Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Leopard Seal Attack - Sharp Teeth Down South

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

It turns out that it's not just the cold that can be deadly down in the south pole. Wes shares a couple of stories to prove it, and then introduces an instant new favorite category called Seal of Approval. Watch here: https://youtu.be/S8l0j-bJiF8 ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We have our bear biologist, West Larson, who once caught a fish. while a bull moose charged him. That's true. Yeah. But it wasn't a bull moose. It was a cow moose. So it's not true, actually. Then we have our producer, Mike Smith, who once slept for 24 hours, but he thought that he only

slept for a minute when he woke up, and he doesn't know how that happened. It's a real Rip Van Winkle kind of thing. Yeah. We're approaching the truth once again on that. Yeah. And then I'm Jeff Larson, and I once did half of a backflip snowboard. Ooh, that's not enough. You got to do more than that.

I landed on my head. So that is true. One truth and two lies. Wait, what was, you told me that you closed your eyes and you woke up and it was the next day. It was like a blink. I blinked and it was a whole night had passed and it was the craziest, one of the craziest things I've ever experienced. I felt well. Where's my lie?

You said for a minute and I slept for 24 hours, both are false. Like pretty egregiously. Did you see Jeff close to your drink right before that happened? No. I was alone, like usual. No, that was what I was trying to say, though. You, like, close your eyes and then it's the next day. You said that?

Okay, yeah, sure. Yeah. You got it. You nailed it perfectly. All right. Me and Mike are both wearing necklaces right now. Yeah. Yours has a little Mario Ghost on it.

What's it called? Ninja. So cool. Mine's just the one I bought because I was watching too much sopranos, and I just decided I need a necklace. It looked good. Yeah. Thanks.

You guys like to show off your wealth a lot. Yeah, this is just showing off our extreme wealth. The necklace I bought it, Herburgers, for $5. Mine was like a hundred yen gacha machine in Japan that I got mine. A hundred yen? That's a lot. It sounds like a lot of yen. It's like unseasonably warm in Salt Lake, and it's a full-on winter storm here.

We're living in different realities right now. It's like a blizzard outside. I know. You know God is great. Works in mysterious ways. I can't remember. where I saw the comment, but someone said, weirdly tooth and claws, the podcast I listened to where they bring up the Bible the most. Which is kind of funny.

It is. You know, I guess there's a lot of references. But anyway, I'm not going to bring it up once today. I'm not talking about the Bible once. So you can. You brought it up? Yeah, I guess I did already bring it up, huh? Yeah, you were the only one more.

I swear to God. I swear to God, I won't bring up religion one more time. Okay. You know what we're going to do today? We're going to start with a little quiz. It's going to be fun. That's new. And this isn't a quiz where you win anything.

It's a quiz where you lose something if you lose. No. Like a part of a body part? Yeah. We're chopping body parts. Yakuza cut my pinky off. You can pick. Mike, I already know what body part you want to rip off.

Oh, yeah. All the time. You know it. Jeff, what body part are you losing? I'll lose in here. Just keep you. You're not actually... I'm going to hear the rest of my life.

That's a good... Yeah, it's a decent pick. What you're actually losing is, Mike, if you lose this quiz, you have to play a full round of mini golf with me and Jeff tonight. You have to. Yeah, I'm sorry. All right. It's been pretty excited.

I feel confident, though. I'm gonna win. Jeff, if you lose, me and Mike once again get to pick a movie for you on our flight to India, which is upcoming in a couple weeks. Okay. Are you okay with that? Do you guys accept the terms? What's your thing?

You don't get anything? I'm not involved in the quiz. He's the game master. I'm game master. The dungeon master. Do you want to give me a... No, how about this? Yeah, you have to pick who you think me or Mike will win.

Okay. And if you pick wrong, then you got to give whoever wins in mini golf $25. Sure. I pick Mike. Okay. All right. Who wants to go first? I'll let Mike go first.

Okay. Mike Smith. And you can steal if the person gets it wrong. Docs on me. I docks to you. Mike, what is a pinniped? I'll steal. No, Mike gets to go first.

Jeff gets just to steal like that? All right, go, Jeff. You get to answer first. What is a pinniped? A pinniped is a seal, sea lion, or one of those other ones with the tusk? I accept seal. Marine mammals that have flippers on their front and back feet, the word actually means fin-footed, but they're generally known as like the seal.

family. So seal was the answer I was looking for. One point, Mike. What about sea lions? Yeah, they're in that family. But they're... Okay. They all, like, big circle is like seals and like sea lions and walruses and all like are fit into family. Jeff, you got, you picked wrong.

The second question's harder than the first. I'm sorry. The first team to reach the South Pole was led by what explorer? Christopher Columbus. Incorrect. Mike, do you know this? Captain Cook. incorrect. Rolled Amundsen from Norway.

That was a tough one. Okay. Mike. Should have gone Noah because he couldn't have really refuted me too hard. Yeah, that's true. And then you would have proved me wrong that we're bringing up the Bible again. He wouldn't have been able to go there. It would have been flooded back then. Mike, it's one zero. Your next question. And if you get this within 10 degrees, I'm going to count it. The coldest temperature You did last question, too. Coldest, Jeff, don't worry, your next one's easier.

Coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth. What the heck? And I'm giving you a hint. It was recorded in Antarctica. Oh, shit, never mind. 160 below Fahrenheit. Incorrect. Jeff, you want to try and steal?

Yeah. I'm going to say 120 Fahrenheit. Ooh, within 10 degrees. Wow. Wait, 120 degrees Fahrenheit? Is that you said? Coldest? 120 degrees Fahrenheit

Yes Yeah Incorrect Negative Negative 20 I tried to give that to you No I said negative You didn't

I did say negative We'll check the tape But not when you gave your final answer You didn't love that I kept saying 128 degrees Fahrenheit But I had already said negative You had it

I did Hmm We'll have to do a recount After the episode Yeah we will I don't know Fine I'm gonna give it to you But if we recount

and you didn't then we're changing how this goes. All right. 1-1. Jeff, true or false? Mount Everest was summited before people reached the South Pole. Yes. Mike?

No. No, no, no. Sir Edmund Hillary, 1967, right? You would have gotten it, but because this is a binary answer, you can't steal it. So it's tied still, one-one. Okay. I don't know what year it was. I could be awesome.

That felt like a trick question. Like, why would you ask that? if they didn't. They didn't. Everest was summited in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911. Now, Mike, you get a binary question.

You're doing the woe's finger or the windy fingers. It's because you're tied up. Something. Mike, true or false. True or false, Mike. Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth. Oh, man. I mean, it's made out of ice,

but ice isn't. water. So that doesn't mean it's wet. I'm talking precipitation. Dryest continent on Earth. False. Incorrect. Dang. Dude. You keep trying it. Okay, Jeff, for the win here, maybe. We're going to have to go back. We'll take. Name the largest species of penguin. Emperor penguin. Correct. Jeff wins. That means. Oh, shoot. Mike, you have to play mini golf. And if this holds, after we record.

I have to pay $25. If it goes back, then Jeff's going to have to watch the movie. We'll put in a clip if I'm wrong. Yes, yes. I'm going to say 120 Fahrenheit. All right, so what continent do you guys think we're going to be talking about today? The North Pole, Antarctica. Not the North Pole, the South Pole, but close.

Actually, not close. Opposite end of the Earth. We're talking about Antarctica. Where the devil lives. Yeah. It's like opposite from Santa. Sure. Yeah, Santa lives up there, Antarctica lives.

North Pole is like just ice, right? That's why it's not a continent, but Antarctica has land. There's land mass. Exactly. Yeah, the North Pole is on sea ice. And Wes is incontinent. I'm not, but someday, probably. That would be fun that.

That's why you use that pee bottle. Yeah, my pee bottle in here. Here it is. Hold it up. Not actually a pee bottle. Gross. It's full of element right now. All right.

So since we're talking about Antarctica, it really narrows down what animal we might be featuring on this podcast that's about animal attacks. So it really has to be either a marine mammal, a fish, or a penguin. Because those are really the only, or maybe a bird. But those are the only animals you really find in Antarctica. Those are in the North Pole, not the South Pole. What the hell? But there's really very few animals in Antarctica that really pose any kind of real danger

toward human visitors, and there's really only one that has ever displayed any kind of actual predatory behavior toward humans. And that animal is the leopard seal. So today, we're finally going to be covering a very requested animal and one that has really been feared by humans since we started exploring the frozen continent of Antarctica. And it's actually really a highly misunderstood animal. Leopard seals, I think people see them, they hear the word leopard. they see how kind of scary they can look

and they think this is a very dangerous animal. This is not a very dangerous animal, but it can be dangerous. I would like kind of say they're the black bears of the seal world where they have some potential to harm us but it's not like they're necessarily trying to. But when they do, they're going to eat you. Well, we'll get to that.

But to start, we're going to talk about one of the most famous Antarctic explorers of all time and the ill-fated expedition aboard the ship, Endurance. Mike, do you know who it is? Hey, no, I saw that book on my shelf. I bought it, apparently, a long time ago. Just haven't read it yet. Do you know who the Explorer is? No. Do you? Sir Ernest Shackleton. Yes, I've read this book. I knew that. I knew that name. Yeah. It's an amazing story. It's honestly probably the best nonfiction, historical nonfiction book I've ever read that's called Endurance. It's really, really good. It's all about this voyage of

Shackleton and problems they ran into and they're miraculous. plea to try and get to safety. It's really amazing. I would definitely recommend the book Endurance. But today, we're mostly going to talk about one of the people on his crew, this guy named Thomas Ordelees. Sounds like a group of people that probably ended up drinking their pee at some point. You think? Yeah, probably. You're really stuck on that lately, which I love. All right, so Ordelees was probably the most disliked person on the ship. And the reason for that was he, I hope it's for a good reason. Yeah, it was.

He was very surly and he was lazy. And he often didn't do his part when they came up against something hard. Like if the ship was stuck or if there was issues, he wasn't the first one to like go out and push or do whatever they had to do. They often really had to convince him to help with anything. So a lot of people didn't like this guy on this boat. Not super popular. Not a team player. Not at all.

So when this ship got stuck in the pack ice, Thomas. would actually sometimes take his bicycle out onto the ice and just disappear for hours, which, you know, if you're stuck in pack ice, like, it's kind of nice to have a hobby. I don't blame him for that. But he would be gone long enough that Shackleton and some of the other officers on the endurance or now on their camps out on the pack ice would get really worried about him. They would think, like, Ordele's has been gone too long. Where is he?

You know, so it's kind of a problem still. It's a weird thing to have on your packing list when you're traveling to Antarctica. Did everyone have bikes or was it just him? I don't think so. I think it was just him. That's like Al-Kiji from one piece. Just riding around. I know.

That's why I was thinking. So one time, Thomas Orde-Lees decided that he would go out and search for food and during this process, he became lost. And when he finally found the men camped out on the pack ice, he started heading back toward them on cross-country skis. but little did Sirley Thomas know that he was being watched by a predator beneath the ice. It had been attracted by his shadow above the surface of the ice, and as he glided along the ice and snow, a 1,000-pound seal swam effortlessly through the water beneath his movement. And as Thomas Orteley approached an opening in the ice ahead,

the seal sped through the water and lay in wait. So some of the men that were gathered had been watching Ordeley approaching, and they were shocked to see a huge leopard seal explode from the water in front of their shipmate. And Ordeley immediately turned and skied in the opposite direction and he started yelling at Frank Wilde, who was another expedition member that was really good with a rifle to bring his rifle out and to shoot the seal.

And I think this was kind of a twofold thing because at this point, these men are stuck in the ice and they're having a hard time finding food. So not only does he want him to save his life, but this is a pretty, big meal deal for these guys if they can kill this seal. So this leopard shoots out of the water up onto the ice where it starts giving chase and Shackleton describes the chase. The seal had a gun too? It didn't. No. You did. No. Water gun. Oh, shoot. I said shoot. You did. Sorry. Shot up out of the water.

All right. So this is what Shackleton said in his journal. The animal, a sea leopard, spraying out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking horse gate of a seal on land. The beast looked like a small dinosaur with a long serpentine neck. And if you do look at a leopard seal, they are very characteristically shaped among seals. They have this long kind of arching neck, and their face does look almost reptilian. It's very different from any other seal out there. They look like much more of a predatory seal than all of the other seal species.

That's cool. That is really cool. Mike, do you think it had a spring? because it sprang out of the water that time. That's what I was thinking. I've learned to hold my tongue, though. I can't take everything so literally I've learned. At first, I didn't think it was real.

I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our scene.

It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, fringe arrow the 100 and the x-files may cause excitement loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials no credit cards or alien encounters necessary pluto tv stream now pay never all right so this seal is up on land all of these men are watching it chase or de lease and he's faster than the seal on the ice like most seals they're pretty ungainly on land kind of like shackleton was describing they have this kind of rocking horse movement and the seal quickly realized it wasn't going to catch him so wheeled around and plunged back into the water And Orde Lee is still trying to create distance between him and where the seal had been, and he's approaching the opposite side of this ice flow and more open water. And what he hadn't realized was that this leopard seal was tracking his movement from underneath the ice.

And when he got close to the open water on the far side of the ice flow, the seal again lunges out of the water directly in front of him and actually lunges toward him trying to bite him. Whoa. Yeah. Its mouth is open. It's displaying jaws full of really sharp, intense. intimidating conical teeth. And this is one of the first explorations ever in that part of the world, right?

They had documented leopard seals at this point, but no one really knew kind of how dangerous they were. Okay. This was a shock to them to be chased by something that they usually are chasing. It feels like a dinosaur almost probably. Yeah. And they're big. This is a thousand-pound seal.

Orde Lee, who had been shouting, is now screaming. He's screaming his head off. And he turns once again to flee from this seal. and it shoots up onto the ice again and starts chasing him. It's kind of playing the scariest game of pickle ever on this ice flow, where it pushes him to one side, it pops up, you know, and sooner or later he's going to stumble or something's going to happen. And it might have caught him had Frank Wild not shown up with his rifle.

The Leopard Seal sees Wild and changes direction. This new target's already closer than Orteley, and Orteley's already starting to put a lot of distance between him and the seal. Wilde's on foot. He's not on skis, so he's moving slower. The leopard seal decides to go for him. Wilde immediately fires a shot. It doesn't say whether or not he hit it, but the leopard seal keeps coming toward him.

And this, again, this is like a huge animal. They have inches of blubber. You have to be a pretty good shot to kill a leopard seal. But Wild, who seems to be like kind of a badass dude, just commits. Instead of running away or anything, he drops to one knee, he balances his rifle, he takes careful aim as the seal's coming toward him, and when it's about 30 feet away, he fires a second shot and drops the leopard seal.

Takes about two of their dog teams to bring the seal's body into camp, and the men guessed it weighed about 1,100 pounds, about 500 kilograms, and they actually end up giving the jaw of this leopard seal to Ordeley as a memento, and Shackleton Torlum, like you're no longer allowed to wander away from camp,

because this had been kind of a traumatic experience. for all of them. I wonder if some of them were kind of hoping that it would get him, you know, since he didn't seem to be very well liked. I was thinking maybe the guy with the gun would like accidentally, quote unquote, shoot him instead. Shoot him in the leg or something. Yeah. And then they'd eat him instead of the seal. That would be dark. I'm glad that didn't happen. So this is really one of the earliest recorded interactions with the leopard seal. Like Jeff brought up, there hadn't been that many expeditions into this part of the world yet. And this is a really interesting animal to talk about, because often when we talk about a species on this podcast, even if colonial,

you know, white explorers from the West hadn't seen this animal for a long time, there's usually like this foundation of an indigenous knowledge and experience around an animal, but there aren't any people that are indigenous to Antarctica. This is a place that doesn't have indigenous peoples. So this is an animal that kind of existed outside of contact with people for a very, very, very long time. Occasionally they would show up in New Zealand or South Africa or something. But as far as their core population, people just had never really seen this animal until like the early 1800s, which is kind of crazy. All right, so we're going to do some quick biology. This is a new animal.

I was really excited to learn more about them. They are pinopets. So in their seal family, it's a clater group of animals. that encompasses all the seals. So we're talking seals, walruses, sea lions, and elephant seals all belong to this family. Otters do not belong to pinnipeds, just to keep that clear. No fins. Well, is that that's the differentiator?

Yeah, they don't have flippers. They, you know, they have actual feet. They're cute enough to be in it. Yeah. Do you think, what do you think are cute or otters or pinopeds? Oh, I think it's too wide of a range to give it to pinnipeds. I'd give it to otters. but I think if you're giving me like the cutest of each

The cutest seal, like a harbor seal A harp seal or what are the other cute ones? Harbor seals are cute too, yeah. I think it's contextual. Like if an otter is showing me its favorite rock or it's playing basketball like you see sometimes in those videos, I'm giving it to the otter. But if it's just like hanging out, lounging around,

I'm going to give it to probably a harp seal. I'm going to give it to sea otter. I think sea otters are cuter than any seal, but that's just me. I don't blame you It's a tough one Leopard seals are the largest pinopeds After elephant seals and walruses

They can weigh up to 1,300 pounds But averages are more in the 500 to 600 pound range They can get up to 12 feet long Which is about almost 4 meters long And they do have sexual dimorphism When it comes to size Like the size of a van Yeah actually

It's funny because as I was researching this There was one website that was like And this is a good example of why you need to use critical thinking, especially when you're researching like wildlife. Often you find websites that seem very like expert based and they'll say some outlandish things. There's one website I found that said they can be 30 feet long, which Jeff is about the size of a like that's longer than a short school bus. But 12 feet, you're right, is about the size of a, well, I think like a sedan is like 14 feet long. So this would be like the size of a compact car, 12 feet long. I looked it up.

I don't have to measure it. Females are larger than males. So there is sexual dimorphism. Females can be up to double the size of males. They are quite a bit larger. I like that. I personally appreciate that. And again, if you're new to the podcast, we talk about sexual dimorphism a lot.

It just means there is some sort of difference between the sexes. So there's like something about them is very different. It could be coloration. It can be size. It can be a lot of different things. But that's what sexual dimorphism is. Okay. So they get their name from the pattern on their silvery gray,

sometimes bluish gray and white coats. They're often spotted. So that's why they were named leopard seal. Early on, they were called sea leopards, which really like, I almost wish we would have stuck with that. But because we have sea lions, so sea leopards would have been kind of cool. That is cool. Almost all marine mammals.

their main protection against really cold conditions of their environment is a really thick layer of fat that we call blubber. And there's a really big difference between just normal fat and blubber. And that difference is that blubber does contain blood vessels. And a really cool thing about the blood vessels in blubber is they can constrict and control the amount of blood flow between the skin and like vital organs and stuff. So if they're in really cold water, those blood vessels will constrict, and that pools the warm blood around their vital organs and keeps their core temperature warm. Oh, wow.

And it restricts blood flow out to the skin because it doesn't really matter if they keep their skin warm. That's awesome. That's really handy, I would assume. Like if one of them has erectile dysfunction? Just, yeah, just constrict those blood vessels and divert that blood. Right where you need it. I wonder if they get the same benefits from a cold plunge, though. Mm, that's a trade-off, yeah, maybe.

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Terms apply. So their range mostly encompasses all of the water directly surrounding Antarctica. So they're found in Antarctic and sub-anarctic waters. And they really like the edge of pack ice. So in these places, pack ice is the ice that's going to form when it gets colder and kind of pack around the continent or up in the north around that multi-year sea ice. And they really like to be right on the edge of that because that's where pan-y ice. because that's where penguins are going to hang out. That's where fur seals are going to hang out.

That's where you often get the highest amount of biodiversity. Fur seals are cute. Yeah. Well, these guys love eating them. We'll talk about that in a second. It's kind of like, I like eating teddy grams. They're pretty cute. Doesn't change the fact they taste great.

You'll still eat them. You probably wouldn't like them as much if they're just a square either. Exactly. Yeah. I could just be eating like a gram cracker. Yeah. Not the same. They have been seen, even though they prefer Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters,

they have been seen in places like South Africa. Africa, New Zealand, Tasmania. There's even an attack that happened in South Africa that we're going to cover when we do this animal again, because I do think this is an animal that will probably come back to at some point. But those sea leopards or leopard seals, see, I'm stuck in sea leopard mode. Those leopard seals probably just wandered to those places. They don't have resident populations in those places.

It's just a wandering leopard seal that decided to go up to wherever. And they've actually been found as far north as the Cook Islands, which is pretty crazy because you're in like tropical seas at that point. They're solitary outside of breeding season, but because they live in such harsh conditions, they're relatively understudied and not a ton is known about their breeding cycle. We do know that they like to vocalize a lot during breeding season. Mike, you like to vocalize a lot, right? Shouting. Yeah. I always say, holy cow, that's my go-to line.

You say, call me daddy. I just, I'm never going to have children. I need someone to say it. Yeah, just to make you feel that, that paternal feeling. Yeah, it's natural. Males, males vocalize the most, and their vocalizations are really interesting. They're often to either attract mates or establish dominance, but they're really crazy sounding.

They kind of sound like high-pitched pigeon cooing or even like crickets chirping. I'll probably, I'll probably cue up a clip for us. us to listen to of some sea leopard. Oh, God, I got to stop saying that. Lepard seal. It's so much cooler. It's so much cooler. Yeah.

Pretty much all pinopeds, they're extremely athletic in the water. That's their environment that they're most comfortable in. They can swim at speeds of 25 miles per hour or 40 kilometers per hour, and they can dive up to 304 meters, which is roughly 1,000 feet. What? It's crazy. They have higher blood flow than lots of animals, and their blood contains higher percentages of myoglobin.

And myoglobin is a protein that transports and stores oxygen. So they're pretty much just like little mini scuba machines, like scuba tanks. Oh, yeah. They have a higher percentage of oxygen in their blood, so they're able to stay underwater for longer amounts of time, up to 15 minutes at a time. That's a long time if you're a mammal. They have some really interesting dentition, so teeth, with really prominent canines and incisors that look like teeth you would see on a bear or a big cat.

They got some scary teeth. They do. Their molars are shaped like little tridents. They have like three little peaks on them. And those teeth are super useful for a wide range of things that leopard seals eat. So I'm going to show you guys a picture of their teeth. And if you're out there listening, you should pull up a picture of leopard, like a leopard seal skull because it's really neat.

All right. So this is an older one, a plate that someone made back, I think, in the early 1900. but you see these molars how they're shaped like little tridents. Yeah, it looks like the fire emoji. Yeah, it does. It looks just like the fire emoji. That's a great pull. So there's a reason they have teeth that are shaped like that.

Based on their fearsome reputation, their number one food might be something that you don't really expect. It's actually krill. So most leopard seal diets are about 50 to 70% krill, and they use those trident-shaped teeth as a way to strain water out after sucking in large mouthfuls of water and krill. So they're going to suck them in and then they just push that water out through the teeth. And that just keeps all the krill in their mouth.

Yeah. And they have specialized little grooves too. That's cool. It's like the thing you, the strainers that you put like noodles in. Exactly. It's like a colander like a sieve. That's what I do with chicken noodle soup. I take a spoonful and then I press the liquid out through my teeth.

So I just have the broth out. Yeah. Cool. That's pretty sweet. All right. And then they also have those sharp canines and incisors for their favorite foods, which is everything from squid and fish to penguins and other seals. So they're actually the only pinniped on earth that has been documented hunting and killing other types of pinnipeds.

And they kill a fair number of smaller seals like fur seals and crap eater seals. They also kill... So pinnipeds are kind of don't like them. It's like that one guy in the ex-beats. expedition probably for pinnipeds. Ordeley. They're like, yeah, leopard seals are there, ordeley? Yeah, if Ordeley were like killing and eating other people on the expedition, I would agree with that.

But they also kill and eat a lot of penguins. So penguins probably don't really love leopard seals either. There was a study where researchers found that leopard seals killed about 12 to 16% of a Gen 2 penguin colony that they were studying, which is a pretty high percentage of penguins that are being killed by leopard seals. They don't have flippers that allow them to grab on to prey. Like they don't have dexterous fingers that allow them to like grab something. And they don't have teeth that are designed for chewing or shearing.

So in order to tear apart something that they can't swallow whole, what they'll often do is drag it deep underwater to kill it. So if it's like a fur seal or a penguin, they'll drag it down. And then once it's dead, they come up to the surface of the water and they do a behavior called flaying. And when they flay something, they kind of do this big arc and just slap it against the surface of the water really hard over and over again until it kind of just explodes. And then they can eat the pieces. Narnally.

That's insane. We're going to Antarctica in 2026. And I think this is on the short list of behaviors that I would want to see the most. That would be so cool. Is a leopard seal flaying a penguin. It's probably going to give me some heat. Just suplexing Roman rains over. over until he explodes.

All right. So I found three or four stories about leopard seals. I was going to tell them all in this episode, but it was kind of getting to be a little long. Before you move on, could I ask something else just about their diet? Or I guess maybe just dietary behaviors in general down in Antarctica. Is there anything to eat that isn't meat? Is everything down there a carnivore?

Or are there herbivores that exist down there? There are, I don't know if you count algae as like plant. But generally, and I'm not going to say this like definitively, but I know in the Arctic, the kind of building blocks of that ecosystem is algae that grows on the underside of the ice. And I do believe that's the same in the South Pole as well. That sea ice, like one of the reasons it's so important is it's actually a platform for these different kinds of tiny life to grow. And algae is one of those. And a lot of these krill and these other things are feeding on that algae. and that's what's actually like the building blocks of the whole ecosystem.

So there is stuff that's not just eating me. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So again, I like I'd found multiple stories. I do think we'll probably just do another episode at some point because some of those stories were pretty pretty good actually. But I wanted to tell the one that had been really requested, one that people have sent

to us since we started this podcast. And that is the story of Kirstie Brown. So to get most of the data and the. stuff that I use for this story. I used an actual peer-reviewed study. It's called interactions between humans and leopard seals. The authors were Shawna, Muir, David Barnes, and Keith Reed. They all worked for the British Antarctic Survey, and it was published in 2006 in Antarctic Science. The reason I bring that up, I like to say our sources, but the reason I was so thorough this time is this is kind of a hard story. And when I, sometimes I'll go on YouTube and

see if other people have talked about these stories. And I found a number of YouTube videos about this. And they really did it bad. Like there was just unverifiable information that made it seem a lot worse than it was. And stuff that if I were a person that knew Kirstie, I would feel really gross hearing. So if you're out there and you're making this kind of content, I would just say do better. There's plenty of like crazy stories out there that have. lots of really weird graphic details that you can use.

You don't have to make them up for the stories that don't have them. It's disrespectful. So we don't like to do that on this here show, on this here podcast. I'll write that down. Make sure I stop doing that. Yeah, I'll take the bear I added into my next story out. So in 2003, Kirstie Brown was working for the Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is a research station that's operated by the British Antarctic Survey.

She's 28 years old, and she's part of a 22-person research team, and one of her projects involved looking at the way that icebergs affect the plant and animal life on the seafloor of the peninsula. So like scouring from icebergs can really disturb, like, these algae beds that we were talking about animal life. So that's what she was looking at. And she had nearly completed the first phase of her project, which involved placing nearly 500 markers on the seafloor

that would show the kind of damage that was caused by these icebergs. She's very competent, a very well-like scientist. She'd gotten her degree in geology. She'd worked in a lot of different fields, a talented photographer, and everyone really liked her in this group, which has to be like a very important thing if you're working in an isolated research base in Antarctica.

You want to be a likable person. You don't want to be an orderly, you know? You want to be a Kirstie. All right, so Brown was really experienced field scientists. She'd done a lot of diving in cold condition. She'd worked in Greenland as well. And she's no stranger to this kind of extreme weather that you're going to be dealing with in Antarctica, especially in the middle of the winter, which this was.

And on top of that, I have to assume that if she worked in Greenland, she would understand kind of the pressures of working around potentially dangerous wildlife. Because if you're in coastal Greenland, you do have to think about polar bears. So she's probably like knows kind of basic wildlife safety scenarios. Sure. But Antarctica, Jeff, does Antarctica have polar bears? No, sir. No, sir.

They don't have puffins either. No, what's their apex predator? Antarctica? Yes. Humans. Aside from humans. Probably a leopard seal. Close.

Orca. First one is orcas, exactly, which is the only animal that really preys on leopard seals. But as we've talked about on this podcast, do orcas really pose any risk to humans in the wild? No. No, not yet. You know, we can cross our fingers. So they're kind of like in all the ocean, right? Orcas, they kind of cover everything.

Pretty much. But they're very common in the Antarctic Ocean. Okay. Yeah, this is an animal that when we go to Antarctica, we have a pretty high chance of seeing. But the next main threat for Kirstie would be the resident leopard seals. and although generally they're not really around this area in the winter, occasionally they would see a leopard seal. And most people that have spent time in Antarctica

had heard tales of potentially aggressive leopard seals. Those stories always seem to involve seals that were being really defensive or reactionary to something that the person was doing. Not necessarily stories like we have with Orde Lee where he's just kind of out there minding his own business and the seal starts chasing him. The more common stories were like,

someone's out in the water and a seal kind of does some circles around them, maybe rushes in a couple times and then leaves, you know, bites their fins or something like that. Pretty typical seal stuff. So even though risks are low, the researchers that were responsible for diving or snorkeling around this research center had protocols for observing marine mammal activity and then making sure there's no leopard seals in the immediate vicinity of where they're going to be diving or snorkeling. And Kirstie and her snorkeling partner followed those protocols before getting into the water on July 22nd, 2003. It's not a super cold day based on Antarctic standards. Like, I think it was around 17 degrees this day.

But of course they're dawning like very bulky, expensive dry suits, really good gear. And that's winter there, right? It is. Yeah. So, I mean, it could be like negative 100. but it was about 17 degrees, pretty calm day. They don't all this gear, they get into the unbelievably cold water, and as they're doing this, they have two people on shore that are watching them.

And I do have to imagine that their main concern is cold. Like when I worked in the Arctic with polar bears, we thought about polar bears, we thought about other wildlife, but the thing that was constantly on our mind was staying warm. And I'm sure that's what these guys are mostly thinking about too. So these two people watch them on shore as they push out into the bay. But whether they had failed to notice it or had slipped by undetected, a leopard seal was in the bay with them. And this new activity in the water had piqued the interest of this curious predator.

While krill and squid were enough to maintain it throughout the winter, the seal wasn't about to turn down the prospect of a more substantial meal. And it's intrigued by these clumsy figures swimming around at the surface of the water. I feel like a lot of times, too, the biggest animals and ecosystems just are a lot more inclined to check something out because they're not really looking over their shoulder all the time. Exactly. And this paper that I mentioned talks about that, how like mountain lions in California or, you know, they had a couple different examples of animals that they're not necessarily like man eaters. But every once in while, they'll just kind of be like, you know, I've been seeing these things around. I'm going to check them out and maybe give it a shot.

All right, so the two snorkelers are busy working on setting up their research grid. They'd kick through this dark and cold water, and during this process they'd separated from each other and had about 20 meters, which is roughly 65 feet between them. This could have been what the seal was waiting for as it watched. Years of hunting Antarctic fur seals and penguins really honed its predatory skills, and it knew that separation was key,

to both targeting and subduing larger prey. It focused on the smaller of these two animals in the water and shot forward. And as it closed in, the leopard sealed realized that it wasn't a fur seal or even a large penguin in the water, but something new, something small enough for it to least investigate. As the teams watching from the shore, nothing seems out of the ordinary. They can see the backs and the back of the head of these two snorkelers with their pipes sticking up through the,

their snorkel sticking up through the water, and then suddenly a scream from Christy shoots through the air and a large splash as she's pulled underwater. And the monotony of this day turns to chaos as this team scrambles to figure out what just happened. Her snorkel buddy, who's in the water with her, starts swimming really quickly over toward where Kirstie had been pulled under,

and the team on shore is shocked to see Kirstie briefly resurface in the jaws of a leopard seal, which then immediately pulls it underwater again. Oh, man. When her snorkel buddy gets to this spot, he looks underwater, and he can see the leopard seal

about 17 feet down, or about five meters down, holding Kirstie by the fins and preventing her from surfacing as she's struggling in the water. There's really nothing he can do because these dry suits are so buoyant that you can't really dive down.

Dude, that's the worst. just like so, like you want so badly. I'm sure he was probably trying, like trying to swim down, just wasn't making any kind of progress. So what he does is he quickly swims back to shore to join the rest of the team who are already getting a boat ready to go out and help. But when the boat gets to the spot

where they had last seen Kirstie, they couldn't see her or the seal. And they're looking around and searching for her, and about 10 minutes later, the seal resurfaces with Kirstie in its jaws and her head is face down in the wall. water and they're about a kilometer away from where they had been. Oh my gosh.

So the team races out in the boat and when they get to this spot, they start, one of them picks up a shovel which they had with them and starts hitting the surface of the water and then the leopard seal with the shovel and the leopard seal does release its grip on Kirstie. But the leopard seal stays in the immediate vicinity of the boat. They pull her motionless body into the boat and they immediately start emergency first aid and CPR. They race back to shore. They take her into the medical bay of this research station, and they continue CPR attempts for about an hour, and then she's pronounced dead at 4.50 p.m. on

on July 22nd, 2003. It's a nightmare. Yeah. The team on the boat estimated this leopard seal to be about 14 feet long, which would be almost a record-setting leopard seal. And this is the first confirmed fatality of a human being killed by a leopard seal. Her death was ruled as an accidental drowning by leopard seal attack. She had a number of lacerations on her body, but she had died from drowning. And her dive computer actually showed, like she was wearing a dive computer on her wrist, it showed that the leopard seal had dragged her down to 70.1 meters deep, which is about 230 feet. So she's kind of crushed, too.

That's probably why it's hard to partially revive her. Yeah, I don't think it would. just because I know drowning in cold water, you kind of get a longer time to come back. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if 230 feet would crush you. But it does stuff to your insides, I think. Yeah. I mean, if she went down that deep and then it immediately pulled her back up,

she could get decompression sickness, all sorts of things. Her lungs could explode. But I think probably by the time it even dragged her down that deep, she was gone. It doesn't. Sure. And something we talked about before is like, if you're just trying to hold your breath in the water, it can take you a very long time to drown. But if you're in like a struggle underwater or trying to hold your breath, it goes a lot quicker. You can die much quicker.

So I doubt this was very long. But unfortunately, she did die. She has this really terrible distinction of being the only person ever killed by a leopard seal. It's impossible to say what the motivation, the actual motivation of this leopard seal was. but the study that I used, which was written by researchers that work in Antarctica, I assume they're Pinniped experts, hypothesized that this was a predatory attack by this seal. And I tend to agree.

And I think the reason I think that is its behavior after grabbing her, pulling her down and drowning her and then resurfacing with her is what they do with larger prey. It's really fortunate that they got out to her before tried to do what it does with like a penguin or a fur seal, you know, once they bring them back up to the surface, which we already talked about, they were able to recover a body before that started happening, which is great. All right. So that is a really tragic, unfortunate thing that happened. I do, I mean, as someone who's worked in some pretty extreme environments doing what I love,

that is part of the appeal to a lot of people that do these sort of things, is that there is this element of uncertainty and and wilderness and and i do think you know from reading about kirstie she was doing what she loved she knew there was risks involved in antarctic research anyone does and i think it's beautiful that she was able to live a life so full of adventure yeah and that sounds like she did a lot more in her like time on earth than a lot of people who live a lot longer than Yeah, if you work from a cubicle, you know, you're not ever going to get killed by a leopard seal, but you might not be like quite as happy as Kirstie was. You know, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with working from a cubicle. I've got a lot of people in cubicles right now.

Crumpling paper. I'm mad at you. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like I feel terrible for Kirstie and her family and anyone that knew her. Yeah. But I am happy that she was able to go out and live out her dreams. Yeah, that is nice. All right, so really quickly, before we get to our categories, I do just want to talk briefly

about what you should do in an interaction like this. I think very few people in our audience have to really worry about ever having an interaction with the leopard seal, but it can happen. They're very rare. There have been really, really few events that were possibly predatory events like Kirsteys or Orde Lee. And when they do happen, when those events happen, they usually don't see the seal before it happens because they're really sneaky.

And the way they, the sneakiest thing they do is they follow shadows underneath the ice. So they can like see penguins moving on the ice by their shadows. And there was a lot of stuff in these papers I read and whatnot about mistaken identity. And I personally don't ever like to say mistaken identity when they're like in the water with something with sharks or with seals or whatever. I don't think that does them justice. I think if a leopard seal swims up to a snorkeler, it's not like, oh, I think. think this is a fur seal. They know it's not a first seal. But if it's a shadow underneath the ice, I think there's a good argument for that. Yeah. Like their initial interest could have been

this is seals or something. Right. And then once they shoot up out of the ice, they're kind of already invested. Like they've already switched in, I'm trying to kill this mode. But the main thing is just avoiding an encounter in the first place. So leopard seals hunt on the edge of the pack ice. So if you're wanting to avoid this animal, avoid Pachyceges, or be cautious around them, if you're going to be diving in Antarctic waters or places where leopard seals have been seen, do a thorough scan, make sure that there's not one around before you enter the water, and stay in groups when you are in the water. If you do happen to be approached by a leopard seal in the water, stay calm, face the seal,

like don't let it get behind you or get your flippers or anything, and then just try and retreat slowly. And I do just want to mention Kirstie didn't do anything wrong. Her team didn't do anything wrong. They're following protocols. And this was really tragic on, you know, something that you couldn't plan for. Yeah. What, I guess, uh, paint a picture of what her snorkeling there would have maybe like been like?

Uh, relatively clear water. They, they said that like the visibility was over 30 feet, but probably like pretty quick drop-offs. And I don't know, not a great field of view. I'm not imagining that she probably even saw this leopard seal sneaking up on it. Like, has she seen a lot of fish? Is there like a lot of stuff in the water? Probably not. No. I'm guessing it's pretty devoid of life, but I don't know. I've never, I've never like been underwater in Antarctica. I'd love to do it. I've seen some beautiful videos of people doing it. But any other questions before we move on to categories?

I'd say just like also for leopard seal, like precaution. If it's on the first story, when it gets up out of the water, I'd say it's almost like a good. or something where it's like just don't fall over and you're going to be all right. Just be calm and get away from it. Yeah. Or there's that lady on the beach. There's that video that always goes like viral when someone repost it where she just keeps falling over and it like seal is like it looks like it's just trying to chase her away.

But eventually it's like, okay lady, you're getting bit. I'm catching up. You're not getting out of my way. Like just don't panic and just like move. Yep. I think that's good advice. If you brought your bike, hop on it, right away. What's the situation like down in the Antarctica now as far as long-term or even permanent

residents? Are there people that live there year-round now? Or is it still just- Just researchers. As far as I know, the only communities there are research communities. And I think there's something like 40,000 people that visit Antarctica every year. As far as permanent residents, it's just researchers. Does, like, any country try to claim it?

Or is it just kind of section? No. There's an Antarctic treaty that establishes it as kind of like a place of science. So it's like a lot of different countries have bases there where they do science. It's kind of beautiful in a way where it's this place that everyone just kind of has agreed. We're going to learn a lot about our planet. And we're all going to kind of try and get along. And I could be over speaking there.

There might be like a conflict that I don't understand or know about. But I'm sure there is. But from what I read, Trump's probably going to try to rename. it to America. Seriously. McKinley or something. Cold U.S. It's funny how no one can claim ownership of Antarctica,

but the U.S. was just like, yeah, we'll take the moon. That's ours. Yeah, exactly. Is it? I actually don't even know if, like, we, the country owns it. I don't think our flag on it denotes ownership. Well, you don't think we even went there, West,

do you? I do actually. I do believe in that, Mike. That's controversial now. Don't try and paint me in that corner. I have plenty of conspiracy. theories. That's not one of them. I wrote a little song to remind you,

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See you on the roof. All right. Let's move on to our category. We're going to start with our favorite, our mainstay category. Your favorite media with a leopard seal? I only know of two, so if we need to expand into just media in Antarctica, we can. I'm going to do just a recent media in Antarctica. Yeah.

One of like the biggest voices for flat earth. Flat Earthers. Yeah. Someone just paid for them to go to Antarctica and like see the sun never said. and it broke his brain and he had to like come out to all of his followers and be like, I don't know what to tell you guys. Oh, no. And I don't know.

I respect people who just don't believe anything they're told. And I think there's a lot to gain from that. But like when it's as much fact as the earth being around, I'm just kind of like, okay, guys, let's figure this one out already. Yeah. I think there's a healthy level of criticism. of science and stuff. But like, I also really trust the scientific method, you know.

Well, yeah, you got to differentiate what's scientific fact and what's just what the government told us. Yeah. You know. You know, everything is scientific theory. Like, it's hard to prove anything as being, like, completely factual. I just feel there's definitely a limit of skepticism to where you kind of turn into someone. No, I agree. I think it's good to question things.

I've been annoyed with climate change stuff recently, where it's just like people completely deny it. And it's just like, well, I mean, you recognize we're using more resources than any time in Earth's history. Putting more carbon dioxide. We're cutting more forests than any time in history. So like, I know that you know that impacts the environment. So I don't know why you would say that. But whatever. But anyways, I was happy to see this flat earth.

they kind of come to reality. Yeah. Sounds great. I'm going to go, so this one, I try, we've tried not to do this. I think at least Jeff and I, because there's a Pokemon for every animal out there. Yeah. But this is, this is one of my favorite ones. And it's like, it's definitely based on leopard seal because it has the little spots on its back.

It's called S-P-H-E-A-L. And it's a perfectly spherical, ball-shaped seal. I like that. It's just like the funniest, cutest-looking little animal. Here, let me read you. Does it evolve from seal? No, it's spiel is the first level. There's a Pokemon that's just sealed.

Seal, it's just called seal. Now one evolves into, what is it? Like, Dugong or something. But here, West, this is for your information. Steele is much faster rolling than walking to get around. Because it's, you know, it's a speed. Oh, that's smart. Leopard's seals should try that when they're on the.

Just rolling into a ball. I actually am curious about this, though, because maybe this is based in some kind of reality. When groups of this Pokemon eat, they all clap at once to show their pleasure. Because of this, their meal times are easy. Do seals, like, do they clap when they eat? Or do they do any kind of gesturing with their? Okay. But, yeah.

There you go. Sfeel less. Okay. You got to look up a picture. I'm surprised neither of you pick this, but I'm glad I get to use it. I'm picking the movie eight below, which is a movie that starred Paul Walker. and a number of sled dogs. And I remember it from, it wasn't my childhood, but I was probably like in high school.

It's kind of a fun movie. And there's actually a really good leopard seal scene that's kind of scary where it shoots out of the carcass of a killer whale or an orca. And they use, it was like Stan Winston Studio used an animatronic leopard seal for a good portion of it. It's pretty good. I rewatch the scene. I actually quite enjoyed it.

There's a scene where like a dog is. movie. Me too. Yeah. I remember when it came out, it kind of like a lot of people joked about it. And that's like Paul Walker, right? He's in it. Yeah. It was a lot of jokes about, oh, terrible actor, stupid, goofy movie. And I was like, I watched it and I was kind of like, I had to keep it a secret because I liked it so much. I think I cried when I watched it. It's good. There is, but there's another movie that came out right around then called Snow Dogs with Cuba Gooding Jr. that is not a good movie. And I think those got confused a bit. Maybe that's what happened. But no, there's a scene where the huskies like eating the orca and the seal like shoots out from inside the carcass and it jumped scared me even like

during just this little YouTube clip so all right that's mine mike I pulled up feel it is a very cute it's perfectly circular dude check out I put a link in chat west I'll look at it right now I need to see it what's the next category it's very cute uh oh it is cute I do like it it's got like little fangs it would roll pretty well Yeah. Okay. The next category is one I created, especially for this episode. It is called seal of approval.

And the rules behind this category is I'm going to bring up something that maybe is a little controversial. How do you come up with these, do genius? Usually, I'm just following Mike's lead because when he does his subscriber episodes, he comes up with some fun ones sometimes. And you do too. But I think Mike is our reigning king of fun categories. At least experimenting. To good or bad effect.

I just doing in your puns. Oh, got it. All right. All right. So the rules of this is I'm going to mention something that's maybe a little bit controversial about, like, how people feel about it. And a lot of these are just truly a little bit controversial. And you guys are going to say whether you give it your seal of approval, meaning you like like that thing or you don't. And if you want to explain your reasoning, you can or you can just say, I give it my seal of approval.

approval. And then you each get to pick two of these things. There's 10 things total where you get to ask my opinion on them as well. But otherwise, all of them are just going to be both of your opinion. I'm going to stay out of it. All right. I'm going to be so curious what you think about all of this, though. You get to pick two each. Okay. The first, green apple flavored candy. Seal of approval. Big one for me. I love, love, love, love. Just behind that super fake banana candy flavor, green apples my second favorite. All right. Jeff? So wait, I'm sorry. Is it just I say I don't have a limited amount of seal of approval?

No, you can give as many seals of approval as you want. You get to pick my opinion on two of these things. I'm not going to give one. I like the caramel apple suckers, but I don't know, I prefer line for my green candy. So if it's not the number one green, I'm not giving it to it. All right. If neither of you are picking to hear my opinion on this one, we're going to move on. I'm so curious. The next one is recreational day hiking. This is like just going for a little hike for a few miles up in the mountains for like a few hours.

You know, we're not talking backpacking or like any real big hike in like a national park. It's just recreational day hiking around. I'll give this a seal of approval. Okay. Seal of approval. Seal of disapproval. in a city get out of like the pollution a little bit get some fresher air yeah i think jeff yours is a widely held opinion mike why do you dislike this it's just even a mile outside of the confines of my four walls

conveniences of life are just a little too far removed for me like i like being at all times having access to all my little snacks and candies and a toilet and a shower who knows what could happen i might need a shower you might have a shower you might have a shower Yeah. All right. We're going to move on. The next one is Pugs. Ooh, I'm giving my ultimate seal of approval if I have.

Ultimate Seal of Approval. Okay. You know, I know it's bad. I know that like breeding dogs has got kind of a problem and Pugs is like a big breeder dog. But I think we came up with something great with Pugs. Okay. You do. My favorite pug ever was in the movie Marie Antoinette.

with Kristen Dunst. She has like a pug, and then she's going to marry, like, a French guy, and they just, like, rip her pug away and give her a French bulldog, but the pug was so cute. That's not really a thing for me. There's a whole contingent of people out there who do the ugly cute kind of thing, and I just, I never have that. When I see a pug, I'm never thinking cute or happy thoughts.

It's always just like, you're kind of gross. I feel bad for them. Should never have happened. So no seal for me. I'll get, I'll get Wes's opinion on this one. All right. Okay. I'm not giving them my seal of approval.

And mostly because I do think a lot of pugs come from breeders. And I'm pretty against dog breeding. I think the only reason you ever should get a dog from a breeders if you need it for a really specific purpose. Outside of that, I really think everyone should rescue. If it's a rescue pug, I'm fine with them. But I don't particularly like pugs. I think they're kind of like disease-addled. not great dogs.

So it doesn't get my seal of approval. I'm also going to ask your opinion on this one. No, you can't both. National Park after Dark said when they were vet tech, or when they were vets, they got a ton of bugs like all the time because they have tons. They have tons. Not healthy enough.

It's so sad to me. All right. Next one. Ring doorbell cameras. So the little cameras on like doorbells. Oh, huge seal of approval. I love these things. dude, you can tell when like any packages get delivered or I don't use DoorDash all that often.

I feel kind of snooty even talking about using it at all. It just seems like the ultimate modern day convenience. But when something comes to my door, I want to be immediately notified whether it's like a package or food or whatever. Yeah, I'm into it. Yeah, I'll give a seal of approval. I think we get a lot of cool, funny content from it. I love when like someone's walkway is a thin layer of ice and they fall down on. all their stairs.

And because of the doorbell, you get to see it, you know. Oh, plus, like, if it's Christmas Eve and there's some carolers coming around, you don't want to get caroled, too, so you can just, like, check your camera. Oh, man. I can't think of a worse situation than to be stuck in, like, a doorway, just looking at people singing at you for a couple minutes. It's the worst. I would rather, I would rather die.

Okay. Wait, I kind of want to know of Wes is on this one, because why did he bring it up? That is kind of a weird specific thing. You can do it. Well, I do I get to in my kids too? You both get two, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'll do it. I disapprove.

This is not a seal of approval for me, mostly because I think from what I've read, these are often used in surveillance and, like, police can access your ring doorbell camera if they get a warrant or whatever. And I just kind of don't. I personally don't like higher levels of, like, being recorded. I just don't care for it. But I do want to rewind a little bit and say that comes from like a person that feels very safe and secure most of the time. And I do know that I'm privileged to feel that way.

And lots of people are. Yeah, you like live in the nicest neighborhood. Not nicest. I live in a very rural neighborhood. I know all my neighbors. I'm a man. You're like giving each other feteen pies every day. Right.

So again, like I get why people like having these on their home especially. insecurity they can give them. I don't like how they're used sometimes by cops. I would rather live handcuffed to an NSA agent than be caroled to once. That's not true, but I like the hyperbole of it. Okay, next one. This one might get a little spicy between the two of you. Taylor Swift, recording artist Taylor Swift.

Seal of approval big time. I just love her too. Like, I like her music a lot. I think it's gotten a lot better. Like, it's edgier, which I like. Really? I think it's got worse, if anything. I like her early stuff, but whatever.

Vigilantey shit is just, I put that on all the time. Like, song about revenge. She's, like, getting after people, spilling tea. And then I also think, I love the NFL. And there's been some high-profile NFL. NFL partners like Giselle, Josh Allen's marrying someone,

the bumblebee actress, I forget and Haley Steinfield or something. But like, I don't know, Taylor Swift is such a good fan of the NFL. Like, you'll watch her just like banging on the glass and she's always like so attentive and you can just tell

she loves the games. Someone was lip reading and she's like, I'm going to kill myself if they don't get this first down. And that's like how I feel when I'm watching a game. So I think she's a true fan of football, which I really respect. And I think that's cool. Yeah. I think she's a really good partner to Travis. I think a lot of people struggle to completely support their partners. I don't know. I just like their relationship. I think they support each other really well. Yeah. That's great. Mike. I am not going to give my seal of

approval. I've just never been the biggest fan. I actually did quite like a few of her first couple albums I thought were pretty interesting and good pop listening. I wasn't quite mainstream pop quite yet at the time, but never all the way connected with her music. I respect her a lot more than I actually like her. I think she's found some really interesting and novel ways to game the system in her favor. And like those, it's the rules of the game. Everyone's playing by the same rules. She's winning and you got to respect it. But I just have never never really heard a song that I was like, oh, that's going on the playlist kind of thing, you know. All right. Shout out to. Audrey Douglas, long time toothy, who was like a huge part of the Ares tour, one of their

main dancers for like all of it. That's cool. Yeah. Wes, I want to hear your opinion. Man, you guys are picking all the ones I'm kind of sour about. I'm doing disapproval. No seal of approval on this one. I agree that she has some real like earworm songs and I don't, I'm not like a hater.

I'm just kind of neutral. I think where I differ from you, Mike, is I don't really like. the way that she's kind of game the system where when there's a big release from another artist, she seems to release like B-Sides or like a new version of whatever to stay on the charts. It does work and I think it's been really effective for her. Part of that was because people owned all of her older stuff though. So she like wanted to kind of take it away from like the big companies. It's the timing though that gets me.

It's always like right when there's some other big, big, big through album. Yeah. There's like several versions of the same album with like an extra track here that releases in Europe specifically when whatever. We don't have to get too deep into it. And I just, I don't know. She's playing the rules. Listen, a lot of Swifis. I think of all the billionaires, she might be my favorite, but that's not saying much for me.

You don't like billionaires. That's a good point. I want to, for all the Swifties, just like, ring in there, whatever right now. You got a shooter here. Great. I want to say one other thing. I think she's been like really empowering for women, which I like a lot. Because I think when she was growing up, she was always kind of told how to act, like how to talk.

There's a very just like, you have to be like the innocent American girl. And I like that she's like kind of opened up and started like talking about a sex life, which, you know, it's unfairly been like, women can't talk about that stuff. They're viewed as whatever. And I think she's opened the door to a lot of just women empowerment for how she's gone against how she's supposed to be. No, a lot of, I know a lot of women and young girls especially look up to her and there's way worse role models out there. So, all right. Let's move on.

The next one is the word moist. Moist. I'll give a seal approval. I don't mind it. I know people hate it. I think it fits the description of the word fits like what it is very well. Yeah. You know.

It's not a word that bothers me. So I guess I approve of it. Like I'm glad it is a word. I think it's a useful one in certain circumstances. So sure. Why not? Let's keep it. We'll move on.

Black licorish. Oh, huge seal. Huge seal. Huge seal of approval. Big one. I love it. I'm curious what your opinion is, Wes. This is my second one.

What do you think? You're going to use it now. Yeah. This is a big one for me. I was kind of hoping it be the next one, but that's all right. We'll go with this one. I don't, and I feel kind of bad because it's another negative one. Never mind.

I'm not, no, I'm going to veto this one. You're going to have to save it. You do have one. Okay. You did have a V4 left to use. I didn't mention that rule. I'm vetoing that one. All right.

The next one is going to the movies alone, like the movie theater, going to see a movie alone. Yeah, I'll give it a seal of approval. I don't think there's anything wrong. I do it a lot just because I think I prefer to go with people. I like to talk about the movie afterwards. Like, I'll always have thoughts that I want to share with people I like, but like, I just hate planning anything, even as simple as going to the movies.

So a lot of times it's just like, this is the time I want to go, so I'm just going to go and not invite anyone. Yeah, big sale of approval for me too. I'm the kind of person whenever there's plans that involve anyone more than just myself. I kind of let other people make decisions because I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be happy with whatever happens. So I let them have whatever's going to make them happy. But it is nice to take some time for myself. And I believe like not just the movies, but even going out to eat, I think is really pleasant, like at a sit-down restaurant even. Oh, yeah. You always kind of strike up a nice little rapport with your server, the waiter, wait,

waitress. Just doing anything by yourself, I think, is not just enjoyable, but I think healthy as well. I think it's really good for you to be able to do that. Yeah. You don't need to pick mine on that one, but if you want to, you can. There's two more. I mean, you vetoed and you said you wanted to talk about this one. I think you already know how I feel about this one. So it's all right. You can pick one of the next two. Sure. Okay. The faint smell of cigarette smoke. No. You like strong scent. Right. It's all or nothing for you. No, seal of approval for me.

No, neither of you. Nope. Okay. Coffee. I mean. We're talking, but no cigarettes. No. And like someone who smells like cigarettes, I don't really like that either.

All right. Are you saving it for the last one, Mike? Yeah. Okay. That's a weird one you like. I know you look. I can tell that you like it. That's weird.

I can't say anything. All right. The last one is diarrhea. Oh, man. I don't even know how I truly feel anymore. You want to hear Wes on this. I do. I really do.

No, as someone as the expert of us three. Seasons to veteran. It kind of, it sucks. It's pretty inconvenient because especially when it's just, you're not getting it all out. So then you know, like, when you go somewhere later, it's going to hit you again. And spicy food is just delicious. and they'll trigger it. So, yeah, I don't like it.

All right. Mike? This, I feel like I'm finally having to like walk through the pearly gates and get judged here. I finally have to make a decision. Because I honestly, it's been such a long-running bit between all of us. I don't really know how I honestly feel. I actually think sometimes it's nice to just purge the system though. Yeah. You have a sick tummy and you just let it go.

And I think that's an incredibly liberating experience. So I guess the seal of approval. I do think it feels the best of all the poops when you like, right afterwards, you feel the most relief. It's like post-diarrhea clarity. I would agree with that. All right. So just by process of elimination, you get to hear my opinion on this. I'm going to do disapprove on this one because I, like, I'm blessed to have a pretty fast gut.

and I kind of can control when I want to to do a big job. And for me, so I've never like been someone that like gets a lot of kind of satisfaction from going a number two. So I feel like diarrhea doesn't really pose anything but negatives for me. It's just kind of like what Jeff was explaining. It like kind of chains me down. And I'd rather not have that be the case. Did you ever have to take laxatives when you were on the wrestling team to make weight? I didn't on wrestling.

I once had to take laxatives after a really terrible experience in Mexico, which we talked about. That's right. When I did the anima. But that was the only time I've ever had to take laxatives, actually. You know what? I'm going to come right out and just say huge seal of approval. Just taking dumps, but like a lot of them, that's awesome. You take a dump when you need to, and it feels good after you've relieved yourself.

and you just times that by 10 or however many times it's going to take. It's great. All right. That wraps up. Seal of approval. We're doing another new category right now. This is one that Jeff came up with a while ago and then I forgot and then kind of re came up with it. And Jeff reminded me that he had told me about it a long time ago.

But it's just a general advice category. No, that's perfect. You're like the type of guy. We got to make it feel like it's your idea. It's not. I'm telling you, it wasn't my idea. Incept. Inception part two. This is going to be our advice category.

And it's going to be one where in the future we're probably going to have people reach out and say things they'd like advice on. It can be silly. It can be serious. It can be whatever you want. For now, the working title is some nice advice will suffice. And today, Jeff is going to be our nice advice giver. We're not coming up than any better than that. So, Jeff, you got advice for us?

Yeah. I'm going to do a quick one this time, but I think this is a great category and we'll keep it going. And I also want to say tooth and claw mailbag.com at gmail.com or sorry, tooth and, tooth and claw mailbag at gmail.com. Tooth and claw mailbag at gmail. Yeah. If you guys want to write us in and like just give us any situation in your life that you want our advice on, go for it. And go ahead and pick whoever you want advice from too. but I wanted to just advise, it's kind of in your list of things, getting outside. I think as humans, we've become too safe and we've become too enclosed in shelters

and there's real value in connecting with nature. But I think it's hard to find reasons to go outside. So ultimately, my advice is getting into birding. because I think birding gives you a really good reason to go outside and to have a purpose to going outside and looking around. So my advice is get into birding and let's say find 20 birds that are local to you. And once you check them all off, send it to me on Instagram and I'll give you a thumbs up. Really? Download the app, Merlin.

It's going to help you really get into. birding. It's like a really cool app. It'll help you see what's in your area. It's just really fun. You can use it to like listen for sounds. Birding's great. Ask your dad for some binoculars. Every dad has a pair of binoculars, whether they know it or not. You're going to weigh 10 times more than the ones you would buy today, but they're going to be great. Yep. All right. That's some nice advice will suffice featuring Jeff Larson this week. It's suffice. The final two categories are going to be, well, actually, a quick three. We're going to do first list. question. Jeff, you got some listener questions for us.

Yeah. Yeah. So there was like a big week in sports and Super Bowl's coming up. So I just asked people for sports-themed listener questions this week. All right. And you might be thinking listeners who hate sports might be like, I'm going to skip this part. Well, just listen to this first question. Julesa B. asked if koalas played sports, which ones would they be best at? and if you want to two people, Peter H. 99 and Julia Bayliss 98, ask what a snake would be good at. So you can choose either or. But I'm going to say koalas would be good at darts. I just think, like, for darts, you want to, like, be able to slow your mind down and get ultra-focused on that dartboard.

And I feel like koala really empty their brain and just focus on that board. and then like you kind of get like people with a bit of a belly who are good at darts and qualls have a bit of a belly Yeah, that's a good thought I'm gonna go with ping pong because it's like they have three paddles when you include their ears Because they're kind of shaped like ping pong paddles, right? Yeah, sure. The ref isn't gonna notice the difference like when I think you're allowed to hit it with your body Oh, are you? There you go. I think so

I'm gonna pick a snake and I'm gonna pick a consulate stricter. I'm going to say the javelin because it can just like wrap itself around the top of a javelin and it's just let go at the perfect time. So it's not going to get a lot of speed running up to that javelin spot, but just trust me on this, Mike. Sure, yeah. You're the expert.

No, I see that. I like it. All right. Aves asked, do you guys ever support certain teams just based off the mascot? My whole life, I've loved the Jacksonville Jaguars because I like Jaguars. I don't think I do. But I'm not a big sports guy. The Cubs, I picked more because of their record back in the day.

And the mascot was like a very lucky thing that came along with it. Otherwise, I would have picked the Bears, too, but I didn't. I just liked that they were like a perennial underdog. So, no, I don't think I ever had. My dad came home from a business trip to Buffalo, New York once with a Buffalo Sabres T-shirt when I was pretty young. And they kind of became my de facto team I rooted for just because I hadn't really had a hockey team before that. And I did like bison. They have a cool like Buffalo, I guess.

Bison. It's kind of a weird little. Buffalo teams, it's like it doesn't matter what their actual name is. It's just like we're going to be a bison because we're Buffalo, New York. The funny thing about their logo, though, is that I liked the, because they used the sabers, the swords. And I thought, that's what I really connected with. I liked the swords more than the buffalo. All right.

Danny B.D. So Luca Donkage, huge trade, huge NBA news. A lot of people are saying biggest NBA trade ever. So they want us to compare the Luca and AD trade to two animals. So if they were traded with. with each other. So for my, like, ranking list, I would say, like, Luca's probably a cheetah because cheetah's, like, had the chance to become, like,

one of the best ever for me. I just love cheetahs. And they've, like, really proven themselves as one of the best animals recently. And Anthony Davis is still really good, but not, like, in the top. So I would probably say it'd be, like, trading a cheetah for a hammerhead. shark for me. Okay. Neither of them are going to do very well in their new environment.

Well, I'm just saying that's how it relates. Like, that's how the put the trade in my terms is like you had a cheetah and you traded it for something cool, but it's not going to be one of the best ever. Yeah. If you guys want to pass any of these two. I'm going to pass on that one. But I let Mike answer it. Yeah.

When this is not answering the question very well, but I remember when I were bringing up Pokemon again. which are kind of to animals if you think about it. But I got a Charzard the first time I ever bought cards with my friend at the mall. And he had a Mutu, and I like Mutu more than Charzard. So he tried to like finesse me by trading me the Mutu for the Charzard. But they're not equally rare. Like the Mutu is much more common of a card to get than a Charzard.

And I was about to trade him. And his brother at the last minute walked up. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Oh, man. My friend was so mad And then I got mad at him Because he tried to like He tried to trick me

I would say Someone got me with that Yeah Pikachu for Venus or Holographic Yeah So Don Chich is the Charazard And AD would be the MUTU

In this situation Like just not They're both cool But like they're on different levels This is a crazy trade I want I just want to express that I personally think something illegal Is happening

Like honestly Something pretty shady Some kind of collusion something is going to come out about this story and someone should serve jail time, namely Nico Harrison. In any other profession, like Luca would have a really good case and complaint, just being like, hey, my employer got rid of me because I got a little bit too fat. Yeah, right.

But in the NBA, I guess they can do it. All right, so Ali Spencer asked, will the Patriots ever be good again? She's a fan. I just want to shout out the quarterback coach, Michael. He's a toothy. So, you know, you're in good hands. Really? Cool. Yeah.

S.E.Rox asks, what would be your preferred Super Bowl contestants and halftime performer this year? So I would have loved seeing the Bengals in it. And I don't really know on the other side as much. I like the AFC teams. The Lions. Bengals and Lions. and then Taylor Swift

singing it. I know it wouldn't have been possible but if it could have been the Bill's chiefs that would be my ideal and that's because Bills are my team and the chiefs I see

as like the biggest villains right now in the NFL. So your Super Bowl was last week. Yeah. So that would have been the most interesting to me even though it's impossible. Half-time performer?

Kendrick's a good one. Yeah. I don't know. Been into Chapman. roll lately. I'd like that. That would be a fun one. She put on such a fun show.

Yeah. I really like, I'm still like really on a big slow pulp has been like my band for the last few months. Sure. Well, if it was like pup. It wouldn't be a great half time. If like pup was their choice, you would be like this is the best Super Bowl ever. I'd be pretty excited.

Yeah. Obviously for me, it'd be the chargers from the AFC. I think NFC would be fun to have Joe Burrow and the Bengals there just because they're kind of like Joe Burrow has been the better. quarterback so far, but they're kind of having a parallel kind of career alongside each other. That'd be fun just to see him face off. And then I think, again, just like maybe sticking with the San Diego thing, having a Blink 182 performance because they're from the area.

That would be like kind of just a cool synergy between. I know that's not usually how it works. It wouldn't be happening in San Diego, probably. Right. But. Tate Nicole said should Nebraska bring back being called the bug eaters instead of the corn huskers? I had no idea they were called the.

bug eaters but yeah west would be like your star player exactly I'll be the mascot and then ST Holmes asked could all the Chicago Bears football players let's just go starters beat a brown bear in a fight

cage match so 22 players yeah I think so okay okay last one not the doll asked worst sports injury on the ouchy scales oh man anytime I'm watching and you see a bone break.

Like when they slow it down and you see it break. I can't. It's like so hard. It comes out of the skin. There was that one in college basketball like five or six years ago that just haunted my dreams. I can't remember who it was. Way.

But it just they replayed it. Yeah. Over and over. That's what it is for me. Yeah. Paul George. Paul George had a similar thing. The one, the worst one I've ever seen live, I was watching when Gordon Hayward had his

like foot turned all the way around. And it just was like ultra zoomed in. Oh, man. Like, it haunted me. Geez. I'm going to go. I watched the like WWE Netflix documentary. Yeah.

And Brett Hart's brother was like trying to come out from the ceiling and the straps broke and he just like died. He died. Yeah. Yeah. That was crazy. It would be crazy like arena, 80,000 people just there. That was the Vince McMahon documentary, right? Yeah.

Yeah. All right. That's it for listening. Not a great guy. Speaking of WWE, Jeff just told me to watch the Royal Rumble that just happened. I did. And I watched it back. And what's his name, Owens?

Kevin Owens. Kevin Owens. Just gets a bit backwards. It's like seriously looked like he was in serious trouble when the last move, he kind of got like suplex tossed backwards onto a ladder. There's like 38 ladders in the ring at this point. The whole is insane. But yeah, I thought something pretty seriously.

It was kind of crazy. Yeah. Well, thank you, that was a fun category. Thank you guys for writing those. I'll do some more themed ones, I think, and it's just kind of fun. So next time, maybe more of like a West-themed one.

Okay. All right, we're going to move on to Conservation Corner really quickly. With these guys, they are very understudied. So there's a really big range of how many biologists think are still out there. It's anywhere they think in like the 200,000, to 400,000 range. So they are a species of least concern. They weren't really targeted by the seal hunting industry when that was a really big

industry back in the 1800s and early 1900s. So this is an animal that kind of got to escape that kind of pressure and it's done pretty well. They seem to be doing okay in the face of climate change so far. But yeah, it's one to watch because climate change is going to vastly affect their environment. Yeah. Yeah.

And then we'll move on to our final category, which is our. claw rating. It's a new animal. All right. So our claw rating for leopard seals, why don't you go first? I feel like this one feels to me like it'll be your favorite seal, West. You like big animals that have big teeth.

Or predators. Yeah. I like others. I like my seal's cute. I don't think they're that cute, but their Pokemon version is cute. I do think they're really cool. I don't know. I'd probably still have to give them like seven claws,

put them at 364. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to go seven as well. I like all these pinnipeds. They're a pretty big fan of anything that spends a lot of time in the water, just out of bias, natural bias. But like Jeff, I think they're seals.

I even kind of like elephant seals just because they're so distinct. I don't know. When I think of a leopard seal, there's not one part of its body that stands out as something that's super interesting to, like, look at or think about that's a weird way to put it but yeah it's fine they like them i jeff you're correct because this is a big predatory seal um they are probably my highest i would maybe put walruses ahead of them but i'm going to give them an eight but walrus isn't a seal is it they're pinnipeds so they are like in the seal family yeah so you could call a walrus a seal you could in the way

that you could call a dolphin a whale their cetaceans they're in the whale family but they're in their own kind of subgroup. So, yeah, I'm going to give him an eight. I would love, I think if when we go to Antarctica, this is the mammal that I'd probably be the most excited to see. So I am, yeah, they're probably an eight for me. Do orcas kill them? They do.

Yeah, orcas are their one main predator. Are they, like, how do they avoid orcas? Do they just go on the ice? Pulling out on the ice. Yeah. So that's why they do spend a fair amount of time pulled out on the ice, even though they're more comfortable. the water just because that helps them feel relatively safe from their main predator.

Norcas like them then. Orcas are like, that's a pretty good meal. Yeah, it's a good meal for an orca. They're not like necessarily targeting them, but it's not a hard thing for an orca to kill. So I just wanted to talk about Wes alluded, like we are going to Antarctica February next year. Yeah. And it seems like a trip we might be able to just keep getting spots for potentially. So like if you're listening and you, it is very, we're trying to have cheaper trips as well. It's definitely one. This is our most expensive trip.

You got to be financially responsible if you're going to go on it. We don't want anyone to like, you know, take out credit card loans to go. Put out their whole future just to go to it. But anyways, if you want to join our wait list on Trova trip, like if we get enough people on the wait list, I think we can keep opening spots. So like don't feel like you don't have a chance to go still, like join our wait list and we can maybe figure it out. It's one of the most expensive places in the world to visit. And we feel really lucky that we get to go there.

But I do think like something with these trips that we've been doing is all three of us have pretty busy schedules now. And like for us to set aside time to go on a trip, we want it to be somewhere that we also want to go. So we've been picking places that we're really excited to go. And we've been dragging Mike to the places we most want to go. And this is the first one he's really like. Yeah. Finally. We got one for, well, not for me, but this one's going to be awesome.

Like if, yeah, it's going to be really, really excited. I can't wait. Okay, cool. Well, thanks guys. And we'll see you next week. All right. Thanks, West. Love you. Love you. Bye.