Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Killer Whale Attack - Tilikum's Terrifying Tour

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Wes gives us all a glimpse into the horrors of killer whale captivity, particularly one mistreated orca and the unfortunate demise of three different people at his hands. Or fins. Teeth, maybe?  ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds                          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. Today, Wes has us talking about one of the most beautiful and beloved animals to exist, the orca. This episode's story is filled to the brim with tragedy. Of course, for the humans involved, but also for the killer whale himself. We'll get to the story in just a second, but first we wanted to shout out a special thanks to all of the new members of our Patreon who are helping us keep the lights on around here. So to Stephanie, Hillary, Farwa, Liddy, Clementine, and Hannah, thank you.

We will forever appreciate you. your support. If you want access to some really cool perks and merchandise, you can hit up our Patreon and join. You'll get early access to our episodes and get to hear our special mini episodes hosted by Jeff and myself that we'll be putting out every other week as is planned for now, and help us grow into an actual legitimate podcast with new tech and stuff. Pretty much every cent you send our way for now goes back into making the podcast better and better. You can find where to join at www.com.com And if you can't support, don't worry, since our main episodes are still going to be released everywhere for free. Thank you again. All right. Let's get to Wes talking about orcas. Okay. We are here and we are going to do an episode on orcas.

Oh, wow. You guys excited? Yeah. They're a big animal. You know, it's an animal that a lot of people have requested, so I'm excited to finally get to them. I think I've kind of been holding off just because they're like the alpha predator out there. So our cage match, we'll just forever know who's number one now. I thought we were going to do like a sports podcast because of the Super Bowl.

No, we're not. But I'm sure you'd like to. Jeff's big sports fan. I have some thoughts real quick on it. Okay. Let's hear him. Think Tom Brady is the third best athlete I've ever seen. Okay.

I put Usain Bolt number one, Michael Phelps number two, and Michael Jordan number four. Huh. But if you count... I put Serena Williams above all those people probably. Okay. That's just me. Okay. If you count Space Jam with Michael Jordan,

I'd put him ahead of Tom Brady. Where you put in bugs? Where he beats aliens who are going to take over. Yeah. Well, Bugs didn't do that well. He didn't play his best game. Bugs didn't do that well. But like, that wasn't an official game.

So, like, who's to say Tom Brady hasn't played football against aliens? Yeah, that's true. Like someone just recorded Michael. Yeah. Have you ever seen those videos of him kissing his son on the lips? Yeah, that knocks him down to like a hundredth place in my mind. They're not just like little pecks. He kisses him on the lips for like four seconds. I need to correct you about the Bugs Bunny game because he was the key to victory and the whole thing because he was the one that distributed MJ's secret stuff to the rest of the team members. Yeah, plus he went and captured Bill Murray right when they need him.

Well, Tom Brady isn't the best athlete. He's just a great leader. Great athlete, amazing football player, but I think his true skill is his leadership. And Bugs is the leader of the tune school. Well, I'm saying he's the third most dominant athlete I've ever seen in my life. Serena Williams won, like what, like 32 grand slams? Yeah. Anyway, for those of you who aren't here for sports, we are going to be talking about Orcas today.

One other thing I wanted to bring up, since this is like unofficially a Lord of the Rings podcast as well, I've been reading the Silmarillion as I talked about in our old episode. I am just absolutely loving it, trying real hard to get Mike and Jeff to read it too, because it's just so great. Yeah, I need to. There's a lot of elves out there I don't know about. There's a lot of elves. It's really elf-heavy.

Okay, let's get into orcas. So those of you who know a lot about orcas probably know that they've never killed anyone in the wild. And they really haven't ever even attacked anyone in the wild. There's a surfer who was bit, I want to say the early 2000s by an orca, but that's like the only time they've ever even bid anyone in the wild. So there aren't any stories out there of wild orca attacks. On the other hand, there are quite a few stories of captive orcas attacking their trainers.

So we're going to talk about the most famous of those whales, orcas, and his name is Tillacum. A quick thing that I just corrected myself on, these animals are technically dolphins. Orcas are part of the dolphin family. They're the biggest dolphin member. They're not whales. but their common name has become killer whales. So a lot of people call them killer whales. Even orca biologists call them killer whales.

And sometimes they even call them whales. It's just become like a colloquial. The hardest time I'm saying that word. It's become a common way of referring to them. So I might even say whales a couple times during this episode. But just remember, they're dolphins. They're not whales. They're the biggest member of the dolphin family.

I'm learning stuff already. Both whales and dolphins are marine mammals, but they're not the same. So they're not a type of whale. They're not a type of whale. They're a type of dolphin. The killer whale capture industry really started in the late 60s. It ramped up in the 70s and 80s. Young orcas were taken from their family pods.

The pods would sometimes follow the boats where they captured them for like days. Yeah, super sad. Yeah, and they're like emitting distress signals and morning calls and all this really sad stuff. Sometimes orcas that were caught in these capture nets that weren't kept were weighed down with anchors and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Killer whales in captivity are placed with other individuals from all over the world, but pretty haphazardly. And so different orca communities around the world are very different. They're a really amazing animal, and each community has its own social structure. So when you put whales from all over the ocean in the same pen, it's kind of like combining inmates from all over the world in the same cell, and it just doesn't end up well.

Except in Paddington. Except in Paddington. Paddington really brings everyone together. Yeah. Okay, so in 1983, a two-year-old orca was captured near Rakevik Iceland. They named him, the people named him. The people that caught him. It wasn't just the orcas.

No, that wasn't. They weren't like asking him. And he spent about a year in a holding take in Iceland, and then he was transferred to sea land of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, where he lived along with two large female orcas, Haida two and Nutka four. And it's really a terrible place to be a captive orca. He was bullied by the larger females. He was kept in a medical tank to avoid injury.

The main tank wasn't very big, and the only thing that separated from the harbor was like a net. So they had constantly like this harbor water that had gasoline and fuel and everything, like going into their enclosure. And then they could also hear all these ocean sounds and all these boat noises all the time. And so it was a really disruptive, terrible place to be an orca. And their tanks were pretty small. And then also the owner was worried that people would come in at night and cut. the net separating them from the harbor. So at night they would put them in this medical tank that was like metal-sided and it was

just, it was like 25 feet diameter. So all three of them were crammed into this thing for 14 hours every day at night and they would like bite each other and get really angry with each other. So it was a really, really terrible facility for an orca. And the trainers also didn't do a lot to add variance to their activities. and they're such an intelligent animal that they need constant intellectual stimulation, and they would really just do the same activities over and over and over again with them. And they were warned by orca specialists that if they didn't think of new ways to entertain the orcas,

the orcas would come up with ways to entertain themselves. And unfortunately, that happened in early 1991 in Sealand of the Pacific. So in February 20th, 1991, Kelty Byrne, a 21-year-old marine biology student, a competitive swimmer. She was working part-time trainer at Sealand, and she was tidying up the area around the orca pool when she slipped and fell halfway into the pool with Tillicum, Ida 2, and Nukkah 4. The three Orcas were thrilled to have a new toy, and Tillacum kind of led this charge, and he pulled her underwater, dragged her around the pool and prevented her from surfacing.

At one point, she finally reached the side and tried to climb out, but the Orcas pulled her back in the pool. And the trainers were trying to throw her a life ring, but the Orcas kept her away from it. They're ignoring all these trainers like calls and commands. And she surfaced briefly twice screaming, I don't want to die. And then was dragged down again. And she finally surfaced a third time about 10 minutes later. But she was dead at that point. So telecom didn't care that she said she didn't want to die.

Telecom did not listen. Nope. He was too busy playing with what was to him a new toy. But why is it a new toy where like, how didn't they swim with him? No. So at this park they never got into the water with the Orcas. And it's because they treated them so poorly. that they couldn't.

Like the second they got on the water, they were attacked by him. And this isn't like necessarily an attack. Until I'm probably just like showing her. Like look at my house. Yeah, that's what... Look at my house. I got... Look at this corner down here.

Yeah. That's the thing is... It wasn't necessarily like a vicious attack. It's more that at this point, when you keep a killer whale in captivity like that, they become essentially psychotic. They're a mentally deranged animal at that point. That's kind of being a little too anthropomorphic.

But it's, you're breaking them down mentally. And anything that comes in the water, they might just think, okay, this is a toy. I'm going to play with it the same way I'd play with any other toy. Whereas a really well-trained, like, killer whale, a much better facility is going to have a better idea of what's a toy and what's not. Right. So it was several hours before they could recover her body from the pool. The orcas had stripped off all of her clothes and she was covered in bruises and cuts.

So Sea Land of the Pacific ended up shutting their doors and they sold off all their orcas. and Tillacom was sold to SeaWorld Orlando in February, no, sorry, in January of 1992. The owners and trainers were a little bit confused at Sealand how their beloved orcas could kill one of their staff. But this guy, Paul Spunge, who's the Spong? It's Paul Spong, I think. It's one of the two. He was director of Orca Lab in British Columbia, which studies Orcas in the Wild.

And he wasn't so confused. He said, if you pen killer whales in a small steel tank, you're in a small steel tank, you're imposing extreme level of sensory deprivation on them. Humans who are subjected to those same conditions become mentally disturbed. So wait, this whale has killed somebody before. Isn't standard fair with animals that do that kind of thing just to put them down? Not so much in captivity because they could kind of look at the circumstances and say like, okay, they never interacted with this whale enough.

They kept it in this tiny pen. There's all these things that sea land of the Pacific was doing wrong. and so we're going to take this whale and give it a better life. SeaWorld was like, so this killer whale in Sealand just killed somebody. And then someone else is like, I have an idea for a new show here at SeaWorld. Let's get that whale over here. It's like snuff film. Yeah.

I wouldn't watch that. To your question, Mike, like for example, the Hogo Zoo here in Utah, they have some bears that killed a person in the wild and ate this guy. And there were cubs when they did it. And they put them in the zoo. And so really, if you can have the right conditions and everything, you can have one of these animals. But I agree with you. It's maybe not an animal that you want people, like, interacting with and everything. So this is kind of like the reverse of what's normal.

Normally, it's like if an animal in the wild kills someone, they can put them in it to captivity. But this animal killed someone because it was in captivity. Right. Exactly. And so there's, I mean, there's a lot of ethics involved here. And really, the problem is this is like a billion dollar industry. and these animals are worth millions. And he was a really big bowl and he had already like sired some calves with these two females that he was with.

So he was, Yeah, so he was really valuable on them. Yeah, exactly. Nice. Okay, so a little bit about orcas before we continue with Tillucum's story. As I mentioned, they don't attack people in the wild. No human has ever been killed by a wild orca that we know of. They live throughout the world's ocean and they travel in family groups called pods.

Orcas and pods remain with their family their entire lives. So they, like, truly remain by their mother's side their entire lives. Males will leave their pod to go mate with females from other pods, but then they come back and stay with their family pods. They communicate using a complicated number of clicks, whistles, and pulses, and those are specific to each community. So each community essentially has its own language. Whoa, that's cool.

Which is amazing. Yeah. And because they do communicate at such a high level, and because each community will teach, like, novel behaviors to their offspring, they're considered an example of animal culture, which essentially culture just means you're teaching novel behaviors to your offspring. It's not something that's genetically passed down. It's something that's being taught.

How advanced would you say their language is compared to say, you know, another intelligent, you know, maybe language is the wrong word to use. Yeah, language is a tricky word to use with communications, probably the right word. Yeah, communication. So compared to say, I know dolphins are the same family. Yeah. They have a pretty robust vocabulary, if you could call it that. Yeah.

Our orca is pretty advanced on that. I think as far as like the number of clicks and whistles and everything they use, it's pretty similar to dolphins and then like some whales and stuff. I think the thing that separates orcas, I'm not sure if this is true with dolphins or not, is that it is different between communities. Like that's the really amazing part. It's just, yeah, that's something that just really doesn't happen that much. And they do teach, again, novel behaviors to their offspring.

So like you guys have probably seen those videos of the killer whales that will come up and like beach themselves to get sea lions or maybe seals in Argentina. Those whales will actually like push their calves up on the on the sand to get them used to that behavior. Killer whales don't do that anywhere else in the world. And again, I'm saying whales and we all know their work as dolphins, but just bear with me. So some biologists even feel that they have a higher capacity for emotions than humans. They have a whole part of their brain that we don't have that's just dedicated to emotions. Yeah, I was thinking if I was a little kid and I got kidnapped by someone, I don't think you would follow him for two straight days. No, no, I'd give up after like 20 minutes probably.

Another thing that's really interesting is each pod of killer whales will kind of specialize in a type of food. And there's like resident killer whales and there's transient killer whales. So the resident ones typically stay in one area of their entire lives. Transient are much more migratory. the resident ones typically specialize in some kind of fish whereas the transient ones are typically looking for marine mammals like seals, sea lions, walrists, whales, whatever.

They eat everything out there. They eat sharks, they eat sea turtles. They're really, they can eat everything, but they are really picky and they tend to specialize in their pods. They can't eat like a great white, can they? They can. Yeah, and they typically, when they kill great whites, they like go for their liver, I guess,

and that like, Decapitate. Not decapitate. What's the other word? Why can't I think of the word? Where you stop something from being like mobile or dangerous or whatever. Incapacitate. Thank you.

They incapacitate the shark. So like the only sea animal they can't take out is like a blue whale? They sometimes kill blue whales. Seriously? Yeah. They are the ultimate predator. They don't. They tend to not attack adult blue whales.

But they... They're not just Texas. But they could. And there's records of them attacking Blue Whales. Yeah. So you just like the ultimate, anything in the ocean. They have no... They have no predator and essentially everything is preyed to them.

What about the predator? You think the predator could take foreign... The predator could probably kill a war. Okay. So it's got one. Missiles and stuff. Well, and humans too. True.

Humans. Humans and aliens, I guess, are potential... predators for horkas. Okay, so they do use incredible strategy when they're hunting. I think you guys may have seen the videos where they like use waves to knock seals off of ice flows. They'll throw seals way up

in the air to disable them. Yeah, like hundreds of feet it seems like it's probably not that high. It's probably like 50 feet. But the reason they're doing that is because seals and all these other marine mammals will really bite them when they attack them. And doing that just completely like disables the animal. It incapacitates

the seal. I thought I thought the Orcas were just letting them have one last moment of fun before getting marched. It looks pretty cool. It does. And I'm sure it's fun for the orca, too. They'll also slap fish with their tails to stun them, and then they can just easily, like, pick off a bunch of fish. So they're really good hunters.

That's like a Pokemon move. Yeah. Tail width? Yeah, tail with. I really need to stop, like, immediately agreeing with you guys when you say something stupid. Yeah. That's half of it's our fault. So males average about 10,000 pounds.

The largest ones get up to like 22,000 pounds. Females average about 6,000 pounds. They can grow to be up to 32 feet long. That's the record. But average is more like 20, 22 feet. They have 48 sharp teeth that fit right into each other. And like I mentioned, they're the alpha predator. Like there's nothing on this planet aside from humans that they see as a threat.

But I fit right into each other. Is it kind of like the bear trap? Yeah, like the top teeth fit into the bottom teeth. I like that. Okay. So back to the story of Tillacum. So Tillacom arrives in SeaWorld, and he's grown into a large bowl. Senior staff debated the idea of getting him to do what they called waterwork,

which is where trainers enter the water with them and do tricks with him. The head trainers believed that this attack at Sealand happened because the trainers had never entered the water there. So when someone finally fell in, it was this really new novel thing, and it was a new toy. And so they thought they could maybe desensitize them to that. But the risks just seemed too great to desensitize a whale that had already killed someone.

So they decided to hold off on waterwork. Instead, they would have him do these things where they'd have him, like, jump way up in the air and splash the audience and do those kind of really crazy big tricks. And he was their biggest killer whale. So it was like a really cool thing for people that went and visited SeaWorld. I went and we sat in the splash zone. Yeah, we probably saw Tillacom. Yeah. Because we went in the 90s when he was there.

I mean, we probably saw him do some tricks. We got splashed by Tillcom. Probably. Yeah. Anyway, another reason they're really hesitant. to do this wasn't just because Tillocum had killed someone, but there was actually like almost a hundred reported incidents of trainers being injured by, by Orcas at this point. And a lot of, you know, this incident at Sealand was the first reported death, but a lot of trainers had bones that

were broken, internal organs ruptured, they'd practically been drowned. It was considered kind of the price of doing business with killer whales, but there's this long list of problems. Is that just because they'd get accidentally battered by the whale swimming around in the same tank? Or is it more like the orca would suddenly decide I'm going to like smush this guy and jump up in the air and land on them. It wasn't accidental by the orca. It was more a lot of time there was trainer error where the trainer would do something like there was one on the blackfish documentary, which again, so I don't think I mentioned this.

A lot of this information comes from this documentary Blackfish that CNN did and it's on Netflix that's about SeaWorld and Tillacom. I also got a lot of this information from a magazine article in outside magazine written by Tim Zimmerman in 2010 called The Killer in the Pool. I should mention those sources. But in Blackfish, they showed this incident where this woman slipped into a pool and the killer whale immediately grabbed her, pulled her all around, almost drowned her, broke her arm. I mean, it's...

I think though of the 100, there were a lot that were like accidents, but it was because they had like really intricate shows that they were doing were just so many things could go wrong and they were like having the whales fling them in the air and like another whale would be coming at him from a different direction. Well there's like one in Blackfish where you see the guy like riding the whale's dorsal fin and then the one jumps up and lands on him and it looks like an accident but this expert comes in and says you know that's probably the killer the orca knows what it's doing. You know, they recognize when a human's on someone.

Sure. So it's more just the orca deciding to break off from this training routine. And for whatever reason, you know, that they can hurt a person when they do that. Do you think it's smart enough to know, like, they'll just think this was an accident if I body slam this guy? Maybe. I don't know. That's a good question. Okay.

So whatever the motivation, and this has to do with what we're just talking about, some trainers believe that killer whales are aware of what they're doing. And this guy Jeffrey Ventre, who was a trainer at SeaWorld from 1987 to 1995, and he's in blackfish a bit, he says, I've seen animals put trainers in their mouths and know exactly what the breaking point of a rib cage is. And how long to hold a trainer at the bottom before they're about to drown and they let him up. Dude. So they're pretty smart and they know what they're doing. So once again, Tillacom is in this situation in SeaWorld where he has a much better facility now. He's got this huge, great facility.

Like, if you're going to have an orca in captivity, you see World's probably the best place for them to be. But once again, he's in a situation where he's dealing with hostile females, particularly a dominant orca named Katrina. Are they females larger? They're not, but they can just be so aggressive that it's still, you know, like a submissive male might still have problems with them. That's how girls flirt sometimes, you know?

Yeah. So this guy, Jeffrey, says, Tilly was a good guy that got beat down a lot by women. So there's a lot of reasons he might be unhappy. So he's like the first in-cell, I guess, the first orca in-cell. So weird to think of that, like being talked about an orca. Yeah, I know. These trainers get a little wonky with their orcas for sure.

Okay, so John Jett, who was a team leader for Tillacom, said sometimes he would suffer a beat down bad enough to rake his skin and bloody him up, and he would have to be held out of shows until he healed. Jet had a term for the blood left streaming in the water. he called it skywriting. After a good thrashing from the other orcas, Tillacum might be off for days, splitting from his trainer to swim at high speed around the pool,

acting agitated around the females, or opening his eyes wide and emitting distress vocals if they asked him to go into a vulnerable position. It's extremely sad if you think about being in Tillacom's situation, says Jet. The poor guy just had no place to run. That's how I felt growing up with you inside.

You had no place to run. Just like he would corner me anywhere in the house and body slam me. was good for you. Sue plaques me. Yeah. Down the stairs. Do you feel like that?

Hang on to your dorsal fin? Do you feel like you're going to act out someday now and kill some people like TILCOM? If I do, it's your fault. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So, in 1999, Tillacom decided to remind the world that at least when it came to humans,

he could be a very dangerous animal. Early on the morning of July 6th, Michael Dordy, a physical trainer at SeaWorld, arrived at his office near the underwater viewing area of the G-pool. He glanced through the viewing glass and saw Tillacum staring back with what appeared to be two human feet hanging down his side. There was a nude body draped across Tillacom's back and it wasn't moving. Tillacum was hurted onto the medical lift in order for SeaWorld staff to retrieve the body. Rigamortis had already set in and it was a young male and again the coroner, coroner and again the coroner and sheriff's report were really telling because he had puncture wounds

and multiple abrasions all over his face. That's one thing that I forgot to mention with the other attack. They ruled it a drowning, but like it was obviously a killer whale, you know? They didn't give it credit like the whale at first. No, they say it's a drowning, which it is. A lot of times that's how they kill them, but it's just kind of like, you know, that's a bit of a stress. It was drowned for a reason. It wasn't the water.

It was the one. It makes me think these coroners that are ruling them a drowning, like have lifetime Passes to Sea World give it to that corners. Corners. Yeah, they're in good with big orca. Jeff, that's the first time in the podcast you've been able to correct my pronunciation. It feels great. So this victim, his name was Daniel Dukes.

He was a 27-year-old guy. He had a reddish-blown ponytail, scraggly beard, and a big red D that was tattooed above his left nipple. Four days before that, he'd been released from jail. and he, I guess for like theft or something, he wasn't like a violent criminal or anything. But on July 5th, he hid at SeaWorld. He stayed there past closing hours. Or he may be snuck in.

They're not totally sure. At some point during the night, he stripped down to his swim trunks. He left his clothes like neatly folded by the edge of the tank. And then he jumped in the killer whale pool. Some people think he was crazy. Some people think he was suicidal. We'll just never know. He maybe just believed that they were like friendly.

Maybe he'd seen free willy to. many times. But again, the coroner determined the case of death to be drowning. So again, who knows who's paying off these coroners? Telecom just getting off easy again. Yeah. Good for him. So isn't it kind of weird that both people that have been drowned so far were like found naked? Yeah. And actually with the third one we're going to talk about that happened as well. They strip them up their clothes. How do they even do that? They're really, even though they look like this really unwieldy, big animal, they're really good with their mouths. Like they can, be really delicate and stuff

and so they can truly just like peel their clothes off. Maybe close off nice and gently. Maybe the kid jumped in fully clothed until come folded the clothes. Well a lot of times, a lot of time serial killers fold up their victims' clothes because they're very

particular and I feel like I know way too much about these attacks to make these jokes. Maybe. Yeah. I won't go down to that. No, it's fine. We're going to get into some of this, the more details. So one of the sources that I was able to find were autopsy reports on both this guy and the third victim. So maybe that's why I'm having heart.

Okay. But it's fine. So another thing that's kind of shady about this, though, is that SeaWorld claims they have no footage of it, when really they have cameras all over that place. There's no way. Yeah. So they say it's not clear if Tillacum actually held him underwater or if he drowned because of like hypothermia because they keep the water and these things pretty cold.

But that's not what happened. I think we all know that. He didn't die of hypothermia. The one clear thing is that he really did work Dukes over. This guy's last name was Dukes. They found abrasions and contusions, both pre-mortem and post-mortem all over his head and body, puncture wounds on his left legs, his scrotum had been ripped open. Divers had to go to the bottom of the pool to retrieve little pieces of his body.

So SeaWorld decided to ramp up their security, and they posted a 24-hour watch at Chamu Stadium. Anyway, the main thing that we learned, though, is that Kelty. Yeah, Scrodom. Kelty had not It kind of was mine too Kelty though had not been an aberration She wasn't like a one-off for Tillacom He's at two kills

Yeah he's got two kills He's going for the hat trick now So now we're going to go to our third victim Who was Donne Don Brancho She was one of SeaWorld's best and most like trainers She had been working there since 1994 She had a great love for animals

She even volunteered at a local shelter And at home she had ducks and rabbits and chickens and stray birds, and she even met her husband Scott at the SeaWorld cafeteria. So it's really sad because you read about these people and you get to know them a little bit, and it seems like she was just really sweet and just absolutely loved her job. And, you know, again, like if you're working with killer whales, you have to accept that there's a certain amount of risk, but still it sucks when people die from these kind of things. And especially because a lot of the SeaWorld trainers say they didn't ever get information

about how often people had actually been injured by their orcas and stuff. There's like a lot wrong with the ethics of SeaWorld, but it is like such a cool job to just like get launched in the air by the orca. Well, a crazy thing too is that a lot of these people don't have, they're not like marine biologists, they're just really good swimmers. And that's why they get hired. And a lot of these attacks happen before the internet is what it is now. And a lot of them just didn't know.

This is just like one kid goes back to school and it's like, Hey, this orca bit someone at SeaWorld when I went and everyone's like, no, it didn't. Right. Or it'll be on like page six of the newspaper or something. Anyway, so Don was one of the only trainers that worked with Tillocum. She had grown really comfortable with the large animal. And some people think she was maybe even getting a little too comfortable. So on February 4th, 2010, Don was working with the Dine with Shamu show,

which takes place in a 1.6 million gallon pool. And it has this open air cafe that wraps around it. So visitors get to pay, that pay extra, come in there, they eat their lunch, and they get to watch this whole training thing with one of the killer whales. So Don was there. She was working with Tillacum. She was running alongside the decking. She was doing commands. Everyone was thrilled by everything that Tillacom was doing with Don.

And around 1.30 p.m., the show ended. The visitor started leaving, and Don started feeding Tillacum and giving them kind of these post-show treats. Like she'd feed them herring. She'd splash them with water, which they really love. And then they have this shallow ledge that she laid down on, and the killer whale comes up to the shallow ledge, and she started stroking them and kind of, you know, giving him this positive interaction. And as she stroked him, something they weren't really supposed to have was long hair, but she did. And her long hair floated out in front of Tillacom. So at the same time, guess we're beginning to approach the huge underwater window below.

Man, I'm really stumbling with my words. You're saying a lot of words. Guess we're beginning to approach the huge underwater window below. and they were allowed then to see Tillacom like come swimming by this window and Don would give them that command to do that. So the trainers down below were like telling Don to do that. And right when they did, Tillacum reached out, grabbed on to her hair and started this game Tug of war with her.

Don was immediately ripped into the water and then Tillacum grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her under water in front of a few dozen stunned guests. A siren sounded and a bunch of staff arrived to try and make things better and they slapped the water and yelled commands at Tillacum. They even placed a large net to try and separate Tillacum from Don, but nothing was working. So the 123-pound Don breaks away from Tillacum. She gets to the surface where she screams for help, but he explodes from the water and slams down on her. She gets away, she tries it again, and this time he grabs her and starts pushing her with his nose like a toy.

And then Tillacum then grabs Dawn by the foot, pulls her underwater and starts shaking her violently. trainers and the staff continued to try and separate him from Don, but after almost half an hour of trying to separate them, they can see that Don's no longer struggling. Tillacom finally releases Don's foot and he grabs her by the arm and he's guided onto this medical lift after, again, like 30, 40 minutes of them trying, and then he can be lifted out of water. And even when he's out of the water, he's refusing to let go over her arm

and they have to pry open his mouth to get him out. And when they do, like the top part of her arm falls off. And he swallows that part of her arm. Her death was ruled death by drowning and blunt force trauma. Again, accurate. Yeah, accurate, but maybe you should put also an orca that has been abused its whole life, killed her. Seems like Tillacum doesn't understand the rules of Tugawar. Yeah, Tillacum.

You did pretty well. Well, he cheated. You can't bite someone's arm off. Yeah. So, I don't know. I haven't played in a while. Again, I'm about to get into everything that happened. Don. It's really bad timing, but that's fine. Okay, so Don had been completely scalped. Pieces of

scalp with her hair attached were retrieved from the bottom of the pool. She had a broken jaw, lacerated ear, lacerations all over her face. She had a fractured vertebrain, sternum. She had broken ribs, lacerated liver. They found two cups of blood in her abdominal cavity. Her upper left arm was completely consumed by telukum, with only the forearm below the elbow remaining and her left knee was dislocated. The nice thing, kind of the one, I guess Compr, you can see in all of this, is that there was very little blood. So that makes experts think that her heart had stopped beating long before a lot of

these injuries occurred. So she, you know, had drowned long before. I thought you were going to say the audience got their money's worth. So after this attack, they decided Tillacom would no longer have any human interaction up close. So they would... Three strikes, he's out. Yeah, they did like... They would, like, spray him from a distance.

They would clean his teeth with, like, an extendable pull. How sharp are their teeth? Because it sounded like she got pretty cut up. They're more like... If they really want to bite into you, they do, like, puncture wounds. But if they're just, like, mouthing you, it'll... It's not like a shark. No, they leave, like, bruises.

They're pretty dull, but they're sharp, if that makes sense. Like, they're so big that they're not, like, razor-sharp. Well, they have, like, so much force that they can be sharp. Exactly. They're like pretty triangular, but not serrated and edged like a shark's teeth are. Go ahead. Okay. So, yeah, they didn't do any more human interaction with him.

He did total, in total, he sired 13 calves, which are found throughout marine parks all around the world. There's a lot of debate whether or not just to release him back into the wild after this. But those releases usually don't do well. Keiko, who's the or played Willie in the movie Free Willy, there was a lot of public pressure to release him after that movie. And they did, and he died almost a year later from pneumonia. So they just, once they've been separated from that family pod, they just really don't do well on their own. So it's just like once they're in captivity, it's really hard to release him. Yeah, you can't really release them.

Or else they might just die a slow death. That's kind of crazy that Tillacom had 15 kids. 13. 13? Because he was an aggressive orca. Yeah. So then, like, that's probably passed down to his offspring. Not necessarily, because they think this is like, his aggression is because of how poorly he was treated at the beginning.

He was kind of bullied by the, and that he was bullied this whole time. It's not necessarily like he was born aggressive. And a lot of the people that worked with him actually thought he was really sweet. It's just that he had essentially a mental illness at that point. So a lot of his offspring have done great in captivity and they're like really beloved in the parks that they're in. Anyway, he died in 2017 at the age of 36. At SeaWorld? Uh, yeah.

As of August 2019, there are still 60 orcas in captivity around the world. About half of those were captured in the wild. Could you still see him at SeaWorld? Would he still do anything? Yeah, I think... So the attack happened in 2010, and I think in 2011 is when he was placed back in, like, the shows. But again, no one was physically interacting with them.

No one was touching him or, like, doing that kind of stuff with Tillacom anymore. Other than being a set piece for these shows, is there any legitimate reason to put orcas into captivity? Yeah, so that's actually exactly what I was about to go back into. So Blackfish came out and people really resonated with a lot of people and it really put a lot of pressure on SeaWorld. And I was working with polar bears at the time and I had gotten money from SeaWorld to do like some of the work that I was doing. And I knew a lot of the behind the scenes at SeaWorld and how much money they put into conservation. into rescue, so I was really torn. So I kind of put together a quick list of pros and cons.

Sure. Of this whole thing. I think the benefits of having orcas in captivity is that they've learned a lot about orca biology that way. They learned how long their gestation period is and a few other things that are pretty critical if you're setting a program to protect them in the wild. They do really inspire people to care about the animal. Like if you go to one of those shows and you see an orca, it's just like, wow, this is the most

beautiful animal. I've ever seen and it's magnificent, and you do care about them. Like, that's a big benefit to zoos and aquariums is just learning to care about something. And then as I mentioned, they raise a ton of money for conservation and sea life rescue. The cons, orcas are really social and intelligent, like we said. Separating them from their family is probably morally wrong. You know, I don't condone any kind of like harvesting animals from the wild for these kind of things. These ones that are born in captivity, I think, is more of a gray area.

But I think the practice of going out and catching orcas in the wild should be done. That shouldn't be happening. And unfortunately, it still is in other places, not in the U.S. anymore. Another con, I just, like, personally, I think they're way too large to be in captivity. They're just too big. You can't build a tank that's big enough. You go to, like, the zoo and you see, like, a polar bear or something that can kind of craft an exhibit that somewhat resembles, you know, where you're, you know,

where you'd find them in the wild. You can't really do that with the marine environment that big. What about the whale sharks in the Atlanta aquarium? I'm not a fan of that either. I just think they're too big and they're just swimming in circles their whole lives. And another con is obviously like they can harm people. They're potentially harmful animals. So I do think if you're going to keep them in captivity,

you shouldn't have people in the water interacting with them. There's plenty of ways to keep them entertained and, you know, progressing with their kind of intelligence without putting people and they're riding on their backs and stuff. So it kind of boils down to how you feel about it. Personally, I'm not as anti-having animals and zoos and aquariums as you might think. And even with orcas, I don't, I think they're too big. I don't think they necessarily should be in there. But I think there's much bigger fish to fry at the same time. There's 60 orcas in captivity, which sucks. And I think it's, you know, it sucks that they're in captivity. But at the same time,

there's like 12,000 Asiatic Blackbears that live in cages that are just as big as. their bodies and they're being milked for their bile, you know? There's much worse things happening to animals out there. The problem is they're not the stars of free willy or they're not animals that are so beloved, you know? Yeah. Again, at least when you have an animal like that in captivity, there are some benefits. SeaWorld makes billions of dollars and some of that money does go towards some really great

things. There are other, like, we're killing 100 million sharks a year, you know? There's no benefit to that. aside from like they're a delicacy to some people, you know? So I just think, I think that you have this problem with whales and dolphins and these animals that people just love where they get, they get a lot of attention. I think it's great for them and I think it's great that we're stopping some of these cruel practices.

But I really think there's other animals that need a little bit more attention. That sounds calloused. No, I get what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. But if that's your fight to fight, if like you're out there and you just, are the number one fan of orcas and you hate having them in captivity. I say, you know, fight on, do your thing, make it better for them.

Blackfish did a lot to, like, change that whole industry. And no longer is SeaWorld. They're ending their practice of having orcas. They're never getting any more orcas. The ones they have now are their last orcas they're going to have. So, and Blackfish did that. Yeah. So I think that's a good thing.

I think you can still bring in visitors without having to, abuse an animal for decades. Right. Okay. So a little bit more about orcas that I learned that's pretty interesting. We are autonomously breathing. Like we don't have to think about breathing. And that's why we can sleep and go unconscious.

They don't do that. They have to breathe. They are consciously breathing when they come up to the surface. So to sleep, they only allow half of their brain to sleep at a time. So they'll go up to the surface and their left half of their brain will turn off and their left eye will close and they'll slowly swim on the surface and then they'll let the right half turn off and their right eye will close. So they're still moving and they're still like half awake but they're allowing half of their brain to sleep at a time. That's really cool. There's a few

other animals that do that. I think ducks do that. There's a few. You can use their distinctive white patches to distinguish between individuals. That's how biologists tell them apart. It's unknown how many orcas are in the wild but experts think there's probably around 50,000, which really isn't that many considering they live in every ocean on the planet. Some orca populations like the southern resident orcas of Washington and British Columbia are quickly dying out. And we'll talk a little bit about that when we get to our categories. Okay, a little basic thing about what to do if you see them in the wild.

Again, they don't attack people, so we don't really have to go into like what you do if you're attacked and necessarily in the wild. But if you do see orcas in the wild, at least in the U.S., legally, you're not allowed to approach them within 200 meters. If you're swimming and you see one, you're. you're supposed to try and get out of the water. If you do see them, when you're within 100 meters, you have to put your engine in neutral.

And then if they decide to come up and approach you, they can, but you're not supposed to, like, touch them or interact with them in any way. So sometimes you'll see those, like, viral videos of people where an or an orca comes up right by their canoe or whatever. That's fine. It's just you can't see them and then, like, paddle over to them and, like, harass them. That's against the rules. Okay.

Questions about orcas? Yeah, so was Telecom about the average size and, and age for an orca, or was the captivity kind of shortened and stunted that, the growth in the age? Average size, yes. Something that does happen to him in captivity is their dorsal fin folds over, which is like a physiological thing that only happens really to captive ones. So he was like a pretty average size. What he wasn't was average age. They do survive longer in the wild. And that's actually something like when you go to these marine parks, they say the opposite. They say they do better in captivity and that's not true. They survive longer in the wild. How long? What's like the difference?

Their lifespan is pretty similar to humans. Females can live like 60 to 70 years and males live, or I think like 70 to 80 years and males live like 50 to 60 years. It's a little bit less than us, but somewhat similar. In captivity, it's like 20 years less for both of them. Yeah, it's kind of a somber story because no one really wins, you know? You got an orca that has like a pretty terrible life and then you got a few people that were unlucky enough to be a play thing for that orca, really. Yeah, that's awful. Yeah, and again, like, we're pretty jockey on here, but obviously it's like a tragedy whenever anyone dies. And so, you know, our hearts go out to whoever might know these people that ended up on the wrong side of TILOCOM.

Okay, categories. Are we ready for categories? Yeah, let's do it. Let's get into it. So our first category is our favorite orca from pop culture, who wants to be. wants to go first. I can go first. I'm going to standard free willy.

Yeah. Who's the actor in it? Was it Joseph Gordon Levitt? I don't think so. I thought it was just like. Was it Elijah Wood? Is it not Elijah? Really famous actor.

I don't remember that. Huh. You want an I and B. Yeah, I'll look it up. I was reading something. He like actually, they did that jump over a kid. Really? The Orchid like jumped over a kid.

I've never considered that that wouldn't be CG, but that so long ago. Yeah. And it does look really realistic. It's such a cool shot. Yeah. So I was right. It's like a, I think it was like a one and done actor.

Oh, was it? Yeah. His name is, well, sorry if you're out there and I called you a one and done. Jason James Richter. I wonder why I thought. He's in some other movies, but I think that was like his big one. And I knew that because I saw that movie a billion times. Maybe I'm thinking of free willy too.

He, Elijah might be in one of the other ones. That's where he's in, or no, Flipper. He's in Flipper. That's where you're thinking of. Yeah. That's not my pick. Flipper was not an orca. No, dolphin.

Same family. There you go. They probably potted together, just like we're doing. They don't do that. Podcasting. Mike, what's your answer? So whenever, when all else fails, you know there's a Pokemon designed after any kind of type of animal.

And there is an orca. I don't know how to pronounce his name, but he looks super. cool. It's either Kai-Oger or Ki-Oger. Okay. This big blue flying orca thing. Cool. There you go. And that's mine. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Mine actually was the same as Jeff's. I would love to say it was different and have another one to introduce, but it was the orca from Free Will. It was Keiko.

I felt like I should have thought of more than I did. Like it seems like a popular logo. I looked them up and I couldn't think of any. The Keiko one was hard for me because such a tragic story. Like to be released and then die alone from like the cold. It's pretty sad. Yeah. I don't know. The saddest part in the movie was when the kid ran it.

He was running away and he stepped on a birthday cake and just ruined it. I don't remember that. I probably should. From free willing? Yeah. I got to watch that movie. I don't remember that. I remember he like was like doing graffiti on the...

That's the same scene and he's running away. Steps in the cake. There's just a cake on it? Okay, I'll watch it later and we can talk about it. Jeff wishes it had ice cream with it. It's so bad. Okay. D desserts.

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What we do here on this category is we talk about all of the animals that we've spoken about thus far on the podcast and how the animal of this episode would stack up against them in a controlled or contained cage-match fight environment. Obviously, the orca sounds like the grand champion of all time. Yeah. Unless we're talking about the predator, apparently. And we haven't done the predator. Once our predator episode comes out, then we'll knock him down a pig.

Yeah, they're really, like, they're the alpha predator on Earth. There's just nothing that even like a polar bear, if it saw an orca in like a open hole or something, I don't think they would try. And they kill, like, there's been reports of them killing like moose when they're swimming across the water. As we mentioned, they can kill a blue whale. Like, there's just not. That's insane. Anything. They'll attack sperm whales sometimes, which are the other really big.

toothed. Well, they're a whale. They're an actual whale, but they have big teeth and they're just, there's just nothing. There's nothing out there that beats them. So this is our grand champ. This is our champ. Yeah, unless you count people, but we're not counting people. They can kill people too. It's on the record. Yeah, we talked about it. Yep. Um, okay, so our next category is what would Mike and Jeff do? So for this one today, we're going to do like, what would you guys do if you were a trainer and you fell into one of these situations where you were being attacked by a trained killer whale right so i remember well i just recently watched blackfish and there was like a moment where it missed a move and went for its fish and she didn't give them any

fish and then like she was running low on fish and didn't give them the normal amount okay so i'd just give them a ton of fish all the time just get them real happy but no like honestly it's just tough like I'm sure she was just an amazing trainer. Pretty much just like, I would make peace with myself that the way I die might be a killer will if I was in her position. That's good. Yeah. Well, Mike, do you want to answer?

Well, I don't have long hair, so it wouldn't have gotten me that way. But had it dragged me into the tub or the pool, whatever the tank, what can call it? Yeah, pool. Pool, tank, whatever. It seems like maybe a good move would be to stay away from the sides of the tank, because it probably batters the people, you know, when it gets them. I guess you don't really have a control over the situation, but I think you guys are kind of hinting on something like a bigger thing with this.

It's just there's not really, they're so big. There's just not much you can do. Once you're in their mouth, you're like, it's going to decide what you do. Right. And so like Jeff's, I think Jeff's is good where he just said he would feed it a ton. Because I think, yeah, if you're dealing with like a really happy, well-fed orca, that's much better than one that's, like, pissed at you. But as far as, I mean, most of them were killed by drowning, you know, not so much by them, like, battering them against something.

So I just think your main thing is just staying out of trouble, which is probably the easiest way to do that is not be an orca trainer. In Blackfish, there was a trainer who had gotten, like, pulled down a bunch of times. Yeah. And he just went limp. Yeah, he stayed really calm. He stayed super calm. and then it would let him go and then it grabbed him again

and he'd like catch his breath yeah and it like munched his ankles and stuff like his feet were all broken but like he they think the reason he probably survived is because of how calm he stayed and like when you're thrashing around and stuff it's like you're an interactive toy with it

you know and it's suddenly like oh the more I play with this thing the more it thrashes I think I could stay calm up until like he took me all the way down and there was just like pressure all around. Right. And he was down for like a minute and a half at a time and stuff. And we've talked about this before. Like if you're holding your breath for a minute and a half, that's not, we can do it. Like I've held my breath that long. But if you're being held under, it's so hard to hold your breath. Like after five seconds, you're going crazy. So it's really

impressive that video. And we should mention, we didn't really want to watch Blackfish and our mom really pushed us to do it. So thanks mom. So, um, so, so, Train for being able to hoard your breath for a long time and get into like mindfulness meditation. Yeah. We've shouted out mom like every podcast. Yeah, mom just is going to have to be on the podcast one of these days. So one thing that you brought up, Mike, that I want to bring up is their name. The whole killer whale moniker for workas was given to them by whalers a long time ago.

It's because they would attack like injured whales and stuff. It's not so much that people feared them because they really had never attacked people. they're really not. I mean, they're just a big dolphin. Like, if they were called black and white dolphins, people would be like, oh, you know, no one would be submitting like, hey, you guys need to do killer whales or whatever, because a big part of the reason we're afraid of them is their name, Killer Whale. Anyway, that's a little bit about what you guys would do.

I think you guys aren't far off in the fact that there's really nothing you can do. Okay. Killer whales is a cool name. It is a cool name. And it's not, I mean, in the wild, it's not far from the truth if you're prey for them. They're really good at getting prey. From the perspective of a seal, it's spot on. Yeah.

A cool thing that I learned, though, is like a human can be in a group of seals. Like, there's been people swimming with seals where a killer whale comes in and kills a seal, and it bypasses the human. Like, they know their prey. They don't confuse us for prey and they don't attack us. Okay. Let's get to some listener questions. All right.

Listener questions. So, Wes, you're going to start us off from Eliah Grace. Wes, what's your favorite thing about being a wildlife biologist, a grad student needing motivation? Yeah, you know, my favorite thing is doing field work, and I've been lucky to do a lot of field work. Regardless of what species it is, I love being out in the field and doing like captures and stuff. I do think if you're thinking about getting into wildlife biology, you should be prepared to be in the office a lot. Mostly you're in the office. I've been really lucky to do the amount of field work I've done.

And one other thing is the further, the more education you get, like if you're a Ph.D. or whatever, the more time you're going to spend in the office. So if you're really just interested in like handling animals and everything, you might want to look into working in zoos, like being a zookeeper or just being like a tech. SeaWorld orchid trainer. You'll get plenty of handling. All right. So from Mickle Picks, what's the worst animal related injury any of you has sustained? And actually, I'm going to combine this one with Lisa Draws asking worst injury from a pet. Okay. My worst animal injury. Mike, do you want to go first? Sure.

So as far as pets go, I've actually never really had a bad experience with a pet. But we did have a German Shepherd. We always have a German Shepherd somewhere around. That's just kind of how our family operates. When I was really little, it nipped at one. one of my friends' faces and got her pretty good across that she really knows and we had to get rid of it. Lieben was its name forever missed.

Yeah. Really sad, but understandable too, because it did show some signs of aggression and, you know, with German Shepardt. Like TILOC. Like TILOC. Yeah. Mine, oh, sorry, did you have more? No.

Okay. Mine, as far as pets go, would just be like some of the snakes I've caught had bit me pretty good. I've bled a lot. as far as any animal, I fell out of a tree once when I was trying to sedate a black bear and I broke my ankle. So it's not necessarily the bear that did it, but it was while I was like working with it. So I'm going to count that. What about that time you like fell off a horse? Yeah, I've fallen off some horses too.

Yeah. Yeah, mine's an ankle injury too. I was walking to a fishing spot and I got close to like some baby grouse and the mom came out and just scared the hell out of me and I like stumbled and just tweaked my ankle a little bit. I don't think I knew about that. Yeah. It wasn't a bad injury. No, that's pretty funny.

I don't have a lot of use on that. I don't have a good, yeah, I don't have like a big injury ever. I got me and West rode a steer or a bowl once and I got kicked in the leg by it. Yeah, it wasn't like a bad injury. And I got kicked in the nuts, but not that hard. I fell off and kind of tweaked my neck. from a mechanical bowl. Oh, that's a good one.

That counts for you, but not for anyone else. All right, from Ashley Goobie. Gobley. Sure. If you could have a miniature of a wild animal as a pet, which would it be in why? Wait, a miniature version of any animal? Yeah. Huh.

So like any animal and it's like a foot or too big. Jeff, what would you pick? Um, oh, man. Baby hippos are cute Just like it's always a little hippo So how many are we talking? Like fits in your pocket Like okay so it's like dog sized or cat sized

Yeah, let's say a cat sized Just to make this easy Yeah, okay I like that You're picking a hippo? Yeah No, I'm picking an elephant An elephant, that's a good pick I was thinking about elephant

I was gonna say something similar with a rhino I thought that'd be kind of cute To seem like hit butt and stuff Because there's a lot of There's a lot of animals that my mind goes to, but like we have them. Like I was like, oh, a tiger. And it's like, well, just get a house cat. Yeah, true.

Or like, there's a lot of those things out there. So I'm going to say an orangutan. A little mini orangutan. Yeah. That'd be kind of fun. I think it'd be pretty cute. And it could swing all over and do like pretty fun stuff. I thought gorilla, but orangting is good too.

Yeah. All right. From Ross Coligan. What's the coolest thing you've ever done? done like ever and your favorite beverage just cause okay that's a hard one to answer the coolest thing i've ever done i can start us off okay mine's like something i don't like tell everyone but i'm standing on that whale shark standing on that whale shark so i snorkeling with whale sharks with west and mike in mexico and our cousin brent and i was like snorkeling above one and it like surfaced

like with me right above it. So like I ended up essentially like laying on it. And it just didn't care at all that I was there. So then like I decided just to like stand up and I stood on it and waved at you guys. Yeah. For all of those of you out there listening to this, it's a good story. But a disclaimer, if you're ever with whale sharks in the wild, you're not allowed to touch them. This one touched Jeff.

Yeah. But don't ever purposely. Jeff just took advantage of the opportunity presented. Yeah. And I hope everyone is as quick-witted as him if they ever have a similar encounter. Don't ever purposely put yourself in that situation. Porpously? Porposely.

Because whale sharks are a fish. They're a shark. But it is pretty cool, right? Yeah, it was cool. That is cool. Mine would probably, you know, I've been really lucky to have some really cool experiences. I just remember one night I was working on my polar bear project. And I was like, it was nighttime and I was snowmobiling across the frozen Arctic Ocean to a polar bear den.

And like the northern lights were dancing in the sky. And it was like just such a one of those like moments where you're just like, man, this is so cool. And I think about it all the time. So that that's up there for me. Just like, I've done some cool stuff. But that was just one of those days where it was like, man, this is like my life's pretty cool right now. Mike? I'll go with hot cocoa.

just drinking some hot cocoa. Yeah, my favorite beverage. Oh, got it. Yeah. Sorry, I mean, I figured you guys took care of that. I didn't have a cooler store than you, so I figured I had a dress. You swam with the whale sharks. That's still cool.

I did actually. Yeah, true. One more that's not an animal thing is I did that arch swing at arches where you like jump off a cliff and swing through the arch. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I, from Sonia Sala. Did Wes and Jeff get along growing up, Mike? I mean, as of 10 years ago, yeah.

Let me tie his tight as tight. You know how I'll field that one. A little bit about Jeff growing up. Jeff was pretty sensitive for his first, like, probably 15 years of life. And we actually got along pretty well, like to begin with. We did lots, like, I always played with you doing, like, pretend. animal games and stuff and then you got pretty like emotional and sensitive we did good from like one to six yeah and then like six to like 16 was hard 16 yeah like 17 to now yeah and now we did

pretty well and now we're doing great i think but like from like me being seven to like 16 i just didn't get along with any you're pretty insufferable i was on i was on like some medications that just made me cry whenever i's tees it makes me pretty sad now but I don't blame me. I was a hard kid to get along. All right. All right. One more.

Favorite national parks. Mine's Glacier. But let's, like, name a couple. Glacier, Yellowstone, Bryce, Capitol Reef are some of my favorites. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Is the Oki-Fanokey? I don't know.

It might be. Well, that's my answer. Orparks that you want to visit. Oh, and this is from Maya Corona. Okay. I know that song. My Corona. No, the Oke Finoki is sweet.

My Sharona. Yeah. I got to hold a little baby alligator. It's the highlight of my entire time I spent in Georgia. That's when your whole weird. I peaked fetish with Alligator started. I looked into its deep black dead eyes and I felt a connection because, you know, real connection. So, yeah, I'd say glacier, yellow stone.

That one in Codiac, Alaska. I always forget the name. Is there one on Kodiak? You're thinking a Katmai. Catmine's not on Kodiak. It's on the mainland. The one we flew to? Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah. That place in Hyder where we watch grizzly bears. That's like a state park or something. And then in Utah, I really love Zion. I love Bryce. Jeff's Lewis. Your enemies.

If you ever asked Jeff for a favorite, get ready for at least. five or six options. Okay. All right. Well, that does it for listening. Okay.

So a little thing. Let me butt in real quick. Wait, let me butt in first. Oh, you butt and all butt. So we do, on Instagram,

we do like the little listener question sticker. And that's the main way that we harvest listener questions. And that's like, if you guys want to submit them when we do that, we'll try and give you guys a warning,

but that's how we get them. Every once in while, people send them in direct messages. It's really hard to keep track of those. So it's not necessarily like the best. way to get them to us. But I do have one that I remembered that I already know the answer to, but I wanted to say

it because we all are fans of this movie. What's the, and this is from Emily Wright, Emily M. Wright. What's the best SNL skit turned movie? Let's do, let's say it on the counter three. One, two, three. McGruber. Oh, what? Okay.

What were you going to say? I said Wayne's World, but. Oh, Wayne's World is. McGruber's. McGruber's so funny. It's close between those, too. Just for some reason, McGraber didn't pop-miles. Waynesworld's really, really good.

Okay, anyways, that's, so the question sticker in our story is the best way to get us questions. If you really have one you want to send to us, send it in a DM. We'll try to remember it. Sometimes it's hard to keep those straight. Mike. Oh. The best way, but we ask questions, ask four questions over our Patreon account. And we have one here right now from Farwa, who's actually a member of our bear tier, which is kind of our middle section.

Grizzly tier. Grizzly, yeah. Yeah. And she's getting a little biblical on us now. Okay. She asks, can a human survive in the stomach of a whale if swallowed whole, and if so, for how long? I think they could But I think it would be

Pretty short I don't know exactly how long Like a blue whale Like I don't know if there's air in there I think the main thing is just that you would drown But I'm not sure Because like whales aren't on the surface that long Right

No They go down But I imagine they still have air in there Even when they go under But I'm not sure I mean I know you could I think there'd be It's not like you would instantly die

When you're consumed If you were swallowed whole But I don't think you would last very long. There'd probably be like a little fish in there to munch on. Yeah. I think I think max you're surviving like half hour. If you're like a scuba diver, that's my guess. Well I think even without air, I bet you might have some air in there for like half hour. You think you could like go to the light from the blowhole to like see what you're doing. Just climb out of the blowhole. Imagine you just see a whale out there and you see someone climb out of it. No, I'm saying to like see inside of it will there be light coming

through the blowhole. I don't think the blowhole is connected to the stomach. To the stomach. It definitely is. I'm no whale biologist. Yeah, it's definitely not. Well, that's where they get rid of all their waste. No, that's where they poop from?

Yeah, they just shoot it out. It's not true, everyone. You learn something new. Yeah, so we don't know, but that's a great question, Farwa. Thank you for your questions. Also, thanks to Clementine, Liddy, Hillary, and Stephanie. who are some of our other Patreon subscribers. Our newest members of Patreon.

Yeah. We love you guys. A little bit of business. We are going to be recording a Patreon exclusive mini episode that's going to be a really good one. So if you guys want those mini episodes, sign up for our Patreon. The Grizzly Tier is where you start getting access to the mini episodes. Okay. A couple more quick categories.

How are we messing things up for Orcas and where can we see them in the wild? one of the big ways we're messing things up for them is by removing a lot of their food sources. Salmon have been really over-exploited in a lot of places where orcas live and eat salmon. So for example, those southern resident orcas, they just really don't have the salmon they need to survive anymore. So that's a big way we're messing things up. Plastic pollution and other kinds of pollution are a big problem for them. Noise, even like sonar from military vessels and stuff, can be a really big problem for them. whaling still happens in some places in the world where orcas are killed and then also

putting them into captivity and stuff is a big problem for them does global warming affect them it does and that it changes kind of where their food sources are found so like global warming affects salmon it affects everything seals it does yeah i mean global warming truly affects pretty much every species on earth i guess my question should have been how does it affect one thing that it is doing is it's opening up some new opportunities for them in the Arctic, but they don't really belong in some of those ecosystems. So it's really messing everything up. But yeah, there's a lot of ways we're messing things up for workas. Is people putting corks in their blowholes a way we're messing things up for them? I don't think so, but it could be. There could be some people out there

are doing. Okay, where to see them in the wild? Like the San Juan Islands in Washington are a great places to see them in the wild. There's some fjords in Norway where there's resident whales or killer whales. You'll see them like almost every time you go out there. There's a lot of places. The only places I've ever, the only place I've ever seen them is actually in the Gulf of Mexico. No, sorry, not the Gulf of Mexico. The Sea of Cortez. Me and Jeff briefly saw someone we were on our kayaks. Oh, I'm not claiming that. Okay. I'm going to claim it. I couldn't confirm that it is in order. Okay. I'm going to confirm it. Wes has extrasensory. powers. Well, let me say why I, why? Because for a little while I thought they might be what are

called false killer whales, which are a smaller member of the dolphin family. I actually saw some of those this year. Their dorsal fins are much smaller. They have kind of the same shape as a killer whale, but they're much smaller. And the ones me and Jeff saw had really tall dorsal fins. So I'm going to say it was an orca. It's fine if you don't want. We saw him from a distance. For a moment. It was for like maybe three seconds. Yeah. But I'm going to count it. And they are in that. area and they see them pretty commonly there. As far as other places, there's lots of places to see them. Just kind of look where you're at and hopefully you'll get lucky enough.

Alaska is a great place too. We're probably running over time. But our last category, do we like this animal? I love orcas. I like there, whenever I go out on the ocean, they're like top of the list of up there, really top of the list of the animals I want to see. So I really, really like them a lot. How about like as far as marine animals go?

I'm going to put a lot of sharks above them and maybe like a couple of the whales, but they're pretty, I would say they're top 10. Well, they're not a whale. Oh, but yeah. Right. They're probably your favorite type of dolphin. Yeah, they are. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, they're my favorite type of dolphin. I'd put them behind like a whale shark, probably behind a great white. So I'm going to go with 24. Okay. All right. No, that sounds right. For marine amels or total? Total.

Okay. I like them a lot. I think they're really cool looking. I'd love to see more than just like a distant blob. Climps. It's more than a blob. You can see their fins going in and out of the water. So for how I do this is I only am ranking them by the animals we've talked about on the podcast so far.

Okay. And I am putting them in second place. Wow. Bumping great whites down to third place. Tigers are still my number one. and orcas are number two. And alligators are four. Yeah.

All right. All right. Well, thanks, guys. Again, remember, we have our Patreon up. There's a few different levels on there. If you, like, aren't able to support us, that's totally fine. We're still going to release all our episodes, our main episodes for free. But there's some great extra content and merch on there for those of you that can't

afford to support us on Patreon. And thanks again for all the reviews, for ratings, for everything you guys are doing to supporting us. Yeah, we really appreciate it. And we'll be back soon. Right now our schedule is looking like we'll be doing a main episode every two weeks and a mini episode every week in between. So if you're looking for weekly content, get on that Patreon. If not, it's going to be every other week for the most part.

All right, we done? We're done. Let's high five. One, two, three. Thanks, guys. See ya.