Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Monitor Lizard Attack - The Monitor Murder Mystery

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

A man named Ron and way too many monitor lizards. Wes takes us through one of the more bizarre and mysterious animal attacks the show has discussed thus far. Jeff gets excited talking about lizard genitalia, and Mike ponders the possibility of the reptilians being responsible. ~~ 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 everybody, welcome back to Tooth and Claw. Today we're talking about monitor lizards, and Wes actually has probably my favorite story that we've shared so far. It's a little bit of a murder mystery. Before we get to the episode, though, I just want to say thanks again to all of our listeners. You guys have been doing an amazing job reviewing our podcast on Apple Podcast, sharing it with your friends and family. We see it all, and we appreciate all of it, and just wanted to say thanks again.

Also, another really quick plug for our Patreon. There are a couple of hours of content, of bonus content there for anyone that signs up for our grizzly and tiger tier of the Patreon subscription model. So if you're interested in a little more or just want to help us grow and get bigger and better, that's an option for you. So, yeah, you can find that at www.com.com forward slash tooth and claw podcast. Thanks for everyone that's already done that. And without any further ado, let's get on to the episode. Thanks again for listening. Okay, it is time for another episode.

That's up, guys. Good to see you again. Jeff, I'm still laughing at your sound check. Oh, yeah? Why? When Jeff sound checks, he does, what do you say? I said, palm sweaty, mom spaghetti. Which is perfect. It's a perfect way to sound check. So, on New Year's, our landlord brought us some sparkling cider to our place, and I get home and like there's nothing there.

But then like my landlord texts me is like, hey, I dropped off some sparkling cider. And I'm like looking everywhere. And Mike had already left to see his family for New Year's. So I text him, I'm like, hey Mike, have you seen the sparkling cider that Peter dropped off? And he's like, yes, I took it. I didn't think you would catch me. I mean, I got to admit, when I get caught. I'm an honest, if nothing else, I'm honest.

Yeah, that would have been a hard one to lie away, though, too. Like, it's just you, too, the way are you supposed to say? Yeah. And then, Wes, you like sparkling cider a lot. Not really. Do you like, like, the more standard flavors, though, or do you like if it's kind of a weird flavor? I'm going to want a weird flavor, probably. So Mike was like, don't worry about it.

It's a really weird flavor. And I was like. That's the best kind. No, it was vanilla raspberry. Barry or something. The original is by far, it's the best. There's a reason why... You're just talking about like Martinelli's. Yeah, Martinellys. I'm not a big fan. It's too fizzy. I just don't really like it. It was a small fight. It hurts your tummy. It doesn't hurt my tummy. I just don't really... I just, well, I guess it hurts my tummy.

Yeah. All right. Well, is there any other six-month-old dirty laundry you want to airs the public? Jeff's just thinking of fights he can bring back up to give you guys... I'm sorry. Let me, I'll just officially for the record, I apologize, Jeff. Oh, yeah. It was, it really wasn't a big deal. I just thought it was funny. Wes, you've been tired from your new job, right? I have been. Yeah, I've been working like six to six doing Golden Eagle surveys for Hawkwatch.

So pretty much just like trying to find Golden Eagle nests and see if they're active or not. And then this spring we're going to go in and put transmitters on them. So that doesn't sound like hogwash. That sounds like. Hawkwatch. I never really thought that they sound just like hogwash, but they do. I guess I just haven't heard the phrase hogwash in a long time. But you've seen some birds? Yeah, I've seen a few.

They said it's been kind of a light year this year so far. So you go to the nest to see if they're active? Yeah, just like check out old nests to see if the birds are using them or not. I don't know. Right now it's like I really enjoy it, but to the average person it might seem a little boring because I'm just driving out in the desert, like looking at Nests from hundreds of meters away. Yeah, I couldn't do that. I have to be on a computer in like a cubicle.

Yeah, exactly. Wait, that's Mike. Ah, come on, guys. Anyway, we're back. We have a new story for you guys. Let's hear it. Okay, we'll get right into the story. You know what?

Really quick, though. Oh, yeah. Me and Jeff on Sunday, on Jeff's birthday. Happy birthday. Oh, yeah, it was my birthday. We saw a wonderful movie. called Minari, which everyone should go see. I loved it.

Yeah. I really, really loved it. It's a beautiful movie. It's just really subdued, but really beautiful and lovely. How do you feel about it winning the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film? I don't think it should be a foreign film. I don't think it should be a foreign film. Yeah, I don't love that.

But it is like half in Korean. Mostly in Korean. It's like 90% in God. Oh, I'd say like 60. Okay, you're probably more. Yeah, you're right. Anyway, it's a great movie. Mike, we missed you.

I apologize. Yeah, it was more family stuff. Two apologies. No, Mark Mellie is involved. Yeah, that's not a new record for Mike. Anyway, I wanted to bring that up because it really was a great movie. You guys should go see it. Today, we're going to talk about a species of animal that isn't one that typically would make a podcast like ours.

It wouldn't be like on the short list. We're going to talk about monitor lizards. Now, I should retract that a little bit because if you're including Komoto Dragons, in that list, then you have a number of attacks to go to and look at. We're actually going to do an episode that's dedicated to Komodo Dragons, which are the biggest monitor lizard and the biggest lizard in the world. But we're going to subtract them from today's conversation. So we're not including Komodo dragons.

So Komodo dragons are a type of monitor lizard? They are. They're in the same genus, but they are the biggest one, and they are big enough to where they have killed some people. We're going to talk about Nile monitor lizards, which are actually the biggest lizard in Africa. They grow to be about seven feet long, but that's including their tail. So, I mean, those seven foot long ones only weigh like 20 pounds. So they're not like a huge animal.

But we're going to talk about a guy who ended up getting on the wrong end of some monitor lizards. It's an interesting story. When we started the podcast, there was a number of attack stories that have always been kind of floating around in my head that I always think of. This was one of them. And it was because I saw this show on Animal Planet called Fatal Attractions. And it was kind of a hokey show. Is it like a dating show? No, it's not.

There's a movie called Fatal Attraction. Yeah, yeah. It's like the classic Sharon Stone. Pretty steamy. Yeah. Yeah. Where she like. She flashes.

Yeah. Oh yeah. That's basic instinct. That's basic instinct. What's fatal attraction? Fatal Attraction is Glenn Close. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. I was wrong. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Glenn Close and Michael Douglas. Douglas. Douglas. They're both like Femphital.

Both with Michael Douglas. They aren't in this story, right? No, Sharon. The movie doesn't... Funny you should say that. Sharon Stone's husband got attacked by a Komodo Dragon. Really? And we're going to talk about that during our Komodo a Dragon episode.

We're not going to get into any more details on that. But this show was on Animal Planet. Again, it was kind of a hokey show, but they told some good stories on it. I lifted a lot of this information from that show. I think it's important to note that. just so people know where we're getting some of our information from. Also some news articles, a few other things. Okay, one thing I didn't love about the show was they did portray reptile keepers as kind

of like weirdos. Like they're all just like strange people. And I don't like I know a lot of people that keep reptiles and that's definitely not true. I think people that keep reptiles can be really passionate about it, but they're not necessarily like outcasts and strange people just because they love reptiles. but this dude kind of was. That reptile expo we go to in Salt Lake, it's like, it's like hit and miss if it's a person like that.

I would say for like pets, yeah, you're going to have a higher percentage of reptile people that are like a little bit strange than like people that collect dogs or something. But collect dogs. That's the other thing is it's like a dog is more of like a companion. And a reptile, it's almost more of like a stamp collection. collection, yeah. But I totally get it because growing up, I always just wanted reptiles. Like, that's what I wanted. Because they're cool. They're cool. They're beautiful. I like watching them eat. Like I was fascinated by them. And I think that's what a lot of these people are like to. They're not

necessarily looking for something to like cuddle with as much as they're like really interested in reptiles. So Ron Huff is our guy. He was really into reptiles, specifically monitor lizards. So in 2002, he's 42 years old. He lived just this quiet, unassuming life in Newark, Delaware, and he worked at a car dealership. He's an ex-soldier, and he spent a lot of his time in the military working with military intelligence. And he had, like, a really military routine. He would work out religiously. He maintained the same hours every day. He maintained a really strict diet. He was very, like, regimented and militaristic in his life. He was also a bit of a recluse. When he wasn't at work, he wasn't really socializing with anyone. He was always alone in his studio apartment. He rarely talked to anyone. He didn't even have a phone

in his apartment. And again, this is 2002. So it's like, you know, I don't think necessarily like everyone has a cell phone at that point, but he didn't even have like a landline. He has no outreach to the outside world. And his co-workers like describe him as being friendly and he would like smile and laugh and stuff. But he also like wasn't the person that initiates a conversation. I think we all know plenty of those people. I think I know where this story is he a lizard person? I get what you're saying. I can't lose it.

Is he like a reptilian lizard person? Is that what this? No, no. But he's a lizard person in that he really likes lizards. Yeah, I got mixed up a little. Me too. Okay, so he did, he has this hidden obsession. He's completely enthralled and obsessed with lizards, specifically monitor lizards.

At this point in 2002, he's turned his entire studio apartment into, essentially a terrarium. These lizards don't have cages. They don't have any other place they live. They just have free roam of his apartment. And I read a bunch of different articles. Some of them said he had six. Some of them said seven.

Most of them said seven. So we're just going to assume he had seven large monitor lizards sharing space with them in a studio apartment. What? They're a challenging lizard to keep in captivity. There's people that have them. They start out real small and cute. And then as I mentioned, they can grow to be like seven feet long. They are the largest lizard from Africa.

So a little bit about Nile monitors. They live throughout sub-Saharan Africa and then along the Nile River Delta. They're mostly a solitary lizard, but there are reports of them gathering in groups around large food sources. They eat everything from little mollusks and insects to small mammals. They have really thick, dry skin that's covered with bead-like scales. So it's really hard to get through their skin. so they really don't have many natural predators either.

And then they have really sharp claws, and they use those claws for digging, climbing, and also tearing into prey. One interesting thing I read is that they'll bite on to prey, and then they use their claws and their hands to pretty much pull at it and break its back. So they're really good at killing and dispatching things. That's like a really good wrestling move in WWE.

Sometimes you'll see it's not quite like that. They bite things and then use their claws to break their back. Oh, okay. Yeah. Gotta start watching wrestling. More like mortal combat maybe, I guess. Something that I also thought was really cool, a fact I read about monitor lizards is sometimes they will team up.

And this is when they're robbing crocodile nests. And one of them will, like, distract the crocodile, and then the other one, like, rips in and eats all the eggs real quick. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. When they're threatened, they arch their backs, they inflate their bodies, and they, like, go to a full stretch. They're pushing all the way off their ground.

And then they start hissing and they whip their tail at you. So it's a pretty like intimidating threat display. Can they do any damage with their tail? They can. Yeah. To us, it's not going to be like anything that's going to break a bone or anything, but it really hurts. Yeah.

And then if like their last resort, they'll actually bite you. And then they can also emit like a musk from their cloaca, which is like really, it just smells terrible. It's like when you pick up a garter snake. Is there any venom? I guess it wouldn't be venom, but like bacteria when they bite you. you. We're going to talk about that. We're going to get into that. Okay, so they have long forked tongues like snakes, and that gives the kemosensory kind of cues to them as they navigate the world,

so they can pick up on prey, kind of like we talked about with pythons. That's kind of how they navigate the world, but they also have really good eyesight and stuff. Oh, so they're just doubling up on like getting around. Yeah, they're pretty good at what they do. They're like good little predators. So Ron, he would order these lizards through mail order, and then you'd have him shipped to his grandma's house. And he did that to avoid problems with his apartment because they really didn't know that he had seven huge monitor lizards living in his apartment. He'd also like pull the blinds whenever he came home. He made sure no one could see him. And he let very few people into his life. His one neighbor he led in and we're going to talk a

little bit about his neighbor. So rather than keep him in cages again, they just had like had free roam. And he also grew hissing cockroaches at home. He like bred hissing. cockroaches because he would feed those to the monitor. And then he also would just like throw chunks of chicken on the floor and they would eat the chicken off the floor. Come on, Ron. Yes, you got to imagine this dude's apartment is gnarly. Reptile smell.

There's a certain reptile smell that's very different from any other animal smell. And it's hard to manage that. And if they're just like taking dumps on the floor and doing their thing wherever and eating chicken and probably like barfing every once in a while and stuff, his his apartment it must have been a nightmare. Even if he's like some military dude and keeping it as clean as possible, I guarantee you it smelled in there.

Can you like imagine a midlife crisis or something where you already own six monitor lizards and you're just like, you know what would probably make me happier is if I got seven monitor lizards. Yeah, honestly I'm like two months in this pandemic away from that, to be honest. Like I'm not far from that at all.

It sounds cool. Like I would want to. to visit it, but I wouldn't want to live there. Well, he probably has one of those coffee house punch cards. We're on like your 10th monitor lizard. They're like, you get the next one. Free. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet.

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really and he's just invested everything into these lizards he loves these lizards really loves them like the way mike loves alligators love loves yeah no i get it it's tough anyway he also had a cat the cat had been attacked multiple times by these monitors that's cruel it's a terrible life for this cat get rid of the cat at least just imagine being that cat and trying like everything's cool and then one day like it's like oh okay there's a lizard here now and then suddenly it's like, oh, there's seven of us. All right. Another important note is his neighbor's name was Jeff Will Donger,

which I thought was an interesting name. That is really important to know. So on a Friday afternoon in January 2002, Ron goes to work at the car dealership, and he shows some of the other employees this bite that he has on his hand. And one of his lizards had bid him while he was feeding it, and he could separate part of the flesh from his hand. It was all cleaned and stuff, but he showed him as like a pretty gnarly bite.

And they were pretty shocked to see his wound and then also shocked to learn. That he's like living with these huge lizards. Now, the thing they didn't realize is that this was actually the last time they would ever see Ron. The following Monday morning, Ron doesn't show up to work. So the next day they send someone to his apartment to check on him and he doesn't come to the door. They can hear the TV and everything, but he's not coming to the door. So after three days of no one seeing him or knowing where he went, Jeff Hildonger comes home with his room. mate, and they smell something weird in their apartment, and they're trying to figure out what it is.

So they traced the smell to their bathroom, and this apartment had pipes that ran up in between apartments, and so their bathroom was essentially connected to Ron's apartment through the pipes, and that's where the smell is coming from. They realize something's wrong, and they initially think it's probably a broken sewer pipe, because it's like a really strong, bad smell. So Ron, you know, he had this military discipline. He hardly ever left home. He didn't really have anyone to travel to see.

There's really no reason for him to be gone to just disappear for this number of days. Or for anyone really to check up on it. Right. So his work, they like realize something's probably wrong and they call the police. And when the police figure out kind of his backstory, they're like, oh, yeah, this dude's probably dead. Just because it's usually like the person either left and didn't tell anyone or they're dead. You know, that's a pretty common kind of call for police where someone's like missing and they go to their apartment. And it's not that common, but it's not uncommon.

for them to find someone that has died in their house. But this was really one, the cops were like, we couldn't prepare ourselves for what we found. When Ron didn't answer, the officers gained entry to his apartment, and they saw the huge monitor lizards everywhere, and they saw them covered in blood, and then they saw,

they assumed they were on a huge murder scene because it was like really, really grisly. Yeah. So Ron slumped against the wall. More than half of his face has been completely eaten off. His hands have been eaten off. his stomach is open and a lot of his internal organs are scattered all over. And it's been like three days?

Three days. Yeah. Well, it's been five days since anyone's seen him. It's been three days since he didn't show up for work. So it's probably been like four or five days. That had to have been the last thing the police would expect to see when they open the doors. Yeah. They're probably expecting to see him with like his face on his table or like in his bathtub or something.

Yeah. You know, but it's him being completely ripped apart by seven big monitor lizards. So the police, you know, they don't have training for this sort of thing. On the show, one of the policemen was like, we're not trained for lizards. We don't know if they're venomous. They don't, you know, these are just people that don't know much about wildlife. And so they're taking a long time to kind of figure out how to deal with these lizards. And I think their minds were so focused on that that they didn't secure the scene or anything.

And so they just leave the door wide open. And Jeff, his neighbor, wanders by, wondering what the cops are doing. And he looks into the apartment and he sees everything. So he says you could see Ron's molars where his ear should be because his face was completely chewed off. And you don't really think about that, but your teeth go up that high. And so he just said you could see his teeth going all the way up by like where his is supposed to be.

And then there's like black dried blood all over Ron's body and then just splattered all over the walls and all over the floor and stuff. So he said that he couldn't shake this image of Ron. And so he went home and immediately sketched it. I have that sketch. No way. And we are definitely going to share it at some point. Maybe put up a content warning.

Because that's pretty... It looks like it's weirdly good and then weirdly bad all at the same time. But then it's got these crazy details in it, too. The picture of the bobcat on the wall. It's like the best part of it Yeah It's like a beavis and butt head Yeah exactly

That's exactly what I thought It looks like a beavis and butthead drawing And then it like has this crossover's door Well I mean it has so much detail That you can tell that Jeff He took such a vivid snapshot in his brain Because it was such a visceral and violent thing That he saw probably just for a split second

Yeah I mean That's what he said like he just glanced in And he just couldn't get it out of his head Couldn't stop thinking about it so he had to draw it. Anyway, his body had been fed on. It had decomposed to a large degree too. So by the time the police arrived,

it was bad enough that the medical examiners couldn't establish cause of death. But detectives tried to put everything together. Did they have any idea what it could have been? Cops are just like, oh, man, that reminds me of this news article I saw recently where it was like cops trying to determine cause of death for a woman that they ran over or something.

And it was like, uh, anyway, I can just see a cork board with red strings just all attached to different pictures of lizards. It's like, okay, what have we got? Yeah. The thing is, is that these lizards aren't big enough to where one bites you and it debilitates you and then like they can continue biting you. They're small enough to where that wouldn't really happen. So it's kind of tricky to like suss out what might have happened. And we're going to talk about the venom thing in a second. but it's not cut and dry.

It's not like you're living with a tiger or something. They're pretty small. They're only 20 pounds. They're long, but you would have to get bit a lot by them to die from it. And he's like, everyone says this dude was ripped because he just worked out every day. So it doesn't really make sense that he would like have to fight off the lizards,

you know, and then they overwhelmed him. That just doesn't really add up. One popular theory is that he got a bad infection from one of the bites and succumb to it over time. And because he's like such a loner and not really someone that reaches out to people, he was just trying to fight it and fight it and fight it. And then he finally like passed out.

And then the lizards went and ate him. I kind of have a hard time with that one just because I feel like at some point you'd go to the hospital before you just pass out unconscious. But it does happen. I mean, I've been sick to where I didn't feel like I needed to go to the hospital. And then if I like stand up, I feel real lightheaded. and like I get close to passing out. Yeah. Maybe if I had seven monitor lizards, they would eat me if I passed out.

Yeah. So I don't know. I think a bite from your monitor lizard's going to wake you up. That's a good point. I think you would have to like really full on go unconscious, not just get woozy and pass out for a minute. So I don't know. I don't rule it out. I think it's possible.

And the thing that does add up is he had just been bitten like days before. Yeah. And his house was super disgusting probably. So like it's probably a breeding. ground for bacteria. Yeah. But their mouth bacteria is not strong enough? Yeah, so it's probably time to talk about that.

For a long time, scientists thought that Komodo dragons, especially, but other lizards, monitor lizards, had a certain bacteria in their mouth that when they bite something, they just wait for it to die slowly. That's mostly a Komoto dragon thing, but they assume that some of the other monitors probably had that too. That's not so much the case. Now they think that they actually might have a really mild form. of venom, which I read this whole long article on this that was like a research paper.

Jury's still out on that. They have the proper anatomy to have venom, but they don't distribute it the way that a snake would where there's like fangs that inject it. No one's opened up a dead monitor lizard and found venom. I see that's, I was wondering that too. They have the storage for it and stuff, but what they think is that it exists, but they produce it constantly. And so they can find these little proteins and stuff, but it's not like a snake where they have like these sacks where it just sits and they like inject it. It's more like they constantly just have it. And they don't, they're pretty sure now. I say they, I mean monitor biologists or monitor, I don't know, physiologists or whatever you call it.

Yeah, lizard people. Reptilians. Exactly. They think that it's there. They don't really think though that that's something that would be potent enough to like take down a human. Now when you have sex, And they bite you a bunch. Who knows? Another theory could be that he just fell or tripped and one bit him and then it started this whole thing and they started all biting him. I don't know. That seems pretty far-fetched too.

There's like no signs of suicide. That was another theory. He could have committed suicide somehow and then he just got so messed up that they couldn't find the marks. But there wasn't like a bullet, you know, anything that typically would suggest suicide. Exactly. They did eat a lot of his internal organs. But then they would have died. Yeah, I don't know.

Usually these lizards are pretty, like animals are pretty good with that kind of stuff. So my theory is that he passed out from something and they ate him. I don't think that they like started biting him and he fell and then they swarmed him. I think that something made him pass out and they ate him. The other thing that was interesting to me is Jeff, the guy that drew the drawing, said that they like, there's like splattered blood. And that to me, I'm no crime scene. investigator or anything. But from like my limited knowledge,

it seems like usually when you have spray like that, it means that something's still alive or that his heart hasn't stopped beating yet. But once the heart stops beating, you don't necessarily get that much spray. And so there's a good chance they started eating him while his heart was still beating. It seems like they would rip off chunks of him, right?

Yeah. If they could do that and they were covered in blood, that's going to splatter some blood around. Yeah. I think there's a difference between like the lizards. This is really grim, but like the lizards like dragging that stuff around his apartment or like getting on the wall as opposed to, or you know, they could have like shook their head, I guess. Yeah, that wrestling movie told us they do. Yeah.

That probably gets blood everywhere. It probably does. But to me it sounded almost like it had arterial spray on the wall. Okay. It's hard to say. There really isn't that much information out there. I think it's, you know, classified or whatever. I don't know what they call that, but not classified.

Top secret. It's not public record. But there's like, it's, you need to get Biden to be classified. Yeah, this is one of those, like, I know this is stupid. This is like one of those things that if I die and I see God that I want to ask. Like, how did Ron Huff die? You know, did he die first and did they eat him or did they lead to him dying? I know that's stupid.

I know there's like a billion other questions you should ask. This is probably a top 10 question for me. I also want to know what happened to the outlaw of pass. Who? The avalanche. Yeah, we'll talk about that some other time. That's a whole podcast. I think it's Yetis.

Okay. So there's a lot of different theories. No one really knows what happened. What we do know is for sure they ate him. And some of these lizards, they end up euthanizing. Some went to zoos. I don't. They probably, there was like one big one that had blood all over it when the cops went in.

like it had just been feeding on him. And I'm pretty sure they put that one down. One of the coworkers in the show was like, I think Ron is probably happy he went out the way he did and he sacrificed himself for his animals. And I'm just like, no. It's not true. It's silver line.

Like Ron sacrificed his money. I'm sure he's happy to give his money to his animals. I don't think he wanted to get eaten by his honder lizards. So that's the story. I have a few more kind of interesting facts about monitor lizards, specifically Nile monitors. So they mate promiscuously, which is interesting. A lot of animals don't do that.

It's just like they mate to mate, and then they're done. They're male gonads enlarge from June to September, and that's when the mating happens. So it's kind of like this free-for-all, things are swollen, they're ready to go, and then they start to like go down, and then they have a few months where there's no mating. Summer happens again. How swollen are we talking? What percentage of size did they increase?

I'm not. I think it's substantial, though. I'm glad we don't do that. They also, they have what's called a hemipenus, and that's like internal, and then when they made it comes out. Jeff knows all that. Yeah, I know that it is. An interesting thing about monitor penises is in India recently, there's this scam where people

were killing tons of monitor lizards, like importing thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of them, drying their penises and selling them as they said. said it was this special plant that was like a root. And their penises looked like two hands clasped together. So they said it was like a piece plant. And they told people it was like magical and it had all these mysterious powers. Really, it was a dried monitor lizard penis. And they've cracked down on this trade.

I think that puts monitor lizard penises in my top three most interesting penis. Really? Yeah. Ducks. Ducks. Ducks. Ducks are number one. Okay.

Uh-huh. monitor and let's not push them one really interesting thing about monitors this specifically is something that has happened with comodo dragons but it does happen with other monitors too is this thing called parthenogenesis which is asexual reproduction so they it's the word actually breaks down to like virgin birth or virgin genesis and they can they're one of the few animals like definitely one of a few vertebrates that can actually have babies without having sex. And that's not the female storing sperm. Like there's animals that can store it for later.

She can literally just double her chromosome and like have male babies. She can't have females. Yeah. Immaculate conception for those. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So they have a different chromosome combination, but any of them that come out a certain way will be born and they're born male.

It's rare. It doesn't happen that. often, but they can't do it. One more thing, they're one of the most exploited reptiles in Africa, Nile monitors. People capture them for food. They use them for their skins because they make like a good leather. And then apparently, sometimes they're hunted down for the fat in their reproductive organs, which is locally believed by some to be a cure for earaches and a protection from lightning. So they like rub this fat all over themselves. I wanted to talk about this really quickly because in a lot of our stories when we talk about like what's happening to wildlife, we're going to talk about

traditional medicine because it's a huge thing. It's like something that people are using animals for. We've talked about it a decent amount already. I just want to know, I think we all agree. I'm for cultures preserving their traditions. I think it's great when an ancient culture can preserve this tradition that they've been doing for a long time. But sometimes the demand is just way too high. Now going on that whole thread, you know, that's like animal exploitation. I think it's easy for us to like point fingers at some of these cultures that do these kind of things that don't add up with animals when like we do way worse stuff in the u.s you know just our whole animal facilities and like the way we get our meat and everything it's terrible and like we're as far as like habitat destruction

everything we're guilty of so much more than most of these cultures so anyway okay so we talked about that we talked about venom oh yeah one more cool thing i wanted to talk about with nile monitors There's females when they lay eggs, they do this really cool thing sometimes where they wait until a termite mound is wet enough to where they can dig into it. And they go in and they dig into a termite mound. They lay their eggs inside. And then they leave and the termites will repair that hole. And so their eggs are like sealed inside of a termite mound, which is like a really safe place to lay your eggs. And then when the little baby monitor lizard is hatched, they just either wait until it rains again and they claw their way out or mom comes back and like digs them back out.

So it's pretty cool. It's like a really cool. Yeah, it's a really interesting way to protect your eggs. Okay, so that's pretty much it for Nile Monitor Lizards. Again, this wasn't an animal that typically would, you know, we would include, but I really thought that's a fascinating story. That's a great murder mystery. Yeah, yeah.

So if anyone knows anything more about Ron Huff or if there's ever been any subsequent medical investigations, you can really clear up a big weight on my shoulders because I really want to know what happened to. Okay. So we are going to launch into our categories. Let's do our favorite monitor lizard. No, sorry, we're just going to do our favorite lizard from pop culture. Aren't you going to ask if we have questions from the story?

Oh, yeah. Do you guys have questions? I don't. I don't either. Thanks for keeping me to that. Now that we're done with questions, we're going to get into our categories and we're going to do our favorite lizard from pop culture. And I'll just go first. Mine actually.

Any lizard. Yeah. Mine actually is a monitor lizard, so I figured I'd go first. Oh, nice. Which is, I think its name is Joe, the goanna from rescuers down under. And a goanna is a type, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, but it's a type of monitor lizard that lives in Australia. Steve Irwin was famously kind of afraid of them.

It was like one of the few animals that he was really nervous to catch because they have serrated teeth like a tiger shark, which I should mention that. I forgot to mention that. Monitor lizards have crazy teeth. I have a picture of their skulls. They have like, they're not just like the tiny little sharp ones like you'd expect in a lizard. They have real teeth. Yeah.

The skulls, I'm just going to describe it for listeners. It looks like a barracuda. It's just like a lot of mouth compared to the skull. Like there's a lot of mouth area. Yeah, it looks like what you'd expect like a dinosaur skull to look like. Yeah. But anyway, going back, Steve Irwin was, I remember one episode where he was trying to catch a big guana and he was like really nervous about it because they're pretty gnarly lizard.

And the one in Rescuers Down Under, I just really remember loving that lizard. It was so fast moving. Yeah, it's cool. And it's kind of scary, but like really funny too. Anyway, that's my favorite lizard. I love that movie. It's a good movie.

That's a good pick. Yeah. So I'm going to go with the iguana in the first Terminator movie. That's a good thing. Sarah Connor's iguana. I never thought of it. Yeah. I just,

it's not in the movie very much, But I look. It's your roommate's iguana, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I had a chameleon, and I just, like, let him out of the cage most of the time, and he would just kind of go wherever. Like Ron. And that's kind of what they had going on with, like, their iguana.

They just, like, put them in the plants. Yeah, just, like, hanging on top of the fridge. Yeah. And I just love that movie, so. Yeah, it's a good picture. And then, yeah, just a shout out to my chameleon, Floyd. Miss you, buddy. You were good.

You were good. pet. He didn't eat you, which is nice. Yeah. My favorite lizard's Godzilla. Okay. I love, especially, I'm going to just give a quick shout out to the 2016 film Shin Godzilla. It's my favorite Godzilla of, I guess, the 21st century. What's the studio that does Godzilla? There's like a studio that's famous for Godzilla movies from Japan. Is it like a Japanese one? It is, yeah, it's Japanese. It's probably them then. I can't remember their name. Do you like the really old Godzilla's or it's like a in a little costume or something? Yeah, so my dad and I,

we always used to watch just old sci-fi creature features together and Godzilla was kind of the biggest and baddest of them also. I used to always watch Godzilla movies on my birthday. Like, that's what I wanted. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, Wes was big into it. There's some debate, though.

Like, me and Jeff actually recently talked about this, what Godzilla was. The late 90s movie is the only one I think that's like, says that he came from, like, a lizard. The rest of them, he's just like a godbeast. But like that late 90s, the terrible one with Matthew Broderick. They like that one, it's like, oh, a nuclear testing turned a lizard into this thing. Okay, so those are our favorite lizards in quotation marks. Okay, a quick new category that I'm introducing right now is Correction Corner. Whoa. I have a correction I need to make.

Someone pointed out on Instagram that I was pretty adamant about making the distinction between whales and dolphins. And I did some more reading up on that. And they're all cetaceans, which is like the order that they're in. But technically dolphins are whales. And I was like really trying to like separate those two and I shouldn't have because they are technically whales. They're tooth whales.

It's kind of confusing. I googled it as well. Uh-huh. And I googled our dolphins whales. And like Google was like, yeah, they're like kind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But. And then I was like, our killer whales whales whales. Right. And it said, no so then I'm like wait but if dolphins are whales then right just like a little bit of clarification in that order there's two sub-orders and there's baleen whales and toothed whales and dolphins and killer whales and sperm whales and a few other whales fit into that toothed whale category but the dolphin like group of those toothed whales has just kind of in a like a very informal way has been dubbed dolphins and porpoises so that's

the group that killer whales are in, but technically they are all whales. So to anyone who listened to that episode, we are offering refunds. Just send your request to Wes's, what's your address? I'm not going to get my address out. Anyway, I do want to make sure we keep, like, I want our wildlife info to be pretty flawless. So if there is anything ever that you guys think I got wrong, go ahead and email us or whatever. Send us a DM. Let us do now some listener questions.

All right. So from Lily, do we have any unpopular or controversial animal opinions? I don't know. Do you guys have any? I hate horses. Yeah, that's pretty unpopular. Which my girl, that's especially unpopular with my girlfriend. And controversial.

I'm ready to fight her. We haven't been in the same room since. That'd be a good fight. I don't know. Like controversial opinions. Like birds or spies. or something like that. Yeah, I don't really, I can't really,

it's really interesting. Apparently, it's something Jeff thinks. Well, we got one. I'll say that. Mike, Mike, no, I'll say, I think birds are spies. All right.

Okay, from D1EG00. How many people would it take to neutralize a brown bear in hand-to-hand combat if it's even possible? It's a good question. I can't give you an exact number, but I think it would take at least 50 people. 50. I'm going to go 30.

Yeah, 30 is probably better. 50 people, you wouldn't even like be able to be able to be able to. But Bear could rip through a lot of people. The thing is like it's only going to take a couple swipes to get like five or six people down. Like you would have to really coordinate and all get it perfect on your first try or else it's going to start mowing through you and then you're in trouble. Uh, all right. From Mountain Chaser 9, this one's from. me.

Okay. Jeff, have you tried cake shakes? Ooh, have you? I've tried everything with cake. Everything. Well, I guess probably there's some possibilities I haven't tried. Cake lasagna. Yeah, I've tried a lot of cake desserts.

Okay. And I just like warm cake and cold ice cream. Okay. That's my one dessert. Yeah. Do you like a cake shake, though? I, it would be like, it'd be in my top half. For shakes.

Okay. You know? It's very big. Well, I'm just saying, like, I would order it more than, like, 50% of other flavors. Okay. Okay. You guys got any thoughts on that? All right.

From... I think you nailed that one. Yeah, perfect answer. From Bale Nelson. Nielsen. Cage match between you three. Who? Um, I'm pretty scrappy, but you guys both are bigger than.

me. West can beat me in arm wrestling with either arm and I'm like what 30, 40 pounds heavier than you? Yeah, probably, yeah, probably a little more than 30. I'm working on it. Yeah. I would say, I would say I'm probably losing in that though. I think you guys both are big enough, probably 50, 60 pounds bigger than me. But maybe because of that, like you're just going to start out dirty because you know you have to. Yeah, I'm going to be real scrappy. It's not going to. It's not. going to be an easy fight. My money's probably going on Mike. Mike's pretty strong. Yeah. Although if it's all at once, I would think we would form an alliance against Mike. Probably. Me and Mike still need to box. I'm ready right now. He would say he wanted to box me and then only

practice ball shots. I was like, I'm not going to box you if you're just going to punch me in the balls. If someone says they want to box me and they go to the bag and start punching it ball height, I'm out. I'm not doing that fight. Okay. Top three bucket list animals to see. For me, it's, are we just saying animals we haven't seen? So you can't like do a double. Let's do that.

It's a bucket list. Okay, but let's just say for the sake of like, they can't be animals you've already seen. Yeah. Okay. You don't put stuff you've already done on your bucket list. Okay. All right.

Jaguar, snow leopard, and. Panda. Yeah, I'm going panda, jaguar, great white shark. I'm going red panda, big old octopus, and a tiger. Okay. All right, so we all want to see a panda. Well, his isn't a panda. Favorite zoo you've been to.

My favorite zoo I've been to. San Diego Zoo for me. I love that. Yeah, it's probably San Diego Zoo, although, we got a contender this year, the Idaho Falls Zoo, which is like a small zoo, but it's just really well done, and they have some great animals. Yeah.

I like the local zoo a lot, the Hogo Zoo. Yeah. You get some really good polar bear action there. Yeah, but I'm going to say San Diego. I like the L.A. L.A. Zoo's good, too. Cool. All right.

From Becca Rose 406, what's the best name you've come across for an animal? Wes, your girlfriend has some really good, like, names for animals. Oh, you mean this is, like, a named animal? Yeah, she says, like, example, Dave the Hamster. Oh, okay. Yeah, she does, she does do good name. Our cat is named Toad, which is probably my favorite animal name.

What's your horse's name? Guapo. Guapo. Toad is named after Mr. Toad from, like, Mr. Toad's wild ride. My friend had a cat named Dog, and we'd always just say, what's up, dog? And the cat wouldn't react at all, and that just made it even fun here. So it's probably mine.

Okay. Jeff, you got any? I mean, I just really liked Floyd for my chameleon. Yeah, it's a good name for a comedian. And then I just want to give a shout out to, I thought I had saved it. I'm sorry, I'm not going to say your name because I didn't, but someone pointed out on our questions that a moose and Yellowstone had eaten part of a carcass. Yeah, bison. So I guess my answer, or my question.

of the moose eating the people and then being lucky it didn't eat them wasn't that dumb after that's true that was burning jeff that gave us that question a buddy of mine that does some camera trapping and some other really cool conservation work so that's that's it for our listener questions uh we have a bunch save too that we'll probably get to some more your guys is yeah we also have one patreon question don't we oh yeah yeah uh we have a patreon question and it is from Morgan and she says, can bears get rabies?

So bears, any warm-blooded mammal can get rabies. It's possible if you're a mammal, it's warm-blooded. I think they're all warm-blooded to get rabies. So bears have definitely gotten rabies before, but there's no documented case of like a person getting rabies from bears. And it's really,

really, really rare that bears do get rabies. They're not like a common carrier of it. But it's possible. Because most of those animals probably won't buy a bear either. Yeah. Well, a rabbit animal will do some pretty crazy stuff. But the really common ones are like bats, raccoons, jackals, but not bears. But they can get it.

It's possible. Okay. Okay. All right. Thanks again, guys, for your listener questions. One thing that I just wanted to promote really quickly is if you guys haven't done this already, write us a review and give us a rating if you use Apple Podcast. that's like something that really, really, really helps us out.

So please do that if you get the option or the opportunity. It'll take one minute of your time. I just thought that was a good time to put that in for some reason. Okay, let's get into our cage match. Mike? Yeah, let's do the cage match. So this category is where we take the animal of the episode, this being monitor lizards.

Nile monitor. And we make a hypothetical situation where they are in a cage fight against all the, not all of the other animals that we've spoken about on this podcast at the same time, but in one-on-one matchups, which eat with each of the different animals and kind of see where they stack up compared to all the other animals that we've talked about. So, Wes, what do you think? So I'm pulling up our old episodes really quick because it's starting to get hard. I think it's got to be last.

I think this is probably our weakest animal so far. Yeah, it'll kill the crow. Crow. How about though if it was all seven of his monitor lizards? Yeah, we could do that. We could say all seven. But even then, even then, like, our moose is taking them out, our killer whale's taking them out.

Speaking of the moose, too, I was really hard and said that the bears wouldn't beat the moose. I do think some of those bears are going to beat the moose. Yeah. But the black bear probably still isn't. About reticulated pythons? No, like, pythons are one of their main predators. Oh, really? Yeah.

And reticulated are the biggest. So I think a python's killing them. How about the little four-foot one that bit the guy's wean? Yeah, they could take that one. Yeah, I don't know. I'm looking at this. Maybe like a single wolf, if there was all seven of them. But one-on-one, they're last.

Yeah, I think one-on-one, this is our new loser. Yeah. Yeah, we got a new weakest animal in the podcast. But that'll be good because now we'll have other animals that can beat something finally. Okay. As far as our like what would you guys do? Do you guys want to do that one? I was maybe going to skip it because I think I would just stop at one monitor lizard.

It's a good answer. And if I got bit, I would get it, knowing what I know now, I would get it checked out immediately. Yeah. Yeah, maybe stop bid zero monitor lizards too. As far as like what you guys should do in the wild if you encounter a monitor lizard, leave it alone. and if it does that threat display where it like kisses and puffs out its body and whips its tail, means you're too close and just back off. If it bites you, do you have to go to a hospital?

Yeah, you probably should, just in case it's infected. I mean, it's more the infection than that venom that I would worry about. Yeah. But really, if you get bit by a monitor lizard outside of Komodo Dragons again, it's because you're messing with it. Like, they're not going to charge you and bite you. So just don't mess with them. Okay, so how are we messing things up for them?

I mentioned that there are some places in the world where they're being exploited for medicine or for fake little root plants that bring happiness. Happiness? Yeah, that's a good, good one. I think aside from that, like, aside from direct exploitation and hunting and stuff, again, it's just like habitat loss. But, you know, that's a really vague thing. And I think we've had some people mention, like, what they can actually do to help with some of these issues. And I think we're going to put together some resources for that. There's a lot of different things you can do.

Obviously, with something like this, don't ever buy any animal product that's, like, made directly from an animal. But there's, yeah, for some of the other animals, we're going to put together some guides that can help you guys make good choices so that you're helping wildlife. With these guys, they're doing pretty well, from what I could learn. Like there wasn't any good information on how well they're doing, which usually means they're doing really well. So I think there's a lot of monitor lizards out there, Nile monitors. Where to see them, sub-Saharan Africa, just spend some time. And you'll especially like along riverways and stuff. And the Nile, yeah, the Nile, yeah.

Especially though, like south of the Nile, south of the Sahara, if you're around rivers and lakes and stuff, you got a good chance of finding one. And finally, do we like this animal? Jeff, what do you think? Do you like Nile monitors? Do you want to see a photo of an owl monitor? Yeah, let's see a photo. I'm going to say I like this animal. I don't need to see it.

I just like lizards in general. I know I'm being a little bold right now. You've liked all of our reptiles quite a bit. I'm a big lizard guy. Yeah. Lizard person. Okay, Jeff, you've seen it now. Yeah, I mean, so I'll preference it with I like all animals.

Yeah. But like as far as how much I like all animals, I would say I don't really like it, if that makes sense. Like, I like them because it's an animal and I like animals. But, like, as far as, like, lizards go, it would probably be in my bottom half. Do you want to see a baby? Oh. Is that a cute?

No, it doesn't. I mean, I think chameleons would probably be my top lizard. Okay. Aquinas are up there. So, for a while, I went through a lot of different phases as a kid of, like, what my favorite animals were. But for a while, it was monitor lizards, specifically Komodo dragons. Like I did a whole research report on Komodo dragons and stuff. So I really like monitor lizards.

They're up there for me. They're probably not breaking the top 20. If we're just taking monitor lizards as a whole, Komodo dragons would be in like my top 20 bucket list animals to see. So I like them quite a bit. I'm a big reptile person, so we're going to put them up there. I'm going to rank it 30010. Okay.

Okay. That's it for our Nile. monitor lizard episode? Well, I want to take a second to shout out our new patrons on Patreon. Can I do that? Yep. So Patreon again for you guys who are not yet a part of it. It's really cool.

We're recording a lot of bonus content for people who are subscribed to us there. We have a couple of hours posted there already that you guys can just have access to as soon as you subscribe to us. We're biased, but I think we all think that our mini episodes so far have been pretty good. Yeah, me and Mike are way better storytelling. than Wes. Regardless of whether that... Yeah, no, they're fun.

But just want to give a shout out to our newest patrons. Thank you so much. You guys have been incredible. And you're making some really cool things happen for us. So thank you to Cali, Sarah, Rebecca, Emma, Tina, Madison.

Oh, no. I told her I was going to butcher this name. And she really wants you to get it right, too. Is it... Shoot, the first letter, even, is going to mess me up. I think it's... Yonara? I think it's...

Yeah. Yoanara. Yeah. That's what I thought too. Yonara. If we got that wrong, we're so sorry. Yeah. We like you all the same.

Yeah. Just change your name to something easier maybe next time. Emily, Allison, Gary, Aaron, Hoyt, Marissa, Nathan, Pico, and Devin. Y'all are the greatest. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Like Mike mentioned, I mean, we all, we're all working like nine to fives are about to start big long jobs. And if we could get to a point where this could be, you know,

something that makes it a little easier for us to do more content, we definitely will. So for sure. Patreon gets us started on that road. Okay. So that's it for Monitor Lizards. And thanks for tuning in, guys. Good job.

Thank you. Good story. Thanks. All right. All right. We'll see you, everyone. Yeah, we'll see.