Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Fire Ant Attack - Joan Goes Skydiving

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Hey everyone! Here's another subscriber episode we thought would be fun to release to the world at large to give everyone a little taste-test of what they can expect if they join either our Patreon or Apple Griz Club. In this one, Jeff shares an unlikely story involving a skydiver and some fire ants, Wes gets fussy about the liberal usage of time travel, and Mike is worried about everyone else's marsh mellows. If you want over 100 hours of subscriber exclusive content with more released every other week, consider joining our Patreon or the Griz Club today! You can also gift a loved (or liked) one a Patreon subscription now To subscribe: https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast To gift a sub: https://www.patreon.com/toothandclawpodcast/gift ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome back to Tooth and Claw. Here's another subscriber episode that we thought it would be fun to release to the world at large to give everyone just a little taste test of what they can expect if they join us, either over at our Patreon or on the Apple Grizz Club. In this one, Jeff talks about fire ants. It's actually a pretty extraordinary story. We're excited for everyone to hear it. But a little bit more about the subscription feeds. I'm realizing how shameless of a plug this is right now as I'm speaking.

But anyway, we have 100 plus hours of content, 100 episodes. and more and counting every other week. I didn't say that very clearly. But so I said to say, we have a lot of subscriber exclusive content over there if you want to subscribe, either for just a month or longer. And also, we just found out that Patreon enabled gifting subscriptions. So if you have anyone in your life, you think would enjoy a little bit more tooth and claw. It's pretty cheap.

It's like $10 for one month. They can binge all of our stuff. You can unsubscribe. Send them the gift of tooth and claw for Christmas maybe. I don't know. Most recently, Wes put out some more thoughts. about his experiences while working with Bear 399. A lot of people really enjoying that.

We started branching out a little bit, doing some other kinds of content just here and there, but again, mostly focused on some of like the weirder animals, like fire ants, for example, that maybe just wouldn't get the coverage on our main feed like we usually do. Anyway, I've been talking too much. We hope you enjoy it. We're grateful for all the support that you've shown us these past few years.

We really could not be doing this without you. So thank you. All right. Let's get to the episode. Let's go. Okay, tooth and claw, Patreon episode. That was a good mix. A good mix of patron and Patreon.

Yeah, I kind of nailed that because I'm always trying to decide which one to go with. The end of it, it sounded like the end of when you say the word onion is like Patreon. Yeah, that was kind of like. Yeah, I like onions. The nice thing about Patreon episodes is we don't really need to introduce ourselves. This is your first ever episode. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, if you just stumbled on us on Patreon,

congrats. I want to do a little sports corner. Oh, sports corner. But it's animal involved. So the Ravens mascot got a season-ending injury in the preseason. Po? Blew out as AIDS. Yeah, Poe the Raven for the NFL team.

Blew out as ACL in my season. a scrimmage with little kids and a little kid tackled him. That sucks. But it is so funny because he left his big old raven mascot head on and got carted off the field in like the full Raven outfit. Oh, this reminds me of something I was going to tell you. So in Missoula, Monty the Bear is the mascot for the University of Montana. He's very well known around Missoula.

It's like a grizzly bear in a jersey with like a bandana. So I was driving to Yellowstone this week, and I was like in Bonner outside of Missoula, and suddenly I see a car pulled over on the side of the road, just one car, like an old beat down like Camry or something, and Monty's like helping them put a tire on. Like in the whole outfit? Yeah, the entire outfit, and it's for sure like the official Monty. I mean, that's got to be for like a promo video. It has to be, right?

Yeah. I don't know. But there was no one there filming. It was just the two people. It was like one person with a broke down car and Monty there with like a tire iron. And I was just like, what the hell is going on? Oh, man. Yeah, it was weird.

So I hazed him. I beanbagged him. Yeah, good call. The one from when I was growing up became the Chicago Bulls mascot. Huh. Benning the Bull. Neat. Have you guys seen the video of the Denver,

mascot like repelling from the ceiling the basketball one but he's like completely unconscious people are like screaming and they just like it's really funny. I'll look at like Denver mascot repelling. Jeez. And then other sports corner did you guys see our guy Donovan Mitchell got traded? I did see that. Yeah. Yeah.

Good for him. I'm sure. Going to Cleveland. Yeah. I know like NBA players don't love playing in Salt Lake. Yeah. But, like, I wouldn't want to live in the state that killed Harambe. No.

You know? Any listeners in Ohio, like, what are you doing? They killed Harambe in your state, you know? Right. So I guess if you live in Ohio, Jeff needs you to move. Just get out. Yeah. Yeah.

The entire state, not just Cincinnati. Worked your whole life to make it to the NBA. But, you know, there's a line. You got to draw that line somewhere. Do birds have ACLs, Wes? I'm still thinking about Po. I don't think so, but that's a really good question. Yeah.

That's crazy that he was able to tear it in that case. Yeah, I don't think he's a real bird. Well, dinosaurs were birds, and they probably had him. I don't know why you think that. The dinosaurs were birds? That they had, no, that they had ACLs. Dinosaurs? I don't know.

Does everything have an ACL? Do birds have knees? I don't know. There's an artist I really like called bird knees. Oh, yeah, you kind of need knees to have ACL. Yeah. I don't think. like most animals with knees would have ACO.

I don't know. I could make up an answer, but I'm not going to. Yeah, it's responsible. Thoughts and prayers to Po. Yeah. Back up Poe, this is your moment to shine. Like, you get a whole season ahead of you. Yeah.

All right, you guys got any other. Oh, yeah, I got one more sports thing. Oh, wow. I'm in another listener-led fantasy football league. Oh, gosh. Let's see if you can break up this friend group, too. Yeah, so hopefully, Derek, I'm still sorry that I ruined your league and hopefully, or wait, I don't know if his name was Derek. You can't even remember his name. You ruined his life and you don't even remember his name.

But yeah, I'm looking forward to- like M. Bison and the Street Fighter movie. Yeah. Burning this league down as it goes as well. Well, I'm excited to have a full season of updates ahead of us. Can I tell you guys one more thing? Yeah. Sports? No. So the Lord of the Rings show comes out today. And I've just been looking forward to it all day.

I feel like a little kid at Christmas. And this is like, you know how sometimes when you wake up too early at Christmas and your parents are like, you got to wait a little bit before you open your presents? Yep. That's how I feel right now recording this episode, just so you know. You just not ever going to be painted. No, I am. Checked out.

But I'm in a good mood because I'm excited. All right. See you. Bye guys, bye patrons Okay, Patrians So we're going to time travel To 195-ish I can't remember exactly

I didn't write that one now Will you insert some Oh, I have one of them Some theremin music right here Yeah, thanks Like the time travel? Theramine music, yeah What's that for?

It's the theremins that one musical instrument goes Wee-wee-wee-wee. Yeah, time-traveling. Okay. The time-travel instrument. Okay. All right. So we're talking about, I'm not sure. I think it's Joan, but it could be Joanne.

But I'm going to go with Joan. Joan Murray. And she was born in Moose Jaw, Canada. How's it spelled? J-O-A-N. Yep, that's Joan. Yeah. So she's born in Moose Jaw, Canada, right?

Cool. She has a couple of brothers. brothers and sisters she goes out in the woods and I didn't really look up her childhood too much so we're just going to I made some of that up probably so we're just going to fast forward okay so wait she's 40 we're time traveling you don't know the year we're in you don't know how to pronounce her name and you may have made up stuff you already didn't know about I pronounced her name right okay cool just I want to make sure we're on the same page so we're time traveling what year are we in now cue this sound effect okay oh we're going to

I want to get, okay. Yeah. So she's now 47 years old and we're in 1999. Okay, good year. Yeah, what were you guys thinking about September 1999? I just watched the movie Fight Club and I was like, wow, that's a good pixie song. I got to get that on Napster. I hope the internet is around next year.

Yeah, I was like, I'm worried about Y2K, but I'm really hoping I can get that millennium beanie baby because that's going to be worth a lot of money once I'm older. Yeah, you're probably crying too. And I think it might be worth like $4,000 right now. Sitting right in front of me. Yeah, you should wrap that up.

That's millennium. That's a hard bear to fuck. Pretty bear. I was playing Tony Hawk. I think 99 was the first Tony Hawk game and that's probably all I did that whole year. PlayStation 1. I added on 64.

Nice. So Joan was the mother of two twins. Sorry, she's the mother of twins is all you got to say with twins. And she worked at a bank during the day. Now working at a bank, it's a good job. A lot of people do it, you know, but I think it can get a little boring, right? So if you guys, if that was like your whole day job like Monday through Friday, what do you think you do outside of work to kind of spice your life up a little?

Um, bear management. Outside of working at the bank, you'd be a bear manager. I think I'd get really into robbing banks. You'd probably have some good inside knowledge, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I would try to drive home with my eyes closed the whole way. You'd do that a lot. Jeff has definitely, Jeff has gone the furthest I've ever gone in a car with his eyes closed.

What are you talking about? You used to do this. You would like go on a long stretch. and just see how long you could close your eyes. I would. Yes, you did. I remember it, and it was terrifying. And then you also do that game where you grab.

I guess I did bring it up, so maybe. Well, and then remember how we would always do that game where you sit behind the person and you put your hands over their eyes and you say, guess who? If I'm sitting behind you while you're driving, I'll cover your eyes with my eyes. But then once I did it to you and you were like, um, hmm. I wait until you get too nervous.

And then I finally took my hands off. You know, when you don't care about life, that's how you live. You remember when Brent, your cousin Brent, he equated, what was it, skydiving? Like the thrill of skydiving is no different than the thrill of driving with your eyes closed. Funny you say that, but no, he said, he said, I don't see why anyone would want to go repelling. Why don't you just drive with your eyes closed? That's like, that's a really weird. You can get the same excitement.

Yeah. Oh, man. So Joan lives in North Carolina. You guys fans in North Carolina? Yeah, I love North Carolina. Yeah. Great food. It's nice state.

Underrated food state. And she's about to do what Mike just mentioned. She's about to go on a solo skydive for a 36th dive. You think at like 36, you're still a novice? No. I don't either. But the article I was reading was like, still a novice. No.

Nope. That's a lot of skydives. Don't you have to have, like, a crazy amount before you can just go do it solo, though? I don't think so. Because I went, I've gone twice, and I feel like they were, like, a couple more, and you can go on your own. Yeah, you got to go, like, four times. I've never done it. You haven't?

Yeah, no, I've been wanting to for long. The problem is, I'll go with you. I want to go somewhere that's, like, really cool, though. I don't want to just go over there. Let's do it in Mexico. Let's do it in Mexico. The desert in Utah, sweet. What are you talking about?

It's just like a brown flat thing. You're just like falling around. We went in Moab, me and Jeff, and it was fun. You do love Brown. Yeah. All right. I want to do it like a volcano or something. So, sir, 36 dive.

36, like, shots with a basketball, that's a novice basketball player. 36 skydives. You're not novice. No, that's a lot. So she prepares her gear like normal, gets in the plane like normal, everything's going normal, jumps out of the plane, waits till the plane gets to 14,500 feet, which I don't know how high you get, but I'm sure that's normal, you know?

And then you think you could survive that high without a parachute? I would say no, but I have read the whole Wikipedia article on people that have survived really far falls from planes. I could do it. Yeah. You think you could, Mike. Yeah. Okay.

Where would you most want to land? Snow, a snow bank. Snowbank? Yeah. Most of the people that survived landed in snow. Not too much snow. So she traveled to South Carolina for this. Not too much snow there in September.

How many marshmallows do you think they've got? Who? In South Carolina. Oh, we're in South Carolina. Did we time travel again? She traveled. Jeff just told us. She drove there.

Okay. Yeah, South Carolina then. Does that change your answer? I think there's a lot of marshmallows. So what are you saying? You would want everyone to bring their marshmallows where you land. Sure, if that's what it takes.

That's where you want to land? Yeah, ideally. So Mike wants to land on everybody in South Carolina's. I mean, I don't want to mess up other people's marshmallows, but if there's like a pit of marshmallows to land in, that would be ideal. In the Batman movie, the first, like the one from the 60s, he lands on a mattress factory and survives a fall from a plane. Oh, really?

Now we're thinking. In the dark night, he like saves what's her face and. lands on a car. Rachel, and they just like land on a car. Yeah, I find. Cars are the softest. I guess I just pick a car than you could possibly land on. It's like a pillow.

A three-mile skydive right onto a car. I think that's what I pick. If we believe movies, the car is by far the best thing you can land on. Preferably moving, like, Fast and the Furious, when they're moving it really. It doesn't really matter, though. If you hit a car, you're safe. All right. So she's free falling right now.

She's like having fun and then it's like all right probably time to pull my cord Starts yanking on the cord nothing happens So you got a problem then do you guys know like what you're supposed to do if you're parachuting and your your backup shoot won't apply Yeah, but first you kind of have to get the first shoot out of the way sometimes when they deploy you have to cut the shoot So that the other shoot can open up I heard like different reports on this where like someone said she had to cut it but I don't think that's the case because I don't think it ever deployed.

Okay. But whatever the situation is, she's like having to contort her body a lot more than normal now to get the second parachute released. Okay. So she's like struggling to get it at the second shoot released. She finally like gets it out. The shoot opens up, fills up, stops her from falling like a parachute short. should, but then, like, she doesn't have any control over her body.

So she's, like, spinning and starts getting these cords all tangled up. And that causes the parachute to get tangled up and deflate. And she's 700 feet above the ground when the second parachute now becomes useless. That's too high. That's too high. And she's been in the air for, like, 45 seconds. She's falling 80 miles per hour towards the ground. Too fast. That's too fast.

Too furious. You're falling, your parachute's not working, where would you least want to land? In a pit of alligators. Pit of alligators, yeah. Maybe like a volcano, active volcano. Mount Doom. Yeah. A bomb, land on a bomb would be better.

So Joan falls onto a gigantic fire ant mound. Oh, no way. Yeah. Oh, John. Yeah. So she falls straight onto a fire. ant mound. Did Joan, like, kick a baby over the day before or something? What did she do to deserve this? What happens when you fall out of a plane onto a mound of fire ants? I mean, if you're, like, you probably die, I would say most, like the ants have...

Such a dumb question. Very little bearing on most of these cases, probably. Yeah. But if you manage to survive, you're in for a real bad time with those parents. But like alive or dead, like what do you think these ants are going to do? They're going to start munching. I love this new tradition in our Patreon episodes where you guys just ask each other the dumbest questions possible. It's a good question. I don't know what you're talking about. So, Joan starts getting stung,

and she gets stung 200 times before paramedics arrive. So she survived the fall. I feel like we kind of skipped that. Well, I mean, I'm not skipping anything. You're skipping ahead of anything. All right. Sorry. All right.

So how high? you guys, I want you both to guess. Whoever, whoever gets closest, I'm going to Venmo $5. Okay? Oh, I need this. So how high does a human have a 50-50 chance of surviving a fall in feet? In feet? So, like, how many feet up does a human have a 50-50 chance of surviving that fall?

I'm going to say, oh, I want Mike to go first. I'll just say 65 feet. I'm going to say 320 feet. You have a 50-50 chance? You went second, too. Wow, Wes. Wow. So Mike wins.

So from 48 feet high, you have a 50-50 chance of surviving that high of a fall. I don't know. She felt from 700 feet. That's why I was getting. You think most people would survive that? No, but she survived. I'm saying 50-50% chance of anyone. Are we taking like babies into account?

What was the control group in this study? I see where your head's at though, because you're assuming she survives. Right. So 80 feet is pretty much 100% death. Like if you fall from 80 feet, you're most likely for sugar and die. Okay. There are some outliers to that. Like possibly 700 feet.

Okay. So that's how far she free falls. she lands on this mound of fire ants she's unable to breathe or move but she's conscious wow no but i don't know if you guys know this but breathing is essential for living yeah and she's not able to do that yeah that's a problem you ever been like punched in the stomach oh yeah yeah so imagine that yeah okay jesse punched me in the stomach like two days ago and knocked the wind out of me yeah so that's how she feels right now So she starts feeling pain from the ant stings now.

And the pain becomes worse and worse until she eventually passes out. Then the paramedics come, they get there, they find her unconscious, covered in fire ants, but she has a pulse. So she gets rushed to the hospital with extensive damage to the right side of her body. And I'm wondering if they bring her in the hospital and they like have her labeled as an ant bite victim. Yeah, like this person's been bit by it. They're like, all her bones are broken. How did these ants do this? These are some strong ants.

No, but they rush her into emergency surgery. She's like put into a two-week coma. And then this is like the- Mario talking. This is like all the medical facts I have written down, which I didn't really dive into a ton. So we're just going to go for it here. Okay.

So she had a communated. Coomunated. Shoot, I can't even read my name. She had a culminated pelvic fracture, a culminated femur fracture, several teeth knocked out of her skull. No major organ or brain damage, though. And then she had to go, she had to do go. She had to go through 20 reconstructive surgeries. Oh my gosh.

She had to have 17 blood transfusions. So then she has to get a metal rod placed in her femur and then plates put into her pelvis. And I was looking up a coma. So you have a 7% chance of surviving a three-day a coma and then 2% chance after 14 days. You keep saying that. Why do you keep saying a coma? What am I supposed to say? Coma?

Yeah, it's just a coma. Yeah, it's just a coma. Yeah, I know it's two words. A coma. All right. No, that's fine. It's fascinating. Yeah. Okay, so you just say coma. All right. Let's do that. I've always just said a coma. Yeah, so that's not how you do it. Yeah. All right. It's not right. No, we all learn things every day. Yeah. I thought you were like doubting the facts. No, no, no, no, no. With the comas.

We're just laughing at the way you say coma. I'm not completely sure how accurate those are. I just Googled survival rates for comas. Yeah. And these were these were the first results I saw. So just covering my bases there. I went in deep on some things. That one I didn't go too deep. Yeah. So all of this is crazy, right?

Right. So how did she survive? I don't know. That ant hills. Do you think all the ants caught her at once? They're strong. Do you think they were all like ready and they're just caught her? It's stupid, but that's not like completely off.

It's because she landed on the ants. because fire ant mounds are softer than normal ground. That's like half of it. So like why do you think that would be that their mounds are softer? Well, because they've got an intricate lacework of tunnels and everything in there. So there's like a lot of air that could be compressed by hitting that. Exactly. Yeah.

So like if you hit the ground with the fire ants, there's all these tunnels that will be compressed. That softens the landing a bit for you. Yeah. But now another thing to consider is she wasn't able to breathe. and it's not like the paramedics were like they're waiting for her so like how does she survive that the ants the fire ants started biting her the venom stimulated her nervous system and that kept her heart beating huh but what about her breathing so like she didn't need to breathe because her heart kept beating from these ants bites interesting yeah because like your system will shut down when you don't

breathe type of thing right but because of the ant bites her nervous system kept pumping her heart. Oh, that kept her alive, even though she wasn't breathing. And doctors say that the ant bites kept her alive. Interesting. That's so cool. That was like double clutch on the ants part. Yeah.

Yeah. So like fire ant bites, they hurt pretty bad, right? They're terrible. How bad do you think they hurt? I've been bit bad. Well, oh, I'm sorry. Let's go back to Schmidt. Schmidt's got him on his pain index score.

I like Schmidt. Yes, we got to bring Schmidt back into this. So remember, it's a scale 1 to 4, 4 being the worst. Four was like bullet ants, but he didn't do like a couple that Coyote Peterson and Jack's World of Wildlife did that were fours too. Right. Very controversial episode of Tooth and Claw when we did our steel index. Yeah. Okay.

Schmidt, he says when describing a fire ant bite, 1.2, sharp, sudden, mildly alarming, like walking across shaggling. carpet and reaching for the light switch. Interesting. Like some sad electricity. I guess that's a really Schmidt's too tough. I would say it's a lot worse than that. I got I got a fire ant sting once and it hurts so bad like it felt like a bee sting. Like I remember just being like this is terrible. Yeah. I have it in a side note. Coyote Peterson would have them as a four I think. Okay. He can't handle the sting. No. So hospital notes continued. her whole right side of her body is like super messed up and like the key was to get like the insides of her stabilized so they had to stabilize her pelvis to limit hemorrhaging

and then that stops her hemopathic shock or something like that hemorrhagic shock hemorrhagic shock that's what it is and that's to avoid going into dIC which is decimated intravascular coropathy, choralopathy. Okay, sure, that sounded good. Whatever. Whoever knows what I'm talking about, you can get mad at me. But basically, what they're trying to do is stabilize, they're trying to stabilize unstable organs, and that allows your blood to keep clotting, which keeps you from bleeding out. And then a note that I brought up that I just want to go back to is she had to have

17 blood transfusions. Yeah. That's like four and a half liters, which is like about as much blood as a body has. Oh, wow. So like she basically like refilled eventually like it wasn't all at once. Right. But like she eventually like pretty much just refilled her whole body with blood transfusions. We learned in our, I think it was Todd Endrosse was his name, that shark attack guy that died in a car accident later, he lost like half of his blood.

and the doctors were like if you had lost any more blood that's like as much as a human being can lose it once and like survive so she must have lost it like over some time gradually yeah yeah internal bleeding type stuff going on it definitely wasn't

like she needed all 17 at once it was like the two week coma where she's getting surgeries and all that jazz that would be kind of cool to just get like a new new set of blood completely replace the old, you know, like an oil change kind of thing? I'd want like little, I'd want like little kid blood.

I'd want like the fresh stuff, you know? Ew, I think that's illegal. Yeah, how old can you be to like when you're allowed to donate blood? That's a good question. Not young enough for West. Yeah, I want that. I want that young blood. So then Joan has to do two years of rehab to like be able to like function as an adult

woman again. I don't know. Just to do two years of rehab is like my main note. So I just expounded on that. Yeah, thanks. When I ruptured my petteler tendon, it took me about, it was about three months of going to like physical rehab to like be able to bend my knee again, to be able to walk again.

So like two years, pretty rough. I just got out of a surgery and I can't bend my wrist. and it made me think, like, I had just watched the Revenant and how torn up he got and, like, all the healing he had to do in the Revenant from the Bear attack. And it made me think, like, wow, healing really is painful. And you are just, like, really sore and stiff and things really hurt. And so I can't imagine a two-year recovery. Like, I would just, I don't know. I just probably take pain pills all the time.

Yeah, which is the benefit of it. Yeah. How do you... Fills can be pretty nice. Yeah, with your wrist all messed up. Wes, how do you, uh, how do you like, uh, that's wrong, wrong hand. Oh, it's your other hand. Yeah, unless I'm doing this stranger.

He's lying on your belly. Yeah. We're moving on. Yeah, okay. After two years, she goes back to the bank, right? Right. Starts working at the bank again. Wow.

Yeah. That's amazing. And like, she could have gotten a, dedicated disability, but she's like, you know what, I want to, I just like banks. might rob one one day. I got to get, they might have changed the locks by now. I got to get working in the bank again. Yeah.

She never skydived again. Yeah, I don't blame her. Until two years later in 2001. Jeez. And then she went for a 37th jump. Wait a minute. It took her two years just to recover, right? And then she's immediately skydiving again.

And she's like, I want to get up there. Good for you, Joan. That's cool. Jump out of a plane. Joan is cool. And then just a little side note, she died in May 2020 this year. Yeah. So like.

I'm glad you didn't say she died on her 37 skydiving. Yeah, so she lived a long life, but died this year of cancer. So, yeah. But yeah, you know, she got a lot more life out of it. She hung out, got to meet her grandkid because she survived all this. And then liked going to Costco was in her obituary. All right. Who doesn't?

Free samples. Yeah. I hope she likes ants. Hopefully you guys don't have any questions because I read every single note I wrote down. But do you guys have any questions? No, are we not? I guess we're probably not talking about ant biology then at all right now. I got some ant facts.

Okay, cool. That's what I want to hear. Mike? I just, I want to see this done. It sounds like something that filmmakers really could take advantage of. like the bad guy's drug a super agent spy guy and like dump him off in the desert and he gets away by like letting ants bite him and that's how he escapes that'd make a good scene in like a B-movie Jason Bourne maybe all of a sudden like his heart starts beating in you hear the little ants go

clear it's like the stuff in movies where you're like okay this movie's stupid but that's not possible yeah except for Wes who thinks he's a 50-50 chance of surviving off like the empire state I actually think that I was just going way too hard on that question. All right. So, Jeff, I do have a question for you. Is it about decimated intervascular collagopathy? No. It's about why I was, the whole story I was waiting for us to like, for you doing the

time jump back to Moose Jaw Canada for that to matter. Was that truly just to tell us where she was porn? Yeah, it didn't matter. Okay. All right. I'm glad we know that, though. It's just giving you a little more background on a little bit. It seems like a wasted time travel to me, but whatever.

Yeah, we only have five of those, I guess. If we could time travel, I wouldn't. Yeah, that's just like, all right. Oh, never mind. Okay. I mean, why not? Is it like it's unlimited use, right? We got unlimited.

You're not going to just invent a time machine where you can only use it five times. Okay, but like if we're going, if we're going, if we're going back into Moose Jaw, would have one of us accidentally does something and it sets off the butterfly effect. It's just risky. That's a risky time jump just to like establish a character.

I said like one sentence about Moose Jaw and like half of that sentence I wasn't sure if I was completely right about it. So you don't even know about it and we're time jumping for no reason. She did have brothers and sisters. You know what? My problem with when people say... I'm just saying she had a family and like grew up in Canada.

When people bring up like butterfly effect and time travel, it's like, I don't know, we couldn't do much worse than we're doing now. Right as well just see if we can shake things a lot better. Maybe it'll be better, you know? I think it could be a little worse than it is now. We haven't had like outright nuclear war yet.

Chithulu. Nah, maybe not. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Not that you know I have at least. All right, I got Jeff's five ant facts for Mike. Yes. I'll just, I'll just shut up then.

So Mike, they're strong. Oh, yeah. That's number one. Number two, they're fast. Number three, they live a lot of places. Number four, no ears. Number five, 3,700 mile wide nest found in Argentina with 33 ant populations. Yeah, I mean, that is a fact.

So it just doesn't seem like that fits. That's the biggest call. Yeah, I get, yeah, that's cool. I didn't know how to make that one short. Yeah. All right, so number one, they're strong. They can carry up to 50 times their body weight. What kind of, are we just talking ants in general here?

Yeah, this is ant facts. Okay. So think the movie Hobbs and Shaw, where the rock pulls the helicopter down, that's got to be about 50 times stronger than like he is. Yeah. So that's pretty much an ant strength. Yeah. for putting in terms I can wrap my hat around.

So this one said like the trap jaw ant has the fastest movement of any animal. I'm not sure how true that is. So what it says is that it can close its jaws at 140 miles per hour. So we know like a peregrine falcon can go faster than that. Yeah. But like I think it's just like the fastest singular movement that like an animal can make. I think pistol shrimp are a lot faster than that. Yeah, that's why I was kind of thinking too.

Yeah, like this one at least is way up there. So don't take that as... They like heat the water to the temperature of the sun when they snap their little things out. So, no, they seriously do. Crazy. I know, that's just like, doesn't make sense though. That's how they make nuclear bombs probably is the shrimp.

Yeah, probably. So they have no ears. So they listen for vibrations using their feet. So like when Joan fell on their ant mound, I'm guessing that was like when someone at a rock concert has like everything turned all the way up and then they like do like a check and sound check. Just breaks everyone's ears. That's probably how that vibration fell to all those hands. My source was National Geographic for kids. But moving on, Wes, you got a little disappointed.

I got Jeff's eight fire ant facts for Wes. Okay. Wait, what about the Argentine ants? Do we not do those? That was my whole facts. Oh, okay. Yeah, so there you had. 3,700 mile wide nest was found in Argentina, which is insane.

It is like all these connected ant colonies, and there's like 33 different types of ant populations. I think it was just one species, though. It was Argentine ants. Oh, okay. There's 33 different populations. that were one. Yeah, because Argentine ants are known for making huge colonies. Yeah.

So if I'm falling out of a plane, I want it to be in Argentina. Yeah, all right. All right. So eight fire-errant facts for West. Number one, they're not native to the U.S. So that means someone brought them here. They're invasive. Yeah.

Number two, there's 200,000 members of a fire-a-c colony. Like, that's how big the colonies get. That's as big as they get. But they're not always like 200,000. No, yeah, I should have phrased that different. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

That'd be cool. The biggest ones get that big. Yes. So they form mounds and tunnels, and the tunnels go up to 25 feet long. Wow. So, like, they get to, they get up to 25 feet long. I guess I should just say not up. Tunnels get 25 feet long.

So that's about the size of a bus. Yeah. Um, yeah, so that makes them actually really hard to kill, too. A short bus. People will kill, like, the entire mound of ants. Yeah. But that'll end up being, like, 60% of the colony. And, like, all the important ants are, like, at the very bottom with the queen.

Yeah. So they can just repopulate real quick. Okay. They can steam and they can also bite. So their bites actually don't really hurt that much. It's the stings that hurt. Right. They only have one predator, which I found interesting.

I don't know if I believe that one. Okay. It says they only have one predator, the forid fly. Huh. And this fly will lay eggs in the ant's thorax, and when the eggs become larva, it'll push into the ant's head killing it. Oh, what the heck? That's sweet. Isn't that insane?

It's like popping the ant's heads off with its larva. Have you ever seen that? I think it was one on the planet Earths or something where there's like a fungus. that kills ants and then it like turns them into zombie ants and like controls their bodies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool.

Can you imagine if something like laid its eggs in us and popped our heads off? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't be crazy. It would be a good movie idea. I will say like that. I think when you say they only have one predator, that might be like the only predator that the only thing it kills is fire ants. But there's plenty of other things that would eat fire ants.

Like lizards will eat fire ants. Lots of stuff will eat fire ants. But that might be one that's like fire ants as its only prey. My source was saying this is the only thing that goes after. And I was thinking maybe because like the other ants will team up on everything. Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure there's other animals that eat fire ants.

Like I'm 100% sure. Yeah. They're omnivores, which is unique to ants. They'll kind of eat bit of everything. Yeah. Cool. They would, you know, they probably will eat Joan if no one came and got her. Yeah.

Most fire ants are females. The male's main job is just to stay down and breed with the queen, and the females are most of the workers. They're just like infertile females. Yeah. And then number eight, they can form a chain and float whenever there's floods. So when you see those ants that, like, chain up and float on water, those are normally fire ants.

Yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah, so those are my ant facts. You got anything you want to add? Yeah, just a real quick search. Like some other things that do eat them are armadillos, ant lions, spiders, birds, horn lizards, snakes. So kind of the normal characters that eat little things like that. Okay, good to know.

I don't know why it said that. It probably, it's probably, again, it's like that bug. Target them. It's like one niche is fire ants. So it's like. And it's probably that because that's like the way. it seems it reproduces to lay its eggs. Exactly.

So it's like a really unique predator. Got it. Okay. Thanks for clearing that up. You're welcome. Correction are in the same episode. Yeah. Yeah.

It's pretty nice. So do we got any more ant stuff we want to go over? I don't think so. All right. I think we're going to do a full length and episode at some point. I guess I said, sorry I said I don't think so. Ants are fascinating. Like kind of like our B episode where there's also.

sorts of crazy little things that they do to communicate. Ants also have that, like, they have, like, some weird pheromones and stuff that they use. There's a lot to talk about with ants. So at some point, we are going to have, like, a full length. That's why I kept it pretty brief for my facts. Yeah, those are great. That was great. I just looked them up and didn't check any of them.

Yeah, just Google. Sounds about right. What people come to tooth and claw for. That's why I'm here. That's why Wes is here. All right. So we're going to move to categories. Okay.

Let's do it. All right. First category is Oachies. All right. I think this is a contender for the worst one. Ten outchies. Yeah. The only factor that it's missing is like tear.

Like there's tear in it, but like I feel like it doesn't stay with her. It's not like she walks out the door and is outside and is afraid of falling out of a plane. Right. Like sometimes with like some of the attacks, like I feel like you're like, constantly worried about a bear or like a chimpanzee or something yeah that's the only thing missing from this story but like the long recovery time the near death the like suffering the like being conscious after she lands yeah not being able to breathe yeah yeah yeah so like i'm i'm giving it a 10 the only thing it could have had was like some like overriding like fear the rest of her life right

yeah i'll give her a 10 sure Yeah. Do you think there's any stories that beat this one from what we've done? Yeah, for me, the one that always pops into my head is Cynthia Dussle Bacon that got her arms chewed off by the bear. I don't know. That one for me always just seems worse. Yeah. I mean, barring death, this is the one I would least want to have happened to me.

I think, I don't know. It's hard to say I'd rather get, like, eaten by a bear. But, I mean, a two-year recovery time, I don't know. This just sounds like the worst. But she could go through without dying. You know? Yeah, so did bacon. She just didn't have an arm or whatever.

Yeah. I still think we've had a couple that were worse for me. You could have some pretty funny jokes without your arms. Yeah. It's true. But, yeah. You could be like a stand-up where your whole thing is like... Hey, someone give me a hand?

For me, this doesn't take the cake, but it is a 10. We hear you? Yeah. All right. So, moving to the next category. Favorite pop culture ant eater, since Mike some reason chose ants or his ant eater. I threw you guys off. Oh, you never saw it coming.

I was joking. My real one is favorite pop culture skydiving moment. Okay. I think me and you were going to pick the same one. Yeah, let's let's let Mike. Mike, you want to go first? Oh, yeah. This one is the best by far.

It's in the movie Lockout. So he skydives from outer space. He's in literal outer space skydiving down to planet Earth. And somehow he lands in the exact city that he, like, needed to land in to complete the mission. It's incredible. Everyone please just watch Lockout. Somehow, after skydiving from outer space, he lands right where the police are waiting to arrest him. Yeah, they're waiting for him right there on the interstate.

It's incredible stuff, man. I love that movie so much. All right, Wes, go for it. I think you should go for it because I have a backup answer. Okay, so it's point break. Yeah. The hard thing about this one is there's actually two skydiving scenes, and I think it's a pretty good debate because I love both of them.

It is. So the first one is over Lake Powell, which is like one of my favorite places on Earth. It's so beautiful. The shot is like amazing. I feel like they really did it. Like it looks like super real. And then I love like the little alpha battle between Bodie and Johnny Utah where like you pull the shoot first. No, you do it first.

And they like keep arguing and they do like the in-air handshake thing. And then Bodie ends up like pulling his shoot for Johnny Utah. Right. That's the real alpha move. The next one you get him like. They rob a bank, right? And then they go in a plane and, like, this one dude gets shot and he's dying and Johnny Utah's all, like, you feel cold because the blood's rushing out of your body and you're about to die.

And then they throw the money out of the plane. And then, like, they take Johnny Utah's parachute and, like, Bode and the dude dying both go out. And then, like, Johnny Utah, his only way to, like, get his girlfriend and, like, catch these bank robbers is to like jump out of this plane but he doesn't have a parachute so he just jumps out with no parachute and it's like the craziest thing ever and i actually think like this is like the most unbelievable thing that's actually physically possible that i've seen in a movie where he jumps out of the plane and like grabs bodie and does the whole thing so that's my choice okay yeah my first pick The first thing I thought of was point break.

Anytime someone brings up something where I can pick point break is my movie I'm going to. But I had a backup, which is a YouTube video I really like. And I think it fits well because it involves some animals too. It's this guy in Australia. And I've probably brought this up on the podcast before. And he's like parachuting down and you just see him like at the end of his jump and he's got his parachute out and he's like coming in for his landing. And you see these kangaroos come skipping. up and he even goes like,

oh, he skip. And then like, right as he lands, these kangaroos attack him and like start kicking him and stuff. And he like gets away and then he's like, oh, fucking ruse. But it's like a pretty funny video. And that's my favorite one. I want to give, wait, first,

which parachute scene in point break do you get both like? The second one. Yeah. Okay. They're both amazing. And then I want to give two honor. mentions the newest Mission Impossible had a really good one yeah that is like that's right he like pulls his oxygen thing out and then like what's it what's the other actor's name henry cavil tom cruise and

henry cavil he like passes out and tom cruise saves them but then he doesn't even realize that tom cruise saved him yeah probably when you watched the movie he was like oh my gosh you saved me during that part hold on what was that other one operation dumbo draw Dude, I had a bunch of notes on that in case we like didn't get like in case I went too quick But yeah, that's a crazy story maybe another time Yeah, okay um well actually I can't remember my second one so we'll just move on So next what would Mike and West do huh? I mean I mean what can you do it doesn't seem like she had any like agency throughout this whole thing, you know?

Yeah. I would aim for water instead of ants, but I mean, the ants saved her. Yeah, twice. Maybe only jump 35 times. Like, just be like, hey, I've pushed my luck long enough. So the only thing it seemed like to me was like she probably, like, I don't think she had a lot of time left, but she probably should have tried to get better control of her body before releasing the second shoot. Yeah. Okay. Because, like, I think that was really hard once the chords were out, but, like, she could have done it before releasing it. Got it. Sure.

Instagram moment. What moment would you put on your Instagram? Right when I hit the ground. Like, my moment of impact. And I want a video. Like, I want a video of that. Yeah. When a bunch of ants are just all over my mangled body, I think that'd make for a cool, creepy picture to always be able to look back in.

fondness on. And they're like, oh, I remember everyone that? That was fun. Like on Wes's line, but like, I'm just going to do 10 pictures

because that's your limit from like 40 feet above the ground up until like I'm hitting the ground. Okay. So they can scroll through them real quick and they can see you like dropping down. A little less brutal for people to see, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And then Mike, do you got some listener questions for us? I do. I got a whole handful. Just tell me when to stop because I'll keep going.

Otherwise. Okay. I'm unstoppable. Like that one train movie? Yeah. It's a great movie. There's a good skydive seen in Fast 7? I don't know.

Where they like go out in the cars and the cars all parachute? Yeah. That wasn't the one I was thinking of it. That's it. I'll get that one in there. From Leanna. You, we are assuming the role of the Hogwarts sorting hat. Which houses would the following animals be in?

So first one is Black Bear. Hufflepuff. Really? Yeah. They're like just kind of like doing their thing and kind of like just getting into trouble sometimes and sleeping a lot. Yeah, they're Hufflepuff. Gotcha. Jeff?

Yeah. I'm going Ravencloth. All right. Just because they're black. What? Just because they're black and so are ravens. What is that? Oh.

Didn't know. No. Because they seem kind of smart. They don't seem that social is why I wouldn't put them in Hufflepuff. Okay. Um, they like kind of avoid people. Yeah. And they're really good at climbing trees.

And I don't know why, but I just feel like if I, there's a tree climbing competition, I'm taking Ravenclaw. All right. That's a solid line of thinking. Next animal is Mountain Lion, Gryffindor. Tree climbing thing is biting me in the butt here. I guess I'll just go Ravenclaw. Jeff has to do that for all.

Actually, let's, let's put them in Slytherin. Okay. They're just never trying to help anything, you know? They're always trying to just think. They're noble, though. They're like noble animals. That one Slytherin person ever probably was. Is that anthropomorphization, Wes?

I feel like you're doing exactly what you always getting mad at us for. Oh, he burned you. Okay, next animal is Western Lowland Gorilla. Ravenclaw. I'll go with Gryffindor. Great. Saltwater crocodile. Slytherin.

Hufflepuff. I can't think of an animal I would, like, less think to associate with Slytherin, except for maybe snakes in general. What you mean? Crocodiles seem like very slither. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're, like, always hanging out in big old groups, so that's why I like Cufflepuff. Okay.

Yeah, you, I'm forgetting about Harry Potter stuff, apparently. Okay, next question. Julia asks, if you had to have any animal wake you up using only the sound they make as you're alarm clock every day. What would it be? Hmm. Um, like a whale? That's what I was going to say. That's a good pick. I was going to say a liar bird because they can like replicate any noise. So I would just have them replicate something really beautiful. But yeah, I think a whale's a good pick. I'll go with whale. Okay. Maybe dolphin. I need something. You just want like a little. Yeah, I need something a little bit more annoying to like get me up.

If it's like too soothing, I won't get up. What's, what kind of sound do those pistol shrimp make? Is it just like a gunshot? It sounds like a gunshot. That'd be pretty effective, I think. I'd pick that. Okay.

Next question is Anderson. They ask, what did you all study in college? Just curious, do you recommend getting your master's, Wes? I am a wildlife management student. Yeah. So I was an English student. I emphasized in creative writing. And that's the end of that.

story. Jeff, you want to go? No, this is for you. Well, they, they asked what we all studied in college. Yeah, they want to know what all of us, so I'll go last. I studied as like a hybrid like recreation management, business management, um, major called experience management. And I did. So my undergrad was in biology because I thought I might go like a medical route. And then I got my master's in wildlife conservation with the emphasis on polar bear and black bear conservation. We should just put you in charge of planning our first tooth and claw festival, Jeff. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Listen, I'm going to be honest. The last question, I was just trying so hard to think of the honorable mention skydive that I can't get out. Yeah, we'll give you some more time. We got a couple more questions. This one's easy. You don't have to think too hard about this one. Gracie asks, would you rather be a fish or a tree?

A fish. Um, hmm. I think tree. Me too. It depends. I mean, fish is too broad. Like, if I could be a shark or something, maybe. I'm picking fish. I'd be, like, the giving tree story, except for I wouldn't do anything for that little kid. I'd just, like, keep all my stuff. I'd be, like, a fruit tree. I'm a little fruity. I'll just be a fish. Why would you want to be a fish so bad?

Because a tree, like, you don't know if you have any consciousness, and if they do, they're stuck. And then also, like... If they don't, they're just peasies. Then you have to live like thousands of years. If I'm not, if I don't have a higher level of consciousness, I want my life to be short. And a fish has a short life. If you're just scared of everything. I love being underwater, though. I love being underwater.

It's one of my favorite places in the world. There's got to be some trees that don't live that long. You've scared of forest fires. What if you're just sitting there watching a forest fire roar toward you and you can't do anything? That sounds terrible. Yeah, whatever. Or will you got woodpeckers pecking holes in you all the time and you can't even move? All the water's going to dry up soon.

Yeah. What's that like swim to where there's water? What's that needle therapy called? Acupuncture. Yeah, that's like having a woodpecker. I love acupuncture. Get into your bark. Yeah, you're going to be one of those fish that like eat people's feet skin.

Oh, I love that, dude. I love feet. Give it to me. All right. Next question. Okay, Laura, this is the last question, Jeff. So you're going to have to hurry up and think about that reference. I'm not going to get it.

It's fine. So this is Laura. they ask if you were to take polar bears and grizzly bears and place them in each other's habitats, who would fare better? So that actually is happening. As climate change, you know, gets more and more intense, we're seeing more grizzly bears go further north, and polar bears are spending more time on land,

so they're spending more time around each other. They actually hybridize sometimes. They can mate and have, either you can call them grower bears or pizly bears, but typically grizzly bears are a bit more aggressive than polar bears. So even on like whale kills and stuff, often grizzly bears will run polar bears off, even though polar bears are a lot bigger than grizzly bears,

just because they are so much more aggressive. So yeah, that's kind of what's happening, and they do spend a decent amount of time together. You should look, if you're curious to learn more about it, look at like photos and videos from Barrow, Alaska or Cactovic Alaska. Those are two places where there's been a lot of mingling of those two species. Cool. Yeah.

It's actually not that cool. It's pretty cool. Ice cold, if you ask me. Well, it's, they did, they've always shared that space, but it's just happening more now. And yeah, I agree that it's not cool that that's happening, but it's kind of a neat thing that's going on, you know. It's too bad, like, polar bears and black bears won't intermix to make, like, new pandas. Panda, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So cool. Do you think that they would get panda coloration, or would they just, like, be gray? I don't know. I think they'd probably just be gray, would be my guess. But I'm not sure. I'm glad they don't do that. Bears. Okay, that's it for listener questions. You think bears ever parachuted? Oh, yeah, for sure. Probably. I don't know. So what do we have left? Yeah, so how much do y'all like fire ants? This is like a three claw for me. Yeah. I would actually even say like two claws.

I have some history with fire ants. I don't love them. But you made me like them a little bit more after today. They can be really useful in life and death situations. It turns out. If you're skydiving, you love them. Yeah. If your parachute doesn't work, you fall on it.

The first time I go skydiving, I'm just going to bring like a pocket full of them. I like ants, but fire ants are pretty low on my list of ants that I like. So I'm doing like two claws. Yeah, I'm going two claws. I feel like a lot of insects when you get like a super close picture of them, they're pretty cute. I don't really get that from ants too much. Like more spiders, you know? Do you like fire ants or your aunt Susan more?

My aunt. Okay. All right. I give them two claws and I'm ranking them 1,673 overall. Well, four digits. Yeah. Tough. Tough.

I think that's my highest one yet. Yeah. Do you want me to check? Yeah, that definitely is. And probably should be higher, honestly. I don't know. I don't know how many animals there are. Yeah, that's what I was just looking up, how many species there are.

Nope. You have goonch at 6,710, Jeff, so. Wow. There's a lot of species. So you got plenty of leeway still. All right. Well, thanks, Jeff. That was great.

Like, Goonch is better than fire and stuff. I've never seen a gooch save a skydiver, but whatever. I wonder if they could. Maybe. If they just opened their mouth and they just fell right in. Cushing the fall a lot. Shlooped right on their mouth. Yeah.

Thanks, Jeff. That was fun. Yeah, I was great. Love you guys. Love you guys. See you. Bye. See you.