Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Python Attack - A Tale of Two Pythons

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

Wes has some uncomfortable stories to share this time, especially for the male listeners. Some of you weirdos might like this one a lot though, just like Jeff and Mike did. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds                          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw, a show where we talk about the most intense real wild animal attacks and what we can learn about how to avoid, prevent, and survive them. Today we're talking about pythons. It gets pretty not safe for work almost immediately, so take this as a content warning. Nothing too crazy, but I know that if my boss were to hear what we say during this episode, I would be asked if I needed any help and then told firmly to leave the premises. Thanks again for listening. Let's get to the episode. So we are back. It's 2021. Yeah. And we're doing a new one. Any New Year's goals?

Yeah, actually, I did make some. I'm doing like a daily workout. I'm, um... Yeah, it shows. You're huge. You guys will have to trust us, but Wes is yoked. I'm trying to eat a lot less sugar because I got a sugar problem. Yeah. And there's a few other things, too. I need to write them down. But those are my main ones.

You got any, Jeff? I've been practicing with Mike's sword. He got a sword as a Christmas present. Yeah. So I'm just trying to get really capable with that. Real good at the sword? Yeah. How's it going?

Not that well. Like Musashi himself. Do they still have sword fighting competitions? Yeah, I think. Like Kendo? The little wooden bamboo things they hit each other with. Or larping? Larping?

At the park? I kind of would hope there's like a real sword fighting competition out there, though, with like real swords. There might be, right? That's war. I know, but like where they're not trying to kill each other, there's, I don't know. Anyway. Yeah.

We're getting off topic already. Mike, New Year's goals? Yeah, reading one book per seven-day period. Wow. One book a week. That's great. That's a lot of reading. Yeah.

Okay. Short books did you read already this year. Yeah, what do we start? So I've gotten away pretty easy. The first couple I've been reading books with my nephew. So they've been reading books. in. How old is he?

Well, he's reading at a level above his grade. Let's just say that. How old is he? Two. Okay. So any book counts. Yeah. Okay.

This isn't going to be nearly as far as I thought. Speaking of hard books, I, the other week I didn't have much to do. I had like a break day. And I started looking at wiki pages for Lord of the Ring stuff. And I was reading like, I, like, did a deep dive on like more. Goth and Iru and like all the different kind of like yeah and was doing this for hours and finally I was just like you know what I just need to read the Silma silmarillion and so I ordered it I got the still more cool yeah also speaking of hard books I watched this start of John Wick three uh-huh

and he killed a dude with a book with a book yeah it's crazy bobin right yeah NBA play hard back book Truly, it's a hard. I'm excited to read the Silmarillion. Like, I have always wanted to. It's always been a goal of mine. I'm going to do it. So outside of U.S. history, would you say that you know more about Middle Earth history than any country in the world? Definitely.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't think about anything for like two days after I read it, after I read those wiki pages. So, you know, I'm just going to do a deep dive. Now, Wes, do you think that pythons exist in the world? world of middle earth? I don't, but that's actually, that's incredible that you brought up pythons.

Yeah. Because that's actually what we're going to talk about. Oh, no way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, as Jeff mentioned, we don't know if pythons existed in Middle Earth, but we do know they exist in Earth.

And that's what we're going to be talking about today is reticulated pythons. Nice segue. Thanks. So we are talking about a specific species of python. which is the reticulated python. Now, if you want to imagine for you guys out there that maybe don't know what the different types of python look like, the python from Harry Potter, Nagini, Voldemort's Python, is a reticulated python. You can tell because it's always reticulating.

Yeah. They have a reticulating pattern down their back, and I think that's how they got their name. They have a really vivid, beautiful pattern. They're actually to the longest snake in the world. Oh, wow. Raticulated python. Yeah. Anacondas are technically the biggest snake in the world because they get heavier and bulkier,

but these ones are the longest and they get really, really big. Okay. What's more impressive to you? Gertrith or like the longest or the biggest? This is getting it weird really soon. I like anacondas. I've seen anacondas in the wild. They, for me, are like...

Just being the heaviest is more impressive. I don't know. I always, when I growing up, I loved reticulated pythons, too. They're beautiful. Yeah. Anyway, we posted a photo of some, like, some tribesmen from the Philippines holding a dead, huge reticulated python on the Instagram. You can get a good idea of just how big they are looking at that. But there's a few stories we're going to go through.

A couple of them involving smaller reticulated pythons. And then a couple involving really big reticulated pythons. Nice. The first couple stories, there probably should be a little content warning for. if you are listening with children, this might not be the story for them. Let them listen. They got to grow up. Okay.

Our first story takes place in non-thaburi Central Thailand. Non-thaburi Central Thailand. I'm probably killing that. On the 8th of September 2020, so this is a really recent one. 18-year-old Syropop Muscarat had just gotten home to a small apartment that he shared with his family, and immediately he goes in to use the bathroom. One of those times where you get home and you just immediately have to go in. That's every time Mike gets home from anywhere.

Wait a minute. Hold on. That's not watching this. Okay, I won't get too far into this, but I'll just say this. Jeff probably has a parasite. Okay. We're going to get back to our story before we get to do another roommate fight. So, Serapop has just sat down on the toilet.

He's in Thailand, and the toilet, and the toilet, toilets there are varied, like there's some that are squat toilets, there's some that are normal sitting toilets. He's on a normal sitting one, and they have these little hoses that are like a spray hose. So it's like a bidet, but you kind of have to do it with the little hose in your hand. Manual bidet. Yeah. So with one hand, he's holding this hose. And the other hand, he's holding his phone, which is what you do on the toilet these days. If I forget my phone when I go to the bathroom, I thought you're going to say a hose. No, no. I'm very bored. if I forget my phone when I'm in the bathroom.

So he's on his phone. He says he's like looking at clips of videos and he's about five minutes into his poop. When suddenly he feels a searing pain on the tip of his penis. Oh. And he looks down and there's a four foot reticulated python biting it. Just completely latched onto it. That's insane.

Yeah. And it's hanging into the toilet bowl. The snake had swam up through the pipes. He was sheltering in his toilet bowl. Who knows if he sat down without, seeing it or while he was on there it decided to swim up but it just struck out and just nailed him so how old was syrah pop he's 18 so this might have been his first sexual experience we're not going to go there uh if it was you know that sucks that that's how anyways i just want

to let the listeners know to like when west describes things he uses his hands a lot and once he like said that he had a hose in his hand. He had his fist clenched like he had a hose in his hand the entire time he's been talking kids. So a little bit. So a little bit. Out of the toilet. It's a nightmare feel.

It's still hanging in the toilet attached to his penis. Okay. So a little bit more about reticulated pythons. He's upset? He is, yeah, we're going to get to his reaction. Okay. So these pythons are actually really common throughout Southeast Asia. They grow to be, as we mentioned, the longest snake in the world.

They hunt. using their tongues and they have like chemo receptors in there that essentially they use this thing called a Jacobson's organ that their tongue can pick up any chemical out in the wild and that transmits it to this organ and that's kind of how they navigate the world and hunt is by doing that thing with their tongue. So that's why you always see tongues coming out of snake's mouths. So once they find an area where they're sticking their tongue out and there's a lot of prey sense and stuff, they'll kind of just lay in wait a reticulated python until something walks by that they're interested in. They strike out. They can strike it like a third of their body length.

And their striking speed is 160 meters per second squared. So it's like, it's faster than we can see. It's insanely fast. And they have a hundred razor sharp teeth that are angled backward. So they look like fishing hooks. And when they latch into something, those teeth, because they're angled backwards, you can't get them out. Like, it's like an anchor for that snake. And that's really how it serves. The teeth anchor on and then the snake wraps its body around whatever it's killing and starts constricting. And the old idea was that they're suffocating their prey and that still maybe happens but the new thought is that they're actually constricting at such a high pressure that it raises your blood pressure so high that the blood literally like rushes into your brain

and destroys your neural tissue. Whoa. So that blood pressure so high that it's ripping apart the tissue in your brain and it kills you that way. So it's a pretty intense way to go. And if the snake is strong enough, it can actually break your spine and stuff too. But scientists are starting to think that that raised blood pressure, both in your brain and your heart, is what actually kills things. Searpop's blood might have been rush into a different part of his body this thing. Exactly. So the other thing is that after they have killed something, they can open their jaws. Our jaws, our two lower jaws, fused at the bottom. We have mandibles that are fused. They don't have that fusion. So they have a like a stretchy ligament right there and that's what they can do to open their mouths really wide.

People always say like they dislocate their jaw. That's not what's happening. Their mouth can just stretch way way out. So they can swallow anything that's about as wide as their body. Like a big reticulated python can swallow a human hole. I just wanted to kind of break down what they're capable of. And the 100 sharp curved teeth especially. Yeah. That's that. not something you want attached to your dick. Yeah, no, anywhere, really. So, that's just me, though. Right, but that'd be like the last spot you'd want me.

Really, you think? Well, let's, okay. We'll deliver it after. Let's try it after. Let's try it after. Yeah, at least. Okay, so Siri Pop has a python attached to his python. He's panicking.

Good one was. He's panicking. He's freaking out. His pants around his ankles, and he hops up and runs to the door. and somehow kind of gets like the door stuck on the snake and the snake pulls off and blood just goes everywhere, sprays all over the bathroom. I've got a photo to show you guys of what his bathroom looked like, his toilet and stuff. What?

So there's a lot of blood. That's the snake inside of the toilet. I thought that is a poop. Yeah, that's the snake. He closes the door. He runs to his mom who's doing her best to calm him down. She's probably freaking out too. He's saying that he had a snake.

Okay, but this isn't a snake that could eat a person. No, no, no, no. This is like a tiny one. This is like a four foot long, you said? It's four feet long. Yeah. They call the paramedics. The paramedics take him to the hospital.

He needs three stitches right on the tip of his wiener. The snake is caught by a local snake rescuer who then lets the snake go. Cirap was quoted saying, it was only a small snake, but its bite was so strong. I hope that my penis can recover. At the time of the interviews that I read, doctors seemed very confident that his penis would indeed heal. They didn't have to amputate it. No.

So, an interesting thing, though, as I was doing the research for this story, I noticed that a lot of details were off and that things seemed kind of, like one of them said it was a squat toilet, and one of them said it was like a sitting toilet. And then I realized that there's two stories that happened to two people in Thailand. The same exact thing happened. So the other stories in 2016, who was another Thai man, he was on one of those squat toilets. And this was a 10-foot reticulated python that latched on to his penis.

Oh, no. It took him, his wife, and his neighbor 30 minutes to get the snake off of him. No. And he also made a complete recovery. Can you imagine going over to your neighbor's house for help? You just have like a 10-foot python attached to you, your penis? Yeah, I guess when the paramedics showed up, the snake's head was tied to the door, and they, like, had to rig this whole mechanism to try and get it off. Oh, like when the door slam for the tooth kind of thing?

I don't know. But somehow they figured it out, but I'm just going to prepare you, his bathroom looked like a murder scene. It is... Oh, we get to see it? Pretty wild. Oh, my goodness. Is that the snake? Yeah, and you think that all of that blood came from his...

His crotch. Yeah, from his weiner. Yeah. What the hell? Heck. How'd they get it off? It took him 30 minutes to get it off. So he actually had to go to the hospital for a couple days. But again, the doctor said that they repaired him and he's back to full strength. All right. That's what you messed up of that snake. I know. Like I wonder if I do wonder with those snakes if it was more of like a defensive thing or if they see like a dangler. That is a little mouse. I don't know. It's terrible to think about. But now we know how to catch reticulated pythons if we want. Anyway. Crack a Cayman Jack Margarita with real lime,

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Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign, turn sick conditions apply. Those are both smaller reticulated pythons, a four-foot reticulated pythons. small end of the spectrum. 10 foot is like that one's growing, probably going to get a lot bigger. And then the biggest they get is like 25 feet. The biggest one ever measured was 25 feet.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that they get bigger than that. Okay. So one of the sources I used for this research was a study done on reticulated pythons and this tribe of Philippine hunter-gatherers in the mid-1900s. In this tribe, 26% of the men in the tribe had survived. predatory attacks by reticulated pythons, and there had been six fatal attacks between 1934 and 1973. So the thing to remember is they're not venomous. So these people aren't dying from a single bite and then, you know, dying from venom. And even though their teeth are really

gnarly, you're not like bleeding out from a python bite either. So all of these fatal attacks are people that got bit and then constricted. They died and the snake realized they were too big to eat or they got swallowed whole. The nice thing about reticulated pythons and all pythons and all constrictors is that their metabolism is so slow that they hardly ever have to eat. So like a huge 20-foot reticulated python can eat a rabbit and it's good for like a month or more before it has to eat again. So they're not, even though these are predatory attacks,

this isn't an animal that's like constantly hunting people. It's just that there was a lot of them and this particular tribe lived out in the jungle and they really came into contact with them a lot to enough to where people were dying. And then also the other thing that's really interesting about this study is the men in this tribe averaged 90 pounds. So like a very small people.

And the reason that a lot of scientists think that reticulated pythons don't attack people a lot more often is because our shoulder blades are too wide for them to actually ingest us. But these guys were small enough that it made sense for them. So one of the stories from this study, though, was pretty nightmarish.

a father who was part of this tribe entered his dwelling in the jungle to find a python had killed two of his children and was swallowing one of them head first so he like comes into his hut or whatever there's a huge reticulated python in his hut and it's swallowing one of his kids head first and the other one's dead on the ground

and then luckily wait why is he dead on the ground so it constricted him killed him moved on to the other one and then started eating the other one but the lucky thing is he had a six-month-old that was fine, like totally unharmed. But he killed it with a bolo knife and like opened it up and one of his, you know,

his kid was halfway swallowed. Did the kid survive? No, those two died. So probably by the time it's consuming whatever it's eating, it's dead by that point. Because it constricts first and then eats. It doesn't eat you alive. So people do get eaten and swallowed whole by reticulated pythons from time to time. That study was in the mid-1900s.

It was like 1930 to 1970. But in 2018, a woman in Indonesia went missing after working in her garden. The local townspeople mounted a search effort. They found her sandals and her machete. And then just like 30 feet away, there was a huge reticulated python with like a big bulge in the middle of it. And they cut it open and she was inside. And there's actually, I think, video of that whole discovery of them cutting it open and stuff. So if any of you guys are real sickos out there and you want to see that, I'm sure you can find it.

somewhere. What would you search? Probably just like woman inside a snake. Yeah, woman swallowed whole by snake. We've talked in the past about an animal that can swallow humans whole. This is it. This is the one that truly swallows you whole. It's not tearing anything off or anything.

It's swallowing you completely whole. But as we mentioned, I think the people that are most susceptible to that would be children, women, or anyone, like pretty small in stature. Because they kind of do this mathematics when they see prey. and they know whether or not, generally know whether or not they can actually ingest it. Every once in a while, they'll get something too big for them and then they have a real problem. This is a tricky one because on our show we're trying really hard not to paint these animals as monsters. These stories are very monstrous.

They are, I think those toilet attacks were probably like defensive. The snake just lives in this urban environment. It finds a nice little watering hole and then suddenly something's there and it feels a need to scare it off. It was just like chilling and then he drops a big old deuce on it. And it's like, what the heck? Take this. It might have just been pissed off. These predatory attacks obviously do happen.

But again, it's these people that really live on the fringes of reticulated python habitat where they've been brought into this urban environment. And suddenly they have this new food source. And they don't see us as a food source. If they did, there's a lot of reticulated pythons out there. They're a relatively common snake. If they actually saw us as a food source, a lot more people would be killed by them.

But they don't not see us as a food source too. So you do have to be careful. Okay, so they live in rainforests, woodlands, grasslands, in Southeast Asia. We mentioned they can grow up to 25 feet. There's actually a standing $50,000 offer from the Wildlife Conservation Society for a live, healthy, reticulated python

that measures over 30 feet, which is pretty much the plot from the movie Anaconda. Yeah, we should get on that. We need John Voigt. Because wasn't he trying to capture the Anacondo live? He didn't want to kill it, right? Yeah, I believe. I don't remember that well.

We really need to rewatch Anaconda. John Voigt kind of seems like a bad hang these days, though. Yeah, he doesn't seem like a good person. That's a good point. All right. But he's a bad guy in the movie. That's true, yeah. All right, so they mostly eat mammals, as we mentioned.

They can eat an animal up to a quarter of their length and up to the same body weight. So they weigh up to like 350 pounds. So really big snake, they can eat a lot of stuff. They can probably eat like a whole deer. They can eat pigs. They can eat humans. So they get really, really, really big. So as far as biology, do you guys have any other questions about reticulated pythons?

Are they ever kept as household pets? They are. They're actually a pretty popular snake in the. reptile trade. Me and Jeff grew up near a pet store that had a reticulated python, a pretty big one actually. Cool. And I remember going there and the guy letting me like hold it in it wrapping her up my leg and just being like, oh, there's no getting this thing off if it starts wrapping around you. They're pretty popular. Ball pythons are a snake that a lot of people have because they're really docile. Ritculated pythons tend to strike out a little bit more. How about, so we've talked about bite pressure with a lot of these animals.

maybe something that'd be interesting is like constrictive pressure. Do you have any numbers on that? Yeah. From what I remember, it's somewhere around 300 pounds for square inch. Okay. So it's pretty strong. It's like enough to break bones pretty easily. I mean a one inch snake could crush 300 pounds. Yeah.

And that's the tricky. The tricky thing is it really depends on how big the snake is. So it's, that's why I think that measurement was from an average size male reticulated Python. But if I were to just squeeze you as hard as I could, how much would that be? I don't know. Like 90, probably. I have no idea. I truly don't know. So any other questions about reticulated Python biology? Southeast Asia, biggest snake, longest snake in the world, really cool. Absolutely beautiful animal. And they're pretty common. I have been to Thailand and taken many dumps. and I never got attacked.

Nice. So I don't think you really got, you don't have to, you got to worry, it sounds like. It sounds like you want to check your toilet pole. Yeah. And actually, I think on the second toilet story that I told, they had seen a snake in the, like, toilet multiple times. And it was kind of like a running joke in that building, like that apartment building. Oh, no. And it shouldn't be a joke, apparently.

You got a snake in your pipes. You should get rid of it. I don't know. How long afterwards do you think it turned into it? a joke. Immediately. Well, for you, maybe not. But if that happened to me, I would fully expect you, too, to make jokes as it was clamped

onto my penis. You'd never, yeah, you'd never live it down. No. You'd think it'd be kind of cool to brag about? Girls like scars. I'll say, Sirapop, or, was that his name? Siripop, the first kid, he seemed pretty stoked about his story. Really?

Yeah, I think I'd be pretty stinted. Pretty smiley and really liked retelling it. I watched a video. He was a pretty charming kid. Both of them were like really good sports, both of the two dudes that got their dick spit. You gotta be. Okay, we're gonna get into our categories. Our first category is your favorite python from pop culture or from real life or whatever.

Jeff? Yeah, I'm gonna go with from the show Jackass. They do a skit where they have like puppets on their, it might have been wild boys. They have puppets on their hand. and steva like kind of hates snakes but he does a puppet show for some pythons that they found in a pit and just like he's doing like a silly puppet show and then it just bites his hand right away and he like can't get it off and it's just really funny to me okay mike how about you yeah so i like um the programming language python has made some pretty amazing games uh sounds about right

Civilization 4, anybody? Sims 4. I am familiar with it. Anybody? Never played it. Yeah, we're on version 3.0 and above now. It's pretty useful. Yeah.

You're staying on brand. Mine is definitely Ka, the Python from Jungle Book, the animated Jungle Book. So I think that whole scene where like Ka hypnotizes, Mogli and does the song and his voice, how it's like all Lispy and stuff. I just think that's a perfect scene from an animated movie. So for me, it's Ka. Was the snake in the Robin Hood animated movie? Was that a Python?

It definitely has like a Python look and pattern to it. That's pretty good when it's like floating on the balloon. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I can imagine. All right. So we're going to go into our cage match.

Mike, you want to do the cage match category? I'd love to do that for you guys. cage match basically we are seeing out of all the animals we've talked about on the podcast so far where the python ranks amongst them all the reticulated python the reticulated python more specifically so west you being the expert where would you place the python on the the ever expanding list of animals we've spoken about so there's definitely a few animals on our list that a full grown reticulated python could kill uh they could definitely kill an alligator Burmese pythons have been released into the Everglades and stuff, and they kill alligator sometimes.

So they could kill an alligator, they could probably kill a mountain lion, and they could kill a chimpanzee for sure. If they can kill a human, they could kill a chimpanzee. A wolf, probably? A wolf, yeah. Honestly, anything smaller than our bears, they could probably kill. So anything, I think a black bear would probably be too much for it. But I don't know. Actually, there's a story of one killing a son.

bear, but it was a pretty small sunbear. So yeah, I don't think they could kill an American black bear. But anything from our list that's smaller than a black bear, I think a reticulated python would have a good chance of killing if it could get its coils around them. Interesting. Yeah. Did it eat the crocodile alligator?

So there's been a bunch that have been, a few alligators have been killed by Burmese pythons. There's actually one really famous story, though, where a Burmese python got an alligator, and it was too big for it. actually like split open. Oh, geez. Gosh.

There's like this photo of like the snake all split open and the dead alligator and they both died. Seems pretty hard to like kill a python too if you don't have a weapon. Yeah, it would be. So we'll get into kind of what you're supposed to do when we do our like, what would you guys do question and answer it. But there's one other little story read about an African rock python in Africa, which is significantly smaller, but it wrapped around a dude who was like doing construction

and he had to like bite his way into it. He finally got it to let go of him. But that was a much smaller snake. I don't think that would work with a reticulated python. You couldn't just bite it. I don't think so. You might as well try it. That's all you got.

So I think that solves our cage match. I mean, it's kind of a tricky one. Kind of in the middle. Yeah. Once they get their coils around you, there's not much you can do. So I think they would do pretty well in our cage match. Okay. What would Mike and Jeff do?

So if you guys were attacked by a big reticulated python, what are you doing? Who wants to go first? So if I'm in the situation as the first kid, I think I'll just put on, I think I'll just leave it. Some music and some candles and stuff. Leave it on my penis. And then I'm going to put on my tightest pair of pants that I have. And I'm going to go to like a club or something. And people are just going to think I'm hung.

And then I'll just let it stay until it wants to leave. Okay. All right. Mike? You know how, like, you can hold up a cross to ward off vampires? Yeah. That one python didn't seem to like sandals. Okay.

So I'll just hold a sandal up. Which python? The one that ate the lady but left her sandals. And her sandals and machete. Okay. Interesting. There you go. All right.

So, you both had, you know, pretty dumb things to say. I apologize again. Jeff's, I knew exactly where you're going the second you started talking about it. Mike's, the sandal thing was, yeah, I just don't even know. All right, so what I've learned, I actually didn't know much about what you're supposed to do. I did know that if a snake starts constricting you, you want to start with the tail and kind of just unwind it as it's constricting you. You don't necessarily want to go for the head because their head can be really hard to control. And once they, again, once they bite into you, it's really hard.

to rip them out because they're hook their hook like teeth they're really anchor into you and it really messes you up too a lot of bleeding so you start with the tail and you start unwinding and just try and keep it from constricting so it's really helpful like all of our animals it's really helpful if you have someone else with you because if the snake does manage to pin both your arms down and you don't have someone with you you're screwed like it it is probably going to kill you if it's a really big snake could you just like body slam it you could try Right. I mean, you would just have to do everything, like that dude just start biting it or body slam or whatever. But it's probably, I mean, if it's a really big snake and it's got you completely tied up like that, you're giving up all your control.

So you want to make sure your arms don't get tied up. You don't want to try and strangle it. I think that's kind of your natural thing. It's like go for its neck. It's not going to work. They don't have that same kind of ability to be strangled like we do. You want to focus on that tail, focus on unwrangling. wrapping it. And then it's going to be focused on trying to rewrap rather than constrict.

An interesting thing is that a lot of zookeepers think that alcohol, like hard alcohol or like rubbing alcohol, if you put it in a snake's face, that immediately stops them from constricting. And even with venomous snakes and stuff, they really don't like that, apparently. So I was reading some people that do a lot of bush stuff out in Thailand and they're out in the jungle and some of them actually carry rubbing alcohol or like a flask of hard alcohol with them. And then a lot of them carry a knife that's on a lanyard in case one of their arms is tied up. They can get their knife. And then you want to just stab the snake as much as you can.

How quick can they wrap up around you? It's pretty quick. As soon as they strike and latch on, they're starting to wrap and constrict. So you remember when we caught that collard lizard in Lake Pal? Yeah. You let me hold it. And it just turned its head around 100. 80 degrees and bit me on the thumb.

And then we pulled on it until we thought we were going to rip its head off. And it's like, we don't want to hurt it. Right. So we wouldn't pull any harder. Right. And it just would not let go. You stuck a stick in and like tried to pry it off. Yeah.

I held it underwater for like a minute. And I was like, I don't want to drown it. It's really cool. Yeah. But like I could not get its mouth off of my thumb. That thing wasn't that big. No, it was a tiny little color. I can't imagine.

trying to get a python's mouth off of you. That's the scary part kind of to people because you're getting bit by a huge snake, but it's not what you want to focus on. You want to focus on its body that's wrapping around you because that's what could actually kill you. So getting the mouth off is the last thing you do. You unwrap those coils, you get it off of you, and then you can try and pry the teeth out, which is going to suck and it's going to take a while, especially if it's on your

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Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time off. So that's kind of what I learned you're supposed to do. As far as avoiding attacks, it's really just being careful, like, keeping, you know, looking for any kind of signs of snakes, looking for places where snakes might be more common. They're common in like caves, in leaf litter, around the fringes of jungles, just being really

careful. And if you see one, it's not going to chase you. They don't chase prey. You just don't be within striking distance of that snake. And you're fine. Just don't get attacked. Yeah. That's that easy.

Honestly, and the only... You said it's two-thirds of its body length that can strike? A third of its body length. And really, the only people in the world that live in a place where they have a constrictor big enough to swallow them whole are people in Southeast Asia and people in South America. Not Florida. Those Burmese pythons, it's never happened like an adult person hasn't been swallowed by one or killed by one as far as I know.

Yeah. But it's not impossible. Yeah. But mostly Southeast Asia and if you live around green anacondas, that too is a potential. But really, they're not out to get people. Don't be scared of them. Snakes are something like they're an animal that we already have demonized a lot and people are naturally very terrified of them.

These are beautiful animals. Like if you see a reticulated python, they are really, really beautiful and they fill a really important ecological niche. So they're important animals. Don't kill snakes for no reason. they belong and they're really important. Okay, so that kind of segues right into our next category, which is how are we messing things up for them?

Retic pythons are actually a least concern animal. They're doing pretty well. But the reason they're doing pretty well is because they exist pretty well on the fringes of human society. And that's because where humans go, usually there's lots of rodents too, and they do well with rodents. They also eat dogs and cats and stuff like that.

So they do okay where cities pop up. but that does put them in conflict with humans. So that's kind of the main thing is just human conflict and habitat loss that's happening with them. They are traded in the pet trade and stuff too. All right. Our next category is actually some listener questions. Okay. So this question is from raddikins.

Radikins. I like that name. Best snake encounters. Looking forward to episodes about hyenas and sloth bears in the future. Cool. Oh, wow. We are too. Best snake encounter.

So I have been able to see like anacondas underwater. I've seen cobras. I've seen a lot of snakes. My favorite snake encounter is probably this last year, getting to handle some wild cobras in India. This guy who rescues cobras taught me kind of how to handle them and just threw me right into it. Yeah, he said he just kind of caught a wild snake and let you get right in there.

He essentially like showed up to the apartment I was in with the cobra he caught that day and then just like let it go and told me to catch it. So it was a pretty wild experience and won all treasure for a long time. It's funny like some Instagram influencers, they're getting like free purses or free workout gear and you just get like, hey, I caught this poisonous snake. Like that's your benefit of being in Instagram. Free opportunity for a poisonous snake bite.

Yeah, it's awesome. I wouldn't have it any other way. Do you have a favorite wild snake? No, but I want to share one that I think is important. When Georgia, the jungle, swinging on the vines to the jungle, and he grabs the vine, but it ends up being a snake. Oh, yeah. That's good. It's a good joke.

Yeah. Thanks. So I used to be really afraid of snakes. I read a book called Fire Starter, and one of the characters gets paranoid by snakes, and for whatever reason, it rubbed off on me. So I was really afraid, especially of rattlesnakes. And then I finally, like, saw one in the wild. And I picked it up and I faced my fear. Now I'm not nearly as afraid of them.

And I remember I was jealous, then I went out and found one so I could pick it up. Yeah. Okay. What's our next question? All right. So from West Elliott, what wildlife tattoo would each of you get? I would probably start with the bear, but I've really thought long and hard about getting a whale shark tattoo too. Because you saw someone at a sandwich shop that had a...

Yeah, a cool one. And then I also have a friend that did a design of a whale shark that I really like. And so I've really considered that. But it would probably, my first one would probably be a bear. The coolest tattoo I've ever seen, I think, is John Frischanti's octopus tattoo on his shoulder. Okay. And I would definitely get an aquatic themed one. So that probably would be what I'd do.

An octopus? Yeah. Super cool. Yeah, I mean, probably a bear. Yeah. Just like a real simple bear. Well, you have it, like, tearing through your skin. Well, it's, like, a famous person who has a cool animal tattoo.

I know, like, the dude who played on Real Salt Lake had dreadlocks, Beckerman, and he had a lion with dreadlocks tattooed on him. I do not want that. That's kind of cool, though. I liked it. All right, what's our next question? LeBron has a big lion, right? There's so many lion tattoos, I feel like.

So, wait, who was that? That was West. West Elliott. All right. Well, we look forward to here. from East Elliott next time maybe. You know what? Maybe should we all get animal tattoos?

North Elliott. Yeah. All right. We'll do it after this episode. Okay. All right. This is from Star Wars Fan 042. That kind of guy.

Yeah. He's asking, how are you? Doing all right. How are you? Oh, man. I don't know. Why? Okay.

Mike. It's been a hard week. We don't need to go into all the reasons why, but thanks for asking. It means a lot. So I'm doing okay. Jeff, you know, it's up in the air. Mike's had a bad one. Yep.

Okay. Okay. From Suzier. One person he'd like to meet alive or dead. Mike, you want to go first? Alive or dead. Yeah. Yeah.

I'd like to meet my mom. Okay. Jeff. I'd like to meet Tom Brady. but I want to meet him when he's dead. Okay, the ghost of Tom Brady. For me, I think it's David Attenborough. He's alive, right?

Or Steve Irwin. Steve Irwin, dead, David Attenborough alive. That's a better answer. That's the one I'm choosing to. Steve Irwin. All right. And we just get to play with animals. Yeah.

That's mine. Okay. It's Justin. Not my answer anymore. If you three were Lord of the Rings characters, which ones would you be? Wait, no, I think this question. works better if we decide for the other people who would they would be. Okay. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. So let's start with Mike. Okay. I'm going to say, I'm going to start with Gimley.

Hmm. Okay. A little too tall. Yeah, I'm not doing physical. I'm just like, Mike's really fun to be around. He's like, can be grouchy really quickly, but he also can be really happy really quickly. He's like a funny grouch. Yeah. Yeah. I'll accept that. He's a grouchy, funny guy. Yeah. Okay. Should we do West? Let's do Wes. I mean, the obvious answer is Frodo. Frodo. Yeah, not just physically, but just kind of like the de facto lead, you know? He's the handsome leading man kind of thing. I'll give him a, like kind of outside the box one. Okay.

Gandalf. Okay, interesting. I think he's pretty smart and he, like, knows a lot of words that you don't normally know. So, like, you know, like, Gandalf probably has some spells where you have to, like, have a lot of stuff that's really weird. I think Wes would be pretty good at having all that in his mind. But if I had to pick someone else for West, it would be Strider. Oh, thank you. It'd be Aragorn.

Yeah. Wow. I don't know. I just kind of, three good ones. An outdoorsman kind of, you know, a little mysterious. It's very nice of you. I hope Gimley wasn't a bad answer. No, no, that's a high honor.

All right, let's pick Jeff's. I'm saying for Jeff either. Boromir? Oh yeah, baby. Or Pippin. I was, Pippin was the one I was leaning. I'm going to say Pippin as well. Yeah.

I think Pippin's sweet. I think Pippin just has this fun energy about him, you know. He plays a really important part in the whole story, but he managed to keep a level head the entire time. Yeah. Brings levity to a beautiful singing voice. Otherwise dire situations. You guys don't know this about Jeff, but he has got some pipes on him.

Beautiful. Tanner. All right. That was a good question. Thank you for that question. Star Wars fan, 42. Yeah, 42. A zero before 42 is still 42.

42 answer to all things in the universe. Hitchhiker's guys, sorry. I was going to say, is that, yeah. Next question. That's all. That's it. Okay, we're done with listener questions. Thanks again for the questions, guys.

We will probably be asking for some more real soon. As always, to send us questions through our Instagram account, which is, tooth and claw podcast there you go tooth and claw podcast and we'll ask for them too okay so our next category is where can you see them

and I've kind of already mentioned this already but Southeast Asia is the place to see reticulated pythons Thailand is kind of the out of all those places probably the easiest even in urban areas like Bangkok and stuff you can you can see them

okay and then our final category is do we like this animal I'll start I absolutely love snakes, always been obsessed with snakes. Retic pythons, I always thought were really cool just because I knew they were the longest snake in the world. And they're really beautifully patterned. So I really like them. I don't know where I'd put them on my list of favorites, but they're, for reptiles at least, they're like up there. They're probably top 10 reptiles.

How about snakes? For snakes? Yeah. There's a few snakes that would come before them. Like what? like a cobra, a garter snake. Gardner snake? Garter snake, just because I've caught a billion of them and I have like a...

Makes like smelled bad. Yeah, so do big pythons. Severus snake. Yeah. Nogini. That's not his name. Anyway, I really like them. I'm big fan.

Yeah, go ahead. I can't give him a number like Jeff does. Yeah, that's, I don't know how he does. It's incredible. I actually am part of a huge reptile family. What, you're part of a rectile family? Yeah. We find rocks to bask on all the time in the winter.

No, but some of my earliest memories are tanks with chameleons or snakes. We actually had a snake escape one into our fireplace vent that showed up subsequently six months later. Really? And I was the one to discover it kind of on the landing of our staircase up to it. It's crazy. We had a similar thing happening in our house. Yeah, it was alive? Yeah, it was alive.

Okay. I love snakes. Ball pythons particularly, we owned a couple of those as I was growing up. I've been tempted to get a ball python. I remember they had like a weird name, right? Yeah, so one of them, they were both my brother Garrett's. One was Shu and one was 829. Okay.

Yeah, interesting names. Yeah, they were weirder than I remember. Yes, those are great. Why 829? So this is a long story. When we were in Thailand, we met a pig that was like 436 or, you know, something. I had like its number tattooed on its side. And it was a really cantankerous pig. It would run around and get mad and snort and headbutt people. It was like a smallish pig,

but that inspired my brother Garrett, who when he got the ball python, named it after the date that he bought it on. So what would that have been August 29th? Yeah. Yeah. That's weird still. Jeff, do you like reticulated pythons? Uh, yeah. They're, They're all right. I like a reticulated python. I'll probably put it like 30012 on my list. All right. So you like a lot of animals more.

Yeah, I like other pythons more. What python do you like more? The green tree python is like, oh, one of my favorite snakes. Like that one's probably in my top 50 animals. Okay. I love green tree pythons. I also really like, what are they called? The gaboon vipers.

Yeah, they're not a python. Right. But I'm just saying, favorite snakes now. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It'd be. They have the longest fangs in the, in the snake world.

Oh, really? Yeah. They just are like chunks, too. Yeah, they're beautiful. But yeah, like, if I'm just going to look at snakes, it'd be between the green tree python and the gaboon viper that I'd want to see. Yeah. Um, but reticulated pythons, like, they're cool.

Yeah. So, like Jeff, like, he shrugged when he said it. He likes them, but they're not. Yeah. Totally. So is that your least? favorite animal you've talked about so far? Yeah.

Okay. Really? Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm like drawing a blank on what we've talked about. It would rank above at least. You like them less than hippos. It'd be hippos and chimpanzees at the bottom. Yeah. But yeah, I like them a lot less than this.

Okay. We're definitely going to do more snakes, so we'll save some more because we got to get into venomous snakes. We got a lot of snake episodes ahead of us. But this was Reticitculated Pythons. Thanks so much, guys, for tuning in. We've been reading the reviews, and honestly, like, we're so flattered by and we're so happy that you guys are enjoying the podcast.

Continue rating and reviewing for us, please. And please follow us on Instagram, too. All right, good to be back. Thanks, guys. See you soon.