Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - HARAMBE - The Western Lowland Gorilla

Episode Date: February 20, 2022

In a first, Jeff takes the lead and does a great job of taking us all through the tragic tale of Harambe, the western lowland gorilla who was shot and killed in his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016. R.I.P., Harambe. You may be gone, but you won't be forgotten. ~~ 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

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That's right. Jeff finally is taking the lead on one of our main release episodes. And we thought, what better episode for Jeff to take the lead for the first time on than the tragic tale of Harambe? And just a quick tease, you all are going to want to stick around for the cage match category because West really went all out when talking about guerrillas, especially when it comes to a fight between a gorilla and a grizzly bear. So without any further ado, let's get to it. Let's go. Okay, tooth and claw. We're back. How we doing? We're doing that. Oh, we're doing great. You guys are looking good. Hey, you too, Mike. I'll say that.

Yeah, I really like your beard right now. Me too. Thanks. Did you have your hair cut professionally, Mike? Me? No, no, no. This is another hack job. That's a self-cut. Mike cuts his own hair. Yeah. Like, the last 10 years. I think that's your best work yet, though. You think? Yeah. I like the little Danish boy looks. I miss the curtain. The curtain. You cut. Yeah.

I do miss that. Or the side swipe like emo. The side swipe. Yeah, that was bad. So just in case this is anyone's first time, this is tooth and claw where Jeff, Wes, and Mike, Wes is a wildlife biologist. And me and Mike are sometimes funny. Don't oversell. Yeah.

If this is your first time listening, the whole point of this podcast is to, to teach you about wildlife through these wildlife attacks, but give you the confidence that you need to go out and enjoy the great outdoors without being afraid of wildlife and being able to appreciate them because you know what you would do if you came into an encounter with one. And just to learn that generally these encounters are the result of a human being doing something wrong. Not always, but generally. So before we get started, I've been going to yoga a lot recently.

I go like every other day, hot yoga. and like it's the only thing that makes me sweat but I swear like my mat just makes the loudest and like funniest fart noises of anyone's mat in class and like I don't fart but like my like sweaty back sucks makes the loudest fart noises all the time do you remember that jackass skit where they go he goes to yoga uh Johnny Knoxville goes to yoga class and he has like a fart machine hidden. That one's like from the show, right? It's from the show.

And he just does like a ton of stretches and like letting out huge farts every time. And it's so stupid and juvenile, but it also just like cracks me up every time. Something about a fart can be so funny. Really quick. Could I do just like a tiny bit of business? Yeah, just go for it. Really quickly. And like if you guys are already on Patreon or know about Patreon, just go ahead and skip forward a couple minutes.

But my mom brought up something recently, and I think this is a good point. A lot of people that listen to us might not actually understand what Patreon is, and we keep referencing it, and they don't really know what it is or like how to get to it. So if you are one of those people, how you get Patreon is you just go into the apps part of your phone, download the Patreon app, open it up, and then just in the search bar and Patreon, just type in Tooth and Claw podcast. And our Patreon page will come up and you can sign up in there. So that's how you get it. And then you're going to have a whole app that has all of our bonus episodes in it on your phone.

And you can listen to those whenever you want. All of our catalog is in there. So when you sign up to Patreon, you get everything we put in there since we started our Patreon. Pretty cool. I think the coolest thing about it is how much of a community it is, like how fun everyone is on there and how they're like all kind of friends now. Speaking in Patreon, me and Mike are normally the ones who lead Patreon episodes with the occasional West episode. But Wes is always the one doing the main episodes, but today I'm going to step in and tell the story, and Wes is still going to give you the biology of it. But this actually might be a good way to kind of get another taste of what Patreon is similar to, too.

We also agreed this is the perfect story for Jeff to tell. It had to be him. Yeah, with the Super Bowl just happening is the Cincinnati Bengals and the L.A. Rams. And I listened to some sports podcasts, and part of my take got some of the Cincinnati Bengal players to, like, begrudgingly just go along with them and say that they were going to try to win the Super Bowl for Harambe, who was in Cincinnati. And then, like, mainstream media picked it up and just kept saying, like, so-and-so says he's going to win the Super Bowl for Harambe when really it was just like the interviewers made him agree to it. Yeah. But it kind of sparked the whole Harambe thing again, the Bengals making the Super Bowl a little bit. So we're going to talk about guerrillas today.

Hell yeah. This one's been a long time coming. We've been wanting to do a grill episode since the beginning and specifically a Harambe episode. So I'm excited. Me too. All right. So on May 28, 2016, Michelle Gregg was enjoying a nice day at the zoo with her four children. She had three daughters and a son ages 7, 4, 3, and 1.

So how do you guys feel about the time of year late May? That's one of my favorite times a year. You got all a summer ahead of you. It's getting really warm. Things are really green. It's such like a positive happy time a year for me because I'm just like, man, there's so much fun stuff in the next few months to do. Yeah, I'm with Wes.

It's one of the times I just like being outside. You disagree, Mike? You don't go outside, so maybe you just... I like the May flowers that spring showers bring, so I appreciate that time of year. So Michelle decided it would be a great time to take her family to the zoo. The Cincinnati Zoo, I was looking it up, and they have giraffes, elephants, lions, they have a snow leopard, they have Gorilla World, they have Roo Valley, which is kangaroos, cat canyon, so they have like some cougars.

zebra this whole episode is just going to be Jeff listing off animals the distance and I was too what animals would you guys like be most excited to see of the ones I just

listed off I'm into elephants I the bigger the better is what I always say I always kind of get bummed out by elephants and zoos I love zoos don't get me wrong

but for whatever reason elephants kind of always bum me out I like big cats like that's what I'm always most drawn to in zoos and they had painted dogs too oh cool

worked with. Yeah. So is the Cincinnati Zoo, I mean, that's like a pretty impressive list of animals. Is it a big zoo? It's a pretty like legitimate. I mean, I always hear about the San Diego Zoo and stuff like that. Is the Cincinnati Zoo up there? It's not on that level.

Okay. But it's a good zoo. It's really good with research. When I looked up like the top 10 biggest zoos in America, it wasn't on the list as far as like animals. But I think it does do it. It's the second oldest zoo. Okay.

in the in the country too oh wow so it started in 1873 it's the second oldest zoo and they've been like pretty groundbreaking with some of their breeding in captivity of animals yeah they're the number one they're the number one gorilla breeder in the world right which is why haramba ended up being sent there they also have sig free and royds white lions really hopefully this kind of paints everyone a good picture of what this zoo is. It's a big zoo. You see lions, see cheetahs. You see maybe Fiona the hippos pregnant mom. Probably not quite pregnant yet. But like they're enjoying their time at the zoo, right? Right. So then Gorilla World, like you were saying West, that's a major draw there. They had 11 guerrillas. So that's kind of like, I don't know if it's the most popular spot, but it's definitely like

one of the top four places you want to go if you're at the Cincinnati Zoo is to go see the gorillas sure so as they're approaching her three-year-old boy jokingly says mom i'm going to go in with the gorillas then her one-year-old distracts her for a few seconds and she loses sight of her three-year-old son so she begins calling out for him when she then heard the chilling words from an older man saying there's a child in there. There's a child in there. Whoa. Just imagine like if you're a mother, there's no worse place for your kid to end up, you know?

I mean, there are. Like the lion enclosure would probably be worse. There's probably like worse than the gorilla or like a tornado. It's just such a middle of the tornado. It's just such a nightmare. Just that your kid disappears for a second and then someone says, hey, there's a kid in the gorilla enclosure. You would just.

And actually, I'll talk about it a bit right now. So what it was was just one of those fences where it's like a, it's not like barbed wire, but it's three metal wires coming down from the top. So anyone could easily fit in between the three metal wires. So what he did was squeezed in between them into the bushes. And like, especially from his level, you don't see that there's a big moat separating like where the guerrillas are from where you are. So he just thought if he goes through this fence, he's in the gorilla enclosure, right?

The moat's like a canyon almost. The moat was 15 feet. But even like a three-year-old, I think if you see a 15-foot ledge, you're not just going to jump off. Right. But he didn't see it. He went through the bushes and fell through the moat into the water. Yeah. So it sounds like this enclosure was built more to keep the guerrillas in than to keep like zoo patrons out, right?

because it seems like three small wires. That sounds like ridiculously easy to get into the guerrilla enclosure. Is that true? I mean, but you do. Like, I think of a lot of the zoos I've been to, and especially guerrilla enclosures where a lot of times there's like a big glass window that you can look at them. But then there's also a section where there's like a moat like that.

And really all it ever is is like a wall with those wires. At a lot of zoos I've been to, from what I remember, it wouldn't be too hard just to like jump a wall to get into the. that like outside part of the primate enclosure. Here's the difference though, West, like looking at pictures and they've updated it now. Yeah. It wouldn't be hard for like someone who's 12 or older. Yeah.

But like a three-year-old shouldn't be able to get into an enclosure within like four seconds. That's a good point. And that's what happened. Yeah. And we are going to talk about that more. Okay. So just hold. We'll get into it.

At 352 p.m. Someone called the police. to report that a baby had fallen into the gorilla moat. And this is all coming from the director of the Cincinnati Zoo. So he said that he fell 15 feet and that there's a kid in the water splashing around. Now at 354 p.m., there's more attention around. People are kind of being loud. The kid's splashing more and the guerrillas finally take notice that there's a child in the exhibit.

So he had been in the water for two minutes with the gritty. gorillas not noticing him. People above him start making noise. The kid in the water starts making noise and then the guerrillas kind of like figure out that there's someone in their enclosure. At the same time, the zookeepers signal for the guerrillas to come inside, something that they do every day. And I should tell, I should have already said this, but it's Harambe and two female gorillas that are in this enclosure. So the two female guerrillas follow the command and they go into a separate area where they're like supposed to be fed or like that's just where they're supposed to go when they get that command but harambe decided that he wanted to go investigate what had just come into

their enclosure so you have a three-year-old boy with a 450 pound western lowland gorilla approaching him and west do you want to explain a little bit of the biology of yeah what uh western lowland gorilla is why would that be a scary situation You're less. This is a good one because I do think, you know, almost everyone out there has a pretty good idea of what a gorilla is and what they look like. This is a very well-known charismatic animal. So I don't really have to explain some of the basic stuff like what they, it's not like a cassery where I have to explain what they even look like. A really funny thing about gorillas, can you guys guess what the Western Lowland gorilla?

Can you guess what their scientific name might be? Something hominid. I don't know. It's guerrilla, gorilla. Oh, that's so cool. So that's the scientific name for the Western lowland gorilla. Another really interesting thing I learned is the name gorilla comes from ancient Greek, and it's this word guerrillae, which means a tribe of hairy women.

And there was this explorer in like 500 BC that mistook a bunch of guerrillas for hairy women. And when they came back, he came back from Africa, they like asked him what he saw. Greece or wherever, Carthagin, I can't remember where he's from. But they asked him what he saw, and he said, guerrillae, and so that's where they got their name. It's from this ancient Greek word, meaning a tribe of hairy women. Isn't that just dwarves? I don't know. So that's what Gimli says, at least. Oh, yeah, that's true. There are four, oh, I thought. Oh, sorry, yeah, I probably should have a little more clear. So there are four subspecies of gorilla. Western lowland gorilla is the smallest and also the most widespread. They live in the forest and swamp lands of Equatorial Africa.

That includes the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. So they're the only species of gorilla that's really kept in zoos. Almost all of the other subspecies, when they put them in zoos, they die. So this is really the only one that's been able to do okay in zoos. All right, they're highly sexually dimorphic. Jeff, remember what sexual dimorphism is? No. So, Mike, do you remember? Is it the, between the male and the females, there's like a significant difference in

size? Exactly. That's exactly what it is. So they're really highly sexually dimorphic. The males are much bigger than the females. So an average size for Western lowland gorillas in the wild for males is like 310 pounds. And females, it's like 200 pounds. So the males are quite a bit bigger than the females.

The largest of them grow to be like 500 pounds, and they stand about five and a half feet tall. Everyone pretty much knows what gorillas look like. They're black fur. An interesting thing about Western lowland gorillas is they get this reddish patch of fur on their forehead. And then like all gorillas, as the males get older and bigger, their hair on their butt and their back starts to gray and get thinner. And that's why they get that named silver back. So that's what happens as they get into like maturity. Oh, so Western lowland guerrillas can still be silverback?

Yeah. Yeah, Harambe was a silverback. It sounds like he was close to how big they possibly can't. You said 450 pounds, Jeff. So that's pretty huge. Yeah, so in the wild, they grow to be 500 pounds. In captivity, they can get up to be like 600 pounds. Oh.

So they can get a lot bigger in captivity. They eat like roots, fruits, shoots, bark, foliage. I didn't even realize that all these rhymed when I was, writing them down, and even insects, but they're mostly, I mean, they're almost obligate vegetarians. They really don't eat anything that's living like an animal aside from insects. How much do they like bananas? I'm sure they absolutely love them. They mostly, like fruit is their favorite thing to eat.

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So they're actually not that territorial, so ranges of family groups will overlap. They have a really tight family structure and they're incredibly social animals. So family groups generally have one breeding male, which is going to be like a large silver back, three breeding females, and then whatever number of non-breeding females and males. And males will compete really dramatically for breeding rights, and they use really large displays of aggression to do that. And it's mostly intimidation. So that's when you see guerrillas like beating their chests and bearing their teeth and charging at each other,

and they'll like rip trees up and throw them and stuff. They do these really big displays, but it hardly ever results in actual. violence. It's just to display and it's to intimidate other males. Sometimes they will actually fight, but it's not that often. A really interesting thing. So their average family size is about eight members, but they can have up to 30 in a group. But the interesting thing is females will engage in this thing called sexual competition. And what it pretty much means is they will just try and have as much sex with the breeding male as possible. Because as long as they're having sex with him, it precludes the other females from having sex with him. So it makes it more likely for

them to pass along their genes and for their offspring to be raised to survive. So even when they're pregnant and like lactating and stuff, they'll just be like bone in him as much as possible to stop the other ones from having sex with them. So it's pretty cool to be a male dominant gorilla. Anyway, they're very intelligent. They regularly use tools. They've been taught to use basic sign language. There was a really famous gorilla named Coco in like the 70s and 80s, I think. And she was taught to like, know, over a thousand sign language symbols. And she could even piece together up to eight of them to form like a sentence. Whoa. They can be really, really intelligent animals. And that's my basic. I saw this clip from a gorilla at the zoo. I don't know what zoo, but someone was going to

like throw food to the gorilla. And it was signing to them like, I'm not allowed. Don't throw me food. Really? What a discipline. I was at the San Diego Zoo recently and they're feeding the gorillas and the gorilla sat in there and it like pounded its chest and then put its hand up for food and they tossed it to it and he like grabbed it and was just plucking them out of the air and it was so human like it was crazy.

I feel like they did that when I went there too. Oh cool. I remember seeing something like that. It was neat. It was like the highlight of the San Diego's see. It was the highlight for me too. There's such cool animals. I like the idea that ripping trees out of the ground is like a sign that, like, what if the human world functioned like that?

If girls just really liked guys that probably used to be. They probably really like the, what's the prime minister of Brazil? Just deforesting. Oh, yeah. Bolsonaro. Probably really likes that. Wes. Yeah.

I was researching guerrillas and I was reading that they kind of have a bad rep as far as like how dangerous they are. Yeah. Not saying that like they aren't dangerous because. go listen to our chimpanzee episode. And girls are stronger than a chimpanzee. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just saying the animal itself can be dangerous, but they're kind of been villainized a little bit.

It sounds like the Frenchman who discovered him, his name was Paul Bieloni du Chaloo. I don't know. It's French. But anyways, he was just saying that he discovered him in Africa and he came back and reported him as being terrible beasts. that only want to kill. Yeah.

And then, like, Hollywood went with King Kong and made it look like, you know, they can just be tears to people. Yeah, I can talk about that a little bit. Yeah, and I do think we should make a note that, like, when that dude says he discovered him, there's definitely people that discovered guerrillas a long time before that dude. They just weren't, like, European people. Right. Anyway, because they're such an intimidating-looking and powerful animal and they have huge canines,

and they do these really incredible displays of like their power, they can be really intimidating. And I'm sure when this guy saw that and he was charged by a gorilla or whatever happened to him, he was probably like, oh, that's the scariest animal out there, you know? Yeah. But they're not. They're actually really gentle. They're not territorial.

They're completely vegetarian. They don't hunt and kill. The thing with chimpanzees is they use violence as communication. Like they will hunt and kill other animals. They do a lot of fighting. They're a very violent species in the wild, and they're pretty unique in that respect among the apes. Grillas don't do that.

They're very peaceful. I know when a lot of researchers have talked about observing younger girls, especially, they see them as almost like human children. They're so docile and gentle. So they're not at all deserving of that reputation, but I do want to say that with a caveat, they could snap you in two. They are incredibly powerful animals,

and they totally deserve our respect, but they're not necessarily aggressive or violent. Yeah, they don't seem like they're overly aggressive towards humans. Right. You see these groups, like tour groups, that go into Rwanda in places to see mountain gorillas or sometimes Western Lowland gorillas or whatever, and they can get pretty close to them.

And the guerrillas tolerate them, and they're pretty fine with it. And it's just understanding their behavior and everything, but you can't do that with like a pride of lions. You can't hike dozens of miles. into their territory and then get 15 feet away from them without really risking, you know, death. Or like, there's just not that many animals that we see as being vicious that you can do that with. And guerrillas really aren't that vicious.

They are pretty docile, smart, intelligent, social animals. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. You're welcome. So let's get back into the story a bit. I'm going to give you a little background on Harambe. Basically, Harambe, he was born in Gladys Porter Zoo in Texas, and the person who took care of him actually said that he would like take him home every day.

And it seems like when guerrillas were first being introduced into zoos and stuff, that there's a lot of like taking them home, taking care of them. But he was born in this zoo. He had one full brother and then 12 other half siblings. and his brother, Makoko, and then three other guerrillas all died at the same night from chlorine poisoning. Yeah, right about that. Someone left chlorine tablets too close to a, what was it? Some type of heater or something.

And it poisoned four guerrillas, and they all died. Oh. And then another one died that they didn't know why. One died at birth, so, like, he ended up with, I don't know, four or five half siblings that made it. And then they all stem from the same set of grandparents that were the first guerrillas to come to America, right, West? Yeah, I think it was some of the first guerrillas to come to the U.S. But they were born in the wild.

His grandparents were born in the wild and they were captured in the wild and brought to the U.S., which they don't do anymore in zoos. So Harambe, when he was 15, he was moved into the Cincinnati Zoo for social reasons so that he could socialize with other lowland gorillas. and ones that weren't as closely related to him. And they have two females in an enclosure named Chui and Mara. And he's like approaching sexual maturity but not quite there. He was born on May 27, 1999. So he had just turned 17 the day before this incident. But they had him in this pen with two other females so that he could kind of learn how to be

an alpha. He didn't have to be with another male. He could kind of learn how to like lead a family. So then Chui and Mara, the two females, like I was saying, obey orders, they go to where they're supposed to go. But Harambe goes to investigate this three-year-old boy who just fell into the enclosure. I don't know. Did you guys watch the video at all or remember it? Yeah, I watched it a bunch of the boy. Yeah. So when it first happened is kind of crazy how different. Like at first you just like hear about it and then like you didn't see the video and everyone was mad. And then everyone like sees Harambe just standing over the child protectively. And everyone is like he's only trying to protect him. Why did you shoot him? Yeah. But then a video came out where you see Harambe kind of

aggressively moving the child by its leg. Yeah. And whipping him around pretty harshly. So that's where, you know, there is a lot of justification. Like, this kid was in real trouble. Right. Harambe wasn't just like, he wasn't treating him like a three-year-old kid should be treated, you know?

He's treating like a ragdoll. Yeah. You buried the lead a little bit there, though. Did they shot him? Did I? Yeah. Uh, yeah, well. Spoiler.

There it is. But yeah, so people are above and like the crowd is just growing and like they're getting louder and more frantic. And this is making Harambe more stressed out. And he's, you can see in the video he's like looking up at people. And that's when he starts to really grab the kid and try to move him around. Yeah. And he's just getting confused. But his instinct, everyone I think at this point agrees is still to protect the kid.

not like trying to hurt the child. Yeah, I don't know if I do agree. I'll let you finish the story of what happened to him and then I'll give you my thoughts on on whether or not I think they made the right decision. But I definitely want to chip in on that. The zoo director says that he thinks the intent was Harambe was trying to protect him. And also Jane Goodell. Goudal.

Jane Goodall. The most famous biologist in the world. Yeah, Gadell. Yeah, Roger Giddell's. wife. Go ahead and tell the rest of the story. I do have a lot that I want to say about that, but I don't want to get us too off track from the story. Okay. Basically, he's in there with Harambe for about six minutes, with Harambe grabbing him, moving him around in the water. And then Harambe takes him out of the more like into the enclosure. And there's a picture of him and he's just

kind of standing directly over the boy. And there is a few times where the boy tries to stand up and walk away. And Harambe gently but assertively grabs him and sits him back down. There's a kind of a tender moment where after he kind of slashed the boy around a bit, they hold hands. Like the little boy reaches up and holds his hand. So now they're in the center of the enclosure and a zookeeper is there. He has a rifle. And this is the moment that's been debated about a ton, but he shoots Harambe straight in the head kills him. And at 4 o'clock, the boy is rescued. So in total it took eight minutes.

But yeah, pretty crazy story. It is. Can I just talk about it a tiny bit? Yes. So I definitely don't know more about apes than Jane Goodall. She's one of the foremost ape researchers in the world. She studied like chimpanzees extensively. She studied a lot of ape.

She's an incredibly smart woman. I agree with her that there's a good chance Harambe was trying to protect this kid. but I do know she also said she thinks the zoo did the right thing. And that's what I definitely think as well. Like there's a chance that Harrombay was trying to protect him. There's also a chance he just viewed him as like a novel toy that had fallen into his enclosure and that he was like a play thing to him, you know? And if that's the case, he could have used him just like any of the object in his enclosure.

He could have thrown him against the wall. He could have drowned him. He could have slapped him against a tree. There's so many different things. that that gorilla could have done in any split second that would have instantly killed that kid, instantly. And as much as I love animals, as much as I think they're the best things on this planet,

I don't think the value of a gorilla's life is larger than the value of a three-year-old boy's life. I just don't. And so I think they definitely made the right decision. And also just on video, having a gorilla killing a three-year-old kid would be terrible for gorillas. It would be.

It would be awful for them. I think it could have been really bad for zoos. I think it was bad for zoos, but I think it could have been 10 times worse. And so I really, I don't think there is any, like we've talked about some zoo stories so far. We talked about one on our last episode where there's like a lot of debate and like whether or not they made the right decision. In my opinion, they 100% made the right decision in this one. There was no other decision to make. If you tranquilize him, it takes minutes for that to go.

And in those minutes, he might have been in race. The second that dart hits him, who knows if he doesn't just smash that kid to smithereens because he's pissed off that he's got a dart in him now. There's just no other option. They had to shoot him. It's terrible. It's awful. He's a really cool gorilla and like it's one of the most tragic videos out there, I think.

He's a handsome gorilla. Yeah. Pictures are a good looking guy. He would have females competing like crazy to have sex with him. But this is one where I don't feel a lot of, oh man, there's a lot of wiggle room here. They needed to shoot him. It's really sad, but they needed to. Yeah.

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 oceanfront 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 savings, surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. How many stories of children falling into guerrilla enclosures do you guys think I found? Probably a bunch. I found two others. That was like that was the thing we were going to say when you were talking about like enclosures and whatnot. There's so many people that go to zoos and like there's just bound to be some kids that

fall into these things. It's just going to happen. Yeah. So yeah, August 30th, 19th. 1986, a five-year-old Levion Merritt was at the zoo with his family. He had three siblings there. And this is in, sorry, this is in England. Okay. And they went to look at the guerrillas, and his dad lifted his brother Clint onto his shoulders to get a better look. So then Levin decided to climb up on the wall that was in front of him so that he could get a better look. And he fell 20 feet, cracked his squirrel.

goal, fractured his arm, and a big silver-back gorilla walked up to him and, like, you know, the people watching kind of the same situation except for not as loud. Yeah. But just not knowing what's going to happen, like this huge gorilla's walking up to this, like, unconscious boy. But the gorilla just like really gently rubbed the boy's back and like stood next to him but never really grabbed him. Yeah.

And then when the boy woke up, he started crying Levin, and that got all the guerrillas to leave. But it's just crazy, like, this gorilla is remembered as a hero. I guess that Levin was bullied in school for it. They, like, called him Tarzan and Gorilla Boy. Oh, no. He should be the coolest kid in school after. He also said that this is like the story he used to impress his wife, who's not easy to impress. Yeah.

And like he views Yombo as a hero, and he went and visited him a bunch, and there's a big memorial. And also in 1996, Brinti Jua was a female gorilla at an Illinois zoo, and a three-year-old boy fell 20 feet into her enclosure. he fractured his arm and he was unconscious. And she put her, like, baby gorilla on her back. And then went and, like, cradled him in her arms and, like, brought him over to the doors of the enclosure so that the zookeepers could grab him. Really? Oh, interesting. Yes.

Like, pretty cool. I don't know. In my mind, it's happened before twice. And, like, these girls were trying to, like, protect the kid. But I can see what you're saying where, like, he also could have viewed him as a toy. I think it helped in these two stories that both kids were unconscious. Yeah. The other boy in the Harambe story, he was, like, splashing around in the water.

He was trying to get away from him. So, like, I think there was a lot of different factors that made Harambe act a bit more aggressive. Like, the crowd noise was, like, very loud. But, yeah, it's just interesting to me that, like... I don't know. I didn't know that, like, Harambe wasn't the first time a three-year-old fell into a gorilla pick, you know? The way I view it, though, is, like, when you hold a really newborn baby, when someone, like, lets you hold a really newborn baby, you just know, like, if anything happened to this baby, if I were to drop it or anything, or not even hold it right, you could really damage it and injure it or even kill it. And that's the kind of strength they have compared to us.

We are truly, like a child to them is so fragile, and all it would take is for Harambe just to like squeeze his hand too tight or something and it kills that kid. And I think with these other guerrillas, had they ever picked up those kids like the silverback, I know the female did, but she like immediately delivered them to the keepers, had the silverback in England picked that one up and carried him around, I think they would have just been waiting for their shot with that one too to put him down because it's just too big of a risk. They're just too powerful of an animal. And even if they're trying to be gentle, they could injure you. And again, I agree with these experts that say he was probably protecting him. I'm not saying that's not the case, but I'm saying there is the possibility that's not the case. And that possibility is too dangerous to like let that situation proceed. At the Hogo Zoo, they have a baby gorilla there.

Right. And like, I go to the zoo a lot and I see when the baby interacts with the mom, she's always like, very gentle, cradles in. And then when the baby interacts with the dad, he's like kind of giving him nuggies, slapping him away, and like roughhousing a bit. Right. But you can't do that with a three-year-old human.

That's what I'm saying is like, even though our kids are roughly the same size as theirs, they have denser bones. They have thicker skin. They have all these things that protect them to where they can survive some roughhousing from their dad. We don't have that. It could easily kill a person.

It really sucks. It sucks to know that had Harambe just not picked him up, he probably would have been fine or just gone to his holding enclosure. But it sucks. It really does. I wonder if you'd be fine if he just killed him right away. Because if the kid's already dead, like, do you still have to kill him? I bet they would have put him down almost for sure.

Really? Yeah. Do you know the name Harambe's from a, it's from a song by Bob Marley's wife, Rita Marley? and it's a song. Oh, really. It's like a swathele term for communal labor, and the song's all about, like, fighting for freedom. So it's kind of, he's kind of like a communist socialist, like freedom sign.

Haramie is pretty cool. Comrade Harambe. Someone, like, won the rights to be his grandfather in Texas, and actually he chose the name after that song. So I want to talk about just what could have been done different. now. Yeah. I'm going to show you guys what the fence was like before and after.

So, like, if you look at that, you can see, like, it's mainly just bushes separating them from the moat. The fence, it's there, but, like, a three-year-old kid who's determined is going to get through it. Yeah, that's not much. The update of it, I feel like it really doesn't change the experience much because the bushes still blocked that view before anyways. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. But, like, it just makes so much better. It just makes so much more sense, like, not have a space where a kid can crawl through. To explain it, the first fence, it's just pretty much a couple bars with some, like, smooth wire going between them, and then the bushes, and then the moat. So it's really easy for a kid to push through that smooth wire. There's just, like, a couple wires going horizontally. And then the second fence is, like, pretty much like a chain link fence with some wood posting around it. And it's not that much higher.

So any adult for sure, and like even most kids would be able to see over it. But it would definitely stop a kid from just wandering through it. So it's definitely an upgrade. Yeah. I'm going to give a few civilian accounts of what happened to. So Kimberly Perkins O'Connor told CNN that she heard the three-year-old boy joking with his mother about going into the enclosure's moat. So I guess he did know the moat was there.

And then the mother was briefly distracted. All of a sudden you heard a splash in the water. and the older gentleman started saying there's a child in there. This one was really interesting to me. Brittany nicely said that she actually tried to prevent it. I tried to grab him and I just couldn't get to him fast enough. So that tells me like how fast this happened. She saw him go through the fence.

She tried to grab him and he was just gone. Yeah. I do think when this all happened, there's all these Harambe warriors out there that were like really villainizing his mom. And we've, we have a lot of like family members that are young. My niece is three right now. They can move fast. And you turn around for a second and they can be gone. And you don't expect them to be able to get into these enclosures at the zoo. So I don't blame her. I really don't. I think she, me neither. You know, she for a second lost sight of her kid and he ended up in the

gorilla enclosure and that just shouldn't happen. And like with the zoo, they had guerrillas in that enclosure with that fence for 40-something years and like nothing ever happened it's like the tiger so like they thought it was fine it's like our more tiger episode it's a situation where like i just don't think we really have to blame someone i agree too hard if you're going to blame anyone i would blame the zoo for not having a better fence and it is interesting the director uh he brought up so he said any of us could climb over barriers if we choose. As I said, you can lock your car, lock your house, but if someone wants to get in, they can. He cited the incident last week in Chile, where a man with a suicide note in his pocket

stripped down and broke into the lying enclosure at the San Diego Zoo, where he was mauled before two animals were shot dead. So, like, he brought up that, like, people can get into the enclosures. It's a bit of a stretch. A three-year-old shouldn't be able to. Exactly. Within seconds. There's a big difference between a determined adult to get into an enclosure and a kid literally

stumbling into one. There's a difference there. But I agree with you, Jeff. I think it's like, it's one of those things where there's no real sense in pointing a lot of fingers because it's a freak accident. It's really sad that it happened. It's sad that Harambe died. I think if anyone did have some guilt, it is the zoo.

But I don't think it was like gross negligence either. You know, I just think it was like they had a fault that they didn't know about. And unfortunately, it was exposed in a really bad way. But luckily, it was an animal that died and not a person. I want to say, like, I first want to just recognize that you know more about animals than me. You know more about this than me. People should maybe value your opinion on it more than mine. Yeah.

But I kind of feel like they didn't need to kill him. people were yelling. That's when he did fling the kid around a little bit. But once he had moved up, like he was just standing over him. Yeah. And like, I don't think there was much risk of Harambe killing the little boy. Like, there's risk like the guy could shoot the boy. Like, he was standing right over him.

So, like, I just don't know. It was a pretty clear shot that he had, though. And they're trained for that. I mean, as a zookeeper. Yeah, I wouldn't miss that shot. You wouldn't miss that shot. It's like 20 yards. Like, I don't think a Harambe would kill the boy.

You know what I mean? Neither do I. I think it's a really small percent chance that they would accidentally shoot the kid. But I also think it's a really small percent chance that once Harambe got the kid to a safer spot, I just don't think he was going to kill him. We don't disagree in that. I totally agree with you that I think it's like a 95% chance that Harambe wasn't going to hurt this kid at all. But what I'm trying to say is that an animal that. that powerful and that has that ability to kill a kid that quickly.

Like if it was an animal where it's going to take a while for him to kill the kid and it's very unlikely that he would, I don't think they're shooting it. But the fact that it's a male silverback gorilla that's powerful enough, it could literally snap his neck with like a wrist flip, you just can't take that risk. Like you can't accept that 5% risk that he could do it because then your zoo might get shut down. Gorillas in captivity might be like it might be this big controversial thing after that. There might be hatred for guerrillas in the wild even. It can have really like long reaching cascading effects that are much worse than one gorilla dying. And I personally think the chances of Harambe

killing that kid are far greater than like the zookeeper that knows how to like fire his gun and is good with it missing a shot from like 20 yards at a huge gorilla's head that's sitting completely still. I guess what I was saying is there's a chance you don't kill the gorilla right away if you shoot it. Yeah. And like he's standing over the kid. Maybe that causes him to act more aggressively as he's dying than he would have. Yeah. I just think like with a high powered rifle shot to the head, you're pretty confident it's going to kill him instantly.

And they have trained for that. Like that's what these zookeepers train for. They know what they're doing. They had three options in my mind. They could tranquilize them, which I think. is the worst option out of all of them. Yeah, because then you have five minutes of a groggy gorilla that's not acting normal. Right.

They could leave him there and just hope that he leaves the kid alone, and they can, like, corral him and get the kid to safety, which would probably take a little while to even get him to safety, if the guerrillas are still in the enclosure, or they shoot him. And I think where he's holding the kid and he's holding him in the water and dragging him around and being as careless as it looked like he was being with him, they made the right decision. All he would have had to do is, like, hold his hand on that kid's head for a little bit when he was in the moat and that kid's dead.

I don't know. Mike, what do you think? So what I think is that I agree that shooting the gorilla was the right idea because even if, and it sounds like Harambe wasn't exhibiting truly violent or aggressive behavior. Yeah. But again, just like a quick slip of the wrist, like you said, or just completely by accident, he could have held the kid underwater or. snapped his neck by shaking him a little bit. I just think that you got to make a snap reaction in that instant. Yeah, you don't have time to think it over.

And again, like, it sucks and it's really sad. And I'm actually really glad because this did turn into kind of a moment for guerrillas. And I think guerrillas in a lot of people's mind really grew in their estimation. And I know for me it kind of did. Like, I didn't really get in on the whole dicks out for Harambe. movement. Yeah. But it did kind of make me think like, oh man, that sucks. Like, gorillas are super cool. Yeah. Yeah. My last point that I want to make, because we could talk about this for hours, and I'm not trying to say there's less inherent value to an animal and captivity to one in the wild,

but this was a captive animal. It's not reducing population in the wild to kill him. It's really sad. It's a gorilla that a lot of people loved. It sucks. But I think there's a big difference between the decision to like shoot him in this kind of situation as like compared to if someone were like on a tour in the jungle and a gorilla grabbed their kid by the foot and dragged them off a little bit, then I think it's like, no, you're putting yourself into their space and their habitat. And then, you know, that's like a risk you have to take as a person. But I think at a zoo, you have to protect that human life. You just do.

And it's tragic. But that's just what happened. Yeah. Like you said, we could go on for a while. Yeah. researching it before I researched it. Honestly, that was kind of my mindset. But as I researched it and found the other stories,

I did kind of change to like, you know what? I kind of wish they would have just waited it out a little longer. And I think like he would have been okay. Maybe. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd. But too often, life gets busy. Or the price holds you back.

Price Line is here to help. you make it happy. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Price Line. Download the Price Line app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. But like you guys said, it did have a lot of positive. Like, there was a good silver lining to the story in which it brought a lot of attention to gorillas. And, like, it actually, I think, helped Cincinnati Zoo quite a bit. Everyone knows where the Cincinnati Zoo is now.

And, like, I was looking at zoos on Instagram. And, like I was saying, it is a big zoo, but it's not in the top 10 biggest. Right. It's the second biggest in, like, followers on its ears. And I think a lot of it's because of this. Yeah. I know they had to, like, shut their social media day. for a while because all it was was Harambe comments for like the first two months.

But yeah, so let's get into like the aftermath of it all a little bit because it was kind of crazy. I asked you guys to bring your favorite Harambe meme. Yeah. So do you guys have one? Yeah, I got mine. Mine, I like, I'm like Mike, I didn't really get into like all the memes and stuff. I actually, when all the Harambe stuff was going on, I was getting, I was. getting, I was happy that everyone was interested in guerrillas, but I was getting really tired of all the

memes and like how long that went on for. I feel like that was also one of the- Me too, but now I kind of think it's funny. Me too. And it also, it makes me nostalgic for that time when like, yeah, things weren't as crazy as they are now and we could all like focus on a gorilla for two months or however long it was. And now it's just like every day there's something terrible happening. I feel like this was like the first meme that just, you know, just really got like completely overused. Like ran into the ground, maybe, yeah. Yeah.

All right. So my favorite is, you know that cartoon of Arthur where he like clenches his fist? Yeah. And they use it in tons of memes. It's that one. But they like have, they've superimposed an actual gorilla fist clenching onto his fist. So it's like cartoon Arthur with the gorilla fist and it's clenched. And a top, like on top of it, the caption says,

when a kid gets in your enclosure. So I really like that one. That one actually made me laugh out loud when I saw it. So that's my pick. I don't know what it is about that stupid Arthur meme, but it's just so funny to me. It's just like a fist. The best was when the bra did it with no context.

Mood. Yeah. So my favorite meme was I tried to find this again, and it's a little irreverent, so forgive me if this offends. But it's a Jedi ghost Harambe appearing to Anakin. And he's telling Anakin to go slay all the younglings to get revenge. I like that. Yeah.

If I can't find it again, maybe I'll just make it and claim it as my own. It's the internet. That's what happens. I like that one a lot. So mine is, there's this gorilla at the window of its enclosure, and it's flipping off a two-year-old girl. And then the meme says, get out of here before you get me shot. It's pretty good. Yeah.

And then I had another quick one where it's just like the Trump hat, but it says make Harambe alive again. That's a movement I can get behind. That's funny. And then I actually read some like, so there's reports that Harambe got 15,000 votes for president after he died. Yeah. A lot of write-ins for Harambe. A lot of them didn't count. And there's like other articles saying like, no, you.

didn't actually get 15,000, but a lot of people did write Harambe. That says a lot about our candidates. A lot of people in Australia actually voted for Harambe for their politician, too. And someone told this reporter in Australia, they asked, why are you voting for Harambe? And worst bloke, so that's like their Instagram handle replied, This election has no one with the courage and prowess and status of Harambe. He died for our sins and will return. I love him.

It was so weird how intense people got about Harambe. I read also, so there was like the whole dicks out for Harambe thing that became really popular. Our friend, mainly my friend, but Todd got really into that one. What do you mean? he got really into it. He just always had his dick out. He just thought it was funny at all, I mean. He didn't get really into it.

I shouldn't say that. All right, well, that's it for the Harambe story. Cool. And then we had the two other ones. So yeah, I don't know. Do you guys have any questions or anything else you want to add to it? I don't think so. I think this would be an interesting one for people that follow us on Instagram or Patreon to

when we post this, like let us know what you guys. guys think. Let us know if you think they made the right decision or not. Like any feelings you have about Harambe's story, because I do think it's really interesting to see what people's opinions are and what their opinions are after we told the story. Let us know. Yeah. I think there's a lot of valid opinions with it. I do too. Like I think what you're saying is true, but I also kind of believe what I am saying, you know? Yeah. So now that the story is over, let's do outchies for this story. Yeah. I think for Harambe, it's a 10 ouchy. I don't. Okay. He died right away.

He did die really quickly. That's true. For this kid, I don't know, like two outchies, three outchies? What do you think? I don't know. He fell 15 feet. Yeah. That's pretty decent.

The other two kids like cracked a skull and they both broke their arms. Yeah. This kid was like kind of rubber. He just like kind of bounced up and was flashing around. So yeah, I'll go two. I'm going to say two outchies. I'll say two outchies for the three-year-old. and six for Harambe.

Sure. Because death sucks, but there's worse ways to go. I should say, too, he was, like, taken to the hospital right after and had, all he had was, like, some scratches. Okay. He didn't have any major injuries, no broken bones, nothing. All right. So two, we'll say two for the kid and six or seven for Harambe?

Yeah, that's fair. Let's give him seven. All right. So, let's get into categories. Cool. Let's start with pop culture. Okay. So we're going to do favorite pop culture gorilla.

Cool. Can I go first? Yeah. All right. Mine are the weird, like, kind of mutant gorillas from the movie Congo that came out in, like, the 90s. Yeah. Those, like, weird kind of silvery colored ones that live in the old temple of gin or gin or whatever it was called. Zin, I think.

Anyways, I had like a Congo computer game on my PC in, like, 95. there was like a problem-solving game and it was really scary. And I just love those scary guerrillas. I love when they throw a dude's brain at him at the beginning of the movie. That's great. I was reading Daniel Radcliffe was saying like if he could be involved with any movie in history, he'd want to be in Congo. That's an amazing. I need to re-watch Congo.

It's a good one. Because I guess there's like a lot of like weird backgrounds. Tim Curry's in that movie, isn't he? Yeah, Tim Curry. Yeah. That's a fun movie. I forget, at the end, does a gorilla get his hands on a laser gun? Yeah.

There's a laser gun happening somewhere. They make a laser gun out of the diamonds from the diamond mine. That was the whole reason they wanted the lasers. And there's like a gorilla knows sign language and it like kills. Yeah, it's crazy. It's a crazy. I got to, we got to have a watch party on that. Yeah.

So my favorite Donkey Kong, gorilla, shoot, spoilered. So it's Donkey Kong. But I also, I need to give a shout out to the band, Gorillas. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, Demon Day's Plastic Beach to the all-time classic. Damon, Auburn. It's so good. I don't even know if those are technically gorillas.

I think Russ on the drums is a gorilla, but the rest of them just kind of look like monkeys. I kind of want to just go with a Wild Boys skit from the spin-off of Jackass. But there's one skit where they're like dressed up as bananas. and they're like in a colony of guerrillas just dancing in front of them. And I don't know, that one made me laugh so hard when I first saw it. So I'm going to go with that one. I'll give a shout out to Mighty Joe Young, the Disney movie. That's probably not a good movie, but yeah.

Yeah, I haven't seen it. I thought for sure when you guys would pick King Kong, but I'm kind of pleasantly surprised. King Kong. I thought, yeah, King Kong. And then I like the gorilla in the first planet apes in the reboot. Okay. Hideaki Sarachi, the gorilla sensei from Gintama.

That's a little niche reference for all y'all anime heads out there. All right. I have a quick new category of, so like, is a three-year-old kid. Kids do stupid things. Crawling into a gorilla pit is pretty stupid. So I just wanted you guys to say,

like, one of the stupidest things you can think of a kid doing. I'll go first. So the dumbest thing, I don't know if this is the dumbest thing, but the most memorable, dumb thing a kid has ever done in my presence was my sister, who had to have been like five at the time, four or five, she tried to ride our dog like a horse and just immediately fell off and sprained her wrist.

So that was pretty dumb, Chrissy. Jeff, you go next. I'm still trying to think. I'm just going to do the internet video of the kid who's like pouring himself juice where he like places the cup off. the ground and then he like spills juice all over the floor and gets like a little bit in the cup and then he like goes back to the fridge to put the juice away and then he goes back to the cup and like slips and knocks all the juice like the little bit of juice he landed in the cup he knocks out

so i'm just going to go at that video that's a good one so the one i thought of while we were talking about this was one really similar to that and it's just a recency bias but me and jesse watched like an hour of Phil videos the other day. And there's this kid who like his dad gave him milk to pour on his cereal and he just like poured it all on the ground and like completely missed his cereal. And I was just like, man, what a dumb little kid. But the other one I just thought of and it's not really even a dumb kid. So this doesn't count, but I'm still going to say it.

One of my favorite videos ever is that kid who like is running by the big outdoor pool and his mom is like, what do you have in your hands? And he goes, a knife. and then she's like, no, and she chases him down. I can just watch that video over and over and over again, but running with a knife is dumb. Let's go to cage match. Cool.

We've done cage match since pretty much the beginning of this podcast. This is the most time I've ever personally put into a cage match. I kid you not, I put like five or six hours into, like, researching this cage match. Because as a bear biologist, the question I get more than any other. question when it comes to like bear fights like what animal could they fight is bear versus gorilla constantly gets brought up we constantly get asked it by like followers and people that listen to the podcast and i really have always kind of been on the fence and so i wanted to do a really deep dive into which animal would win in this fight so we're for this cage match for this one all we're talking about is grizzly

bear versus gorilla we're not even going to talk about our other animals we're just doing a head-to-head matchup a title fight. This is like a big one. Yeah. I'm excited. Okay. So I wanted to break this down and I want to let you guys know I did my absolute best on this one to only use peer reviewed research for my research.

And I'm going to let you know when I didn't have it because I do think it's important to know that for this, for this really important topic. All right. Yeah. So first things first. If we're talking about a fight between the biggest grizzly bear in existence and the biggest gorilla in existence, it is 100% the grizzly bear that's going to win. I shouldn't say 100%, but they are by far the favorite.

Nine times out of 10. Yeah, because the biggest grizzly bears get upwards of 1,500 pounds, and the biggest gorillas are like 600 pounds. So just by weight alone, it's going to be the grizzly bear. It's going to beat the gorilla if you're looking at biggest versus biggest. So what I did instead is I took average size. So our average size brown bear for all the subspecies around the world is 478 pounds for males and 335 pounds for females. The average weight for all gorilla subspecies across their range in Africa is 350 pounds for males and 200 pounds for females.

So bears have a slight advantage in weight, but I don't think it's like a landslide and I don't think it's a done deal based on weight for averages. Moving on, bite force. We've talked about bite force a lot on this show. We've argued even a little bit about how bite force is measured and whether or not it's important. There's two ways to look at bite force. You can look at bite force quotient, which is adjusted for size. You're taking into account the mass of the animal, or you can just look at the actual force that's exerted by the canines in the bite.

And that's what we're going to look at for each of these animals, because we already talked about size. We're just going to look at their actual force that they can exert when they bite. And we're going to talk about Newton's, which is a little bit harder to understand, but Newton's is what they usually use in these papers because it's an actual measurement of force.

So I'm really nerding out on this. Sorry. Newton's. Yes. Grizzly bears have a... That's where we know you did your research. Grizzly bears have a maximum force of 985 newtons. It was like 700 and something

with a confidence interval. of like 200 something, so I took the upper side of that confidence interval. So their maximum force is 985 newtons. The articles I found with gorillas, which were much more sparse, said that they might have up to 1693 newtons. So almost twice as much bite force and a gorilla compared to a bear. I think that's important because the way these animals are winning this fight is by crushing bone, breaking skulls, doing that kind of thing.

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 of conditions apply. Okay, weapons. Both animals have some impressive canines. They're essentially the same size. They're canines that can grow to two to three inches in length. There's some research that suggests that maybe primate canines are a little bit stronger than those of carnivores like bears and maybe a little bit less prone to breakage. But I think they're pretty similar as far as breakage goes. Are bears a little sharper though?

No. Actually, it's probably the opposite. I'd say guerrillas probably have a bit sharper canines. But it really depends on where they live and what they're eating. So grizzly bears do have claws that are two to three inches long, and they have those really strong muscles in their hump and in their forearm that put a lot of power behind those claws and behind their paws. They pack a really strong punch, but unlike popular opinion, they mostly kill with their teeth, not so much with their paws and claws, but they are a good weapon.

So that's a point for grizzly bears. Gorillas really just have fingernails. They don't have any kind of claws or anything. that would really do any damage. They have really strong hands, but we're going to talk about strength here in a second. Okay, strength. Quick disclaimer. When you're talking about these things in biology, there's some inherent sexism. They always talk about how it compares to men and men's strength. And unfortunately, that's where, like most of the stuff that I collected, that's all it talks about. We're also talking about really sexually dimorphic animals where the males are stronger

than the females. So that's just what we're talking about. I'm sorry that that sexism is part of this conversation, but it is. So I'm just wanted to make that disclaimer. No, I think we should just do like the biggest of both species. Right. And that's sometimes that might be the female, but this time it's the male. In this case, it's the males. On average, they're bigger. We are going to talk about the females, though, really quickly at the end. So in testing, it was shown, and these tests were kind of pseudoscience tests. This wasn't like peer-reviewed tests, but it showed on average grizzly bears are roughly 3.75 times stronger than an average human male, and they can lift weights up to 1,100 pounds. There's anecdotal stories of grizzly bears like flipping dumpsters that weigh 700 pounds

like they're a beach ball and picking up rocks that weigh like 600 pounds to look for moths underneath. Vin Diesel could do that. Yeah. So I'm using pounds. I'm sorry to all you guys that use kilograms and stuff. You're just going to have to do those conversions on your own. I'm sorry. On the other hand, gorillas have been said to be able to lift weight up to 4,000 pounds and can be up to 10 times stronger than the average human man. There's anecdotal stories of Grizzlies ripping banana trees out of the ground in a rage. Gorillas. Did I say gorillas? You say grizzlies.

Okay. There's anecdotal stories of gorillas ripping banana trees out of the ground when they're in a rage, like it's just nothing. There's stories of them bending steel bars when they're in zoos. And there's stories of them pulling like steel out of the enclosure, just like really. ripping steel out of the law and stuff. So I think based on all that, oh, go ahead. That question we just got about like what animal we choose as our bodyguard, I'm changing it to gorilla now.

Based on all that, I think that's really pseudosciencey, all these experiments. But I do think we can probably give the strength category to gorillas. They do seem like they're a bit stronger than the average grizzly bear. A couple more little things. Bone density is an important thing to talk about because, again, they're winning these fights by like crushing skulls and breaking bones breaking backs that sort of thing they have pretty similar bone density from what i could find i couldn't find any really great information on that but it is denser bone than we have uh protection grizzly bears have really

thick fur they have really thick skin and they have like a couple inches of fat that protect their organs and muscle and whatnot guerrillas do have thick skin but they don't have that fat layer and their skin isn't quite as thick as the grizzlies and neither is their fervs. So they're not quite as well protected as a grizzly bear would be. Speed, grizzly bears can run about 35 miles per hour. Gorillas top out at like 20 miles per hour. Guerrillas are very smart. They can use tools.

They can throw tools. They can throw rocks. They're much more dexterous. They can climb. So they definitely have that edge. As far as intelligence goes, I don't think it's a big factor. I think if you had like multiple grizzlies fighting multiple gorillas, then it matters because there's like a coordination strategy then and some other things

that come into play. But if it's just a cage match where the two are fighting, I think instincts and aggression is much more important than intelligence. So I wanted to talk about that really quickly. We're almost done. So aggression and experience. Grizzly bears are a much more aggressive animal than guerrillas. Their natural behavior involves a lot more fighting, hunting, killing. A grizzly bear has this innate instinct and behavior to be able to fight and subdue prey. They fight a lot amongst themselves, and when they fight, there's actual violence usually. It's not just display and intimidation. Guerrillas do fight amongst each other.

Those fights can sometimes turn violent, but it's often just intimidation like we talked about. So, based on all of that, all of that information, I think I would probably still give Grizzlies a sloth. light edge. And that's based on the fact that they have the protection built in, because I think this really comes down to just a fight of how many blows they can trade before one finally goes down. And I think in those blows, the grizzly bear is doing a lot of damage with its claws. And I think if either of them can really get their teeth into each other, that could end the fight. But I think there's a lot of just slapping back and forth first. The grizzly bear's taking less damage as it's getting hit, and it's doling out more damage as it's hitting.

I think if they're wrestling, like if they're tussling, the gorilla probably has a bit of an advantage. But I think overall, if I were a betting man, which I am, I would put my money on the grizzly bear. But I do think it's a very tight, very close fight. Yeah, I think that's our most interesting matchup yet. And like, there's not many animals that, like, once a grizzly bear gets on top of it,

the animal could maybe get it off. Right. But like, gorillas are so strong. It might be able to, like, push it off and get up again. I really think it could go either way. But I'm going to edge out with Grizzly. Your results match mine, Wes. I'll just say that.

Okay. I did a smash match between Banjo and Donkey Kong. And Banjo won pretty easily best two out of three. His grenades just were too much for Donkey Kong. I'm taking Grizzly bear unless it's Harambe. I think Harambe could have got him. Yeah. Well, Harambe fights.

with the strength of the entire country behind him. I want to real quick just throw a few of our other animals at guerrilla for you. Just like, you don't need to go in depth on it. Okay. So moose? I'm picking gorilla. Polar bear? Polar bear.

Okay. And then black bear, it's gorilla. I think the big cats are interesting. I think like a lion or a tiger in a guerrilla fight, I'm probably giving it to the big cat, but I think it's close. Jaguar, gorilla? Probably the gorilla. But I do think it's close in those fights. Okay.

Cool. Okay, should we do what would Mike and Jeff do really quick? Yeah. Oh, shoot. Yeah. So if we were the three-year-old or what? Yeah. What are you doing?

No, let's just say if we fall in, what do we do? Okay, yeah. I fall into a guerrilla den. Yep, grill enclosure. Yeah, I don't know. I said dead. So, I mean, I'm an alpha, so I'm just going to assert dominance over them. Okay.

It shouldn't be too hard. All right. Just go up. He beats his chest. I'll beat my chest right back at him. You know? That's a good plan. He comes at me.

I'll come at him harder. So I just need to learn a couple of signs in sign language and say like, I'm just, there was a mistake. My fault. I don't want to hurt you. Don't hurt me. We'll solve this real quick. It's a good answer.

I don't know how many signs that would take to say, but I'll learn those real quick. Okay. Really quick, what I learned about guerrillas and guerrilla encounters is pretty much the opposite of what Jeff's doing. So if you happen to encounter a girl in the wild, and who knows, and captivity may be a dominance thing would work, and every once in a while of the wild, it might too. But what these people say that work with guerrillas and that take people out to see gorillas is that first and foremost, this is an animal you don't want to maintain eye contact with. They do see that as a direct threat and a challenge. So when you're out observing

gorillas, you don't ever directly lock eyes with them, especially with the big males. Don't they say to not even like smile at them or show your teeth? Yeah. You just, you don't show your teeth. Exactly. If you show your teeth, again, that's you like saying, I'm dominant. Look how big my teeth are. You don't want to do that. Another thing is if the gorilla gets close, like if it charges at you, what you do is you divert your eyes and you walk away slowly and deliberately, you don't run. This is another animal you just don't run from. They see that as a threat. They'll run you down and they'll be aggressive. So never run.

If it gets really close during its charge, you can crouch down and look as small and non-threatening as possible. And that's just being really submissive and showing the gorilla that you're not a threat and that it's like you're not challenging him. Yep. He's in charge. You're not in charge. And that neutralizes that situation almost immediately. Finally, if a gorilla is acting aggressive with you, a couple other things, you can pretend to be another gorilla, like pick a. leaves and acting, acting, acting disinterested to them can really disarm them. I like that.

And then, like, the most important thing is if you do have the chance to be around gorillas, whether you fall into their enclosure or you're out in the wild, maintaining your distance, like giving them at least 20 feet, which is really close still. Like, if you get to go see gorillas in the wild, you get to get pretty close to them, but give them some distance because you approaching them very closely, again, is another act of aggression. So it's all about, about being submissive and letting the big male silverback know that you're not a threat. He's really the only one you have to worry about. Oh, I forgot really quick.

With the cage match, I'll just say it now. If it is a female versus female, the bear has a really big advantage because female gorillas are really submissive, not very aggressive or anything. And female grizzlies aren't very different from males in their level of aggression. Their canines are just as long and female gorillas have really short canines. So it's definitely the female grizzly bear. Okay. Interesting.

Wes, with the cage match, too, I want to bring up. So Mike Tyson said that he went to the New York Zoo and saw a gorilla, like, bossing the other guerrillas around. I know this story. And he offered the zookeeper $10,000 to let him go in to the enclosure and knock the gorilla's ass out. Who wins in a cage match, Mike Tyson or a gorilla? If it was a male, like if it was a silverback, 100% the, the, the, the, it was a cage match. Gorilla. 10 times out of 10.

If it was a female, it might have just, like, seen him as... Best boxer of all time. Strongest punch ever. 10 times out of 10. Mike Tyson. 10 times out of 10, the Silverback Gorilla wins that fight. For the what would we do type thing, too, one thing I want to bring up was just, I think it would have been good had people, like, backed up from viewing the enclosure and like,

been quieter. I think once it started getting more frantic, he started to panic a bit. Yeah. So like it would have been great had someone like backed everyone up away because the crowd seemed to get pretty big and pretty chaotic. Yeah. Perfect. Let's do some listener questions. Mike, you want to do the two Patreon questions?

Oh, yeah. So since Jeff took storytelling duties, I selected a couple of lucky patrons. So we're going to start out. They're not lucky because we're answering all their questions in some form or not. Well, yeah. Lucky in as much as I chose. them is worthy questions to ask while I'm leading the category. Lucky.

So James has this question. Wes mentioned on a different episode, a turtle and then a frog in the pond behind his child at home were huge influences on his career and getting into conservation. Were there other animals in that pond or anywhere around it that were just as interesting or influential to you? Tell us about this magical place. Like in that story, the frogs were so influential because they died out. and I got to, I like witnessed a local extinction of a species and it really clicked that conservation switch for me where I was like, oh wow, this can happen.

So that's what the story was. And so the frog was definitely the, the northern leopard frog was like the thing that was most influential. But I loved everything about those ponds, like turtles, frogs, snakes, anything I could find there was amazing. There was like beavers, fish, like everything. So it was a magical place. But the frogs were the most influential. Turtles were, what type of turtle are they? Western painted turtle.

Yeah, they have the coolest bellies. Yeah, they have a carapace that's just like, oh wait, that's not their care. Is it their carapace? I can't remember now. No one knows what a carapace is. Shell? The bottom part of their shell, they're like, they're ventral, the bottom, I'm using bad words. The bottom part of their shell is really brightly colored.

It's beautiful. Their belly. Yeah. It's not a carapace. What is it called? Do turtles like belly rubs? Uh, no, actually they do have nerves in their shell and, like, like it can be really sensitive so you don't really want to mess with it too much.

Oh, okay. I should stop doing that then. Yeah, probably. They might like them if you're just, if you're doing it just right. Okay, so this is from bevers. Question for everyone. If you had to get a tattoo tomorrow, what would it be and where would you put it? Follow up question.

If you could pick a tattoo for the other two to get, what would it be and where? It's Plastron. The bottom's the plasteron, the tops of carapace. Okay. Tattoo for ourselves and a tattoo for the other people? Yeah. I'd have us all just get Harambe in heaven. Okay.

Where? Or maybe Mike gets a baby Harambe. West gets a live harambi and I get Harambe in heaven. Yeah, I like that idea. It'd be funny to have like Mike get Po, me get Tay, and you to get toes, potatoes. Oh, yeah. These super funny. If I got my own...

I'd get a tattoo of Jeff's face on my face so I could look like Jeff. Yeah. Oh, thanks, dude. If I'm getting my own tattoo, I think I'm settled on my first tattoo being a whale shark, just because I think they're visually really good. I think I have these little books my mom gave me about the Klan Geddes. It's like our Scottish ancestry for our family. And they have this cool little crest with a Pikes head on it. And that'd be something I think would be pretty cool.

Well, we know some cool tattoo artists now that have done some cool work for us already. And I think they would be great options for tattoos. So if anyone out there needs tattoos, look up Justice and Randy. Justice, Randy. And then we're running a little longer, but I want to do two listener questions real quick. Bibi from the Shire asks favorite taco spot in each of your to go or go-to orders. Mine's in Salt Lake. Well, it's probably in Mexico, but in Salt Lake, I really like a place called Chungas.

I just love pastaore with pineapple. Mine's in Guerrero, Mexico, and it's, it's, what's the pork called again? the like ground up pork shoot why am I not remembering this chorizo yeah it's a chorizo it's like a flour tortilla it's a queso taco with chorizo and it's like so good I could eat them every day

that's my favorite my favorite is lucha libra in San Diego they have if you call far enough in advance you can reserve the little wrestling ring seating option so you can eat your surf and turf and tacos and stuff in a little like roped off wrestling arena

it's so cool You love a gimmick. I love it. I want to go there. All right. And then from Caro Balling, what is the superior dog breed? Okay. Oh, man.

Getting into, like, genetics and stuff. Eugenics. The cutest dog I think I've ever seen is the puppy and John Wick. And ever since I saw that puppy, I've been really into beagles. My big thing is just, like, rescues. I don't really care what breed, as long as it's a rescue. And I like mixed breeds. Like, I like a mutt.

I think mutts are like have the best temperament and they're just the cutest and Bryce is a mutt. So I like mixed breed mutts. I like German Shepherds. They have some weird hip issues going on, some weird like selective breeding problems. But yeah, German Shepherds are just the coolest dogs to me. All right. Oh, wait. I got one more question I wanted to ask you guys.

We got a ton of people writing in about this. Okay. They want you, as in you, Larson family, to post the recipe for the Huckleberry pie, the Larson family Huckleberry Pie. We'll post it. We'll post it only to Patreon. Eh, it's not that good anyways. Yeah.

Do you like that? No, dude, I hate it. So let's finish off with how are we messing things up for them? Yeah. Maybe apart from shooting them in Zeus. Yeah, serious. Okay. So I did a lot

I did it well not a lot but a little bit of research into conservation I was specifically looking at Western lowland gorillas but in the 80s there was thought to be about 100,000 total guerrillas in the wild a discovery in 2007 found that there was like I think it was either 2006 or 2007 found 125,000 gorillas in like a lowland swamp that they didn't know were there so it like doubled

the existing estimate of how many girls We're left in the wild. But today, numbers are still really hard to come by. They are doing a little bit better. It's estimated there's up to 300,000 Western lowland gorillas in the wild. They are the most plentiful of all the gorillas. They are still considered critically endangered. And that's because their numbers decreased by about 60% in the last 20 to 25 years.

So there used to be a lot more guerrillas, a lot more. It is weird that they're critically endangered when there's that big of a population. Yeah. It's mostly because the threats that they're faced by are really imminent and really bad. Deforestation in Equatorial Africa is happening at a really scary rate. And then there's also some pretty intense bushmeat trade for guerrillas, so people poaching them to sell for their meat, which is pretty crazy. Like who would eat a gorilla, but I guess bush meat, it's, I shouldn't say that. It's just weird to think about eating.

It's weird to think about. It seems weird for us to think about eating. But culturally, I'm sure it's more normal. Yeah. Other places. Anyway, they're also really susceptible to outbreaks from diseases like Ebola. And Ebola outbreaks have actually wiped out whole subpopulations of gorillas or populations of gorillas.

They reproduce really slowly. Females have a short window for breeding. And then they become infertile. And then they're really actually incredibly important because they're ecosystem engineers, which means they're like seed dispersers. They eat so many different types of fruit and plants. and then they poop out those seeds and they spread them throughout the forest, that they're really important to those forests, to their regeneration, to their growth.

And when you kill gorillas and then you're also deforesting at the same time, you can actually make that entire ecosystem collapse just by doing those two things. So they're really, really important. I wonder how similar it is to eat a gorilla to like eating a person. Yeah, I don't know. Jeff's going to think about that for a while, I guess. I was reading that they get AIDS too. Yeah, there's a lot of diseases that we get that are...

A lot of them get AIDS. I'm not sure about that. And it might have started from gorillas, Westland gorillas, like... Western lowland gorillas. It did start with primates, and they were saying it might have started with gorillas. Yeah.

There's a pretty decent percentage that have AIDS. I'll have to look into that. I don't want to, like, say that for sure because I don't know that. But there are a lot of threats. deforestation, habitat loss, poaching, disease outbreak. There's a lot of things facing them, and that's why they're listed as critically endangered. Some of the other subspecies are just considered endangered, but they're in trouble. And recovery takes a long time with them because they're such slow reproducers.

So yeah, that's conservation. There are some silver linings like the fact that we just found a ton of them. But that's what I wanted to say about their conservation. So I love guerrillas. they're one of when I go see them in a zoo like that's one of the highlights that I've going to a zoo is seeing a gorilla so for me I do feel like a real affinity for them oh we should do our claw rating oh yeah yeah so for me they're I would say they're a nine claw animal I'm getting them nine claws me too I just love watching gorillas do

whatever I think they're super funny but also like super impressive all at the same time yeah they're great no I'm going 10 for the kind of what my with saying, like, I think the baby gorillas are just the cutest. They are. And then, like, a big male gorilla is just so impressive to look at. They're so fun to watch. I'm ranking them 14 on my favorite animals list. And I just really like gorillas a lot.

Okay. Well, Jeff, great job doing the research for that story. I know, like, we've had a lot of people ask about Arrombay for a while, so I'm glad we finally got to them. Yeah. We cranked out some hits recently. We did Night of the Grizzlies and then our news episode and now right into Harambe. I mean, this is like quite the stretch for us.

Yeah. But my next one will probably be like crabs or something boring just because we don't want to give you guys all the best stuff all at once. We just want to give you crabs. Thanks, guys. Thanks everyone for listening. And, you know, Dix out for Harambe. Better late than ever, I guess. Love you guys.

Love everyone. Bye.