Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Mothers Day Special - Animals that Saved the Day

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Wes and Jeff's mom is back for another Mothers Day special to talk about a few stories about the times wherein some animals save a human's life. Then we get into some mom-centric categories to wrap things up.  ~~ This episode of Tooth & Claw is brought to you by... Manscaped: Use code CLAW at Manscaped.com Vuori: Vuori.com/CLAW Athletic Greens: AthleticGreens.com/TOOTH Betterhelp: Betterhelp.com/TOOTH 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 to a Mother's Day special episode of Tooth and Claw. That's right. Wes and Jeff's mom, Cindy, she's back on the show, and she had a pretty fun idea of what she wanted to do this time around. So instead of focusing on some animal attacks, she decided maybe it'd be a little more appropriate to focus on some heroic animals, some animals that helped humans in some of their most desperate hours. So that's what we're doing today.

And we think that you'll all find them pretty cool, too. So that's the plan. We hope you enjoy it. Ooh, and real quick, just want to give another quick plug. If you're enjoying the show and you want some more tooth and claw, there are two places you can get some more. So we have our Patreon. And also recently, we set up the Apple subscription service just, you know, to give people more options, whichever is the most convenient for you, feel free to join to either. But we probably have about close to 30 hours of bonus content.

And we do try to make them as entertaining and as informative as we can. So if you want some more of us, feel free to join at either of those two places, Patreon or the Apple subscription. It's the same exact content in both places as far as at least bonus episodes go. So yeah, we hope to see you over there. Thanks for hearing me out on that one. All right, I'm done talking. Let's go. Tooth and Claw podcast, here we are. It's Jeff, Wes, and Mike.

And do we have another one today? We do. All right. Our favorite guest, Cindy Lark. Say hi, Mom. Hi, everyone. She's back. I'm back.

It's Mother's Day. So something funny, Wes and Cindy are definitely related because mom, you wrote a bunch of notes, and then you got worried we would find them ahead of time, and you hit them, and then you can't find them now, right? That's correct, yes. And then, Wes, you just wrote a ton of notes and fell asleep and your computer died, and then you didn't have them? Yeah.

I just moved into a new house this week. It's been a really stressful. You didn't. It's been a really stressful week. And I've been trying really hard to prep for this episode, especially with us signing with the network and all the new things. I stayed up really late last night and just decided to leave my computer open. And it died.

And in the morning, all my notes were gone. It was like eight pages of notes. And so we thought about doing a time machine. Yeah. But we decided it wasn't worth it. That wouldn't be... Wrists were too high. Yeah.

Because you were missing out with all my notes gone. Really? Yeah. What were they? They were all the words you say. And sometimes the terminology... It's a literal description of notes. You made up, like, Raxine.

A lot of notes. Raxine for, like, a raccoon vaccine. Oh. So things like that, I wrote down. Oh, man. Maybe you'll find them. Now you don't even know what a Raxon is. So you would use the time machine to go back.

Oh, yeah. What if it altered that? the fabric of space time. Like the butterfly effect. Like if you saw yourself from the future and you're like, you're just looking for notes? Tell me something important. Yeah. You never thought about that, did you?

You're just using a time machine willy-nilly. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Hey, Mom. Yeah. You just recently, a couple minutes ago, told Dad to be quiet as a mouse. I was kidding. I was going to say this too.

Will you make your noise that you told him after? Do your mouse impression. You'll be as quiet as a mouse during the podcast. cast he, like this. E, E, E, E. It's uncanny. Is there a mouse in here? Wow.

So, real quick, the reason I know I'm related to mom is the other day I stepped on some sunglasses on my floor and broke them. And I had to go to REI to buy new ones. So I, like, went out to my car and realized I didn't have my wallet. So then I was like, oh, shoot, ran back upstairs, looked. Found my wallet, got distracted, set it down somehow, went back to my car, drove all the way to REI, and didn't have my wallet. And I had to like go back home.

Let's maybe talk about good things. So this is how I know I'm not related to Cindy, because when I was born, I looked up and I was like, that's not Cindy. No, we love you, Mom. Yeah, we do. How is that nice? Mom, the way you can know that we love you is that we're doing this again

because last year's episode was one of our most popular episodes. Rousing success. Everyone loved it. Maybe she thinks we're just using her. Maybe we are. But that's not the case and you know that.

And even this year, instead of kind of going the normal route and doing an animal attack because there's a fair number of attacks out there that involve mothers and children, my mom had a different idea that she wanted to use. So the idea that she had was doing something a little bit more upbeat,

a little bit more wholesome than our typical attack stories. She did have one story for us that was like a shark attack, but it was so brutal and sad. And last year we did a pretty brutal and sad Mother's Day episode. Yeah, everyone that I met just said, oh, I loved your episode so much. Oh, but it was so sad that the mom died. Yeah.

And so then I didn't really want to repeat that. Well, I don't want to repeat it. Right, because it was a really tragic one. So we decided not to do it, although I am going to do that story at some point, because it's a good one. What we decided to do instead was talk about some really interesting stories where it seems as though animals are rescuing humans. Whoa. You recently read a book called When Animals Rescue, Amazing True Stories about heroic and Helpful Creatures. It's by Belinda Resio or Rechio.

I'm not totally sure how to say her last name. But it was an interesting book, and you told me about it, and I was actually kind of dismissive. And then we were on a road trip together and you made me listen to it. You forced me. And I enjoyed it. I did enjoy it. So we're going to take a couple stories from that book and we're going to talk about it. And I've got a few that I'm going to do and my mom's going to do one or two.

And then we're going to talk about them. And then we're going to ask you a bunch of questions. Cool. And we might make fun to some more. Yeah. All right. Okay. Okay.

So first of all, last year when we did our Mother's Day episode, we got into a little argument, mom. Do you remember what it was about? No. You said something about how some animals are just... Oh, yeah, I remember that one. Yeah. And it wasn't about her chewing your food on the phone. It was about animals being mean and how I said that's anthropomorphizing.

Yeah. And anthropomorphizing is pretty much just attributing human traits to animal species. Let me write that word down. You're going to write it down in your new notes? And it's something that as scientists we really try hard not to do because it, tends to affect the way that you view your data. It skews the way that you're looking at the animal and it just creates some bias. So it's something we try to avoid as much as possible. But when you are talking about animals rescuing people, it's going to creep into the discussion no matter what.

Right. Because I kind of believe in it. You do. And I kind of do too. But the problem is it kind of takes you then from like hard science into pseudoscience. And that's something that I think it's really important that we talk about before we get into these stories is that there is absolutely no way for us to confirm motivations of animals. We can't interview them. We can't get into their brains at that level and see how they're actually being motivated. It's just we can't confirm that. So it's easy to study behavior. You can like say, oh, it did A, B, C, and D. But when it actually comes down to the motivations behind those behaviors, all you can have is hypothesis. So you can try and confirm those hypotheses, but you can't say it as fact.

Right. And so I think when it comes to animal emotion, that gets even more confounding because we can't ask the animal why it was doing what it was doing or feeling what it was feeling. On the other hand, I think it's pretty easy to say that animals have the capacity for emotion. I have a dog, Bryce, who's very emotional. If Jesse's sick, Bryce goes in there and just like lays by her and like can pick up not only on her own emotions, but on our emotions.

And she feels everything from love and grief and compassion and jealousy, all these different emotions that up until I had a dog like that, I didn't really think that animals were capable of that level of emotion. And now I know they are. And there actually are wildlife biologists that believe that every emotion that we feel, animals can also feel. How do you guys feel about that, Jeff and Mike? Yeah, I mean, I don't think speech is necessarily...

only way to tell emotion. It's not the only way to, like, suss it out, but it's the only way to prove it. Like, even if someone says they're sad, maybe they're happy, you know? Yeah. It's not like that's proof that they're sad. But then, okay, but by that line of logic, there's no way to prove it. Right. But, like, that's the best way to figure out someone's motivations is for them to tell you.

And you can't get that from an animal. But you can, it's just they don't tell you with words. It's body language. They tell you with, like. Behavior. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And they do study.

and observation. Right. So for me, I could count that as. But that's the whole point I'm trying to make is behavior is easy to study. Motivations for behavior isn't. So like if an animal,

if say for example, Bryce, Jesse's sick, like I said, and Bryce goes up and like is sleeping with her and just hanging out with her and kind of acting like mopey too. Yeah.

I could be like, oh wow, she feels compassion for Jesse and she's like protecting her. But it could be too that she's upset that she's not getting fed at the same frequency as she normally does

or she's worried that she won't get fed the same way. You just don't know without asking them. Mike, what do you think? Also, people, sometimes you don't even know your own emotions. Totally. Like, sometimes you think you're angry for something, but you're actually sad for something. Totally.

Emotion in general is really hard to understand. I think emotion is pretty much a fundamental building block of like complex organisms. Like a dog, you're talking about Bryce. on an instinctual level when they're excited or happy, the tail wags, you know? Yeah. And I think that's just a really important thing for animals and humans are animals, but humans and animals to be able to emote to each other to kind of signify when

it's a safe time to approach or kind of how they're feeling of what they need. So I don't know. Like I have no doubt that on some level, emotions can be expressed by animals. But like you said, from our perspective, it's only speculation. Maybe the reason humans have to communicate is we don't have tails to wag. That's a good point. Yeah, but we have like eyes, the emo, we have all sorts of things. That's a good point.

Let me ask you a question. We do bark, though. Going back to our argument. Yeah. I feel like you guys are thinking, though, that I don't think that animals have emotions and they totally do. Yeah. But some animal, like going back to our argument about the lions, the lions of Sava, I said they were mean.

Yeah. But if Bryce can feel happy or sad, couldn't one of those lions have felt angry? Yeah. And like, I'm going to hunt them down. To me, anger. This was our whole argument, though, is anger is different from being mean. I was saying, like, they're aggressive, which to me is, like, on par with being angry. But mean denotes that they're evil, that there's something, like, inherently wrong with them.

Well, I think they could have been mean stuff. Okay, that's fine. We don't need. Well, really. But we're on the same page that animals have emotion. Animals can emote. But understanding the motivations behind those emotions is what's tricky. They're very different from human emotion.

But not necessarily. That's the whole thing. There are biologists that think they're on par with us, but then there's others that don't. There's some biologists that just think every single time an animal's reacting to something, it's because it's reacting to a stimulus. It's not necessarily emoting. But something that I want to bring up, two things are, we're going to talk about a lot in this podcast are empathy and altruism. So empathy is like a really

big one and that's pretty much the ability for someone to understand and share someone else's feelings. So it's like, Jeff, if you're really sad because some girl doesn't like you, you know, then I have been in that position. I can empathize with that and I can say, oh, I understand how this feels because I've been there. That's not. I'll be like, no, you don't. Yeah, exactly. You don't know me. Yeah, which happens every time. That's empathy. And then altruism is really just like someone acting in someone else's best interest when it doesn't benefit them in any way.

We talked about with vampire bats, they're probably altruistic and that they'll feed other vampire bats, even though they're not benefiting from it at all. Good for the group, like good of the group type of mentality. And they know that maybe someday they'll get that back, you know, but it doesn't benefit them in that moment. So that's altruism. And it's really rare in the animal kingdom.

But we're going to talk about some stories. Camels had it a little bit, where in the desert they wouldn't eat all of the plant. Yeah, exactly. They would like leave a little bit so it could keep growing. Yeah, and that's more just kind of forward thinking than altruism. But yeah, it's kind of on par. Yeah. Okay, so.

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time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. There's a couple things I want to talk about. There's a study by Larry Young, who's a neuroscientist from Emory University, and this study involved Prairie

Bowls, and Prairie Vols are like a small rodent, but in kind of a weird thing, they're like one of the only mammals that mate for life. So they're monogamous, which is pretty crazy for a rodent to be monogamous, but they are. And he found that these paired prairie voles, when one of them was in trouble or like scared or whatever, its counterpart, its partner would come over and comfort and lick it and like do everything it could to make it feel better, if one of them was injured or scared or whatever. And they wouldn't do this for stranger voles. They would only do it for the one that they were paired with.

Oh, that's cool. And so really they're like emotionally in sync is what he thinks. And he also saw that their stress hormones would rise and fall with each other. And he thinks that these bonds were facilitated by a, do you guys remember the hormone that we talked about in the last Mother's Day episode with the rats? It's the love hormone. It's the one you feel when you hug someone, not endorphins. Oxytocin. So oxytocin is the love hormone.

It's the one you feel when you hug someone or when you're, were like in love. And that's what he thinks facilitates this, this emotional bonding in prairie bowls. So I want to talk about one other experiment before we get in the stories. Another experiment was done by Jeffrey Mogil, who was a geneticist at McGill University. And he had an experiment. And these experiments kind of are sad because they had to kind of torture rodents to figure out how they emote with each other. But what they would do is they would take a mouse from a cage, they restrain it, And then they dip its tail in a hot 120 degree water.

And pretty much they would see how long it would take this mouse for it to yank its tail out. Like how long it could withstand that hot water before it just decided to rip its tail out of the water? Why wouldn't it just rip it out immediately? They didn't for whatever reason. Like they'll wait until the pain's too strong and then they'll pull it out. Yeah. Anyway, so what they did is they did like thousands of these tail dip trials. And as they were looking at their data, they saw a really weird pattern.

And the pattern was that the order in which the mice were tested mattered a lot for their pain tolerance. So that first mouse would leave its tail in there the longest, and the rest of the mice progressively would leave their tails in shorter and shorter and shorter. And what they realized was that they'd put the mouse back with the other mice. And it was essentially like it was telling the other mice that it hurt. And then the other mice were like afraid of this hot water. And so because of that, their experience, they like had more. pain associated with it. And it's kind of weird, and I didn't really believe it, but then they did some follow-up

experiments to solidify this. And instead of putting the first mouse back in the cage with the other mice, they would put them in different cages, and that pattern completely disappeared. So there was some kind of communication between these mice that, like, hey, that experiment hurts. And then that, like, anticipation of the hurt made them react. So they were sharing information, and they were kind of sharing. sharing their pain. And so it's a really interesting study that looks at emotion and like shared

experiences in animals. So those are just a couple things I wanted to bring up first to hint at some more scientific stuff that points to emotion and communication and socialization and animals. These stories aren't very scientific that we're going to get into, but they are really interesting. So I'm going to do the first few and then mom, you're going to do the lion one, right? Okay, perfect. We're going to start with whales. We recently saw some whales. We went on a family trip to Laredo. We saw Orca.

We saw Blue Whale. We saw a gray whale. We saw a fin whale, we think. We saw a lot of whales. And dolphins. And dolphins. They're all cetaceans. This story involves humpback whales, which I think we've all seen as well.

Have you seen a humpback whale, mom? In Hawaii, I think you've seen them. Okay. Yeah. They're the ones you typically see in Hawaii. Okay. All right. So Nanhouser is a Marine.

biologists and she's the director of the Cook Islands Center for Cetation Research and Conservation. She's not the director of the president. And she was snorkeling with whales in September 2017 and the waters around the Cook Islands. And she's in the water with these whales. She's with three whales, she thinks. And there's one big whale. It's 47 feet long, 50,000 pounds, swim straight at her. And this isn't common. Typically the whales kind of keep a certain distance between the snorkelers and themselves, and it swims right up to her, and it starts pushing her with its snout, and it's grabbing her with its pectoral fins, and it's pulling her under the pectoral fin. And then it's also trying to push her onto its stomach and, like, rolling around to try and, like, get her out of the

water. And it's crazy. There's video of this, and I watched it. Yeah. And it's very unique. And she says, like, she's been doing this for 30 years. She's never had a whale approach her with that kind of intensity. Yeah. And it actually kind of started to get a little scary for her. Yeah, I'm sure. Were you guys swam with whale sharks? Would that freak you out?

No, but just because I've, maybe the first time it would, you know? And I don't think it would freak me out, but maybe if it kept it up for as long as this whale did, it might. Yeah. So Greyhound bust nudging you around in the water? I don't know. We'll have to look out big of buses. Two grahounds, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that would freak you out. I think so. They're just so huge. Yeah. And like, you kind of know, like, a whale shouldn't be doing this. Right. And what she said was this thing could easily push her under the water and drown her. Or it could slap her with its fins or its tail and break her bones.

And she only had a snorkel. So she was getting a little nervous. And also these whales have barnacles on them. And those barnacles are pretty sharp. So she was getting cut up by its barnacles. Oh, wow. So she was nervous, but this whale finally disengages from her. And she decides to swim to the boat because she kind of wants to process.

what just happened. For sure. And as she's swimming to the boat, she turns around and she sees the other whales, and the second whale is slapping the water with its tail really hard. And they only do that when they're antagonized by something. And then she sees a third whale underneath that whale, but then she sees that that whale's tail is going side to side rather than up and down. And she realizes it's not a whale. It's actually a huge tiger shark, the biggest tiger shark she's ever seen. And it dawns on her that this whale was actually just trying to push her away from this shark the whole time. He's trying to push her back to her boat or get her out of the water. And that's totally what she lands on. And even when she sees this shark, the whale shows back up and starts

pushing her towards the boat again. And she finally gets on the boat. And in the footage, you see her, like, get on the boat. And the whale's right there by the boat. And then it swims off. Yeah. And all the other scientists that were there, like, review the footage. And they're all in like, like total agreement that this whale was 100% trying to protect her from this shark. That's really cool. And in a really weird coincidence, she actually sees the same whale a year later and it like comes up and hugs her. So it's a really strange story and she was pretty perplexed by it and had never experienced anything like that and didn't think that whales would ever try and protect her. And she reached out to a colleague of hers named Robert Pittman.

And he had actually observed instances of humpback whales protecting seals from orcas in the Southern Oceans. Cool. That's why I was going to ask if they protect other animals like our size. They do. And it's mostly other marine mammals. And so this Robert Pittman guy got really curious. And he reached out to a bunch of cetacean researchers. And he got 115 reports back of whales displaying protective behavior of their other animals. And 90% of those reports were animals that weren't other whales. So like seals, humans, whatever, a lot of seal ones. And he actually ended up writing a paper about altruism in whales. So it's pretty interesting.

I kind of thought about it. Like, it's kind of sad for those orcas. You know, like maybe the orcas should swim up to like a bunch of krill next time and protect it from humpback whales. Yeah. It's just kind of funny that like, to me, humpback whales see animals that are a little bit bigger as like worthwhile of protecting. But then meanwhile they eat like fish and krill and stuff.

Yeah. I'd really like to be hugged by a whale. Yeah. I've just decided. I don't know how exactly it, like, it just tucks you under its fin. That's got to be the best hug out there. Moishes you into it. Yeah.

You'd need a full scuba set up. Yeah. Otherwise, you just hugged you for a few. That's true, yeah. Maybe, yeah, it'd have to come up onto the land. Mom, if you could be hugged by any other. Then I'd like it. What would you want to be hugged by it?

Anaconda? No. I'd give pretty tight hugs. Well, Jesse's, cat hugged me once. It was really sweet. Toad gives great hugs. Really, really sweet. So I don't know. Okay. Yeah. It depends on if they're doing it altruistically. Yes. Which of your, or like if a tiger hug me, I'd be a little, I'd be a little nervous. Yeah. Maybe he wants to bite me. Which, which kid of yours do you want to hug from the most right now? Right now? Yeah. If you could

pick. You, Michael. Oh, man. All right. So in this book, She brings up a theory that a few scientists have that the reason whales display this level of altruism and empathy is because of spindle neurons. So spindle neurons are also called von Economo neurons. And the reason they're called that is they were discovered by a Vienna-based researcher named Constantine von Economo. That is a great name. Yeah, there it is. I knew you'd like that. They were discovered in the early 1900s, and then no one really talked about them for almost 100 years.

And then in the 1990s, some other researchers kind of rediscovered them. And the common theory is that these spindle neurons are responsible from everything, from self-awareness to empathy, to social intelligence. And it's a really kind of understudied thing. It's not possible to say for sure that's what they're responsible for. But they're only found in large-brained animals, like whales, primates. Humans? Yeah, humans.

We have the most out of any animals. People think whales might have more, but as far as testing's been done so far, we have the most. And there's a lot of science that still needs to be done on them. But there is the chance that, like, having these spindle neurons present is what gives us the ability to empathize and to have altruism and whatnot. Who knows? So where did spindle come from? They kind of have a spindle-like shape, and they're longer than typical neurons and a little bit more of a direct pathway. Do all humans have empathy?

No. Like serial killers don't have empathy. They don't have it. That's supposedly, like, not all of them, but, like, that's a common trait. Like, for sociopaths probably just lack spindle neurons. Yeah, maybe. It would actually be really interesting to see if that's the case. I'd be really interesting to see that.

Like if they have less spindle neurons than everyone else. Yeah. I thought of the animal I'd want to hug me. Okay. Okay. A koala, Michael. Oh, that's a good. You realize.

I really like them too. They all have. They're so cute. STDs. Every single one of them. So cute. Yeah, you're going to walk away with the clap from that hug. All right.

So the next story, and my mom is... Dad will be like, what? The next story is about seals. And I do want to point out, Mom, you're the one that recommended most of these stories to me. And I think you pick some really good ones. So the seal one is interesting. And I wanted to include... Actually, before I go on to the seals, though, after each of these stories, I want to ask everyone,

if you think the animal... in our last story was displaying empathy or altruism or some kind of human emotion or if it was just doing some sort of natural behavior that could explain what it was doing. And we could call these instances, Wes, because I was listening to the old podcast and you don't want to call everything an attack. This is not an attack. Encounter. So we could call it an instance.

Yeah. Encounter, I think, is a great word. Encounter? Okay. Yeah. Definitely not an attack. Yeah. So, I mean, it's hard for me to say for sure the motivation of a whale.

Right. But I don't see any benefit for it to prevent a shark from, like, getting a meal. So, like, I view it as trying to protect the person from the shark. Mom? Yeah, I agree. Well, so why would it want to, in my, this is my weird, twisted way of looking at this situation. Because I see a shark and I'm a whale and I'm like, this is my sixth. see buddy. I should be helping this guy get its food. Why would it want to keep the other animal

from getting a little food? I thought about that a lot, that exact question. And something I thought about is that as humans, I think we're inherently more prone to like emote with mammals. For whatever reason, I think most people have a stronger connection with mammals. It's just kind of from birth, we tend to care more about mammals than we do other things and we tend to be more scared of animals that are mammals. And I kind of think that might be the same explanation. The whales recognize that we're closer to them evolutionarily. Yeah.

And they just want to protect things that seem like their buddies. Or maybe they don't. They might not like sharks. Yeah. Yeah. Is like bullies in schools, they're typically like the bigger kids, right? Yeah. And they'll steal kids lunch so that the kids can't have lunch.

Yeah. Whales are like way bigger than sharks. And they're just bullies. So maybe they're just being bullies and stealing their lives. That's Anthroport. Yeah. I do like that though. Yeah, like with the orcas too, if the whales are protecting seals from orcas, when we

were out on the boat, the guide told us that we wouldn't even see an orca because the whales won't even be around them. Right. And then 10 minutes later, Wes was like, well, there's an orca. Yeah. Yeah. But. Yeah.

Yeah. And orcas. True. And I think there is a certain size that a whale gets where it doesn't have to worry about orcas anymore. There's a huge blue whale. Yeah, they said the young. Yeah, I don't think it was worried about it. Yeah, he said the younger.

But the baby ones do. Yeah, and so maybe they just naturally protect from them. Yeah, they might. So those are some good theories and thanks, everyone. I'm going to ask after each story. But our next story is about seals. This one takes place in 1999. It involves this woman Charlene Camburn, who is 30.

She's with their boyfriend Chris, who's 38, and their seven-year-old son, Brogan, which is another great name. It's a good. Brogie. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always easy to save big.

every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. See site for details. They're visiting this place called Donna Nook. It's a nature preserve that's located on the eastern coast of England. And it's a popular preserve mostly because there's some really big seal colonies there. So people go there to watch the seals. And that's what this little family was doing on this day. And they actually walked along some tidal flats to go out and get closer to these seals and see them. But as they were there, as they were walking on these tidal flats, the sun's starting to go down, they decide they should probably go back, and the tide rushes in much quicker than they expected. And it actually cuts off

the sandbar that they were on from the shore. So they have now water between them and the shore, and Brogan and Chris actually don't know how to swim. But Charlene's a pretty competent swimmer, so she decides, she like strips down to her underwear and jumps in the water. They're in the North Sea, so it's really cold. And she decides that she's going to swim across this water to go get them help. So she jumps in and the current's a lot stronger than she anticipates and the water is really cold. So it saps her energy almost immediately. Uh-oh. And after 10 minutes, she's like totally exhausted and starting to become really disoriented. And she's treading water and she's wondering what to do and she looks up and she sees that she's surrounded by six seals. At first she thinks like,

okay, these seals are just curious. They're coming to check me out, which is what I would assume. too. And they're probably just going to leave her alone pretty soon, but they actually stuck around. And they swam around her in a circle, and the sun completely sets. And she's totally exhausted and completely, like, frigid, chilled to her core. And she starts to actually, like, give up, and she's just accepting that she's going to die. And she sinks under the water. And whenever she would sink down, the seals would dive down, and they would kind of, like,

gently nudge her back up to the surface. Oh, cool. And from what I read, I don't think they're, like, pushing her back up to the surface. surface, but they would like bump into her feet and stuff and that would kind of make her stir and go back up to the surface. It's not like they're like hoisting her up. But they were nudging her feet and stuff and she could feel them nudging her up. And she said, they were nudging my legs and kept diving beside me and I kept bobbing back up. So maybe they were just like nudging her enough to where her natural buoyancy would push her back up. And she said she found the seal's presence

really calming and actually invigorating. And without them around her, she would have given up. And she told reporters, all I could see were their faces around me. Not one of them faced away and they were all barking and squealing. One seal in particular was especially reassuring. I'll never forget the seal in front of me. He was there all the time swimming backwards and staring at me. It was a dreamy feeling, which if you're like freezing and thinking you're about to die, but you also just have this seal like right in front of you just staring at you. Yeah. It would be like really dreamy. I think that's the perfect word for it. Yeah. Well, plus you want to live because you want to tell everyone about it.

That's what happened. Yeah. It's a good point. But it does sound really dreamy to me and like kind of just a really peaceful way to go actually. But she'd been over an hour in this really cold, dark water, and she finally sees what she thought was a boat. And she's trying to shout for help. And her voice gets really weak from the cold and from the exertion of spring. Like Rose and Titanic.

Exactly. Just like Rose. Yeah. Except Charlene's actually a good person and Rose is terrible. But the boat actually vanishes. And when that happened, she completely gives up. And she again starts to sink under water. And immediately the seals are there again,

and they start pushing her up again. And at some point during her ordeal, she remembers hazily, like, getting back up to the surface and seeing some lights from a boat. And when she sees that, she realizes that someone's finally there to rescue her, and she passes out, goes unconscious. Wow.

So she had been in the water for almost two hours, and it's really, really cold. So she wakes up in a hospital bed, and her first thought is what happened to Chris and Brogan. And apparently, they had, like, found a sandbar that connected to the shore, and they just, like, ran across the shore. Use their brains. Yeah, exactly.

Instead of just, like, taking off their clothes and jumping in immediately. But she's super relieved that they're okay. And what had actually happened is the Coast Guard arrived on the scene. They fired a flare to, like, light up the sea, and they spotted her in the seals. And after they pulled her out, they realized she had severe hypothermia and they took her to the hospital. And one of the Coast Guard people said that if she'd remained in the water even a few minutes longer, she might have died. Which I feel like is a common thread in a lot of these stories.

They always say that. We didn't get her out. 10 seconds later, she would have been frozen. Which I think, who knows, you know. But, yeah. Two hours in cold water. It seems like she almost died a few times. Yeah.

So she was really relieved. She was really grateful that her family. had made it out and she was really grateful to the seals. And her husband, or her boyfriend was as well, and they were convinced that the seals creating a circle around her is what stopped her from drifting like three to four miles out. And he told, like they both told the reporters, they felt that like the seals kept her alive and that they stayed with her

and watched her and did all these things to help her not sink. I want to talk about this one a little bit. Yeah. So we'll do our ratings now. We'll decide if we think this is actually an animal rest. rescue. This is the one from all these stories that, besides maybe the one my mom's going to tell, that I'm the least convinced about as far as them, like, actually trying to rescue her and help her. Jeff, we've swam with sea lions a decent amount. Mike, you have two. Yeah. I feel like they are just

endlessly curious. Like, as long as you want to stay in the water with them, they will come out up and check you out and, like, hang out generally. If they have pups around, sometimes they decide they don't want to or go back and protect their pups or whatever. But more often than not, they'll stay in the water and kind of swim around and check you out. Yeah. So my theory on this one is I do think they could have been trying to help her out. But I also think these seals could have just been like curious. And because she was above water, they wanted to be above water and like watching her.

But then when she went below water, they went below water and were checking her out underwater. And just they started bumping into her whenever she was underwater. And that's kind of... Just accidentally bumping into her? No, like, there, so like the sea lions that we swim with don't necessarily bump into people. But I do know people that swim with seals or sea lions in places where they constantly bump into them. But they're underwater diving with them. And I think they're much more comfortable underwater, investigating things and whatnot, than they are on top of the water. I think when you're on top of the water, they're like, they're built for underwater. So when you're on top of the water, they're just up and watching you and seeing what you're

you're doing. But then once you're underwater, they feel much more agile and they're much more willing to kind of bump into you and check you out. That's what I think was happening here. But that's just my opinion. What do you guys think? I think two hours is a long time for seals to stay with someone if they're just curious. My counterpoint to that is just that this is a really cold ocean where I don't think anyone ever swims with them. And so I think these six seals were just the ones that were like, we're going to stick with this as long as it goes because this never happens. Is there any chance that they were kind of like a circle of vultures waiting for her to die? No.

They don't ever eat humans or bite at humans, right? No. Okay. Yeah, because I can't think of a single good reason why they would, air quotes, save this person. I don't know. It just, it could be the same thing as the whales. And there are other stories. They could just tell that she's in trouble.

and they just wanted to help her out. And that's a possibility. Mom, what do you think? Well, I researched too. Yeah. Because I read the book first and then looked at the internet. Oh, she got in their first last. She will defer to you.

There were other incidents, but from what you're saying, then it could have been the same reason. But I always like to think that the animals helped. Yeah. So I'm going with the seals actually helped her. Yeah. And that's fine. That they wanted to. With all of these stories, I think that's a strong possibility.

Okay. But I do tend to kind of avert to scientific brain on a lot of these. The whale one, I actually think it was altruism and it was trying to help her. This one, I think it was curiosity. And I think it's just the behavior of above water versus below water that changed their behavior when she went under. But do you think the seals could tell she was struggling? I don't know. What do you guys think?

I'm asking the audience. Maybe. Oh, okay. She could probably tell that she was, like, struggling. Yeah. And that probably made them, like, curious, but also, like, they involved themselves enough to help. Yeah. And, you know what, like, I'd be interested to see.

Because there's stories about dolphins that do that, too. Yeah. I'd be interesting to see how they handle a seal that would be struggling in that regard, if they do the same kind of behavior or not. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see. But maybe someone out there that's listening is a Pinniped researcher, and they can let us know.

A what? Piniped. That's like seals and sea lions and stuff. Ride you down. She's making her new ones. My favorite one is gorilla, gorilla, gorilla. Yeah, that's the science. You wrote that one down.

All right. Oh, yeah. Okay, we're going to move on. We're going to move on to an animal that I don't really like that much. Oh, wow. Yeah. Once we do an episode on these animals, you're going to find that you're going to get a below five claw rating for me. Oh, I can't wait.

Pigs. I'm not a pig fan. Pigs are sweet. You know what? I've been around enough pig farms, and they smell so bad that I just can't get over it. And then I also feel like they're one of those animals that if you pass out, like if you fall down around pigs, they're probably going to eat you. Well, will you give us your best pig noise? No.

Come on. And I agree with Wes. I don't, I'm not a pig fan either. All right, but this is a really interesting story, and this is one that had it happen in the Internet age, we probably would have heard about this pig for like a month straight. And it's about Lulu the Pig. So this happened in 1998, but the story actually starts in 1997 when Joanne and Jack Altzman of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, decided to babysit their daughter's pet. And their daughter's pet was Lulu the Pig.

She was a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. So they're those ones that look, they almost look naked with wispy black hair, and they have a scrunched-up face and they're really pot-bellied. And they're really cute when they're tiny and really ugly when they're big. And Lulu was really tiny when they first adopted Lulu. She was only four pounds. She belonged to their daughter Jackie, who was like, hey, mom and dad, can you watch my pet for a little bit? Oh, has that ever happened?

Yeah, this happened. I brought a pair at home, which ended up staying with my parents for a long time until he got his freedom unexpectedly. Anyway, so they decided to watch Lulu and days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. and after a year they had realized like this is our pet now. And Lulu, who started at four pounds, in that year, grew to 150 pounds. A big part of that is because they fed her like jelly donuts and just like human food all the time. But they, Joanne and Jack, her parents, Jackie's parents, really grew to love Lulu. And they found a way to make room for her in their house and their vacation trailer.

Should we get a pig for mom and dad? No, I don't think so. I don't think that pig will be bacon before we know it. So in August 1998, they were vacationing in Presk Isle, Pennsylvania, and Jack was out fishing on Lake Erie, and Joanne was relaxing in their trailer with Lulu and their dog bear. And suddenly she felt a really terrible pain in her chest, and she realized she was having a heart attack. And she had actually had a heart attack just 18 months before, so she knew what they felt like, and she knew she was having another.

And she was reaching for the phone, and before she could grab it, she collapsed. on the floor. And Bear starts barking. He's freaking out. Lulu actually came over and was just like whimpering and nudging her face and licking her face. And then while Joanne's on the floor, she tries throwing an alarm clock through the window to like just to do something. That was the only thing she could grab to warn someone that she was in there having a heart attack. And she can't get any kind of message out. So she's lying on the floor dying. The dog's barking, but like people here are barking dogs all the time. They don't necessarily respond to one. Yeah.

And so Lulu's there, and suddenly Lulu decides to push herself through the doggie door. And the doggy door was built for like a dog, not 150. Like Lulu didn't use the doggy door? No. And she pushes her way all the way through it and like really scrapes and injures herself in the process. And then she gets out in the yard and there's a gate there and she somehow figures out how to open the gate. And a lot of scientists agree that pigs are probably one of the smartest animals. She figures out how to get in the gate. And there's a nearby road.

and she runs out in the road and plays dead. She lays down in the middle of the road. And apparently this is a game they would play a lot of times. Yeah, it wasn't the first time she'd play dead. Yeah, she'd play dead with the owners and it was like a fun game for them. And she would do it to get attention from the owners. She knew playing dead could get her attention. Maybe she's doing like charades.

Like the owner's dead. Yeah, she's pretending to be. So she lays down in the middle of the road and people are driving by her. and she actually keeps running back to Joanne and checking on her and then pushing through this doggy door again and playing dead. And this goes on for like 45 minutes and people are just driving around her and like thinking that it's just like a dead pig in the road or something.

And finally this guy notices her and notices that she's injured and pulls over to like see what's wrong with this pig. And when he pulls over Lulu pops up and she like guides him back to the trailer. And he yells into the trailer. He says, hey lady, your pig's in distress. And she's like, so am I. in like a really weak voice. Yeah.

And that's so cool. She tells him to call an ambulance and she's transported by a helicopter to the hospital. She goes through open heart surgery and she survives. Wow. And the doctor said had she gone a few more minutes without help, she would have died. Anyway, she makes a full recovery. So does Lulu. And it's this really cool story of like a pig trying to help its owner from what we can see.

She actually was like in the New York Times after that. She was on David Letterman, Oprah. All these different shows brought Louie. That's so awesome. It was like a really big thing for a little while. So I am going to, I'll go first again. I think with these domestic animals where they've socialized with the person and the person's kind of in their social group, I see a lot more evidence for true empathy and altruism because there's a lot of precedent for animals helping out other animals in their social group. I see a lot more evidence for true empathy and altruism because there's a lot of precedent for animals helping out other animals in their.

their own social groups. A, because it benefits them because they know that's where they get food from, and B, just because they care about those other animals. So I do think this was the pig actually trying to rescue her, but I think it was because it had motivations because she's in a social group. Yes. So do you think the pig rescued her because she cared about her or because she was her bread and butter? Care take care? I don't know. That's where we're getting into motivations, and I can't say that. Yeah. I would say, yeah, the pig and the dog were upset that their owner was dying. So that's why they went and got help.

Yeah. I will say, like, if, like, me or Jesse passed out on the floor, Bryce would be totally distraught. And it's because she cares about us, not just because we feed her. Like, she would be so sad if anything happened to either of us. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it is a rare animal that actually will think for the. themselves and go and get rescue to, like, to actually go and get somebody. That was like a strategy.

That was pretty next level. Pretty smart. Yeah. That shows how smart pigs are. Problems all. Yeah. Mike? Yeah, I want to see Lassie reboot, but with Pigs.

With Lulu. Yeah, Lulu. Demi's in the well. She just lays down immediately. Yeah. Every episode, she just plays dead. I mean, obviously this pig was responding to a situation. in order to help.

Yeah. Honestly, I can't see it any other way than that. I don't know exactly why. Yeah. It could be like Cindy was saying just, she's lo, lo, lo, lo, Lulu. They wanted to keep, you know, the pipeline of food and caretaking coming her way. But again, like. That was my theory.

My mom doesn't necessarily. Oh, okay. Well, so I'm sorry. No. Oh, you might. You don't know. For the pig. Yeah.

So I don't really like pigs. Okay. Yeah. Do you like pigs, Jeff? Yeah. I like pigs. Yeah. I feel like Wes and Cindy shouldn't eat the ham tonight.

right. I love how they taste. The Mother's Day hand. Yeah, you can't have it both ways. I did change my mind. I mean, rats wound up a fraction of a point. So who knows? Yeah.

Fraction of a point. Go rats. One point. Rats out there are celebrating. 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 Price line is here to help you turn your dream trip.

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Boring animal. Yeah. Ooh, that's a good question. Like every day. Oh, you're leading me to something. I'm leading you. What's going on here? Just what's a boring animal that you absolutely love?

Cow? Yeah, cows. They're so freaking sweet. All right. And what boring animal do you absolutely hate? Horse. Okay. Get out of here.

This story involves both. This story was made for you, Mike. It was. Yes. So buckle up, Mike, because you're about, you're going to have an emotional whirlwind here. Okay, let me get my tissues ready. Okay. So what do you guys think of when you picture a dairy cow specifically?

Black and white. Big old udders. How about its attitude? build wet udders. Okay. Jeff stuck on utters. Mom, what do you think about it? Just not a happy, like not a happy cow, but just kind of a boring, bland.

Boring and placid and just kind of like, you could probably grab one by the collar and just lead it around. Yeah, but still don't get behind it. Don't let it kick you. Okay. That's advice for everyone from my mom. Don't get behind dairy cows. Okay. So Fiona Boyd and her husband Matt ran two dairy farms.

I forgot to put the location for this, but I'm pretty sure it's in England. And on a certain day, Fiona was out, and she was responding to a call from her husband, Matt, who asked if she could move a cow and her calf out of the paddock and separate them. So that's a pretty common practice for dairy cow owners is when the mom has a calf, they pull them apart pretty quickly because then I think the mom keeps producing milk, and it's just you don't want to leave them together because milk is what you want. You don't want it wasted on the calves necessarily. So usually what they do is they'll walk both mother and calf wherever they're trying to take them to separate them to this calf house.

And then they leave the calf there and they bring the mom back to where she was. But on this occasion, that didn't happen. The mother didn't want to follow them. So she actually was just walking with this calf to where the calf house was. And she was expecting the mom to catch up with them, but it didn't. So as she was leading this calf, a lot of the other cows, because this was kind of a new thing, just like a human with a calf, we're getting a little agitated and they're getting curious

and they're gathering around them. So this commotion, like all these cows gathering around Fiona and the calf, kind of distressed the calf and it started bleeding, bleating, not bleeding. Oh, okay.

Yeah, bleating. What's bleeding? Bleeting? It's like... Do the sound like. Uh, okay. Mom? I think that's pretty good.

Mom, you want to try it? No, you try it. That's pretty good too. Pretty much calling out for its mom. And that, actually like really kicked its mom into high gear and the mom charged in there and immediately knocked Fiona down and Fiona knows like you don't want to be on the ground around cows because they can stomp you they can like push you with its head which is exactly what this cow started

doing and it weighs like almost a thousand pounds and it's pushing its head into her in the ground it's all that milk yeah it's all that milk and sometimes the other cows will even group up and attack whatever else is being pushed to the ground so she knows she's in a really bad position. And she's shouting and she's fighting back, but she's unable to move. And this cow's just pushing its head into her. And I know this happens with bison, too. They'll like push someone in the ground and they try and break your neck or your back with all that pressure. And that's what she thinks is happening. And she's worried that it's going to start kicking her and stuff too. And she's just like starting to think that she might die. And she's about to give up hope

when suddenly this cow stops attacking her. And what had happened was her horse, a chestnut mare, Kerry Gold had appeared. And Carrie Gold had been in the same paddock. He was out there grazing. Mike's so triggered. You'd see Mike's face shaking his head back and forth. At some point, this horse, Carrie, must have noticed what was going on, and it charged into the area where Fiona was being attacked,

and it started repeatedly kicking this cow with its rear hooves. And this immediately caused the cow to stop pushing Fiona down and to retreat, and that gave Fiona the chance to crawl under the fence and call for help. So she went to a hospital. She had minor injuries, just cuts and bruises. She makes a full recovery, and she says there's no doubt in her mind that the horse saved her life. So as for the horse, it got extra apples and carrots, which seems like a pretty weak reward. Yeah, come on.

But like, what's a great, like, you get to sleep inside for a month. Kentucky Derby gets like a trophy. Yeah, that's true. You think it's excited about that? Probably not. Probably just like made a blanket of flower. Or mating opportunities or something. Anyway, an interesting thing is that after Fiona's attack,

Carrie the horse became really protective of any human that ever went into that specific paddock. Yeah. Weird. Okay. So mom, it's your turn now. Oh, wait. Aren't we going to talk about that a little? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sorry. So we get to talk about this one. Because I just want to go with Mike for a minute and just be like, the cow really, I feel like that's really mean to take the calf away from the cow. Oh, yeah. So I don't blame the mother cow. I almost admire her for standing up for a calf. It is Mother's Day.

Me too. Yeah. I don't blame the mother cow either. Yeah. But the horse is the hero. Right. But we're not mad at the cow. Because she tried to save her calf.

Like I wouldn't let anyone take my babies away. But then she kept her on the ground. It's like let her go now that she's on the ground. Well, she's neutralizing that threat. Yeah. Mike, how do you feel about this story? I'm all the way on the cow's side. I really respect when an animal that, air quotes, again, belongs to a human, really puts us in our place.

And then this stupid horse, I don't respect horses. Just like, oh, here we are. We got to save our human owner. Yeah. I think horses, man, they just need to stick up for themselves. Maybe I'd respect them a little more. But instead, they're just always coming to our rescue. I like the horse.

You can get rescued her. Yeah. Yeah. It is a really cool horse. I think it's a domesticated animal that's socialized with that person and it fully tried to savor. Like, it reacted to a threat. That's my guess.

All right. In all seriousness, I think I agree. Yeah. Yeah. But it hurts. It hurts. It hurts to say. I do think, like, there is more to cows than what we give them credit for sometimes.

One time I saw a video of these cows that got away or were released and weren't slaughtered and they had been, they had been. Oh, yeah. And they, like, jumped around. Yeah, they were jumping around. Yeah. And I know that happens sometimes. Totally. I think they have some underlying, I think, some hidden,

I think they feel emotions. Hidden emotions. Yeah. Yeah. They don't get turned into a gateway PC box. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right.

Let's move on to Lions. Okay. Okay. I'm excited for this one. This is a good story. Okay. I found this story actually when it came out, which was 2005. Wow.

I actually printed it and put it in. my file of interesting animal stories. I did. I did. Wow. She started a podcast back there. And then it was in the, yeah, I should have, but, and then it was in the book that Wes and I read.

So I was kind of excited about it. But so there was a 12 year old girl and she was kidnapped. She was in Ethiopia and she is kidnapped, which was a common thing there. They kidnap young girls sometimes and take them and then make them into wives of other people. So they kidnapped her and they had her for seven days and they beat her every day and she was just crying and I just imagine her cries were very despairing. So these lions came. And I imagine like these guys are probably camped out in the bush or something because they're trying to avoid being caught for these lions to just show up. So these lions came and they chased

the men off and then they stayed with the girl for six. hours until the police authorities and her family came and rescued her. No way. They stayed with her. And this is what the sergeant said. They stood guard until we found her. And then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest. Wanda Moos said, adding he didn't know whether the lions were male or female.

I believe they were female. I know. I don't know. Isn't it just a mane? It's pretty easy to tell you. So, yeah, and they just left her. So anyways, I think that they felt sorry for her and chased the men off, and Wes doesn't. This is a hard one for me.

Because they're, like, lions are like true predators. You know, they scavenge, but then they also kill for their food. And my alternate explanation for this one is that they heard her cries. they either thought she was wounded prey or the potential is that she was a baby lion because cries from the two species can sound somewhat similar and I think the author in the book brought that up and if it was a baby lion

there's a chance then that they were just protecting her as if they would protect a baby lion and then when these people showed up, scared them off and they decided to leave her. My thought is that there's a lot of footage out there and in the book it talks a lot about this other lion that would take orix calves is like as kind of like abandoned or as like adopted calves.

But every once in a while she would kill one or the other lions. She would like raise them? She would raise them. She would stick with them for like days or even weeks. No, she didn't kill them. Well, you're right. They would die in starvation and she would eat them. Okay.

But there are, there's other footage too of like lions stumbling upon baby gazelles or whatever and they'll take them for a little while and play with them and then they kill them. And sometimes that takes hours. Yeah. And you see it on the internet, like, lions aren't always mean or something. Right. And it's like playing with a baby pronghorn. And then it's like, that pronghorn is going to die.

Yeah. Like polar bears will do that with dogs. Yeah. But then occasionally they just kill them, you know? And so in my mind, what I personally think happened here is that they thought it was some kind of prey. They showed up. They realized it wasn't something that they typically, you know, view as prey. they scared these guys off when they showed up

and they were just kind of deciding what to do with this girl. At some point in this story had this gone on much longer, I'm pretty convinced they would have eaten her. But when these other guys showed up, the police or whatever, they scared the lions off. Six hours is a long time. It is, but it's not that long. Like some of these lions that adopt calves for a little while,

it'll go on for days before they finally kill them. What's that in lion years, Jeff? Six hours. That's longer. Yeah, right? So another thing that I know is that a lot of the tribesmen and whatnot that have lived with lions for a long time in Africa, they would go into lion kills and just run them off of kills. And they can do that during the day, but at night you can't. And so lions won't defend a kill during the day.

And they could literally just walk up to a kill and scare the lions off. And so my thought, my theory is that these guys, I'm not sure what time of day it was. Yeah, not either. But the lions came in at night when they had this girl scared these guys off because lions coming in at night is scary. And then it was daytime when the police came back and that scared the lions off from this girl. That's my theory. I think sooner or later this girl was going to be a meal. Well, I did a little research on lions, female lions.

So, yes, lionesses. It said Leon-Ein sisterhood. Yeah. So they have equal breeding. They don't like compete for the male's attention. They hunt together. They take care of each other's offspring. Like they just have like a co-op of babysitting.

And when the older lions, lionesses get too old and can't hunt as well, they actually save some of their kill for the older lionesses. So I do think that lions are cool mothers. They are. And I think that maybe when they hurt them. her crying, they just were like, okay. But I do think that eventually they could have killed her. Yeah.

I don't take that away. It's rare that any predator passes up a meal because of like, but I'm not discounting it. Yeah. I'm not saying I'm 100% convinced of my theory, but if I were a betting man, which I am, I would bet that had this gone on for a little while longer, a day or two longer even, they would have eaten this girl. But I'd give her 24 hours. I think the motivation, like, it's just a cool story.

It is a cool story. It's cool that she was kidnapped. And like she was, regardless of the motivation, she was saved by life. Yeah. That's how I feel too. So like the motivation doesn't matter to me too much. I see what you're saying. Like they probably came in because they heard screaming or like they just wanted to see.

What was going on? And then the people left. And I can see mom's view that they have a motherly instinct and didn't want to just. just like kill the girl right away. Right. So yeah, I just think it's cool that her life was saved by lines. Yeah.

And that's like the biggest takeaway everyone should have, I think. I do too. And like before we get to mics, I overall I was going to make that point with all of these stories. Yeah. I don't want to sound like too much about buzzkill with like the explanations. No, it's good to hear.

Yeah. No, you need to do that side. All of these ultimately. Yeah. Our cool stories where emotion is involved in some way. And like we can. if there's any take-home message, it's that there is some crossover between animal and human

emotions. These are cool stories. Yeah. Mike? I didn't have a whole lot to add on that one. It just seems like I err on the side of science, I guess, and it just doesn't really make sense to me why a predator would pass up a free meal unless there was some explanation. Maybe there's a detail we don't know or something.

I don't know. Some other, oh, go ahead. No, I guess that's really a lot of say. Some other factors that would be interesting to know is like when these lions last fed, had they just eaten that day and they're like pretty full, they've truly could have just been saving her. Like they do that with like calves and stuff sometimes. How long would you wait before killing her? I wouldn't do it. If you're a lion.

If I'm a lion, I would wait a little while. Right. Yeah. And kind of going back to what Jeff said, I actually just believe in miracles that happen sometimes. And sometimes it's not that person's dated job. Totally. And I do too. And I think that could be the case.

I mean, that is kind of like a, that story could be the birth of any number of myths and religious stories that, yeah. Can you even imagine? This is obviously a blessed child. But wouldn't that be cool if you were not that the girl, I mean, she went through terrible things. Yeah, but just to be. And she must have been so scared, but just like, what are they doing?

Yeah. You know, why are they still here? And it's like, even if the lion. attacked her, it's like, at least I'm not with those guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great, till the CFO sees them, that's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.

I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bullspend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign, terms of conditions apply. So really quick, two more things I wanted to say before we got out of the stories.

There's a ton of stories in this book. There's two more that stuck with me and I just want to report on them almost like headlines. One of them that I thought was really interesting were these guerrillas that they went around and disassembled hunter snares in the forest that were used to catch like other animals. And it was because one of their gorillas, gorillas had been caught in one of these and it had been injured and they recognized like, oh, it got hurt by this thing, so I'm going to take it apart. That's awesome.

And that really does show altruism. It shows that they knew where those snares were, so they weren't going to get caught, but they didn't want any other animals to get caught in them. And that's like true, in my mind, altruism. And then there was another one about a parrot that I thought was really interesting, an African gray parrot where it had learned all these words and it actually learned how to piece words together to make sentences. And its owner was babysitting

a little girl. And the little girl was in the room alone for a minute and she was choking. And the woman was in the other or the, yeah, the owner who was babysitting was in the other room. And the parrot just started yelling, mama, baby, mama, baby. And she'd never heard her use

the word baby before. And the parrot was fluttering its wings and stuff. And she ran and saved the girl from choking. And the, she called the girl mom or she called the lady mama, the it did and then she like pieced those together. And that one like I thought was really neat. So anyway, it's a really interesting book. If you're interested in kind of more the emotional side of things, I wouldn't recommend it as like a super sciencey book. But as far as like really

interesting stories that you can kind of interpret in your own way, I think it's a great book. So that's it for stories. Mom, thanks so much for pointing us in the direction of that book. Yeah. Thanks for doing a nice, a nice one. Yeah, not a mean one. We don't like me. You know I like attack stores, but I just wanted a nice one for once. All right. So we're going to do a category first.

Our pop culture category is going to be like what animal rescue in a movie do you like the most, right? Is that what we're doing? Yeah, like just your favorite pop culture animal hero. Okay. And I get to go first. Okay. All right. Okay.

So we already mentioned Lassie. Yeah. But I grew up with Lassie. And we didn't, we couldn't watch whenever we wanted to, you know, when the episode was on, that's the only time we got to see it. And it was in black and white part of the time. But it, Lassie was pretty cool. All of us loved Lassie. And we all wanted a dog like Lassie.

And then with the Timmy, Timmy's in trouble. Even now when your dad and I will see an animal look at us, Gil turned to me and he'll go, Timmy's in trouble. Timmy's in trouble. And then also, I guess there's even a study, and they named it. The Timmy's in the well study. Really? And, yeah, so. Timmy's parents really should have just cut their losses and let Timmy die.

He was always in trouble. He was always in trouble. He was always started. I've always wanted to see an episode of Lassie, but there was really high stakes. It was like, what's that Lassie? Timmy's captured by a redress. President Lincoln got assassinated? I don't know.

I just think a gritty reboot could really work for Lassie. That would be funny. That's a good idea. Yeah, I'll go. Okay. Mine's also a golden retriever. Okay. I'm going with Air Bud.

Okay. Sure. 30th time Air Bud's made the podcast. There's a scene where the basketball coach is in like a locked gymnasium. And he's just chucking basketballs at this little kid. Like, because the kids, like, wasn't good enough at basketball. I guess, which is like a 10-year-old. What does the coach expect?

But he's just like, chucking these balls at him. Bobby-Ney-style. Airbud keys into it and knows it's wrong and leads everyone in there and bust the coach. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good pick.

So I misinterpreted this category. I just thought Darkwing Duck. We love when this happens. I thought of Dark because he is literally a hero. I thought that's what you're talking. But I thought of a different one. And so in Baby's Day Out, the all-time popular flick with Joe Montania, there's one time when the baby's in a gorilla cage and one of the bad guys that's trying to steal, I forget why they're trying to steal this baby. The bad guy slowly reaches in and starts pulling the baby towards to get out of the cage.

And the gorilla just like hammers. I think he like just breaks his arm. I don't know. I forget exactly what happened, but I always appreciated that gorilla. There's good. Okay. The one that I decided to pick right now, actually, I was going to do the jungle book where Baloo saves Mowgli from Cher Khan.

But I just thought of this movie that I brought up on the podcast before, but that I just loved watching. It's called Venom. And it's not like the Tom Hardy Venom superhero. It's from like the late 70s, I think. And it's about this kid who gets kidnapped in his own home. And he's like held hostage. And they're just like by this weird stroke of coincidence, a black mamba also gets let loose in this same home because he's like the kids obsessed with snakes and he's supposed to have this

harmless snake but it was actually a black mamba and there's this part where this woman is like about to attack the kid or something and the snake ends up biting her and it's the gnarliest snake death scene I've ever seen in a movie and like pretty true to form for what a black mamba death would look like and it's a really crazy movie too because they use real black mamba's in it and they're like the snake that you don't want to get bit by. You die like really quick. And so it was a really good fun movie and that snake saved that kid's life. I'm going to give a shout out to Ice Age. Because that whole plot is just that. Like a woolly mammoth and Sith the Sloth and the Sabretooth. I don't remember that one at all. It's like they escort. Yeah. That's a great pick.

All right. So our next category is just going to be some, uh, some Patreon questions for you, Mom. Okay. You ready? I think so. Okay. From Hayden, if Cindy could be any animal, what would she be? And then I'll just add on Megan's as if Wes, Jeff, and Mike were animals, what would they be? Okay.

I'm going to go with Wes's pick the, was it a hawk that one time? Yeah, like a eagle or a hawk. Yeah, but which kind flies for fun? Ravens do. I want to be a raven then. Yeah. Okay, cool. How about for us?

What would you be? Yeah. Like, how do I look at you as animals? Yeah. Okay, so I actually thought of the cartoon, again, Jungle Book. I think Jeff would be Blue. Okay. Because Jeff just enjoys life and he just takes it as it comes. That's a big compliment.

Blue is one of the best cartoon characters ever. It's just very loyal and... Just the bare necessities. Can be a little grumpy sometimes if he's angry. But then, West, you would be Bagheera. Well, no, no, not the naggy way, but the way where you're actually thinking ahead. Yeah. You're thinking ahead.

And then you're kind of like, okay, if you're not going to do it, I'm just going to go. But you keep coming back and you keep on. Yeah. And also, he's a good runner. He likes to climb. He likes to do the, yeah. Well, I know, but he's just, I'm just saying that he's cool. Okay.

Thanks. Okay. Yeah, black panthers are cool. Okay. Yeah, sweet. Okay. Yeah. How about Mike?

Mike, actually, I thought of a cheetah. Because he is, he did, he does run or he did run fast. And then sometimes he just wants to go out by himself and, and just do his own thing. Yeah. Is that a cheetah behavior? I guess. I'll take it. Well, that's what I'm a match to me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just going to do, I'm just going to do cheetah for you. All right. Sorry, I wanted cool ones for everyone. No, those were all great. Okay.

Yeah. From Loin. Cindy, what's your favorite movie? And also, do you think Cyrus should have a podcast? About doing people's teeth. Okay, so I've got a couple of favorite movies. With my kids growing up, I really liked Swiss family Robinson. And I personally like musicals, like Sound of Music, all over, that kind of thing.

But I really, I'm with Jeff on Braveheart, and I really love. like point break. Point break is like, I love point break so much. We have a huge poster downstairs of point break in the house. Yeah, point break. And I do like Gladiator too, but I don't really feel like his purpose was all that great. But so those are my movies. He was a slave.

I know, but his thing was like. Maximus, you better check your life. Braveheart was trying to free the people. And then Maximus was just. like for Rome and I'm not really a Rome fan. So you don't, you don't care about Rome, but Scotland is cool. Yeah. Okay.

Well, he wasn't, well, Rome wasn't depressed like Scotland was. I think I see what you're doing. Fair enough. Okay. All right. This one's from Brooke. Growing up in Florida, it was easy to see the destruction of natural environments due to population growth and behavior of tourists.

As Montana seems to be really having a moment of extreme popularity, what do you wish people knew when visiting your state? Oh, boy. I could write a book on this one. It's kind of a no-win situation. I actually don't blame people that come here, but it's just frustrating because I pay the price for being here all winter long so I can have the summer. And then my summer is just totally crowded.

So you earn it. Yeah, but then everyone. When I meet that comes here, I like. And so, but that's why people like coming here. So it's just, there's just a no win situation. I agree with you that there should be like some kind of locals benefit for like glacier in those places. Yeah, I do think. There should be like a day or a pass or something that locals can get.

Just because we do, the winters here suck. Yeah. So I do, if there was something like I know in Hawaii, they have one day a week that one of their bays is only for the people that are from That's cool. I actually really like that. Yeah. So that would be cool, but I don't blame the people from out of state for that problem. Yeah. You know, that would be an in-state problem. So, mom, I wanted to ask you a question for a category. More about me and Jeff. Sorry, Mike. No, I don't. Yeah. Your mom's dead. Yep. She's out of there. I'm disqualified for mother's day. Mom, the question was, what is the thing that you've been most proud of? Or what's one thing you've, not most proud of? We'll say, what's one thing you've been proud of? me and Jeff, and what's one thing you've been the least proud of for me and Jeff? Yeah. I don't know why you asked me this question. Because I knew it would bug you. Okay. Well, I'm going to just say I am going to include Mike in this because I just had reached

out to his family. We did a Patreon episode. Well, we did some Patreon things for getting to know Mike and Jeff and Wes better. So I just reached out to his family and it sounded just like Wes and Jeff too. But all of you actually are very nice to people and you treat them. Like even if someone's really funny or different, you just enjoy that about them. It's not like, I mean, maybe you're laughing, but you're not laughing at them. You just enjoy it. You just don't mock people for anything. You just are so nice and with kids and that. So I am really proud of that, but that's not the one I'm going to say because. What? Well, you already did. It's too late. Because the one I'm going to say is that I was trying to rack my brain on the negative one and then the positive one went right with it. So

when Jeff was in grade school, he came home once and told me that he had paid his friends 50 cents not to swear. And we, Gill and I never swear. And I just, don't like it. I think it's not classy. So anyways, my kids didn't swear growing up. And then I was really appalled when I heard you swear on the podcast. I was just like first time I've ever heard him swear. And I was not happy about it. Or proud. That's a good. That's a great answer. Okay. So our next category is one that Mike and Jeff came up with. Are we done with all the proud and not proud though? I don't know, are we? Okay. You have more?

Oh, I have a list. All right. No, we're okay. Okay. Save them for you. Yeah, I'd say we're done. What do you shitheads think? Oh, Wesley.

I was like promising people that they can listen to the Mother's Day episode with no swearing. All right. So one last category is I don't even know how to say it completely. Mom's done. She's out. But it was. If you could take an animal, just like every animal, that female animal, that's a mother, since it's Mother's Day, and make that, like, same attributes of it as a mother, human attributes, which animals are the worst moms? It'll get a little more clear when we start giving our answers.

Like, you want to just, like, start off with this. Yeah, sure. So, like, the first example we could think of was, it's very unmotherly, or at least bad mothering. for praying mantises to eat their husband's head after sex? I feel like that's a bad mom thing, right? Just to kill your dad, right? Yeah, it's awful. Like before you're even born? Exactly.

So with that in mind. So that was a human doing that. Right. So, that's what we're going for. Should I just start? So I also thought of a spider when they have just a million little spider babies at one time.

I feel like that'd be really irresponsible. for a human mom to have just tons. You couldn't support them financially. You can't keep track of them all. They kind of just scurry around and get stepped on and killed by other animals. I feel like that's a pretty bad mom. I'm going with a cheetah because they make their, they make baby cheetahs kill animals, like, super young and then eat them. So, like, if a human mom made you, like, kill them.

your own food when you're a baby and eat it, that would be pretty bad. That is. All right. I'm going to pick one specific animal. So I was doing the Golden Eagle study, and we had cameras on a nest. And, like, it was a nest I was monitoring. And I was a chick in the nest. And I was monitoring this nest for months and, like, really excited to finally visit

this nest and, like, see if there was a chick in it. And, like, a week before we were going to visit it to, or there was a chick in it. But a week before we were going to, like, go in and ban this. chick, we couldn't see it anymore. It wasn't popping up or anything. And so we went and collected the camera and the chick wasn't there. And then when we looked at the footage, there's a time where, like, the mom came back from, like, getting prey and just accidentally pushed this chick off the clip.

No way. And it's really, I don't actually think it was a bad mom. It's just a terrible accident. Yeah. But she, like, pushes it off and then she just, like, looks over. And it was just like, whoops. Oh, gosh. So that's my pick.

Oh, that's terrible. Did you have one mom or not? The only thing I could think of is, I know, like, sometimes when you have fish, you have to have them separate. When the mom's going to do the babies, you have to do them separate because then the mom will eat all the babies. Yeah. That's a good pick. Yeah.

That's good. All right. Your answer, Jeff, actually reminded me. I'm just going to sneak a little something for my mom in here, if you don't mind. So my mom was actually, she was really adventurous and very outdoorsy. You would never assume having met her. But I got this idea when I was really little that I wanted to go fish and make dinner for my family with the fish that I caught. So she actually took me out.

How old? I was like maybe five years old. And so she got the fish and the bait and all that stuff all set up. And we went down and I caught one single fish. And I was so proud. And we got home. And she knew that I wanted to provide the family with food. So she made sure that I was the one.

that killed the fish, like, chopped its head off. Yeah. I knew that she would do it. Like, you know, I knew that she could do it, but she would not allow me to, like, pass that buck to her, you know? She's like, I think this is going to be a really important thing for you. Yeah. And she's just like, she made me, you know, take care of that. I don't know how she knew how to make a fish like that, but she walked me through it all.

Did she make you do it all slowly and did her eyes get all glassed over when you did it? Yeah. That's truly my stuff. That's really cool. No, but she, she was like that. She was really cool that way. That's great. It makes my cheetah pick worse.

You had a good example of. She may be a kill when I was little. You didn't know. Yeah. We all miss your mom, Mike. Just so you know. One last question for you, Mom. I know you really like enjoying,

you really enjoy doing these Mother's Day podcasts, right? The second time. Yeah, it's fun. We all enjoy it. Yes. If someone told you that you either couldn't do these again or you had to go to the moon, what would you pick?

I couldn't do these again. You wouldn't do these again? No. Okay. I'm not going to the moon. My mom won't go to the moon. We could have a gun to her head. All right.

Well, happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This was great. This was great.

Sure. Yep. Okay. And this is tooth and claw. Yeah. Like you, about to say that. I was just going to say it and thank you all for listening. I hope you liked it.

And we did, we did record another episode with our mom, a bonus episode so you can get that either on Patreon or if we have Apple subscription set up at this point you can get it there as well so we got two subscription services and awesome yeah we'll see you later love you guys yeah see it bye bye