Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Twisted Tale of Travis the Chimpanzee

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Wes tells the horrifying and tragic story of Charla Nash, Sandra Herold, and Travis the chimpanzee. ~~ MasterClass: Get 15% off any annual membership at MasterClass by visiting https://masterclass.com/TOOTH and using promo code TOOTH Ollie Pet Food: Cozy up with your pup this season—go to https://ollie.com/tooth and use code tooth to get 60% off your first box! Remi: Get 50% off your custom night guard at https://shopremi.com/tooth with code TOOTH at checkout. Rocket Money: Let Rockey Money help you reach your financial goals faster—join at https://RocketMoney.com/CLAW with promo code CLAW. Smalls: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping at https://Smalls.com/TOOTH ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ 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

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Hello everyone, welcome back to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our chimpanzee biologist, Wes Larson, with us. And then I'm, or which one? What? I'm not a chimpanzee biologist. Or which one? Bears. Bears?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we have our bear biologist. Is that right? That's better. Yeah. Do I need to say the type of bear? I'm pretty much a chimpanzee biologist after our chimp crazy episodes.

Mike has you hunch his one too And then yeah we have Mike Smith with us and he's a good guy That's all I can say about Mike Yeah he is I try to be yeah I like your hat today Mike Thanks it's a good hat You're a good guy to you just complimenting me That's a good guy behavior I guess oh really? Thank you

Sometimes I feel like that is uh you you've gotten at me once or twice before for doing nervous laughter which I do and I am trying to to kind of work on, I think I kind of nervously compliment people too. Like, I think if I don't have, I think if there's a low in a conversation and I don't have like something to say, I just throw out a compliment. I think that's a great reaction though. I guess. If that's where your brain goes to fill dead air.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Okay. Well, a cop is like framing him with drugs and he's like, I like your gun. All right. Well, I brought up Chimp Crazy a second ago, and there's a reason I did that. We, in 2024, we partnered with HBO documentaries, and we did a series of episodes on their series, Chimp Crazy. It was a lot of work, but we were really proud of what we put out.

And there was a part in that series where they go into one of the premier animal attack stories of our lifetimes. When we started this podcast, this was one of the stories that was like top of mind for me. And I actually started putting it together and then I stumbled on the story of Mo the Chimpanzee. And he kind of pushed out this story. And then we were going to do it during the Chimp Crazy episodes, but they kind of wanted us to wait. And so we waited. But now we're finally doing the story in full of Travis the Chimpanzee. Great.

So we have talked about this in those Chimp Crazy episodes, but not really at length. We haven't really dove into it the way I've wanted to. It was all over the news. It rocked the world when it happened. The details came out and people are still kind of reeling from this one. This is still one that is very much in the public mind because it's such a crazy attack. You added the words, the world after you said it rocked. I was afraid you were just going to let it.

It rocked. It rocked. It's like, rocked. That's a weird way to approach this one. To describe it. All right. So the other reason for doing this is there's a movie coming out this month called Primate. I can't say if it's good or not. I haven't seen it. I think it's made by Shutter. It's all about a pet chimpanzee that kind of goes on a rampage. I think it becomes rabid. And it just seemed like good timing to finally do Travis's story based on that movie coming out. There being enough separation from our Chim Crazy episodes. Here we go. We're going to do Travis, finally.

I was talking to a guy yesterday and telling him about our podcast. And I was saying like, oh, yeah, we're about to do Travis the Chimp. And he's like, oh, that's such a crazy story. He's like, the biggest one ever, this ape killed like 20 people on a TV set, right? I was like, you know, I'm not positive by I think you're just thinking of the movie, nope. Yeah. That's a kind way to say that to him. That's great.

That's true. This is like probably the biggest known chimp attack ever. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. And the events and Nope were very much based off of Travis, especially when you see the victim later and she has that veil over her face. Because our victim would commonly wear a veil like that in real life. So yeah, Jordan Peel really dug into this story a bit when he did the story of Gordy and Nope. Okay.

Sandy Harold was born in 1938. in Stamford, Connecticut, to a Jewish-Italian family. Her dad operated a popular bakery in the town, and Sandy had a relatively unassuming childhood as an only child. She was obsessed with dogs, especially with their family, German Shepherd. But she kind of just grew up, like most only-childs back then, very loved by her parents, a pretty typical American upbringing. She grew up, she got married in the 50s, right out of high school,

and then got divorced and then married again. She graduated high school when she was 50? No. In the 1950s she got married. Super senior. Right out of high school. She's a stranger thing. Yeah, like Eddie. Then she got divorced and she got married again in 1960.

It's a pretty quick turnaround. The second marriage was much more romantic, but also filled with a lot of intensity and a lot of fighting. And it really, though, did bring Sandy's first true love of her life, which was her daughter named Susan or Sue, who was born in 1961. But Sandy's husband had an addiction that makes, in my opinion, makes married life kind of hard. And that addiction was sleeping with lots and lots of other women and being an asshole.

Tough. Oh, both of those things are tough. Don't be either of those things, guys. Yeah, those are bad things to be if you want your marriage to work out. So she got her second divorce in the mid-60s. And a little bit, just to describe Sandy, she's on the shorter side. She has long jet black hair with cropped bangs, very like bronze looking, like maybe lots of tanning or self-tanner.

Call Hollywood, kind of. Yeah. And just very vivacious, like dresses maybe like a little bit exorbitantly or whatever the word would be enthusiastically. But a person that everyone said was very funny, very good. fun to be around and just a real character. All right. When she turned 30, she married the next love of her life, after her daughter Sue, who was Jerry Harold. He was very different from her other two husbands and that he was kind, intelligent, doting, and loyal. And finally, Sandy found some stability. Her and Jerry moved in

with her parents in the house that she had grown up in, and Jerry raised Sue, the daughter, as if she were his own daughter. They also started a few different businesses in town. including a towing business and an auto body shop. And both of those business actually really flourished, and they became millionaires, but very low-key millionaires. They weren't like flaunting their wealth. They were kind of spending it more on like dogs.

And I don't know, whatever. It's kind of like what you do with your millions. It's whatever Jesse spends her money on. I think they were spending their money on that too. I definitely don't end millions, but maybe one day. They also got into pretty into semi-professional barrel racing in rodeos, or at least San Diego. No way.

Yeah. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard. Yeah. So in the 70s, the whole family would follow her around when she went from rodeo to rodeo and did barrel racing. And it was during this time that Sandy met an 18-year-old runaway named Charla Nash. She met her on this rodeo circuit. The two became fast friends. They spent a lot of time traveling around to different rodeos together, and they were really good friends.

So one day the two women were at the rodeo and this rodeo had... Wait a minute. Yeah. Am I envisioning the wrong thing when I hear barrel racing? I was picturing like the hobbits in the river in barrels. That's probably not going on. I was surprised because it's just horses running around barrels. That's, yeah.

No, fuck that. And you said the coolest thing ever. You thought they were like rolling on top of the barrels with their feet. All right. Correction Corner. What did you think he meant? I thought he was talking about like picturing hobbits in the river

barrels going over the Niagara Falls dude that would have been so sick just a race to see you got down to the bottom of the waterfall you're thinking like donkey Kong like you jump over the barrels yeah geez come up with it that's such a misleading name so actual barrel racing

it's when the barrels are like put up around the arena and they ride around him and do really tight turns around the barrels. Boring. Boring. I mean, that is a good point by Mike, though, like barrel racing, you think the barrels would be racing.

Yeah, right. Like, if we ever race barrels, what can we call it now? I don't know. B-1. I don't know. It's like, there's probably someone, but B-1.

Yeah, all right. I'm going to get off of this. All right. So one day, these two women, Sandy and Charlo, were at a rodeo that had a special attraction. That attraction was a chimpanzee, dressed like a cowboy,

riding a horse around the arena. Amazing. Rightfully so, was losing its mind. Later, Sandy found the chimpanzee backstage and gave it a few gummy bears. Then a little bit later when the chimpanzee was back on its horse again in the arena, it saw Sandy in the audience, it jumped down, ran over, and jumped in her arms. And it made a pretty big impression on Sandy. That'll do it.

It'll do it. Yep. Just it running around on a horse. you know, dressed as a cowboy, it's probably enough. It's enough for Jeff. Well, I mean, it gets back to Mike's point, too. They had a chimpanzee there. They could have easily done Donkey Kong.

Just had the jump throw barrels. Just needed one gorilla and we would have been set. Well, I'm saying you got the chimp. That's good enough. Chips close enough. Well, that's Diddy Kong, right? We need to get the whole crew together. So the following years are really,

just some golden years for this little family. Sue grew up kind of like a younger copy of her mom. She just has platinum blonde hair instead of black. Her and her mom rodeo together. They dance together. They work together. They're constantly just chatting and having fun around their house, their horses, their dogs, and Jerry. But then Sue falls in love. She marries and her husband convinces her to move away. And then right after that... Her third marriage? No, this is Sue, the daughter. Oh, yeah, yeah. And she had to be. been living with Sandy and whatnot. And then right after that, both of Sandy's parents grew ill and died. So everything really goes from being wonderful and golden and perfect to kind of stale and gray.

And Sandy and Jerry realized that they're kind of on the far end of middle age, and they really don't have a lot around to keep them happy and fulfilled. And Sandy's about to change all of that with a visit to Festus, Missouri in 1994. Do you guys remember who lives in Festus, Missouri? That lady that Tanya worked for. Yes. What was her name? Barb. Connie Casey.

There it is. Chimp queen. Yes, she is. The chimp queen. Connie Casey, this is a woman who, if you listen to our Chimp Crazy episodes, is in large part responsible for a lot of the captive chimpanzees in the United States. She was a breeder. She sold chimpanzees to private owners.

And then when that became legally complicated for her, her, she started like a rescue for her chimpanzees. She's just trying to help out. Yeah. If you want to learn more about her, go back and listen to those episodes or watch the Chim Crazy documentary. Actually do both. But a few days earlier, Connie Casey had called Sandy to tell her that her baby had arrived and

that it was a boy. Sandy had been in contact with Connie for a while now and over the months they'd negotiated a deal for Sandy to buy a newborn chimpanzee. And her swaddling babe had been born. and Sandy flew to Missouri, went to the Casey's house, and bought her chimpanzee for 40 grand after they sedated its mom and took it out of the cage. Wow, is that like the going rate for chimps? Yeah. I think it's probably a lot more now.

This was in 1994. Doggone. They're expensive. There's like worse ways you could spend $40,000. Sure. Yeah, without a doubt. She named him Travis after her favorite country singer, Travis, Trit, who I couldn't name a song from if you put a gun to my head.

Bill, play a clip right here. Have you guys seen there's a clip going around the internet of someone who like made a song out of all the country songs talking about like drinking ice cold beer? And it's like really long and it's just all these different clips from different country songs going like, ice cold beer. They do like that stuff. It's always whiskey, too. Like, every time it's...

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They took turns holding him. They let him lay on blankets around the house or in his crib. And he just took time absorbing their smells, their sounds, and bonding to them. Then around three months old, he was able to turn himself over and not, long after that he was scooting around and then walking on his hands and legs, which is something I didn't really understand that they're pretty like immobile for their first few months of life. So they're always just holding on to their moms. That is really interesting.

Yeah. Like a human, right? Yeah. Like it's a big milestone for a baby when they flip over for this first time. It's like, we're celebrating that. And usually animals are like, what's the big deal here? Yeah. No, that's the thought I had too because I thought that we were kind of.

of unique in how helpless we were for how long we're helpless. And it turns out that chimpanzees are pretty similar. And it makes sense because they're our closest living relative. Sharks, too. What about? They don't flip over for a really long time. Yeah, they don't really ever flip over unless they have to. Yeah, that's true.

But not really a good comparison. Do they never do like a barrel roll in the water? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. Not tell their adults. I don't know about that. It takes a long time, right?

I don't think that's true at all. It's an advanced move. I think they're kind of born doing a barrel roll. All right. Whoa. Sandy and Jerry taught Travis how to be a member of their family, how to use the toilet, how to brush his teeth, how to take a bath. Again, a lot of the same things you would teach a toddler or a little kid in a family.

They bought him a whole wardrobe. And each day Sandy would dress him in different outfits, which we've established is the best thing about having a pet child. chimpanzee is there's one good thing about it. It's putting them in fun outfits. Here's, yeah, it's like, we're already way past being morally correct here. So go ahead and dress him up in my opinion. If you're going to have one, you might as well make him look good.

Yeah. What's your, the number one article of clothing? Because for me, it's a little cap with a propeller on it. That's like, that's what I, my mind went to. I think, I think like overalls is. really high. Spenders are overalls. Yeah. You know, I'm a sucker too for like a professional chimpanzee like in a suit and tie. That's real good. Well that's like that means something too. There's like some hidden depth to that photo. It's like oh man. We think we're so smart going off to the rat race,

but we're all just a bunch of apes. And like maybe it's just me but like I assume that's a successful chimpanzee every single time. Yeah. A boss. Well, they got a leg up in negotiations because they're like, if you don't agree to this deal, I'm going to rip your balls off.

So. Horrifically malle you. Right. But on the other end, it's like, if they're running a company and all you got to offer them is like a truckload of bananas, it's pretty good for you, too. Yeah.

At some point, it's cheap. Yeah. Jeff, I think if you, if we were to say you're a scientist, you could be like a chimpanzee outfit professional. I think that would be something you could. A stylist. I think I'm, I don't think I'm the best in the, it's like you. You're not the best bear biologists in the world, but you're top 10. Sure.

I'm not top 10. All right. So they ended up retrofitting their house to make areas for Travis where he could roam freely. They hung ropes and tires and whatnot in his room. But they did have some strong metal doors, some caging, some different things to install, so they did have an area where they could secure him if needed. But most nights, especially as a baby, Travis slept in bed with them or in their room. Oh, wow.

And as a young chimpanzee. Yeah. And it really helped them kill their loneliness. They felt like they had a new lease on life. They would take him to work. He quickly became the mascot of their businesses. And both employees and local residents really started falling in love with Travis. Even the policemen really, really liked him.

Sure. Would you say it's like a good thing to do if you're in a relationship that's kind of lost its luster a bit? You want to like, yeah. Go top to chimpanzee. I would not say that. You wouldn't recommend getting a chimpanzee. No, I'd say more like. Struggling couples.

Couples therapists might be a better idea or, yeah. We'll see how this ends out, but I don't think it's going to be a good ending for any of these people. Things got even better for Jerry and Sandy not long after, and that's because Sue, Sandy's daughter, got a divorce and decided to move back home with her young son, and they moved into an apartment Sandy and Jerry had built next to the auto body shop. And Sue and Sandy really picked up right where they left off. They spent the day joking and gossiping while they're working, and Sue's son Tyler was actually the same age as Travis, the chimpanzee. So those two played a lot together as well. Cousins, you know, just playing with your normal cousin. She's having a good old time. Charla Nash would also come visit sometimes, and she would bring her daughter Brianna, and they would play and bond with Travis as well.

But Travis grew up pretty quickly. He started acting a bit on TV commercials. He became really famous around the town. He would eat meals with the heralds. He loved lobster tail, Italian food, Filet Mignon candy ice cream. That would suck to like have a chimp that just likes the most expensive thing on the menu. Yeah. Caviar. I do kind of get the feeling that they had more money than they knew what to do with. But they also like didn't really want to like travel the world or buy really goddy expensive things.

So a little bit of lobster tail and filet mignon was like pretty easy for them. Oh, okay. Yeah. Sandy and Jerry though felt happy. year than they had felt in a long, long time, but things were about to change. When Travis was around five years old, Sue once again found love and remarried. She had two more kids, and much to Sandy's horror, they decided to move again to North Carolina. And Sandy was crushed, but she would constantly write letters and send gifts to Sue and her family

and would treasure any response she got from her daughter. She would even, like, seal up the letters and reread them over and over and over again. It took Sue a while She's like opening the letter again No she would like put it in like a plastic sealed kind of thing So that the letters wouldn't get lost or anything Like when you get a really rare Pokemon card maybe Yeah

You want to protect it like laminated but not laminated Like in a little yeah All right That's all just to illustrate that she really really loved her daughter Like her daughter was her whole world Any kind of communication or whatever It was so important to her from her daughter

daughter. And during this time, Sue was kind of, she took a really long time to move all of her stuff from Connecticut down to North Carolina. So she was doing a lot of trips back and forth. In the year 2000, she was on one of these trips and she was having some back pain, so she took a percassette. And then that night she left to drive back to North Carolina. Somewhere in Virginia, she went off the road and hit a tree. And she was ejected from the car and killed instantly. no. When Sandy got this news, her world just totally imploded. She became really depressed. She considered suicide. She distanced herself from her friends, from Sue's kids, and really her whole world became Jerry and Travis. And at this point, Travis is already starting to age out of his

adolescence and into adulthood, and he and Jerry would even share a glass of wine each night before bed. But with this new found kind of adulthood, came a new assertiveness and kind of a new bit of unpredictability. He wasn't just this like constantly happy hooting wonderful baby chimpanzee anymore. All right. In October of 2003, the little family was a relaxing after dinner, watching the World Series, when Jerry and Sandy realized they had to go to the tow shop for something. So they got into their Rav 4 and Travis hopped in as well and they did the same drive they'd done hundreds of times together but when they got to an intersection in town and were stopped at a stoplight

for some reason someone threw an empty plastic soda bottle through their open window and onto Travis's lap and at this point the 170 pound chimp grunted unbuckled his seatbelt open the door and shot out into the road in just his diaper Oh, no. Wow. You got to think, like, if you threw, like, a soda bottle through someone's window and then suddenly a huge chimpanzee just bolts out after you.

Yeah. That would be the scariest thing ever. I would assume they saw the chimpanzee, and that's why they throw an empty... Maybe. I mean, that's why it makes sense to me to throw an empty bottle in the car. Sure. To, like, interact with the chimp. Yeah, that might be true.

or they might have just known that it was Sandy and Jerry and that Travis was probably with him. But if you didn't know, that would be a surprise of a lifetime. So it would take Sandy, Jerry, and the police hours to corral Travis and get back in the car. And the whole incident was kind of funny because Travis was just hooting and smacking cops on their butts and running around and doing tricks

and a huge crowd gathered to watch this big spectacle. But they couldn't get him back in the car. And the only reason he finally went back in the car is because he got bored and he went back on his own, buckled a seatbelt, and it was ready to go. So, I mean, it was like, I think this was a big turning point for the heralds where they realized we're not in full control of this chimpanzee anymore. You know, we have a wild animal living with us. And no one pressed any charges. And I think that's because Travis was a pretty big boo licker and all the police had photos of themselves with Travis.

So they didn't really want him or the heralds to get in trouble. But trouble was definitely brewing for this little family. And after this incident, it was all over national news. So Connecticut actually added what would come to be known as the Travis Amendment to their exotic animal laws, and it would require anyone with a pet primate over 50 pounds to hold a special permit. But because Travis was this local celebrity and no one really wanted to separate him from his family,

they kind of just let him be grandfathered in to the old way, and they let Sandy and Jerry keep Travis with the understanding that they were on really thin ice. And an animal control officer in Stanford actually talked to Sandy and did his best explain the physical changes that were starting to happen to Travis and how highly sexualized and potentially violent chimpanzees can be as they enter adulthood, and that the heralds were about to be living with a very different animal

than the ones they were used to. And the highly sexualized thing is something not to gloss over here. Male chimpanzees, when they're mating, they'll mate dozens of times per day. I mean, they really go for it. Mike? Yeah.

What's that? Couldn't be me. Mike? Dozens? Come on. At what point is it just not even fun anymore, you know? And with that, With that sexualization comes aggression.

You know, that's just like their body is being flooded with those hormones that lead to both of those things kind of being expressed. Mike? All right. Mike's feeling that aggression right now. Yeah. No, I'm, I release that. Yeah, he wants to mate with me a couple weeks ago. I would, with you, Jeff, get over yourself.

Maybe if your hair was actually pink still, but not interested. Oh, all right. What happened to it? It's only just very lightly pink now. Yeah. It's okay. It just fades and I haven't been putting conditioner in it. I'm getting it cut tomorrow.

I like it still. There I go. There I go. Complementing. All right. The heralds were about to be living with a very different animal than the one they were used to. Jeff, we learned this when we did the Chimp Crazy episodes. but can you tell us about how old all the different actor chimps are,

just in like basic terms? Um, no. You brought this up recently. You know this. Like how, when you see an actor chimpanzee, a chimpanzee in a commercial or a movie or whatever, you can bet that it is in what stage of its life?

Adolescence. Right. It's an adolescent. I didn't know that for sure. Yeah, he said it a couple episodes ago, how. Because didn't Tonka. act to like her freaking 20s? Not really. No, they generally retire these chimps once they hit out or once they pass

adolescence and go into adulthood. And that's because they do become so much harder to control. And I think that's something that we didn't really realize growing up is we saw all these chimpanzees in different movies and TV and whatnot. And we just kind of saw them as being this cute, bubbly, friendly animal. But that's because we're only seeing babies and adolescent chimpanzees. We're not seeing the adult. and the adults behave very differently. And they just become much more volatile and difficult to control. So Sandy and Jerry stopped taking Travis off the property much.

Travis had to get used to a life confined to the house and often stuck in his room. And now all of the responsibility to entertain an adult chimpanzee fell to Sandy and Jerry. And while they did their best to create enrichment for Travis, he started becoming more sullen and having bigger mood swings. Mike? Oh man

It's less a swing and more just like a constant nadir of mood You know I'm waiting for that up swing to be honest It's been years You guys do not want to see Mike If he hasn't made it 12 times a day I'll start running around town in my diaper Slapping cops on the butt

Doing backflips Sullenly Maybe that's Benson Boone's problem He just needs to have more sex. Yeah. Stop doing so many backflips. Yeah.

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time offer. About a year after the incident at the intersection, Jerry starts to feel sick more and more, and then one day at work he gets really sick and has some intense pain, and some of his employees take him to the hospital. He was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer, spend the next few weeks at the hospital with Sandy by his side, but he would never make it home. He knew he was dying. He told Sandy that when he was gone, she should take Travis to a sanctuary because he was too much to handle for just her. Meanwhile, at home, Travis is losing his mind without Jerry around. When Jerry would call to talk to Travis on the phone, he would get really upset and frustrated, and he would even pull pictures of Jerry down off of the wall and kiss them and hold them close to his chest and just was

really aggravated that he couldn't see his dad and he didn't know where his dad was. And I think that's an important thing to realize is that these two had a very strong bond. And Travis cared deeply about Jerry and vice versa. They didn't try like the thing in movies and TV where you walk in the hospital and it's like

family only please and you say oh, he is family. He is family. And they're like, that's actually a tree panzy. No, I don't think they did. Should have. Jerry died in April of

2005, and it was the last sad domino in a series of events that would lead to Charla Nash having her face ripped off by a chimpanzee. All right, tiny bit of biology here. We went over chimps very extensively in our Moe episode, as well as our Chimp Crazy episode, so I'm not going to rehash a ton here. We are going to do a little bit. They're the third largest non-human great ape. Can you guys name the great apes?

King Kong. gorillas sure yeah there's bobo bobo not there oh bonobos yeah bonobos are one so we got gorillas bonobos oh man uh mandrillos no orangutan i'm pretty sure they're not orangutan is another one uh and then chimpanzees and humans you can actually put humans in that category if you want but yeah those are the great apes Mandarles are actually in the monkey family. They are closely related to baboons. The lesser apes are like the gibbons. But the great apes are the ones we just listed.

Which one is the girl from Twilight? The girl from twilight. She's a spider monkey. Yeah. Is that a... That's a monkey. Yep. It's not an ape.

That's a lesser ape. What do they call those ones? Lesser. So really quickly, springs up a good point and something I just want to reiterate. Great point, Mike. All of these animals. that we're talking about are primates, but monkeys and apes are separated.

They are not, apes are not monkeys, monkeys are not apes. There we go. They are all primates, but they are in different, those are different groups. If you're calling like another human,

a monkey, that's wrong. You should call them a primate. You should call them an ape or a primate. Yeah. You're an ape. So a more fitting nickname for Bella would maybe be like spider gorilla.

Yeah, spider given, spider chimp sure yeah yeah it won't make a lot of sense all right hop on chimp so they are the third largest non-human great ape uh hold on tight chimp males on average chimpanzee males on average are going to be between 90 and 135 pounds or 40 to 60 kilograms so remember Travis is already 170 pounds in the story so he's far larger than average. Females tend to be a bit smaller. So there is a bit of sexual dimorphism.

I can take it. Kind of female. Kind of similar to the range you would see in like, no, you couldn't. In humans, human males and females like that kind of size difference. It's not like glaringly obvious, but it is definitely a difference. They're born black with pale faces and their face darkens over time. Both males and females tend to have a fine white beard under their chin. They're found throughout Equatorial Africa, and their range extends into 21 countries, though they're just barely hanging on in some of those countries.

They definitely have some hot spots where they're doing a lot better than other places. They'll mostly eat vegetation and fruit and insects, but they're very opportunistic and will hunt and eat meat when it's available. Growing up, I had this video series called Trials of Life when I was a kid, and the last segment in the last video, video showed chimpanzees hunting, catching, and eating colobus monkeys while they're still alive. And it really left an impression on me. It was like too violent for me. And I didn't think that existed in the natural world when I was that age. And that was too much.

Seeing these monkeys like screaming as they were being eaten alive by chimpanzees was a little too visceral. Maybe a little bit too like uncanny valley. I don't like it. Yeah. The main thing I wanted to go over though is. how smart and how social they are. So here's a few bullet points

that I think illustrates how smart they are and after each one I want you guys to vote whether this is smart or not smart. Okay? We can just say smarter or stupid to make it easier. All right. Sure. They've passed the mirror test

which shows they are capable of self-awareness. When they look in a mirror, they know they're looking at themselves. It's not just like some other random animal. Smart or stupid? Smart. Smart. There's that clip I always see on my algorithm of a drunk guy who doesn't even realize his reflection is himself.

And he keeps punching it and trying to like, he's like, no, you get out of my way. There's definitely some overlap between the smartest chimpanzees and the dumbest humans. All right. They have been shown to use certain insects. sex to treat wounds. Smart or smart? I think it's dumb. Stupid.

It doesn't work. It kind of does for them, though. They're using ones that have like certain properties that help them treat their wounds. I thought you said maggots don't work in wounds. Did I say that? I don't know. They use tools for things like catching termites and ants and getting honey out of hives. and some chimpanzees even sharpened sticks with their teeth

to spear bush babies in their holes in trees. Stupid. That's dumb. That's smart. I think it's smart. This is kind of the like breakthrough that Jane Goodall had was she showed chimpanzees using like blades of grass to fish termites out of their mounds. And tool use in animals, even though we're discovering more and more animals use tools,

it does show kind of a higher level of an intelligence. Mike, why do you think it's stupid? I was going to answer that. Okay. Okay. Yeah, Jeff, this show is yours. Go ahead. The stage is set.

Because Mike thinks they should use a gun, but he doesn't realize how small bush babies are. Like, a gun would destroy most of what they're going to eat. That actually brings up a good point. You said bullet points. You have bullet points, Wes. Remember when the NBA team, the bullets was changed to the wizards to, like, promote more of a nonviolent message? Should we start calling them wizard points? Sure.

These are my wizard points. No. That's all I've got to say on the matter. All right. I think it's smart. I think all these are smart. They have a good photographic memory, and one chimpanzee was shown jumbled digits on a screen

for less than a quarter of a second and was able to remember their positions better than humans that were tested with the same test. So not all chimpanzees are able to do this immediately, but some of them have such good photographic. memories that like this screen with numbers can appear for a quarter of a second and then it remembers exactly where all the numbers were. Wow.

Yeah, I don't think I could do that. It's like those severance guys. All right. So we all think it's smart. Next one. They like being tickled when they're happy. Smart or stupid. This is maybe the one that I think is stupid.

That's a question of intelligence. I think it's smart. Okay. Because most animals wouldn't. Most animals would be like, oh, it's trying to hurt me. Yeah. They figured out we're not trying to hurt him. Mike, what do you think?

I think it's a little stupid. I think you're, yeah, leaving yourself a little vulnerable, showing signs of weakness or something. The only one that I think is stupid because I really don't like being tickled. So I don't, yeah, it makes me unhappy. The only thing I think they're really stupid for is all those times we, like, put a hundred of them in a room to write a book and they haven't wrote one book yet. They will over time though. They will. If you give them enough time, they'll write the complete works of Shakespeare.

All right. A captive chimpanzee learned over 350 American Sign Language signs and even spontaneously taught some of those signs to her son. It's more than I know. It's pretty smart. That to me is like the smartest thing they've done. Jeff? Smart?

Stupid? I wasn't listening to that one. Okay. As far as their social... That's the end of that game. As far as social structure. I was just thinking of them type it and I'm sorry. Yeah, it's okay.

Thank goodness. That's what you're usually thinking of. I forgot that that was the trigger for you. As far as their social structure is concerned, it's really complex. And that's because they often live in large groups of up to 100 individuals. And they have what's called a fission fusion society. And to dumb that down a little bit, this isn't like the smart way of explaining this, or the elongated way of explaining it. But basically it just means that small groups are constantly forming and splitting off of that big group and then rejoining.

So they're constantly like forming these like hunting parties or maternal groups or whatever else mating groups that kind of split off and then rejoin and split off and rejoin. And it really means that there's like a lot of fluidity in these big groups. That's interesting. Yeah. It comes with a lot of. That like seems like high school, you know, where you have like your little. clicks, but then like they'll be part of a bigger click and they kind of, you know. That's true. Yeah, it's a good point. And just like high school, that comes with a lot of different

hierarchy and dominance changes. So the basic lesson that I want to illustrate here is that chimpanzees have to be very socially aware because their groups are quite dynamic in the wild. And I think that really is important when you talk about then a chimpanzee being socialized with humans because that is still built into its genetics. Speaking of genetics really quickly, chimpanzee evolution. There's still a fair amount of debate over ape evolution and the time periods and whatnot, but I want to give you guys a really simplified version of it because I think it's really interesting and probably speaks to why you see human chimpanzee bonds more than you would see like human and gorilla bonds or human and orangutan bonds. Okay, so we're going to picture a big, thick branch

coming off of a tree. That branch represents the common ancestry of all the great apes. The first branch coming off of it would be the common ancestor of the orangutans. That split happened somewhere around 14 million years ago, and all these dates are give or take a few million years. The next branch is the common ancestor of the guerrillas that happened about 7 million years ago, and humans, chimpanzees and bonobos only diverged about 4 to 6 million years ago. So the interesting thing about that is it makes chimpanzees our closest living relative of all of the great apes and of all the animals. And I think it maybe speaks to why people can form such intense bonds, pet chimpanzees.

Because there's a lot of similarities to, like, raising a human being when you're raising a pet chimpanzee. And to be honest, chimpanzees can form really strong bonds to us, too. Like, I feel like, I feel like dogs definitely do as well, but, like, having, just what you were saying about Travis, like, hugging the photo, couldn't take that, what was the guy's name? Jerry. Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't take that Jerry wasn't there. Just was devastated.

And that feels like real, like, grief from a chimp, you know, so that's pretty unique. And the difference is dogs we've socialized to be part of our groups. But this is genetic. Like there is a genetic similarity. It makes them easier to bond with us. So chimpanzees and bonobos are the two that are the closest related. But then we, like us and chimpanzees, would be the next closest relation, which I think is really interesting. All right.

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After Jerry's death, Sandy enters a much darker depression. She pretty much cuts off all communication with her friends and family. She starts going on these shopping sprees at T.J. Max and Marshalls. And somehow at those stores, spends hundreds of thousands. of dollars and becomes a bit of a hoarder. I feel like you could buy a T.J. Max for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. Right.

But there are photos from this time of her home and there's just shopping bags everywhere. And she'd buy stuff for herself and Travis, but it would all just kind of sit in certain rooms of the house. And it made it so really only like her room and Travis's room were the open areas where they had any room to move around. She mostly just spent a lot of time at home with Travis, crying, missing Jerry, missing Sue, and Travis also entered into depression without Jerry, and he spent a lot of time just rocking back and forth in his cage. Around this time, one person that Sandy did let into her life was her old friend, Charla Nash.

Charlie had been working odd jobs and traveling around with her daughter, and he even spent some time in a homeless shelter, so Sandy kind of took her under her wing and let them move into Sue's old apartment rent-free. She gave Charla a job doing bookkeeping for her businesses. And that job kind of just morphed into a bunch of stuff, and Charla would spend time tending to Sandy's house or their property, or even watching Travis if Sandy needed to go somewhere and wasn't able to watch him. So by early 2008, Travis was 14, and he's no longer the cute, bubbly baby chimpanzee he used to be. He's obese for a chimpanzee. He weighs 240 pounds. He's five feet tall when he stands up, and his face had turned black and his torso had grayed.

So he kind of went from looking like Bubbles the Chimpanzee to Coba, the Chimpancy. You guys remember both of them. I mean, he looks very different than he did as a baby. I'm glad you said rocking back and forth in his cage. Uh-huh. I thought you were just going to say rocking. Rocking out. Just rocking.

Yeah. to chimpanzee sanctuaries, but she never sent them. Travis was the last remaining member of her family, and I think deep down she knew that she was never going to let him go. On February 16, 2009, Sandy's having a big problem with Travis. She'd gone into his room to clean, and while she was in there, Travis went to the kitchen and stole her car keys and was now out in the front yard running between the two cars, basically telling Sandy that he wanted to go for a ride. And he's a lot of He's not allowed to go for rides anymore because of the incident in the intersection, but he's just agitated. He's been agitated all day.

He's refusing food, ignoring Sandy and the other pets. And she was even so worried that she put some Xanax in his morning tea to try and calm them down. Which. With medications, you don't know what kind of effect they're going to have on an animal, even people sometimes. So it's not necessarily the best move. Sandy had made plans to meet a friend that afternoon, and she called that. friend and told her she was going to be late because Travis was out of control. He wanted to go for a ride and he had stolen her keys. And around that same time, Charla Nash had called Sandy. And while

Sandy asserted that Charla volunteered to come help with Travis, Charla would later say that she was asked to come help. But either way, regardless of who, you know, like what order that happened in, Charla headed over to Sandy's house after the phone call to help her control Travis and get her keys back. And on the way, Charla had picked up an Elmo doll because Travis loved Elmo, and she thought it might be a good distraction and a good way to convince him to go back inside. One other detail that could be important, but maybe not, is that Charla had a new, or Charla had a new hairstyle that Travis hadn't seen at this point. All right, when she pulled up to the house, Charla got out of the car with

the Elmo doll and walked toward Travis with the doll in front of her face. And something about this, whether it was the doll in front of her face, the new hairstyle, just the fact that he was already overly agitated, the Xanax, who knows, but something about this interaction enraged this 200-pound chimpanzee. He's about 35 feet away from Charla and he charged. First on his feet and knuckles, and then just on two legs with his arms swinging through the air. and Sandy saw all of this from the front of the house and she screamed, Travis, Travis, Travis, what are you doing?

Travis, stop, Travis, it's Charla. Kind of like Shia LeBuff, how he attacks people. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of similarities here. But your screams did nothing to stop the angry, depressed, and massive chimpanzee. Travis slammed into Charla, hurling her into the side of the car, and then onto the ground, and then tearing into her with his fingers and teeth, while both human and chimpanzees screams filled the air. Sandy grabs a snow shovel, she runs at Travis, hitting him repeatedly,

but he just kept screaming and tearing and biting at Charla. Blood was already everywhere, all over Charla, all over Travis's face, down the side of the car, and spilling onto the frozen ground. So now Sandy runs screaming into the house, and without thinking she grabs a butcher knife, and then runs back out, still screaming, plunges the butcher knife into Travis's back. He doesn't even flinch, but just keeps biting and tearing and pulling and ripping at Charlie's face.

And Sandy stabs him twice more, and after the third stab, Travis turns and looks at Sandy directly in the face. His entire muzzle is covered in blood and bits of skin and tissue. And Sandy can now see past him, and down to her friend on the ground. and Charla's face had been almost entirely removed by the chimpanzee's teeth and hands, and now is just a wet, bloody, pulpy mess where her features had previously been. Oh my God. So she thinks her friend is dead.

Travis turns back to Charla. Sandy runs into the house screaming. She picks up the phone to call the police, and I want to read part of the transcript from their nearly 12-minute call, and we'll probably play a little bit of this too. So here's what she said to the police. She says, send the police. The emergency operator says, what's the problem there?

The chimp, the chimp killed my friend. What's wrong with your friend? Oh, please, send the police with the gun, with the gun, hurry up. Who has the gun? Please, hurry up, please hurry up. He's killing my girlfriend. Then they try and calm her down to really, this operator's having a hard time understanding what's going on.

He says, what's the problem? She says, he's killing my friend. Who's killing your friend? Chimp, my chimpanzee. Oh, your chimpanzee is killing your friend? Yes, he ripped her apart. Hurry up, hurry up, please. Then this operator says, what's going on?

What is the monkey doing? Tell me what the monkey is doing? He ripped her face off. He ripped her face off. Gun, they've got to shoot him. Please, please, hurry, please. And she goes on to say, the operator says, I need you to calm down.

They're on their way. And she says, I can't, I can't. He's eating her. He's eating her. And then she just keeps kind of saying, like, please God, where are they? Where are they? What's the problem there? They can't kill my group.

Lock your doors on your car and stay there with me. It don't matter. It don't matter. It don't matter. He will rip the doors. Dundra. Just do what I'm telling you to. Stay in the car. The police officers will handle it. He's not dead. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. So this takes 12 minutes for the police to show up. When the first responding officers respond, some of them did know Sandy and Travis, so they kind of, even though they had heard monkey go out over the call, they knew what they were walking into. And Frank Shiafari was one of the first on the scene, and as he pulled into the property, it didn't take him long to see Travis and the carnage that Travis had left behind. Charla Nash was laying on the ground, unconscious, mostly naked, and almost unrecognizable.

And as soon as Travis clocked the police cruiser, he ran twice. It immediately he knocks off the rearview mirror. He tries opening the passenger side door. And when he finds it locked, he goes to the driver's side door. And according to this officer, rips the door off of the cruiser. Really wanted to go on that ride. Yeah, he really wanted to get in a car. That honestly could be what he was trying to do.

Who knows? But as he does this, the officer inside Frank Shiafari lurches toward the passenger side of the vehicle, kind of gets caught up in that big computer thing they have. have in the middle of their cars. And Travis leans in, bears his teeth that are still streaked and dripping with blood. And Frank pulls out his gun and fires four rounds. Man, Travis takes a few steps backward, screams, takes a shit, and runs off. Oh, no.

I'll clean that up. Yeah. Tearing the door off is so insane. Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's so scary. I think Vin Diesel might have done that once. But that's the only time I can think of anyone doing that.

If Finn got shot in those four times, though, he would just, like, kind of turn his shoulder a little bit and then be okay. That's true. Sandy is, meanwhile, locked inside of one of the other cars. That's where she's secured herself. She hears the shots, and she watches as Travis runs inside, and she tells emergency services on the other end that he's still alive. But she was wrong. Travis had walked on his knuckles through the kitchen, the bedroom, and into his own, room where he fell over and died.

And it's, it's funny for me, like, I, like, it's funny. No, that's not funny. Going over this story a bunch of times already, I never really, I felt bad for Travis, but it didn't really hit me how sad his story is.

And preparing this episode, it made me really sad. I was kind of just like, that really sucks that he had this happy life and that he didn't understand why it was all taken away from him. And I see him and Charla as the victims here, you know? Like, it's really, really sad. Yeah.

No, like, I do think it wasn't just Travis was their family, but also Travis felt like they were his family. Mm-hmm. And it'd be so hard to have your dad just die and you don't really understand why. You didn't get to see him again. He just disappeared. And then your whole life changes. you're in your cage more often,

you're going through puberty and no one is explaining to you what's happening. Yeah. And you just want to go on a ride. But rightfully for Sandra, like if your kid's throwing a tantrum, you can't always give them what they want. Yeah.

It always, it makes me think, like, if Jesse were to ever die, I would want our dog to die with her because I would feel so sad. sad all the time looking at my dog and not being able to explain to her why Jesse is gone. No? And that's how I feel about Travis is like he loved these people. He loved Sue.

He loved Jerry and he lost them both and he didn't know why. And that's like really, really sad. I remember when in the chimp crazy documentary, I forget if it was Travis' story or if it was another chimp. But at the end of just a tortuous life, there was a moment. where the policeman or whoever it was that pulled the trigger on the other end, they made this connection with each other. And the policeman felt, it felt like the chimp wanted to end the suffering.

They wanted that trigger to be pulled and to just be put out of their misery. And that was just a really emotionally devastating moment. Yeah, that's like consider that. No, go ahead. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was just going to say like that a chimp that's so at the end of its emotional chain that it's looking for an escape, you know. And I don't know, I guess we can't say. for sure that that's what the chimp is thinking, but I mean, you put it the way Jeff did,

where everything was just taken away and nothing's explained and nothing makes sense. It's, yeah. Yeah, just looking for any kind of escape. That's what this Frank Shiafari guy said. The guy that killed Travis is that he says that he is certain that they had that connection and that Travis was saying, kill me, like, I want this to be over. Yeah. So when he leaves his car, his cruiser, and goes looking around, he sees pieces.

of scalp, skin, fingers, and other body parts scattered around the ground and a growing pool of blood around the body. As he approaches Charla Nash, she reaches out with a bloody stump where her hand used to be, and she tries grabbing Frank's foot. She's rushed to the hospital where she'd get over seven hours of emergency surgery just to stabilize her by four groups of surgeons. She'd lost her eyelids, her nose, her lower jaw, and her scalp, and he had pummeled the bones of her face to a point that there was almost no structure, had removed one of her hands completely, and four of the five fingers on the other hand. Both eyes became infected in the attack, and she lost her eyesight. Some of the medical workers that assisted with her procedures following

the attack would need special counseling and therapy just to process the extreme nature of her injuries. Her family very quickly would open a $50 million lawsuit against Sandy. Ultimately, Lee Charlo would be awarded $4 million. She would go on to have facial reconstruction surgery, and she would become an advocate for exotic animal ownership laws. We're going to leave her from this point onward just because I think she's been under the public eyes so much, and there's been so much scrutiny that I don't want to, like, go too much into her recovery, but it's been a long, hard road for her. miraculous that she was able to survive. Yeah. It really is.

Unbelievable work by that medical team. Yeah. Following the attack, Sandy retreats into her home. She really doesn't speak to the press or even try to clarify what had happened much. The big question remained if she was more upset about losing Travis or the attack on Charla. And she did answer that to friends by saying, well, I stabbed him. You know, I was trying to kill him. And I do think, like, the emergency call transcript where she's just like, they need to get here, they need to kill him, answers that question.

Like, she cared more about her friend that was being killed by her chimpanzee than her chimpanzee. So I don't think it's super fair. But she did really miss Travis. She didn't clean up the blood in his room. She also put in a big stuffed chimpanzee doll in his room. She continued shopping excessively and hoarding, tried to put a new life together. but whenever she would talk to friends, she would just end up crying about Travis.

She started feeding local deer and raccoons, but then in a last ditch effort to just feel anything, she went 50-50 on another baby chimpanzee with the chimp trainer in Florida. And she knew she would never be able to have this chimpanzee in her house or bring it home, but she paid for half of it, and it was, for all intents and purposes,

half her chimpanzee. We went over that pretty extensively in the Chimp Crazy Eust. episodes, but it's pretty insane to me. It's like someone that has not learned their lesson, unfortunately. But when you're that sad, you do crazy things, you know, just do. Maybe get a dog, maybe get a cat. Yeah, yeah, anything. Reach out to your grandkids, you know. Get a guerriller. Yeah, not a gorilla. I don't think a gorilla would be better. A gorilla? A gorilla. A gorilla. A gorilla. They named this new baby chance. Sandy went out to Florida to visit and got

very emotional giving little baby chance a hug. But then in May of 2010, a little more than a year after the attack, Sandy started having some intense chest pain, called a friend who ended up taking her to the hospital, and it turned out her aorta had ruptured, and Sandy died in emergency surgery. She was buried next to Jerry, and inside of her coffin they placed the urn with Sue's remains, her daughter, and on the other side of her body, the urn with Travis's remains. And that ends the tragic story of Travis the Chimpanzee. You guys got any questions? It's a tough one.

Yeah. That's sad. Do you think this was just kind of bad luck or do you think people made mistakes? I think people made some pretty big mistakes. It's a crazy question for the end of this episode. Yeah. I think it's a mistake to keep a chimpanzee in your house regardless. I think we've learned that that almost all.

always goes poorly, especially when there's not other chimpanzees around. But yeah, there's mistakes. The counter. Okay, let's hear. Counter. argument. Yeah. She owned two chimps, and one of them didn't rip her friend's face off.

The second one, Chance? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, she only had Chance for a year. Like, 50, 50. I can't remember. A Chance died, and it wasn't, there was something, something happened with Chance. So, life doesn't usually go really well for these. chimpanzees in captivity.

It's not a good thing. It seems like the very best case scenario is they start acting up and then they're taken away before anything truly terrible can happen. But yeah, I never heard. I don't know. Maybe there are there stories out there where a chimp just lives to a nice, ripe old age and dies without any thing terrible happening? Honestly, I mean, obviously, I think it's bad.

I was joking. but I do think Tonka would have been that example. Like it seemed like Tonka, even for an older chimp, was pretty chill. See, I disagree. Because Tonka was like rocking back and forth in his little tiny cage. And when Tanya would bring like a phone to the window, he would just have to like sit there and depressed, stare at photos of other chimpanzees.

I don't think a human family is enough for a chimpanzee. I think they have more complex social requirements than that. Okay. And I don't think you can give them the space that they need either. Well, I wasn't saying this is like a good life, but I was saying I don't think it would have ended in tragedy in that one case. But I don't know. Yeah. Like it could have.

It was a chimpanzee. Yeah. I kind of think it would have, but I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. She was afraid of Tonka, too. It's like she she wasn't like, come. It's like, yeah, this is my daughter.

but also, or was it Tonka boy or girl? Tonko's a boy. Boy, yeah. This is my son, even though I have a son, and my son might bite my finger off any day. Yeah. All right.

Yeah, don't do it. I don't, I don't, I don't, there's better things to spend 50 grand on or 40 grand or whatever, and, uh, I love thinking that someone listening right now was going to get a chimpanzee until that right there. Their mouse is hovering. over the two-day delivery Amazon button.

They're like, can I still, can I still cancel this order? All right, let's move on to our categories. Yes. Our first one is your favorite Travis from the world of pop culture. I felt like I maybe could have, if I really thought about it, thought of a better answer, but the one I want to say is Travis Barker. Because I never got like super huge into music like you guys. And I was more definitely just like mainstream bands and music.

And so for me, Travis Barker was the only person in a band where the drummer was easily the most famous member of that band. And especially bands I liked. So I thought it was kind of cool to have like a drummer be like the main star. of a band. Yeah. Yeah. He's an incredible drummer, too. Like, one of the all-time best.

So I think that's a good pick. Which is, like, so interesting because their, like, lyrics are so basic. And, like, let's just make money. And then they just have one of the best drummers ever. Yeah. I love Blink, though. I'm a fan. I know.

But it's still, like, yeah. Fell in love with a girl at the rock show. Fair enough. Yeah. Excited for my first day. What, I don't know, like a lot of their songs are just like very bubble gummy. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike, who's your favorite Travis? I'm going to stay on the music tack and say Travis Scott. I know a bit of a controversy surrounding him in multiple different parts of his life. But specifically, his album Rodeo, I think is one of the best trap albums. Maybe I probably my favorite. I don't know if best is always a weird word to ascribe to anything. But man, rodeo, some of my all-time favorite tracks. I haven't really gotten into any of his later stuff or earlier stuff, but that one album is pretty infallible in my ears.

Yeah. In my eyes. Who's your least favorite, Travis? Travis. Who's this Travis Trit guy? I'm not going to say who you want me to say. I mean, I felt like I was alley-uping you there. I know. I don't want to get into it.

We're not doing it. All right. I had a hard time deciding between two. One was Travis Pastrana, who I don't know anything about him personally or if he's a good person or not, but I just remember him doing some of the craziest stunts ever, like jumping out of an airplane with no parachute. That's what I was going to say. He did the point break thing in real life.

That's pretty impressive to do that. And then the other one I thought of was Travis Femel or Fimel. He's the guy that played Ragnar Lothbrook. in the Vikings series. Oh, yeah. I feel like he hasn't had a huge career since, but he still pops up here and there. But that,

I loved that show pretty much up until he left it. Because he was just such like an anchoring, amazing part of it and so good in his role. So I think it's like a really good show with him in it. So that's who I picked. All right. Shout out Travis Trit. I don't know.

You might be a great guy. Sure. You're not my least favorite. All right, I had top three primates you want to see in the wild. We've seen a few together. We saw orangutans. We've seen some monkeys. What are your top three?

So primates, it includes apes and apes. Yeah. Okay. Apes and monkeys. Yeah. Apes and apes. I would go, I want to see one of those golden monkeys in China. What are they called?

The super fluffy ones that don't look real. The golden langers? No. Like the super like... The Chinese snub nose monkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of my picks. Chinese snubbo.

The blue faces and the... I want to see a mandrill. And I want to see a colobus. Okay. Shoot me. I will. I will. Just give me a minute.

I'll go with gorilla baboon and one other one. I don't care. You've seen a baboon. Yeah, but I'll see another one. Okay. Rihalaboon. And one other, I don't care. Love it.

All right. Jeff, we had two the same. I want the Chinese snub nose monkey and the mandrill. My other one is gorilla. So Mike, we had guerrilla. Same too. Yeah. Nice.

I'd love to see some guerrillas. Okay. It's not how that's sad, but, yeah. Mike, what about, like, does monkeys in Japan that go in the hot springs? I don't want to be in a hot spring with a monkey. Would you want to see them in one? Or would you be pissed that they're like in the hot springs? Yeah.

I don't know what I feel about that, but I don't want to be there with one. Yeah, their red faces in the heated water kind of has a weird feeling to me, even though their faces are just red anyways. I've never really done that. This is a group of animals that just makes me uneasy. I'm kind of tired of macaques anyways. Like I feel like everywhere you go, there's macaques and I've had my fill. All right.

I got a, it came from Quora. This is a funny, a question that I found to be funny, not so much the answers, but the question was good. Do you think Travis the chimp went to hell or heaven? Let's discuss that. The answers were just like very literal on who makes it to hell and heaven. A lot of scriptures that were referenced. So the answers weren't that great, but what do you guys think?

It's interesting I mean what There's the Scripture that all dogs go to heaven I don't think that's So even bad dogs Go to heaven Like even dogs have killed

Way more people than Travis And that's true They all go to heaven I think he's in heaven If heaven exists But I mean Travis is smarter than a dog Yeah

I think he didn't know It was Charla Or Charla I think the Elmo Dahl in front of the face is probably the big thing where you just didn't realize what was coming at him.

That makes it better. Like, I don't know, it's kind of evil to want to kill Elmo too. Yeah. Like, Elmo's, what did Elmo ever do? I think Travis had... He's pretty annoying.

Some pretty serious mental illness going on. So I'm not going to blame him. But yeah. You think he gets off on, like, the psycho thing? I think he does more than people even. Yeah. He's an animal. I think animals are going to make it to heaven.

Probably all of them. Sharks? Yeah. Sharks especially. That'd be crazy. I have sharks in heaven. Sure. There's got water in heaven.

I don't know what. That was a bad. I asked a bad question. What are you right? Like sharks aren't going to eat things in heaven, are they? I don't know. That's a good question. That's like all they do.

You know? This heaven thing's really falling apart the more we talk about it. Mike, what do you think? Is Travis making it to heaven or hell? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'll, I want him to be there. Mike's just done with categories. All right.

I just, I'll tell you this. I don't know what to. I'll tell you this. If Travis is going to hell, that's where I want to be to. All right. Fair enough. Okay, a quick, let's argue with the question mark on the end. I don't know if we're actually going to argue because I could see us all agreeing on this.

My argument. I'll take the other side. I don't care. Okay. Surprise parties are bad, is what I think. Travis got surprised. Didn't go well. I think surprise parties in general just aren't fun and bad.

For either the people that have to do the surprising and the person that's being surprised, I just prefer not to have one. It's really unfair. It's really unfair. That's why you spoiled mine in India. I didn't mean to. Why do you think it's really unfair, Mike? Because all of a sudden it kind of turns into your responsibility to make sure that everyone that planned this surprise party feels like that was a success.

And I'm not going to give you the reaction that you're hoping for. I just promise you I'm not. And then all of a sudden it's like, I kind of feel like the bad guy. And I didn't want all of you over at my house. How did you even learn where I live? I don't want you there. Get out of there. For me, my main argument is like, I really like the anticipation of a fun event as much as I like the event.

itself and I feel like if you're being surprised you kind of go through your whole day like if it's your birthday or something thinking like oh everyone forgot my birthday like this kind of sucks this is like a bummer of a birthday and then at the end it's like oh they didn't forget sorry I don't care I really don't at the end it's kind of like oh they didn't forget but then I don't know I just I would just rather know that like I'm gonna have some fun with my friends and not worry about it I I am genuinely going to take the other side of this. Yeah.

Because the thing about surprise parties is it's not like they do it every birthday. It's like you get like one surprise party in your life maybe, if you're lucky, in my opinion. Yeah, I never had one. It's like sour. Yeah. I'm not giving you one. I don't know. I feel like birthdays get boring.

Like I'm tired of my birthdays. So it's like, I don't know, maybe a surprise party would be kind of fun. Mix it up. Yeah, mix it up at once in your life. Okay. I think that's a good argument. And yeah, maybe I'm just sour because I've never had one. Yeah.

The ones that I've had to do the surprising, I'm always kind of like, oh, this is so overly complicated. Okay. You don't need to have Elmo there. I got a question for you guys that I came up with. Let's say you're with the absolute love of your life. Everything is truly perfect. Like every single thing about your relationship is great. but then she says she or he said they want to legally raise a chimpanzee in your house

it's going to live with you for its entire lifespan 50 plus years would that be a deal breaker for you this is the true like perfect relationship up until that point Mike would be like okay but I'm never going to interact with it I'm never going to help yeah and I think that's an incredibly fair and reasonable stance to take. But you wouldn't be able to do that. Unless you had like a huge house, you're going to be interacting with this chimpanzee. There's no way or not. That's why I'm leaving.

Yeah, I think I'm leaving. There's not a chance. I think it's too much for me. And I would be afraid of it. Knowing what I know about chimpanzees, once it's an adult, I would just live my life and like on edge. Honestly, like... I have to replace and repair and stuff.

Pre tooth and claw, I think I would be like... this relationship just got even better. Yeah, you'd be the one proposing buying this fancy. But now it's just like, it's not going to end well. This is going to make things bad. Think of all the lobster tail you'd have to buy. Oh, man. Maybe I could just adopt a kid and dress them up like a chimp and be like, oh, look.

All right, so it's a deal breaker for all of us. All right, we're going to do a quick conservation corner and then wrap this up. There's somewhere... I'd adopt a lobster tail. That'd be pretty... There's somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000... That'd help take care of it.

Chimpanzees in the wild. They are IUCN endangered because they are rapidly losing their habitat and they are poached for bushmeat and some other things. They... Because, you know, you hear 150,000 to 300,000 and you think of like, oh, there's only 5,000 tigers or whatever. It seems like they're doing pretty well.

compared to a lot of our imperiled species. But they, I can't stress enough, like these parts of Equatorial Africa where they're found are some of our most threatened ecosystems in the world. They are under threat from a lot of exploitation, from climate change, from human conflicts, like wars, and there's just a lot going on in this part of the world that is stacking up against animals like chimpanzees and gorillas and mandrillos. some of these other primates that live there. So even though there's a fair amount of them,

they've got a lot of pretty substantial threats that they're facing. Okay, I think we're going to wrap it up. I'm going to skip listener questions for today, but we appreciate all the questions you've been sending us. We will do them still, but sometimes we don't. We're not going to do it today, I decided. All right. Fine.

Mike, we... Yeah, nothing. All right, guys. Thanks for listening to the story of Travis. We love you. And let us know if that Primate movie is any good. I love you guys. All right.

See you. See ya. Bye.