Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Jack and the Killer Jellyfish

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

In 1961, toxinologist Jack Barnes thought up a novel way to test just how bad the sting of the Irukandji jellyfish is. And the award for worst father goes to.... Watch here: https://youtu.be/hSHvlJ0jjGs ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Register today at Richfield, Utah.com. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We are Wes, Jeff, and Mike. Wes is our bear biologist, and we love him. I'm Wes's little brother. I was his field tech with some black bears. We have Mike Smith, who his favorite director is Quentin Tarantino, but only because of the foot fetish stuff. None of the other stuff. True. It's really everything outside of the frame about him that makes me excited. Not the movies themselves. How good of a person he is in his personal life. Who is your favorite director, Mike?

That's a great question. That's such a good question, Wes? Yeah. I don't know. I answered that already. Is it Mark Bergman? Is it Burgman? He is good.

Persona. Check it out. Peep it. Seven Seal. Everyone got to watch it. Some dude who died 50 years ago. Miyazaki would be another guess. Oh, that's actually a good one.

Currasala. Yeah. Sure. He just loves women's feet, dirty, clean, pushed up on a window. Yeah, they'll take them, sir. Any way you can dish him out. Right. Go ahead and post your feet in the comments of this episode.

DM directly to Mike. That's one way to get me on social media. So we've now, I think we've done every iteration of the three of us in solo episodes. Me and Mike just did a subscriber episode without Jeff. Where was that? We're going to get to that. It was a companion episode to this episode. So both of those episodes are going to be dealing with the same species.

And we talked about a guy who had a really unfortunate encounter while he was scuba diving. And Jeff, you had a pretty uncomfortable scuba experience lately. Yes. Do you think that you were the most uncomfortable anyone's ever been scuba diving? You know, I would put my name in the hat for the most uncomfortable on the boat for sure. Yeah. Like sitting on the hard boat. It was really tough.

You want to let us know what happened? Once I got in the water, there's a little relief. Yeah, so, I mean, it goes back to our trip in India. Being in the Himalayas was rough on my lungs. And then we went on like safaris and I got a lot of dust in there. And I just kind of had an uncontrollable cough. So two of our travelers were nice enough to give me some steroids that could kind of help with the respiration. And like as soon as I heard the word steroids, I said yes, you know.

You were popping. I'm crazy. Yeah. I think I overheard you say to Mike, like, just take a bunch of these. And I definitely didn't say that. We took, like, half the dose that you're even supposed to. It wasn't that many. But I took one a day for five days, like they told me to.

But then, come to find out, one of the really rare side effects of that is a rectal absence. Absence. Which is just like a... Pararectal abscess. So, unluckly for me. that decided to show its head once me and Mike went on a trip to get our cousin scuba certified in Cosmo, Mexico, which, you know, Little Island in Mexico, not too many options for me to go to get help. I start feeling a ton of pain and pressure in my ass. Yeah.

So I think that maybe I'm constipated. So then I like start pushing harder than I've ever pushed before. It's like nothing's even starting or anything. And then I'm just like fucking scuba diving every day with it too. And it just hurts so bad. Mike, what was I doing when we weren't scuba diving? You were just eating cereal bowls full of laxatives, basically. I ate a record amount of laxatives because I just like wasn't having no fact.

And just laying in bed all day while we were just in the most beautiful. I actually went to a doctor there and he was just kind of like, what do you think you have? I was like, I don't know. I think maybe I'm constipated. And he's like, yeah, maybe try laxatives. I was like, yeah, it happened. And he's like, well, you can try an enema. So then I took some animas.

Wow, this sounds familiar. Yeah, you know. Did you try different positions? Like, at first I just squatted. And I got my knees. And I kept doing it. way so maybe maybe there's something there to explore maybe try it on your back next time just like romantically in the future I mean right but so then I get home the flight was just

the most miserable flights of my entire life miserable like time of my entire life I there's like a tiny little Guatemal lady next to me and she would like fall asleep forward and I would shift every five minutes and she would wake up every single time I moved and I fell but like I couldn't help it. So then I go to the doctors as soon as I get home and they were like, they didn't think it was this because I'd wait, I'd been in pain for like seven days. And once they found out it was in absence or however you did it.

Abscess. Abses. They were like, oh, you're like really tough. You should have been in here a while ago. If you had this pain for seven days, these are like really painful. I was like, yeah, it's kind of scuba diving. So then. All of a sudden, next thing I know, I'm in surgery, getting it out.

And pretty surprising. Did they let you keep it? And right now, they didn't. I don't think it's something you can really keep. I think it's something more like a gigantic pimple type situation where you burst it open. Sure. Have you kept a pimple ever? No, but you could.

I mean, I don't think you could. Just like a little vial of. Yeah, I don't even want to think about that. There's probably someone out there that does. I can keep it. my gauze, I guess. I will say, though, thanks, Jeff, for keeping us. You really took us on a journey there with all the pictures you were sending.

Yeah, the underwear one was probably, you guys didn't you see that. But I just thought that gave a better, like, idea of where I was at for the day. We would just get a photo of whatever was going on in Jeff's underwear with no context whatsoever. Right. Here's enough of things. Well, first there was just like a little poop in my boxers and then. Yeah, then later there was poop and blood. So I was like, I guess I'll update them on.

It didn't really, yeah, it wasn't very clear in those photos. I also woke up to one text that just said, I'm going to the hospital. And I was like, I got it. So. Yeah, I woke up to just incredibly severe pain in my ass. So I would, I'd say mine was scarier still. Yeah, I'm not, I wasn't competing there. I wasn't saying that I suffered more.

But if it is a competition, I think I would. Yeah, sure. Sounds like a real pain in the ass. Well, and I'm supposed to be at, like, my roommate's reunion right now in Vegas. So I was thinking it'd be funny if I just show up still, just, like, blood dripping down my leg and, like, just go hard for 24 hours and come back. That's funny because that's the kind of thing that I would pray to get one of these parerectal abscesses instead. of go to Vegas with my old roommates. I'd be like, I got the perfect excuse now.

I don't know. I think it's cool. We meet up, so I don't want to. Yeah, it's great. That's just personally my whole vibe these days. But yeah, you guys got any other questions? You want to know anything else? I don't think so.

I got a drain. I'm like draining stuff as we're recording this one. Oh, okay. Listeners, if you want. Maybe we just do a long bleep through all of this. I mean, medically, I think it's interesting. Yeah. I don't really have any other questions.

I'm sure whatever we need to learn will learn on your social media. Yes. So you're actively, things are being drained from you right now as we speak. Yeah. I have a continuous funnel of drainage. Wow. Okay. A hole.

I have two holes in my rectum right now. Yeah. In your rump. So that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Like a little vampire bitch in your butthole. Yeah. All right.

Well, we're happier with us. I'm sure we're going to talk more about this throughout the episode. I think we're good. I don't think we need to. Don't we have a whole ass theme to listener questions later? They're not about my ass. Okay. I'm sure we're not going to way to make it about your ass.

Listen, I think people have had their fill of. that talk. Not us. That's disgusting. All right. Yeah. Well, as I mentioned earlier, we missed you on the sub episode. This has been kind of an interesting journey on this one because originally Jeff was

going to prepare a subscription episode this week, but then he had his ass pains. And so we kind of switched it up. Thanks for stepping up to the plate. Happy to do it apart. That's what the brothers are for, you know? The one that I was preparing for the subscription episode, I really, it was. It was like kind of a rabbit hole that I went down as I was preparing this main feed episode. And then I decided to switch them.

So we gave our subscribers kind of the story about someone who had a terrible interaction with this animal. And we're going to give our main feed kind of more of a subscriber-like episode where we're going to go down kind of a weird rabbit hole. It's a detective story. It's really interesting. And it's also kind of the story of a dad that's a bit of an asshole in my opinion. No, no. And it's about the Urukhanji jellyfish. Oricanji? Uricanji.

Like from Lord of the Rings? That's exactly what we said in the sub-episode. Yes. Sounds a lot like Uriqai. And for those of you who don't know this, and we talked about this before, Urik is actually the ork language word for ork. So when you say Urik, you're just saying ork in orkish, which is interesting. Yeah, I think that's interesting. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed

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This is a job for Indeed. sponsor jobs. All right. So we've done a couple episodes. I think they've been subscriber episodes about kings of sting. And I'm going to nominate another king of sting in this episode. And his name is Jack Barnes. This would be maybe the Australian king of sting.

And I think the reason I want to nominate him. Throwing his hat in the ring. And throwing his hat in ring. Well, the king of sting is not the person. It's the insect. Oh, I always thought it was the person. Yeah. I did the episode.

It was, what's the king of sting? And it was the executioner watch. But they call that one guy that, the guy that made the chart, they call him the king of sting. They don't. I don't know. I'm going to let Jeff. The king of sting goes to the insect, which insect is the king of sting? All right.

I will take your word for it. You better not be a quick search, though. I'm going to do it on my ear corner. I mean, I made the episode. I'm the one who made the guy. king of sting title for the insects. Like, I made it. It's not something you can look up.

Here's a New York Times headline. Justin Schmidt entomologist known as King of Sting dies in 75. Oh my gosh. You've embarrassed me. All right. Anyway, I'm going to nominate, since this is my episode, Jack Barnes as the Australian King of Sting. So it's Jack Barnes versus a bunch of insects.

And the reason I think, yeah, the reason I think this is I would, wager that he's i mean i just read the article i don't care if someone named someone king of sting my episode was what insect is the king of sting okay yeah for your episode great i'm saying for my episode this guy i'm calling a king of sting because i think he stung himself with the craziest thing that i've ever heard of someone stinging themselves with and it wasn't just himself that he stung and that's the crazy wrinkle in this story and we're going to get to that. But in the early 1900s in the waters of Northern Australia, there was a hidden menace that was lurking. Aboriginal people that had lived in this area for a very long time and swam in these

coastal waters were aware of the risks, and they knew that a tiny unseen assassin could cause extreme pain or even death. But it took colonial Australians a while to figure out the danger. So as early as 1922, people swimming and bathing, northern Queensland especially, reported stings from some marine creatures, and then a really particular set of extreme symptoms that followed. Those symptoms included severe headache, really severe backache, and abdominal pains, muscle pains, chest pain, nausea, vomiting, sweating, anxiety, hypertension, which is like really high blood pressure, tachycardia and pulmonary edema. It's like Jeff's day to day these past couple weeks.

Yeah, it sounds like child's play on this. So basically, these symptoms were so unique to these stings that they decided, you know, that this was like a specific phenomenon that was happening. It wasn't like this was a bunch of different animals that were causing this. They knew that one thing was causing this exact set. of symptoms. And one of the craziest symptoms that came along with this particular syndrome was a sense of impending doom. So sting victims are so convinced that they're going to die because these symptoms are so intense and so painful that they often beg their doctors

to kill them. So it's a really, really intense kind of sting. Yeah, that's the doom one's an interesting one because I do believe that that's probably where most of it stems from, just like that overwhelming sense of pain. But I also think, I don't know if you've ever experienced an impending sense of doom. I did once when I mixed a couple medications that I shouldn't. And it like, it totally put me into this weird depressed funk where I felt doomed to forever feel that way. And it's something I just like can't really articulate very well. But I think.

It was the first time I smoked weed. It's just. So, no, but really. I don't doubt that because I think that doom sensation is very psychological more than just like a manifestation of physical pain, you know? Yeah. And from what I've read, it's unclear with this particular animal, like whether or not that's actually something within the toxins of their venom that's causing that. Or if it's just that the pain that the person has experienced, is at such a high level that they just are sure that they're going to die. Sure.

Anyway, scientists and marine biologists in this area, they started getting wind of all these reports. And like many of the public, they suspected a jellyfish, or as they're often called in Australia, a marine stinger. So in 1935, a jelly bugger. Yeah, a jelly roo? Yeah. In 1935, Hugo Flecker, who's a toxologist, radiologist and a naturalist, was living in Cairns, or as they say in Australia, cans. and he took interest in the reports of both these painful stings and the deaths for marine creatures, and he started compiling all these different reports and finding some commonalities.

So basically, they don't know what's causing this, but he's just trying to put all these reports together to figure out what might be happening. And he and this other doctor, Dr. Ronald Southcott, classified stings into two types. They had type A, which includes all the symptoms that we just listed. So this syndrome where you have like intense abdominal pain, back pain, a feeling of doom, nausea, all of that stuff. And then type B was a very different type of sting where it's very immediate, often, not often, but sometimes would lead to death. So type A, they called Urukhungi syndrome. And the reason they called that is there was a tribe of people, some Aboriginal people that lived in northern Australia,

around the area where these stings have been happening. and so they wanted to name this syndrome after those people. As like a show of respect? I think so. I think so. Yeah, I don't think it was like meant to be a negative thing. But I do really want to, I want to read quickly a snippet of how Hugo Flecker reported the symptoms of Ory Kanji syndrome because I think it's a little bit better than the

clinical way that I just reported it. So he said, the pain usually, but not invariably, starts suddenly. The victim receiving a local sensation is a little bit of a little bit of. having been stung by a bee or a wasp. At other times, the pain at the sight of the sting may be slight or insignificant or altogether absent. While in some cases, the victim might be quite aware that he's been stung at all. However, the victim is able to reach the edge of the water, perhaps with difficulty, and then sinks on the beach, absolutely prostrated, and has to be removed by friends or bystanders. By this time, intense backache, the most distressing symptom

of all starts, followed by pain in the stomach and aches all over. attending by retching and vomiting, necessitating the use of opiates. The patient is seriously ill for a day or two, ultimately recovers a few days later. So we talked about this a bit on the other episode, and we talked about Dr. Alicia Gershwin, who described the back pain as an electric drill being bored into your back. There was another doctor, Jamie Seymour, who has been stung a number of times by this creature, and he said that on a scale of 1 to 10 it was a 14 and that if he could have killed himself he would have that's how bad the pain was i mean his skill just doesn't make any sense at that point yeah

pointless scale if it's not 1 to 10 but sure i would say i was in 10 out of 10 pain for solid four days last week with your ass you give it a 10 i was i was as uncomfortable as i've ever been yeah i think i mean I'm not saying that you're on 10. Okay. You're saying like Cynthia Baker will be like you. Cynthia Desslebaker. I'm always giving people like eights and stuff.

So I should probably give myself an eight or seven. Eights. I see. When we talked about this on the other episode, the people that are victims of this sting describe it as being held into a fire that they can't escape from. Like they have molten magma that's pulsing through their veins. and they're being stabbed by flaming hot swords. Like, it apparently seems to be kind of the worst pain that a human being can tolerate.

I think my issues, I need to like find some comparisons to describe mine to a little better. Yeah. Not a bar. I need to think of, you know, it felt like there was a giant dog inside my ass. A giant dog. It's way out. Yes. All right.

Yeah, maybe at the end of the episode, We can say who had it worse. Jeff's ass. Sorry, I said I wasn't going to bring up. Yeah, I am. Exema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis. A once-monthly treatment for moderate to disappear eczema.

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1-800-545-9759. All right. So we are talking about type A stings, which are this Urukonji syndrome. And then there's type B stings, which had similar characteristics, but were tended to be a little bit more extreme and could even lead to death. In 1955, a 5-year-old boy was killed after being stung by a jellyfish. in the waters near Cardwell, North Queensland. And Dr. Flecker went to the beach. Not the king of sting, that kid.

No, no, he, yeah, the prince. But maybe that jellyfish is, you know. Dr. Flecker went to the beach, collected whatever specimens he could find, and he ended up collecting three types of jellyfish, and one of those jellyfish had a distinct box-like shape with four tentacles, one coming out of each corner of the box.

So he sent this specimen to a marine biologist, who determined it was a previously undescribed species of lethal box jellyfish. And this one was named Chironix Fleckery after Dr. Flecker. Today that, that species of jellyfish is known as the Australian box jellyfish. It's responsible for at least 64 deaths since the late 1800s. So this Flecker guy who had kind of tried to figure out what Urukhanji syndrome was did discover this other species of box jellyfish. but then he died. He died two years later and he kind of never solved this big mystery of what the Urukonji syndrome, why it was happening.

Wasn't Abraham Lincoln, he kind of died around the mid to late 18th, 1800s, right? Yeah, but that's not when this guy died. He got stung in the back of the head. That's what I'm thinking. Shucked a box jellyfish at him. John Brooks booth. Yeah, I don't think every death from the mid to late 1800s was responsible. How many did you say 69?

64 deaths in Australia since the late 1800s. 64 is a good number too, though. Yeah, not quite as. Yeah, Nintendo 64. Right. It's a great, it's a great system. You ever played that? All right.

GoldenEye. It's probably the system I've played the most. No. 64? There's no way. No. It's quite close. Yeah.

I like that. It's an even numbers. Yeah. All right. The numbers are even. No. 32's prime number. 32?

No. Yeah, it's divisible by six. Six, six times six equals six. Is that what a... No, that's none of that's true. Or you're going down so many wrong alleys here. Prime number is... It's not things that can be divided by...

I don't think we... Prime means that it can't be divided by anything but one. Oh, you guys are right. You guys are right. You guys are right. Yeah. All right. All right. There's a stellar three minutes of podcasting there.

That'll be our social media clip right there. All right. Hugo Flecker died a couple years later, and that's where Jack Barnes comes in. Jack Barnes was born in 1922, which is a really tumultuous time for Australia, like a lot of the world. He was raised in a rural setting. Hold on. I want to talk about Abraham Lincoln some more. So you know that scene in Attack or no, what is it, the Clone Wars?

The second prequel Star Wars movie. when the assassin hires a different assassin to carry out his assassination. And you've been talking about... And hold on. Yeah, Jeff. That assassin uses worms.

Worms, right. I think you see where I'm going with this. You've been talking about how these little box jellies are like very stealth assassins, like very... I'm just saying maybe John Wilkes Booth

could have come up with a better plan than just shooting Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head. He could have employed some box jellyfish. Got Lincoln into scuba. Yeah. Really playing the long long game. I think Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving

in like the 17th century. Something like that. Jacques Cousteau of the 17th century. All right. We're off the rails. Okay. So this guy, Jack Barnes. Hold on.

age. However, in 1942, he took a break from studying medicine to join the Australian military in World War II and a fight on the island of Tumor against the Japanese. He returned to medicine following the war, and he became superintendent of a small hospital on Thursday Island from 1947 to 1953. And then in 1953, he arrived in Cairns, or Cairns, in Northeast Queensland, where he set up a private practice in 1958. In 58, in 58, in 58. In 58, he was a, he arrived. following the death of Flecker, the British Medical Association talked to Barnes and they said, you know, he had always always had this really keen interest in marine life. And they said, we want you to continue Flecker's research and discover what kind of creature was responsible

for Urukhanji syndrome. People knew Barnes during this time and they described him as irritable and belligerent, demanding and critical, unsociable and rude. I know someone like that. Yeah Under that gruff exterior A kindly and compassionate associate Huh Kind of more of the first half I think Mike's more the first half

But then it comes out the second half sometimes Or sorry, he's more of the second half And the first half comes out Whatever personally Not for me to judge This is like maybe a judgment thing too I've kind of described I've decided that when everyone's described

As like really nice deep down You're just an asshole of it. People describe it that way. You're not a nice person. Like, that's not what being nice is. Right. It's the opposite, in fact. I'll die on that hill, yeah.

I might push back a little bit. Yeah, you know. Like Harrison Ford, I feel like he's kind of a dick, but if you got to know, like, if you're in his inner circle, he's the best. Yeah, but see, that's my whole point. Like, I think a truly nice kind person, you don't have to be in their inner circle for them to be nice to you. I think that's a little fake, though. I think you can be a cool person and, like, still be a dick. But, like, I think if you're nice and kind, then you're nice and kind.

Yeah. Yeah. Who's to say who's right, you know? Yeah. That's just my, I'm going to die on that hill is what I said. Yeah. All right. A lot of the detectives, though, a lot of the best detectives throughout history have been

described as kind of unsociable, prickly, people that, like, aren't very easy to connect with. And I do think Barnes was a really good detective. He produced this paper called Cause and Effect. in Urukangi stinging's, and it kind of reads like a mystery novel. I really liked reading this paper, goes through the different clues that you use to figure out the culprit behind these stings. And I want to shout out Sci Hub really quick, which is SCI Hub. It's a place where you can paste the DOI of any journal article and access it for free.

So it's kind of like a pirating site for scientific journals, and it works really well, and it's how I access almost all of them. The scientific papers, like you've written some, so I'm asking anymore. The people who wrote the paper don't get the money, right? No, you have to pay money. Yeah. No, but I'm saying like, or who has to pay money? I had, like my last paper, we had to pay like $7,000 to have it.

So like you would encourage people to get it for free. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You access them for free. Go for it. Yeah. So let's dive into this detective work a little bit. the first thing that Barnes did was rule out some of the usual suspects.

So he thought it was maybe possible that Urukangi syndrome might just be an allergic reaction to something like a Portuguese man of war sting or even the Australian box jelly. But after he read through the work of Flecker and some of these other predecessors, he realized there's no way this was an allergic reaction. This was its own thing. So one of the first things he did was collect all of the reports of these type A stinging like the Urukangi syndrome stinging. And one of the first patterns that jumped out

was that almost all the stings occurred between November and January during the Australian summer. And often the stings occurred in bursts. So there would suddenly be a lot of reports in a matter of days and then it would go quiet again. So what would, if you guys are a detective and you're trying to figure out what that means, what would you think if suddenly a bunch of people are getting stung

and then all of a sudden no one is? Maybe it's like a seasonal animal type of thing. Yeah. Something is bringing large groups of this animal into shore and then suddenly it's gone. Right. Okay. Even more interestingly, he found that 85% of the recorded stings that led to Urukanzi syndrome came from two places, Palm Cove and Ellis Beach.

These were very popular beaches north of Cairns, but the percentage of stings there couldn't be explained away by just their popularity. There had to be something else that was going on. So he studied these two beaches in their specific geography and realized that there was really interesting currents during the winter months that caused open ocean water to be pushed southward onto these beaches. So typically these beaches would have this kind of murky coastal water, but during the summer, this open ocean cleaner pelagic water would get blown in and with it a bunch of

the pelagic creatures that lived in that water. And with marine ecology, when you have meetings of like two types of water like that, there's often a lot of biology happening there. They're kind of biological hotspots. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon.

Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. So Barnes studies these two beaches, their specific geography, and he realizes that the currents were likely bringing this unknown assassin close to shore. It's kind of like if John Wilkes' booth were just using two currents to get close to Lincoln to assassinate.

That's what I'm saying, dude. Yeah. Anyway. I think you did a good job, honestly. I think we're giving John Wilkes booth too much crap here. He's the only ones to ever pull it off. He escaped for a while, too, and he used probably like the loudest gun that's ever been. Yeah.

No, that goes. He jumped off and, like, broke his ankle. I mean, mission accomplished. Mission accomplished, though. Yeah. I don't know. All right. So the first thing that Barnes decided to do was use fine mesh nets to try and just simply

collect some of these specimens during periods of high currents. But what he quickly found out was that as these jellyfish were being pushed closer to shore, so was a lot of other stuff. So his nets within minutes would be completely clogged with different organic material and marine life. And there'd be so much that it was impossible to sort through it and try and figure out what might be this mystery jellyfish. So they decided not to do that anymore. And what they decided then they would do is just kind of walk the shore and look for jellyfish

that might have been washed up on shore and inspect those and see if they might be the ones. But they weren't really finding anything that had the right hardware to cause these kind of stinks. Another really confounding thing for Barnes was that none of the swimmers that had been stung had seen the jellyfish that stung them. And the ones that could remember anything at all said that they had felt like an extremely light touch that was very transient in nature, like something just kind of whisked over them. It just barely touched them. And all of this information might lead to a lot of confusion for a normal person,

but for a good detective like Barnes, it helped him kind of clarify what he might be looking for. And he laid out some clues, and I'm going to read them through really quick. First, he knew that the jellyfish wasn't microscopic because people had felt it made contact with them. Second, it did have to be quite small because there were reports of people being stung when tiny wavelets washed over their exposed skin. So it meant that it was small and that it probably traveled on the surface.

Third, it was probably transparent and colorless because people never saw it. And when they searched the water, they couldn't find it. Fourth, it probably showed up in large numbers because lots of stings occurred kind of simultaneously. Fifth, it was probably mobile. Jellyfish that kind of just floated on top of the water would get water. up on the sand, but if a jellyfish was mobile, it could actively avoid that. So he thinks that it was probably mobile, which is a box jelly. Box jellies, we know, are mobile.

They can actually propel themselves through the water, unlike the other jellyfish. So now a new search began, and Barnes let everyone know that they were looking for a small, but not microscopic, transparent, and mobile jellyfish, and that they'd focus their search around Palm and Ellis beaches. And Barnes would personally do close to 100 hours sitting like, couple feet below the surface with a modified snorkel. And the reason he'd do that is because if you look down in the water for jellyfish, you don't really see anything.

But if you're looking against the sun, you can see a lot of stuff like suspended in the water. So he would just like for dozens of hours at a time, just sit on the ocean floor and stare up at the sun and like look for something that matches all these different qualifications that he had. He also spent a lot of time in panty hose. Because the panty hose are enough of a covering to stop a jellyfish from stinging. Really?

Really? Yeah. What? The thing about their nematicus, their stinging cells, is they, like, kind of inherently know when they're making contact with organic material. And so if they brush against something that's non-organic, like seaweed or whatever else, they won't sting. And the panty hose is, like, just enough to stop them from stinging.

You could have used, like, like, pants or, like, a sweat soup. Wanted horse symphonies. But yeah, I mean, you know, whatever. Yeah. Don't get many opportunities to, not that you need an excuse. If he gets, like, creative and starts getting, like, the fish net ones or, like, ones with holes in them, then it's in trouble again. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah.

All right. So, we're going to get to where this gets a little bit more interesting in his big discovery. Oh, good. In early December, 1961, there were a spate of stings in the area that Barnes have been operating in, and he and his team went to the water. And he told people to be looking at the top of the water and for any transparent organism that might be moving against the general flow of water. And after a bit of searching, they did finally capture a tiny, mobile, transparent, box-shaped Medusa jellyfish.

And Barnes wasn't even able to see it until he actually put it on the glass of his mask. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he found a glass container. They could get a better look at its overall shape. And after observing it for a bit, some of his helpers went back. into the water. Not long after they saw a fish that was moving really erratically through the water, and they noticed that it had a tiny jellyfish attached to it. So they actually caught that one as well

and brought that one up too. So he had two specimens and he thought that these might be the jellyfish that were responsible for Urukonji syndrome. And remember, this is a search now for like, they're going on like 40 years that they've been looking for this animal. And it's the first time that any of them have ever laid eyes on it. And although it fit all of it, of his clues, the only way to be sure that this was the jellyfish that was causing Orucangi syndrome was to let it stink someone. And that's where the story takes a crazy turn. So Barnes is standing there. He's got these two jellyfish. He's determined to put this medical mystery to rest then and there. And he decided that he would sting himself with the jellyfish.

And then he drafted two other subjects to be stung. So one of the subjects that he drafted to be Stung. Jeez. Makes a lot of sense to me. It's this like really kind of strong, robust lifeguard named Charles Chilla Ross. His nickname was Chilla. And the other subject that he drafted. Why does that make a lot of sense?

Because like if someone's going to get stung, it's going to be a kind of like brave lifeguard that's like, yes, I will, I'll do this. You know, it just kind of seems like. I mean, I think women could get stung to. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying in 1960s, Australia, the person that would probably be. volunteer would be this kind of now. I get what you're saying. I'm just being. The last

person though, the second person that he drafted is the reason that I picked this whole story and wanted to do it. It was his nine-year-old son, Nick. Oh my gosh. That makes a lot more sense to me. And this is crazy to me because it's not like they don't know

what this sting does. Yeah, they're like seeing people get really messed up. Yeah, and he is the expert on it at this point. Like, he has read lots of accounts of people pleading for death because the pain from this sting is so bad. And he's like, you know who we should sting? My nine-year-old son.

I'll retract my kind of pushback of him not being a complete jerk. Yeah, exactly. All right. So he decides to go through with this. And in his paper, he refers to these three subjects, himself as J.B., Jack Barnes. His son is NB, Nick Barnes, and the lifeguard as C.B. Or C.R.

Sorry, Chilla Ross. And he reports on the stings in the paper, and it's done in a very clinical way. And I'm going to do my best to kind of interpret some of that coldness into, like, what they were actually experiencing. But we're going to get into the report of these three stings right now. So the first thing that he did is he splashed water on the inside of the upper arm of both himself, and then the other two subjects. And he held the jellyfish there until they said the sting was uncomfortably sharp. This took three seconds for his son, four seconds for himself, and ten seconds for the lifeguard. The first symptom that all three of them reported was a painful stinging sensation,

but not much more than a bee sting. But then things got a lot worse. Did they have three separate jellyfish or just the one? No, they had two. And I think he used one of them for him and his son, and then he used the other one for the lifeguard. So his son Nick was the first to report mild abdominal pain, and then he said both of his armpits were aching. He then said that his stomach pain was getting much worse, and that he was starting to have severe back pain as well. And then within 20 minutes, both of the adults had armpit pain,

which was closely followed by back pain, and discomfort around their ribs. Within 30 minutes, all of them had severe stomach pain, severe lower back pain, which again has been described as a power drill boring into your lower back. This is not just like the aches that you get up. You know, when you get up from bed, you have like a little bit of lower back pain. From everything I've read, this is the most intense lower back pain that you can experience. Oh, the kid. Nick. I know.

Dude, this is. I can't believe that this is a real thing that happened. So at this point Barnes must know, okay, we got it right. You know, like this is the Arakanji jellyfish. This is a Reconji syndrome. But he also had to have known what's still left in store for him and for his son. So I doubt he was like celebrating that much, but he had to know, okay, we solved the mystery. All right.

So now I'm going to read directly from his report more of what they experienced. As systemic effects became manifest, subjects were seized with a remote. remarkable restlessness, and we're in constant movement, stamping about aimlessly swinging their arms, flexing and extending their bodies, and generally twisting and writhing. And it's funny that, like, he says subjects, but this is him, too. Like, he is also doing all of this. As the pains increased, initiative was notably depressed, and brain function, though accurate, was decidedly sluggish.

Answers came slowly, and despite obvious discomfort, there seemed to be no urge to obtain treatment. The sufferers had no clear idea of the whereabouts of their belongings and had difficulty in handling heavy items, which I'm like, is someone just trying to hand them heavy items to figure out how difficult it is? You obviously don't go to the gym. That's true. It's a lifestyle. When you go to the gym, you just lift up heavy stuff all the time. Everything you can see. You're trying to bench for us.

It's a real problem if you're a gym nut like me. There appeared to be a genuine, though not marked loss of power, coupled with general clumsiness. And this clumsiness seemed not so much due to weakness as difficulty in concentrating. Touching of painful areas now including arms and legs showed muscle groups in tonic contraction, short of spasm. So that pretty much just means their muscles are like firing and twitching and spasming, but like not a full-on epa- or like a fit yet. Their muscles are going crazy.

This is my favorite part. This possibly explains the peculiar postures noted for extremes of flexion and extension were avoided, and the volunteers adopted a stance, which I can best liken to that of an infant with a full nappy. So a nappy is a diaper. And he's saying that, like, they were bending their bodies in a way to, like, not experience pain, that it looked like they were babies with full diapers. Huh. Yeah.

So at this point Barnes realizes, we're going to need medical attention. We shouldn't just be here on the beach for this. So he puts his son Nick in the back seat of his dodge, the lifeguard hops in the passenger seat, and then he drives them 20 minutes back to Cannes. And this is what happens during that drive. During the 20 minutes drive to Cairns, the victims were all inconsiderable distress, heightened it seemed by the necessity to remain seated. All had abdominal and back pain.

pain in the anterior chest wall with some difficulty in breathing and aches and muscles and joints all had headache and distinctly dry mouth CR noticed that his eyes were burning and J.B. himself felt itchy and complained of sharp prickling sensations in the skin.

Nick felt very cold and was shivering violently. So sun is like starting to get the chills and shivering. So miserable. As someone like having been on that airplane with my abscess,

I mean, just having to sit in a seat is just the worst. It's the worst. It's so bad. Like, you need to be able to lay down and move. And I don't know. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle.

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Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. See site for details. So he goes on now. They start coughing crazy. They start vomiting. A lot of their muscles start cramping up and aching.

He says like maximum discomfort at this point. They felt that the troubles were centered around their. chest and what was happening is they're getting these waves of pain. It would get really, really bad, and then it would kind of like go down a little bit, and then it would get bad again. And each time it would ratchet up, it would get worse and worse with each of these waves. And they would kind of try to do everything they could to stop it and nothing was helping. And they say the urge to ride was compulsive and well indulged. So they're writhing around as they're like trying to get rid of this pain. If you're like driving past them, you're probably like, what are they listening to you?

Yeah, seriously. He says 40 minutes after the stinging, the abdominal musculature of the three subjects was an unrelenting spasm so rigid as to weren't fully the term boardlike. So their stomachs were spasming so much that it felt like a board. So I guess if you want to get washboard apps, you know, go out and sting yourself with one of these things. People would do that too. And it got so... I wonder what the lifeguard's abs felt like, because he already had it. Right.

He already has rock hard abs. Yeah. Yeah. They probably felt like diamond. Yeah. Anyway, it just keeps getting worse and worse. The lifeguard starts throwing up uncontrollably to where he's just covered in his own vomit. Oh, my God.

Yeah. It just, it says, C.R. coughed and vomited simultaneously and almost continuously. J.B. coughed violently and frequently vomited intermittently. and Nick vomited only after drinking water. So Nick luckily got spared the vomiting. He says this is where they reached the peak of their misery. And it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And finally, they got some opioids.

And they took these opioids. And for most of them, it immediately had an effect. And me and Mike talked about this in the other episode a bit. For some people, now they treat them with fentanyl or some other opioids, it really, really helps with these symptoms. For others, it does, like, hardly anything. That's kind of the case with opioids in general, I feel like. Totally.

Like, Mike, opioids don't really do much for you, right? They just make me throw up. Nothing really more than that. It sucks. I wish they did work, but... After, like, my first major surgery, my ankle one, I also had, like, a lot of anxiety, and that first opioid I ever took, I think it was a Lord Tab.

It's, like, the best I've ever felt. in my entire life because it got rid of my pain it got rid of my anxiety it's just like on cloud nine yeah and and so what happens with these people and this happened with our other victim in the other episode is that the pain kind of fights the painkiller and then suddenly the painkiller will like take over and they feel really good and warm and happy and then all of a sudden the pain comes back and there's kind of this like push and pull but that's why you guys just take more open and that a lot of these people They give them like the maximum amount of morphine. And then they're like, we literally can't give you anymore or else you're going to die.

Yeah. And the people beg for it. I'm just kidding. Pain killers are very dangerous. Don't. Yeah. Don't take more. A crazy thing, though, is after like their pain kind of subsided, they started having this really crazy,

intense prickling sensation that was painful as well. And they felt it in their joints and subcutaneous tissues, scalp, finger, face, penis, and rectis. So they're kind of just feeling this crazy tickling everywhere, which, you know, take that for what you will. You think an erection might have happened a little somewhere along the way? So they go through this crazy, like, hellish experience, I don't. And it lasts about 24 hours where they're having to kind of dose themselves and do whatever they can to treat these symptoms. They're not like staying in the hospital. No, I think they were being treated by one of his friends who was also like a medical professional.

But they pretty much, after about 24 hours, there was no symptoms left. They were all feeling okay. And he even made his son go to school the next day, which is kind of crazy. Yeah. All right. So they've found their jellyfish. They named it Karukia Barnesi after Barnes. And today it's widely known as the Urukonji Jelly.

There are like 16 species of Urukonji jellyfish. This is one of the most famous. This is one of the ones that often comes ashore in northern Australian large numbers. And Barnes would actually go on to contribute a lot more to the field of box jellyfish studies. He would die in 1985 of a heart attack. Before we finish up with this story, there's one more really interesting thing, a tidbit from his paper that I wanted to bring up. And I think it really highlights something that we've talked about multiple times on this

podcast, which is the value in consulting indigenous voices when you're studying wildlife. Because basically, after Barnes had discovered this jellyfish, he heard a story from a soldier that happened all the way back in 1944. And the soldier was stationed on an island that made up part of Papua New Guinea, and one night another soldier was brought to him with extreme stomach and back pain, so bad that he thought his appendix had burst. and he didn't think this guy was going to survive a bumpy ride to the nearest hospital. So he dosed him up with morphine and his symptoms went away.

And a few days later, another soldier had the same symptoms. But this time when he was brought in, one of this guy's servants who was Papuan said, hey, I think I know what's going on here. Let me go get our witch doctor from the local village, who was like a medicine man. And he brought this witch doctor to his house. This is what Barnes reported it as. And this is what happened next. from the paper. The witch doctor

upon arrival checked the legs of the patient and pointed out a small lesion. The patient recalled having been stung while swimming an hour earlier. The witch doctor then went into the jungle, procured some leaves which he chewed up for a poultice, applied this to the lesion, and complete recovery

occurred in about 20 to 30 minutes. Wow. Whoa. The witch doctor then sent one of the village divers down. Lucky. Yeah. The doctor. He just guessed. You just grabbed a legion. He then sent one of the village divers

Down to the Coral Lagoon to bring what they considered the causative agent This was a small three centimeters wide Almost colorless jellyfish So this witch doctor and like I don't know if that's the right terminology these days But that's what Barnes said He knew exactly what it was He knew the jellyfish responsible One of his villagers found it immediately

And they even had a treatment for the sting and this was all the way back in 1944. So had someone just gone... Yeah, had someone just gone to this tribe and said, hey, do you guys know what causes this? They probably would have had an immediate answer. Yeah. So that just goes to show.

Always talk to the people that know and care for that land best. And often that's indigenous peoples. So are these Ur-Kai jellyfish? Orkondi jellyfish? Are they still like a real problem for people? people in Australia? Yeah. And we talk about that a bit on the other episode, but they think they cause up to $3 billion

in losses for the Australian government each year in tourism losses and medical expenses. They are a problem. They have whole beaches that they have to shut down. Do they like put signs up now though when the currents are coming in and stuff? They do. And like you'll remember Jeff when we went to the Great Barrier Reef, we had to wear stinger suits when we went out and swimming around. It's because of this jellyfish mostly that they make you wear those.

Yeah, they are a constant threat. There's like up to 250 to 300 people as one report in Queensland every year that are hospitalized from Uruguangi stings. There's been two deaths. They both occurred, I believe, in 2002, and they both involved. One was a British man and one was an American man. And they both had underlying health conditions to where the blood pressure increase from this sting killed them. So it does. For a second, I thought you were going to say that.

soldier was going to die because he's going to take his appendix out. Yeah. Like the guy just opened him up. Just cuts him open immediately. All right. You guys have any questions before we get to our categories? I just want to say, you know, I got a lot of stuff going on with me right now and maybe a little irritable or just like argumentable.

But I'm fine with you calling people King of Sting. All right. I think I've called people King of Sting before. So I don't know what I was on about with that, but I'll take it back. I'm sorry, too. I wasn't trying to be. I think the insects and animals are the ultimate kings of sting still. But I think, you know, it's a fun title.

So you can get into it. You can put this person in the. Jack Barnes is in there and his son, I think, should be probably in there too. And the witch doctor. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to get to our categories. I do just want to emphasize again,

If you want to learn more about this animal, if you want to hear me and Mike talk about someone more recently who was stung by one and all the stuff that happened to him, check out our recent subscriber episode. It was a really fun one. And there's a lot more information there. Okay. I bet it was really fun. Oh, man. It just was like, yeah. Just so easy and nice.

You're able to get through your story. Didn't get interrupted once. All right. First category. What's the meanest thing your dad has ever done to you? Me and Jeff got the same dad. The one I think of was just at Lake Powell once dad put on like a latex glove, but he like shoved it on his hand and pushed his hand all the way through and broke the glove open at the end.

And then he goes, Jeff, that's how you were born. And made me think for like six years that was an accident. Like I asked him like, are you being serious? And he's like, yeah. And I guess I wasn't. an accident. So it's more funny than mean, but it's a little mean. It is pretty funny.

I've never thought of like when people claim it's an accident, that's never really been like a broken condom. It's like not a negative thing for me. It's like accidents happen all the time. Yeah. It's not that big a deal for an accident. Mine also involves our dad because that was the prompt. And I can't remember if I've told this story on the podcast yet. But I think I'd probably have, but I'm going to retell it because I don't.

It is probably the meanest thing my dad's ever done. I was plagued by nightmares as a kid. I, like, things really scared me. I would have a really hard time sleeping if I just saw, like, a trailer for Gremlins or, you know, the Dracula trailer, the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula trailer. Just stupid little things would really get in my head. In fact, me and Jeff shared a room for a little while while he was a baby, and I read this horror novel about a baby vampire. And for a while I did not trust Jeff one bit as terrified of you. But I was really into reading these little horror booklets.

And one of them, I can't remember if it was the scary stories to tell in the dark or what it was. But there was a story of this girl who a vampire would come to her window and kind of like scratch on the window at night. And that night, like the night after I read this story, it was windy. There was stuff hitting my window. And I got so scared, like probably the most scared I've ever been, a kid that I went up and knocked on my parents door and went in and complained and said, I think there's a vampire outside my window. And my parents were like, no, no, no, no.

And then my dad was like, actually, I recently killed all the vampires in this area. So you're okay. And I was like, wait, what? Like, vampires are real? And he's like, yeah, but I got them all. Yeah. And then I was like, okay. And so I started walking out of their room and he goes, or at least I,

I think I got them. Okay, well, that. Yeah. And it not only made it seem like vampires were real to me, which I wanted them to tell me they weren't, but I was terrified that he hadn't actually got all of them. So it was pretty mean, but also very funny in retrospect. I can't think of, so there are two things that come to mind, and my dad denies that either of one of these things was deliberately done by him.

But once he kicked a red ant hill all over my legs when I was little and we were living in Georgia, mentioned that once. And he's denied it. I brought, it was like he, he's pretty much gaslit me into believing maybe it actually didn't happen and I'm making it up. But I swear, it was so painful and terrible. And he was standing there. I was standing right there and he just kicked it all over my legs. It was a crazy. He just had like an intrusive thought. Yeah. And then the other one, this one really did happen. I'll never be able to be convinced otherwise, but I would fall asleep and then he would turn the heater, like the, you know, how sometimes cars have, like, the seat heat heaters. He'd always turn it all the way up whenever I fell asleep in the seat and I just wake up

in like a puddle of sweat. And that's like, kind of mean. It's like not the most mean thing that's ever been done to me, but it's like, come on, man, this sucks. I don't want this. Yeah. I don't want that to happen. My dad does something similarly just kind of jerkish where they have a bathroom where

the, on their upstairs floor where the toilet's like really close to the door. and if he knows you're in there taking a dump, he'll come and just like bang on the door as hard as he can, like five or six times. And it's so jarring and shocking. And every time I'm like, Dad, that's so annoying. Why are you doing that?

He just thinks it's funny no matter what. It drives me crazy. Yeah. Okay. Our next question, what's your favorite detective story? This can be a movie. It can be TV.

It can be a book. It can be whatever you want. And I'm going to go first on this one. always just going first because you're the lead no i don't see you know mike's on way yeah you are on one i'm on jep's side now 100%. i just love that that one comment or wrote in once oh yeah we got to always went first yeah and they said that i'd love to hear the sound of my own voice yeah it's just like the least true thing ever uh but no i want you to go first west i really do all right i'm gonna say it's the first sherlock homes novel the sound of the scarlet one

Oh, this is the one with the gorilla running around. No. The purloined letter. Should have gone first, dude. Yeah, I know. I'm just going to, let's re-rack this. It's called a study in Scarlet. It's the first, it's by Arthur Conan Doyle.

It's the first Sherlock Holmes novel. I really like it for a couple of reasons. It introduces you to these characters that we've all grown up with and that we know really well. So I think, like, I'd always seen Sherlock Holmes stuff, but never really knew of his genesis and how him and Watson became friends and stuff. And you get to know that in this novel. And then also, a big part of it goes to like early Mormon history in Utah. And it's really fascinating. And it's just a really interesting book and story and really charming. And like, it made me love Sherlock Holmes more than I already do. So that's, that's my pick. A study in Scarlet. Who's your favorite

Sherlock? Like the actor, I guess actor portrayal? Robert Downey Jr. I love the Guy Ritchie-Sharelock movies. Nothing wrong with that? Yeah. I'm more of a basal-rathbone guy. My mom raised me on Basil Rathbone. Do you say it that way every time? Yeah.

Basil, perfect. For me, it's a shot in the dark. It's the second Pink Panther movie in Spector Clouseau. I think Peter Sellers might be the funniest person ever to have lived. Maybe, perhaps ever. All right. In history. But no, like, I think it is my favorite of his movies.

He's just a bumbling inspector slash detective. It's kind of a murder mystery, whodunit kind of thing. But classic Inspector Cluso, he bumbles his way through it all. It's great. Man, it's so good. Yeah, I think, like,

all time, the most I ever got into, like, a detective thing was the show Luther with Mugreselva, especially, like, the first four episodes. Three and four, there's, like, a two-parter. There's just, like,

some of the best TV I'd ever seen in my life at that point. That show doesn't pull its punches either. Like that was quite like good show. Yeah. So yeah. I think that's like the most I've ever been into like a detective show. But yeah. Now it might be a different answer.

Like I really like prisoners with Jake Jill and all. I thought it was great. You know what? I want to do a quick honorable mention, which was the show Hannibal. I just thought that was a really good show and like super dark. It's one of those shows that I couldn't believe it was on. NBC because it has some of the craziest, like, most violent stuff I've ever seen in a show. But it's just really, really good.

And Mads Mickelson is just like a tour to force in every single episode. So I just love that show. Yeah. I think Idris Elba might be the most handsome detective ever. I think he'll get my vote, right? Without a doubt. I can't think of anyone that would compete. Yeah.

Daniel Craig's hot. But yeah, I wouldn't put him over Ebris. Like as James Bond? I was thinking glass the Oh glass onion Knives out Knives out Yeah I think Idriselba's like in my top five

Like probably most handsome men ever though You know He's up there There you go All right I got a couple rapid fire questions for you guys First of all How much would you have to get paid

To take an Urukanchi sting You know what As like right now I'm doing alright But like in college I'm gonna answer as if I were in college Yeah I like that probably $2,000. Wow.

Okay. Knowing all the sales are going to be more than that. Yeah. All right. I think if I'm like ready to go and geared up, I have like medical assistance at the ready. I have hopefully the opiates do their thing for me. Right now I'd probably do it for like, I don't know, $250,000.

That's a lot more than I thought. I mean, I'm not, I'm going to be somewhere in between you guys. Sounds like this is potentially lethal. Well, he's doing like, he's helping with another podcast. He's making like side money. You could die from us. Like people have died from this. And a lot of the other people want to die because it's so bad.

Yeah, but on the other hand, a nine year old did it for fun. Totally. It wasn't for fun. I will say like there is this kind of part of me that wants to experience. it just to say like I've experienced the most painful stee. As a 20 year old, there's a chance I would have done it for free if I was in like the right environment. You could hold it over a Coyote Peterson for the rest of your life.

You could say even when we're stung by it. Yeah. So I think for me right now, my number is somewhere in the like 30 to $50,000 range for me to get stung by one of these. If we, if me and West both got stung though and at the start we were like playing it cool and just like try it, dude. Nope. No, no, no.

I want people to go revisit that section where Wes was listing off the symptoms and really truly think how much money it would take for you to undergo those symptoms. Like literally wishing you were dead. Literally. Yeah. There's probably people that. $30,000. Being treated by it, they would like give away any money to make that pain stop. Right.

But I think if I'm walking a beach in Australia and some guy walks up with $30,000 in his hand and he says, all I'm going to do is brush this jellyfish on your arm. and you get this, I'd probably say yes. Yeah. I don't know, man. Okay. I feel like I went low even, but do you think Coyote Peterson will ever sting himself with one of these? I do. I don't.

He's a content creator at hard. He might have to, yeah, he might like get in a place where he just has to go really hard. But I just don't know how he can give a bigger reaction. Like, I think it'll be a worst sting, but I don't think, I don't know how he'll show it as worse is what he's given us. He got nibbled by like a ladybug and did a triple backflip. He needs to put like an Alka-Seltzer tablet in his mouth or something and start like foaming. All right.

One last quick question. Do you prefer the name Marine Stinger like they call these in Australia or jellyfish? Jellyfish? Yeah, jellyfish. I think I do too easily. It's more personality. Yeah. Okay.

All right. I don't like Marine Stinger. a jellyfish. Okay. We're going to do our, one of our newer categories, which is let's argue. And I think we're all primed for it. Man, I'm... And the thing we're going to argue about is, while you guys were in Mexico,

each of you would text me something kind of like, hey, is Brent a picky eater? Or like, you know, these little things that I could tell you guys were maybe... Does Mike like to snorkel? Yes. This is about snorkeling. So we're going to argue whether or not... snorkeling is an enjoyable activity. Mike's ready to go.

No, it sucks. It's terrible. I want to hear why you think snorkeling is terrible. There's a lot of reasons. It's mostly exposure to the sun and the salt water down the snorkel hose or whatever you call the little pipe thing. That sucks. You're on the chop of the surface of the water. It's never like, it's never relaxing float. I don't know.

It feels like way more uncomfortable to be worth having a, not awesome analog to scuba diving you know yeah it's like when we snorkeled in the great barrier reef you weren't having fun not all that much fun no because i'd have to go back on the boat and reapply sunscreen after like three seconds and then the i don't know it's just not that fun to like thin across the surface of the water yeah see i i i want to counter that uh yeah first of all you can just put on sunscreen but i i can't count as being in the sun you do have to be in the sun. You do hate the sun.

But I think it's the most relaxing float you can have in the water. Like what? You want to be on your back just like struggling to stay up with like waves splashing in your eyes and mouth and nose? Like that's the other option for floating. With a snorkel, you get to like float with your belly down. You're looking at the reef. You're looking at fish just kind of floating.

They're relaxing. What's a more relaxing way to float on? water. I mean, you don't have to be in like the breaking waves of the surf. You could be in a lazy river inside. You don't have to be in breaking waves if you're snorkeling. That was your argument. No, the surface of the ocean, wherever you're snorkeling, it's always like a little choppy. It's never like glassy, you know? It's always a little bit rocky and it's jostling you a little bit. But it gets really old, really fast. You said it's not a relaxing float. I feel like that's the most relaxing float you can have in the ocean is not a snorkel.

I guess that's just a difference of opinion then. Well, what is then? Wait, I want to count. You think it's more relaxing? Does float on your back in the ocean? I would rather float underneath the surface of the water while you're scuba diving. You're just kind of gently drifting through the water. Okay.

No more jostles. No, I don't think I'm going to argue with you. I think I agree that like I prefer usually scuba diving to snorkeling. But for me, the thing I love about snorkeling is the freedom it gives you. Like you can dive down. You can kind of navigate and be much more mobile in the water. I hate all the gear and stuff that comes with scuba diving. It feels very claustrophobic to me.

And I do love that snorkeling. And Mike, when we were snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, you did a lot of diving and exploring. Yeah, because I want to be under the water and be able to stay under there. And with new snorkele technology, you can just blow out the water. You don't have to swallow any of it. You always get some in your mouth, though. You don't. Plus, like, you go underwater, you're swimming around under the water.

You've got, like, 30 seconds at best because you're doing, like, some strenuous swimming. You're trying to navigate around. You have to go up to the surface over and over and over again. It's just kind of a lot less fun. It's just not worth it to me. I don't enjoy it at all. I really don't. It is funny because, like, no one who I know loves swimming more than Mike.

In the Olympics, he watches all the swimming events. He just loves swimming. No one loves scuba diving more than Mike. And then, like, no one hates snorkeling more than Mike. It's just, like, a little bit, like. It was shocking to me. You know what? It's like, it's like playing flag football.

It's like, let's go do the real thing, how about. It's like a million times cooler. I can have fun with both. Yeah, if you're obsessed with football, like, yeah, you want to be playing tackle football. All right. I think we've gotten to the point where we should stop. Let's argue and move on to our case category. Snorkeling sucks.

That's fine. It's fine if you guys. Everyone else in the world can like it. I'm not against other people having fun. I just don't have fun doing it. Fair enough. You know what? Mike,

I love that you're an impassioned person that sticks to your opinions. I love that you're going on a tooth and claw trip in two weeks where snorkeling is one of the main activity. It's going to be super fun for everyone. for everyone. Okay. Let's do listener questions. Jeff, you got some for a special ass episode.

So yeah, these are just ass-themed listener question. Okay, so this person helped me get my Instagram back when it got stolen once because it worked for Facebook, I think, but I still really have a hard time

with their Instagram name. Exhara. Yeah. Axshar. Exhara, yeah. Why do Some monkeys slash primates have such prominent but holes. Or just butt color issue.

Yeah. You know, I know this answer. And I know what Akshara's talking about here. There's like that swelling you sometimes see on their rear end, these big like swollen patches. You see it in chimpanzees. You see it in mandrill. I think it is swelling and I think it has something to do with mating. But I can't speak to that for sure.

Isn't it kind of an alpha thing? It's not. It happens to a bunch of different, it happens to both genders from what I remember, but I can't, I can't say for sure. I would have had to look it up. We don't know. All right. Yeah. This looks really uncomfortable.

I know. It always looks like it would be really uncomfortable to sit on. Christina Fukamoto asked, best male celebrity ass. Who's the most caked? I'm going to go with Sanji from the live action one piece. Okay. Caked up. Thickness.

Sure. I think Jim Carrey putting out the vibes in Dumb and Dumber. Actually, like, is doing a pretty good job putting out the vibes. I thought you'd go East Ventura. That would have been a good one to you. Talking out of it. I'm having a hard time, like, thinking of a good male ass. Oh, you know, just like in the Avengers movie where they always talk about how Chris,

what's his face? Chris Evans has America's ass. Yeah. Sure. I'll go with that. That's the only one I can remember right now. Emily Wolcott asked, would you rather have just one butt cheek or three cheeks? Three. I have three. Yeah. Yeah, because then one, I don't think you get a butt hole anymore.

One feels really uncomfortable. Where would it be? I think you just have two options. Two holes. I feel like with one you'd always kind of be rocking back and forth. Okay. But with one butt cheek, where's the hole? You don't get any, probably. That's what I'm trying to say, yeah.

Yeah, it's troubling. So I would want two holes over the heels. Is it even a cheek anymore? Or is it like a shin? You know? I don't know. Yeah, shin, I guess, kind of. There's a bone there.

M. Hartner asks, which baby animal has the cutest ass? It feels like a weird one to answer. Do you think? I'm going to go with wombats. I think one. have really cute little butts. Yeah, that's a pretty good answer. I'm gonna go with a white-tailed deer.

I like just baby white-tailed deer in general and their tails popping up. It's a cute little butt. Maybe like a little bunny rabbit, the cotton tail. Oh, yeah. Nice. The wheel deal asks, hit me up with your wiping technique. Got a feeling Jeff runs with wet wipes crowd.

Wes, I did this one mostly for you because I think you vastly improved me in Mike's life by just your love for bidet. We talked about this actually in the other episode too. But yeah, for me, the bidet followed up by like a little drying. Would you give Wes credit for you having a bidet? I'm trying to think now. I mean, they were on my radar before I even knew Wes. That's for sure.

But I wasn't really using one until well after I met him regularly at least. So I guess, probably. For me, it gets full credit. They're great. They're great little inventions. Yeah. We're all three bidet users. So easy one to answer.

JT. 85. I won best butt in high school. What animal would win that in their yearbook? I guess we kind of did that with babies, but I'm going to, we can shout out one another. I'll go koala. I'm going to say giant pandas. Hmm.

Oh, they're pretty caked up. That's a good answer. Depends. If there's a lot. of horse girls in your class. The horse is definitely going to win. They got those weird, big muscular butts. Yeah.

Gross. But I can see them getting a lot of the vote. All right. That's it. That's all I got. Okay, I got a couple subscriber ones super quick. This one is from Kyle. Kyle said, I was watching Beast games.

And one of the participants says he's a polar bear guard. I was just curious if you might be able to give some insight into this. Is that a real thing? Thanks so much. It is. In places where there's a lot of polar bears, people are hired that are proficient with, generally with firearms, with the different deterrent tools to be polar bear guards. So they're often stationed around people that might be doing outdoor work or whatever in places where there's polar bears. So really their main job is just to look for polar bears.

And if they see one approaching, they'll let everyone know. But they also are trained to like handle a polar bear if it's coming in too close. All right. I got one more. This is from Amador. Amador says, hello, big fan of the show from Washington State. I want to get your thoughts on the pros and cons of hiking with a dog in relation to animal attack risks. I have two younger daughters, three and seven, and hope to take them on more hikes as they get older. I heard your most recent episode, this was a while ago, about the Mount Lion attacks with the two young children.

I generally stay on well-marked trails who will be doing more exploring of Northeast Washington State that doesn't have the crowds to find them out right near. Thank you. So basically the question is hiking with dogs and whether or not you should take them. I would say in a place like Northeast Washington, where the main thing you do kind of have to be thinking about is Mount Lions and Black Bears, having a dog is a pretty good idea. Your dog is probably going to do enough to scare away either of those two animals. I think where it gets a lot more nuanced and complicated is when you're in grizzly bear country. And moose. Yeah. The dog can. can antagonize those animals to the level where they bring them into you. So my general advice to people, if you're worried about that, is in those kind of areas where you're especially worried to keep your dog on a leash, because then your dog's actually going to probably scare the animal off, and it's not going to be able to go actually chase it and bring it back to you, which has happened with dogs too.

Yeah, sure. Why not? Keep your freaks on a leash. Yeah. Wow. No, that was the disturbing. That was kind of the breakdown, though. Yeah.

I can't even. Yeah, the scatting. Yeah. I love that song. Anyway, no one can do it. Wait, I have a quick one. Jonathan Davis. From a patron.

Rachel Cox, she's on the news in Florida. Asked if an aunt hits you going a trillion miles per hour, would you die or would it not matter? I think you would die, right? Yeah, I think so. Really? A trillion miles per hour? Well, I don't know. think the ant would disintegrate.

It disintegrate long before it even hit you if it was going that fast. But the question was if it hit you going a trillion miles per hour. So in this question, we're assuming that it's possible. Yeah. I'm saying it's like, I think it would like bore a hole straight through. I think you'd die immediately. I think anything traveling that fast would like immediately just detonate everything in like a million square miles. blow up the whole town.

Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks guys for sending those in. Thanks for the listener ones and the subscriber ones. We really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this episode. Again, if you want to hear the companion piece, go to our Patreon or our Apple Gris Club.

It's $10 a month for either of those services. And I think that Gris Club actually might even just be nine. And you're going to get access to our whole back catalog, all of our bonus episodes, which I think we're probably well over 100 now. would be my guess. Well over. Yeah.

And so you're going to get hours and hours and hours of additional content. You're going to be able to like be more in touch with our community. It's really fun. So check it out. And thanks for being here today, everyone. All right. See you guys. Love you.

Love you. Bye.