Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Justin Bieber Saves a Man's Life - 2020 Wrap-Up

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

A year-end special! Wes has a couple of animal attack stories that involve two of the greatest musical acts ever to come out of North America (can't fight the facts), and also brings to discussion the popular "Which animal would you pick to defend you?" meme that's been making the rounds online for a while now. ~~ 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. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw, a show where we talk about the most intense real wild animal attacks and what we can learn about how to avoid, prevent, and survive them. This is going to be a special episode to kind of wrap up the year, reflect on all that we learned, answer some of your questions, and of course we have a couple of quick stories to share with you guys, too, featuring some of your favorite musical acts if you were a preteen girl, circa 2010, or me back in 1999.

Also, we want to say thanks again for all of your support. It's really meant a lot to see you guys rating and reviewing and subscribing to us and all that stuff. We've seen a lot of surprising growth, and it's all because of you guys. Also, a quick shout out to our Instagram. Follow us at Tooth and Claw podcast on Instagram. We try to be as active as we can be there, posting all kinds of fun animal stuff and talking with you all. So, yeah, thank you again for listening. You guys are all great.

All right, let's get to the episode. All right, welcome back to a special episode of Tooth and Claw, our end of the year podcast. How are you guys doing? Good. Mike, I feel great. Mike, so me and Wes just went to Montana, right? You always do. For Christmas.

And I realize it's probably my fault that we were in a roommate fight because me and Wes got in a big fight. He asked me if I could just have one dessert for the rest of my life and I can't have another type, what would I want? And I start really thinking about cake, but then I'm like, I really like cake with ice cream. So I say ice cream and cake. And he's like, you can't use ice cream and cake. You can only have one or the other.

So just real quick, sorry, Jeff. This is an animal podcast, but continue, Jeff. Keep going. And then we get in a big argument about whether cake and ice cream is... It's the most ridiculous argument. I've had a long time. One treat or two treats. Because it's obviously two treats.

There's no one in this world that would agree with Joe. Well, let me be the arbiter. Just let me hear this out. Okay. Well, my argument was we really like these cookies. Our mom makes where it's like a peanut butter cookie with Hershey Kisses on top. Yeah, it's a classic Christmas cookie. So I was like Hershey Kisses are one treat.

Peanut Butter cookies are one treat and you're combining the two. Okay, that's two different desserts that someone's preparing separately and you're combining them. If someone prepares a dessert like the peanut butter, cookie and it's like intended to be one dessert, a peanut butter cookie with a Hershey's Kiss, that's a dessert. It's like a Snickers has caramel and peanuts and all these different things included in it. But you can't say like, I want a Snickers bar and a bowl of caramel, you know? Sure.

Those are two different things. And Jeff just could not get that through his mind. We thought about this for like, I'm not kidding, like half an hour. And I was like, Jeff, it's my question. How are you not? He wouldn't let me have it. No. Okay, so the judge rules that Jeff does not serve any time on a technicality,

but recognizes that Wes was correct. Yeah, thank you. Like, I don't need to, like, hold Jeff accountable for his terrible answer in my question. But it was an awful answer that's clearly two desserts. I just think, like, had I said vanilla ice cream with hot fudge, you would have said, okay. Exactly. But if I have a topping. Cake is my topping, you're like, no way, dude.

Cake is its own dessert. I ended up choosing an ice cream cake. All I can say is I understand, Mike. Yeah, common denominator. Yeah, just Jeff. Yeah, I realize it now. Okay, great. I'm going to bring that up next time we get into one of those.

Okay, so as Jeff mentioned, we're kind of doing a special episode today. We are going to still have a couple stories, but there are little stories that I came across while I was researching some of our other ones, and they were just like too good that I wanted to share them, but I didn't really have a good excuse to share them. and they have a very similar theme to them. And then we're going to get into some year-end stuff and like some fun listener questions and stuff. Two stories?

Two stories for the price of one. Two stories for the price of one. So you guys got to listen twice. Two of our favorite animals involved in these stories. Okay. Buckle up. Buckle up. Hold on to your butts.

Whatever else we've said. Okay. So the first one happened in 2014 and it involved a Russian fisherman named Igor Voro Zibitsen. And I had to break that. that up to be able to say it properly. Like spell it out phonetically. I think I got it.

So Igor is a fisherman, as I mentioned. He's fishing in northern Russia's Yucutia Republic, which is kind of right on the edge of Siberia. And, yeah, that's what I always try to get during risk. Yucutia? Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

Is that right part of eye? It's like the top right little bridge over to Alaska, right? Cool. Yeah, I had no idea. It's strategic. Anyway, so he is out fishing. He had just parked his car in the woods, and he's on his way to one of his favorite fishing spots when suddenly he fills an enormous impact from behind and he's knocked to the ground.

And again, I'm going to, like, these stories are quick because there's not a lot of detail, but I'm going to get right into it. So Igor had been hit by a particularly territorial brown bear. He's being mauled by a big Russian brown bear. And as soon as he hits the ground, the bear's like clawing him and biting at him and doing, you know, what bears do, what we've talked about. A little bit more about these particular bears. This is a subspecies of brown bear. It's the eastern Siberian brown bear. And they do. tend to be a little bit more aggressive than some of the other subspecies. And it's because it's like such a sparse human population in that area that they don't really

see a lot of humans. And so when they do see a human, they haven't really equated them with a threat yet. So they tend to be a little bit more bold. And then they also live in a part of the world where there isn't a lot of plant life. So they tend to be a little bit more carnivorous as well. So these are bears. They tend to get into a lot of trouble and are historically a little bit more prone to attack. So he's attacked right out of the gate.

He gets out of his car, pretty much gets knocked to the ground. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's sudden enough that he doesn't really have time to think or really even realize what's happening. But after a few seconds while he's on the ground being mauled, his phone starts to ring. And his ringtone was set to play the song Baby by Justin Bieber. What?

And I guess the Bebes was really offensive to this bear because it immediately stopped the attack when his phone started going off and ran off. He's just really tired of hearing that song. Just like, I can't listen to this song. I've got to get out of here. It's 2014, so we're like past. Beber fevers.

Well, Bieber, like, Baby was earlier than that. Was it really? I think. Yeah. Okay. I think so. I'll look it up. But I haven't watched the Bieber documentary in a while, so my time lines a little off.

That's a real rewatchable movie for you. So the bear scurries off. Igor goes to the hospital. He's treated for some relatively minor cuts and bruises. One funny thing. is that he mentioned that his granddaughter is actually the one that said Bieber as his ringtone. It was 2010, baby. So this is four years after that.

He claims to not be a believer, but, you know, he says it was his granddaughter. And the lyrics real quick are, oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, whoa, you know you love me. I know you care. Yeah, we all know this song. All right. Yeah. Anyway, it's the baby, baby, baby, baby song. We've all heard it a million times.

I thought the lyrics seemed funny. I think it's pretty funny that he was like, it was my granddaughter. Like, guys, you know. No, who knows. Of course it was. Anyway, my brother did do that to our dad once. It was pretty funny.

He put Shania Twain, I feel like a woman as my dad's ringtone. And this is like, before he went to work. Yeah, and this is before he had, he probably still doesn't, like any idea how to change his ringtone too. Like it was in there until one of us changed it for him. And he didn't even know how to turn it off.

Yeah. And so he went into like a work. meeting and he's with a bunch of his colleagues and all of a sudden I feel like a woman starts playing it full. I called him like six times that day. And it's like his favorite story to tell because he was so embarrassed by it. So maybe that's what happened to Igor. But maybe, you know what Igor, if you put baby as your own ringtone, that's totally fine. We're not going to judge you. No. So that's our first story. I wanted to talk a little bit about what probably happened there. We kind of mentioned this already a lot of bear attacks. They're very territorial.

the bear is just looking to neutralize a threat. And as soon as that threat, you know, is either neutralized or becomes too scary for the bear, the bear's going to stop the attack. So that's why bear spray works really well because the bear initiates the attack. But then suddenly it's like, oh, I wasn't expecting this. I'm out of here. And maybe that's what happened with his ringtone was like it was just such a shock to the bear that it decided to stop.

It's also possible that it had kind of done what it had intended to do, which was knock him to the ground, mull him a bit and get out of there. There wasn't information about the bear, but I'm guessing it was a female with Cubs based on what it did to him and how quick it was to flee from a potential threat. So how much credit are we giving Justin Bieber for saving this guy? I'm, I don't know. Like, I want to believe. I think he should take credit. I want to believe that it was, that it was Bieber.

Yeah. But I also, you know, knowing as much as I do about brown bears, it's very likely that it had just finished. and was going to run away anyway. But it is cool that it stopped right when the phone went off. So very much, it could be that. Yeah. Okay. So our second story is very related.

And it takes place in 2011. And Walter Icrum was a middle schooler living in the southern Norwegian town of Rakhstad. So I looked up Rakhustad, and it's like a very quaint-looking, quintessential little Norwegian town. It's like in these rolling hills with pine forest. It's inland, so it's not like right on the coast. and Walter lives with his family in a farmhouse on the edge of town. So he's a middle schooler, so we're guessing, like, probably around 10 to 11 years old. It's a chilly January day, and his mom had planned to pick him up from school,

but she was actually stuck shopping in town, and so he just ended up having to take the bus instead. I imagine she called him or whatever and said, hop on the bus. So the reason she had planned to pick him up that day is because she had seen three wolves in the tree line of their property the night before. So they had a big farm, and their horses, were kind of freaking out because of these wolves. And she didn't want him to have to make this long walk

from the bus stop to their house on his own. But again, she got tied up, and she decided to just have him take the bus, and that was a decision that she would come to regret. So Walter gets off the bus. He plugs his earphones into his phone, starts listening to some music, and he's walking this path home,

and the path kind of traverses this gently sloping hill. And as he's walking, he notices four gray shapes that are playing on this hill, and he thinks at first, that it's probably the neighbor's dogs playing with each other. But as they get closer, he realizes he's being followed by four big, large gray wolves. Big large. Big large.

Yeah. Big lorbs. Big large. So Walter had been taught by his parents. Like, there's lots of wolves in this area. So he'd been taught, don't ever run from him. And he actually, like, I was really impressed by this kid because he knew exactly what to do. So he didn't run. He stood his ground.

He started waving his arms and yelling. And then he was about to create a noise that was. very unbearable for them. He pulls his headphones out of his phone and just lets his phone speakers go. And the song that he was listening to was overcome by the band Crete. Creed, yes, which is a song that we listened to before this podcast. And I can attest that it's not a great song. Just kidding. We listen to it before every podcast. Oh man. I don't know. If I was the wolves, I think I'd get pumped up for like a fight. Well, it actually did the trick. The wolves turned around. They trotted away. Walter was spared.

a potential attack with some quick thinking and some really bad music. It's like the total of our parents' stories of walking to school. When I walk to school, I'd be attacked by wolves. Yeah, it was negative 30. And I was listening to Creed. Yeah. Yeah, more grandpans. Yeah.

Anyway, he survived. He had a scary day, but obviously he was fine. I looked him up. He's now a computer science specialist and a hobby anime artist. And took a look at his anime. It's mostly pretty sexy. My kind of guy. Good for you, Walter.

You know, do your thing. Okay, quick thing to mention with that story, we talked about this in our last podcast. With wolves, the main thing to do is like very similar to a cougar or a black bear. You remain dominant. You make as much noise as you can like Walter did. And you never, ever run away. I think with all the animals we talked about, cougars and wolves especially don't ever run from them because that really triggers that predatory response to them. And if you can, blast creed.

Blast creed. Well, now you have a good excuse to always have your guilty pleasure songs on your phone. Totally. Because you can just be like, wolves, bears, you know, you never know. Just quick shout out to our Anaconda scale because that was a real Ice Cube move. It was. Yeah. Walter was really on top of his game.

A little bit more about Norwegian wolf attacks. I looked into them. They're pretty similar to North America, where they don't really have. their only recorded death from a wolf was in 1800. So they have a number of attacks that have been recorded, but they're really rare, and they really haven't had any fatalities. So there are parts of the world that we mentioned have a lot.

Norway isn't one of those places. Okay. So that is our story. Stories. I just came across both of those again while I was researching and just thought, you know, those are two terrible bands. Music is powerful. Yeah.

If you like those bands, cool. Yeah, good for you. We're not judging. I had a Creed phase. I was 10. I'm not surprised. It was 1999. I like a theme Bieber songs.

Yeah. No, no judgment. I can honestly say I've never liked either of those fans, but you know what? Well, good for you, Wes. You're way cooler. I'm not trying to say that. I'm not trying. I've liked some terrible bands.

I currently like some terrible bands. Okay. This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo, and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with Visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot.

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It's actually something we meant to talk about earlier in the year, but it's something that we definitely should discuss. A lot of you probably remember if you're on Twitter or if you're on the internet at all, earlier this year this meme came out. and there's nine different categories and you get to pick two of these animals, they're going to defend you and the rest is coming to kill you. I'm going to share this meme on the Instagram, but really quick, the animals are 50 eagles, 10 crocodiles, three grizzly bears, seven bowls, one hunter, 15 wolves, 10,000 rats, five gorillas or four lions. So you get to pick two of those categories to defend you, the rest are coming to kill you.

Now, I think for the sake of making it even, we just assume that for each of these animals, it's the maximum size that that animal can get to. I literally had friends almost lose friendships over this question on Twitter. And I, like, even inserted myself into a bunch of them because a lot of people were picking bears over gorillas. And I was like, I honestly, I'm a bear expert. I'd pick the gorillas. Okay. So I'll go first. Yeah.

I've thought about this a lot. For me, if the hunter has, like, unlimited ammo, I'm picking the hunter. Well, what gun does he have? It looks like he just has a hunting rifle. It looks like a shotgun to me. For me, it's almost boring to have the hunter included in there. So I kind of want to cut him out. Oh, really?

I want to pick the hunter. Okay. I totally would. But I just think there's too many things that play into that. You got to keep on that. Like for me, if the hunter's on an elevated platform and he's got unlimited ammo, then like the hunter can pick off all those animals. Not the Eagles.

Yeah, the Eagles would be hard. But that's why you pick the Eagles. I pick the birds. Okay. So for me, I'm not going to pick the hunter because I don't know about. about the ammo and everything. There wasn't enough information on the hunter for me to pick him. I'm picking the 10,000 rats.

I've thought about this a lot, and I'm constantly fluctuating between the other ones. But the rats, I'm always for sure on. I'm picking 10,000 rats. And then if I can have a moat with the 10 crocodiles, I'm picking them. If they're in a moat. Yeah, that's smart. If they're not in a moat, I'm picking the five gorillas. I'll go next.

Go for it. So, yeah, for me, the 10,000 rats is a lock, for sure, taking the... that. The hunter, no way I'm taking him. It's one dude, unless he has like a machine gun grenade launcher. If a single one of those animals slips by, he's toast. If 10,000 rats are coming at him, he's not going to be able to kill him. But you can pick him and the rats. Yeah, but I'd rather pick the eagles. So you're picking the rats and the eagles. Yeah, because eagles have huge talents. They can come at you from the air. So like, the hunter's done. He'll take out like two of my eagles. That's good point. The guerrillas, that's going to be tough. I mean, I see. I see. I

still think no matter what I'm dead. Yeah. But I think those give me the best chance. I like the Eagles. The Eagles actually like a golden eagle, for example, their talons are as long as a grizzly bear's claws. Yeah. And more powerful probably.

They don't have more weight behind them, but they are just like a vice. Right. But Eagles aren't getting through my crocodiles. You know, their claws aren't going to pierce the crocodiles. That's the one thing I didn't see the Eagles beating was the rocks. Yeah. Mike, what's your? But like the crocodiles, I feel like I can just kind of climb up.

a little tree or something. For me, I'm only picking them if I have a moat with the crocodiles in them. Otherwise, I think they're useless. They're not useless, but not as good. Mike? Yeah, for me, the Eagles were the lock for sure, because they're airborne. And that kind of takes away every other animal, except for the hunter's ability to kind of take him out, which is why I went with the hunter is my second option.

Because the way I look at it is this isn't like a battle arena where there's just limited space to move around. If I'm looking at this right, I can go wherever and move and use my human and intelligence to kind of like outsmart a bunch of stupid rats. Okay. You know? Yeah. And birds take out rats.

Super easy. I think the kind of caveat to all this is that you have to assume there's coordination between the animals that you're picking. Because if it's just 10,000 rats, then you throw them down and they all scurry. Yeah, they're not going to like attack. You're assuming they're defending you. Yeah. They're coordinating a defense.

Right. And I think 10,000 rats. It's like, I don't know. It's a lot of rats. Yeah. I looked up how much they weigh and they're like roughly a pound each. Yeah. the biggest rats.

Sure. And so that's 10,000 pounds of animals, which is more than the rest of these, aside from maybe the crocodiles. Okay. So, like, poundage-wise, I just think that human ingenuity could easily out with rats. Well, think of this.

I have my 50 eagles and my 10,000 rats. Uh-huh. All 50 eagles pick up two rats in each clock. I like this. Bring them over to your hunter and just drop them on. Oh, that's a good idea. Like little rat missiles. Yeah.

Yeah. If you're overwhelmed. by rats. Eagles and rats. Like I think a couple hundred rats overwhelms you. Sure, but if I get on a bike and ride for half a day, those rats aren't going to catch up to me. The eagle's watch up to you. Yeah, but the Eagles are on my side because I pick the Eagles. Okay, fair enough. Okay. I can see why this is a big debate. What I will say is that I would definitely pick gorillas over bears. Even though I know, like, I love bears. I know what they're capable of. Guerrillas are so strong. I think bears was my last choice. Really? I picked bulls. See, I'd pick the bears over the lions and I'd pick them over

the wolves. Oh yeah, I kind of forgot. Because like a pack of like 15 wolves usually can't even run off like one bear. So we got our answers. That's what we say. Jeff might have swayed me with the Eagles dropping rats on people. Yeah, it's a good idea. I just got to keep working on you with the cake and ice. In lower the rings, like nothing beats the Eagles. So that is the meme. Thanks guys for recommending it. We have been meaning to talk about it. Feel free to send us your scenarios, what you think would win so we can make fun of you. say how you're wrong. All right. Should we get into our categories? Do it. Okay. So we are going to kind of look back at some of our episodes, talk about a little bit of year-end stuff. Our first category

that we all wanted to talk about was looking back at our 10 episodes, which was our biggest ouch. So Jeff, do you want to explain that? Yeah, so there's been a few episodes where something really painful happens, and I say, ouch afterwards. So we're just going to go with our biggest The one that generated the biggest out of us. Yeah. So like the one that kind of sticks out to us. Okay. And I can, I can start us off just so you guys kind of know exactly what I mean. Yeah. Sure. The one that sticks out to me is in the hippopotamus episode where it says they could see the guy's liver. Lung. That's right. His lung and his pumping blood and like his ribs were broken. Paul Templar was, yeah. Paul Templar. That's my biggest ouch is seeing Paul's lung.

Okay. Mike, what's yours? I was going to go, I believe it was the first story that we shared in our second episode about the black bear where, what's her name? Elena Hansen. Elena, her face was flapped all the way off. Yeah. That was a big ouch to me. Okay.

For me, it's hands down the chimpanzee attack. The chint. Yeah. I like, testicle. Yeah. So, like, researching that one and having to read the whole description made me actually, like, sick. and then when I got to his testicle skin ripped off, sorry for whoever skipped that episode

because you couldn't handle it. Like, maybe we'll put a trigger warning at the beginning of that. For some reason, the thought of, like, animals that claw and bite and everything is, like, completely different from an animal using its human-like hands to rip stuff off. That just freaks me out more than anything. And it, like, ripping that guy's nuts off.

It gave me nightmares. That's a big out. Fine line between pleasure and pain. No, I don't think. think so. Okay, on that note, let's go to our related category, which is like the scariest moment, the stories that we've talked about. What was the thing that if you saw that, it would have freaked you out the most? Okay, for me, it again is the chimpanzee. And it's those people, as they were talking to Moe outside the cage and they see two big chimpanzees out of their cage

come running at them, that would just freak me out so bad. And maybe, this is all just like feeding into my fear of chimpanzees. But that for me was like, again, when I was reading that, it gave me goosebumps. So my, the scariest moment for me is kind of the standoff. And this maybe is a little tame, but I'll try to explain it. Yeah. It's the standoff between the little kid and the wolf. Okay.

Because there's so much time where there's just, you don't know exactly what's going to happen. But you have a feeling it's going to end really badly. So like you start running through your mind. what is this wolf about to do to me. Whereas like with, we have a couple of attacks. It just happened instantly. You don't even have a moment to register what's going on. I think that little bit, that moment of tension would have really made me wet my pants.

Yeah. And especially it's like a little kid. So you put themselves in their mind and it's like terrifying. So I'm going to kind of run through my thought process on it a bit. Scary movies, I always get scared the most by like a jump scare. Yeah. So I'm going with kind of the. jump scare part.

The polar bear one where the kid puts his head out of the tent and then the bear's just biting him right in the way. That seemed pretty scary. Yeah. But the two I decided between is the tiger one where you're just at the zoo walking away from an exhibit, have no expectations of anything possibly happening to you. And then like a tiger is just attacking you and your friends. Totally.

And I'd be more scared to be like, the. kid that didn't die and like have your friend being attacked. Well, he was also knocking on the door and they wouldn't take it seriously. And he had gotten like a horror movie. Yeah. Like he'd already like gone a little bit of horror movie. In a horror movie, they would totally let them in. But the one I'm going with is the people on the boat when the dude got in the shark's

mouth. Yeah. Launched in the air. Launched in the air. He's just in like a 20 foot great white. Was it 20 feet? Yeah. It was 19.

Yeah. 20 foot great white shark's mouth. and your friend or brother is just in the mouth all the sudden, and you're just in the boat helpless. And that was one where in that story, they talked about the trauma that happened to the other guys. A lot of these stories, like the people that are there watching,

you don't necessarily hear too much about how traumatized they were. But that one, like almost every article I read, it mentioned how everyone in that boat was pretty traumatized by them. So that's a good pick. You remember James Franco's shirt and Pineapple Express? Yeah, with the shark with a cat, Yeah, that's a classic shirt. I like that.

That's a great movie. So I think now we should probably do some listener questions, and then we'll get into some more of these other categories. So, Jeff, do you have some listener questions for us? Yeah, I do. Thank you guys again for giving us questions. We got a lot of questions this week. I promise you, we read all of them.

We get to as many as we can. What is the biggest animal you could realistically fight off and attack with with your bare hands? And who asked that question? And this is from Hey Drew Beebe. Okay. So I would personally, like, I would say a mountain lion. They're the fourth biggest cat, but they are one that you have a chance of fighting off with your hands.

I couldn't think of anything bigger than that. You could potentially fight off a black bear, but if it wanted to kill you, it would just keep doing it. I guess that's true with the mountain line too. But I think the one you have the best chance with that's the biggest is a mountain line. I'd say like a female elk. You think you could fight off a cow elk? Yeah. I don't think you could.

How would you fight that? How would it? It would just like trample you? Yeah, like a horse. That happens all the time. I don't think you could. Okay. Maybe a deer.

Maybe a deer. Maybe a deer. You're bigger than a mountain lion. That's true. They're about the same. All right. I'm going to stick with a predator. Yeah.

I'm going to trust you. I would go with an animal that's not a predator. I feel like they're usually harder to fight off. I think a mountain lion's so slim and like it needs every muscle in its body to kill its food. that they're so cautious that you can fight them off. But like if a deer, like there's so many videos online of deer just like relentlessly coming at people. So I'm going to say mountain line. Well, way to go.

Hey, Drew. You started another fight. All right. We got a question from T-Money Jackson. Could you do an episode on Bobcats? I saw one recently and didn't know what to do. Wes, what did you do if you see a Bobcat? If I saw a Bobcat, I'd get my camera out, get my camera out,

get as close to it as I wanted and take some photos probably. A bobcat's like essentially a big house cat. They don't attack people. If you like tried to grab it, it would really mess you up. Like they're mean as hell, but it's not going to pounce on you and try and attack you. Okay. So probably no bobcat episodes. Probably no bobcat episode.

If you're not familiar with the bobcat, do you call it Robert Cat? You know what? I worked with the bobcat researcher and he called him Robert Cats a lot. So there you go. So you're not far off. We learn things here. From Tay Brad 421, does slash will climate change affect the schedule for when bears hibernate? So yeah, it does.

Bears really only hibernate if they're a pregnant and they're planning on having cubs or to avoid a food shortage. So in places where it's really cold, bears hibernate because they don't have enough vegetation to sustain them throughout the winter. but in places like Florida or other places where you have warm weather bears, they don't really hibernate if they're not having cubs, and that's because there's plenty of food for them still. So if climate change drastically reduced winter length and stuff, bears aren't going to hibernate nearly as long or not at all. So it can really affect it.

All right. So for Mike, from Meadow Road, it says, For West, how did you become a wildlife biologist, what school experiences and or internships? Okay. Actually, let's let West answer that. Okay, no, that's smart. This is a great question.

I had someone email me this as well, so I wanted to talk about it. For me, it was kind of a long road where I didn't plan on being a wildlife biologist to begin with. I was obsessed with wildlife, but I ended up going down a medical route, didn't really like it, did my undergrad in biology, decided not to go medical, and then thought about what I was passionate about, which was wildlife. I studied really hard for the GRE. I did well on the GRE. And then I found a professor that was working with bears, which were the species that I wanted to work with. And I just bugged him and bugged him and bugged him.

He kept telling me that he didn't have any work for me or a position for me or anything. But I continued going in, making sure I was on his radar. He finally gave me a job as a polar bear tech. Then he gave me a position as a master's student. And I did my master's with him on a black bear and polar bear project. and then I came out of that, started doing freelance work, hosted a show for Great Big Story, and then everything kind of came crashing down this year with the pandemic,

and I'm kind of deciding what to do next. I got a few options, but that's kind of my story. Hope it helps you guys. My number one point of advice would just be as persistent as you can be once you figure out what you want to do. You go to Hawaii in your head all the time, but when you're actually ready to go, there's Expedia, flights, hotels, vacation homes, cars,

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Fresh groceries, your way. with Ralph's delivery and pickup. Get free delivery during online deal days, plus $30 off your first online order. Ralph's, fresh for everyone. Okay, we have a question from Cameron Rhodes. Which Star Wars character would you choose to help you fight off an animal attack?

Mike, you want to go first? Sure. I would go with Java. He's got a whole host of people, you know, that's... Wait, so he's allowed to use... He's allowed to use his... That's a good choice.

His little rat, salacious crumb. Because he might like catch the animal, put him down in the basement and just feed your enemies to it. Yeah. Or dress him in like a really sexy metal bikini. Yeah. So we have a rancor situation or a Princess Lay's situation. Okay.

I personally, I wouldn't pick like the really big fat, slow moving crime lord and his little weird dog, you know, in a universe of like cityists and stuff. But I'm going to pick Darth Vader just because I feel like he, you know, had this legendary power and was like the chosen one and hardly anyone could ever beat him in a fight. So I'm picking. I'm picking Vader. He kind of breathes loud and I feel like animals would hear him really easily. Yeah, they might. But that's not always a bad thing.

He sounds surprising. That's true. Force wielder. I thought about Vader, but I was like, I like animals too much. Vader's going to kill the animal, you know? So then I ended up on Luke. Because I just figured Luke could use the force to, like, put some grizzly bear at the top of a tree or something. Okay, that's fair.

I would probably, if I'm picking, like, a pacifist, I'd probably pick Yoda over Luke. I just feel like Yoda would encourage more attacks because the animals could take him. That's fair. Like, they would see him and be like, I can take this old toad. Okay. Maybe the guy in charge of the death beam on the Death Star. So you just want to, like, nuke the whole planet? Yeah.

All right, let's move on. All right, we got one from our brother. Oh, great. Cy Grizz. Where do you think you got the name Cy Gris? I think he copied me, but that's okay. Are you more likely to be attacked by a pack of wolves or a black bear? A black bear.

Just based off statistics, the amount of attacks every year, it's a black bear. Unless you're in India, then it's wolves. Good question, Cy. All right, we got one from E-Dang-Zero. Sorry if I said that wrong. Part of my favorite thing about listener questions is watching Jeff work his way through their names. Cutest baby animal. Huh.

Mike, do you have an answer? Yeah, I am partial to kittens. Okay. Just like the regular, whatever kind of house cat you want. It's like a house cat kitten. For me, it's a baby bear cub. Yeah. And it's probably, I mean, I'd probably go with a polar bear.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say, baby polar bear. I don't think there's a real cute. Much cuter. Yeah, but for me, it's bear. but I'm going to say baby polar bear. All right. So from nativ, or wait. Native?

All right. Well, it's not. Natali? Yeah, it's like native don't. Okay. Native don't. Sorry if I'm saying these wrong. Which animal is the softest?

Chinchilla. Chinchilla. I was thinking the inside of a koala's ear. Have you touched the inside of a koala's ear? I'm just saying which looks this off. I'm going to say a worm after it rains. Okay, and we have a listener question from Nico Yanoni. In theory, could you relocate polar bears to the South Pole?

Yeah, that was one I wanted to include because that's a question I've been asked a lot. You could, you could put polar bears in the South Pole, and they probably have plenty of seals and stuff to feed on down there. So in theory, you probably could do that. it would cause total trauma to that ecosystem down there. If you're introducing an alpha predator to a new ecosystem, it just wreaks havoc. So it would be an ecological disaster to introduce them down there. They'd kill tons of penguins. They'd kill seals.

Like, it would be really bad for the environment, but you probably could do it. It might be fun to try out for like two years. It'd be fun if you're not a penguin or a leopard seal or something that they would kill. You think they'll ever reintroduce Grizzlies to California? I doubt it. They have it on the state flag. Yeah, there's just not enough habitat for them there anymore. So I really doubt it.

I think there be some other places in the country they get reintroduced, but probably not California. All right. All right. So that's it for listener questions. Again, as Jeff mentioned, keep sending them. We love doing them. We get to as many as we can. We try and save some of the other ones for later, but we really like doing them.

So keep coming up with them. Okay. So another category, what animals have had the best year in terms of conservation and which had the worst. And I'm just going to kind of launch into this really quick. It's been a really weird year for wildlife conservation. The pandemic really affected a lot of projects, a lot of organizations. So there's some benefits and some negatives to that. Some animals that had really great years. Tasmanian devils were reintroduced to Australia. That was a really big conservation success. They're like dying off like crazy in Tasmania from cancer, from some like habitat

loss and a bunch of other stuff. So reintroducing them to a place that they haven't been. for like 400 years. It's a big win for Tasmanian devils. Kenyan elephants had a really good year. They're having a lot of babies, which it's hard to exactly say why that's happening, but it's probably just increased protection. One thing that people don't realize is that just killing elephants obviously reduces their numbers, but if you can stop that, not only do you stop animals from dying, but you also stop them from being so stressed out that they like are more reproductively viable. They're more fecund is the word. So they're having a lot more babies because they're having more protection. I always thought it was less protection equals more babies.

I see what you're trying to say. Yeah. That's true, Jeff. And remember that. But also with elephants, that's not necessarily the case. Okay, penguins have had kind of a weird year. Pangolins, a lot of people think that they're one of the intermediaries between bats and humans for coronavirus. So China's like really cracked down on the illegal pangolin trade and they're thinking that that's probably going to be a big win for pangolins. But on the other hand, when an animal is blamed for a disease, people tend to kill them in really high numbers just because they think they're unclean animals. So I've talked to pangolin researchers.

They're not really sure how to feel about them being blamed for coronavirus. It could go either way. How many pangolin researchers do you know? I know a handful, like three or four. I went to Africa and worked on a penguin project. So I know him personally. The Big Cat Act was passed in the U.S., which essentially, I'm pretty sure it was passed. It's so hard to know if anything actually is passed.

But that essentially restricts people that are doing these like cat petting operations, like the guys in Tiger King. And that's a big win for big cats because those like pet, those cub petting things and like letting people like take pictures with tigers and lions and stuff is just terrible for them. it's awful. And another big win is that most of those Tiger King people got thrown in jail this year or had their like facilities shut down or whatever. So that's a big win. A couple losers. Because of the pandemic, there's far fewer visitors in natural nature reserves and parks and stuff.

So poachers have really run rampant this year because they have a lot less pressure on them. So poachers are actually having like a pretty banner year for what they're doing, which is awful. And then this was one of the hottest years on record for the world, especially in the Arctic. There's huge fires in Siberia, in the Pontanol in Brazil and Amazon in Brazil. The U.S. had terrible fires. Australia had terrible fires. So climate change is really ramping up as we've talked about, and that's really causing some huge problems for wildlife around the world.

So those are kind of some of the losers. Anyway, that's some winners and losers for the year in conservation. And some weirdos for the pangolins. Yeah, the pangolins were not, you know, juries out on pangolins. Okay, so another category for you guys. we've all learned a lot, I think, doing this podcast, like, including me as I do the research and stuff. So I just wanted to ask, like, what's the most interesting thing that each of you have learned throughout this process? So Mike?

Yeah, I'll start. I was blown away, and I hope I'm not the last person in the world to learn this, but the whales evolved from land animals returning back to the water. Is that common knowledge? I don't think so. Okay, good. Yeah. No, I thought that was really, really interesting. Jeff? Yeah, I have a runner-up and then my answer. As always. The runner-up is that hippos run on the ground and can't really swim and they just float and sink a bunch. Yeah, that was one of mine too.

And then my main one was just how many wolf attacks occur outside of the U.S. because I just knew how uncommon they were. So I just thought like wolves never attack anyone. But it's interesting to hear that like in India it's an actual problem. Totally. Yeah. for me, like the hippos not being able to float was a huge one. And then my other one was a hippo-related one too,

where I learned about the hippo act in 1910. The fact that we were like, you know, a hair away from getting hippos in the U.S., like in the swamp, which just would completely reshape that whole ecosystem down there. So that was pretty wild to me. Okay, our next category is kind of our last one probably. We've talked about 10 different animals so far in the podcast. We're going to come back to some of those animals.

We're going to introduce some new ones. We have a lot of fun stories lined up. But of the 10 animals that we've talked about, what's your favorite so far? This is going to be the hardest question for me. We'll give you time to think. Okay. Jeff, what's your favorite animal we've talked about so far? It's probably got to be the grizzly bear.

Cool. Tiger is really cool, but I'm going grizzly bear. Mike? It's the tiger for me. Man, it's pretty easy. I love tigers. Yeah, you've stuck to tiger. For me, it's grizzly bears as well.

Like, bears are my favorite group of animals, and grizzlies pretty consistently are at the top of that list. So I'm going to go with grizzlies. Chimpanzee and people clothes is pretty high for me, too. Without the people clothes, it's at the bottom. And that's a backwards hat. Yeah, backwards hat, sunglasses and t-shirt. What do you guys think is the, like, strike t-shirt?

Would you say that for like animals dressed up in people-clothes, chimpanzees are the ones that... Oh, they're the one seed, for sure. For you, like... Yeah, I can't think of any other animal. So I have an interesting one to throw into that. Okay, I'm... A while ago, someone posted a video of, like, a chicken

that they put in, like, full overalls. I've seen that. Oh. That really hit the spot for me. I really thought it was funny, because it's, like, kind of wobbling back and forth, and it looks just... It makes you, like, look at the chicken

in a completely different way. So that one's probably my pick. I do appreciate dogs that get put in the costume where their front paws are the legs of like a human costume. That's pretty good too. I think penguins can be pretty funny in people close. I don't think I've ever seen a penguin in people close. Oh, that's pretty fun. I'll look it up.

Something to look up. Okay. So that's it for our categories. That's it for this year's episodes. We're having a great time with this thing. We're excited to make more. We're going to take a couple weeks off. and then we're going to come back.

We're going to start releasing episodes at a pretty good clip again. Feel free to send in stories, send in animal recommendations. We'll consider them. Follow us on Instagram. We love talking to you guys on Instagram. Totally. It's just Tooth and Claw podcast on Instagram. And remember to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Leave us a rating that really helps a lot. And then my, if I can give you guys a New Year's recommendation for your, for your whatever those are called resolutions. Yeah. I would just say, don't be afraid of animals. That again is like the message we want to portray with this podcast. Obviously, we need to respect them. Obviously, these stories are really intriguing to us.

Animal attacks throughout history have been these really appealing, interesting stories to people. But we don't want them to incite fear in you. We want to teach you what you can do to not be afraid when you're in these environments. Don't be afraid of animals. Don't be afraid of animals. Yeah. Got it. Great.

Already done. Okay. All right. Well, that wraps up season one. Yeah. Let's, uh, we got to end on a cliffhanger for season two, right? Yeah. I want to give us, like, a taste of what we can expect, like an animal you're thinking we're

going to do a snake one real quick. Snakes. I haven't picked the species yet, but snakes are pretty high on the list. Yeah. And then we're doing an orca episode. We got to. People have been asking for orcas. I've been hesitant to do it because as soon as we have orcas,

is in that cage match, it's like game over for everything else. Yeah. Unless we like put mosquitoes in there or something. Or like a person. Yeah, or a human being. Or 10,000 rats, apparently. That'd be a good fight. I'd pick the orca, put those rats in the water,

and the orchards eating all of them. Okay, that's it. So thanks, guys. We really appreciate everything. We do. See ya. Love you.