Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Pygmy Elephant Attack - Borneo Trip Travelogue with Jeff

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Jeff gives us all a rundown of everything he could remember that happened on our recent trip to Borneo. He punctuates his trip notes with a couple of attacks that took place on the island, including one that involves a crocodile, and another about a pygmie elephant. Watch this episode here: https://youtu.be/x7M3KxbZ6hE ~~ 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

Let's be honest, buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy, or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at mood. And it's not just the variety that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small American-owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly, and ready to elevate your mood.

And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-D.com to get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. So for today's episode, Jeff actually prepared a travel log of our recent trip to Borneo. So he'll talk about all the different spots that we stopped at, all the cool animals that we saw, a couple of funny little stories, including a drone that could easily have killed one or many of our group. But he also talks about some animal attacks that he learned about while we were there.

He got some insider information from some of our guides that just happened to have taken place around a couple of the spots that we visited. So it's a little bit different from our usual episodes, but it has all the same elements just in a different order than maybe you're used to. Oh, and something else we wanted to bring up is that this will actually be a really good episode to watch over at our YouTube channel, since we included a bunch of photos and footage that we and some of the other members of our group took while we were there in Borneo to go along with it. So if you haven't checked this out on YouTube yet, just click the link that I'll put in the episode description, or type tooth and claw into the YouTube search bar, and you should be able to find it pretty easily. If you want to just listen to this as a regular podcast, audio only, it's totally fine. This episode's going to be good either way.

But the YouTube video could be kind of interesting if you're looking to see some cool animal pictures. So, thanks to everyone for listening. I have done enough talking. Let's get to the episode. Let's go. If I lost my arm, I'd want to replace it with an umbrella. She's like going to that. Sure.

But then I don't know if my shoulder would probably get tired. Yeah. Maybe you replace your shoulder with an umbrella or your head. You could replace your head with an umbrella. Well, those are the ones. those hats. That's true. They do kind of already have that, don't they? And you don't have to replace your head. Should this be our intro? We can. Yeah, let's do it. So, tooth and claw podcast, you got the brothers, Wes Larson and Jeff Larson. West Larson is our wildlife biologist, technically speaking.

Technically, yeah. Jeff Larson's our wildlife biologists. If you're not speaking technically or truthfully. Correct. You're dishonestly speaking, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a liar. So Wes went to school for that title. Yes. Did my studies, got my master's, was a wildlife field biologist for 11 years. You went to school for a pretty long while for that, right, Wes? My master's took me four years because I kind of had to switch trajectories midway through.

But if we're being fair, like if you were really good at what you do, you would have done it a little faster, right? Yeah, I'm not that smart. But I would love to have done it longer because I loved it. Yeah, he wasn't like trying to finish. He got to do really fun work. Okay. Like a Van Wilder situation? Yeah.

Tom liked me so we just kind of, it worked. Great. Tom Wilder being. Tom Smith, not Van Wilder. Oh, shoot, I got that all the next time. Tom's son. Tom was my master's advice. He's cool.

He's a good guy. He is. And this other person you're talking is our producer. and best friend Mike Smith. Hey, Mike. Hey, what's up? West. Not too much.

I'm in Yellowstone. I'm in a hotel in Bozeman in between Yellowstone trips. How are you liking it? There's a lot of bears right now, huh? There's a lot of grizzlies right now, a lot. I talked to someone that saw 29 grizzlies in one day in the park. Whoa. That's County Cubs.

And a crazy thing. Here's a little news that maybe tooth and claw people hear early. There's a grizzly with five cups, which has maybe never been documented in the world. This might be like a world first. World record. So they just learned about her like two days ago. So I really want to see her. What's normal?

Like two or three? Two or three. Two is like average three is happens. Four is, it's happened like $3.99 have four cubs. But it's really a huge deal when there's a bear with four cubs. $3.99 is a famous Teton's band. Oh, yeah, yeah. Five is unprecedented. Black bears can have five cubs, but brown birds don't. That's really cool, actually. Huh. Yeah. Busy mom. And two days ago, a white bison was born. Whoa. What's going on? Yeah, which is like an extremely sacred animal to a lot of the indigenous peoples around here. So, and a sign of a good omen. So maybe.

Yeah. Reminds me of that movie like Beverly Hills Ninja. Yeah. With Chris Farley. Is that what it was? Yeah. Sure. He was the white ninja or something. Right. Yeah. Are you communicating with me? It's probably really problematic if we go back and watch that. Yeah. What do you guys think this white bison is a, what do you think it's an omen of? Yeah, I think, I think climate change. We're past our peak. We're on the downhill now. We're on the down. Yeah. It being, it being white is reminiscent of like the icebergs that are melting maybe. They're coming back. Oh, you think it's swinging the other way. I like that. It's a good omen. Yeah. Good omen.

What do you think? Maybe the Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl. That'd be a good omen for me. Well, that's fun, Wes. I wish you would have invited us. I saw 15 bears and 10, or 15 grizzlies and 10 black bears this week. Oh, that's a lot. That's too, are you like a little bored of them?

I'm tired of bears. Yeah, I'm over it. Where's all these birds at? Yeah. No, Jesse was with me, and one day she was like, I've got bear fatigue. and I said, what? And I got kind of mad at her. You can't say that out loud around you?

No, not around me. There's no such thing. Well, today I'm going to lead the episode, a Jeff episode. And I pitched you guys this idea. Thanks for going with me on it. We'll see. I mean, I think people really liked my little trip recrap of when I went to Cancun. What would a recrap be?

Have you like ate your poop and then recracked it? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Dogs do that a lot. I think you nailed it. All right. But then I was thinking with Borneo, I thought it was really fun trip, and I felt like there's enough content from the trip to be able to put together like a travel log. And then I throw in a few different stories with some of the animals we saw, like near some of the locations we were at.

Great. So? Very start, we decided to fly out of a zoo. We go into Portland, then we go to San Francisco, and then from San Francisco we take this pretty new airline called Starlux to Taiwan and then again to Kuala Lumpur. The Starlux opening video, I just have been thinking about a lot. It was high production. There's like a chameleon right away who turns invisible and he's teaching you how to put your seatbelt on. It's all CG.

Yeah. This hamburger's listening to music. And, like, this flight attendant that kind of has, like, the body of the mom from the Incredibles. Yeah, it made me think of, like, Jessica Rabbit. Jessica Rabbit from Whofram. She's, like, dancing with them. And then I'm like, oh, something's going to happen with this, like, kind of hot flight attendant. And lobehold, a lava head, volcano head guy has a crush on her and his head's going to blow up because

He likes her so much, but luckily he's sitting by someone with ice powers who cools them down. Who did they catch smoking in the lavatory? Do you remember? Was that the hamburger? It was a little gougly-eyed alien. I don't think it was a cheeseburger. It was like an alien, but it sure looked like a cheeseburger. That was the cut that I liked the most because it just cuts to him smoking in the bathroom.

And it's like he's smoking weed because the music cuts to like a real fun music and his eyes are all googly. and Volcano Head hates it. Yeah. And then the person you guys sat by was just super sick the whole time, right? Yeah, that's right. Like the sickest human I've seen in a long time. And you put them in between you both. Her.

Her. Yeah. She coughed regularly at like five second intervals for 14 hours. I felt so bad for her. Yeah. And it wasn't like a dry throat cough. It was like a bad cough. Yeah.

No, so that wasn't a fun flight for you guys. You know what also was not a fun flight for me? Sorry. I just, I need to tell everyone this happening, but on the Portland flight, I sat next to an old lady. We had kind of like built a rapport with her like going up to the ticket counter. Oh yeah. She started talking to me. She was really sweet. She was super interested and she talked the entire like hour and a half flight from Missoula to Portland. But by the end of the flight, she was really getting in deep to like some family stuff. And as we were landing, she was just like, you know, I just really wish I never would have had grandchildren, which is a real, like, I can understand saying you'd wish you didn't have kids,

but wishing you didn't have grandkids is like another layer of like, what is happening to this lady. Yeah. And that's like hard for you to respond to, you know? Yeah, I didn't know what to do, but I just left. I was like, well, have fun in Portland. Well, we get to the Taiwan airport and then we saw a Dior tester thing in the airport and I tried telling the lady giving out samples that Wes is a Dior model and she was not impressed.

Yeah, you even like showed her a photo and stuff. She would like did not give any reaction and I started to feel a little embarrassed like why am I talking about Wes is a Dior model. Because it's legitimately interesting. I can't believe someone would just like blankface stonewall you like that. It's weird. Oh man, it is incredible. Wes, you were kind of a model, huh?

Yeah, I mean, they took photos and stuff, and then there's the two videos that I did with them. So those photos could pop up today. Yeah, and like airports you heard they might, like, show up there, right? Yeah, it's possible. Do you get to meet Johnny Depp? Because he does the same quote as you. I didn't get to meet Johnny Depp.

I'm not that interested in. No, Johnny Depp. Yeah, I don't really care to meet him. That's fine. Yeah, because, well, What, your start was with Philson, right? That was like your first, like, modeling thing you did. Yeah, they hired us to find bears, and then we modeled for them a little bit, too.

He brought me, that's generous of you to say we, because he brought me with him, and I was like Mike Krasowski and Monsters Inc, where he has, like, the logo over his face. Like, I was doing, like, blue steel the entire trip, like, just trying to, like, model. And all it was, it was, like, one tiny little square in a collage of pictures. me on like an ATV and then West got like all these like pages of him doing things but it was it made sense to do it was fun we had a fun time it was really fun so anyways so then we meet most of our group in the airport in Kualumpur fly together to Borneo we land and then we met our guide his name is Kurt he was like the most intelligent fun guide ever like if he's listening we love you

Kurt, you gave us so much information. And he had... It was just fun to be around. Yeah. Trip's supervisor named Wayne, who kind of asked us if he could just be a background observer. But he was just too much fun and quickly became like an equal member of the group. And then he told us a little bit about Borneo on our first bus ride that like it was

super affected by World War II, which you know, you wouldn't normally guess. But yeah, Japan like did a ton of damage in Borneo. And then, like, I think it got split up pretty quick after that between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and we were in Malaysian Borneo, the entire trip. Right. And we get to the hotel right away. There's a leopard cat, which is, like, a small, like, house cat-sized cat, but it's a wild cat that looks really cool in a basket that some guy had just, like, trapped and was, like, bringing to, like, get it helped. I forgot that that was the first animal. Like, well, not the first animal, but kind of like the-

When we got out of the bus. It was pretty amazing. I don't know. It was just a great way to start the trip to, like, have a leopard cat. Yeah, it's just hanging out waiting to grade us to the airport or to the hotel. There's wildlife in this country, you know. Yeah. And then we meet the rest of the group at the pool.

Eric, one of our group members said that the other day a water monitor had, like, ran into the pool, but was just like running straight at it and really freaked out. I really freaked him out and then just like jumped in the pool, which is pretty cool. We have a water monitor episode. They're really big lizards. We got like a quick trip to a temple in real, and it costs like seven ringets to take the car, which is like $1.50, and I swear he drove us for like half an hour. So that was, I still don't understand how that was.

Pleasant surprise. And then we saw a dude on the way to the temple just what's, the full drum set playing the drums on his driveway. You remember that? Yeah, I love that guy. I don't know what he was playing, but he was going hard at it. His drum set was like one-fifth of his house, and he was just like on the side of the road going so hard.

All right, so real quick, just to set the stage, I'm going to talk about everyone who is in our group, but here's like a few interesting stories about members of the group at the start. So Chantel had recently been diagnosed with the time, type of cancer. She got surgery for it right after the trip, so we were just like really thankful she was still able to make it. Alex and Lindy, Lindy was a long-time listener, and on a first date, they had talked about Tooth and Claw, so Alex hadn't ever heard of us. He started listening to us. They decided to go to Borneo together, but his friends, so it's

like great to have them. We had Ben, who designed the trip at Trova, but then like after booking the trip was let go from the company, but was still able to come on the trip with us. And then Sarah and Chloe had wanted to go to Borneo from like a super young age. Sarah wanted to see the proboscis monkeys. And most everyone else just trusted our decision to choose Borneo. And the history of that decision was I was just scrolling through trips and I saw thumbnail of an orangutan. And then I texted Wes and Mike and was like, hey, Borneo looks pretty cool.

It worked. A few months later, we're all in Porni all together. Another, Kitty was inspired by Tooth and Cloud to go into marine biology. So any future papers she writes, we get credit for. And Kayla wanted to go on the National Park after Dark Trip, but had to come on ours instead because it's full. Sorry about that, Kayla. So then the next morning at breakfast, the water monitors, came, took a little sunbathe, jumped in the pool.

We got pretty excited. Wes, we're like watching this water monitor, and Wes tells me, I really, really want to pick it up. I'm like, oh, really? Like, it's not going to bite you. And he's like, oh, no, it'll bite the hell out of me. All right. No, I mean, I did want to pick it up, but I...

You think you could have... I wouldn't have done it. You think it would have done it? I for sure could have caught it. Yeah. but it would have bit me. I don't know how to pick that lizard up without getting messed up and clod and stuff.

So I wouldn't have done it, but I wanted to. Toothed and Claude. You got some real Steve Irwin in you, dude. I do. I do. Yeah. It was a good little starter spot, though, because we were on alert for the water monitor,

which we saw, and that was really cool. There's also like a little jungle walk kind of tucked away in the back. They didn't really seem like... Yeah. Like they didn't want us on it, but we could. I don't think so.

Yeah, but we saw some. We even saw a really cool bird at that temple we went to. I don't know exactly which ones. Do you remember what they were, Wes? Yeah, it was a blue-throated bead. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that was a really pretty little bird. One thing I really liked about Borneo is it didn't seem like there was like any off-limits

places. Like you can kind of just do what you wanted. And they were like, all right, whatever. Like, you might get hurt. I love that. Yeah. And I should have said, this was the Saba Hotel in Siddakin. So we were like pretty thrilled.

we got to see those water monitors. One of them was just gigantic, too. And then we left that first hotel. We went to like a skywalk on like the way to our next hotel. And Wes, what was that bird you saw on there? The black and yellow broad bill, which was the main bird I wanted to see on the trip. It was like honestly kind of cute for lack of a better word, just like how excited Wes was that he got to see this bird.

It's very excited about that bird. He's like, I don't think you guys, like, understand how cool that bird was. It was like, it was pretty cool. Yeah. But you're right. And then Kurt, our guide, showed me a video that they had showed him of an orangutan who had raided their fridge two days before. So let's put a pen in that. Okay.

Use the pen as a pin. Right. And put a pen in it. It's penned. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish.

Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. Okay, so then we get to our next hotel, and it's the Billet Rainforest Lodge.

It was really unique. We had to, like, get in two separate little boats just to, like, be able to get to this lodge. We get to the lodge, and, like, there's, like, these three hammocks. I go and rest in one, and then Chloe and Ava join me. And after, like, two minutes, we're just like, oh, this is great. And a tree branch just, like, breaks and hits Ava in the face. That could have been so much worse than it ended up. Like she took it like a champ.

We had also heard We had heard that there had been an elephant sighting the previous day to us arriving there, right? So we were kind of excited for that. No, that same morning. That same morning. That's right. Yeah.

And Kurt had like a surprise for us, but then it didn't end up being there. But it was pretty cool still like we're staying in a place where there's elephants right by us, you know? He was kind of like the Chris Farley in Billy Madison. And he was like, you can imagine what it would be like if there was an elephant here though, right?

Yeah. That's what he told us. It would be pretty sweet. He's like, yeah, it would be pretty cool. It is nice to know. He's like, here's a picture of me with an elephant. Yeah. So then we've seen a lot, but I mean, one of the main reasons we want to go there,

we get to go on our first river cruise. And, you know, one way or another, my state of mind's a little bit altered when we go on our first river. cruise. So we're out there. It's like my first time really birding. And Wes has a green laser pointer that he would use to like help us see the birds that he sees. And there's like this one, I think it was a kingfish or something. But Wes like kept shining his laser pointer in like little circles. Or he's like demonstrating like, hey, follow this laser pointer. And like someone on his boat couldn't see the bird. So he kept like moving it around. And I thought the laser pointer was the bird for a little while.

I was just like, oh yeah, I see it. Bioluminescence, something. And then I was like, Jeff, get a grip. That's the freaking laser pointer. Right. And then they tell us on the tour, like Borneo has a big five, kind of like using what Africa does with their big five. You guys remember the big five?

Aranatan, rhinoceros hornbill, elephant, saltwater crocodile, and. Prabas. Proboscis monkeys. Proboscis monkey. Proboscis. Yeah. So at the start of the cruise, we see this rhinoceros hornbill, which like, I don't know, maybe Mike, you want to describe it a little bit?

So it's a pretty, I don't know if I would say it's a huge bird. It's pretty sizable, though. It's got this cool yellow beak, if I'm thinking of the right one. But it also has kind of what looked like a banana kind of strapped to the top of its head. Like a red banana. Yeah, like upside down or right side up. I don't know how bananas usually are. I guess.

But it was kind of like bending upwards towards the sky. And when they took off the rhinoceros horn. Exactly. Yeah. But like their wings

are pretty big again. So when they fly, it almost looked like they were moving in slow motion to me. Just like the most graceful, really most beautiful bird maybe I've ever

seen in person. They're really cool. Yeah. Huge bird and like such a cool bill. And honestly, to me, it made it feel

like Jurassic Park when we are like on that boat and just see like this giant bird with like a rhinoceros sword that like yeah you've never seen in anything like it before you know turns out proboscis monkeys are not hard to find at all there's just tons of them lining the river um they they look like a bad cartoon drawing to me like someone who just like can't draw and knows but Yeah, Wes, didn't you say you liked proboscis monkeys way more than you expected you would? Yeah, like the coloring of their fur and stuff was more beautiful than I thought. They just were like a more graceful and beautiful monkey than I thought they'd be. Because I'd seen a lot of photos of them and I always thought they were kind of ugly.

But then seeing them in real life, I did kind of fall in love with them, which I tend to do with most animals when I see them. But I did really like them. And something I learned preparing for this episode is this, jump into the water to like cross channels and stuff and there's saltwater crocodiles that like will listen for that and hunt for that and they jump from really high up when they like enter the water and then on that trip we saw a baby crock it was super colorful really cute and then like gets into the water right so i'll just say it the next day we saw like a gigantic salt water crocodile as well

and our guides like beached us on the land right next to it and it's like a little bit like what are we doing here it was intimidating we're too close to it for sure you were at the front of the boat right he had his long camera lens and the lens was like almost touching the crocodile it was like hanging out of the boat so it was so funny all i could do was like photos of its eyeball without close-hand lines our guide Kurt was just like yellow and at the boat driver's like, what are you doing? Like, scoop back.

So this brings me to a couple crock stories I found in Borneo. So real quick to like give a little background on one of the stories I'm going to do in some like of the geography of Borneo. Borneo, as we've said a few times recently, has like a billion palm trees, right? And they collect palm oil from these palm trees.

It's done a lot of damage to the ecosystem. them. Yeah, they're not native palm trees. These are palm plantations that people have created. They've wiped out existing rainforests to create these palm oil plantations. They've like cut out a lot of habitat. They've disconnected a lot of species of animals from the, from the group. It's caused a lot of problems. What one of my drivers had told me is that England actually planted like a ton of palm trees before the world wars and stuff. and they own these palm trees until like the 80s until Malaysia was able to take full control of the palm trees. So like UK messing stuff up, you know? Yeah.

They like to do that. Don't just blame Malaysia. And then we saw a lot of palm workers. They'd be on like dirt bikes looking for elephants a lot of times at night with like fake guns. And they only got like 20 ringets a night, someone told us, which is not a lot of money. That's like $4 or $5. But it does provide jobs to a lot of people in Borneo. So in February 15th, 2022, there's a 51-year-old man.

He was only known as Luther. And he was working collecting palm leaves at the Bia Batu River. It was just like a little channel of the river, though. It wasn't very wide. It was more like just like a little side section. So these people had been swimming in it for a while. and like there's never any crocodiles in there but it was connected to a river with crocodiles

so one day they're swimming you know after like a hot day working in palm and a crocodile comes up attacks him his friends all try to scare it off to no avail and a separate vi standard was like videoed some of the attack once it like moved away and they're never able to find this crocodile so like it's just crazy to me too like you get this swimming

spot that you just start to think it's completely safe. Like there's never crocodiles in there. And then one day there is and like that's all it takes. That's all it takes. Yeah. All right. Another story. This one's really fast.

But this is the river we were on. So in 2022, a man was killed by a crocodile in the river, like on another side section, I think, because the main river I didn't see any bridges. But he was crossing a wooden bridge. But the water level had raised so much. that like a little bit of the bridge was in the water. And that's all it took. The crocodile was like waiting right by the bridge for someone to cross.

And as he like got to the part that is by the water, the crocodile bit him and snatched him up. Jeez. So Wes, we've done a few episodes on animals trying to help humans in bad situations. Uh-huh. And sometimes it like just doesn't make any sense for like that animal behavior, right? Like there's just some instance where it's like,

Why did that happen? Well, I got one for you. Okay. The headline is a crocodile carries the intact body of a four-year-old boy to rescuers a mile away from where he drowned. Geez. There was no bite marks. I don't think I would want that from, like, yeah. No.

Wait, it was a headless body? Is that what you said? No. Intact body. Oh, interesting. There's no bite marks. Muhammad Zihad, we, jaha. Sorry, I know I messed that a little bit.

Had gone missing two days before near the Jawah estuary in the province of East Kumitan Indonesia. So this is on the Indonesia side of Borneo. So the crocodile got the boy on top of his head, swam for a mile, brought it to a boat, and just kept his head up by the boat until two men in the boat pulled the body off of the crocodile. That's crazy. What the heck? After that happened, the crocodile disappeared under the surface of the water. Wow.

Weird. Yeah, you'd never think that from a crocodile of all animals. I know. Huh. Everyone from like the search and rescue agency, they're quoted as saying, we think the crocodile actually aided in the search for the victim. Nothing is missing. Everything is intact.

That's so weird. And there's video of it too. Yeah. You'd think with a dog or a whale or a dolphin. or something like that makes sense, but not a crocodile. Like a crocodile's whole purpose is just to eat things, you know? I'd be like nervous too if I was the two people in the boat. Like, is this crocodile like a genius that's just like found a new way to like kill humans?

Yeah. But no, he's just trying to give them the body. That's wild. Consider it maybe? It kind of feels that way. Like, why don't do it? So there's our crocodile story. Let's get back to our trip review.

We saw some Honda civets that night in the tree right by our hotel. Sivots. Yeah, civets. Yeah, that's good. I saw two of them fight each other, which was, like, kind of crazy. But, yeah, just a really cool animal that we saw. Yeah. That night at dinner, a sequoia hit Haley in the face.

Cicada. She, Sequoia would really hurt her if it is. I'd miss that up a few times. Either way. A cicada hit Haley in the face, and she, like, completely fell out of her chair.

And, like, our helper guide, Wayne, he, like, looked, like, kind of shocked. And I was like, yeah, we're not used to, like, these bugs, because I thought he meant, like, such a big reaction to a bug, you know? Yeah. And it turned out he was just scared of bugs as well. Yeah.

It was, I'll say, though, Haley, it was oddly athletically impressive the way she kind of back rolled out of the chair and everything. I was kind of impressed it, you know, how deftly she maneuvered. But later, I shook hands with a cicada and my friend Brandt told me is the best content I've ever made on my Instagram. So I got good taste of friends. You deserve a little trophy. Then the next day, McCawks raided our whole camp. I like found one just like digging through the trash that the housekeepers had collected. And the entire trip there's just macaques, macaques.

Yeah. I think you can go both ways, right? Yeah. They're just everywhere. Like the first one that got pointed out, I was pretty excited. And then by the end of the trip, you're like, yeah, I get it. You know, but they're really cool. So then also that day, I told Kurt that I brought my drone, and he got excited.

and wanted me to use it to try to find the elephants. So we flew it way up in the air. It is way too thick. We couldn't see anything. But then I was like, can I bring this on the boat? And he was like, I don't know. I'm a little nervous. You'll crash it.

I was like, don't worry. I'm an expert. Won't crash it. So I bring on the boat. We go to like this area, I don't know, this cool little like Oxbow Lake area. and the front of the boat looks flat to me, so I set my drone on there. Normally, I just let it fly out of my hand. It wasn't flat, so it broke two of the propellers on takeoff,

and I had like 20% control of my drone once it got up in the air, and my initial thought was to try to land it in the boat, but then I was like, I might hurt, like, one of the people on our trip if I do that. So I crashed it like immediately into these plants. And you know what though? It's still good. So we're all right. But a pretty funny video from that.

I was a little embarrassed. The second when I knew something was wrong and then it quickly devolved. Yes. It's like one of those things where it just immediately goes wrong. I was a little embarrassed by that one. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th.

Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus Co-Maine's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry and the best heavyweight in the world, Francis Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carano. Live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time,

6 p.m. Pacific Time. All right. So then we're on to our third hotel. It's my nature resort in Sepuluk. Sepulac. Sepulac. So we're driving there and on the way there, West, I think you started like putting some ideas in Kurt's head. But we decide to take our huge bus down a narrow road to like a random cave because Kurt says like this is a good area for orangutan.

We'd done two or three river cruises, hadn't seen any orangutans yet. And we're itching to see an orangutan, right? Yeah. So we get there this random. It's called go. Manton cave. We get there. It's like not on the itinerary.

We have no idea about it. Turns out it's like the coolest cave ever. Such cool lighting. But also like very gross. Bat poop and bird poop everywhere. And cockroaches like all under you. He had warned us the smell would be bad. But it really like knocked me off my feet.

I remember Oriana went in there but like had to step out. And we don't know. Yeah. That's not saying anything about Oriana. It's saying like, this cave smelled really potent. It was grubs. It was gross. But it was really cool to see. And we also saw some red langers.

Isn't that what they were? Oh, that's right. Right outside. Maroon langers. Maroon langers. Which were really fun and cool to see. And I was like, I'm not going to see a orangutan this trip, but at least I got to see these maroon langers. Yeah.

So let's unpen what I had said. earlier, we get to our third hotel, and we're all happy, but a little disappointed that we'd still see no orangutans. And, like, as soon as we get out of the bus waiting to just tell us all to run up to the hotel. And an orangutan nickname Boogie Boy had just raided the fridge, and we were able to see his, like, agile escape out of the resort. He's taking like a bunch of bread and milk.

Yeah, go ahead, Mike. He was just crawling along the guardrail off this viewing deck. It was just such a cool. Again, I don't know what it is with me. And maybe I'm just a Michael Bay officianto or something. But when orangutan move, it looks like they're going in slow motion to me. It's like very deliberate. Yeah.

But just kind of slow and languid. But I was going to say it's good that Wes, had he not taken us down that little detour to the cave down that road, we would have missed that perfect window of pulling up. So it's like it was kind of like our experience in Australia where like we did the work and it paid off unexpectedly. Cassowary. You know, yeah, with the cassowary. It makes it that much better too.

Yeah. You feel like so. If you just show up to Borneo and immediately there's an orangutan, it doesn't feel like it's hard. But for us, we really had to work for it. So yeah, that was my highest point of the trip. I think. I was just so excited to see it. orangutan. I thought it's so funny that it raided the fridge. Turned out it was the same one that

raided the skywalks fridge the other day. And then we get to our rooms. Our rooms are awesome. I'm trying to figure out birding on my porch with, uh, it's a shared porch with Taylor and Bethany. And I'm starting to like birding just so everyone knows. It's fun. It's pretty cool. It's addicting. Then super hard late rain and lightning storm hit us. And we get a couple drinks. We're hanging out. as a group in the pool, then Sabrina shows up with a bottle of wine, and I feel like things just went up a notch, and we all went for it a little bit. Not everyone, but a lot of the group, and it was really fun. And a little bit nervous having, like, I don't think a pool's, like, the best place

to be in a lightning storm. Yeah. No. Yeah. We all kind of lost our minds for an hour or two there. We are all just kind of soaking it in. It was just a crazy weather moment. It felt so nice to, like, have it cool down.

And by then, I think the group was like really... Part of the trip, I think. Like, it's like such a bonding moment. It was. Then that night there's flying squirrels at the hotel. And we came up with a really funny question later, I think, Mike, in Kuala Lumpur. But Kuala Lumpur has the second highest building in the world. So how far could one jump if it went to the top of that building?

I don't think the other of us came up with a good answer. rotation. I think they could make it all the way around. All the way around, yeah. Just let it spin underneath. Just hover. No, but flying squirrels, like, some of those jumps, they went really far. I really liked it. That was such a fun little thing to do every night, like, sit out and watch the flying squirrels. The guides were really funny. They would, like, like, a short flight to, like, a closer tree. They would call a domestic flight. And then when they went, like, for a super far tree, they'd call it international flight.

And then we went on a night hike. We saw that cool little viper. Yeah. Bornian keel, keeled pit viper. Yeah. A bunch of huntsman spiders. Like a lot of wildlife there. The next day, we went to the orangutan sanctuary, which was like a lot cooler than a zoo, but not quite like a wild orangutan is somewhere in between.

Like the orangutan do have the option to leave, but they don't. but also like they're way more active and like normal acting than like in a zoo. Then we went to a sun bear sanctuary and Wes had like kind of loosely known the person who had started it and is like famous in bear world, right? Yeah, he's just kind of, he's like the preeminent sunbear biologist and I'd seen him talk a couple times and then I had had some of my colleagues back home doing intro so that I, could meet him while we're at the sanctuary and it was really nice he ended up like kind of escorting us around and showing us the sun bears and i remember our guides were like that was actually really nice for us even because we never really get to see dr wong and he showed us and they they said it was like really special that he was able to hang out with us so it was great he had a lot of jokes in

his presentation he did it was really funny a lot funnier than i expected him to be yeah and then we went to a proboscis sanctuary which like we had seen so many that I wasn't that excited about it. And we get there and there's just like, what, silver leaf monkeys and like proboscis monkeys and like just monkeys everywhere. And it's like really chaotic in a really fun way. It was fun. That chapter.

And then we go to our last resort, the Tabin Wildlife Resort. I got in my notes here. Last resort, long drive, Chantelle Thrua. Chantelle was really funny about it. though she like ran up to the van and was like, I threw up, like, very excited for herself. This one was funny to me too. Half the rooms were on the river and then half of them were like up on a mountain. So like a few of our travelers just had to go like so high up to their room every time.

Yeah, like on a full hike. But it was really cool up there too. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like the most stairs ever to get to a room. Lots of water monitors in our river. right there. They just kind of like float through the water. And then you guys did a night safari and Lindy spotted some orangutan arms. So we decided we'd go like watch the orangutan

wake up. We woke up with the orangutans and is really just picturesque beautiful. Like, you know, like backlit and there's just silhouettes moving around like a mom and his baby. My favorite wildlife moment of that trip probably Is like kind of spiritual And like it's so early that I think our group Hadn't like ramped up yet So it's like one of our uniquely quiet moments At the trip

Also that night I had a bat in my room And when I turned the lights on It would like hide And when I turned the lights off It just start like flying into everything And like getting really close in my face. So I had to like use a flashlight to try to find it. It took me like an hour to like kind of key in on it. And it started just getting lower and lower like right by my face. So then I like had to

keep the lights off and open the door right when I opened the door. Or like I stand by the door so I can close it when it flies out. So it starts like hitting the walls again. And then it comes like straight at my face. And had I not ducked it would have hit me like square in the nose. But I like dup. But I like ducked right as it came at me and then it left my room. You almost got COVID. 24. Then the next day we go to a mud volcano, which you're probably thinking, what's a mud volcano? It's just pretty much a lot of mud.

Yeah. A little girth running out from the ground. There's spots you can't step in it. And we see a mouse deer on the hike, which was really... Oh, I forgot about that. That was so cool. As excited as I'd seen him the whole trip, I think. They're so tiny.

And they're like, they're a type of deer, but they're like the size of a rabbit. It's really interesting animal. Yeah. And then like, as we're watching it, like, every guide there's like, their meat tastes so good. I'm just like, okay. I didn't hear that. Good to know. So we go to the mud volcano.

We put mud on ourselves. and a few people fall into the mud, which was kind of funny. And then we had to be careful for leeches in this part of Borneo. And just a funny curt memory that I have is, I remember him telling me that, like, one time when he was hiking there, he had gotten leeches on his belly button and both nipples. Both nipples, yeah. And I was just like, I don't think I believe you,

but I also, like, you haven't messed with me in this way yet. So that's, I don't know. There's like a cool, like huge trees that like locals used to use to communicate with where they just hit a rock on the tree and make a really loud noise. They use that one for the black keys on pianos. Oh, really? Mahogany. Mahogany, yeah.

It's just a cool little fact I picked up on it. Yeah. And then we went to swim at a waterfall and you guys got Ava to play the rock game. where you see how many rocks you can fit in your mouth, but you have to be able to count all of the rocks in order to win. So, like, one time Wes got, like, thousands in his mouth, but he couldn't count them all. Yeah, bad strategy.

You can't just put a handful of sand in your mouth. It's just so funny. On, like, a tooth and claw trip in Borneo, you guys are just, like, putting rocks in your mouth with a listener. And she may have gotten a pair of height because... She got 17. Yeah. Not parasites, rocks.

Yeah. Hannity presents. In the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guys. Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Hannity. Eye drops and work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Hadiday. Out of day. Bring it on.

Okay, so now to like the main, I know this has been like a long episode or like a different format for getting to like the main story. But I was just hoping people would like hearing about our trip. So this mud volcano that we visited in Borneo while we were traveling around, I asked this guide. So do you guys, have you guys like had many animal attacks in this area or like do you know of any? and he told me the craziest story of one that happened right by the spot that we had just been at, which like kind of blew my mind because it was just like, I just experienced this location, and now I'm hearing this story about what happened. Right.

So, Wes, pygmy elephants only live in Asia, correct? I, like, I know that Borny and elephants are considered pygmy elephants. Yeah, they're born and elephants. Yeah, but they're not actually like pygmy. Like, they're not significantly smaller than their mainland counterparts. Like, they're pretty much the exact same size as, like, Malaysian elephants. Yeah. But, yeah, so, and they're actually called, like, Bornean elephants.

But they only live in Asia. Yes, these ones are only in Asia. Well, they're, yeah, only in Borneo. So linguistically, I can refer to them as Asian elephants. You can't, yeah. They are Asian elephants. There are such species of Asian elephant. Yeah.

I was making that as a joke, but I guess I'm right. No, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. It's still funny though I'll give you that That was hilarious Well Mike you're in English

Major what does the word pygmy mean Uh Minine cute and small So you think of like a mouse Mouse deer When you think of a pygmy elephant Right I was thinking of the little elephant

At the beginning of Sky Captain The world of tomorrow There's a little elephant Yeah you were You kept bringing That's what I was thinking I think about that A lot That whole movie

Yeah but like West said They're like pretty comparable to Asian elephants. They're about like 70% smaller though. Or not 70. They're like 70% as big on average. What I read is like 70 to 95% as big. So they're like, it's pretty hard to tell them apart from any other Asian elephant because they're not significantly smaller.

All right. So to the attack story, there's like three main differing sources on my story. our guide in Tabine, the Australian news cycle and the Borneo cycle. All three accounts were a little bit different, but I'm going to let you guys know first, like what I know for sure. So this is from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Borneo Post, and the Wild Singapore blog. So Jenna O'Grady, Donley, was 25 from New South Wales, Australia, and was trekking with a friend and a Malaysian guide in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Sava State.

Jenna was becoming a very well-traveled person. She had just visited big cats in Africa the year before, seen elephants, and just had a huge love for large wild animals. She had also recently completed a thesis on renal failure in big cats and was due to graduate with first-class honors just a week after this trip to boarding on December 16th. Sydney University Veterinary Science Faculty Dean Professor Rosanne Taylor said that Donnelly was the Dean's List Prize winner and future leader of the profession.

She was very much the face of Australian veterinarians of the future. She will be very much missed. That doesn't sound good. Yeah. At 6.30 a.m. December 7th, they were at this mud volcano. I remember a guide saying that like it used to be an option to stay in a little tower above the mud. So I'm assuming that's where they were since they were there this early and it was a bit of a drive. And they're looking for wildlife because a lot of wildlife go to this mud volcano to get salt out of the mud, especially elephants.

They didn't see any elephants out of. after waiting and watching for a while. So they went like a little bit off trail and were able to find a bull Bornean elephant. As we had said, I'll just add a few Borneo elephant facts. So like for a long time, they were so close to like Asian elephants that people thought that, well, they actually thought that a Sultan of Sulu in like the 18th century brought elephants to Borneo and that like they were just Asian elephants that had been set free there. Well, to clarify, like, they are Asian elephants.

Like, you said they're close to Asian elephants. Like, they are an Asian elephant. It's just a subspecies. So they're really close to the mainland elephants. There's like a mainland Malaysian elephant. Yeah. And they thought that they had just brought them over from the mainland. But any elephant that you find in Asia is an Asian elephant.

That's the species of elephant. And this is a subspecies of that elephant. Okay. So then the World Wildlife Federation actually did like a study on it, and they were able to find DNA evidence that proved these elephants were isolated about 300,000 years ago from their cousins in mainland Asia. So like that kind of debunked that theory. But a lot of why that theory existed is that pygmy elephants are known to be more gentle than any other type of elephants. They're more gentle than like the wild Asian elephants that you find. So people thought, like, maybe these were domestic elephants brought to Borneo that...

Really quick. It's World Wildlife Fund, not World Wildlife Federation. Okay, thank you. Yeah. WWF. Yeah. Yeah. What Jeff just said, like, is important.

Like, they've now proved that these are not an elephant that, like, sultons brought over in, you know, hundreds of years ago and then just got free. This is an animal that naturally was separated from the mainland population. and evolved into what we know is the Bornean pygmy elephant. So it's not just like a feral elephant. This is an actual subspecies of Asian elephant. Okay. A full grown pygmy elephant can be 8.2 feet to 9.8 feet tall.

And they normally weigh about 6,500 pounds to 11,000 pounds. They are the world's smallest elephants, but as we've said, not by a lot. Right. And they also resemble Dumbo the most of any of the elephants because they kind of have more of a baby face. Their tails are longer. Their tails sometimes even can grow to touch the ground. And they have straighter tusks than most elephants. So back to our story, this particular bull elephant that they encountered had one of its tusks was broken.

So it's easy to identify. Some people had said that they had seen this elephant. elephant around a few times had always given it space because it was a solitary male. Also, unfortunately for Jenna, this male happened to be in must. It's M-U-S-T-H. Hmm. Yeah, I don't know. I've never heard that term before. It's a state or condition of violent, destructive frenzy occurring with the rutting season in male elephants accompanied by the exudation of an oily substance from the glands between the

eyes and mouth. Okay. Weird. So witnesses had observed that the bull elephant was discharging the oil, like black oily substance from its ears. So like they knew that this was a rutting elephant that could be even more aggressive than like, and bull elephants are already kind of the most aggressive type of elephant, right?

Right. It's, yeah. Yeah. Jenna, somehow this one wasn't like completely clear how it happened, but it It is clear that she got way too close to this bull elephant, like 10 meters away from the elephant, which is very close. And it seems like the guide was not with her when this happened because it seemed like he didn't know exactly how that had happened. So the story I heard from our guide was that they were leaving and Jenna maybe turned around to take one last picture of the elephant and got close without the guide knowing. But yeah, it's a little bit cloudy there.

I think they wanted to protect this guide and didn't give like every detail that happened. But anyways, Jenna gets way too close to this elephant, takes a picture, the flash goes off, and this triggers the elephant to run at Jenna. So then this bull elephant rammed its good tusk through Jenna's chest, killing her almost instantly. Yeah. The guide and Jenna's friend ran from the elephant, unable to do anything off. obviously to help Jenna in this situation because this is a gigantic animal, right? That's in it.

That'd be so shocking to like just see your friend get skewered by an elephant too. Yeah. Now another thing that wasn't in the articles, but I heard from the local guide while we were there, is that they left, they went to get help. And when they returned to the scene, the elephant was still at the body, like occasionally trampling it. So, yeah.

Ackland, I'm just going to go, Ackland, because I can't say his last name, who was a 57-year-old worker at the time. Ackland. Yeah. Said he had had several encounters with this elephant since he first arrived to the reserve that August. And he said that whenever he experienced a mill,

he'd always give him more space because he just knew those ones were more aggressive. And he said that he would speak with the elephant. and like asked for permission to give to be in the same area as it and he believed communicating with the animals was a positive way to be able to interact in their space huh okay but that pretty much does it for jena's story it's just super sad seems like she had like the right frame of mind for just like wanting to like help the world help animals love traveling and it's like west it's part of your life risk, I think, is like, and me too, like, we just are drawn in by dangerous big animals.

And, you know, like this seems like a moment where maybe someone who probably knew better, maybe got a little too close, but like I could see myself doing that at some point. And this elephant just wasn't having it that day. Yeah. I never think of elephant. Elephant tusks as being sharp enough to just skewer through someone. that you know and it sounds like these these pygmy these Asian elephants kind of have uniquely straight almost kind of like a javelin or a sword or something that's just like

such a way to go that I've never even conceived that's yeah if you think about it though like like even like a blunt log can go through a person if it's launched with enough force yeah and an elephant can put a lot of force behind those tusks and they're sharp enough with that much force to go through a person no problem yeah yeah yeah no I agree that like to be like skewered by like an elephant tusk. I honestly didn't know there's a possibility until this story. But yeah. Yeah.

Usually when you hear about people getting killed by elephants, it's like them being trampled or their car being flipped or something like that. It's not the tusks doing it. But yeah, it's honestly like probably a quicker way to go. So in a way like that's fortunate that it was probably just like an instant death. Yeah. Yeah. Well, heart goes out to Jenna's family. That's tough.

Yeah, that's really awful. Exema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis. A once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month- or longer dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking ebblis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Emglis, Lebrichizumab, LBKZ.

A 250 milligram per 2-millimeter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults in children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least. 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical topical topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebbglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebbglis. Before starting ebbglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about ebbglis and visit ebglis.com or call 1-800 LilyRX or 100

1-800 545-9-9. Okay, so just like a quick, few more notes about the trip before we go to categories. We go back to Kuala Lumpur after the trip and I almost lost my passport again. You guys That's not surprising.

You guys, you guys, the reason I did it. You remember that? It was on the ground. Jeff put it on his bag and then like walked off and it was on my suitcase. As he was getting into a taxi and me and Mike or both just like, Jeff, your passport. It's so annoying because like the Uber was called Grab.

They like needed a picture of my passport. And I was like, okay, I'm going to set it here so I don't forget it. And then I forgot it. Yeah. We did like this huge hike to Batu Caves, which was really cool. Sponsored by Pepsi, the Caves. Yeah. Would you say that's a natural monument?

No, I'd say it million stairs. Yeah. A lot of stairs. Definitely. Yeah. You're right. A cool big statue, too. Yeah.

Oh, just one note I have here. The girls on our trip had very mixed feelings about Mike's calves. Some were into it. Some were a little like, that's too much. Too much cab. I'm on the, I'm on the, I had to have been Kayla. I'm on her side. I don't like having my calves this big.

It's kind of annoying. Kayla has truly got to all of our deepest insecurities in a matter of minutes. Yeah. We went to the zoo in Kuala Lumpur, saw just this raccoon that seemed way too out in the open. So if there's ever like wild raccoons in Kualaumpur, we'll know they came from the zoo. And saw some pandas that had like this giant dome air-conditioned, pretty sweet enclosure. Any zoo notes from you guys? It was a great zoo.

It was a little, there's definitely a lot of enclosures that didn't feel like they were a sufficient. enough to hold those animals, especially the tiger one. The tiger one scared me a little. But we did see a lot of great animals, and there was lots of cool birds that were wild all over the zoo, and it was a good zoo. A lot of like wild animals in the zoo with the engaged animals. When you guys left, I did an indoor skydiving thing, so just a quick thank you to Talley is fun experiencing that, and Christine had like really funny just hair popping out of like

every hole in the helmet and just looked real fun. razzled but it's really funny we went to an indian restaurant where i ordered a quail as an appetizer and we had like a few vegetarians and a vegan on the trip and in retrospect that looked way too much like a bird and i probably should have like ordered it in front of everyone but it is delicious and i just want to say thank you everyone who came is like one of the most fun trips i've ever been on. I think we'll probably do more Trova trips. West will keep doing naturalist journey trips. We'll figure it out. But hopefully if you're listening to this and enjoyed my recap, hopefully you can get on one of our future trips. You guys have any notes before I pass it

to categories? Yeah, I just want to say kind of what you did. Thanks to everyone, not just for this Borneo trip, but our other two trips that we have planned already for having faith in us, that this would be a fun and good experience. And it went extremely well. Everyone was really cool, really nice, and it went off without a hitch. And just grateful. Grateful that we have such cool listeners.

Yeah, this was like a trip that I was a little bit nervous about, but now I find myself really looking forward to the next tube just because this one was so much fun. What are you nervous about? Just like if I would enjoy traveling with that many people and if it would be awkward or weird or anything, and everyone was so cool and it was so fun that I'm really looking forward to the next one. You guys are both really good in like a big group, I feel like, too.

I was like, I'm better at like one, two, three person groups, you know. I kind of clicked into guide mode a bit too. Yeah. I think it's in your blood, dude. Instrumental. I don't think you'll be able to ever shake that. Probably not. But it's great.

I think it added a lot of value. For sure. You showed us a lot of birds. You showed us a lot of stuff. So yeah, I like stuff. I like brink. Thanks. Thanks for knowing stuff and liking it too.

And thank you just to the country of Boreneo is not a country. Malaysia. The island of Borneo for just, you know, having us all. Like, I love it. Like, it's just a great place. And, like, thanks for sharing your part of the world with us. All right. So two categories.

Who was your favorite and least favorite member of our group? That's, we're not answering the category. So first real category, so Ava braided me and Mike's hair. So what's the best pop culture braided hair you can think of? Does Princess Leia's cinnamon buns? Yeah, that's kind of a braid, right? That's my favorite. That's got to be what I would pick too.

I can't think of any other braids. I'm going to go with Ragnar from the show Vikings. He had some pretty cool, like, shaved head and braid on top type of looks. Yeah, Viking braids that or like Thor movies or whatever, those always look pretty cool. Katniss Everdeen had a pretty good one. That's true. Didn't Rapunzel? But yeah, it's got to be Leah for me.

Oh, Rapunzel is a good choice. Entangled, I think, yeah. Well, I guess in Rapunzel the story, but, you know, whatever. What was your favorite snapshot of the trip? Wes's photo bomb pretty easily. It's just a perfectly clear picture of Wes putting his head

in like the top right corner of a picture. I forget who took it, but I love it. I think it was Christine. Oh, you didn't see it? Her phone was on portrait mode

and so it just like perfectly focused in on my faces and photo bombing the top right hand corner of a monkey photo. And it's so funny to me photo. Yeah. Kayla had a funny one too where like the flying squirrel was going and lindy was like recording it behind her she like moved her hand

like perfectly blocking the squirrel on accident the entire flight it was so funny couldn't have done that more perfectly snapshot what do you mean like a photo or do you mean just like part of the trip i because mike didn't really did you take a photo mike i did i took a picture of the water monitor lizard okay and that I just figured for Mike, he could do like a mental snapshot if you want. Yeah. I would say the day that we were all just like swimming in the pool and it was raining and we were just kind of like all coming together as a group was my favorite like moment of that entire trip. Yeah. I'd have to just, we talked about it, but the morning orangutan like watching him wake up.

Yeah. That first rhinoceros hornbill, like flying over the river. That was amazing. All right. Favorite insect on the trip? It's got to be that lantern bug for me. That was such a cool looking bug. The one that was like on the side of the tree that Kurt pointed out.

At the Rangatan Sanctuary. That was, yeah. Yeah, they just had a lot of cool like millopedes with like neon purple legs or like, there's like this fly that was bugging me so much. But then when I like looked at its feet, it had like little white booties on the bottom of its feet and it was like doing a little dance. I was like, okay, I guess I like. this fly now. Yeah.

On one of our little jungle hikes, someone found like a jumbo roly-poli thing and we passed it. West found it, right? It was West? I'm not even sure what it was, but it rolled up into this cool little ball and we all passed it off.

It's a type of millipede. Yeah. It was a millipede. Okay. I tried to hand it off to, I was at the very back of the line, except for Wayne was behind me. And when I tried to hand it to him,

he jumped like six feet back. He was so scared of it. He doesn't like book. No, he does not. All right, if we were to put a pygmy elephant into our cage match competition, where would it rank? It's doing pretty good. Anything beating it? I don't, I mean, I think of our terrestrial animals, it's beating all of them.

Like, an orca is going to beat it in the water, obviously. But I don't think, I don't think we've talked about anything that can beat an elephant. Even, like the smallest type of elephant. Yeah, I mean, they're still, like we see. said, even though they're, we call them pygmy elephants and they are technically the smallest. From what I've read, if you put them next to an Asian elephant, it's not like it's obvious, which is the Borneoingian pygmy elephant. Like, they're still a big elephant. So I, yeah, I don't know. I would probably give it top dog. Top dog. All right. So to conservation in Malaysia, so like,

that counts Malaysia, the country and like their section of Borneo, the eye. island, right? The Bornean elephants are protected under Schedule 2 of the Wildlife Conservation enactment. So basically any person found guilty of hunting elephants is liable of a fine of 50,000 ringets. And also, huh? It's like 20 bucks or something. It's like 10,000. It's like 10,000. I'm just kidding. No, I wouldn't even know. One thousand something. I think it's 10,000. Yeah. Yeah. or five years imprisonment or both. So it could be a bigger fine probably, but at least they have,

they're trying to protect it. Yeah, it's better than nothing for sure. And like they do get shot a lot there because like they are one of the animals in Borneo that actually really like palm trees and like can eat palm trees. And we're like, so like that's why there's all these guards protecting. There's electric fences guarding all these palm trees with like people on dirt. with fake guns to scare off elephants.

But it sounds like every once in while the elephants just have too much willpower to stop them and they'll break through and like take out trees, eat the trees and like do some real damage to these palms. I feel like with how many palm plantations there are there, there should be a rule that they just have to let. Like elephants just can't do whatever. Yeah.

So I do think a decent number of elephants get illegally killed, though, for, like, breaking into people's palm trees. Yeah. Did you say the total number of Borneo elephants? No, it's a little under 1,500. Okay. Ooh. Okay.

The Oregon Zoo in Portland is the only place with a Borneo elephant in the United States. It's a rescued female. And she was found wandering alone near a palm oil plantation. she had wounds on her front legs and her left eye from gunshots and was left blind in that eye. So if you live in Oregon, go check her out at the zoo. Yeah. I know a big threat for them too is, like aside from habitat loss, they can set a lot of snares there to catch other wildlife.

Like wildlife that's legal to catch. And these elephants get caught in those snares often and it can really injure them. I know like a really big percentage of elephants on board. orneo have injuries from snares. I saw 20%. Yeah, because they are so prevalent. And it's such, I mean, that's how that, that leopard cat that we saw at the beginning had been caught in the snare.

Snares are a really popular way of catching game there, but they're, they're not great because they're indiscriminate. They can catch just about anything. I don't know what it is about elephants, but I know all animals are, you know, they're just being themselves to the best of their abilities. But something about an elephant being hurt, even considering how big they are and how they can protect themselves when it comes to it. But like it just makes me extra sad.

They just seem like really nice, gentle giants for the most part. They're so intelligent. It's so social, you know? The biggest threats to them is habitat loss and fragmentation, which are driven by expanding human populations. And it also leads to more conflicts with humans and elephants, you know, the people and also just trampling crops like I just said and it says that hundreds of people and elephants are killed annually as a result of such conflicts but not and just hundreds of people

aren't killed that's that's Asian or elephants yeah yeah and just expanding human development will always disrupt their migration routes depletes food sources and destroys their habitat Also, Borneo elephants need 100 to 225 liters of water every day. And that's getting a lot harder for them to find because of climate conditions are like cutting resources to their water. So their only option is to migrate where they can find that resource to survive. Do you think it's because elephants, elephant scientists back in the 1950s, we're like, you need to get 225 liters of water every day?

They actually don't need that much. Yeah, just give them some element. Yeah, this is bullshit. Yeah. They just be one patch of element, pouch of element every day. Yeah. And they are listed as endangered. All right.

So now I want to do your personal ranking of the big five and your claw rating for each of them. So, like, my favorite's the orangutan. It's a 10 claw for me. and then I would go with the elephant probably nine claw and then I would go hornbill which I'd probably also give nine and then saltwater crocodile I'm giving an eight and proboscis monkeys I'm giving this seven okay yeah I would do I'd probably it's hard for me between a ring a tan and saltwater croc but I'm probably going to pick

orangutan number one and I'd give them ten o'clock Saltwater Crocs number two, nine claws. And just so you guys know, I really like all of these animals. Rhinoceros hornbills next, nine claws, pygmy elephants, eight claws, and a proboscis monkey is seven claws. Okay, so I'll do crocodiles, my favorite. I'm giving that one, nine. I'll go elephant after that, pygmy elephant with another nine. What else do we have?

We have, oh, the hornbill. I love those, man, those, like, that was a life-changing almost experience for me. It was like the moment I became interested in birds and on another level was seeing that Hornbill. So that'll be my, in number three, that'll be an eight. Are birds kind of worth looking at? Are birds cool? Huh. And then number four is orangutan.

I'll give them a seven, which is much higher than I would have given them pre-Bornio. And then after that, proboscis, I'll give like a six. They're interesting and cool, but they're not. They didn't change my life, you know. High bar. Borneo Big Five said a high bar. All right. Well, that's it for our rankings.

I think we're going to skip listener questions this episode. So that's it for the episode. Hopefully people enjoy it. Maybe we can do this on like future trips if we find out about attacks at places we'd been close to. But yeah, I thought it was a really fun and funny trip. Thank you, Wes and Mike, for going with me. It's fun.

Thanks for letting us come with you. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for letting me look at the thumbnails of all the trips and just see it in orangutan and say, let's go here. Yep, that's all they need to do to get us to sign up for other ones. Just put animals, Jeff likes, and the thumbnails. But yeah, and thank you, everyone who came with us. It was amazing time. And thank you listeners for now you're a part of it.

too, you know. You know our stories. You're in on it with us. So thanks for listening. If you guys want more episodes, check us out on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. We got some real bangers in there. And check out, is there anything else I should plug? Wes's Instagram account. He's a Dior model. No. Check out Wes's Dior videos. You can't be why, but don't worry about it. it we we love you guys thank you see you next time all right we'll see you guys love you