Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Hippo Attack - Marius and his Pet Hippo Humphrey

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Jeff once again takes the lead to tell the tragic and cautionary tale of Marius, a South African man with a penchant for the outdoors and exotic animals, and his pet hippo Humphrey. Wes dives deep into how many people are killed by hippos every year, and then the guys wrap things up by discussing their favorite drug dealers (we promise it makes sense by the end).  ~~ 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 to another episode of Tooth and Claw. On this episode, Jeff is taking the lead, actually. He prepared a really interesting story about a hippo attack. That makes this our second hippo episode, so if you want some more hippo, feel free to go back and check out our first one. Wes, of course, being the resident professional wildlife biologist, he digs pretty deep into some cool hippo facts, so we hope you enjoy it. Oh, and I wanted just to, real quick, it's been a while since we did this,

but if you haven't left us a review over on Apple Podcasts and a rating, or over on Spotify, you can leave ratings there as well. If you feel strongly about our show one way or the other, please leave us a review. We read all of them, and we wish that we could respond to all of them. You guys are all so nice, but yeah,

it really does help us out a lot when you leave a review. Thanks in advance for doing that. You guys are all really nice and super supportive. So let's get to the episode. I've done enough talking. Let's go. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the tooth and claw podcast. That's what I call it.

I said the tooth and claw, which we don't usually call it the. That's what we're getting fancy today. Justin Timberleek would have told us to name it. The tooth and claw, because of the Facebook. Yeah. Yeah, so Sean. Oh, wait, no, he would have told us. Sean Myers or whatever is, Sean Parker.

He would say the opposite, huh? Yeah. It was, he didn't want it to be the Facebook. He just wanted it to be Facebook. It's a weird tooth and claw. So I want to set up a little historical remembrance for you guys, okay? All right. Yeah.

We just passed a holiday, and I just want you guys to, I want you to picture it's August 8th, 2004. Okay. And you're on the passenger boat, Chicago's Little Lady. You're on the 1 p.m. Architecture Foundation tour on the Chicago River, having the time of your life. Okay? Yeah. You're out there. You're looking at Chicago architecture.

And you just happen to pass under the metal grates of the Kinsey Street Bridge. And little known to you, at that exact point, bus driver, Stefan Wohl, is also driving the violinist Boyd Tinsley from the popular band, Dave Matthews Band. Oh, yeah, I remember this. And at that very moment that you're passing under that bridge, that bus driver decides to empty the entire sewage tank of that bus onto you. Right onto that boat. Yeah, the septic tank. This happened. I just recently learned about this.

It's called the Dave Matthews Band Chicago River Incident. And it dumped like, what was it? Like 300. It was a ridiculous amount of like septic tank on like 300 poos. It was 300 poos. Yeah. But I guess there's 120 people on this boat and two thirds of them were soaked in this sewage material. all passengers were issued refunds, which I think is important.

A lot of them... They didn't ask, like, are any of you fans of Dave Matthews band? Just see you guys know. Because you might be excited. So, wait, the boating company gave them their money back? Because I feel like Dave Matthews, like, the bus should have been on. I'm sure they got in trouble. Dave Matthews band ended up having to pay like $300,000.

Oh, wow. Yeah. But here's a explanation. The liquid waste was brownish yellow. in color and had a foul offensive odor. It went into passengers' eyes, mouths, hair, and onto clothing and personal belongings. There was people with disabilities, elderly, a pregnant woman, a small child, and an infant. All of them were soaked.

The mayor released a bit of an announcement talking about it, and he said the dumping was absolutely unacceptable, but he thought that Dave Matthews band was a very good band. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, something I just learned about and, yeah, that anniversary just came about. Did you hear about the redneck guy who found a meteorite? No. Yeah.

It ended up just being like a chunk of frozen poop. Oh, yeah, I did hear about that. Yeah. I remember that. Yep, I did hear about that, Jeff. I think there's a Dave Matthews song in that movie. So, you know, this is all full circle. It's all connected.

You guys into the Dave Matthews band at all? No, not at all. I like the song Crash. I did. I will admit that I like that song. It's hard not to like that song. But everything else to me, I don't really like jam bands. I just don't care for them.

No fish? No. String cheese incident? No. No, not into it. Anyway, that's something I learned about this week. That's the episode. Thanks, guys.

We'll see you. Thanks for taking us back in time, West. Back to 2004. That was a trip. 2004 news articles. Yeah. I just picture myself under that bridge and staring up and seeing that liquid pour out and thinking, huh, this is a little weird.

Yeah. Yeah, but if that didn't happen to you, no one would care about your day in Chicago. I'm not going that far. That's a little. Do you think for some of those people, that's the best thing that ever happened to them? Maybe the most interesting. Most notable. Yeah.

Like at a party, they're like, hey, just so you know. I bet you even some of their family members. It's like, I have an uncle who was in Chicago and got Dave Matthews band poop on him. Plus, I don't think it's really that bad. Remember at the end of Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins is like super excited. Yeah. Because he crawled through all that poop. I don't think it's because of the poop.

He was excited. That's open to interpretation. Yes. Are he excited that he's like not in the poop anymore? Yeah, not imprisoning. That's how I interpret it. He's like, oh, it's finally out of there. It's weird that you both interpreted this very differently.

Every reading is valid. That's what I learned as an English student. Yeah. All right. So what are we doing? Poop, we're talking poop. The animal we're talking about today loves flipping its poop around. True.

What are we talking about? Let's intro the podcast really good. quickly. Oh, yeah. We're tooth and claw podcast. I'm Wes Larson. I'm a biologist. Been working with primarily large carnivores for the past 10 plus a years, mostly bears.

Jeff's my little brother. He was a tech on one of my projects for a bit. Now he's working with invasive insects in Utah. Also does some fly fishing guiding. Mike is a friend of ours. I'm kind of like your tech on your current project. If you look at it that way. That's a good way to look at it.

Okay, yeah. Anime consultant, too. Yeah. Anyway, we tell stories about animal attacks, in quotation marks, attacks. You might want to call them encounters. That's a better word. But pretty much we're telling those stories that people love to hear, but we're trying to tell them in a way that does the animals justice,

that explains their behavior, why they probably reacted the way they did to the person, how the people might have been doing something wrong to trigger that attack or that encounter, and how we can learn from them. And you know what? We're trying to have some fun in the process. Are we having fun? So far. I'm having fun.

Most of the time. Yeah. We got a special episode today because I'm not going to lead it. All right. So who's doing it? I want me to do it? I guess. I'll do it.

All right. Whatever. I got one lock and loaded. Okay. This one's really cool because it's an animal encounter that turns into an animal attack. Oh, perfect. That's on brand. Wow.

Sounds like a lot. Of our stories. So what do you guys think would be cool about owning your own pet hippo? Probably just the fame and fortune that would come with it. Okay. You think you'd get famous. Yeah, you'd probably get internet famous if you had a pet hippo. I think the coolest thing would be having, since hippos live in the water, typically,

or spend most of the time in the water, I should say. That probably means you have a pretty sweet pool or like a river or something. something so that's that's what i'm most excited that you have enough property to have a hippo is what you're excited about the hippo is like tertiary to my excitement of owning the hippo what what tricks would you want to teach it i would want it to open its mouth and let me brush its teeth that's the main one i don't kind of want to be able to like sit in its mouth and read a book okay ew it's brave Gross. Yeah.

It's not where I want to spend hours reading a book and a wet mouth of a hippo. Well, Jeff's not going to be reading for hours. It's going to be like a couple minutes here and there. That's true. Like one Calvin and Hobbs comic strip. Yeah. That would be great. And I'm reading so much.

What would suck about it? I think, like, they smell. They have a lot of waste and it would just be really dirty. They eat a lot. And they dump a lot. Yeah. And, you know, the water's getting dirty all the time. Yeah.

I think the constant ever-present fear of getting chomped in half would probably be a pretty big con on my pro-con list. Yeah. They can kill you, you think? And sometimes it seems like they really want to. We've actually, we've done a hippo episode. Right. And we know that they can kill a person.

All right. Well, I'm going to be talking about a hippo attack. and we're talking about a South African man named Marius Ells, and he's from the free state of South Africa, and he grew up with a lot of space and animals in the beautiful South African landscape. I got most of my information from a show on Animal Planet called Fatal Attractions. There's like a ton of stories written about it, but Fatal Attractions was the only thing I really got a lot of comprehensive information. information from. Great.

Yeah. Great show. So at 12 years old, he earned his dad's respect. Mike, you might want to plug your ears by taming a wild horse that no one else could. Oh, man. And then he named her lady. He earned his dad's respect and lost Mike's respect. How did you guys earn your dad's respect? Oh, I'm still trying.

How about you? I tried grilling some barbecue chicken and, like, really butchered it today. and he was really nice about it, but, you know, I think I lost respect on the whole. So I'm in the red. I feel like there's one time when dad told me, like, wow, that's amazing. And that was like, I was like, oh, I finally earned disrespect. But I don't know. I don't remember.

Maybe that, like, game where you spread your fingers as wide as you can and you, like, try to put a knife in between your fingers as quick as you can. I don't think that was. I've never been quick enough for him to respect me. Yeah. All right. So he tames this wild horse and they become super bonded because like this horse who he named Lady only really likes him. So that's like kind of cool whenever like an animal just loves you and doesn't really like other people that much. Yeah. I agree. I don't know. You guys can understand why he loves this horse, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, lady very prematurely in her life got a pretty serious injury that they weren't able to get it fixed and they had to put her down.

Oh. This really depressed Marius and he withdrew my freaking computer Siri turned on when I said that. Okay, so this really depressed Marius and he withdrew from his family and spent all of his time in nature. and like all he cared about was bonding with animals. You know, and I feel that. I've been there. Me and Pete Davidson are probably like in a similar path right now. Sure.

Wes, what type of animals do you think he'd find? In South Africa? Yeah, you've been there, right, Wes? Yeah, all sorts of stuff. He's going to find lots of ungulates like Springbok and Paula, a kudu, a wildebeest. giraffes, birds, hippos, lions. They're penguins in South Africa, right?

Probably not in this. Yeah, in far South Africa. Yeah. But probably not in free South Africa or wherever. Well, if one, like, flies a little farther north than usual, then maybe. Occasional pangolin, leopards, cheetahs. Assume he found at least one of all of those. Okay.

At 34 years old, he married and he became a major in the South African Calvary. He still just lived for his weekends when he could spend time with his animals on the game farm. They called it a game farm once. I never saw that again, and I don't think they really hunted there that much. So that's what they called it. In South Africa, pretty much all of the wildlife are constrained to reserves. Like Kruger National Park is essentially fenced. Pretty much every place that there's wildlife in South Africa, it's fenced in.

And there's big reserves. but sometimes those reserves will be smaller and they'll call them like game farms or something and sometimes they let people come on and hunt or I don't know there's a lot of different types of reserves yeah I didn't get the impression people hunted on it okay yeah but it is it is a really a really unique country when it comes to wildlife okay two good and co coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream real milk and contain three grams of sugar per serving that's 40% less than the five 5 grams per serving and leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich, delicious experience.

Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, cold, bold, or frothy, two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one. Two good coffee creamers, real goodness in every sip. Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle. So Marius, he's unable to have children with his wife. So he bonded really strongly with his nephew, Johann. And Johann says a lot of his best life. memories were with Marius teaching him about animals in nature.

Cool. Oh, yeah. That's nice. Yeah, so then now that you feel all nice, then his father died. And he got all depressed again and started bonding with animals like he did when he was a child. Yeah. At least he had his respect when he died. That's more than we could say if our dad's died.

That's true. As far as coping mechanisms go to, I feel like. like that's not a bad one to like reach out to wildlife. Yeah. You know, some people connect with nature. Unless it becomes a fatal attraction, then I don't think it is a good coping mechanism. We have to have earned dad's respect with crawling into bear dance. I don't know, dude.

I don't know. It's hard. Okay. So he's all depressed now. But in 2005, a couple nearby rescued a three-month-old hippo from the Val River. which is like a huge river in South Africa. And they kept it for a few months. And then the hippos, once it got to be like about a year old,

got way too big for them to manage on their property. Yeah. So Marius found out about it and he decided he was going to buy it. And like he just couldn't contain his excitement for like getting this new pet. And like apparently he already had a rhino and giraffe on his land. Oh, okay. Like the idea of getting a hippo, he was just like a new man. Do you know how much he bought it for?

I don't know. I'd be interested to hear the going rate of a hippo. Well, by the end of the episode, we'll find out whether you can still ask him or not. Okay. So what do you think he would need for his new pet hippo? Like, what do you think he needs to do? Some kind of, like, big water enclosure. Yeah, so that's what he does.

He builds a huge ditch and fills it with water. And then he buys Humphrey the Hippo. Humphrey? Huh? Humphrey? Did we know that yet, or did you just slip that in there for us? I don't think you told us his name until just now. That's a great name.

Well, I just told you. All right. It's a good name. Just throwing it in. Keep up. Okay. So he goes and buys Humphrey the hippo, who he would feed a ton of apples to.

Apples were Humphrey's favorite food, and the young male hippo bonded to him like a dog. They would go on walks together, Marius would hand feed him, and they would go and lay down next to each other in the sun. Nice. So they were just like best friends right away, right? Were they both excreting blood mucus while they're in the sun? No, Marius would use standard human sunscreen. Okay. But Humphrey would go ahead and do the mutiny.

that for the sun, yeah. Yeah, okay. Makes sense. Good SPF. So, Mario's family was really concerned for his safety, but they were also really conflicted because, like, he was just so happy with his new hippo, and the hippo was really happy with him.

Yeah. But as Humphrey got older, there's signs that the hippo is becoming more wild. Marius kind of ignored him and just focused on the positives, which, you know, that's what everyone tells you to do, right? Just focus on the positives. Yeah, that's true. So I can't blame him for that.

No. So as Humphrey's becoming a young adult, he begins to break out. And one day he broke down their steel fence. No, break out of his enclosure. Oh, okay, yeah. He broke down the steel fence and went to the nearby Vell River, where he was originally found. VAL? I think it's VAL River.

I don't know. That's up to you. It's V-A-A-L. Okay. So I'm going vaal. Vol, sure. VAL. And when escaping, Humphrey would approach people not knowing like that's kind of against the rules for most hippos to just go up to people.

But, you know, he's been raised by people. So he's just going up to everyone he sees. Wes, who is it in our family that, well, whenever we'd say we were going to run away, mom would just say, like, I'll pack you a lunch. Yeah, we'd say we'd run away to Blue Mountain and kill him. rabbits for food and they would be like, okay, we'll pack your bags in a lunch. And we'd be like, ah, wow. She's a funny mom. She is. I wonder if she respects us. So one day, Humphrey escaped and went back to this river, the Valle River, and started going towards a 52-year-old man canoeing with his seven-year-old grandson. So when I read this, Mike,

I immediately thought of you telling me about that license plate border thing that said I'd rather be kayaking. Oh yeah. Yeah, I got pretty worked up about that, didn't that? Yeah. Do you think this guy could have one that says, like, I'd rather be canoeing on his car? Yeah. Would you, like, think. I just never, I don't, I don't believe that he would always rather be doing that, no matter the circumstances, you know? I saw one the other day that said, I'd rather be a triathlete, and that one really through. Is something stopping them? So you're not and you would just rather be that?

Can't afford a bike. Is Humphrey full size at this point? No, he's not full size. He's like a teenager. He's like a couple of years old. So what would you guys do if you're like the grandpa and you're just canoeing with your seven-year-old grandson and you see this hippo coming at you? You'd be scared.

You know that they're a dangerous animal and you would be... Like you wouldn't feel like your canoe. No, you'd be worried. Cano is not a problem for them. And, like, he doesn't know Humphrey's a trained, or like a... A tamed animal. Yeah, kind of a tame hippo. Yeah. So they canoed over to a tree and climbed up the tree.

And then Humphrey stood under the tree for two hours just bumping into the canoe and looking up at him and wouldn't leave. Yeah. And finally, Marius came and he got Humphrey's. Humphrey to leave him alone with an apple. So he just had an apple on him and called Humphrey over and Humphrey went and got the apple. And Marius got a lot of negative attention because of this incident, but he's actually kind of happy about it because he's proud of himself for having a trained hippo.

And he liked all the attention he was getting for it. And this made me wonder, are apples kind of the bear spray for hippos and cassowaries? You think so? You just need an apple? I just think it's like with a horse. If you give a horse a treat, a lot of times you can get them to do what you want him to do. You know, big ungulates like a treat. This incident did make him take it a little more seriously and they electrified all their fences around Humphrey.

And that made it so Humphrey stopped escaping. But then with the new attention, Marius started bringing in camera people to come see the hippo and see how bonded they were. were. So Marius would ride on Humphrey like every single week. And he would even run and jump onto his back as he was getting into the water. And then Humphrey would swim around in his little pond, but he would always keep Marius above water. Like he knew not to go too deep and like they would just ride around in the pond and he'd get wet kind of up to his waist. But he was just riding this hippo around his property. I think I've seen videos and photos of this dude

riding his hippo. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Yeah. It's bad, but it's pretty sweet. His dad would have been real proud of it. Yeah. Really respected him. So he brings a cameraman to like come and film him riding his hippo around. And something about like the extra person there

and the camera made Humphrey more agitated than normal. and Humphrey just kept throwing him off of his back and was acting like a little bit more agitated than normal. So this was where like some red flags started coming up, you know? Yeah. But it's kind of like Humphrey's not just like completely chill with him anymore. So Humphrey's now a five-year-old male hippo. And like adult male hippos get to 3,500 to like 9,000 pounds.

This is a big old hippo, man. Yeah, you know. Oh, yeah. And one day in 2010, Humphrey charged Johann with his mouth open. Johann was just walking by some bushes and then seized this hippo with his mouth wide open charging at him. And he didn't make contact, but it really scared Johann and, like, there's some real tension there. Then a little later, Humphrey full-on attacked Johann and threw him 10 feet in the air. Marius was 100 yards away

and he ran up to help after hearing Johann scream for help and he ran up as Johann was being bit by Humphrey on the ground and he got the hippo off of him and then they took Johan to the hospital and on the whole drive there Johann was in a ton of pain

his back hurt his leg hurt and they get to the hospital he has a broken pelvis from the bite Oh my gosh Marius just like feels awful because like this hippo he said I'll bring it up later by like this hippo he treats him as a son so like he's super conflicted he's crying he just feels so

bad that he didn't prevent this attack and then johan feel isn't terrible because like of all this grief his uncle feels and they both more than like being upset that he got attacked they're both just upset that the whole thing happened so he treats humphrey as his son yeah so do you think humphrey was just trying to earn his dad's respect is this just a Big circle of sons trying to earn your dad's respect. Maybe he thought Johann was kind of taking his role as. Trying to take over. Jealousy.

Or he was just like, dad, look how far I can chucked Johann up in the air. Yeah, yeah. So Johan ended up having permanent leg damage from the attack. Yeah. You're still able to like walk around, but it's just never been the same. Yeah. Broken pelvis is not a joke. Well, they got, I mean, they have a ton of, we're not going to go through all the facts today.

I bet you there's some jokes about that. Yeah, for sure. We're not going to go through all the facts, but if you go back to our other hip-po episode, we talk about their jaw strength. They can have up to 20-inch-long canines. They're amazing animals. And like Jeff mentioned, they're absolutely massive. They're the third biggest terrestrial mammal.

So they're still counted as like a terrestrial mammal. So they're only like- And I got some facts coming up. Okay. Great. Cool. I won't get too deep into them. Those two facts come up.

So yeah, that's a good tease. for Jeff's upcoming facts. Okay. So then after that, Marius is like pretty concerned about his pet hippo. So he goes to a local person named Tony Jobert, and he's a local hippo owner. And Tony told him that, you know, you have a five-year-old bull hippo. So like he wants to mate, and you have to buy him a female hippo and just leave it to be a hippo. So wait, his solution was just to buy another hippo and then just let them go and be hippos.

And also he just went to like the local other hippo owner. Yeah. Yeah. The guy asked him like, do you have space for like another hippo? And Marius is like, yeah. And then he's like, well, yeah, you need like a female one. You know that's exactly what Marius wanted to hear too. Yeah.

Yep. I got space. No, because Mario says you don't understand. I swim with the hippo. And like Tony's telling them like, you gotta just let it be a hippo, you know? Yeah. So Tony's like, oh, you're crazy. You can't swim with a hippo.

It'll kill you. So even the other hippo guy is a little shaken by. Tony who owns hippos is like, you're crazy. Yeah. Stop swimming with your hippo. Really quick. Just a quick thing that I want to interject. I think it's important that people understand the difference between.

And we've talked about this a little bit in the past. domestication and simply taming an animal. So if you tame a wild animal, you're, that particular animal, you've kind of taught it good behavior. But at some point, it's natural hormones and its natural behaviors and everything might still trigger and it might still decide to revert back to like a completely wild state. Domestication is very different. It's like over generations and generations and generations, we've selected for particular attributes that we want in an animal. And over a long time, we pulled those attributes out to where it's like pretty much a different animal. Like it's become domesticated.

We have picked the nicest animal of that litter and then the nicest of the next litter. And we just kept doing that until they were domesticated. And so it's important that people remember when you're just taming a wild animal. It's just very surface level. That animal has learned what it needs to do to like get a reward or to like get some attention from you. But it's not domesticated. it's tamed, and it could very easily slip back into some really aggressive natural behaviors. Yeah, but Humphrey was like, you know, he's pretty cuddly.

He's an exception. He was getting those apples. We'll see what I have. Yeah. All right. But yeah, so to rewind, because I really like the response here, so Tony says, like, you're crazy, you can't swim with the hippo, it'll kill you. What do you guys think Marius told him in response to that? I have no idea.

Well, he told him, I will never stop swimming with my hippo. Okay. You know, I like a man of conviction. Yeah. I bet that ends up being true. And then Tony says, he knows that Marius is going to get killed, and Marius says that Humphrey's just a lovable, gentle giant. Okay.

So then Humphrey escapes again, and he decides to go ahead and kill six different cattle from this cattle. from this cattle owner nearby. Wow, that's not typical hippo behavior. Yeah. This cattle owner gets really pissed, and he wants Marius to sell the hippo. He's like, you can't handle this thing.

And Mike West just said, killing cattle, that's really, what is that? Like, why isn't that hippo behavior? They're not carnivores. Like, they don't eat meat. They don't care to kill cattle. Like, they are famous for, like, raiding crops. So why do you think he would have killed cattle?

Probably just because he's, like, a hippoers. that's been kept in an enclosure all of his life. He's, like, getting stressed out with the situation. Yeah, he's just not acting like a normal hippo. And then Humphrey also reportedly chased golfers at a local country club when he escaped. So Marius finally gets someone called on him to come and investigate it. Uh-huh. Wildlife Inspector Herman Jordan was called, and what would you guys do if your strategy is like,

you want to keep your pet hippo? and the wildlife inspector comes. I don't know. Just hide them and put him in the closet so they couldn't find him. Well, Marius's idea was to show him that he could ride up on. Oh, no.

Oh, Marius. No. And so, sorry, I keep saying, listeners, I'm mixing up Marius and Marius, but it's Marius. So he's like, I'm going to show you, like he's like my son. I'm going to swim with him.

And Herman's like, no, you're not. And if you ever do that again, I'll prosecute you. You need to take heed of this animal or it's going to kill you. So Marius is quoted as saying, Humphrey's like a son to me. He's just like a human. There's a relationship between Humphrey and me, and that's what some people don't understand. They think you can only have a relationship with dogs, cats, and domestic animals. But I have a relationship with the most dangerous animal. in Africa. So that's what Marius said. And, you know, that kind of just shows you his perspective on his hippo, which is really unique. It's getting a little too deep. I don't doubt that he had a

relationship with it. But even if, like, you do have, if you had a dog that weighed 5,000 pounds, you would still, even if you, like, had a great relationship with your dog, you would have to be like, oh, yeah, I have a great relationship with my dog, but it's also 5,000 pounds and it could kill me at any moment, you know? Yeah. And like, one thing he just mentioned, Jeff, like, the most dangerous animal and Africa thing, I want to come back to that later. So I want to put a little pin in that.

Yeah, do it. Sure. Okay. But not right now. Not right now. No, we're putting a pin in it. Okay. So after all this attention, people coming to investigate it, Marius tells his family,

he's planning on moving Humphrey to a game farm. And then, like, the day that he told him he's going to move him comes, and he's just kind of like ignoring. everyone in changing the subject when they bring it up like when bill about doesn't want to hand the ring to gandolph exactly it was humphrey right there in his pocket really that's a really good example but there's no gandolph in the story to like really call him out on his shit you know everyone needs a gandolph and he's that's still his plan but he just decides to push it back so johan begins to like really dread helping out on the farm just because he has a really bad feeling about everything, probably partially because he's been, like, attacked

and bitten really hard by this hippo. Right. And just watching Marius, like, hand-feed the hippo still. And now everyone watches from a really safe distance, but to watch someone you love doing that, you know, he's starting to get really scared. And this hippo is starting to not really let anyone else get close to it. So I'm going to take a quick little break here. to give you guys Jeff's six fun hippo facts.

Okay. Oh, great. So, number one, hippos are really big. Number two. That's pretty fun. Hippos have a lot of friends. Number three, hippos have big teeth. Number four, hippos have cute ears they can wiggle.

Number five, they eat a lot. Number six, they smell poop. Was this peer-reviewed? Where'd this information come from? So with number one, like Wes already mentioned, they're the third largest land mammals. So which ones are the bigger ones? Elephants and white rhinos. Right.

Hippos have lots of friends. Normally schools of hippos have 10 to 30 members, but some schools have up to 200 members. So this is probably part of why Humphrey's getting so agitated is they are very social animals. Hippos have big old teeth. So hippo teeth are much sharper than most other herbivores. and they grow really long and that's to help them fight during like mating.

Yeah. Pigs are some of their closest relatives and they also have like big tusks that they use for fighting and stuff. So yeah. Hippos have cute ears they can wiggle. I don't have any more information on that one.

Well, so an interesting thing about that. It's actually a good one. If you look at a hippo, you see that their eyes, their nose and their ears are all like on top of their head. And that's so that they can float in the water. The thing about hippos being in the water, I'm going to let you get back to your facts, but this is one I wanted to bring up. No, yeah.

They're in the water mostly to keep their skin wet and to keep out of the sun. They're not really getting food out of the water. It's not their main spot for doing anything aside from like sun avoidance. And at nighttime, they actually leave the water to go eat. So like they're not eating. Do they sleep in the water when they're just like hanging out in the water? Yeah. And a really cool thing about their sleep patterns is they'll fall asleep.

And they don't float. They actually sink. They're not swimmers. And they'll sink down. And then they have this automatic response where their body, they just like push themselves back up for air. And they do that without thinking while they're sleeping, which is really cool. Well, that's really cool.

Yeah. So they can like sink down. And their bodies just automatically like push themselves back up. Yeah. Wow. But the thing that people don't realize much about hippos is that they eat almost all of their food on land. And they'll eat a lot of food every given.

night. They go out and they eat like 80 kilograms of food on any given night, which is a lot. Yeah, they eat 80 kilograms of grass each night. But actually compared to cattle, that's less percentage-wise for body size. So they actually don't eat a ton. Are you sure it's kilograms? It might be pounds. I can't remember. But it's a lot. Okay. It might be 80 pounds. I think you're right. It's 80 pounds. I mean for a three to 10,000 pound animal, I wouldn't rule really anything out yeah and like for them that's like one point something percent of their body weight and like cows will eat 2.5 percent of their body weight every day so they still eat a ton but they're not it's not that much considering how big they are yeah love cows all right jeff sorry go ahead continue number six they

smell poop hippos will smell each other's poop to determine if other hippos are friends or foes so they can tell that by the way their poop smells cool okay west you have any other hippo facts you want I'm going to throw it? I have a bunch, but I'm sure we're going to do more hippo episodes in the future, so I'm not going to bore you with them. I wonder what exactly what it is that they smell in the poo that makes them determine that it's a friend. What do you think?

I don't know. Yeah. I know the big males will like poop and then they flick their tail back and forth and it sprays it all over, and that's like a dominance thing. And that's probably to spread all their poop around so that all the other males are like, oh, this is the big guy. So it's like spread and scent around. Yeah.

It's kind of like that Dave Matthews band Bus Driver. Yeah. Yeah. That's how Dave Matthews band. That's how they end every show. It's new fans. Started their authority over the whole city of Chicago. I guess, yeah.

That's kind of how I feel after listening to Dave Matthews band. You heard the mayors suck up to him. That's true. That's all because of the smell of their poop. Yeah. And they just dump their shit on like 120 of his citizens. All right. So back to the story.

Okay. One day in November 2011, Marius went to the water and started whistling and calling for Humphrey. He was biting an apple and wanting to feed Humphrey the rest of this apple he's biting. But something seemed wrong to Johann as Humphrey came towards him. Henny, a farm worker, was also with Johann and said Humphrey came at Marius with his ears pinned back. Wes, why is that bad? It's just a sign of a grass. It's the hippo telling him that he's not happy.

To get a little more aerodynamic. There's a few other things they do. Like him running at Johan earlier with his mouth open, like if they open their mouths or if they pin their ears back or if they grunt or make a bunch of different vocalizations, those are all signals from a hippo that it's not happy with you. So Henny and Johan start calling at him to get away because Humphrey looks aggressive.

And Johan got a real cold chilled going all the way down his spine. He says, it happened in a blink of an eye. Humphrey grabbed Marius and brought him into the water, biting him multiple times. Marius shouted Humphrey's name once while being bitten, but then was suddenly taken into the water. Henny went straight into the water to help and called to Johann who quickly followed. They grabbed Marius under each arm and dragged his body onto shore. Johann then felt for a pulse and he thought he felt a pulse and he had some hope but now that he's like looking back on it he thinks that that might have been just like wishful thinking because the paramedics quickly arrived and they pronounced Marius dead at the scene and with the autopsy they thought he died pretty instantly wow so then Humphrey was shot by the family and all of them did. Tony the other.

The firing squad. Did they blindfold him? I picture one gun with all of their fingers on it. All I read was Humphrey was shot. Okay. And then Tony, the other hippo owner, was upset that they killed Humphrey because he has a female hippo named Jessica. And he seems to think that he's a pretty responsible hippo owner

that's not going to get eaten by his hippos. Yeah. So that's the story. of what happened to Marius Ells in South Africa. Do you think Marius, how he said he always wanted to be swimming with Humphrey? Do you think like a little bit of him was still inside Humphrey when Humphrey died so he was still swimming with him? He's still swimming with him today, I bet.

So yeah, well, no, I guess they both died, huh? You know, Johann's pretty brave to like, to get thrown up in the air by this hippo and have his pelvis crushed and everything. and then to be able to jump back in the water to save Marius is like this henny dude too. As he was like went right in there. That was like his first reaction. Yeah. Well,

the moral of this story is don't have pet hippos, right? Yeah, I guess so. Although it did look pretty cool watching him ride his hippo. I don't think it's worth it. I think you get rid of them once they turn three. That's the moral I got out of it. I don't think that's fair. to the hippo.

Do you guys have in questions or comments? Yeah, I did want to bring up something that West just mentioned really quickly in passing that we covered a little more thoroughly on our last episode. But in cartoons, I grew up thinking hippo teeth were like kind of sawed off little nubs. But 20-inch-long tusk slash fangs, it's pretty wild how, I mean, obviously anything that big is going to be dangerous, but they have some serious weapons too in their mouth. It's crazy, too, because I feel like most animals with teeth that big, the teeth don't stay inside of their mouth when their mouth is closed. But these teeth fit up into their upper lip when they close their mouth.

Yeah, they kind of like fold into there. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years.

Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. Seasite for details. Is now a good time for me to talk about the hippos being the most dangerous animal in Africa thing? Yeah. I have a two-parter thing and I'm going to talk about Pablo Escobar's hippos. Okay. But that's kind of a conservation type thing.

So we'll just, we'll let you run with this first. Okay. Yeah. So while we're talking about hippos in Africa, I think we talked about this in our last episode, and I had a really hard time figuring out how many people hippos actually kill every year. And if you just type that into Google, like how many people are hippos killing, the number that always comes up is 500. And that's a lot of people.

Like if that's true, then yes. That's like the low end of it. Right. But, okay, so we're going to get into this. If that's true, then they are the most dangerous herbivabobab. war for sure in Africa and one of the more dangerous animals. Crocodiles kill a lot more people without a doubt, but hippos would be number two if that was the case. I really dug into this, and I completely avoid any kind of popular literature. I just went for scientific articles,

and I think I've solved this for us, and it's not what these popular articles say, and I want people to think about, like, there's a lot of misinformation about animals out there. Like, people think that polar bears are relentless man-eaters and there's just a lot of things that people have kind of like decided to agree upon even though they're not true and this hippos killing that many people is definitely one of those things i'm not saying that hippos aren't one of the most dangerous animals in africa but they definitely don't kill 500 people a year so i'm poured over all this scientific literature crocodiles are without a doubt of like large animals they're the number one killer in africa in a lot of the case studies I looked at.

So the best information for this sort of thing is case studies where they'd look at a certain country. They'd take like a 10-year spread or something and they'd see how many people died in those years. And in those case studies, crocodiles, elephants, and lions often killed more people than hippos. So then I was kind of like not knowing what to believe. And so I decided to look at the countries that have the largest hippo populations. And Zambia is the country that has the largest hippo populations. population. They have 40,000 hippos, which is roughly 32% of all the hippos in Africa. So there's about 125,000 hippos in Africa, and Zambia has 40,000 of them. So you would think if any country

is going to be responsible for a lot of hippo deaths, it's probably going to be Zambia. So I found a case study, and they looked at human deaths from wildlife from 2002 to 2008. Crocodiles killed roughly three times the amount of people as hippos, and hippos and elephants killed roughly the same amount of people. So in that seven years, 2002 to 2008, so there's seven total years there, there are 65 people killed by hippos and 63 people killed by elephants. So I want to do just a little bit of math here really quick on those numbers. So 65 people died over a seven-year period in Zambia. So that comes out to about 9.2 people per year over that seven-year period. As I said later, about 32% of the roughly 125,000 hippos call Zambia home.

So if 500 people a year were actually killed by hippos, you would expect to have a large chunk, like about a third of those 500 people, come from Zambia because about a third of the hippos live there. So 32% of 500 is 160. So if 500 people were actually dying each year from hippos, it wouldn't be crazy to assume that it would be about 160 people, that would be killed by hippos in Zambia. But even if you wanted to just be conservative,

so we said it should be around 160, even if you were to knock that in half and say, okay, just 80 people a year should be killed in Zambia, this study showed it's about nine people a year. So it's way less than what you would expect. And then there's another study in Mozambique, a really populated country,

that showed 12 deaths from hippos over a two-year period, so six deaths a year. So I think this 500 number is complete bullshit. Like, I really don't think it's anywhere near that. I can't find anything in any of the literature that suggests that hippos are more dangerous than elephants or even close to what crocodiles do. So they're really not the most dangerous animal in Africa. They're not responsible for that many deaths.

That being said, they're an incredibly dangerous animal. They might be like top four. They're very territorial. They're for sure top four. Mount Rushmore are most dangerous. Yeah. So in Africa, as far as large animals. go, we're not counting like spiders and snakes and mosquitoes and stuff.

As far as large animals go, it's crocodiles. And then the next three are either elephants, hippos, or lions. Those are the other three that are responsible for a lot of deaths. But none of them besides crocodiles are even close to 500 deaths a year. Interesting. So if you ever hear that thing or if you ever hear hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa, that's not true. They're not.

They're territorial aggressive animals, but they're not the most. dangerous animal in Africa. What I've heard is they're the most dangerous land animal. They're not. That's the thing. Crocodiles aren't land animals. Elephants, in every case study I read, aside from the one in Zambia, elephants were responsible for more deaths by a good margin, usually like twice as many. So yeah, they are dangerous. Like, don't get me wrong. They're super dangerous. But that 500 number, I think we can throw that completely out the window. Well, myth busted. Myth busted. That's been sitting with me since our last. Hippo episode and it's something I couldn't stop thinking about.

No, I was really curious. So thanks. Yep. Okay. So I'm going to go into our conservation and I'm getting real specific on this one. I mentioned it in our last hippo episode, but this time I looked into it a lot more. And as the listeners may or may not know, there's a pretty decent hippo population in Columbia. and it's really random and I'm going to explain why they're there and like how they're doing

and what the country is doing about it. So I watched a documentary called The Hunt for Pablo's Hippos. And in Hacienda, Napolese, Pablo Escobar, one of like the biggest drug lords in the history of the world at his height of power. He was like the sixth richest man in the world. So he made this huge playhouse farm ranch out in Hacienda, Napolays. And he had like... I'm just picturing a huge playhouse.

It seriously was... There's like a ton of like dinosaur collection there. Where he just has like a ton of dinosaurs made out of cement that are like triceratopsuses, like stabbing another dinosaur and stuff. And it's like, I don't know. It's like funny, like little kid stuff. but he starts collecting stuff and then he starts an animal collection and he gets elephants he gets giraffes he gets like ostrich monkeys a bunch of different animals and then he gets four hippos

which were like his favorite animals of all of his animals and i read or like there's this guy on the documentary that took care of the hippos for him and he said he just went up there and like asked for a job and Pablo gave him a job and he's like that's how everyone did it. If you wanted a job, he would give you a job. Imagine walking up to him and you're like, hey, could I get a job? And he's like, yeah, you're going to take care of my hippos. I'd be so stoked.

So Pablo then opened his zoo to the public free of charge and there's like a ton of people who went and like took pictures with his animals. And one of them's name was. Yeah, I was going to ask if the hippos had names. Her name was Gina. I'm trying to read my note here. Oh, is this a visitor? We're just going to go.

It's Gina Serna. I'm just going to go by her first name. The rest of the episode, though, Gina. And she went there and got a picture with his monkey when she was like a little girl. And the reason she's important is she's now in charge of all the hippos in Colombia. Like the government put her in charge of it. So like she went to Pablo's farm. Like everyone really loved Pablo Escobar.

before the drug war started. But then, like, the drug war started, he got super violent, and Gina's father was actually killed by one of Pablo Escobar's bombs in an apartment. So in 1993, Pablo Escobar was killed. A lot of his animals at his zoo died, and then a lot were given to actual zoos. But the hippos were just left alone in the ponds, and, like, they didn't do anything with them.

Do you think Gina had the respect of her dad before he died? I do, okay. She was pretty young, so it might have been hard at that point, you know. She didn't have enough time. That monkey picture wasn't enough? I don't know. So the hippos were left alone in the ponds. They started to breed, and then they trampled down the fences and escaped in, like, 2009.

And part of the reason that the hippos escaped is like, hippos are really social animals, but the big bull hippos will like assert dominance over the other males. So that will like prompt some of the males to want to leave and like find new areas. So once these hippos started growing up, some of them break through the fences and like left. So yeah, hippos are like breaking out and then there's one huge hippo called Pepe that broke out. and like was terrorizing fishermen. There you go. They did have names. Pepe.

It also killed six different cattle, so a lot like comfy there. I don't know why they do that. Territorial maybe, I don't know. Yeah. Then like the army went after Pepe and killed the hippo. No. And a bunch of Colombians went in the streets and like protested the hippo being killed because the picture went viral.

Mm-hmm. So a judge ruled that you can't kill. kill hippos. It's illegal to kill hippos. So that becomes the law in Colombia now is like, no one can kill hippos. So now Gina is called to like get control of the hippos. She calls this guy in South Africa named Chris Hobgirk. And he's just like has a lot of experience with hippos in South Africa. At this point, there's 30 plus hippos in the lakes in the town of Naples, which is like right where Pablo was and there's just like this community of houses and they all love the hippos but there are like hippos there's videos of hippos walking through the streets in like towns in

Columbia and it's like it's pretty crazy so gina and chris set up cameras the first day chris gets there and they want to figure out what these hippos are doing if they're leaving like the fenced area if they're going and like breaking free and the first night they see eight hippos. hippos leave the fenced area and are eating grass. So it's like, okay, so these hippos are like out of control. Right. And then they go to this little town a few miles away and they go to the Korkana River. There's this local fisherman who says like, oh yeah, I see hippos where I fish on the river.

And he's like, I'll go take you to see him. And like he drives him down this river for a long time. And then they see this big old bull hippo. and then they also see a female hippo with a baby hippo and these are all just hippos out in the wild in the river right so this is like the first time anyone's ever like filmed hippos out in the wild in columbia that aren't just in this naples area right it's like the news dress of world movie yeah jeanah's like we got a real problem on our hands this is the biggest invasive alien animal ever in the history of the world

world that's documented. So it's really unprecedented that, you know, these hippos are breeding. Small things, not megafauna that take over. Yeah. But like Columbia is perfect for hippos. Like in Africa, a lot of times females won't breed if there's a drought and they'll go like three or four years without having a baby. But in Columbia, there's a ton of rainfall so these female hippos can have babies all the

and they can have up to 10 babies in their lifetime. Yeah, and that's the other thing. There's just like tons of grass everywhere. So that's the thing about invasive species is like in their natural environments, there's like a system of safeguards that have kind of existed to control their population at the right levels. You know, so they fit in just the right way in their ecosystem. But when you put them somewhere new, those things don't exist. And it could be really bad for them and they just immediately die out.

Or it could just be like the best situation. ever for them. Yeah. And they just like proliferate like crazy. Like pythons in Florida. Exactly. Like no natural predators, tons of food, great habitat. So yeah.

And the problem is they're killing the animals they already lived there. Right. These farmers in this river said they used to see manatees in the river and they haven't seen manatees the last few years. And then a bunch of the fish are being killed off from their feces of the hippo and stuff like that. Yeah. So, like, some of the people don't like them, but honestly, most of the people in Columbia seem to just love that they have hippos now, which is just crazy.

So there's been hippos filmed in the streets of the town of Eldor Dahl. And then apparently someone was saying that in the documentary, they interview someone who claims that there's a black market for hippos and that people can buy hippos for $300. Oh, my gosh. You serious? And then he tells them about. this guy who bought hippos and they like go to his property and there's just two hippos there. Jeez.

Yeah. So it's like getting really out of control. You know, how can you control the population when there's like a whole black market for it? Right. So in the end of the documentary, they trapped these hippos into an old cattle fence thing. And it's just a mom and its baby. They use like a trail of carrots to lure them in there. and then they trinklyzed the hippos, which I guess was like super dangerous because hippos don't really do well with sedatives.

And also it's hard to penetrate their skin. And also hippos will go into the water. And like both these hippos did. And then they could drown if they're tranquilized and like go into the water. But they tranquilize them both. And she, so Gina's a vet. And she actually cut open a hippo. and it took her two hours just to get through the skin.

And then she ended up sterilizing the young baby female hippo. Oh, yeah. And then they, like, drive 30 hours and take this baby hippo to his zoo. But, like, it's this huge process just to sterilize one hippo. A single one, yeah. Right. Yeah. And in 2020, there was 60 plus unsterized hippos in Columbia.

So I just looked it up. And in 2022, they think now that there's 133 hippos in Colombia. So they're like spreading really fast. That's from Alexander von Humboldt, a biological researcher. Yeah. Okay. And then in March, Colombia finally declared hippos an invasive animal. Good.

Yeah. So now the plan is still to sterilize every hippo. and watching this documentary The Hunt for Pablo's Hippos, it was just like they were doing everything with the smallest amount of resources. Like to pick the hippo up to transport it, they just got like 30 people to lift it up. Yeah.

They need like cranes. They need real like things to transport these hippos. They need like ways to capture them and sterilize them, you know? Maybe now that they're an invasive species, they'll have more resources to do. that. Yeah. So, I'm out. The last I saw, they have 24 sterilized hippos. Okay. So they're making progress, but like, you got to do it quick. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so that was my research on Pablo Escobar and his hippos. And I just think it's like, that's super interesting. Like, can you

imagine if they like get into like a Venezuela or like start spreading through South America? They need to, they need to take care of them now because that could do a lot of dance. There's like hippo statues all through Columbia. Yeah, whether or not the public loves them. Like, that's just something you have to take care of. And that can be something they can remember forever, but it's too destructive. All right. So that's all the info I have for this episode.

That was great, Jeff. Great. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. So now we'll go into categories. I want to start out with the Anaconda scale. Notice how I said that right? Yeah.

Nice job. I nailed it. So Marius, where would you rank him on your Andaconda scale? You said it wrong. That's fine. So I'm all mixed up now. John Void is all the way on the bad end of the spectrum. Yeah, he's bad.

But he's who I'm picking for Marius. Me too, I think. Without a doubt. Especially where he got people close to him in danger. He endangered other people. He thought he could tame a wild animal. And he ended up paying for it with his life. He's a John boy.

Sucks that it happened to him. Who would you give more ouches to Marius or Johann? Oh, are we doing ouches? Marius. Yeah, I'm going to move on to ouches. I think I'm giving Marius seven outchies. It sounded like, I mean, he died, but it sounded like it was really quick. And then Johan, I'm going to give seven as well.

Femers are supposed to be the most painful bone to break. I've heard. It was his pelvis, though. Oh, it was pelvis. I shoot. I mix that up. Well, that would suck, too. I almost feel like Johann's pain is worse.

He had to watch his friend die, too, or his relative or whatever. Yeah. Don't forget about a lifetime of emotional damage that Marius died pretty fast. Yeah. Marius. Added the hands of his best friend. Yeah. Oh, that's, I would say Marius at five.

Five. And Johan said. He died. Did I forget? He died so fast. Five is what we've given people for, like, breaking an arm. He died. And he died.

I'm sticking to it. I'm going to give Marius an 8 and Johann a 5. Okay, I'm giving them both sevens. Okay. What would your guys ideal pet be if there's like no moral implications and you have like unlimited resources and land? A red panda. Because this one was pretty sweet to me. I want a red panda.

Okay. I don't want anything that's big enough that it could kill someone. Or that would be expensive. Well, I guess financial is not an issue here, but still feeding a huge animal all the time would kind of... Yeah. Well, yeah, that's why I'd put that caveat in. Right. Yeah.

It's still a lot of work, though. It'd kind of just be a lot of work. Yeah, that's why I want a red panda. I feel like it just wants to sleep. Dude, I want a hip-blow now. That just acts like my dog. All right. I want a condor.

Yeah, condor. Okay. Because I feel like they'd be able to take care of themselves. Plus, like they'd smell really bad. Would they? I don't know much about it. Like, vultures smell terrible. I just like the movie.

condor, man. But condors aren't vultures, but okay, I accept your, I accept your, thanks to your answer. And then because of Pablo's hippos, we're going to do favorite pop culture drug dealer. All right. I don't know what this says about me, but I thought of so many, so fast. So I must have a lot of good. Yeah. So I'm just going to go with the most recent drug dealer that I've really gotten into. So there's recently finished trilogy of books called the Greenbone Saga. and there's a crime syndicate family called the Cowles, and they, I can already see West, it's glazing over and checking out.

My eyes are glazing over. Anyway, they're a drug dealing crime. Leave it up to Mike to pick a reference that no one's ever heard of. Books are good. I recommend them. All right. Fonda Lee. Great job.

I'm picking, I picked a comedy one and a serious one. So for comedy, I picked the duo of James Franco and Danny McBride in Pineapple Express, which I think is one of the funniest movies ever. and then I picked That would just be James Franco. Why? Danny McBride's a drug dealer in medicine? Oh, you're right.

I'm sorry, I was thinking of the other dude. And then I'm picking Avon Barksdale for my serious drug dealer. Yeah. From the wire. I thought of someone from the wire, but it was Marlowe Stanfield. I love Avon. Yeah, I don't know why. Yeah.

They're all great. That's an amazing show. I'm going to go with just personal. choice. I'm going, well, like, I don't know how to say it. A biased choice. Okay. I'm going with the guy down the street. Wagner. Pablo Escobar in Narcos. Yeah. Because I met the actor Wagner Mora and he's the coolest dude ever. He listened to our daddy daughter date episode on the podcast and told me that was really intense when I sent it to him. Oh, cool. But he's like the coolest dude ever. He bought me a bunch of lobster sandwiches. He's so great in that old, too.

And, like, he was amazing as Pablo Escobar. Wait, he bought you a bunch of lobster sandwiches. Yeah. Okay. That's what it takes to your Jeff's vote. Yeah, I want to shout out Scarface. That was probably my runner-up. Tony.

All right. I also want to shout out Cain from Robocop 2, which, I admit, is an inferior movie. But Tom Noonan is incredible in that film. Oh, my. What about, like, Tony Soprano? Yeah. He's not really a drug dealer. though. I mean, he is.

Probably, yeah. Okay, that's a stretch, though. Ow, he sells drugs. Yeah, but they do so many other things. It's organized crime. I don't know. Sure. I also like Brad Dureth.

What's his name? Something Wyatt in, this just came to me. I've been watching Miami Vice a lot lately. You're such a Brad Dyrf fan. I love Brad Dyerf. Yeah, I thought of him. That's my all-time favorite show, probably. Lara.

I stand by my choices. We can just keep listing drug dealers. Yeah, there's a good, there's a lot. Let's do it, I'm in. Ricardo Diaz. Listener question. GTA vice. Mike, you want to start us off with Patreon?

I do. We got a couple. So I want to double up for Nora. She has one question I thought would be nice for all of us to get into, and then one maybe more for Wes. But first question they have is, how do you get out or into pants or sweatshirts slash shirts that are inside out or when you're exhausted? Do you rassel it or fold it?

or pull it out neatly, or do you have a dance to get out of it? How do you deal with that situation? To get my sweats off, I just, like, get it to where my, like, feet are above the heat, my heels are on top of it. Then I just walk backwards until they, like, come off. Oh, yeah. That's a nice trick. And then while you're doing that, you can take your sweatshirt off, and then it's, like, two birds with one stone.

Are you, like, a floor, a floor-closed guy, or do you try to put them away and be a little neat? Half and half. Depends. Some days I'm neat. Some days I'm four clothes. It's pretty easy when you're like taking your clothes off because all you have to do is throw them in the basket. Yeah.

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but I just kind of. There's a lot. I pull my shirt off from the bottom. Yeah. And then I also just take my pants off from the waist. That's weird. That's crazy, dude. That's how I do it.

It's pretty normal, I feel like. Okay. Second part of the question. And maybe Wes, you have some insight on this. You guys mentioned that the rabies vaccine for humans can be like $10K plus. Why or how is it cheaper for house cats and dogs? Yeah, so a little distinction here. The 10K plus is after you've been bitten.

It's a different treatment after you've already been bitten by something and you suspect you have rabies. That's not necessarily like the vaccine you're receiving. If you just go get it now. If you get a vaccine preventative, it's less. It's still really expensive. I still think you're paying like in the thousands for it, but it's a lot less than if you've already been bitten by something.

But I think the reason it's so much more expensive for people is because they make it from like an immunoglobulin. Like they make it from human blood and it's really expensive to make it from that to like separate all the parts and to do this process to make the rabies vaccine. And for animals, for whatever reason, it's just much easier. I think there's no like kind of FDA oversight and they can just make it from the cheapest, most accessible kind of components. But for humans, they have all these crazy rules that they have to go by,

and so it gets really expensive. Dude, it's such a scam that so many humans are just like really generous and give their blood for free. And then like when you need it, you have to like pay for it. I know. The biggest scam is we're talking to the U.S. here. Other countries, you can get rabies vaccines for free or like for very little. And if you get bitten by an animal that you suspect,

to be rabid, they'll, like, treat you for free, too. This is an American problem. This isn't in other places. Yeah. I got some Instagram questions. Okay. From Nick Greeny, if you were to pick an animal for each other's personalities, what would they be?

Mike would kind of be a horse. Pretty loyal. Loyal. Yeah. Get out of here. Loyal. I think I would actually pick a bear for Mike. He could get a little wild.

A bear. Mike likes sleeping. No, for Mike. Oh, for Mike. He likes sleeping. He like can be he can get really angry really quickly for the most part he's like really fun to be around though and like but he's also like likes a dark spot just to sleep and hang out. I do kind of like binge eat too. You know there's a big bullet berries in front of me.

I'm working my way through him and once I might go see turtle for Mike. Why? Because he loves swimming and he's pretty chill. Okay. For Jeff I would say slothy. I think I would say. Yeah. Like a slothy.

is the one I think of. No, it's because I was animated as one. Yeah, that might be it. I like that. Sloss are sweet. But it's not like your... That's like my nickname growing up. It's, I don't think it's...

It's a little offensive. It doesn't mean you're slow, like, mentally, but I just think, like... Kind of does. No, they're not slow mentally. They're just, like, kind of slow moving. You don't think they're mentally slow? They're probably pretty dumb. You think they're, like, thinking really fast as they move one...

I don't think they're more mentally slow than, like, other animals. I was thinking Sea Turtle for you, Joe. But for Wes, I'm going with a fox because he's curious. They're usually, I don't know, I think foxes are usually depicted as being like kind of sharp, witted. Is that true? Is that a thing? Yeah. Yeah.

I'll go with a koala because he's kind of a bear, but he's a small bear. Tons of chlamydia, too. Not a bear. All right. From Andy Scarebear, what are you supposed to do in a dinosaur encounter? Jurassic World feels inaccurate I don't know You just hold your hand out

I think it's accurate Or don't move if it's a T-Rex Yeah just hold your hand out and be Chris Pratt Just watch the movies It explains it all dude Stand in front of a freezer door And then slam it when you trick them into running inside

Oh yeah like a mirror door Get the mirror out From NISTay What's up with bears and logs I saw a bear the other day digging through a log. Oh, good question. So a lot of times they'll rip apart logs, like dead logs, because that's a spot where ants are going to lay their larva

or where there's going to be termites or other bugs for them to eat. So generally, they're ripping them up to get it bugs. That's almost for sure what it was doing, ripping it up to get some sweet bugs. Grubes. Eat up those bugs. Yep. Chubby little bugs. Yeah.

Full of juice. Like in line from. Boy, I would. I'm so jealous of those bears, you know those bugs. But we can just, I feel like we won't have the same answer. So I'm still asking it. From Mayor Evan, favorite Hollywood movie animal attack. Mine's probably the bear attack and the Revenant.

Yeah. It's just really true to, it's really true to form. It's like really accurate. It's thrilling. It's scary. That's probably what I would pick. They did a pretty good job with the CG bear, which is rare. So that's, yeah, I think that's what I'll go with.

It's a rare bear. According to Wes's words. I'm going with Jaws eating quint. I think that'll always be my answer to this. I don't know if it'll ever get unthrowned. I'm trying to think if there's ever an animal that hits someone in the balls in a movie. I'm sure there is. Yeah.

Didn't Steve Zon get punched in the balls by that raccoon? What was that movie? Yeah. I'm pretty sure. What was that movie called? The one with like Jason Biggs. Saving Silverman. Yeah, it was Saving Silverman.

Yeah. Yeah, that's mine catch. Sure. The raccoon attack and saving silver. It's a deep pole. All right. And then for hippos, how much you guys like it? How many claws and how much you like it?

I can't remember what I gave them last time, but they're not super high for me. Like, I'm probably going to say, I'll say seven claws. And the reason they're that high is because I really like seeing them in zoos. I think they're a really cool animal to see, like, where they have this. tanks that you can see under the water and stuff. And they're just because they are so dangerous and cool, I'll give them a seven. But generally, I don't think I'd be that into them. When I saw them in Africa, they weren't like a highlight for me. Oh, really? I was going to say that maybe seeing him in the wild would be a pretty cool experience. They kind of just were like chilling in the water.

I got a really cool video of a bird standing on one and it looks like it's just standing on a rock and then all of a sudden the hippo like rises out of the water and you realize it's standing on a hippo. You got a picture of that? A video. Oh, a video, yeah. I was going to say, that's like some Harry Potter technology that you have. Yeah, for some reason I've kind of come around on them. I ranked them pretty low, but I'm going to give them five claws this time,

and I think that's a step up for me. Okay. Jeff? I'm also bumping them up. You were already. How? To 11? To a 10.

Wow. Yeah. And I'm putting them, they were 25 overall for me. and I'm putting them at 16. All right. Renewed appreciation for hippos. I freaking love hippos. Like Wes was saying, if I'm at a zoo,

they're probably my highlight of the whole zoo trip. They are cool to see in zoos. And I think they do pretty well in zoos. Okay, last category, I forgot. I had in my notes and I skipped it somehow. But I want to do what would Wes and Mike do. Okay. So we'll start with Mike and then we'll let Wes kind of tell us

what we're supposed to do with hippo. Got it. So in the event of being attacked by a hippo, it doesn't sound like there's a whole lot you can do, but I really would have taken up the offer to matchmake my hippo with a girl hippo. I think that would have probably relieved a whole lot of sexual attention, you know?

Yeah, you just got to let him get his rocks off. I feel like I probably would have said, just feed it an apple, but he had an apples. He had one. Well, he took a bite out of it, though. Maybe it wanted. That made it mad. That set them off.

I would make me mad. Someone's like about to give me an apple and they take a bite out. Yeah, exactly. Especially if you're a hippo and like that apple is just a tiny little fleck for you. All right. So I'll tell you what you actually should do. So the main thing with hippos, as Mike mentioned, is like avoiding being in one's mouth. If you're in its mouth, there's not anything you can do.

Like truly nothing. This is one of those animals where it's like if it's got you, you're out of options. So the big thing is like a lot of hippo attacks are surprise encounters. So like a person rounds a corner in a river or something and there's hippos there or they just end up too close or the hippos are out feeding at night and they walk into some hippos. So the main thing is like if you are on a waterway in Africa or you're walking around at night where there could be hippos nearby, you got to make your presence known.

You got to make sure you're making plenty of noise. If you're on a boat, you can like slap the side of the boat. every once in a while just to like warn any hippos that you might be approaching. That gives them time to leave, which is probably what they're going to want to do. It just gives them more time to make a decision and it doesn't trigger that immediate kind of like defensive attack. If you are around hippos, you want to look for signs of aggression. Jeff mentioned one earlier like the ears going down, yawning, vocalizations. Those are all signs of aggression and hippos. If you see those things, you want to get out of that area pretty quickly.

Avoid thickets, avoid places at night where hippos might be hanging out. And then if you are being chased by a hippo, like get up a tree, get up a termite mound, get up something where the hippo isn't actually going to be able to grab you. Those are the main things that I've learned. But again, it's avoiding with them. It's 100% avoiding the encounter. Once you're being attacked by the hippo, you just got to hope it doesn't want to kill you because it's totally capable of it.

It seems to me if you run away, they kind of give up quick. They can be really fast. It just depends. And, like, yeah, you could run from a hippo. Running from a hippo isn't a bad idea. When we're talking about any ungulate and hippos are ungulates, running isn't ever a bad idea. It's a bad idea if you're in a canoe on the water.

Yeah, that's true. Otherwise, it's not a bad idea. But you, they're not a predator. You're not triggering a predatory response by running. A lot of times all it wants you do is get away. So if you can run away, by all means run away. But if you're in the water or something, the main thing is making sure it knows you're there before you surprise it. Okay.

Well, that is my episode. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. Ooh. Thanks for listening. My pleasure. Thanks, everyone out there. I do it again.

Hopefully, you guys, hopefully if you guys listen to this whole episode, you don't end up buying a hippo as a pet. And hopefully your dads are all proud of you. If, like, 99% of the people who listen to this episode don't. end up buying a pet hippo, I'll feel like I accomplished something. Job well done. That's great. Yeah. I don't know if that's the best statistics.

You know, set attainable goals. Well, thanks again, everyone. Again, if you, hey, if you want more episodes that are led by Jeff, or if you're curious to see what a Mike led episode might be like, because I promise you, it's wild, it's fun. Check out our Patreon or check out our Apple Gris Club, because you're going to get a lot of content. like a lot. And we have the same content on both platforms.

We have all the bonus episodes on Patreon and Grizz Club. And it pretty much costs the price of like four or five apples. So, I mean, that's a pretty good deal, I think. Four or five apples a month for all that bonus content seems worth it to me. Way cheaper than a pet hippo. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see you guys later.

All right. Love you guys. Bye.