Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Jaguar Attack - Beware the Jaguars Jaws

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Wes prepared a few stories to share with us all about the rare but no-less-violent jaguar attack, so strap on your helmets and join us for the ride.  ~~ 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

If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. That's right, we're back.

It's the regular gang, Wes, Jeff, and me, Mike. And on this episode, for the first time, and hopefully not for the last time, we're talking about Jaguars. Wes prepared a handful of stories for us to showcase exactly what the Jaguar is capable of and how best to prevent and avoid dangerous encounters with them ourselves. Anyway, he did a great job preparing these stories. We think you're really going to enjoy this one. Oh, and just real quick, I wanted to plug our Patreon account. As most of you know already, you can subscribe over there for some more bonus content and early access to our main episodes.

Oh, and just recently we posted a bonus episode about public service mascots like Smokey the Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog. And it's generating quite a bit of traffic in our comments section over there because we had a little competition to see who among me, Wes, and Jeff could draft the best team of public service mascots. So if you join over there, you can get in on the action. as a tiger or a grizzly tier patron. And I'm not saying you should do this. I'm just saying that you could. Wes is actually beating Jeff and I pretty badly. So if, hypothetically, you wanted to join and maybe help us out,

because I don't think Wes really put together that good of a team. You can do that. So yeah, that's just a little taste of the action we got going on over at our Patreon account. Thank you so much to all of you who have already joined. And also thank you to everyone that's left us a review and a rating over on Apple Podcasts. It really does help us a lot, and we love seeing all of the incredibly generously nice things that you all say about us. It truly does make our day. All right, that's enough talking about other stuff.

Let's get to talking about Jaguars. We hope you enjoy the episode. All right. Jeff's got his Ninja Turtle doll. You have all the old toys, don't you, Jeff? Beanie babies. Oh, yeah. I got this guy.

Oh, a dinosaur. Yeah, look at you. Do girls like that you just have toys set up all over? Yeah, it's for them to play with if they get bored. Cool. Ankleosaurus. Enkylosaurus. You know what?

I grew up with, like, all the dinosaurs, and I realized as an adult that I'm pronouncing a lot of their names wrong. Mm. Because then I'll hear, like, paleontologists say them, and they say them differently. Oh, really? Yeah, like, that one I always said ankylosaurus, and it's enchilosaurus. Well, no one's actually been able to ask a dinosaur how their name is pronounced. That's true.

I don't really. That's a good point. Yeah. Put too much. stock into what these so-called paleontologists are saying. There's that stupid thing where they said like bronosaurus weren't a dinosaur and then they were like actually they are a dinosaur we found one and it's like you made up the name. Well what they thought originally they thought that they had a bronosaurus but they

had a stegosaurus head for it and so they were like oh this is actually an a patosaurus but then they I think they found that they actually had the right head or something I don't know but somehow Bronosaurus back. They're just making it all. Just like how Pluto's back as a planet. Um, hey everyone, welcome to tooth and claw podcast. My name's Wes Larson. I'm a wildlife biologist. Hey, Wes. I've worked mostly with bears, but with some other species as well. And you got Jeff and Mike with you. Jeff and Mike. We got Jeff and Mike. Here on this podcast, our goal is to talk about animal attacks, but we want to explain them very much from the animal-centric view. We want people to understand that these animals are

usually just reacting to something that the person is doing wrong. Not they're not bloodthirsty monsters. They're generally just doing what's natural to them. And usually the person has created some sort of circumstance that led the animal to do that. But not always. And today one of our attack stories is going to be a true, a couple of them actually are true predatory attacks. So there are definitely our exceptions to that. But that's within their natural behavior as well. Some of these animals, they're predators. That's what they do. If we're out in their in their environment, it might happen. So, hey, well, it's really good to be back with you guys.

Yeah. How are you guys doing? It's, uh, my favorite thing is just hanging with the boys, you two in particular. Jeff, how you doing, pal? I'm doing pretty good. The smoke's a little depressing, but it's, it's kind of clear today, so. So that depression's lifting a little bit. Yeah.

Okay. Speaking of depressing, we got a question from Neil Aboshama, a friend of ours. Your old roommate, both of our own roommate. Yeah, he sent us this TikTok video, and it was this girl talking about why bears haven't been domesticated. Yeah. Which I thought was like a pretty good question, because it was like, hey, we took cats and we domesticated them. We took wolves and we domesticated them. Like, how come no one ever did this with bears?

They did. And I thought about it a lot. Coalas? No, those are not domesticated bears. It's a good question, but in my, in my, in my, mind, it's probably just that like they're just too big to begin with. Like a wolf or whatever, you could slowly like select for the non-aggressive wolves over many generations and get it like a dog, but a bear, it's probably pretty hard to like start that process with a bear.

People do have bears as pets that they interact with. Yeah, and those are trained bears, but they're not domesticated. Domestication is something that happens over many generations. And it actually like changes the genetic makeup of the animal. So there's this really famous test that these people did in Russia on like a fox farm where they got the foxes and the ones that were most aggressive they removed and then the ones that were least aggressive they let breed and they kept picking the least aggressive fox and let them breed. And over time, it only took like a few generations and they like had a fox that started to look like a dog and act like a dog. And it was like a really quick thing because they were purposely selecting for those traits. Oh, wow. And so that's domestication,

when you purposely are trying to select for traits that lead to, like, an animal being comfortable around humans. We really should do that with pandas. With pandas, I know. Yeah, because they're not huge. That's true. You could start with pandas. Aren't there only, like, eight pandas? It'd be so easy to find, like, the two that are least aggressive. It's really hard to get them to breed, though. Oh, yeah. That's the thing about, like, foxes is that. they breed a lot and they breed pretty often. But pandas, it's like every few years and they don't have many cubs. So you don't really have the pool to select from.

What would you do to like try to help your pandas breed? I don't know. What would you do? What are you thinking of? Like candle it dinner with some bamboo. Yeah, what music? Rose pedals on their little bamboo patch. What music would you choose?

I don't know. Maybe like cigarettes after sex or something. Just that. You heard that band? They're a good band. Kenny G. Or like. Some Kenny G.

There's some good bands out there. Kenny G. Are you guys? What? The saxophone. That means immediate sex. Right? I don't know.

I don't think so. Anyway, it was a good question. Thanks, Neil. Me and Neil used to run a blog called Samplesaurus, where we'd go to Costco and review the samples every day. Oh, yeah. Didn't go very far. days we're the best right yeah we'd eat samples every day we'd review the samples from that day and we'd talk about how nice the sample people i remember how excited you'd be for the super bowl

oh yeah super bowl samples are unreal yeah do you have a top couple samples you ever had at costco oh man no you know what they're really good at is like just like one bite tastes so good the way they prepare it and if you buy the actual thing it's like you don't this isn't the same at all Yeah, no. I feel like you got to bring the grandma with the hairnet to your house to, like, really have the same experience. It's all about presentation. It's all about presentation. Don't kidnap those grandmas and bring them to your house, though.

Dude, you can't always tell people what not to do. You know, you got to let them do some stuff. I'm getting a little bossy. Don't hurt animals. Don't kill sharks. Don't kidnap grandmas. All right, it's fine. You can kidnap grandmas.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I apologize. Anyway, so that's kind of it for news that's going on, I guess. News? I do. Yeah, that wasn't really news, was it? I've got a correction, though. Can I do a correction corner?

Yeah. So in our news episode, we did talk about bees, and I mentioned a story where I... Bees? Yeah, bees. Beeds. Oh, Papa Bear. Oh, Papa Bear. Love the honey.

Anyway, I mentioned. a story where I had stepped on, or Jeff brought it up, where I stepped on like a hornet nest and I got stung by a bunch of yellow jackets. Yeah. And I said my grandpa and aunt were looking at a badger and no one helped me. And my brother Cyrus actually really helped me a lot. I was getting stung like crazy and I was on this rock surrounded by all these thorn bushes. And he actually came up and guided me down and helped me and risk getting stung and all this stuff.

And it was like a very heroic thing that he did. And I totally didn't bring that up. And I felt kind of bad about it. So Cyrus, thanks for, you know, doing one nice thing for me when I was a kid. Risking life and limb. Aside from all the other times, you beat me up. I'm still waiting for my nice thing. Yeah.

You get one. J.K., we love Cyrus. He was a good older brother. Yeah, that's kind of messed up. You left all that out. I know. I just completely left it out. So that's a big correction.

But we can still trash grandpa. he didn't help it out. Oh yeah, he didn't help it all. He just, Grandpa and Aunt Terry just cared about that badger. Okay, so. So what? We're talking about bees?

No, we're not talking about bees. Well, yeah, we're not. We are talking about an animal that lives near bees. We're talking about Jack. Wait, let me guess. Bears. Nope. Bears and bees are like peas in a pod.

They are peas in a pod. People are always talking. about the birds and the bees is it birds it's not a bird uh we're talking about jaguars oh oh yeah yeah no they do live close to bees often they do yeah that is true this is our first jaguar episode it's one that we've been looking forward to for a while because we're big fans of jaguars so i'm going to go ahead and get into it there are not many stories about jaguar attacks jaguar attacks are really rare but um they are starting to happen with a little bit more frequency Some people do think that back in the day before, you know, really good written, recorded history,

that there were a lot more attacks than they are now and that they maybe saw a lot of these indigenous people as prey and whatnot. But anyway, in recent times, that's not something that we've seen. They don't really, of the big cats, they definitely attack the least. So when I say big cats, we're talking about tigers, lions, leopards. We're going to include mountain lions and jaguars. Why do you think that is that they don't attack as much as leopards or lions or tigers? We'll get into that a little bit, but I think the main thought is just that they have really good prey abundance in most of these places that they live. And so they don't really see humans as prey.

But, yeah, I don't know. They're pretty deep in jungle normally, right? They're not as close to humans as the other cats. Yeah, and they don't live necessarily in places with, like, huge human populations. Whereas like leopards live right on the fringes of huge cities in India. Lions live close to human settlements in Africa. Tigers live next to a ton of people in India. So that's kind of why those cats probably attack more people.

But it's really, it's not that well known why Jaguars don't do it. They definitely are capable of killing people. We actually are like right in their kind of sweet spot for the size of prey that they like to attack. So it would make sense that they would want to attack more people, but they really don't. But it does happen, and I do have a few stories of some attacks from Jaguars. So we're going to start out with one that happened in 2007. So on an early May morning in 2007, a 40-year-old man who was an Owedi native, that's a tribe down in Brazil, he was walking in the woods near the shore of Lake Ipawu in Madagroso, Brazil.

He was walking a trail that was really familiar to him, and it led to a Manjoka, which is their word for Kasava, plantation, where he would collect. food to this plantation. And he's walking with his two dogs and immediately he goes into high alert because the dogs start growling and barking at the thick jungle surrounding the trail, which if you're walking a trail early morning in Brazil, that's not a great sign. The dogs shoot off into the thick undergrowth and then the man hears this tail-tale sign, a roar of a jaguar, and this is a jaguar that's not very happy and it's being chased by these dogs. So much like mountain lions and other big cats, dogs will often chase them and they try and tree them. And that's

what happened here. These two dogs chase the jaguar up a tree, but the difference between like a mountain line being treeed and a jaguar being tree. And Clint told me about this, is that whereas like a mountain line will just stay in that tree until those dogs leave, a jaguar will stay there until it gets pissed enough to where it will just come down and murder the dogs. And Clint, this trapper that me and Jeff knew, he had a friend in Arizona who accidentally treat a jaguar, and he had to like pull his dogs away because the jaguar was trying. to kill his dogs. He said it acted completely different from any mountain line he'd ever treeed.

Well, that's impressive too, because black bears don't really do that either. No, but black bears are much shyer than jaguars for sure. But they're like the same size is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, totally. When you say the jaguar roared, is that a genuine kind of a big cat typical roar? Yeah, so they are one of the three big cats that do full-on roar. Okay. No, four big cats.

Sorry. So Jaguars, leopards, tigers, and lions are the four that roar. The rest of them don't. So those are all the Pantera species, too. Probably pretty surprising to tree a jaguar in Arizona with your dogs. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to talk some more about that. But Jaguar's Pantera Onsa.

That's its Latin name. It is part of the Pantera family, and they do roar. They're considered true big cats. You want to give us one? No, but we'll play one. Anyway, you said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save?

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When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for this day. So these dogs have treeed this jaguar, and like I mentioned, they just get to a point where they're too pissed, and that's exactly what happened here. The jaguar silently jumped down on these dogs,

right as this guy shows up to help. He watches the jaguar jump down out of the tree, and he runs up to try and help his dogs. He's got a machete and a large stick, but by the time he gets to the dogs, the jaguar has already killed both of them. Oh, man. And he turns on the jaguar and tries to, like,

get it off of the dogs and it pounces on him it bites him into his left shoulder and then he's got his machete and he tries to like hit the jaguar off of his left shoulder with the machete which actually works it jumps off but then he runs at it and tries to hit it more with the machete it attacks him again and it rips up his torso pretty good leaving some really deep scratch marks and lacerations in his chest so as this is happening another indigenous guy hears all the commotion he runs up with his dog, which attacks the jaguar and is immediately killed by the jaguar as well. And then the second guys are like hunting dogs, right? Yeah. I mean, they're, they're dogs that have lived in the jungle their whole life. So I'm sure they're smaller, but they're used to chasing animals. I'm just saying

it's like impressive how quick the jaguar can kill like these capable dogs. Totally. And we're going to talk about the way they kill their prey. And it's a little bit different from any other cat we've talked about. But these two men then managed to run the jaguar off. He, the dude, the that comes to help, he takes the guy that was attacked into the village. And this guy was actually just treated with herbs from the local shaman and or shaman. How do you say that? Shaman. I typically don't say that word at all.

I don't know why I said shaman. When I do say shaman, I say shaman. Yeah, it's shaman. The local shaman treated him with some herbs. So that's what happened to this guy. He ended up with just like some scars. He was okay. But that's our first, our first attack.

We're going to talk about three or four. But before we get into the other ones, I did want to talk about some Jaguar facts. So we've talked about some big cats. Where do you guys think Jaguars rank as far as the biggest cats? Third. Okay. Did I say that already? No, I just already knew that.

Okay. Yep, good job. They are the third largest cat. They're the biggest cat in the Western Hemisphere. They can grow to be up. The biggest recorded ever was 358 pounds, which Jeff, our biggest bear was 350 pounds. That's a big cat. Oh, wow.

It's like a really big cat. What's the heaviest human ever recorded? Oh, wasn't it like 14, more than that? 1,400 pounds or something? Oh, my gosh. There's got to be people that are more than 800, for sure. Humans probably have, like, the biggest range from, like, smallest adult to biggest adult. That's probably true.

Grizzly bears, too. So they do average, like, more around, like, 150 pounds. They're roughly five feet long. Pretty much every article I read had a different. for like what was the basis of the name Jaguar. But some people think it comes from an indigenous word Jaguar, which means he who kills with one leap. But there's a bunch of other explanations. So I'm not going to say that's true.

But that was the coolest one. So that's the one I wanted to say. Yeah. I got a fact. Go for it. Strongest bite of any cat. Yeah. Pound for pound.

If you're measuring it just straight, tigers and lions both have stronger bites. Are you sure? But, yep. But for their size, Jaguars have the strong. strongest bite. I thought Jaguars had the strongest over. I did too and then I looked into it a little bit more and it's that's pound for pound they have the strongest bite. Okay so I just looked it up. Heaviest human ever, 1400 pounds. John milk. That's insane. That's so big. That's the biggest range of animals I think. Even grizzly bears. That's pretty big. The interesting thing about their spots too is

with Jaguars you'll see like around their face and neck and stuff you'll see like solid dark spots. and then on their lower abdomen you'll see almost like stripes. And then in their middle they have rosettes where they have like a circle that encapsulates another spot or sometimes multiple spots. And that is one of the ways you can tell jaguars from leopards is leopards don't have they have rosettes. They have those like circles, but they don't have spots within their rosettes. They're just empty circles, whereas jaguars will have spots inside of their rosettes. That's how they always tell the difference. Yeah, jaguars are typically.

stalkier. They're a little bit lower to the ground. They're bigger. They weigh more than leopards. Their tails are a little bit shorter, and they've got those rosettes. And they've got a little bit more rounded, muscular-looking face, too. A couple more interesting facts. When they mate, they breed, they made up to 100 times per day during their breeding season, which is usually, luckily, for the females. A hundred? Only a few days long. That's an incredible sperm reproductive powers. Yeah. It's some real stamina. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. So they can live up to 12 to 15 years in the wild. They really are the ultimate opportunists as far as hunting.

Their hunting strategy is really just to like kind of patrol areas and hope that they see prey. And then when they do see prey, they stock it. They get into an ambush position and they'll wait until they're in a blind spot for that prey and then they jump on its back. And then Jaguars, we've talked about different ways that cats kill animals like tigers and lions often suffocate, mountain lions try and get their teeth through your spine. Jaguars often will just bite your skull and literally crush your skull with their bite force. Jeez.

Yeah. And you'll see them and they'll bite something and then they kind of just like keep rearranging their bite until they finally crush that skull. They do sometimes also sever the spinal column with their bite. And then they sometimes will suffocate larger prey. So like cattle and tapirs, bigger animals, they'll actually like bite and suffocate. But for smaller stuff, like human size, they'll actually crush your skull.

It's crazy those videos where they are hunting Cayman and they'll like bite like a seven foot camen or something. Yeah. And just lift it completely out of the water. The thing's like flopping around and its mouth just like never even like moves an inch off of its skull. Like they can bite so hard. They just lock on.

Yeah. And you know, we'll come back to this. And I'm sure someone's going to challenge us on the PSI thing. I read a few different things. Just like you, Jeff, I read a few articles that said they have the strongest flat-out bite force of any cat. But then a lot of them said that they pound for pound have the highest. And that if you're doing pound-for-pound, the next highest is clouded leopard. So there's some debate out there.

But the ones that I read that seem to be the most scientific said pound-for-pound, they have the highest bite force. Which makes sense to me. Anyway, they are occasionally melanistic. So you'll see black jaguars in the wild. Unlike leopards, where that, a little bit of them. Aleal is recessive with jaguars that's dominant. So it is a little bit more common to see a black jaguar than a black leopard. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. And those are the only two cats that can be black panthers, right? Jaguars and leopard. Those are the two that are commonly considered black. Yeah, black panthers. Okay. There are, I think there have been like melanistic lions and tigers and stuff before too. But when you're talking about a black panther, it's either a leopard or a jaguar.

Okay. So they are considered some of the. the best ambush hunters in the animal kingdom. There's very little information, like I mentioned earlier, about jaguar attacks on humans. Researchers really all tend to agree that they're incredibly rare, but they are getting a little bit more frequent in recent years, and that's a lot of it probably because people are spending more time around jaguars with like ecotourism and people going into the pontoonol a lot more. People are spending more time around jaguars. They did one... rainforest. Yeah, honestly. They did one study in Venezuela and the researchers asked a ton of different

ranchers and people about Jaguars. And they found between 1940 and 2015, there were 22 reliable records of attacks on humans and that included four fatalities. And that was just in Venezuela. So they are really rare and they're so rare that when they happen sometimes they'll write a whole paper just on that attack. And that happened in 2013 to a three-year-old girl in Guyana. So that's the next story I wanted to talk about. You guys ready for that one? Okay. Let's do it. I don't know. Three-year-old girl, that's a little... It's a little rough. It's a little sad. But we're going to get through it. So on December 27th, 2013, Jasmine Joseph was a little girl. She's three years old. She's living with her family in a remote indigenous community near the Mazurani or no, Mazaruni River in Guyana. So,

Guiana, do you guys know where Guyana is? Yeah. It's just east of Venezuela. It's up on the coast of like the Caribbean and everything. It's just east of Venezuela. It's very thick rainforest. It's a really cool place. Do you have Christmas?

I don't know. This is two days after Christmas, but like probably like many people in her village, she's pretty much been raised in the outdoors. Even at three years old, I'm imagining this little girl has learned kind of how to survive in the jungle. So in November of 2013, just like a month or two before this incident, this little girl, Jasmine, was actually attacked by a jaguar while on the banks of the river. Oh, man. This is like nearly unheard of.

And she was there in a bunch of other village members and her grandma were able to scare off this cat before it really got her. And so she had like some scratches on her feet, but it was pretty like minor. And even for like a community like this in the middle of the jungle in great jaguar habitat, those kind of attacks are really. almost non-existent, but then Jasmine manages to get attacked twice in a span of two months. She must have did something to make this Jaguar mad. And my guess is it's the same Jaguar. So on the morning of December 27th, Jasmine and her mom are down by the river, and Jasmine's playing on the edge of the jungle while her mom is washing clothes on the river's edge.

And her mom had just glanced back to check on her, and then she turns back to her clothes in the river when she hears high-pitched screams from her daughter and a really loud commotion behind her. And she turns around to see a large jaguar with its jaws completely clamped around her daughter's head, dragging her way into the jungle. That's the worst because they eat skulls, right? Yeah, and now twice we've had stories of moms that are like doing their laundry in the river,

they turn around to see their kid being attacked by an animal. Yeah. So we had that woman with the Nile Crocodile, too. So Jasmine's literally being drug into the jungle. She just drug like 60 feet from where she was attacked. Probably pretty quick, too. since she's only like super quick

Jaguar can move Yeah I mean she doesn't weigh that much But it completely picked her up by her head So Jasmine's mom and the other villagers Run to her aid and they managed to scare the cat off And then someone shoots it not far from where Jasmine was attacked And then they put her on a boat and they rush her to the nearest health center Which is like 10 minutes away

And by the time they get to this health center Her family thought she'd already died So they leave her on this boat and they go to like get a nurse And when the nurse comes back to Jasmine, she finds that she does still have a pulse. So the nurse calls another boat, and this larger boat comes and gets Jasmine, and it takes her to the nearest airstrip, which is like about an hour away by boat. And then she takes a one and a half hour flight to Georgetown, which is the capital of Guyana, and then a 15-minute drive to the hospital. So it's been like

a few hours now since she's been attacked. And doctors find that her skull has been completely crushed in multiple places. Her scalp is ripped to shreds. There's photos of this in this paper and I'll I'll show it to you guys and then maybe if we feel like it we can post these but they're pretty gnarly here let's just let's look at them really quick I'll share my screen oh no come on man okay so I'm gonna show you guys these photos of Jasmine's attacks oh man I don't think I'm not really very good oh dude you can't just like put it up oh my gosh so you can see like her skull got like really crushed in she has a big laceration right over her nose and And she pretty much got scalped by this January as well.

Bloded. Yeah. And her scalp's like missing. I mean, it's completely tore it off. I was about to say this feels like when I'm watching someone balancing on the milk crates, and I know they're going to like break their arm or something, but it is a lot worse than that. It's pretty bad.

So she, um, her skull had been crushed in multiple places. Their scalp is completely ripped off and torn in shreds. She has large lacerations all over her chest, her face. her neck, her arms. And her doctors weren't optimistic. They were like, you know, people don't usually come back from these kind of wounds. Yeah, I mean, they're pretty bad. Unreal, yeah.

Anyway, Jasmine's like, maybe we'll put them on Patreon because our Patreon people we know can handle that stuff. Just DM us if you want to see them. Yeah, serious. Jasmine's a fighter and her doctors were amazed to see her vitals go up, even during all her treatment of surgeries and everything. They ended up having to do a craniotomy. So they removed part of her skull and that cut down on the swelling.

And then they put like a metal plate in to replace that piece of skull. And the crazy thing is she ends up making a full recovery. Wow. Oh, good for her. That's awesome. Which is like pretty amazing considering the extent of her wounds. I'm going to show you guys a photo of her recovered just so you can feel like a little bit better. Okay.

Yeah, those are the bad ones. The one on the right there. Good. Yeah, she looks good. So she, I mean, she did make a full recovery. She has some scarring. but aside from that, you know, for being drug away at three years old by a Jaguar, you're pretty lucky to survive. Plus, it's cool to have Jaguar scars, you know? Not very many people

have Jaguar scars. True. All right, so we're just going to rip to our second story, or sorry, this is our third one now. That's okay. July 14th, 2010, it's 6 p.m., 17-year-old Mateos Lamos. He was enjoying this evening boat ride. He's out in Matagrosso again, so like the Pontenol area, and he's fishing with some friends. Wait, what country? He's from Ministradice. This is in Brazil again, sorry. Wait, the last one was in Brazil, though, right?

No, our first one was Brazil. Last one was Guyana. This one's Brazil. So he's from Minaserd Ice, which is a much more arid part of Brazil, and he's vacationing in the Pontanol, which is this expansive wetlands, surrounded by jungle, tons of Cayman, tons of Jaguar. I've been there. It's amazing.

Do we know anyone that's been there? Yeah. Such a cool place to like fish and see wildlife. You got super close to seeing a jaguar, right? Yeah, we followed them. We had one like follow us and its tracks weren't our tracks when we came back. Didn't it like walk behind you probably or something while you were walking? It was there.

It was there. The next day they saw it. I mean, they're an animal that you see only if they want you to see them. You don't get lucky with them really. This summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup, and Kraft Singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly. milty cheese and thick rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and craft.

Anyway, this Mateos Lamos, he's 17 years old, and he's coming back from this really great fishing trip. He's on the boat, and he and his friends think that they see something moving on the other side of the river. So together with their guide or their captain or whatever, they get the boat closer and they slowed out to investigate when a jaguar roars out of the brush, explodes from this ravine, and jumps onto the boat. Oh, man.

And it bites Mateos, bites Mateos on his right shoulder, and the force of this jaguar launching out of the forest onto the boat and biting him, knock both of them into the water, and they just disappear. So it's like, his friends, just imagine this. Like, you're on a boat by the jungle, and suddenly a jaguar shoots out of the jungle, grabs your friend, knocks him into the water, and they're both just gone. And you're just like looking at the water. And so they're just like sitting there in stunned silence when the jaguar pops back up.

and it's got Mateos's head and its jaws. So again, that's, like, not a good place to be. I just keep, like, imagining when the Caymans are flopping around in their jaws. Those things are pure muscle and they can't, like, get out. I was holding a Cayman once in my lap, and all it had to do was, like, flop its tail, and it knocked me completely off this boat. So you think, like, if a Jaguar can subdue a Cayman were nothing to it.

So it pops up in the water. It's holding Mateos's head and its jaws, and this captain was really quick thinking. He grabs an iron pipe that was in this boat and he just smashes it down onto the jaguar's head. And that causes the jaguar to release Mateus and it runs back into the jungle. So they pull him back on the boat

and they're trying to keep pressure on his wounds and the boat's racing towards help and they had this huge stroke of luck and they managed to encounter another boat that has a doctor on board. And this doctor has like bandages. He has antibiotics. He has anti-inflammatories. He has like,

an IV saline solution. Like he really, this is like a great find. But so it's eight hours before they're able to get him to a hospital. And they also find with him that he's had his skull crushed in multiple places. He actually has damage to his brain. Jasmine, I don't think, actually had any brain damage, but this guy does. And then he also has large lacerations on his face, torso and arms. So I'm going to show you guys what his wounds look like.

Oh, good. Yeah, I know you want to see. So I'm going to show you. That's Jasmine. Quit showing us that. So I've seen that one last. This is Mateus. Damn.

And those, you can see those are chunks of his skull in that bottom right. Holy cow. That's so powerful. So he, and this is like within seconds. It didn't take long for this Jaguar to do this. So again, he's pretty much scalped. He has these big lacerations. Doctors work on him for a while.

They remove bone fragments from his skull cavity. And he survives, but he actually ended up having traumatic amnesia. So he has memory loss problems. Which is pretty sad. At least he probably doesn't remember that traumatic jaguar attack. I don't know. I bet he does, but maybe not. Okay, so we are going to, I'm just going to actually read the third one because this one's

actually a fatal Jaguar attack. Fourth one, I want. Sorry, the fourth one. Last time I forgave you, but this time I don't. Use your fingers. This is the third Brazilian one at least. Oh, okay. Nice.

That's probably, nice save. Thanks. So this one happened again in Madagroso, so in pretty much the Pontanol. So it's a 21-year-old fisherman, and he was attacked in a remote area. It occurred around 7.30 p.m. So a few of these attacks have either been in the evening or the morning. All of them have been. And that is when Jaguars tend to be the most active.

And he was attacked on the banks of the Paraguay River near the Ta'am. I should be able to say these because I speak Portuguese. Taima Nature Reserve. It's an open site. It measures about 25 meters wide. and 10 meters deep, and there's really poor lighting because it's surrounded by all this really thick vegetation. So people that camp there, a lot of fishermen apparently camp there, they have to have like

an open fire and artificial lighting so that they can see around them and spend the night safely. For a jaguars? That's like what they should be concerned with that. And probably like came in and so other animals as well. Anaconda are down there. But so he was actually sleeping in his tent. He had the entrance closed off. And in the night, around 7.30 p.m., the Jaguar actually entered his tent and bit him on his neck.

It grabbed him by his neck and his head. So he lost a lot of tissue and bone. And then he had claw scratches all over him and punctures like all over his chest and his back from the teeth. So they actually think this guy died from his spinal cord being severed. That's what they said it was. But it didn't eat him? No, it started feeding on him. It dragged him approximately 60 meters into the woods.

and then some other fishermen got a call from this guy's dad because he hadn't called and he hadn't checked in so they were worried about him and they found his body and it had been fed on. So the ideas that this guy was, it was a predatory attack and it did feed on him quite a bit. But the way it killed him though was biting through his spinal column. Yeah, I was going to say something about the bite actually

because that last picture you showed us, those puncture wounds, it honestly looks like a shark attack, like big shark teeth punching through skin. And I just didn't imagine that's what it would be like for a jaguar too. It's pretty crazy. Well, most of those, so like how you saw in sudden of those victims head, you saw those cuts, those are actually from the claws. Oh, those are claws.

That's from the jaguar grabbing onto their head with their claws. And then the big puncture wounds are from their canines. And that's where you see like the breakage and them like shearing the scalp off and stuff. But those little cuts are from claws. Do you guys want to see the photos from this? one, it's pretty bad. We're in. It's a dead body.

You're in? Okay. We're in this deep. They're definitely a lot worse. So just prepare yourselves. This is the guy they found after being consumed by a Jaguar. We'll put this on Instagram too. I don't think we are going to put this one on Instagram, but it's pretty bad.

So it's not a good way to go. It's not a good way to go. So as you guys have seen, Jaguars do typically kill their prey, including humans, by biting the skull or breaking their spinal calls. them or by like biting their throat and you can see that in those no that's crazy i mean regardless of where they rank for bite force it's like very obvious that they know that they have a really strong bite because they're just clamping skulls and breaking them well and i think the thing that i've learned from going through these case studies and learning about the few attacks that have happened

is that with some of the big cats like mountain lions for example you've probably got a little bit of time to fight them off. We think about like Cindy Palin or the woman that was attacked in British Columbia that fought the cat for an hour before she realized her kids were okay and then she died. She like she was able to battle that mountain line for a while and I don't think you really have that option with Jackals. I think like you got a school crush. It sounds like you got a few seconds to fight off and then if it gets its teeth around your school, you're probably going to die. Unless you got a captain with a metal pipe nearby to smash it on its head. And even then, his skull was just crushed.

Right, that dude, and he was only in its mouth for seconds. So from looking through these case histories and learning about attacks, it does seem like attacks are much more likely to happen when a Jaguar feels cornered or threatened. So a lot of the attacks that we didn't bring up have happened because, like, they're chased by dogs, and then the person came up on the cat and it attacked the person too. or it was like a hunter actually pursuing a jaguar and it attacked back. So those are generally like where most attacks have happened.

Predatory ones are pretty rare, but they obviously have happened. That one that happened that we just talked about in 2008 is the only recorded fatality in Brazil. Recently in Colombia, two people were killed in 2013, but it really doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. So it's not like you can go in a Jaguar territory and be like, there is no way I'm going to be attacked by a jaguar, but of all the big cats, they do attack the least. Like I have a friend, I think we brought him up before, Paulo, who, or Paul, Paul Rosalie, he works in the Amazon,

and he sets up trail cameras and stuff. And very often he'll pass a trail camera and you'll see him in it, and then, like, minutes later, you'll see a jaguar. And he says that they like, they like to follow people and they're really curious. And he says they're always kind of following you, but they don't ever mess with them. spent thousands of hours in the jungle and he's never had a problem with jaguars. So they're not an animal that you necessarily need to be afraid of, but you do need to have the

right amount of respect. They seem top level sneaky for animals. They are. I mean, like, all these big cat researchers like kind of agree that when it comes to ambush hunting, jaguars are the best at it. But yeah, they just really don't see us as prey. And these people that we're talking about, there's a whole scientific paper about these case histories because they are so rare. You don't see that with mountain lions or tigers or lions because it happens with like some frequency and with jaguars it's just very weird. Did you hear about the jaguar that went into the restaurant

in the Amazon this year? Yeah, went into a restaurant and there's like this riverboat guide who was able to like fight it off. I heard that was faked though. You got to remember Jeff that movies aren't real. Oh, okay. That was a movie.

Yeah, it was in a movie. It was the rock. Yeah, it did. It was the rock, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. Okay. Jungle Cruise. Yeah.

Yeah. There it is. Unless there was any doubt left. Jeff just dashed it upon the rocks. That was the movie Jungle Cruise. So I do think I want to really quickly, because these ones especially were a little gruesome, especially with those photos associated with them. Yeah, those are not.

I do just want to say, this isn't a normal thing. This hardly ever happens. Jaguars don't see us as prey. But you do need to be respectful of them. They are a predator. It can happen. So you need to be prepared for the worst, but it's very, very, very rare. Okay.

So let's give our ouchies. So I think we got a range of outchies here. Maybe we should just, like, give a general ouches for what a typical Jaguar attack looks like. Yeah. I'm having a hard time. I'm going to give them nine outchies. Yeah. Because it's pretty bad.

If you survive it, yeah, I'm giving it like a 10. because like you're probably going to have a crushed skull and a bunch like those claw marks are deep yeah from these stories it seems like the the very best case scenario is you have a crushed skull like that's kind of just a given that's going to happen yeah you might live you might not our first guy that had the dogs just had like scratches he got like scarred up

because they his like his shaman treated them with like herbs Well, and the Jaguar wasn't hunting him. Like the ones where they're like after the person, they just bite their head right away, you know? So we'll say our ouchy scale for this one is a predatory jaguar attack. And we're going to give it. I'm giving it a 9. I still think I would prefer it to like a predatory grizzly or something. But it's pretty bad.

I'm giving it a 10 if you survive and like a 5 if you die because it seems like they can kill you pretty fast. That's a good point. That's a good point. Mike, what are your, what's your number? Nine seems right. It seems like we've talked about worse, but not much. Not much.

Yeah. Okay. That's our ouchies. Feel free to fight us on that if you guys want. Okay. So we are going to get into our categories. Categories. So this is our first time doing a cat.

This is our first time doing Jaguars. So we are just going to fick or thick. We're going to fix our. Favorite pop culture jaguar. So I'll go last. Why don't one of you guys go first? Sure, I'll go first. So in the game, the fighting game, Tekken, you guys know Tech.

Oh, yeah. Finally a reference that I understand. So my favorite guy in the first Tekken to fight with was King. And he wore a Jaguar mask. I know he's not really actually a Jaguar, but he's a good dude. He's like a Mexican luchador, and he has a bunch of orphaned kids. He's fighting for stuff like. like that.

So, see, when I played that game, I thought he actually was a Jaguar. Me too, for the longest time. It is just a mask. Yeah, it's good to know. We'll count it. Jeff, thanks. It counts. So I had a hard time.

I normally like to look up pop culture of the animals. And all that came up was like cars and football players. But I've always loved Jaguar since I was a little kid. I've had was interested in watching the show Jagg, just because it reminded me a Jaguars. Is that the Air Force? Yeah. He must have been so disappointed.

And then, like, my favorite football team's always been to Jacksonville Jaguars, and it's only because of their name. So I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with their mascot Duval. I like their logo in the middle of the field in Christmas when it has a Santa hat. And I was going to say Tim Tebow because he's on the Jaguars for, like, two weeks this year until they cut him.

But, yeah, I'll just go with their mascot. Okay. I've got two that I actually want to bring up. So the first is the Black Jaguar from the Mill Gibson movie Apocalypse. That's a good choice. So the main character's name in that movie is Jaguar Apolly. And then he's like on the run from like some other, this other tribe that kidnapped him and tried to sacrifice him.

And as he's running, he's like hiding in a tree. And then this big Black Jaguar shows up in the same tree with him. And so he gets out of the tree and he's running as these guys are chasing him. they like intersect and the jaguar's chasing jaguar paw but it actually grabs one of these other guys and there's this really violent scene of it ripping this dude's face off and killing him pretty much immediately which we've learned happens yeah and then the other guys show up and kill the jaguar but it's a great scene it's actually a really good movie i really like that movie it is horrifically violent so violence bothers you don't don't watch that movie yeah my second i had to do a runner-up for this one because

I grew up watching this old Disney nature movie called Jungle Cats, and I watched it all the time, and it was like a family of Jaguars in the Amazon. And to this day, I have no idea how they filmed it because they have all these crazy interactions, like them killing those really big fish, I forget what they're called, but those huge fish to live in the Amazon.

Oh, shoot, this is going to drive me crazy. I'll look it up. Them like killing those, it starts with the P, them like fighting tape here, doing all these crazy things, and it was like a black Jaguar, and a spotted one. It was really cool.

But the movie's called like Jungle Cat and it's like an old 60s Disney nature movie and it's great. Sweet. Are they called Piraruku? Yeah, Piraruku. That's not how you pronounce it but it's something like that.

Yeah. Anyway, that's my runner up. Okay. Good picks, Wes. If anyone out there has seen Jungle Cat aside from me, let me know because I'd love to hear about it. Relax and let Ralph's delivery

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This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Okay. Let's do our cage match. Mike, do you want to lead us through the cage? match? Yeah, so of course the cage match is where we indulge a little bit around here. We don't ever actually want to see this happen. We let our hair down. We have some fun. Right. Sleep into something a little more comfortable. So what we do in this category is we pit the animal of the episode up against all of the other animals that we've talked about so far on the podcast. So how do you think a jaguar

would fare in a cage match against, let's say, a mountain line. Let's start there. Yeah, it's beating the mountain line. I think we've got, this is an interesting one. I think we've got some good matchups with the jaguar. I think it takes most of the alligators, unless it's like a gigantic one. It wouldn't kill a crocodile, like a big crocodile. We haven't done crocodile yet. It could kill an alligator. Yeah, kind of. We kind of did. In our Mother's Day up said we had an Nile Crocod. Well, you used to say it didn't count yet. I know. I know. I don't think it does. I think in a black bear would be a really good fight. It'd kill the hippo.

It would just crawl in its mouth and eat it from the inside out. Yeah. I don't, I think that's what would have been. They're quick enough. Stealthy enough. I think it would kill our wolf. It would kill our mountain lion. I think the black bear would be a good fight, but I think the jaguar would win somewhat

often. Tiger would kill it. Lion would kill it. So the bigger cats than it would kill it. Yeah. Okay. They're significantly bigger. Moose?

What else do we need to include? Yeah, moose would be a good fight. Moose have it outweighed by like five times, but jaguars are just such good predators. They do kill horses, so it would kill our horse. Ooh, how about the spider? The spider, I think the jaguar would win. I think it could kill the pythons. That was another crazy thing in this Disney movie.

There's like an Andaconda fight with this jaguar. Oh, sweet. They're probably just throwing animals in like a pen. So I know jaguars are maybe the only cat. me if I'm wrong, but while I was kind of just doing a little bit of cursory research, they're, of course, they're really good in the water. They're the only cat that seems water resistant to a point? Yeah, so I don't know if water resistance is the right word, but they like spend a lot of

time in the water. Like they enjoy the water, they hunt in the water. Of all the big cats, they're the most likely to be seen in the water. No, but Mike's right. There's some like water resistant thing in their fur that's like. Okay. And it like helps them dive and stuff too. so they can catch fish, which is kind of crazy.

I didn't read anything about that, but I'm sure if you guys did, then there's got to be something to it. Oh, Mike, I actually wanted to ask you. I know you did a little bit of research, too, on kind of the importance of Jaguars in South American culture and Central American culture. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, sure. I don't want to take up too much time because we're running a little long already, but basically what I've found is that In every major Mesoamerican civilization, Jaguars were featured prominently in whatever that culture's religion happened to be. And honestly, we already kind of talked about why they would be revered just for being such like powerful and majestic animals.

But there are some actually really interesting bits of information that I just probably aren't common knowledge when it comes to Jaguars. So hang with me as I introduce this topic. So in my research on Jaguars, I stumbled across a Joe Rogan episode. And I don't really listen to Joe Rogan, but people that do know that he likes to talk about drugs, and specifically, ayahuasca and DMT, a lot. And that led me down kind of this rabbit hole that led me to learn that Jaguars actually. Do ayahuasca.

Well, it makes me want to do ayahuasca with a jaguar, because apparently they do it. They're like these little, they're these, they're called Yage leaves or Yage or something that basically hold the same or a similar molecular compound as what you would find in an ayahuasca, a drink of ayahuasca. And there's a lot of footage of Jaguars just kind of, it almost looks like they're on catnip. They're rolling around, kind of pawing at the air and staring up at the sky. And it's just really interesting that. Just tripping balls. Honestly, it's super funny and kind of cute. but a very disarmed and vulnerable state for this really cool animal to be in.

And I don't know. There's a lot of, of course, this is very much a surface level introduction to what these cultures thought of these animals. But they really, really are a central and important part to their belief system. You can't go anywhere down there. Like, I know Jeff spent a lot of time in Guatemala. I've spent a lot of time in Brazil. Like, you can't go anywhere without seeing imagery of Jaguars. Like, they're everywhere.

In Mexico, too. They're really important to the culture, to the religion, to, like, the indigenous peoples. It's, like, on the same level as bears would be for, like, the indigenous peoples of North America. Like, Jaguars are very much so. Yeah. For people down there. So, yeah, thanks, Mike. I would love, maybe we could share some of those videos of Jaguars getting way, way high.

All right. Let's get into, so our cage match, sorry, I kind of interrupted our cage match, but. Yeah. So we're going to put them right above black. bear, an alligator. Yeah, I would put them pretty even with black bears. I'd be really curious to see how that goes. I think they'd take a black bear. It depends on how big of a black bear, but maybe. I'm putting my money on jaguars. Okay. That bite is something else. They would definitely kill the chimpanzee. They would definitely kill the wolf. Yeah. I mean, I think they're like up there for

our mid-sized animals. Okay, so let's get to our next category, which is what would Mike and Jeff do if they were attacked by a Jaguar. Yeah, I'll go. Jeff, you can go first. So it seems like they're just really good at, like, ambushing you, and they just bite your skull, like, straight away. Yeah. So I just watched the movie Suicide Squad,

and John Cena's character wears, like, a giant toilet bowl on his head. Oh, man, this is my answer. So I would just wear one of those everywhere. Yeah, I was going to say, just wearing a helmet is probably the best thing. I would want a big giant silver one. You know, I think just a helmet, it would bite right through that thing. That's a good point. Yeah, wear a helmet that's so big that it can't even get its mouth around your head.

Yeah. The guy from X-Men. Exactly. All right, Mike, you got to come up with something else. Three, two, one. So here's what I would do. I would swing on the vines. Swing away.

I'd ask it to join the ayahuasca circle with us. I think it'd be down to chill. Let it get some clarity. There you go. Okay, well, I'm going to tell you what you actually should do. So, again, this one's coming from Pantera, which is an organization that works with a lot of big cats. Yeah, they wore that one song, Cemetery Gates. Not the Van Pantera, the organization.

And what they recommend you do is if you see a Jaguar, first of all, like most importantly, you want to stay calm. You want to raise your arms slowly and avoid any sudden or abrupt movements, but raising your arms makes you look a little bigger and a little more intimidating to the cat. but you don't want to do it abruptly. If you have children with you, you want to slowly lift those children up off the ground without bending over, and then you want to slowly back away from the jaguar, never turning your back to it.

Turning your back to it might trigger that predatory response. That's good advice for any of the large cats. All of those things are great advice. If you are actually attacked by a jaguar, I couldn't find a ton of information on this, but I am going to go off. What I know about if you're attacked by any of the big cats, if you're actually being attacked, you need to fight back.

Playing dead's not going to do anything. It's probably attacking you to try and eat you and kill you. So you need to fight back. You need to do whatever you can. Try and poke its eyes. Try and, you know, stick your hand down its throat. There's a lot of different things you can try and do. It seems hard if it's like attached to your skull, like from the start.

It's really hard. Just eye gouge maybe. Right. So if you're, if it's a surprise attack like that and it's on your back, you got to do whatever you can. Nipple twister. If you see it coming. Yeah. Wet Willie.

Rugburn. Anyway, you want to avoid getting attacked on your head and your neck, though. So if you see it coming, do whatever you can to keep it from getting its jaws locked onto your head or your neck. Because at that point, you got your check engine light. You're in trouble. You're going to probably die. So the nipple twist is a good idea, especially if it's a female jaguar because they have like eight nipples. Yeah, it's a great idea.

That should have been part of your ideas. Anyway. We'll talk about that more next time we do a jaguarian. episode. And we definitely will. There's some, there's some really interesting Jaguar attacks in captivity that are probably going to be our next Jaguar episode. Oh, nice. But this one I wanted just to focus on the wild attacks. Okay. So our next category is our listener questions. I believe we have a few. Sweet. Jeff. I'm excited. Let's hear him. No, I think you've got it. I got him. Okay. Yeah. That's my job, isn't it? Yeah.

You can just make some up if we don't have it. Is one and only job. Yeah, I was thinking it. Oh, I already asked mine, what's the fattest human ever? That was surprising. You did. It's a lot of a lot of them. It's like heavier than the biggest grizzly bear. It's about the same. But we're, 1400 pounds?

Grizzly bears get to like 1,500 pounds. Whoa. All right. Oh, man. These names, when it's just like all one name on Instagram. No, give them to us, Jeff. Pump them into our veins. We love the names.

Christopher Eber, Christopher Eberman is what we're going for it's Christopher that one you sure worked a long time on well so Jeff and a horse versus Mike and Wes who wins Jeff and a horse versus us yeah and we're just like got our fists yeah I think you and the horse yeah like for sure I think so too stupid I feel like us three are pretty even match but a horse is way better than all three of us I think Well, I think, yeah, a horse would beat all three of us. That's my, if I could choose one way not to die, it would be by horse. That'd be so humiliating after all I've done.

It'd be full circle. Yeah, that's karma, dude, for hating him so much. All right, so this is from SLW 6-225. How did you first meet? Well, me and Jeff met because my mom gave birth to both of us. And you were so mad when she had me. pretty upset. You were like, I wanted to be that baby.

I tried pushing you back in. And then... So that's how we met. I met Mike in college. And then how did you and Wes meet? You introduced us. I think I first met Mike when he was in the locker room. Right.

So Jeff overheard me say that I was in charge of renting out equipment in the, our college's locker room. So he got hooked up with that stuff through me. And then Wes and I, really our friendship started. We first talked to each other in earnest, probably during the dodge ball, the trampoline dodgeball tournament. Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that. I think me and Mike became good friends when you came to Montana in 2013. That's when we were like, I was like, well, Mike's like my friend now. Yeah, that's when we first saw each other naked. Yeah. And then we've done it many times since. I remember going into like the locker room to hang out with Mike and there's just like nothing to do.

And he was just hitting, like, tennis balls and golf balls into the office with a golf club. I was like, that seems like a pretty cool job. That's probably the best job you'll ever have. I miss it every day. Yeah. All right. Next question. All right.

So this one I'm just going to pronounce, it's a meow? Okay. Okay. All right. If you could swap your arms and legs for animals, what would it be and why? I would swap my arms for wings so I could fly. That's a good answer. And my legs would be fish legs.

So you could swing. To the tail. That's great. You're going to suck on land now, though. Yeah, I've had plenty of time on land. I'm ready for air and water. You won't really be able to grab anything. No.

That seems hard to... It's a bad... The fish legs were a bad choice. Flying fish are like that. They have wings, right? Yeah. There you go. You're a flying fish.

I'll be a flying fish How about you guys I'm just going to go with a cheetah Like they got You're doing both arms and legs for cheetah If you just do one you're not fast But with both you're freaking fast Yeah I'll go with kangaroo legs

Oh that's a good good answer And then I'm just going to pick like chimpanzee arms So you can still type and stuff Yeah so I can still use my thumb and stuff They're gonna be all like hairy and musly and weird Oh no that's all right Just wear long sleeves Like that guy in umbrella academy

Oh, yeah. All right. From Swift Nora. What animal do you think is the most unfairly persecuted bias against? Sharks. I'm going to say. Sharks are snakes. Just koalas with Mike.

It's fair. That's not. That's not. It's a terrible answer. They're beloved by almost everyone. I said with Mike. Okay, with Mike, fine. Horses are mics, though.

Well, maybe I think of something else while Mike's answering. I think bees, too. Bees get a bad rap. That's a good answer. At least the good ones. They kind of get combined with hornets. And it's like hornets are way worse. People are really into bees.

And bees have always been like cute. Like they're always on like cutesy little things. I think sharks, sharks and snakes. But we're trying to answer something other than your answer. But it's the right answer. Would you just not want us to ever talk around here? No, that's not what I'm saying. Here, let me just mute my mind.

Are we fighting? Yeah. We're just trying to give other options here, you know? You're right. Okay. Your sharks are the worst. Is that what you want to hear? 100 million sharks a year.

Can we move on? All right, let's move on. Next question. We're fighting. This one's from... I still love you, though. Me too. Hannah, Shiro, Hannah.

Barn owls are so cute, question mark. True. I agree. You think cute's the right word for them? Yeah, I think they're cute. And they're also, like, majestic. I'm going to say, yes, exclamation mark. Okay.

This one is I-Mogan. I'mogan. O'Brien. Bryant. Favorite Australian animal. Why don't you guys go first? Jeff, I know yours. I'm going to koala. Coala.

Mike. Does Tasmanian devil count? Sure. Yeah, I'll go with that. Tasmania is part of Australia. I'm probably going to say a cassowary right now. Oh, wow. I'm really into cassoiries.

What about African wild dogs? They're not in Australia. Where are they? Africa. All right. Wait, what else should we shout out? Dingoes? Dingoes, saltwater crocodiles.

Platypus. Wallabies. Kangaroos. Whombats are really cool. Lots of snakes, lots of lizards. Those frilled lizards. Thorny devils are really cool. I love thorny devils.

All right. Shrimps on the Barbie. So this is from Kelly. And it's, if the NFL teams all had their namesakes as their 12th man, example, Dolphins get a dolphin, pirates get a pirate, etc. Who would win? So pirates isn't, or I guess buccaneers counts as a pirate. The buccaneers, yeah.

Who would win? That's a good question. Probably the Jets? Yeah. It'd be hard to tackle. A jet. They could just blow up the other team. Yeah, it's the Jets.

It's either the Jets or the Bears. I don't know. That's close. Or the Browns. Just everything brown is on their team. A race. You could kind of just fly the football to the end zone. Well, the Eagles would be better than the Ravens.

I think the Jets. I think Mike nailed it. The worst would just be the Washington football team because they don't even have a representative. All right. From Kara, imagine you were just born and orphaned into the jungle book universe. Which animal would you want to raise you? Example, Mowgli was raised by wolves. I think I would have chosen Asian elephants.

So, yeah, which, so if you were in the jungle book, which animal would you want to raise you? Probably Sher Khan. Like, everyone was afraid of him. That's who I don't raise me. Yeah, like, just join the thing that everyone's afraid of, and then you have nothing to be afraid of. What's the orangutan's name?

Louis, King Louis. Maybe him. He seemed like he had, like, a good little community going. Him and Balloo seemed like they had the most fun. I'm going with Ballou. Yeah. Probably blue. He's just fun.

I liked your answer, Wes. Yeah, but yours is better. All right. All right. From Jennifer. One question I have right now for the three of you is who and or what is something that has really inspired you in your life. Honestly, like, this is kind of a cliche answer for a lot of wildlife biologists my age, but Steve Irwin was a huge inspiration for me. I've noticed, like, recently, for some reason, there's been a few news.

about how he, like, isn't the best example because he was handling all these animals for no reason and stuff. But I don't know. I think the good he did far outweighs any bad he did. He just inspired so many people to care about animals. Yeah. So for me, I was truly devastated when we lost Steve. So he's, he's a big one for me. I'm going to say Steve or one. Mike, you want to go? Yeah, I bet I can do you even one better on the cliche answer, Wes, and just say, my dad, honestly. Uh, just, the most measured. That's like a weird way

to start complimenting is like the first thing you think about when you think about your dad as him being measured. I don't know if there's a better militaristic. He's cool and he's nice. But yeah, my dad's just the best guy I know. Cool. Yeah, I'll just go with Wes and Mike,

you know, just trying to be part of the gang and just really want to be as good at video games as Mike and as good at catching animals as Wes. You'll get there, pal. You'll get there. No, that's a terrible answer. And you definitely shouldn't think either.

All right, fair enough. Aim a little higher. Yeah. Okay. All right. What's next? Is that it for questions? That's it.

All right. Cool. Thanks, guys. Again, like, thanks for sending in questions. We're going to ask for them every once in while on Instagram. Patreon questions do get priority. So if you're a Patreon member, we will answer your questions. So keep sending them in.

Our next category is how are we messing things up for Jaguars. So they are ranked as near threatened by the IUCN. The reason it's near threatened and not vulnerable is probably just because there isn't a great idea of how many Jaguars there actually are. Because they're sneaky. Yeah. Some of the are,

and they lived in really dense jungle where it's hard to get at them. One of the articles I read said there's up to 170,000 jaguars, which seems like way too many. One of them said there was 15,000. So that's our, that's our span somewhere between 15,000. and 170,000. I think the answer, from what I've read, I read a bunch of stuff about this.

I think it's somewhere between like 30,000 and 50,000 Jaguars in the wild. So there's a decent amount. More than half of those are in Brazil in the Pontinal area, mostly, and in the Amazon. But when you look at where they used to be in how large their range is, Jaguars used to live in the U.S.

They used to live all the way up to like Colorado. Now people do occasionally see them in southern Arizona. One was seen there in March, but it's just males that are kind of roaming and exploring new areas. Unfortunately, the border wall is probably going to put an end to that. The parts that were built already have kind of gone in these areas where they were likely to cross. But there hasn't been a breeding population in the U.S. for like 50 years. But they did used to live here. And now they live throughout Mexico, throughout Central America, all the way down to northern Argentina and South America.

but they've lost roughly 55% of their range in the last century. They've lost up to 25% of their population since the mid-90s. In the 60s and 70s, up to 18,000 Jaguars were killed per year just for their coats. But luckily, we've really controlled that. So now the main thing that threatens Jaguars are habitat loss, which is the biggest thing. Their habitats becoming really fragmented. So Pantera, for example, is working on connecting some of those fragmented habitats so that there's a corridor for jaguars to move.

And that's really good for them. Sorry, connecting those corridors, not losing their habitat. Yeah, we get it. So habitat loss is number one, hunting, which is often like a retaliatory thing, where if they kill cattle or livestock or whatever, hunters will go out and shoot jaguars or ranchers will. And luckily, that's something that's being tackled pretty aggressively. And a lot of them are starting to realize jaguars are worth more alive than they are dead. And really those are the main two things that are happening to harm jaguars, habitat loss and hunting.

Yeah, the Brazilian president's been like burning tons of rainforest to like help the land development or something. And that's a huge issue for them. The pontinol had massive wildfires last year that burned a lot of jaguar habitat. So those are the main things threatening them. But luckily they are, they're not endangered yet. And there are some really good signs of jaguar recovery, especially in places like, the pontonol. Besides like the island countries, pretty much like everywhere from Mexico to Argentina has some type of population, right? So the only, there's two countries where they're extinct

in that range, and that's El Salvador doesn't have jaguars and Uruguay doesn't have jaguars. They used to, and they're extinct in those countries now. But everywhere else does in that range, yep. I didn't think you would know that. Good job. You're smart guy. Yeah, your brain is huge. That's why you're my example. Oh, thanks, Jeff. All right, so let's get into our rankings of how we like this animal. So, Jeff, I'm going to let you go first because this is a big one for you. Yeah, so it's my favorite cat.

I think I said lions might have been in the lion episode, but it's not. It's Jaguars. And probably I'm going to go with number two overall for animals. Grizzly bear's number one. Jaguars number two. And how many claws? 10. This gets 10, 10, 10 clock. 10 claw animal.

If I'm going to a zoo and they have like pretty much every type of animal, it's going to be two animals I most want to see, jaguars and pandas. Yeah, I'd agree with that actually. So they're also a 10 claw animal for me. I know I've had a handful of 10 claw animals, but jaguars are for sure. They're maybe my favorite big cat. I've spent a lot of money trying just to go see them in the pontoonal. I'm probably going to spend it again at some point.

I really, really love Jaguars. Think about them a lot. So, yeah, 10 claws. I'm not going to bother giving them a ranking outside of that, but 10 claws for me. Yeah, jaguars are sweet. I'm going to give them eight claws, closer to a nine than a seven, but I think eight feels about right for how I'm feeling about them right now. What big cats do you like more than Jaguars?

I like tigers and if cheetahs count, yeah, those are the only two. two I'd put above Jaguar. Okay, well, I think that's it. That's our first Jaguar episode. That's our first spotted cat episode. Or I guess we did our Cheetah Mini. Yeah. But on Patreon.

Leopards, there's going to be a lot of leopard attacks, and there's not many Jaguar attacks. So it's kind of interesting we got to Jaguars first, but here we are talking about Jaguars. It's a good animal. It is. Let's go. Let's go find some.

All right. Let's do it. I'll go. All right. If anyone else out there wants to go, let's all meet the Pantanol. Pontonall? We'll have a tooth and claw meetup out there. Just bring your huge helmets.

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone wear your helmets. All right. Well, it's good talking to you guys. And thanks everyone out there for listening. We truly appreciate it. If you guys haven't left a review yet on Apple Podcasts, go ahead and leave one.

If you haven't joined our Patreon. If it's going to be like one star, if it's going to be one star, just don't even bother. Yeah. Leave us a five star review. And yeah, thanks again, everyone who's already on Patreon and that's left us review. We read them all and we really appreciate it. We've been just like tickled with the reviews that we've read so far. Yeah, really shocked at how, you know, it's nice to be reminded that people are genuinely good.

Not everyone's a troll. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, love you guys. Same. All right. We'll see you later. Bye.

Bye.