Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Lion Attack - The Lions of Tsavo Part 2

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

The wrap up of the story of the Lions of Tsavo. But first, we engage in the age old debate of what’s better: ice powers or tree powers? ~~ 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 Tooth and Claw. Today we're finishing up the story of the Lions of Savo. That's right, this is part two, the finale of the story that we started telling in the previous episode. So if you haven't heard that yet, you can go back and check that out. Or if you want to just hear part two the end of the story without having the buildup or context to it, I guess you can just keep listening here. We won't judge. As always, thank you so much for listening.

A special shout out goes to all of our subscribers over on Patreon. If you're interested in hearing more from us, you can go ahead and subscribe over there. You can find us at www.patryon.com slash tooth and claw podcast, where we have a bunch of mini bonus episodes recorded with More On the Way. We release every other week there. And we've got a couple of really good episodes coming up, if I do say so myself. So I don't know, check it out if that interests you. Or if you want the opportunity to check out some cool merch that we have coming out too.

Patreon is the place to find that. Thanks. All right, let's get on with the show. Okay, we're ready. We are going to do a little recap. Is there anything you guys needed to say beforehand? I want to know why you think tree powers is the best superpower. I don't think it's the best superpower.

What is? You always ask the question, ice powers or tree powers? And I always pick tree powers because I think it's better than ice powers. What's the best? I don't know. No, you always just pick tree powers. No, you give me those two options and I pick tree powers. I would not pick it.

I would rather fly than have tree powers. Well, then just get ice powers. No, that's not the same. You just shooting ice to, like, stand on as you go isn't flying. Oh, yeah, but you could fly. Well, you could fly with tree powers then, too. Jeff loves asking people if they would pick ice powers or tree powers, and he always says he would pick ice powers,

and his one reason for that is so that he can kiss a girl and, like, freeze the air inside of her mouth. So, like, it's like a really cool kiss. Yeah, because it sucks. Every time I'm, like, kissing a girl, I have to stop and go to the fridge and suck on ice for a while. Don't get ice powers, then I wouldn't have to do that. So we've had this discussion with a lot of people. Yeah.

And after very short order, everyone agrees. It's tree powers. Here's the thing about tree powers. You can just instantly make a mango to eat or any other fruit that you want. You can, you're pretty much Groot from Gardens of Galaxy. You can shoot wood at people. You can, like, shoot up in the air with the wood. There's a lot of stuff you can do with tree powers.

Ice powers, every stairway I'm at, I'm sliding down it. I'm just making this slide. Nah, be good. And then, um, every drink I ever drink will be cold. Perfect temperature. Imagine, okay. Imagine if, like, you go to someone's house and you're going down their stairs and you just freeze. their stairwell, it'd be so pissed at it.

Nah, they'd just be amazed. Yeah, I don't. You could help the whole melting polarizing. Yeah, I could save the planet. But so could tree powers. Deforestation. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

All right. So I would be eating delicious fruit. Agreed to disagree. No, I don't. You're wrong. Anyway, tree powers is what I'd pick over those two, but not as a general superpower. I would walk on water. I'd want to fly.

If I could fly, I'd pick fight. I'd have perfectly, so I have a split lip right now. And it hurts when I smile and laugh. So no jokes this episode is. But I would have perfectly moisturized skin and hair. That would be your superpower? Yeah, living in Utah has really done a number on me.

Okay. That's, yeah, that's an interesting pick, but I don't know what that, would I be like, Aquaman, I guess you'd call me? I don't know. If you guys, okay, if you guys, could either fly at like 25 miles per hour but you can fly as long as you want but it's at 25 miles per hour that's too slow or you can teleport at like however far of a distance you can see you can teleport which of those would you pick teleporting you would yeah okay i'd just teleport

in the sky and then i teleport back down you could just fly around that way yeah flying just sounds so fun to me all right You're going to get like bugs in your mouth. 25 miles an hour. Yeah, you're not. Yeah, yeah, I maybe. I mean, I get bugs in my mouth just walking around sometimes. Maybe that's my problem. We'll just get into the story.

Yeah, I think we're done with talking about that. So we are on part two of the Lions of Savo story. Many of you may have seen the movie Ghost in the Darkness, the 1996 film, starring Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas, Tom Wilkinson, and others. other, King Theodon, Horse Lord. It's a wonderful film. It's not very true to the actual story, but there is some stuff that they maintained.

But essentially, the story is about these two lions. In our first episode, we talked about these lions, how they had started attacking railway camps, and they were getting really good at it. I mean, almost every night they're attacking this camp, and they're pulling people out of their tents. They're eating people right outside of these big fences called Bomas that are made of thorny bushes.

They're really, really successful and really, really good at killing people. And John H. Patterson, who was the civil engineer on this project, and essentially the project head for this stretch of railway that was being built, was powerless to stop them. He had tried a lot of different things,

mostly just climbing up into tree and waiting for them. But he had shot at them. He had tried to trick them, and just everything wasn't working. And the Lions had really gotten the best of him every single time. So that's where we're at. And finally, toward the end of part one, these workers that they had hired to build this railway were mostly people from India that had been conscripted by the British army. And they just were done. They were being killed at random by these lions. And they're tired of it. They're tired of living in fear. And most of them hopped to train and got out of there. So that's kind of where we ended. Are there anythings you guys would like to add before we start back into this story? Just also the fact that it sounds like the company is in kind of a time crunch to get this railroad done.

So there's pressure from kind of every side to get this thing done and also to avoid being eaten. Totally. And the lions are kind of in a time crunch because all the Indian people are leaving. Yeah. So they got to kind of up how many people they're killing. That's a good point. Yeah. And we did.

I mean, most of these people they'd killed were Indian workers. there were a few that were like Swahili people. They had tried to attack Patterson and a few others, but most, like the vast majority has been Indian workers. So as far as the time crunch thing goes, in the movie, they really accentuate that. Like, it's a really big deal. The book doesn't talk nearly as much about it.

It seemed like Patterson had a little bit more leeway than the movie seemed. Still financially. But financially, this whole project is, they're way over budget. You said they're four times over budget. Yeah. They're spending it. ton of money and these lions have completely shut down construction at this point. I mean, they have brought a total halt to it. Maybe they like know it's going to cause habitat loss.

I mean, that's that's a theory. Like, we got to get rid of these guys. That's what a lot of the Indian workers and some of the Swahili people that were helping to thought that like these were lions that had the spirits of native elders that were trying to stop this thing because it was like an insult to traditional African, like, land rights and all these other things. So, yeah, I'm team lying. Yeah, me too, to be honest. I am. Aside, I wish that the lion was killing, like, the people that were funding this project,

not the workers. I want them to get Patterson. I like Patterson, actually, quite a bit. But anyway, Patterson at this point, he's operating with a skeleton crew. He just has a few brave people that stayed behind, a few dozen workers that didn't leave, and then work on the railroad has completely stopped. And so he asked a district officer in Mombasa, this guy who he just refers to as Mr. Whitehead to come and help.

So I think this is kind of in the movie where they get the inspiration from Michael Douglas. But this Mr. Whitehead is, I think he's like an army guy, but he's not a renowned world hunter. It's just a guy that he asked to come help. So this Mr. Whitehead was due to arrive the night of December 2nd, which is right after all these guys had left, all the Indian workers had left. And Patterson sends this boy to go retrieve him from the railway station

and bring him to Savo. And the boy comes back a few hours later and he's shaking from fright. And apparently the lion was at the railway station, was on the platform. And the railway workers had locked themselves in their offices because the lion was there. And Patterson doesn't really believe him because at this point,

all of the workers that had stayed behind are so traumatized. that everything is a lion to them. The train is kind of just like the sushi conveyor belts that they have in Korea and Japan. It's just bringing more food in for the lions and he's just kind of waiting there now. Yeah. To them. I'm not sure if that's the most clever or the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I guess both.

At this point, though, Patterson doesn't really believe this kid because every Impala, every baboon, Every little animal that people are seeing, they're like, ah, it's a lion. Everything is freaking a lion. Yeah. And so he's like, sure, there's a lion there. But then he learns, yeah, the lions actually were at the railway station and they'd shut everything down. Yeah. So Whitehead doesn't arrive that night.

And Patterson's eating dinner by himself and he hears gunshots, but he doesn't really pay attention to him because there were, as we mentioned, the last episode, each of these camps had a couple Indian soldiers in their camps and gunshots were pretty normal. they would shoot at any animal they saw pretty much. It was a fairly normal occurrence to hear gunshots. Would they like eat animals that they found? Yeah.

Okay. So he heard these gunshots and then late at night he decided to go up into the hide that he had constructed and he was surprised that as soon as he got up in the hide hoping that the lions would show up, he was surprised to hear the lions not far away eating something. And he just assumed that they'd probably gotten some livestock or something because he hadn't heard screaming or commotion that usually followed when a lion attacked the camp. So he's up in this hide and he hears them eating something.

He's like, oh, man, they must have gotten something. So he takes a shot out of them and they picked up whatever they're eating and they go over a ridge. So the next morning, Patterson is leaving where he was up in this hide in the tree and he's headed back to camp and he comes across this Mr. Whitehead, just like out in the bush. And this guy looks really shaken and he's super disheveled. And then this is what he says their conversation was in the book. So this is Patterson. Where on earth have you come from? I exclaimed.

Why didn't you turn up to dinner last night? A nice reception you give a fellow when you invite him to dinner, was his only reply. Why, what's up? I asked. That infernal lion of yours nearly did for me last night, said Whitehead. Nonsense. You must have dreamed it, I cried in astonishment. For answer, he turned around and showed me his back. That's not much of a dream, is it?

So Whitehead's shirt had been completely ripped open. and he had four big claw marks down his back. Whoa. So Patterson rushes him to the tent, and he addresses his wounds. And while he's doing that, Whitehead tells him his story of what happened. And so this is his story. I like how Whitehead made him get to that point. Like, I feel like if I was him, I'd be like, okay, I was attacked by a lie.

Like, that would be my intro. Yeah. But he's like, why didn't you go to dinner? And he's like, well, your welcoming party wasn't that great. and like you kind of teases it out of him. He had a whole night to think of a funny little joke. Yeah, that's true. He's like, this is going to be in a book someday. I got to come up with a good answer.

So Whitehead's train had arrived a little bit late, and it was pretty dark by the time he started toward the Savo camp. And he had with him this servant, Abdullah, who was carrying a lamp and helping him cut through the thick brush on the way to the camp. So it's just Whitehead and Abdullah, they're leaving this railway station. and this is just like a temporary railway station. And they're cutting through the brush, and Abdullah's holding the lamp, and Whitehead's cutting through the brush.

And suddenly one of the lions jumps down from a high bank and knocks Whitehead over. And that's when it scratches his back and rips open of his shirt. And as he falls backwards, he fires his gun, which likely saves his life because it makes the lion switch direction. But unfortunately for Abdullah, it then decides to go for him. And it grabs him. And by the time Whitehead stands up, he sees Abdullah in the mouth of this lion, and it's running away with him. And Abdullah is yelling, oh, master, a lion.

Oh, man. Yeah. So he sees his, like, faithful servant get killed by this lion. Whitehead fires again, but it doesn't hit the lion, and the lion disappears with Abdullah. So Patterson had heard these shots when he was eating dinner, and then the thing that he heard the lion eating was Abdullah. Oh, no. Yeah. Not Abdullah.

So honestly, like, as I was reading this book, I was starting to get a little upset by this point because it just seemed like all these guys that are getting eaten are just servants and workers, people that no one deserves to get eaten by it. Well, I'm sure there's people that deserve to get eaten by lions. But of all the people that didn't deserve it in this situation, it was these people. They had just gone there to get a little bit of extra money. and they weren't there for like glory or adventure. And that's kind of what a lot of the white people in this story were there for.

And so it was getting a little frustrating just how many people are dying and how casual they're still treating it. But luckily on that day, some more helped arrived in this fight against the lions. The superintendent of police for the railway, who I'm guessing he was based in in Mombasa. His name is Farquhar. He arrived and then he came with some sepoys, which are, another type of Indian soldier, and they fought for the British government. A few other officials also showed up to help, and each of them this time took a hide in a tree.

So now they have people spread out throughout all these camps, and they have a bunch of people in trees. And then they also decided, we mentioned last episode that Patterson had built a trap, and they decided to finally put this trap into play. This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo and dressing, toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. So a quick reminder of what this trap was like.

It's essentially a big wooden box. In the middle there's some metal bars and there's open doors on either end. So the people get in on one end and they close their door behind him. And then on the other end it's an open door and the line can come in that side. and when it comes in far enough, it springs a thing that closes the door behind it. So then you got people on one side of the bars, and the lion on the other side, and the lion's trapped, and the people can shoot the lion through the bars. So that's the idea behind this trap.

So they're all in trees. They got two sepoys in this trap. Those are those Indian soldiers. And the night's really quiet. Nothing's happening. And then around 9 o'clock, Patterson's just completely overjoyed to hear the trap door close, which means that something walked into the trap and it closed that door. And he thought to himself, finally we got one of them.

He said, one at least of the brutes is done for. But he's wrong. The sepoys are waiting in the light of their lamp in this trap. And as they're waiting, they're just getting more and more terrified minute by minute. Like imagine this. You just like barely show up to Savo. You've heard that maybe dozens, if not hundreds of people have been killed by these lions. And then this dude's like, hey,

sit in this trap that I built and the lion's going to come in here. All that's separating you are these bars and then you can shoot it. Yeah. And you're just sitting there. You're literally bait. That's what they were. Right. And they're just waiting.

And you would, I mean, your nerves would be afraid. It would be really, really scary. So when the lion actually does show up and it charges into this gate, apparently it hit those bars and it's trying to kill these guys. It's shooting its paws through. It's roaring. It's doing everything it can to kill them. and they're just completely paralyzed by fear.

They are not shooting. No. They're not doing anything. They're just paralyzed. And so Farquhar, who's the superintendent of police, he's in a nearby tree. And he starts yelling at these guys because they're essentially his men. And he's like, start shooting. Shoot the line.

Yeah. And at that point, they each had a rifle and they all had a ton of ammunition. They just start shooting like crazy. And Patterson said that they shot. with a vengeance anywhere, anyhow. So Patterson says he and Whitehead are in a tree that's at a 90 degree angle to where the trap was. And they did that on purpose. So when these guys shoot, there's no way like any of the bullets are going to come their direction.

And he said bullets are just whizzing by him. These guys are just shooting in every direction. And they fired dozens of times. And in the end, they were only able to hit the bar on the door that was keeping the lion in. And so the door goes back up. and the lion was able to run out. That's ridiculous. Yeah.

So, like the stormtroopers in Star Wars. Yeah, exactly. Patterson says how they failed to kill him several times over is, and always will be a complete mystery to me, as they could have put the muzzles of their rifles absolutely touching his body. I agree. But at the same time, why isn't Patterson in the trap then? You know, like, it's very easy to be like, oh, these guys should have killed this thing. But he probably should have killed it by now too.

And he didn't put himself in the trap as bait. So I kind of have a hard time being like, oh yeah, these guys were awful when Patterson wasn't even willing to go in there himself. But anyway, so he's got all this help with him, and he decides to spend the next two days hunting these lions in the brush, rather than just hoping they show back up. They decide to take some initiative and go chase them. But they only get momentary glimpses of the lions. And after a few days, all of these people, Farquhar, the superintendent of police, Mr. Whitehead, the Sepoys, they all have stuff they're responsible for in Mombasa.

So they leave. And Patterson's again alone with the lions. I like Whitehead's role in this story. Just like comes for help as like help. And like immediately his like best like servant or friend gets eaten and he almost dies. Yeah. And it's just like, okay, yeah. I see you guys have some like credit to what you're saying.

Yeah, it makes sense that none of them wanted to stay much longer. Yeah. They realize like, okay, these are actual terrible monsters, which they're not. They're animals and we love them, but they thought they were monsters. Okay. So a few days after everyone left, Patterson's leaving his Boma in the morning and a Swahili worker comes running up to him yelling Simba, Simba. So Simba is actually the Swahili word for Lion.

and apparently the lion had attacked a donkey near the camp and he was eating it. Did they steal that from Lion King? They didn't. Lion King stole it from Swahua. Oh, that makes more sense. Yeah. But where does Kimba, the white lion, planned all that? Just kidding.

Well, it's a whole, yeah, you can dive into that and learn about how Disney stole IP from someone. Or did they? Yeah, yeah, it's a long and deep road. Anyway, it's daytime, and the lions had attacked a donkey during the day, which gave Patterson a really unique opportunity. And with the pans on the donkey? This wasn't a pan donkey. Okay.

This gave Patterson a chance to actually like hunt one down and kill it in the date, which he hadn't had many opportunities to do. And Farquhar, the superintendent of police, had left him a higher caliber rifle to do this. And so he grabs this guy's rifle. And this was in the movie too, except it was, um, Theodin Horse Lord that gives him the rifle. Yeah. But he grabs it and he goes with the Swahili worker to go and catch this line. or to kill it. And they cautiously are following the trail and then at one point

Patterson can faintly see the outline of this lion through the brush. And at that very moment this Swahili worker that was with him stepped on the twig and the lion roared and jumped thicker into the brush. So what Patterson decided to do was go and get a bunch of the workers and they surrounded the brush and they all had pots and pans and oil tins and stuff that they were banging on. And they kind of made a semicircle around this lion. And meanwhile, Patterson hid behind an ant-hill where he thought the lion was going to come out. And so they start moving in and they're making all this noise and they can hear the lion roaring in the brush. And then Patterson's plan actually works.

And the lion jumps out. He has a clear shot, raises his rifle, puts it right on its brain, pulls the trigger, and it clicks. Oh, man. And he was using an untested gun and he knew that was a terrible idea, but he did it anyway. He thought he had had his moment finally, but he's horrified and he's like, okay, the lion's going to kill him now because the lion sees him, his guns clicked. And in that moment, he forgets he has a double barrel gun and he hasn't tried the other barrel. So he's frantically trying to reload.

And luckily, this lion is still distracted with the barrage of noise that's coming out of the forest. And so he suddenly realizes, oh, I've got another shot, raises it up and takes aim and shoots. And the lion roars and jumps into the brush. So he doesn't know if he's hated or not, but he's pretty happy because he wasn't killed in this weird moment of choking. Yeah. And he wasn't bit by any ants? I don't know. He didn't say if he was bit by ants or not.

Yeah. But he might have been. Yeah, he was right by an antiole. That's a good point. But at this point, Patterson in his book is saying there might be something to this devil's theory. These might not just be normal lions because every time he thinks he's about to get him, something happens. and they get away and he gets bit by ants. Like not just something happens, but something almost inexplicable happens.

Right, like his gun misfires or the lions see him coming and they go somewhere else. Or the firing squad with a lion literally like two feet away. They're paralyzed. Can't fear. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Which one do you think?

I feel like the cage is still the one where it's like, that lion should be dead. It should. They shot the gate open. Are you kidding? It's incredible. Yeah, it's been a wild journey. I mean, at this point, they're eight months into this thing, and I guarantee you, Patterson is, you know, on his last leg.

At that point, I would start to wonder if, is there something, like, weird with these lions? Yeah, I would think they're supernatural. For sure. A curse or something. Like, without a doubt. So the donkey that this lion had been feeding on had a lot of meat on it still. So Patterson decides to use it as bait. He again builds, this time instead of getting into tree, he builds a small tower.

and he builds it right near the donkey and he attaches the donkey to stump with some wire so that if the lions show up they can't pull it into the bush they have to eat it there. And he spends most of the night waiting for the lions to show up and he starts to fall asleep when the sounds of a large animal moving through the brush wake him up and he could hear the lion breathing

and he quickly realized that it wasn't going for the donkey it was stalking him in his tower. So he spends a few hours in this tower listening to the lion stalking him. he can hear it creeping closer and closer. And he starts to get pretty scared because he's thinking, I'm only 12 feet up, and it could maybe jump up this high,

which we learned in our tiger episode. Pretty easily could. Probably could. Yeah. Yeah. Or it could knock down one of these poles that's supporting his tower, and the poles aren't that big. So he's getting pretty nervous,

and his fear is getting stronger and stronger when all of a sudden something hits him in the back of the head. And he's like, okay, the lion's here. I'm toast. This is finally it. And it was an owl. Like an owl had flown into his head, which is actually a scene they have in the movie. Yeah.

But he actually falls out of the tower in the movie. And in the book, he says it just, he thought that the owl probably thought he was a branch or something and it ran into his head. That's crazy. Of all the scenes in the movie, if you had told me or asked me to guess which scene was fake from the movie, I'd be like, oh yeah, the owl. They like knocked him off. Yeah. No. apparently that's real and who knows i mean he wanted this book to be a seller so who knows how much of

this is exaggerated but that's what he said uh that's not a flattering detail to me no that's true kind of dumb and like yeah and it's very likely the zowl was pissed at him too and had like swiped at him had swooped at him so he makes a bit of a commotion when this happens and the lion hears them and the lion lets out a roar and that actually gives patterson a pretty good idea of where this lion is so he takes aim and he peers into the darkness until he thinks he can see its outline and he shoots and the lion lets out a big roar and it runs into the bush and then he can hear it groaning and then he can hear it breathing heavily and then it stops breathing and he knows that he had finally gotten one of these lions so they have a huge party in camp there's dancing everyone's

just so happy that one of these lions is finally dead and because it's because to them they finally realize, okay, they're not invincible, they're not untouchable, we can kill him. And it was a really, it came at a really important time. They needed to finally get one of them. They went the next morning and they found the body of the lion. And his shot from earlier on the day actually had hit it, the second shot when he choked. And his most recent shot had finished the job. A bunch of workers were with him. They picked him up on their shoulders. They had like another celebration at the body the lion. And yeah, so they were starting to feel like there was the light at the end of the tunnel. So not long after the second line...

Have you ever been picked up on people's shoulders for anything you've done? I... Yeah, but I can't think of it. But I remember it feeling really good. It feels amazing. Yeah. I think it was like some... I was never that great at sports, but I think I did something once in sports that was good.

Yeah. And, yeah, that's such a big. I did a good thing in sports. Anyway, not long after the second lion attacked some goats in camp, but it was chased off. And Patterson again built a tower near the carcass of those goats, and he hoped the lion would come back. And he's getting really tired at this point because he's staying up almost every night, all night. And so he brought his gunbearer Mahina with him. And the two sat in the hide for hours, and Patterson's starting to fall asleep.

And as he falls asleep, Mahina, like, grabs his arm and softly. says lion. So Patterson wakes up and he takes aim and again he finally has a little bit of luck because this lion steps out in a clearing and he fires with both barrels but he sees and he actually sees the lion like take the impact but then the lion jumps away into the brush. So he's pretty excited. He's like tomorrow we're going to go find another dead lion and I'm going to be a hero. But the next morning they go and they follow this blood trail and it disappears. They follow it for a while and then it's gone. For like 10 days nothing happens. And Patterson, and the men think, we got him.

We got him, and he died somewhere out in the savannah, and we're done with the lions. Then one night they hear that all too familiar at this point scream of terror because the lion's attacking the camp again. The lion had returned, and it was frantically trying to get through the boma to grab another victim, and Patterson actually heard it, and he runs out and fires his gun and scares the lion off, so it didn't get anyone.

But the next day, he sets up another hide, yet another hide in a tree, and him and Mahina go back up And as he's climbing I like Mahina's job is just his gun bear Yeah I know You can't hold your gun I know So far there's been like water carrier

Gun bearer There's like some pretty Yeah As he's climbing to get into this last tree He almost grabs a venomous snake And he falls out of a tree And some of the men with him Kill the snake

But I mean he's really Pretty unlucky at this point I wonder if making the movie they had to decide whether to keep the owl or an owl or snake because you really can't have both of those it's like this is too much yeah so at this point it's a full moon they have a really great night they have a great field of view and they're both thrilled because the lion actually shows up and it starts to stalk them in their hide and patterson has his 303 which is his trusty rifle he takes aim and he fires

and he again thinks that he's hit his target because the lion roars and it jumps away and he again thinks okay in the morning we're going to go find this body so soon as it gets light out Patterson Mahina and a native tracker they leave to go find the body of the lion and when they'd only got about a quarter mile

into the brush they are shocked because they're walking through this brush and suddenly like couple yards in front of them they hear a really deep roar that he says he could feel in his bones. Oh, man. And he looks into the brush, and he can see the angry eyes of the lion, and then it's

bared teeth looking at him. So he fires immediately, and the lion jumps out of the brush and charges at him. And this time he fires again, and he knocks the lion over. And so he again thinks, okay, I finally got it. But it quickly jumps up to its feet, and it charges him again. And he's out of shots on this gun, and Mahina's carrying his other gun. So he turns to Mahina to grab his other rifle. and Mahina's halfway up a tree with the rifle already.

So the lion's coming for Patterson. It's coming slower because it is pretty injured at this point. But he jumps up in the tree as well with Mahina, and he's able to grab this rifle from Mahina in the tree, and then he fires and the lion falls over. So he's, even in his book, he's like, I should have waited longer because he hops down and he goes to poke the lion's body,

and it hops up and charges him again. And he fires two more times. He shoots it in the head, and the chest and it dies. Jeez, man. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items, then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes.

So you can feel confident it's what you ordered. Fresh groceries, your way with Ralph's delivery and pickup. Get free delivery during online deal days, plus $30 off your first, online order. Ralph's Fresh for everyone. Have you ever heard a lion roar in real life? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I was at the Chicago Zoo, which like, it's like a free public zoo.

So it's smaller. Yeah. But I was at the other end from where the lions were. Yeah. And it scared me because like the male lions started just roaring. Yeah. And it just shook the entire zoo. Yeah.

And then everyone went to like, look at. look at this lion and it just was like so cool like up on a rock just roaring yeah but like it legit just like scared me at a zoo they got some pipes did you feel it in your rib cage pretty much i so i've never heard an animal roar but there was a guy i was in a little caesars i got to hear the it is and uh me and my me and my friend just out of my for two large pepperoni pizzas. And this dude was huge, not just tall, but huge. And he yelled back instructions for what the people in the back should make for us.

And he yelled the words, too perp, so loud that it almost brought me to my knees. But like I felt my ribs reverberate. It's probably the same as what Patterson. Was it the one in Provo? Yeah. It was incredible. I love that this is your reference point for like,

a lion roaring and almost killing someone. I know who he's talking about even. Anyway, yeah. And when it comes to lion roars, the one you heard in the zoo, Jeff, is more a lion announcing like, hey, I'm here. This is my territory. They do that loud roar where they go up on something and roar as loud as they can. But then they also have a really angry roar when they're fighting or killing something. And that's what he heard here. And they're very, they're both very scary and very loud. That's cool. But Padd Anderson realizes this nightmare is finally over. He's managed to kill both lions.

His men have a great amount of respect for him at this point. For a while, they thought that he was just a total failure, but at this point they think he's their savior, and they're really happy. And the Indian men actually give him, like, this silver bowl that he says is his greatest trophy that he's ever gotten. And speaking of trophies, he does have both of the lions skinned, and he takes their skulls.

And those taxidermied skins are now on display at the Chicago Field Museum. They bought him from Patterson. And they have the skulls there as well. So the men that had abandoned the construction site came back. He was able to complete his work, get everything done than he needed to on his portion of railway. And then he wrote a book, which is the book that I used for most of the research on this. And a few different Hollywood movies were made from the story, I think three in total. But the most famous is Ghost in Darkness.

Ghost in the Darkness. Secondhand lions. Uh-huh. And lion. And lions. No. The other ones were made a long time ago, but Ghost in the Darkness is the most recent one and the most successful. Lion isn't that the one where like the little boy gets lost?

Yeah. Yeah. Debtel. We mentioned this in the last episode, but all in all, Patterson claims 135 men were killed by the lions. You need to remember Patterson was trying to sell his book. but at the same time I read so many articles were there like oh Patterson was exaggerating

it's like yeah but he was there you know no one else was that so I think you can dismiss that but the same time you have to accept that that's our best source of information when it comes to that and I mean this lasted nine months so when you think about it that would be

I mean that'd be a lot that'd be like a person being killed every other day yeah and that number probably is a little high but what they ended up doing is this guy Bruce Patterson, who's not related to John Patterson, he's a scientist at the Field Museum, and he did an isotope test on the lions. So he looked at their bone fragments and their hair fragments,

and essentially what the idea there was was to see, to look, you can isolate the isotopes that are associated with feeding on humans, and you can get an idea of what percentage of their diet were humans at the end of their lives. And so what he found is that for the last three months of their lives, humans accounted for about 30% of their prey, which is a really high number. I mean, it was probably the main thing that they were killing was humans.

So then they used the average size and feeding habits of Savo Lions to estimate that over their nine-month slaughter, they probably killed about 35 humans, is what this guy, Bruce Patterson, came up with. I personally think that that number is probably somewhere, between the two estimates. I think it's somewhere between 35 and 135. I would guess.

I would say it's probably like 74. That's honestly what I was going to say 70. Yeah, I think it's honestly probably somewhere around there. Based on Patterson's book, I think it was more than 35 people. But I don't know. That's just me saying that. How often do lions eat? Are they going to be eating like two lions?

Would they be eating a human for food every day? I mean, they could. Yeah, they eat a lot. And I don't, I should have looked that up to see exactly how much they eat in a given week or how often they have to bring down prey. But lions are big eaters. They can eat a lot. And a human doesn't provide a ton of meat for a lion.

So it wouldn't be outside their natural range to kill a person every other day and to still be hungry. I mean, they could, they could probably kill a person every day and still be hungry. Yeah, so that's unknown. It's not, I mean, that isotope analysis is the best. way that we can get a pretty good idea of how many people they'd killed. But it's not like you can say, oh, it was exactly this many people, from what I understand, at least. I wanted to get in a little bit more of the science behind this, especially the motives of the

lions. Do you guys have any guesses for why these two lions might have just decided to start killing people? Territorialism, I don't know. Yeah, they're like in the area. It seems like it wasn't that hard. Yeah, I mean, that's the main thing, is difficulty. There's a few different theories out there, and we're going to kind of run through each of them.

There's a common myth that when man eaters, when you have a man eater, an animal that starts killing people, that they have this, like, taste for human flesh. There's this idea that once an animal kills a person, it never goes back because it's gotten a taste for us. To me, that always has felt weirdly egotistical. We just think because we're humans, we taste so good, and animals just love the way we taste. and I don't buy that. I don't think that's the case. But what is very possible is that while this railway was being constructed, a lot of people died. We mentioned they had big bouts of dysentery, they had scurvy, they had all these different issues, and a lot of dead bodies were being

left along the way. And so lions aren't against scavenging. They will scavenge. And one common theory is that these lions were scavenging on people so much that they started to realize, people are a food source and it's pretty easy. And then another idea is that there was a really bad disease in the time that was affecting cattle and it was probably affecting a lot of the native prey for lions as well, Buffalo and wildebeest. It was called Rinder pest. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you know Rinder pest. Anyway, it had killed a lot of the animals in the area and they think that maybe it was prey scare city too that led these lions. to start killing people. So there's kind of a bunch of different ideas that factor into it. But the leading theory is that these lions, one of them especially, had some pretty serious dental problems.

So Patterson, Bruce Patterson, the guy at the field museum, he's done pretty extensive testing on those teeth. And they found that one of the canines is completely worn down and the pulp was probably showing on that tooth, which would be extremely painful. Yeah. And that lion, was also missing three of its lower incisors. So it had a broken canine. It's missing all these

teeth. It has an abscess in its mouth. And then the other lion also had a tooth that was showing some pulp. So the idea is that we're really soft. We don't have thick skin. We don't have horns. We don't have hooves. We're really easy for an animal to eat. And especially an animal with a broken tooth that would be really painful to eat something with thick skin, eating a person would be a really painless way to get food. And we don't really fight back very hard either. Yeah. So that's kind of the leading theory is that their dental injuries were so extreme that they turned to humans. My guess is that it was probably a combination of all three of those. One of the reasons that people don't necessarily think they were scavenging.

A animal like a lion will only turn to pure scavenging if it's really, really hungry. And they would eat the bones then too. And they would eat the marrow, and they would crunch all those bones up. And when they did further analysis on the teeth, they didn't see the kind of wear that's typical for an animal that's eating bones.

Like hyenas and other animals that eat a lot of bones, they have these big kind of chunks taken out of there. It's not chunks, but it's like their teeth are really battered because they're eating something really hard regularly. And these lions had relatively smooth teeth. So the idea there is that they probably weren't eating bones, they probably weren't starving. So that kind of eliminates the theory that they were just really hard up for prey.

So the main prevailing theory is that their teeth were hurting, but it could be a combination of a bunch of this stuff. But that's kind of the main idea. Do you guys have questions about that? No. I was interested why in the first episode you said, we're easy to eat. So, yeah, we're just soft.

Yeah, I mean, our skin is thin and soft and pink. It's easy for animals to eat us. Okay, so that pretty much explains the motives. And it gets behind this idea that when there's a combination of different things that can turn our animals into man-eaters, it's really rare, though. This doesn't happen that often. Lions, as we mentioned the first episode, they do kill people.

It does happen every year in Africa that they kill some people. But if they were targeting us as prey, it would be like this all the time. It would be like the Sava lions all the time. Where anytime people stepped out, there's the potential they're going to be killed by lions. And we would have thousands of people killed every year by lions, not dozens or low hundreds. The thing with it too is, I mean, obviously they were really good at killing people. They killed a lot of people and were successful. Yeah.

But like they died. Yeah. The two lions killing people died. Yeah. So I just feel like we're so good at hunting animals. Like if an animal decides it wants to start killing people, like it's going to probably die. Yeah. So that just is kind of like natural selection.

Like anything that messes with humans is probably going to end up dying. It's weeded out. Yeah. That's a good point. I think with these lions, again, and a lot of the stuff I read it called the monsters or devils or whatever. This isn't outside of their natural behavior. They switched to a new prey source that was convenient for them because they were injured or because they had a lack of prey. And that's not unnatural for an animal to do that. But it doesn't happen that often. And we're lucky that there

are a lot of other prey for these animals because if there wasn't, then they might start to target us a lot more. So that, I mean, that's kind of the basics of this. I mention all that because I just don't want to demonize them, I don't want to buy into this whole narrative that once they get a taste for us, it's over for us, and they just start killing us like that. It's more just that we're easy. We're easy to kill, and sometimes lions like these ones just decide that they're going to take advantage of an easy meal. What is a lion's, like, biggest food source?

You mean, like, what are the animals they kill most often? Yeah. They kill a lot of different ungulates. So it's usually like zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, uh, Analo. Bison. No, buffalo. Not bison.

That's their main stuff. Big ungulates. Yeah. But they can eat anything from like warthogs down to small mammals. They'll eat a lot of different stuff. But big ungulates are kind of their bread and butter. One other thing I wanted to mention about the Savo Lions is these were two males without a pride. And that lends to this idea that they might have been a little bit younger.

Sometimes younger male lions that don't have a problem. they'll team up and they'll go out and hunt together. But there's this idea that these might have been younger, more inexperienced lions. I don't know if there's that much information out there about that if they've tested that or not, but that is an interesting thing about this, that these were two male lions without a pride. And that's another reason why they might have decided to kill people, because when you have a whole pride, like we mentioned in the last episode that's supporting you, it's a lot easier to bring down big game.

and you have animals that are coming in a lot more often that you can eat, but when you're by yourself, you kind of have to take advantage of any opportunity you have. So I truly found this story to be so interesting. I know it got a little repetitive in there because it's just the same thing over and over and over again. But it's just so fascinating to me to think about a time when people just were kind of powerless against this sort of thing, you know? Like if lions just decided they want to start killing you, they could. Yeah.

It's pretty wild. Yeah, that's scary. Yeah. Not scary. It is scary, but more of like, I'm grateful that they don't. Yeah. I'm glad I don't have to be scared that way. Yeah.

No, that whole story just sounded so scary. Yeah. Especially like laying in a tent and not knowing if you're going to be pulled out of your tent in the middle of the night. I wonder how they decided who slept on the edges of the tent. Well, I think they, I think they all. just slept with their head in the middle and their feet going out to the edges so it could just grab any of them oh my gosh um anyway i was really excited to do this one this is one i've been waiting to do for a while i think these stories of like man eaters that kill a bunch of people are especially

fascinating we'll definitely do more of them you guys have any other questions what ended up happening with the the railroad tracks did they finish it yeah they finished it uh and then the uganda The Uganda Railway was around for a long time. I don't know if it still is, but it became like a really popular train ride because you saw a lot of cool wildlife and stuff. Like I know Teddy Roosevelt wrote it and just shot animals out of it like the Patterson. Almost for sure. Yeah. But yeah, it was a really popular railway.

I read if it was still around and I don't have it in my notes. But anyway, yeah. We all have that dream trip. We've been wishing we could go on. But too often, life or usually price gets in the way. That's why Priceline is here to help you turn your dream trip into reality. With up to 60% off hotels and up to 50% off flights, you can book everything you need for your next adventure.

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So I was just like reading about lions because we were doing lions. Yeah. Have you guys heard of the Mapungo Lion Coalition? No. So it's like kind of the most famous like they called a coalition instead of a pride because it's mainly just male lions. Yeah. But it's like the most famous like pride ever. Huh.

And it was five brothers and then one like half brother. And it says on Wikipedia, so they dominated like 170,000 acres of Africa, like in South Africa in the Kruger National Park. Yeah. And they killed over a hundred other lions. Really? Yeah, including cubs. But like mainly they would just kill like other male lions. That's crazy.

Wow. And they, yeah, they just, like, dominated the whole area and, like, just kind of ruled everything. Yeah. And whenever, like, another male lion tried to join them, they would just kill it. Interesting. But, like, so they thought it as kind of, scientists thought it's interesting. They let the one that wasn't an actual brother even join them. Uh-huh.

But, yeah, so their leader was Makuklu. And then there's Rost. Scar, pretty boy, kinky tail, and Mr. T. And I just- And I just want to show you Mr. T. Oh, yeah, that does look like Mr. T. Yeah. His hair looks just like him.

That's amazing. Yeah, he's got like the Mohawk. But yeah, apparently it's like the most famous group of lions ever, and I just thought that's interesting. Yeah, I'd been to Kruger, and I saw Lions and Kruger. Oh, yeah? I think I only saw lionesses and cubs. Mr. T, it said, was killed by rival lions in 2012.

Once they kind of like had their reign of the land. Yeah. Cool. Well, that's it for the story. I hope you guys have liked it. We're going to do a couple more categories today and get to some more listener questions too. But our first category we're going to do today is our cage match category. So, Mike, do you want to take the reins for that?

I'd love to, Wes. Okay. So, as always, the cage match is a hypothetical situation that we never, ever want to recreate in reality, where we pit the animal of the show of this episode, as being the lion, in a situation, a fight, a cage match against the other animals that we've talked about so far on the podcast. So stretching back all into our different episodes of the different animals. And, you know, where they would rank overall compared to. say the tiger.

Would tigers usually be Amur Tigers of this? I would probably give I would give the Amor Tiger the slight edge. Over a male line. Just because it's a little bit bigger. I feel like male lions is like our hardest one to place. It's going to be pretty hard. I feel like it could beat pretty much

everything but then like a lot of them would probably beat it. You know what I mean? The reason I would give it to the tiger is a bit bigger and then also a tiger we mentioned this in the last episode. A tiger is 100% responsible for its own survival.

So a tiger is constantly hunting, constantly killing, and constantly trying to survive, whereas a lion, especially a male lion, can kind of depend on its pride to keep it alive. Oh, yeah. And so I just and this is a bit anthropomorphic, but I feel like a tiger

is just a little bit more honed in on its skills. And so I'm giving it to the tiger. Mike, where do you think a lion bite pressure fits in with the cats. It's pretty high. Second place. Third.

What? Behind. So, Jaguars one. Jaguar is like the fifth most of any animal. Yeah. It's like super strong. So it's probably Jaguar, Tiger, Lion. And lions actually significantly less than Tigers.

Really? Yeah. Lions is like 600 PSI and Tigers is like over a thousand. For me, I would say the lion could probably edge out our brown bear and our black bears. The polar, I would, I don't know, because sometimes brown bears be polar bears too. This is getting hard. If it's a big coastal grizzly bear, if we're doing our biggest animal, like our biggest male grizzly versus our biggest male lion, yeah, I'd pick the grizzly. But like a Montana grizzly, I'd probably take the lion.

I'd pick the lion. Yeah, an interior grizzly. Um, so the bears that's going to be, a good fight. The tiger I'm giving it to the tiger. The mountain lion it's going to beat for sure. The chimpanzee it's going to beat for sure. The alligator it's going to beat. The python I'd give it to the lion. It's going to kill the wolf. Yeah, I mean, the lions, I'm glad we have the lion in here finally because I feel like we were missing it. It's going to kill the moose. It's going to kill the monitor lizard. It's up there. The lion's up there. Yeah. But we're going to place it for the record. I think we're placing it fourth of land animals, right? After the tiger, grizzly, and polar.

Yeah. Yeah. That's where we're putting it. Cool. Yeah. I agree with that. Okay. We're all in agreement.

Okay. Let's go into some conservation stuff about lions, and then we'll do a few listener questions. So a really interesting thing I read that's really sad is since the time Lion King came out, and this has nothing to do with Lion King coming out. It's just a metric of time. But since Lion King came out, we've lost half of our lions. They've decreased by almost half in those last 20-something years. They've lost 94% of their historic range.

And they really are in a lot of trouble, actually. Lions are classified vulnerable, but there's a lot of different things that are problems for them. One big problem is that bushmeat has become much more popular in Africa. so a lot of their prey is being wiped out, and they're having a harder time finding prey. They're also killed in retaliation because they kill a lot of cattle. They are often poisoned.

People poison cattle carcasses, and then the lions come to feed on them, and they die. And then they're also losing a lot of habitat and it's becoming fragmented. So it's getting really hard for lions. Another big thing is trophy hunting. Trophy hunts are pretty well managed as far as the number of lions they're allowing to be killed,

but the problem is they're killing the healthiest biggest males because that's what a trophy hunter wants to kill is its best trophy did you think it was like pretty cool and that dentist killed that one lying at the national park was not into that at all you didn't think it was kind of cool no yeah no me neither yeah no i hate i i don't understand i don't understand the appeal especially yeah like the lion wasn't even like hiding or anything it's like so what? It's not cool that you did that. Yeah. Yeah, but the trophy hunting thing, the big issue with it, even more so than the ethics of it, is just that they're taking out the breeders. They're taking out the ones with the best genetics. And that allows a lot of diseases to come in.

It allows for lions that wouldn't typically be mating to be doing the mating, and they're passing on less powerful genes. Why is trophy hunting allowed at all? It just seems so... A lot of that money, they say, you know, goes back. into conservation, which there's some arguments for that. But there have been some reports where they actually look at where the money goes and it doesn't go to where you hope it would go. It's just there's a lot of money behind it. And there's a lot of power and political power behind it too.

That's really sad. Yeah, I'm not a fan of trophy hunting, but it is a very nuanced issue. But I don't really care for it. Poaching, I don't care for it at all. I should say that. Poaching is also a problem for them. A lot of their parts are sold to the Chinese. medicine trade, which is a big issue. So it's kind of death by a thousand cuts. This was a really

interesting statistic that I read. For every lion in the wild, there are 14 African elephants, there's 15 western lowland gorillas, and there's more rhinos than lions too. So I think we think of those animals of elephants and gorillas and rhinos being on the verge of extinction, and we don't realize there's more of them than there are lions. So we're running out of lions. That's really surprising to me. Yeah, I would never have guessed that. There used to be, I mean, not too long ago, there's hundreds of thousands of lions in Africa, and now there's, I think, somewhere around 20,000 remaining. So.

Come on. Yeah. So they are in some trouble around here. We need to stop. And, you know, if you really want to go shoot a lion, just take a camera and go on a safari and get some cool photos and do that instead, you know? Yeah. Shoot them.

With a camera. Yeah. They call it that, right? Yeah, yeah. Get some good shots. Photo shoot. Yeah. Okay, so that's a bit about

Or maybe use a paintball gun How about that? No, we're not doing that either. Okay, so we're going to do some listener questions And then we're going to wrap this up We have a couple more Patreon ones, right? Yeah, okay, so Patreon questions This one's a little long, so I'm just going to kind of shorten it myself

But basically he's asking about using Bluetooth While hiking in Bear Country and just like playing music and it's from Jackson Quinn, our Patreon. Okay. So he's asking if that's a good idea to have music playing. It is. Yeah, I think any noise you can make when you're hiking in bear country is great. It's going to scare off bears and they're going to hear you coming and you're not going to be surprising them.

That's the main thing is you don't want to surprise a bear when you're hiking in bear country. It is a little annoying for people sometimes. I don't like it when I'm hiking and someone's playing music. So I think you've got to be cognizant of the other people that you're going to be cognizant of the other people that you're around and if I was hiking around a lot of other people I wouldn't do it because then you're just naturally going to be making enough noise anyway that you're not going to surprise a bear but if you're by yourself it's a it's a good tactic it can help okay was that yeah so the other part was that um so it's kind of a funny story tells

about how he accidentally sprayed his leg with bear spray hiking and you like splashed water on it but it's still like burnt for a few hours yeah so just the best way to like get bear spray off if you do get sprayed by it. I think milk actually works pretty well. Oh, really? Yeah. Hot ones, that's what they always suggest. Yeah, and it's like when you see people getting pepper sprayed by police and stuff,

a lot of times they pour milk on it. I'm pretty sure it works with bear spray as well. Okay. And then from Jackson Quinn. Oh, wait, sorry. That last one was from Derek. I got confused with Mike's text. So this one's from Jackson.

Thanks for the question, Derek. Yeah, Derek. That was my fault. No, you're good. So this is from Jackson. What would your suggestions be for students entering college looking forward to making real environmental change? I mean, I think there's a lot of different routes you can go. You could get into environmental law, which is honestly one of the best ways to probably make change.

If you're interested in doing wildlife, then... And that's where you represent animals in court. It's kind of. I mean, you're not actually representing animals, but you're representing their interests. There's a lot of different ways you can do it. You can be a conservation biologist and you can come up with new conservation rules and regulations.

You can be an educator and you can teach people about these different things. There's really a lot of different routes you could go. Honestly, if it were me, if I wasn't wanting to work in the field and I just wanted to make a difference, I would say environmental law is probably the best way to do that or to get into politics. I would suggest dropping out

And then just starting your own company, making a billion dollars, and then just like buying a ton of land just for animals. Yeah, just do that. That sounds a lot easier than... Drop out and get a billion dollars. There you go. Hope that answers your question, Jackson. Okay. All right.

And then from the podcast listener questions. On the Instagram. Yeah. From Rat Burns. Favorite deep sea creature. Ooh, I like English. fish. What ones are those? They're the ones that have the little, they have like a little light that dangles in front of them. Oh yeah. And they grab other fish when they come too close. Yeah.

I like the Greenland sharks. Okay. They are like 500 years old. 400. Yeah. And just kind of like mossy and big. Yeah. And huge. I like a giant squid. Cool. Yeah, that's a good run. You love those squids and octopuses. I don't know what that means just yet, but. There's like some weird Japanese. Japanese, like, sex, octopus stuff. Yeah, tentical stuff. Yeah. That's not the reason. Okay.

I hope. I shouldn't say weird. I shouldn't shame that, like, that's your thing. Modern day walkabout. Wes, what's your thoughts on eco-tourism? Eco-tourism can be done well. There's places that do it really well, and people then are inspired because they see the animal in real life, and they have this really, honestly, life-changing experience.

but then there's places that do really poorly and they're contributing to habitat destruction or habituating animals. So I think there's a lot of good ecotourism out there, but you really need to do your research and make sure if you're doing it that you are going with the right people. Okay. Yeah. Okay, this one I'm going to ask you and then come back to because I think I maybe should have prepped you a little.

Okay. What animal would be the scariest as a kaiju? So pretty much just like if you have like a, a 100 or 200 foot size animal. Which one would be scariest? But we'll come back. Okay. So who was that from?

That's from Fatty Patty. Okay. So in Good Company jewelry asks, what happens in the wild when a lion is dying of old age? Does it just lie down and give up? It's really rare that animals in the wild senes, which means die of old age. There's not that many animals in the wild that that happens.

too. They usually are either killed by like another lion that's going to come in and take over their pride or they die from some injury that's caused by an animal that they bring down. So it's not, it's really, really rare. What was the rest of the? Like do they just lie down? Yeah. I mean, if one did die of old age, it would just lie down and die. But it's, it hardly ever happens. It's usually a violent death for animals. All right. So we're going to go back to fatty patty. Okay. So what animal would be the scariest as a kaiju which is just like a giant animal pretty much yeah like god's so i'm gonna start and i'm going praying mantis okay i think praying mantis just look crazy and scary if it's like big you know yeah like the only reason they're not scary is how small they are yeah but like if it was huge

i think that'd be really scary i was thinking kind of along the same lines but a millipede yeah i was gonna say senatete tons of different weird little legs segments greasy looking body Yeah, I was going to say like a centipede or a spider, one of those two for me. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then what do tigers dream of when they take a little tiger snooze? And this is from Sky is the high.

That's a good question. Who knows? We can't know. Probably hunting. I learned from your girlfriend, Jesse, the animals like have real dreams. Yeah, because Bryce, like, like, barks and like chases stuff. Yeah, Bryce will chase stuff in her dreams.

It's really cute. But that's what makes me think tigers probably dream of hunting and chasing and killing things. And frosted flakes. And frosted there. Yeah. Great. Thanks for sending in questions, guys. If we didn't get to your question, we do keep some of the old ones for later episodes.

So we'll try and get to them. But we can't get to all of them. So just keep looking for that on our stories and keep asking them. And hopefully one of these days we'll get to your question. Sometimes they're kind of similar to. to questions we've already answered. And like, we read them all and we appreciate all of them. So thank you.

Thank you. Cool. Well, that's all I've got. Do you guys have anything else you want to add to our first lion episode? We're going to have more lion episodes. But this is our first one. It's a doozy. Should we?

Should we roar? That's pretty weak. Thanks, guys. We appreciate you all so much. Don't forget to give us a review and a rating if you listen on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for our Patreon. If you're interested in some more content, we just recorded the darkest episode we've recorded so far that Jeff brought to us about different way that people have been executed throughout history with animals. Yeah, so there's plenty of more content on the Patreon and we got a lot of more episodes coming for you guys.

So thanks so much again and we'll talk to you later. Yeah, please sign up for Patreon because with my episode I just did, I think we're going to lose a few people. We're probably going to lose half of our people. Yeah. All right. Thanks, guys. We'll see it. Bye.

Bye.