it was so nice because, like, I could just do laundry with three of them and still have, like, three clean pairs of jeans. and like I just always had clean jeans. I was like, how many pairs of jeans do you have? He's like, oh, I don't know, like five. He's like, get another pair of jeans if you're reminiscing about it like this. Oh, I love that guy. Oh, man. Didn't you, like, sleep on the floor in front of the stairs, too?

Oh, that's like the most scared I've ever been was I went, I went down to, like, get a, like, book tape out of my car. and I walk down the stairs and it's like pitch black and it's 2 a.m. And it's just this perfectly like awake, good morning. I got so scared and is like right next to me. And then I like turned the light on it. I was like, Eric, what the hell? And he's like, yeah, I was just farting a lot. And I didn't want to bug Victor.

Wait, him and the other 50 year old shared a room. They shared a room. Incredible. The other guy was from Mexico and he said he always wanted two stallions. Uh-huh. So he just owned two Mustangs. Like the cars. Yeah.

Honestly, there was a time when I was probably the worst roommate because I was raising a raccoon in a house and it was just pooping on everything. And like I had a germaphob roommate and he probably just hated me. But I think my worst roommate situation was I lived with two brothers that were just like, hyper conservative and they just had like frame photos of Ronald Reagan all over the house and they got like anytime the TV was on if like there was like a POC person on they would say something racist and it just got so old and I got really tired of that but I don't know I like I'm trying to think of like a funny one and I'm having I'm drawing a blank yeah your guys this that's your guys this takes the cake yeah that's a good question though great patron

on question. Thank you. Okay, that's good. Well, thanks for the questions, guys and gals and thanks for listening to my story. Yeah. All the way to the end. Should we do early? Should we do early? Should we do out to? Shouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot to do that. Oh yeah. And we should do how much we like them. Yeah. Maybe. And conservation. Let's do quick of all of those. Yes. Yeah. So ouchies, it's just the one guy that got hurt, right? Yeah. And he maybe was going to have contusions and bruises in the future. Yeah. He's going to have them in the future. Yeah. I'm giving him a three. Getting the wind knocked out, he sucks.

Landed on rocks, too. You guys give people that are, like, killed by animals, like, four or five. He got hit by a bull and it hurt worse. Well, that doesn't count. I'm giving him a three. Oh, you're right. He said it hurt worse than the pool. But we have no idea what kind of bull or what happened.

I'll give him a two. And then I'll give the purse a seven. Yeah, that's destroyed. I'm going to give him a three. three. Yeah, three sounds good. Okay. So for conservation, and I'll dig deeper into this for the full length, but one thing I do know about giraffes is that, and I learned this a little while, like a few years ago, but for a long time, people just kind of thought they were fine and they were understudied. And then when researchers really started looking into it, they realized that there had actually

been a really big reduce in giraffe numbers in Africa, like 30 or 40 percent, I think. So just recently, giraffe conservation has become a much bigger thing. And there's a lot of groups looking into why they're dying out. A lot of its poaching for bush meat, a lot of its habitat loss. But we are losing giraffes pretty quickly. So they are, I'm pretty sure they're IUCN vulnerable. But some of the subspecies like the Namib giraffe I know is critically endangered. And there's a few other subspecies that are either endangered or threatened. So they are an animal that needs some help, that needs some real conservation pressure and it's something that we kind of just realized so hopefully we can save the yeah should start a bumper i think i don't think they're an animal that's going to go extinct because

they are so like well-loved and charismatic and they there are places where they've gone extinct like they used to live in like like kind of by like Nigeria and some of those areas of africa and they've been extirpated from there so now they have like strongholds in eastern africa and Southern Africa, but the strongholds don't last forever. You've got to take care of them. Yeah. I mean, look at Helms Deep. Yep, exactly. Look at Helms Deep. Look at it now. So how much do we like them? I like them a lot. Me too. Yeah, they're pretty high. They're like a strong eight, maybe a nine. That's how I feel. They're a high. High. I'm like, yeah, I'm like eight and a half nine, somewhere in there. As far as like non-preditors go, they're probably in my

five. Yeah, big old black tongues. We didn't talk about their tongues. Purpleish black. Yeah. I think I'm going 16 overall. Wow. Wow.

Holy cow. I got bid by a giraffe once when I was feeding it some lettuce. Wow. Yeah. They hurt? Yeah, it really hurt. How many ouchies? More than this dude.

Really? Yeah. I should have told your story. I'm going to bump it to 21. Okay. I'm going to say an eight. It's hard for an ungulate for me to be higher than that. And I think they're about as high for me.

is ungulates get. So I'm going to say an eight. Okay. I'm going to invent a 10 star because it's an ungulant. So like, yeah, 10. Because like, yeah, I'm giving it a 10. 10 claws? 10 claws.

Okay. I feel like, 10 stars. 10 star. I feel like if you were to like canonize animals for like, you could pick 20 animals to send out into space to like show aliens what animal life on earth is like. Yeah. You can't leave giraffe out. You're right.

You're right. Like if you picked like. So unique. If you picked like 20 animals to represent Earth, giraffes would be one of them. I think so. I'm looking at my list again. I'm putting them at 16.

Okay. I got one open spot ahead of 11, and that's it. They're an iconic animal, but they're still an eight for me. But that's high for an ungulate. Now, you don't have to explain yourself. Yeah. Well, thanks, Mike. That was great.

I learned a lot about giraffes. I remembered my favorite roommate stories from you guys, which is a real treat. We have a lot more. That was a really fun. summer. I would come hang out with you guys a lot over there. We would play some, which version of Smash Brothers, Wii? The Wii brawl. We had like a 5,000 pound TV. Yeah, this sort of store. Massive big screen TV. Oh, that was really fun. That was the summer, me, Jeff and Brent marathoned One Piece too. Oh, yeah. That was a big summer for me. You guys were always really, like, looked really sleepy and

tired because you were just stinging up all night watching One Piece. Me and Mike went to Montana for like three days and we like said like we should probably watch a couple episodes because brent will probably watch a few we got back and he was a hundred ahead of us he did the math and it was like almost impossible that he was like wouldn't leave the room he just only watched one piece while we were gone incredible all right well thanks guys uh thank you all you all you subscribers you're the ones that have kept us afloat for this long so we really truly appreciate you love you guys we love love you. See you next time. See ya. Bye.