Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - How the Goonch Stole Christmas

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

This episode was previously exclusive to our subscriber channels, so if you feel like you've heard it before, you might just have! If you like it, consider subscribing either to our Patreon or the Apple Grizclub using the links below and getting much, much more. On this episode, Wes introduces us all to the goonch, which turns out to be a real animal. He covers a couple of horrifying accounts of attacks by what is essentially a monster catfish, and we all learn something new and terrifying about the world. Meanwhile, Jeff gives out his lowest overall animal ranking ever, and Mike has a bit of a mental breakdown hearing about Wes's old eating habits. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ 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, the episode you're hearing today is actually a selection from our subscription catalog. That's perfect timing because if you've got a toothy in your life that you're looking for the right gift for them, we really recommend our subscription channels. You can get us on Patreon or on Apple Grizz Club and you're going to get access to hundreds of hours of extra content. Some really fun bonus content, like me and Mike just finished our four-part series on horror movies that we love. We call it the Mike and Wes No Pants Horror Movie Mix Up. You're just going to have to listen to see how we settled on that name. did a really interesting subscription episode on Asian elephants and some of the countries that are

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Hey everyone. Hey everyone. Patrons. We got a treat for you. Wes is doing his first Patreon. Yeah. I was just about to say I think this is the first one I've led. Do you need any pointers?

Yeah. Give me some pointers, guys. You want to just relax a bit. Relax a bit? And I find it's helpful to not do, like, very much prep. Like, no research, no prep. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that has worked really well for you. And if you would, like, find a story online, just never even read it. Just go straight. And, like, don't pre-read it at all. Just read it like as you're going. Yeah. Perfect. If you forget any details, just make them up.

You can make up better stories than real stories, usually. All right. Well, hey, have you guys been? getting ready for the holidays. I just drove home. Oh, to Montana? Yeah. Jeff only visits when I'm not there.

That's probably the only time I've been here without you. Have you guys been watching many Christmas movies? You watch Home Alone yet? I have not been watching very many Christmas movies. Yeah. You said that. I saw the new Spider-Man, which I liked a lot. Yeah, that counts too.

And then... Mike, you saw The Matrix. Yep. You'll tell us nothing about it. Zip. I'm zipped up. You know which one I read about that I want to rewatch was Scrooge. The Bill Murray. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd like to rewatch that. I like a dark Christmas movie. I remember we watched Cranpus a few years ago, and you didn't like it. It was kind of gave us a weird vibe. You like it a lot. I like it a lot. I really like that director, though. He did Trick or Treat, too, which is one of my favorite Halloween movies.

And he did a Godzilla movie. He did The King of the Monsters, I think. Yeah. Steven Spielberg. I absorbed, it's a wonderful life kind of was on during a family Christmas gathering. And that's about all I can take of that movie.

We watch that movie every Christmas Eve. We have my whole life. And at this point, I just, I love it. It's a great movie, but I don't know if I could really sit down and watch the whole thing in one sitting ever again. You know, it's one that entered my lineup last year was the animated movie Klaus.

Oh yeah, you were talking about that. It's like a very pleasant, Just nice movie. It's a really good one. Yeah. Okay, I got a question for you guys, though. Which of the booby traps in Home Alone would you least like to have happened to you in the original Home Alone? That's the only Christmas movie I watched this year.

Yeah. Well, I'd say just McColley Colkin's Home Alone's. Okay. If you want to pull from number two, you can. Okay. I just don't know any of those ones. He, like, could have killed him with the bricks. The Bricks is pretty dangerous.

Well, even like the iron, him dropping the clothes iron on his face in the first one, definitely could have killed him. But the one that always gets me are the Christmas ornaments when he steps on them. Oh, yeah. The bulbs and stuff, and they're all, that just for some reason gets me. That one almost takes me out of the movie because it's just like so obvious and like he just stomps on like every ornament. Ornament? No, it's all right, though. He like slams his feet down. He stumps on like every single one of them. And I'm just like, okay, this is the stupidest thing. Well, it's also funny because he's already gotten like hit by the iron, had the nail on his foot, all that stuff. And then he still doesn't take the time to like look when he goes through the window, like just a quick glance at the ground.

Yeah. So you know it's weird in that movie? They get beat up like really bad. Yeah. Like all the booby traps. And then just like some 90, year old guy bongs them with a shovel and they're just both unconscious. Completely out. Huge thing of paint nailing you in the face and you're just like, oh, that a shovel tapping you in the head and you have. That's a good point. I also like that of all the traps, I mean, I know tarantulas can do some damage, but like all things said and done, that's probably the least, like, painful one they all went through,

but that's the one that everybody remembers, just because of the screen. Daniel Stern's scream at that part. All right, so what's your guys' answer? Mine's the Ormond. Mine's the nail. That's the one that grosses me out the most. If I had to pick one from the first movie, it'd be the nail. But my favorite trap of any of the Home Alone movie is one through five, or are there six now?

I have no idea. I think the six ones are the only per king in the world that knows. So the second movie when Daniel Stern once again is screaming when he gets shocked and he turns into the A skeleton. That's so funny. You see it skeleton? That's great. Mike was telling me the plot of the fourth or fifth one is like the burglarers are dead and he's

like booby-trapping like ghosts. Was I telling you that? I think I was making that up. No, it's true. On the IMDB, there's a home alone where it's like booby-trapping ghosts that are trying to like burglarize that house. And it got made? It's like number five.

Where do you go from there, you know? We should watch it sometime. Well, we could talk about Home Loan for hours, but we're not going to. We're going to talk instead about the goonch. Huh? Well, let me tell you guys how I got here. So I really wanted to do a story on... I didn't think you know how Patreon episodes work.

Let me tell you. It's still about animals. Yeah. I wanted to do a story about an attack that happened on Christmas or like Christmas Eve or something. And so I was Googling just animal attacks and like with Christmas Day and all these things. And somehow I stumbled upon a headline that said, goonch attacks in the Cali River, India. What's a gunch?

I was really curious what a gunch was. Okay. And so I did some research and we're going to learn about it. But I was so into it that it kind of stole the idea of like doing a Christmas story. So I'm going to call this story how the gunch stole Christmas. All right. I bet there are a lot of. animal attacks on Christmas Day.

Because, you know, little Timmy is getting like a puppy and grandpa's going to trip over that dog and stuff like that. I found a good kangaroo one that was like Christmas Eve, but the goonch stole it. Okay. Gunch stole Christmas. I'm excited for this. No further ado. All right.

First of all, how do you guys feel about about goonches? Confused. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like a sexual. Aroused was almost the word I was going to use. Well, it sounds like, what's the, it sounds like, um, goose. Gooch.

Yeah, like you got kicked in the gooch. How big do you guys think a goonch can get? We don't know what they are. There's just no frame of reference here. All right. 10. An inch? I think they can get 10 big.

All right, cool. So you guys don't know much about goonches, huh? Does anyone? We're going to learn about goonches. So is the gooncha Dr. Sue's character? The goonch is not. The Grinch is, but this is how the goonch stole Christmas, not the Grinch. Okay.

So, it's a beautiful cold blue river. It runs from its headwaters in the Himalayas before widening and flowing through the jungles and forests of northern India and western Nepal. As I mentioned, it's named after the Hindu god of destruction and death, Kali, and the river forms a border between northern India and western Nepal for a lot of its journey. It's a really important and sacred river to the people in the area, but in the late 90s and in the 2000s, something was lurking in the waters of the Kali River, the goonch.

So, in 1998, a 17-year-old Nepali boy, Dil Bahadur, which makes me think of Badadur, Soran's fortress and Mordor, but it's Bahadur. It's not spelled the same way. He was swimming in the Kali River while he was waiting for a ferry to take him across the river into India. So his girlfriend was watching from the shore. She's smiling and waving to the swimming boy. And they're in really high spirits because they're actually traveling to India in the hopes

of starting a new life together in a new country. Unfortunately, those dreams were about to be cut short. As Dill swam around, a large predator was attracted to his movement in the water, and silently slipped through the water toward him. Dill's girlfriend and several other onlookers then watched in horror, as without a sound, he's pulled underwater by some unseen monster. He doesn't splash or scream. He's just gone in an instant.

Whoa. So they had launched this expansive search. They search for multiple days along three miles of the river, but they never find a single, like, hint that he was ever there. They don't find his body. They don't find any clothing. They find nothing. He's just completely gone. A few months later, about a mile downstream in this town called Dharma Gat, a young boy was washing himself in the river in about knee-deep water when something grabbed him.

When something grabbed him by the legs. His father was standing nearby, heard the boy's scream that something was pulling him into the water and had grabbed him, but he couldn't get to the river. in time to save his son and the boy disappeared beneath the water of the river Collie. Again, really quick, really fast, just gone. And they again launch a search, they again look for the body,

can't find anything. That's weird since it happened in really relatively shallow water. Yeah, so not long after it is spooky. I can't think of any animal like that would... I've got one guess, Jeff. Gooch?

I'll give you a... I'll give you a And it rhymes with mooch, or mooch, I guess. Okay, so not long after a rancher sees a 600-pound buffalo get pulled underwater by something that the farmer describes as larger than the buffalo. What? So that's the craziest one for me. A gooch is what's like a gooch is something else. This is a goonch, but we're not to it yet. Okay.

Yeah, wait for categories, Jeff. Oh, I'm saying the gooch. You're saying it, you're saying it wrong. The hidden predator did not strike again until nine years later in Nagrugat when an 18-year-old Ataul Kumar was swimming in the river Kali with a friend. His sudden scream shocked his friend and local villagers who turned to see the boy pulled under the water. This time, though, a local villager, Surenda Bora, saw the attacker, and he said it looked like an elongated pig, and he identified it as a sous.

a Seuss is just kind of like a mythological fish monster that can suck in prey from a distance as far as I could gather. Like Kirby? These attacks are happening. Yeah, like Kirby. He's more of a cloud monster. Yeah. These attacks are happening.

No one really knows what they are. Three people have died. A buffalo has died. And it's kind of this crazy mystery. So have you guys ever watched the show River Monsters? I know. It's on Animal Planet. And it's this guy, Jeremy Wade, who goes and he's,

He investigates these kind of things, and he catches fish that are potentially dangerous or whatever that live in the river, not so much ocean fish. He gets more in the river. He does. So one of his first episodes was actually to go investigate this animal, that he wasn't sure what it was. So I'm going to kind of run you through how that looked, his investigation. So in 2009, he traveled to the Kali River, and along the search, he's visiting these

locations where some of the deaths happened, and he's talking to eyewitnesses. And one of the first theories he comes up with is whirlpools. because it's like a pretty fast-moving river, and for someone just to get sucked under immediately and not show back up, like a whirlpool is kind of something that would make sense. But the thing that doesn't make sense is that all of these men, when they were killed,

they were in like really shallow water, waist deep. Actually, the third was swimming across the river, but the rest of them were in waist-deep water. And the thing that really doesn't make sense about it is the second one, the boy who was killed in front of his father, yelled out, something's got me. And the third one, a guy said he thought he saw an elongated pig attacking him. Pigs and whirlpools aren't often confused for each other.

And also, like, the fact that they never found the bodies or anything, if they had just drowned, there's a good chance they would have washed up somewhere, but they didn't find anything. So whirlpools were eliminating that possibility. Yeah, throw that out. And, like, does he think that it's possible for there to be, like, some type of predator, like a crocodile or something? Oh, Jeff.

once again, right on time with the segue, the second most obvious culprit after Whirlpool was a crocodile. So in India, there's three species of crocodile. We've got your saltwater crocodiles, which we've talked about, and we know is like more than capable of killing a person. Big old guys. Yeah, you've got a mugger crocodile, which also can kill a person or a buffalo. And then you've got a garyl, gyrrille. I always say it wrong. I know I've always liked in my entire life, but I don't know how to pronounce their name. But they're the ones that have the really long snouts that are super thin and like tons of teeth. And they're fish eaters.

Oh, yeah, yeah. They're fish eaters. They don't have the capability to kill people. Like, they just don't. What kind were, you talked about Temple of Doom, which ones are those? Those are mugger crocodiles. Mugger. So mugger crocodiles are the most common in India.

And saltwater crocodiles don't live on the Kali River, but mugger crocodiles do. So, like, then they can't use magic. either? They can't. What do you mean? Words that? Just the muggle. Oh. Yeah. It is a real bad joke.

You know, you got to get up to back to hit a home run. I'll take a step away and let you go for a while. Anyway, so Jeremy Wade, this guy who's visiting, decides to look into mugger crocodiles. Now, the things that don't make sense about it being a mugger crocodile is that these attacks happen pretty far upriver on the collie river where it's still really cold. and pretty fast. And mugger crocodiles like really big, expansive rivers that are warm, and they like to pull themselves up on the bank to sun and whatnot. And in these areas where these attacks happen, no one's ever seen a crocodile. They've never seen them sunning on the banks, and the

water's really cold. So it just really doesn't make sense that a mugger crocodile would be up there. And then that's kind of what he said, but I wanted to add, when a crocodile attacks someone, it usually makes a bit more of a commotion. Like you typically see the tail come out of the water or the head or something. And then often even if they pull... Like the water would probably get bloody. Right. And even when they pull someone down,

they often come back up with the person in their jaws because as we talked about, they're not great at eating underwater. They have to eat above water. So... They like tear them up a bit. Right. So it doesn't make sense that it's a crocodile either.

So the next option would be a bull shark. Bull sharks, as we've talked about again, can live in fresh water, and they do travel up the Ganges River and other rivers in India. So that's a real possibility. But again, we're really far upstream. We're in cold, fast-moving water. And bull sharks tend to be in, like, bigger rivers, and they like to be at confluences. And they generally, if there's a bull shark in the river, you'll, like, see their fin cutting through the water every once in a while. And again, they, like, kind of make a mess when they eat.

They don't like eat something whole. So you're going to have blood and you're going to have remains and all these other things. But I will say of all the other options besides a goonch, which we're about to get to, I think Bullshark is the only one that there's like a possibility. It's a bull shark. I think a goonch is like a type of whale. We're not closing the door on. Yeah, it could be.

But it's not. We're not closing the door on bull sharks. But we are opening the door on goonches. Okay. Okay. All right. I think we can close the door on the other one. Well, Bull Sharks, we can keep the door open a crack.

You can name it how the goonch stole Christmas. Right, right, right, right, right. What are you saying? Like, I think everyone kind of knows that it's going to be a gooch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're really, you're a master store.

You're like Stephen King who really. Or M Knight. M. Knight Shahn. Good twists. Yeah, that's a better one. It is a goonch. I got no twist for you. Yeah.

All right. So can we close the door on bull sharks? No, because they actually don't know for sure that it's a goonch, but we're pretty sure. Okay. So this fisherman and biologist Jeremy Wade, he talked to the guy who said that he had, that he thought it was a sous, and then he kind of teased out that a seuss was another name for a goonch. And a goonch is actually a massive catfish. So there you finally know what a goonch is.

is a massive, massive catfish. They're also commonly referred to as the giant devil catfish. They can get massive. Like to eat a person? So there's another type of catfish called the Macong River catfish that lives in Thailand, I think. I don't have this in my notes or anything, but I know they can get up to like 700 pounds. Oh my God. So we're going to talk a little bit more about the goonch, but they're actually, we don't know a ton about them.

So this is going to be a little light on biology, and I'm just going to preface this with like, you guys know a lot of times I have lots of facts that I can kind of pull out of the old file index in my brain. This one, I don't know anything about catfish. I didn't know anything about Goonch going into this. So everything I learned, I learned from my research, and there's not a ton. But a few things that I did learn. They're found in large rivers of the Indian subcontinent. They typically hang out in big, slow pools near a fast-moving current.

They can grow to be larger than seven feet long. They have massive mouths with large backward-facing teeth. Just for a reference, like their teeth kind of look like a maco shark's teeth, but they just don't have quite as many. But they have big teeth, like over an inch long, these really big goonch. And they're sharp. They're not like what you would expect from a catfish. They're like big, sharp teeth.

They are bottom feeders. Like all their catfish, they're negatively buoyant. Mike, you're a diver. What's it mean when you're negatively buoyant? It means you sink. Right. they sink. They have large, flat, bony heads that they use to, like, get food on the bottom.

And that also helps as a hydrofoil. It, like, pushes the water over their head. A really interesting thing about catfish is their bodies are covered with chemo receptors, which means that they can, like, touch something to taste it. So they don't need to taste with their mouth. They can actually taste with their bodies. I'm glad humans don't have that. Yeah, that would suck.

Kind of, do you? If you're constantly, you can touch something. Your tongue. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Yes. Just depends what you use to touch it. Well, all of their body they can touch it with.

They can also smell chemicals in the water with those chemoreceptors. And these kind of like these taste receptors and the chemoreceptors are really key in them finding food. That's how they use that to find food. And I think that's important for our story. And I'm going to explain why, which is something I kind of pieced together but wasn't in any of the articles that I read. Okay. They do not have scale. their bodies are often just naked skin covered in mucus.

So sometimes catfish will have like plating almost, but the goonch is like pretty much naked. It's just like a fish that doesn't have scales and it's all mucusy. Most catfish also have a hollow, bony spine on their dorsal and pectoral fins, and those spines can be locked into place when something like has them, and then that can like poke something, and it can cause a lot of injury, actually. So if you've ever caught a catfish, you have to be careful.

with their fins because they can't poke you with those spines. And there are actually a few catfish that have venom in those spines. And striped eel catfish have a venom so lethal it can kill a human. Wow. The goonch has spines, but it doesn't have any known venom. The world record goonch was six and a half feet long and 250 pounds. But they aren't very heavily fished. And most biologists agree that they can probably get a lot bigger than that.

But that's like the world record. The smaller ones are heavily fished. The smaller ones are actually heavily fished, but the bigger ones, people just can't catch them. They're really tricky. This guy, like Jeremy Wade, he was down there fishing for like weeks and weeks and weeks before he finally caught a big one. He caught lots of little ones, but the big ones are hard to catch. Is the river, like, clear enough that you could see them in their pools?

So, when he was looking for him, there was one pool they got to where they saw one, and then they like dove in there and saw a bunch of little ones. But then kind of the rain started and everything. thing and the water got pretty murky and they couldn't see him. Okay. So he's out there fishing and looking for Gooch. He finds a few that are like three to five feet long, but he doesn't encounter one that's big enough to eat a man.

But then he talks to more villagers and he learns something really interesting. He learns that there's these places along this river where they light funeral pires, which essentially they like have a body right next to the river. They burn it. And then in Hinduism, there's like a certain level where after the body is burned, to that level, they believe the soul has left the body. And then they just dumped the body in the river after that. So they were dumping a lot of bodies into the river.

And his theory is that one of these goonch was like hanging out near these funeral pires and just eating human remains on the bottom and getting really big off of human remains. And that kind of makes sense to me because if they're like constantly tasting humans and like eating human remains, then if... Get a taste for human flesh. Kind of, and we've dispelled that with, like, a lot of other animals. Most animals don't get a taste for our flesh. What they learn is, like, people are easy to kill,

and that's when, like, man-eaters start killing people. It's because we're just easy. But it's not so much because they like our taste. But it is possible that this goonch did kind of acquire that taste. And then when it was swimming in the water and it maybe bumped into one of these boys or was close enough to taste them, it was like, oh, this is my meal. This is the thing I eat. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. That's my theory that I came up with. Anyway, he's having a really hard time catching a big goonch. You know, we've all been there. It's hard to catch a big goonch. I've never caught. So, Wade, he decides to erect a decoy funeral pyre. He doesn't put anything on it, but he has the ashes going into the water and like the

flame right by the water, hoping that that'll attract a big goonch. And weirdly enough, it does. And he hooks into a really big goonch and actually catch. is the world record goonch at the time, which was over six feet long and 160 pounds. Now, like, they've caught a bigger one that's 230 pounds. But he pulls this fish up and, like, in the video, it's pretty crazy. Like, it has big old teeth and a huge mouth. It's not big enough to kill a person, not even close.

But he and other biologists think that it's not too hard to imagine a goonch that's twice as big as this goonch. So if there was one that big, it could easily... kill a person. And they also have like a really strong suction so they could like suck them underwater and just as they're negatively buoyant, they just go to the bottom and just hold that person underwater until they die and then just like suck them up and eat them. So that's the prevailing theory is that these three men were killed by a goonch. That's crazy. Yeah. I had no idea. I wouldn't have ever thought a catfish was capable of yeah. You should look at photos of the Mekong

River catfish because they are massive. Yeah, I'm looking at one right now. River Jaws, monster catfish. That thing is huge. You should put one on as your background, Mike, so Jeff can see it. And then also you should share a picture of goonch teeth, too. Just sharing my screen real quick. That's what I...

Yeah, so that's a Mekong River catfish. That could easily swallow, especially a smaller person. And then type in goonch teeth. Mike's computer background is just a frog killing it. So that far one, that's Jeremy Wade with the goonch. Like, that's the one he caught. Oh, yeah, that thing's got a gnarly mouth. Yeah, they got some teeth.

Yeah. Whoa. They're not like, you know, they're not like a catfish you'd want to noodle for. You guys know what noodling is, right? Yeah. Where you stick your arm in and the catfish comes and bites it. Exactly. Like, how's that frog doing?

Is he falling? Is he going to be okay? It's a William Steig book called Gorky Rises. Some of our more cultured listeners will probably recognize that. Okay. He's fallen to his death, though, right? One of the more famous children's books. No, he's flying.

All right. He made a little potion. He can float. Don't worry about the frog. He's okay, guys. So that's the goonch story. It's like an unsolved mystery, but everyone seems to agree that it was a goonch.

There is, I do think there's a chance it was a bullshark, though. But I'm, you know, I'm team goonch. I think it's a goonch. Yeah, it makes sense a bit. I think maybe. just that was like his way of breaking up with her just by dying he just no he just held his breath and like went down the river fled the country what about the other two that's i don't have a theory for that yeah okay want a new dad all right so we're going to do um we're going to do outchies of getting eaten

by a catfish i guess you're getting eaten and you're getting killed to me it's it's like I don't think the ouchies are that high Like I'm gonna give it a seven But as far as like psychological horror Like if I get pulled underwater by something And I realize it's a massive catfish It's gonna scare me pretty bad Like I'm gonna be really freaked out

Wow, you're dying you mean? Yeah like that to me is worse Than being attacked by a shark or a crocodile Because it's like Yeah it would suck to like see the surface And not be able to like go up Right and also be like Oh this is a catfish

I'm gonna be fine and realize, like, I'm not fine. Like, it's actually a sea monster, basically. Yeah. Yeah. I'll go with a six. I might even go lower than, no, I feel six is the right place. Just because, yeah, I mean, it's pretty horrifying when you see this thing.

We'll post a picture, I'm sure. But on the grand spectrum of animals that we've talked about in ways to die, I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to give it a six, just so we got six, six, six, six, six. That's a good reason. I think Wes is right, drowning, especially if you can, like, see the surface, would be pretty horrifying. I would say, though, I've always thought a cool way to, not to die, but to be used after death, would be to, like, just go be planted out in the middle of the forest or something and let my remains serve as, you know, nutrients for new plant life. Yeah. I wouldn't be, I wouldn't mind being, like, cooked up and served to some fish.

Me neither. You know? I don't care. Let them have a little bit of me. To be honest, I don't care. what happens to me after I die. Like, same. I just want to be, like, dumped into a river.

I just want it to be cheap. I don't want to, like, people to go broke, trying to bury me in some gilded coffin. Just dump me in a river. Are we going to do the... What would Jeff and Mike do? Yeah, we are. Oh, cool.

I got an answer. All right. Okay. Should we just go to categories then? Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. Well, we're in it, right?

We just did ouchies. No, outchies are more, like, end of the story. But we'll do. Yeah. Well, we'll launch into categories. What would Jeff and Mike do? So I would put, so it has my foot and I'm like on the bottom of the river. Yeah.

I would put my other foot like right on its face. And then with both hands, I'd just grab its whiskers and just yank towards me as hard as I could. That was going to be mine. That might work. So those whiskers are called Barbos. And if it let's go, I'm not going to let go. I'm going to be like, you tried to kill me. I'm going to rip these suckers off.

Yeah. So what I would do is, you know how cats really hate getting pet against the grain of their fur? Yeah. That's what I would do. Pet it the wrong way. I'd pet backwards on the fish and get real. It'd row and run. Yeah.

Right. Laser poignant. So I actually don't really have a good answer for what you do if you're attacked by a goonch. It seems like there's not much. If it's that big of a goonch, like it can pull you underwater pretty quick. I think Jeff's answer is probably a pretty good one. Like grab them by the barbels and just like pull on them as hard as you can. Is that what they're called?

Barbels? Yeah, I like that. B-A-R-B-E-L-S, barbells. Barbels. Yeah, I don't have a good answer. If you're swimming in the Collie River in India, the upper Collie River, watch out for goonches because a goonch will get you. Good advice.

Yeah. I actually might not put my foot on its head just because you said they don't have scales. So they're just pure slimy. Yeah, it'd be gross. Well, it might have you by like the middle too. I do think this is an animal that potentially joins our list of animals that could maybe swallow a person a whole. Really? I don't know.

It seems like that's almost like maybe what happened to these people because they didn't find any remains or anything. So it could be, it could be that a really big goonch. I don't know. Catfish just like inhale stuff. Yeah. Like Kirby. Yeah, and get their powers. That's like their same size.

Yeah, not if they're like, this one was six feet long, but they think there could be one that's like 10 feet long out there. So Jeremy Wade, he claims to have seen one that was like 800 to 1,000 pounds when he was like swimming. So if there's one that big, it could, it could just inhale a person. Especially like, these were kind of smaller dudes. It's a possibility that it did just suck them right in. Well, I mean, even better for me. me. Why? I would prefer to, like, I've said this before, but I think if I'm inside the animal,

there's a lot of damage I can do. That's right where you want to be. Start ripping out hearts and livers and. Right. Punch them on the inside of the gut. Getting punched in the stomach like normally hurts. Can you imagine from the inside? You could do a lot more damage than a water buffalo. If I, like, bit it on the outside compared to biting it on the inside. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good point. All right.

So, yeah, I don't have great advice for people. Probably just the same advice as, like, if you're around crocodiles, just do your best to stay out of the water unless you know what's in the water with you. It kind of sucks. It sounds like a cool river. Yeah. This is one of those episodes where I came in not thinking there were any more animals that I needed to be afraid of. Yeah.

And now there's one more on the list. The gooch, dude. Goonch. Yeah, it's also a fun one to say. So the Goonch stole Christmas in what way? Because I was going to do a Christmas episode, and the Goonch stole that, because I found the Goonch stories. Oh, okay. So these didn't all happen on, like, Christmas Day or something?

How the Goonch stole Christmas was by derailing me for my plans. There's no Christmas. Yeah. There's no Christmas scene to the episode. The Goonch succeeded. The name of the episode now. We did. We talked about Home Alone.

Oh, yeah, something completely related to the story. Yeah. Okay. So I also wanted to ask you guys, we're talking about a catfish. I want you to tell me your favorite animal that has another animal's name in its name. And just to like illustrate what I mean by that, I'll go first. Mine is a whale shark. It's a shark, but it's a whale shark.

I didn't even think of that one. That's a good one. Never actually liked that name. I hate that name because it always confuses all my friends when we go see whale sharks. they're always like, oh, we saw some whales. And it's like, no, we didn't. We saw some sharks. Yeah.

It's a descriptive. It's a descriptive name. It's like how a catfish. So you think it should be shark whales? No. It's just like people get confused because they're so big. But it's, it's just a name. It's descriptive.

But whale sharks are my favorite. I'm not saying it's like the best name, but that's my favorite animal that has another animal's name in its name. See, I took it as like what's my favorite name. So I chose C. Fair enough. Seahorse. Okay.

Because I just think. Just to make Mad Mike. It's a perfect name. Mad Mike. I think it's a perfect name for those fish because they do look like horses. They do. And like they are just like really funny looking animals to me. I've always wanted to see one.

I like the name seahorse. I like the animal a lot too. Yeah. They're interesting. A lot more interesting than real horses. My pick is the rhinoceros beetle. Oh, yeah. And close second is leper.

frog. I think those are sweet. I love leopard frogs. But rhinoceros beetle is the one. Those guys, they're like, yeah, they're like the powerlifting champions of the bug universe. They're pretty sweet. Have you seen them? I like that. They flip over stuff. Yeah, Jeff bought me one once, like a taxidermied one. Or was that a rhinocer spedal or a different kind? I tried to buy you a Hercules beetle, but it does kind of look like a rhinocer's beetle. I think it was a Hercules. They're pretty good at flipping stuff. You got to watch out. You think they could flip a human over?

If one grew to be the size of a goonch, it could. Oh, a beetle. Yeah, you're right. No, I don't think so. All right. So our next category is, how are we messing things up for the goonch? I misspoke earlier. They are being overfished, but it's the smaller goonch that are being overfished.

Are they overfished? Yeah. Is that a bad thing? It is. If they're killing people? Yeah, they're important to their ecosystem. Like, we don't ever want an animal to, I mean, you know, we take our risk. I just never really, we'll get to this in the last, or one of the last categories,

but I just never like catfish. Okay. That doesn't mean they should be killed, though. Anyway, they're being overfished. They also are losing some habitat to, like, hydroelectric dams and stuff like that. And then also, a lot of the rivers in India are becoming really polluted. I will say, though, like, these guys live far enough upstream. I don't think they really have that problem

and their bottom feeders so they do pretty well in different environments but I think their main problem right now is over fishing and habitat loss. Why do people fish them do they taste good? Yeah, I think they do. They taste like catfish.

You haven't ate a gooch, you didn't even know when one was. A catfish? A catfish? I mean, a lot of catfish tastes different, right? Yeah, that's true. But catfish is okay. So goonch is probably good too. You know, a big old pile of steaming plate of goonch.

Who doesn't love that? A pile of goonch. Yeah. Slap some goonch on your plate. All right. So our next category is patron questions. Okay. From Jennifer, I probably should have prepped you guys on this one, but we'll see how good you are thinking on your feet.

Okay. Usually not pretty good. Who and or what is something that has really inspired you in your life? Okay, I can do that one. Well, I don't want to repeat myself, though. I was just going to say Steve Irwin again. Yeah. That's just all I'll say that one.

I'll think of something. No, I'm going to think of something better. Do you guys have anyone that you want to say? Yeah. Who? Steve Irwin. Okay. Okay. You stole mine.

Yeah. I'll say David Attenborough. He's another naturalist that I just like, he's like one person that I'll be really upset when he's gone. because I think we all know him as like the voice of all those cool nature documentaries, but he also has done a lot of really cool conservation work and just seems like the most interesting person in the world. And from all accounts is like a really nice, genuine person too. So he's pretty inspiring to me.

I really like David Attenborough. I'll pick Bill Bryson. He's my favorite nonfiction writer. He takes things that sound like they would be mundane, but makes him super interesting. he did like a short history of nearly everything or at home. And I just find the way he writes to be really inspiring insofar as it makes my little curiosity neurons fire in my brain. Cool.

He's great. Yeah. I'm going to say Adam from Adam and Eve. All right. Any reason? Uh, just seemed like a good guy, you know? Yeah. That's all it takes.

All right. Huh. I mean, it's kind of my, I'm related to them. Stream a consciousness. All right. So this one I'm going to combine to, we got Hot Wheels and Hena. So they want to know what are all the animals me and you have worked with. So it's mainly going to be you answering that.

And also something we were surprised to learn about that animal. Yeah. So Jeff's just worked with me on the Black Bear project, but he's got. And a little help with owls. He's gotten to come help with owls. But I, so I've worked on black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears, sloth bears. Golden Eagles, kestrels, burrowing owls, flammilated owls, African wild dogs, Temex ground pangolin, green sea turtle, eastern hellbender, spotted eagle ray, southern elephant seal.

And I'm forgetting someone. Did you say the African wild dog? Argentine tagu. Yeah, I said, Argentine Tegu, American alligator. Yeah, those are the main ones. But one thing that I really liked, since we talked about African wild dogs a little bit, a really cool thing about them that I'll say is that they're one of another altruistic animal. So when there's like an injured adult or whatever in the pack,

they'll actually feed that injured animal before they eat, which is something that you just like don't see in nature. But they'll actually do that. And they're like, they have a super tight social bond and structure. So they're really cool. What was the other animal that we talked about that's like that? Wasn't it bees that we said were altruistic? Or maybe it was the bats.

It was the bats. It was the bats. Yeah. They vomited. They vomited the blood into other bats mouths. Another interesting thing with the African wild dogs is West rubbed their noses into the other ones, into their butt holes to make them like each other. Yeah, while they're sedated, we rubbed.

poop all over their faces so that they would like each other. So if you guys want to watch that. You drugged them and rubbed their faces and shit? Just Google Mission Wild African Wild dogs. Huh. Yeah. Great big story, Mission Wild African Wild Dogs. Have you not seen those, Mike?

No. All right. No, I saw one where you were playing out of some bird, I think. I'm going to make you watch them, I think. Oof. Got to gain my composure here. Okay, so we got Robert. wanting to know what our favorite animal penis is.

Oh, that's a good question. And he says his is a dragonfly. Anyone know what's special about a dragonfly penis? I don't. Breathe's fire, maybe. That's what dragons are known for. I'm just going to say blue whales, because that's, like, bigger than a person.

The biggest. Mine's walrus, because it's the biggest in relation to their size, I think. That's what I've heard, at least. It's the biggest that has an actual bone in it. Ooh, that's a good fact to know. Ducks?

Ducks are like a corkscrew. Twisty one. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Okay, I think we're good. Yeah, cool, cool question. From the people want to know. Yeah, I guess.

From Megan, what's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten? When I was in Guatemala, they just, like, boiled pure fat, or cow fat, and there's, like, no meat. And that is like the worst thing I've ever eaten. I had a, at a hot pot restaurant in Taiwan, they had little cubes of congealed pig blood. And they actually weren't bad, but it's still a weird thing to have eaten. So that'll be my answer. You know what? I mean a lot of weird shit, but like probably the weirdest is just when I was in like...

That's a good answer. Yeah. When I was in third grade, when I was in third grade, I got into a real bug eating phase and was just eating bugs like all the time like hundreds of bugs a day and that's not an exaggeration what and i remember once my hundreds once my dad once my dad's like smushed a spider and i licked it off the floor are you serious right now i'm not i'm not joking what the hell is going on around here yeah and then and then my friend who was eating some bugs too but not nearly the amount is he got hives from eating bugs and he had to tell his parents

that he had been eating bugs, and there was no more bug eating after that. Not 100, hundreds of bugs daily. I ate a lot of bugs. Where are you getting them? I'd catch him. Imagine him at, like, dinner, and they're like, Wes, you got to eat dinner. He's like, oh, I already ate. Yeah, I'm full of bugs.

I went to the park. I went to the park for an hour. Bugs are a good source of protein. They are. We should be eating more bugs. Like, there's nothing wrong with eating bugs. It's just gross when you're eating. You would do pretty good on that show alone.

Yeah. I'm always, whenever I watch that show, I'm like, why aren't they just eating bugs all the time? Did you ever see the movie Snowpiercer? Yeah, I love Snowpiercer. Bong Joon Ho's movie. Isn't that the red, like, little bricks of stuff? That's made out of cockroaches. It's crotch are gross.

Cockroaches are gross. That's where you draw the line. Probably in third grade, I wouldn't have. I would have eaten a cockroach. You'll lick a spider off of the floor, but. Yeah. I don't know, dude. All right.

And then from Rebecca. That's so weird. Like I feel like we're not focusing on how, like, enough on how weird that is. That's really, really. I know. I was an obsessive kid. I'm sorry. Whatever.

All right. I don't know. I think this podcast might have just ended. Did you have a favorite? Grasshoppers. Oh, the grossest one I ever ate was a butterfly because its wings stuck to the roof of my mouth. It was like, you know, when you eat cinnamon and it like makes people cough that's what a butterfly was like you know what's

funny is i remember like you would always get those suckers from like mexico that had like a bug in the middle like a grasshopper or something and you were like the cooler older brother so i was always like oh i got to get one of those suckers and then i ate one and it's like in the end i just ate like a bug and it sucked. I was just like, why has he been eating so many of these suckers with bugs in them? I don't eat bugs anymore, but it was

like a good, it was like a two-week obsession where I just ate tons of bugs. All right. From Rebecca, which would be worse? A hippo with fangs and venom like a cobra or a couple of wolves with jaws and teeth like a crocodile. I think the wolves are worse because a hippo,

it's like, if you get eaten by, if you get Been by a hippo. It doesn't matter if it's venomous or not. But by that same logic, the hippo is worse regardless, right? Right. I'd rather have wolves. Yeah. I could fight off a couple wolves before one hippo.

I think the wolves are a bigger upgrade, though, than the hippo getting venom. True. Yeah. All right, that's it. There's some good creative questions. Thanks, guys. All right. So our last category for the goonch is how much do we like this animal?

Let's give us some claws. Wait. Did we do pop culture? Oh no, we haven't. You're right. All right, so we're going to do our favorite pop culture catfishes. I'll go first. All right, go for it, Jeff.

So I bent the rule a little bit, and I went with a koi. Okay. And it's the office when Michael falls in a koi pond at a restaurant. Oh, yeah, I remember that one. Yeah. And then my other one was Magicarp, the Pokemon. And that's more of a carp, I think. But it, like, really sucks when you have a magic carp as your Pokemon, and they're really bad.

And then it's just, like, for some reason, evolves into a, like, huge, sweet dragon. That is cool. I'm just going to have to take your word on that one. They do have the little barbels, I get, I mean. Yeah, some car about that, too, right? Yeah. Mike, I see that you've got an anime catfish. Is that your favorite catfish?

No. It's a good one, though. It's Sanji. He's braiding the barbell. of a catfish. That's pretty funny. Yeah, that is funny. My favorite catfish is Mantaito, getting catfished by that dude when he was in college.

Do you want to explain what that happened with that catfishing story? I'm going to need Jeff's assistance because I'm going to miss some incredible details. It's really bizarre. So a college football player in the United States, he played at Notre Dame. He had a girlfriend or so, he thought. There was a huge national news because he was like player of the year, one of the best linebackers we'd ever seen in college. Well, he was like at the Heisman and he like made it about his girlfriend.

Right. That just died. That died. Or so he thought. And then pretty quickly thereafter, the story unraveled on a national stage. And it was by far the most embarrassing thing, I think, that's ever happened to a collegiate athlete, probably. I can't think of anything that even comes. comes close because the girl he thought was his girlfriend who he had never met or even spoken

to over the phone, who he made just sound like the biggest deal and most devastating loss he'd ever go through. It was this, like, I can't state strongly enough how big of a news story this was and how tragic it was for this player and how much he was celebrated for playing through all this adversity. And then like three days afterwards, it turned out everything was fake. It's just a guy who was like in too deep and like killed her off. Yeah. He tried to end the relationship by dying. He really got a. It's like the most famous time in Mantae's life and he used it as a platform to like talk about his girlfriend that died. Yeah, it's really sad. Yeah. Funny enough, I also picked like a cat fishing story. All right. So mine was one that I

remember from the news a long time ago is this 19 year old woman in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and she lived with her aunt, like, really hated that she was meeting guys on Facebook and, like, bringing them over to her house. So she forced the niece to, like, shut down Facebook and, like, wasn't letting her do that anymore. So the niece blocked her aunt on Facebook so that she could keep doing it. And the aunt, to get her back, started a fake account on Facebook. And the name, of the fake account was um it was hold up top of tray top dog ellis was the name of the fake account and it was like this like you know tough looking dude and and he added the niece tray top dog ellis added the niece and they like formed a relationship and then after like a long time of them talking

and flirting and everything she asked him to kill her aunt so oh man what she the niece said that she should, that Ellis should come over, shoot and kill her aunt, and then also kill her fiance and her cousin and the family dog. So she like, what?

She told this guy to do it, but the guy was really her aunt. It was actually the aunt. Yeah. And so the aunt turned her into the police and she went to jail. Wow. Yeah.

It's a crazy one. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know what's crazy is like the dude who does the show catfish and like made the documentary. Yeah. That like got cats.

He did. Yeah. I didn't hear about that. That's how it started. Oh. It was like a documentary about him called catfish. And like these people thought your girlfriend doesn't seem real. So he went to meet her and is like some like 50 year old woman.

But it's like kind of like I don't know. I just feel like people who get catfished are just like very gollable or something. Like not video chat someone within like a year. of dating them. Yeah, I agree when it goes on for that long. But, like, I know some people that are pretty smart that have gotten catfished. But I don't know.

It just happens. Just seems like he got super lucky that, like, he's turned it into a career. Oh, yeah. Just, like, really dumb mistake. Well, he, like, coined the term catfish. Like, that's where it came from. Why is it catfish?

I can't remember. It says it in the documentary. Yeah. A fishing attack is kind of the same thing in the information security. world, so I don't know where the cat part comes from, but I'm sure there's some root. Do you know where the fish comes from? Yeah, it's kind of just like fishing, like, they call it fishing for personal information.

It's just like a, anyway, a term. Okay, well, let's go ahead and rate the goonch. How much do we like this animal? How many claws? I'm going to give the goonch three claws. Not a big goonch fan. I don't really care for them. Yeah.

So it gets three claws for me. me, sorry. I'm going to give it two. Yeah, I think I might go with, I'll go with three, just for the fact that it's super interesting that they can get so huge. Yeah, and its teeth and stuff are cool. Yeah, and also the fact that I didn't know that they exist until today, and so they're just kind of like a curiosity, but tomorrow probably all say they're two. Yeah, I've never been a big catfish. Me neither. I just never really liked them. I'm going to rank it 6,700. I don't think there's that many of species.

There might be. I was going to guess somewhere in the 6,700 range. Well, thanks guys. And yeah, I think thanks to all you patrons for being here. And just so you know, you're the only ones getting episodes right now. We're taking a little break from the main feed. So I bet you're happy your patron. We're happy your patrons.

Wes is like, I think I might want like a little break from doing episodes. And then he's like, I'll do the Patreon episode. Yeah, I know. I'm addicted, I'm addicted to to goonch. He's addicted to, he can't quit you guys. Yeah. Anyways, thanks guys. Thanks so much for all your encouragement, for everything you guys do for us.

We really do appreciate it. And happy holidays, huh? Yeah. I agree. Yeah. This is probably coming up. on Christmas Eve so if you celebrate Christmas Merry Christmas if not happy whatever else All right see you guys bye see ya